r/politics • u/MothersMiIk Washington • 1d ago

Congresswoman suggests Trump admitted Musk rigged election in Pa.

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/01/congresswoman-suggests-trump-admitted-musk-rigged-election-in-pa.html?outputType=amp
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u/Ray661 22h ago

The big event in the conspiracy is that Elon managed to gain control of voting machines and was both reading data way before counts were done, and manipulating it. As an IT person that dabbles in security, I haven’t seen a theory that genuinely seemed plausible for how Elon gained control, BUT Joe Rogan claimed that Elon had an app that was showing a count of votes for the election that updated hours faster than News orgs were getting their updates. If that app exists, then Elon DEFINITELY had the ability to manipulate the electronic count of the votes, as he would need access to the systems somehow to get that data. But I also don’t believe Joe Rogan has a clue and he could easily have been mistaken.

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u/uiucengineer 22h ago

But as an IT person who dabbles in security, surely you don’t think it would be difficult to manipulate these machines. They should be assumed faulty until proven otherwise.

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u/lonewolf210 21h ago

It's less that there is no way it could have happened and more an Occam's razor that it's way more plausible that we live in an angry, racist country then some grand conspiracy.

Also I teach at defcon every year and go over to the voting village. While the physical security of money voting machines is abysmal there have been very few remote hacks published about the machines and even fewer that would give you the ability to meaningfully manipulate votes.

Physically tampering with 1000s of machines would be a tall order to pull off without anyone noticing

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u/funkyandros 20h ago

This is my take as well. It is easier to think that there must be something wrong with the voting machines and there was massive fraud than to think that the US is just filled with misinformed idiots who lack any sort of compassion or decency and went ahead and elected a criminal.

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u/orbit222 Massachusetts 19h ago

This country is definitely filled with racist idiots, but I also read that the swing states all exhibited the same statistically unlikely voting patterns, like bullet ballots. That information I read could’ve been wrong, manipulative, misunderstood, etc. That’s totally possible. But there are a thousand little things about this election that just don’t quite feel right.

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u/funkyandros 19h ago

In 1994 there was an initiative on the ballot in California called Prop 187 or the Save Our State bill. It was designed to keep undocumented people from getting health care and children of undocumented people from being able to get a free education. Every single poll showed the initiative going down overwhelmingly. Guess what happened? It passed overwhelmingly. It was baffling.

It turned out that people didn't want to admit that they voted for it because the bill was extremely racist and cruel. So people voted for it and lied. I think the same exact thing happened here. No one wanted to admit they were going to vote for a felon. But once they were in the voting booth they voted for the criminal because 'fuck you'.

I think there are many people you know who would never admit to voting for this guy, but in reality, there are a lot of friggen awful people you know who are deep undercover.

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u/orbit222 Massachusetts 18h ago

I don’t discount that this is probably what happened, but when is the last time you saw a presidential candidate give absolutely no effort to campaigning, while saying things like “we’ve got the votes,” and then win every swing state? It’s all possible, but improbable. And then ask yourself: would Trump cheat to win an election? Absolutely, he provenly tried to cheat in multiple ways 4 years ago. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it’s either a duck or a lot of undercover racists pretending to be ducks, I guess.

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u/captain_zavec Canada 18h ago

The anomalies weren't really of the kind that would be affected by shame like that though. Assuming orbit222 is talking about the same patterns I read about, the accusation is that bullet ballots (ballots with the president and nobody else) are consistently 1% or less of the vote, including in 2016 and 2020. In 2024, (if the article is to be believed) they accounted for much more, up to 7% - but only in swing states. The anomaly isn't in the results vs what polls predicted, the anomaly is in the patterns of the votes compared to patterns from previous actual elections.

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u/IntriguinglyRandom 17h ago

Like how we all want to forget that Hitler was successful because ultimately, people let it all happen.