December 8, 2016

Teachable moment Now: post election remedies can never be counted on to repair elections

For strong reasons why, please see this bradblog discussion with Paul Lehto, longtime election protection democracy activist. http://bradblog.com/?p=11953

December 4, 2016

Trump forces file Bush v Gore complaint to stop Wisconsin recount

Filed late Friday December 1 in federal court, Great America PAC and the Stop Hillary PAC have sued the Wisconsin Election Commission under Bush v. Gore, claiming that the varying standards used to count votes (machine counts and hand counts) violate the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution. https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/332954119/Wisconsin-recount-complaint

Note that this is Republicans suing Republicans to stop the recount. And that it is the Republican Wisconsin Election Commission that allowed counties to choose machines or hand count against the request of both Stein and Clinton, thus setting up this challenge.

The complaint also falsely claims there is a federal mandate to finish up the recount by the safe harbor date under 3 USC 5 of December 13. However, because electors can be subject to challenge if certified after this date, it is the excuse to ask for injunctive relief, by saying Trump will be irreparably damaged in his victory if this date passes by without certification of electors.

Let us please not have any comments like "I thought Bush v. GORE wasn't a precedent?" If that were in fact true, it makes the situation worse because courts can reach an opposite decision, or the same decision, on identical facts. Not being a precedent does not mean "can't happen again."

For those who have felt reassured that they "have paper ballots" (Which are then scanned by machines) please watch how recounts actually go, how they are actually fought vigorously, saddled with onerous requirements like those in PA, and stuck with many millions of dollars in fees while other folks complain about the fundraising- You can expect repeats of all of this more or less with every presidential recount. YOUR PAPER BALLOT ISN'T WORTH ANYTHING MUCH BECAUSE AS A PRACTICAL MATTER YOU CAN'T GET TO IT except with extreme difficulty and probably not on time in the opinion of Republican friendly courts.

The only way to have a fair election is to get it right on election night. And you can never KNOW it's right with machines. You can only be a believer. The reason the system demands public confidence even in advance (!) of both a result and the reports of irregularities or not, is that any lack of confidence rips the veil off elections, and you realize you've been had, your paper ballot was false security.

And although one can in advance say the chances are against any given recount because the election law is itself filled with traps and a form of rigged game, anyone who opines that the recount won't be successful because of margin size doesn't know what they are talking about because errors with machines need not and often aren't tiny errors they can be large. Whereas with hand counts, if they are recounted the errors are typically rather small and margins of more than a fraction of a percent are difficult to overcome.

Bottom line: the machines declare who will be President, and literally nobody knows what those ballots really say, and many people including election officials fight like hell to keep anyone from ever finding out.

Still reassured you got paper ballots? You shouldn't be.

Solution: The ONLY way to guarantee our rights - especially when we need voting rights the most, which is to remove a crooked government and to "kick the bums out" is to use precinct hand counted paper ballots, making sure there are both enough people and enough random observers by using the jury summoning system. (Which is way better than doing a 10 day jury trial for most people). Instead, the alleged rush to get election night results justifies machines, then the rush to certify justifies cancelling recounts.

So, please enjoy this corrupt, collusive litigation of Republican PACS suing a Republican state administration to stop a citizen/Green/Democratic Party statewide recount because the Republican administration set it up in a way Republicans don't like!

December 4, 2016

3 voters disfranchised in WI recount just to avoid official embarrassment

This shows that WI election officials in New Richmond, WI, would rather disfranchise voters than suffer any embarrassment to themselves.

So three voters got disfranchised when to "compensate" (their word) for the following "problems."

1. They found two absentee ballot ENVELOPES that didn't have ADDRESSES on the WITNESS signatures. Corrupt Wisconsin election law provides that if an address even for just one of two required absentee ballot witnesses is missing then the ballot as a whole gets tossed.

2. These two ballots didn't get tossed, they got placed in with other ballots instead (they claim they never looked at these ballots, ahem, but they did look at the envelope so they know WHO these folks are)

3.The problem as these officials see it: Now the number of legal voters is LESS THAN the number of ballots. Or, ballots is greater than voters if you want to put it that way. They think: this CAN NOT STAND.

4. BUT Actually voters and ballots could be considered to be equal with the asterisk that three got in the ballot box that technically shouldn't under corrupt and technical Wisconsin rules, but their decision not to look at it this way, plus their "compensation" that follows shows how rigidly committed the Wisconsin election code, as interpreted by these folks, is about disfranchisement for technical errors.

5. The New Richmond Wisconsin election officials decide that the number of legal voters must be reduced by three, because they find three problems (two with missing address for witness and one that was never counted and which they added to the ballots).

6. Their "solution" is to "randomly" remove two ballots (as seen on the video in the link below), and for the Extra ballot they are adding that was never counted before they remove a ballot with no presidential vote (item an undervote).

7. They can't find which ballots were "illegally" allowed so they randomly pick two ballots from a small stack, and two unknown people are totally disfranchised for the recount.

Three unknown people are disfranchised, all to force the books to balance and prevent embarrassment for the election officials. The chances are higher than 99% that the persons disfranchised are not the ones who had witnesses that omitted their signatures.

The officials claim they don't look no at the ballots when they open them. That is BS. It might sometimes be true but not all the time.

So chances are an absentee came in either from a person they know or with votes they like. They let the address for the witnesses problem slide. Unexpected scrutiny comes up in the form of a recount process, so they say oops and randomly disfranchise two others instead.

Result: They have allowed two "illegal votes" and counted one additional legal vote never counted before, and also disfranchised three legal voters as "compensation." (the two random ones, plus the removed undervote, since an undervote is still a vote and probably a protest non-vote that has a right to be counted as zero on the Presidential race. )

But they avoid the embarrassment of ballots exceeding legal voters (a situation that repeats in numerous small Wisconsin towns as Richard Hayes Phillips has found)

And it's fairly certain that the disfranchisement of innocents for the "crime" of witness addresses missing will not result in any consequences for these election officials.

This also gives their recount a cushion of several votes so if it changes the result by just a few votes it will be ambiguous if it was machine error or the result of this disfranchisement shell game.

Watch the minute and a half of video to see innocents disfranchised. They committed no election law technical mistake whatsoever and yet still lose their ballots totally!


http://theuptake.org/2016/12/02/ballots-randomly-removed-from-wisconsin-recount/

November 30, 2016

Wisconsin Election Officials CAN'T ADD: 3.5 Million recount now 3.9 million due to adding error

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/hillary-clinton-files-motion-in-support-of-hand-recount-in/article_adb7ea51-5e50-5e48-9e2f-9dfb246e25db.html

They buried the lede in this article. Wisconsin officials can not add, and have increased the exorbitant recount fee from $3.5 million to $3.9 million due to their own admitted error in addition. I'll bet they used a calculator and still got it wrong.

The article notes that Clinton has joined the Stein motion and is requesting a statewide hand recount.

Note that the Wisconsin position that each County can choose how they want to recount is an egregious repeat of exactly what the Supreme Court struck down in Bush v Gore and used to terminate the 2000 election during the recount phase in Florida, infamously awarding the state and the presidency to George W. BUSH.

Where is the press on calling this election incompetence out? How can they add up county election returns when they can't add up County financial estimates for recounts?

And calling out the bad faith repeat of Bush v. GORE, which struck down partial recounts as unconstitutional??

November 17, 2016

Trump Plans to Cash in -.even if his Properties all Burn to the Ground

Recent media has mentioned the difficulty of protecting Trump Tower in NY - one of the most difficult Secret Service tasks ever.

It's not the job of the Secret Service, but how will they protect the twin Trump Towers in Istanbul once Trump ramps up his deportation pogrom and "knocking the hell out of ISIS?"

I would not be wanting to insure Trump holdings worldwide against anything like fire, vandalism or terrorism (the latter is often a policy exclusion for little guys but possibly there would be variation or some negotiation on big dollar investments like Trump properties.)

In town here some business owner facing declining sales is charged with torching the business for insurance fraud purposes. That's arson of course. Very common with distressed properties.

Look for Herr Drumpf to be arsonist in chief, only he will be pissing off far too many jihadists and they will do the work for him, saving Trump the trouble of doing it himself. !]

The main possibilities here seem to be:

1. Trump has good insurance for this risk and cashes in big time, both on insurance and increased sympathy for his Trump brand among some. (Might the US government by any law have to indemnify the President in any way for.personal losses sustained on account of him being President?)

2. The insurers balk, deem themselves insecure, and cancel the policy, leaving Trump Properties uninsured. (Property not mortgaged)

3. The insurers balk, Trump has mortgaged the property and lack of suitable insurance becomes a condition of default and foreclosure if the banks don't believe adequate insurance is.in place or can be obtained.

4. The Trump Bailout Act of 2017 transfers many billions to the coffers of Trump Properties.

There are various other ways this could go, but don't you think that no matter what happens, Trump will reap a windfall?

He now claims to not care, because he's moved on to much bigger things, but nothing is bigger than billions for Trump, and you can bet that having risked as much as he has so far, he is going for much more than being a geopolitical master of the universe!

Please post your ideas on how Trump plans to cash in - no matter what.... I bet he has a plan, I'm just not sure exactly what it is. Ideas?

September 5, 2016

Health Issues: Trump Could Die Any Day Now!

Speaking of health "issues" and the future President, the National Institute of Health says the mentally ill have a life expectancy of 14 to 32 fewer years than the average American. See [link:http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2011/no-health-without-mental-health.shtml|

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2011/no-health-without-mental-health.shtml

Some reporter or surrogate should ask the Trump campaign: Doesn't this mean Donald Trump could die any day now?

Of course, if the premise of mental illness were denied, that would be topical as well.

Who knows, this might be enough to.stop the dumb health issue attacks! What is Trump's life expectancy at his age, 82 years? Then 82 minus the minimum reduction in life expectancy of 14 is 68 and he's already past that age! Those "concerned" with the health of Hillary Clinton should be most concerned about this - their own candidate!


(For a serious, non-trolling discussion of the factors that cause these decreases in longevity, one of which has to do with barriers to treatment, please see the link above, and remember that 99.999% of the mentally ill deserve our compassion and are not running for President.)

August 10, 2016

Well he keeps asking Mr. DEMILLE for the traditional closeups, but perhaps he will change....

August 10, 2016

Trump's Second Amendment dog whistle was to Militia, and Threatens Civil War, not Assassination

In the attempt to spin out of Trump's Second Amendment threat, Trump's handlers referred to the "unification" of Second Amendment defenders as being a force that could stop Clinton gun control judges or measures. This too is a dog whistle attempting to explain Trump's comment while still satisfying the right wing base.

The "Second Amendment people" are the members and supporters of the militia movement, not so much the NRA. The NRA will expend all of its political power in the national election, and they will lose. The real sub-headline of Trump's comment could well be "Trump Contemplates Losing, and a Clinton Presidency" and "Muses About How to Stop Gun Control."

But though the NRA will have blown it's wad on the election, the right wing militia movement has been literally threatening "bloody civil war" if any new gun control legislation is passed. These are the same folks who took over via armed occupation the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. But this fizzled only because the rest of the movement condemned the takeover ON TACTICAL GROUNDS, saying that this was not the time or place for their bloody civil war. But they quickly went on to add that their long promised civil war was definitely still coming.

If you want a string of quotes about bloody civil war threats, and the terrorist plots and broken windows in Democratic Party offices that have already happened because of the leader of just one od these militia groups, read the Southern Poverty Law Center bio on this leader. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/michael-brian-vanderboegh-0

I hate to say it, but those saying this is simply a reference to assassination are wrong. Trump is the king of dog wbistles, and what he knows well are his dog whistles and extreme right symbolism and politics. The militia has been promising "bloody civil war" for years if there is new gun control law, and the threat here is not limited to assassination.

What makes sense of the gun control context, the post-election Clinton presidency context, as well as the subsequent spin about the "unification" of Second Amendment people, is that Trump is dog whistling civil war, AFTER HE LOSES. An assassination is usually a small number of people acting alone, but it takes "Second Amendment PEOPLE" to prosecute armed resistance and fight a "bloody civil war." Once again, Trump dog whistles to what's left of his base. "Bloody civil war" can include, but is not limited to, assassination.

Those who have some exposure to militia rhetoric about the Second Amendment will certainly understand Trump in the above way, and Trump is adept enough at extreme right dog whistles that this interpretation has the major advantage of making sense of everything he and his campaign said, other than the lie that this was about mobilizing people for an election....

July 24, 2016

Wasserman-Schultz: Is Anything Really Changing?

Before the convention and during the campaign, Wasserman-Schultz worked to promote Hillary's campaign, and she will continue to do so until the nomination is formalized. Then, at the end of the convention she resigns from the DNC, and per Hillary's statement today she will become "honorary chair" of her 50-sfate strategy. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/statements/2016/07/24/hillary-clinton-statement-on-the-resignation-of-democratic-national-committee-chair-debbie-wasserman-schultz/

So Wasserman-Schultz's support for Hillary goes from subtle/denied (supply your own adjectives here) to open and honorary.

What is really going to change? Little or nothing with respect to Hillary. Some, if you consider the non-campaign aspects of being DNC chair. It doesn't seem like Wasserman-Schultz will be "gone" -- because usually there is a gap, hiatus or "time out" before a return to public life. That will not happen here.

I'm more troubled by Hillary's follow-up hiring, than by the "damn emails" in this context. How does such a honorary position promote unity??? Do you think the hiring promotes unity? Vote below.