"What to watch for"?
Republican vote-fraud shenanigans! Building on 2016 and preparing for 2020
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Words cannot express how happy I am that Stacey Abrams won tonight’s primary!
It’s a clarion call that white, wealthy GA progressives will no longer be calling the shots here, and that the Democratic Party here is finally going in the direction that it should’ve been going in for many years now. If people of color are the backbone and the base of the party, then they should have someone that truly represents the base to lead it. And in Stacey Abrams, they have such a leader.
Stacey Evans, like so many would-be or stale progressive leaders, was essentially a millionaire suburbanite. Not unlike Bernie Sanders (who’s movement endorsed her), Nancy Pelosi, and other lifestyle liberals. Honestly, the Democrats are better off without standard bearers like these.
Now, will Ms. Abrams win the general? Probably not technically. But the passing of the torch in Democratic Party politics, from the far left class conscious, upper class white lifestyle liberals to the woke, race conscious, and identity driven left is a powerful moral victory, and this is what really matters!
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Wait a minute...former Senator and disabled war hero Max Cleland...who was "swift boated" by Saxby Chambliss is running for the 6th District and only gets a mention?!
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Many people were surprised that Cleland lost the 2002 senate race.
Victoria Collier writes in her piece below: “In his 2009 autobiography, [Cleland] accused computerized voting of being ripe for fraud. In the month leading up to the election, Diebold employees, led by Bob Urosevich, applied an uncertified software patch to 5,000 voting machines that Georgia had purchased in May.
“‘We were told that it was intended to fix the clock which it didn’t do,’ Diebold consultant and whistle-blower Chris Hood recounted in a 2006 Rolling Stone article. ‘The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done …. It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state …. We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from [Bob] Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level.’”
Collier: How to Rig an Election https://tinyurl.com/y9xx63f6
Republican Stephen Spoonamore, Computer Security Guru, Election Theft with Voter Machines https://tinyurl.com/ydfbsk84
Spoonamore says he reviewed the code for the 2002 Georgia patch. He believes it was vote flipping code, not a clock function.
“If you look at the case of Saxby Chambliss, that’s ridiculous, the man was not elected. He lost that election by five points. Max Cleland won. They flipped the votes. Clear as day. Everybody was shocked by it. There have been numerous vote flips at this point.”
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I’ve never really understood the fawning over Cleland. I’ve met him several times, and he seems the very definition of daft. The type is well known in the South, and usually to be found in left leaning Episcopal churches.
And as someone with extensive time in the infantry and at Ft. Benning, Senator Cleland isn’t quite the “war hero” that the militarily ignorant on the left make him out to be; he lost his limbs when exiting a Huey near Khe Sahn, because he didn’t have the clips on his grenades on his LCE web gear properly fastened down, and one of them went off when he exited the chopper. This is well known, and it’s why many who’ve actually served in combat and with airborne or air assault units would hardly consider him a “war hero.” It’s a miracle he didn’t get his soldiers and the crew killed.
If being dangerously inept is what the left considers a “war hero,” is it any wonder why those in the military vote so reliably and overwhelmingly with the right?
No, Cleland is not running; he endorsed a candidate.
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I fear tonight is going to be a comeuppance for Democratic fervor. The only data point worth watching will be turnout; if it is typically (and abysmally) low in the Democratic primaries, the writing is on the wall for the Fall.
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The questions I have are, Have the Deplorables realized that they were conned by a criminal who is beholden Russia, and will Democrats come out and vote in droves? We’ll get some indication soon enough.
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These political races must be observed carefully since any hope of freeing ourselves from our malaise is at stake.
Has the N.Y.T. thought about a section in which gun fights, shootings, and other killings might be reported. A format of the "Old West" seems more than appropriate (with photos).
Just reportage, of course.
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I consider myself liberal but will be voting for Stacey Evans over Stacey Abrams. I emailed the Abrams campaign days ago to confirm her current stance on Stone Mountain and have not received a reply. I cannot support the Taliban who destroy and deface art they do not like.
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Two good Democratic candidates for governor but I'm voting for Bernie Sanders' pick. He is working hard across the country to break the lock of Republicans on state governments. Working people need a real choice in every state.
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The biggest thing to look for is the red flags due to the unsecure voting machines in Georgia. No paper trail! They were easily hacked, Karen Handel did nothing to secure them after the attack. Then later she won over Ossoff by "a larger margin than expected" even in areas where polling showed her WAY behind.
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Maureen,
You’re right about the Ossoff/Handel race. Karen Handel is just “super lucky.”
The Ossoff/Handel Georgia election had many red flags in the preliminary race and the June runoff. A "glitch" on election night in April changed Ossoff's numbers from 50+ percent to below 50, thus triggering a runoff. Handel "won" the election by 3.6 percent. In order to overcome Ossoff's early voting lead she miraculously pulled off a 16.4 percent lead on election day. More analysis:
Jonathan Simon: Laughing Their Ossoff: Did Computer-Aided Fraud Play A Role In Georgia's Special Election Upset? https://tinyurl.com/y84c256u
“The biggest thing to look for is the red flags due to the unsecure voting machines in Georgia. No paper trail! They were easily hacked.”
Simon points out that optical scan machines use computer software to tally the ballots. Therefore, the vote count is not secure or transparent. With regard to the paper ballots, He says that “paper ballots give us a false assurance as they ‘almost never’ see the light of day.”
We need to count ballots by hand at polling places (before the chain of custody is broken) with observers of all interested parties present.
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Not sure the special Alabama Senate election was a good barometer:
"Let's hope the voters will be as smart, and critical, as were voters in Alabama."
Remember: Roy Moore was the subject of numerous sexual-harassment allegations, some alleging actual rape of teenagers. While he denied those allegations, they struck me as credible, and I think Alabama voters largely felt they were.
Absent that background, Moore probably would have won easily. I'm not aware that any candidates in today's primaries have had similar allegations made against them.
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Already voted early here in Atlanta. Straight Democrat, all great candidates. Looking forward to November, it can't come soon enough!
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How can we be confident that Republicans will not cheat in elections? All that they have said and done sow doubt about the fairness of elections at all levels. Unlimited power and money, combined with zealotry, are incentives to promote vote-rigging and election-stealing.
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Although races in Georgian Districts may be localized, there is no doubt that Ms. Abrams's energy and confrontational strategy will influence the ticket in easy and in difficult ways.
The climate in Georgia is one of intelligent voters who, for the most part, declare that they are independent thinkers, even though many, like many progressive thinkers, restrict their opinion makers to a few familiar voices.
Nonetheless, I am excited at the prospect that Stacey Abrams can energize and convince her natural constituencies to get to the polls in November and bring another voter with them. Believe me, brothers and sisters, I am leaving no one out who will want to vote for progress, intelligence and for the peoples' interests.
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What we all ought agree on is that the U.S. does not need any more race-based voting solely on the basis is skin color. Are we good there?
Well, that is precisely what Democrat fervent Abrams supporters outside of Georgia are engaged in: pure unadulterated racism. There is not a sliver of difference between the black candidate Stacey Abrams, and the white candidate Stacey Evans. Both women are the same age, same background and with the same careerist experience in the state legislature. Shame on Emily's List for also engaging in racist backing of one woman over the other based on skin color - only Abrams instead of backing BOTH Democrat women.
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One thing that Georgia Democrats may want to consider is which Stacey would offer greater appeal to female voters in the state as a whole (not just among Democrats). There is no path to victory on November 6 for whichever Stacey wins today without a very, very strong showing among women statewide - and, as 2016 reminded us once again, women overall do NOT vote as a bloc.
There are strong right wing nests. Let's hope the voters will be as smart, and critical, as were voters in Alabama. Vote for the good of the people, not the party, or corporations.Vote for actual family values, not pretend ones.
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What we won’t know about today’s elections is if the vote count is legitimate because our vote-counting system has been outsourced to a handful of private rightwing companies that tabulate our votes “in secret on proprietary software.” A vast amount of exit poll data indicates that some election results are "statistically impossible.” Exit polls fell within the margin of error before computerized voting.
There used to be concern about the vulnerabilities with computerized voting, but then it became taboo to talk about it.
- NYT: Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say
- Washington Post: [Maryland Governor] Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots for Nov. Vote
- Wall Street Journal: Reversing Course on Electronic Voting
- NPR: The Approaching 2006 E-Voting 'Train Wreck'
Computer experts, including researchers from Princeton, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Ohio and Stanford Universities, the Brennan Center and the GAO, have proven over and over that electronic voting machines are easily hackable and it can be done with self-deleting code.
Collier: How to Rig an Election https://tinyurl.com/y9xx63f6
“In 2005, the non-partisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, stated unequivocally that the greatest threats to secure voting are insiders with direct access to the machines. ‘There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries.”
#DemocracyDemandsTransparentVoteCounting
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Re: Arkansas governor's race: A year from now it would be nice to have a story on what Jan Morgan is doing. Her campaign has been guano crazed, but she has a couple of things going for her, and it's not the gun thing. She's willing to recognize and correct her mistakes, and she's willing to call out religious nut cases such as the one that is insistent about building monuments to himself on the Capital grounds.
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Vanessa, I’m hitting the “recommend” button on your use of the phrase “guano crazed.” Thanks—that’s a useful expression!
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Working hard to elect Amy McGrath here! She has made an extraordinary positive impression, appealing to women and men alike, college-educated suburban voters and rural voters in our district. Go Amy!
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I am really hopinv Amy McGrath makes a strong showing!
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GO Amy McGrath of Kentucky!!! Signed, California.
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Ditto from another Californian!
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Re the Georgia race for governor. It's not who wins tomorrow's primary; what's important is how many Democratic and Republican voters show up at the polls. In Ohio's gubernatorial primaries, the GOP brought out 827,000 voters, while Democratic candidates totaled 680,000 votes. It's the midterms. If the past repeats itself - which I believe it will - Democrats in most cases will stay home today and complain about losing tomorrow.
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Alan--Hope not. This is why we need election day to be a federal holiday.
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Alan,
I have no idea what the turnout or the voting will be in Georgia (or anywhere else), but I too noticed that the total Republican votes in the Ohio primary far exceeded the total Democratic votes. It's impossible to predict whether that will be true in other states, but it certainly looks like the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio (DeWine) will cruise to victory there.
The primary is TODAY, Tuesday.