From [HERE] The NY Times reports that the Obama administration said on Friday that it confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials that they did not see “any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day.” The government issued the statement to The Times "on the condition that it be attributable only to a senior official." In other words it should not be attributed to Obama. [MORE]
However, the white house statement did not explicitly say that it had "confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials" as asserted by the NY Times. "Homeland Security" and "intelligence officials" are not mentioned in the White House statement at all. The WH statement only refers to "the federal government" and does not reference any reports. As such, the statement about 'confirming reports' from Homeland security and intelligence officials should be attributed to the NY Times. [read it for yourself]
The "senior official" said “the Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.
That said, since we do not know if the Russians had planned any malicious cyber activity for election day, we don’t know if they were deterred from further activity by the various warnings the U.S. government conveyed." [MORE]
The statement came as opponents of Donald J. Trump, some citing fears of vote hacking, are seeking recounts in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where his margin of victory was extremely thin. His margin is less than 11,600 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin and 68,000 in Pennsylvania.
A drive by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, for recounts in those states had brought in more than $5 million by midday on Friday, her campaign said, and had increased its goal to $7 million. She filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday [MORE]. Computer science experts have asserted that electronic voting systems in the battleground states had serious cybersecurity problems and may have been subjected to malware manipulation. [MORE]
Purge of Non-White Votes. Whether such a challenge will be successful in the face of an elite white media and government with so much invested in the votary's belief in electronic voting remains to be seen. However, investigative journalist Greg Palast has claimed that before a single vote was even cast, the election was already fixed by Trump operatives who eliminated millions of legitimate African American, Latino and Asian voters from the voter rolls in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Such a challenge has nothing to do with electronic voting. Since election day the elite white media has simply ignored the issue of non-white voters being systematically denied their right to vote. Although the Palast and Green party challenges are distinct they both question the integrity of the voting system and the advertised democracy in the U.S.
Millions of non-white voters were purged by a program known as The Interstate Crosscheck. The program, launched in 2005 by racist suspect, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (in photo), was designed as a method to counter voter fraud. Interstate Crosscheck removes a voter from the voter list if the individual’s name appears to be registered in more than one state. Around 7 million names were put on the list of “potential double voters” before the 2014 election. Crosscheck then compares each state’s list with lists from other states in the program (28 states participate).
An investigation done by Rolling Stone found the program uses a biased and questionable methodology that puts voters with African-American, Latino, and Asian names in greater danger of being purged from the voter list and being falsely accused of double voting. Crosscheck supposedly matches first, middle and last name, plus birth date, and provides the last four digits of a Social Security number for additional verification.
However, in practice a quarter of the names on the list did not have a middle name match. The system also neglected to take into account designations of Jr. and Sr., and the lists obtained by Palast did not include any Social Security numbers. Consequently, an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of non-whites have been removed who have typical Black, Latino and Asian last names and who reside in predominately minority zip codes. Names such as Jackson, Garcia and Wong in areas such as Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia. U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. “If your name is Washington, there’s an 89 percent chance you’re African-American,” says Palast. “If your last name is Hernandez, there’s a 94 percent chance you’re Hispanic.” Finding these common names the GOP targeted non-white voters on the list.
This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on what Palast dubs “Trump’s hit list.” His investigators calculated 1.1 million non-white people, many spread over crucial swing states were deprived of their right to vote on election day.
According to the exit polls, 88% of black voters voted for Hillary Clinton, as well as 65% of hispanic and asian American voters.
“The list is loaded overwhelmingly with voters of color and the poor,” says Palast. “Many didn’t discover that their vote was stolen until they turned up last Tuesday and found their name missing. In the US they are given something called a provisional ballot, but if your name is not on the voter roll, you can fill out all the provisional votes you like they’re not going to count your vote. – They can’t even if you’re wrongly removed.
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
- Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922
Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257
- Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824
Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008
- North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393
Enough votes to swing the election away from the Hillary Clinton victory predicted in polls – explaining suspicious exit polls inconsistencies – and towards a shock result for Trump and Republican victory in the Senate. [MORE]
Despite the list of 7 million suspects, there have only been four arrests and no prosecutions.
Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."
Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, reviewed data from Georgia and Virginia, and was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."
Swedlund's statistical analysis found that African-American, Latino and Asian names predominate, a simple result of the Crosscheck matching process, which spews out little more than a bunch of common names. No surprise: The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names. If your name is Washington, there's an 89 percent chance you're African-American. If your last name is Hernandez, there's a 94 percent chance you're Hispanic. If your name is Kim, there's a 95 percent chance you're Asian.
This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on the list. Was the program designed to target voters of color? "I'm a data guy," Swedlund says. "I can't tell you what the intent was. I can only tell you what the outcome is. And the outcome is discriminatory against minorities."
For instance in Ohio Palast inverviewed Donald Webster, an African-American registered to vote in a predominately Black area. Crosscheck lists him registered in Ohio as Donald Alexander Webster Jr., while registered a second time as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville, Virginia. Webster says he's never been a "Eugene" and has never been to Charlottesville. I explained that both he and his Virginia doppelgänger were subject to losing their ability to vote.
"How low can they go?" he asked. "I mean, how can they do that?"
Palast put his question to Robert Fitrakis, a voting-rights attorney who examined our Crosscheck data. I showed him Donald Webster's listing – and page after page of Ohio voters. Fitrakis says that the Ohio secretary of state's enthusiasm for Crosscheck fits a pattern: "He doesn't want to match middle names, because he doesn't want real matches. They're targeting people with clearly defined ethnic names that typically vote for the Democratic Party. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how – by taking away the rights of citizens to vote."
The demographics in the US are quickly changing with the Latino, Asian and African American populations surging while the white population is declining [MORE]. As the votary begins to reflect such changes the GOP simply cannot survive without manipulating or suppressing the non-white vote. [MORE] (Crosscheck was by no means the only method that came to light to disenfranchise voters more likely to vote Democrat. Methods such as "caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.) [racists practice racism to survive]. Palast explains, “this country is violently divided. There simply aren’t enough white guys to elect Trump nor a Republican Senate. The only way they could win was to eliminate the votes of non-white guys—and they did so by tossing black provisional ballots into the dumpster, new strict voter ID laws that saw students and low income voters turned away—the list goes on.” [MORE]