Dominion Voting systems has been acquired by founder and chairman of Liberty Vote Scott Leiendecker, in a deal which included dropping lawsuits against conservatives.

Leiendecker, former GOP election reform advocate, has officially become the sole owner of Dominion after making the deal contingent on dropping several remaining lawsuits against prominent conservatives and One America News Network (OANN).

The “prominent conservatives” are Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy; Rudy Giuliani; and Sidney Powell.

Of all the accusations of fraud in the 2020 elections, the ones against Dominion seemed the weakest. But – as I’ve said from the start about all the 2020 fraud allegations – once you change the rules from the old paper ballot routine, especially with computers and mail-in voting, you need to increase safeguards to the point where voters trust in your accuracy and fairness. In 2020, the public was not feeling that ballot security was in place, and so whichever party had lost that election, that party would have claimed fraud. There is no question in my mind that had Biden lost, the Democrats would have screamed fraud because even prior to the election they were complaining about Dominion too (see this from 2019, for example, as well as this from the same year).

So why didn’t many Democrats claim fraud in 2024, when Trump won? The first reason was that it wasn’t especially close, and the second reason was that the voting patterns showed a shift to Trump in almost every county and in almost every demographic. That would be hard to fake. Another reason is that many states tightened up the mail-in ballot rules that had been put in place so hastily in 2020 with the excuse of COVID.

Now Dominion’s new owner Leiendecker is determined to create a product in which people have more trust. I say, “good luck”:

“Liberty Vote signals a new chapter for American elections — one where trust is rebuilt from the ground up,” Leiendecker stated in the press release. “Liberty Vote is committed to delivering election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency, security, and simplicity so that voters can be assured that every ballot is filled-in accurately and fairly counted.”

In addition, the company is prioritizing the use of hand-marked paper ballots to strengthen election security and compliance.

Sounds promising.

The post Meet the new boss at Dominion, not like the old boss appeared first on The New Neo.

Could Biden have done any better had he stayed in? I doubt it, because not only was his presidency disastrous but his infirmities had become obvious no matter how hard the MSM tried to cover them up.

The whole thing is still amazing to contemplate.

The post Seems like only yesterday … appeared first on The New Neo.

(1) Trump’s first term victory was considered a fluke and this one was not. Therefore they believe the electorate has become more evil and/or stupid.

(2) In Trump’s first term, they could claim that he didn’t “really” win because he didn’t win the popular vote. In the second term, he won the popular vote.

(3) Efforts to sabotage Trump’s first term – such as Russiagate – were immediately successful in that they convinced a lot of people and also had a restrictive effect on Trump in terms of what he could accomplish and how much energy he could devote to his policy aims versus fighting the lies.

(4) There were many people in Trump’s first administration who either weren’t onboard with his goals or were actively against them. This is far less true in his second term.

(5) He hit the ground running in his second term.

(6) During the Biden administration, Democrats watched Biden undo a great deal of what Trump had done in his first term. And now they’re having the nightmarish experience of watching Trump II undo what Biden did, or re-do what Biden had undone.

(7) One of the most awful things about the 2024 election, as far as the Democrats are concerned, was their loss of support in several of the groups on which their power depends: black and Hispanic voters. They’re not sure what to do about that.

(8) The Trump assassination attempt in Butler galls them, because it was such a close call and many really really wish Trump had been killed. His seemingly miraculous survival is especially frustrating.

(9) They thought that their lawfare against Trump would work either to put him in prison or at the very least to turn more voters against them. Instead it had the opposite effect, another dramatically and deeply frustrating result. It’s something like the classic scene in a horror movie in which the hero or heroine thinks the monster is gone and is finally able to relax and then bam! The monster pounces.

The post Why TDS has gotten worse among many Democrats in Trump’s second term appeared first on The New Neo.

Probably this is because it’s a primary and only a small percentage of people voted at all.

If anyone is still paying attention at the time, we will learn the true answer after the election for mayor, presuming that someone bothers to poll NYC Jews to find out how they voted.

The votes of Jews, however, except in a few cities, are electorally negligible, there are not many of them to begin with and overwhelmingly concentrated in deep-blue cities. Chasing their votes seems to be to be outdated thinking, as there are other minority blocs that are larger and in places that matter more.

Pew estimated in 2020 about 6 million Jews in the US, 1.5 million of whom say they are not religious. They say a lot more than that of course because of the “who counts” issue.

This website has a different number but breaks down by metro area. New York, Los Angeles, and Miami account for just under half of the total. DC, Philadephia, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit account for another quarter, which leaves something like 2 million more scattered across the country.

Jews in America are comparable in size to Chinese Americans and Indian Americans, each at about 5.5 million. It seems hardly anyone spends as much time talking about what Chinese and Indian Americans are going to think, as they spend talking about what Jews are going to think. Especially with Indians I think this a huge mistake, considering where Indians tend to concentrate in the economy. There are increasingly more Indians in C suites and in national office.

Of course Mexican Americans and Black Americans represent far larger shares of the population, each near 12% of the total population. There’s also a lot of outdated thinking on who Mexican Americans actually are and what is likely to appeal to them, but I bet some party is spending bezillions to try to figure it out, either now or very soon. It would be effort much better spent than worrying about if American Jews want to vote for socialist Democrats or not.

Good points. And yet people do seem to care more about how Jews vote for several reasons. One is Jew-hatred by those who like to blame them. As I said in my post, I often see comments on the right that say something like, “I’ll start caring about Jew-hating when the Jews stop voting for Democrats.” It’s the same with Israel – much of the world cares disproportionately about Israel because a great deal of the world hates Jews.

But it’s certainly not just that. Those who love and/or admire Jews care too, of course – but the point is that feelings about Jews are often hyper-intense, both positive or negative.

In addition, the post I wrote about Jews and Mamdani was about the NYC primary, a city where Jews are a very important voting bloc, about 11% or 12% according to most sites. That’s not as large as the city’s black or Hispanic population, but it’s still a large and influential group.

They are also an important voting bloc in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Also in Florida, which is not a swing state, and where Jews vote more for the GOP than in a state such as NY; see this about the 2024 election:

The AP/Fox News Voter Analysis Exit Poll has updated some of its numbers since yesterday, showing even better results than we quoted in the graphic above:

In Arizona, Trump won 38% of the Jewish vote.

In Nevada, he won 42% of the Jewish vote.

In Florida, he won 44% of the Jewish vote.

In New York he won 46% of the Jewish vote.

In Pennsylvania, where the Honan Group did a specific, state-wide exit poll, President Trump won 41% of the Jewish vote.

*Many polls (including CNN) don’t have a large enough sample of Jewish voters to be reliable. The AP/Fox News Voter Analysis Exit Poll is a national poll with a much larger sample size, making it possible to extrapolate data about some specific states.

It’s challenging to get figures for Jews, because of the sampling problem, but those figures for GOP votes among Jews in 2024 are probably significantly higher than most people imagine.

There’s another thing about Jewish voters: they tend to have high turnout.

And lastly, much of the emphasis on the Jewish vote, or appealing to the Jewish vote, is actually an appeal to Jewish donors.

The post Why do people care about the Jewish vote? appeared first on The New Neo.

Here’s the agreement reached in his lawsuit against CBS for deceptively editing a Kamala Harris interview to make her look better:

Paramount Global and CBS agreed on Tuesday to pay President Donald Trump a sum that could reach north of $30 million to settle the president’s election interference lawsuit against the network.

Trump will receive $16 million upfront. This will cover legal fees, costs of the case, and contributions to his future presidential library or charitable causes, to be determined at Trump’s discretion.

There is an anticipation that there will be another allocation in the mid-eight figures set aside for advertisements, public service announcements, or other similar transmissions, in support of conservative causes by the network in the future, Fox News Digital has learned.

I suspect that’s nothing much to CBS. But still, it’s a victory for Trump. And apparently they are also agreeing that in the future they will post entire transcripts for interviews with presidential candidates.

More:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and eight Democratic colleagues sent a letter to Redstone in May asking her not to settle the lawsuit against CBS News, which they called an “attack on the First Amendment.” They called the potential settlement a “grave mistake” and “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him, President Trump.”

The letter also stated “presidents do not get to punish or censor the media for criticizing them” in the United States.

Nobody censored anyone – except for CBS, which censored (that is, made editorial decisions that were somewhat deceptive) the words of Kamala Harris. Trump wanted full disclosure of her words; how is that censorship? And he used a courtroom to duke it out with CBS. Of course, Trump has a lot of power as president. But CBS has a lot of power as a major network, and it has used that power over and over to put its finger on the political scales in favor of the left.

The post CBS pays Trump in settlement of biased-editing lawsuit appeared first on The New Neo.

Now Hostin looks back and reflects:

Speaking on the “Behind the Table” podcast posted Wednesday, the incendiary host said she feels “terrible.”

“It’s Sunny’s fault she [Kamala] didn’t win,” Joy Behar quipped, trying to be funny but figuratively stabbing her co-host in the back. Sunny put her hands to her face in shame, then responded [when asked if she knew it would be a viral moment]:

“I knew it instantly when she answered it. … Which is why I asked the follow-up question, ‘is there one thing?’ Because I knew, I could see the soundbite and I knew what was going to happen, but I thought it was a really fair question and I thought it was a question that she would expect. …

“I feel terrible.”

She feels terrible that she asked a question that elicited an answer that hurt Kamala’s chances. Obviously, she still wishes Harris had been elected.

But here’s my question for Hostin: does she wonder why Harris gave such an abominable answer? I assume that Hostin – like so many people confronted with the flaws of their favored candidates – would make some sort of excuse. Was Kamala having a bad day, for example? But that doesn’t wash, because this was a question so basic, so obvious, that Harris should have had an acceptable answer memorized even if she couldn’t come up with one on the spot. Her answer wasn’t a fluke; it was emblematic of what was wrong.

To me, Harris had many many major flaws. The first set could be grouped under the heading “she’s a leftist.” But the second set was different, and even those who liked her leftism – such as Sunny Hostin – should have been alarmed by this second group, which could be grouped under the heading of “she’s utterly incompetent, mentally disorganized, and incapable of the most basic communication of ideas.”

What I find worthy of mention is the fact that Hostin and so many others never saw that or will not admit it even if they did see it. They cannot afford to do so, either to others or even to themselves. A mind is indeed a difficult thing to change.

The post Sunny Hostin regrets asking Kamala Harris a real question appeared first on The New Neo.

What were the Dem leadership and their minions thinking when they engaged in this massive coverup of Sloe Joe’s feebleness and disfunction?

Good question. along with the related one of “why did they think they could get away with it?” Short version of the answer: they thought it was their only option.

If we go back in time to the 2020 campaign, it was obvious that a second Donald Trump term would be a truly nightmare scenario for the Democrats. They felt they absolutely had to win. The only thing they lacked was a healthy, vigorous candidate who could do it. Bernie Sanders become – to their horror – the frontrunner but he was too old, too obviously leftist, too ethnically Jewish. He simply wouldn’t do because they felt he would lose the election. Kamala Harris was great on paper in terms of identity politics but seemed to have zero electoral appeal even to Democrats, much less Republicans and/or Independents. The others in the running were hardly doing much better.

The Democrats’ only hope became Joe Biden, whom they knew they could label a moderate compared to Sanders. Whatever cognitive problems he had – and he clearly had them even in 2020, although not as severe as they later became – the Democrats wagered they could cover up and/or minimize them in the highly unusual COVID campaign season. The others were pressured to drop out, Biden became the nominee, and then there was a full court press to rig the election through the cooperation of the MSM and the intelligence community, which (among other things) managed to suppress and discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story when it surfaced near the election. Biden’s cognitive problems offered an opportunity for control by others who were to the left of Biden himself, which they considered a feature rather than a bug.

Remember after the election, how the right was betting that Biden wouldn’t last? That he’d retire by June, a lot of people said, and would be replaced. I didn’t think so, for one simple reason: Kamala Harris was not ready for prime time, and as a black woman she could not be bypassed for a substitute. I believe that Biden’s handlers were surprised at how incompetent she seemed, much more than they were surprised at any of Biden’s deficits. So they were stuck with him, and stuck with her, and they never really figured a way out of that dilemma for the entire four years of the Biden administration.

As far as the 2024 campaign went, my guess is that they didn’t really try to talk Biden out of running at first, even though his cognitive issues had increased, because they still didn’t have a winning replacement. They hoped to take Trump out by lawfare anyway, and that would solve the problem. They tried to do that; oh how they tried! But the lawfare didn’t work and the Biden/Trump debate loomed. Did Biden do worse in that debate than they expected, or exactly as bad as they expected? I don’t know, but that’s the point at which they suddenly were forced to acknowledge – because it simply could not be denied any longer – that Biden couldn’t run for president in 2024 and had to be replaced.

Things were in a state of flux for a little while, and it was during that time that Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt. What didn’t kill him made him stronger as a candidate. About a week later Biden withdrew from the race, and Harris became his nearly immediate replacement. The Democrats didn’t see any other way to deal with the mess, and they still had to pretend that Biden had dropped out for other reasons because to admit he was too cognitively challenged would be to admit that they’d covered it up for a long time. Therefore the message the campaign put out was that Biden was stepping aside to make room for youth. And Harris was also left with few options but to go around pretending Biden was cognitively intact, as well, because as his VP she had to have known and been part of any coverup.

From start to finish the entire thing was determined by the fact that Democrats had no good candidates to run as alternatives. They hoped that the MSM’s cooperation would help their sleight of hand fool the public one more time and Harris would become president. Fortunately, it didn’t work.

Now they have some ‘splaining to do, and the agreed-on narrative du jour is that they – the press and the Democrats, that is – were fooled by a bunch of canny political aides to Biden. And additionally, that Biden was too selfish and foolhardy to drop out in a timely fashion and give Kamala a chance to blossom and shine – although anyone who actually watched Harris in interviews would have been aware that time was not her friend. The tack they’re taking is ludicrous, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a better one. The truth makes them look like knaves and fools; the lie makes them look like knaves and fools. So knaves and fools it is.

The post Joe Biden: what were they thinking? appeared first on The New Neo.

2024 VP Democratic candidate Tim Walz is still giving interviews and talks. Here’s a report on his participation in a Harvard Kennedy School forum on Monday night:

Walz said Harris chose him, in part, because, “I could code talk to White guys watching football, fixing their truck” and “put them at ease.” The Minnesota governor described himself as the “permission structure” for White men from rural America to vote for Democrats.

That’s a good reminder of how the Harris/Walz ticket was one of the best demonstrations of the fact that racial and “gender” identity politics have swallowed the Democratic Party. After all, Harris was chosen because she’s a black woman – and it’s not just me saying that, it was Biden who explicitly said it. Turns out that wasn’t enough to win. And Walz is saying he was chosen because he’s some sort of rural macho white guy and therefore could talk the language of rural macho white guys, all while not talking their language at all. People who say “code talk” and “permission structure” aren’t likely to appeal much to that particular demographic.

Harris was and is a train wreck. Walz was and is a train wreck. It is shocking that they got as many votes as they did.

The post Let us now take just a moment to reflect again on the fact that we dodged quite a bullet when Harris/Walz were defeated appeared first on The New Neo.

I don’t especially like it. It’s not that the two-party system – with a primary for each party and generally a single nominee for each party – is perfect. Certainly not. But I prefer it to a system where the final candidates sometimes end up being from the same party, and/or where second-choices can determine elections.

Take the example of the re-election of Lisa Murkowski to the Senate in 2022:

This was the first U.S. Senate election in Alaska to be held under a new election process provided for in Ballot Measure 2. All candidates ran in a nonpartisan blanket top-four primary on August 16, 2022, and the top four candidates advanced to the general election, where voters utilized ranked-choice voting.

Murkowski had been a vocal critic of Donald Trump during his presidency and opposed several of his initiatives. Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, and was the only one up for re-election in 2022. On March 16, 2021, the Alaska Republican Party voted to censure Murkowski and announced that it would recruit a Republican challenger in the 2022 election cycle. Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, was endorsed by Trump and the Alaska Republican Party. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee supported Murkowski.

In addition to Murkowski and Tshibaka, Democrat Pat Chesbro and Republican Buzz Kelley also advanced to the general election. On September 13, Kelley suspended his campaign and endorsed Tshibaka but remained on the ballot. Murkowski received a plurality of first-place votes; however, because no candidate received a majority of the votes in the first round, an instant runoff was triggered. Murkowski won reelection in the third and final round, winning most of the second-choice votes from Chesbro’s voters.

Perhaps Murkowski would have won anyway, even under the rules of a traditional election. But her majority vote came from Democrats who preferred her to the other Republican (see the chart at the link; rounds 2 and 3).

Another Alaska election that same year was the House race in 2022 in which Democrat Mary Peltola was elected in a Republican district. In the open primary dictated by the rules (rather than primaries to select a candidate from each party), sole Democrat Peltola had gotten about 36% of the vote and the two GOP candidates combined to get about 56% of the vote.

However, the two GOP candidates (Begich and Palin) stayed in the race and spent much of their money and time attacking each other. If one had been eliminated in single-party primaries, that would not have happened (unless one ran as an Independent). In the final vote, Peltola won in this manner:

Peltola won the election with 54.94% of the vote in the third round of ballot-counting, after two other candidates, Begich III and Bye, were eliminated and their supporters’ votes were reallocated to the remaining candidates, according to the Alaska Division of Elections. Peltola had won nearly 49% of the vote in the first round, putting her close to victory from the beginning. Even though only about 10% of the eliminated Republican candidates’ supporters ranked Peltola as their next choice, rather than Palin, it was enough to secure her win.

In this case, as far as we can tell it wasn’t Peltola’s being chosen as second choice by Democrats that put her over the top (she was the only Democrat in the race), it was being chosen as second-choice by a small number of voters who had supported the losing GOP candidate Begich and who placed her rather than the controversial Palin as their second choice. The fact that a ton of money had poured into the state to support Peltola didn’t hurt, either.

In 2024, however, Begich ousted Peltola. The Republicans were wiser that time, despite ranked-choice voting still being in operation in Alaska:

Peltola finished first in this summer’s top-four, nonpartisan primary, followed by Begich and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (R). But Dahlstrom, backed by President-elect Trump, then bowed out of the race as the party sought to avoid fissures that were seen as paving the path for Peltola in the midterms.

House Republicans’ campaign arm had targeted the Alaska seat as an “offensive pickup” opportunity and named Dahlstrom to its “Young Guns” list, but its chair praised Dahlstrom for her exit. Begich then picked up Trump’s endorsement.

So although this was a ranked-choice race with an open primary, the GOP made sure that the general was like a conventional race rather than a ranked choice one; it featured a single candidate from each party. The results were that Begich won – this time despite Peltola’s candidacy being supported by about seven times more money than his (probably mostly from out-of-state), and despite the fact that she was endorsed by Murkowski and also had gotten more votes in the initial primary than the two GOP candidates combined.

Or, take the 2022 election of Oakland’s mayor Sheng Thao who won – barely – because of 2nd-place votes, giving her the victory over the person who actually got the most 1st-place votes. Thao ended up being recalled after a year in office, by the way.

I mention that ranked-choice often sows confusion; this article explains some of what I mean:

With a ranked-choice ballot, however, if there are five candidates running for each of those offices, then a voter is supposed to “vote” 30 times, ranking all five candidates for each of the six offices.

This requires a longer, more complicated ballot with more instructions, more pages and more ways to make mistakes. The process takes longer, which means more ballots are left incomplete. Many voters simply don’t have an opinion about who is their third, fourth or fifth choice in many elections. Yet leaving rankings blank creates the possibility of a ballot being excluded from the final results.

Counting ranked-choice ballots must be centralized and can only proceed after all ballots are returned and adjudicated. Initially, only first-preference votes are counted. If a candidate has a majority, he or she wins (and the whole ranked-choice process becomes irrelevant). If not, then the least popular candidate is eliminated, ballots with that candidate first are “adjusted” to move up the second preference to be counted as a first preference, and there is a new round of counting. Any of those ballots that have no second preference are eliminated.

This means that some ballots are counted for the same candidate in every round, while voters who prefer the least popular candidates may be counted for several different candidates as their choices are eliminated. If a voter’s preference is eliminated with no more rankings, then that voter’s ballot is considered “exhausted” and is not included in any further counting or in the final results.

Lastly, I believe it’s telling that it’s mainly the left pushing for ranked-choice voting:

Progressive groups and their donors spent more than $100 million last year pushing ranked-choice voting …

The post On ranked-choice voting appeared first on The New Neo.

For me, one of his most cringe-worthy poses was his attempt to project a macho “regular guy” vibe. And he’s still trying:

Since faceplanting as Kamala Harris’ running mate, the Minnesota governor has been holding rallies and making the media rounds in a desperate attempt to boost his stock for a 2028 presidential run.

Here’s Tim:

Tim Walz on Trump supporters: "I think I can kick most of their ass" pic.twitter.com/CHstXUb7ng

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 18, 2025

How can a person be that tone deaf? Someone should tell him that what works in Minnesota doesn’t necessarily work on a national level.

Kamala Harris may be running for the governorship of California. One of her problems has been that what works in California doesn’t necessarily work on a national level. So maybe retreating to the state level is a good idea for her. I doubt she’ll run, though, unless pretty much assured she’ll win the Democratic primary, which is tantamount to winning the election in California.

The post Tim Walz – one of many dodged bullets in the 2024 election appeared first on The New Neo.