Excerpt: "Whatever happens with the nomination, we respectfully request that
Bernie soon organize a broad series of grassroots gatherings where those who
have worked so hard for him will get the best possible training and
inspiration toward becoming lifelong activists who'll make a tangible
difference in the day-to-day business of saving this planet."
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Is Hillary Stealing the Nomination? Will Bernie Birth a Long-Term Movement?
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
27 April 16
At this delicate moment in the primary season, we all need to take a deep
breath and evaluate what comes next.
Bernie Sanders has a mathematical chance to win. But Hillary seems the
likely Democratic nominee.
Donald Trump has an army of delegates. But if he doesn't win on the first
ballot, Paul Ryan could be the Republican nominee.
Oy!
For a wide variety of reasons, we believe Hillary and Bernie could beat
Trump. But we're not sure about Ryan, who we find absolutely terrifying.
Key is the stripping of our voter rolls. Millions of Democrats have already
been disenfranchised. In a close race, that could make the difference.
Also key is the flipping of the electronic vote count, which few on the left
seem to be willing to face in all its depressing finality.
Both are explored in our new Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows
& Electronic Election Theft (introduced by Mimi Kennedy and Greg Palast) at
www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org.
As Greens, we believe this election's most critical imperative is that
Bernie convert the HUGE upwelling of mostly young grassroots discontent he
has ignited into a long-term multi-issue movement. His success won't be
measured by whether he wins the nomination or presidency. Miles Mogulescu
has written nicely about this at The Huffington Post.
It matters most that those he's energized emerge after November full of
commitment and heart. We've seen too many electoral campaigns feed into a
general "disillusionment" when they don't win the vote count. We've seen too
many youthful uprisings too quickly dissipate.
As geezer vets of the civil rights, anti-war, No Nukes, social justice,
election protection and other campaigns, we desperately want all these
brilliant folks of all ages to take on the issues nearest to their hearts
with renewed ferocity in the coming months, years, decades.
Having awakened this glorious beast, we need Professor Sanders to teach this
class of '16 the ultimate lessons in staying power (of which he is such a
sterling example).
So whatever happens with the nomination, we respectfully request that Bernie
soon organize a broad series of grassroots gatherings where those who have
worked so hard for him will get the best possible training and inspiration
toward becoming lifelong activists who'll make a tangible difference in the
day-to-day business of saving this planet.
We all know that some meaningful changes can be made by putting better
people in office. But in in the long run it's the nitty-gritty grind of
facing down the corporations issue by issue, place by place, nuke by nuke,
that will save us.
Along the way there's the collapse of our electoral system. From Jimmy
Carter to Harvard to the UN and so many others who've studied it, it's
patently obvious the mechanisms by which we conduct elections in this
country are ridiculously decrepit and corrupt.
As a partial solution, we've concocted the "Ohio Plan," which demands:
universal automatic voter registration at age 18; a four-day national
holiday for voting; voter ID based on a signature that matches the
registration form with stiff felony penalties for cheating; universal
hand-counted paper ballots.
We also want money out of politics, public-funded campaigns, an end to
gerrymandering, and abolition of the Electoral College.
In 2016, the first thing to face is the massive disenfranchisement of
millions of voters, mostly citizens of color and youth. We are heartened to
see Bernie and Hillary joined together in an Arizona lawsuit.
But the long lines and urban registration stripping that we saw in Phoenix,
Madison, and elsewhere this spring will spell doom for the Democrats if they
cannot guarantee their constituencies' the right to vote in November.
At this point, we're not optimistic. The efforts at re-enfranchisement are
little and late. Among those doing superb work on this stripping of our
voter rolls are the great Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com), Ari Berman ofThe
Nation, and others.
But the electronic flipping of the alleged vote count remains a demon black
box. The 2000 election was turned from Gore to Bush by electronic
manipulations in Volusia County, Florida. The 2004 election was turned from
Kerry to Bush in a Chattanooga basement which transformed a 4.2% Democratic
lead into a 2.5% GOP victory in 90 dark minutes.
All that could happen again in 2016.
Over the years we've respected the work of The Nation's Josh Holland, who's
expressed concern about our reporting on indications of irregularities that
seem to favor Hillary over Bernie.
But our stated conclusions on them remain far from conclusive. If we thought
we had definitive evidence that the Clinton campaign was stealing the
nomination from the Sanders campaign, we'd say so in direct, explicit and
unmistakable phrases.
Simply put: we do NOT at this point believe they rise to the level of
provable theft, as we are certain was the case in 2000 and 2004.
We understand concerns and welcome the dialogue. But we'd like to avoid the
usual circular firing squad.
Writing in The Nation, Josh has deemed it important to mention disagreements
with our former collaborator Steve Rosenfeld, and our good friend Mark
Hertsgaard.
Mark's writing on global warming has been legend. In 2004 he criticized some
of our reporting on the Ohio vote count. We disagreed with him then and
still do. Nothing in the past 12 years of our research and writing while
based in central Ohio has surfaced that would make us change our reporting
on how the 2004 election was stolen. Quite the opposite.
But other comments on the nature of electronic election theft throw up a
HUGE red flag. And here we worry about a dangerous gap in the work from The
Nation and the left as a whole.
If international election standards were applied to the 2016 primaries,
eight states - Georgia, Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio,
New York, Tennessee - would be investigated for suspected fraudulent
election results, because the actual vote deviates so greatly from the exit
polls. Also, the exit polls indicated that Sanders won in Illinois,
Massachusetts and Missouri.
The bottom line is this: there is no viable method for monitoring or
verifying the electronic vote count in 2016. In a close race, which we
expect this fall, the outcome could be flipped in key swing states where GOP
governors and secretaries of state are running the elections. This includes
most notably Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona, plus North Carolina and
Florida (where the situations are slightly different).
Steve has called this "a stretch." He and Josh seem to dismiss the assertion
that an election can be electronically stolen as "conspiracy theory,"
apparently based on the idea that such thefts would become obvious fodder
for an infuriated media and public outrage.
This we find this overly trusting and dangerous. Under our current system
there is no way to counter-indicate a stolen electronic vote count except by
exit polling, for which Josh has expressed contempt. Exit polls in other
countries (especially Germany) are highly reliable; here the raw data is
too, but can be hard to get. And it's now standard procedure to have the
public numbers "adjusted" to fit official vote counts, fraudulent or
otherwise.
And even raw data exit polls have no legal standing. Nor, apparently, does
the court system itself.
After the 2004 election, we won a ruling in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v.
Blackwell federal lawsuit. Bob was lead attorney, Harvey a plaintiff. Judge
Algernon Marbley ordered Ohio's 88 county election boards to compile their
records and bring them to Columbus for an official recount. But 56 of those
88 counties failed to produce the requested records. Some boards of
elections "accidentally" destroyed all of the requested ballots. No one was
prosecuted. There was never a recount.
Admitted into evidence in the lawsuit was the Ohio secretary of state's
architectural map of the computer network used to count Ohio's votes. It is
included here so everyone can take a look.
The votes were counted by private contractors in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The
three main companies involved were all heavily linked to the Right to Life
movement in Ohio. The Free Press also uncovered the contract where these
companies arranged with the Secretary of State's office a year prior to the
2004 election to move the Ohio vote count to Tennessee should Ohio's
supercomputers fail on Election Day, which would happen for the first time
in known history. Cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore told the Free
Pressthat the computer configuration was set up to allow a "man in the
middle attack" to alter Ohio's votes.
The late night shift in the 2004 electronic vote count in 10 decisive swing
states was by all accounts a "virtual statistical impossibility," with the
odds against that happening in the millions. But now we are being told the
idea that this could indicate a stolen election is "conspiracy theory."
PLEASE!!! If someone - anyone! - can demonstrate EXACTLY how the electronic
vote count will be monitored, verified and made clear to the media in 2016,
and then guarantee that the public and the courts will react with
enforceable fury, we will be eternally grateful.
We hope in the meantime The Nationwill add to Ari Berman's fine reporting on
the stripping of voter eligibilities an in-depth investigation into the
"other shoe" of election theft - the flipping of the electronic vote count.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) raised the "Diebold question" at a Congressional
Black Caucus hearing on April 21, 2016. Johnson noted how easy it would be
to hack the old voting machines, many that are over 20 years old, and vowed
to introduce legislation that would make voting secure.
Finally, we are often asked how, if the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen,
Obama won in 2008 and 2012. We did, after all, write in 2004 that the 2008
election was being rigged.
The answer is simple: it was. But Obama won by far too many votes to have
that election credibly stolen. And his campaign was not in denial.
We are happy to hear from Steve that our reporting on Ohio 2004 might have
enhanced Obama's scrutiny on the 2008 vote count.
But it should be made clear that Obama's victory could easily have been
flipped had the vote count been closer and had fewer states been so
definitively won. We believe he actually won by more than 10 million votes
in both 2008 and 2012, but was officially credited with far less.
Where, exactly, is the line beyond which an election can't be stolen? Do the
Democrats need to win by 5%. 10%. to get an official victory? And what then
happens to the down-ballot races?
We prefer not to see those limits tested again.
And we need to have people prepared to take tangible action. In 2012 Bob
Fitrakis filed a successful Election Day lawsuit preventing illegal computer
patches being rigged into Ohio's electronic machines. In a closer race,
those patches might have made the difference. We believe the expectation
that they would work did cause Karl Rove to do his legendary flipped-out
double-take on Fox News as he was told Mitt Romney had lost Ohio.
We also reported (as did The Nation) that voting machines in key Cincinnati
precincts were financially linked to the Romney family. We each wrote
separate articles about that and were each blacklisted by Daily Kos for
doing so, even though the vast bulk of Harvey's 150+ previous blogs on that
site were about nuclear power and renewable energy.
Some publications that aren't progressive understand the problem.
Twenty-three minutes into the 2012 Election Day, Forbes took the Free
Pressreporting seriously, and warned voters of the dangers of private,
for-profit companies owning and maintaining voting machines.
Over the years we've been repeatedly told that we should stop reporting on
electronic election theft because it might discourage voter turnout. And
that the key to a Democratic victory in 2016 will be another massive vote
count victory that will be "too big to steal."
Frankly, we don't see that happening this year.
And we find such talk deeply disturbing. We have no doubt that innumerable
US House and Senate races have been stolen over the years, along with
governorships, control of state legislatures, referenda and more, all of it
producing a deep reinforcement of the corporate control of our government.
We're also reasonably certain that neither Hillary nor Bernie is likely to
amass in November a margin of victory over either Ryan or Trump that would
be big enough to negate the possibility of massive disenfranchisement and
electronic vote flipping in key states like Ohio, Michigan, Iowa or Arizona.
And anyway . why the hell are we even thinking about leaving such a problem
unsolved?
This disease needs a definitive cure.
We look forward to further reasoned and reasonable dialogue. We invite Josh
and Ari to join us on our panel at the upcoming Left Forum in New York in
May. We welcome a public discussion with Steve and Mark in California.
Above all, we hope to see those millions of Bernie supporters joining us at
the reactor sites, the banks, the women's health centers, the shelters, the
schools and so many other critical hot spots in our corporate-plagued
society, no matter who wins (or how) in November.
________________________________________
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of six books on election
integrity, including the new Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows
and Electronic Election Theft(www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org).
Bob's Fitrakis Files are at www.freepress.org. Harvey's Organic Spiral of US
History is coming soon at www.solartopia.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Is Hillary Stealing the Nomination? Will Bernie Birth a Long-Term Movement?
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
27 April 16
t this delicate moment in the primary season, we all need to take a deep
breath and evaluate what comes next.
Bernie Sanders has a mathematical chance to win. But Hillary seems the
likely Democratic nominee.
Donald Trump has an army of delegates. But if he doesn't win on the first
ballot, Paul Ryan could be the Republican nominee.
Oy!
For a wide variety of reasons, we believe Hillary and Bernie could beat
Trump. But we're not sure about Ryan, who we find absolutely terrifying.
Key is the stripping of our voter rolls. Millions of Democrats have already
been disenfranchised. In a close race, that could make the difference.
Also key is the flipping of the electronic vote count, which few on the left
seem to be willing to face in all its depressing finality.
Both are explored in our new Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows
& Electronic Election Theft (introduced by Mimi Kennedy and Greg Palast) at
www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org.
As Greens, we believe this election's most critical imperative is that
Bernie convert the HUGE upwelling of mostly young grassroots discontent he
has ignited into a long-term multi-issue movement. His success won't be
measured by whether he wins the nomination or presidency. Miles Mogulescu
has written nicely about this at The Huffington Post.
It matters most that those he's energized emerge after November full of
commitment and heart. We've seen too many electoral campaigns feed into a
general "disillusionment" when they don't win the vote count. We've seen too
many youthful uprisings too quickly dissipate.
As geezer vets of the civil rights, anti-war, No Nukes, social justice,
election protection and other campaigns, we desperately want all these
brilliant folks of all ages to take on the issues nearest to their hearts
with renewed ferocity in the coming months, years, decades.
Having awakened this glorious beast, we need Professor Sanders to teach this
class of '16 the ultimate lessons in staying power (of which he is such a
sterling example).
So whatever happens with the nomination, we respectfully request that Bernie
soon organize a broad series of grassroots gatherings where those who have
worked so hard for him will get the best possible training and inspiration
toward becoming lifelong activists who'll make a tangible difference in the
day-to-day business of saving this planet.
We all know that some meaningful changes can be made by putting better
people in office. But in in the long run it's the nitty-gritty grind of
facing down the corporations issue by issue, place by place, nuke by nuke,
that will save us.
Along the way there's the collapse of our electoral system. From Jimmy
Carter to Harvard to the UN and so many others who've studied it, it's
patently obvious the mechanisms by which we conduct elections in this
country are ridiculously decrepit and corrupt.
As a partial solution, we've concocted the "Ohio Plan," which demands:
universal automatic voter registration at age 18; a four-day national
holiday for voting; voter ID based on a signature that matches the
registration form with stiff felony penalties for cheating; universal
hand-counted paper ballots.
We also want money out of politics, public-funded campaigns, an end to
gerrymandering, and abolition of the Electoral College.
In 2016, the first thing to face is the massive disenfranchisement of
millions of voters, mostly citizens of color and youth. We are heartened to
see Bernie and Hillary joined together in an Arizona lawsuit.
But the long lines and urban registration stripping that we saw in Phoenix,
Madison, and elsewhere this spring will spell doom for the Democrats if they
cannot guarantee their constituencies' the right to vote in November.
At this point, we're not optimistic. The efforts at re-enfranchisement are
little and late. Among those doing superb work on this stripping of our
voter rolls are the great Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com), Ari Berman ofThe
Nation, and others.
But the electronic flipping of the alleged vote count remains a demon black
box. The 2000 election was turned from Gore to Bush by electronic
manipulations in Volusia County, Florida. The 2004 election was turned from
Kerry to Bush in a Chattanooga basement which transformed a 4.2% Democratic
lead into a 2.5% GOP victory in 90 dark minutes.
All that could happen again in 2016.
Over the years we've respected the work of The Nation's Josh Holland, who's
expressed concern about our reporting on indications of irregularities that
seem to favor Hillary over Bernie.
But our stated conclusions on them remain far from conclusive. If we thought
we had definitive evidence that the Clinton campaign was stealing the
nomination from the Sanders campaign, we'd say so in direct, explicit and
unmistakable phrases.
Simply put: we do NOT at this point believe they rise to the level of
provable theft, as we are certain was the case in 2000 and 2004.
We understand concerns and welcome the dialogue. But we'd like to avoid the
usual circular firing squad.
Writing in The Nation, Josh has deemed it important to mention disagreements
with our former collaborator Steve Rosenfeld, and our good friend Mark
Hertsgaard.
Mark's writing on global warming has been legend. In 2004 he criticized some
of our reporting on the Ohio vote count. We disagreed with him then and
still do. Nothing in the past 12 years of our research and writing while
based in central Ohio has surfaced that would make us change our reporting
on how the 2004 election was stolen. Quite the opposite.
But other comments on the nature of electronic election theft throw up a
HUGE red flag. And here we worry about a dangerous gap in the work from The
Nation and the left as a whole.
If international election standards were applied to the 2016 primaries,
eight states - Georgia, Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio,
New York, Tennessee - would be investigated for suspected fraudulent
election results, because the actual vote deviates so greatly from the exit
polls. Also, the exit polls indicated that Sanders won in Illinois,
Massachusetts and Missouri.
The bottom line is this: there is no viable method for monitoring or
verifying the electronic vote count in 2016. In a close race, which we
expect this fall, the outcome could be flipped in key swing states where GOP
governors and secretaries of state are running the elections. This includes
most notably Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona, plus North Carolina and
Florida (where the situations are slightly different).
Steve has called this "a stretch." He and Josh seem to dismiss the assertion
that an election can be electronically stolen as "conspiracy theory,"
apparently based on the idea that such thefts would become obvious fodder
for an infuriated media and public outrage.
This we find this overly trusting and dangerous. Under our current system
there is no way to counter-indicate a stolen electronic vote count except by
exit polling, for which Josh has expressed contempt. Exit polls in other
countries (especially Germany) are highly reliable; here the raw data is
too, but can be hard to get. And it's now standard procedure to have the
public numbers "adjusted" to fit official vote counts, fraudulent or
otherwise.
And even raw data exit polls have no legal standing. Nor, apparently, does
the court system itself.
After the 2004 election, we won a ruling in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v.
Blackwell federal lawsuit. Bob was lead attorney, Harvey a plaintiff. Judge
Algernon Marbley ordered Ohio's 88 county election boards to compile their
records and bring them to Columbus for an official recount. But 56 of those
88 counties failed to produce the requested records. Some boards of
elections "accidentally" destroyed all of the requested ballots. No one was
prosecuted. There was never a recount.
Admitted into evidence in the lawsuit was the Ohio secretary of state's
architectural map of the computer network used to count Ohio's votes. It is
included here so everyone can take a look.
The votes were counted by private contractors in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The
three main companies involved were all heavily linked to the Right to Life
movement in Ohio. The Free Press also uncovered the contract where these
companies arranged with the Secretary of State's office a year prior to the
2004 election to move the Ohio vote count to Tennessee should Ohio's
supercomputers fail on Election Day, which would happen for the first time
in known history. Cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore told the Free
Pressthat the computer configuration was set up to allow a "man in the
middle attack" to alter Ohio's votes.
The late night shift in the 2004 electronic vote count in 10 decisive swing
states was by all accounts a "virtual statistical impossibility," with the
odds against that happening in the millions. But now we are being told the
idea that this could indicate a stolen election is "conspiracy theory."
PLEASE!!! If someone - anyone! - can demonstrate EXACTLY how the electronic
vote count will be monitored, verified and made clear to the media in 2016,
and then guarantee that the public and the courts will react with
enforceable fury, we will be eternally grateful.
We hope in the meantime The Nationwill add to Ari Berman's fine reporting on
the stripping of voter eligibilities an in-depth investigation into the
"other shoe" of election theft - the flipping of the electronic vote count.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) raised the "Diebold question" at a Congressional
Black Caucus hearing on April 21, 2016. Johnson noted how easy it would be
to hack the old voting machines, many that are over 20 years old, and vowed
to introduce legislation that would make voting secure.
Finally, we are often asked how, if the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen,
Obama won in 2008 and 2012. We did, after all, write in 2004 that the 2008
election was being rigged.
The answer is simple: it was. But Obama won by far too many votes to have
that election credibly stolen. And his campaign was not in denial.
We are happy to hear from Steve that our reporting on Ohio 2004 might have
enhanced Obama's scrutiny on the 2008 vote count.
But it should be made clear that Obama's victory could easily have been
flipped had the vote count been closer and had fewer states been so
definitively won. We believe he actually won by more than 10 million votes
in both 2008 and 2012, but was officially credited with far less.
Where, exactly, is the line beyond which an election can't be stolen? Do the
Democrats need to win by 5%. 10%. to get an official victory? And what then
happens to the down-ballot races?
We prefer not to see those limits tested again.
And we need to have people prepared to take tangible action. In 2012 Bob
Fitrakis filed a successful Election Day lawsuit preventing illegal computer
patches being rigged into Ohio's electronic machines. In a closer race,
those patches might have made the difference. We believe the expectation
that they would work did cause Karl Rove to do his legendary flipped-out
double-take on Fox News as he was told Mitt Romney had lost Ohio.
We also reported (as did The Nation) that voting machines in key Cincinnati
precincts were financially linked to the Romney family. We each wrote
separate articles about that and were each blacklisted by Daily Kos for
doing so, even though the vast bulk of Harvey's 150+ previous blogs on that
site were about nuclear power and renewable energy.
Some publications that aren't progressive understand the problem.
Twenty-three minutes into the 2012 Election Day, Forbes took the Free
Pressreporting seriously, and warned voters of the dangers of private,
for-profit companies owning and maintaining voting machines.
Over the years we've been repeatedly told that we should stop reporting on
electronic election theft because it might discourage voter turnout. And
that the key to a Democratic victory in 2016 will be another massive vote
count victory that will be "too big to steal."
Frankly, we don't see that happening this year.
And we find such talk deeply disturbing. We have no doubt that innumerable
US House and Senate races have been stolen over the years, along with
governorships, control of state legislatures, referenda and more, all of it
producing a deep reinforcement of the corporate control of our government.
We're also reasonably certain that neither Hillary nor Bernie is likely to
amass in November a margin of victory over either Ryan or Trump that would
be big enough to negate the possibility of massive disenfranchisement and
electronic vote flipping in key states like Ohio, Michigan, Iowa or Arizona.
And anyway . why the hell are we even thinking about leaving such a problem
unsolved?
This disease needs a definitive cure.
We look forward to further reasoned and reasonable dialogue. We invite Josh
and Ari to join us on our panel at the upcoming Left Forum in New York in
May. We welcome a public discussion with Steve and Mark in California.
Above all, we hope to see those millions of Bernie supporters joining us at
the reactor sites, the banks, the women's health centers, the shelters, the
schools and so many other critical hot spots in our corporate-plagued
society, no matter who wins (or how) in November.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of six books on election
integrity, including the new Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows
and Electronic Election Theft(www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org).
Bob's Fitrakis Files are at www.freepress.org. Harvey's Organic Spiral of US
History is coming soon at www.solartopia.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
