HoltesThoughts: Legalizing A Corrupt Election Process

Vote Suppression, hacking, massive official fraud

Increasingly, with the help of databases of personal information and unlimited money for buying politicians, planting fake information and by manipulating pretty much everyone, We have people who think they can buy our elections with impunity and manage our Democracy. This is bigger than mere fraud. This threatens the survival of our republic's Democracy. If the Russians weren't involved it would be harder to get anyone paying attention, but Trump is a walking Confessional.

Trump has to be stopped before he can legalize and institutionalize a corrupt election process, loyalty requirements and his tyrannical policies. This post focuses on his efforts to corrupt the election process.

Wannabe Totalitarian Dictator

We are gradually realizing that the Russian Interference Affair is just the tip of an iceberg of wannabe Tyranny. Trump may have been elected due to a three pronged attack on election integrity; Voter Suppression, Hacking and Official Voter Fraud & Targeted Propaganda. The Russians may have been involved in this, but the movement is Right Wing and Driven by wannabe Oligarchs. Even Impeaching Trump won't stop the movement to destroy the gains of 90% of America and setup an Oligarchic Kakistocracy.

In 2016 the folks running Project Alamo Admitted:

“We have three major voter suppression operations under way” [Targeting Clinton Voters]

These efforts have resolved themselves into three broad categories:

Voter Suppression
Hacking and Official Fraud
Targeted Propaganda For Trump, Against Voters & Officials

Voter Suppression Justified by Big Lie about Voter Fraud

Trump Practices "The Big Lie", constantly. He says outrageous things, not really caring whether they are true in order to advance his designs. People believe the big lie, precisely because it is so outrageous, so impossible, that many folks will conclude "nobody would say such outrageous things unless they were true."

Trump's first action as President was White House commission on election integrity, based on a bald faced lie claiming that:

" I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally"

The press, mostly, took his claims, at least initially, seriously. But pretty much everybody everyone outside the racist voter suppression crowd that backs this, pushed back on Trump's Claim,

"Academic experts and election officials say there was no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential race." [FactCheck]

But in classic totalitarian Doublespeak form, Trump and his Voter Suppression Allies, not only continued his assertion but double down.

Fact Checking Unsubstantiated Claims of Voter Fraud

Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

Despite push back on his lies, he created a Commission on Election Integrity. He appointed Vice President Mike Pence to chair the Commission, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to be the vice chair. I've talked about Kris Kobach in a previous post: [See How RW Hacked Election]. The Commission is plainly designed to justify and scale up "Cross Check". It pretends to be "Bi-Partisan" but it is A One Party institution. Bush created a similar commission and found little evidence of In Person Voter Fraud. Cross Check and Kobach are interested in voter suppression, not vote integrity. People involved in it boast about it. Their request for information that no official should ever see revealed where they want to go:

“the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.”

They also did not bother to setup a secure system for protecting the privacy of the information they were asking for. This leads anyone who cares about Voting process integrity to see through the transparent reality of what they are doing. A principle of elections is that people have a right to vote without others knowing how they voted unless they want them to know it!

Eliminating the Election Assistance Commission

In February the Congress and the Trump Administration sought to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. They made this argument:

"GOP lawmakers argue the Election Assistance Commission, created in 2002, has outlived its usefulness. Democrats say that in the age of hacking, it’s needed now more than ever."

I suppose the commission has outlived it's usefulness to the Right Wing.

Distraction, Diversion, Propaganda and Suppression

These actions, combined indicate that Trump and his movement are interested in "winning at any cost." They pay lip service to vote integrity, yet undermine it. Trump himself is transparent about his intentions. Trump seems to think that treason is just "opposition research" and raising money like any other [corrupt] politician would do. When asked about meeting with the Russians he and his surrogates seem to see a PR problem not an ethical, moral or legal issue.

Authoritarian Republicans

Republicans have been driving off moderates and people with integrity for years. For instance Kris Kobach, while Running the Republican Party in Kansas:

"served as chair of the Kansas Republican Party. While there, he established a “loyalty committee” for party members. The Kansas press described the committee as a place to “weigh complaints of political misconduct by Republicans.” Critics described it as a means to keep moderate Republicans from straying too far from a conservative party line." [kobach in Kansas]

The Pretext of "political misconduct" becomes a dark version of "political correctness" pursued by the Right Wing. And Kobach purged moderate Republicans from the Kansas GOP. The GOP has been becoming increasingly ruthless. Their Pundits openly so!

Engaging in Treason, Okay

Even so, most Republicans up til recently, would draw the line at working with a hostile foreign power:

As Chris Christie concedes:: "I think, quite frankly, it's probably against the law."
Yet Pundits like the execrable Judge Jeanine Pirro:: “As someone who’s run for office five times, if the devil called me and said he wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I’d be on the first trolley to Hell to get it,” Fox

Pirro Sells her Soul

She and most of her party, admit they are willing to & seem to have already sold their souls for cash, attention and power. They'll do anything "to win." They'll lie to and steal from their voter base. They'll sabotage our institutions. They'll ignore or repeal rule of law and common decency. This is beyond sick and into evil. Anyone calling themselves an "evangelical Christian" and supporting this kind of evil is a hypocrite. Yet as Christopher Stroop has profiled and I blogged on before, that is exactly what they are doing! See:

Charlatans, Dominionists, Fanatics and Russians

Kompromat, Quid Pro Quo and Election Stealing

She's referring to Russians offering Kompromat in return for Helping Trump Win Election!

"The lobbyist, first identified by the Associated Press as Rinat Akhmetshin, denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies. He accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr.; Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law; and Paul Manafort, former chairman of the Trump campaign." [change.org]

William Browder tells us (and anyone involved in the community affirms):

"In the world of Russian intelligence, there is no such thing as a 'former intelligence officer,'" he said. "So in my opinion you had a member of Putin's secret police directly meeting with the son of the future next president of the United States asking to change US sanctions policy crucial to Putin." Business insider

So Trump, and the rest are Traitors.

Normalizing Hacking and Stealing Elections

When I wrote my previous post on this subject, How the Right hacked our election, I was focused on Kris Kobach and his caging and voter suppression methods. The Russian Affair was barely a footnote in the post. But I've been reading about Trump's business connections and dealings with Mafia, Oligarchs and the Russian Government, for a while.

The reality is that the GOP doesn't need Russian help to break the law and cheat. But Trump needed Russian Help to break what was left of GOP integrity and turn the GOP into a Russian Style Cheating operation. We now have virtually an entire party that is normalizing Russian Style (or Old Chicago Style) electioneering. "Winning" is now everything. And people who take silly things like integrity, virtue and rule of law are suddenly despised as "losers." We resist this, at considerable risk that we may find killings and extra-judicial lawlessness by officials will jail or kill us too. But we do it anyway, so that our children (or grandchildren) can inherit a system with integrity.

When we fight back, we win.

Growing Problem

http://columbusfreepress.com/article/diebold-indicted-its-spectre-still-haunts-ohio-elections

Election Rigging was going on before the Russians Got involved. I remember how Anonymous stopped a vote flipping scheme in 2012. This scheme is why Karl Rove was certain that Romney would win the election. According to the story he was certain they'd be able to, untraceably, flip the votes of voters in 3 swing states so that rural parts of those states would come in with slight wins for Romney and Republican candidates. According to Anonymous, they blocked his access to the website. He was unable to flip votes.

The list of issues follows a series of events:

Use of Electronic Voting spreads, 1975-1988

No Paper Trail
Limited ability to verify and validate
Electronic tabulation and counting using hackable programming
No ability to recount votes securely

Problems identified with tabulating punch card voting, 1988

2000 Election decided by Supreme Court, which ruled:

Corrupt SCOTUS

We were already having trouble with Rigged elections, before SCOTUS decided to repeal most of the Civil Rights Act. Now, our republican frenemies are getting to be pretty openly lawless and ruthless. The current round of mess started when they got majorities in Congress by cheating, and then lawyers took them to court for it.

Corrupt SCOTUS And Voting Rights

Instead of ruling against States trying to rig elections, the cheating SCOTUS overturned portions of the Voting Rights act, Republican dominated States everywhere began instituting Caging! Essentially the Corrupt Supreme Court legalized criminal behavior and election fraud.

Similarly they overturned more than 100 years of rulings against Corporate bribery and electioneering in Citizens United and the even more execreable follow on decisions that cited it. We now have crooked elections, crooked ads and the ability of Corrupt Officials to throw out legitimate votes and pick candidates not supported by Majority Rule

Sources, Further Readings

This post got unweildy, so I've cleaned it up as much as I could, added some illustrations, and a lot of links

Executive Order

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/11/president-announces-formation-bipartisan-presidential-commission

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-right-hacked-our-election-war-on.html

https://www.unhackthevote.com/

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/uncovering-kris-kobach%E2%80%99s-anti-voting-history

Corrupt Court - Montana Decision Throws out 100 years of case law June 2012; Corrupt Judges on the Supreme Court; A Corrupt Decision blind to Corrupt Influence October 8 2013; The expected corrupt Decision by a Corrupt Court April 2014; Corrupt Court and Undue Influence and access according to Founders April 2014; Is Quid Pro Quo Bribery the only kind of Corruption the Government can Punish?; Corrupt Court overturns a Bribery Conviction January 2016
Related Articles: http://columbusfreepress.com/article/diebold-indicted-its-spectre-still-haunts-ohio-elections; U.S.Election Commission; https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/11/president-announces-formation-bipartisan-presidential-commission; Executive Order; Atlantic; https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-planning-an-unprecedented-attack-on-voting-rights/; https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2017/07/13/presidential-advisory-commission-election-integrity; http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/340143-house-dem-seeks-to-restore-funding-to-the-election-assistance-commission

Kris Kobach

The Brennan Center warns about Kobach:

"Kobach has drafted and promoted several draconian laws, including Arizona’s controversial 2010 “show me your papers” law (which requires police to determine the immigration status of someone arrested or detained when there is “reasonable suspicion” a person is not in the U.S. with lawful authorization), requirements for documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote (all of which have been tied up in court and administrative battles for years), and strict photo ID requirements to vote. He has also been one of the most vocal proponents of the notion that American elections are plagued by voter fraud. " [Brennan]

HoltesThoughts

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Legalizing A Corrupt Election Process