On today’s BradCast: A last minute ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, without plaintiffs even present, will allow the state to destroy electronic “ballot images” created by the state’s digital computer ballot scanners in Tuesday’s special election. Also, was it the fake news or the real news that tipped last year’s Presidential election? [Audio link to show follows below.]
In Alabama, computer tabulators determine the intent of voters (either correctly or incorrectly), as cast on hand-marked paper ballots from Tuesday’s highly contentious U.S. Senate Special Election between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. The state Supreme Court, in a late ruling on Monday, issued a stay [PDF] that effectively reversed a lower court order [PDF] on Monday. That order had required all digital scanners in the state to be set to retain all such images created by the system as ballots are scanned through it. The stay now means that only in the exceedingly rare event of a hand “recount” of paper ballots will the public be able to oversee elections results to determine if the computers got it right on Tuesday.
We’ve been covering this issue for some time. (My original interview last week with election integrity and transparency advocate John Brakey, who helped organize the AL lawsuit is here.) Yesterday, it looked like a win for Brakey and the multi-partisan plaintiffs who filed in court to demand the state’s retention of all digital images for inspection by the public, as per federal law requiring all election materials be retained for 22 months. But late on Monday, Secretary of State John Merrill and Alabama’s state Election Administrator Ed Packard argued their case [PDF] ex parte (in otherwords, alone, without the plaintiffs there or allowed to respond) and received a favorable ruling from Roy Moore’s old colleagues on the court. (Moore was formerly a State Supreme Court Justice, until twice being removed for failing to follow federal court orders.)
I spoke with Brakey and attorney working on the case, Chris Sautter, earlier today, as well as other experts. I’ve got details on their comments, and from the court documents, on today’s show. Essentially, the state argued that state election officials didn’t have jurisdiction to order county election officials to turn on the software switch on the scanners to retain all ballot images, and that doing so at the last minute, as the Circuit Court ordered on Monday, would “cause confusion among elections officials and be disruptive to” the election on Tuesday. That, even though the Circuit Court judge found it wouldn’t cost the state anything to do so and that failing to turn on the setting that retains the images would lead to irreparable harm to the plaintiffs. Sautter tells me the state did not make the case for last minute confusion during the lower court arguments.
I suspect we’ll have much more on that and on other problems reported at the polls today, on tomorrow’s BradCast, along with whatever results — accurate or inaccurate (who knows?) — that the computers may report by then.
Then, after a flurry of fake news over the weekend during the final run-up to Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Alabama, we discuss an alarming new study analyzing the effect of both real and fake news during the run-up to last year’s Presidential election. Was it so-called fake news and Russian Facebook ads that gave Donald Trump the edge to defeat Hillary Clinton last year? Or, was it a failure by the mainstream corporate media — the “real news” — to responsibly cover important issues that the electorate needed before casting their vote? DAVID M. ROTHSCHILD, co-author of the new study published by Columbia Journalism Review, joins us today to discuss their — at times, remarkable — findings.
I’d strongly urge you to read their full damning report — particularly if you are of the mind that fake news and ads said to have come from Russia, turned this election — because there are too many detailed and troubling findings in it for me to adequately summarize either here or during today’s program.
But, to cite just one aspect of my conversation with Rothschild about the report’s analysis of 150 front-page articles in the New York Times over the 69 days prior to last year’s November election, he tells me: “150 stories. And of that, there were just 10 stories where they actually really touched on a specific policy initiative of either of the candidates, the ideal thing that you would want the ‘paper of record’ to be supplying to people. The vast majority of stories were miscellaneous campaign stories. Over 50% of them talked about the horse race. Very small percentages, 15% or less, actually talked anything about policy, with even smaller percentages actually talking about the policies themselves. It was all about the horse race, all about the scandals, not about the impact of the election itself on policy, which is ultimately why we have elections and ultimately defines the impact of these elections.”
His study notes that in just six days right before the election, “The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” That said, ironically enough, as Rothschild notes, even the MSM coverage of the purported scandals was terrible, misleading and inaccurate as well! They, and we, never seem to learn.
Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green New Report, as unprecedented winter wildfires continue to ravage Southern California and as the Trump Administration continues to ravage the environment…
Do nuclear launch codes require correct DOB?
Tough order for this family of idiots.
Oh fer three on NYC absentee ballots.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politic...wn-out-n828861
Yippee for Doug, btw!
There were reports that some voters were told to cast provisional ballots because their voter status was “invalid.” They would have to come back and provide ID for those votes to count. Not sure if those votes were considered part of the totals. If so, expect more legal shenanigans before the election is certified.
While it is ironic that it is Roy Moore who has been deprived of the availability of preserved digital ballot images, there are procedural due process as well as substantive law concerns that accompany the haste by which the AL Supreme Court acted in granting an ex parte stay.
The Supreme Court Stay was signed by the Clerk of the Supreme Court, apparently upon the instruction of the Chief Justice. The order indicates that the other six Justices concurred.
While it is not entirely clear at what precise hour the stay order was issued, one has to question whether the seven justices had sufficient time to read and digest the one-sided legal arguments that had been presented by Secretary of State John Merrill.
Merrill’s Petition for an Emergency Writ of Mandamus was not electronically received by the AL Supreme Court less than 12 minutes before the close of business hours at the AL Supreme Court.
In his “emergency” petition, Merrill’s principal argument was that he lacked the power to compel County election officials to comply with the order directing them “to set their voting machines to save ALL PROCESSED IMAGES.”
Merril argues that it the County election officials and not the office of the Secretary of State that should have been parties to the proceeding.
But, if that’s true, how was the Secretary of State harmed by the preliminary injunction?
According to the Order Granting a Preliminary Injunction”, all Merrill had to do to comply with the order was to “send a copy of [the injunction] to the [County election officials]” in order to comply with the order.
Anyone wanna bet that Roy Moore’s colleagues on the bench did not see that Moore would refuse to concede because they did not think he would lose?
Given that Moore states that he will challenge the outcome (don’t count on it) how likely is it that AL’s Supreme court will now find cause for an exception to their own ruling, for the purpose of to protecting the ballot images from destruction?
If Moore won in a tight race, motive for interested parties to seek the destruction the images exists.
But given that he lost to the Democrat Moore would now have cause to want those images preserved, no?
Too cynical??
Donald Pruden asked @4:
Yeah, he might want them preserved. So might Jones if a “recount” (a rescan) ends up showing very different numbers than the original tally.
That said, even if the AL Supremes change their mind somehow, it’s too late. The setting to preserve those ballot images is made before ballots are scanned. If the system is not set to retain all ballot images, then they are deleted (in theory) the moment after the ballot is scanned and tabulated from that scan.
At least as I understand it.
I suspect that even though the Republicans in Alabama would love to do a recount after jiggering the machines – of course – they won’t, because it would call too much attention to the bad court ruling which cancelled out the good ruling to make sure all the ballots were preserved by John Brakey’s effort.
The machines have been a boon to the establishment that spans both parties, and that’s why John Kerry and Hillary Clinton didn’t want to, or got told not to expose the scam by fighting.
As we know, nobody knows for sure what’s going on inside the machines, including myself, and that’s why I have to guess. I’m not too bad at smelling rats though, when things don’t add up.