Thread by @TimInHonolulu

1. Reposted from 12/17 #Russianbots: Here's how I think voter data was used. Background: July 2016, I had reason to investigate what I thought was a theft of Hawaii Democratic Party data. It turns out it wasn't but I learned from the data firm that Democrats use the database

2. contained 4 fields. The fields are 1. Name; 2. District; 3. ID Document; and 4. Voter frequency. Name, District and frequency were likely used to target the key precincts in the three key swing states. Knowing that a person is going to vote and is in the Democrats database

3. is statistical gold. But work would have to be done to reach these targeted voters. That's where data from social media and brokers like Google would provide a reference database to merge with the voter data. In the end they would have email, Facebook and Twitter accounts of

4. certain Dem voters. This would be like Ford knowing a specific consumer was on the way to by a Ford. But in another car company hands would give the opportunity to show that same Ford customer videos of Ford's exploding and killing the passengers.

5. That's likely what the Russian sock puppets did. Targeting known Democratic high frequency voters on Facebook with videos that the showed Hillary in highly negative light at a minimum suppressed the vote. It may have caused votes for Trump that would not otherwise have been

6. made. The electoral college gives disproportional weight to certain states and within states key precincts. This is a fatal vulnerability that the Trump campaign with the assistance of the Kremlin's sock puppet army likely exploited. They only real fix is to amend the

7. Constitution. That's not likely so we can expect even greater manipulation in future. Another fix would be to shut down social media for final weeks of an election campaign. Again, not likely to happen.

8. Current US fraud laws may be employed to allow candidates to sue @Facebook & @Twitter to enjoin projection of fraudulent news. RICO could be employed to make the "see no evil" @Twitter & @facebook management risk their companies' financial ruin for failing to self police.