Vote NOW… By Hand… On Paper… Be a Poll Worker… And PROTECT THIS ELECTION!!!

-by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

The Armageddon Election of 2020 is officially underway.

Ballots are in the mail. Vote centers are opening.

Wherever you can, cast your ballot NOW.

Then become a poll worker and/or an  Election Protection volunteer. Do NOT wait until November 3rd, or even late October.

In many states (including California, Nevada and others) if you are a registered voter, you are entitled to get a ballot in the mail. If you don’t, check your registration (on line, or call the election board) and get one sent as soon as possible.

If your ballot does arrive in the mail, check all the boxes on the envelope, see that your signature matches your best ID, that your name and address are perfect, and that required documents are copied and included. Call the election board and/or an Election Protection group to go over the details, and to find out if you can walk in your ballot.

Many sports arenas will be used right up to and/or including election day. Go there if you can.

Wear your mask and social distance.

Bring your envelope and all your ID. Bring (or BE) an election protectionist. Some polling centers offer a choice between voting on paper or by machine. ALWAYS insist on paper. Avoid touchscreen machines at all costs. Also avoid provisional ballots if you can.

Some precincts will offer computerized marking devices. But mark your ballot by hand if you can.

Some may let you personally insert your finished ballot into the digital scanning device that will count them all. DO IT!

If you can’t go in personally, some states may let your ballot be walked in by a family member or an authorized citizen (be careful: requirements vary, and “vote harvesting” is illegal).

If you mail in your ballot, or drop it in a collection box (if there are any), do it NOW.  Make sure that collection box is an authorized receptacle, and not a fake right-wind trash can designed to divert and destroy your vote.

If your ballot gets in early enough, some election workers may actually call you to come in and “cure” errors you might have made on the envelope.

At least a million votes were not counted in 2018 because they came in late. Nearly all 2020 voting will be done on paper ballots and fed into digital scanners.

Even in big numbers, the digital images they create can be read almost immediately, once the last ballot is scanned (the ballots themselves stay for recounts).

Some supervisors will senselessly trash the images once they’re counted, and even these relatively simple machines can be hacked.

But if the scanners are used properly, and are NOT connected to the internet (there’s no reason to connect them), the 2020 threat of long vote-count delays and sinister electronic theft will be far less than with hackable touchscreens.

Meanwhile, Trump’s sabotage is already obvious at the postal service, and in key states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Trump could still send in troops to destroy ballots, scanners, and more. He will trash any outcome he dislikes.

In the tradition of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and the KKK supported by Trump’s father, armed militias are already preparing to intimidate voters and otherwise assault the democratic process. We must plan for that.

But we can’t let them distract us from FIRST demanding a fair election with a clear mandate.

If you marched for George Floyd, march NOW into your local voting center. Be a poll worker and/or poll monitor to protect and properly certify the votes-- and voters-- as they come to the precincts. The hours are long, but the pay can be good. (Ohio is offering lawyers CLE credit).

Spend at least a few late hours, in teams-- for as long as it takes-- to scan the ballots and/or memory cards that come in on Election Night.

Be there to help process and protect mailed-in and provisional ballots in the following days when Trump claims victory.

Election Protectionists must guarantee that the whole world is watching.

To keep current, join our Monday Grassroots Emergency Election Protection calls.

2020 is already bringing vastly expanded paper balloting, enhanced early and mail-in voting, and a generational shift in poll workers.

But saving our democracy and our ability to survive on this planet demands a protected election and a well-prepared aftermath.

That means ALL OF US!!

Trump Blatantly Urges His Supporters In North Carolina To Commit A Felony By Voting Twice

Today, presidential voting kicked off and the first state to send out absentee ballot was North Carolina. Much to Trump's chagrin, 618,000 requested ballots went out today that's 16 times the number the state sent out at the same time four years ago. AP reported that "the requests came overwhelmingly from Democratic and independent voters, a reflection of a new partisan divide over mail voting... Democrats requested more than 326,000 ballots, and independents 192,000, while only 92,000 were sought by Republicans. Voters in the state can continue to request the ballots up until Oct. 27." Two days earlier, on Wednesday evening, Fox News released a new poll that shows Biden leading Trump-- albeit narrowly-- among likely voters in North Carolina by 4 points. This may have been depressing for Trump, who desperately needs North Carolina's 15 electoral votes if he's to have any hope at all of eking out any kind of path to victory in November.

Hours earlier, Rep Jamie Raskin (D-MD), in reference to Trump, told his own supporters that there is a "massive assault on the Post Office to sabotage the election" and that "We will have our hands full defending a November victory against every trick in the fascist playbook...These brutal times are trying to our souls." Maybe Trump saw it because he almost immediately reached for one of his most blatant proposals to his fans to help him sabotage the election yet.

Lauren Egan and Pete Williams of NBC News reported that while Stumping in North Carolina Trumo just urged his supporters to vote twice-- once by mail and once in person. That's illegal and I assume urging people to do so is also illegal. Egan and Williams noted that this is an escalation of "his attempts to cast confusion and doubt on the validity of the result."

Trump: "So let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote... If it's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote. So that's the way it is. And that's what they should do."

Asked about Trump's comments during an interview later Wednesday on CNN, Attorney General William Barr argued that a 2005 bipartisan report on election reform found that mail-in voting is "fraught with the risk of fraud and coercion."

Asked why there have been no findings, however, of widespread fraud, Barr responded, "We haven't had the kind of widespread use of mail-in ballots that's being proposed."

Barr said he was unaware of the specific laws in North Carolina, and he did not respond directly to questions about Trump's earlier comments.

Trump made similar claims about mail-in ballots during his 2016 campaign, essentially encouraging his supporters to commit voter fraud.

While the House House scurried to explain that Trump didn't actually mean what he said and wasn't really urging his supporters in North Carolina to break any laws, he flew off to Pennsylvania, where he urged supporters there to also vote twice. "Sign your mail-in ballot, OK? You sign it and send it in and then you have to follow it. And if on Election Day or early voting, that is not tabulated and counted, you go vote. And if for some reason after that-- it shouldn’t take that long-- they’re not going to be able to tabulate it because you would have voted. But you have to make sure your vote counts, because the only way they are going to be able to beat us is by doing that kind of stuff."

We began with Jamie Raskin-- and we'll end with him as well. "Trump’s open-air invitation to his supporters to vote twice," he told me yesterday, "is a plan for massive criminal voter fraud and chaos at the polls to justify other offenses against American democracy. Every elected official in America must denounce this criminal solicitation by the President or be considered complicit by history in this conspiracy against our government and Constitution."

I Bet Election Theft And Voter Suppression Would Stop If They Were Capital Crimes And A Few People Got Executed For It

Georgia's primary elections were a mess yesterday. Look at the race for the Democratic slot in Georgia's first district. Progressive Lisa Ring, the progressive in George's first district will be in a runoff with Joyce Griggs. With 96.89% of precincts reporting (204 out of 225), Lisa had 17,181 votes to Griggs' 17,164. Every vote counts. The Senate race looked like it was coming down to a runoff between a progressive (Teresa Tomlinson) and a nothing (Jon Ossoff) as well, but by last night, the nothing had avoided the runoff and is likely to lose the chance to beat Perdue; leave it to Schumer! The important race in GA-07 also looks like it will be determined in a runoff, as will Democratic primaries in GA-09 and in GA-13, where longtime incumbent and useless Blue Dog David Scott has been forced into a runoff, the only Georgia incumbent who was.

The Associated Press headline tells the real story of the Tuesday primary: 'Chaos in Georgia': Is messy primary a November harbinger?. Bill Barrow wrote that "The long-standing wrangle over voting rights and election security came to a head in Georgia, where a messy primary and partisan finger-pointing offered an unsettling preview of a November contest when battleground states could face potentially record turnout. Many Democrats blamed the Republican secretary of state for hours-long lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time for Tuesday’s elections. Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called it “completely unacceptable.” Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties, while President Donald Trump’s top campaign attorney decried 'the chaos in Georgia.'"

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the primary quickly turned into an ordeal for voters who waited for hours Tuesday when it became clear officials were unprepared for an election on new voting computers during the coronavirus pandemic. Poll workers couldn’t get voting machines to work. Precincts opened late. Social-distancing requirements created long lines. Some voters gave up and went home. The primary was a major test of Georgia’s ability to run a highly anticipated election in a potential battleground state ahead of November’s presidential election, when more than twice as many voters are expected. Elections officials fell short."

Is it just incompetence? Or is there more to Georgia's Republican-controlled dysfunctional voting system? The last Secretary of State, Brian Kemp blatantly stole the gubernatorial election from Stacey Abrams two years ago. Now he's governor. The new issue of Mother Jones carries an essay by election fraud expert Ari Berman, How the Coronavirus Handed the GOP New Ways to Squash the Vote, which isn't specifically about Georgia. In fact, he starts in Texas, where H. Drew Galloway is executive director of MOVE Texas and "spends his life trying to register young voters. Typi­cally, in the spring of an election year, Galloway would be overseeing a staff of about four dozen who, before classes end for the summer, register newly eligi­ble voters on 55 college campuses and at dozens of high schools. Last year, MOVE Texas signed up more than 25,000 new voters. It reached nearly 8,000 more this year before the state’s March 3 presidential primary. But then the coronavirus outbreak scattered students, and MOVE Texas, like every other political group, suspended in-person registration drives. 'We’ve gone from registering 2,000 people a week to registering maybe 100,' Galloway told me in April. 'Voter registration is decimated in Texas.'"

Texas is one of those states controlled by the GOP-- like Georgia-- where the state works hard to keep as many people from voting as they can, especially people of color, poor people and young people and, wrote Berman, "What’s happened in Texas is happening nationwide: The coronavirus has heightened the already considerable obstacles blocking citizens from exercising their right to vote. In the last decade, Republicans have enacted new voting restrictions in 25 states. The Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, unleashing new efforts in states with long histories of voting discrimination to make it harder for voters of color to cast ballots."

Even before the pandemic, Texas was a hard place to register. As of May, it was one of 10 states with no way to do so online. Anyone who wants to sign up voters must be deputized by each county they work in, every two years. Texas has an estimated 5.5 million unregistered but eligible voters-- more people than the individual populations of 28 other states. The majority of them, according to the Texas Demo­cratic Party, are young, people of color, or both, who would likely favor Democrats if they voted. Luke Warford, who directs the party’s efforts to expand voting, told me that Texas Democrats had hoped to see 2 million new people register this year as part of its push to tip the state blue. “We had plans to run the largest statewide voter registration program in history,” he said. “Introduce a pandemic and that makes everything you were planning to do in person quite a bit more difficult.”

Even if new voters succeed in registering, without changes to the existing system they’ll face unequal access to mail-in ballots. Texas limits mail-in voting for those under 65 to people who are out of town during the election, in jail, or have a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents them from going to the polls. Meanwhile, any voter 65 or older-- the strongest age demographic for Donald Trump in 2016-- can request an absentee ballot with no questions asked.

In April, a state judge ruled that people afraid of contracting the coronavirus while voting had a legitimate reason to get an absentee ballot. Texas’ Republican attorney general has opposed the ruling, claiming that “a fear of contracting COVID-19” is “an emotional condition and not a physical” one, and has raised the prospect of “criminal sanctions” for groups like MOVE Texas that help voters under 65 obtain mail-in ballots. In late May, the state’s all-Republican Supreme Court agreed a lack of immunity to the virus alone was not a valid reason, but said voters could weigh their health history and make their own decision-- a ruling that could cause confusion and leave some people requesting mail ballots open to prosecution. A separate appeal on the matter is pending in federal court.

...In key states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, the number of new voters who registered in March was half or less than it was during the same time period in 2016.

Public health and election expert agree that voting by mail us the safest way to cast a ballot in a pandemic. Yet most states are unprepared to hold mail elections in a way that won’t lead to significant voter disenfranchisement. The six best-positioned states-- California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington-- ­have already put in place systems where a ballot is sent to every registered voter. In three other Western states-- Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico-- a majority of votes are cast by mail, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. With Florida and pockets of other mail-in voters added in, a quarter of Americans voted by mail in 2018, a record number. But in the 40 other states, mail-in ballots made up just 9 percent of votes cast. Fewer than 8 percent of people voted by mail in key states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Because it’s been a minor method of voting in a lot of the key states, the rules and practices involving mail voting have gotten less scrutiny and haven’t been thought out to make sure they’re fair and accessible,” said Wendy Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

While quickly expanding voting by mail could help many people cast ballots in November, it poses its own risks. If election officials, especially in places unused to the method, are overwhelmed by a surge of requests, ballots might not reach voters in time. The United States Postal Service, which faces a major budget shortfall and attacks from the Trump administration (a major fundraiser for the Republican National Convention was just named postmaster general), could lack the resources to handle increases in sent and returned ballots. And a sizable chunk of the electorate will be unfamiliar with the intricate rules governing mail-in voting and could see their ballots thrown out on technicalities.

...While groups like Rock the Vote and Voto Latino have reported a major increase in voter registrations amid the protests over George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer, calls for young people and people of color to reshape the 2020 elections by voting in record numbers must contend with the reality that those communities most affected by racism and police brutality could also have the toughest time voting this year.

“As we push more people to vote by mail, which is a good thing, the number of ballots that aren’t counted is going to increase. And we know those ballots are not equally distributed. This burden is shared disproportionately by young and minority voters,” Elias said.

Wisconsin's disastrous election on April 7, when officials proceeded with a primary and state Supreme Court race despite a statewide shelter-in-place order, provided a vivid illustration of how not to vote during a pandemic. Republican leaders in the state legislature rebuffed calls by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, to postpone the election or mail an absentee ballot to every registered voter. With many people afraid to leave their homes, and cities closing the bulk of their polling places because of poll worker shortages-- Milwaukee opened just 5 of 180-- anxious Wisconsinites were forced to wait hours in line to vote. Just 6 percent of the state’s voters cast ballots by mail in 2018; this spring around 60 percent did.

While photos of masked voters and poll workers in protective gear drew national outrage, they may have obscured the fact that the state was ill-equipped to handle that huge increase. Though officials worked around the clock-- Madison’s city clerk said she logged more than 100 hours a week during the close of the election--121,000 mail-in ballots were not returned, as voters complained they didn’t receive them in time or at all, because of mistakes by election workers or the post office.

A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission confirmed that the dramatic increase in absentee voting “certainly caught us by surprise,” conceding that Milwaukee and Green Bay, both home to many Democratic voters, had failed to get every requester a ballot, unlike “the vast majority” of the states’ 1,850 municipalities.

Wisconsin also shined a light on the restrictive rules for mail-in ballots. Voters had to get a witness to watch them fill out their ballots, difficult for anyone living alone at a time of social distancing. Many voters had to include a copy of their photo ID to request an absentee ballot, which at a minimum required uploading a picture of their ID or photocopying it. Such rules, which Republicans refused to waive, helped lead to an estimated 23,000 absentee ballots being rejected-- almost the same number that Trump carried the state by in 2016.

... Despite Trump’s false claim that mail-in voting benefits Democrats, the parties’ voters made roughly equal use of the option in 2016, and it’s helped Republicans in key swing states like Arizona and Florida. Older and whiter voters tend to vote by mail more than the overall electorate. According to a Brennan Center analysis of voting in seven presidential battlegrounds, voters 65 or over were roughly twice as likely to vote by mail than those under 40. Nationwide, in 2018, just 11 percent of Black voters cast ballots by mail while 23 percent of white voters did.

Trump and the RNC have signaled they’ll fight expansions of mail-in voting that would make the process more accessible for younger and more diverse voters, but not for their most reliable voters, such as mailing absentee ballot applications to anyone over 64.

Ben Wikler, who helped thousands of voters cast their first mail-in ballots in April as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, warns that “the danger is Republicans will apply the ruthless cynicism they’ve used for in-person voter suppression to absentee voter suppression and we’ll be fighting against a whole new set of tactics.”

Another worry is the spread of disinformation about how to vote, which could be particularly disruptive in a year when Americans will have to adopt unfamiliar procedures. The potential methods go well beyond what’s known about Russia’s 2016 playbook. Shady political organizations could send people genuine-seeming but fake absentee ballots, set up bogus websites to trick people into thinking they’ve requested ballots, spread the wrong deadline for returning mail-in ballots, or give incorrect information about the type of documentation or identification needed to vote.

“The pandemic could likely be weaponized in the hands of those that already had the intent to suppress the vote,” said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “There are a lot more challenges now to conducting elections. There’s a lot more potential for mischief.”

“The silver lining” of Wisconsin, Gupta said, “was it raised the alarm for folks who weren’t necessarily focusing on the elections and democracy component of COVID. It certainly awakened local and state officials-- ­they don’t want those same Wisconsin photos on their watch.”

...The electoral response to the coronavirus mirrors the public health one, with little national leadership, and state action varying widely. Some states, like California, which is sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters, are doing a lot to make voting easier while others, like Texas, are fighting common­sense steps to expand voter access. Elements of the federal government and state-level Republicans may be working quietly to respond responsibly and ensure a free and fair election, but Trump is actively undermining that goal by lying about the prevalence of voter fraud and opposing mail-in voting.

The president’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus outbreak may have imperiled his reelection chances. But its disproportionate impacts could play to his advantage. The counties with the highest rates of covid-19 as of mid-April voted for Clinton by 19 points, while the areas with the lowest rates supported Trump by 15 points. If the virus surges or stay-at-home orders return for Election Day, residents of these large and staunchly Democratic cities could be afraid to vote in person-- and in most states, they’ll face untested election systems with their own potentially decisive faults. As Wikler noted in the wake of Wisconsin’s primary, “The harder it is to vote, the more people wind up getting pushed to the side.”

When Republicans Can't Win, They Always Try Cheating-- It's Part Of The Nature Of Conservatism... And Kentucky Is A Good Case

Gangsta President by Nancy Ohanian

Last week, Mehdi Hasan interviewed Bernie for The Intercept. I dealt with some of it last night, but not this interaction about 2020:

Hasan: I’ll hold you to that. I’ll hold you to that definitely, Senator. One last question before I let you go. Let’s say November, you beat Donald Trump. You win the popular vote. You win the Electoral College. It’s clear. It’s decisive. And he says, “No, I don’t accept the result. It’s fake news. It was the deep state. It was a coup. It was illegal immigrants voting for the Democrats.” What do you do in that scenario?

Bernie: I share the paranoia of many people. Trump is a pathological liar and a very dangerous person. Trump will accept the election results and when I defeat him, I will become the president of the United States.

Let's hope. Sportsmanship and patriotism aren't exactly part of Trump's wheelhouse. Yesterday, New York Times reporters Matt Rosenberg and Nick Corasaniti took a look at how Trump and his cronies tried-- and are still trying a week later-- to steal the gubernatorial election in Kentucky. They called the efforts "an omen for 2020." They reported that "A few hours after polls closed in Kentucky last Tuesday, a Twitter user writing under the handle @Overlordkraken1 posted a message to his 19 followers saying he had 'just shredded a box of Republican mail-in ballots.' It was clear that the Kentucky governor’s race was going to be excruciatingly close, and that the Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin, could be headed to defeat. But just in case anyone missed the significance of the destroyed-ballots claim, @Overlordkraken1 added a final touch to his tweet: 'Bye-Bye Bevin,' he wrote. For those eager to cry fraud as a reliably red state leaned blue, the fact that @Overlordkraken1 did not appear to be in Kentucky-- Louisville was misspelled in the location tag on his tweet, for one thing-- was not going to get in the way of a useful narrative. Nor was Twitter’s decision to suspend his account."

Within hours of @Overlordkraken1’s tweet, as it became apparent that Mr. Bevin was trailing in the vote tally, hyperpartisan conservatives and trolls were pushing out a screenshot of the message, boosted by what appeared to be a network of bots, and providing early grist for allegations of electoral theft in Kentucky. High-profile right-wing figures were soon tweeting out their own conspiracy theories about the election being stolen-- messages that were in turn pushed by even more trolls and bots-- and the Bevin campaign began talking about “irregularities” in the vote without offering any specifics or evidence.

The talk has only intensified in the days since, though it has yet to be matched by any evidence of actual election rigging. But with Mr. Bevin’s choosing not to concede, and Kentucky authorities’ preparing to recanvass all of the votes at his insistence, Kentucky is shaping up to be a case study in the real-word impact of disinformation-- and a preview of what election-security officials and experts fear could unfold a year from now if the 2020 presidential election comes down to the wire.

Since his election four years ago, Mr. Bevin has hitched himself to President Trump, and his allegations of irregularities echo the Trump playbook. Mr. Trump has sown doubts about a “rigged election” system since before his own election, including openly questioning the mail-in ballot process in Colorado. He then contended that fraud had lost him the popular vote (which Hillary Clinton won by 2.9 million votes). And he has amplified similar theories while in office, tweeting at least 40 times about unfounded voter fraud allegations, according to an analysis by the New York Times, including a claim after the midterm elections last year that “many ballots are missing or forged” in Florida.

Such divisive rhetoric after close elections has always risked shaking public faith in essential democratic institutions. But in a profoundly polarized country where narrow margins are hardly uncommon, sophisticated networks of social media users-- human and bot-- can quickly turn partisan rancor into grave threats, rapidly amplifying disinformation and creating an initial veneer of vast discord that can eventually become self-fulfilling.

“It shows how the same divisions that the Russians sought to expose in 2016 remain real vulnerabilities in our democracy,” said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nonpartisan group in Washington focused on election security. “The ugly partisanship that is dominating our democratic discourse continues to create openings for those who want to weaken our institutions and use the online space to fuel conspiracies or advance their own agenda.”

Mr. Bevin has not elaborated on the nature or source of the perceived irregularities, and his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The campaign of Attorney General Andy Beshear, who is leading the governor by roughly 5,000 votes, said in a statement that “it’s deeply concerning to see shady coordinated disinformation campaigns trying to undermine our democracy.”

The Kentucky secretary of state’s office said federal law enforcement officials were investigating both the tweet about shredding ballots and the subsequent rapid amplification. The United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Kentucky did not respond to a request for comment.

Twitter, in response to questions from The Times, said the trolling and spread of disinformation about the Kentucky race appeared scattershot and haphazard, but largely appeared to originate in the United States. The company described @Overlordkraken1, whose profile said his name was Luis, as a user with a history of small-time trolling.

Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media, agreed with the conclusion that much of the activity around the Kentucky vote was domestic and not likely to have been pushed by any foreign power. Graphika said the tweets about electoral fraud appeared to land in what it calls a “Trump core”-- a large number of highly interconnected social media accounts, many run by real people, that are typically reactive and loud and can keep a conversation going for days at a time.

But much like the Russian-backed networks of bots and trolls that impersonated Black Lives Matter activists in 2016, or more recently seized on divisive issues like gun rights after a mass shooting, the accounts that quickly amplified doubts and disinformation about the Kentucky election seemed ready for the occasion.

The tweet about the shredded ballots was first noticed by the secretary of state’s office, which alerted law enforcement officials and Twitter. The tweet was quickly taken down, but by then it had already been captured in a screenshot and would be widely shared.

Data compiled by VineSight, a start-up that detects disinformation on social media, showed that many of the accounts that tweeted the screenshot of @Overlordkraken1’s ballot-shredding claim appeared to be bots. Their tweets, in turn, were spread by other bots.

Of the more than 3,800 accounts that VineSight detected tweeting the screenshot, at least 2,350 appeared to be bots, based on an analysis of the accounts’ activities, including how quickly and how often they tweet.

One was an account that went by the handle @ConservaMomUSA and had both human and bot characteristics. @ConservaMomUSA’s post about the ballot shredding was retweeted about 1,300 times, and nearly 60 percent of that traffic was from bots, VineSight found.

The volume of bot-like tweets of the vote-shredding screenshot prompted VineSight to alert the Democratic Governors Association in Washington. Despite growing fears about national disinformation campaigns, the news startled some officials there.

“I was a little surprised,” said David Turner, the group’s communications director. He noted that while some small-scale bot activity had been detected after the 2017 elections in Virginia, “we didn’t see any of that in our close elections last year.”

The disinformation quickly grew beyond the allegation of shredded ballots. The conspiratorial hashtag #StopTheSteal, which had been prevalent in the 2018 midterm elections, then silent for nearly a year, spiked late on election night, tweeted more than 1,200 times, largely by accounts with bot-like characteristics.

Tweets explicitly claiming that the election had been “rigged” were also picked up. A quick sample of nine tweets decrying a “rigged” election were retweeted roughly 1,800 times, with nearly 60 percent of the retweets coming from bot-like accounts, according to data compiled by VineSight.

Other bot-like accounts were resurfacing unfounded allegations of “voter intimidation” by George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor and favorite boogeyman of the far right.

Talk of possible electoral fraud was not limited to the fringes of online discourse. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a prominent right-wing activist group, tweeted that Kentucky had weak voter ID laws and “dirty election rolls,” though he was careful not to make any direct allegation of wrongdoing.

Michael Coudrey, an entrepreneur and activist with more than 180,000 Twitter followers, posted a message on Wednesday that Kentucky had switched to machines that scanned votes and provided no paper backup, and “oddly enough the entire state turns blue.”

In an email responding to questions from The Times, Mr. Coudrey said warnings from federal officials about possible foreign interference in elections made Kentucky’s use of scannable voting machines a cause for concern. Still, he later deleted the tweet after it became apparent that Republicans had scored significant wins in the state. But by then it had been retweeted hundreds of times.

“Now we see as a reality that Kentucky was prime fertile breeding ground to amplify tactics that have previously been used in the 2016 election, and try out new tactics that I do believe will most likely continue to be used in the 2020 election,” said Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in 2014 against Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader. She said it foreshadowed “what is to come in elections not only here in the Commonwealth, but all across this nation.”

By Thursday, the online campaign was melding with real-world action. A supporter of Mr. Bevin, Frank Simon, had set up a robocall network telling people to “please report suspected voter fraud” to the state Department of Elections.

There are no indications of any voter fraud in Kentucky, according to Ms. Grimes.

“Beyond the routine calls that we field, up to and on Election Day, there are no irregularities that would substantiate a 5,000-vote difference margin that now separates unofficially Governor-elect Beshear with Governor Bevin,” she said.

While the Kentucky election, held in an off-year, remains a sideshow to most people outside the state, election security experts see in it a worrying sign of what Americans may be forced to contend with next November.

A situation like Kentucky’s, but on a national scale, would at the very least leave the government “paralyzed in terms of any real policy, domestically or abroad,” said George Beebe of the Center for the National Interest, a conservative think tank in Washington.

“We are not going to be able to actually do things,” Mr. Beebe said. “It’s going to be a challenge, I think, to hold things together. Where this is pointing is a crisis of systemic legitimacy.”

To better understand how Beshear won in beet red Kentucky, let's turn to Bill Bishop at Daily Yonder: Where the Vote Shifted in Kentucky from 2015 to 2019. it wasn't just the voter enthusiasm against Trump and Bevin the the cities-- and there was huge Democratic voter turn out in Louisville, Lexington and the Cincinnati suburbs-- but also a shift towards Beshear across the state compared to Bevin's election in 2015. Bishop acknowledged that "the areas that gave the Democrat a lead over incumbent Governor Matt Bevin were in the state’s major cities and close-in suburbs... Only 39 of Kentucky’s 120 counties were more Republican this week than four years earlier. Almost all counties were rural or exurban (the remotest suburbs) and they are concentrated in the western portion of the state. The counties that moved most strongly toward the Democrats were central city counties of the major metro regions of the state and their suburbs (including those neighboring Cincinnati, Ohio). Of the seven counties where Democrats increased their share by 10 percentage points from 2015, five were attached to major metro areas."

As I mentioned right after the election, most of the big coal counties that had been Bernie Country in 2016 and then went for Trump in the general, either outright voted for Beshear or gave him far more voters than they had given Democrats in recent times. Bishop: "There was a strong Democratic trend in a number of Eastern Kentucky counties. Magoffin, Knott and Perry counties (all once dependent on the coal industry) had some of the strongest Democratic shifts in the state. But since the urban and suburban counties have much larger populations than rural counties, most of the surge in Democratic votes was tied to the cities. Democrats increased their total vote by 283,000 from 2015 to 2019. Nearly two-thirds of that increase (177,000 votes) came from the state’s major cities or suburbs. In fact, nearly 40 percent of that increase came from just two counties, the central parts of Louisville (Jefferson County) and Lexington (Fayette County). The increase in voter turnout was massive in Kentucky, compared to 2015. The Democratic vote increased by 66 percent from 2015 to 2019. The Republican turnout increased by 37.7 percent-- a huge gain but not enough to offset the Democratic surge. The Democratic vote in downtown Lexington nearly doubled."

The Washington Post has a sophisticated analysis of the urban, suburban and rural shifts in Kentucky’s elections. It finds that the split between central cities and counties farther from city centers has widened since 2015.

The Yonder finds the same widening gap. For example, there was a 22.5 percentage point difference in the Democratic vote between Louisville (Jefferson County) and the state’s most rural counties in 2015. This week, the gap was 29.6 points.

Let's Re-Visit The North Carolina Republican Party Vote Theft Mess

We left off Sunday night before the meeting of the North Carolina Board of Elections. All the background about the case, the candidates and the 9th district can be found there, as well as my predictions how just how horrible Democrat Blue Dog Dan McCready is likely to be and how progressives would be better off without him in Congress. But I know you want to cheer for Team Blue anyway, so here's the update.

Voter fraud galore and it seems like these Republicans absolutely have to go to prison for trying to steal the election. On Monday Leslie McCrae Dowless, who was paid by Republican Mark Harris to steal the 2018 primary and general election, was aware of that and said he will not testify with a grant of immunity from prosecution. That makes sense-- especially after his stepdaughter testified how his ballot harvesting operation worked.

Lisa Britt, whose mother was married to Leslie McCrae Dowless in the early 1990s, testified that Dowless paid workers to collect absentee ballot request forms and mail-in absentee ballots and drop them off at his office and his home.

She said Dowless and others made copies of request forms and had specific criteria for matching pen colors, where to mail ballots from, how many to mail at a time and even how to place stamps to avoid setting off alarms.

“He fussed at me for putting on stamps upside down,” Britt testified before the N.C. Board of Elections. “We didn’t want to throw up a red flag.”


...Britt’s testimony was the beginning of the attempt by a new, five-member state board to prove what Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach called “a coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated during the 2018 general election in Bladen and Robeson counties.”

The hearing took place in a makeshift courtroom at the state bar and drew dozens of potential witnesses as well as national media. When it ends, the board will vote to either certify the victory of Republican Mark Harris, call for a new election or deadlock, which would throw the matter into limbo.

Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in unofficial results in the district, which runs from Charlotte to Bladen County in the east.

Dowless was hired by Red Dome Group, Harris’ campaign consulting group at Harris’ direction. The state board said Red Dome Group paid Dowless $131,357.57 from July 3 to Nov. 7, but said that it could not be certain all of the money was for Harris’ campaign.

Monday marked the first time that state officials revealed their findings in the investigation, which launched in November and twice caused the old nine-member state board not to certify the election results. 
Britt, a convicted felon who had previously spoken to investigators, said she didn’t think Dowless would have her do anything illegal. Britt, who testified without immunity and without a lawyer present, admitted to multiple election fraud activities.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Britt said. “Mr. Dowless has been a father figure to me for 30 years. There’s certain things you would place trust in. He’s not going to put you out here to do something illegal.”


 But Britt outlined a process by which she and other workers often signed as witnesses for ballots they did not see signed, traced over signatures to make sure the ink colors matched that of the voter’s, dated forms incorrectly, forged signatures and filled in down-ballot races on some ballots.

It is illegal in North Carolina for anyone outside of a close relative to handle a voter’s absentee ballot. Her testimony was backed by another witness, Kelly Hendrix, who testified that she collected ballots and turned them into Dowless with only one of the two required witness signatures. The forms were signed later, Hendrix said, by people who did not see them collected.

Britt also told the board that Dowless-- on at least two occasions-- tried to influence her public statements and testimony. As controversy swirled over the election results last year, Britt said Dowless called her and other workers together for a meeting at his house.

“As long as we all stick together we’ll all be fine, because they don’t have anything on us,” Britt said Dowless told them.


Britt, who along with her two young children lived with Dowless for a time last year, said late last week, Dowless sent her a note, urging her to say she had not done anything wrong, that Dowless had never instructed her to do anything wrong and to take the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination before the board.

The note was entered into evidence.


Britt testified that she made false statements during a December interview with WBTV, in which she denied collecting absentee ballots.

“I do feel I have done wrong,” she said.


 ...“You heard direct evidence of a scheme to deprive voters of the 9th Congressional District of fair balloting,” McCready campaign attorney Marc Elias said after the hearing. “And you heard that that direct evidence winds up doorstep and the telephone of Republican candidate Mark Harris.”

Republicans say unreturned ballots don’t necessarily suggest fraud. An attorney for the Harris campaign pointed out that the Bladen County Improvement PAC, a Democratic group, was working to request numerous absentee ballots as well. Republicans say McCready must show that any fraudulent ballots actually made a difference.

“The burden is on McCready to prove absent the irregularities he likely would have won the race. The burden is not on Mr. Harris or the NCGOP to prove the election system is perfect. It is not, never has been, and never will be,” tweeted Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NC Republican Party.

Under state law, the board can call for a new election if “Irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness.”

Trump and Harris-- perfect pair of cheats

Exciting, right? Tuesday the fireworks continued with a finding that "votes were counted days before Election Day in the rural county at the center of the disputed results." AP reported that "The officials also said the election was marred by falsified signatures, blank ballots that consultants could complete and disappearing documents. The state elections board on Tuesday heard from Bladen County poll workers who admitted tallying results on the Saturday before Election Day when early, in-person voting ended. That’s contrary to proper practice... [and] the practice of early counting raises questions about the vulnerability of the county’s voting results."

This process was expected to end today tomorrow with a decision by Friday. That looks less likely as the magnitude of the criminal activities continues to unfold. The Republican Party has been whining about voters fraud for years and years and they have finally found it. Now we all know why they were so sure of it too. Except for people who get their news from Fox. They don't get a reality-based perspective on anything. It's kind of scary. For example, this Tucker Carlson piece with Dutch historian Rutger Bregman hasn't been aired-- and won't be. You should watch it though... for a whole variety of reasons, done of which have anything directly to do with Republican Parrty election theft in North Carolina.





UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS!

In an unexpected shock today, Mark Harris' son. John, testified that he had warned his father-- more than once-- about fraudulent absentee ballots in Bladen County and told him in no uncertain terms that McCrae Dowless is a GOP career criminal.

Tomorrow's The Day In North Carolina-- Another Fascist In Congress... Or A Somewhat Less Horrible Blue Dog?

It's exceedingly rare that elections that are decided by vote theft get overturned. But the swingy southern-tier district of North Carolina, stretching from Elizabethtown and Fayetteville in the east, out through Lumberton, Laurinburg, Wadesboro and the southern Charlotte suburbs as far as the Central Piedmont Community College campus in the west, still doesn't have a representative in Congress. The PVI is a daunting R+8, but independents and moderate Republicans in the suburbs abandoned anyone tainted with Trump-- as Harris is-- in droves. (Trump beat Hillary in the 9th by nearly a dozen points-- 54.4% to 42.8%.)

Tomorrow-- finally-- the North Carolina Board of Elections will hold its long-awaited public evidentiary hearing in Raleigh into the Mark Harris fraud case. It starts at 10 AM and is expected to last as long as 3 days. The five-member board will consider testimony from its own investigators and experts, plus witnesses representing Mark Harris (R) and Dan McCready (Blue Dog). There are 3 Dems and 2 Republicans on the board. It would take 3 votes to certify Harris-- who leads by 905 votes (including thousands of fraudulent ballots)-- or 4 votes to call a new election. In other words, the Dems would have to get at least one of the Republicans to vote with them for a do-over. Or, the Republicans would need at least one Democrat to agree with them that the election was stolen fair and square. A decision is expected by Wednesday. If the Board of Elections can't reach a decision, either Gov. Roy Cooper (D) or the U.S. House will have to decide and there is little doubt that either would call for a new election.

Harris is trying to turn the hearing into a circus in the hopes of discrediting the decision, which no one expects to go his way. His attorney has demanded McCready appear to explain a comment he made last month on TV: "This is for the State Board to decide-- I think there are two options here. Either [Harris] knew what was going on, which I don't know how you wouldn't, and he should be in jail... or he turned a blind eye to fraud. He built a culture of corruption that represents the worst in our politics."

Early this month, Charlotte Observer political reporter Jim Morrill explained why McCready would have a commanding head start over Harris. It's mostly money. McCready's got $338,000 in his coffers compared to Harris $19,000.

This past Friday Morrill reported that McCready's case is based on the obvious, that Harris' ballot harvesting operation tainted more ballots than the current margin The Election Board can call for a new election if "irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness," which is clearly the case here.

The McCready campaign argues that the number of ballots affected by Leslie McCrae Dowless-- a Bladen County political operative and elected official who was hired at Harris’ direction to conduct get-out-the-vote work-- could be as high as 2,500, citing the 1,364 absentee-by-mail ballots cast in Bladen and Robeson and the 1,169 absentee-by-mail ballots sent to voters that were not returned and who did not vote in another way.

...Dowless, whose work in the 2016 election led to multiple ongoing investigations, is alleged to have paid workers to collect requests for mail-in absentee ballots, which is legal, and to have paid workers to collect completed or incomplete mail-in absentee ballots, which is illegal.

“While only Dowless may ever know the breadth of his scheme, the evidence is conclusive: Dowless’s operation tainted a far greater number of ballots than the apparent margin in the CD-9 race, and he was aided and abetted by elections officials along the way,” the McCready campaign said in its brief.

Dowless himself turned in requests for 590 mail-in absentee ballots in Bladen County, according to data released by the state board. McCready’s legal brief says that Dowless and his associates made “well over 700” requests in Bladen County.

As for the unreturned ballots, the McCready campaign argues their rate was “exceedingly high” in Bladen and Robeson and claims that Dowless and his associates discarded ballots they had collected.


The McCready campaign also said that Bladen County election officials released early vote totals to Dowless, gave him access to unredacted ballot request forms and provided him regular reports with voter information connected to mail-in absentee ballots.

McCready’s argument-- that more than 905 ballots were affected-- seems designed to rebut claims by the Harris campaign that the state board should certify his victory because there are not enough ballots to overcome the current deficit.

“Irregularity or misconduct alone does not mean a protest moves forward. The State Board must decide whether the irregularity is sufficient to cast doubt on the results of the election,” Harris’ attorneys wrote in their filing to the board. “If irregularity or misconduct-- no matter its nature or egregiousness-- does not cast doubt on the result, the protest should be dismissed.”

The Harris campaign has denied knowing about Dowless’ criminal history or about allegations of improper actions in 2016 until news reports after the election.

The previous nine-member board was disbanded in late December due to a separate legal challenge, but staff continued its investigation into the election results. The new board, made up of three Democrats and two Republicans, was appointed Jan. 31. Members got their first in-depth look at the evidence gathered by staff last week.

There are several reasons Democrats around the country are rooting for-- and contributing to-- McCready. First, of course, is the tribal mentality which defines this as a team sport and sees McCready in a blue uniform and Harris in a red one. A more valid reason is because Harris is a extremist lunatic who will be a 100% rubber stamp for Trump or even someone pushing Trump further right. But the best reason is because there are already too many crooked politicians in Congress and Harris clearly hired a known election fraud mastermind and paid him to steal the election./ He belongs in prison, not in Congress.

That said, I want to warn progressives about McCready. Not only is he a Blue Dog, but on most crucial issues the Republicans will be able to count on him to support their positions. The Democrats don't need another vote to elect a Speaker and organize the House-- the usual lame argument for support crap lesser-of-two-evils candidates like McCready. In fact, McCready will be another voice within the caucus, pushing the caucus to water down progressive proposals. Progressives are actually better off if McCready loses.

These are 10 freshman Blue Dogs with their ProgressivePunch ratings so far. Aside from having joined the Blue Dog caucus, you'll notice what they all have in common. McCready is considerably to the right of most of them:

• Anthony Brindisi (NY)- F
• Ed Case (HI)- F
• Joe Cunningham (SC)- F
• Kendra Horn (OK)- F
• Ben McAdams (UT)- F
• Max Rose (NY)- F
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)- F
• Abigail Spanberger (VA)- F
• Xopchitl Torres Small (NM)- F
• Jeff Van Drew (NJ)- F

New Election After Republicans Were Caught Trying To Steal A House Seat In North Carolina?

2 GOP crooks-- Mark Harris and Trumpanzee

By the end of last month, it was already obvious that North Carolina Trumpist, Mark Harris, had stolen both the GOP primary that ousted Robert Pittenger and then the general election in which he-- against all odds-- beat Blue Dog Dan McCready. The final 538.com forecast omg November 6, showed Harris with just a 12.1% chance to win (1 in 8).

Harris has been in DC pretending that he's the legitimately-elected congressman from North Carolina's 9th district, the state's southern tier, from Charlotte through Monroe, Wadesboro and Lumberton and up to Fayetteville. Everyone knows he tampered with the ballots and wasn't really elected. According to the election tallies that no one believes to be legitimate, Harris beat McCready 138,338 (49.4%) to 136,478 (48.8%). There are 8 counties in the district. McCready won 6, including the biggest (Mecklenburg). But it appears that the absentee ballot scheme that Harris almost pulled off, gave him wins in Bladen and Union counties. Congress-- meaning the Democratic majority-- will decide whether or not to seat Harris. I don't see Speaker Pelosi swearing him in. In all but Bladen County, McCready won among mail-in absentee ballot voters by at least 16 points. In Bladen County, he lost by 24. A Harris capo, notorious crook Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., led a crew of thugs who went door-to-door in Bladen County collecting blank or partially-completed absentee ballots, promising to finish and submit the ballots on the voters' behalf. This is an old Republican trick that they do all over the country. Harris was paying Dowless in untraceable cash-- and Dowless passed the cash on to his team for, in effect, buying the absentee ballots.

Yesterday, the district's biggest newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, urged the state to hold a new election from scratch, although it makes no sense to allow Harris to participate in one.

In the week since the state Board of Elections declined to certify the results of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District election, journalists and others have begun to fill in the details of a troubling case of apparent ballot fraud. In Bladen County-- and perhaps other counties-- individuals have interfered with the voting process by gaining access to others’ absentee ballots, according to witnesses and records. Investigators also are looking into the burgeoning scandal.

There may be no way, however, to know how widespread the fraud was, or whether it involved enough ballots to potentially change the outcome of the election-- a 905-vote victory for Republican Mark Harris over Democrat Dan McCready. But we do know enough. Unless new evidence somehow clears the clouds hanging over this election, the Board of Elections should toss out the 9th District results.

Calling for a new election would be an enormously significant decision for the board. It should be done with the support of N.C. statutes and without a whiff of partisan politics. Republicans from Raleigh to Washington would surely howl; already, they’ve noted that the number of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County falls short of the overall margin of victory in the 9th.

This is true. But witnesses have said that their ballots, which were collected by individuals apparently working for ringleader McCrae Dowless, were never submitted to the county or state. There’s little certainty about how many ballots were wrongly tossed or destroyed in Bladen County (there were more than 1,500 that were requested but unreturned) or how much Dowless and his workers may have done the same in neighboring Robeson County, as reports suggest. It might have been enough to change the outcome of the race. It might not have been.


That possibility, however, triggers a statutory threshold for holding a new election. North Carolina General Statute 163A-1180 authorizes the Board of Elections to intervene and “take any other action necessary to assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result of an election.” The board should call for a new NC-09 general election. The U.S. House can and should order a new primary, given that results show Harris winning a startling 96 percent of the Bladen absentee vote in his narrow 2018 primary victory over then incumbent Robert Pittenger.

Questions remain about how much Harris knew about the work being done on his behalf. Both he and his chief consultant, Andy Yates, contend they weren’t aware of any election fraud in the 9th District, but Dowless was well-known as a dicey figure in N.C. political circles. He’s a convicted felon who had been investigated for similar fraud in 2016, and he even was featured nationally in a This American Life episode. Harris, at the least, should have seen the smoke.

Voters in the 9th District deserve the confidence that their election was free from fraud. North Carolina statute supports it. The evidence already demands it. The Board of Elections should start the election over.

Yesterday, Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who will be second in command on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a few weeks, wants the committee to call an emergency hearing immediately to look into Republican vote tampering in NC-09, calling it "real election fraud... Votes have been stolen by preying on senior and minority voters, and now a cloud of doubt and suspicion hangs over this election result. It is incumbent on Chairman Gowdy to hold an emergency hearing before the end of this congressional session so that we can shed light and understand what happened in this race."

The Hill reported last night that "Over a thousand absentee ballots from likely Democratic voters may have been destroyed... as allegations of fraud on behalf of the Republican candidate mount. 'You’re looking at several thousand, possibly 2,000 absentee ballot requests from this most recent election. About 40 percent of those, it appears, at this point may not have been returned,' Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman told CNN... Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the next House majority leader, said Tuesday that Democrats will not seat Harris until the allegations are resolved."

What's at stake? I mean really at stake? Believe me, it's way more than just another North Carolina House seat. Here's Bernie talking about chutzpah to the Real News Network at Berniepalooza last week:




UPDATE: McCready Just Withdrew His Concession

In an exclusive interview, McCready told Joe Bruno that he thinks Harris not only knew what McCrae Dowless was doing but that he was bankrolling "criminal activity."

CNN interviewed Bruno (below). Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, was also on CNN where he hinted that the state party might support a new election if allegations of fraud are proven true and if it impacted the outcome of the race. If allegations of fraud are proven true, the perps shouldn't be allowed to participate in a new election unless it's from a prison cell. Woodhouse: "This has shaken us to the core. We are not ready to call for a new election yet. I think we have to let the board of elections come show their hand if they can show that this conceivably could have flipped the race in that neighborhood, we will absolutely support a new election."