How to steal a Presidential election

[mfcorey1]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/21/voting-wrongs/


The Republicans’ plan is that if they can’t buy the 2012 election they will steal it.

The plan, long in the making and now well into its execution, is to raise great gobs of money—in newly limitless amounts—so that they and their allies could outspend the president’s forces; and they would also place obstacles in the way of large swaths of citizens who traditionally support the Democrats and want to exercise their right to vote. The plan would disproportionately affect blacks, who were guaranteed the right to vote in 1870 by the Fifteenth Amendment; but then that right was negated by southern state legislatures; and after people marched, were beaten, and died in the civil rights movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now various state legislatures are coming up with new ways to try once again to nullify that right.

In a close election, the Republican plan could call into question the legitimacy of the next president. An election conducted on this basis could lead to turbulence on election day and possibly an extended period of lawsuits contesting the outcome in various states. Bush v. Gore would seem to have been a pleasant summer afternoon. The fact that their party’s nominee is currently stumbling about, his candidacy widely deemed to be in crisis mode, hasn’t lessened their determination to prevent as many Democratic supporters as they can from voting in November.

This national effort to tilt the 2012 election is being carried out on the pretext that the country’s voting system is under threat from widespread “voter fraud.” the fact that no significant fraud has been found doesn’t deter the people pursuing this plan. Myths are convenient in politics. Want to fix an election? No problem. Just make up a story that the other side is trying to rig the election—and meanwhile try to rig the election. (Jon Stewart recently concluded a searing segment about the imagined voter fraud by saying: “Next, leashes for leprechauns.”)

[pinboy3niner]

1. I had the honor of marching with GA Rep. John Lewis against voter suppression in Ohio in '04

We marched from downtown to Sec. of State Blackwell's office in the state Capitol.

At the end of the march, Rep. Lewis signed my Kerry placard. (If I'd been a tad smarter, I'd have given him something smaller than my 3' x 4' foamcore Kerry sign. )

What's really disgraceful is that we have to keep fighting this same battle over and over again...

[fasttense]

2. It seems to me the RepubliCONS have stealing presidential elections down to a fine art.

The perfect execution of election theft was in 2000 and 2004. The bushes and cheney never won an election. They only stole them and Mitt is following in their footsteps.

So, what are you going to do America when the Dancing Supremes declare Mittens the President? Are you all going to stand around and do nothing yet again?

[lame54]

3. You didn't even mention Diebold

[PATRICK]

4. The smaller Romney per cent figure

The much abused swing voter figure means about the same for both parties. After all the gaming and partisanship solidifies along with the incumbency advantage, etc, there is still only several per cent up for grabs. One party can't go for broke and raid the large "hardcore" blocs easily and the other won't Ironically from two ideological partisan standpoints you could switch names of the parties in that equation. "Can't" is always used in place of "won't" because there in fact is a tweedle-dum-dee-dum rhythm to all the arguments.

But where the GOP departs to really break through because it must, giving nothing much at all to its hardcore 40 something per cents, is that that swing sector blurs two figures. The blur is caused by fraud and in fact some of THAT percentage does not even exist. The overall fraud includes the disenfranchised, altered votes and counts. That is what is hiding in the generally blurry(necessarily, conveniently blurring) verbal fog that is not at all just a Romney blooper.

Although the various media had some difficulty parsing the sweeping simplicity of numerical disdain for "47%" which blended Dems and "freeloaders" in an unsustainable argument, no one touched the equally deliberate, sloppy, confusion of the swing numbers.

Because therein lies the fraud that the Dems can't even seem to see as they double down themselves on the so-called undecided game. Believe me, as the polls and the possibility of correcting exit polls after fraud go, if any belief remains that the election is to be decided by the swing margin, the fraud portion WILL have their say. That say is Romney.

The other big gaffe was actually a third number. The presumption that the entire GOP circus will vote for Mitt and does not even deserve a thought. That, despite having lied and catered to every crazy whim of the Tea Party to make up for his terrible campaign abilities.

His silent minorities. Fraud and loyal GOP serfs- who aren't even worth despising because they toe the line.

[nc4bo]

5. YES but what can we? How to force those who can change it to pay attention to it?

I typed out an epic post last night about this topic then got scared to post it here so I just saved it and went to bed.

[IMG][/IMG]

Perhaps scared isn't the right word - tentative is more like it. After I'd typed it and was about to post, as a response to this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021394009. I then saw the 2 posts for 19 DAYS OF ACTION pinned to the top of the board. After reading those, I got the feeling that perhaps that was going to be the way voter suppression and disenfranchisement would be fought but not everyone can NOT just pick up and travel from state to state to state. People would have to go to more than just those 2 states, something more needs to be done.

So after waking up this morning with this still on my mind, I come to DU and I saw this post addressing the same concerns I spent time trying to put down in my own post last night and it's like a 5 alarm fire burning in my brain right now. We gotta do something!

I'm going to go ahead and post what I was so hesitant to post last night, tentativeness be damned. Perhaps brighter minds than myself can help start to counter what is only obvious to those who care to SEE the obvious into a concern to everyone in the country.

_____________________________________________

This has happening all over the country & you can almost always set your watch to the timing

of these shenanigans to when there's a big election, usually a GE and they are getting bolder and bolder it seems. They are like vermin who aren't afraid of humans anymore and boldly continue raiding the pantry while we stand there watching them.

It always comes in the form of unsubstantiated voter fraud allegations, partisan based dumping of voting blocs and partisan based voter suppression and voter intimidation, mailers that deliberately list the wrong information like polling places, voting hours or election dates, deceptive phone calls meant to confuse or mislead voters always by the same anti-American terrorists of the Republican Party. It almost always ends with unverifiable elections, vote flipping and misplaced ballots.

Occasionally a particularly nasty case hits the news but M$M does its best to keep coverage low keyed or refuses to cover it at all. Voter Integrity Project's antics I know nothing about and I LIVE in NC and if it wasn't for Rachel Maddow covering it, I'd still be clueless. Yes, she showed a clip from our local news about it but obviously it wasn't treated with the same seriousness as the Friday coverage of our local high school football games. I'm sure I'm not the only one living here who missed that story.

There is an army of Republicans Teabaggers out there lead by supposedly non-partisan Republican/Tea Party based organizations going by names such as True The Vote, Election Integrity of Maryland and Voter Integrity, Tampa Vote Fair who are taking advantage of the law that allow the public to observe the polls.

So who's going to poll watch Republican/Teabaggers poll watching the voters? I believe that True The Vote and groups spawned from True The Vote are making an effort to suppress and intimidate in 47 states this election!

Are Democrats even ready for this?

http://www.truethevote.org/about/

Our initiatives include:

Mobilizing and training volunteers who are willing to work as election monitors
Aggressively pursuing fraud reports to ensure prosecution when appropriate
Providing a support system for our volunteers that includes live and online training, quick reference guides, a call bank to phone in problem reports, information on videotaping at polling places, and security as necessary
Creating documentaries and instructional videos for use in recruiting and training
Raising awareness of the problem through strategic outreach efforts including advertising, social networking, media relations, and relational marketing
Voter registration programs and efforts to validate existing registration lists, including the use of pattern recognition software to detect problem areas

More on True The Vote and how they intimidate: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/28/748841/tea-party-group-builds-poll-watcher-network-to-discourage-voting-create-false-record-of-voter-fraud/

Minority voters in Wisconsin also reported harassment by True the Vote’s white poll watchers, who took notes and watched as the predominantly black line of voters cast their ballots. When Walker survived the recall election, True the Vote congratulated their poll watchers on “a victory of their own making.”

Prior to their efforts in Wisconsin, a judge ruled that their use of poll watchers in Texas’ 2010 elections amounted to an illegal contribution to the Republican Party.

Now, Colorlines reports, True the Vote is planning to take this localized strategy national in November. A major component of this effort will be gathering “evidence” to assist the group’s longer term work to enact voter ID laws and other legislation addressing the nearly nonexistent problem of in-person voter fraud.

I have a feeling they are all over the country doing the same things as this, just like Voter Integrity did in my own state of North Carolina. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/21/maddow-tea-party-groups-trying-to-steal-election-via-voter-purges/:

In Maryland, they are called Election Integrity Maryland. This Republican/Tea Party group has $15 training webinaars http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-poll-watching-20120917,0,73652.story:

Poll watchers and challengers are an integral part of the Maryland election system and the laws that govern it and provide an added level of protection against irregularities at the polls.

Election Integrity Maryland created our training strictly following the regulations outlined by the Maryland State Board of Elections. In fact, our training guide was reviewed and approved by the board.

Our poll watchers are trained in a two-hour webinar; there is no pre-screening of registrants. We invite volunteers statewide to undergo the training and receive a "diploma" demonstrating they have completed their training and are prepared to serve in the polls.

<....>

The goal of Election Integrity Maryland is to be a "help mate" of the election process in Maryland. We are not adversaries. While EIM is modeled after the True the Vote initiative begun in Houston in 2010, EIM has no official relationship with True the Vote. EIM is a nonprofit, 501(c) 4 corporation.

The Board of Elections, Election Integrity Maryland, True the Vote and the American people all want the same thing: an election where the outcome is not suspected of being manipulated by any person, party or special-interest group.

http://electionintegritymaryland.com/pressreleases

MORE CHALLENGES MADE TO VOTER REGISTRATIONS

Salisbury, MD. Today, the citizen watchdog group Election Integrity Maryland
(EIM) submitted a second set of challenges to voter registration rolls in Prince
George’s County. The first challenges were submitted last month.

EIM is researching publicly available data to determine if voter rolls in Maryland
are up-to-date, in accordance with state and federal requirements. What the
organization is finding are inaccuracies which may be due to clerical error,
oversight, or failure to update the registrations.

http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=PORTSIDE;e0c8c42b.1209a

Still, thirty-nine states allow private citizens to challenge voters at the polls. According to the Brennan study, election officials in those states are "under immense time pressure to decide challenges quickly in order to avoid voting delays." True the Vote is aware of this, but they put it differently, saying at a recent poll watcher training that election officials are "under immense pressure to do the wrong thing"-namely let undocumented immigrants vote, and let people vote multiple times.

Scarier, of the thirty-nine states that allow random people to challenge voters inside polling places, only fifteen of them require the challengers to prove that the person they're challenging isn't an eligible voter. Which means that in twenty-four states people can
wage all kinds of frivolous accusations-that a person is an "illegal alien," or that they are using a dead person's identity to vote-to burden if not intimidate voters. In these states, the poll challenger statutes can be abused and used for racial profiling, when not sending a chill effect to others who might be vulnerable for no other reason than having a Latino surname.

In those states, people can make up a reason to challenge a voter's rights without any evidence backing them up, and do so with impunity. It's the same as when people drum up charges of voter fraud to pass voter ID bills and go unpunished when it's revealed that no such fraud exists. You can't fabricate a police report by saying you were mugged if you weren't; you can't file a false claim saying you lost possessions in a disaster. In both cases, you face jail and fines for bearing false witness, but not if you fabricate voter fraud or voter ineligibility in many states.

The Brennan report points out that South Carolina and Virginia allow people to challenge voters even if it's nothing but a whim. Consider that both South Carolina and Virginia both have passed voter ID laws. In South Carolina, that law is currently being challenged in a federal court, where it was discovered that the law's author Representative Alan Clemmons made racist comments about black voters in an e-mail while discussing how to pass the legislation.

I can't help but think that M$M will never do it's job unless the stink of the scandal became so large in magnitude that our public officials began complaining about, if the internet made the issue viral, if enough people were forced to look that media coverage would be mandatory and unsquashable; just like all of Mitt Romney's scandals and fuck-ups have become so obvious they can no longer ignore it.

M$M has, for the most part, completely ignored this activity even though it's widespread. Honestly, I was horrified at the sheer numbers of the legions who are waging war on our voting rights.

Maybe a huge contact by phone, email and snail mail campaign by others who are fed up? Maybe it's a good idea for the Activists Group to have a DU brainstorm meeting?

Listening to Chris Matthews on Hardball over the past couple days, and he mentioned that people should begin to make some big noise about it, especially white people. He said blacks have been fully aware of these tactics for quite a while but need some help.

I think he's right.

It's shameful behavior on the part of ONE political party in this country. Something should be done or some action attempted but I wouldn't even know where to begin (I did write the WH about it a couple weeks ago, no response. They're busy, not even sure anyone reads the emails anyway).

So, what can we do? If it's not in time for this election than certainly in time for the next one.

________________________________________________

So brothers and sisters of DU, along with efforts like the 19 DAYS OF ACTION one state at a time, what ELSE can we do?