Below is my column in USA Today on the need for a federal commission on the 2020 election. While I opposed the challenge and the call for the ten-day commission, I do believe that a real commission is warranted. Indeed, the violence yesterday only further shows the deep divisions in this country over these lingering questions. However, there must be the commitment to a real commission — not another placebo commission
Here is the column:
I hate federal commissions. I have always hated federal commissions. Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.
With the challenge to the certification of election votes, some Republican members of Congress are calling to delay the proceedings for 10 days and impanel a commission to “audit” the results. There is precedent for such a commission. Just not good precedent. Indeed, citing the Electoral Commission of 1877 as a model of good constitutional process is like citing the Titanic as a model of good maritime navigation. The commission was an utter disaster.
The 1876 election commission
The commission was formed after the contested 1876 presidential election of Democrat Samuel Tilden and Rutherford Hayes. Tilden won the popular vote and was just one vote short of the electoral votes needed to win the White House. The election was marred by open fraud, including South Carolina certifying a vote of 101% of the eligible voters.
As a compromise, the commission was formed and consisted of 15 members: five Supreme Court justices and five members from each chamber of Congress. The key was that it was supposed to be composed of seven Democrats, seven Republicans and one independent. However, in a move that seemed calculated to secure his vote for Tilden, the Illinois legislature then moved to appoint the independent, Justice David Davis, to the Senate. If they wanted to buy his vote, it was a colossal failure when Davis decided to take the seat and leave the commission. He was replaced by a Republican, and the commission voted along strictly partisan lines to install Hayes, not Tilden.
In many ways, the Electoral Commission was a model for most federal commissions, which are designed for good politics and not good government.
An example is the 9/11 Commission, which was stacked with reliable allies to guarantee that no one — and no party — would be blamed for the negligence leading to up to the attacks.
The commission spent two years and millions of dollars. It went to almost a dozen countries, interviewed more than 1,000 people and archived over 2.5 million pages of documents. The result was a report that blamed no one specifically and since concluded that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were “not well served,” in the words of the commission’s chairman, by the FBI and CIA.
You see, if everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. Despite showing that the attacks could have been prevented under existing laws and powers, the budgets and powers of both agencies were then massively increased.
That is not what we need. There are three reasons why the need for a real commission is needed:
►First, and most important, this was an unprecedented election in the reliance of mail-in voting and the use of new voting systems and procedures. We need to review how that worked down to the smallest precincts and hamlets.
►Second, possibly tens of millions of voters believe that this election was rigged and stolen. I am not one of them. However, the integrity of our elections depends on the faith of the electorate.
Roughly 40% of that electorate have lingering doubts about whether their votes actually matter. Most of the cases challenging the election were not decided on the merits. Indeed, it seems they haven’t even been allowed for discovery. Instead, they were largely dismissed on jurisdictional or standing groups or under the “laches” doctrine that they were brought too late. Those allegations need to be conclusively proven or disproven in the interests of the country.
►Third, there were problems. There was not proof of systemic fraud or irregularities, but there were problems of uncounted votes, loss of key custodial information and key differences in the rules governing voting and tabulations.
We have spent billions to achieve greater security and reliability after prior election controversies. Indeed, we had a prior election commission that failed to achieve those fundamental goals.
The importance of having a commission
A real commission will take a couple years to fully address these allegations. It will be meaningless if it’s stacked by the same reliable political cutouts used historically in federal commissions. It should be formed on a commitment of absolute transparency with public hearings and public archiving of underlying material before the issuance of any final report. That way, the public at large can analyze and contribute to the review of this evidence.
There is one other task for Congress. It should rescind and replace the Electoral Count Act passed after the Hayes-Tilden election. It is one of the worst conceived and crafted federal laws on the books. The constitutionality of that act has long been challenged, including some who argue that Congress has nothing but a purely ceremonial role in opening state certifications and counting them.
Courts are likely to recognize that Congress has a more substantive role, particularly when rivaling sets of electors are presented or there is clear evidence of fraud. However, the validity of such electoral votes should be left largely to the courts in challenges in the given states. That is why the current challenge is unwarranted. There is no serious basis to challenge the validity of the electoral votes certified by the states.
Reality check for Trump’s fantasies:Judges aren’t his pawns on election lawsuits.
The main challenge, however, remains the same: Whether Congress can appoint a real federal commission without rigging the result by appointing partisan members. In 1877, to quote from a speech of Ohio Sen. Allen Granberry Thurman, “It was perfectly clear that any bill that gave the least advantage, ay, the weight of the dust in the balance, to either party, could not become the law of the land.”
Nothing has changed. The stakes are too high to allow even a dust particle to tip the difference on the ultimate findings. The dust-free option requires a dependent, not independent, commission. Otherwise, the public will be the loser.
So, let’s have a commission, but let’s make it a real one.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley
Ignorant Republicans Riot And Don’t Even Get Any Big-Screen TVs
https://babylonbee.com/news/ignorant-republicans-riot-and-dont-even-get-a-free-big-screen-tv-out-of-it/?utm_content=buffer4c72f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
https://image-cdn.parler.com/A/t/AtJgYUsAsd.jpeg
In 2017 people protested the “unite the right rally” in Charlottesville and a white woman was killed, and everyone blamed the right.
In 2021 people protested to “Stop the steal” in Washington and a white woman was killed, and everyone blamed the right.
Only the left is allowed to protest.
Only the lives of those on the left matter.
Rep. Meijer: I experienced the heinous assault on Capitol; now, time to face reality
… I was one of the few Republicans who had already acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect, and earlier in the week I had joined a handful of GOP colleagues in noting our constitutional responsibility to certify the Electoral College results. We had seen calls on the far right for the vice president to pull an imaginary “Pence Card” and overturn the election results.
To the fringe, Vice President Mike Pence’s failure to seize fictional powers was tantamount to treason and there were suggestions Pence be put to death. While the Capitol was being assaulted by his supporters who were duped into believing the election was in fact a landslide victory and the true results could be overturned, Trump egged on these violent delusions.
… Hours later, after the Capitol was cleared of insurrectionists, with windows shattered and the smell of tear gas lingering, the consequences of his dangerous lies became clear. As we moved to accept Arizona’s electors, a fellow freshman lingered near a voting terminal, voting card in hand. My colleague told me that efforts to overturn the election were wrong, and that voting to certify was a constitutional duty. But my colleague feared for family members, and the danger the vote would put them in. Profoundly shaken, my colleague voted to overturn.
An angry mob succeeded in threatening at least one member of Congress from performing what that member understood was a constitutional responsibility. …
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2021/01/09/opinion-after-heinous-assault-time-reckon-reality/6599593002/
“Rep. Meijer: I experienced the heinous assault on Capitol”
So ? What do you expect when elections are conducted lawlessly ?
The rest of this is pointless.
I have no problems with what Pence did. I also have no problems with what many on the right asked him todo.
Everything goes to hell when elections are lawless.
I would note that Pence and congress clearly have the power to reject the election results.
They did so in the past. I would suggest looking into the election of 1876.
Congress should never have to do so. States should conduct elections lawfully transparently and above reproach.
But when they fail to do so, Congress is the constitutional fall back.
There was no “insurrection” here – though there may eventually be one.
There were alot of protestors who have good reason to question the results of the election, demanding congress step in as the constitution allows.
No one sought to have anyone act outside the constitutions guidelines.
Lets be clear – there has been little doubt since Nov. 4 that Biden will be inaugurated.
But nothing has changed the FACT that a plurality of people beleive the election was fraudulent.
I would encourage Biden and you and democrats and the left to continue to pretend otherwise and to continue to beleive you have power and legitimacy that you do not.
And I would ask how you plan on repeating this in 2022 and 2024 ?
Biden won the least number of counties in the US of anyone actuallly elected ever.
This is part of the reason that republicans nearly retook the house.
Democrats will be in deep trouble in the house in 2022. They can not win the house through massive voter fraud in big cities.
Next you can pretty well bet that Republicans will find a means to thwart voter Fraud by 2022.
Either states will fix their lawless election processes or some less scrupulous republicans will use the flaws in the current system to disrupt it.
We have seen this nonsense before. Every breach of norms that democrats have done in the past has come back to bite them.
Why do you expect this to be different.
But I will go further – you have a HUGE problem you can not fix.
There will be doubts about this election forever. And those doubts will ALWAYS be whether Democrats stole the election.
Investigations in the coming months can make those doubts far greater – but nothing can alevitate them.
Democrats have an albatross arround their necks that is going to be a problem for a really long time.
I would further note that democrat governors went back to lockdowns in late november and December – despite the fact that we know they are ineffective.
This appears to have tanked the recovery – and a 2nd dip will not be easily fixed.
Unemployment shot up for the first time since April. We are likely to see horrible numbers elewhere shortly.
Governors have actively or incompetently thwarted vaccinations. We could have vaccinated 40M americans in December,
We managed to do about 2M. We could have vaccinated another 60M before the inauguration.
Instead we have the guy who locked himself in the basement for the past year as president.
This would also be the guy who served as vice president during the weakest economic recovery since the great depression.
Do you really think he is going to get the engine of the economy running again ?
Just to be clear – threatening congressmen who are just doing their constitutional duty is not OK right ?
So we can jail every leftist who complains about the senators, representatives, president, or courts doing their constitutiional duty as they see it ?
Do you idiots actually read what you write ?
We do not all agree on what the constitutional duty of those in government is. That is at the core of ALL of our political division.
Of course the left is completely clueless having no consistent concept of what the constitution requires – except that it bars republicans from doing anything and democrats can do as they please.
Regardless, two people shouting at each “follow the constitution” – does not make one of them a criminal because they disagree.
You are constantly wrong. You are not an insurrectionist because you are wrong.
Within the year of the adoption of the Constitution, the Founders held an election in which voters were required to be male, European, 21 and own 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres.
By design, the election was solemn and restricted, with a turnout of 11.6%.
There were no benefits, entitlements or “free stuff” on the ballots – not much motive for dependents and parasites to vote.
In order to obtain more and evermore benefits and entitlements, more and more dependents and beneficiaries (the “poor” and public workers) have been imported and added to the voting roles to increase their chances of enjoying the redistribution of the wealth of others.
American elections, once solemn affairs concerning the perpetuation of freedom, are now nothing but huge, frenzied campaigns to obtain benefits, entitlements and “free stuff” for the dependents and participants, aka “voters.”
How long can that persist?
Dear Professor Turley, I have one simple solution that will avoid all these compressed wranglings about states and federal constitutions. Just move the national elections to the second Tuesday of September every two years.
1. That leaves time for audits.
2. That sets the expectations that there will be audits.
3. That forces states to adopt a fail-safe system for voting to avoid audits (and embarrassment).
4. That opens up the entire voting process, so that it is not compressed into a timeframe that can be easily targeted by criminals,
or corrupt election officials, who only have to worry about keeping their misdeeds “under the rug” a short time. If misdeeds are sorted
and examined over four months instead of two, and are a matter of course, then far fewer people with little integrity would sign up for
participation. They would be scared their acts would be made transparent, because time and auditing experience will improve.
I have mentioned this to as many influential people on Twitter as I can think of. It needs to be considered in the U.S. Congress.
In addition, so does a Voter I.D. tied to a Social Security Number tied to a birth certificate or to citizenship status. If all that is tied in, then as soon as Social Security gets the notice of death, then the voter I.D. is also automatically cancelled. No dead people voting, no double -quadruple voting, no two state voting. The Voter I.D. must be changed just as a person must change a Driver License when moving to a new state. I know of no states that issue a new Driver License without checking a national database that the applicant does not hold a license from a different state which must be canceled before issuing a new one.
Insurance companies also keep nationwide records of accidents per driver, claims per driver.
Therefore, if elections are the pillar, one must assume a national registration system is already do-able.
Audits need not take much time at all.
A properly done independent audit of an election takes no more time than counting the vote.
And there is absolutely no reason we can not count the entire vote on election day in near real time.
95% of counties in this country manage that every single election.
BTW shortening the counting time is a significant antifraud measure.
Whenever precincts or counties are coming in late – we should presume fraud.
regardless – do you think that manufacturers test every single product they produce ?
Of source not. They do carefully designed random sampling and that allows them to acheive 6 sigma quality control.
IF we had 6Sigma election systems fraud would be nearly imposible and inconsequential.
We can audit the entire election using independently done carefully designed random sampling in a few hours – and be more certain of correct results than with a recount.
“We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.”
– Professor Turley
______________
– America needs two vote counts in every state – one democrat and one republican.
– America needs elections wherein voters present at a polling place, be certified and execute a ballot in real time.
– America needs elections that occur on Tuesday, one day, one 24-hour period (distant voting results must be communicated electronically in three formats, with no vote-by-mail).
– America needs votes completed by hand.
– America needs votes counted by hand.
– America needs elections wherein the vote is solemn.
– America needs campaign contributions limited and restricted to voters who are citizens and voters of the state they vote in, precluding any and all contributions from non-citizens and non-residents of states, and precluding contributions by any and all entities other than individual citizens who are voters.
– America must abolish and fully abrogate the unconstitutional, socially engineered redistributionist welfare state, its entitlements and benefits, and by that act America will reduce the desire to vote of hundreds of millions of parasites who vote merely to obtain benefits and entitlements. When there is no “free stuff” to vote for, parasites will lose interest in voting, making elections substantially more rational, coherent, scrutable and manageable.
You can not control campaign contributions – that is a pipe dream of the left.
You are far better of list letting the money flow.
Democrats outspent republicans more than 2:1 in 2020, They payed $10B to get the 40K votes necescary to defeat Trump.
We are well past the point at which political money has massively diminishing returns.
Dont worry about it.
The rest of your suggestions are excellent.
I would note that there are many ways to conduct a secure and trustworthy election. Not ONE.
But there are 10,000 times more ways to conduct an insecure election.
There is more than one way to prevent election fraud and get trustworthy elections.
But the vast majority of ways to conduct an election are BOTH untrustworthy and fraud prone.
While I agree that there needs to be a federal election commission, how in the world could we find truly non partisan people to staff it? Judes to FBI agents have all behaved as Democrat political activists.
We need impartial justice, and I don’t know how to achieve that.
You neither need to – nor want to.
You want the most partisan investigators you possibly can have, You want the equivalent of the Mueller team – except without the bullying and intimidation.
If there was no consequential fraud you can expect that investigator to come back with the equivalent of the Mueller report.
“I looked thoroughly and found nothing – but I am still sure there must be something there”.
That will not satifiy the few die hard idiots – just as way to many on the left do not realize the mueller report is a damning indictment of the FBI and DOJ. 22 months millions of dollars and nothing but innuendo.
If that is the result of having a Sydney Powell investigate election fraud – then we can safely conclude there is none.
You do not want a bipartisan commission or a non-partisan commission – that will produce a white wash.
You want a pit bull – and if you are Joe Biden you hope that like with Trump – they find nothing.
And that is how we get results we can trust.
I would further note that any inquiry that does not provide a list of recomendations to improve trust in elections is worthless.
Finally I would note that a REAL independent audit is quite easy, need not take long, and should be SOP.
Once again I am firmly in Professor Turley’s corner on this….and I salute his laying out the situation and relevant history of the latest disaster in our election system.
Do this in the public eye…leave no stone unturned….plow that rocky ground….and let there be no sacred cows.
That shall never happen.
ABC News stated their case to “cleanse” Society of Trump Supporters….and just reinforced the reasons we believe the Election was stolen by the Democrats.
Nothing has been done to prove those concerns wrong…..as the good Professor pointed out.
So where does this leave us…..Wednesday it was only a few people that breached the sanctity of the Capitol…do you think this grave concern about our system of government, system of law, and the integrity of Judges and Politicians will just wither and die a natural death?
Don’t bet the farm on that happening.
So where does this leave us…..Wednesday it was only a few people that breached the sanctity of the Capitol…do you think this grave concern about our system of government, system of law, and the integrity of Judges and Politicians will just wither and die a natural death?
Good post Ralph!
I believe where that leaves the millions of people that voted against the established political class in 2016 and then increased that base to well over 70 million is wide awake. What we’ve seen over the last 4 years is an all out assault to completely discredit the man that slipped passed the establishment’s “election security” that was supposed to put Clinton in the White House. He even got passed the “election insurance” trap laid by the deep state. This base is not stupid. They’re not fooled by rhetoric. Because they don’t trust the political class, they look for facts and evidence to arrive at the truth. So for 4 years the establishment threw one allegation after another at this president. They failed and his base grew. They impeached him and his base grew. They employed the MSM and Big Tech against him and his base grew. The IC/FBI/DOJ were used against him and his base grew. The courts were weaponized against him and his base grew. He delivered on promises and his base grew. Then we get to 2020, an election year, and the establishment’s enemy is stronger than ever. So what does the establishment’s “election security” strategy need to be now? Find a way to destroy Trump’s 2 signature accomplishments: financial and national security. Enter Covid-19, lockdown the nation, release the BLM/Antifa hounds, destroy small business, out of “fear,” make mail-in voting go nationwide. Oops. His base had grown by how much!? “Stop counting! We need more ballots!” “Alright, start counting again.” And like magic, a Trump base that had organically grown to well over 70 million found themselves losing to a Biden/Harris ticket that had no legs down ballot. That’s right, the “election security” cabal didn’t leave this election to chance and they didn’t even bother to hide it.
But it doesn’t end there. The establishment isn’t finished with Trump and his base. They need to find a way to destroy the legacy of the Trump administration and make the millions of people that have supported him ashamed to have ever done so. This is where the establishment truly miscalculates. That will never happen.
The left and democrats does not seem to grasp that the continued persecution of Trump and Trump supporters will end badly, and possibly violently.
If your objective is to utterly destroy your opponent – you require them to fight to the death and wounder animals are the most dangerous.
The wisest thing that the left could do right now is to let go and move on, and hope that over time those still ferverently supporting Trump weaken in their support. Attacking will assure that DOES NOT happen.
But they are going to act stupidly.
But they are going to act stupidly.
John,
By what standards? Classical Liberalism? Yes. CCP? USSR? No. 2020 will be the year the American form of government Democrats and Republicans fought for control over the last couple centuries died. We are now at that 1763 moment where we will start accumulating a long train of abuses. Democrats will have 2 years to prove to millions and millions of Americans we are going to remain a constitutional republic, or we are going to be something else altogether.
And they are doing everything in their power to prove untrustworthy.
The purpose of this new impeachment effort is to Bar Trump from running again.
Why ?
If Biden won legitimately, in 20204 he will be running as the incumbent and he will handily defeat Trump.
He will defeat anyone – so long as he governs well.
I do not think Trump is running again.
But democrats are so afraid of that they need to impeach him ? AGAIN ?
I am trying to figure out what world we are in.
The Bidens get caught with their hand in the cookie jar in Ukraine and Trump gets impeached for asking for an investigation into the cookie theft ?
I would further note – much ignored in this entire mess is that The Chris Kerry’s Archer Devon’s Hunter Biden’s and others implicated in all of this – are not just Joe Biden’s family – but the children or relatives of many of our ruling elites.
But then democrats managed to re-elect Robert Menedez after being caught in a massive political corruption scandal that if not criminal was so repulisive he should have hung his head and gone into hiding.
And yet democrats ran him again and narrowly re-elected him.
There have been real republican scandals (and fake ones) – those people are GONE.
I do not know that republicans are more honest than democrats.
They just have the good sense to be embarrassed when caught and go into hiding.
I admire Sen. Franken. When he was caught – he resigned.
I hate commissions, but I think we need one to determine whether the President illegally extorted a weaker nation to provide political attacks against an opponent.
Is that how that works? Or do I need storm the Capitol first? If so – must it be a joint session of Congress or can I just storm the Capitol during a pro forma session? Or – does the guy I enable need to incite me to storm it? Or, does Biden FIRST need to extort Trudeau into providing political attacks on Ted Cruz’s dad? But then, given the last 4 administrations worth of precedent – you wouldn’t be around to defend him… as when the calendar switches over to (D), you develop more expansive views of impeachment. So if Biden were impeached for demanding Trudeau provide ammo against Ted Cruz by way of a family member…. Is THAT when I need to storm the Capitol?
Sorry… I’m not a lawyer, so this is all very confusing for me.
I wish there some easier code, a moral code, a simple code than these intricacies and fineries of the law.
Alas, though – if there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, the only guidance we have beyond the law is which green room has the freshest M&Ms.
The left stormed the capital in 2018 – the media did not completely freak out.
Almost 4 times as many people entered the capital in 2018 and 4 times as many were arrested.
But no one was killed by the capital police. Because the police are not allowed to kill leftists – only those on the right.
The protesters didn’t storm the Capitol Building in 2018. They entered legally and were peaceful, though noisy. They did not break in. They did not break windows. They didn’t break into offices, they didn’t rifle though the Parliamentarians papers, strewing them on the floor. They didn’t steal things from Pelosi’s office. None of them were carrying flex-cuffs to tie up hostages. None of them were threatening to execute the Vice President.
The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol Building this week did NOT enter legally. They were NOT peaceful. They broke in, they broke windows, they broke into offices, they tossed documents on the floor, some said they were looking for Pence to execute him for failing to do what Trump wanted, a noose was set up outside the building, some were carrying flex-cuffs, …
If you cannot honestly deal with the difference, you’re a disgusting person. Shame on you.
“the police are not allowed to kill leftists”
You are also a liar, John, because you know GD well that they do kill people on the left.
It is hard to find video of the 2018 “protests” but there were actually far MORE people inside the capital.
They filled up several floors of the capital. They invaded hearing rooms with proceedings in session.
BTW we do not have a parliament. That would be the UK.
They did actually break into offices and they actually confronted numerous senators both democrats and republicans – several of whom changed their votes
As to the your claims – you do not actually know what you say to be true. Lots of threats were made.
Nearly all of hollywood (some of whom were at the 2018 attack on the capital) has threatened the president.
As to 2020 – many of these protestors were law enforcement from other states.
No hostages were taken.
Your own video accomplishes nothing beyond showing large numbers of people chanting things that you do not wish to hear.
It’s easy to find videos of the 2018 protests. You must be inept at Google searches.
No one said we have a parliament. You just imagine that for some reason you need to point out that we don’t have a parliament. You’re pretty nutty.
“It’s easy to find videos of the 2018 protests. You must be inept at Google searches.”
No it is easy to find what Google wants you to find. It is much harder to find the actual truth.
It requires work to find the videos of violent protests this summer – even though we know that $2B+ in damage occurred.
But google favors the “wall of moms” daytime videos of portland as an example over those with protestors lighting fires and throwing rocks.
“No one said we have a parliament. You just imagine that for some reason you need to point out that we don’t have a parliament.”
Just giving you your own medicine.
You are constantly fixating on twisted and usually WRONG meanings of words.
National guard != Police
Active Shooter != protestor.
Parliment != congress.
Anonymous the Stupid is too stupid to recognize that Google controls what he sees. He requires someone else to do his thinking.
Generally google is really poor at censoring immediate events, but as things move into the past anything favorable to conservatives or disadvantageous to the left gets increasingly hard to find – even when you know exactly what you are looking for.
Google has a near monopoly, but their algorithms push leftist points ahead and conservative points behind. Anonymous the Stupid doesn’t know that, but he doesn’t want to learn. You you know why? Because he is Anonymous the Stupid.
Just to be clear – if all of this continues – actual insurrection may eventually come about.
But this was no more an insurection than the Kavanaugh protests.
This was a large number of people strongly voicing disagreement with what congress was doing at the moment – just as in 2018.
The difference is that the claims against Kavanaugh were never credible.
While there is ZERO question that the 2020 election was conducted in violation of state election laws and constitutions.
Those in 2018 were protesting the lawful actions of congress.
Those in 2020 were protesting lawless government.
Neither are “insurection” – YET.
I would however suggest that you read the decalarion of independence – Insurection can be legitimately justified. And if we are not there, we are incredibly close and getting closer all the time.
I would further note that your efforts to silence and censor these people will only make this worse.
The more you attempt to suppress the voices of 75M people – the more you empower the actual extremists among them.
When you slant the news, when you silence people on social media, when you try to shutdown any means they can communicate,
you amplify the voices of the least rational and your push people to violence.
I would also note the bare chested horned “protestor” who sat in the vice presidents seat in the Senate has been arrested – he is a paid actor, tied to BLM Antifa and democrats.
OOPS!!!!!
“I would also note the bare chested horned “protestor” who sat in the vice presidents seat in the Senate has been arrested – he is a paid actor, tied to BLM Antifa and democrats. OOPS!!!!!”
You make these endless proclamations without presenting evidence, and this one, like so many of your other ones, is false. Are you just ignorant, or are you purposefully lying?
The guy’s name is Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, and he doesn’t have ties to BLM, Antifa and Democrats.
You can read the references here –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Angeli
“The guy’s name is Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, and he doesn’t have ties to BLM, Antifa and Democrats.”
To nail you with your own medicine – PROVE IT!!!
You can’t.
Regardless, there is evidence that he has appeared at other Trump rallies.
That does not preclude his being paid by Sorros etc. But it makes it less likely.
This would all be easier if the media could be trusted.
But they can’t. I can beleive a Guardian story – with fotos of Chansley at another Trump rally.
But I can not trust them must beyond that.
I already did prove it with the references in the Wikipedia article.
I am no longer sure what we are arguing about.
But Wikipedia is not proof.
They are a source, they are often right. But they are no different from a claim by you or me.
They are not a primary source.
Just as the media is not a primary source.
A wikipedia link is an appeal to authority.
It is a fallacy.
Fallacy means that the assertion you are offering is not a valid argument.
It may be true, it might not.
Ah, Wikipedia does not and can not prove that he does not have ties to others.
You can not prove a negative.
“If you cannot honestly deal with the difference, you’re a disgusting person. Shame on you.”
Of course I can tell the difference – the only one killed was a protestor killed by capital police.
There was no immediate danger of bodily harm to the officer or others at the time.
The officer did not retreat as one is required to when they or another is not in immediate danger of bodily harm.
You do not seem to grasp that by law all (including police) use of force must be proportionate.
You can not shoot someone for poinding on a door (which she was not).
There are no paintings in the capital defaced, no statues destroyed,
““the police are not allowed to kill leftists”
You are also a liar, John, because you know GD well that they do kill people on the left.”
And yet through the summer – not a SINGLE LEFTIST PROTESTOR WAS KILLED BY POLICE.
Active Shooter != Protestor.
National Guardsmen != Police.
I would note that even if I was actually wrong – which I am not – that would not change the broader fact that YOU are treating those on the left to a different standard than those on the right.
You either know that or are unable to grasp reality through your ideological biases.
This is precisely what gets us into wars.
The nazi’s claimed their invasion of Poland was justified
“through the summer – not a SINGLE LEFTIST PROTESTOR WAS KILLED BY POLICE.”
Prove it.
“YOU are treating those on the left to a different standard than those on the right.”
Prove it.
“Sicknick would be uninjured today if he had followed orders and procedures.”
Prove it.
“The Officer who shot the Airforce Vet violated the same directive. His actions constitute murder. He shot and killed an unarmed person.”
He had no way of knowing that she was unarmed. She had already illegally broken into the Capitol, others had illegally broken the glass of the door into the Speaker’s Lobby, and she was starting to climb through that window in an attempt to get into the Speaker’s Lobby, which enters directly onto the House floor, where members of Congress may still have been inside. The rioters were trying to get into the House Chamber. She was warned that there was an armed guard on the other side of the door, and she started to climb through anyway.
You are nuts if you think it’s cut and dried whether the Officer could legally shoot to protect members of Congress from insurrectionists in that context.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/01/08/the-journey-of-ashli-babbitt/
““through the summer – not a SINGLE LEFTIST PROTESTOR WAS KILLED BY POLICE.”
Prove it.”
Check ACLED data.
Regardless this is a stupid demand on you part.
The media is all over everything that happens to a protestor – especitally if they are black.
““YOU are treating those on the left to a different standard than those on the right.”
Prove it.”
Read your own posts – it is self evident. YOU are the proof of double standards.
““Sicknick would be uninjured today if he had followed orders and procedures.”
Prove it.”
He was ordered not to engage protestors, he did. He died.
““The Officer who shot the Airforce Vet violated the same directive. His actions constitute murder. He shot and killed an unarmed person.””
“He had no way of knowing that she was unarmed.”
Not the standard.
You are not entitled to shoot people because you do not know they are not armed.
You are not even allowed to shoot people who ARE armed.
You may only use deadly force in response to an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm.
That is the legal standard in most if not all of the US.
It is clear from YOUR video that was not the case.
No one in the video EXCEPT the officer was pointing a weapon until AFTER he shot.
In fact no weapons were visible until he shot her.
AFTER he shot her several weapons appeared – but no protestor fired DESPITE the immediate actual threat of death of bodily harm.
Only the protestors followed the law with respect to use of deadly force.
BTW this is not a policy issue – this is actual law.
“She had already illegally broken into the Capitol”
Arguably not true and not relevant.
“others had illegally broken the glass of the door into the Speaker’s Lobby”
Others – not her. Further the officer would not have been justified in shooting those who broke the glass.
That is still not an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury.
Everyone except the police had already left the lobby, He was no longer protecting anyone, and he had a duty to retreat.
“and she was starting to climb through that window in an attempt to get into the Speaker’s Lobby”
Not as evidenced in the video YOU provided.
Not that it matters – you can not shoot someone for climbing through a window.
“which enters directly onto the House floor, where members of Congress may still have been inside.”
No;t relevant – the 2018 Kavanugh protestors broke into a number of senators offices and confronted them directly.
None was shot.
“The rioters were trying to get into the House Chamber.”
I am pretty sure you are incorrect, that this was the lobby to the speakers chambers.
But it would not matter.
“She was warned that there was an armed guard on the other side of the door”
Not that I heard and still not relevant.
The police are not authorized to shoot whoever they please just because they have warned them.
“and she started to climb through anyway.”
Again not relevant and not what your video shows.
“You are nuts if you think it’s cut and dried whether the Officer could legally shoot to protect members of Congress from insurrectionists in that context.”
Your spin is false. This nonsense that this was an insurection is idiocy.
Had these protestors actually succeeded in shutting down congress, or alternatively voting not to certify the election – that STILL would not have been an insurection.
Calling it one is stupid – if that was an insurection – so was the 2019 Kavanaugh protest. So was the BLM/Antifa violence this summer.
Further there were no members of congress in the lobby at the time.
But even if there were – there is no right to kill people to protect congressmen from angry constituents.
They have to be an imminent threat of death or bodily harm.
There was no evidence at that moment the protestors were armed,
None were brandishing weapons much less firing them.
The officer was not trying to make an arrest.
He was acting lawlessly.
It is far more cut and dried that the average police shooting.
I do not have to condone breaking windows to grasp that you can not murder people for it.
If you could thousands would have died this summer.
You clearly don’t understand what it means to prove something. Making another claim without evidence isn’t proof.
I’ve reached my fill. You’ll undoubtedly continue to drone on, but I’m not going to respond further.
“You clearly don’t understand what it means to prove something.. Making another claim without evidence isn’t proof.”
Circular reasoning, All proof is inherently either another claim or something we axiomatically accept as true.
I told you to check ACLED data. You are correct that is just another claim. The data that ACLED collects is just more claims.
None of us are present at every single BLM protest in the country and every single location within it. There is no assertion that is not “just another claim”. Every single thing that you do not directly observe personally – is just another claim. And every statement by someone that they did or did not observe something is “just another claim”
Put simply at some point each of us must ultimately except information on trust.
You may not trust me – though I am rarely wrong and correct errors when I note them or when they are pointed out.
But you do not trust ACLED ? What about their sources – newspaper articles, and crime reports – do you trust those ?
At what point in your world does something change from “just another claim” to something you trust ?
You have a fixation on links. is a link to the onion or babylon Bee trustworthy ?
Much of what has been reported in the press is unreliable – why are you claiming a link to WaPo is trustworthy ?
“I’ve reached my fill. You’ll undoubtedly continue to drone on, but I’m not going to respond further.”
You said that some time ago, and yet you have continued.
Anonymous makes things up. With all the time spent on the Internet he has no life so he lives in fantasy.
BTW I did not claim the police never kill those on the left.
In fact – though at the moment there is no evidence of particular Bias by the police with respect to either the left or the right.
I strongly suspect that should things continue to escalate that the police on the streets will largely turn a blind eye to the conduct of the right. Those on the right supported the street cops as they are attacked by Antifa, BLM, democrats and the left.
In fact generally the left should be deeply concerned – while they control those who give orders, they near universally do NOT control those who enforce those orders – whether it is in the police or military. The east German govenment fell when ordinary police and soldiers refused to follow orders to attack protestors.
The protesters in 2018 didn’t kill any officers. The protesters this week killed Officer Brian Sicknick.
Watch this video and then show me a video of protesters in 2018 doing anything like this. You won’t be able to.
You’re a disgusting person to suggest that the two protests are analogous. Shame on you, shame, shame, shame.
In both 2018 and 2020 the capital police were properly orderd NOT to use violence against protestors who were not violent.
To cede space in the capital slowly, to buy time and not escalate, Officer Sicknick disobeyed that directive, and engaged in physical conflict with protestors.
The person who hit Sickneck with a fire extinguished was wrong, his actions were criminal.
But Sicknick would be uninjured today if he had followed orders and procedures.
The Officer who shot the Airforce Vet violated the same directive. His actions constitute murder. He shot and killed an unarmed person.
His actions were far worse than those alleged regarding George Floyd. Floyd had just passed an allegedly counterfeit $20. He was clearly high on Fentanyl, I would strongly suggest that you watch the police body cam video of Flyod PRIOR to and immediately following arrest. He was completely out of control and claiming he could not breath while standing on the street surrounded by officers.
Paramedics were called, Floyd was cuffed and put into a police cruiser. He was out of control in the cruiser. He was taken out of the crusier at his own request. He ultimately died from a Fentanyl overdose.
This woman was protesting. We can niggle over the extent to which her actions were legal. Regardless, she was NOT armed at the time. She was NOT an imminent threat of bodily harm to anyone. The Officer was NOT protecting himself or others – he was protecting an empty hallway. His use of deadly force was NOT justified. But she is a white woman, so we are NOT going to light the country on fire over her death. We can blame her for her own death – because of course she was a Trump supporter and we hate them and she got what was coming to her. While George Flyod is somehow a hero and requires protests burning down the country.
You had better hope that those on the right behave better than those on the left or you are facing years of escalating violence.
There are myriads of videos of 2018, just as there are myriads of video’s of 2021.
The one you provided of 2021 was long boring and tame – except the last minute – where it was obvious the officer shot the airforce vet without justification.
The videos of the violence over the summer run by the national press actuively underplay the violence – those from local press and independent reporters show a far more violent picture of this summers protests.
There is zero doubt that some things in the capital in 2021 were plain WRONG – whether you are right or left.
I have not seen evidence of ransacking or graffetting the capital. I have seen no actual destruction beyond breaking some glass – which I do not condone. But I have no doubt there was more offensive conduct.
Exactly the same is true of 2018. There were 4 times as many people arrested in 2018 – they were not arrested for chanting. Just as no one was arrested for shouting “stop the steal” The people who were arrested committed serious offenses.
And I would note nearly all in 2018 were released and had their records cleared. I do not expect that today.
Regardless the ultimate questions are not answered by a single video. This is not a dueling video contest.
The fact is the capital was invaded by protestors in 2018. They overran barriers, and they accosted senators in their offices, and in hearings.
The conduct in 2021 was indistinguishable – EXCEPT that those in 2021 were protesting an incontrovertably lawless election.
Those in 2018 were protesting a supreme court confirmation based on 35 year old allegations lacking substance.
Lots of photos of the ransacking in the Capitol. Look around.
Presumably the extortion you are talking about is Ukraine ?
Regardless you have your facts wrong – the VICE PRESIDENT litterally extorted Ukraine – to thwart a prosecutor from investigating the business that was paying his son a small fortune.
And the left has had their head in the sand over that for years.
No commission is needed to to look into Trump’s preposterous lies.
It would be like appointing a commission to look into whether the Earth was flat.
I am sorry but when you have the CEO of Dominion on video tape demonstrating how “the intent of the voter” can be changed by election officials, there is nothing preventing those election officials from engaging in massive voter fraud.
When you have an Illinois election official pointing out to Dominion that Dominion has NEVER been able to obtain ECA certification we have problems.
Especially when Dominion kicked out 68% of votes in MI, 93% of votes in Fulton Co Georgia, and 70% in Maricopa Co AZ.
Name one! Be Specific.
It’s not about Trump or what he has said. You ignore we have never had an election run as this one was due to a pandemic. That alone caused skepticism by more than just Trump supporters.
We are also learning – some of us more slowly than others that though some govenrment actions such as lockdowns made things much worse. No government action made the pandemic better.
Studies from Denmark show that over a 3 month period religiously wearing masks results in a 15-20% reduction in C19 transmission.
Just to be clear anything less than a 70% reduction over a long enough period for the virus to disappear is completely ineffective.
You MUST reduce the R0 value below 1.0 – preferably MUCH below 1.0 for a long period – longer the higher R0 is.
Buried in the understanding of the Denmark results is not only is 15-20% not even a tiny fraction of enough, but the effectiveness of a mask over 6 months will be 7-10%, over a year will be 3-5%.
Mass use of masks only makes it take longer to infect everyone.
There has always only been one way to end this – herd immunity – and only a few ways to aceive that – and masks, lockdowns and social distancing are merely delaying tactics.
We have been lied to – by people who knew or should have known, and who used the pandemic as an excuse to try to accomplish political objectives that had nothing to do with the pendemic and who reveled in lording power over others.
We spent millions of dollars and years looking into the preposterous lies about the Collusion Delusion.
There is zero doubt that this election was conducted in violation of the laws of these states.
That alone justifies an investigation.
The only issue with respect tot he vast majority of Trump’s purportedly preposterous lies – the scale of the actual fraud.
There is ZERO doubt at all that people who were not eligable to vote or vote in that state or did not exist voted.
That happens in every single election and it happens atleast an order of magnitude more frequently in mailin elections.
The only question was the number of votes by uillegitimate voters greater than the margin of victory – and for all your hubris you do not and can not know that. Though eventually will WILL know that.
But even more importantly – whether the fraud in THIS election was significant – absent significant changes the fraud in the next election WILL be significant. Unless you are deaf and Blind you have learned that the elections systems that we have are quite easily defrauded – that almost no effort is put into catching fraud, and quickly that WILL be taken advantage of.
If you doubt that – it is pretty trivial for a small group of republicans to completely gum up the next election.
Get each states voter registration rolls – those are publicly available, and fraudulently submit mailin ballots for millions of voters.
So long as those committing the fraud can determine the critical information – and that is readily available, it is highly likely these votes will count. At the very least it will take massive effort to separate the fraudulent ballots from the legitimate one. And the process necescary to do so will also necescarily result in purging the ballots that Trump alleges tipped the election.
Put simply democrats can be FORCED to either count millions of fraudulent ballots or scrutinize ballots the way they should have in 2020.
Nor do republicans actually have to do this – all that is needed is a credible threat and Democrats will STILL have to purge illegitimate ballots.
I would further note – there are allegations of illegitimate b allots sent by nations like China or Russia. Those are probably red herrings – in 2020. But there is nothing preventing those countries from engaging in mailin ballot fraud in the future – the system you have in place right now is not even close to secure – and especially not from a capable and unscrupulous nation or organitizaiton – or even an individual with the resources – and they are not that significant to engage in mass election fraud.
Again a foreign country need not do alot. All they have to do is evoke the fear that the election has been defrauded.
Nor do you need a foreign power to do so – a false flag operation would be very effective – either some neffarious group making it look like the russians or the chinese Or the russians making it look like the chinese or visa versa.
The left has setup the opportunity for massive electoral disruption – first by the 2016 collusion deliusion – you have persuaded most voters that foreign interferance is real as well as that US political parties would collude with foreign countries.
There is only one way that you can quell that fear in the future – and that is to secure future elections.
I do not think a Commision is a good idea. We know what we need to secure our elections – it is not all that hard.
We are just not doing it.
And if we do not – if we have not had massive fraud in the past – we will.
If you do not act – you will be forced to act.
But you can stick your head in the sand.
There is a very well-done documentary that aired on HBO in 2006 called “Hacking Democracy”. A citizen activist from Washington State, Bev Harris spent several years investigating voting systems in several states. This movie tells that story. It is a great starting point to understand how a flawed voting system made by Diebold evolved over the years into the system(s) in use today. The fundamental flaw that began with Diebold is fractional voting. Bev Harris still maintains a very informative website at https://blackboxvoting.org/ . The documentary is available to rent ($3.99) or buy ($5.99) on Vimeo or iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/hacking-democracy/id271431024.
When I first read that these voting machines were designed to be able make some votes worth more than others, I was incredulous. But Bev Harris obtained the operator’s manual for the machines that clearly describe the feature and how to use it. In the spirit of “If you build it, they will come” (from Field of Dreams), if you built a voting machine that can fix an election, they will buy it and exploit it.
I have been fighting against these computerized voting systems since they were first introduced by Bush in 2001.
There are three independent aspects of the problem.
The first is the use of electronic terminals for voting. These are a horribly bad idea – the only means by which you can safely use a voting terminal is to have that terminal print out a vote that is later scanned and counted. Anything else is subject to all kinds of potential problems and there is no means that it can be made trustworthy.
The Next is the scanning and counting systems. While I would personally prefer paper ballots hand counted – France does exactly that and produces election results for the entire nation by midnight on election day. There is no fundimental reason that we can not computerize the entire process of counting ballots so long as the ballots are ALWAYS paper ballots and ALWAYS preserved.
Which brings us to the third issue. The method by which the ballot is counted is completely irrelevant – So long as there is always a trust worthy INDEPENDENT audit system that starts with the paper ballots.
It is this latter issue that has been the pivot point for the past two months. Outside of the fact that the election itself was conducted lawlessly which is an independent problem regardless of the outcome, every other claim with regard to election fraud can be proven or disproven by an independent audit.
One of the most important facets to election integrity is that it is NOT about the equipment, machines, or the people used to count the vote.
I have repeatedly argued here that elections are about Trust. We do not need to design voting systems such that fraud is impossible – we can not do that. We need to design voting systems so that Fraud will be CAUGHT.
I have very little interest in the DVS fraactional voting arguments – it does not matter if it is true.
The really big deal – is that we must ROUTINELY and INDEPENDENTLY audit our elections preferably quickly after the election.
The vast majority of the legal battles over the past two months have been specifically about that. NOT the nonsense the press has claimed. Most of them have raised allegations of fraud for the purpose of gaining access to the records of votes or to the paper ballots to be able to determine whether any of these claims of fraud have merit.
Contra those here one the left – the courts did not investigate allegations of fraud, and determine they did not occur.
The courts dismissed the allegations of fraud and thwarted any independent effort to investigate.
The efforts by the state and the courts to thwart independent inquiry are the greatest evidence that election fraud occurred.
The fundimental aspect of our election systems that is flawed today is the complete lack of transparency.
This is of critical importance. Further Independent auditing of elections must not be a one time issue.
Even if Trump had managed to get a near immediate independent audit of thus election and the results had confirmed a Biden victory.
The stupidest thing we could do would be to breathe a collective sigh of relief and use this as a reason to thwart future audits.
If election fraud is possible it is only a question of time before it occurs. The stakes in elections are far too high.
You are dead on, The reason that the election “officials” in the six states refused audits of each ballot is obvious. They do not want their misdeeds exposed. As for PRESIDENT TRUMP not being able to get a hearing of the evidence in court is he rocked the boat to hard and alienated four of five judges, which was his own fault. Doing an audit, a true audit, in the seven counting centers would have answered every question but that was too easy and Trump would have won.
They didn’t refuse audits. Why do you falsely think they did?
Georgia audited via a complete hand recount. Trump lost.
Trump lost over 60 court cases, several heard by more than one judge. Why do you mistakenly think it was 4 or 5 judges?
Georgia audited via a complete hand recount.
They ran the ballots through the machines again. And where were the observers?
They ran the ballots through the machines again.
“Election workers will hand sort ballots into piles for each candidate, and the machines will count those piles.”
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/12/what-is-hand-recount-how-long-will-it-take-heres-what-to-know-about-georgias-recount-of-presidential/114861936/
Yeah, they ran them through the machines again after hand sorting them by candidate. You ignore that part because you either never bothered to check or you’re not honest enough to deal with it.
A limited # of observers from both parties were there if they wanted to be. Some left of their own accord. Trump’s lawyer stated to a judge that there were a “non-zero” number of Trump observers.
All you do is highlight what people are upset about.
I am sure the quites you cite are correct. This is what Raffensberger PROMISED.
But it is NOT what occured. There is a significant body of testimony to the GA legislature that all that was done was existing Ballot scans were recounted by machines.
We have the same thing with Signature verification – Raffensberger SAID there would be a hand verification of all signatures on all mailin ballots to be done by researchers at the University of GA.
Instead, a random sample of 5000 mailin ballots in Cobb county was verified by the GBI without any prior training. They identified almost 400 suspect envelopes – that all would have been discarded ballots in all prior elections – the normal rejection rate is 20% for first time mailin voters and 6% for people who have done it before. That is historical data from mailin and absentee ballots in use over decades.
The almost 400 suspect signatures matches that rejection rate fairly well.
Regardless, Cobb County is not Fulton country. Cobb County is an affluent highly educated northern suburb of atlanta with a median income of almost 80K. Pretty much the least likely place to find fraud or mailin voter ballot error.
And Raffensberger promissed full signature verfication for the entire state.
Put simply in multiple instances Raffensberger LIED.
So guess what – just like those of you who pushed the collusion delusion for 4 years – these protestors DO NOT TRUST raffensberger.
This is a huge huge deal with all of this.
All that was necescary to prevent those was for the states to follow their election laws and constitutions.
That did not happen.
But it was still poossible to mitigate the damage.
These state officials could at the very least not have repeatedly LIED – that does nothing but make things worse.
Sometimes those lies were small – such as the PA department of State claiming that Act 77 specifically authorized the courts to change the mailin ballot deadline.
Often the lies were larger such as those of Raffensberger.
Regardless when government LIES, it makes EVERY allegation of fraud appear more credible.
Several people have cited the claim by Bookvar that PA did not count the 10,000 late ballots.
Given that she lied about act 77 – why should we beleive that there were only 10,000 late ballots and that they were not counted.
Regardless there are numerous affadvits claiming to observe backdating ballot revceipts and there are thousands of ballots that were received before they were mailed and thousands more received the same day they were mailed and thousands more with no recept date at all.
PA is also short 250K voters vs. ballots – more than 2 months after the election. There are possible explanations for this – but all must include incompetence the alternative is fraud.
Again why are these people to be trusted.
The states could also have ACTUALLY looked into the allegations of fraud. Most of the allegations made are quite easily testable.
Many can easily be tested by releasing to the public information that will be release publicly in a few months no matter what.
But again these states have DELIBERATELY acted to thwart investigating, and to make themselves look as guilty as possible.
Contra many posters here – the duty to conduct an election LAWFULLY – rests with the state. The duty to PROVE the election results are trustworthy rests with the states.
Yet the states aided bhy the courts have thrown up every possible obstacle to any inquiry. And the limited results we have so far from places where any inquiry was allowed are daming.
I thought the “expert” that claimed 68% of Michigan DVS scanned ballots were thrown to adjudication was a partisan exageration.
Then the Dept State data from Fulton county came in with an even higher ballot adjudication rate.
That alone should set off gigantic red flags all over the place.
In 2000 in Broward County Bush and Gore were fighting over haning chads and counting the votes of 3% of punched card ballots that required adjudication.
We have computerized voting and multiplied the error rate by a factor of 25.
Who in their right mind thinks that is anyway to conduct an election ?
Who trusts that ?
They did not even run the ballots through the machines again.
They ran the post adjudication scans through the counters again.
There was no observation. Not actual paper ballots were involved.
Atleast according to testimony to the GA legislature.
PROVE IT.
FFS, I gave you a link to reporting that contradicts your claim, and you do nothing but puke words on the page.
You have no credibility. None. Unless you prove your claims with evidence, they’re worthless.
I’m not going to bother reading the rest of what you’ve written. I can’t deal with the voluminous puke of words.
“PROVE IT.
FFS, I gave you a link to reporting that contradicts your claim, and you do nothing but puke words on the page.”
No you gave me a link to a third party descibing what they expected to occur.
That is not what occured. You still do not seem to grasp that when a reporter writes “this is what will be done” that is not a fact.
It is not proof that actually happened.
“You have no credibility. None. Unless you prove your claims with evidence, they’re worthless.”
Then I guess your claims are worthless.
On issue after issue you have proved links that DO NOT support the claims you made.
“I’m not going to bother reading the rest of what you’ve written. I can’t deal with the voluminous puke of words.”
We all know – if you can;’t hear the truth maybe it will go away.
“No you gave me a link to a third party descibing what they expected to occur.”
That is what Anonymous the Stupid does. He isn’t able to think for himself. He copies the thoughts of others.
He rants about proof and has a fixation on links.
A link does not make text more credible.
I noted that the data on police shootings of protestors can be found in the ACLED database.
It would be hard to provide better proof than that.
I am sure there is a news article somewhere that says “according to ACLED there were not police shootings of protestors”.
But unless Anonymous is technically incompetent he ought to be able to confirm this himself.
Doing so is far more convincing than any link I can provide.
Further he seems to be clueless about english.
If GA conducted a serious hand recount – I would love to know that. Real evidence.
I have claimed Raffensberger lied because several people testified as to what was actually done – and that was NOT a hand recount.
No one right or left challenged their testimony.
This matters alot. While a full hand recount is not necescary to establish whether there was significant fraud in GA.
The recount of the scanned imaged proves that computers can count the same questionable information twice and get the same results.
“He rants about proof and has a fixation on links.”
Anonymous the Stupid frequently doesn’t even know what the links say. I know that because not infrequently I read the piece and it said the opposite of what Anonymous the Stupid thought they said. He doesn’t summarize because he can’t. He will take links that outliers to prove facts that are well established.
Do you know why he does all these stupid things? Because he is Anonymous the Stupid.
Facts are facts – regardless of who reports them.
But much of what the media reports is not fact.
The link Anonymous keeps using regarding the GA recounts is a reporter reporting speculation about what the recount WOULD be.
Not after the fact telling use what it WAS.
Anonymous does not grasp that much of the anger and distrust particularly in GA is because what was promised is NOT what was done.
Worse still – that distrust combined with no effort at correcting the problems in GA likely dictated the senate outcome.
” reporting speculation”
Anonymous is lost. I didn’t read the article so I don’t know for sure but Anonymous the Stupid will accept speculation as fact. You you know what? Because Anonymous the Stupid is too stupid to read past the words he wants to quote.
So little of what is published in the media is trustworthy and so much has to be read extremely carefully.
So much of what is supposed to be straight news is badly written opinion and there is so little actual facts that many articles are useless.
Then where there is information so much of it is poorly sourced.
The vast majority of what those on the left beleive about Trump is either an article that says Eric Swallwell said something about Trump – therefore it must be true or some anonymous source purportedly at the whitehouse said something about Trump – so it must be true.
And those on the left have learned nothing from the fact that over 4 years none of it has turned out to be true.
Most of them beleive it WAS true – even though in most instances we now know it was not.
I do not know how many times I have read an article that claimed “Trump said X” – 20 paragraphs of ranting about Trump,
all explaining how evil whatever it was that Trump said was – and at the end – what Trump actually said is not printed, and when you find it, what he said was innocuous and not as represented.
Nor is this about Trump – if the press will lie about Trump, they will lie about anything that is at odds with their world view.
“what Trump actually said is not printed”
Logic tells us when the media is lying about Trump. If Trump said something that was true and really bad they would quote in context what he said, and then provide an interpretation and a link. They would be proud of their work. When they want to spin or lie they avoid in context quotes links and interpretations.
The depend on people like Anonymous the Stupid. With guys like that all they have to do is say the speech was calling for the overthrow of the government and he will believe it.
Amen or should I say Awomen
One of the reasons that you saw the protests at the capital is that they did NOT do the things you claim.
Particularly in GA.
Raffensburger said there would be a complete hand recount. There was NOT. What was actually done is that the post adjudication scans were recounted by the computer systems. If you had followed the testimony to the GA Legislature you would know this.
There is no possibility that recounting the scanned ballot images will find much of anything. The adjudication process – which is turning out to be one of the huge deals alters the images. In Fulton county alone – 105,000 of 132,000 ballots were kicked into adjucation.
That alone should be a huge red flag to EVERYONE. The Adjudication system has absolutely no accountability.
There is no oversight, The adjudicator can change ANYTHING. If a ballot is kicked into adjucication because of an undervote in an Alderman’s race, the adjudicator can change the vote in the president, representative and senator’s race. And there is no meaningful audit trail.
Reffansberger promised a full signature verification review. Instead there was a very limited signature review in Cobb County. Errors were found there – I beleive 5000 ballots were checked. almost 400 had signature verification errors and in all previous years would have been rejected. I beleive about 30 were found to be actually fraudulent, and those were forwarded for prosecution. Cobb County is one of the most likely counties to NOT have significant Mailin problems. Raffensberger promised to verify Fulton County but never did.
You may not know these things – but I would bet most of those protesting in DC are aware of them.
Look at all the court cases – they were lost on Standing, or Laches grounds. Contra most of the left and the media NOT on the merits.
Again most of those protesting this know that. There are very few cases that got to the point of looking at the merits of the claims, and those are still proceeding and will take months.
There is a reason for this. Trump did not have the option of filing a case that would go through full evidentiary hearings and a trial as those take years. It would do him no good at all to prove in 2022 that the election was stolen. To be useful he had to persuade the courts to review the election on an expedited basis. He sought TRO’s against certification primarily. The burden to get a TRO is abnormally high.
It is also psychologically higher when he must persuade a court to stop the forward progress of a national election – particularly of President. It is higher still when the court has seen rioting burning and looting in the entire country over a questionable incident involving the police and a drug addict. In the long run – if you bother to pay attention you will likely see many of the allegations in these affadavits proven. But that will be months from know. We will as an example ultimately know how many out of state voters voted in each of these states. In 2016 there were 5500 people in New Hampshire who voted using out of state ID. 2000 of those eventually were determined to be NH residents. The rest never established any presence in NH and most with near certainty were not NH residents. That might have flipped the presidential race in NH, it with near certainty would have flipped the Senate race. But 9 months after the fact it has no effect
And NH 2016 was an almost entirely in person voting race.
Whether the left likes it our not – Voter Fraud is very real. With the numerous razor thin races we have seen in the past 2 decades it is near certain that it has changed the outcome of many of them. But everyone including the courts is affraid of exploring voter fraud because exposing it undermines our elections. The remedy is to reduce the opportunity for Fraud. Instead we have increased it.
Eventually a reckoning is coming. We have had these problems in the past. 28 states – including 5 of the “swing” states have provisions in their state constitutions requiring secret ballots – this is a consequence of the massive fraud that occurred in the 19th century.
Mailin voting is NOT secret balloting. If there was not inducement and coercion which is ONE of the things secret ballots prohibit – there will be in the future. Regardless you NEVER want to have ballots leave the control of election officials – not filled out ballots, not blank ones. Doing so opens myriads of avenues of fraud. If you do not understand this – ultimately you will. If massive fraud did not occur in 2020, it will soon enough if we keep this up.
“If you build it, they will come” – applies to election fraud. If the voting process can be defrauded – ultimately it will.
That is the lesson of history that you ignore at your peril.
Raffensburger said there would be a complete hand recount. There was NOT.
There was. You either never bothered to check or you’re not honest enough to deal with it. As I already pointed out, “Election workers will hand sort ballots into piles for each candidate, and the machines will count those piles.”
https://www.onlineathens.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/12/what-is-hand-recount-how-long-will-it-take-heres-what-to-know-about-georgias-recount-of-presidential/114861936/
They ran them through the machines again after hand sorting them by candidate. That’s a hand recount.
I’m not going to bother reading the rest of your comment when you can’t even get such a basic fact correct.
“will hand sort ballots ”
Too dumb to realize what was done wasn’t adequate. If one repeats the same process over and over again one will invariably get the same results over and over again.
It is not that it was not adequate. It is that it was not what was promised.
The problem with the election itself is that people did not trust the results.
The purpose of the recount was to restore trust.
If those doing the recount lie to you – even small lies – it makes things worse not better.
You keep posting nonsense like this.
Your link is a claim as to what WILL be done. There is testimony under oath of what WAS done.
It is possible that those testifying – on video, before the GA legislature are lying under oath.
Anything is possible. Of course no one from the GA dept state has contradicted them.
And you keep playing this stupid game. There is zero doubt that Raffensberger in GA – and Bookevar in PA have lied repeatedly about the election. I am sure there are similar problems in other states. Some of the lies are small and stupid. But they are still lies, and once someone starts lying to you – it is not possible to beleive them about anything.
You seem to be under the impression that if you demonstrate that in one instance they only half lied, or that what they told people really means what they did rather than what people expected, that somehow absolves them from everything.
If you want people to trust election results you MUST
Follow the law and the state and federal constitution. PERIOD.
There is no judicial override to this. Elections are the means by which government acheives legitimacy.
It is not the trust of the courts you must secure – but that of citizens.
We can beleive the wrong person won. We can beleive that those who voted for the other guy are stupid.
We can beleive they were persuaded by russian trolls. And the election is still legitimate.
It is not the obligation of government to prove that the best man won the election.
It is the obligation of government to prove that the elections were conducted according to the laws and the constitutions.
That is called “the rule of law” – the courts are supposed to insure that. When they fail – and they failed BEFORE the election.
We are all in deep shit.
I have provided you with a list of atleast 1 dozen potential problems in this election.
For many of them the biggest issue is not whether they occured – your idiotic claim that I am required to proof that fraud actually happened.
It is that it is inarguably possible for undectable fraud to have occured MANY ways.
If a Bank leaves the front door and the vault door open overnight – you can expect customers are going to move to another bank.
They are not going to wait to find out whether anyone has walked out with the money.
I do not need to prove my bank was robbed to lose trust in that bank.
The bank is required to earn and hold my trust.
Government is the same. Conduct elections according to the law.
If those on the left desparately want mailin elections – you may not do that by executive or judicial fiat.
You may not even do that through the legislature. If your constitution requires secret ballots – you must have secret ballots, or you must change the constitution.
The rule of law requires following the law as it is, Not as you wish it to be.
The reason that you can trust that if you change the law or constitution that the legislature, executive and judiciary will be bound to your changes – and not just ignore them is because the law is followed as written.
When the government make up the law, or ignore the law, that is not a fixable problem.
You must also conduct elections in a manner that fraud that could alter the outcome is either impossible or certain to be caught quickly.
You continue to spry this nonsense that the burden of proof with respect to an election is on the people.
It is not. It rests with government.
It is also FUNDIMENTAL.
If elections are trustworthy – we can vote out of office those we come to distrust.
If elections are not trustworthy – the only means to restore the rule of law is through violence.
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
You do not seem to understand that it does not matter if I an the plurality of americans who are deeply suspicious of this election are wrong.
If doubt about the election is that high – that alone is a failure.
Government is not legitimate without the trust of the people.
The burden of proving legitimate elections ALWAYS rests on government.
If we need not follow the law – then it is trivial for those in power to pick their successors – or to assure their own continued power.
You do not seem to grasp the difference between a fact and a prediction.
Anonymous has significant lapses of memory. They are intentional because he is a hypocrite. Most of what he says (in what by now must be thousands of responses) is banal, wrong and lacking significant intelligence.
Poor Allan. You once again project your own weaknesses onto others.
I do not doubt that some of the many many claims of fraud or error in this election are wrong.
This is one of the fundimental errors that Anonymous does not grasp.
The legitimacy or government rests on the consent of the governed.
That consent is given by elections.
Absent trust in the election – by the losers as well as the winners – there is no consent and govenrment itself is illegitimate.
It does not matter if those who beleive this election was stolen are ultimately wrong.
What matters is they have not been persuaded.
One of the reasons is that those in govenrment have not only failed to reassure them – they have ACTIVELY erroded confidence.
Anon says I am wrong about the recount. I highly doubt that. My claims are based on testimony before the GA legislature that was recorded and made public. It could be lies. But I am more inclined to trust the testminony of witnesses over a newspaper article saying what is going to be done. BTW there are other ways we can know the article is incorrect.
It is pretty clear at this point that the DVS systems adjuication rate is north of 2/3.
Even if the “recount” was conducted as described, there is no possibility that there would not be severl percent deviation.
You can not have humans adjudicate 105,000 ballots and get the same results twice.
You will not get the same results if you hand count them.
I would also note that the process this article describes is silly. You do not need to separate paper ballots before you scan and count them.
The alleged GA recount found a few large errors. But these were either missed piles of ballots or human errors in reporting.
The “counts” came out exactly the same. That is not possible.
Another very troubling aspect of this election is that – as Turley noted recouts rarely produce more than couple of hundred votes one way or the other.
There is a reason for this – absent systemic fraud, all real errors then to ballance. One precinct will find 50 Trump votes another will find 45 Biden votes. No election is error free, but in a lawful election the errors should ballance to a very small amount.
A complete recount of GA should have been within a couple of hundred votes of the original Count – the actual result was a 5000 vote Gain by Trump. But the individual precints should all have tallies that are slightly different than before.
Only machines count almost exactly the same every single time.
From what I have seen across all these states there have been numerous vote adjustments post election – that is normal.
But all but one have increased Trump’s count. That is not a natural pattern.
That is a huge indication of fraud.
Random counting errors are unavoidable.
When the errors themselves show a trend – that is the fingerprint of human intervention – i.e. something is NOT random.
When anonymous has an explanation for the fact that every single adjustment so far save a small one in GA has favored Trump, I will be interested.
I honestly do not know the scale of the fraud in this election.
I have followed lots of the evidence. And I have felt like I was on a yoyo. Some plausible claims have proved on examination to be weak.
Some almost lunatic claims have slowly gained credibility – though not always in exactly the form originally presented.
The “expert” in Michigan really lost me when he claimed a 68% error rate. That was just preposeterous.
And then were find that 105K or 132K ballots in Fulton county were kicked into adjudication.
Absolutely everyone should be very concerned about that.
If our electronic systems are so flawed that they can not get it right almost 70% of the time – why are we using them at all.
It would be more efficient to count ballots by hand – and more trustworthy.
It does not matter if ultimately the ballot was counted correctly – it the error rate was 68%. The system is inherently broken – JUNK.
And that alone requires a serious fix.
Further if the error rate is that high – why should we beleive it was not wrong about those ballots it claims were correct ?
And shouldn;t we bother to find out if the ballots kicked to adjudication really had ambiguities ?
No matter what the error rate alone is damning. I makes a highly plausible claim that the election results were altered by computer error alone.
Trust matters – not just of the election officials but the equipment. An error rate this high is NOT trustworthy.
I do not know that Sydney powell’s claim that DVS systems were reducing Trump votes and increasing Biden votes is correct.
It seems implausible – the likelyhood of getting caught seems enormous and the penalty potentially draconian.
But the error rate of DVS systems is alone a reason they should never be used anywhere.
But there is an alternative – what if DVS systems is correctly kicking out almost 70% of the ballots because they are ambiguous.
That would mean that 70% of voters were unclear about their intentions. That too is a huge problem.
If True we would expect a very high rejection rate for ballots. Not the 0.25% that these states reported.
If on 70% of ballots the machines LEGITIMATELY could not figure out voter intent – then you would expect that on several percent of those – humans would not be able to either.
There is absolutely no way that the adjuication rate for these systems does not REQUIRE thorough inquiry.
And people are not stupid – or 46% of them are not, and they understand that.
I appreciate your clearly written position. Trust in our voting system is critical, and I applaud your long-standing position that electronic voting machines are problematic. I also totally agree with you about the need for an audit trail, and for an after-the-fact audit to be a routine part of the voting process. Where my opinion diverges from yours is on the issue of whether the voting machine itself is an issue.
You stated that: “I have very little interest in the DVS fraactional voting arguments – it does not matter if it is true.” Then you make many more great points with which I totally agree. You then end with: “If election fraud is possible it is only a question of time before it occurs. The stakes in elections are far too high.”
As a voter, I would rather know that I can trust the voting equipment when I go to the polling place to vote. You are correct that if it is an all-paper, routinely audited system, that would be a much better system. But is it realistic that any entity or commission can convince or coerce states to go to that system, especially after they have committed to long-term, high $ value contracts? (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/12/08/dominion-voting-systems-received-120-million-from-19-states-and-133-local-governments-to-provide-election-services-2017-2019/?sh=3f9ff1bc620f).
It is critical that audits as you describe need to be done for the 2020 elections, and in all 50 states. When I purchase gasoline in any state, regardless of the specific dispensing machine at a gas station, I can trust that the amount I pumped and the total price is correct because it is regularly inspected. Should we do any less for voting equipment?
Maybe I was not clear.
There are several aspects to trust in elections.
A), 28 states and most countries int he world require secret ballots.
That means voters must come to a poll – where they can vote without coercion or inducement, and they must leave without their ballot and there must be no record of how a specific person voted that can be tied back to that person.
Mailin voting can not ever meet that critieria. Some forms of absentee voting can.
B). The eligability of the voter must be determined BEFORE they are given a ballot. You never ever want filled ballots to exist that are not legitimate votes. Once a ballot is separated from the person in a secret ballot election there is no means to correct the problem if that ballot gets into the counting stream.
Again mailin balloting can not meet this criteria – Some absentee balloting can.
C). There MUST be a paper ballot that is the actual record of the vote, and it is that paper ballot and only that paper ballot that is EVER counted. One of the problems with the recounts is that they just recounted scanned images after “adjudication” – and adjusication alters the scanned images. Any recount or audit must start with scanning the votes again.
Part of this requirement is that you can not have a machine or computer voting terminal that does anything accept produce a paper ballot that is later scanned. If they exist computer terminals or other machines should only be tools to FILL out a paper ballot.
D). I would greatly prefer that all ballots were counted by hand. It is relatively simple to construct a means to do that is fast, where any fraud must be small scale, and likely will be caught.
But it is unlikely we will do that.
Computerized ballot scanners/counters can be safely used – but only if there are atleast truly indepent and truly random audits.
E). As early as possible in the counting process subtotals should be made public. We need almost no fraud prevention on upper teir counting systems – that is above the systems producing the subtotals. The press and the public will verify that counting from the subtotals up is done correctly.
I would note a big big part of fraud prevention is assuring that any fraud will be caught – that means maximum transparency and auditing.
F). Every single paper ballot should be unique. This is important to prevent the injection of ballots into a secret ballot system.
Remember that the voter must be completely divorced from their ballot – or you WILL get inducement or coercion. In the 19th century that was rampant and that is why 28 state constitutions require secret ballots. We should not reject the lessons of the past.
Unique ballots mean that counting systems can reject any injected ballots that did not come from people.
I would further note that today we have an assortment of sophisticated cyrptgraphic tools that allow us to general unique identifiers that are not easily forgeable. If the ID’s on ballots are created using a dual key system, you can not create a blank ballot if you do not have the private key.
We can also use one way hashes – with hashes derived from the scanned ballot to protect ballot scans from downstream alteration.
There are many other techniques that we have for prevention of fraud. Remember we actually have a great deal of experience with fraud prevention – we validate currency, we validate banking transactions. We have billions of financial transactions each day with zero fraud.
What I suggest above is not the only method – though it is based on centuries of experience with voter fraud – not My experiences – the worlds.
I have said over and over elminating nearly all fraud in elections is not that hard. But it is also not magical. We do not eleimate fraud by wishing it is not their. We eliminate it by processes that are fraud proof or highly fraud resistant.
As noted these are not secret, the fact that we do not have them speaks to either the laziness and incompetence of government
OR to the actually desire of government to allow election fraud.
There is not a good explanation for an election where we can not KNOW the fraud was tiny.
You used financial transactions as an example of something we do much better.
That is a near perfectly analogus system.
Free market transactions are littlerally a ranked choice voting system. You express your prefeneces by voting with your money.
Free markets are infinitely better at reflecting the actual preferences and values of people that voting and government – which is one of the reasons we should do as much as possible though markets and as little as possible through government.
Biden is purportedly looking to wipe out alot of student loan debt.
If he actually wanted to assure that colleges delivered students more value than they cost – he would get governnent as far away from education as possible. As government has intruded into private education the value has declined and the cost has skyrocketed.
The most likely effect of Biden’s “loan forgiveness” is to inflate the cost of college even further. But I will not predict that specifically. What I will predict is that the net harm will be much greater than the good, and that the market will react to Biden’s subsidy of education, by transfering all the benefit to the producers of education not the consumers. All government efforts to regulate free markets ultimately benefit producers more than consumers.
BTW there is a near perfect free market equivalent to secret ballots that is absolutely fraud proof.
Cyrpto currencies. I would strongly suggest looking to incorporate the ideas of trustworthy financial transactions – and particularly crypto currencies into voting – and some of my ideas reflect that.
I would further note that cyrpto currencies come very close to making mailin secret ballots possible – though they fall just short and the problem can not be fixed. Anytime people vote away from a secure location their vote is not private and they can be induced or coerced.
Strictly crypto voting has another flaw – that of lack of transparency. Ultimately cyrpto currencies are a black box that we must trust.
We can not have that in an election.
But we can use the same techniques to secure more traditionally conducted elections. To eliminate the possibility of duplicate ballots, injected ballots, and forged ballots.
France does not do mail ballots as they found out they are prone to fraud.
I have been an election worker in the past where the machines created a paper an electronic record and we had to check that they matched at the polling station. All was witnessed and signed by workers from both parties, sealed and delivered to the town Hall. Members from both parties delivered a sealed container with all sealed polling station pouches to the county. I am not against electronic voting machines, but see no need for vote counting machines or electronic transmissions of the count. In this election signature verification was not done at polls as usual and created a disaster. Voting day registration should not be done. If you are that lazy and disinterested to do so at least a month before it is is your own fault.
Perhaps all citizens should take the course and work at least one election in their life. Even if it is for the local school board.
If we have a really good voter ID system – with an ID that confirms the eligability of the person to vote – we do not need voter registration at all.
It is actually more trouble than it is worth.
There won’t be a commission, Jonathan. A commission would easily uncover the fraud. You just described above why this country has no real judicial system and why our votes don’t count. And people wonder why the capitol building would get “stormed”. lol. If we don’t have a real democratic form of government that the capitol building is supposed to symbolize and represent, it’s better that we not allow the people in power to continue with this charade. We should unmask them for who and what they are.
There is fraud and inaccuracies in all elections because all people are not honest. The question is how much fraud? With mass mailing of ballots it id greater this year. Apparently in some states other parties besides the state election board were mailing out ballots. That is part of the reason for deteriorating voter confidence.
There need not be fraud in all elections – the processes needed to eliminatre or radically reduce fraud exist and are not that hard.
In fact a fraud free election can probably be conducted more easily than the current election processes.
WE have insecure systems because govenrment benefits.