Hi all,

Warning, I don't want this to be political at all ....

People say that Russia interfered with the US election to try and sway the vote but how can this be? At the end of the day, individual people go into a booth and vote, no one sits in the booth and forces their hand.

How can you affect an election?

 

In Russia, you don't go to party, party come to you.
(KGB agent 45).
Max.

 

At the end of the day, individual people go into a booth and vote, no one sits in the booth and forces their hand.

True.
But they vote based upon the news and information they receive from the news media and other sources. If some of that information is bogus then they may vote differently from what they otherwise would have.

The Russians affected the election by posting misleading, fake, and inflammatory comments on social media sites, such as about race, illegal immigration, etc., without stating the source of this information as being from Russian operatives.
Some who voted tend to believe everything they read on the internet and may have not understand these postings as being false, and thus could have been influenced to vote based on this "fake news".

 

I keep seeing the title as "Electron Interference".
Must be my AAC mindset.

 

What they heard and believed online was only a confirmation of what they already believed so the mean effect on changing votes was close to zero like all elections. Elections are usually won on enthusiasm FOR or AGAINST a candidate. If it was a incentive for people to vote what might not have voted otherwise, that's a good thing overall for the USA. Foreign 'Interference' is a noise factor with election spending in the Billions from USA based political parties.

 

I think it has something to do with people are literal, are basically trusting, and believe
what they see/read.

Human race needs to learn not to trust until verified. Sad result in todays world.

Regards, Dana.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/...y-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention#1970_election_(U.S.)

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...or-us-meddles-in-foreign-elections-for-a-good

Following a federal indictment of Russians accused of meddling in the U.S election, a former CIA director on Friday said the U.S. “probably” meddles in other countries’ elections, as well.

The Russian embassy flagged his comments.



When asked whether the U.S. interferes in other countries’ elections, James Woolsey said, “Well, only for a very good cause in the interests of democracy."

“Oh, probably, but it was for the good of the system in order to avoid communists taking over,” he told Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show on Friday night.

Woolsey served as CIA director under former President Clinton.

 

What they heard and believed online was only a confirmation of what they already believed so the mean effect on changing votes was close to zero like all elections.

On what do you base that opinion?

 

People say that Russia interfered with the US election to try and sway the vote but how can this be? At the end of the day, individual people go into a booth and vote, no one sits in the booth and forces their hand.

How can you affect an election?

Some people recognize fake news/information when they see it and some don't.

I had a relative tell me I needed to watch FOX if I wanted the truth. Sadly, FOX has turned into the US version of RT.

 

Sadly, FOX has turned into the US version of RT.

I have the same opine of CNN, MSNBC, and the three major networks as being the U.S. Version of RT. I haven't seen fox news for over a couple of decades.

Confirmation bias ... is why people tend to believe stories that they had a prior belief in.

Works for both parties. Some have a strong bias against HRC. I knew DJT was a brash New Yorker from the 1980s. He hadn't changed one iota. He does have newer toys to display is brashness. MSM is aghast, demonstrating they must hold a Utopian view.

So, if DJT stayed on message ... despite the attempted take-downs by MSM, I tend to think his message resonated with others. President Obama had a few years to codify his executive order, but he didn't expend any political capital to do so. The minority party in congress also didn't expend any political capital to codify it. So, one president rescinds a previous executive order and all hell breaks loose. Now the minority party has an issue to help them get elected ... so they are on-board with all the political capital they can muster. Politics is such a game. Not what's good for the country but what's good for the country's political class.

Here's a 1888 election interference article .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_letter

 

On what do you base that opinion?

How many people have said that a Russian generated 'fake news' article was the deciding factor in how they voted, ie.. they were deadset to vote for X but changed their mind and voted for Y after hearing about Z on some social media email. Now, 'real news' did possibility change votes but that is exactly what is supposed to happen in a election.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-did-russian-interference-affect-the-2016-election/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ly-mean/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.587b681015b0

Part of this response, it seems, stems from a lack of clarity around what “meddling” means in the context of Russia’s electoral activity. It seems to be true that Russia didn’t directly affect vote totals in 2016 — more on this below — but instead interfered or tried to interfere in a number of other ways. It seems clear, too, that this effort is ongoing.

So let’s take a step back. When we talk about Russian meddling, what are we talking about? What were its effects? When did it begin?
...
That said, these bots have achieved near-mythical status in online conversations. There’s little evidence that the bots significantly influenced either voting or the national conversation on a day-to-day basis. When discussing the scale of the bots’ reach — hundreds of thousands of views — it’s worth remembering that, on Twitter and nationally, that’s a small drop in a big bucket. Sixty thousand people is about two-hundredths of a percent of the country’s population. There’s still little evidence that the social-media efforts did much.

Now when the US interferes in foreign elections we go in big, sometime even (with a little help from our friends) eliminating the candidate we oppose and we still don't get the wanted result most of the time even when the desired puppet won.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...pts-to-change-regimes/?utm_term=.5e7bb375388f

 

Hi all,

Warning, I don't want this to be political at all ....

People say that Russia interfered with the US election to try and sway the vote but how can this be? At the end of the day, individual people go into a booth and vote, no one sits in the booth and forces their hand.

How can you affect an election?

In addition to disinformation, which is what I think people allege the Russians did, you can indirectly support favored candidates with money for their campaigns.

One example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy

Or if the shoe is on the other foot, you don't even try to hide your meddling.
https://spectator.org/obamas-meddling-in-foreign-elections-six-examples/

 

I don't want this to be political at all ....

Really?

 

I've noticed that all the political threads have been deleted so I will throw in my 2 cents before this one disappears too.

<snipped blatant political content>

OK everybody - Read this thread fast before the moderators hit the Flush Button on it.

 

Hi all,

Warning, I don't want this to be political at all ....

People say that Russia interfered with the US election to try and sway the vote but how can this be? At the end of the day, individual people go into a booth and vote, no one sits in the booth and forces their hand.

How can you affect an election?

There are a number of ways to influence an election -- and many of them are perfectly fine, even when done by a foreign power.

First, you have efforts to change public opinion in order to sway who they vote for once they go into the voting booth.

Second, you have efforts to affect who goes into the voting booths to begin with, either by getting more of the people you expect to vote your way there or to discourage/prevent people that you expect to vote the other way from getting there. This would also include getting people, real or imaginary, to vote that aren't eligible to do so.

Third, you have efforts to actually affect what happens AFTER they have gone into a booth. You might challenge the results of elections that narrowly when the "wrong" way. You might try to hack into the county's computers to tamper with the results.

In all of these, even the last, there are approaches that are perfectly legitimate (or at least legal) and there are approaches that aren't.

The election laws were changed in Colorado six or seven years ago in a way that seems to invite election fraud. I am pretty sure that, if I wanted to, I could probably go into many counties on election day and go into many of the polling locations in those counties and register to vote at the same time I fill out my ballot and give a local park as my home address and cast the ballot non-provisionally and not get caught. The real question is whether I could get enough people to spend the day doing that traveling all over the state in order to have a realistic chance of affecting the outcome of a race that was expected to be ultra close.

 

How many people have said that a Russian generated 'fake news' article was the deciding factor in how they voted, ie.. they were deadset to vote for X but changed their mind and voted for Y after hearing about Z on some social media email

I don't know.
How many was it?
Or are these just some "facts" you are throwing out that you have no real knowledge of?

 

I don't know.
How many was it?
Or are these just some "facts" you are throwing out that you have no real knowledge of?

Facts are actual evidence of it happening or not. A negative response of it happening is scientific evidence too of a behavior. The fact that We don't know is evidence (I'm sure there are a few somewhere ) is IMO indicative of how weak the effect was after tons of breathless 'BombShell' reporting from the media. What we can say is the votes were counted correctly and actual votes were not changed. I would just think that after this long period after the election it (Russian election interference) would be nailed down if it was a determining factor. Everyone on the left or right to middle says the same thing if they look honestly at the election. If there was an effect of Russian election interference (that one can prove with scientific evidence) it was very small even with the small deciding number of votes in a electoral college voting system that makes each State a separate battleground.

 

MOD NOTE: Gentlemen, please let's keep the discussion geared to what the TS is asking about, which is a query into how a foreign country could influence an election when the actual voting is down in the privacy of a booth. Let's not go veering off into a politically-charged discussion of the last election.

 

Really?

Yeah, this has nothing to do with politics such as "who is a republican, democrat, conservative, labour" etc. This was about the idea of election manipulation anyway and how it is achieved or if it is even real anyway.

 

I have the same opine...

Joe, sorry for being pedantic (and a grammar Nazi), but I've seen you do this before and it makes me cringe when I read it.

Opine is a verb. Opinion is a noun.

A verb requires an object. A noun is an object.

One can opine. But he cannot have an opine.

What would you think if I said, "I opinion that grammar is for the birds"?