Letters to the Editor
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Good for Bloomberg
It's been horrifying, the last few elections, how many "irregularities" have occurred and how far short our elections fall of truly democratic exercises. I'm glad to see that Bloomberg is making an issue of it before November. I wish there were more people in this country focused on the significance of easily tampered-with electronic voting machines and inadequate training and preparation of polling staff, and strange happenings in certain states and precints.
Pretty soon, they'll be sending observers over here from other countries to guarantee our free and fair elections!
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vote fraud?
Why didn't the story and/or the mayor mention that there were districts where Hillary Clinton's votes were tallied as zero? Just curious.
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50 yr old machines!
This is not cutting edge Diebold results delivery, but low-tech person based fraud. ZERO VOTES? Puhlease, Bloomberg should get the USA for New York to investigate this apparently very real instance of vote count fraud. Though, since it doesn't involve a specious prosecution with the prospect of paring down the rights of poor Democratic voters in a national contest, it probably won't meet the policy agenda requirements at Justice.
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Probably, most American elections always have been this bad.
One hears lots of stories about the bad old days. But it may be encouraging that this comes to light now, on top of Michigan's faux primary, in the post-hanging-chad/post-Texas-gerrymander world. Maybe we can take a big step toward honest elections in the USA.
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Technocracy
One thing I will say for Bloomberg, despite his Democratic/Republican/Independent skewing: throughout all iterations, he remains a technocrat, very much into examining what's wrong, and seeking to fix it.
I'm getting freaked out by the ongoing, repeated "errors" (?) in our electoral process. Is something truly going more wrong than usual, or are people just more aware of it/looking at it more since the 2000 fiasco?
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Doesn't sound like fraud
Speaking as someone who follows election fraud closely, almost every believable allegation of fraud has one of two things occurring: either voters are wrongly denied their chance to vote, or the machines are unauditable. I don't know how these lever machines work, but if they can go back and figure out the right count, then they must be auditable and it sounds like that's how the errors were caught. Election judges are basically volunteers even if they get minimal pay, and sometimes the training is pretty minimal too, not to mention that even those who've done this for years have really just a few days of experience. Compare it to instances where fraud looks much more likely, like caging schemes and statistically improbable results from touchscreens. I'm guessing Bloomberg knows nothing about this stuff.
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Straighten it out!
It is rather hard to accept that some kind of error causing no votes to show for one particular candidate could happen in 80 separate districts (and a few where it worked the other way).
For heaven's sake can't we get the problems with our election procedures straightened out?! Assuring accurate results that can be trusted is critical to the legitimacy of the entire democratic system.
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Election Fraud... Not likely
There would be no advantage to dropping the votes for one candidate to zero in so many precincts in order to steal an election. Any idiot can figure out that if you want to not get caught, you have to be subtle enough that the results aren't obvious to anybody who looks closely enough. I can't believe that anybody capable of gaming the system would expect to get away with this.
The most likely possibilities are 1) Machine error. The machines were simply badly designed or broke down. 2) Human error. Somebody screwed up. This would probably be related to bad design of the machines. 3) Pranks. Somebody messed with the vote either to make Clinton look bad or to cast doubt on the entire voting system (most likely the latter). Or maybe this is just like a real world version of a computer virus - somebody sabotages a system because they get off reading about it in the paper. An electoral arsonist, so to speak.
Regardless, it seems very unlikely that this was a serious attempt to steal an election.
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Ooh! I know!
We'll all use our thumbprints to stain the space next to our chosen candidate's name! Bring out the purple ink!
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And, Comrade Stalin wins 100% of the vote...
But seriously, this is getting a bit past ridiculous, that in this day, we still have to, must, in fact, question the validity of elections. I understand that no system is perfect, or not subject to abuse, fraud, hacking, etc., but can we please get above these banana republic level "voting irregularities?"
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and I'm counting
the minutes until someone hangs this one on HRC.
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Well, at least they're better than Diebold
I'm a true-blue upper west side liberal, and despite myself I like Bloomberg most of the time, the major exception being how he shilled for the republicans the last few election cycles. As a previous poster pointed out, only an imbecile would try to rig an election this clumsily. Bloomberg is no slouch himself, so his reaction and selective use of the facts must have been an attempt to damage Hillary.
It's much more likely to end up being a machine or human error. People wail and cry about the antiquated pull-lever machines in NY, but given the track record of the new-fangled digital/optical machines, I'll keep these thank you.
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Bloomberg and his "F" word!
No, the real reason Bloomberg used the "F" word is that he wants to cast doubts on Hillary Clinton's integrity. He suggests FRAUD, but then suggests that there were no legal matters at stake. Huh?
Wouldn't ya think that if the mayor REALLY believes there was fraud, he'd want to investigate it?
Also, leaving out the fact that there were districts where Clinton got zero votes in the tally is very convenient.
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I don't understand what "unofficial" means
if the only reason they're re-counting was because some of the counts were so obviously mistaken. Wouldn't the first count have stood as the "official" one if they hadn't realized they had to re-count? Are the initial counts we hear usually the "unofficial" ones? And are they also usually the final, "official" ones if the random checks seem OK? I am confused.
And am I the only one who is mildly annoyed by the tax system but would rather see the byzantine electoral system simplified and standardized FIRST?