Election Issues

When I first sat down to write this week’s article, I could only think of two or three stories worthy of mention. I had fallen behind with my email newsletters, and family commitments drastically reduced my already limited time spent on social media and various websites. As I quickly caught up with the news and did my research, I realized last week was full of stories on which people needed to be informed. I spoke to friends and family who do not have a consistent interest in politics and they were all surprised by most of what happened last week. Had I not subscribed to multiple political news emails, been acquainted with many activists, and had the time to do my research, I would have had no idea what was going on in this country.

Coming Saturday, October 6th

ONLINE CONFERENCE by donation

Was the 2016 Election Stolen?

Was Donald Trump actually elected president?

Did Bernie actually win the primaries over Hillary?

You can ask questions by email during the broadcast. The video stream will be instantly archived for 10 days. You can arrive late or watch it again. You can watch on your computer, iphone, android phone, ipad, etc.

The 2016 exit polls varied widely from the actual vote count in the key states–this combined with other pattern evidence is a strong indicator that the vote counts were manipulated (click here for proof).

– Traditional Scottish prayer

Two years after Russia interfered in the American presidential campaign, the nation has done little to protect itself against a renewed effort to influence voters in the coming congressional midterm elections, according to lawmakers and independent analysts.

– Washington Post, August 1, 2018

At the big “Treason Summit” “Russopocalypse” “Catastrovent” on Monday, journalist Sam Husseini tried to ask a question about banning nuclear weapons, and was physically hauled out of the room by officials from the “Land of Press Freedom,” Finland. Meanwhile, an Associated Press reporter was permitted to ask a perfectly respectable question pushing a blatant lie that risks nuclear war. Yay for press freedom!

By now, anyone with a scintilla of public spirit knows the names of Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Mercer, and the mammoth corporations from Wall Street, the banks, the oil companies, big Pharma, big agriculture, and the like. If you are of the older generation, as I am, you remember when you and those who thought like you clucked over the millions that were being spent in political campaigns. How quickly the change in a single letter signified our movement to campaigns of millions. Now it’s billions. 

A big chunk of American democracy is riding on Tuesday’s Virginia election.

The outcome could turn on how well Democrats protect the right to vote….and the right to have the votes accurately counted. 

If Democrat and anti-Trump activists do not work to guarantee everyone’s access to the polls, they could very well lose the election.  The GOP has perfected the use of Jim Crow tactics to prevent from voting countless black, Hispanic and other ethnic citizens by electronic and other means.  The Democrats have been weak at best at protecting those votes. 

They can also expect a “last minute surge” for Republican candidates, followed by “glitches” in electronic voting machines, especially in rural areas where election boards are controlled by Republicans.  If experience in states like Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin and elsewhere are any indicator, ballots will be “found” for the Republicans and “lost” for the Democrats in key swing districts.  These could easily determine the outcome. 

Ohio 2004 Case Study

In March 2004, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman published the article Diebold, Electronic Voting, and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy on freepress.org and onmotherjones.compredicting that Ohio would be the new Florida in the 2004 presidential election because of the partisan connections of George W. Bush to the private owners of the electronic voting machines and vote tabulation software. The key source for the article, Athan Gibbs, was an African American entrepreneur who had invented a voting machine that gave each voter a verified voting receipt. Approximately one week after the article ran, Gibbs was killed when his car was hit by a truck on an interstate highway.

·       Due in part to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), like most of the rest of the country, the majority of Ohio’s 2004 registration records were managed electronically, and votes were cast and counted electronically.

Florida 2000 Case Study

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore, the incumbent Vice President, won the nationwide presidential vote tally by more than 500,000 votes. But for the first time since 1876, a Constitutional crisis arose over the alignment of the Electoral College. The final decision was thrown to the state of Florida (which had also been “in play” in 1876).

The Bush campaign was coordinated by Karl Rove. The Florida election was officially controlled by Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who openly supported Bush as the co-chair of his election campaign.

The GOP campaign employed a wide range of tactics reminiscent of the Jim Crow era to cut into the turnout among tens of thousands blacks and Hispanics, who favored Gore by as much as 9:1. Among other things, state police and other law enforcement agencies physically intimidated potential voters in predominantly black areas of Orlando and elsewhere.