Can we please make NDA’s especially those intended to muzzle public servants, illegal?
4
Complete, hypocritical, disastrous nonsense.
Another example of the expertise of Democratic leaders in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
If you're forced to sign an NDA, resist. Refuse to serve, or sign, serve and ignore.
3
Democrats 2019: we will get democracy back on track.
Democrats 2020: we can’t find our way out of a paper bag.
4
I voted in the Nevada pre-caucus voting on Tuesday at Palo Verde H.S. in western Las Vegas, and it was a disaster. I waited 2 hours 40 minutes to vote. I saw handicapped persons denied any frontsies, so there were people with canes, crutches, wheelchairs, motorized scooters, and mothers with newborns waiting in line with me. Just as I was about to vote, two party elites, apparently a husband and wife, walked in and were immediately allowed to vote. When I questioned that procedure, I was told to be quiet, vote, and leave.
That's what the party elite want: good complacent sheeple who will support the party while the party mistreats them.
Still, wonder why the leaders want NDAs?
5
So let's see; the other Democratic candidates at the Nevada debate slammed all over Mayor Mike for his corporate NDAs. Now the Nevada Democratic officials demands its poll volunteers to sign NDAs.
The more and more we watch this debacle of a Democratic primary season unfold I am reminded of Will Rogers....
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/will_rogers_122697
5
We may wonder how long it will take before someone’s tops off a 4chan troll with the phone number and these results are also an instant mess. How about paper, please?
1
Who says all the site leaders will sign. They're not obligated and could not be replaced at this late date.
I will be curious to see how many have the backbone to say, "No, I won't sign."
4
This is a lot of kerfluffle about Nevada, when there are so few votes actually at stake. Something on the order of two tenths of one percent of the Democratic vote here. Let's get a little perspective on the larger picture.
1
It suggest they have little confidence in themselves, or that they are planning some shenanigans. Either way it looks dishonest. Hide the process so no one knows what happened really.
4
Wow.
Florida may be able to rest for ever if Nevada goes Iowa.
Hard to believe that the leaders in Nevada ditched Google - after all these articles explained to us how Google will work.
If Iowa phones were jammed - why are folks in Nevada so sure that theirs will not jam.
One thing for sure - what happens in Vegas - will definitely not stay in Vegas.
Good, bad and the ugly.
So confidence inspiring.
1
Don't sign, Nevada people. You have every right to speak to the media and help the rest of us understand what's going on. In fact, it's your duty.
3
Thank goodness they won't be allowed to feed bungled information to self-serving media outlets, who will twist it into anything they want. I'm the odd one out here, I guess.
3
All Democratic candidates should be against Nevada forcing caucus site leaders to sign NDAs. Where's Elizabeth Warren? She was against NDAs signed by Buttigieg and Bloomberg but is ignoring the Nevada Democratic Party.
3
Did any of them watch the debate, Elizabeth Warren and Bloomberg? NDAs are a way of bullying and intimidating workers to cover up the malfeasance of management. Not a good look for the Party, especially after Iowa.
3
And I thought the suppression of information was strictly a Republican strategy.
22
Well it was a good run for the Democratic party.
13
And the DNC calls for whom to be transparent? I guess everyone else but themselves.
27
So cheating is going to be rampant in Nevada. What else is new? I doubt this will end well for the Democrats. What in the world are they thinking?
18
I don't think a gag rule bodes well for the success of this process.
22
I’m a Democrat. I’m disgusted by this lack of transparency. N.D.A.’s exist only to cover wrong doing and when those demanding the N.D.A. have the power to suppress those weaker that have to abide by the N.D.A.. Shame on the party. With the most recent debate and this action we’re careening down a path to 4 more years of Trump.
37
It sounds like the honchos of the Nevada Democrats would like to be able to suppress truth in case their caucuses are ran as badly as those in Iowa. No one should be sign a non-disclosure agreement. Instead the volunteers should band together and say that they'll walk out if the party tries to force them to sign. I support the Democrats generally, but the demand that volunteers sign an NDA is just too Trumpian (or Bloombergian) for my taste.
22
@Utahn
I think Trump would be the last to ask someone in government to sign an NDA. Has he ever?
1
How is it possible - especially after the Iowa debacle - that volunteers got less than ONE WEEK of training (with new reporting methods and technology)???
"Over the last week the state party has held several training sessions for volunteers who are overseeing the caucuses."
DNC runs these incompetent and potentially corrupt operations and they have evidenced a strong bias against Benrie Sanders, going back to 2016. Heads should roll.
This will not end well.
14
Does the Nevada Democratic Party honestly believe that opacity, rather than transparency, is the way to foster trust and confidence?
19
What really are the consequences of someone breaking an NDA? This would be a great time for a good article explaining this in the cases of people constrained by NDAs with Trump, Weinstein, Bloomberg, and others.
Thank you.
11
I would comment on this article but I had to agree to a NDA before I read it.
Yeesh. What is the world coming to?
13
The article says that the DNC asserts that signing NDCs is standard for this type of thing.
Did anyone actually check to see if they have been required before? I may have missed it with a second reading, but it would be nice to know if this is just more hot air, covering their new requirement, or it is indeed SOP.
16
@reid
It isn't the DNC requesting the non-disclosure agreements, it is the Nevada State Democratic Party.
3
The optics of requiring poll workers to sign nondisclosure agreements is abysmally bad, particularly coming on the heels of the debate discussion of Mike Bloomberg's nondisclosure agreements. What sort of 'secret strategy' do site leaders know about? Does it involve tipping the scales as was done in 2016?
I'm having doubts about who the DNC represents. If there was a good progressive alternative party, I'd consider jumping ship.
27
Of course the Democratic party is right. It's serious stuff, not some secret meeting between Congressmen on the Intelligence Committee and top Intelligence officers.
3
All registered Democrats should email/text DNC and request a National Primary for all States. End silly infighting among States. And use ranked choice to figure out who top Candidate is. Require all States to reveal results same day. Use paper mail in/drop off and send ballots out at least 2 weeks ahead. Then Convention can be used to reveal running mate and Party Platform. And shorten run up to Primary. Too much money spent on this process now. I would personally prefer public funding of elections; difficult to do though due to how entrenched it is now.
11
@PeterG Let's remember that a primary is not an election. It is a party function.
2
Come on, DNC.
Your emails were hacked because of a spearphishing attack initiated through gmail. Knowing this, you were planning on using Google Forms to collect ballots?
The DNC's entire IT department needs to be fired.
43
@Todd
It’s the decision makers who pilot an untested app during a presidential year who need be be fired. Why is the democratic party leadership so incompetent?
4
To Nevada Democrats; Designate all tasks to responsible adults. Have 2 different people count ballots. Let scrutineers keep a close eye on everything. Have more than 1 phone line and operator. Use simple forms to record results. Speak clearly on the phone. Repeat everything to double check. Double check the arithmetic. You can do it! It's not that hard!
11
What is hard is finding, keeping, and training all the adult volunteers it takes to do such a large undertaking. I know because I currently am involved on a minuscule scale in comparison, in finding, keeping, and training adult volunteers and it. is. hard. Most of the folks volunteering are retired/not employed or employed part time, have expressed an avid interest in a number of options presented to them and still they don’t step up when asked, find any number of excuses, or just generally flake. It is disheartening and maddening. I wish those folks in Nevada the best. They have my sympathy.
13
@Andy
Perhaps we need un-involved voting observers at the caucuses and primaries. From neighboring states, say. Or pair up democrats and republicans at each precinct.
If you want something to work correctly, don’t use a computer or the internet. They don’t work. If you turn on a computer, it will probably have an error saying something needs to be installed or upgraded yada yada and crash. If you go to a website, it will popup an advertisement to purchase a landrover or vinyl siding, and then crash. Abandon technology now! Long live paper!
12
This article mentions the "nuisance calls" that impeded Iowa and I anticipate that the same thing will happen in Nevada. As reported a couple of weeks ago, the call were by Trump-loving trolls and I suspect they are still out there ihunkered down n their caves and burrows.
19
@ShowMe
There was a plane full of them from Washington DC that arrived in Iowa that day--all republicans from Congress and the administration, as well as Don Jr. and others.
1
My 84-year-old mom is a Las Vegas, Nevada voter and has been registered to vote by mail for years. This year, the Democratic Party in Nevada decided to eliminate mail-in ballots for the primary which effectively disenfranchises all of the home bound voters who cannot make it to a caucus site. By eliminating these voters from the primary, the Party has already made a mess of the Nevada results.
54
Will anyone be monitoring the hot line to assure that it's not bombarded with nuisance calls?
And if the line gets overloaded with prank calls is there a way to determine who/how/from where such calls are being made?
12
There's a zero percent chance that Trump operatives won't already know that super secret hotline phone number before the caucusing is over and won't be deluging it with bogus calls in order to keep precinct chairs from getting through to call in results. Hey, Democrats, can't you do better than 1980s technology?
6
Sorry, Reid, but the process isn't far more complex than ever before because there is, for the first time ever, transparency with the vote count. The same two sets of vote counting had to be done, the same viability thresholds existed, the same system for allocating delegates to each precinct was used, the same processes were put in place to determine how delegates would be allocated, and the same or similar formulae were used to calculate SDEs. The only thing that's different is we now know how thoroughly unreliable caucus results, as reported, must have been in previous election cycles. That's it. Early balloting does not change the equation one iota (it's just more math like the above - confusing and easy to mess up). The best thing that ever happened is full transparency because it gives Nevada a chance to fix what it gets wrong. The layer upon layer of documentation NV is requiring is great. But the one thing I would advise them to do is fix obvious mistakes during the initial vote count rather than waiting days or weeks to get them fixed while incomplete or inaccurate results are reported as official or final.
7
I personally can’t wait until Super Tuesday when we get to hear who wins Nevada.
32
How will Nevada officials ensure that the phone lines are not again flooded by 4chan users?
This is shaping up to be a horrific mess...
27
There have been reports of Trump’s deplorables attempting to jam and lock up phone hotlines used for reporting Democrat vote counts. Let’s hope the Nevada organizers keep the number well guarded.
12
@Xoxarle Exactly. I don't know how you keep the dirty trix party from getting it, sending it thru twitter, and an avalanche of clogging calls ensues.
2
Using MMS as primary would be better, since it's basically unjammable (and clearly a crime to make a denial-of-service attack on a site), but it's very relieving that the Nevada Dems gave up Google Docs as their filing method. That was not a good idea.
1
Caucuses really need to go, clearly primaries are the best way for people to be represented fairly and accurately. Let's hope that Nevada doesn't turn into the mess that was Iowa.
12
“In Iowa, the caucuses were marred with mathematical errors from precinct leaders overwhelmed by the amount of data they were required to document.”
This is incorrect. The mathematical errors were the product of sloppiness and poor math skills. The precinct leaders were not overwhelmed. The data simply illuminated just how messy and inaccurate this process which depends too heavily on fallible human calculators is.
15
Part of the reason Iowa was a mess was because Trump supporters mounted a 4Chan drive to clog Democratic phone lines as caucuses attempted to report results. Their efforts were rewarded in the news media. I can't believe I have to say it: You don't expect the same thing in Nevada?
It's a denial of service attack. A very, very simple denial of service attack. Everyone calls the number at the same time jamming the switch. Operators have to sort through endless spammers to find legitimate callers. The attack delays reporting while Fox News proclaims chaos again.
Republicans are running the same play again. Relying on phone lines seems like a really dumb idea. Nevada should tell everyone to expect delayed results. They are going to have the control center call each caucus individually rather than the other way around. Repeat the process until all results are reported. The vote won't be tallied for several days. Deal with it.
32
Doing it by hand and being called in is the only way to do it. Caucuses done on an electronic gadget make no sense and are overly complicated to be used once every 4 years. There are a lot of things that people think are better computerized only to find out the manual method was easier and got better result. Many a business implements software conversions only to abort once the employees try using it.
2
What a joke. Should be nothing but primaries from now on. Trump will taunt us endlessly if they screw up again like in Iowa. Fire Perez immediately.
42
@Brian You are aware this is a NDP call and not DNC issue right? The state party is in charge of running the election as they see fit.
13
But if the state party can't (or won't) do the right thing, and the national one won't replace it or its leaders with competent representation, then that hurts the DNC, not (just) the NDP—and if the DNC wants to but *can't* replace said NDP, they should sue the NDP for abuse of monopoly, trademark infringement, fraud, etc. They'd not be offering the product they claim to.
4
Is anyone else concerned that the Nevada Caucuses are being held on the same day as a major Heavyweight title fight promoted by two major US networks and a large international broadcaster, in Las Vegas itself? Are many of these casino workers actually gonna get a chance to vote on one of their busiest work dates of the year? Seems like poor planning to me.
22
@PB Thoses workers had early voting sites at four casinos. One open 24 hours. If they wanted to do early voting, they could.
22
So the results will be phoned in, and a picture of the form will be sent by text. This presumes that all workers will have smartphones.....
9