The USA “primary season” is ridiculous, if only a few million people get to decide, and so much money and so much time is wasted “up front.”
This is the 4th election in a row that “my” state’s primary ended up with almost no candidates left to vote for (and “mine” was eliminated). WTF?
Please put your thoughtful, respectfully worded ideas in the COMMENTS.
Primary season reforms :
——No one can “buy” their way into a debate or onto a ballot; donor types and total money raised are not relevant nor counted towards eligibility for debate participation or ballot inclusion
—We need to have ALL the primaries held within a few weeks of each other, perhaps all in March or April
—NO ONE IS ALLOWED to drop out of any race, once on a ballot, except for legal (criminal indictment) or health reasons, until all votes from all primaries have been counted
—NO MORE “caucuses,” either, since that system is based on a racist bunch of BS that excludes most voters in those states, anyway
—No candidate is allowed to outspend the lowest-spending candidate in any given primary, with all money accounted for and transparently received (from WHOM) and spent, tallied daily
—The entire “primary season” should be fewer than 6 months, from start to convention, allowing 4 months for campaigning, one month for primaries, and one month between final primaries and convention
—ALL legitimate party candidates are eligible to be selected during that party’s the convention
—No promises can be made to any candidate prior to the final election as to getting picked for Cabinet, appointed, judiciary, or other positions until after the election, and certainly not as a trade for dropping out of an election’s primary or ballot.
Major election reform:
—No more “super” delegates (only Democrats have this BS, anyway)
—No more electoral college: one vote counts as one vote
—ALL polling places are to be kept open/re-opened for ALL elections
—Polling places are required to exist and be open for 3 days before and on election day, for every election, in EVERY USA state and territory and its counties/parishes, with more than one place per region in those with difficult-to-traverse areas and/or populations that require it
—Voters should not have to wait in lines should take voters longer than one hour to vote
—No more voting machines. Period. All paper ballots, everywhere, always
— All legitimate state ID is accepted for voting, if ID is even required
—I’m open to NOT having ID required, since that disenfranchises some voters, and since “voter fraud” is a non-existent “problem”
—No registered voters are EVER to be “purged,” removed or eliminated from eligibility prior to ANY election, all such purged are to be immediately restored, since the “reasons” given for any purging are always bogus, anyway
—No VISIBLE electioneering allowed, no matter how many feet away, at any polling place: no signage, no banners, no petitions, no people asking questions of voters prior to or after voting, no one standing around wearing candidates’ or issues’ regalia, no confrontations of voters, no pressure of any kind to vote any particular way, ever, anywhere
—No “exit polling,” and, therefore, no influencing future voters by first voters by the media
—No public or online speculation by the media as to who or what lost/won until ALL voters have voted in every USA region
—No announcing “winners” or “losers” and no “concession speeches” or conceding until ALL votes have been counted, including absentee ballots, which takes days or weeks after each election
—No one who is running can manage that election (e.g., Georgia’s fiasco)
—Public factual databases about candidates in easy to find places ex voting record if they are a congressperson, their own policy statements
—Polling locations can be moved with 6 months notice and the notice given very publicly in many forms.
—Adequate numbers of polling locations and ballots per population, and reachable by public transportation where public transportation exists.
—Election day is a national holiday and people who work on national holidays are given some time off in the 3 days before or the day of, to vote.
—Automatic voter registration upon other civic participation such as getting a driver’s license, registering a car, signing a lease, or paying taxes. Day of election voter registration.
—Voters who are confirmed by a medical professional to have died, can be removed from the voter rolls within one month of their death or their published obituary. (Individual voters who are dead may be removed around their time of death. No purges needed.)
When a voter registers to vote in a new place because they have moved, the new place can contact their previous city or town so they can be removed from the voter list.
—Voting machines can be used where they help people with disabilities to vote. The voting machine shall up produce a paper ballot that can be counted with the other paper ballots. Paper ballots are counted by optical scanning and are kept for possible hand counting. All election electronics are kept off of the internet at all times every day of the year.
— Ranked choice voting in primaries. No announcement of how candidates did in any primary until all primaries have been held. Exit polling is allowed if done by UN election monitors and kept confidential until all votes are counted. If someone is not able to get to the polling place and hasn’t done an early voting or absentee ballot ahead of time, two justices of the peace will bring them a ballot at their home or wherever they are so they can vote (if they’re sick or their car breaks down or whatever). This last one is practiced in Vermont.
Ranked choice voting: for every candidate who gets less than 10% of the vote, the second choice candidate on the ballot will be used; then if no candidate has a majority, find the one who has the fewest votes and use the second choice candidates on those ballots. Etc until there’s a winner.
From The Washington Post to The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine to the League of Women Voters to many other independent, reputable sources (these and others quoted and linked, below), we now know how and which aspects of these elections have been rigged by Republicans and their cronies. What can we do? GET INFORMED and FIGHT BACK!
“‘This election [2016’s] was rigged. And it needs to stop,’ said Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States….’We are not talking about vigilante voter intimidation,’ said Carson. ‘We are talking about official, legal voter suppression by state legislatures and election officials.'”
This article, posted on 11/23/16, lists 13 states with KNOWN voter suppression tactics that were utilized.
“Millions of would-be voters didn’t participate because of obstacles designed to discourage them….Fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election, and 20 have had such restrictions put in place since 2010, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a group that opposes such laws….[T]he Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights group, found that counties previously covered by the Voting Rights Act have closed down at least 868 polling places. The closures (often without adequate notice) disproportionately affect minority voters.”
From The Washington Post, 11/29/16.
On 3/20/18, we saw this headline: “Cambridge Analytica bosses were secretly filmed boasting about how they helped Trump win the US election.” By late summer, 2018, this “business” had been closed down/renamed, its managers fired and some indicted (including Mark Turnbull, the managing director, and CEO Alexander Nix), and many others under investigation who used their “services” have also been indicted/arrested via Robert Mueller‘s independent prosecution team looking into Russian AND OTHER MEDDLING in the 2016 elections, among other things.
From https://amp.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-boasts-won-trump-election-facebook-data-2018-3
“[T]he modern-day swing of election rigging began with the 1980 Presidential Election. Democrat Jimmy Carter was President, running for his second term. Republican Ronald Reagan was the GOP’s nominee for President. However, the stage was set for rigging that election exactly one year earlier.
“On November 4, 1979, a mob of young Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran Iran, taking more than 60 Americans hostage. The Carter Administration worked for more than a year to free the hostages, getting a small number released, then attempting a failed rescue mission. The Americans were held for a total of 444 days, only to be released peacefully just minutes after Republican Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
The 2016 election was the first presidential contest in more than 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Voter suppression, which disproportionately favors Republicans, is something the Republicans have been working toward for decades, unfortunately, and they have been succeeding.
FYI, some terms: —The popular vote = whether the candidate won the state or not; one vote, one person —The electoral vote = how much that state was ‘worth (how many electoral college votes that state has)’ for that election.
—About the Electoral College:
——The District of Columbia and 48 states used to have “winner takes all,” meaning. whichever candidate has the majority of popular votes gets that state’s entire electoral college vote count.
——Two states in 2016 had “proportional winning,” meaning, each candidate’s percentage of popular votes received determines how many electoral college votes that candidate gets from that state for the electoral college’s total. More states are joining this group, as of 2007 (Maryland became the first state to switch), known as the “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.” Connecticut and other States Dump “Winner Takes All” for Electoral College Allocations
—Election Fraud = conspiracy to alter election results on the part of individuals, organizations, political parties, and/or local or regional/state/federal governmental officials by a variety of tactics, using many types of (sometimes LEGAL, now) voter suppression, such as: eliminating same-day registration; tampering with/unfairly purging or not accepting voter registrations; tampering with/miscounting votes/falsely recording votes from voting machines; unfairly altering /closing polling locations or giving false addresses and / or restricting the polling places’ open hours; restricting early voting; creating unfairly discriminatory voter ID requirements; printing false (post-election) dates or incorrect mail-back addresses on absentee ballots; sending out absentee ballots too late or not at all; not counting all votes; forcing people to use “provisional ballots,” then not counting them; barring ex-felons from becoming eligible to vote after serving their time; falsely claiming individuals are not eligible to vote and then illegally not allowing them to register or to vote; overcounting /stuffing votes; diminishing voting effectiveness by creating paper ballots difficult to read, use, understand or mark one’s vote clearly on; making it a felony for anyone other than a family member or caregiver to collect a voter’s absentee ballot; lying about a candidate’s political party affiliations, names or positions in order to confuse voters; putting up dead or false candidates; threatening to and placing ICE, police and other intimidating individuals at polling entrances while making public threats to arrest anyone guilty of anything who comes to vote; and so many more awful methods. NONE of these is the fault or responsibility of the VOTER.
—Voter Fraud—of which there is HARDLY ANY—IS the responsibility of an individual voter or group of voters. This involves people who do or attempt to vote more than once, or in more than one location, or use fake IDs or fake names to register or vote.
***************************************
Currently (2018), 270 Electoral College votes are needed to “win” a Presidential election in the USA. Each State is allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which may change each decade according to the size of each State’s population as determined in the Census*).
2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore —Electoral College: 538 total/271 “won”
—No. of popular votes Bush received: 50,460,810 = Bush LOST by 543,816 votes
—Election decided by a Supreme Court vote, which gave the “win” to Bush
“History will most likely record this as the first known illegal take-over of the White House. Dozens of people were involved, but most remember only a few names. Jeb Bush – George W’s brother – was governor of Florida and Katherine Harris was Secretary of State. With her job as Secretary of State, Harris simultaneously co-chairedGeorge W. Bush‘s Florida election campaign, served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and took time off from her “day” job to go around the country stumping for Bush.
“…Harris declared George W [Bush] the winner by just a mere 536 votes (.009786%) over Democratic opponent Al Gore. Florida state election law didn’t require the Secretary of State to order a statewide recount, not even in such a ridiculously tight election. But this article by The New York Times quoted a recount by the Miami Herald which said Gore would have won a flawless Florida election by 23,000 votes. Even if the Miami Herald was 90% wrong, Gore would still have won by more than 1500 votes….
“…Choicepoint and Database Technologies, two companies (later combined into one company) hired by Katherine Harris’s office to examine the legality of registered voters in Florida, had doctored the outcome. 57,700 legal voters were removed from the list and not allowed to vote. (Later, independent experts said most of those voters would have voted for Al Gore based on their party registration.)
“Choicepoint said 8,000 of those Florida voters were felons, thus negating them as legal voters. But as it turned out, those 8,000 Florida voters had committed only misdemeanors, not felonies, which did not negate their voting eligibility.
“There were several thousand more purged from the voting register simply because they had the same last name as convicted felons. Some were even purged because their personal computers had notes indicating they might commit a crime in the future.
“…Bush “won” in Florida by only 536 votes”
2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry
—Electoral College: 538 total/286 “won”
—No. of popular votes Bush received: 62,040,610 = Bush “won” by 3,012,171 votes
—Just as the election of 2000 was exposed as “fixed” after that election, so was the 2004 election.
“Had Kerry won Ohio, he would have won the election, he would have needed only 59,301 voters to switch their vote from Bush to win the state. The smear campaign (remember the “Swift Boat,” anti-Kerry lies**?) against Kerry, among other heinous practices, definitely impacted many people’s ability to vote and their choice of whom to vote for.”
“59 newspapers that had backed Bush in 2000 endorsed John Kerry in 2004. The Republican Party was split on Bush with some very powerful names breaking off.
“On a level playing field, Bush could never have won again in 2004. But since their 2000 tactics worked so well, and without repercussions, he and his party once again turned to illegal means, but this time it was coupled with a highly publicized immoral attack on their opponent.”
“The following is just a small sampling of the irregularities.
Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six states, was caught shredding Democratic registrations. The company was headed by Nathan Sproul, the former executive director of the Arizona State Republican Party.
Officials purged tens of thousands of eligible voters and neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives.
Short changed Democratic precincts in voting machine allocation.
Some Republican precincts had a 98% voter turnout while some Democratic precincts had only a 7% voter turnout.
GOP election officials in Warren County invented a terrorist threat to keep the media from monitoring the official vote count.
One in every four citizens who registered in 2004 were not listed on the registration polls.
80,000 votes for John Kerry was counted for George Bush.
357,000 voters were prevented from voting or did not have their vote counted. The overwhelming majority were Democrats.
Phone calls were made from a hotel across the street from the Ohio Republican Party headquarters to Democratic voters threatening them if they showed up to vote.
Kenneth Blackwell was Ohio’s Katherine Harris this time around. Blackwell, as Secretary of State, was in charge of vote counting, yet he was co-chair of President Bush’s re-election committee. (Does this sound like déjà vu “all-over-again”? Why not, it worked in 2000.)
“Practically every irregularity of the 2004 election helped George Bush and hurt John Kerry. Pollster Lou Harris was quoted as saying ‘Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen.“‘
2008: John McCain vs. Barack Obama
—Electoral College: 538 total/365 won
—No. of popular votes Obama received: 69,498,516 = Obama won by 9,550,193 votes
—If the grassroots organizations that “got out the vote” for Obama had been less successful, Democrats would have “lost” this as well. But, winning by over 9 MILLION votes is impossible to hide.
2012: Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama
—Electoral College: 538 total/332 won
—No. of popular votes Obama received: 65,915,795 = Obama won by 4,982,291 votes
—“About two weeks before the election, Anonymous released a video warning Karl Rove and his PAC, American Crossroads, that they were watching and if Rove and his group tried to rig the election through the electronic voting machines as they did in 2004, Anonymous would shut them down.
“When the election was over, ‘a group calling themselves The Protectors, believed to be comprised of Anonymous hackers, sent a letter to election transparency non-profit, Velvet Revolution, claiming to have thwarted attempts by GOP strategists to flip votes and rig the election in three swing states.’
“…[S]imple math produced by retired NSA analyst, Michael Dunihot:
“And mathematics showed changes in actual raw voting data that had no statistical correlation other than programmable computer fraud. This computer fraud resulted in votes being flipped from Democrat to Republican in every federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election since 2008 (thus far) and in the 2012 primary contests from other Republicans to Mitt Romney.”
2016: Donald J. Trump vs. Hillary Clinton
—Electoral College: 538 total/304 won
—No. of popular votes Trump received: 62,984,828 = Trump LOST by 2,868,686 votes
—“Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were potentially manipulated, according to prominent computer scientists and lawyers who have spoken with the Clinton campaign” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wisconsin-michigan-pennsylvania-election-hillary-clinton-hacked-manipulated-donald-trump-swing-a7433091.html
—“[S]tates controlled by Republicans across the country have enacted disenfranchising voting laws that unquestionably target non-Republican voters. By doing so, Republicans won’t have to work so hard to come up with new ideas of how to rig elections. If they can achieve their goal by reducing the number of ‘qualified’ Democratic voters to something less than Republican voters, then they are home free. No need for rigging elections anymore.”
This election was one of the worst uses of Republican-funded and -managed voter suppression to defraud, obstruct, deregister, disenfranchise and block Democratic voters in US history. “The 2016 election was the first presidential contest in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), because the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a long history of discrimination no longer need to have their proposed voting changes approved by the federal government. …14 states—including important swing states—had new voting restrictions in place.”
For example (and there are HUNDREDS like this): “Donald Trump ‘carried’ the state by 27,000 votes, but 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked the required forms of voter ID. Turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest level in 20 years and fell by 52,000 in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives.”
Historically, and particularly in 2016, African-Americans were expected to vote for Democrats, like Hillary Clinton.
Also,
“On Election Day, there were 868 fewer polling places in states with a long history of voting discrimination, like Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina. These changes impacted hundreds of thousands of voters, yet received almost no coverage in the media.”
Making voting more difficult to access (by having fewer polling places, putting them further apart geographically, closing polling stations for early voting, etc.) in areas that poorer people, elderly people and college students would vote (all individuals who ordinarily use public transportation or lack vehicles of their own) disproportionately affects Democratic voters adversely, as Republicans well know.
“[Trump‘s] campaign openly boasted that ‘we have three major voter-suppression operations under way’ to reduce turnout among African Americans, young women, and liberals….The election results showed that when more people vote, Democrats do better. That’s why the GOP is so invested in voter suppression.” https://www.thenation.com/article/did-republicans-rig-the-election/
—“[A] report from the Government Accountability Office, …found that strict voter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee had decreased turnout by roughly 2 to 3 percent, with the largest drops among black, young, and new voters.
“According to a comprehensive study by MIT political scientist Charles Stewart, an estimated 16 million people—12 percent of all voters—encountered at least one problem voting in 2016. There were more than 1 million lost votes, Stewart estimates, because people ran into things like ID laws, long lines at the polls, and difficulty registering. Trump won the election by a total of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin….
“[W]hen Republicans took control of 26 state legislatures in the wave election of 2010, they passed a slew of laws making it harder to vote. Twenty-two states have adopted new voting restrictions since then, more than half of which first went into effect in 2016….Republican-controlled statehouses have already passed more voting restrictions in 2017 than they did in 2016 and 2015 combined. ” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/voter-suppression-wisconsin-election-2016/
**************************************
It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over
The WORST thing any candidate can do early in the counting process is concede. That was the key mistake made by Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Once they concede, it doesn’t matter who actually “wins,” because concession means they have withdrawn from the race, formally. PLEASE tell your local and regional/state candidates: DO NOT concede, NO MATTER WHAT, until ALL legal challenges are finished and ALL votes are counted, which may take MONTHS.
Usually, it takes weeks to find out who actually wins any hotly contested races. For the 2018 mid-term races, due to the time it takes to count so many paper ballots and awaiting outcomes of legal challenges in “broken” states guilty of election fraud (polling location problems, broken machines, wrong ballots, illegal registration purging and discarding absentee ballots, etc), we could be looking at much longer.
“We are happy to connect with voters however they need! Call us at 866-OUR-VOTE or text ‘Our Vote’ to 97779 with your questions or reports of problems. We’re here through election day to #protectthevote”
“What kinds of voting problems might you run into?
✦ A problem with your voting machine
✦ If you want to change a vote you made on your ballot/machine
✦ Having your ID challenged
✦ Your name isn’t on the voter list
✦ Polls closing early
✦ Being intimidated or pressured at the polling location
“If you run into these, or any other problems while voting, take action right away.
1) Talk to a poll worker BEFORE you finish voting and tell them about the problem. They are there to help you.
2) If they don’t or can’t help you, ask for their supervisor.
3) If you still have a problem, call Election Protection Hotline at (866) OUR-VOTE.”
*The way the USA population is counted for the every-ten-years USA Census is hotly disputed right now (2018. For the 2020 election (unless there is a special election prior to that, WHICH IS POSSIBLE), the Census’ totals will be THE deciding factor for every state that still has “winner takes all” for its Electoral College (see above). There are also security issues (cyber and other), issues of “citizenship” being contested and may suppress participation in the Census due to fears of being deported if “counted,” and other problems: “The 2020 Census Is Already in Big Trouble”
and “Why America’s next census is controversial”
[T]he most prominent census-related debate has been the growing conversation about gerrymandering. The enumerated purpose of the census in the Constitution is to use the data gleaned to redraw congressional districts and reallocate representation to fit the population. Over the past few decades, as politics and demographics have become increasingly intertwined, the institutional incentives to game that system have mounted. Especially as Republicans have embraced their status as a party for white men, they’ve become more and more adept at using the census, especially the redistricting process, in order to maintain partisan advantage. But that advantage has been built mostly with the census data already in hand—influencing the data itself, perhaps by biasing it against noncitizens, would add another potent weapon to an arsenal that’s already proven its dominance over American electoral politics. And that is to say nothing of the possibility that between foreign and domestic interventions in data quality, the census could be rendered unusable or unreliable for those political processes altogether. Without a census, there is no American democracy.
**”Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, formerly known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was a political group of United States Swift boat veterans and former prisoners of war of the Vietnam War, formed during the 2004 presidential election campaign for the purpose of opposing John Kerry’s candidacy for the presidency….[T]here was not a speck of truth to the allegations, and the Bush inter-circle was exposed as being behind the attacks. Even John McCain questioned the ad and condemned it as “dishonest and dishonorable”
from 
from 
Sally Ember, Ed.D. 
You must be logged in to post a comment.