The Huffington Post & Citizens’ Oversight and Election Justice USA & Election Fraud 2016 and TrustVote.org – 2016-07-05 21:31:46
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-spielberg/the-undemocratic-primary_b_10751830.html
UNCOUNTED: The True Story of the California Primary
The UnDemocratic Primary
Ben Spielberg / The Huffington Post
(July 1, 2016) — In a recent piece in the New York Times, Nate Cohn laments “the steady drumbeat of tweets about how Hillary Clinton stole the presidential primary from Bernie Sanders.” Cohn resisted writing about them for so long, he asserts, because he “didn’t want to dignify the views of conspiracy theorists.”
Cohn’s central point — that a discrepancy between the exit polls and the final vote count doesn’t imply election fraud — is well argued. But like other pundits, Cohn is too dismissive of concerns about the Democratic primary.
It may not have been “rigged” or “stolen” in the sense in which many people seem to interpret those words (to mean that there were illegal efforts to mess with vote counts), but it certainly wasn’t democratic, and only 31 percent of Democrats express “a great deal of confidence” that the Democratic primary process is fair for good reason.
Instead of reflexively labeling suspicions of wrongdoing by those in power as insane ramblings from conspiracy theorists, journalists would do well to reflect on why such suspicions exist.
For starters, as Matt Yglesias and Jeff Stein have acknowledged, “the media, the party, and other elected officials [were] virtually uniformly . . . loaded against” Sanders from the get-go. In fact, the Democratic party threw so much institutional support behind Clinton so long before she even declared her candidacy that political scientist David Karol asserted, in December of 2014, that “Hillary has basically almost been nominated.”
The Democratic National Committee’s debate schedule was “obviously intended” to insulate Clinton from challengers and scrutiny. The DNC, in response to inappropriate behavior from a Sanders staffer who DNC staff had recommended and the campaign had already fired, suspended Sanders’ access to important voter data in violation of its contract with his campaign.
While Clinton was dinging Sanders on his ostensible disregard for party fundraising, the “so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees” was exploiting loopholes in campaign finance laws to funnel the bulk of its resources to Clinton and Clinton alone.
Even into late May, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was leaning heavily into biased, anti-Sanders messaging. In addition, leaders of numerous groups traditionally affiliated with the Democratic party — unions and organizations generally more aligned with Sanders than Clinton on campaign issues — endorsed Clinton without polling their members (the groups that did open the endorsement process up to members typically endorsed Sanders).
Mainstream pundits and analysts were hardly any better than the Democratic party. From the moment Sanders declared his candidacy, the media insisted — when they covered him at all, which was not very often — that he had “no chance of winning.”
They continued to write off the possibility of a Sanders victory even as his popularity skyrocketed and he took an early lead in the popular vote, inappropriately including superdelegates in their reporting to make it look like Clinton was winning big.
They asserted that the hundreds of policy wonks in support of Sanders’ ideas didn’t exist, subjecting Sanders’ proposals to far more scrutiny than Clinton’s, getting their analysis of some of Sanders’ plans flat-out wrong, and attempting to “boot anyone not preaching from the incrementalist gospel out of the serious club.”
They began to pressure Sanders to drop out well before even half of all primaries and caucuses had been completed. They helped advance the false narrative that angry, sexist, illiberal White men fueled Sanders’ rise when his supporters were typically more power-balancing than Clinton’s and he was actually most popular among young women, young people of color, and poor Americans. They also helped the Clinton campaign propagate numerous misleading and/or untrue attacks on Sanders.
In general, as often happens when political and media establishments are threatened, they progressed from “polite condescension” towards the Sanders campaign to “innuendos” to “right-wing attacks” to “grave and hysterical warnings” to something close to a “[f]ull-scale and unrestrained meltdown.”
It’s not clear exactly how much of that progression was coordinated, but it takes minimal effort to dismantle the claim that the Democratic party and mainstream media outlets were mostly neutral.
Whether Clinton surrogates were praising her on TV without disclosing their ties to her campaign or technically unaffiliated newspaper outlets were blasting Sanders in headlines and post-publication edits to their articles, media sources consistently parroted misleading Clinton campaign talking points. New evidence suggests that the DNC was along for the ride.
It is true that Clinton faced a large amount of negative media coverage herself — much of it in the summer of 2015 and by some metrics the most out of any presidential candidate — and it is also true that the Sanders campaign had its issues, especially when it came to reaching out to and addressing the concerns of older Black voters.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Clinton got way more coverage at a critical juncture of the race, a huge asset because “[n]ame recognition is a key asset in the early going [and,] even as late as August of 2015, two in five registered Democrats nationally said they’d never heard of Sanders or had heard so little they didn’t have an opinion.”
It also doesn’t change the fact that Clinton was considered the de facto nominee even when media coverage was otherwise unfavorable, a dynamic that surely benefited her among Democrats who prioritize uniting the party in the general election above all else.
Though Sanders’ popularity increased as voters became more familiar with him, the initial lack of media coverage of his campaign, Democratic party opposition to his candidacy, and the idea that a Clinton win was inevitable all hamstrung him greatly. If the media coverage he received had been more equitable and accurate, it is easy to show that he might have been the Democratic nominee.
That’s why, when writers argue that superdelegates did not “decide the nomination for Clinton,” they’re only half-right. Clinton certainly won the popular vote under Democratic primary rules, but the superdelegates’ early allegiances and the media’s reporting on those allegiances also certainly influenced that popular vote.
Roadblocks from Democratic party elites and misleading or downright untrue attacks from the Clinton campaign, its many high-profile surrogates, and the mainstream media were ubiquitous throughout the primary process and certainly influenced the vote as well.
As Glenn Greenwald summarized, premature media reports that Clinton had won the election on June 6, besides depressing turnout in the next day’s primaries, constituted “the perfect symbolic ending to the Democratic Party primary:
The nomination [was] consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors . . .
[T]he party’s governing rules are deliberately undemocratic; unfair and even corrupt decisions were repeatedly made by party officials to benefit Clinton; and the ostensibly neutral Democratic National Committee . . . constantly put not just its thumb but its entire body on the scale to ensure she won.”
Combine many Democrats’ staunch denial of these problems with undemocratic voting practices that have favored Clinton and that her supporters have too often downplayed, and it’s little wonder that some people believe the election was a sham.
Journalists who disagree should absolutely make their case, and defenders of the Democratic primary results make several legitimate points in addition to Cohn’s. Clinton secured more votes and more pledged delegates than Sanders. When voting rules were less restrictive, she still won a greater number of open primaries than he did.
Caucuses, which are very undemocratic, likely benefited Sanders. There isn’t evidence that the Clinton campaign coordinated efforts to purge voters from the rolls, inaccurately tabulate votes, or mislead Sanders’ California supporters into registering for the American Independent Party. And while “the American election system is a disaster” and “should be reformed,” it’s not clear that the numerous and alarming voting rights issues that surfaced during the primary systematically disadvantaged Sanders.
But rather than cautioning Sanders against “suggesting the entire political process is unfair,” journalists should more seriously consider where voters’ concerns come from. It isn’t Sanders’ responsibility to “argue to his supporters that the outcome of the [Democratic primary] process was legitimate” or that the primary was “fair and square,” as it most definitely wasn’t. It’s our collective responsibility to fix the very real problems with our democracy in the months and years ahead.
Note: A version of this post originally appeared on 34justice.
Lawsuit Filed to Stop the
Certification of California’s Primary Results
Citizens’ Oversight and Election Justice USA
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (June 29th, 2016) — Attorney Bill Simpich of Election Justice USA, with plaintiff Citizens Oversight under the direction of Ray Lutz, filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against the state of California intended to stop the certification of the June 7, 2016 Presidential primary results.
The defendants in the case are Alex Padilla, Secretary of State of the State of California; Michael Vu, San Diego County Registrar of Voters; Helen N. Robbins-Meyer, San Diego County Chief Administrative Officer; and San Diego County, a municipality.
The filing indicates several issues with the large number of vote-by-mail (VBM) and provisional ballots and cites the Registrar of Voters office’s failure to adhere to the Voter Bill of Rights (Elections Code Section 2300), which protects citizens’ rights to proper observation of all aspects of the voting process, as well as ballot counting procedures.
The primary cause of action is based on the violation of the right to vote. The intent of the voter was compromised when voters were not given proper ballots by which to exercise intent. Because of this, high numbers of write-in and provisional ballots have been removed from the counting process. In addition, the plaintiff alleges that the ballots cast for the Democratic presidential candidates have not been fully counted by either Defendant Vu or the county registrars.
The suit seeks to stop the certification of the results. The election code states that a 1% manual tally must be performed in two parts: one including 1% of all ballots cast at precincts (including provisional ballots and ballots removed) and one including 1% of all VBM ballots cast (including the VBM ballots already processed as well as those still in the queue to be processed).
The filing states the registrar’s refusal to allow observation of the ballot handling process was widespread and seeks relief until these deficiencies are fully addressed.
About Election Justice USA: Election Justice USA (EJUSA) is a national coalition of seasoned election integrity experts, statisticians, attorneys, journalists, and activists whose mission is to ensure each vote is counted accurately within the electoral processes of the United States.
The organization strives to educate and mobilize the voting public; collect and analyze individual testimonies, physical evidence, and voting statistics; file cases in state and federal court; and lead the movement for election reform.
The 2016 Presidential primaries’ most prominent issues include: voter suppression, registration tampering, mass voter purging, vote by mail (VBM) and other ballot issues, poll closings, and inaccurate electronic voting machine (EVM) counts.
In cooperation with like-minded organizations such as TrustVote.org and DemocracyCounts.org, EJUSA is forming a broad coalition to bring awareness, foster activism and oversight, and spearhead reform efforts while fighting the necessary battles in the courtroom.
Election Fraud Lawsuit & California Theft Update
Election Fraud 2016 and TrustVote.org
(June 17, 2016) — Interview with Bob Fritakis on Trust Vote/Institute for American Democracy & Election Integrity lawsuits and fraud that has occurred in California and the rest of the fifty states throughout the Democratic Presidential Primary election. I had a few tech/sound issues with Googe Hangout at very beginning of interview, so my apologies for any sound pops. Important updates and answers to your questions around the filings!
Petitioning UN Electoral Assistance Division
US Citizens Officially Request Emergency Electoral Assistance From The United Nations
Change.org
We the people of the United States of America are officially requesting the United Nations to monitor our remaining 2016 presidential election. So far we have seen evidence of massive election fraud all across the country, which gives us reason to believe that the fraud will continue.
We have a reasonable suspicion that our government and the integrity of our electoral process has been compromised in order to place their chosen candidate in power against the will of the American people.
The US State Dept. says that a discrepancy in exit polls of more than 2% indicates fraud, we have had discrepancies outside of that margin in at least 16 of the state primaries all the way up to a discrepancy of 23%.
These discrepancies have only happened in one of our political parties and they have all been in favor of one candidate. On top of the exit poll discrepancies there has been reports of ballots cast in the names of deceased citizens, patients of mental hospitals, and elderly people with dementia.
There has been reports of registration purging, switching of party affiliations, vote flipping, and massive voter suppression. Not to mention the millions of voters who have not been allowed to vote because they do not claim any party affiliation. Multiple major universities have calculated that in order to get our current results without election fraud, the odds would be 1 in 70 billion.
This level of election fraud is usually only done covertly and in 3rd world countries, now it’s being done openly and blatantly in the United States. Our democracy is being stolen and we very well maybe on the brink of a dictatorship, we can no longer trust our government and we need help from the outside.
So we are respectively requesting the UN to step in and assess the integrity of our electoral process. We also request that you review the apparent fraud of our current results and ensure credibility and transparency moving forward. We feel that your help is imperative to avoid an inevitable major conflict in the U.S. due to corruption in our government.
O
A Bernie Landslide in CA Humboldt County
(Open Source Voting Tabulation System)
Richard Charnin / WordPress
(July 2, 2016) — In California there is just ONE county which uses an Open Source System to audit votes. Could that be why Bernie had 68% of the vote in Humboldt County? It was his highest vote share in ALL 58 counties! The system is a deterrent to fraud.
The Humboldt Open Source (TEVS) tabulation system was pioneered in 2006 by Mitch Trachtenberg, a computer programmer, together with Carolyn Crnich, registrar of Humboldt County and Kevin Collins, election integrity activist. The election showed significant problems in the Diebold system they were using in counting votes.
As result of these problems, Diebold abruptly severed its business relationship with Humboldt. Carolyn then switched to another voting company, Hart InterCivic, but kept the TEVS system functioning.
TEVS is the ONLY OPEN SOURCE, TRANSPARENT SYSTEM FOR COUNTING VOTES IN THE UNITED STATES It is being used as a recounting system to double-check the vote-counting of the Hart InterCivic system which has been performing well, unlike the Diebold system which was used previously.
At the time she introduced TEVS, Carolyn purchased a high speed scanner that could operate independently of any voting machine to tabulate the votes using TEVS.
Uncounted: The Story of the California Election
July 4, 2016 by truthfirst12013
This is the TIP of the iceberg. It doesn’t document everything however it gives a strong general overview of some of the problems that went down in California in the Democratic Primary Election in 2016.
San Diego Registrar of Voters Faces Lawsuit
July 4, 2016 by truthfirst12013
Ray Lutz has filed and it is scheduled for the 7th of July. See news story and scroll down to watch Youtube video from Ray detailing the issues with the election and explaining lawsuit in much more detail: Click photo . . . Continue reading →
Because the ‘Outcome Has to Be Certain’ —
Shredder Truck at San Diego Registry — 3/4 million Provisional Ballots May Have Been SHREDDED
Posted on July 4, 2016 by truthfirst12013
Read the article about how it looks like there were over 3/4 of a MILLION ballots SHREDDED
Click the photo of the Shredder Truck parked in front of the San Diego Registrar of Voter’s Office to read about the … Continue reading →
Over 2 Million Ballots had Not Been Counted As of June 12 in California – DEBACLE
Posted on June 18, 2016 by truthfirst12013
Click the photo to WATCH the video:
Complaint for Declaratory Relief Filed Against Michael Vu, San Diego Board of Registar
Posted on June 18, 2016 by truthfirst12013
Update California: On June 16, 2016, the following “Complaint for Declaratory Relief” was filed by Ray Lutz against San Diego Registrar of Voters Michael Vu and his supervisor, Helen N. Robbins-Meyer, Chief Administrative Officer of San Diego County. This was … Continue reading →
Stanford University Confirms Democratic Election Fraud
Posted on June 17, 2016 by truthfirst12013
The evidence is piling up to a mountain the size of Everest as the corporate media blackout continues:
Update on Uncounted Ballots in California as of 6/12/2016
Posted on June 15, 2016 by truthfirst12013
This is updated as ballot counts change. As of 6/12 – 2.6 MILLION votes yet to be counted!!!! Thank you Trust Vote –
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
