Voter Suppression & Election Theft by the Republican Party

[goldenvalley]

Sept 9, 2022 16:39:42 GMT pnwguy said:

Another denier who is preaching the gospel of the Big Lie

www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/09/08/an-ex-professor-spreads-election-myths-across-us-one-town-time/

Clements, who has no formal training or background in election systems, spent months crisscrossing the back roads in his home state of New Mexico in a battered Buick, trying to convince local leaders not to certify election results. His words had an impact: In June, officials in three New Mexico counties where he made his case either delayed or voted against certification of this year’s primary results, even though there was no credible evidence of problems with the vote.

Now, Clements has taken his message nationwide, traveling to small towns in more than a dozen states, with a focus, he said, on places that are “forgotten and abandoned and overlooked.” His crusade to prove that voting systems can’t be trusted has deepened fears among election experts, who say his meritless claims could give Trump allies more fodder to try to disrupt elections in November and beyond.

Who is paying for his gas? I'm guessing pillow man.

[pnwguy]

Sept 9, 2022 16:54:11 GMT goldenvalley said:

Sept 9, 2022 16:39:42 GMT pnwguy said:

Another denier who is preaching the gospel of the Big Lie

www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/09/08/an-ex-professor-spreads-election-myths-across-us-one-town-time/

Who is paying for his gas? I'm guessing pillow man.

If he's doing this in churches, I'm guessing the local preacher is promoting a "love offering" after his presentation, to support this "patriot missionary".  He's doing divine work.

[LFC]

The Big Lie really is the primary pillar, along with a side of abortion, that the Republican Party has anymore.

60 Percent Of Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall
By FiveThirtyEight Staff

From the Carolinas to California, Montana to Florida, election denialism has spread across the country. Candidates who support former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen will appear on ballots in nearly every state this fall. FiveThirtyEight drew on news reports, debate footage, campaign materials and social media and reached out to every single Republican nominee for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general to determine their position on the 2020 election.

There are a lot of election deniers on the ballot. Out of 541 total Republican nominees running for office, we found 199 who fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election. These candidates either clearly stated that the election was stolen from Trump or took legal action to overturn the results, such as voting not to certify election results or joining lawsuits that sought to overturn the election.

Moreover, an additional 62 candidates raised questions around the results of the 2020 election. These candidates haven’t gone so far as to say explicitly that the election was stolen or take legal action to overturn it. However, they haven’t said the election was legitimate either. In fact, they have raised doubts about potential fraud.

There were 118 candidates whose position on the 2020 election we could not determine. They either had no comment on the 2020 election or avoided answering when asked directly.

But not all Republicans running embrace Trump’s claims. A total of 74 have fully accepted the results of the 2020 election while another 88 have accepted with reservations, meaning they think President Biden won, but still raised concerns about the integrity of the election.

Those who "raised concerns" are in the same bucket as the deniers. They may not want to pick up the "Trump won" baton but they still want the party to engage in wide scale voter suppression.

[LFC]

Mr. MyPillow was just subpoenaed and had his phone confiscated. I didn't watch the video because I just don't have the stomach for it this morning.

Not A Hardee’s!

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced on Tuesday night that FBI agents “surrounded” him at a Hardee’s restaurant in Minnesota, seized his cell phone and served him a subpoena (in his announcement, the pillow tycoon gleefully waved the order he claimed the feds gave him that said “not to tell anybody” about the subpoena).

• More specifically, the FBI confronted him while he was in his car at a Hardee’s drive-thru, Mr. Pillow told CNN.

• The FBI confirmed to the Daily Beast and CNN that agents were “at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge.”

• The seizure and subpoena were part of the FBI’s investigation into the election equipment security breach in Mesa County that was masterminded by indicted MAGA clerk Tina Peters, according to Lindell and the Daily Beast’s copy of the documents.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 14, 2022 15:51:08 GMT LFC said:

Mr. MyPillow was just subpoenaed and had his phone confiscated. I didn't watch the video because I just don't have the stomach for it this morning.

Not A Hardee’s!

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced on Tuesday night that FBI agents “surrounded” him at a Hardee’s restaurant in Minnesota, seized his cell phone and served him a subpoena (in his announcement, the pillow tycoon gleefully waved the order he claimed the feds gave him that said “not to tell anybody” about the subpoena).

• More specifically, the FBI confronted him while he was in his car at a Hardee’s drive-thru, Mr. Pillow told CNN.

• The FBI confirmed to the Daily Beast and CNN that agents were “at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge.”

• The seizure and subpoena were part of the FBI’s investigation into the election equipment security breach in Mesa County that was masterminded by indicted MAGA clerk Tina Peters, according to Lindell and the Daily Beast’s copy of the documents.

Reminds me of when the feds got Eastman's phone at the airport! 

[goldenvalley]

Sept 14, 2022 15:51:08 GMT LFC said:

Mr. MyPillow was just subpoenaed and had his phone confiscated. I didn't watch the video because I just don't have the stomach for it this morning.

Not A Hardee’s!

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced on Tuesday night that FBI agents “surrounded” him at a Hardee’s restaurant in Minnesota, seized his cell phone and served him a subpoena (in his announcement, the pillow tycoon gleefully waved the order he claimed the feds gave him that said “not to tell anybody” about the subpoena).

• More specifically, the FBI confronted him while he was in his car at a Hardee’s drive-thru, Mr. Pillow told CNN.

• The FBI confirmed to the Daily Beast and CNN that agents were “at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge.”

• The seizure and subpoena were part of the FBI’s investigation into the election equipment security breach in Mesa County that was masterminded by indicted MAGA clerk Tina Peters, according to Lindell and the Daily Beast’s copy of the documents.

Reminds me of when the feds got Eastman's phone at the airport! The nerve!

[LFC]

Sept 13, 2022 19:26:07 GMT LFC said:

The Big Lie really is the primary pillar, along with a side of abortion, that the Republican Party has anymore.

60 Percent Of Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall
By FiveThirtyEight Staff

That number may be low. Here's a Big Lie proponent who admits he's going stealth to improve his electoral chances.

Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

Not all election-denying Republican candidates are openly peddling the Big Lie on the campaign trail and letting everyone know how divorced from reality they are: Some are trying to sneak in disguised as a person still anchored in reality. For example:

• Erik Aadland, a Republican running for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, privately told conservative activists in June that he believes the 2020 election was “undermined by fraud” and now “we have an illegitimate government in power,” according to audio obtained by FiveThirtyEight.
• Aadland explained that he’s being “deliberate” with his public rhetoric about the election because “it’s not an issue that wins us this race.” He argued that he’d be “much more effective in addressing” (nonexistent) voter fraud in Congress than “just screaming from a bully pulpit.”
• So FiveThirtyEight’s tally of 200 candidates (for governor, Senate, House, secretary of state or attorney general) who fully deny the 2020 election results is likely an undercount. Awesome!

[LFC]

Voter ID rules for thee but not for me!

An Alabama man who volunteered as a poll worker in his community was fired shortly after he asked Alabama State Republican Party Chairman John Wahl and his family to present proper identification before voting.

Alabama.com's Kyle Whitmire reports that Clyde Martin, a retired TVA supervisor at a nuclear power plant, tried to get Wahl and his family to present their identifications when they came to the polls to vote, as is required by Alabama state law.

The family refused and Martin was relieved of his duties shortly afterward.

In an interview, Wahl explained to Whitmire that his family had a religious exemption on having to show a photo ID as a prerequisite for voting.

“Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptists are well known for their concerns about pictures or the way pictures are used,” Wahl told Whitmire. “They are definitely not normal in our modern culture, but they shouldn’t be attacked or discriminated against for choosing a different lifestyle.”

Despite this, notes Whitmire, Wahl regularly posts his own photos on social media, including at least one photo of himself shortly after he voted.

[LFC]

Aug 18, 2022 21:23:29 GMT LFC said:

A Wisconsin state judge tore the "investigation" to shreds in a 90-page opinion. Here's a lot of it but read the whole article. I wouldn't be shocked if a move was made to disbar Gableman. He certainly seems to have earned it.

After finding nothing and being torn apart over his sham "investigation" Gableman is still swinging. Now he's hinting about actual violence to get his way. Remember that this lying, traitorous asshat was once a state supreme court justice. He's not fit to judge a 1st grade spelling bee.

Wisconsin Sham Election Auditor Calls For Revolution After Finding Zero Voter Fraud

Ex-Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, the so-called “auditor” of his state’s 2020 election results, argued during a local GOP event on Sept. 9 that “revolution” was “the only way to keep an honest government.”

• There was an unmistakable hint of violence in Gableman’s declaration, with the ex-justice claiming that “Thomas Jefferson said that the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of revolution in every generation.”

• “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Gableman lamented.

[LFC]

Georgia has video. Oops.

Newly obtained surveillance video shows for the first time what happened inside a Georgia county elections office the day its voting systems are known to have been breached on January 7, 2021.

A Republican county official in Georgia and operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump spent hours inside a restricted area of the Coffee County elections office that day. Among those seen in the footage is Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020.

CNN previously reported that Latham escorted operatives working with former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell through the front door of the elections office on January 7, 2021. The new footage appears to undercut previous claims by Latham that she was not “personally involved” in the breach.

The new video, obtained as part of a years-long civil lawsuit in Georgia related to the security of voting systems there, shows Latham remained in the office for hours as those same operatives set up computers near election equipment and appear to access voting data.

The footage also features the two men Latham escorted into the building earlier that day, Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, both of whom have acknowledged they were part of a team that gained access to Coffee County’s voting systems.

[LFC]

Behold the danger of the true believer. Who would stand up to this? Certainly not Republicans. So many of those who would have stood up for democracy and truth have been pushed out of power or threatened into submissions.

Don’t Say He Didn’t Warn You

Arizona GOP secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem, an election-denying Oath Keeper who was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, told Time magazine that as secretary of state, he would certify a Biden victory in 2024 “if there’s no fraud” – but “I think you’re proposing something that, quite frankly, is a fantasy.”

• Finchem argued that Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona “strains credibility” because he apparently “can’t find anyone who will admit” they voted for him. Checkmate!

• By the way, Finchem had a fundraiser on Sunday that was co-hosted by a Sandy Hook and 9/11 truther (and yep, she’s a QAnoner).

[LFC]

Mr. MyPillow is throwing a little temper tantrum.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is trying to fight back after the FBI seized his cell phone at a Hardee’s drive-thru last week.

Lindell filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday claiming that his First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights had all been violated when FBI agents executed a search warrant for his phone on Sept. 13 at a Hardee’s in Mankato, Minnesota. The warrant was part of the DOJ’s investigation into the Mesa County election equipment security breach masterminded by indicted clerk Tina Peters, an ally of Lindell.

The lawsuit (which lists Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota as the defendants) demanded that the government return his phone and any data it may have accessed on the device.

[LFC]

Uh, oh. Mr. MyPillow stuck his nose out waaaayyyy too far.

Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and ally to former President Donald Trump, is under U.S. federal investigation for identity theft and for conspiring to damage a protected computer connected to a suspected voting equipment security breach in Colorado.

The new details about the focus of the investigation were confirmed on Wednesday after Lindell's attorneys uploaded a copy of a search and seizure warrant approved by U.S. Magistrate Judge Tony Leung for Minnesota federal court on Sept. 7.

Leung approved the warrant based on probable cause that Lindell and other possible co-conspirators may have violated federal laws prohibiting identity fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and causing intentional damage a protected computer.

Lindell's attorneys uploaded the warrant as part of their lawsuit against the Justice Department to demand the return of Lindell's cell phone, which FBI agents seized on Sept. 13 while he was ordering fast food at a drive-through window.

[LFC]

Alan Dershowitz to the rescue! Poor Alan. Whatever decent reputation he once head is past circling the bowl and is now floating in Trump's cesspool. I can't figure out if he's nuts or he just desperately wants to matter. Maybe both.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 22, 2022 21:53:16 GMT LFC said:

Alan Dershowitz to the rescue! Poor Alan. Whatever decent reputation he once head is past circling the bowl and is now floating in Trump's cesspool. I can't figure out if he's nuts or he just desperately wants to matter. Maybe both.

What a pair...two attention hounds. 

[LFC]

 Anybody who was involved needs to be prosecuted as well as sued for the full cost of replacing the machines.

Georgia To Replace County’s Breached Voting Machines

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) announced on Friday that the voting equipment in Coffee County will be replaced after pro-Trump operatives got access to it thanks to one of the state’s fake Trump electors.

• The equipment is being replaced specifically to get “perennial election deniers and conspiracy theorists” to STFU, according to Raffensperger.

• Arizona’s Maricopa County similarly had to toss away its voting equipment thanks to MAGA election denialism. The county paid nearly $3 million in taxpayer funds to replace the equipment because it had been subjected to the Arizona state Senate’s bogus 2020 election “audit” and election officials had no way of knowing if the equipment had been tampered with by the fake auditors.

[LFC]

Moscow Mitch is seeing the collapse of the political system that brings him power. Sure he did more than most to get us here but it got away from him and now endangers his position. I have no doubt that this is a naked attempt to keep the crazies he enabled from gaining complete control, which means he gets impacted personally, but I'll take it.

Wednesday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) signaled his support for a bill seeking to overhaul the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a century-old election administration law.

The Senate Rules Committee debated on the bill soon afterwards, where the Kentucky Republican gave a speech expressing his support for the legislation.

“After 150 years, the Electoral Count Act needs some modest updates,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

The ECA dictates how vote counts are certified in Congress after an election. It fell under the national spotlight after John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who used to work for former President Donald Trump, tried to hijack the law’s vague language to claim that then-Vice President Mike Pence could call the 2020 election for Trump.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 28, 2022 14:25:49 GMT LFC said:

Moscow Mitch is seeing the collapse of the political system that brings him power. Sure he did more than most to get us here but it got away from him and now endangers his position. I have no doubt that this is a naked attempt to keep the crazies he enabled from gaining complete control, which means he gets impacted personally, but I'll take it.

Wednesday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) signaled his support for a bill seeking to overhaul the Electoral Count Act of 1887, a century-old election administration law.

The Senate Rules Committee debated on the bill soon afterwards, where the Kentucky Republican gave a speech expressing his support for the legislation.

“After 150 years, the Electoral Count Act needs some modest updates,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

The ECA dictates how vote counts are certified in Congress after an election. It fell under the national spotlight after John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who used to work for former President Donald Trump, tried to hijack the law’s vague language to claim that then-Vice President Mike Pence could call the 2020 election for Trump.

I think he was legitimately appalled at 1/6 but craved Republican dominance more than he was appalled and repulsed.  And perhaps he really thought someone else or some other branch of government would move to get Trump out of the limelight.

At any rate McConnell is on his way out. I think this is his last term and he senses he won't be majority leader anymore. He's got plenty of money, as does his wife.  He doesn't need to deal with the crazies he unleashed anymore.

[LFC]

A bit of sanity comes to Pennsylvania voting. I'm sure the Republicans are howling that clearly legitimate ballots are ("HORRORS!") going to be counted.

[LFC]

A Pennsylvania judge ruled that people who make innocent mistakes can be helped to correct them.

Democracy Docket
@democracydocket

🚨VICTORY: Pennsylvania judge denies GOP request to prohibit county boards of elections from developing and implementing cure procedures for voters to fix technical mistakes on their mail-in ballots in the midterm elections.

Helping people to cast their constitutionally protected voted? Translated to Republican that means fraud, tyranny, and fascism.

[LFC]

A bit of sanity, at least until right-wing, partisan hack SCOTUS decides to abandon states' rights yet again to help hand the elections to their tribe.

[LFC]

Pleading the 5th seems to be a Republican virtue anymore. It's almost like they know those things they said they were so proud of and were totally legal maybe aren't.

Arizona GOP Chair Repeatedly Invoked 5th Amendment In Front Of Jan. 6 Panel

Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward, a leader in Trump’s fake elector scheme in her state who was a fake elector herself, pleaded the Fifth and refused to answer “every substantive question” she was asked during her deposition with the House Jan. 6 Committee, an attorney for the committee said during a court hearing on Tuesday.

• The hearing was part of the committee’s court battle with Ward over her phone records from Nov. 3, 2020 to Jan. 20, 2021.
• Ward has also been subpoenaed in the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 probe, as have the rest of her fellow sham electors in Arizona.

[LFC]

This bears watching to see if it's real or if it's a fascist abuse of power meant to punish somebody who was dragged into a right-wing conspiracy theory. Yes, LA County is blue but who knows what the people in their justice system are like. There have been plenty of PD horror stories from that region.

The founder and CEO of Konnech, a company at the center of many 2020 election denier conspiracy theories, was arrested on Tuesday under suspicion of data theft. Specifically, Eugene Yu is accused of storing Los Angeles County poll worker information on servers in China, in violation of Konnech’s contract with the county, according to a press statement from the LA County District Attorney’s Office. The story was first reported by The New York Times.

Yu was arrested in Michigan, where he lives, the statement said. The LA DA’s office wrote that it is “seeking [his] extradition to Los Angeles.” On top of the executive’s arrest, investigators also seized “hard drives and other digital evidence.”

Konnech is a small company that distributes PollChief, an election worker management software, to multiple municipalities around the U.S., including Los Angeles. The software helps to schedule and organize poll staffing. According to the company’s website, they have 32 clients in North America, the first of which was the City of Detroit. PollChief is also used in Allen County, Indiana, and Dekalb County, Georgia, according to an Oct. 3 report from the New York Times.

That article outlined how unfounded conspiracy theories alleging Konnech’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party have spread widely among election deniers. These theorists often “support” their claims simply by pointing out the ethnic background and national origin of some of the company’s 21 employees, and CEO Yu.

[LFC]

The Republican assault on free and fair elections continues, all powered by The Big Lie.

When voters go to the polls in November, they’ll face dozens of new restrictions on the ease with which they can vote that weren’t there in 2020. Fueled in part by the Big Lie, states have put in place 33 new restrictive voting laws in 20 states since January 1, 2021, according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice released on Thursday morning.

“Whether it’s access to mail voting or new voter registration requirements, voters in some states are facing a significant number of new barriers this year,” Jasleen Singh, counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told TPM. “These laws derive from conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen and false claims of widespread voter fraud.”

The majority of the new laws that will be in place for 2022’s midterms were passed in the months after the 2020 election and former President Trump’s bogus allegations of mass voter fraud and GOP fearmongering about pandemic voting measures. “This backlash against mail voting followed the 2020 elections, when a much larger proportion of the electorate relied on mail voting than in the past due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the report says.

But 2022 has been busy too. During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers in 39 states proposed at least 405 restrictive bills, the Brennan Center report found.

[LFC]

Wisconsin has been at it full tilt.

Ever since claims of election fraud arose in 2020, Wisconsin has seen its share of quixotic attempts to taint the presidential results.

A group of phony electors tried to claim the state’s electoral votes for Donald Trump. Wisconsin’s top lawmaker launched a yearlong inquiry led by a lawyer spewing election fraud theories. And its courts heard numerous suits challenging the integrity of the 2020 election and the people administering it.

All those efforts failed, sometimes spectacularly.

But on a more fundamental level, the election deniers succeeded. They helped change the way Election Day will look in 2022 for crucial midterm elections in Wisconsin — and they are creating an even more favorable climate for Trump and Republicans in 2024.

This summer, the conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court banned most drop boxes for ballots, which had provided another quick and convenient method of voting during the pandemic, rather than relying on the mail. Until a federal judge intervened, the ruling also meant that people with disabilities could not have help delivering their ballots to their municipal clerks.

More recently, in Waukesha County, a judge sided with the Republican Party in a ruling that barred local clerks from fixing even minor errors or omissions — such as a missing ZIP code — on absentee ballot envelopes. The clerks could contact the voter or return the ballot to be corrected. In a state already known for limiting voter access, this was another example of a push toward more controls.

And the Wisconsin Assembly and the Senate, both dominated by Republicans, have passed a raft of bills that would tighten voting laws. Each was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. But Evers is in a close race for reelection against Republican Tim Michels, who has said that “on day one” he will call a special session of the Legislature to “fix the election mess.”

Philip Rocco, associate professor of political science at Marquette University in Milwaukee, describes a dynamic he has seen across the country playing out on a large scale in Wisconsin. An onslaught of attacks on the voting process, he said, produces “an atmosphere of procedural chaos going into Election Day.”

“Just in general, it’s created a dangerous environment for elections to occur in.”