YES! Let The Election Recounts Begin In Three States!

Former Green candidate Jill Stein, has raised more than $4 million to do election recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Americans, by and large, are too gullible and accepting of democratic process - and despite painting themselves as fierce "patriots" - they often fall short where the rubber meets the road. I am talking here about the basic processes for electing our highest officials including for President - an office that arguably is the most powerful on Earth.  Such an election is particularly critical if the capture of the Presidency, for example, represents the final linchpin in one party having total control of government. Hence, by its appointments  (including Supreme Court) and agendas it can then literally affect the lives of tens of millions for good or ill. If the wrong person gets in, sneaks in, really by failure of election processes, it can mean upending the lives of a majority of citizens.

Author Greg Palast, who investigated the 2000 fake Florida (Choicepoint) voter felon rolls, has noted the stark consequences:

"No way around it, this is one frightening moment.  Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction.  Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed—and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and a howling anti-Semite as White House Senior Counselor.."

In respect of this 2016 Presidential election, many critical eyes - not just on the left - have looked askance at what has transpired, especially in view of the Supreme Court's torpedoing of voter protections hitherto assured under the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  But beyond those issues, there is the one that overshadows the use of electronic voting machines and whether, indeed, they can be trusted in giving reliable results.

For any who gullibly believe Diebold machines - for example- are as good as paper ballots, I invite you to take a gander at the machine below showing vote switching (from 2012) in action, e.g. at: http://wonkette.com/488754/watch-this-pennsylvania-voting-machine-hilariously-refuse-to-accept-a-vote-for-barack-obama

Arguably, if the total election results had been much closer, a much narrower margin for Obama, it is quite conceivable the 2012 election could have been stolen. The narrower margins would have made election theft more successful, effective.

The incident shown in the link was not unusual, or exceptional. On Nov. 6, 2012, at  precisely 8.30 a.m. Mountain time, wifey and I stared spellbound while watching KOAA-TV, as the newscaster noted two electronic machines in Adams County had 'switched' voters' choices for President - from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney! Like smart citizens who check their grocery receipts for errors after each purchase, the voters checked their paper printouts and sure enough.....there on the paper was 'Mitt Romney (R)- Paul Ryan(VP)' instead of 'Barack Obama(D)- Joe Biden (VP)'. The voters complained and precinct specialists attempted to replicate the errors, but to no avail.  However, they then performed the legit fail -safe action (demanded) of taking the machines out of commission.

Had the Colorado electoral vote total been determined by those voting machine differences, Colorado would have gone for Romney instead of Obama. THAT is why electoral processes need to be examined especially in close, nail biter elections. It is stupid to just say "Well, the election is over, deal with it!". No, uh uh, not when so many millions of lives are at stake in terms of their life quality.
This is why I am vexed and impatient by people why assert we need to "move on" or those like Kellyanne Conway saying HRC voters "can't accept the results of this election". Yes, they can- IF it is fair.

Recall that back on April 19, I warned of a possible heist using electronic voting machines in Repub states, i.e. states in which Republican governors had control of the voting stations, regulations, accessibility etc. The header of my post was 'The Fix May Already Be In For Gooprs to Steal the 2016 Election'. Therein I cited a blog post by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman  on smirkingchimp.com:

There are two things we all need to know about the upcoming 2016 election:

1. Millions of likely Democratic voters have already been stripped from the voter rolls in critical states like Ohio. The key reporting on this has been done by the great Greg Palast, who has shown that a computer program coordinated by the Republican secretary of state of Kansas is being used in some two dozen states to steal from a substantial percentage of the citizenry their right to vote. The raw numbers are high enough that they could have a significant impact on the presidential, US Senate, House and many other elections this fall. The ACLU has now sued Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, over the stripping of two million citizens from Ohio's voter rolls.

2. There is no way to verify the official tally on the electronic machines on which the majority of Americans will vote this fall. Nearly all the machines are a decade old, most are controlled by a single company (ES&S, owned by Warren Buffett) and the courts have ruled that the software is proprietary, making the vote counts beyond public scrutiny. In fact, they are beyond all independent monitoring altogether. In many key swing states (including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona) GOP governors and secretaries of state will have a free hand to flip the vote count to whatever they want it to be without detection or accountability. This could turn control of our government over to the GOP come November, as it did in 2000 and 2004.

These two critical markers of the upcoming national election were at center stage in their upcoming report :  The Flip & Strip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org / www.solartopia.org),

In the wake of the historical findings and proof that electronic voting machines CAN switch votes and given the close (as well as suspicious)  results in three industrial states - two of which flipped, and one still close to call - it boggles the mind the media is in such a rush to foreclose the election. This is why Jill Stein merits kudos for undertaking a task that Hillary wouldn't. This despite Hillary getting hundreds of millions of bucks in campaign donations more than Stein.  But obviously, the Clinton campaign is more invested in the "optics" of looking graceful in defeat and honorable - despite the fact many more (2.2. million at last count) voted for her and therefore over 62.5 million stand to have their votes trashed in the dumpster of history. (Even as our nation risks having its reputation and integrity trashed by a Trump administration.)

I applaud Stein's efforts, as everyone should,  and that basically means doing a very simple thing in the three states noted: comparing the electronic vote results with the paper ballot records.  If the totals square off with each other and whatever differential doesn't lead to a reversal in the state's electoral votes, then fine and dandy. award that state's electoral votes to Trump. If not, then no, you can't do that.

As for Hillary, she's being urged by many to officially request a recount in those states. But don't hold your breath, it was far easier for her campaign to grab donated money for the initial run than to protect the integrity of the results after the fact. Also, according to a UK Guardian report "several senior Democrats are said to be intensely reluctant to suggest there were irregularities in the result because Clinton and her team criticized Trump so sharply during the campaign for claiming that the election would be “rigged” against him."

Yes, and well, don't you think if the situation was reversed Trump would be calling for recounts now, and in more than 3 states? Again, it doesn't pay to be faux honorable or gracious when so much is on the line. Hillary needs to drop the pretense of just silently accepting the loss and come out fighting like she besieged her voters to do for her in her 'Stronger Together' campaign.

At the same time, according to the same report, others have spoken publicly, including the sister of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide who pointed out. “A shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary in PA, MI & WI is all that is needed to win,” Heba Abedin said on Facebook, urging people to call the justice department to request an audit.

Again, this issue goes beyond the claims of "Russian hacking" which I doubt was responsible. It is more a matter of investigating whether the electronic votes cast via Diebold, ES & S voting machines were "true" and not switched. Also, that all the voters (especially African Americans) in key states who tried to vote - including using provisional ballots - were allowed to do so.

Update:  Ted Olson Pitches Hissy Fit Over Recount:

Yep, the same dolt and hired hack who represented Bush Jr, in Bush v. Gore, now claims (TIME. Dec. 12, p. 18) "Jill Stein's recounts are destructive to democracy".. But how can a process that validates democratic choice be destructive to it? This is total nonsense but we shouldn't be surprised by such loopy logic from a guy who insisted the FLA recounts in 2000, were against "equal treatment" for his client.  He also bitched and moaned about Stein being a "bit player" and yet demanding recounts. Sorry, Roscoe, that is what the STATE laws allow- for any candidate no matter what the % of votes! Seems like this punk just can't handle true democracy.

What I'd like to see instead is an uproar over the refusal of official to do recounts of African -American votes in Michigan, see e.g

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/70158/michigan-election-officials-refuse-to-recount-thousands-of-ballots-in-states-communities-of-color

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/70016/recount-or-bust-its-the-only-way-to-verify-who-won-the-2016-election


Excerpt:

Any functioning democracy should involve the verification of the vote. That, in this case, involves a recount process. The candidates who are on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin can call for the recount. In Pennsylvania, it’s voters who can. It doesn’t have to be the runner-up candidate. Third-party candidates can call for the recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin. And three voters per county in Pennsylvania can call for them. There were serious concerns leading up to the election about the vulnerability of our voting systems. There were anomalies that occurred on Election Day and all those give rise to the basis of why we make sure we verify the vote.

And:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/23/jill-stein-election-recount-fund-michigan-wisconsin-pennsylvania

Obama Haters Need to Grow Up! AND 10 Takeaways from Election Night

Images on a Right whacko's blog.  (TOP: After the election was called for Obama, BOTTOM - just before). He is going into mental meltdown mode after Obama's win last night. Maybe he needs some MJ cookies.

As readers can see from the attached images, the Obama hating assholes haven’t relented despite a decisive electoral win over the lying, job-dismantling, petulant in defeat,  former BAIN CEO Mittens Romney. Can Obama expect cooperation from these fools? Don’t bet on it! The same blogger that posted the attached top and bottom images also had the temerity to scrawl on his blog:


“I wonder if Obummer really "won." Reports are coming in that (biased?) pollworkers in several states were giving ballots to individuals with no photo IDs. Which is why the Left has always opposed them. And...I wonder how many of those who voted (with no IDs) were even in this country legally!

No matter. "...be sure your sin will find you out" ( Numbers 32:23). As an evangelical Christian, I have personally seen and experienced much tragedy, hate, etc., and, although I may not understand at the time why things sometimes go the way they do, I put my faith in God, as opposed to confidence in man. In other words, I "walk by faith, not by sight" ( 2 Cor. 5:7 )."

  The last line was especially amusing as he had total faith the Mittster would win – and in a LANDSLIDE! How much dumbass faith is that? Maybe what we need to do is to get this hater into a nice video – DANCING with Obama – instead of hating on him.

But in my takeaways I will show why this nut is off his rocker. If ANY votes were “stolen” it was by the other side – likely in VA, FL and OH – making those states much closer by electronically switching votes (see two blogs ago – the link showing a machine vote switch in action)

The TEN Takeaways:


1- Nate Silver (538 blog) is a freaking pollster GURU! With a 90 % probability he basically nailed the result for Obama electorally – while taking all kinds of venom from Mittens’ Repuke Goon Gallery. The latter, as I noted before, simply couldn’t tolerate the nature of statistical reality and opted to diss it rather than accept it.

2- Willard Mitt was in the end his own worst enemy, as even assorted earlier defenders acknowledge this morning. No one in the end knew where this shapeshifter stood – he was a hard core Tea Bagger puppet in the REEP debates then morphed into a wannabe “moderate” during the presidential debates. In the end most intelligent people couldn’t reconcile his changes to who he really was,  or accept that what he said truly mattered to him - or to them!

3- Superstorm Sandy was indeed the ‘black Swan’ embodiment I noted earlier in a previous blog, and showed that indeed people need government when the going gets tough – while showing (with images of Gov. Chris Christie) Obama could work across the aisle and was indeed the grown up here.

4- The White Evangelical Cracker votes Mittens and his campaign kept insisting would arrive with “passion” (defeating or denying the polls like Nate Silver’s) didn’t emerge. The total white vote proportion was 72% and needed to be at least 74% for the Mittster to have a chance. The white cracker votes were at least cancelled out in Florida and Colorado by a 70%+ Hispanic turnout in those states. THAT turnout plausibly neutralized electronic vote thefts in those states. (Making the election close enough to toss to Willard Mitt, but now - thanks to the huge Puerto Rican Dem turnout in the I-94 central Florida corridor that state will likely have its 29 electoral votes for Obama.)

5- Obama took the Rust Belt states of Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin by finally giving a full throated defense of the auto bailout that people in those states could understand, especially using the ‘spokes on a bicycle wheel’ analogy of how jobs spread from Detroit outwards to other states which manufacture tires, auto parts, etc. This ensured large union turnout and likely neutralized the effort to electronically steal (switch) votes using a recently installed, uncertified electronic computer “patch”. (Union households went 60% to 38% for Obama, according to a CBS News poll this morning).

6- Virginia and Ohio going for Obama was also helped by a large women’s vote, for example in Ohio going to Obama by 56% to 40%. In Virginia women in Loudon County were appalled at their governor’s efforts to demand invasive ultrasound probes before allowing an abortion. Threats against contraception and hence increased health costs also caused women in Ohio to vote for Obama far more than their non-unon working class hubbies.

7- “The War on Women” coming to the fore, compliments of firebrand Christian idiots like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, assured at least six Senate seats going to the Dems including Clare McCaskill’s in Missouri and Joe Donnelly’s in Indiana. As even conservo Joe Scarborough observed this morning, this issue was one of idiocy,  not conservative identity.


8- The Youth vote in Colorado, coming out by nearly 60%-38% for Obama also hinged on the vote for Amendment 64 to make marijuana in small amounts legal for recreational use for all citizens 21 yrs. and older. This is another reason, as I will show below, Obama needs to get control of his agency – the DEA- to get them to back off State’s prerogatives as reflected in citizen initiatives. The alternative is to stir anti-government sentiment among youth in key states (like Colorado and Washington) which could be catastrophic for Dems.

9- The demographic reflected in the election disclosed whites no longer “control” the nation’s electoral map. Whites have continually been hard-assed against Obama in this cycle from the get go, with white men going for Mittens by nearly 66% to 34% and white women not much better at 56% to 38%. This racial split is deplorable and leads the impartial observer to at least suspect some racial motivation.


10. Obama Earned at least Political Capital He Can USE:

Obama will be told by the Extreme Reepos (like Mitch McConnell who delivered a most ungracious response last night) that he has no “mandate” because of the close popular vote, about 50%-49%, but by a large electoral win (likely with 332 final) he has at least political capital. How to use it?


A) GO OVER THE FISCAL CLIFF!

The “fiscal cliff” as I have pointed out before, is largely a confection invented by a certain Washington Neoliberal Elite to justify severe “entitlement” cuts down the road. They figure if they can get the Bush tax cuts to be retained for all now – yelping about a “massive recession” if we don’t- that they can use that as leverage to cut domestic benefits programs later. This is all so much HORSE SHIT! There is no fiscal cliff, and in fact DIVING over it is the best way to solve an otherwise intractable deficit problem (as even fiscal hawk David Walker would agree).

According to William Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institute and former adviser to George H.W. Bush:

“It will be much easier to negotiate a budget deal going over the cliff. It seems to be the only way we can boost revenues.”

Adds Matt McAlvanah, a spokesman for Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the fourth-ranking Democrat:

“The willingness to go over the cliff is a means to force a deal,”

This is the point! The Repukes and Mitch McConnell, Eric Kantor and Weepy eyed Johnno Boehner, will make no “grand deal” on their own that includes ANY significant revenues no matter how much Obama may want them. Why would they? Their agenda now is to deny the Prez a Legacy, as opposed to being a one –termer.

The best means to attain deficit control and sobriety is therefore to go OVER the alleged “cliff” and in the process solve the problem without any need for Reepo cooperation or agreement to higher revenues. The revenues come automatically! By merely passively allowing ALL tax cuts to expire – the payroll tax cuts (which never should have been there in the first place since they FUND Social Security which the Reeps want to cut) as well as the Bush tax cuts for all classes, enormous deficit reduction is attained – without the bullshit and rigamorole to pander to the Reepos.

In fact, $500b would be saved the next fiscal year, and $3.7 trillion over ten years – with NO Bush tax cuts. The supposed consequences would not be catastrophic at all but only incrementally crimp some wanton consumption. (Most people never even noticed the payroll tax cuts coming into their pay packets each week!) . In large measure, the fantasy of the horrendous results of "diving" are based on the myth that tax cuts energize the economy and create jobs. But the opposite is true, as a Financial Times analysis of the Bush tax cuts showed (FT, 9/15/10) People – the Middle class- meanwhile, can then be told that this is a small price to pay to retain their government benefits which otherwise would require draconian cuts down the line.


B) Get Control of your Agencies and DEMAND the Reepos Finally Complete the Remaining Federal Office Picks from Last Term

Both are important and run in tandem. The REEPS must be made to understand that they cannot continue to hold up key picks for federal agencies, offices – and need to pay a price if they do. One method is a tack used several times by JFK, cut defense spending, contracts in their districts if they fail to cooperate.

It is also important Obama gain control of his federal agencies overall, instead of “letting the inmates run the asylum”, so to speak. A case in point is the DEA, which has been running amuck with raids on medical marijuana (MJ) dispensaries in CA, CO the last two years, despite Obama stating clearly in 2009 this sort of thing would not be a priority. Then WHY are they doing it?

According to author Rob Kampia (‘Legalize It!’, Playboy, November, p. 56):

“The federal attacks on medical marijuana aren’t driven by calculated politics ….Rather the attacks are the result of Obama being a bad manager. ….

In 2009 and 2010 the Department of Justice followed the president’s lead – just as any staff with a new boss would – and let medical marijuana flourish across the country. Unfortunately, over time the staff noticed that Obama, his Chief of Staff and other White House bosses weren’t holding the DOJ accountable. DOJ staffers started doing what most other unsupervised employees would do: They followed their own agendas.”

Obama, now that two states (WA, CO) have legalized pot for recreational use, needs to respect citizen voter rights for those amendments to constitutions in those states and tell the DEA hotshots to back off. Order them to follow his lead, not engage in their own freelancing. If not, and the feds continue intervening and impeding, this could cost the Dems the MJ states in future elections – and this may be critical in tight future elections (See also my takeaway #8)


C) Pull out of Afghanistan SOONER, instead of waiting until 2014. You will be able to save at least $550 b more in squandered treasure, not to mention dozens more American lives, and you don’t need to put on the bravado military posture any more to show voters how tough you are. In other words, you will now finally earn your Nobel Peace Prize in the eyes of many!

D) Don’t appease the Reepos or believe they will make nicey now with you. These are the same jackwads that obstructed everything in your first term. Make them come to you…..don’t offer any peace pipes to them! This is the least your voters expect after waiting in line for hours – for many of them – in key battleground states.

There! 'Nuff Said!

As for the asshole blogger that thinks Obama is an “Evil King” – take a look at your own side for once, friend, and maybe pull yourself away from the computer and help out the less fortunate instead of pissing on them all the time.