A Call for Impartial Elections

-by Michelled Nappi
RepairRestoreSafeguard.org

Superdelegates. Cancelled primaries. Closed pollsites. Caucus counts gone awry. When the electoral process itself becomes an issue, something’s gone badly wrong. Primaries and caucuses serve the state purpose of nominating a field of candidates. Political parties are not disinterested regarding that state purpose. The Supreme Court has held that governing the nominations process is the state’s responsibility, stressing that granting a party power to control a primary is the state’s decision, not the party’s (New York State Board of Elections v Lopez Torres, 552 US 196 [2008]). Ballot lines are public property. While parties can endorse, only states can nominate.

But every state still grants parties control of ballot lines. Each state’s dominant party appoints election officers and decides primary process. Ballot access is by party. National party conventions then throw out all states’ results, using solely their own votes to decide “their” ballot lines. Party even determines access to general-election debates.

And every state still grants parties power to nominate its Electoral College electors; some let parties appoint them outright.

Political parties are private corporate entities, not accountable to voters, members or donors. The Southern District of Florida dismissed Wilding et al. v Democratic National Committee and Schultz, 16-61511-Civ-Zloch (2016). Donors maintained that the DNC had defrauded them by falsely stating in public and in its charter that in campaigning processes, primaries and its convention it required impartiality and evenhandedness regarding candidates. The party's filings suggested that its charter was optional: "We don't have to run an evenhanded primary, even if we say we're going to…[W]e could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way." The District held that the plaintiffs could only seek redress through "the ballot box, the DNC's internal workings, or their right of free speech – not through the judiciary." Since the complaint alleged electoral fraud and a party’s internal workings are only available to those members in a position to take an active role in its governance, the decision effectively limited most of the plaintiffs to complaining in the media. Their appeal failed.

When will we stop accepting partisan government? Adversarial government is no accident. It’s a form of corruption. We can reduce its force in government dramatically by removing party power from states' electoral process.

Nominations cases relying even in part on state law have been failing this season: where both statutory and constitutional questions are raised courts must decide on statute if possible. Over time corruption has also influenced precedent. But there is a constitutional case for state governance of the full electoral process. States have an interest in "protect[ing] the integrity and reliability of the electoral process itself" and ensuring "orderly, fair and honest elections." US Term Limits, Inc, v Thornton, 514 US 779 (1995). In Gray v Sanders, 372 US 368 (1963) the Supreme Court found that the primary is an integral stage of an election. In Smith v Allwright, 321 US 649 (1944) it found that primaries serve a state purpose and are operated under state authority. Amendment XXIV includes federal primaries in its list of elections in which government may not abridge or deny the vote. And in e.g. Alaskan Independent Party v Alaska, 545 F.3d 1173, 1180 (9th Cir. 2008), the Ninth Circuit held that the "State's interest in eliminating the fraud and corruption that frequently accompanied party-run nominating conventions is compelling.”

Any state can take back control of its full electoral process. RepairRestoreSafeguard, Inc., a government-accountability reform organization, has a free model bill any state can customize to remove electoral functions from party control.

The Impartial Elections Act

“Section 1. To bring this State's United States primary and general elections into compliance with Article I, sections 2 and 4, Article II, section 1, Article IV, section 4 and the Seventeenth and Twenty-fourth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, these will be held impartially by this State, will be open to all voters, will equally accommodate all candidates including independent and write-in candidates, and in no statute, rule or practice will discriminate on the basis of interest or membership in an interest group, coalition, or political party. No candidate will hold more than one ballot line. Candidates will qualify for ballot lines by petition signed by a number of eligible voters in accordance with the laws of this State. An interest group, coalition, or political party may endorse candidates but will not nominate candidates.


Section 2. This State's Electoral College electors for President and Vice President of the United States will be nominated during the United States congressional primary elections and elected during the United States congressional general elections. This State's ballot lines for President of the United States will be determined by nomination at primary elections held during the congressional primary elections. This State's eligible voters will state a preference for a ticket of President and Vice President during the United States congressional general elections.


Section 3. No third party will be used to circumvent this law."

In fourteen states (Arizona Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington) this can be done by ballot initiative. Either way, if your legislature refuses, interested voters of any state can file for a writ of mandamus to enjoin their state to take back its primary.

It’s high time states began controlling nominations and elections themselves.

Why the Iowa Caucus Vote Needs To Be Audited From Raw Data & the Audit and Data Published

by Thomas Neuburger

The new show-your-work requirements for Iowa seem to have revealed that not every precinct follows the rules and many struggle with the math of calculating delegate equivalents, there has probably never been a clean caucus.
—Matt Bruenig here (emphasis added)

For the Democratic Party to undermine faith in the fairness of its own process will have devastating consequences, just the first of which is the re-election of Donald Trump. It’s crossroads time, folks.
—Yours truly here

When the Iowa caucus results were originally withheld by the state party, one of the reasons given was "inconsistencies" in the reported data. That was Monday night. It's now many days later, and those inconsistencies have not only not been ironed out, they're still popping up. And being reported by caucus managers via Twitter and noticed by news outlets everywhere.

I'll present just a few of the "inconsistencies" below, but first, a larger point. If the Democratic Party in general, and the Iowa Democratic Party in particular, want to undo the damage they have done, not only their own reputations but to the electoral process as a whole, they will hire independent auditors to reverify the results from raw data — and then publish those results and the data that supports them.

At this point, I don't think anything less will repair the harm done by the #IowaCF that, as I write, is still ongoing. Consider just the few examples below, then ask yourself, no matter whom you prefer as a candidate, will you believe that whatever they say about the results is accurate, absent the raw data and an auditor?

Example 1 — Polk County caucus. From Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Polk County Democrats, writing on Feb 5, two days after the election:

We’re aware that some of the Polk County precincts reported by the Iowa Democratic Party this afternoon were incorrect. Our precinct chairs and our Executive Director Judy Downs have notified the IDP [Iowa Democratic Party] and we’re helping them get it corrected.

Note that he's not saying the county data incorrect; he's saying that the record of that data at the state Democratic Party is wrong.  

Example 2 — Black Hawk County caucus. From Chris Schwartz, Black Hawk County supervisor:

Click to enlarge

Mr. Schwartz added this on February 5:

We have known for over 24 hours as verified by our county party that @BernieSanders won the #iacaucuses in Black Hawk County with 2,149 votes, 155 County Delegates. #NotMeUs #IowaCaucuses

Schwartz two hours later:

The state party is now being forced to walk back their error of giving @BernieSanders delegates to @DevalPatrick who received zero votes in Black Hawk County. Press can dm me.

The "error" he refers to was that the state party transferred, perhaps inadvertently but who knows, a number of votes from Bernie Sanders to Deval Patrick, who was out of the race and had no adherents.

Example 3 — Walnut/Grimes/Grant caucus. The transfer of votes from Sanders to Patrick, and perhaps from Warren to Steyer, appears to have occurred elsewhere.

The highlighted part of the following graphic appears to be from the Walnut/Grimes/Grant caucus results as reported by the state party:

Click to enlarge

If the graphic is accurate, Deval Patrick got or was given 20 and 23 votes on the first and second alignments respectively, while Sanders got or was given 2 and 0 votes on the first and second alignments.  Also in the same caucus, Steyer got 20 and 23 votes while Warren got 0 and 0, if I read this correctly.

The Patrick-Sanders data swap seems an obvious problem, but to my knowledge, it hasn't been addressed. And the Steyer-Warren data could be fishy as well, but without the raw data we'll never know. 

We'll also never know if errors like these have been fixed without an independent and published audit.

Example 4 — Polk County-Des Moines Precinct 14 in Merle Hay. This is from James Payne who said he attended the caucus:

They fucking misreported my precinct. Bernie won 2 delegates in Polk County - Des Moines Precinct 14 in Merle Hay and we fought like hell for them. And @iowademocrats put one of our SDEs in Warren's column but correctly reported vote

Payne later adds, "Here is the raw misreporting on the failing @iowademocrats's website. That .27 should be a .52 SDE. Instead, they gave it to Warren."

Here is the raw misreporting on the failing @iowademocrats's website. That .27 should be a .52 SDE. Instead, they gave it to Warren. They're trying to steal this. #IowaCaucuses #iowa #IowaCaucusDisaster pic.twitter.com/ciTvBI4mTH

— James Payne (@Banalization) February 5, 2020

Click through for the images. 

Of his own experience, Payne writes, "I flew to Iowa from NYC, slept on a blow-up for a week, knocked in the cold, called, was trained & I met tons of great people & had an awesome time but no one I was with was being paid, everyone was taking a hit to do this, I will not stand for this shit. #IowaCaucusDisaster"

Example 5 — Statewide data analysis. Finally, let's consider this from Michael Culshaw-Maurer, a PhD candidate in Ecology at UC Davis.

He writes, "Been working with @SethYefrican (who is now famous) on some analysis of weird #iowacaucases results. Here I outline a bunch of cases where a candidate went from VIABLE in the first round to NOT VIABLE in the final round, which isn't supposed to happen".

This image accompanied his tweet. Click to enlarge it.

If I read this right, the candidate reports boxed in red were viable on the first round but not viable on the second round after realignment (see candidate key on right of graphic for color coding). According to Iowa Party rules, a viable candidate cannot lose viability.

Also as I read this, there doesn't seem to be a pattern as to which candidates are disenfranchised. Even so, this is quite a number of errors. If this data is taken from the state's reporting site as seems likely, it indicates a broad serious problem with the validity of the published results.

It also begs the question, have all Iowa caucus been run this sloppily? 

Bottom Line: Audit the Caucus Results and Publish the Audit

None of this is proof of malfeasance, but it's not proof of innocence either. What it is proof of is that the Iowa caucus results contain a mass of data errors that, deliberate or not, throw the entire results report into question.

If the Democratic Party of Iowa wants to restore its reputation as a reliable broker in the business of democratic elections, it will turn over all data to independent auditors who will publish all of the results — even if it proves Matt Bruenig right, that "there has probably never been a clean [Iowa] caucus."

The alternative is an election, barely begun, that's already tarred beyond recognition, and a public that sees these facts in shock and responds, understandably, in disbelief.
 

How Much Of The GOP Is Going Along With The Trump-McConnell Plan To Leave U.S. Elections Unprotected From Foreign Interference?

A couple of weeks ago we looked at what the group Republicans for the Rule of Law is and how they are targeting the pro-Putin agenda of #MoscowMitch. Tomorrow they will start running 30-second spots on Fox & Friends-- as well as on Fox News SundayM, on Meet the Press and in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri and South Carolina. The ads target McConnell and 4 of his Senate allies: Marco Rubio (R-FL), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and James Lankford (R-OK).

The goal in airing ads nationally and in the home states of the 5 Republican senators is to increase pressure on Moscow Mitch to stop blocking election security legislation and allow votes in the Senate. Now, if only the budget were $4 million instead of $400,000, they might even persuade some of these senators to do something! The ad up top is the one that will run in Florida and this is the South Carolina ad:

The board of Republicans for the Rule of Law includes William Kristol, which is why they usually sound exactly like the Bullwark website he edits, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, former New Jersey Gov. Christy Todd Whitman, former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC), Jennifer Horn (former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party), Sarah Longwell (past national chair of the Long Cabin Republicans), prominent dermatologist Andy Zwick, and Chris Gagin, former chair of the Belmont County (Ohio) Republican Party chair, who resigned over Trump's assessing incident with Putin in Helsinki.

These two are the original spots the group put together to turn up the heat on Moscow Mitch-- the only one of the targeted Republicans facing a live or die election challenge next year, and widely considered the main culprit in keeping the backdoor to the American election system open to the Russians:

It's Not Just Russians Who Steal Elections. Republicans Have Other Methods As Well

All morning we've been looking at the Blue Wave and how hard it will be for the GOP to defend themselves against it. So, they're resorting to cheating-- removing Democrats from the registration rolls. The non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice reported that 9 states with a history of barring blacks from voting are up to their old tracks agin, now that the Justice Department no longer requires them to get pre-approval for changes in their election protocols. The former slave-holding states that went to war against America have a higher rate of removing legitimately registered voters from the rolls than normal states and a higher rate of removing legitimately registered voters from the rolls than they did while the Justice Department rubles on pre-clearance were in effect (in accord with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was struck down by the right-wing Supreme Court 5 years ago.

Millions of legitimately registered voters have been purged from the rolls, mostly in Southern states, to protect Republican officeholders. Georgia has been leading the way, although Republican secretaries of state everywhere in the country are singing from the same hymnal. Brennan Center: "Voter purges are an often-flawed process of cleaning up voter rolls by deleting names from registration lists. Done badly, they can prevent eligible people from casting a ballot that counts... In June 2016, the Arkansas secretary of state provided a list to the state’s 75 county clerks suggesting that more than 7,700 names be removed from the rolls because of supposed felony convictions. That roster was highly inaccurate; it included people who had never been convicted of a felony, as well as persons with past convictions whose voting rights had been restored. And in Virginia in 2013, nearly 39,000 voters were removed from the rolls when the state relied on a faulty database to delete voters who allegedly had moved out of the commonwealth. Error rates in some counties ran as high as 17 percent."

These voters were victims of purges-- the sometimes-flawed process by which election officials attempt to remove ineligible names from voter registration lists. When done correctly, purges ensure the voter rolls are accurate and up to-date. When done incorrectly, purges disenfranchise legitimate voters (often when it is too close to an election to rectify the mistake), causing confusion and delay at the polls.

Ahead of upcoming midterm elections, a new Brennan Center investigation has examined data for more than 6,600 jurisdictions that report purge rates to the Election Assistance Commission and calculated purge rates for 49 states.

We found that between 2014 and 2016, states removed almost 16 million voters from the rolls, and every state in the country can and should do more to protect voters from improper purges.

Almost 4 million more names were purged from the rolls between 2014 and 2016 than between 2006 and 2008.3 This growth in the number of removed voters represented an increase of 33 percent-- far outstripping growth in both total registered voters (18 percent) and total popula- tion (6 percent).

Most disturbingly, our research suggests great cause for concern that the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder (which ended federal “preclearance,” a Voting Rights Act provision that was enacted to apply extra scrutiny to jurisdictions with a history of racial dis- crimination) has had a profound and negative impact:

For the two election cycles between 2012 and 2016, jurisdictions no longer subject to federal preclearance had purge rates significantly higher than jurisdictions that did not have it in 2013. The Brennan Center calculates that 2 million fewer voters would have been purged over those four years if jurisdictions previously subject to federal preclearance had purged at the same rate as those jurisdictions not subject to that provision in 2013.

In Texas, for example, one of the states previously subject to federal preclearance, approximately 363,000 more voters were erased from the rolls in the first election cycle after Shelby County than in the comparable midterm election cycle immediately preceding it.5 And Georgia purged twice as many voters-- 1.5 million-- between the 2012 and 2016 elections as it did between 2008 and 2012.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has abdicated its as- signed role in preventing overly aggressive purges. In fact, the Justice Department has sent letters to election officials inquiring about their purging practices-- a move seen by many as laying the groundwork for claims that some jurisdictions are not sufficiently aggressive in clearing names off the rolls.

Illegal Ballot Destruction In The Midst Of A Law Suit Means Wasserman Schultz Stole The FL-23 Primary Election Afterall

Donna Edwards became a member of Congress-- one of the best members of Congress-- in 2008. But, truth be told, her constituents elected her in 2006... only to see the victory snatched out of her hands on election night with last minute stuffed ballot boxes from corrupt conservative Al Wynn and his Machine. Donna got to work on the 2008 campaign the next day and after Donna eviscerated him in the primary-- 59% to 37%-- he resigned to become a corporate lobbyist.

Last year Tim Canova ran a similar grassroots progressive race against the female counterpart to Wynn-- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the same crook who, as DNC chair, was fired for fixing the primaries for Hillary Clinton. She fixed the election for Hillary; did she fix her own election against Canova? He always thought so but the media and DC establishment went bonkers when he mentioned it and nearly drove this good man out of politics with all their vitriol and venom. Polling was showing him ahead but on primary day Wasserman Schultz beat him 28,809 to 21,907 in a very low turnout election.

Friday, Marc Caputo broke the a story at Politico about how Brenda Snipes a crooked Wasserman Schultz crony and ally and the Broward County elections chief broke the law by destroying ballots cast in the tight primary election between Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova after Canova sued to get access to the ballots. Canova, according to Caputo "wanted to inspect the optical-scan ballots cast in his Aug. 30 primary race against Wasserman Schultz because he had concerns about the integrity of the elections office."

Under longstanding federal law, ballots cast in a congressional race aren’t supposed to be destroyed until 22 months after the election. And under state law, a public record sought in a court case is not supposed to be destroyed without a judge’s order.

Snipes’ office, however, destroyed the paper ballots in question in October-- in the middle of Canova’s lawsuit-- but says it’s lawful because the office made high-quality electronic copies. Canova’s legal team found out after the fact last month.

“The documents were not destroyed because they were maintained in an electronic format,” Snipes’ attorney, Burnadette Norris-Weeks, told Politico. “They have the documents... They did a two-day inspection of the ballots.”

But Canova, a Nova Southeastern University law professor, and his attorney say they wanted originals to make sure they weren’t tampered with. Digital copies can be altered, they said.

Seven election-law lawyers interviewed by Politico do not share Snipes' attorney's interpretation of the statute. Nor does the Department of Justice’s voting division, which is in charge of enforcing the federal law.

“If it’s a federal election, i.e., there is at least one federal candidate on the ballot, the custodian must keep the ballots for 22 months,” Brett Kappel, a Washington lawyer with Akerman LLP, said in an email to Politico. “State law may require a shorter time for retention, but federal law would pre-empt any such state law with regard to ballots cast for federal candidates.”

Kappel said evidence in an active court case should never be unilaterally destroyed. He said actual paper ballots are superior to imaged copies, and he pointed to the legal wrangling over Florida’s now-discarded punch-card ballots that were banned after the disputed 2000 presidential elections in Florida.

...Hans von Spakovsky, an elections expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the ballots must be preserved in paper form for 22 months. He said there’s a simple reason that original ballots are superior to an electronic image: “These electronic systems can be hacked.”

According to Snipes’ office, however, the ballot copies are of high quality for a review. Her attorney also dismissed Canova as a sore loser who’s trying to create a name for himself as he challenges Wasserman Schultz a second time.

“Mr. Canova lost this election,” she said. “He’s been all over Washington and has been trying to do a documentary because he’s upset he lost the election.”

In one hearing, Norris-Weeks insisted that she “certainly could get [a sworn statement] from Debbie Wasserman Schultz” to say that “she knows that they're preparing a documentary, and they're running all around talking to different people trying to do that.”

But Canova said the accusation was false.

“I’m not working on a documentary,” he said. “It is unfortunate that counsel for the Supervisor of Elections has to make things up to somehow justify the office’s illegal actions.”

Wasserman Schultz’s office declined to comment, but she has said she looks forward to again facing Canova, whom she beat by 13.6 percentage points last year.

Canova didn’t want to comment about his specific motivations for the suit, but acknowledged he has concerns about the race against Wasserman Schultz. Canova’s interest in the ballots was piqued by Lulu Friesdat, a documentary filmmaker and activist with a group called the Election Integrity network, which filed the first records request to inspect or copy the ballots in March.

A month later, Snipes’ office responded to the records request by saying it would cost $71,868.87 to sort and produce the ballots for inspection. Canova soon got involved with his attorney, Leonard Collins, and eventually they negotiated a price reduction that brought the cost down to about $3,000. But relations soured, and Canova sued in June.

Snipes’ office, meanwhile, is involved in two other lawsuits and has been plagued by errors and controversies over public records and paperwork.

One of the reasons Donald Trump is in the White House is because the Democratic Party was saddled with a corrupt party head, Wasserman Schultz, whose entire career, going back to her days in the Florida state legislature, have been marked with blatant and persistent corruption. She has long been the poster child of everything plaguing the Democratic Party. She has smeared and slimed Canova non-stop from the moment he dared to challenge here reelection. And now its getting closer and closer to the day when she will be, not just fired as the worst DNC chair in history but fired from Congress itself. Please consider helping Canova's campaign by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right. Meanwhile, this was the statement he issued after Caputo's explosive report yesterday:

In ordering the destruction of ballots, the Supervisor not only violated federal law requiring ballots be maintained for 22 months. Snipes also certified that the ballots were not subject to a pending lawsuit, which she knew was a complete falsehood given that Snipes had been personally served as the defendant in our lawsuit nearly three months earlier and even though we had already made public records requests and pre-trial discovery demands to inspect the ballots.

The ballot destruction raises serious questions:  Why engage in this blatant lawbreaking? To cover up something worse? What has the Supervisor of Elections been hiding? We demand state and federal investigations into the ballot destruction and prosecution of illegal wrongdoing.

Destruction of ballots prevents any reliable audit of the election results. We are left dependent on scanned ballot images created and sorted by scanning software that requires inspection by software experts. But the scanning software is considered proprietary software, owned and controlled by the private vendors, and often protected from independent inspection and analysis.

This destruction of ballots undermines people's faith and confidence in the integrity of our elections and this election in particular. To restore confidence, Congress must investigate and hold public hearings on the circumstances of my primary, including inspection and analysis of the scanned ballot images and the scanning software. Congress should also investigate the relationships between the vendors that control the electronic voting machines and software, their officers and directors, the Broward Supervisor of Elections office, Democratic party officials, and candidates for public office.

The Democratic Party will never be a real alternative to the Republican Party nor a welcoming home for good government reformers, with people like Wasserman Schultz exercising leadership roles in it. This person isn't even the lesser of two evils, which is all the Democrats can claim half the time anyway. She is what makes contemporary politics disgusting and she is the embodiment of what keeps decent people from wanting to get involved with politics.

Time For Paper Ballots-- So The Kremlin Can’t Steal The Next Election The Way They Stole 2016 For Trump. (Oh, You Didn’t Hear?)

Naive people-- really naive people-- have believed an American establishment desperate to pretend that the Kremlin didn’t steal the election for Trump. I’ve always thought they were fools and that Putin certainly stole the election for Trump, while Obama sat by with his dick in his hand. And then participated in a massive coverup to make Americans think their voting system was just fine and that all Putin did was hack the criminally-minded Debbie Wassermann Schultz-- she desreved it and worse, right?-- and release some silly e-mails and get some Albanian and Macedonian kids to monkey around with Facebook. Yeah, wanna buy a bridge?

A low key article in the NY Times yesterday scratched the surface of how Putin delivered America the devastating, debilitating blow of a Trumpanzee White House. Nicole Perlroth, Michael Wines and Matthew Rosenberg began their report in Durham. North Carolina is a swing state. Hillary was competitive there. Trump won the state’s crucial 15 electoral votes 2,339,603 (50.5%) to 2,162,074 (46.7%). Not that close. How’d that happen? Durham is a blue county. After winning the state in 2008, Obama lost North Carolina in 2012 2,275,853 (51%) to 2,178,388 (48%). But he kicked ass in Durham County-- 109,185 (76%) to 33,326 (23%) for Romney. Running against a sociopathic racist Hillary had every reason too think she would do better than Obama had-- and she did-- 118,783 (78.9%) to 27,879 (18.5%). She should have done even better, but… Durham County, of all counties, was targeted for some trouble.

The problems, wrote Perlroth, Wines and Rosenberg, "involved electronic poll books-- tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. [Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group] knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before. 'It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,' Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham."

[M]onths later, for Ms. Greenhalgh, other election security experts and some state officials, questions still linger about what happened that day in Durham as well as other counties in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona.

After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists.

The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus-- voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment-- have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference, such as the hacking of Democratic emails and spreading of false or damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Yet the hacking of electoral systems was more extensive than previously disclosed, the New York Times found.

Beyond VR Systems, hackers breached at least two other providers of critical election services well ahead of the 2016 voting, said current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies.

Intelligence officials in January reassured Americans that there was no indication that Russian hackers had altered the vote count on Election Day, the bottom-line outcome. But the assurances stopped there.

Government officials said that they intentionally did not address the security of the back-end election systems, whose disruption could prevent voters from even casting ballots.

That’s partly because states control elections; they have fewer resources than the federal government but have long been loath to allow even cursory federal intrusions into the voting process.

That, along with legal constraints on intelligence agencies’ involvement in domestic issues, has hobbled any broad examination of Russian efforts to compromise American election systems. Those attempts include combing through voter databases, scanning for vulnerabilities or seeking to alter data, which have been identified in multiple states. Current congressional inquiries and the special counsel’s Russia investigation have not focused on the matter.

“We don’t know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state,” said Michael Daniel, who served as the cybersecurity coordinator in the Obama White House. “If you really want to know what happened, you’d have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research and investigation, and you may not find out even then.”

In interviews, academic and private election security experts acknowledged the challenges of such diagnostics but argued that the effort is necessary. They warned about what could come, perhaps as soon as next year’s midterm elections, if the existing mix of outdated voting equipment, haphazard election-verification procedures and array of outside vendors is not improved to build an effective defense against Russian or other hackers.

In Durham, a local firm with limited digital forensics or software engineering expertise produced a confidential report, much of it involving interviews with poll workers, on the county’s election problems. The report was obtained by The Times, and election technology specialists who reviewed it at the Times’ request said the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

Neither VR Systems-- which operates in seven states beyond North Carolina-- nor local officials were warned before Election Day that Russian hackers could have compromised their software. After problems arose, Durham County rebuffed help from the Department of Homeland Security and Free & Fair, a team of digital election-forensics experts who volunteered to conduct a free autopsy. The same was true elsewhere across the country.

…While only a fraction of [Durham Co.] voters were turned away because of the e-poll book difficulties-- more than half of the county cast their ballots days earlier-- plenty of others were affected when the state mandated that the entire county revert to paper rolls on Election Day. People steamed as everything slowed. Voters gave up and left polling places in droves-- there’s no way of knowing the numbers, but they include more than a hundred North Carolina Central University students facing four-hour delays.

At a call center operated by the monitoring group Election Protection, Ms. Greenhalgh was fielding technical complaints from voters in Mississippi, Texas and North Carolina. Only a handful came from the first two states.

Her account of the troubles matches complaints logged in the Election Incident Reporting System, a tracking tool created by nonprofit groups. As the problems mounted, The Charlotte Observer reported that Durham’s e-poll book vendor was Florida-based VR Systems, which Ms. Greenhalgh knew from a CNN report had been hacked earlier by Russians. “Chills went through my spine,” she recalled.

The vendor does not make the touch-screen equipment used to cast or tally votes and does not manage county data. But without the information needed to verify voters’ identities and eligibility, which county officials load onto VR’s poll books, voters cannot cast ballots at all.

Details of the breach did not emerge until June, in a classified National Security Agency report leaked to The Intercept, a national security news site. That report found that hackers from Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U., had penetrated the company’s computer systems as early as August 2016, then sent “spear-phishing” emails from a fake VR Systems account to 122 state and local election jurisdictions. The emails sought to trick election officials into downloading malicious software to take over their computers.

The N.S.A. analysis did not say whether the hackers had sabotaged voter data. “It is unknown,” the agency concluded, whether Russian phishing “successfully compromised the intended victims, and what potential data could have been accessed.”

VR Systems’ chief operating officer, Ben Martin, said he did not believe Russian hackers were successful. He acknowledged that the vendor was a “juicy target,” given that its systems are used in battleground states including North Carolina, Florida and Virginia. But he said that the company blocked access from its systems to local databases, and employs security protocols to bar intruders and digital triggers that sound alerts if its software is manipulated.

On Election Day, as the e-poll book problems continued, Ms. Greenhalgh urged an Election Protection colleague in North Carolina to warn the state Board of Elections of a cyberattack and suggest that it call in the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security. In an email, she also warned a Homeland Security election specialist of the problems. Later, the specialist told her Durham County had rejected the agency’s help.

When Ms. Greenhalgh, who works at Verified Voting, a nonprofit dedicated to election integrity, followed up with the North Carolina colleague, he reported that state officials said they would not require federal help.

“He said: ‘The state does not view this as a problem. There’s nothing we can do, so we’ve moved on to other things,’” Ms. Greenhalgh recalled. “Meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘What could be more important to move on to?’”

The idea of subverting the American vote by hacking election systems is not new. In an assessment of Russian cyberattacks released in January, intelligence agencies said Kremlin spy services had been collecting information on election processes, technology and equipment in the United States since early 2014.

The Russians shied away from measures that might alter the “tallying” of votes, the report added, a conclusion drawn from American spying and intercepts of Russian officials’ communications and an analysis by the Department of Homeland Security, according to the current and former government officials.

The most obvious way to rig an election-- controlling hundreds or thousands of decentralized voting machines-- is also the most difficult. During a conference of computer hackers last month in Las Vegas, participants had direct access and quickly took over more than 30 voting machines. But remotely infiltrating machines of different makes and models and then covertly changing the vote count is far more challenging.

Beginning in 2015, the American officials said, Russian hackers focused instead on other internet-accessible targets: computers at the Democratic National Committee, state and local voter databases, election websites, e-poll book vendors and other back-end election services.

Apart from the Russian influence campaign intended to undermine Mrs. Clinton and other Democratic officials, the impact of the quieter Russian hacking efforts at the state and county level has not been widely studied. Federal officials have been so tight-lipped that not even many election officials in the 21 states the hackers assaulted know whether their systems were compromised, in part because they have not been granted security clearances to examine the classified evidence.

The January intelligence assessment implied that the Russian hackers had achieved broader access than has been assumed. Without elaborating, the report said the Russians had “obtained and maintained access to multiple U.S. state and local election boards.”

Two previously acknowledged strikes in June 2016 hint at Russian ambitions. In Arizona, Russian hackers successfully stole a username and password for an election official in Gila County. And in Illinois, Russian hackers inserted a malicious program into the Illinois State Board of Elections’ database. According to Ken Menzel, the board’s general counsel, the program tried unsuccessfully “to alter things other than voter data”-- he declined to be more specific-- and managed to illegally download registration files for 90,000 voters before being detected.

On Election Day last year, a number of counties reported problems similar to those in Durham. In North Carolina, e-poll book incidents occurred in the counties that are home to the state’s largest cities, including Raleigh, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville and Charlotte. Three of Virginia’s most populous counties-- Prince William, Loudoun, and Henrico-- as well as Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, and Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, also reported difficulties. All were attributed to software glitches.

Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, argued for more scrutiny of suspicious incidents. “We must harden our cyber defenses, and thoroughly educate the American public about the danger posed” by attacks,” he said in an email. “In other words: we are not making our elections any safer by withholding information about the scope and scale of the threat.”

In Durham County, officials have rejected any notion that an intruder sought to alter the election outcome. “We do not believe, and evidence does not suggest, that hacking occurred on Election Day,” Derek Bowens, the election director, said in a recent email.

But last month, after inquiries from reporters and the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, Durham county officials voted to turn over laptops and other devices to the board for further analysis. It was not clear which government agency or private forensics firm, would conduct the investigation.

Ms. Greenhalgh will be watching closely. “What people focus on is, ‘Did someone mess with the vote totals?’” she said. “What they don’t realize is that messing with the e-poll books to keep people from voting is just as effective.’”

The Times, the newspaper of record, is easing its readers into the whole concept of Putin having decided the 2016 election slowly. Wait 'til they get to Russian vote theft in carefully-targeted counties in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Ohio!

A public discussion nudged by Joe Sestak would likely be a noticeably better public discussion

"The Senate needs an independent leader accountable only to 'We the People,' not any other interests . . . a leader accountable for deeds, not intentions."

-- former PA Rep. (and former three-star Adm.) Joe Sestak,
announcing a campaign for "Leadership for a Better America"

by Ken

I trust everyone remembers Joe Sestak, the retired three-star admiral who was elected to two terms in Congress before deciding in 2010 to run for the Senate seat then held by then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, eventually defeating Specter for, yes, the Democratic nomination and then losing by a respectably and frustratigly narrowly margin to the egregious "anti-tax" imbecile Pat Toomey (who ironically is discovering just how ignorant and insane you have to be to maintain standing among present-day right-wingers), in a year when Pennsylvanians generally were giving considerably larger margins to a panoply of subhuman life forms.

I didn't and don't think of Admiral Sestak in terms of ideology, but more as a man with an impressive range of life experience who seems genuinely committed to problem-solving, real-problem-solving. I'm fascinated to find, in the bio accompanying the press release we'll get to in a moment, stuff like this:

In his first term, he was named the most productive member of his Congressional class by the Majority Leader’s Office. He was also recognized for servicing four times the constituent cases than the average Congressional office, while hosting an average of 15 large summit gatherings in his district each year on key issues.

As I noted here during the Senate campaign, I was impressed, at times even overwhelmed, by the stream of real-world issue discussion that came out of the campaign. Not so much on the handful of hot-button issues that we pretended were the real issues of the day, but on a really staggering array of issues that affect the way people live their everyday lives.

Naturally (i have to conclude), no one paid attention. We always pretend that we want "issues-driven" campaigns, but we don't. Real issues require real thought and real attention to all kinds of real-world detail that most people don't give a crap about -- even though the issues at stake affect their lives a whole lot more than, say, abortion.

Which is a prelude to passing on some thinking about "leadership" that Joe Sestak is sharing with the announcement that he is launching a campaign for "Leadership for a Better America."

Here's what the release has to say:

"I believe that Pennsylvanians are exceptional because we are hard-working people who strive for our own achievement, but always with a sense of being part of a larger community. But we pay a price when our leadership fails to confront our challenges except when in crisis, and it is the loss of trust by those they represent. We need to restore that trust by leaders who are American before they are partisan."

"I have spent a lot of time listening to and talking with the people of Pennsylvania . . . in their homes, at diners, coffee shops, in labor and small business gatherings, and VFW halls. The government of the people has rarely been held in such low regard by the people, undermining our sense of unity -- what we stand for and what we are capable of."

"In particular, the U.S. Senate’s lack of leadership and lack of accountability has meant our nation careens from crisis to crisis, paralyzing the governing of our nation. Its failure to lead gravely affects how well state and local leaders can serve the people, and worse, the economic strength of our working families. We need leaders who serve the people and what they need -- not themselves, not ideology, nor party; leaders who commit themselves to pragmatic leadership for the people, with Pennsylvanian values and common sense."

"I want to begin that change, starting right here in Pennsylvania.  The Senate needs an independent leader accountable only to "We the People," not any other interests. . . a leader accountable for deeds, not intentions," said Admiral Sestak.

If you want me to tell you what this all adds up to, I'm afraid I can't. The release goes on to note, "The committee is filed with the Federal Election Commission as 'Friends of Joe Sestak,' an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate." Which I suppose tells us the underlying intention here. Except that with PA Sen. Bob Casey having just been reelected, the state doesn't have a Senate seat coming open until Pat Toomey's seat is put before the voters in 2016.

So I'm left to think that, just as he says, Joe has as his principal goal to influence the nature of the public dialogue. As if anybody gives a damn about that.

Once again, I worry that the legitimate concerns voiced here about leadership will fall on deaf ears, because just as with the pretense we make that we want issues-based campaigns, I don't think "we the people" want real leadership, except in the fascistic sense of power-made loons who tell us how to live while stroking our prejudices and tickling our terrors.

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Done Deal For Obama? Don't People Undrestand GOP Election Fraud?

Folks who are poll-obsessed already know that by Sunday, Nate Silver had moved Obama's chance of winning the Electoral College (and reelection) to 85.1%-- pretty tough odds for Romney. And when I woke up Sunday morning I found an odd press release from Paddy Power, Europe's top betting house, that says they had already started paying out to punters who picked Obama to win and had already sent $650,000 worth of checks before a single vote is counted! 75% of the money that's been bet has gone Obama's way over the last two months. A Paddy Power spokesperson said: “Romney gave it a good shot and is doing well in the popular vote, but we suspect he’s had his moment in the sun and is likely to be remembered more for his legendary gaffes than Presidential potential. The overall betting trend has shown one way traffic for Obama and punters seemed to have called it 100% correct. Despite Romney appealing to the large evangelical and senior vote, America‘s sticking with black and cool.” As you can see below, they're still taking bets on how big Obama's win will be and on state races, etc.

Had Katherine Harris, Ken Blackwell, and Kathy Nickolaus been tried and then shot for treason-- which is, after all, exactly what those three were guilty of-- I would feel that there would be less of a propensity for Republican officials in the states they've captured in 2010 to try to steal the election now. We've all seen the attempts to limit voter participation in Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, Texas... all the states they control... but now they're looking for ways to subvert the vote-counting itself. Reince Priebus-- straight out of the Kathy Nickolaus school of election theft in Wisconsin and now the chairman of the RNC-- hired notorious election criminal Nathan Sproul to undermine democracy in Virginia, Florida and Colorado. It's what happens when no one is held seriously accountable for serious crimes. Viper-like Ken doll Jon Husted, Ohio's extremist Secretary of State, seems determined to be this year's Katherine Harris. He's already the 2012 posterboy for voter suppression, even after being slapped down by state and federal courts for his efforts to keep likely Democrats from voting. And now he has a new scheme to invalidate votes. Anyone who though these anti-democracy freaks were just going to accept the inevitable without a dirty fight, just doesn't know the nature of these people. And what do they have to lose? No one ever gets held accountable. So keep his graphic in mind when the GOP tries their coup d'état this week:

It won't always be as gross as the bomb scare at an Orlando area early voting station or serial election fraudster Patrick McHenry trying to subvert democracy at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, which Newsweek ranked the "most liberal college in America." But anyone who isn't expecting nationwide GOP attempts to steal the election, just hasn't been paying attention this year decade.

With electronic voting machines, which leave no paper trail and are programmed with proprietary software, the count can be decided before the vote. Those who control the electronics can simply program voting machines to elect the candidate they want to win. Electronic voting is not transparent. When you vote electronically, you do not know for whom you are voting. Only the machine knows.

According to most polls, the race for the White House is too-close-to-call. History has shown that when an election is close and there’s no expectation for a clear winner, these are the easiest ones to steal. Even more important, the divergence between exit polls, perhaps indicating the real winner, and the stolen result, if not overdone, can be very small. Those who stole the election can easily put on TV enough experts to explain that the divergence between the exit polls and the vote count is not statistically significant or is because women or racial minorities or members of one party were disproportionately questioned in exit polls.

There have been recent reports that, because of costs, exit polls in the 2012 presidential election will no longer be conducted on the usual comprehensive basis in order to save money. If the reports are correct, no check remains on election theft.

...For now Republicans seem to have the technological advantage with their ownership of companies that produce electronic voting machines programmed by proprietary software, but in the future the advantage could shift to Democrats. Early voting aids electronic election theft. Successful and noncontroversial theft depends on knowing how to program the machines. The victory needs to be within the range of plausibility. Too big a victory raises eyebrows, but if the guess is wrong in the other direction theft fails. Early voting helps the voting machine programmers decide how to set the machines.

The absence of transparency is a threat to whatever remains of American democracy. In the Summer 2011 issue of the Trends Journal, Gerald Celente made the point that “if we can bank online, we can vote online.”

Think about it! Across the globe, trillions of dollars of bank transactions are made each day, and rarely are they compromised. If we can accurately count money online, we can certainly count votes accurately online. The only obstacles blocking online voting are entrenched political interests intent upon controlling the ballot box.

The lack of transparency has given rise to election litigation. On October 29, the Washington Post reported that “thousands of attorneys, representing the two major presidential candidates, their parties, unions, civil rights groups and voter-fraud watchdogs, are in place across the country, poised to challenge election results that may be called into question by machine failures, voter suppression or other allegations of illegal activity.”

Voting online, if properly arranged, can provide the transparency that the current system lacks. While the GOP might remain active in voter suppression, the Democrats could no longer vote graveyards, and the count of those who do manage to vote would not be subject to secret proprietary software.

In 2005 the nonpartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded that the integrity of elections was compromised by those who controlled the programming. Proprietary private ownership of voting technology is simply incompatible with transparent elections. A country without a transparent vote is a country without democracy.

Anyone know if Romney's most malevolent little shit of a son, Tagg, invested in a company that owns voting counting machines in Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati)? That could be the best investment the sleazy Romney family ever made.

"Electoral Dysfunction," Mo Rocca-style: "As an American, I'm proud that I have the right to vote. Or do I?"

"I'm Mo Rocca, American, and as an American, I'm proud that I have the right to vote. [Pause] Or do I? For answers, I consulted the Constitution."

by Ken

And, Mo reports, in the video portion of "The Right to Vote," " the first of four NYT "Op-Docs" based on the forthcoming feature film Electoral Dysfunction: "A close reading of the Constitution didn't turn up anything about the right to vote."

Electoral Dysfunction, which was screened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Montreal World Film Festival and is scheduled to be shown today at the Democratic National Convention in advance of a theatrical opening (at NYC's Quad Cinema) on September 21 and PBS telecast in October, is a collaboration between Mo and documentary filmmakers Bennett Singer, David Deschamps and Leslie D. Farrell that set out to answer the big questions, like: Where is the Electoral College -- and does it have a winning football team? (You can view a two-minute trailer here.)

As Mo writes in the text portion of the "Right to Vote" op-doc:

Yes, the United States is one of only a handful of nations whose constitution does not explicitly provide the right to vote. (Singapore is another, but it doesn't even allow you to chew gum on the street.)

I imagine you're surprised. I know I was. Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in -- the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill -- and yet they neglected to include the right to vote. (I know, it was a long, hot summer. Hard to stay focused.) It got me thinking: What else don't I know about voting in our country? How does voting really work -- or sometimes not work -- in America?

So I did what any concerned citizen would do when trying to get to the bottom of things: I teamed up with some documentary filmmakers, took a road trip across America, and created "Electoral Dysfunction," a feature-length documentary from which this Op-Docs -- the first in a series of four -- is adapted. Along the way I met all kinds of people at the heart of our nation's elections -- voters, election workers, elected officials, even “electors” (you know, the guys and gals who end up picking the president).

Spoiler alert: The way we run elections in this country is, as kids today might say, totally busted. Because the Constitution leaves key decisions about voting to the states, what we think of as our "electoral system" is really a crazy quilt of local, state and federal systems: 13,000 different voting districts, in fact, each with its own rules and regulations.

The second of the four Op-Docs, "Voter ID Wars," appears today, and Mo begins the text portion with a shrewd observation:

If you've only got 30 seconds to make your case in the debate over photo ID laws -- which require voters to show up at the polls with a government-issued photo ID -- it's much easier to argue in favor of the laws.

"You need a photo ID to get on an airplane or rent a movie from Blockbuster. Get over it!"

While investigating voting in America for the documentary film "Electoral Dysfunction," I heard versions of this line over and over from the laws' backers. The message is clear: "If you're too lazy to get a government-issued photo ID, then you probably don't deserve to vote. And please, let's not forget 9/11." (The airplane reference is a handy conversation-stopper.)

"But voting rights are worth at least 60 seconds of our attention," Mo insists. "So here's why these laws hurt more than they help."

The only crime these laws address is voter impersonation -- someone showing up at the polls and claiming to be someone else in order to cast a fraudulent vote. (I know, sounds almost delightfully madcap.)

There are so many problems with the way we run elections in this country. Voter impersonation is not one of them. Indiana, one of the first states to pass a strict photo ID law, has never convicted anyone for it. Ditto Pennsylvania, which passed an even stricter law.

It's an extremely rare crime -- 10 cases nationwide over a 12-year period during which hundreds of millions of votes were cast -- and for good reason. The penalty is severe -- up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine -- and the perpetrator nets only one vote. If you're going to steal an election, there are far better options. (Hire a 16-year-old to hack into the computer touch-screen voting system -- the one without a paper trail -- in use in about a third of American states.)

These laws are a solution in search of a problem. Why not a law criminalizing child abduction by space aliens? Well, can you prove it isn't happening?

But even if these laws prevent only a tiny number of fraudulent votes, aren't they worthwhile? No.

(Mo proceeds to explain the nature of the hardship these laws impose on poorer voters -- and to explain why neither the airport nor the Blockbuster analogy holds.)

In the video portion of the voter-ID Op-Docs, we're reminded that the Supreme Court, in upholding Indiana's strictest-in-the-land law aimed at stopping non-existent voter fraud, underlined that no such case had been presented to it. And both the text and the video take pains to explain the real hardship posed by the voter-ID requirements. In the video, Mo asks a wrathful-looking old geezer if he's worried about election fraud,. Naturally he is. Mo asks what kind of election fraud he's worried about. It takes the fellow just a moment to come up with an answer: "Democrat."

Of course, anyone who's sufficiently informed to deserve to vote knows that this is nonsense, that the intent here isn't to safeguard the electoral process but to exclude certain classes of voters from it, and that in fact it's Republicans who have made election-stealing an increasing priority going back at least to the giddy days of their theft of the 2000 presidential election, when the final "You Stole It, You Got It" Certificate of Successful Election Theft was issued by none other than the Supreme Court of the United States.

Electoral Dysfunction, by the way, is claimed to be nonpartisan, and I have no difficulty believing that this is just another of the increasingly frequent occasions -- now that the Right is irrevocably committed to, and certified for, a policy of "all lies, all the time" -- when those damned facts are biased.

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Follow-ups: on Buddy Roemer's campaign for "a clean election," and cell-phone robocalls

by Ken

Last night I raised the question: "Is Buddy Roemer any worse a candidate than "Brokeback Rick" Perry? (Probably not, but is he any BETTER?)" This was in response to Eli Saslow's Washington Post Style-section piece "Buddy Roemer among those struggling for a slot in GOP presidential race," about the really marginal GOP presidential candidates, including the former one-term governor of Louisiana, who last held public office in 1991, when he was defeated for reelection running as a Republican. (He had been elected as a Democrat.)

Now I don't really enjoy kicking a guy when he's down, unless he asked for it. But in Buddy's case, well, it all seemed so pathetic.

He had been out of politics for almost 20 years, but he still felt confident that his opinions would resonate. Repeal health-care reform. Raise the eligibility age for Social Security. Seal the border and enforce immigration laws.

Worst of all, "he thought an audience would be waiting for him," and it apparently came as news to him "that becoming president is not always about experience and ideas. It’s also about money, fame and momentum.”

As I wrote Howie back when he passed along the above tweets: "as if we needed any more proof of how pathetic his 'campaign' is?" I mean, really now, a guy who's paying attention to what I write here?

I'd be surprised if there's any DWT reader who wouldn't love to see elections where the determining factors weren't money, fame, and momentum. And who wouldn't like to see what Buddy calls "a clean election." (The Post article points out that "had never accepted political donations of more than $100." However, that's running in no larger election venue than the state of Louisiana, and it was also 20 years ago. My guess is that these days even statewide elections in Louisiana -- even Governor Booby's recent cakewalk reelection -- are more expensive to buy than that.) But really, does the degree of cluelessness on display in the Post story offer any hope for improvement in our electoral system?

Let's take Buddy at his word:

I want nothing more than to prove that a candidate can run a clean campaign. Maybe I'm naive, but I believe in my message.

If he really still believes his message, doesn't that go beyond "naive" to "totally out of touch"? Because hasn't he in fact proved that he can't run "a clean campaign" and get enough attention to raise himself above the grade of electoral laughingstock?

You'd think it would at least be a source of some comfort to him that his current party (as of the last time I checked, anyway) isn't lacking for candidates committed to repealing health-care reform, raising the eligibility age for Social Security, and sealing the border and enforcing immigration laws.


AND SPEAKING OF THOSE CELL-PHONE ROBOCALLS
JUST AROUND THE CORNER . . .

On Thursday I wrote about the business community's aggressive drive to wipe out the existing legal ban to robocalls to cell phones without the recipient's express approval. Really, my interest wasn't so much the particular issue as the way it demonstrates the 21st-century tactics of the hard-driving Hard Right, as it seeks to mop up the few areas of the economic and social order not currently under its control. In particular, I was set off by the pathetic stoogery of the woeful ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Brooklyn's Ed Towns, who let then-ranking member Darrell "Not Presently Under Idictment fer Nuttin'" Issa walk all over him in his brief stint as the committee chairman, and is now the only Democratic congressman signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill to strip cell-phone users of this modest protection.

What I found hilarious, or at least would if it were the least bit funny, was the congressman's statement in which he simply parroted the propaganda presumably furnished by his friendly telecom lobbyists:

During the hearing, I thought it was especially interesting to hear how this 20-year old law prevents consumers from getting useful information about their accounts using technology that did not exist when the law was originally passed. Do we really want to stop FedEx or UPS using modern technology to deliver your holiday gifts on time? Of course not, but that is what we heard at the hearing is one consequence of this 20-year old law. Other consequences we heard were about how the law limits notifications about threats such as fraud alerts, data breaches, and product recalls.

My larger concern was this example of why it has been so important to the lease-holders on the American Right for decades now to accomplish the moronification of the American electorate. In the process I had to provide some background on the robocall issue, and under deadline pressure I simply blanked. The place I should have directed you is our own Noah's recent post "Congress Launches New Attack On The Quality Of Life."

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