Can Elections be Rigged?

Can US elections be rigged?

                When I was young I used to debate with my friends if “professional wrestling” was real or fake.  There were pro’s and con’s, we were convinced the wrestlers were giving their utmost to win but something was off.  The wrestlers did amazing stunts but at the same time the stories seemed to be too perfect and the matches seamless to the next storyline.  Eventually the major wrestling network WWF (now called WWE) admitted to having ‘scripted’ matches.  The moves were real and the athletes truly are doing amazing feats but the outcome is known.  This is what I visualize when someone says the word rigged. 

                Tammany Hall was a political organization created in 1786 which worked to help immigrants, mainly the Irish rise up in power and influence.  By the mid 1800’s it was a strong organization which muscled it’s way into political power in New York City.  It was notorious for graft and corruption and vote rigging.  Throughout American history there have been many instances of voter intimidation mainly in poor and minority communities which is why so many laws have been created.

                Could something like wide scale vote rigging or voter intimidation today happen?  Here are the outliers which don’t define the majority of our electoral system.

(1)    The presidential election of 2000 came down to Florida which subsequently came down to several counties where ballots had changed.  Some were punched twice or partially punched.  After a grueling battle, the electors in Florida were given to George Bush making him the president.

(2)    During the 2016 democratic nomination process, Hillary Clinton was ahead but mostly because of the non pledged (super) delegates.  New York was a critical primary that set her on a course for taking the nomination. Bernie Sanders name was left off of a couple counties which favored him.

(3)    Al Franken became the 60ths democratic senator in 2009 allowing a super majority democratic congress to emerge.  The race was won by several hundred ballots supposedly left in a pollsters car for a night.  Then the story was retracted and denounced. 

(4)    In 2008 black panthers staged some of their people outside majority white communities and engaged in intimidation carrying batons.  Initially there was a legal case but for some reason it was dropped by the new administration. 

Is it possible for a political machine, Democratic, Republican, Independent or foreign to throw an election?  Influence is one thing.  We know for sure that the media has an agenda and tends to favor one candidate over another. 

The election system is vulnerable to accidents, fraud and espionage.    

·         No ID required to vote.  Give your name and address.  For some reason having to show ID is racist and activist groups will fight any attempt to implement such a system.  A person could theoretically vote more than once, register themselves more than once and vote for people who either aren’t alive or have moved.  It would be hard to coordinate a large scale effort.

·         Voter Registration:  Groups like Acorn discredit the good work that people do to try to get as many new people to register and vote.  In the past workers for certain groups have admitted to helping people either lie to get registered or pushed to sign up as many applicants regardless of how new they were.  Also, they will usually assign them into the political party of their choosing.  That doesn’t mean the person must vote that way but it puts them on notice with the particular political party. 

·         Foreign Funding.  Many groups like moveOn.org, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and Center for American Progress receive foreign funding and seek to influence united states elections.  This is technically probably still illegal but very easy to get around.  https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/foreign.php  http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1237

·         Electronic voting.  It’s not that the machines are more likely to fail or be tampered with.  There are monitors from both political parties at each polling place and certainly when the votes are tampered.  However, we’ve seen 500 million yahoo accounts become hacked, servers of major political parties, and even Iranian centrifuges.  Could a worm be planted in machines previous to them being deployed. 

·         Vote Counting: In 2012 a Spanish company SYCTL bought the largest vote counting company in united states.  Why this was allowed was beyond me. Our votes after being tallied are sent to this server, routed possibly out of country, counted and then the results are sent back.  There is so much possibility for manipulation at every stage. Again if everybody's being hacked (for fun) why wouldn't this be at the top of some hacker or even state sponsors list? 

How do elections probably get won?

                I get asked often, can anybody’s mind be changed by what the candidates say or do in the last month before an election.  Everyone wants to capture a “49%” or “deplorables” moment on video.  It’s not that these moments change many minds but it’s all about motivation.  If you are demoralized you are less likely to vote and if you are charged up or better yet caught up in a frenzy of fear you will vote, lest they take away your X.  It’s about optics, how you and your surrogates use the various victories of your candidate and missteps of the other. 

                It’s also about the ground game.  How do you encourage people to vote.  How often do you barrage them with letters, advertisements, calls, poster bill boards.  If you can get them to sign up on your web site with prizes like meet the candidate for lunch (yeah right) they can then use your email or phone number to pester you into voting. 

                At the end of the day anything can happen. 

America's Class Structure

Often the country is classified as having three classes, the middle class, the poor, and the rich.  The rich are usually vilified as not paying their fair share even though they pay 80% of all taxes.  Everyone wants to give the middle class a tax break and help the most vulnerable (the poor).  As usual, things change over time and there are really six classes of people with as many as 13 sub groups.  Removed from this description is terms such as good and bad.  There are both in all the categories.  Even criminals have some good people who will go on to reform their lives and change society.  Following is a description devoid of ethical judgement. 

              Let’s start at the top.  The Elites consist of all the countries leaders, the president, the senators, representatives and governors.  All the CEO’s of major companies make up the elites.  This group is often referred to the top 1%. They control the majority of the wealth of the country and make virtually all the decisions that affect our lives.  Within this group is a sub group, an even smaller group, possibly the .01% who are the titans.  The titans are the mega billionaires who work behind the scenes to affect policy at the highest levels.  This would be the Buffet’s and the Koch’s who make it seem like they’re nice people trying to help but really their serving their own business interests.  Some are captains of industry who change our lives like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.  Others were placed in positions of power who run a large company into the ground and leave with a golden parachute.  The latter ought to be vilified and the former lauded.  Another aspect of the titans is that they have no problem with higher taxes because their money is not taxable.  Warren Buffet for example earns 60 million a year and is worth 60 billion.  If we did the math we would realize that he did not work for a thousand years.  He has no problem paying ten percent more on 60 million while he pays nothing on 60 billion because it's his assets that make up his wealth not his income. 

              The next group is the prosperous.  These are the “rich” who usually wind up paying the majority of the tax because they can’t hide their money like the Elites. They are also a diverse group.  Small business owners and entrepreneur are the engine of growth for our economy.  60% of all new jobs are created by small businesses.   Very small businesses owners tend to not have corporation and therefore fund their activities directly from their own personal finances.  A small change in tax policy could wind up taking money from their businesses.  It’s important to understand that taxing the rich is such a blanket statement that doesn’t really address who should pay more.  Athletes and movies stars drive an enormous amount of economic activity and therefore are well paid.  I don’t know what hedge fund managers really do but they also make a ton of money.   Hedge fund managers get paid in dividends which are taxed at a lower rate (currently 20% as opposed to 39.6% for the top income levels). 

              Most of us are in the working class formerly known as the middle class.  As of 2016 there are 157 million Americans (just under 50%) employed or seeking work.  These are adults who are in the public work force.  In this group there are two sub groups, though not distinctly identified.  There are those who work and pay a positive tax rate and those who work and pay a negative tax rate.  Everyone pays things like sales tax and state tax but the working non tax payers either don’t pay federal taxes or get more money back at tax time than the money they paid.  For example, an individual with a family might work and pay $1500 of federal tax.  They go to a tax preparer who applies all refundable tax credits and get back often times as much as $6,000 back.  They also get food stamps, Medicaid, subsidies, free phones, ect.  This is not to say they don’t struggle, many do.  Still, their work which is hard to measure produces more economic activity than the what they receive from the government. 

              Next we have the dependents, the non-working.  The non-working as of 2016 are 94 million strong (about 30%).  The labor participation rate rose from 1960 to 1990, peaked for fifteen years and has been going down ever since.  In the 1960’s many women were home makers, stay at home mom’s, or caretakers as you would identify them.  My mom also stayed home and raised us, she only had a part time job as my sister and I became older.  Their work is not to be undervalued, it is so critical to take care of children.  Children now a days are taken care of either by a school or by a grandparents just as much as by a parent.  Women more and more entered the work force from 1960 to the turn of the century which is why the labor participation rate rose.  Now because of all the government subsidies more people can afford to stay home.  People retire and live longer which is another factor in the rising non-working class.  After a lifetime of working no one begrudges a senior from enjoying themselves and today in a way that no older generation has ever been able to enjoy their latter years.  I do wonder at people who retire from a union job at 55 and live to 95.  How can a system sustain this?  The last sub group is the idle.  These are the people who have given up looking for work.  Maybe they stay home with older kids who don’t need attention.  Maybe they pan handle, maybe they squeak out enough government benefits and enough non taxed income to squeeze by.  Many have injuries that prevent them from working in their chosen profession but they are all capable of doing something.  They just don’t. 

              The next group definitely depends on society for survival.  They are the helpless.  For one reason or another they really are incapable of working.  The first sub group is the incapable, these are the severely disabled.  So many tens of millions of people are labeled as handicapped which is important to give them the help they need but they are capable of working.  They can still be productive individually but society must help them and we should.  Children of course are a drain on our resources but critical to our future.  The Amish have a saying: a child under seven is a drain, between seven and fourteen they balance out and after fourteen they are an asset.  If only that were true.  It seems like children are a drain till they get their first full time job in their twenties.

              The last group definitely drains from society with providing absolutely no tangible benefits.  A person doesn’t always walk around being a criminal unless they’re a gang member.  Maybe they’re a drug addict, maybe they’ve robbed or stolen.  I would say no one is irredeemable.  Those in jail may seem like they’re not harming society but society is paying at least 20,000 per year to house, clothe, feed and secure them.  There are 3 million in jail in this country (1%).  How many more are freed criminals, I can only site the statistic of 1.4 million in gangs. 

              I always strive for maximum clarity when identifying how things are and how they could be better.  If we take the 47% of Working Americans who pay taxes that leaves us with 73 million Americans who are financially taking care of 318 million. This is a tall order when 23% of Americans are taking care of the bills for the other 77%.  If this trend continues we will surely see economic troubles abound. 

Is the Internet Alive?

From the time of the Greeks we have been fascinated with automated machinery and the ability to break free of its intended purpose.  The very word automaton is Greek in origin.  Talos was an artificial man of bronze, others Greek mythology stories included automated machines or statues that spoke.  During the middle ages actual statues with moving parts were created.  The fear was always that some evil spirit would inhabit them.  Either by divine power or magic the machines could be made to do harmful things.  In other words, a mind of their own but really more a mind of their creator.  Of note is a story from Arabian Nights which detailed lost technologies that were advanced enough to have dancing marionettes without strings and a robot horse.

                This started to be seen as an actual tangible reality when the first computers were invented.  I’m sure he’s not the first but Isaac Asimov’s 1950 book I, Robot is the best example of defining intelligent thinking robots.  A self-contained mechanical person with as much intelligence or more than a human being.  How could such a being be controlled was the central theme behind the three laws of robotics coined by Asimov. 

                With technological change comes change in the central theme of an artificial intelligence.  The Internet was in its early stages when the focus changed from a singular contained intelligence to a distributed intelligence.  Now, with such an intelligence if it was a single entity contained in a building it could access information and processing power all over the world.  Or it could actually be a distributed intelligence.  Terminator popularized the idea of Skynet.  Terminator I & II focused on a mainframe or data center contained in an underground bunker which was put in control of our nuclear arsenal.  Terminator III further enhanced the idea that Skynet did not exist in one place but was distributed through a series of viruses or malicious computer programs. 

                Standing away from the Armageddon scenarios there is always a confusion between life, intelligence and self-awareness and a directed will.  A bacterium is alive because it employees the eight life processes which are (1) Nutrition (2) Transport (3) Synthesis (4) Growth (5) Excretion (6) Respiration (7) Regulation and (8) Reproduction.  A virus (the organic kind) is questionable.  The main thing is they cannot reproduce on their own.  They have to have a host cell do it for them.  An intelligent lifeform in its simplest form can think for itself.  Is an ant intelligent or is it just following a program?  Ants know how to avoid danger. Mice obviously can reason and think, though they are not self-aware.  Monkeys are self-aware and they have a will to a degree.  Without getting into a large debate they are about as close to being a self-aware intelligent being like ourselves as you get on this planet.  Is the internet alive in the most basic sense? 

                What is the internet?  Is it the physical computers and transmission lines?  In that respect no, the internet can clearly not perform many of the functions of a lifeform.  Or is it the handling and processing of data and the maintenance of the network? 

1. The internet needs energy in the form of electricity to operate.  What would happen if we shut down the entire internet?  Could we just turn everything back on?  Would it work like nothing happened or is it a flow?  Electricity is its nutrition.
2. It transports information, that’s its primary job. 
3. Synthesis is a tough one, to combine two products into something else.  It does package and unpackage data packets.  We talk about the seven or five layers of protocols,
4. It obviously grows in size every year, we humans do the work.  Mainframes can control data stores and memory usage. 
5. It deletes old data and packets that failed to send or were sent to a bogus address.    
6. It takes in and it pushes out data every millisecond.
7. It regulates packet flow 
8. It does not reproduce to my knowledge.  Though the internet is a series of inter connected networks.  More than likely it does not really reproduce but it can split itself and reconnect.

      In addition it does defend itself against viruses.  I would say the Internet is as close to a living being as we can get.  I do not believe in spontaneous self awareness or intelligence.  If I had to choose a lifeform that the Internet most closely represents it would be an amoeba.