June 9, 2016

California Called for Clinton While 800,000-3,000,000 Ballots Remain Uncounted

Greg Palast warned us that this would likely happen. Palast is the investigative reporter who more than anyone else documented how George W. Bush stole the Florida 2000 Presidential election that gave Bush the final electoral votes he needed to win the election. On June 1st 2016 Palast wrote of the coming Democratic primary in California that some poll workers have been told to give No Party Preference (NPP) voters provisional ballots rather than regular ballots. He urged voters to demand a regular Democratic ballot because, as many of us know, provisional ballots are usually not counted.

I did phone banking for Bernie. My job was to contact NPP voters and tell them that they had to ask for a Democratic ballot (or a Democratic “crossover” ballot) when they go to the polls, or if they’ve already been sent a “non-partisan” ballot (which doesn’t give them the opportunity to vote for President) they have to bring it to the polls to exchange for a Democratic ballot. The goal was to provide these instructions to all NPP voters in the state. But so many calls go unanswered – what percentage of NPP voters actually get the correct information?

The importance of this to the Sanders campaign was huge. Record breaking new voter registrations in California resulted in 4.2 million registered NPP voters by Election Day. Polls show that these voters vote for Sanders by a margin of approximately 40%.

But when California was called for Clinton on Wednesday morning, a bare minimum of 800 thousand ballots remained uncounted – including provisional ballots and late mail-in ballots. The 800 K number was arrived at by 11 California counties that reported solid numbers of uncounted ballots. But there are 58 counties in California. Nobody knows at this time the total number of uncounted ballots. Estimates of uncounted ballots range from 1 million to 3 million. And these estimates don’t even include the many eligible voters who were turned away from the polls on Election Day without even being given a chance to vote provisionally.

The official vote count had Clinton ahead by about 440 thousand votes. How can they call the election with so many votes uncounted, especially when most of them are disproportionately likely to be for the candidate who’s losing?


Election Day, June 7 in California

The reality of Election Day in California turned out to be far worse than even Palast was warning of. Investigations show an aggressive attempt to disenfranchise Sanders voters. Palast wrote on Election Day, June 7:

In some counties like Los Angeles, it's not easy for an NPP to claim their right to vote in the Democratic primary – and in other counties, nearly impossible. Example: In Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, if you don’t say the magic words, “I want a Democratic crossover ballot,” you are automatically given a ballot without the presidential race. And ready for this, if an NPP voter asks the poll worker, “How do I get to vote in the Democratic party primary”, they are instructed to say, “NPP voters can’t get Democratic ballots.” They are ordered not to breathe a word that the voter can get a “crossover” ballot that includes the presidential race. I’m not kidding. This is from the official Election Officer Training Manual page 49:
"A No Party Preference voter will need to request a crossover ballot from the Roster Index Officer. (Do not offer them a crossover ballot if they do not ask)."…

If an NPP voter doesn’t say they are “surrendering” their NPP ballot, the clerk can take it and count it blank instead of giving the voter a new one… Election Justice USA filed still more declarations with the courts of poll workers being told to give NPP voters “provisional” ballots even if they say the magic words, “I want a crossover Democratic ballot.”

Poll worker Jeff Lewis, who was abhorred by the training he received, filed a description of the training in an official declaration to a federal court:

Someone raised their hand and asked a follow-up question: ‘So, what if someone gets a nonpartisan ballot, notices it doesn't have the presidential candidates on it, and asks you where they are?’ The answer poll workers are instructed to give: ‘Sorry, NPP ballots don't have presidential candidates on them.’

Another California poll worker, Ashley Beck, complained:

I was told that all NPP voters are to be given provisional ballots. I was bothered by that, because I was always told that NPP voters in California can vote for Democrats and their vote would be counted…. We all know what happens most of the time with provisional ballots. They are not being counted.”

The Los Angeles Times announced hundreds of reports of additional problems in an article titled: ‘It was just chaos’: Broken machines, incomplete voter rolls leave some wondering whether their ballots will be counted. As if the impediments to obtaining a Democratic “crossover” ballot weren’t bad enough, some counties ran out of them, thus ensuring that NPP voters wouldn’t be able to vote on a regular ballot. Other counties demanded that first time voters (likely Sanders voters) show official voter ID, even though California law doesn’t require it. And as we’ve seen all through this primary season, many would-be voters are complaining that their voter registration was purged or changed to Republican (which prohibits them from voting in the Democratic primary) without their knowledge, and most of these would-be voters are Sanders would-be voters.


So why did they call the election with so many votes uncounted

The reason the election was called with so many votes uncounted is not hard to understand. It is exactly the same reason why our corporate “news” media timed their false announcement of Clinton “clinching” the Democratic nomination for the day before the California and five other Democratic primaries. It is the same reason why all of the powerful establishment forces within and outside of the Democratic Party have done everything they can since day one to prevent the nomination of Bernie Sanders. Their status, power, and wealth are vested in the status quo. The Sanders campaign is all about disrupting the status quo – leveling the playing field and giving the American people more control over their lives. It’s that simple.

Efforts are currently underway to force a counting of the uncounted California ballots prior to certification of Tuesday’s election. We will see what happens. If they are not counted, this should come up at the July Democratic National Convention.

June 7, 2016

About our Corporate “News” Media Premature Announcement that Clinton Clinched the Nomination

Anybody who’s paid attention knows that our corporate “news” media is nothing but a conglomerate of highly paid shills dedicated to nothing so much as maintaining the status quo in our country – and has been so for many years. But yesterday’s announcement that Hillary Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination for President has to be one of the most blatantly ridiculous things they’ve ever engaged in – coming on the heels of one of the worst episodes of voter suppression we’ve seen in a long time, in a primary season that has been sickeningly filled with such episodes.

Hillary Clinton has NOT clinched the Democratic nomination, and our corporate “news” media knows that. To win the Democratic nomination a candidate needs 2,383 delegates. Clinton is currently more than 500 pledged delegates short of that, and she will still be short that number going into the Democratic National Convention in July. In order to arrive at the “conclusion” that Clinton clinched the nomination yesterday, our corporate news media had to add in unpledged delegates (i.e. Superdelegates) who say that they will vote for Clinton but who won’t actually vote until the Convention in July. Therefore, the claim that Clinton has clinched the nomination is essentially based on a poll – of Superdelegates. So our “news” media may as well have awarded her the nomination before the first vote was cast, based on national polls that showed her far ahead of any other Democratic candidate.

We could argue all day about the wisdom of including unelected Superdelegates in the nominating process, and I’m not going to argue that here, one way or the other. Suffice it to say that the rationale is to give Democratic Party leaders more say in the process, especially in the event that they feel that the leader in pledged delegates is too weak to have a good chance of winning the general election. That is exactly what they are facing in this case. Hillary Clinton has unprecedented negative net favorability ratings for a major party nominee, and she is involved in major scandals that could end up in indictment and conviction on criminal charges at worst, or just continued revelations that cause her favorability ratings to plummet further at best. That is also unprecedented for a major party nominee. Furthermore, a substantial amount of evidence has accumulated that election fraud may be the primary basis for her current lead, and this issue may or may not come up at the Convention, I don’t know.

In any event, the bottom line is that the Superdelegates have not voted yet, and they will not vote until the July Convention. Arguments will be made at the Convention, and then they will decide. A lot can happen between now and then. As is the case with all polls, the Superdelegates who currently say they will be voting for Clinton could change their minds before it’s all over.

June 1, 2016

Election Integrity Organizations Plan Exit Polls for California Democratic Primary

In response to the cancelling of TV network funded exit polls just prior to the Kentucky and Oregon Democratic primaries, citizen funded exit polls are now being planned for the California primary:

Because network funded exit polls have been cancelled for the remaining 2016 primaries, a number of organizations including Protect California Ballots, California Election Protection Network and Election Defense Alliance have organized to conduct citizen exit polling.

These organizations are looking for volunteers to conduct the polling. Please check out the Facebook link above for details if you are interested in volunteering.

The announcement continues:

Exit polling is important for safeguarding the integrity of elections. So far in the 2016 election cycle, some state primary results do not match exit polls within the survey sampling margin of error. Such discrepancies are often indicative of election fraud. Why would the networks that traditionally fund exit polls cancel exit polling for the remaining primaries?

Around the world, exit polls have been used to verify the integrity of elections. The United States has funded exit polls in Eastern Europe to detect fraud. Discrepancies between exit polls and the official vote count have been used to successfully overturn election results in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia…

The {recent cancelling of} exit poll reporting and the lack of an explanation for their absence has only added fuel to voters’ speculation regarding election fraud.

Actually, the statement that “some {Democratic 2016} state primary results do not match exit polls within survey sampling margin of error” is quite an understatement. The discrepancies between what the exit polls have predicted and the official Democratic primary results have exceeded the statistical margin of error in 10 states this primary season and all of them favor Clinton in the official results compared to the exit poll predictions. Beyond that, the consistency of the discrepancies has been quite remarkable, favoring Clinton in the official results compared to exit poll predictions in 20 of the 23 primaries since March 1 where exit polls have been conducted. The chart below shows that in graphic form (Note especially the last two columns).




The Inquisitr points out that:

Exit polls had become the source of suspicion of so much election fraud {in the Democratic primaries this year} that the hashtag “#ExitPollGate” surfaced on social media. Primary after primary, exit polls were not aligning with election outcomes in the Democratic primaries…

Voter advocacy groups have pointed to exit polls as a red flag that election fraud may be occurring, because the United States has used exit polls as a measure of fraud in elections in other nations. So why did the TV networks suddenly cancel them for the rest of the primary season right before the Kentucky and Oregon primaries?

Election Fraud Watch 2016 has a simple explanation:

The exit polls have not matched the official results OUTSIDE the margin of error in many states in the Democratic primary election. It has been a red flag for fraud. WHY are the networks canceling exit polls in the remaining upcoming primaries? Simple. They do not want to provide a means of evidence to document the theft.

But haven’t we been told by our national news media that exit polls aren’t reliable for the purpose of identifying fraud?

Yes, we’ve been told by our national corporate news media over and over again that exit poll discrepancies aren’t a reliable measure of election fraud. They tell us that for the same reason that they fail to tell us so many other things. They are wedded to the status quo and they don’t want to rock the boat. Have you ever heard them discuss that our election system is ranked LAST among the established democracies in the world? The fact of the matter is that as explained by Jonathan Simon at the Election Defense Alliance, whenever we see exit poll discrepancies that are highly suggestive of fraud, they always favor the more conservative candidate in the official vote count compared to what is predicted by the exit polls. Our national corporate news media is fine with that and they want to make sure that we all know that anyone who takes exit polls seriously as a means of monitoring elections will be labeled a “conspiracy theorist” – as if election fraud couldn’t possibly occur in our country. And yet, almost every expert on the electronic voting machines that are used to count our votes acknowledges that they are highly vulnerable to vote rigging.

As an example of our news media trying everything they can to get our mind away from exit polls, let’s consider Nate Silver’s “Ten Reasons Why you Should Ignore Exit Polls”, as I believe that Nate is the most frequently quoted pollster on this subject. He is far too intelligent to write something with so much fallacious reasoning, so I am assuming that he was heavily persuaded to do it. I discuss his ten points in detail in this post. Here I will just summarize why we should ignore his advice on this:

1) Some of his reasons to ignore exit polls (2, 3, 5, and 10) clearly exhibit circular reasoning. He says in various ways that we should ignore them because they have been shown to be wrong in the past. But they definitely have NOT been shown to be wrong in the past. What they have shown is that they often deviate from the official election results (again, they always favor the more conservative candidate in the official count). To say that this proves them to be wrong is classical circular reasoning. What such deviations show is that exit polls often differ from the official count, meaning that either the exit polls are wrong or the official count is wrong (i.e. rigged).

2) Nate makes his living by analyzing pre-election polls. Yet in his criticism of exit polls, he doesn’t even mention that some of his reasons for ignoring exit polls (4, 6, and 9) apply equally or more so to pre-election polls. Does he want us to ignore pre-election polls too? Of course not – he makes his living from them.

3) Related to number 2 above, he doesn’t balance his discussion by including the very substantial and unarguable advantages that exit polls have over pre-election polls, which include: a) They assess how the voter actually voted rather than how s/he intends to vote at a later time; b) Pre-election polls rely on models to estimate who likely voters will be. Different pollsters use different models to estimate that and obviously some of them are wrong. Sometimes, most of them are wrong. Exit polls have no need for such models. Each respondent to an exit poll has approximately a 100% chance of voting because s/he has already voted and; c) despite the problems that exit polls have in obtaining a true random sample of voters, the problems with obtaining a true random sample with pre-election polls are far worse for the very simple reason that many voters cannot be sampled at all because they are unobtainable by phone.


In summary

If exit polls are as bad as our corporate news media tries to tell us, then why does our country pay to have them performed elsewhere in the world?

And if the substantial exit poll discrepancies in the Democratic primaries this year are indicative of the poor reliability of exit polls rather than election fraud, then why have the exit polls in the Republican primaries been so consistently right on target(scroll down to table)? I’ll suggest a reason why. To repeat myself – exit poll discrepancies in this country in recent years (since 2004 at least) always favor the more conservative candidate in the official vote count (i.e. election fraud is almost always perpetrated on behalf of the more conservative candidate). In the Republican primaries this year, election fraud wasn’t worth the effort. All the candidates were plenty enough conservative to satisfy whoever might be behind this.

I’m looking forward to the California primary election and comparison with the California exit polls. Should there be a large discrepancy (in either direction and regardless of who wins), I would very much want to see a hand count of the whole state to see how much the official machine count differs from the hand count. There is no other way that we can have confidence in the results in the face of large exit poll discrepancies from the official results.

May 29, 2016

Some Tips to California Voters to Avoid Being Disenfranchised

I got much of this from a former California precinct worker who posted it at a Bernie Sanders site, Jackpine Radicals. He is especially concerned about a category of voters called DTS (Declined To State party preference), who legally can vote in the Democratic Party, but he is worried that they might be targeted for suppression in an attempt to steal the election. However, I see that according to the California Secretary of State Website, the DTS category has been renamed to NPP (No Party Preference – perhaps in an effort to confuse these voters), so I will cover them together. The poster also includes a disclaimer which says that this information is correct and current to the best of his knowledge, unless the Democratic Party made recent rule changes that he is unaware of with the goal of taking votes away from Bernie. I will summarize his most important points:

1) MOST IMPORTANT: If you are in the DTS or NPP category, they will probably try to give you a non-partisan ballot (in fact the SOS website specifically says they will), which does not include the Presidential primary on it. If they ask you which ballot you want to receive, or if they don’t ask and try to give you a non-partisan ballot, tell them you want a Democratic ballot. Do not just say that you are a Democrat, or don’t say that at all. Tell them you want a Democratic ballot, which they are legally required to give to you if you request it (assuming you are registered DTS or NPP or Democratic and at the right precinct). Make sure you have a Democratic ballot before you vote. If you mistakenly begin voting and then realize that the Presidential primary is not on the ballot or that one of the candidate’s names is not on the ballot, do not finish voting – take the ballot to a poll worker and demand a Democratic ballot. If they refuse to give you one, report to the highest election official at the polls and to the Sanders campaign.

2) Many California voters are reporting that their registrations have been switched to Republican or some other category which is not allowed to participate in the Democratic primaries, or if they are voting absentee have received an absentee ballot that does not include the Presidential primary on it. So check your voter registration, and if it has been switched, get it changed back if you can. They forge signatures in order to change voter registrations, and this can be easily proved, but you would have to go to the BOE office or County Elections Office and have them compare your signature to the signature that changed your voter registration.

3) Do not wear anything that will identify you as a Sanders voter. If you do, you may be accused of electioneering, or you risk being illegally purged or having your vote not count.

4) If you are newly registered or recently changed your registration, but you did so by May 24, you are legally allowed to vote in the Democratic primary if your most current registration change is to the Democratic Party or DTS or NPP (there may be one or more other categories that are also legally allowed to vote, but it doesn’t appear to me that that is the case). So, if you are told at the polls that your name is not on the roster, ask them to check “Late Changes”, where your name should appear.

5) If your name cannot be found, make sure that you are in the right precinct. If you are not, make an attempt to vote in the right precinct because otherwise you will be required to vote Provisional ballot, which may not count.

6) If you are in line by 8 pm, you must be allowed to vote (if otherwise legally allowed to vote). If they try to tell you otherwise, report it to the highest election official at the polls and to the Sanders campaign.

7) If you received an absentee ballot but didn’t use it, in order to cast a regular vote (i.e. not provisional ballot), you must bring a spoiled absentee ballot with you to the polls.

8) Voter ID is not required by law in California. But I would advise that if you have one, bring it anyhow, just in case.

9) If they say that your voter status is inactive, you are still legally allowed to vote by regular ballot in California. If they don’t give you a Democratic ballot, report to highest election official at the polls and to Sanders campaign.

May 27, 2016

The Less Noted and Discussed Aspect of the Clinton E-mail Scandal

The bulk of attention in the Clinton e-mail scandal focuses on breaches of national security – which I won’t talk about here. But there’s another aspect to it that some people may find to be more important and darker than her breaches of national security: Her attempt to hide her federal business from the relevant federal agencies and the American people. The relevant part of federal law violated by this attempt is in the IG report:

Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account, by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service.

In fact, among the “personal” Clinton e-mails discovered by the IG, one contains an apparent admission that a major reason for her decision to set up a private e-mail server for the conduct of government business was to prevent “access” to it by federal officials or anyone else, as noted by the Washington Examiner. The Examiner discusses this aspect of the scandal and sums it up by saying:

But the classified information discussion may be a distraction from a more important issue: Clinton's inappropriate secrecy, keeping her emails outside the reach of federal officials and outside the reach of public-records laws. In America the government's business is the people's business — but Hillary Clinton wanted the American people out of her business.

What might Clinton have wanted to keep away from the federal authorities and the public?

One possibility would be that she was afraid that it might shed light on reports of corruption involving the Clinton Foundation. Another article by the Examiner notes:

Thousands of emails made public by the State Department between May of last year and Friday indicate donors to the Clinton Foundation were often given personal meetings, generous contracts or special consideration that was seemingly not afforded to the same number of private groups that had not written checks to the charity.

Or maybe they involve her central involvement with the disastrous Libyan War, which Clinton played a central role in creating, which helped ISIS and other terrorist groups gain power, and which Clinton has never even acknowledged as a mistake.

Or perhaps it would show something about her $225,000 speeches to Wall Street. There are federal laws against candidates for high federal offices receiving money for personal use from powerful interests, and with good reason. Large sums of money from powerful interest groups that are regulated by the federal government might cause a new U.S. President or other public official to favor those powerful interests over their other constituents. (In my opinion, there should be similar prohibitions against campaign contributions from powerful interest groups, for the same reason, but that’s another issue, since unfortunately those bribes are legal). Clinton claims that her speeches to Wall Street which earned her such huge sums of money were made before she became a candidate for President. But her e-mails could show that she was running long before she announced it publicly, in which case the pay she received for some or many of her Wall Street speeches would be illegal.

The Examiner sums up the problem with Clinton’s lack of transparency:

Transparency is essential to a functional democracy. Congress and various arms of the executive branch have created rules to bring about that transparency. Hillary Clinton broke those rules, in keeping with her career of antipathy for transparency. This antipathy to a core value is disqualifying in a presidential candidate. It's also a trait she shares with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has refused to release his tax returns, as presidential candidates traditionally do….. Democracy needs sunshine in order to flourish. America is in for four years of darkness.

I think it would have been better if the Examiner had changed its last sentence to read: “America is in for four years of darkness IF Trump and Clinton receive their Party’s nomination and are the only viable contenders in the November Presidential Election.” In other words, I think that if the Democratic Party goes through with its long intended coronation it will not only be committing political suicide but worse yet, it will be perpetrating a great disservice upon the American people.

It would be like if Richard Nixon, at the height of the Watergate scandal, rather than resigning the Presidency, had announced his intention to run for another term (He couldn’t have done that because he was in his second term at the time of his resignation, but this is just a hypothetical analogy). At least when Nixon resigned he had the privilege of having a successor who he approved of. If Clinton is the Democratic nominee she won’t have that option – assuming that she disapproves of a Trump Presidency.

May 25, 2016

Alison Grimes Should Recuse herself for the Kentucky Re-canvass

Alison Grimes, who as Kentucky Secretary of State is in charge of the running of elections in Kentucky, recently said:

I’m not only here to do my job as your secretary of state to make sure folks actually get to the polls to vote, but second, and most importantly, to support a family — both the former president and the woman I believe will be our next president.

So the chief elections officer in Kentucky, who the taxpayers pay to ensure fair elections, thinks that it is more important for her to support the campaign of one of the candidates.

With the re-canvass coming up tomorrow, I feel the need to repeat a paragraph from a recent post of mine regarding the Kentucky Democratic primary, because I now have something significant to add to it:

On Tuesday evening I was following comments on the reddit live blog while also following the KY election returns. Early in the evening, with about 20% of precincts reporting, with Bernie ahead in the state count by about 4%, several redditors noticed something very strange, which I was unable to personally observe because the site on which I was following the returns did not report results by county. What they noticed was a sudden decrease in the percent reporting from Jefferson County, simultaneously with a big increase in the vote count for Clinton. This concerned me, so I looked back at the election results, which literally seconds ago had shown Bernie with a 4 point lead, and it was completely gone – Clinton had taken the lead. Throughout the rest of the evening I saw somewhat similar comments from the redditors, causing me to believe that there were several similar occurrences, but I was more focused on the election results than their comments (which I now regret), so I am unable to discuss them in the detail that I discussed the first one.

Now I read this, which confirms my impressions from Election Night:

As I watched the returns come in last night… I noticed a trend in the numbers as they came in. Sanders would be gradually building a lead, getting it up to about 2,000 votes or so and then suddenly, a big number shift would come in and Hillary would be up a thousand, two thousand, four thousand votes all at once. Then the numbers would trickle in and Bernie would gradually regain the lead over the course of an hour or so and suddenly, once again, Hillary votes would come in in one massive dump and she would go up by another thousand or two thousand.

This unlikely trend continued all night…. Jefferson County kept injecting some votes periodically yesterday during the count but then they stopped with about 2 hours or so to go before the final votes… Jefferson County held their vote totals until about 98% of the votes were in from the rest of the state and they suddenly dumped a bunch of Hillary votes into the mix, giving her a 2,500 vote lead with 98% of the votes in and a guaranteed “victory” in Kentucky.

Also in the article is a video of Grimes cheerleading for Hillary at a rally in Louisville (in Jefferson County) before a crowd of 200 people – to give you an idea of how popular she is there.

In addition to the strange sudden swings to Clinton due to massive vote dumps from Jefferson County and a Secretary of State who is an ardent Clinton supporter, is the fact that exit polls, which the TV networks have been sponsoring throughout the primary season, were suddenly cancelled for the rest of the primary season shortly before the Kentucky primary. The Clinton vote count this primary season has consistently exceeded exit poll predictions, frequently by very large amounts. It would have been very interesting to see an exit poll for the Kentucky primary.

For all these reasons, I was very excited to hear that Bernie is requesting a re-canvass of Kentucky. But as best I can tell, Kentucky uses electronic voting machines WITH NO PAPER TRAIL in at least some counties. I have been unable to determine which counties do this, but I suspect that Jefferson County is likely to be one of them. Add to that a highly partisan Secretary of State, and the biggest questions are: How is the true vote count going to be determined where there is no paper trail? Does anyone have the capability to ascertain vote rigging by inspecting these machines? If attempts are made to do so, are the voting machine manufacturers going to try to block such inspections with the excuse that their machines are “proprietary”? And if so, is the Secretary of State going to roll over and let them get away with that? And if and where paper trails are available, will the vote counting be open to public inspection (as in Florida 2000) to make sure that the counting is done fairly?

These are all extremely important questions, and the Secretary of State is going to have a big role to play in all of them, and more. Democracy cannot afford to have this done by someone who says that it is more important for her to support one of the candidates than it is to ensure a fair election, especially given the highly suspicious election returns we saw in the Kentucky primary last week. We had that with Katherine Harris in the 2000 Presidential election in Florida and Kenneth Blackwell in the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. In both cases, the election of George W. Bush was the result. We also saw it with Roberta Lange at the Nevada Democratic State Convention a couple weeks ago. This kind of thing cannot be tolerated in a country that calls itself a democracy. Alison Grimes must recuse herself for this very important re-canvassing process if we are to have much confidence in the results.

May 22, 2016

Electoral Map Sanders vs. Trump – Looks Like a Landslide

There are two different maps that look at a general election between Sanders and Trump. One includes only states that have been polled, and considers solid leads (10 points or more) and leaning leads (5-10 points). The other map extrapolates from that to allocate un-polled states based on how the state voted in 2012.

The map that considers only polled states looks like a landslide for Sanders:
http://www.270towin.com/polling-maps/sanders-trump-electoral-map

Sanders leads in those states by an electoral count of 237 to 13. Only 13 EC votes in the Sanders column are “leaning” leads (5-10 points), the other 224 being solid (10 or greater). On that map, Sanders has solid leads in NH, NY, MA, NJ, PA, MD, VA, NC, MI, WI, MN, CA, AZ, UT (total of 224 EC votes) and “leaning” leads in IA and CT (13 EC votes). Trump has leads only in LA and WV (both solid Republican bastions in the past 4 presidential election, with a total of 13 EC votes). Sanders’ lead in Utah is especially striking because Utah hasn’t voted Republican in a Presidential election since 1968 – but Trump is very unpopular in the West. Keep in mind that these numbers of 237 (total) or 224 (solid) EC votes for Sanders do NOT include several states which he couldn’t possibly lose to Trump, including VT, HI, WA, OR, IL, RI, DC, NV, CO, and NM. I’m including NV, CO, and NM here because they are Western states with large Hispanic populations, which can’t stand Trump for obvious reasons. These states that Sanders couldn’t possibly lose to Trump add up to 73 more EC votes, to give him a total of 297 solid EC votes, which is plenty enough to win. Too close to call states (<5 point leads) include MO, GA, SC, FL, IN, OH (total 93 EC votes).

The other map, which extrapolates by adding un-polled states based on 2012 results is somewhat more favorable to Trump, as it adds only 7 EC votes for Sanders from what I discussed above (DE and ME) and 128 for Trump. But many of those states are quite questionable for Trump, based on his very poor showing against Sanders in the polled states. It includes many Western states, where Trump is quite unpopular. Given that Sanders has a solid lead in Utah, it seems likely that he could pick off quite a few other traditionally Republican states in the West as well against Trump.


What about Clinton?

Clinton’s electoral map against Trump shows a likely win, but it is substantially weaker than the Sanders electoral map. Worse yet, her popularity has been decreasing lately, so that her net favorability ratings are now at negative 19% - almost 30 points lower than Sanders at +9.7%.

Maybe one reason for that is the recent strong-armed despicable abuse of power demonstrated by Clinton surrogates at the NV State Convention. Videos of the events there are circulating widely, apparently effectively combatting the biased “news” media reports that omit the many abuses of power by Clinton surrogates and talk only about false reports of “violence” by Sanders delegates. I guess our “news” media, as well as the Democratic Party, considers loud and angry protests against the theft of our democracy to be the equivalent of violence.

And now polls for head to head competition against Trump show Trump with an actual lead (though a statistical dead heat) against Clinton. That is not a single poll, but an average of several recent polls (He leads in three recent polls and trails in two). What a terrible risk we’ll be taking if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.

May 22, 2016

Clinton Delegate Whistleblower at NV State Convention: We Were Told

The Clinton delegate whistleblower says that they were told that party leaders could "scrub anyone they wanted to". She says that they were also told that the statement came from above -- i.e. Roberta Lange.

I just have this to say about anyone who tried to tell us that the 58 Sanders delegates at the NV State Convention who were decertified were done so for any legitimate reason: they were either very ignorant of the facts, very naive or very dishonest.

Well, maybe now our national "news" media will have to retract some of the ugly spin against Bernie and his delegates that they've been reporting about what happened at the NV State Convention. But I doubt that they will.

May 20, 2016

Strange Electronic “Glitches” in Jefferson and Pike Counties in KY Democratic Primary

On Tuesday evening I was following comments on the reddit live blog while also following the KY election returns.

Early in the evening, with about 20% of precincts reporting, with Bernie ahead in the state count by about 4%, several redditors noticed something very strange, which I was unable to personally observe because the site on which I was following the returns did not report results by county. What they noticed was a sudden decrease in the percent reporting from Jefferson County, simultaneously with a big increase in the vote count for Clinton. This concerned me, so I looked back at the election results, which literally seconds ago had shown Bernie with a 4 point lead, and it was completely gone – Clinton had taken the lead. Throughout the rest of the evening I saw somewhat similar comments from the redditors, causing me to believe that there were several similar occurrences, but I was more focused on the election results than their comments (which I now regret), so I am unable to discuss them in the detail that I discussed the first one.

Also of note is that very late in the election, with the vote count extremely close, suddenly all of the votes from Pike County, one of only 4 counties in KY where Sanders won by more than a 2:1 margin, disappeared, giving Clinton a substantial lead. Votes from Pike County returned several minutes later, and when they did Clinton still had a small lead, which she maintained until the end. The Inquisitor reports that when the Pike County returns came back, 20% of the votes were gone, but others maintain that all the votes came back. I cannot resolve that issue, but many are calling for a hand recount of Pike County, and in the interest of ensuring a fair election, I believe that should be done, as well as a hand recount of Jefferson County.

Call me paranoid, but these findings sound very suspicious to me. I was dying to get hold of exit poll results to see if the strange electronic “glitches” from Jefferson County would show up as substantial exit poll discrepancies from the official vote count, but guess what happened? Exit polls have been cancelled for the rest of the Democratic primary season. Perhaps some people in a position of power became very nervous over the fact that the large exit poll discrepancies (scroll down to see exit polls) seen in so many Democratic primaries this year (but not in the Republican primaries), 23 of 26 favoring Clinton in the official count compared to the exit polls (including 10 above the margin of error, ALL of which favored Clinton in the official count), have aroused a good deal of suspicion and calls for hand counted audits, which would settle the question of whether the exit polls were wrong or the electronic machines were wrong. Well, no need to worry about that any more. We’ll just have to trust the electronic voting machines that are owned and programmed by right wing corporations with little or no government oversight, or with oversight by highly partisan and corrupt election officials (for example, Katherine Harris (FL 2000), Kenneth Blackwell (OH 2004), and Roberta Lange (NV 2016)).

May 18, 2016

Bernie’s Statement about the Nevada State Convention

I posted about the happenings at this convention a few days ago. Here is the statement that Bernie made about it, in part in response to inaccurate reports of violence at the convention. I have bolded the parts that I think are especially important to emphasize:

It is imperative that the Democratic leadership, both nationally and in the states, understand that the political world is changing and that millions of Americans are outraged at establishment politics and establishment economics. The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors.

The Democratic Party has a choice. It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change – people who are willing to take on Wall Street, corporate greed and a fossil fuel industry which is destroying this planet. Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.

Within the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against my campaign organization. Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a ‘penchant for violence.’ That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals. But, when we speak of violence, I should add here that months ago, during the Nevada campaign, shots were fired into my campaign office in Nevada and apartment housing complex my campaign staff lived in was broken into and ransacked.

If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned. I am happy to say that has been the case at state conventions in Maine, Alaska, Colorado and Hawaii where good discussions were held and democratic decisions were reached. Unfortunately, that was not the case at the Nevada convention. At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place. Among other things:

* The chair of the convention announced that the convention rules passed on voice vote, when the vote was a clear no-vote. At the very least, the Chair should have allowed for a headcount.
* The chair allowed its Credentials Committee to en mass rule that 64 delegates were ineligible without offering an opportunity for 58 of them to be heard. That decision enabled the Clinton campaign to end up with a 30-vote majority.
* The chair refused to acknowledge any motions made from the floor or allow votes on them.
* The chair refused to accept any petitions for amendments to the rules that were properly submitted.

These are on top of failures at the precinct and county conventions including trying to depose and then threaten with arrest the Clark County convention credentials chair because she was operating too fairly.