"Anti-Bernie Facebook Attack Was a Glitch," that ostensibly only affected one democratic candidate.

Clinton's Web Supporters, Allegedly Using Pornography, Shut Down Bernie Sanders' Facebook Groups

Last week, Correct The Record (CTR), David Brock’s super PAC that coordinates with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, announced that it was spending $1m on social media in an effort to combat Bernie Sanders’ online dominance. How, specifically? By paying trolls.

Last night, on the eve of five Democratic Primary elections—Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—we may have seen this paid army in action. Several notable Bernie Sanders Facebook groups were taken down following a coordinated cyber attack by Clinton supporters, in which a number of users reported content on the pages simultaneously. According to US Uncut, “Facebook’s automated systems take note of how many individuals report a particular post, and if the post is reported enough, it will be taken down. This same process applies to groups, pages, and individual user accounts.”

This is a bit....

...well anti-DU, kinda, but I wanted to know if anyone knew about other forums like this one? I was trying to remember one, jacobites or jack rabbits...any suggestions would be super!

The Story of the Great Brooklyn Voter Purge Keeps Getting Weirder

Some 120,000 people couldn't vote. What happened?
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/new-york-primary-voter-purge

In a damning eight page memo obtained by the Daily News, and posted in full on the newspaper's website, the lead investigator said, 'the review revealed a pattern consistent with coordinated fundraising and expenditure of funds to evade contribution limits, for purpose of funneling contributions that exceeded contribution limits."

According to the Daily News, the memo was delivered to the Elections Board in January, and recommended the Manhattan DA investigate City Hall for 'willful and flagrant violations' of state election law.

"The United States Has Essentially a One-Party System" - Noam Chomsky

Extensive Harvard report of countries Electoral Integrity, concludes US ranks lowest among West.

Norris, Pippa; Martinez i Coma, Ferran ; Gromping, Max; Nai, Alessandro, 2016, "Perceptions of Electoral Integrity, (PEI-4.0)", Harvard Dataverse, V1

Data Subsets and Description for the EIC:
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/NFD5U4

Description:

This data-set by the Electoral Integrity Project evaluates the quality of elections held around the world. Based on a rolling survey collecting the views of election experts, this research provides independent and reliable evidence to compare whether countries meet international standards of electoral integrity. PEI-4.0 cumulative release covers 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held worldwide in 139 countries from 1 July 2012 to 31 December 2015. For each contest, 40 election experts receive an electronic invitation to fill the survey. The survey includes assessments from 2,080 election experts, with a mean response rate of 28%. The study collects 49 indicators to compare elections. These indicators are clustered to evaluate eleven stages in the electoral cycle as well as generating an overall summary Perception of Electoral Integrity (PEI) 100-point index and comparative ranking. The datasets are available for analysis at three levels: COUNTRY-level (139 cases); ELECTION-level (180 cases), and also EXPERT-level (2,080). Each dataset can be downloaded in STATA, SPSS, CSV and EXCEL formats.

Any additional information can be found and downloaded online.

As if further proof could possibly be needed of the sorry state of the American electoral process, a new study just ranked the United States dead last in electoral integrity among established Western democracies.

The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP)'s 2015 Year in Elections report is an independent research project by 2,000 elections experts from Harvard University and the University of Sydney in Australia assembled to examine the world's elections.

The EIP states that "the core notion of 'electoral integrity' refers to agreed international principles and standards of elections, applying universally to all countries worldwide throughout the electoral cycle, including during the pre-electoral period, the campaign, and on polling day and its aftermath. Conversely, 'electoral malpractice' refers to violations of electoral integrity."

"The report gathers assessments from over 2,000 experts to evaluate the perceived integrity of all 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held between July 1, 2012 to December 31, 2015 in 139 countries worldwide. These include 54 national elections held last year. Indeed, the 2016 elections have proven the system so rigged, even those who'd previously still harbored illusions our democracy is fair, have begun to come to terms with the truth: the political establishment's corporatist plutocrats choose their own to install in the White House every four years.

Though reasons why the United States has reached this new low in fair elections are complex, critics often point to the tidal wave of corporate cash after the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. But this may be somewhat misguided. Would removing cash automatically bring some voting power back to the public? Perhaps to an extent. But it also ignores the will of the establishment to ensure its rulers always win — in other words, where there's a will there's a way.

Unless Clinton steps up her rhetoric against Citizens United and Fracking...

I cannot vote for her. She is "officially" against Citizens United, but not very vocal about it. Similar to her stance against the TPP, what is she doing to stop it? NOTHING. IMHO, she is all rhetoric on these issues. Congratulations on her NY win, but I cannot vote for her, thinking she says something and does another behind closed doors....

UPDATE ON EMERGENCY LAWSUIT FILED IN NY OVER VOTER PURGE #NYPrimary

Co-founders of Ben & Jerry's arrested at Capitol during Democracy Spring Protest

April 16th, 2015 to 2016, just look....