"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, May 11, 2023
New York State’s Republican U.S. Representative for the Empire State’s 3rd Congressional District, GEORGE ANTHONY DEVOLDER SANTOS, also known as “George Santos,” Defendant.
There is, I dare say, no one who “likes” him. To be more succinct, people (his constituents especially and particularly) do not appreciate who he is, and what he has done, which is to consistently lie, i.e., fabricate falsehoods, exclusively about himself.
And the way they got him was to NOT VOTE.
Literally.
The sheer number of people who DID NOT VOTE in the 2022 midterm election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District is the EXCLUSIVE reason why George Santos was elected. Period. It’s THEIR fault, by omission.
Percent of households with incomes of $200,000 or more: 30.4%
At the time of Forbes’ writing (10/21/22, linked above), it was represented by Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, who opted to campaign for governor of the Empire State instead of for Congressional reelection. George Santos, who had campaigned for that same office in the election immediately prior, i.e., 2020, was elected in the November 8, 2022 General Election, and took the Oath of Office January 3, 2023.
After 2020 redistricting, the district includes northern Long Island from Great Neck in the west, to Dix Hills and Kings Park in the east.
In the 2020 General Election, George Santos campaigned against Tom Suozzi, who campaigned as a Democrat / Working Families Party / Independence Party. Tom Suozzi won, 208,412 to 161,907. In the 2022 mid-term election, Republican George Santos won against Democrat Robert Zimmerman, who campaigned under the banner of the Democrat / Working Families Party, by 142,017 to 120,060. Put another way, Santos won the 2022 election with FEWER VOTES (12.2%) than he received in 2020.
Again, there’s ONLY one reason why Santos won in 2022: People did NOT vote. Altogether, a little over 101,000 FEWER people voted in the Zimmerman v Santos race in CD3 in 2022, than in the 2020 Suozzi v Santos race.
Defendant George Santos, a now-Federally-indited Republican U.S. Representative of NY CD-3. This is NOT a mugshot, but rather, is a U.S. Passport-style photograph, which does NOT allow the subject to wear glasses, caps, or uniforms when the image is made.
Of course, there was is another chronically habitual liar, who became the 45th POTUS for essentially the same reason — people didn’t vote. Though there were more popular votes for the losing candidate than for the winning candidate, Electoral College votes decide the ultimate winner — NOT the popular vote. Again, Presidential candidates are NOT elected by popular vote, but that’s a discussion for another day. And it’s NOT the first time it’s ever happened, either.
More to the point, George Santos now has an OFFICIAL new name:
Defendant.
He seems to enjoy changing his name, and practically every other aspect about his life which he has fraudulently fabricated. Some news outlets have generously used the term “fabulist” to describe him, which is, in my considered estimation, not merely inaccurate, but entirely too kind.
Here’s why:
The term “fabulist,” is defined as: 1. A composer of fables.
The 2nd definition, which is not the preferred, or primary usage, is “A teller of tales; a liar.” The word “fabulist” stems from the French word “fabuliste,” which was further derived from the Latin word “fābula,” meaning fable — and a fable is defined as follows: 1. A usually short narrative making an edifying or cautionary point and often employing as characters animals that speak and act like humans.
2. A story about legendary persons and exploits.
3. A falsehood; a lie.
Clearly, we see that a “fabulist” is not primarily, nor necessarily, a bad person. Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Ridinghood, and “The Boy Who Cried ‘WOLF!'” (properly “The Shepherd Boy & the Wolf“) are all “tall tales,” allegorical stories that teach a moral. And hopefully, most everyone knows that “The Shepherd Boy & the Wolf” is an Aesop’s fable, and the moral it teaches: DO NOT LIE.
So fables, and the associated related term fabulist, as one who tells fables, are much too generous terms to characterize the Defendant, which is the name the United States Government has given to him, and is the term we’ll use from here, forward. Of course, the more blunted “goddamn liar” is exceedingly more succinct, though unofficial, so we’ll use the OFFICIAL term — DEFENDANT.
Defendant has been charged with violating the following laws:
SANTOS, also known as “George Santos” did transmit and cause to be transmitted, by means of wire communication in interstate and foreign commerce, one or more writings, signs, signals, pictures and sounds, as st forth below:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, March 6, 2023
The writing style of the majority of bodies of work (especially and particularly “news”) found online is abysmally poor, and uninformative. It’s a problem that I bitch about with seeming regularity. Doubtlessly, there are numerous contributing factors, but it is my opinion that a predominate role has been, and continues to be, played by corporate-profit-driven, Wall-$treet-controlled “media outlets,” whose exclusive concern is… MONEY.
Nothing else.
No concern for truth, no concern for veracity, for authenticity, no concern for quality, no concern for anything but MONEY.
And nowhere is that more excruciatingly shown than at Fox News, which stinking putrid pot has had the purifying and sanitizing light of day shown upon it brought by the MULTI-BILLION dollar defamation lawsuit against it by Dominion Voting Systems of Denver, CO, charging that Fox deliberately spread malicious lies about the November 2020 General Election, falsely claiming that Dominion’s voting machines were part and parcel of a giant conspiracy and fraud to alter the outcome of the election.
They were not.
And as tranche after tranche, raft after raft of documents and communications of myriad kind have shown, and continue to show, not even Fox’s lying talking heads believed the bullshit espoused by the crazies of the Party of Trump.
But more to the point.
Today’s journalists (I use that term loosely) are piss poor writers, uninformative, and more… and worse.
Here’s an example that occurs with calculable regularity.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, December 4, 2022
It’s been often said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
So, in that case, here are six… and a couple PDFs as well.
Voter Registration records are PUBLIC INFORMATION.
Which means that ANYONE can access them for ANY REASON.
Public means public.
Here, for your perusal, are images from the website of the office of the Secretary of State of Georgia -and- of Texas of Voter Registration for Hershel Walker.
A parting thought:
Republicans, in large part, if not exclusively, have raised a ruckus claiming all sorts of fraudulent vote-related activity, most of which has to do with the actual casting of a ballot, despite abundantly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, as they have done in recent history, Republicans, again, have also changed many laws pertinent to voting — which includes voting registration — to make offense of them, a felony act. A felony act, by definition, is a crime for which the penalty/punishment is/can be imprisonment/incarceration for a period of NOT LESS THAN 366 days, i.e., a year and a day (excluding leap years).
Felony acts are, by their punishment, considered to be the MOST SERIOUS of CRIMINAL offenses. And so, to be certain, when states’ legislators enact law that makes a deceitful act pertinent to voting, and/or registration, they are, in effect, saying that such an act is the moral equivalent of murder, which is itself a felony act.
The proliferation of legislatures — again, mostly, if not exclusively Republican — changing punishment for existing laws which have been considered misdemeanor acts into felony offenses (that is to say, increasing the severity of punishment) has in recent history INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY. And so, it’s little wonder that in the United States, an ostensibly “free” nation, there are MORE PEOPLE INCARCERATED TOTAL -and- PER CAPITA than in any other nation the world over — including Communist China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, and other dictatorial, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes COMBINED.
Yeah.
Let that soak in a while.
It’s not a joke, it’s not exaggeration, it’s not hyperbole.
It’s the unvarnished truth, and a hard, cold, fact.
“After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world’s prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation’s population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. [The report] examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm.”
But, it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of this matter.
Will either state, Georgia, and/or Texas pursue justice?
Or, will the, again, mostly-Republican dominated state governments allow “one of their own,” i.e., the rich and famous, e.g., Herschel Walker, get off scot-free?
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, July 16, 2022
The United States Constitution has been amended 27 times.
Of those 27 amendments, there is but one solitary matter which has consistently appeared over the years.
And similarly, there is but one matter which has consistently been problematic for the United States.
That solitary matter has been addressed in the Constitution, to be affirmed, confirmed, and reaffirmed, time, and time, and time again.
And that single, solitary matter, is voting.
Exactly 5 of the 27 amendments — or 18.5% — to the U.S. Constitution have dealt with matters related to voting. If by the number of instances in which the matter is addressed is any indication of its importance, there is NO MORE greater matter to civil society, and by extension, to our democratic republic, than voting.
And yet, as evidenced by the corollary to those same amendments, voting has been, and continues to be, the single most abused, and misused tool of those who attempt to wrest power AWAY FROM the people, and accumulate it to unto themselves, and/or their favored political party.
Voting gives POWER TO THE PEOPLE; and that is precisely why some do NOT want We The People to have power, as our Constitutional Democratic Republic mandates.
Here are the amendments to the Constitution, as they read, which have all dealt with matters of voting.
J.D. Vance, memoirist author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which twice became a NYT best-seller in August 2016 and January 2017, a limited-release motion picture, and was later adapted for Netflix, is an attorney/venture capitalist campaigning as a Republican for Ohio’s 2022 election for its Class III U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Rob Portman.
Mr. Vance spoke Friday, July 23, 2021 at an Intercollegiate Studies Institute-sponsored Future of American Political Economy Conference, and in large part, claimed – without any citation of evidence – that childless politicians who he said “don’t have a personal indirect stake” in improving the country, are responsible for what he called “cultural wars,” which he said are waged by “the left.”
HYPERCRIMINALIZATION:Georgia’s new law codifies mass disenfranchisement and intimidation and further expands criminalization policy in the voting process.1.Mass Challenges:Codifies that a single person can challenge the voter registration of an unlimited # of voters at once, resulting in that voter being purged. (lines 575–576)
1. Mass Challenges: Codifies that a single person can challenge the voter registration of an unlimited # of voters at once, resulting in that voter being purged. (lines 575–576)
2. Mass Challenges: Codifies that a single person can challenge the rights of an unlimited # of voters to cast their ballot in the upcoming election. 364k Georgians were frivolously challenged in the runoffs. In just 29 counties, 15,000 Black voters, 2,000 Hispanic voters, and 1500 AAPI voters were challenged.(lines 622–623)
Georgia’s nickname is the “Peach State,” and it is one of the 13 original colonies.
3. Mass Challenges:Mandates counties hold mass challenge hearings that challenged voter must show up to—within 10 days of frivolous challenge. (line 581)
4. Line–warming/Criminalization: Makes it a crime for volunteers or groups to hand water or snacks to voters in line. (lines 1873–1875)
5. Line–warming/Criminalization: Makes it a crime for *voters* in line to accept water or snacks from a volunteer or group. Bill later amended to allow an “unattended receptacle” near line. (lines 1873–1875, lines 1887–1889)
6. Criminalization: Creates a new misdemeanor for voters if the voter allows someone other than those authorized under state/federal law to see them marking their ballot at home. (lines 1339, 1347–1349)
7. Criminalization:Creates a new felony for anyone that witnesses someone else mark their *absentee* ballot at home — unless they are providing legally authorized assistance or are a child. (lines 2449–2454)
8. Criminalization: Creates a new misdemeanor for handling a completed application for anyone not authorized by law to assist voter. (lines 979–981)
9. Criminalization:Adds new misdemeanor for photographing your own *absentee* ballot or someone else’s. (expanding existing law to ensure VBM also criminalized) (line 2460)
10. Intimidation: Creates new fraud hotline that will accept “anonymous tips” and AG can launch investigations or prosecute within 3 days. (lines 171–178)
POWER GRABS/CONSOLIDATION OF ELECTION AUTHORITY: Georgia’s new law removes significant power from the Secretary of State and gives the GOP–led, gerrymandered state legislature majority control of the State Election Board.
11. Removes SOS Power: Removes the Secretary of State as Chair of the State Election Board (line 185).
12. State Legislature Controls SEB: Grants state legislature power to appoint new chair of State Election Board (SEB). Meaning state legislature will choose 3 out of 5 State Election Board members going forward, a majority. (lines 185 –189)
13. Removes SOS Power:Removes the SOS as a voting member of the State Election Board (lines 252–253).
14. Removes SOS Power: Bill amended at last second to remove SOS power to appoint members of performance review board. (lines 500–503, line 521, line 540 || vs. lines 499–502, line 520, line 540 of bill as passed SEI committee: LC280338S)
15. Removes SOS Power: Requires SOS provide all necessary support/assistance to SEB for county takeovers at the sole discretion of SEB (lines 270–281).
16. Removes SOS Power:Bans SOS/counties from proactively sending vote by mail applications without a request. (lines 966–970)
17. Legislative Power:Allows state legislature to overrule any emergency election rule (lines 2491–2494)
COUNTY ELECTION BOARD TAKEOVERS:Georgia’s new law removes judicial oversight from the county intervention process and grants a GOP–controlled State Election Board the power to replace county BOEs and local elections officials that have significant voter access and election certification responsibilities.
18. No Judicial Oversight: Removes judicial oversight from county takeover process. Georgia already had a process to deal with low–performing counties, but it required judicial oversight of the State Election Board (SEB). The new process replaces judicial oversight with opaque investigation/takeover powers. (See Georgia Code § 21–2–32 for previous process)Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, April 1, 2021
Many questions have arisen, and comments have been made, about Georgia’s new voting restrictions law.
Republican state legislators who wrote, passed, and signed the bill into law (Republican Governor Brian Kemp was formerly Secretary of State when he campaigned for the Governor’s office… and as a state official, oversaw his own election… nope, no conflict of interest there, eh?) continue to claim that the “integrity” and “security” of the voting systems in Georgia should be strengthened – as if they were insecure to begin with.
They were not.
The essence of what has happened, as many have observed and stated, is that since Republicans lost in the national election for President, and in the Senate election, they’re changing the rules in order to make it easier for them to win next time.
There was NO fraud, NO irregularities, NO insecurity in the Georgia election, nor in any election in the nation. Period.
So, here for your perusal, is the word-for-word reading of the law, including a screenshot of the law as passed, and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, April 1, 2021
One of the tenets of law is intentionality, which is the foreknowledge of, and intent to willfully disobey, or violate, law, and often includes recklessness as an element of intent. Intent is part and parcel of motive, and in context, often accompanies an evil, or malicious motive. In law, typically, a person cannot be convicted of a crime if there is no intent. Motive, however, is different from intention, and is irrelevant in determining liability.
Sometimes it’s said that “ignorance is no excuse for the law,” but that’s a mere colloquialism which itself has no basis in law. It’s nothing but a hollow saying, for it has no support in any way. There is such as thing as “willful ignorance,” which is an intentional, and therefore deliberate, act. And, the classic Steve Martin comedy sketch in which he presents his defense to a “foul crime” as “I forgot” is funny precisely because there are crimes which are so inherently gross in their violation – rape, murder, armed robbery, arson, etc. – that no reasonable, or sane person could ever assert that they forgot it was illegal.
Negligence is similar, insofar as there is a risk which is assumed by the offending party, which has the potential to harm another person, or property. Negligence occurs when it is likely that harm will occur from the offending party’s conduct, and knowingly engages in the risk. Again, a deliberate action.
Recklessness requires determining that the offending party should have known they were taking a risk, but the difference between recklessness and negligence is not always clear. An example of recklessness would be DUI – the offending party clearly knows they were taking a risk, and continued with the conduct. Once again, a deliberateness is evident.
However, there are crimes that are not inherently, or morally wrong, and it is impossible for any one person to know all laws. Furthermore, many laws are intricately complex, which further adds to the confusing calculus. Because of that, it puts even the most circumspect and conscientious people at risk of violating laws for which many – including legislators, legal experts, jurists, attorneys, and others – are unaware of their requirements. And in that sense, the traditional protection afforded by determining culpability before conviction is dismissed.
Most folks would agree, I’m certain, that it’s probably not too uncommon for anyone to violate a law unknowingly. And, when such a thing occurs, and someone is arrested for the same – for unknowingly violating a law – when the time for prosecution comes around (if it does), because often, such cases are rapidly dismissed by the state (government) because intentionality is missing.
The state has a responsibility to its citizens to make them aware of the law, so that they can abide by it.
But, in Texas, there is presently a case which will undoubtedly be heard by that state’s Supreme Court (though it must first be heard by the TX Court of Criminal Appeals) which raises that very question:
Can a citizen be held to account for unintentionally violating a law, when the state had a responsibility – which they admittedly failed to do – to notify the citizen of their circumstances before the law, and liability to it?
Crystal Mason
A Fort Worth, TX woman – Crystal Mason – who happens to be Black, was on supervised release for a Federal felony conviction related to tax fraud, when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016. She had been released from prison the previous year. She and her former husband had owned a tax preparation business, and was accused of inflating tax deductions on some returns which they prepared for clients, and eventually plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government, and was sentenced to 5yrs in prison, and 3yrs supervised release. She was placed on probation for 2 of 3 other felonies, and received deferred adjudication for the 3rd.
Neither state, nor Federal authorities notified her that she was, by Texas state law, ineligible to vote until the entire term of her punishment was fully completed.
Officials who were overseeing her supervised release testified at her trial that they never informed her that she was ineligible to vote under Texas state law.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 19, 2021
Imagine for a minute, if you can, what it would be like for your elected Representatives and Senators, at either the State, or Federal level to literally “undo,” or attempt to “undo,” an election that was in every way conducted properly (meaning ethically, honestly, and openly, in accordance with all applicable laws), simply because they didn’t “like” the way The People voted – the results or outcome of the election wasn’t to their suiting, or liking.
The Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney and the Georgia State Attorney General’s Office are both investigating that matter in order to determine what, if any, election-related laws were broken in the course of that phone call, which may include “the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”
The audio taped recording of the Trump-Raffensperger phone call is quite likely much worse than any of the numerous covert so-called “smoking gun” audio tapes of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Nixon’s numerous recorded conversations with staff, and others, including of his phone calls, which detailed his involvement in the numerous crimes of the Watergate burglary/break-in, also revealed him to be paranoid.
And cockamamie conspiracy theories aside – especially and particularly the one of “The BIG Lie,” as told by the former President – NO ONE made any overt, or clandestine effort or attempt to “steal” any election from anyone. PERIOD.
But the point of the matter is this:
There are
GENUINELY
now-ongoing efforts
to literally “undo”
the results of honest elections
in the United States.
No, this is NOT a joke… and, NO this is NOT a conspiracy theory.
It is a documented fact.
What does it say for democracy and the democratic process if the expressed will of the people is somehow, overridden, undone, or cancelled?
Yeah… it’s that “cancel culture” thing.
And it is Republicans who are doing it.
Remember the thing about “psychological projection” – a morbid behavior in which people deny or defend in themselves the very characteristic or behavior they abjure and detest in others? It’s a type of “blame shifting,” and a refusal to accept either reality or responsibility.
Read for yourself the following 2 news items to learn what GOP-Banana Republican types are doing in some states.
Marijuana Foes Deploy New ‘Playbook’ To Thwart State Legalization, Upend Election Results
Efforts to thwart voter-approved marijuana legalization in Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota are evidence of a “playbook” that reflects new legal strategies and greater willingness among local government officials to nullify election results, experts say.
Those efforts – led by anti-marijuana politicians and other opponents – threaten to stop or delay the implementation of new medical and recreational cannabis markets that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales a year.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 28, 2021
If you cant win honestly, the next step is using dishonesty.
And that’s EXACTLY what Georgia Banana Republicans are doing – changing the rules in the middle of the game when it becomes apparent that they’re starting to lose favor with The People.
Lying, corrupt, sons of bitches, and bastards… every god-damned one of ’em.
A Georgia Republican is introducing a bill requiring voters to send copies of their photo ID to election officials two times before being permitted to cast an absentee ballot.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 7, 2021
U.S. Capitol Police in plain clothes stand behind barricaded doors to the House floor and draw pistols upon Trump 2020 mobsters who violently invaded the U.S. Capitol Building, Wednesday, January 6, 2021 during the Constitutionally-ordered tallying of the states’ certified Electoral College votes.
The shocking events that unfolded yesterday in our nation’s capitol – rioting thugs, marauders, and hooligans who violently overthrew and violently invaded our Nation’s Capitol building complex thereby participating in insurrection after being egged on by their losing candidate, the soon-to-be-former President Trump – are unprecedented. Not since the War of 1812 when British soldiers breached and burned our nation’s capitol has the capitol been invaded. The sad part is, that it was brought about EXCLUSIVELY by a Lying, Lawless and Treasonous American President – Trump – whom the GOP has coddled and cultivated.
Again, yesterday’s domestic terroristic events were brought about exclusively by President Trump, who has consistently falsely asserted that he “won” the 2020 General Election, despite numerous Read the rest of this entry »
In the story below, read for yourselves the inconsistencies in the various states on the single topic of election voting recounts. And those are just the handful of states in which the race is “too close to call,” per se, even though some have already been “called” by the Associated Press – though their call is NOT OFFICIAL. Their call is, however, widely respected because of its veracity and consistency. And to be widely respected for those reasons is good.
Point being, is that in the 7 states mentioned below, there are 7 DIFFERENT laws.
Here’s an example of something that would be a good compromise:
I think that it’s a good practice to be able to have requests for recounts by the interested parties, i.e., the candidates, rather than being court-ordered. In states where recounts may be requested by either candidate (the requestor), and in which the state pays, that could be modified to be a shared expense, borne in equal parts by the requestor(s) and the state, and perhaps even, in the case of a Federal election, in an equal third part by the U.S. Government. But again, these are things that merit, warrant and deserve significant further discussion.
There is LITERALLY NO SENSE in having 50 DIFFERENT sets of laws governing something common to us all as citizens – voting. If our nation had a National Uniform Voting Standards law, it would help establish unity in our nation, by creating uniformity, and it would similarly streamline many states’ operations, as well as significantly reducing questionable matters, and increase efficiency.
Georgia is heading for a recount over close Trump-Biden race. How does that work? How long will it take?
By Karina Zaiets, and Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY
Updated 8:24 a.m. CST Nov. 9, 2020
On Friday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said the state would have a recount because of the slim vote margin. The margin is currently 0.2% with 99% of votes counted. The state had about 4,169 votes left to count, according to Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager. A [full statewide] recount could take until the end of the month, he noted.
Sterling said counties will hand-count a deck of ballots as a test, which will then be sent through high-speed scanners located at the central county elections office. If the tallies match and the election workers determine the scanner is working accurately, every single ballot will then be rescanned. According to AP’s research, there have been at least 31 statewide recounts since 2000. And of those, only three changed the outcome of the election. The initial margins in those races were all under 300 votes.
Rules for recounting
The laws governing recounts vary by state and a handful of states do not offer a recount process at all. Here are the rules in key states:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, November 1, 2020
How many voting-related laws are there in our allegedly “united” United States?
You’d likely be shocked to find out.
Maybe, maybe not.
And frankly, I don’t know how many voting related laws there are in our nation, and I’ve neither read, nor heard of any compendium on the subject, nor have I ever heard anyone directly or indirectly address the topic.
But, laws are finite – there are only a fixed amount at any given time – so it’s entirely possible to make a reasoned determination of that number. So let’s work it this way:
There are 3141 counties and county equivalents in the 50 United States.
If each county or county equivalent had only 1 law pertaining to voting related matters, that’d be 3141 laws.
If each state had only one law pertaining to any voting-related matter, there would be at least 50 laws.
So, if the 90,095 total general-purpose governments and special districts, 3141 counties/county equivalents and 50 states each had only 1 voting-related law, that’d be a GRAND TOTAL of 93,286 laws.
But I assure you, there are MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY MORE than just one voting-related law in each of those areas.
So, purely for illustration purposes, let’s just hypothetically say there are at LEAST 100 voting-related laws in each of the 50 United States. Doing the math, that’s 50 x 100 = 5000. Again, that’s at a minimum.
But, what if there are 200 voting-related laws in each of the 50 United States?
That’d be 10,000 voting-related laws. And that’s only at the state level.
Perhaps already you’re beginning to “get the picture,” to understand the size, scope, nature, and extent of the problem.
And to be utterly certain, and without question, the problem is the variety and number of voting-related laws, many of which are contradictory among them.
There’s LITERALLY NO justifiable, commonsensical, rational reason to have so many DIFFERENT – even blatantly contradictory – laws on just one subject over which the Federal government has ultimate authority.
by Stephen Fowler, Georgia Public Broadcasting
Oct. 17, 2020
5 a.m. EDT
Congress works for you. Learn how to be a better boss with the User’s Guide to Democracy, a series of personalized emails about what your representatives actually do.
This article is co-published by ProPublica, Georgia Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.
Kathy spotted the long line of voters as she pulled into the Christian City Welcome Center about 3:30 p.m., ready to cast her ballot in the June 9 primary election.
Hundreds of people were waiting in the heat and rain outside the lush, tree-lined complex in Union City, an Atlanta suburb with 22,400 residents, nearly 88% of them Black. She briefly considered not casting a ballot at all, but decided to stay.
By the time she got inside more than five hours later, the polls had officially closed and the electronic scanners were shut down. Poll workers told her she’d have to cast a provisional ballot, but they promised that her vote would be counted.
“I’m now angry again, I’m frustrated again, and now I have an added emotion, which is anxiety,” said Kathy, a human services worker, recalling her emotions at the time. She asked that her full name not be used because she fears repercussions from speaking out. “I’m wondering if my ballot is going to count.”
By the time the last voter finally got inside the welcome center to cast a ballot, it was the next day, June 10.
The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: The number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in non-White neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day. The pruning of polling places started long before the pandemic, which has discouraged people from voting in person.
In Georgia, considered a battleground state for control of the White House and U.S. Senate, the difficulty of voting in Black communities like Union City could possibly tip the results on Nov. 3. With massive turnout expected, lines could be even longer than they were for the primary, despite a rise in mail-in voting and Georgians already turning out by the hundreds of thousands to cast ballots early.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision in 2013 eliminated key federal oversight of election decisions in states with histories of discrimination, Georgia’s voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million people, yet polling locations have been cut statewide by nearly 10%, according to an analysis of state and local records by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica. Much of the growth has been fueled by younger, non-White voters, especially in nine metro Atlanta counties, where four out of five new voters were non-White, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
The metro Atlanta area has been hit particularly hard. The nine counties — Fulton, Gwinnett, Forsyth, DeKalb, Cobb, Hall, Cherokee, Henry and Clayton — have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38% of the polling places, according to the analysis.
As a result, the average number of voters packed into each polling location in those counties grew by nearly 40%, from about 2,600 in 2012 to more than 3,600 per polling place as of Oct. 9, the analysis shows. In addition, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, October 16, 2020
Voting in America is crazy.
Reading the bizarre differences of Voter ID laws, rules, and regulations in four neighboring states – Florida and Alabama, Alabama and Tennessee, and Tennessee and Kentucky – one can’t help but laugh at the absurdity, and inconsistency of it all.
Moreover, it gives pause for thought, and raises the question: What the hell is going on, and why?
Such absurdity is not limited to those Southern former “slave states.” Throughout America, laws relating or pertaining to voting are a poorly designed, pathetically executed mishmash, a harum-scarum hodgepodge, which is rickety and contradictory, and a miserably vacillating excuse for a democratic process as one could possibly imagine.
There is LITERALLY NO CONSISTENCY in them whatsoever!
LITERALLY!
Here are a few simple, yet egregious examples to illustrate the case in point.
In Vermont, Maine, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico (yes, Puerto Ricans are American citizens) convicted felons can vote… while incarcerated.
But not in any other state in the union.
In Florida, voters in the Sunshine State agreed in 2018 with a 65% majority to allow former felons who had completed their sentences to vote. It restored the rights of nearly 1.5 million citizens in that state. However, the GOP-dominated legislature overrode the citizens expressed will and changed the law to require the former felons to have paid all fines and fees associated with their case, before they could register to vote, thereby effectively disenfranchising at least 6.98% of 21,477,737 Floridians of their Constitutionally-guaranteed right.
In 16 states, felons lose their voting rights only while incarcerated, and receive automatic restoration upon release.
In 21 states, felons lose their voting rights during incarceration, and for a period of time after, typically while on parole and/or probation. Voting rights are automatically restored after this time period. Former felons may also have to pay any outstanding fines, fees or restitution before their rights are restored as well.
In 11 states felons lose their voting rights indefinitely for some crimes, or require a governor’s pardon in order for voting rights to be restored, face an additional waiting period after completion of sentence (including parole and probation) or require additional action before voting rights can be restored.
And while some states revoke the right to vote following a felony conviction, thereby requiring re-registration, North Dakota automatically registers all eligible voters.
And that’s just a good start to illustrate the case in point.
There is NO consistency in the 50 states’ laws when it comes to matters pertaining to voting.
For the largest part, states can, and do, whatever they want when it comes to matters pertaining to voting.
Why?
Because they can.
There are very few, if any, Federal voting-related laws, rules, or regulations in the United States.
Article I., Section 4 of the United States Constitution reads in pertinent part that, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, September 22, 2020
The sorts of problems described in the story linked below could be resolved very simply by Congress, which has the authority to regulate election law, but has chosen to abdicate the responsibility, failed to exercise that right, and allowed chaos and pandemonium to ensue by allowing at least 50 different laws, rules, regulations, and more.
By establishing a National Standard Election and Uniform Voting Law which would cover ALL aspects of voting, from registration, to identification, to hours of operation and places of polls, to dates, times, and types of voting methods used, ALL those questions and more would be settled, and uniform nationwide, from state to state, and sea to shining sea.
From Maine to Minnesota, Mississippi to Maryland, Michigan to Arizona, and from Florida to Washington, Georgia to Oregon, and California to Texas to the Carolinas, and all points in between — ONE LAW to govern them all.
We would then begin to have a truly UNITED STATES!
2020 Election Faces Unprecedented Amount Of Litigation
Hundreds of lawsuits are already swirling around mail-in voting as campaigns, parties and outside groups try to sort issues both basic and technical — questions such as:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, August 14, 2020
Apparently, it ~has~ come to this sorry state of affairs in our nation.
After Donald the Trump’s ravages, America will DEFINITELY need to be made great again.
Perhaps more than anything, this matter points to the need for the Federal government to step in and establish an across-the-board 50-state Uniform Voting Standard law so that there are NO inconsistencies whatsoever.
Presently, there are a plethora of voting laws nationwide, some even varying within the state, as evidenced by this sentence in the news item: “Ohio offers 28 days of early, in-person voting. Traditional, in-person voting also will be available on Election Day.”
“Early voting is one of two ways in which a registered voter of Tennessee may vote before the actual election day. The second way for a registered voter to vote early is called by-mail voting.
“The early voting period typically begins twenty (20) days before an election and ends five (5) days before an election. The exception is for the Presidential Preference Primary, when early voting ends seven (7) days before the election.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 29, 2020
Surely Republican hypocrisy and lies surprise no one any longer.
Now, about that “swamp” thing…
White House Press Secretary Voted By Mail 12 Times In 12 Years
by Steven Portnoy, CBS News
May 28, 2020
Washington — White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has voted by mail a dozen times in the last 10 years, according to Florida voter records reviewed by CBS News, a revelation that comes amid her own criticisms of efforts to expand mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany
A voting history report from the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections shows that McEnany “voted absentee” in every election, both general and primary, since November 2008. At times during that span, McEnany, a Tampa native, attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most recently, she voted by mail in Florida’s presidential primary in March.
While the report shows that McEnany voted “absentee,” Hillsborough County election officials said that its system uses the phrase “voted absentee” for any voter who votes by mail, whether they are in the county when they receive a ballot or not. Florida voters can opt to submit ballots by mail for any reason, according to the state Division of Elections.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Ed. note: This entry was written shortly after HRC made her remarks, found transcribed herein, but remained unpublished. As of publication today, Wednesday, 11 March 2020, Tulsi Gabbard remains a candidate to be the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nominee, though her viability as a candidate is practically non-existent, while Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the two major candidates remaining in the race.
Tulsi Gabbard, Official Portrait
In the recent edition of the podcast “Campaign HQ with David Plouffe,” (Google podcast link) the former 2008 Obama campaign adviser interviewed Hillary Clinton on a wide range of topics, primarily about strategy and tactics that Trump and Republicans will most likely use in an attempt to defeat the 2020 Democratic party presidential nominee.
In the hour-long, often-rambling podcast, guest Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom was the 2016 Democratic nominee for POTUS, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and a former United States Senator from New York, obliquely and surreptitiously accused Tulsi Gabbard, a current Major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, current Hawaii U.S. Representative (D-CD2), and Iraq War Veteran, of being a “Russian asset.”
The shocking incredulity which Hillary accuses a fellow Democrat of being – an open traitor to our nation, not merely a “faithless” candidate – could possibly be taken seriously, if not at face value – but for at least two things:
Tulsi Gabbard, Promotion to Major
1.) Tulsi Gabbard is a Major in the Hawaii National Guard, and as such, has sworn an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”;
2.) Tulsi Gabbard is an Iraq War Veteran, and;
3.) Tulsi Gabbard is a current Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, and in that capacity has similarly sworn an oath of fealty – fidelity to and support of the Constitution.
If what Hillary surreptitiously claimed, suggested, or intimated (she did not mention Rep. Gabbard by name) were true (which it is not), Tulsi would be an open traitor – and she is not.
The seriousness of such charges are not to be taken lightly, which is also why, in large part, that they’re incredulous. Hillary’s claims are not even specious, they are fully unjustified, and wholly unwarranted. And so, they should not, and cannot be taken seriously.
Most American journalistic and media outlets have hardly taken notice, save for a nominal categorical mention on Twitter, and a CBS Evening News report by Norah O’Donnell, and one, or two other stories, including Fox News Tucker Carlson’s brief interview with Tulsi Gabbard about the ordeal shortly after it came to light.
Even Chuck Todd, the marshmallow-soft replacement for the late, take-no-prisoners attorney/host Tim Russert on NBC’s once-revered Sunday newsmaker program Meet the Press, only had a passing interaction on the subject with South Bend, Indiana “Mayor Pete” Buttegieg, who is also a Navy Iraq War Veteran and Democratic candidate to be the party’s Presidential Nominee. Their brief exchange follows:
CHUCKTODD: Before I let you go, I was curious if you had any reaction to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implying that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard might be a Russian asset.
MAYORPETEBUTTIGIEG: What I’ll say is, I’m not going to get into their dispute. What I will say is we know right now –
TODD: Is that appropriate?
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I suppose when you become a private citizen you can say whatever you want. But…
TODD: I understand that, but she’s a sitting member of Congress. She served.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, I certainly honor her service. As we saw in the debate, I also have strong disagreements with her on topics like Syria. But the bigger issue here is Russia is working to interfere with our elections right now. And we know a big part of how they’re going to do it is exploiting divisions among the American people, with their information operations. We’ve got to become a harder target and as president, I will make sure using all of our tools, diplomatic, economic, and security there is enough deterrence that Russia, or any country, would never again calculate that it is in their interest to mess with our democracy.
TODD: I just wonder if you are comfortable at all – I mean, throw a charge out there making her deny it. That’s a Trumpian move.
BUTTIGIEG: Well, we got to focus on the task at hand right now. And that includes making sure that this presidency comes to an end. That is my focus. That, and what happens after this presidency comes to an end.
TODD: So, you’re comfortable with Hillary Clinton’s critique of Tulsi Gabbard and how she went about it?
BUTTIGIEG: No, I’m not. I’m also not getting in the middle of it because we as a party and as a country have to focus on the future.
NBC’s Chuck Todd was asking “Mayor Pete” Buttegieg about the exchange with David Plouffe and Hillary Clinton in which she spoke about the possibility of another unexpected potential outcome like 2016 (in which the Vladimir Putin-run Russian government significantly meddled online using false narratives and “bots” to alter the outcome according to their wants, thereby getting Donald Trump elected), and the likelihood of Trump’s re-election in conjunction with the possible strategy and tactics they’ll use against the Democratic nomine.
The pertinent part comes about 35 minutes into the one-hour interview. After her controversial remarks, the podcast took a break. In context, and in pertinent part, she said the following: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 28, 2020
Crooked Hillary…
Everyone who pays attention to the news – especially political news – has heard the phrase uttered by the Current White House Occupant, sometimes also known as POS45. There’s even a Wikipedia page of the nicknames he gives folks.
Que sera, sera… eh?
Nevertheless, recall the 2016 General Election?
Why, of course you do!
Who could forget it, right?
I mean, it was a choice between “the devil you know, and the devil you don’t know.” Either way, it was a devil. But at least with one, you could half-way predict what that devil might, could, or possibly would do.
Not so with the other devil.
Or, put another way, a known quantity versus an unknown quantity.
And, time has proven it to be the case.
But for all the investigations which have been launched against her, or about her, and her dealings, nothing has stuck. So maybe she’s the “Teflon Don,” rather than her husband “Blowjob Bill,” eh?
And, perhaps you may recall how she later revealed in her book, an excerpt of which was made into a Politico article, what she’d found when she was briefly DNC chair, specifically, how a back-room deal was struck between Hillary and the DNC a year before the 2016 election campaign season began.
“I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
“So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
Focus upon that last sentence – “It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
“…for which she expected to wield control of its operations.”
That, my friends, is a classic example of a quid pro quo – giving one thing of value in exchange for another thing of value. Legally defined as a type of valid contract, the quid pro quo is not an illegal act in and of itself, per se, and must be considered within context to determine if it was an illegal act, or not.
There’s little-to-no question that it was unethical, at the very least, and certainly hasn’t reflected positively on the party, nor upon Hillary.
But how did it get to that point?
After the convention, Ms Brazile called Gary Gensler, Chief Financial Officer of Hillary’s campaign, who told her that the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.
Stewardship of the party’s finances was in shambles, to say the least, and it was due in significant part, or so she claims, from her predecessor Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Representative from Florida’s 20th Congressional District.
Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, as you may recall, also later resigned as DNC Chair after a tranche of WikiLeaks emails showed she had given significant help to Hillary during her Presidential campaign, rather than remain a supportive, yet independent observer. So perhaps it was for the best, anyway.
Not everyone in the party had been happy with her at the helm, either. Lis Smith, a longtime campaign operative, former Communications Director, and former Deputy Campaign Director for candidates like Martin O’Malley, Bill de Blasio, Claire McCaskill, and Barack Obama, said of Wasserman-Schultz’ resignation that, “Her resignation is good news for Democrats, and great news for anyone who believes the DNC needs wholesale reform. Hopefully we can all learn from her little experiment this past primary season and never repeat it as a party.”
Senator Sanders was more diplomatically circumspect in his remarks, saying that, “While she deserves thanks for her years of service, the party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people. The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race.”
But, back to the story at hand.
Ms. Brazile wrote that while she was interim DNC Chair that, “I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him.” But in her search for the “smoking gun,” after diligent efforts, speaking with numerous party lawyers and officials who feigned knowledge or responsibility, she continually came up empty-handed… until later. She wrote:
“When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
“The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook [Hillary’s Campaign Manager] with a copy to Marc Elias [General Counsel for Hillary’s campaign]—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
She wrote that while she was the interim DNC Chair, she experienced some unusual events, which at the time, seemed nothing more than purely odd, if not curious, but certainly not suspicious, nor even eyebrow-raising. One of those trifling matters was that, as chair of the party, she was hamstrung from doing anything the party chair would have normally done, such as write press releases, unless Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, October 28, 2019
As I pondered how to begin this entry, numerous thoughts occurred to me about the possible pathway it could take. But the bottom line (Already? Yes, already.) is that what I really want to do is talk about politics and religion.
Sure, almost everyone has heard the adage and encouragements to avoid talking about those two subjects, and almost always to avoid them at holiday family get-togethers. And then, there’s “polite company,” in which one doesn’t want to appear controversial, start a quarrel, or possibly offend someone.
But this is none of the above, and you’ve read this far, so here we go.
Globally, within the last 50 years, and more so since the 1990’s in this nation (the United States), there has emerged a politically active religious movement which has innervated the halls of government at the national and state levels. Local politics has some effect, but nowhere is it more seen and felt than at those two levels.
We have seen the emergence of right-wing extremism in almost all religions, and it’s certainly most visible in the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity – three sects of a common religion from the same family which essentially share the same god.
In recent history, we have seen it demonstrated as a revolt against liberalism (which is properly defined as “freedom”) in Iran in 1979, in which right-wing religious extremists of the Islamic religion, led by the Ayatollah Ruholla Kohmeni (1902-1989) overthrew the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980). Since that time, the nation has remained under the oppressive religious regime of the Islamic Republican Party.
We have also witnessed events such as the rise of radical Islam in the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS, or ISIL), and numerous sects in other Middle Eastern nations, many of which were formerly free from religious influence in government.
While there are many other complicating features of those nations’ internal struggles, such as governmental oppression, totalitarianism, involvement by foreign governments in propping up leaders seen as useful to those same governments, etc., suffice it to say, it is true that the revolutionary forces were almost exclusively religiously motivated by fear of losing their religion at the hand of the existing governmental state.
In the United States, led in large part by the Reverend Jerry Falwell (1933-2007), founder of Liberty University, and supported by Evangelicals such as Pat Robertson (b.1930) and his 700 Club and Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) led by Paul (1924-2013) and Jan Crouch (1939-2016), and a veritable host of other high-profile religious leaders who used television, such as Oral Roberts (1918-2009), Kenneth Hagin (1917-2003), Kenneth Copeland (b.1936), Jerry Savelle (b.1946), Marilyn Hickey (b.1931), Jimmy Swaggart (b.1935), et al., have exercised significant political sway upon a large portion of the American voting public, which in turn, elected officials and politicians who would do their political bidding in Washington, and in states’ capitols nationwide.
Once described as “values voters” who measured candidates on high moral character, Evangelicals now unify behind an unholy trinity of nativism, xenophobia and White grievance. They have exchanged ethics of accountability principles, to thinking “the end justifies the means,” and have stopped searching for personal character and leadership quality in political leaders, and instead have accepted the actions and morality of their chosen candidates if their election objectives are met.
Such actions are problematic not only for religion, but for government as well. Because if religion has become a tool used by government, it has lost its own internal moral compass, and its influence and usefulness as a force for public virtue, private morality, and social unification has become worthless. And even if that is true (and increasingly, it seems so), then America has lost its own unique character of adherence to principles of tolerance, seeking peaceful resolution to problems, and its own commitment to equality under law.
All those groups and people have one thing in common: they constrain freedom in people by using religion to manipulate government. And yet, as evidenced by numerous hind-sight observations in the 2016 General Election, the irony – and disturbingly eerie parallel – of the matter, is that Evangelicals are no longer adherent to orthodoxy, or traditional “old time religion,” which has become as equally a motivating religious fear factor for them, as much as it is for radical Islam.
In Middle Eastern nations, it has been more violent, but the objectives are the same: Wrest control of the existing government away from its leaders, and install religious extremists in power; curtail personal freedoms; subjugate and limit women to child-rearing and housekeeping roles; deny women education – keep them illiterate; deny women access to contraceptives or abortion services, thereby forcing them to become pregnant and give birth; deny women – and others – voting rights; deny women and others freedom of movement by forbidding them to drive automobiles; force everyone to adhere to the state religion, or face harsh punishment or execution for disobeying, or speaking against it.
While in the United States such drastic measures have not all occurred, little by little, led largely by Republicans, states and the Federal government are enacting laws limiting hard-won civil rights, such as 18-year-olds’ Right to Vote; denying women access to contraception, and limiting therapeutic abortion.
While the argument has changed in tenor and is now couched as a “right to life” (a phrase not found in the Constitution, but only in the Declaration of Independence – “…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”), its beginning is unmistakably religious in origin, having first been promulgated by the Catholic Church, and later adopted by Evangelical Protestants as a tenet of their faith, as well.
But, because many don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on that subject, those who would restrict others’ freedoms, instead, take a circuitous, surreptitious route to force their beliefs upon others, ultimately, by making voting more difficult, and hoping they’ll stay away from polls on Election Day. Because when voters don’t vote, freedom is the ultimate loser. And sadly, that is how some want it – because they think there’s just too much freedom – and wrongly claim that responsibility is absent from freedom.
This Spring, the Republican-dominated Texas State Legislature enacted legislation which forbids any early voting polling place from being open less than the full 12 days of the early voting period. The net effect is that 9 sites on college and university campuses in the state – as well as 6 campus polling locations in Fort Worth, 2 in Brownsville, and others throughout the state – will be forced to close, effectively disenfranchising very nearly 14,000 full-time student voters.
In Wisconsin, despite the fact that there has never been a case of deliberate student voter fraud in state history, the Republican-led state legislature passed legislation that requires poll workers to check signatures ONLY on student IDs, even though many schools have removed signatures from them because it’s a security risk, since the IDs are also used as debit cards, and room keys. As well, that same law mandates that IDs used for voting purposes must expire in 2 years, while most Student IDs are valid for 4 years. Not only that, but students with acceptable IDs must also show proof of enrollment before being allowed to vote. While the state’s colleges and universities have diligently tried to meet all ID requirements for the students to use school IDs to exercise their voting rights, the end result has been statewide student voter chaos.
In New Hampshire, a Republican-led effort which became law now requires newly-registered voters who also drive, to establish “domicile” there by obtaining a New Hampshire Driver License and automobile registration, which can cost hundreds of dollars annually. The catch is, it affects students almost exclusively, because 60% of the state’s students come from outside the state. That too, was a Republican-led effort by the former Republican Speaker of the House, William O’Brien, who in 2011 promised to restrict student voting and said they are “kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience.”
In Texas, which ranks dead last in voter turnout, the state’s Republican legislators have restricted student voter pre-registration to 2 months before the student’s 18th birthday, excludes use of college and university-issued ID cards, mandates that state driver licenses be used -and- only if they sign a form swearing that they could not reasonably obtain an “accepted” voter ID, and explain why.
Tennessee isn’t too far behind. That state’s Republican legislators use a convenient loophole in the law requiring election officials to help register high school students to avoid fulfilling their obligation, do not accept student IDs as valid for voting purposes, and have excluded out-of-state Driver Licenses as forms of valid Voter ID. The state’s 4 most populous cities – Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Chattanooga – also have significant student populations, and no on-campus early voting polling locations. However, a recent law requires those who would – for pay – register voters, to take a 30 minute course offered by the Secretary of State, while those who would – not for hire – register voters out of a sense of civil service, are not required to take the course. Although, the state’s General Assembly does allow expired IDs such as United States Passport, military photo ID, TN driver license, and TN handgun carry permit with photo, and photo ID issued by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, to be used as valid forms of Voter ID.
Sunny Florida doesn’t fare so well, either. That state’s Republican Secretary of State outlawed on-campus early voting sites in 2014, but following a Federal court challenge, the decision was overturned and 60,000 votes were cast on campuses statewide in the 2018 election. Not to be outdone, the state’s legislators re-enacted the ban and required all early voting sites to have “sufficient non-permitted parking,” which is often difficult to find.
The Tarheel State hasn’t been very friendly to student voters, either. North Carolina’s Republican legislators passed a Voter ID law in 2018 that accepted student IDs as valid for voting purposes, albeit with caveats so burdensome that even major state universities couldn’t comply. While the law was relaxed somewhat, confusion still exists, and consequently, less than half of the state’s 180 accredited institutions have sought Voter ID certification for their students’ IDs.
Aside from the common denominator of student status, the single greatest factor in all these cases is that students reliably vote for Democratic candidates.
“At the conclusion of the 2017 United States Senate Special Election Run-off, the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office reviewed a formal, routine election report indicating that 140 individuals had been given credit for voting in the Democrat primary election on August 15th and then voting in the Republican run-off election on September 26. This action, termed crossover voting, is an action which would violate the State’s new crossover voting law (Act No. 2017-340).
“… under Alabama law it is illegal to vote in both a party primary and then vote in another party’s primary runoff. In the general election, voters are allowed to vote for candidates from both parties and/or independent or minor party candidates. 66 percent of Alabamians straight party voted in the 2018 election. Alabama does not have party registration, so any voter is allowed to participate in the party primary of their choice.”
He cited Act No. 2017-340, which as summarized on the state legislature’s website as, “Act 2017-340, SB108, amends Section 17-4-2.1, Code of Alabama 1975, relating to voting, to allow the Secretary of State to use electronic poll books instead of printed lists of qualified voters. The act also prohibits any voter from voting in a primary runoff election unless the voter voted in the preceding primary election of the party for which the runoff election is being held.”
The act, which originated as SB108 (Senate Bill) and was sponsored by Senators Tom Whatley, Cam Ward, Clyde Chambliss, Tripp Pittman, Bill Holtzclaw and Senate President Pro Tempore Del Marsh – all Republicans – states in part that the law will “prohibit a voter from voting in a primary runoff election unless the voter voted in the preceding primary election of the party for which the runoff election is being held.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, November 10, 2018
Cindy McCain, widow of late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
Cindy McCain, widow of late Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, on Thursday, November 8, 2018 criticized the Arizona GOP about a state GOP-initiated lawsuit over counting mail-in ballots by Tweeting, “@AZGOP I am one of those mail in ballots. I was under the impression my vote was always counted.”
Her Tweet was in response to the Arizona GOP’s efforts to get a judge to issue orders to stop counting mail-in ballots in the race for US Senate to fill the seat being vacated by Jeff Flake, a Republican. The two candidates, Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema find themselves in extremely close competition.
Both candidates are also Arizona Congressional Representatives. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has represented the 9th Congressional District, while Republican Martha McSally has represented the 2nd Congressional District.
In court Thursday morning November 8, 2018, state Republican leaders were challenging mail-in ballots in Yuma, Navajo, Apache and Maricopa counties after the GOP parties in those counties filed a lawsuit challenging the way counties verify signatures on mail-in ballots that are dropped off at the polls on Election Day. The lawsuit did NOT allege any type of fraud.
The US Census Bureau estimated the 2017 population of Apache County as 71,606; Navajo County as 108,956; Yuma County as 207,534; and Maricopa County as 4,307,033. Maricopa County is location of the Phoenix–Mesa–Glendale, AZ Metropolitan Statistical Area. Together, those four counties comprise 66.9% of Arizona’s 7,016,270 estimated 2017 population.
When the two parties met in court, there was little fanfare, no grandstanding, and no contentious sparks flew, so it made for very poor political theatre, though others nationally attempted to inject false explosive allegations and deceptive narratives into the matter by deliberately gross mischaracterization.
The primary point of the suit involved a much more mundane matter, and specifically, the legal challenge was focused upon on a lack of procedural consistency in the time frame that counties allowed voters to correct signature “issues” on mail-in ballots.
And in only a matter of minutes after the AZ GOP held a grandstanding news/press conference in which they made accusation saying, “The Democrats are stealing the election and we’re not going to allow it,” and immediately before the court hearing, all of the counties and the Republican groups had come to an agreement, which Judge Mahoney approved with no fanfare.
The settlement, was that all of Arizona’s 15 counties would allow voters to verify the signatures on their ballots through 5 p.m. on Nov. 14.
Martha McSally, R-AZ
Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ
And the overriding irony of the matter, is that the counties whose election practices they ended up changing, were largely run by Republicans.
There were also an estimated 360,000 outstanding ballots still being counted statewide. Of those, an estimated 266,000 are from Maricopa County.
For now, Sinema is leading in Maricopa and Pima counties by a net 83,652 votes. McSally’s lead in the state’s other 13 counties is 65,113.
Arizona’s protracted vote-count is due in large part to the need to verify signatures for those who vote by mail, which represents the bulk of ballots.
So far, the Democrat Sinema is winning the Republican-leaning Maricopa County by 3.3 percentage points.
One reason the race and ballot count is so hotly contested, is because the Republicans are in jeopardy of losing a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 30 years. As well, what also makes this race particularly interesting, is that Maricopa County has traditionally been a GOP stronghold, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 130,000.
But, in essence, here’s a nut of what’s been happening not only there, but in other states, as well.
In some states, there are so-called “exact match” laws, rules, or regulations concerning the signatures of voters who cast absentee, or mail-in ballots, and in essence, those “exact match” laws, rules, or regulations give broad discretion to anyone counting those ballots to exercise their personal opinion – untrained, non-expert, unscientific independent judgment – about someone’s signature, specifically, whether they believe it was signed by the person who attested to signing it, or not. In other words, no expertise is required.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Today is Election Day!
The 2018 Mid-Term Elections are NOW underway!
Which brings us to another point:
With the proliferation of confusing and contradictory laws varying from state-to-state, often-unnecessary voter purges, voter suppression efforts, disenfranchisement attempts, and often outright intimidation, it makes perfectly good sense for Congress to step up to the plate, and take control of the 50-state hodgepodge patchwork mishmash voting-related varieties to establish National Uniform Voting Standards.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, June 13, 2017
The ONLY FAILSAFE means to electronically count ballots is by using an Optical Scanning system. Votes can be counted manually, and Voter Intent can be determined by examining ballots. I write from experience as an Election Official in numerous elections. Can any electronic device be hacked? Yes. But physical ballots are the “backup” which can be examined to check against any suspicious machine, or software.
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Russians Hacked Into Election Software, Databases In 39 States
The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they complained directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.”
By Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON – Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.
In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.
The scope and sophistication so concerned Obama administration officials that they took an unprecedented step — complaining directly to Moscow over a modern-day “red phone.” In October, two of the people said, the White House contacted the Kremlin on the back channel to offer detailed documents of what it said was Russia’s role in election meddling and to warn that the attacks risked setting off a broader conflict.
The new details, buttressed by a classified National Security Agency document recently disclosed by the Intercept, show the scope of alleged hacking that federal investigators are scrutinizing as they look into whether Trump campaign officials may have colluded in the efforts. But they also paint a worrisome picture for future elections: The newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn’t done meddling.
“They’re coming after America. They will be back.”
– Former FBI Director James Comey testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington declined to comment on the agency’s probe.
Russian officials have publicly denied any role in cyberattacks connected to the U.S. elections, including a massive “spear phishing” effort that compromised Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, among hundreds of other groups. President Vladimir Putin said in recent comments to reporters that criminals inside the country could have been involved without having been sanctioned by the Russian government.
One of the mysteries about the 2016 presidential election is why Russian intelligence, after gaining access to state and local systems, didn’t try to disrupt the vote. One possibility is that the American warning was effective. Another former senior U.S. official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the classified U.S. probe into pre-election hacking, said a more likely explanation is that several months of hacking failed to give the attackers the access they needed to master America’s disparate voting systems spread across more than 7,000 local jurisdictions.
Such operations need not change votes to be effective. In fact, the Obama administration believed that the Russians were possibly preparing to delete voter registration information or slow vote tallying in order to undermine confidence in the election. That effort went far beyond the carefully timed release of private communications by individuals and parties.
One former senior U.S. official expressed concern that the Russians now have three years to build on their knowledge of U.S. voting systems before the next presidential election, and there is every reason to believe they will use what they have learned in future attacks.
As the first test of a communication system designed to de-escalate cyber conflict between the two countries, the cyber “red phone” — not a phone, in fact, but a secure messaging channel for sending urgent messages and documents — didn’t quite work as the White House had hoped. NBC News first reported that use of the red phone by the White House last December.
The White House provided evidence gathered on Russia’s hacking efforts and reasons why the U.S. considered it dangerously aggressive. Russia responded by asking for more information and providing assurances that it would look into the matter even as the hacking continued, according to the two people familiar with the response.
“Last year, as we detected intrusions into websites managed by election officials around the country, the administration worked relentlessly to protect our election infrastructure,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for former President Barack Obama. “Given that our election systems are so decentralized, that effort meant working with Democratic and Republican election administrators from all across the country to bolster their cyber defenses.”
Illinois, which was among the states that gave the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security almost full access to investigate its systems, provides a window into the hackers’ successes and failures.
In early July 2016, a contractor who works two or three days a week at the state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, May 12, 2017
You’ve likely seen a meme floating around referencing how America’s Most Poverty Stricken counties voted Republican.
Yes?
I decided to research the matter to see:
1.) If it was true, and;
2.) Exactly what else I’d find.
While my analysis isn’t fully complete, there are already some early fascinating findings.
Breaking down Poverty into two categories – Per Capita Income (PCI) and Median Household Income (MHI) – has shown “the usual suspects,” but exposed some not-so-usual ones, as well.
For example, we often hear that West Virginia is a very High Poverty state, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Data from the United States Census Bureau (USCB) backs up those claims… yet only to a limited extent.
But, “pockets” of poverty may exist in an otherwise not-so-poor state (and they do), and a state may have a high number of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, March 26, 2017
As of today – Sunday, March 26, 2017 – we are less than 100 days into President Donald Trump’s term in office, and his approval ratings – so far, a low of 37% – are practically subterranean. According to Gallup, his highest approval rating thus far has been 46%, which was a three-day average shortly after he was inaugurated, from January 23-25, 2017. An average of all presidents from 1938-2017 at this point in their presidency (first year, first term) is 53%. Two-term Republican Dwight David Eisenhower (previously former Supreme Allied Commander during WWII) was the highest with a 74% approval rating in March 1953. Oft-maligned Democrat President Jimmy Carter had a 72% approval rating March 1977, and JFK had 73% in March 1961. A reminder that JFK was later assassinated November 22, 1963. More recently however, Barack Obama had a 62% approval rating March 2009.
A reminder also that the 2018 Election (aka “Midterm”) is arriving quickly, and for many, it will be one of THE MOST SIGNIFICANT elections in a lifetime, because ALL 435 seats in the House of Representatives and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, December 19, 2016
How Much Is Your Vote Worth? From: New York Times Op-Chart November 2, 2008 This map shows each state re-sized in proportion to the relative influence of the individual voters who live there. The numbers indicate the total delegates to the Electoral College from each state, and how many eligible voters a single delegate from each state represents. Source: The United States Election Project at George Mason University.
Having read the article How Powerful Is Your Vote? by Chris Kirk several times, I still disagree with it. The article’s premise is that by using the Electoral College (EC) system, the votes cast in less populated states are somehow “more powerful” than those in more populated states. To posit such an assertion is to demonstrate a wholesale lack of understanding of the system. That is not to say the EC system is perfect, nor that changes to it are not needed; rather, it only acknowledges the author’s fundamentally deep misunderstanding of the manner in which the system is established, and a virtually wholesale ignorance of the Constitution.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, November 3, 2016
Remember how ANGRY some folks got when Michael Weisskopf (b.1946) of the Washington Post wrote on February 1, 1993 (link to original article with the WaPo’s editorial addendum) that the simple-minded evangelical groupies of Jerry Falwell (who himself died in 2007), Pat Robertson (b.1930), et al, that: “The gospel lobby evolved with the explosion of satellite and cable television, hitting its national political peak in the presidential election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
“Unlike other powerful interests, it does not lavish campaign funds on candidates for Congress nor does it entertain them. The strength of fundamentalist leaders lies in their flocks. Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.
“Some studies put the number of evangelical Americans as high as 40 million, with the vast majority considered politically conservative.”
[ed. note: The excerpt, which has frequently been distilled to “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command,” is provided here in full proper context with leading and following sentences, not merely excerpted, in order to thoroughly show proper context.]
The USCB has also performed research on income, which is similarly delineated and categorized by education. For the year 2011 (18 years AFTER the remarks were made), and those aged 25+ with at least a Bachelor’s Degree, the average income was Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, October 2, 2016
I write the following as an experienced election official, having participated in various levels and capacities of electioneering, as poll watcher, at polling locations, re-counting ballots in close and contended elections, and counting absentee ballots.
Voter fraud and voting fraud may be two sides of the same vote fraud coin. Allow me to explain.
An Iraqi citizen, turning his head to protect his identity, proudly displays the indelible ink on his finger as proof he has voted in Iraq’s first free election in over 50 years on Jan. 30, 2005. Everyone voting in the historic election has to mark their finger with the ink to indicate they have already voted as a means to deter voting fraud. DoD photo by Master Sgt. Dave Ahlschwede, U.S. Air Force. (Released)
In some lesser-developed nations, evidence of having voted has been accomplished by having the voter dip their finger in an indelible, semi-permanent ink. The world has seen it used in Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, August 21, 2013
1“Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord,a for this is the right thing to do. 2“Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.”b
4“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.” cf.Ephesians 6:1-4 NLT
Politically, it certainly seems that Southerners have been more often wrong, than correct.
And today, continuing the tradition of Radical Liberal Republicans who endeavor to remove voting rights and foist more atrocities upon the nation, they continue to be “right” about being wrong.
As the guest spoke, it occurred to me that the primary difference between this era, and the era of the late Civil Rights leader is that the exceeding majority of today’s youthful musicians are out for the almighty dollar, rather than speaking their hearts and minds for the causes of truth, justice, and the American way.
It’s all about the money.
And according to some, there is perhaps no better representative of the “me” generation than Taylor Swift.
Not being familiar with the body of Miss Swift’s work, I must rely upon interviews with her, and from remarks by those whom are familiar with her work. And it seems that there are many who utterly despise her work, for no other reason than that “practically every song she sings is about herself.”
And in defense of Miss Swift, regarding her work, she has said, “I’ve been very selfish about my songs. I’ve Read the rest of this entry »
It has more than 900 million people. It has its own currency. And this month, for the first time, the digital republic known as Facebook held elections of a sort: it offered users a chance to vote on the way the site is governed, including how the company deploys its users’ data.
Turnout was spectacularly bad in the digital republic that the writer Rebecca Mackinnon has dubbed Facebookistan. Fewer than 350,000 Facebook users voted, or under 0.04 percent.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, March 20, 2012
During a time in which RepublicanAlabama governor Dr. Robert Bentley has declared 10.6% proration statewide, he has simultaneously approved several million dollars in executive salaries & compensation for state employees whom are hand-picked by the governor and his cronies.
The total value of the compensation packages – which includes state taxpayer funded retirement, taxpayer paid health insurance & taxpayer paid Cost Of Living Adjustments – could be well in excess of $2,400,000.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, March 15, 2012
{UPDATE 3/15/12: I modified the title of this entry, because I believe it more accurately reflects what I wish to express in sharing this entry, that…} While no balloting system is perfect, Alabama‘s system – the Optech Eagle 2000 optical scanner – is the best I’ve ever seen or used. Having been an election official in numerous elections throughout the state where the system is implemented (and the system is implemented state wide), I have never seen, nor heard of any failures or inability of ballots to be counted.
The beauty of that system is that even if electricity or the machines fail, ballots are able to be securely cast by voters, because they’re deposited in a securely locked box to which the ballot counting machine is attached. And even if there were no machines to function at all, ballots could be counted and voter intent determined by manual examination of the ballots. Voters can even request a new ballot if they cast their ballot in error, or change their mind. The “glitch” described in this story – while exceedingly rare – in no way detracted from the ability of votes to be counted, or voter intent determined.
With electronic balloting however, if a machine fails or electrical power fails, there’s no way for voters to cast their ballots. As well, electronic algorithms and computer code can be hacked. And security breaches of such code continues to be problematic. Further, if a voter casts a ballot in error, voters cannot change their vote with electronic balloting.
Mobile Countyballot problems caused by tiny printing error
A small printing error on some Mobile County ballots forced poll workers to count thousands by hand late Tuesday.
Published: Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 6:00 PM Updated: Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 6:06 PM
“This little white dot,” said Probate Judge Don Davis, pointing to a white, donut-shaped mark barely one-tenth of an inch wide.
The tiny error, though, ended up in an important spot, on the security markings that let the electronic machines know whether to count it. The markings look like a bar code stretching along the side of the ballot.
Warm Southern Breeze 