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63
She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. (thiswillhold.substack.com)
submitted 2 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/politics@beehaw.org
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This would be a lot more tinfoilesque were a court case on the matter not already underway in New York.

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

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[–] chaos@beehaw.org 16 points 2 days ago (3 children)

There is basically zero actual evidence here. The argument basically goes "this could've happened, then this other thing could've happened, then a third thing could've happened, someone said something vaguely ominous in a group chat, and then something we all know is impossible happened: Donald Trump was elected President despite being obviously bad. There's only one conclusion: the election was stolen and now we just need to track it down." Read the article again and try to pick out the things that are shown to have actually happened and weren't just suspicions or possibilities.

It doesn't hold up for the same reasons the 2020 doubts didn't hold up. Did they do this in every state? Because the results were pretty uniform across the country, it was a big swing right. It'd be the biggest and most successful conspiracy in history, getting away with rigging a wide variety of completely separate voting systems, many of which are heavily or entirely paper-based, many of which are run by blue states or weren't even competitive, with no leaks and no discrepancies in any of the public records.

Or, maybe, just maybe, Biden was incredibly unpopular and Kamala didn't run a good campaign, while Donald "I'll fix everything and everyone will be rich" Trump promised to take action and not just continue the same policies for another four years, so people gave him another shot. "Oh, but he had felonies! Surely the electorate would never!" Yeah, they would. We elect terrible people all the time. He won. This isn't productive.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 32 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The fact that more people signed sworn affidavits that they voted for Harris than tallied votes was enough for a judge to move to discovery makes this tonally different from the 2020 challenges that all failed. I don't think Harris was a particularly great candidate, but that's miles away from votes being miscounted.

You're conflating and making false equivalencies between separate events.

[–] remington@beehaw.org 11 points 2 days ago

The fact that more people signed sworn affidavits that they voted for Harris than tallied votes was enough for a judge to move to discovery makes this tonally different from the 2020 challenges that all failed.

I agree and I will be following the court case(s).

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 9 points 2 days ago

Okay, sure. That's one thing in one election that should be looked at, and if more comes up, great, chase that down too. There is a massive gap between that and "zomg the national election was totally stolen!"

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There’s plenty of evidence if you go look at the data. It’s been artificially smoothed.

Yes across all the tabulator machines. They started to shift votes once a given tabulator had counted 400 votes to mask it.

They went back and looked and seems the pattern was present in the past few elections. This is why Trump was so convinced the dems cheated. The people outvoted a vote shifting algorithm. They shifted votes after 600 min in the 2020 election.

They also found the algorithm that does this, the admin access password publicly on git, and the code used to flash the tabulators.

It’s absolutely nothing like Trumps batshit baseless claims.

Analysis for a few states out, 11 more underway.

https://electiontruthalliance.org/2024-us-election-analysis

https://smartelections.substack.com/p/so-clean

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is why Trump was so convinced the dems cheated. The people outvoted a vote shifting algorithm.

See, this is exactly what the conservatives say when you ask "well, how did Trump win in 2016 and 2024 if the elections are rigged?" Obviously, the sheer power of True American Patriots overwhelmed the Democratic rigging. It's not any more sensible when we do it.

I can't say I read everything here, but what I did looked mostly like "these numbers seem funny to me." Which is reason to look further, sure, but far short of definitive proof. Is there any reason to believe the vote tabulators were running this compromised code, or had default passwords set? Is there an independent statistics expert saying "they're right, this is suspicious"? A confession by one of what must have been hundreds of co-conspirators in this, apparently, multi-year project that has perfectly evaded scrutiny until these folks found the truth? It's an extraordinary claim, and the bar for believing it hasn't even come close to being met.

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Again, no, conservatives have ZERO fucking evidence. Trump got laughed out of courts by judges he appointed. He didn’t even try to lie he brought like tweets of pictures of people carrying boxes and said ‘look! Fraud!’

It was completely brain dead.

There are at least three independent groups who have been publicly researching it since just after the election. The group i linked also gave it to two separate independent researchers and made sure they came to the conclusions. The odds Trump could’ve won the way he did is one in 50 octillion

You telling me the guy who done a fake elector scheme, tried to solicit fake votes from states, and turn over the election illegitimately didn’t fucking try to cheat in every way possible? Give me a break. The dems didn’t check or knowingly turned a blind eye.

It wouldn’t have taken hundreds of people, very few. The lawsuits will progress, the bar for me giving it credibility is lack of a coherent debunk.

https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/im-not-saying-pennsylvania-was-stolen

https://www.wjbf.com/business/press-releases/accesswire/1033393/retransmission-2024-presidential-and-senate-results-called-into-question-as-lawsuit-advances/

https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/she-won-they-didnt-just-change-the

https://dissentinbloom.substack.com/p/the-machines-were-changed-before

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The breathless reporting and big numbers immediately set off my BS detector. Usually, when a stat says something like "the odds of this happening purely by chance are 1 In a hojillion!" it's just bad statistics, for example saying "even if each of my windows had a 75% chance of breaking in the hurricane, the odds that all of them would break is less than 1%, so clearly someone sabotaged my house!" No, they were all in the same hurricane, not independent random hurricanes, you can't just multiply the probabilities like that. It's very easy to do bad stats and come up with wild results.

It also looks like this is mostly focused on Pennsylvania, where there's actually more to look at. Again, sure! It's worth looking into. Let's see evidence that this crosses state lines and isn't just Pennsylvania. Let's see evidence that the machines really were vulnerable and not just that they could've been. Let's find someone who will name names and give specifics about this conspiracy. If this stuff is true, it'll get picked up by more sober voices that aren't yelling "it was stolen, it was stolen, don't you all see???" and then it might be worth tuning in.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Alright you don't trust math people, so what science is your opinion based on? Vibes?

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

When did I say I don't trust math people? I do, but not when they're saying "these numbers don't look quite right, so here's an entire story about how maybe they used satellites to steal an election." I've said repeatedly through the thread that this stuff should be looked at, but we need to keep in mind that stealing an election is very hard to do and not immediately dismiss contrary evidence like the fact that many elections that absolutely could not be manipulated the same way showed a similar result of a giant swing to the right, or that independent exit polls didn't report anything unusual.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I can’t say I read everything here

big numbers immediately set off my BS detector.

hojillion

You are basically saying "I didn't do the work of understanding what they published, but they are wrong"

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 0 points 7 hours ago

I only have so many minutes to spend on this plane of existence, so if I look through something and decide "this isn't enough to go anywhere", then no, I'm not going to spend more time on it. I'd be happy to be wrong and see Trump and his cronies get brought down by a ragtag group of statisticians who found the truth and didn't give up until justice was served, but I really don't think that'll happen.

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Your hurricane analogy doesn’t hold because the point isn’t that a bunch of unrelated events magically lined up, it’s that the same anomalies showed up in the same voting systems, in multiple places, under almost identical conditions. The statistical models don’t treat these like random broken windows, they test how likely the same patterns could happen systematically without manipulation.

Pennsylvania is just the latest focus partly because Trump basically said it himself:

“We were in danger of losing Pennsylvania. But he knows those computers better than anybody, all those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So, thank you to Elon.”

What does that even mean if it’s not hinting at interference?

And it’s not just Pennsylvania. There is detailed analysis for Clark County, Nevada, drop-off rate studies covering six states, and ongoing work expanding that to eleven more full states.

More importantly, this is not just about statistics. In Coffee County, Georgia, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell actually hired a tech team to access and copy Dominion voting system software and data. There is security footage, emails, invoices, and sworn testimony proving it happened. Powell was indicted for conspiracy to commit computer crimes and ended up pleading guilty to multiple counts, admitting what they did and agreeing to testify against others.

This was not a one-off either. Similar breaches happened in Michigan and Colorado, which is why in December 2023 almost two dozen well-known election security experts and computer scientists signed an open letter warning that Trump allies were behind a coordinated multistate effort to breach voting software that runs most of the country’s ballots.

It’s always projection with these people; if they’re accusing the other side of doing something, chances are they’re the ones doing it. It’s like your daft cousin who keeps yelling “Stop cheating!” during a board game while he’s got extra cards hidden up his sleeve. They think the Democrats are rigging the election, so they’re busy rigging it themselves to tilt the scales their way.

So it really doesn’t matter if you personally believe every detail or not. The point is there is so much credible evidence, with real people charged and pleading guilty, that we should be shouting about it until it gets a real, independent investigation.

[–] chaos@beehaw.org -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm open to the idea that there might be something here, I just haven't seen anything particularly compelling, it's all been very typical conspiracy theory stuff. The Trump lawyer thing I did hear about, I don't remember anything about actually changing results though, just unauthorized access. Trump saying something suspicious, well, he says a lot of stuff. The drop off rates being different between the two candidates seems sensible to me, I'd expect quite a few Trump voters to just care about Trump and not the rest of the races, and less so on the Democratic side. It's the reason turnout now seems to help Republicans, they've won over a lot of unreliable voters and Trump brings them out better than most. A coordinated, multi-state conspiracy to rig the election seems very unlikely to stay completely airtight for over a year.

Is there a source that specifically claims that these anomalies are happening in states using the same voting system and not in others? I haven't seen that in anything linked to me so far, and that would be at least interesting.

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The Trump lawyer thing I did hear about, I don’t remember anything about actually changing results though, just unauthorized access.

Lot of handwaving in this post, go read the full report. There were multiple breaches.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-151721941

Trump saying something suspicious, well, he says a lot of stuff.

What does it mean though?

The drop off rates being different between the two candidates seems sensible to me, I’d expect quite a few Trump voters to just care about Trump and not the rest of the races, and less so on the Democratic side.

The point is that happened at an unprecedented rate which appears unnatural. Historically drop-off rates don’t show that level of extreme split between presidential and down-ballot races, even among single-issue or personality-driven voters. Again more handwaving based on vibes

A coordinated, multi-state conspiracy to rig the election seems very unlikely to stay completely airtight for over a year.

It didn't, it's been public the full time you've just not been listening.

Is there a source that specifically claims that these anomalies are happening in states using the same voting system and not in others? I haven’t seen that in anything linked to me so far, and that would be at least interesting.

There's clear evidence that anomalies correlate with specific machines (ES&S/Dominion), but only in strategic states/counties, not wherever those machines are used., The Election Truth Alliance noted in their Clark County NV analysis that anomalies appeared in high-volume ES&S tabulators, seen in a swing county but not replicated in other counties using the same machines. A Planet Critical deep‑dive found that “bullet ballots” — votes cast for only president, skipping down-ballot races — spiked dramatically in swing states using ES&S tabulators, with Trump bullet ballots at 7.2% in Arizona and 5.5% in Nevada, and 11% in North Carolina. By contrast, these same systems in nearby non-swing states (Oregon, Utah, Idaho) saw a spike of less than 0.05%.

If the anomalies were due to random mechanical faults or uniform software bugs, you'd expect to see them statewide - but that's not what the numbers show.

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/cyber-security-experts-warn-election-hacked

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

... did you read the update to that last link? Kinda undermined quite a bit of this.

I'm open to the idea that a conspiracy happened. We know they aren't above things like sending an alternate slate of electoral votes and then hoping to override the legitimate results in Congress, because that absolutely did happen. But stealing seven separate elections in all the swing states is a hell of a tough job, and harder to do it without being caught for months. If it did happen, there'd be more evidence than just statistical anomalies within the official results. You'd see people recorded as voting who say they never did, you'd see exit polls that don't make sense, you'd see an audit reveal missing paper ballots, there'd be something more. And even if it was the perfect crime, you'll need to find a flaw to actually get anything done about it anyway. There isn't enough here to say it happened. There's enough to look into some suspicious stuff in a few places, and go ahead and check those out, but don't get your hopes up or say that it's the only conclusion. The simplest and most obvious answer remains the most likely: the country elected Trump by choice.

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I hadn't, but it's only about the bullet-ballots, which are a small part of it.

There are signs beyond just raw stats and it’s not only about bullet ballots.

“You’d see people recorded as voting who say they never did”

How? The point isn’t fake voters. The claim is that the system changed how some real votes were counted, flipping votes above a certain limit for certain people. In Rockland County, NY, you have sworn affidavits from real voters saying their votes were missing or miscounted. This isn’t just “I forgot to vote” - these are people whose totals don’t match what the machines reported. That’s why a judge agreed it deserves discovery.

“You’d see exit polls that don’t make sense”

If the manipulation changed a big enough chunk of votes in a single county, then yes, you would probably see a clear mismatch between the exit poll and the final count. But what people are saying is that the alleged flips were small and spread out - for example, switching just enough votes here and there to stay under the radar.

Exit polls have a margin of error. If the flip is just two or three percent in key spots, it might not stand out because normal voter shifts, turnout differences, or shy-voter effects can explain small gaps. Plus, not every place has a solid local exit poll; some counties don’t even do them at all.

So yes, you could catch a huge flip that way, but if the flips were subtle and spread across many precincts, an exit poll alone probably wouldn’t prove it. The real test is still comparing the paper ballots directly to what the machines reported.

“You’d see an audit reveal missing paper ballots”

That is exactly what the Clark County, NV, ballot-level data shows. The machine results can’t be explained by the physical ballots alone. This is why people keep asking for full hand counts in specific high-risk counties instead of broad audits that skip over the suspicious spots.

No one is saying “Trump definitely lost.” The point is that the pattern is suspicious enough that it should be fully checked, with paper, logs, and software all verified properly. That is just basic accountability, not wishful thinking.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Of course they cheated, that's MAGA'S entire brand. If they were absolutely sure that they'd win by an enormous margin, they'd STILL cheat.

The Dems have been trying to sell the concept that there were millions of people in swing states that voted straight Democratic tickets, except HitlerPig at the top.

Where are these people? I'm sure there were a few, but they are as rare as white squirrels. I have NEVER heard a single person claim to have voted Democratic except for HitlerPig, and I have never seen one speak in the media. There are supposed to be millions of them, so show me just one.

It's a silly idea. Of course they cheated. I'd be more surprised if it were proven they didn't cheat.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 points 2 days ago

I have never seen one speak in the media.

We're in agreement here, but it's important to bear in mind that corporate media has already bent the knee. Being subjected to one of Trump's tirades (and lawsuits) for reporting discrepancies isn't good for shareholders, which is their audience -- not readers, listeners or viewers ... fuck, not even the ever-dwindling number of advertisers at this point.

Plus, I don't think Mike Reed wants to be hauled before Congress to defend freedom of the press. He doesn't believe in it in the first place.

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Okay, so where's the massive exit poll discrepancy between who voters say they voted for and the official results? That would be a red flag worth paying attention to, if it showed inconsistent results between down ballot and top line races but only in states that used these supposedly compromised voting machines.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Polls are meaningless.

I want proof. There are supposed to be MILLIONS of these people. Show me five. Show me one.

Even if they could trot out a few, they couldn't be trusted. There is no proof of how they voted, other than their word, and the word of any Trumper is worthless.

[–] remington@beehaw.org 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

While state attorneys general begin their investigations, it only takes one U.S. senator to initiate the disqualification proceedings against the unelected and unfit occupant of the Oval Office.

Good.

[–] chaos@beehaw.org 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think this is true. There's no mechanism for correcting a fixed election other than impeachment as far as I know, and that would require Republicans to play ball, and obviously they won't. Not to mention that nothing in this post is backed up by any evidence, just "this could have happened."

[–] Geodad@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

here's no mechanism for correcting a fixed election

Yes, there is.

The 2nd Amendment.

[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Remember when we made fun of the Mypillow guy for spouting election conspiracy bullshit? Man, those were good times.

Sure, it feels better to go down the conspiracy rabbit hole than realize we probably shouldn't have put up an animated corpse up against trump until it was too late.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 11 points 2 days ago

Candidate quality and tally manipulation are separate issues. There's enough here for a judge to move forward, so "but Biden" is a red herring. Lindell couldn't produce a shred of evidence, and Giuliani et al. got laughed out court every time -- more than 60 times.

Here we have a first challenge on 2024 where there's this crazy thing called "evidence." Is this a nationwide thing? I have no idea. But why would you flip the results in a rural New York county via software and leave it at that? That screams waste of coding resources.