Despite all the pleas for unity, and all the denials that nothing sketchy happened in the primary elections to affect the outcome, and the we Berners are just sore losers, mopre and more studies are coming to the conclusion that electoral fraud did occur and it overwhelmingly benefited Hillary Clinton. The most recent paper, "An Electoral System in Crisis," authored by lulu Fries’dat & Anselmo Sampietro in collaboration with Fritz Scheuren, a statistics professor and former head of the American Statistical Association, had this to say about the "irregularities" in this years primary elections (emphasis mine):

A large and growing body of research provides convincing evidence that U.S. electronic voting equipment in many areas throughout the country is not counting the votes accurately. This could be due to malfunctions in computer equipment that in 43 states is over a decade old , and long past its natural life. However, in many cases, the evidence strongly suggests that fraud is the likely explanation. These problems have been occurring since at least 2004, and are certainly present in the current 2016 presidential primaries. The documentation consists of statistical graphs analyzing data from five presidential cycles, as well as off-year races from across the country. The data illustrates that there are unusually large discrepancies between small precinct and large precinct election returns, and noticeable differences between hand-counted and machine-counted precinct results. Even in isolation, the data gives cause for concern. The statistical evidence is reinforced by physical evidence and congressional hearings: manual recounts that do not match the totals of the machines being audited; and testimony under oath about direct knowledge of tampering with electronic voting equipment. We examined the election results of the 2016 presidential primaries, and found irregularities in the overwhelming majority of the twenty-one states that we analyzed. The data indicates, in particular, that the totals reported in the Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders may not be correct. In state after state, independent examination by two separate analysts found suspect statistical patterns giving Clinton inflated percentages, that in all likelihood are not fully based on actual votes; and leaving Sanders with what appear to be artificially depressed totals. The difference between the reported totals, and our best estimate of the actual vote totals, varies considerably from state to state. However, these differences are significant—sometimes more than 10%—and could change the outcome of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. We found irregularities in the 2016 Republican presidential primary as well, and while concerning, we do not believe they are large enough to change the outcome of that race. Fritz Scheuren, a member of the statistics faculty at George Washington University, and a former president of the American Statistical Association, has been a collaborator in this research. Examining the data from the study, Scheuren said, “As a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary voting unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and possibly even] suspicious. There is a greater degree of smoothness in the outcomes than the roughness that is typical in raw/real data.”

It's becoming harder and harder for Hillary apologists to dismiss these claims of election fraud as the work of conspiracy theorists and/or unqualified graduate students; not when you have the a well respected former President of the American Statistical Association agreeing that the data is "unusual," "unexpected" and consistently smoother than is typical in "raw data." By the way, here is what the concept of smoothing data in statistics means.

In statistics ... to smooth a data set is to create an approximating function that attempts to capture important patterns in the data, while leaving out noise or other fine-scale structures/rapid phenomena. In smoothing, the data points of a signal are modified so individual points (presumably because of noise) are reduced, and points that are lower than the adjacent points are increased leading to a smoother signal. Smoothing may be used in two important ways that can aid in data analysis (1) by being able to extract more information from the data as long as the assumption of smoothing is reasonable and (2) by being able to provide analyses that are both flexible and robust.[1] Many different algorithms are used in smoothing.

In short, raw data in any field does not generally fit neatly along a curve or trend line. The data sets have to be adjusted, or smoothed, to make allowances for anomalies and outliers - that is data points that are inconsistent with the majority of the data collected. This is done in statistics to eliminate noisy data that makes it difficult to discern patterns. Raw data, whether in scientific experiment, marketing studies or voting that lacks noise is highly unusual. It strongly suggests that the raw voting data was tampered with. The fact that the vote totals varied so widely from the expected vote totals should alarm anyone.

Indeed, in the recent past, a Presidential Commission and individual Democratic elected officials have made the very argument the authors of this study are making - that these electronic voting machines are unreliable and capable of being hacked to manipulate the vote count and steal elections.

In January 2014, The Presidential Commission on Election Administration published a report stating, "Perhaps the most dire warning the Commission heard in its investigation ... concerned the impending crisis in voting technology. Well-known to election administrators, if not the public at large, this impending crisis arises from the widespread wearing out of voting machines purchased a decade ago (p.62.)” This report was issued over two years ago, but unfortunately very little has been done since then to rectify the problem. So the issues we are reporting here, of security problems on old and failing machines, are not surprising. However we did find security issues with even newer electronic voting equipment, such as the machines in New York State. At a congressional briefing on voter suppression, held on April 21, 2016, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) expressed grave concern about the security of the voting equipment: “There is a very insidious, treacherous and deceitful method of voter suppression, and it has to do with the integrity of the voting process itself... one possibility, and I think it's a very good one, is that someone's manipulating the counting of the votes. Someone is hacking into these computers that tabulate the votes."

And yet, when it comes to the recent primary elections between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, establishment Democrats have been quick to label anyone pointing out the many discrepancies in the vote tallies that consistently favored Clinton, nut-cases and "tin foil hat" conspiracy theorists. Funny, how that works, isn't it?

Which may explain the recent reports that Sanders delegates to the DNC convention are planning protests inside the convention walls, even as thousands of us will be protesting outside those walls. Like us, they know that what happened in this primary season to Bernie Sanders and to all of us who voted for him (or tried to vote for him) stinks to high heaven. For it isn't just evidence of voting machine shenanigans, but of voter registration purges in numerous states in which Democratic voters showed up on election day only to find they were no longer registered as Democrats, or many cases - such as the infamous purge of 120,000 voters in Brooklyn - no longer registered at all. The mess that was the California Democratic Primary election was just the last in a series of blatant voter suppression efforts that benefited Hillary Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders.

Indeed, our electoral system is do corrupt at ever level that the only solution may be to have our own "American Spring" to once and for all demonstrate to the power and moneyed elites that we have had enough and we aren't going to take it anymore. I'm all in with that. What do you say?