Think about this for a second. In the past 16 years, election fraud was only taken seriously in two contexts: to make us think Russians would rig it for Trump, and to support a recount of an election Trump won. Can you see how this doesn't sit well with me? It practically looks like the media wants to catch fraud in Trump's favor, specifically so Russia can get falsely blamed.
And now that there does seem to be fraud for Trump, everybody is pinning it on Russia. Democrats who ignored election integrity in the primaries are now concerned Putin stole the election. RecountNow.org also adopts this McCarthyist dogwhistling, saying:
We know that the Russians hacked into U.S. electronic voter rolls (voter databases) before the election and also indicated that they planned to interfere in the election itself. Did they successfully rig the U.S. election?
If a recount, legitimate or not, uncovers fraud for Trump, Russia is nearly certain to get blamed. Can you imagine what will happen if it looks like Russia hacked the presidential election? The public would be clamoring for an aggressive response, which our government would be happy to deliver. Russian hacking could become the next big lie to get us into war, after WMDs.
Everything works out so nicely for the establishment that it almost looks like they planned it! And they probably did. When the media covered voting machine security, making sure to frame it in terms of Russian hacking, they were clearly planning something. There was no other reason to talk about it. At the very least, they wanted an excuse to challenge an unintended Trump upset. Might they have gone as far as rigging it for Trump specifically to provoke an investigation?
That would answer a big mystery: why did the establishment rig it for Trump? Hillary's campaign probably didn't learn about this until election day, which explains their surprise. But with the recount, they now have a chance to reclaim the presidency. Even if that fails, the establishment still gets a lot out of it, including war and a weakened Trump that will be forced to cede power to the GOP establishment.
The Hillary and Jill campaigns
Jill Stein taking up the recount has been incredibly divisive in the progressive movement. Some support her efforts, while others don't want her to help Hillary. In fact, quite a few in the latter group are suspicious of Jill's motives, believing she's working with or for the Clinton campaign. Meanwhile, Hillary's campaign seems remarkably dismissive of an effort that could reverse her loss, but they've still said they'll participate in the recount. So what's really going on?
Nothing about Jill Stein calling for a recount is suspect. The Green Party has a history of caring about election integrity when Democrats don't. In the 2004 Ohio election, after John Kerry refused to challenge the obvious theft, Green candidate David Cobb (now Jill's campaign manager) requested a recount. Jill asking for a recount now perfectly matches the Greens' platform and record.
Jill's decision to request a recount was based on a report by CS experts. A group of them was lobbying the Clinton campaign to do so, and one of them (J. Alex Halderman) wrote a Medium post about it on Nov 23, calling for a recount to set the record straight. In response, Jill announced a recount initiative that same day.
For me, everything checked out, until I saw Jill's recount petition in Wisconsin. She, rather disappointingly, gives credence to the discredited claim of Russian hackers. Keep in mind, this is the same candidate who called Hillary more dangerous than Trump on foreign policy, and she's now adopted Hillary's same fearmongering rhetoric that only serves to antagonize Russia.
I expected the establishment media and Democrats to point to Russia as the culprit. But seeing Jill, my own preferred candidate in this election, do so was very disheartening. Her petition unquestioningly accepts the dubious evidence of Russian hacking, and uses it as a basis for the recount:
The well-documented and conclusive evidence of foreign interference in the presidential race before the election, along with the irregularities observed in Wisconsin, call into question the results and indicate the possibility that widespread breach occurred.
There is no convincing evidence that any of the claimed "Russian" hacks (DNC, Podesta emails, or state voter rolls) were Russian in origin. And Jill, like everyone else, ignores the real threat of election insiders. She's playing exactly into what the establishment wants to do: pin fraud that gets found on Russia.
And though I didn't register it at the time, Jill's rationale for a recount always brought up the Russian hacking lie. When asked why she wanted a recount (for example, on Brad Friedman's show), she said that this was a "hack-riddled election", clearly alluding to all the "Russian" hacks.
Was she just fed bad information by technical advisers? I wanted to know, so I had one of my friends put the question to David Cobb. He was very evasive and refused to answer. Curious, I decided to ask Cobb myself. Cobb denied that Jill made any claims about Russian hacking, despite it being clearly stated in the petition. When I pointed that out, he started typing a response and then decided not to answer me.
Very odd behavior indeed. Why would Cobb be so averse to answering that question in particular? Is there something more to Jill spreading anti-Russia propaganda, the same propaganda espoused by the establishment media?
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