Strange Electronic “Glitches” in Jefferson and Pike Counties in KY Democratic Primary

[Time for change]

On Tuesday evening I was following comments on the reddit live blog while also following the KY election returns.

Early in the evening, with about 20% of precincts reporting, with Bernie ahead in the state count by about 4%, several redditors noticed something very strange, which I was unable to personally observe because the site on which I was following the returns did not report results by county. What they noticed was a sudden decrease in the percent reporting from Jefferson County, simultaneously with a big increase in the vote count for Clinton. This concerned me, so I looked back at the election results, which literally seconds ago had shown Bernie with a 4 point lead, and it was completely gone – Clinton had taken the lead. Throughout the rest of the evening I saw somewhat similar comments from the redditors, causing me to believe that there were several similar occurrences, but I was more focused on the election results than their comments (which I now regret), so I am unable to discuss them in the detail that I discussed the first one.

Also of note is that very late in the election, with the vote count extremely close, suddenly all of the votes from Pike County, one of only 4 counties in KY where Sanders won by more than a 2:1 margin, disappeared, giving Clinton a substantial lead. Votes from Pike County returned several minutes later, and when they did Clinton still had a small lead, which she maintained until the end. The Inquisitor reports that when the Pike County returns came back, 20% of the votes were gone, but others maintain that all the votes came back. I cannot resolve that issue, but many are calling for a hand recount of Pike County, and in the interest of ensuring a fair election, I believe that should be done, as well as a hand recount of Jefferson County.

Call me paranoid, but these findings sound very suspicious to me. I was dying to get hold of exit poll results to see if the strange electronic “glitches” from Jefferson County would show up as substantial exit poll discrepancies from the official vote count, but guess what happened? Exit polls have been cancelled for the rest of the Democratic primary season. Perhaps some people in a position of power became very nervous over the fact that the large exit poll discrepancies (scroll down to see exit polls) seen in so many Democratic primaries this year (but not in the Republican primaries), 23 of 26 favoring Clinton in the official count compared to the exit polls (including 10 above the margin of error, ALL of which favored Clinton in the official count), have aroused a good deal of suspicion and calls for hand counted audits, which would settle the question of whether the exit polls were wrong or the electronic machines were wrong. Well, no need to worry about that any more. We’ll just have to trust the electronic voting machines that are owned and programmed by right wing corporations with little or no government oversight, or with oversight by highly partisan and corrupt election officials (for example, Katherine Harris (FL 2000), Kenneth Blackwell (OH 2004), and Roberta Lange (NV 2016)).

[msongs]

1. every bernie "win" should also be investigate for fraud. after all they use the same machines and

are run by same kinds of supervisors. yet it is only fraud when hillary wins.

[Time for change]

2. Great

You wanna investigate the Bernie wins, I have no problem with that.

But just one clarification. Different states do not all use the same kinds of machines in their elections. Some have vast differences from others. And they don't have the same kinds of supervisors either. Some have fierce Hillary partisans in charge of the election, and some don't.

[Kip Humphrey]

7. Absolutely agree. Every state where a Bernie surrogate is in charge of the election system should

be audited too.

[Time for change]

10. Absolutely

And that could probably be done in less than a minute.

[bobbobbins01]

13. I don't think any Bernie supporter would be against that.

I wholeheartedly agree...investigate the whole thing top to bottom.

Whats strange is that many Hillary supporters are vocally against any sort of investigation.

[Hiraeth]

21. I am all for a transparent election process, all the way from the get go.

[Scootaloo]

27. Bring it on.

You really think that this is about scoring points for Bernie, don't you?

[pmorlan1]

3. I would love to see both counties

recounted by neutral people. We were also told that the reason that it took so long for Jefferson Co. to report the rest of their numbers (they were the last country to report all numbers) was because there was a power outage at a church (heard it on local news). It could be nothing but because of all the other "mishaps" I sure would like to see a recount especially when Allison L. Grimes went on TV to say it was nothing.

[Time for change]

29. Yes, it's a combingation of so many things

Massive voter purging, exit poll discrepancies consistently pointing in the same direction, heavy handed abuse of power at the NV state convention, strange electronic vote changes, our "news" media and the Democratic Party doing everything they can to disredit Bernie with lies.

I barely believe anything I hear on TV anymore from any establishment source. They are nothing but a huge right wing propaganda monopoly, disguised as news.

[Hiraeth]

22. NowSam. you sound like Judge Judy!

thanks for the LOL

[AtomicKitten]

5. Exiting polling is only accurate for Rs, not for Ds for which they are just a pesky nuisance.

Or some such shit.

[AzDar]

6. K & R

[bigtree]

8. "several redditors"

...not exactly a bastion of objectiveness and impartiality.

Cool story bros..

[Time for change]

9. They all saw the same thing

Interpret it as you like.

I don't see why anyone would object to a hand counted audit. Objections to that for the 2004 election on DU were very few and far between if there were any at all.

[benny05]

11. I Did as Well, but on the NYT

Unless I am not home, I follow the returns county by county on the NYT. That night I pointed out that Pike Cty had been counted, them I couldn't figure out what happened. Then I went to twitter, and Bluegrass State Reporters at the Lexington Herald also noticed the disappearance.


It was not the first time it happened. I saw it for RI and DE as well. RI will always be strange because only 30% of the polling places were open.

[Octafish]

12. Verifiable totals need more than a few electrons on a thumb drive.

Thanks for putting it into words, Time for change. Do the right wing corps still include the Dominionist ultraconservative Urosevich brothers?

PS: Good to read you!

[Time for change]

15. Thank you Octafish

This is so depressing, to see any candidate lose in this way, with so many questions hanging about the integrity of these elections, but nobody high up in the Democratic Party seems to care at all.

Remember 2005, when hardly anyone at this site argued about the virtue and even the necessity for monitoring elections for fraud?

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Attempting to delegitimize every election one loses is a hallmark of fascism

[Time for change]

17. I would say that election fraud and disinterest in monitoring elections

because we're told over and over again that our elections don't need to be monitored for fraud is a much bigger hallmark of fascism.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. If Sanders supporters scrutiny of elections was evenly distributed

That might be the case. As it stands, they only add the extra scrutiny to the elections they lose. All elections have irregularities, as most adults know. Knit picking the minor and non determinative irregularities to delegitimize your opponent is fascism and it's the scariest aspect of the radical fringe of Sandersism.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Well well

first you need to learn what the word fascism is... secondly, our elections have been compromised since at least 2000, in major ways.

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

[DemocraticWing]

16. I'm a Kentuckian and have 100% confidence that the count is accurate. There's no fraud here.

I also have a strong understanding of politics in Louisville and can guarantee you that Hillary's win in Jefferson County is by an accurate margin as reported.

We lost by a tiny margin in Kentucky and split the delegates. It's time to move on.

[Time for change]

18. How do you have 100% confidence in it, and

what do you have against auditing elections?

[DemocraticWing]

20. It's accurate in relation to the conditions on the ground.

I know people all over the state and I talk politics with most of them. People were split down the middle, and I know plenty of people who didn't make up their mind until they stepped in the voting booth.

I'm fine with auditing the election though. It might change by a minor count one way or another, and perhaps Bernie would gain or lose a delegate or two. I don't know if that's a huge priority for anybody though, because the primary will be over soon and the chances of any potentially changed delegates in Kentucky is virtually zero.

Trust me, I don't LIKE the results. I wish Bernie would have won 80% of the vote in Kentucky gotten nearly all the delegates. But he didn't because a lot of people prefer Hillary, and every time I've made the case they had their reasons and stuck to them. I'm honestly somewhat relieved the fighting is ending.

I'm tired of arguing with friends and want to work with them to stop an actual fascist getting elected.

[Time for change]

23. I trust your intentions but I disagree with you

I don't think that you or anyone else can get an accurate assessment of what the results should be just from talking to people.

Exit polls do a much better job of doing that than anyone can get just by talking to people. And throughout these primaries Hillary has done far better than exit polls predicted her to do. And then there's the massive voter suppression that took place in NY and AZ and other states. And then there's the abuse of power at the NV state convention. And then there our unmonitored electronic voting machines that can be so easily manipulated. And there's the Chicago audit that differed substantially from the machine count. And then, when the exit poll discrepancies begin to get some attention and make people wonder about the accuracy of our election results, they stop doing exit polls.

If publicly monitored hand counted audits were done in states with large exit poll discrepancies and only small differences between the hand and machine counts were shown, I'd be satisfied and "move on" as you say. But until then I won't shut up about this because even if the Democratic primaries have been fair -- which I doubt -- the fact that we're not monitoring them leaves the door wide open to the stealing of our democracy.

[Zynx]

19. Indeed. Everything about the Louisville area was good for Clinton.

Had she not won it convincingly, it would have been surprising.

[stillwaiting]

35. You have 100% confidence in election results that are neither transparent nor verifiable?

Why ever for?

With a cancellation of exit polls.

On machines that are easily hacked allowing results to be prearranged or flipped quite easily.

[Time for change]

36. +100

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Well well

Call me paranoid, but these findings sound very suspicious to me. I was dying to get hold of exit poll results to see if the strange electronic “glitches” from Jefferson County would show up as substantial exit poll discrepancies from the official vote count, but guess what happened? Exit polls have been cancelled for the rest of the Democratic primary season. Perhaps some people in a position of power became very nervous over the fact that the large exit poll discrepancies (scroll down to see exit polls) seen in so many Democratic primaries this year (but not in the Republican primaries), 23 of 26 favoring Clinton in the official count compared to the exit polls (including 10 above the margin of error, ALL of which favored Clinton in the official count), have aroused a good deal of suspicion and calls for hand counted audits, which would settle the question of whether the exit polls were wrong or the electronic machines were wrong. Well, no need to worry about that any more. We’ll just have to trust the electronic voting machines that are owned and programmed by right wing corporations with little or no government oversight, or with oversight by highly partisan and corrupt election officials (for example, Katherine Harris (FL 2000), Kenneth Blackwell (OH 2004), and Roberta Lange (NV 2016)).

I feel so good, somehow I am 18 again. That was the first time I pretended to vote in Mexico. Oh and trust me, pretend was what we did. We knew that dedazos meant that whoever the person the President chose, would be his successor. And also it was his successor. Yes there are issues, but you will be told by prim and proper people that you are into conspiracy theories.

Well Stalin had it the best. It really does not matter who votes, but who counts it. So I reached peace with the new reality that who I pretend to vote for matters not. Who I actually vote for is determined by the central tabulator. If this can be overcome, it will be with massive turnouts. Trust me, we are not in Mexico. There we were too stubborn and still voted, never mind that thousands of votes could appear or disappear for a torta and a coke. These days it is a gift card, or a bag of beans.

They even make fun that these discrepancies are considered suspect by USAID, and the UN. Nope, our elections do not pass muster, they are a show and in oligarchies controlled elections are essential. When enough people cross to this way of thinking, whole governments lose legitimacy. That is the danger.

[Enthusiast]

31. +1!

[Time for change]

37. With alternate sources of communication now available,

Maybe enough people will "cross to this way of thinking" sooner than a lot of people think. It's already reflected in favorability ratings of Congress running at 10-20% and lower, and in the substantial negative favorability ratings of every presidential candidate this year except for Bernie (+7)

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Why the next frontier of control is the web

[Enthusiast]

32. Kicked and recommended! nt

[randome]

33. Okay, I'll call you paranoid.

There are glitches in every election in just about every precinct. Voting will never be a perfect process.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[Time for change]

34. Yeah, but the big ones always favor Hillory

And then there's the massive voter purging, the very large exit poll discrepancies, in which Hillary consistently outperforms what the exit polls predict, the extreme abuse of power demonstrated on video at the NV state convention, and much more. Put it all together, and combine it with the fact that her surrogates are in charge of elections all over the country and that she has the full force of the Democratic Party behind her, which seems to be willing to do anything to prevent Sanders from winning, and I see a picture from which I can draw only one reasonable conclusion.

[nadinbrzezinski]

40. To be fair, there other posdible conclusions

But after 2000 and 2004, and I might add local resistance to audits by activists...coincidences are for fools and idiots

[nadinbrzezinski]

39. You sound like PRI officials