Demand Respect for Results

Albany Times Union
October 5, 2020

By Jerry H. Goldfeder and Lincoln A. Mitchell

…"Despite increasingly provocative rhetoric from the president, we hope our historical traditions will carry the day. Unfortunately, we may have to guarantee their continuation through action beyond voting - to peaceably assemble throughout the country, in all state capitals and major cities, with a simple, yet profound, message: support democracy, count the votes, respect the outcome.“

Read the article here.

America May Need International Intervention

New York Times: "Democrats must now win the popular vote by three, four or even five percentage points to be assured of winning the Electoral College. They must achieve that margin in the face of a strenuous Republican effort to ensure that many Democratic ballots are not counted. And even if they overcome both of those obstacles, Mr. Trump may still not concede….After observing America’s 2018 midterm elections, a team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe....concluded that, in critical ways, American elections “contravene ...international standards with regard to universal and equal suffrage.”

Voting lawsuits pile up across US as election approaches

AP "Measuring the anxiety over the November election is as simple as tallying the hundreds of voting-related lawsuits filed across the country in recent months. The cases concern the fundamentals of the American voting process, including how ballots are cast and counted, during an election made unique by the coronavirus pandemic and by a president who refuses to commit to accepting the results.”

[New York may not be a swing state, but NY election laws make NY ripe for election challenges and chaos due to lack of any automatic path to a 100% hand count. Legislators at the state and county level have done little to prepare for the chaos if this November election is close. This includes local races, such as Harckham-Astorino. Needed-automatic 100% handcount if an election is close. Without it, we are in the courts for weeks or months if the vote is close. Allegra Dengler]

Brooklyn Voters Receive Absentee Ballot Envelopes with Wrong Voter Names and Addresses

Gothamitst "The New York City Board of Elections has mailed out nearly half a million absentee ballots ahead of Election Day this November, as many New Yorkers are opting to vote by mail during the pandemic. Yet some voters are already reporting problems with their ballots that could invalidate someone’s vote if they aren’t caught in time.

"If you have received an absentee ballot with errors on it, the city Board of Elections says you should reach out to them via email at Apply4Absentee@boe.nyc or call 1-866-VOTE-NYC….When Gothamist / WNYC called the 1-866-VOTE-NYC hotline on Monday afternoon, there were 79 callers ahead of us."…

Ransomware Attacks Take On New Urgency Ahead of Vote

Key Points:

A Texas company that sells software that cities and states use to display results on election night was hit by ransomware last week, the latest of nearly a thousand such attacks over the past year against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems.

“The chance of a local government not being hit while attempting to manage the upcoming and already ridiculously messy election would seem to be very slim,” Department of Homeland Security, noted that the agency was trying to make sure local election officials printed out their electronic poll books, which are used to check in voters, so that they had a backup.

The F.B.I. warned last week that the days after the election could result in “disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.”

Over the past 18 months, cybercriminals — primarily based in Russia and Eastern Europe — have hit the American public sector with more ransomware attacks than in any other period on record, according to Emsisoft, which tracks the incursions. A record 966 ransomware attacks hit the American public sector last year — two-thirds of them targeting state or local governments.

The F.B.I. concluded that ransomware “will likely threaten the availability of data on interconnected election servers” in November, ...The agency cited two recent examples: a ransomware attack in Oregon that locked up county computers and crippled backup data, and another in Louisiana in which cybercriminals hacked the secretary of state’s offices, then waited three months to detonate their ransomware the week of Louisiana’s statewide elections for governor and legislative seats last November.

...security researchers have noted with growing alarm that the ransomware attacks hitting American systems are evolving in disturbing ways. Attackers are not just locking up data, they are stealing it, dumping it online in some cases, and selling access to victims’ data on the dark web and privately to nation-state groups. Researchers at Intel471, a threat intelligence firm, recently discovered that Russian cybercriminals had been selling access to victims’ data to North Korean hackers, and Russian cybercriminals have a long track record of working hand in hand with the Kremlin.

Donald Trump’s Favorite Voting Machines

NYS Board of Elections is about to certify the ESS Expressvote XL voting machines warned about in this article. NYC is poised to buy them as soon as they are approved. Westchester County bought a similar BMD (Ballot Marking Device) , the Dominion ICE, in time for 2020 elections. The ICE were used with disasterous results in the June primary. Call your New York State legislators today to pass S6733/A8597 to ban these hybrid voting machines in New York.

Donald in Blunderland: Trump won't commit to peaceful power transfer at surreal press briefing

If this disturbs you, take the pledge to defend democracy at https://choosedemocracy.us

Allegra“

[senior White House reporter] Karem “... Do you commit to make sure that there’s a peaceful transferal of power?”…….Still Trump refused to commit. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”….."Later, Karem remarked on Twitter: “This is the most frightening answer I have ever received to any question I have ever asked. I’ve interviewed convicted killers with more empathy."

Donald Trump Wants A New Supreme Court Justice To Help Hand Him A Second Term

Blumenthal "“Now we’re counting on the federal court system to make it so that we can actually have an evening where we know who wins. Not where the votes are going to be counted a week later or two weeks later,” Trump said at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Saturday, one day after Ginsburg’s death.

"The substance of Trump’s statements is clear. He wants to stop states from counting legitimate votes on Nov. 3, and he intends to file a challenge in the courts to do this. He is now saying that his nominee needs to be seated on the court in order to rule in his favor, stop the counting of legitimately cast ballots and hand him a second term. “

Warning: Trump and his Rioters can win using “The XII”Election won by Fire and Fury—and Loophole in Constitution

by Greg Palast

September 17, 2020

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Six weeks ago, I told Naomi Wolf, on air, that President Donald Trump can win via a constitutional coup d’état—via the first-ever use of the 12th Amendment. And yesterday, Trump let the cat out of the bag: he expects to invoke the 12th Amendment loophole.

He said, “You think November 3 [decides the election]….at a certain point it goes to Congress.” He was giving away what his minions must have told him: you’ll win using Amendment XII.”

Here’s what I said on August 5. (And thanks to Thom Hartmann for first warning about a “coup d’état by XII.”):

I want people to think about this carefully. For example, the Gucci Riot with Roger Stone back in 2000 where we saw $1,200 an hour consultants banging on the windows and stopping the vote count. Now we’ll get Boogaloo Boys in Hawaiian shirts with crowbars and pipes who will be smashing the buildings, Molotov cocktails thrown into post offices because our president has said there are a million ballots in these 12 Post Offices from Venezuela and we have to stop the election from being stolen.

There will be protests in the streets on both sides. We already had the test run in Portland. It’s a test run of the unmarked SUVs picking up people as if we were in Peronist Argentina.

And what I'm worried about is that, for example, the Florida legislature, you’ll have two Post Offices on fire, the Miami-Dade County Clerk’s Office is shut down because it's too dangerous to go in because of the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys. Then what happens is, the rabidly Republican legislature of Florida says it's too much mayhem, we can't count the votes in time.

I expect Florida will have 6 million mail-in ballots. The GOP-controlled Florida Legislature will say, we can't count them in time, so we're not going to certify the election.

Republicans, who control the legislature, of Michigan, will also say, “We can't certify the election.”

Imagine: Detroit is in flames and Milwaukee's in flames. They won't certify the results.

So, you have three Republican legislatures say it's mayhem in the streets, it’s martial law, we've had curfews, we can't count the ballots. Therefore, there will be no certification. As a result, no candidate gets 270 votes in the Electoral College because they don't send the electors.

Real simple: you don't certify the election, you can't send your electors, no one gets 270 electoral votes. Then, under the 12th Amendment it goes to the House.

But it's not Nancy Pelosi who makes the decision. Each state gets a single vote. Wyoming gets the same vote as New York, and Donald Trump is reelected — constitutionally — because our cities are in flames.

What’s the solution? Massive in-person early voting.
Go mid-week when there are no lines.
Bring mask, gloves, sanitizer, ID and resolve.

The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night — And Could Hand Trump A Second Term

Paul Blumenthal: "A dynamic known as the “Blue Shift” already has shown that ballots counted after an election day tend to favor Democratic candidates, as their voters are more likely to cast provisional ballots in-person or return their absentee ballots closer to the receipt deadline….Combine the existing “Blue Shift” with the pandemic-induced jump in absentee voting and it becomes clear that a great divergence could emerge between the Nov. 3 returns and the actual final tally when late-arriving absentee and provisional ballots are counted. Trump could easily go to bed with a lead in key states based on an incomplete tally on election night and wake up to see that lead eroding based on the totally normal counting of valid ballots ― a “red mirage,” as one political consultant called it in an interview with Axios.

...During the 2000 recount in Florida, Republican operatives contrived protests, including the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot, to pressure state election officials to stop counting ballots. Democrats have already said they will not cede protest activity to the GOP, as they did in 2000….But right-wing protests that have emerged in support of Trump during his term in office don’t look like the work of astroturfing staffers dressed in the attire of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite. He has the backing of a broad network of heavily-armed militia groups, far-right street-fighting gangs, white supremacists and a pseudo-religious cult that believes Trump is a demigod operating in secret to prevent the apocalypse."

Biden Creates Legal War Room, Preparing for a Big Fight Over Voting

NEW YORK TIMES:"Mr. Trump’s talk of fraud drew a notable Republican rebuke last week, when Benjamin L. Ginsberg, one of the party’s top elections lawyers for decades, wrote a scathing Washington Post op-ed article…."The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out,” Mr. Ginsberg wrote, adding, “Calling elections ‘fraudulent’ and results ‘rigged’ with almost nonexistent evidence is antithetical to being the ‘rule of law’ party.””

Carter Centre to launch first-ever US election initiative, citing ‘erosion’ of democracy

The Independent: "The democracy promotion organisation founded by former president Jimmy Carter is to launch its first United States election initiative this year, citing an “erosion” of democracy in the country. ...the centre has prioritised countries where there is “a significant potential for an important change in the quality of democracy”, or where democracy is “under severe threat”.“

How to Save 2020: The Grassroots Emergency Election Protection "Trifecta" Action Guide 

Harvey Wasserman 14 August 20 “The 2020 election is not likely to be cancelled or postponed. But it CAN be sabotaged or stolen. It will not be enough this year merely to register and vote. Nowhere near…..Those hoping for a fair outcome in the fall must NOW join election boards, become poll workers and poll watchers, and more. Wherever possible, all citizens committed to American democracy must be present for every aspect of the 2020 election process, including the post-election ballot counting and recounting. “

New Voting Machines May Help With Early Voting But Advocates Say They Could Undermine Ranked-Choice Voting

The Expressvote XL is not only undermines ranked-choice voting, but would undermine election security. Read Common Cause New York’s report, and sign their petition: The ExpressVote XL Machine: Bad for New York’s Elections.

https://www.commoncause.org/new-york/resource/express-vote-xl-voting-machines-are-bad-for-new-york/

Allegra Dengler

A “war game” that tried to simulate the 2020 transition ended in violence.

Vox…" key flaws in our electoral system, ranging from the rickety 18th-century design of the presidential election system to our modern plague of hyperpartisanship. ... make the electoral system particularly vulnerable to a catastrophic collapse in 2020 — and some of them could still be addressed before it’s too late….Legislators in key electoral states need to “affirm [in advance] the process they’re going to use” to count votes and challenge results so everyone can agree on how to proceed after Election Day….”[New York is especially vulnerable to drawn-out vote counts since the only way for a “losing” candidate to get a recount is to sue, even if they lose by only a handful of votes. A lawsuit can drag on for months. Legislation mandating automatic recounts if the vote count is close is bogged down in Albany. Gov Cuomo authorized automatic recounts in close races for 2021, but nothing is protecting New York from a post-election nightmare this November.