↓
 
Home » Election 2018: vote early, vote often

Election 2018: vote early, vote often

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s going on with vote-counting in Arizona and Florida—and especially Florida—is profoundly disturbing. It’s one thing to lose a close race. It’s another to have votes dribble out in a slow bleed, always seeming to favor Democrats (and with Democrats being in charge of vote-counting in the districts in question), and in some cases in violation of the regulations for reporting votes.

The Democrats have made it clear, also, that they are not interested in rules. They are interested in winning above all else even if they have to break the rules. If they define themselves as the Good and Republicans as the Evil, whatever they do is justified in their own minds. They proved that indisputably with the Kavanaugh hearings. No one who observed that outrageous travesty can doubt that.

So I would not be at all surprised, not for a moment, if the Democrats in one or several states are committing election fraud. In previous years I was far more reluctant to say that. Now it just seems to be the most likely explanation.

Some commenters from Australia have described how voting is handled in their country (see this and this). They profess to be puzzled by the mess here. But the United States has a history of state-by-state control of voting, and people are loathe to give that up. One reason is that instituting new systems will cost money. Another is that it could make it harder to commit election fraud, and many people in charge want to preserve that ability. A third is just plain inertia.

I remember back in 2000 being shocked by the way voting is handled—or mis-handled—in Florida. I’m sure there have been changes in the nearly-20 years since then, but I don’t know that most of them are for the better. We seem to have done away with “hanging chads” and the “butterfly ballot” (I think we have, anyway), but very serious problems remain. Of course, the powers that be in say, Broward County, no doubt think these things are a feature rather than a bug.

In general, I am against early voting and mail-in voting. I think the old system, which some states still preserve, of going to a polling place and voting all on one day (with a small number of exceptions for absentee ballots obtained by people who cannot attend because they will be out of town or are ill), is the way to go. But that system is more and more being phased out, in the name of convenience and encouraging more and more people to vote. It also encourages more and more abuse of the system.

I have to say I am depressed about what’s happening now. I can’t really look on the bright side at the moment or offer a pep talk. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. If you want to offer something of that sort in the comments, be my guest. I think we all could use some cheering up.

Comments

Election 2018: vote early, vote often — 35 Comments

  1. Ironically, democracy is less at risk in many third and second-world nations, where counting and accountability are handled with greater competence and visibility.

  2. Brenda Snipes, Supervisor of Elections for Broward County, has an unsavory reputation and cannot be trusted at all; the Democrats seem intent upon proving the truth of the adage that what matters is not who votes, but who counts the votes.

  3. These past two years have been one uninterrupted tantrum of Democrats not accepting the results of an election. Now we have it again, and they are committing vote fraud to change the results in Florida and Arizona, I believe.

    Keep in mind that Broward County is the ill-administered place where failure to discipline “minority” students contributed greatly to the slaughter of students by one who was failed by the behavior of school and law enforcement authorities.

    I remember, today, how furious I was in 2000 when Gore/Lieberman tried to overturn a Florida election by fraud. Here in North Carolina, they have overturned a voter ID law, claiming it was racist. It wasn’t; it would simply have made vote fraud harder, and they are pro-fraud. They don’t give a hoot about the black citizens they pretend to be protecting.

  4. Don’t forget Broward County is the home of Sheriff Scott Israel, the mastermind LEO who let Nikolas Cruz leisurely shoot up a high school, killing seventeen and injuring seventeen more, while Israel’s deputies hid behind vehicles.

    The Broward Deputies Association had a no-confidence vote on Israel which ran 534-94 against Israel.

    But guess what, Scott Israel is still the Sheriff of Broward County.

  5. When I voted in Brooklyn on Tuesday, the man ahead of me informed the poll worker that he was changing his signature and party affiliation. “Why are you changing your signature?” she asked. He responded, “I have a new signature.” He was allowed to vote. Needless to say, in NY the signature is the only way of establishing that the person voting is the same as the one who is registered.

    As for the man behind me, he was not on the voter list. He was given a ballot and an affidavit, to be submitted with the ballot.

    Widespread fraud in US elections? I think so.

  6. “Why does Philadelphia have the largest zombie population in the country?”

    “Because in Philly, the dead can vote!”

  7. As Instapundit has been saying for years, bring back paper ballots. Though even with them the standing joke years ago was that Daly held the down-state vote in IL until they knew how many votes they needed to get the outcome they wanted.

    I shudder when I read calls for online voting.

  8. It’s a slender reed, but:
    The Constitution of the United States of America
    Article 1

    Section 5. Quorum, Journals, Meetings, Adjournments. — Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members

    It appears possible that the Senate could determine that the election of Senators from Florida and Arizona were the result of fraud, and decide that they are not qualified to serve.

  9. One aspect of absentee voting (vote-by-mail, vote-by-Internet, whatever) that doesn’t get enough attention is the loss of the secret ballot.
    If you fill out the ballot in a voting booth and carry it to the ballot box in a privacy sleeve, only you know how you marked it.
    If you fill it out anywhere else… well, Big Brother may honorably separate the content of the ballot from the name on the envelope, but the ballot isn’t secret from your spouse, your boss, the shop steward, nor that guy who offered you $20 to vote for his friend Melvin.
    “Attention, fellow employees! We need to make sure everyone votes, so everyone bring your ballots to work this Thursday and we’ll all fill them out together in the break room. If you don’t, we might just think you’re being unmutual, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  10. Despite the best efforts of the Democrats and their MSM propaganda Department to convince us that there is no vote fraud taking place here in the U.S., from the few stories that have bypassed their filters, it is obvious that it is occurring, and that it is likely fairly widespread.

    Just the fact alone that the newest credible estimates, just out, put the number of illegal aliens here in the U.S., not at the often quoted estimated 11 million but, rather, at an estimated 20 or perhaps as high as 30 million gives you an idea of the potential for large scale fraudulent voting.

    (The Democrats aren’t championing illegal immigration and open borders out of the goodness of their hearts.

    Now that Democrats are losing their grip on and/or abandoning their traditional white working class base, and seeing the first signs of the beginning of the erosion in their black base, they are trying to import a whole new class of immigrant voters who—indebted to Democrats—will, most of them, pretty likely vote straight Democrat for quite some time to come.)

    Moreover, if they had nothing to hide, if there just wasn’t any vote fraud going on, why would various large states have recently refused to give requested voting data to a Federal commission set up to survey the situation and to determine if there is, indeed, voting fraud taking place.

    Then, of course, there are the Democrat, MSM and various advocacy organization’s efforts to fight–tooth and nail–against any efforts to implement voter ID laws.

    (Yeah, I know, you have to have a picture ID to open a bank account, cash a check, get into a Federal building, get admitted to a hospital, sign up with a local doctor’s practice, buy cigarettes, get a license to conceal carry, or buy a gun, enroll your children in school, volunteer for the military, set up a Social Security account or get an EBT card, set up a borrowing account at your local library, or to buy most things.

    Hell, we even had to show a picture ID to be able to register our dog with the local vet practice.

    So don’t tell me that asking for a picture ID to verify your identity, so that you can vote is, in any way, “discriminatory,” and an attempt at “voter suppression.”)

    Don’t forget, as well, Soros’ under the Radar “Secretary of State Project,” which has been spending a lot of effort and money to try to get Democrats elected to this unheralded and pedestrian state post, which oversees, proposes and enforces rules, and has jurisdiction over controversies involving election matters in each state.

    As for evidence that such fraud is taking place, see, for instance, the recent story about the four Hispanic women—indicted on multiple felony counts—who were caught running a North Texas voting fraud ring, who, according to the story linked below, were apparently being paid to “harvest” and falsify the ballots of elderly area citizens by the former executive director of the Tarrant county Democratic party. See https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/election/article220540115.html.

    Just yesterday, in problem state Florida’s Broward county, we had the pictures some observant citizen snapped of election workers unloading boxes of ballots from a private vehicle and stuffing them into a rental truck—ballots that are, under Florida’s election laws, supposedly subject to very rigorous “chain of custody requirements.” See http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-shows-broward-county-fl-election-crews-violating-all-chain-of-custody-requirements-for-ballots/

    Then, there was the school teacher, also in Florida’s Broward county, who stumbled onto a box marked “provisional ballots” in a storage room, two days after the voting ended in her high school. See https://nypost.com/2018/11/08/florida-teacher-finds-provisional-ballot-box-in-storage-area/

    Just this month, as well, there were the nine people arrested—Hispanics all—for voter fraud this month in Hidalgo county Texas, with authorities saying that there were more arrests to come . See https://wcyb.com/news/nation-world/five-people-arrested-by-texas-ags-office-for-voter-fraud

    Then, there is the very recent Project Veritas undercover video of Texas election workers saying that it was OK for someone who wasn’t a citizen to vote, and one worker saying that they had had “a ton” of non-citizens vote at their location. See https://conservativedailypost.com/voter-fraud-in-texas-caught-on-tape-tonight/

    Etc., etc.

    No voting fraud going on? Yeah, riiiiight.

  11. Sorry NEO, but can’t say anything good about the process right now. Just so Angry!

  12. At least we are moving away from the M.O. of Romney, McCain et all, where we closed our eyes to their crimes, clutched their cocktail party invites to our hearts, and rolled over in the muck to let them kick us again. Love him or hate him, we have our street-fighter, trash talking, brass knuckle brawling President to thank for that.

    Let’s hope Lindsey Graham stays sharp. Lawsuits, injunctions and endless publicity are called for here. The left has been very quick to make a major ruckus anytime they’re the least bit displeased. Let them find out how it feels on the receiving end of an all-out political blitz. The Senate can and should refuse to seat any member “elected” illegally. And every Florida voter not a resident of Broward has standing to sue for the more lenient and illegal treatment given to Broward’s votes.

  13. One of the problems here, as well, is that tracking down, investigating, and prosecuting voter fraud is not most law enforcement personnel’s top priority and, as well, it appears that such voter fraud is treated way too lightly by our laws and especially, by our courts.

    In the last several years, I can remember only a small handful of reports of people being arrested for voter fraud, a smaller number actually being prosecuted, only a few of the guilty actually being penalized and, even then, the perps were usually given a small fine, and little or no jail time.

    If we want to stamp out voter fraud, it must be made a very much higher priory for law enforcement, and the penalties must be both substantially increased, and harsh sentences handed out by our courts.

  14. We all know how easy it is to track packages through the Post Office, UPS, Amazon, and so forth. Why not have a simple bar code and scanner system for each ballot box, so that you can instantly know where each one is at all times, as well as when the ballots therein were counted? This is simple inventory management.

  15. A judge has just ruled that Broward County must release their ballot counts today by 7 PM. I think this may be followed up on. Let’s hope.

  16. When one side dictates the rules and does not follow said rules, there is no rule of law. We are there. The left will not like the circumstances they are promoting. My only question is where is the new location where CW 2.0 begins?

  17. It won’t stop until someone stops them…cold.
    CW 2.0 may begin in Broward County & God knows the Sheriff won’t field a team to end it.

  18. Yankee on November 9, 2018 at 5:10 pm at 5:10 pm said:
    We all know how easy it is to track packages through the Post Office, UPS, Amazon, and so forth. Why not have a simple bar code and scanner system for each ballot box, so that you can instantly know where each one is at all times, as well as when the ballots therein were counted? This is simple inventory management.
    * * *
    Makes sense, but as was said above, the reason there are so many arcane and insane voting rules is because some people WANT to be able to perpetrate fraud.

    Excellent explanations here, too long to excerpt:
    https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/11/09/fl-recount-hillarys-dossier-lawyer-elias-rides-in-for-dems-but-real-story-is-his-biggest-hits-with-recounts-like-franken-2008-wa-governor-race-2004/

    And here on the judge’s ruling (why was this Broward county person even allowed to keep her job after previous conviction for tampering?!?!)

    https://www.dailywire.com/news/38186/breaking-judge-rules-rick-scott-florida-supervisor-hank-berrien

    https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/415837-teacher-says-she-discovered-ballot-box-left-behind-at-florida
    “A Florida teacher says she discovered a locked ballot box that was left behind at a polling site in Miramar.

    Teacher Lakeisha Sorey told The Sun-Sentinel she came across the box on Thursday afternoon and said it was located in the same area at Sunshine Elementary School where voting had been held earlier this week.

    Sorey said she was concerned the box, which was labeled “provisional ballots,” might have contained uncounted ballots and decided not to meddle with it.

    “I didn’t want to touch it,” Sorey told the local paper.

    Sorey said she also reportedly contacted her friend, state Rep. Shevrin Jones (D), who the newspaper noted was a close confidant of Tallahassee Mayor and Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D), seeking help about the discovery.

    Jones told the newspaper he contacted the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office after learning of the box and said he was told it was likely full of blank ballots.”

  22. Scott won two lawsuits – I’m amazed there are judges that will work this fast, rather than delaying things until the Democrat wins.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rick-scott-wins-first-election-lawsuit/
    “Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate who currently leads Democratic opponent Sen. Bill Nelson by 15,000 votes, has won his first lawsuit against Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher. As ballots in the gubernatorial and Senate races head to a recount, Scott sued Bucher Thursday night for refusing to allow official party and campaign representatives into the ballot counting area, and having staff members determine a voter’s intent without review by the county canvassing board.
    …
    Scott also filed a lawsuit against Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes on Thursday evening, alleging that her office is hiding information about the number of ballots left to be counted. Broward County Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ordered the immediate release of voter information from Snipes, ruling in Scott’s favor.”

  24. The Arizona race is lost, I am afraid. McSally loses in every dump from the uncounted ballots, and in numbers that defy the early vote count that did take place prior to the closing of the polls on Tuesday, and in numbers that defy the vote placed on Tuesday. In other words, up until Wednesday morning, McSally was leading in all the votes counted in the early vote and the votes taken on Tuesday, but is losing decisively all the votes counted after Wednesday morning. Someone should do a statistical analysis of these results after they are done. What is the statistical probability that two sets of votes like this would produce such dramatically different percentages for each of the candidates in the counties under question?

  25. Hard to put any positive spin on this. I live just a couple blocks from the King County line, where Seattle’s finest liberals have been perfecting this kind of maneuver for decades. Behind in the vote? Just recount until you win. We’ve seen years where 3-4 recounts were done, until enough ballots were found that the D won. It’s so common that many conservatives round here (and there are some still) have given up even protesting. Whom would they protest to? From the Governor on down, the liberals have a complete lock on the system. At least in Florida, there’s still a fighting chance to stop the rot. Seattle, I fear, is only a few steps behind SFran on the slide into chaos.

  26. Truman was particularly irked by the “professional liberal,” whom he distinguished from “real liberals” like himself. Professional liberals lived by slogans and saw American politics as an ideological war, which Truman considered alien to the genius of the Democratic party. In his lifetime the party was a sort of political melting pot in which conservative Southerners and moderate border-state men like Truman found common ground with Eastern liberals. “Professional liberals are too arrogant to compromise,” Truman said. “In my experience they were also very unpleasant people on a personal level. Behind their slogans about saving the world and sharing the wealth with the common man lurked a nasty hunger for power. They’d double-cross their own mothers to get it or keep it.”
    Eight Days With Harry Truman

    It’s an interesting view into Harry, who was very much an antisemite (the interviewer, who was Jewish, was not allowed into Bess’ house, and Harry did not seem to feel that was worth arguing with her over — this is in 1970, mind you).

    I note this because of the above quote. I think almost, if not ALL liberals, are now PostModern Liberals, and thence complete “professionals” in Harry’s usage of the term.

    And while it’s not there yet, I do think that the GOP is on its way to being the true melting pot, where anyone can be a part of the party, no matter what their overall race and creed.

    Lefties are well on the way to being “believe exactly as we do or GTFO”.

  27. This is truly frightening. It should have been stopped more than a decade ago — wasn’t it an open secret that uncounted Washington State ballots kept showing up till there were enough to pretend the Dems had won? It should surely be stopped now. Before any of the candidates are seated.

    Would it be possible to invalidate the whole November 6 election and call a whole new election? I suppose not.

    These people really are going to take down the country.

  28. The Constitution of the United States of America
    Article 1

    Section 5. Quorum, Journals, Meetings, Adjournments. — Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members

    It appears possible that the Senate could determine that the election of Senators from Florida and Arizona were the result of fraud, and decide that they are not qualified to serve. –CapnRusty

    Thank you, Captain; the founders supplied the answer, once again. Is Mitch McConnell big enough to invoke it? He’s sure to have the Oval Office support behind him.

    Think of the “Constitutional Crisis” that invoking the Constitution will set off in the usual places. Refusing to seat senators elected by mysterious boxes of previously unknown votes days after the election will be branded as terrible, heinous, outrageous, shocking, and so on. Not so the appearance of these boxes of votes, with tallies inexplicably zooming upwards every passing day. LOL!

  29. I am also distressed by this attempted theft of several elections.

    The reason so many counties are this sloppy and disorganized is because it facilitates election fraud more easily, and with greater plausible deniability. I’ve seen the media shrug off what’s happening in FL and AZ because ‘it’s always that bad’. No, it’s intentionally kept that bad for critical and/or close election years such as this.

    Broward county is not an anomaly. Judicial Watch reported last year that L.A. county had **144%** of voting age residents registered to vote. During the 2016 recount just one precinct in Detroit had a box noting 307 ballots certified with only 52 ballots inside it. Project Veritas just caught one Texas precinct worker saying they’d processed ‘tons’ of DACA votes on Tuesday. I’d guess that most states have at least one county that regularly reports irregularities such as these.

    There was a reason True the Vote was the Tea Party-inspired organization most harassed by the Obama administration: they did not want voter rolls, vote processing examined or fixed. It’s time to clean this up, not only in Broward county, but in every state.

  31. Broward isn’t even pretending to be impartial anymore.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/whoops-brenda-snipes-office-mixed-bad-provisional-ballots-with-good-ones/ar-BBPxRls?ocid=spartandhp

    “On Election Day, Broward County collected more than 600 provisional ballots. The vast majority were declared invalid by the county’s canvassing board judges for reasons ranging from registering to vote too late to previously voting to voting at the wrong precinct.

    But a couple hundred provisional ballots were held in limbo. Those ballots were the result of a connectivity issue in the system that precincts use to look up voter registrations, said Pat Nesbit, the elections day operations manager for Broward County. Voters would swipe their ID and the precinct system would show they weren’t registered voters. But when staffers called the Broward elections headquarters, the voter’s registration would appear. Precinct workers had those 205 voters fill out provisional ballots.

    On Election Day, Broward election staffers set those 205 votes aside, removed the anonymous ballots from their signed envelopes and counted them up in a voting machine that didn’t add those numbers to the final vote count. The elections department didn’t originally intend to have the canvassing board review those votes, but after uproar from lawyers for the Republican Party, the office handed them over to the board, which usually reviews ballots still in the envelopes.

    On Friday, the three-person canvassing board — on which Snipes usually sits — found about 20 of those 205 votes had mismatched signatures and declared them illegal. That means there are at least 20 illegal votes mixed into an anonymous pile of 205, all sitting in a machine that counted them but did not add them to the final count.

    “The ballots cannot be identified,” Snipes confirmed when a lawyer for the Republican Party asked.

    Republican Party lawyers immediately pressed Snipes about the future of those 205 votes and if they’d be counted. Snipes declined to answer and continued judging signatures on remaining ballots. There is no statute guiding what happens next.

    “This process doesn’t exist. The process is that the ballots aren’t opened. I would suggest to the board that this process would stop,” said Leonard Collins, a lawyer for the Florida Republican Party.

    Broward must present its unofficial vote total from the midterm elections to the state by noon Saturday. Recounts are expected in races for U.S. Senate, governor and commissioner of agriculture, and Snipes has become a target for Republican politicians alleging corruption and incompetence after her office was still counting thousands of early and absentee ballots in the days following Tuesday’s election.

    The board concluded its Friday session about 10:30 p.m., but the supervisor of elections has not yet announced a decision on how to handle the ballots.”

  32. Are there not already sufficient violations of the state’s election laws such that a court would reject the county’s votes from being certified? In whole, I am imagining, but possibly only in part. It would be salutary for Broward’s voting to be eliminated from the state’s totals due to illegalities (I am assuming those, don’t know the specific laws governing) — motivating Broward County to elect competent election officials for the future, and motivating those officials to improve the processes, thus reassuring the rest of the state that their votes will not be fraudulently transgressed by outlaw officials.

  33. To add to the mix, Florida’s current Secretary of State is Kenneth Detzner, who is a former Democrat turned Republican. But the Republican side is of longstanding by now. Although he was born in Chicago….. ; )

    I would guess he is on the hot seat right about now. Except, he was appointed by Scott. Can he even rule on this tally? What a wacky mess.

  34. I wonder if Scott–given the political realities in Florida–just didn’t want to use up a lot of political capital in firing incompetent, insubordinate–if not worse–Snipes.

  35. The shame is that they’re not even trying to hide it.

    The Democrats are doing their best to steal elections in several states, and doing it pretty much in plain sight, with a complicit MSM just looking the other way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑