Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label voter fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label voter fraud. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Suckered


There are ways to discern the truth - although "political truth" can be very different from what we grew up thinking of as "the truth".

Donald Trump has always played on the fact that people want to believe what they hear, because they don't want to believe they're being fooled.

We have some faith in what we're told because we're taught to have faith in people who are "above" us - our betters (ie: teachers, preachers, leaders, etc).

When they boldly assert an opinion as if it were a fact - stating it forcefully, and repeating it over and over again - we tend to lose track of our initial skepticism, and over time, we may even forget the bit of conflicting evidence that raised doubt in the first place. The repeated assertion becomes an ear worm - like an inane commercial jingle, or a Rick Astley song.


Trump convinces people to do illegal things for him, simply by telling them those things aren't actually illegal.



‘Fake elector’ charges epitomize how Trump’s allies played with fire

The Michigan indictments reinforce the evidence that at least some of those involved knew this wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up


When Michigan Republicans were planning in late 2020 to submit a slate of electors who supported Donald Trump — despite Trump having lost the state by nearly three points — then-state GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox thought better of it.

“I was very uncomfortable with that, as per my lawyers’ opinion,” Cox told the congressional Jan. 6 committee last year.

So she said she proposed an alternative: Instead of submitting the electors as if Trump had won, the party would sign a document merely offering the electors as a contingency in case the courts somehow awarded Michigan to Trump.

Those involved did not adopt Cox’s plan. The courts didn’t overturn Michigan’s result. And now the 16 people who signed a document falsely claiming they were duly elected have been indicted.

Michigan on Tuesday became the first state to charge so-called “fake” Trump electors. The 16 electors who signed that document are each charged with eight felonies, including forgery.

As documents from the office of state Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) note, they not only falsely declared duly elected status, but they also falsely claimed they had “convened and organized in the State Capitol” — the location where such proceedings must legally be held — despite meeting at state GOP headquarters instead. The possibility of criminal charges for making such false statements in a legal document has long been talked about. Alternate electors in Georgia have also been scrutinized, and news broke last week that Arizona’s Democratic attorney general was similarly probing her state’s alternate electors.

The Michigan 16 become the latest in a long line of people indicted for their roles in trying to overturn the election for Trump. That list could possibly grow to include Trump himself soon; news broke earlier Tuesday that special counsel Jack Smith had informed Trump that he was a target in his Jan. 6 investigation. It’s not clear whether any charges might involve the fake-elector plans that developed in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.

Here’s what the Michigan case reinforces about the “fake elector” plots: just how many people seemed to recognize that the plan wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up.

The documents released with the indictment allege that those involved talked about how the effort was supposed to remain secret.

When one now-indicted participant posted about it on Facebook, according to the Michigan affidavit, another complained “we were all asked to keep silent” and added, “Was she not told to keep quite [sic].”

A third participant, now-indicted Michigan Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden, confirmed, according to the affidavit, “Yes we all were.”

The Michigan case is the third in which we’ve learned about how the fake electors intended to operate in secret. The Washington Post reported last year on an email showing a Trump campaign staffer advising Georgia’s alternate electors to operate in “complete secrecy.” Separately, a fake elector in Wisconsin talked about efforts to meet in secret.

In each case, those involved indicated they worried that people knowing what was happening would compromise the mission or present security concerns. In Michigan, there was even talk of sneaking into the Capitol the day before the constitutionally required date of Dec. 14 and staying overnight, according to Cox’s testimony. She labeled the idea “insane and inappropriate.”

Despite the calls for secrecy, in each of the three states, they wound up promoting their efforts, at least after the fact.

But it’s not the only evidence that at least some of the people involved understood in real time how dicey what they were doing was.

In addition to Cox refusing to participate, so did two of the 16 people who had initially volunteered to serve as Trump electors. One of them was former Michigan secretary of state Terri Lynn Land (R), who in that role had run the state’s elections. (Cox testified that Land was also not “comfortable” with the effort.) Those two were replaced.

Cox stated in her Jan. 6 committee testimony, “That document was like an affidavit stating that they were voting for the president, and that was not — they weren’t doing that.”

Similarly, one of the now-indicted signers, Meshawn Maddock, who later became state party co-chairwoman, signaled a month before signing that she might have been aware there were potential legal problems with such an effort. When asked by Politico’s Kyle Cheney in mid-November 2020 about the possibility of submitting alternate electors for Trump, Maddock said, “What I might want to do can be completely different from what we are legally capable of doing, does that make sense?”

While Michigan Republicans opted not to pursue Cox’s plan, some in other states took more care to insulate themselves — in line with her idea. In both New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the electors built into the documents they signed a contingency stating that they were the duly chosen electors only if Trump’s loss in their state were to be overturned.

More broadly, the big question about the fake-elector plot was whether it was truly such a contingency in case a state’s results were overturned, as Trump’s campaign insisted, or whether it was intended to try to overturn the result on Jan. 6 regardless, as Trump eventually attempted to do. Evidence suggests that at least some involved understood this early on as being about the intended outcome. Georgia’s alternate Trump electors have suggested in court that Trump’s campaign might have “misused[d]” them when he tried to overturn the results on Jan. 6 even without Georgia’s result being overturned.

We might soon learn a lot more about that, via the special counsel’s investigation. For now, though, 16 more people are facing serious penalties for playing roles in Trump’s scheme — in seemingly predictable ways.

Monday, May 01, 2023

Another One?

Hey - where ya keep all the voter fraud at?


4th resident of The Villages arrested for voter fraud

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Another resident of The Villages has been arrested for voter fraud by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.

Charles Franklin Barnes, was arrested on Jan. 4 for violating the law and attempting to cast multiple ballots in the 2020 election. He’s the fourth resident of the Florida community to see charges for voter fraud in the past month.

3 from The Villages charged with voter fraud, accused of casting more than 1 ballot in 2020 election

In December 2021, Jay Ketcik, Joan Halstead and John Rider were charged for casting more than one ballot, according to local authorities.

According to previous coverage by WFLA affiliate WESH, Ketcik voted by mail in Florida while also casting an absentee ballot in Michigan, while Halstead voted in person in Florida but cast an absentee ballot in New York.

Rider was charged with casting an absentee ballot in New York while also voting in Sumter County, according to reporting by Villages-News, a media company in The Villages.

Barnes was released on a $2,000 bond, according to the Sumter County sheriff. According to Florida vote records, Barnes was not affiliated with a political party.

Friday, September 24, 2021

Oy

Trump always makes things worse for Trump --Bob Cesca


Trump accused Democrats of trying to distract from the Arizona audit results, seemingly unaware that they confirm Biden's victory


Former President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Democrats of seeking to distract from the release of the result of the controversial vote audit in Maricopa County, Arizona.

But he appears to have launched the attack unaware that details of the audit had already been released, and that the audit had confirmed that President Joe Biden was the victor.

In the statement late Thursday, Trump hit out at the House of Representatives commission investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which on Thursday subpoenaed allies and aides of the president.

Trump said the move was timed to distract from the expected release on Friday of the result of the Maricopa County audit by the contractors Cyber Ninjas.

The audit attracted criticism from state election officials and some Republican officials, who accused Cyber Ninjas of conducting a shambolic process designed to substantiate right-wing conspiracy theories and undermine Biden's win.

The result of the process has been eagerly anticipated by supporters of the former president, who hoped it would undermine Joe Biden's victory in the battleground state, which helped secure him the presidency in November 2020.

Trump's statement, made at around 11 p.m. ET, said, "Interesting that the Unselect Committee of political hacks 'dropped' their subpoena request the night before Arizona is expected to announce its findings from the Forensic Audit on voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election Scam."

He went on to praise Cyber Ninjas as "highly respected auditors" and said "everybody will be watching Arizona tomorrow."

But Trump apparently didn't realize that news organizations in Arizona had obtained draft copies of the audit result.

Reports on its results went live shortly before Trump's statement, and they made it clear that the recount showed that Biden had won, in line with the official result.

In fact, the audit found that Biden had won the county by 99 more votes than in the original tally, while Trump received 261 fewer votes than in the original vote count.

It was back in February that the Republican-led state Senate commissioned Cyber Ninjas to conduct the audit, saying it was necessary to establish faith in the integrity of the election.

The audit was launched despite there being no evidence of fraud or other malpractice that could affect its results. It came after Trump for months pushed his "Big Lie" that the election had been stolen from him as a result of fraud.

In a statement early Friday, Jack Sellers, the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said that the original count had been accurate, and that the result was the "will of the voters."

"That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise," he said.

Trump has called on other states to conduct audits modeled on Arizona's.

The fuckery these assholes are up to is straight outa the bad old days at School Of The Americas - the kind of thing we taught Manuel Noriega to do.
  1. Fuck up the election process. eg: steal whole big bunches of ballots - break the chain of custody - tamper with the machinery, etc
  2. Point at it and say, "Oh look - the process is fucked up and therefore unreliable. I'd better stay in power so I can fix it for you. We'll have to skip elections until we know for sure what happened..."
  3. Start again at #1 - repeat as needed

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Bless You, Charlie Pierce



Charlie Pierce - Esquire:

Remember that old saw about a lawyer who defends himself having a fool for a client? Well, the reverse is true, too. A client who becomes his own lawyer has a fool for a lawyer.

The court has been merciless toward Kobach and toward his prime witnesses, including the notorious Hans von Spakovsky, who has been a vital member of the posse in pursuit of the franchise ever since the Republicans dreamed it up. For his part, Kobach has evinced all the legal skills of a marmoset. His feet haven’t touched the bottom of the pool since he entered the court. The federal district judge, a patient woman named Julie Robinson, is completely fed up with having to preside over a trial while filling in the gaps in Kobach’s legal education, as this story from The Kansas City Star explains:

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson has repeatedly warned Kobach’s team about trying to introduce evidence that has not been shared with the plaintiffs during the first three days of the high stakes trial, which will determine whether thousands can vote in Kansas this November. Kobach complained that the parties in the case “are relying on numbers that are stale” after the judge blocked a line of questioning to Bryan Caskey, the state director of elections, on data that had not been provided to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the plaintiffs in the case before the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan.

This triggered a rebuke from Robinson after three days of polite warnings on the rules of legal procedure in the face of multiple hiccups from Kobach’s team. “We're not going to have a trial by ambush here... You're stuck with what you provided to them by the deadline,” Robinson said. "No, no. That's not how trials are conducted," she told Kobach during the exchange. Sue Becker, an attorney on Kobach’s team, tried to interject. “Let me finish,” the judge said as she continued on with her admonishment.

And it gets better from there.

May the Lord Zalmoxis keep you and protect you, Charlie.



Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Today's Fuckery

Charlie Pierce, Esquire:

Manchester NH -- The entire Charlatans Cotillion that took place on the campus of St. Anselm’s College on Tuesday ended with a barefaced obvious lie from a barefaced obvious liar, which is entirely in keeping with the hearing held here by the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity, a body that is nearly as nauseating as it is ridiculous.

While the hearing was going on, the Campaign Legal Center released a copy of an internal Heritage Foundation email that it had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It was addressed to Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. The name of the sender was blacked out, but the content of the email took the committee’s entire threadbare claim to any legitimacy at all and fed bloody gobbets of that claim to the wolverines.

- snip -

This, of course, is the commission led by vice chairman Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, a guy who’s based his entire political career on knuckling immigrants and inventing tales of voter fraud, even as he keeps getting swatted upside his head in various courts. The commission is larded with people like Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams and Ken Blackwell, all of whom have been enthusiastic pitchmen for the voter-fraud mythology ever since they slimed into the public eye. What we got on Tuesday was a visit to a fantastical world so detached from actual reality that the Hubble couldn’t pick it up, a universe of non-fact and ideological incest so round and complete that it was like wandering into something from Gulliver's Travels.


It's obvious to anybody carrying around a living thinking brain in his skull that the Voter Fraud thing is an attempt to suppress Dem votes by dog-whistling the message to the rubes that POC have to be pushed back into the shadows, so the noble white man can retain his rightful place defending the honor of the womenfolk and - goddamit I get tired of this shit.


Also obvious: the play right now is for the Repubs in congress to stall as long as they possibly can, in the hope that enough Dem voters can be fucked outa their franchise by Kris Kobach, while the state-level Repubs continue wiring the districts under the protection of a SCOTUS that seems to be going along with it all.

Think Progress:

In a victory for Republicans, all the Republican members of the Supreme Court joined a pair of orders handed down Tuesday, staying a lower court decision which struck down two Republican-drawn districts. All four of the Court’s Democrats would have denied the stay.

Tuesday evening’s orders are the latest development in a long, winding challenge to Texas’ gerrymandered maps. You can read a summary of the many twists and turns in this case, as well as the legal issues before the Supreme Court, here.

The crux of the case is that, last month, a three-judge panel of federal judges held that two Texas congressional districts were illegally drawn — the first because it was intentionally drawn to dilute Hispanic votes, the second because it was drawn with too much reliance on race.

And the theft of Garland's seat on the court comes into sharper focus.


Saturday, November 17, 2012

The Anonymous Thing

Lots of speculation and suppositioning about whether or not Anonymous had something to do with stopping a real or imagined attempt by Karl Rove to hack the vote for Romney.

From Wonkette (hard to tell what to think when these guys get goin' on something):
Oh cool, Anonymous (we think it is Anonymous?) says Karl Rove was gonna vote fraud all the Machines, and that’s why he was so flabbergasted and refused to believe it when Fox called Ohio for Bamz, but they stopped him from stealing all the Machines by jamming up ORCA, because it was not actually a GOTV system but a “steal the vote” system, but they stopped him, we are pretty sure that is what the following letter, which we guess is from Anonymous probably, says. Seems legit!
And here's the letter:

I guess I just have to wonder about something.  Let's say Anonymous did have the goods on ol' Karl.  The letter seems to indicate they knew an awful lot about the scheme and about how it worked (barn doors etc).  If they knew all that, and they had all the evidence of tampering and what could easily be construed as a bunch of people conspiring to commit Wire Fraud, and Election Rigging and a host of other Federal Crimes - why did they just kinda fold the tent and say in effect, "Watch yer ass, fellas cuz next time we'll be on you like the sun covers Dixie".  Why go all Batman, thwarting the evil genius, but then, instead of exposing him and delivering him to justice, you pat him on the butt and send him on his way with a warning?  I gotta be missing something, or there's a lot more to be found out, but I don't get it - not yet anyway.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Vote

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, about the myth of voter fraud:
At this point, you may be wondering if there's really anything wrong with all this. What's the problem with cracking down on voter fraud? And why shouldn't voters be required to show photo ID? If you need ID to cash a check or buy a six-pack, why not to vote?
The answer—surprising to many—is straightforward: Not everyone has, or can easily get, a photo ID. If you don't drive, you don't have a driver's license. If you're poor, you probably don't have a credit card. And if you're unbanked and don't need ID to buy liquor, you probably don't have much need for photo ID at all.
Once that sinks in, the electoral significance becomes obvious. In 2007, shortly before the Crawford decision was handed down, the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race released a study of Indiana voters showing that among whites, the middle-aged, and the middle class, about 90 percent possessed photo ID. Among blacks, the young, and the poor—all of whom vote for Democrats at high rates—the rate was about 80 percent. Overall, 91 percent of registered Republicans had some form of photo ID, compared to only 83 percent of registered Democrats.
--and--
Still, Republicans argue, anyone can obtain a photo ID with a modest amount of effort if they really want to vote. And isn't this small amount of inconvenience worth it in order to crack down on fraud?
Sure—but first there needs to be some actual fraud to crack down on. And that turns out to be remarkably elusive.
 --and--
Statistics tell part of this story: According to a survey by the Brennan Center, 8 percent of voting-age whites lack a photo ID, compared to 25 percent of blacks. Getting an ID card from the state usually requires you to produce a birth certificate, and Barbara Zia of the South Carolina League of Women Voters recently explained what this means in her state: "Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare."
In St. Louis, where our story opened, Kit Bond's outrage about dogs and dead people has a long pedigree. It is, a local official told the American Prospect's Art Levine, "code for black people." This kind of racial dog whistling, which relentlessly paints ethnic minorities as corrupt and dishonest, is corrosive not just to our political discourse, but to democracy itself.
--and--
The scandal of the photo ID laws, then, isn't so much that they give one party an advantage, or even that they affect minorities disproportionately. The scandal is that they knowingly target minorities. So even if the real-life effects of these laws are small, they're impairing civil rights that African Americans and others have spent decades fighting, and sometimes dying, for. This in turn means that something most of us thought was finally taboo—active suppression of minority votes—isn't really taboo after all.

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Advantage: White Guy

Louis CK on Being White.



From a piece about the myth of voter fraud by Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic:
Last week, as one federal judge after another struck down these new measures, as one court after another called out Republican lawmakers for the lack of evidence supporting the push to stop "voter fraud," it dawned on me that this national debate suffers, as so many do these days, from a lack of a common starting point. There is so much fear. There is so much ignorance. There is so much exaggeration. Here are six of the most frequent comments I get when I write about voting rights followed by my attempts at a few answers that perhaps can get us talking about this in a more productive way.
The Myths:
  • We need these new voter ID laws to stop voter fraud
  • We need these new voter ID laws to stop illegal immigrants from voting
  • The new voter laws do not create substantial burdens on registered voters
  • The new Republican voter laws are the results of reasonable compromises between and among state legislators
  • There are many restrictions upon the right to vote -- what's so vital about another such restriction?
  • Burdening the rights of voters to cast their ballots is not the same as disenfranchising voters
In the end, Voter ID is just not fair - and fairness is one of things American Exceptionalism is really about.

And, oh yeah - I almost forgot.  When voting is outlawed, only outlaws will vote.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Vote Suppression

People with power use their power.  Sometimes to get more; sometimes to keep what they have; sometimes just to make sure we all know who has it.

From Balloon Juice, here's a pretty good rundown:

(from the Pennsylvania voter ID law)
All photo IDs must contain an expiration date that is current, unless noted otherwise. Acceptable IDs include:
• Photo IDs issued by the U.S. Federal Government or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:
•Pennsylvania driver’s license or non-driver’s license photo ID (IDs are valid for voting purposes 12 months past expiration date)
•Valid U.S. passport
•U.S. military ID - active duty and retired military (a military or veteran’s ID must designate an expiration date or designate that the expiration date is indefinite). Military dependents’ ID must contain an expiration date
•Employee photo ID issued by Federal, PA, County or Municipal government
•Photo ID cards from an accredited Pennsylvania public or private institution of higher learning
•Photo ID cards issued by a Pennsylvania care facility, including long-term care facilities, assisted living residences or personal care homes
All the "liberal" complaining about this really doesn't look like a standard conspiracy theory.  This looks a lot like Repubs (who hold governorships and who control state houses in OH, PA and FL) are cooking up ways to tamp down on some pretty significant voter demographics that are known to lean towards voting for Democrats.  I know that's a bunch of equivocation, but while there's practically no similar efforts in places where Dems hold power, and the fact that these laws are almost exclusively being jammed thru in battleground states, AND that there's practically no evidence of anything even close to the level of Voter Fraud these restrictions are aimed at preventing, we still have to make sure we're not just stampeding over the cliff, saying all Repubs are power-mad assholes who want a lockstep totalitarian dictatorship.  The thought has crossed my mind - in fact it's crossed my mind often enough to have worn several easily followed trails into it.  I'm just not ready to point and yell, "J'acccuse", that's all.

One thing I really don't like about this is that the Press Poodles seem not to be looking closely at it at all. As if glossing over it or ignoring it helps their Horse Race approach by working to make Obama's lead look narrower than it is.  One tho't on that: because it's too one-sided, reporting on it would make 'em look biased, so until they can come up with something the Dems are doing that they think can "balance it out", they'll continue looking past it.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Little Jimmy (updated)

(update) - From a story at The Boston Herald site

James O'Keefe strikes again!  Except he doesn't.  Here's the video of O'Keefe's latest escapade, attempting to demonstrate the urgent need for Voter ID.



I'll certainly agree with the basic premise that we have to look after the integrity of our elections process - no argument there.  But this Voter ID thing is a solution in search of a problem.  And while we're at it, how come the "party of personal responsibility and small government" is being so adamant about getting Big Gubmint to step in on this one?  Can you say "Nanny State", bitches?

Anyway, Ryan Reilly at TPM has the breakdown.  (hat tip = Balloon Juice)
“Who in their right mind would risk a felony conviction for this? And who would be able to do this in large enough numbers to (1) affect the outcome of the election and (2) remain undetected?” Hasen wrote.
That quote hits it smack on the head for me.  Again - Voter ID (eg) is not about what they tell us it's about.  So what is it?

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Solution Seeks Problem

The need to fight rampant voter fraud is one of those really scary sounding memes the Repubs love to trot out as they try to beat back the tide of Youth and Minority voting that they fervently believe threatens to wash them away at any moment.

Rampant Voter Fraud is also - you guessed it - almost completely baseless.

Here's a good look at the "issue" in The Tennesseean (not exactly a bastion of liberal bias):
“They identified a lot of fraud, but very, very, very, very, very, very little of it could be prevented by identification at the polls,” Levitt said.
The remainder involved vote buying, ballot-box stuffing, problems with absentee ballots, or ex-convicts voting even though laws bar them from doing so. Over the same seven-year time period covered by the cases Levitt reviewed, 400 million votes were cast in general elections.
“If there was evidence of this, we’d know about it,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters. Her organization, which has affiliates in every state, knows voter registrars, attends election meetings, observes and works at polls and is intimately aware of how the election system works.
It's not about protecting the franchise.  It's about keeping people from voting a certain way - in this case for Democrats - and it stinks.  If a big majority (of either party) showed up in some state houses, the electees might grow some balls, step out of line, and then the Lords of Lucre will lose a big measure of control.  And we can't have that now, can we?