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/