Also Harvey Wasserman and Bob Petrakis have written about this and a
journalist from The Nation whose name I can't think of.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Abby Vincent
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2016 8:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money can Buy, was on Thom
Hartmann's show. He has lots of examples of differences between votes and
exit polls and people of similar ethnic sounding names purged because they
could vote in different states. Also it was made less convenient to vote in
neighborhoods more likely to vote Democratic.
Abby
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Driscoll
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2016 4:35 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Abby:
Do we have positive information that "voters were illegally disqualified
or discouraged from voting"?
Richard
On 12/1/2016 10:20 PM, Abby Vincent wrote:
Clinton would have to win recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin andAfrican-Americans "with almost surgical precision."
Pennsylvania for it to matter. What they aren't counting are the
votes of all the voters illegally disqualified or discouraged from
voting. Trump's vice president makes him assassination-proof. He may
just be too smart to do anything that would get him impeached. Let's
face it. We're stuck with him for four years.
Abby
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam ;
Vieni
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2016 7:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Published on
Thursday, December 01, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
by
Robert C. Koehler
(Photo: Getty Images)
The impatience across much of the media is palpable.
Recount?
Oh groan. That's not going to change the election results. The
consensus "truth" writhing just below the surface of the mainstream,
eyeball-rolling disapproval of Jill Stein's call for and financing of
a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin (and perhaps in Pennsylvania
and Michigan) is that the political and media consensus has already
established who the next president is. Like it or not.
And "election integrity" is apparently set in stone, here in America,
the oldest democracy on the planet. We took care of that a long time
ago. No matter that touch-screen voting is unverifiable and absurdly
vulnerable to hacking and the struggle for power brings out the worst
in people. No matter that the Republican Party - the political party
that lost the vote but won the election - has a long history of
passing voter suppression laws aimed at non-white Americans. The
federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down one such law in
North Carolina, for instance, accused state legislators of targeting
Nonetheless, in mainstream media land, questioning the results of adiscussed the state of the Florida vote with Jeb.
presidential election has a sort of unpatriotic stench to it, almost
like burning the flag. Once agreement congeals and the winner is
declared, that's it. The election's over and it's time to move on.
To which I say: "Jebbie says we got it! Jebbie says we got it!"
These are the words that George W. Bush's first cousin, John Prescott
Ellis, uttered 16 years ago - in the early morning hours of Nov. 8,
2000 - while he was serving as the election anchorman for Fox News
during its coverage of the Bush-Gore election. Ellis, who was a
freelance Republican political adviser, had been on the phone
throughout the night with both George and Jeb Bush, according to an
account of the incident at History Commons, and shortly after 2 a.m.
had
The vote was excruciatingly close and considered by everyone else aspainfully disturbing:
still too close to call, but the two cousins determined otherwise in
their phone chat.
Ellis announced Jeb's victory declaration to his coverage team and,
within minutes, Fox News declared Bush the winner of the election.
What happened next, as noted in the History Commons account, remains
"The other networks hurriedly, and inaccurately, follow suit."Gore 'lost.'"
Bush's lead was miniscule and dropping, but the other network
executives, fearing their coverage would look wimpy, jumped on the
bandwagon one by one and joined Fox in declaring Bush the winner.
The Associated Press refused to make the call, pointing out that
Bush's lead was steadily dwindling. "But the television broadcasts
drive the story," the History Commons explained. "Network pundits
immediately begin dissecting Bush's 'victory' and speculating as to
why
The effect of this was to turn Al Gore - winner, like Hillary Clinton,in power.
of the popular vote - into a sore loser, to the extent that he
challenged the highly controversial and questionable Florida vote totals.
In other words, the American president is essentially determined every
four years by a sort of quick-draw consensus of corporate media
conglomerates, not by a cautiously precise hand count of the votes
that have been cast - votes that, in any case, only partially
represent the will of the American electorate, thanks to ongoing voter
suppression that trims the American electorate to suit the wishes of
those
The Green Party-driven vote recount in Wisconsin and perhapsdiscussed the state of the Florida vote with Jeb.
elsewhere, while hardly addressing all the problems assailing our
democracy, at least challenges the bogus consensus by which the
president is currently determined and acknowledges the ideal that
every vote counts and every vote matters.
Indeed, the value of every vote ought to matter more than who wins and
who loses. And mandatory, routine recounts might waylay the
entertainment spectacle of election night, turning it into something
with deeper purpose and significance than, say, the last game of the
World Series. In a real democracy, voting and governing are not
separate entities but a manifestation of the ongoing partnership
between the people and their chosen leaders.
And "the people" means everyone. As Greg Palast notes on Truthout,
"just as poor areas get the worst schools and hospitals, they also get
the worst voting machines.
"The key is an ugly statistic not taught in third grade civics class:
According to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote
will be disqualified as 'spoiled' is 900 percent more likely if you're
black than if you're white."
The Green Party recount would re-examine "spoiled" and discarded
ballots along with those that were counted. Perhaps there's a lack of
election-night excitement to such work, at least from the perspective
of a TV channel executive, but I'd rather have a functioning democracy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0 License Robert C. Koehler
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and
nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at
the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@xxxxxxxxx or
visit his website at commonwonders.com.
Skip to main content
//
. DONATE
. SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER
Thursday, December 1, 2016
. Home
. World
. U.S.
. Canada
. Climate
. War & Peace
. Economy
. Rights
. Solutions
. #NotNormal
. #NoDAPL
. Bernie Sanders
Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Published on
Thursday, December 01, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
by
Robert C. Koehler
. 12 Comments
.
. (Photo: Getty Images)
. The impatience across much of the media is palpable.
. Recount?
. Oh groan. That's not going to change the election results. The
consensus "truth" writhing just below the surface of the mainstream,
eyeball-rolling disapproval of Jill Stein's call for and financing of
a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin (and perhaps in Pennsylvania
and
Michigan) is that the political and media consensus has already
established who the next president is. Like it or not.
. And "election integrity" is apparently set in stone, here in
America, the oldest democracy on the planet. We took care of that a
long time ago. No matter that touch-screen voting is unverifiable and
absurdly vulnerable to hacking and the struggle for power brings out
the worst in people. No matter that the Republican Party - the
political party that lost the vote but won the election - has a long
history of passing voter suppression laws aimed at non-white
Americans. The federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, striking down one
such law in North Carolina, for instance, accused state legislators of
targeting African-Americans "with almost surgical precision."
Nonetheless, in mainstream media land, questioning the results of a
presidential election has a sort of unpatriotic stench to it, almost
like burning the flag. Once agreement congeals and the winner is
declared, that's it. The election's over and it's time to move on.
To which I say: "Jebbie says we got it! Jebbie says we got it!"
These are the words that George W. Bush's first cousin, John Prescott
Ellis, uttered 16 years ago - in the early morning hours of Nov. 8,
2000 - while he was serving as the election anchorman for Fox News
during its coverage of the Bush-Gore election. Ellis, who was a
freelance Republican political adviser, had been on the phone
throughout the night with both George and Jeb Bush, according to an
account of the incident at History Commons, and shortly after 2 a.m.
had
The vote was excruciatingly close and considered by everyone else aspainfully disturbing:
still too close to call, but the two cousins determined otherwise in
their phone chat.
Ellis announced Jeb's victory declaration to his coverage team and,
within minutes, Fox News declared Bush the winner of the election.
What happened next, as noted in the History Commons account, remains
"The other networks hurriedly, and inaccurately, follow suit."Gore 'lost.'"
Bush's lead was miniscule and dropping, but the other network
executives, fearing their coverage would look wimpy, jumped on the
bandwagon one by one and joined Fox in declaring Bush the winner.
The Associated Press refused to make the call, pointing out that
Bush's lead was steadily dwindling. "But the television broadcasts
drive the story," the History Commons explained. "Network pundits
immediately begin dissecting Bush's 'victory' and speculating as to
why
The effect of this was to turn Al Gore - winner, like Hillary Clinton,in power.
of the popular vote - into a sore loser, to the extent that he
challenged the highly controversial and questionable Florida vote totals.
In other words, the American president is essentially determined every
four years by a sort of quick-draw consensus of corporate media
conglomerates, not by a cautiously precise hand count of the votes
that have been cast - votes that, in any case, only partially
represent the will of the American electorate, thanks to ongoing voter
suppression that trims the American electorate to suit the wishes of
those
The Green Party-driven vote recount in Wisconsin and perhaps
elsewhere, while hardly addressing all the problems assailing our
democracy, at least challenges the bogus consensus by which the
president is currently determined and acknowledges the ideal that
every vote counts and every vote matters.
Indeed, the value of every vote ought to matter more than who wins and
who loses. And mandatory, routine recounts might waylay the
entertainment spectacle of election night, turning it into something
with deeper purpose and significance than, say, the last game of the
World Series. In a real democracy, voting and governing are not
separate entities but a manifestation of the ongoing partnership
between the people and their chosen leaders.
And "the people" means everyone. As Greg Palast notes on Truthout,
"just as poor areas get the worst schools and hospitals, they also get
the worst voting machines.
"The key is an ugly statistic not taught in third grade civics class:
According to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote
will be disqualified as 'spoiled' is 900 percent more likely if you're
black than if you're white."
The Green Party recount would re-examine "spoiled" and discarded
ballots along with those that were counted. Perhaps there's a lack of
election-night excitement to such work, at least from the perspective
of a TV channel executive, but I'd rather have a functioning democracy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0 License /author/robert-c-koehler
/author/robert-c-koehler/author/robert-c-koehler
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and
nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at
the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@xxxxxxxxx or
visit his website at commonwonders.com.
