By Becky Gillette – “Never in the history of political polling have so many got it so wrong and offered so few plausible explanations,” said a local letter to the editor after the presidential election. Right after the election, the mainstream media in the U.S. largely ignored the “plausible explanations” that include the potential election fraud in key battleground states where exit poll numbers gave the majority to Hillary Clinton while electronic vote machines totals gave narrow victories to Donald Trump.
The media was largely silent about the discrepancies in the three states until recently week when Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein announced a fundraising campaign to ask for a recount in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In those states, Trump had a total of only 107,000 votes more, but took all the electoral votes.
After Stein took action, Clinton joined the recount effort. One poll showed 42 percent of Democrats believe the election was stolen from Clinton. There were social media campaigns urging Clinton to ask for a recount and ask the federal government to investigate foreign interference in the election.
Trump, who prior to the election claimed the election was rigged and declined to agree to accept any result that didn’t put him in office, responded to the recount effort by saying it was a “scam” by the Green Party to raise money.
While the polls have been wrong before, it has never been by this large a margin, said local attorney Forrest Jacobi, who has been involved for more than a decade in advocating the end to “black box voting,” voting machines that don’t provide a way to verify individual votes. He said the Trump campaign calling people who support the recount “cry babies” ignores the legitimate need to verify vote totals.
“Exerting your Constitutional and legal rights to have a recount is part of our legal system,” Jacobi said. “Those who call sour grapes on recounts are trying to deny people their legal rights. Any candidate can ask for a recount. Jill Stein didn’t get much traction during the campaign, but is now getting more publicity asking for a recount than she did running as a candidate. We live with a political process that has voter suppression, election fraud and now there are allegations that the Russians have been hacking into our political system. It would be good to find out if the Russians did hack into our system. Anything to improve the system would be good. A recount could indicate there are some problems with our system that we need to remedy.”
Ferguson Stewart, a local Trump supporter, agreed this recount is a Constitutional right. “But she must provide a legitimate reason for this recount,” he said. “I do not see anything but a waste of publicly donated money and my concern is with who has donated this money, more than two million dollars. I would like this information to be made public and if it is found that a large portion of this money is from non-U.S. sources, I truly believe that an investigation should be launched as to who and why and what is the true intent.”
Jacobi said it has been suggested the Democrats don’t want to talk about voter suppression and election fraud because it would deter people from voting.
“However, if the system is flawed where the results do not represent the will of the people, we need to do something about it,” he said. “At latest count, Hillary got 2.2 million more votes than Donald Trump, so there is something wrong with the system. For one thing, we need to eliminate the Electoral College.”
Trump now claims he won the popular vote because “millions” of people voted illegally, but he presented no evidence. Jacobi finds it ironic that the recount Trump is opposing could expose if there were people who voted illegally.
“A recount would substantiate his allegation or prove that it is more hot air,” Jacobi said.
What is at stake, Jacobi said, is more than just one presidential election, but the integrity of U.S. elections.
“Right now voting machines are manufactured by private companies who use proprietary software,” Jacobi said. “It has been proven again and again that results can be manipulated. When the Republicans do it, it is known as a ‘red shift.’ When the Democrats do it, it is known as a ‘blue shift.’ There was evidence of tampering in the Democratic primary in New York when Clinton’s lead far surpassed the vote for Bernie Sanders indicated by polls.”
He said voting machines should be transparent.
“Australia has open source software,” Jacobi said. “Anyone can check the software and verify that is correct and doing what it is told to do. Now, we have no verification whatsoever. In fact, statistical analysis says it is not working.”
There is precedent for the winner of the popular vote to lose the election. In 2000, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush after the Supreme Court intervened and stopped a planned recount in Florida that would have given Gore the presidency.
Jacobi said the U.S. Supreme Court exceeded its power.
“It was basically a coup,” Jacobi said. “The Constitution doesn’t give the Supreme Court the right to pick the president.”
Some might argue if the recount shows Clinton won in those states, it would be very disruptive.
“But we just can’t look the other way,” Jacobi said. “We have to do something. If we are going to change the election system, this is one way to do it. If there are problems, they need to be exposed and they need to be corrected. And the exit poll numbers say there are problems.”
Jacobi has been concerned about black box voting since Sen. Max Cleland’s re-election campaign in 2002. Cleland was a disabled Vietnam War veteran who lost amid allegations of reprogramming of the election machines in Georgia.
“There have been all sorts of unusual elections since then where the results did not meet the exit poll numbers,” Jacobi said.
Considering computer experts who have proven how easy it is to hack voting machines, why does the U.S. continue to use electronic voting machines with no paper trail? Jacobi said in Wisconsin, there was a huge disparity between paper ballots and machines.
“The paper ballots aligned with the exit polls,” he said. “The big discrepancy was with the electronic machines, which you cannot check.”
Jacobi said the bottom line is the U.S. has turned over voting to machines controlled by private individuals.
“Coming up with numbers that can’t be verified is not a transparent system,” Jacobi said. “The Max Cleland election proved something obviously wrong with our system and it has continued since then. It has gotten worse, not better, and will continue to get worse until we redo the system.”