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Donald Trump supporters artificially manipulated the results of online polls to create a false narrative that the Republican nominee won the first presidential debate on Monday night.
The efforts originated from users of the pro-Trump Reddit community r/The_Donald and 4chan messaged boards, which bombarded around 70 polls, including those launched by Time, Fortune, and CNBC.
In this latest incarnation, multiple Reddit users enlisted the Trump-supporting masses on r/The_Donald, which has over 200,000 subscribers, by posting dozens of online polls that are vulnerable to vote brigading, bots, and other forms of manipulation that make these non-scientific surveys notoriously unreliable.
Polls that were not open to public voting consistently put Clinton ahead of Trump. In a flash poll by Public Policy Polling, Clinton led Trump 51 to 40. A CNN/ORC poll conducted immediately following the debate found significantly stronger support for Clinton, who topped Trump 62 to 27.
http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/trump-clinton-debate-online-polls-4chan-the-donald/
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:58PM
Perish the thought that I might agree with jmorris on something, but these are strange times. Democrats do keep the inner city votes locked up through direct control of the existence of blacks (and Latinos, and any other economically disadvantaged group) who depend on any form of public assistance to survive. I can't personally attest to that in other cities like Baltimore or Philadelphia, but I have witnessed it at work here in New York City.
A decade ago I was deeply involved in the Howard Dean campaign, and founded a large grassroots organization (15,000 people) to work for his presidential run. After he dropped out of the race we continued to work on state and local races in New York. One of the races we worked on was a primary challenge to Marty Dilan, a state senator representing a district in North Brooklyn, a neighborhood called Williamsburg. Marty Dilan was the protege of the Brooklyn Democratic Party Boss, Vito Lopez. Vito Lopez, as party boss, personally hired all the poll site captains and poll workers. Marty Dilan controlled the State Dept. of Housing, so anyone who lived in, or whose friends and relatives lived in, public housing would be at direct risk for being thrown out on the street if they voted against Marty Dilan.
The task of our organization on primary day was to serve as poll monitors and hand out flyers close to poll sites (outside the exclusion zone). I worked several poll sites inside, monitoring the proceedings to make sure there were no shenanigans; I spent half the day at a high-rise public housing project, and the other half at a low-rise public housing location. At the first the poll captain was a grandmotherly woman who was in the tank for Dilan, because she had been appointed the poll captain at that site by Vito Lopez for years. She thought it was OK to go into the voting booth with the voters and flip the switches for them, something that is totally illegal. I objected strenuously and instructed the cop on duty to eject her from the poll site. The cop refused. I filed an emergency complaint with the Board of Elections; nothing happened. At the low rise site, the poll captain was Vito Lopez's girlfriend. That area had more support for the challenger, but nobody showed up to vote for him. Funny, that.
Later that day other members of our organization witnessed Marty Dilan himself getting out of his limo and punching out some of the challenger's supporters who were holding up signs next to one of the busy roads in the district. There were three cops present, but they did nothing. Our organization's members demanded, incredulously, that the cops do something to intervene. No, they said, their mothers (or cousins, or sisters) lived in public housing in the district. Dilan would have thrown them out on the street.
That's a bit lengthier a reply than you were probably expecting, but you did demand a citation. There it is. Democrats have a stranglehold on inner city blacks and others in a hundred different ways. Housing, food stamps, medical care, electricity, plumbing, the neighborhood schools, immigration, etc, etc. If they don't do as they're told and vote how they're told, the Democratic party machine can make their lives very difficult if not impossible. It is nothing like a democracy at all and much closer to a feudal system. And if you think it's fanciful that there could be such a lock extending from the national level down to the very building you live in, consider that Hillary Clinton's strongest local booster was my city councilman who never did one damn useful thing in 12 years in office. That know-nothing, meh x 10^50 city councilman is somebody you might know today, Bill de Blasio. He's the mayor of NYC now.
I'm afraid, my friend, that as much as it pains me to say it, jmorris is right on this point.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday September 28 2016, @02:36PM
A fascinating anecdote, and I don't doubt its veracity, but I would say it is proof of one crooked politician (and his crooked minions) rather than proof of a national democratic racist conspiracy.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 28 2016, @04:23PM
One crooked politician? Oh, no, that was one crooked politician to illustrate the system that obtains in New York City, the sina qua non of national Democratic party politics. Whether it's the Boyland family in East Brooklyn, the Clarke family in Crown Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant, or Charlie Rangel's people in the Bronx, it's crooked through-and-through.
Also, I didn't say that it was a racist conspiracy. My thesis was not that the Democratic party is the racist party and that the Republican party is not, but that the Democratic party very much has a vested material interest in preserving the dependency of urban blacks, Latinos, and other disadvantaged groups and that they very directly and ruthlessly defend it. The race of the dependent groups is immaterial. The group could be creamy white, blonde-haired Lithuanians and the situation would be the same.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @09:32PM
I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years. --LBJ
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @02:45PM
> Dilan would have thrown them out on the street.
> If they don't do as they're told and vote how they're told, the Democratic party machine can make their
> lives very difficult if not impossible. It is nothing like a democracy at all and much closer to a feudal system.
You don't think it is a huge leap to go from one corrupt politician threatening to abuse his power to systemic oppression? In this age of cellphone video of everything you don't the kind of widespread threats you are talking about wouldn't be all over the net? Even without video, talk about that shit would be all over black twitter. And yet its not. Ah, more proof of conspiracy! Lack of proof is actually proof!
Not all minorities are poor. Sure, a disproportionate amount are, but there are still tons who are living decent middle-class lives without welfare. And they still overwhelmingly vote democrat. The demoractic party takes minorities for granted. But it isn't because of some feudal system where all the politicians "own" them because of dependency. Its because the republicans have made racism an unofficial party plank for the last 40 years while the democrats are the ones doing the opposite. And that's plain as day to anyone who isn't white.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:15PM
Spoken like a millenial. This happened before smartphones with cameras were ubiquitous. Even now, it's illegal to take photos or video inside the poll site. Also, this happened long before there was Twitter, and before there was Facebook. Young people today don't realize how recent those companies are, because they never paid any attention to the world before they became teenagers and got their first cell phones. To help you with the cultural timeline, at the time it was happening the closest thing to the social media we know today was Meetup.com, and that was about using their platform to meet in person with other like-minded people. Gasp! Yes, that's meet in-person.
I could tell you similar stories about the Boyland family in East Brooklyn, or the Clarkes in Crown Heights/Bedford-Stuyvesant. Those are things I've witnessed personally. But I don't want to bore everyone with a wall of text about the inner workings of New York City Democratic party corruption. And it wouldn't convince the millenials among you anyway, since it's still anecdotal, isn't it? Or I could suggest you do a quick Google and look up the convictions of former Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon "Shelly" Silver (Democrat, convicted in May 2016) and former New York State Senate Majority leader Dean Skelos (Republican, also convicted in May 2016), explain that in New York State politics everything, everything is decided by the "Three Men in the Room," aka the Governor, Senate Majority Leader, and Speaker of the Assembly, and assert that that is hard data that damns the system pretty irrefutably, and you'll still wave your hand and say, "It can't be so," because you've already made up your mind that Hillary can do no wrong, and that the Democratic Party leadership is still mostly good people.
They aren't. And they need to go, along with their Republican counterparts.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @05:24PM
> Spoken like a millenial. This happened before smartphones with cameras were ubiquitous.
You asserted that the conspiracy is on going. If your best defense is that this conspiracy is no longer happening then what exactly is your beef?
Even more revealing is that you have no response for the fact that minorities who are not on welfare also vote overwhelmingly for the democratic party.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:39AM
Yet you speak up for Trump! Hypocrite!
The simple fact is that you have almost no idea what Trump will do in office. He has backtracked so many times it is hard to follow. If you think you do know, then you are simply in denial.
But what do we know about Trump: 1. He is a racist. 2. He has misused charitable donations. 3. He wants to weaken the 1st amendment, so that rich people can't be criticized.
He doesn't care about you or people like you. All he cares about is promoting the interests of the wealthy.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 29 2016, @11:41AM
I know that, but there's a chance he will stop the TPP. There's a chance he'll take out a couple noxious Wall Street bankers (likely because they jumped the queue at the squash court). But at least that's something. With Hillary, there's zero chance.
Also, I want to stick my finger in the eye of the Establishment. I want to see them quail in fear for once. Yes, it's nihilism, but there we are. They made the bed, and now they're gonna lie in it with us.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Whoever on Thursday September 29 2016, @02:35PM
Oh my god..
You really are stupid, aren't you!
Trump is establishment. He always has been. His campaign has been funded by other wealthy people, almost from the beginning.
He isn't going to do anything against the establishment. Instead, he wants to neuter the first amendment so that wealthy people can't be criticized.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 29 2016, @07:44PM
Excellent. We seem to have found a genuine Hillary supporter.
Trump won't bring down the Establishment as a whole, but he might bring down some of them, and that's what's got them worried. Suddenly they're all searching their memories to see if they ever slighted Trump at a cocktail party. I admit that's very little to root for, but it's something, and a whole lot more than the zero we'd get from Hillary.
I honestly would vastly have preferred Bernie Sanders. I think he's a good guy and would have gentled the circumstances of the 99%, who haven't caught a break in 40 years. But the game was rigged against him, too, and now there's nothing left but to savor the nervous quivering of the 1%.
Washington DC delenda est.