Just when I think that the voting system is hopeless and the Democratic Party
is a scam, I hear or read something like Norman Solomon's discussion with Paul
Jay on The Real News the other day. Solomon said, "Fine, be as discouraged as
you wish with the Democratic Party. Build a new party if you think you can. But
what will you do in 2018 when there's no new party structure. Will you stay
home or will you try to use the structure that exists and run some young,
reform candidates, and vote against the folks in office who are hurting you and
your families?"
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2017 10:56 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Was the Heated 2016 Democratic Primary Rigged
for Debbie Wasserman Schultz?
Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away, I believed we Americans had
a Fool Proof voting system. Because that was what I was told. Told by those
who knew better.
The tug of war between those who wanted All American Citizens to register and
vote, versus those who did not "trust" the average American...especially those
of Color and of the working class, had raged since the days of George
Washington and the Founding Fathers.
But as always happens, the Greed driven Ruling Class over played their hand.
The Two Headed, One Party became so high handed that even this old blind man
could "see" right through their games. As long as the DNC continues to control
the Democratic Head, and they do nothing to alter or end the Electoral College,
I will remain an independent spectator. And just for the record, as long as
the Republican Head puts forth candidates such as Donald Trump, and Judge Roy
of Alabama, I will avoid any contact.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/12/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Was the Heated 2016 Democratic Primary Rigged for Debbie Wasserman Schultz?
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
By Lulu Fiesdat, AlterNet | Report
Newly uncovered data on the race won by Debbie Wasserman Schultz in
2016 have shocked election experts.
Newly uncovered data on the race won by Debbie Wasserman Schultz in
2016 have shocked election experts. (Photo: Church World Service)
Pledge your support for ethical, insightful independent media: Make a
tax-deductible donation to Truthout and choose the "monthly" option at
checkout.
In August 2016, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz faced
off against progressive maverick and Bernie Sanders supporter Tim
Canova -- her first-ever primary challenger -- after six terms in Congress.
Just weeks earlier she had been forced to resign as head of the
Democratic National Committee after stolen emails showed her talking
smack about Senator Sanders and leaning on the scales in favor of her
ally Hillary Clinton. Canova focused the national outrage against her,
raising over $3 million, and turning the congressional election into a
referendum on her policies and ethics. But with a 13.5% victory she
overcame questions about her political viability and returned triumphantly to
her job in Washington.
Now new evidence of original ballots being destroyed and cast ballots
not matching voter lists calls into question the results of that election.
With the nation fixated on the Alabama Senate special election and
daily talk of interference in the 2016 presidential race, securing
elections and verifying the accuracy of the vote has captivated the public.
On Thursday, an election transparency lawsuit was filed to preserve
digital images of the ballots in the Alabama Senate race. And in a
hearing in Broward County Florida, last month, a year-long battle to
view the ballots in the race between Wasserman Schultz and Canova came
to a head with a surprising admission by the Broward County Supervisor of
Elections' office.
In violation of both federal and state statutes that require federal
election materials be preserved for 22 months, their office destroyed
the ballots from the Wasserman Schultz/Canova race after only 12 months.
Broward
County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes personally signed off on
the ballots' destruction.
The county was in court because of a lawsuit that emerged from a
public records request I filed in March 2017. It was the third public
records request I filed with Broward County in a year. They did not
provide the items requested in the first two public records request,
so with the help of an attorney hired by Canova, who was also
interested in seeing the ballots, I filed a third request. The county
refused to comply with many items in the third request, and in June
2017 Canova, who is running for Congress against Wasserman Schultz
again, took them to court. I am an expert witness in the case.
According to a transcript of the November hearing, the attorney for
the Supervisor's office Burnadette Norris-Weeks claimed the ballots
were destroyed, "Because they can't just store hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of boxes.
It's possible that lack of storage space is not the only reason
Broward County officials wanted to destroy the ballots. Months of
investigating the Supervisor's office and analyzing election data
reveal that in the vast majority of precincts in the race, the number
of cast ballots does not match the number of voters who voted.
The discrepancies are large and all over the map. Some precincts show
10 to
20 more cast ballots than voters. In one precinct alone, M030, there
are 24 more cast ballots than voters. Other precincts are missing
ballots. Less than 10% of the precincts have the same number of cast
ballots as voters; and in all the precincts combined, there are more than
1,000 discrepancies.
Election experts and administrators who reviewed the data were shocked
and concerned.
Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science at the University of
South Carolina, said, "I see what I would call a high likelihood of
massive incompetence. Either that or there is fraud. I don't think you
should see numbers this big in this many precincts." Buell has
examined election records extensively in South Carolina.
Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa
sputtered in disbelief at the data. "This is really weird." He
continued that they ought to be reconciling the number of voters with
ballots and if they're not doing it, "they're grossly negligent."
Jones served on the Election Assistance Commission's Technical
Guidelines Development Committee for four years, but said "I've never seen a
county that looks like this."
Canova is not the first one to take the Broward County Supervisor of
Elections' office to court. He is in line behind the Republican Party
that sued in November of 2016 over absentee ballots being opened in
secret, and a not-for-profit that sued in October last year when
Broward County left a medical marijuana amendment off some ballots.
Problems with the county's elections go further back than that. In
2006, according to documents provided by the Florida Fair Elections
Coalition, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections' office admitted
to a "loss of data"
that included over 100,000 ballot images.
Ballots not matching the number of voters has surfaced in other
states. In Wisconsin, the issue happens frequently enough that there
is a statute
(7.51
(2)(e)) on how to handle it, and the solution might surprise you. If
there are more ballots than voters, officials are instructed to
randomly pull out and throw away ballots until the numbers match.
Explanations
After almost a year of wrangling with the Supervisor of Elections'
office, we were allowed a ballot inspection on November 1st and 2nd.
We arrived to find that there were no actual ballots to be inspected.
The county instead insisted on showing us digital scans of ballots. In
the subsequent court hearing they admitted they destroyed the originals.
We had already looked at the voter lists. The point of the ballot
inspection was to see if there were also disparities in the vote count
itself. We received printouts of scans for five precincts. In three of
the five precincts, there were differences between the scans and the
certified totals. In one case the difference was more than 1%. Based
on the margins in this race, that type of shift is not large enough to
change the outcome.
However, since the original ballots, the totals tapes, and all
associated paperwork have been destroyed, there is no way now to
verify that these scans, or the votes on them, match the original
ballots. The county hired an outside agency, Clear Ballot, to do the
scanning -- raising chain of custody and security issues as well. Who
had access to the ballots? Who had access to the scans?
The large discrepancies between the number of voters and the cast
ballots, plus the inability or refusal of the Supervisor of Elections'
office to produce the original ballots, all raise questions about what
the true totals for the race may have been. Experts we consulted
concurred that the certified results must be considered suspect. "They
destroyed the evidence,"
said Karen McKim, a member of the Wisconsin Election Integrity Action
Team and a veteran of handcounts in that state. "They can't defend
their results."
The Broward County Supervisor of Elections' staff refused to answer
questions during the ballot inspection, so it was not possible to ask
them to explain the problems with their data. They are being deposed
in regard to the destruction of ballots, and could be subject to
criminal prosecution.
The printouts of the scans were sealed and sent to Columbia County,
New York, in case further examination is useful.
Academics and election officials who regularly examine this type of
data offered a myriad of potential reasons for the large discrepancies
between the voters and the ballots, but were universally dismayed.
When asked if there was a reason for that type of gap Columbia County
New York Election Commissioner Virginia Martin replied, "Not a good
one." She suggested that a crush of new voters at the polls could
result in a lot of spoiled ballots, but said "If this were happening
in my county I'd want to investigate it."
Professor Buell described a packed election with seven-hour wait times
in South Carolina where he had witnessed voters leaving after signing
in. That resulted in more signatures than ballots in some precincts.
But he could not recall seeing anything comparable to the numbers from
Broward. He also noted the light turnout in this race and said the
discrepancies were "unlikely to be attributable to long lines."
Susan Pynchon, executive director of the Florida Fair Elections
Coalition, expressed frustration that when conducting citizen audits
on elections, it was not unusual for them to see counties where the numbers
did not add up.
One explanation she had received in Volusia County was that they don't
put police officers, firefighters, and judges on the disk of voters.
Jones was uncomfortable with that practice saying, "Reconciling the
number of ballots with the number of votes is such a fundamental
protection of democracy that that is just giving the government the right to
rig elections."
A November article in the Christian Science Monitor brought to light
some disturbing facts about the Broward County voter database:
. It's estimated there are 61,000 more registered voters than eligible
voters.
. It's estimated there are 560 centenarians currently living in
Broward County, but there are 3,044 centenarians registered to vote there.
The Monitor explored various security risks facing Broward County
elections
-- including the fact that its election systems and registration
database are provided by VR Systems, a company that was compromised by
hackers in 2016. Russia, North Korea, Iran and China were all put
forward as foreign adversaries that could potentially disrupt or
manipulate an election. But Pynchon offered a more mundane risk,
closer to home. She pointed to a "ballot on demand" machine available
at every early voting site that is capable of printing out ballots for any
voter in any precinct.
The machines solved a major logistics problem for early voting, but
she is concerned that there are not enough safeguards in place to
protect against their abuse. She described how multiple ballots can be
printed with the bubbles already filled in for candidates, and ended
by saying, "An inside job would always be easier because you have
access to all the tools you need."
The Rematch
Wasserman Schultz claims she is looking forward to the upcoming
contest against Canova, saying in a June email, "I embrace it as a
chance to continue to talk directly with voters." Canova has made no
secret of his opinion of Wasserman Schultz. Following the election, he
refused to make a concession call saying, "I'll concede that Debbie
Wasserman Schultz is a corporate stooge."
Snipes, the current Broward County Supervisor of Elections presided
over the first race. She has a four-year term, so unless she is
removed from office for misconduct (something the Florida constitution
allows the governor to
do) she will also preside over the rematch.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It
may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from
the source.
Lulu Fiesdat
Lulu Friesdat is an Emmy award-winning journalist whose many news
assignments include producing election coverage for MSNBC and editing
with "CBS Evening News" and "Good Morning America." She received a
"Best Documentary" award for directing her first feature-length
documentary, Holler Back: [not] Voting in an American Town. Follow her on
Twitter:
@LuluFriesdat.
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