On today’s BradCast, state and federal court rulings, shameful ‘recount’ laws and other outrageous obstacles preventing citizen oversight of Presidential election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere. And, as if that’s all not disturbing enough, wait until you hear who Trump is reportedly tapping to head up the Environmental Protection Agency! [Audio link posted below]
Our “Recount” 2016 coverage continues today, on the heels of “dueling” federal and state court rulings on Tuesday night in Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s fight to continue hand-counts in Michigan, hundreds of precincts across the state (including tens of thousands of ballots) are being declared “unrecountable” by state officials — for often absurd reasons. We explain those rulings as we await what is likely to be a federal court order ending all counting in the state by tomorrow, despite Trump’s razor thin 10,000 vote statewide margin of just one-tenth of one-percent over Hillary Clinton.
Another court ruling comes down today against Stein’s suit for a forensic analyses of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems used in Philadelphia, prompting plans to seek same in state court. And the counting (and computer re-scanning) continues in Wisconsin, despite efforts by Team Trump to stop counting and oversight immediately in all three states.
We’re joined today by author, former attorney and longtime election integrity advocate Paul Lehto to discuss all of the above and much more, including how failed tabulation systems, woeful election law, and extraordinary legal challenges in at least six courts in three states to block all oversight is little more than an invitation for future fraud.
On MI’s “outrageous” law resulting in hundreds of “unrecountable” precincts in Detroit alone, Lehto charges: “All you need to do is add an extra ballot without adjusting the poll books, which makes it easier to do fraud or easier create an error. And that error or fraud is insulated from ever affecting the results. If somebody did want to do fraud, it’s like a dream for them.”
“But here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter, from the perspective of democracy, whether it’s an error or whether it’s a fraud. Because we’re only interested in the true vote count,” he tells me. “But in this case, Michigan law itself is protecting and creating ‘safe harbor’ for both errors and fraud.”
“Don’t count on anything happening after Election Night,” Lehto has long warned. “Why? Number one: everybody wants to avoid embarrassment. Nobody wants to be the next Florida. So everybody in the state government and the elections bureau is working really, really hard not to be embarrassed, and that’s a non-partisan interest that really goes against transparency. The other thing is that 100 percent of all election law is made by election winners, who absolutely do not want their victories to be questioned. So that’s another factor why you can never really count on getting good election laws for post-election remedies, because everybody that’s voting on it is a winner and they don’t want losers — or what they would call ‘sore losers’ — questioning their great victory. So basically that leaves democracy defenseless.”
As he describes the evolution of the Election Integrity movement over the past decade, Lehto concludes our system amounts to “basically: certify first, ask questions later.” He says post-election audits or “recounts” are ultimately “not sufficient, no matter who you are. The only option is to get it right on election night.”
Also on today’s show, in case you still don’t believe elections and democracy matter: Trump will reportedly nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt — a climate change denier, opponent of environmental regulations, and long-time fossil-fuel industry tool — to head up the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
So it seems that all it takes is for one person who knows that the election is going to be rigged in a precinct, and all they have to do is go into the precinct to vote, check in with the folks with the poll books, but not vote, and the tallies reported on election night will stand and can’t be recounted. They have successfully made the election tallies unchallengeable. A small cabal with members in each precinct (or enough to make a difference) can finalize results, unless someone cheats better than they do.
I had hopes that Jill Stein’s recount would force some actual democracy into US elections. However, the way her efforts are being portrayed by the news media is both disparaging and inaccurate.
Instead of protesting Donald Trump, Americans should be on the streets protesting the use of electronic vote tabulation systems during elections and demanding that elections be conducted with paper ballots, hand-counted. They should be protesting the mainstream media’s lack of coverage of these attacks against democracy.
Hillary Clinton even being the Democratic candidate was a symptom of sickness afflicting and corrupting US democracy.
The supreme court is probably praying this doesn’t end up on their desk. I hope it does. The whole thing’s a farce anyway. That will give us faces to blame it on.
One question about Michigan:
If every precinct that doesn’t have a perfect match of votes and voters can’t be considered in a hand tally, why are those same precinct’s results allowed in the machine tally?
Corporations are people, but people aren’t?
Somehow Russian stuff becomes more clear.
“The voters decide nothing, those who count the ballots decide everything.” – Stalin
Alice in Wonderland meets Catch-22 meets Bizarro World meets 1984.
Trumpelthinskin really is just the guy to try to create a Ministry of Truth.
I suspect we are about to enter a time of much hell and much heroism.
Great hopeful piece about California digging in and saying fuck you to the forces of darkness creeping across the land on Rachel Maddow last night.
Brad–you and Desi got room for a few more?
Even though this recount effort hasn’t been covered well by the media, I’m hopeful that enough horrified voters have followed it closely enough to gain more awareness of the problems and increase the likelihood of reform for future elections. (Hopefully Donald trump doesn’t make it too late for reform, because of climate change or a turn towards facism) I’m one of those voters who was vaguely aware of problems, but not very focused on it until now. I was not happy with the green party taking votes away, but am now feeling very grateful towards jill Stein for bringing forth this effort.