And of course, there's the electoral college which exists in order to
prevent the people from electing their president. Next time I stumble on a
history of it, I'll post it. It came out of attempts to be sure that white
slave owners had a lot of influence in the voting process. The problem is
that most people believe American mythology and have never read real, actual
American history.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2016 10:48 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus
Every nerve in my body told me to ignore Richard's post. That's because I
don't want to get all upset when one of our list members closes their eyes
and ears and suggests that there is no evidence of voter restriction or
tampering with ballots.
If Richard really believes that voicing concern or suspicion regarding the
honesty of our elections is nothing more than the whining of the losers,
then he is ignoring our long history of rigging elections. From the Git Go,
following the Colonies victory over King George, and the establishment of
the Great American Oligarchy, attempts have been ongoing to control and
limit who gets to vote.
Right off the bat our fearless forefathers evidenced their mistrust of the
"Common Man" by limiting who could participate in the running of the
government. Only White *Men, 21 years and older, who were either Landowners
or had a certain level of personal wealth. Without going to great lengths
to prove my point, I dare say that in our first elections most Americans,
Slaves, and Indians collectively outnumbered those who made up the new
Ruling Class. I would challenge those who close their eyes and ears to the
fact that we have always attempted to control the ballot, to name an
election that did not have the taint of rigged ballots and controlled
voters. Of course, if we were all Black, and among the working class, we
would not need this conversation at all. And when my grandma was a girl,
no woman had the privilege of voting. And where are these "no seeums" when
it comes to the evidence that voters have been dropped off the registers, or
frightened by bodily harm if they came near the Polls? As American
Citizens, we have a responsibility to hold our government accountible for
its actions. Does the fact that 40% of registered Americans forget to vote?
But even then, shame on them for not taking positive action. I could
understand not voting, if we then turned to organizing a movement to clean
up our election system.
At the rate we are deteriorating, we will soon have the problem solved for
us...by our first official dictator.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/2/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not Abby, but there is certainly evidence that voters of color,totals.
younger voters, the elderly, all voters whom the Republican Party
anticipates would vote Democratic, have been prevented from voting in
a variety of ways, and not just in this Presidential election. I've
posted some of the articles regarding this by at least 4 writers
who've done investigative reporting on the subject for years. Cross
Check and gerymandering are 2 of the more obvious methods. But a lot
has been written about voting machines with no paper ballots and this
year in Ohio, (I think that was where), they actually turned off the
security systems in the voting machines.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard ;
Driscoll
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2016 7:35 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, of the popular vote - into a sore loser, to the extent that
he challenged the highly controversial and questionable Florida vote
precision."In other words, the American president is essentially determinedin power.
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 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.
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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
totals.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, of the popular vote - into a sore loser, to the extent that
he challenged the highly controversial and questionable Florida vote
In other words, the American president is essentially determinedin power.
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.
