Free Press Election Reporting
Donald Trump is in power in large part because Democrats have repeatedly conceded elections they really won. On Tuesday, that MUST change.
Anyone deemed a close loser MUST fight. Every tally must be contested, every denial challenged, all missing ballots found, every provisional honored.
What could bury our democracy? Stripped voter rolls, erased precincts, lies about where to vote, voting stations moved out of town, intimidated voters, impossible-to-get ID, street addresses required on reservations, lies about eligibility, unsent absentee ballots, suppressed registrations, hacked electronic machines, hidden source codes, trashed provisionals. It’s all been happening since at least 2000. Highly qualified teams of election protection specialists all over the country (www.freepress.org and many more; the state and national Democratic parties have hotlines) are ready to fight.
rump’s November 6 blitzkrieg depends on stripping our right to vote and flipping the vote count.
To hold back a potential Democrat “Blue Wave,” Trump has formed a RED WALL to disenfranchise millions of Americans while counting only those votes Trump wants.
Editor’s Note: The 2018 midterm elections are quickly approaching. These non-presidential elections historically give voters a chance to change the country’s course. They will decide whether or not Republicans keep a majority in Congress, important governor’s races and more.
Are you ready to be a poll worker?
To stop Trump’s dictatorial rise, a real opposition party would be mobilizing Americans to vote AND to protect the right to cast verifiable ballots while making sure they’re actually counted.
That means becoming poll workers, registration protectors, vote count monitors and much more.
A real opposition party would now be organizing massive nationwide grassroots trainings for a reliable election. Are the Dems doing that?
Trump’s Republicans enter 2018 with a 5-10% structural advantage. They’ve stripped voter registration rolls and flipped electronic vote counts since at least 2000.
This year just voting will again not be enough.
Progressives MUST become poll workers, bring voters to the polls, monitor vote counts after the balloting, and refuse to concede close elections.
Strip/flip tactics gave Republicans the presidency in 2000, 2004 and 2016. In 2014 and 2016, they took six US Senate seats when their candidate trailed in the exit polls and/or “won” by less than five points.
Those six seats gave Trump control of US Supreme Court, his mega-tax cut for the super-rich, and much more.
The speed that hackers were able to breach security on dozens of electronic voting machines at one of the United States’ largest cybersecurity conferences underscores the long-standing problem with computerized electronic voting systems in our country. At the annual DefCon cybersecurity conference this July, hacker managed to break into every voting machine within minutes, according to an article in The Hill.[1]
Thomas Richards, a security consultant, said “It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it” referring to the Premier Election Solutions voting machine currently used in Georgia.[2]
Computerized voting in the United States was promoted by an interlocking industrial complex of political operatives, technicians and vendors.
The infamous Trumputin consigliere Paul Manafort worked with the GOP operatives who stole Ohio’s 2004 presidential election at the same time they teamed up to install the Kremlin’s chosen mafia don in Ukraine.
Manafort is Donald Trump’s former campaign manager. He’s been convicted of a wide range of high-profile crimes by a jury evaluating charges brought by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
Manafort also worked in Ukraine following the 2004 popular Orange Revolution with Ohio-based IT specialist Michael Connell and Tennessean Jeff Averbeck to install the Putin-backed Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine. Connell and Averbeck have been deeply implicated as being among the chief architects of the stolen Ohio 2004 vote flip that gave George W. Bush a second term in the White House.
Craig Unger, in his essential book House of Trump, House of Putin, places Manafort in Ukraine in “late 2004.” Manafort worked out of a small six-to-eight-person office at 4 Sofievskaya Street in Kiev. Over the next decade, Manafort made 138 trips to Ukraine, according to Unger.
The speed that hackers were able to breach security on dozens of electronic voting machines at one of the United States’ largest cybersecurity conferences underscores the long-standing problem with computerized electronic voting systems in our country. At the annual DefCon cybersecurity conference this July, hacker managed to break into every voting machine within minutes, according to an article in The Hill.[1]
Thomas Richards, a security consultant, said “It took me only a few minutes to see how to hack it” referring to the Premier Election Solutions voting machine currently used in Georgia.[2]
Computerized voting in the United States was promoted by an interlocking industrial complex of political operatives, technicians and vendors.
Secretary of State Jon Husted:
Ohio has a long and unfortunate history of election irregularities. In recent years millions of Ohio citizens have been purged from the voter rolls. Large numbers of electronic voting machines have yielded dubious results that indicate manipulation and hacking.
In light of this, a number of serious issues have arisen surrounding this year’s special election in the 12th Congressional District.
First, let us consider that Ohio, and U.S. elections in general, are undemocratic. They fail the basic tests of transparency by allowing private, partisan, for-profit companies to secretly program the computer voting machines.
In all seven counties that comprise the 12th Congressional District in Ohio, easily hackable Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines were used. Many of the counties used the notoriously rigged Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machines.
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
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
oes anyone here have confidence that the American voting system is secure, stable, and designed to protect the voting rights of every eligible American voter?
Everyone's talking about election hacking these days. In the country's latest reprise of "the Russians are coming," we're all in turmoil about Putin's interference in U.S. elections.
However, don't you find it highly ironic politicians on all sides are so worried about "Russian hacking," while virtually none of them is addressing much more significant forms of election rigging? I'm talking about the criminal fixes arranged by the U.S. officials themselves?
More specifically, these include the retention of the outdated electoral college itself, outrageous gerrymandering of voting districts, super delegates at nominating conventions, voter suppression's many forms (from voter IDs to felony disenfranchisement laws), Koch brother funding of candidates' election campaigns (as in Citizens United), and the use of highly hackable computerized technology that miscounts and discounts millions of votes each election cycle. (No wonder so many of us decide on election day, "Why bother?")