The authors of this report can be taken seriously as they put their professional reputation on the line. I am not sure that Fritz Scheuren, professor of statistics at George Washington University and the 100th President of the American Statistical Association (ASA), would risk his reputation by making statements we can't defend. Here is what he says: “as a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary voting unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and even] suspicious. There is a greater degree of smoothness in the outcomes than the roughness that is typical in raw/real data.”