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Leigh Jamgochian
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Leighj
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2009
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 3:25 pm: | 
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I'm not sure where to go but I just got back from voting. Ordinarily I stand in line, state my name, they find it in the book and then compare my photo ID with the name in the book.
When I went to show my ID the person stated "I don't need to see it you found your name in the book"
Is there something I can do to report this? I know that if I gave a name that was taken it would look silly and I live in a small town but I know several people that did not vote today and I could have just posed as them.
I'm located in Weatherly, PA Carbon county and would like to raise a little heck. I don't know who or where to contact any info would be helpful! Thanks! |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3245
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 5:41 am: |
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Leigh,
I am a Pennsylvanian, a former county election director. Yours is a good friend of mine. If you call him at 570-325-4801 tell Ken Leffler his old buddy Kurt Bellman from Berks says "Hi".
If your election officals HAD asked for your ID, if your name in the pollbook did not say "ID Required", they would have been committing a misdeed.
Think about that. Asking for your ID could be criminal. NOT asking for it is correct.
ONLY if you were voting for the FIRST TIME EVER in that precinct would you need to show ID. This is Pennsylvania law. In Berks County, our precinct election officials were threatened with federal prosecution for asking for ID's when they are legally not required, even though their justification was that they could not understand the spoken name given by the voter.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 2431
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 9:30 am: |
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Do they ask to even see the voter registration card, Kurt? |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3247
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 12:06 pm: |
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No, except for first time voters in the precinct. The voter registration card is just one of about 10 allowed ID types, asked of STRICTLY those first time voters. If a voter is NOT a first-time voter, no ID may even be REQUESTED. If it is spontaneously OFFERED, that's fine. But if a precinct official even asks someone to provide a card who is NOT a first time voter, it can be a criminal offense.
The law is abundantly clear - the signature match IS your ID.
Hyper-technically, my precinct violated the ID laws yesterday. My registration was erroneously (but I understand the error and it was benign) moved to another precinct since our May primary, I discovered it, and got my registration moved back where it was. They reset the flag as if I was a first-time voter in my precinct. It was due to a technical fine point of law that may not repeat for 20 years. Knowing the SURE software's ID flag logic, I expected the technical error.
They asked for my ID, I had it handy, no harm, no foul.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 2432
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 1:57 pm: |
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I'm sorry, that's stupid. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3251
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 5:25 am: |
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Brant,
Can you see now how the Philly "van voters" scam keeps working? No one has to have ANY kind of ID, unless the name they're voting under is a first timer in the precinct!
And as of 2004, Phiily was flat out REFUSING to put the voter's DOB in the pollbook, and they might STILL not be doing it, so you couldn't even check if the "voter" was about the right age for the identity claimed.
In Pennsylvania, from 1937 until HAVA in 2002, NOBODY had to show ANYTHING, even a voter registration card, in order to vote. It was all based on signature match ALONE. Claiming a false identity is the easiest scam going in voting.
See how things like "retail" voter fraud, as if there ever was such a distinction in the first place (there isn't - it's all an invention of the Soros-sphere) can go wildly "wholesale"?
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 2434
Registered: 1-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 9:02 am: |
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Now, see? "Soros-sphere", now you're starting to sound like Mark. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3252
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 9:10 am: |
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When I first ran into these facts, I thought they were "stupid" too. Then I saw USDOJ lawyers threatening people with papers if they didn't stop it with the ID requesting.
Of course, that was under a "disparate impact" on Spanish speakers, which USDOJ didn't need to prove legally, all they had to do was allege it, and the law didn't need to show intent, merely effect. So if an anglo pollworker couldn't understand the name a Spanish speaker was saying, if the pollworker asked for the name in writing, he was risking a federal indictment.
They had to engage in a "Abbott and Costello"-like verbal exchange to stay legal.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 633
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 9:20 am: |
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Amazing how the pollworkers never compare the signatures, even though the signature comparison is the only I.D. required.
Or do they?
Do the scam organizers get copies of the legitimate signatures and get the van voters together to memorize their assigned voter names and practice forging their assigned signatures beforehand?
This is going on en masse, has been for years, and not a single signature has ever been challenged by a pollworker?
Not a single van voter has ever forgotten their assigned voter name or misspelled it when signing the voter rolls?
Nobody has ever managed to bust a class of van voters while they were practicing forging their assigned signatures?
Not a single pollworker has gone to the press or filed a lawsuit explaining that their training teaches them not to ask for I.D. except in the case of first-time voters, that the signature comparison is the only I.D., but they are instructed not to actually compare the signatures?
I find that incredible in every sense of the word. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3253
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 10:52 am: |
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They can't even (since the SURE system was implemented) see the signatures to compare them easily. They are next to each other in the pollbook, but by regulation they must be inverted to each other. (180 degrees rotated.) No decent side by side comparison is possible since SURE was implemented.
Even so, this scam RELIES on the existence "all of the same party, no outsiders" precinct poll boards. There simply are no "minority party" members or observers where the scam is worked. That amounts to many hundreds of Philly's 1681 polling sites. In 2008, when the minority party sent watchers to many new precincts, the precinct Judge simply refused to honor the watcher's paperwork.
The scammer's signature eventually BECOMES the fictitious voter's signature, through rescans which are done routinely whenever someone at the central office thinks a signature might not match well enough. The bad is just made good, digitally.
Challenges aren't done because there are no challengers present. The whole precinct board is in on the scam, and no one can get access to the pollbook later. The guy I work with said they even had red-haired freckled Irish guys voting obviously Hispanic surnames. It was all a big joke to them. There was no need to hide anything. The corruption was out front and brazen.
Misspellings have occurred, even BAD ones. They let it ride. Remember, EVERYONE who has access to the pollbook is a co-conspirator. If a whistleblower lands a spot in one of the precincts, they shut that one down and use another.
The scam even goes on in contested PRIMARIES. The city is racially not so homogenous. The whites run the scam to help white candidates, and the blacks do the same in their areas. Then they just work together in November.
This is why Philadelphia always has "turnouts" FAAAAAR above that of other cities, and somehow all that extra turnout just happens to happen in precincts that are 95%-5%-ish in registration.
By the way, THERE IS NO SUCH DISTINCTION AS "VOTER FRAUD" AND "ELECTION FRAUD" OR "RETAIL" AND "WHOLESALE". There's only ELECTION FRAUD, ......PERIOD!!!
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 635
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 1:32 pm: |
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Kurt writes: "Remember, EVERYONE who has access to the pollbook is a co-conspirator."
So elections officials don't have access to the pollbooks?
Or are you saying that ALL elections officials in Pennsylvania are corrupt co-conspirators?
Why do you think that all elections officials in Pennsylvania are corrupt, but no elections officials elsewhere are corrupt?
Kurt writes: "By the way, THERE IS NO SUCH DISTINCTION AS "VOTER FRAUD" AND "ELECTION FRAUD" OR "RETAIL" AND "WHOLESALE". There's only ELECTION FRAUD, ......PERIOD!!!"
Really? If that was so, why do you suppose that the Democratic and Republican parties spent so many years denying the possibility of wholesale election fraud, while insisting upon the existence of retail voter fraud? Is there a reason that they seem to see a difference where you insist that none exists?
Retail fraud is done one ballot at a time by individual voters.
Wholesale fraud is done by altering, tampering with, flipping, adding, or subtracting large quantities of ballots at once, either by elections officials or by machines programmed to do so.
Voters only have access to one ballot at a time, and there is a limit to how many times they can vote on election day even if there is absolutely nothing to prevent them from voting multiple times.
Elections officials have access to large quantities of ballots and also have access to the computer programs that can be programmed to count or miscount those ballots. In most cases, elections officials have UNSUPERVISED accesss to both the computer programs and to large quantities of ballots.
Since you have stated that you don't believe that wholesale election fraud has ever occurred, are you suggesting that all allegations of wholesale fraud are lies and that any fraud at all is due to retail voter fraud? If so, how can you say that a type of fraud, wholesale election fraud, which you claim HAS NEVER occurred, is the same as retail voter fraud which you DO believe has occurred? Can something which doesn't exist be the same as something which does?
Kurt writes, "If a whistleblower lands a spot in one of the precincts, they shut that one down and use another."
WHO are you saying shuts down precincts if a whistleblower lands a spot, Kurt? How do pollworkers know that somebody is a potential whistleblower BEFORE they have blown the whistle? Can the pollworkers shut down their own precincts or is that decision made by the elections officials who alone have that power and whose reputations you claim to be here on BBV to defend?
If you are claiming that ALL elections officials in Pennsylvania are corrupt co-conspirators, what is your basis for insisting that all other elections officials in the United States are honest and trustworthy?
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3254
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 5:34 am: |
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Mark,
You're far too ignorant of Pennsylvania procedure to even have a discussion with.
The person who decides to shut down the operation if there is a "new guy" in the precinct is the PARTY COMMITTEEMAN (or woman, as the case may be). He knows who is "supposed" to be there because he got them their jobs in the first place, and YES, THE VERY SAME POLLWORKERS WORK THE SAME PRECINCTS EVERY TIME, some for 30-40 years in a row! Only AFTER the Committeeman "trusts" the new guy can the scam be resumed.
"So elections officials don't have access to the pollbooks?"
No, routinely, absent a court order, they do not! The "election officials" at the central office do NOT have access to the pollbooks routinely. They are sealed once the barcodes next to the signatures are scanned, and that scanning is usually done by temps or floater workers who don't have the time or inclination to look into anything further than whether a signature is or is not there. There is no ability to sua sponte examine already scanned pollbooks, by ANYONE, election official, or member of the public at large. But again, a court can order an unsealing.
PSA Notice: This immolation of yet another Mark E. Smith strawman (Boy! They never do stop coming, do they?) has been brought to you by V. Kurt Bellman, who reminds you to please drive safely. Fallen leaves and wet roads make for difficult tire adhesion.
Back to our regular posting: Pennsylvania has a VERY STRICT system where all KINDS of things can be challenged or observed at the precinct while voting is going on, but very little to nothing later. And if the Committeeman's "stooge" prevents challengers from being allowed in, as happens often, there is NO oversight possible.
This is why I can almost hardly wait for some national campaign to try to roll into PA and pull a Ohio 2004 or Florida 2000. They'll be laughed out of the state! If they weren't in the polling sites on the Election Day itself, they're screwed. Issues are waived, baby! You have to be PROACTIVE if you think you want to challenge a PA election. REACTIVE doesn't work here. You need a FEDERAL court to open up a PA election to anything resembling scrutiny. (As many have discovered.)
"Well, we'll just see if Pennsylvania comes out close and we'll send our lawyers in to doublecheck everything." HAH! Not in THIS state, baby! You've got to be there ON Election Day, INSIDE 9000+ polling stations, and then you can watch the official tally done in 67 courthouses on the Friday next. Other than that, NADA!
"Elections officials have access to large quantities of ballots and also have access to the computer programs that can be programmed to count or miscount those ballots. In most cases, elections officials have UNSUPERVISED accesss to both the computer programs and to large quantities of ballots."
Nooooo, Mark. I served as an election director for four years and had NO access to the software, supervised or unsupervised, except with "user" rights, EVER!!!!! And paper ballots are all (except for a few overseas ballots) counted AT THE PRECINCT LEVEL. And the overseas ballots were counted and opened AT A PUBLIC MEETING, as are the provisionals under law. Go sell your fiction to Random House, okay?
(More straw set ablaze.) Get back fool, those embers are still hot!
The problem is, dearest Mr. Smith, that neither you, nor Brad Friedman, nor RFK, Jr., nor that BBC fellow, has the slightest damned idea what the devil you're talknig about. You make baseless allegations and resonate them among your poor deluded selves often enough that you believe your own lies. The "somebody" you heard it from was your own echo, sweetie. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)
What I am saying is that the so-called distinction between "wholesale" fraud and "retail" fraud is an artifice invented by the political far left to excuse the type they have been PROVEN to be quite good at. There is NO distinction in law. And what they call "retail" is done in massive numbers. Since you like analogs so much, let's call it "WalMart-scaled retail".
On Tuesday, there was a transit strike in Philly. HORRENDOUS traffic problems all day. Turnouts were held down compared to normal numbers. Voters had trouble voting before or after work due to nightmare commutes. Result? A near-Republican sweep of the statewide judgeships. 6 of 7 winners were Republicans. The Philly "machine" was not able to deliver their usual "numbers".
As I posted elsewhere, on Tuesday I WAS a poll watcher in my town for what passes for the Democratic "machine" (as if!) (both party operations are pretty much useless here) where I live. We did pretty darned well, locally. Lots of incumbents won, but not the Republican we had targeted. He lost 60-40.
Final Commercial Message: This post has been brought to you by the 'Radical Fringe Moderates' of Pennsylvania, electing people like Hugh Scott, John Heinz, Bob Casey, Arlen Specter and Tom Ridge since dirt was invented. Our motto is "Screw All The Extremists". (Okay, once in a while a Santorum or Wofford type sneaks through. We got snookered. It happens. Heck, those two ran against each other! Calm down, we took care of it.)
Now, am I too *issed off with Mr. Smith to any more have a civil discourse with him? Yeah, I guess for now I am. So sue me. In my personal opinion, he's a jerk, and someone with whom I have absolutely NO desire to share ANY space, cyber or otherwise. I may even avoid watching the Eagles vs. Chargers game based on a freakish random camera shot when on a cityscape.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 637
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 10:13 am: |
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Yes, I am ignorant of Pennsylvania procedure, Kurt, and I am grateful to you for enlightening not only me, but also all BBV readers.
Kurt writes: "The person who decides to shut down the operation if there is a "new guy" in the precinct is the PARTY COMMITTEEMAN (or woman, as the case may be). He knows who is "supposed" to be there because he got them their jobs in the first place...."
Got them their jobs? Is everyone who is in a position to hire a pollworker in Pennsylvania, a party committeeman? Or controlled by and a co-conspirator with the party committeeman?
Kurt writes, "....and YES, THE VERY SAME POLLWORKERS WORK THE SAME PRECINCTS EVERY TIME, some for 30-40 years in a row! Only AFTER the Committeeman "trusts" the new guy can the scam be resumed."
So they have had to shut down every precinct where a new person was hired during the past 30-40 years until they could trust the new guy?
Kurt writes, "On Tuesday, there was a transit strike in Philly. HORRENDOUS traffic problems all day. Turnouts were held down compared to normal numbers. Voters had trouble voting before or after work due to nightmare commutes. Result? A near-Republican sweep of the statewide judgeships. 6 of 7 winners were Republicans. The Philly "machine" was not able to deliver their usual 'numbers'."
So it is Democratic Party committeemen running the scam and due to the transit strike it didn't work this time? Democrats are the ones who are able to get jobs for corrupt pollworkers and shut down precincts where anyone happens to have been hired without their authorization and who they don't trust, and thus keep Republicans from winning?
And yet Kurt writes, "As I posted elsewhere, on Tuesday I WAS a poll watcher in my town for what passes for the Democratic "machine" (as if!) (both party operations are pretty much useless here) where I live."
So this Democratic Party machine that has gotten jobs for ALL the pollworkers (ALL pollworkers have access to the pollbooks and are therefore, according to Kurt, ALL pollworkers are co-conspirators) for the past 30 to 40 years, and which can shut down precincts if a non-trusted person somehow happens to have been hired without their authorization, is "useless?"
But you don't think that any funny stuff went on in states where the top elections official was also the chair of the Bush campaign, as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004?
Did your group of "Radical Fringe Moderates" somehow also arrange transit strikes in order to thwart the "useless" Democratic political party machine that controls ALL pollworkers, in order to get Republican Tom Ridge elected?
Ridge may be a moderate in your book, but Wikipedia says, "The Governor nominated Dr. Peter J. Jannetta to be his secretary of health. Dr. Jannetta was known to the governor to have testified perjuriously in Court, the Pennsylvania Superior Court stating, "We have little difficulty in concluding that Dr. Jannetta's testimony at deposition was different than, or inconsistent with, the testimony at trial." Levy v Jannetta, CCP Allegheny County, GD 81-7689; appeal -J. A370017/92 Levy v Jannetta et al., No. 00150 Pittsburgh, 1992. settled, 1995." Dr. Jannetta served as Governor Ridge's health secretary for 6 months." Is hiring a known perjurer your idea of a moderate?
Arlen Spector, like yourself, has been both a Democrat and a Republican. He authored or co-authored, according to Wikipedia, the magic bullet theory while working for the Warren Commission "investigating" the JFK assassination, which was crucial to the ability of the Commission to deny that there was more than one shooter, something that a subsequent investigation has disproved. I don't think that inventing an implausible magic bullet in order to cover up the truth about a bloody coup that assassinated an American President is something that a moderate would do.
Wikipedia cites only one quote from Hugh Scott, which was after the U-2 incident, "A memorable quote from Hugh Scott came during the U-2 Incident in 1960, when Senator Scott said that 'We have violated the eleventh Commandment — Thou Shall Not Get Caught.'" That doesn't sound to me like something a moderate would believe or say.
With regard to Bob Casey, Wikipedia says, "Casey was only one of 7 Senators to vote against a measure that would have blocked federal funds to ACORN, a group that has 'come under fire after hidden-camera videos show ACORN workers in Baltimore giving financial advice to individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute; they were actually conservative activists.'" Casey appears to side with ACORN on many issues and does seem to be a moderate. If there is anyone at all in Pennsylvania who was elected due to "Wal-Mart scale" voter fraud by ACORN and co-conspirators (including ALL pollworkers and ALL those who hire pollworkers), I think it would most likely be the Senator who didn't vote to defund ACORN.
There are more Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. Therefore it is likely that more people vote for Democrats than Republicans. So there are only two ways, other than wholesale insider fraud, for a Republican to win, and those are to run a Republican who is more moderate than the Democratic candidates, or to find a way to keep people from voting. Insider wholesale fraud can flip the votes from a Democrat to a Republican, but it won't seem plausible.
Implausible results don't matter, as they are still the official results and there is no way to verify or challenge them. But those with the ability to commit wholesale election fraud don't want people questioning or trying to verify the fraudulent results, so they try to shift attention to voter fraud. One would think that an organization like ACORN which seems to think that votes count, would operate in areas that DON'T already have overwhelming numbers of people who vote for the issues they are concerned with.
There is no straw man, Kurt. You are alleging, if I understand you correctly, a massive voter fraud conspiracy by ACORN and co-conspirators. You are alleging that unlike you, most elections officials, who you claim tend to be both partisan and conservative, don't reject fraudulent voter registrations and simply enter them into the voter rolls. You are alleging that ACORN then gets vans to carry hordes of these fraudulent voters to the polls and that their co-conspirators, the pollworkers, allow them to vote. You are also alleging that in addition to the fraudulent registrations, ACORN assigns people to vote fraudulently under the names of people who aren't likely to vote, coaches those people to memorize the names of the legitimate voters they're pretending to be, and that pollworkers couldn't check the signatures if they wanted to. And that your conspiracy theory, rather than the fact that there are more poor people than rich people in Pennsylvania, explains why candidates who pretend to care about poor people are more likely to get elected in Pennsylvania, unless there is a transit strike and only rich people who aren't dependent upon public transit or vans, can get to the polls.
When there are serious questions about an election, or otherwise inexplicable election results, it is quite possible that there is a conspiracy.
When there are no serious questions about an election and no otherwise inexplicable election results (i.e., the majority wins), conspiracy theories tend to sound both partisan and paranoid.
Kurt writes, "Okay, once in a while a Santorum or Wofford type sneaks through. We got snookered. It happens. Heck, those two ran against each other! Calm down, we took care of it."
So it is your group of "Radical Fringe Moderates" who control elections, not the voters? Would this group be what you call PLUs (People Like Us), that is, people who work within the elections office or work for political parties and who tend to be partisan and conservative? And your group takes credit for electing one of only seven Senators who voted against defunding ACORN?
Maybe you're a "Radical Fringe Moderate," Kurt. Or maybe you're a bureaucrat who just does his job and follows orders, no matter how ethical or unethical that job and those orders may be, and then spends inordinate amounts of time trying to justify things that don't make sense
Of course you're angry with me and have to resort to more name-calling. Here you are defending the reputations of elections officials by crediting them as running or being co-conspirators in a massive voter fraud conspiracy theory, and here I am pointing out that your theory doesn't make sense. But if it was your group rather than the voters or ACORN who got Bob Casey elected, then congratulations. Whether it was deliberate or accidental, you elected one of only seven Senators who refused to vote for an unconstitutional bill of attainder.
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3258
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 10:30 am: |
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"Got them their jobs? Is everyone who is in a position to hire a pollworker in Pennsylvania, a party committeeman? Or controlled by and a co-conspirator with the party committeeman?"
In Pennsylvania generally speaking, no. In several counties within Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia (and Bucks, a Republican patronage haven), yes. In many counties WITHOUT a strong party apparatus, it's like pulling teeth to get ANY pollworkers. In "machine" counties, it seems to be a breeze.
These types of scams are enabled by "single party with no minority party representation or observers" situations which ABOUND in Pennsylvania. Where there is rough parity, and plenty of R's and D's, it can't work and it doesn't work there.
"So they have had to shut down every precinct where a new person was hired during the past 30-40 years until they could trust the new guy?"
Yes, the Committeeman has to shut down the van voter scam until and unless he can "cleanse" his precinct of a non-trusted outsider. It temporarily reverts to a "normal" precinct. Keep in mind, in Pennsylvania, the VAST majority of pollworkers are not even "hired". They are elected by the voters of the precinct in a fully normal election. In most "nearly single party" precincts there are no "minority party" candidates and the vacancy is filled by yet another member of the majority party.
"So it is Democratic Party committeemen running the scam and due to the transit strike it didn't work this time? Democrats are the ones who are able to get jobs for corrupt pollworkers and shut down precincts where anyone happens to have been hired without their authorization and who they don't trust, and thus keep Republicans from winning?"
Due to the transit strike, two factors were present. "Normal real" voter turnout (the type you really can't ghost-vote for, because they DO normally vote) in Philly was WAAAY down due to a traffic crush. The news media reported on high numbers of voters stuck in commuting traffic. Again, traffic eliminated SOME precincts from the van scam becuase it took so long to get from precinct to precinct. Third factor. The highest profile contest on the ballot in Philly was District Attorney. Not going to drag many marginal voters out.
"So this Democratic Party machine that has gotten jobs for ALL the pollworkers (ALL pollworkers have access to the pollbooks and are therefore, according to Kurt, ALL pollworkers are co-conspirators) for the past 30 to 40 years, and which can shut down precincts if a non-trusted person somehow happens to have been hired without their authorization, is "useless?"
The KEY DIFFERENCE, (DO try to remain lucid here, Mark) is the difference between a place WITH effective machine politics (e.g. Philadelphia), and a place with a nearly complete lack thereof (e.g. Berks County).
"But you don't think that any funny stuff went on in states where the top elections official was also the chair of the Bush campaign, as in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004? "
So what, Mark? The head of initially Hillary's campaign (primary) and later Obama's here was the Governor who has immediate hiring and firing power over OUR top state elections official. Your point is??? Our Governor unilaterally extended our petition deadline last winter because (my theory) too many if Hillary Clinton's convention delegate candidates failed to get their paperwork filed on time. He said it was due to a snowstorm, which was actually flurries.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 638
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 10:47 am: |
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Interesting that a "useless" political party machine can shut down the ACORN van voter scam. So ACORN is totally controlled by the Democratic Party?
Why hasn't the Democratic Party managed to stop ACORN from pushing for single-payer health care? Can't they just shut them down at will?
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Before you accept the veracity of any "election," find out if the electoral process is controlled by the voters or by a small group of "Radical Fringe Moderates" who do the actual "electing" and "take care of" any results they didn't control. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3259
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 10:56 am: |
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"Interesting that a "useless" political party machine can shut down the ACORN van voter scam. So ACORN is controlled by the Democratic Party?"
No, the van scam FAAAAR predates ACORN's existence. They merely provided more "foot soldiers" to enable it than ever existed before.
Oh, by the way, the answer to your question above is "Yes, one PORTION of the Democratic Party and ACORN are in TOTAL collusion. Yes, indeed."
We have three "quasi-parties" that remain semi-viable statewide - moderate Democrats, leftist Democrats, and Republicans. There are a few regions with SOME moderate Republicans, but they seem to be a dying breed.
"Why hasn't the Democratic Party managed to stop ACORN from pushing for single-payer health care? Can't they just shut them down at will?"
Damned if I know the answer to that one. I back single-payer, too. It's one of a few issues on which ACORN and I are in complete agreement. (The other one off the top of my head is the need for an AGGRESSIVE multi-lingual "participate in Census 2010" campaign in the inner cities.)
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Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3260
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:06 am: |
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"So it is your group of "Radical Fringe Moderates" who control elections, not the voters?"
Speaking of Pennsylvania specifically and when taken as a WHOLE STATE in a macro basis, not local concentrations, "Radical Fringe Moderates" and "the voters" are interchangeable terms for the same set of people.
By the way, where DID you learn that skill of attributing things people never said to them by twisting the context out of all recognition?? You're not an attorney are you?
I'll be a sunuvabitch if you can't twist truth into a lie better than anyone I ever met.
I may be a smartassed loudmouth, but you, sir, are just a fundamentally deceitful dishonest SOB, aren't you? Your momma would be so proud.
By the way, jackass, the Bob Casey I was referring to was the current Senator's father, the former Governor, and Presiding Officer of the 1968 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. Bob Casey, Jr.'s days in the Senate are numbered. (Merely a prediction.) He's taking potshots from LOTS of Democrats in our state for the ACORN vote. I believe he will come to so regret that ACORN vote that he may be forced to do a public mea culpa.
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Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 639
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:43 am: |
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If you REALLY believe that I'm dishonest, Kurt, and you aren't just name-calling, please point to something I said that you consider to be dishonest. And if you REALLY believe that I've misattributed your words or twisted them out of all recognition, please point to a specific example. Name-calling for the sake of name-calling, and making unfounded allegations just because you don't like me, doesn't further productive discussions.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not a name-calling loudmouth either. And I DO know how to use a dictionary. I also know how to think logically and to make reasonable arguments without name-calling. It isn't dishonest to point out the dictionary meaning of words that you use incorrectly, or to questions statements that don't make sense.
Since one of the reasons you stated for finding me not credible, Kurt, is that I had described myself as a radical, using the word to describe yourself should lower your own credibility in your eyes.
A fringe group is not a majority.
The word moderates is the ONLY word in there that is applicable to a majority of voters.
So ACORN is dangerous because it is in collusion with and provides more foot soldiers for the Democratic Party?
But the van scam started before ACORN? It was the Democratic Party that was fradulently registering voters, coaching teams of fraudulent voters, and driving teams of fraudulent voters from one polling place to another before ACORN came along to help them out?
Defunding, destroying, or otherwise eliminating ACORN wouldn't solve the problem, then? In order to eliminate voter fraud, we'd have to eliminate the Democratic Party?
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3261
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:51 am: |
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"But the van scam started before ACORN? It was the Democratic Party that was fradulently registering voters, coaching teams of fraudulent voters, and driving teams of fraudulent voters from one polling place to another before ACORN came along to help them out?"
Yes, and I never indicated otherwise. (Example 1 of dishonesty on your part.) ACORN's activities help to further ENABLE the van scam by creating more bogus registrations to use, BUT YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT BECAUSE BOTH BEV AND I HAVE PREVIOUSLY POINTED THIS OUT. (Example 2)
You have ALSO intentionally misstated my points re: machine vs. non-machine (POLITICAL machines, not voting) regions in order to distort my statements (Example 3). You do this sort of thing on a REGULAR and ONGOING basis. It is a creepy-assed thing to do and you KNOW DAMNED WELL it is dishonest. Yet you persist in doing it gratuitously month after month after month.
By the way, I am TOLD by oldtimers that Philly USED TO BE (back in the 40's and 50's) a "Republican town", and the Democrats of today learned all their techniques from the Republicans of that day, and that there's NEVER been a time when Philly politics was ever "clean". It's like Tammany Hall never ended down there. It went from being a corrupt "company town" to being a corrupt "union town" in a few short years.
Our 1937-created Election Code was created SPECIFICALLY because HCPB elections had become UTTERLY corrupted in Pennsylvania, not just in Philly, but in Allentown, Erie, Scranton, Reading, Johnstown, the coal regions of Pottsville area (once an NFL franchise town) etc. too. Voting machines were brought in in 1937 to "clean them up".
The term 'Radical Fringe Moderate' is a frickin' JOKE, for crissakes. Are you STUPID, too???!?!? You at least have ZERO appreciation for irony. Look up "irony". It says "see 'irony'". (Yet more humor the humorless troll will miss.)
What drives BOTH state party organizations CRAZY in this state is that NEITHER OF THEM has real power. The moderates and independents "own" this state politically, even though rather few people are actually registered that way. (We have a closed primary system that discourages independent and 3rd party registrations.)
So we have regions in our state that have VERY persistent party patterns, but taken as a whole, we are a swing state. We have MANY Democrats WELL to the right of MANY Republicans (a trend that IS lessening in recent years - places where conservative Democrats reign are trending Republican lately, and ditto for liberal Republican areas trending more Democrat lately.). Moderates still "own" this state, as a whole, and probably will for a VERY long time. Neither party particularly "likes" us moderates. We really *iss both parties off quite a bit. But in the end, the only way you can win in this state statewide is to paint yourself as more moderate than the other guy, except in rare circumstances like the Bush meltdown.
But the way LOCAL potentates win favor with their party is "delivering our vote", sometimes honestly, sometimes not so honestly. But that doesn't implicate county election personnel, who actually deserve GREAT credit for (mostly) RESISTING the efforts of the corrupt individuals that frequently surround them on all sides. They do this because if they're dirty, while they MAY be attempted to be protected by corrupt pols, if they slip up, they're going to jail for a LONNNNG time. The penalties are harsh enough in this state to make it not worth the risk.
And the prosecutions here are REAL. No "wrist slaps" or "oh well" here. We're talking major grade felonies. People go to prison if they screw around with elections in this state.
But there ARE some remaining open corruption vectors which are VERY low risk, like ghost-voting in nearly single party precincts, which are FAR too common in some key areas. And each bogus registration an ACORN creates opens that vector wider and wider.
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Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 3262
Registered: 4-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 12:55 pm: |
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I must give ACORN credit for doing something VERY right in Pennsylvania.
As a method of avoiding criminal prosecution in Pittsburgh AS AN ORGANIZATION (they still have thrown 6 employees under the bus), they have reached a settlement with the Allegheny County D.A. whereby he will not charge the ORGANIZATION, PER SE, under the statute, while ACORN litigates the constiutionality of that statute in federal court.
That is the PROPER way to handle these kinds of issues. It allows the D.A. to NOT expend scarce prosecutorial resources prosecuting under a statute that is under federal court review. Implicit in this arrangement is the fact that if ACORN loses in federal court, they will no longer have ANY excuse for violating the statutes involved in this state.
BRAVOS to all involved. Maybe the smarts of their old attorney, B. H. Obama, Attorney at Law, are paying dividends.
==========================================
Before you question the veracity of any election, please self-examine to see if perhaps you haven't fallen prey to the all too common problem of the famous "I don't see how Nixon won..." phenomenon. Not everyone is Gore Vidal, or one of his friends, after all.
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Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 640
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 6, 2009 - 2:07 pm: |
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Kurt writes: "What drives BOTH state party organizations CRAZY in this state is that NEITHER OF THEM has real power. The moderates and independents 'own' this state politically, even though rather few people are actually registered that way. (We have a closed primary system that discourages independent and 3rd party registrations.)"
So the power to control ALL pollworkers isn't controlling ALL the power?
Independent and 3rd party registrations and candidates are discouraged everywhere in the country. That's why half the electorate doesn't both to vote, because nobody on the ballot with any chance of winning would represent their interests.
Factually, the Democratic and Republican parties control ALL the power in Pennsylvania and almost everywhere else in the U.S. Half the electorate doesn't bother to vote because of that, and of the other half, the half that DOES vote, many are voting "lesser evil," that is trying to select which of the candidates who won't represent them, might do them a tad less harm. Due to political party control, voters don't have the option of voting for candidates who would represent their interests (although some do cast protest or throw-away votes to indicate their awareness of the problem).
I think it is sensible of the DA not to prosecute under a statute that might not be constitutional. Perhaps if the DA loses in court, that office will have no further excuse to waste scarce prosecutorial resources trying to destroy the Democratic Party. Apart from hiring, appointing, and protecting Republicans from prosecution, adhering to and expanding upon what they used to call the Republican agenda, the Democratic Party has not distinguished itself from the Republican Party. Both parties are what the late Walter Karp called, in his book of the same name, Indispensable Enemies, and their staged differences are nothing more than an attempt to convince voters that it is worth voting for a barely perceptible lesser evil in an unverifiable system where there is no accountability.
Most people in the U.S. really are moderates, and most voters would probably like to be moderates if they were given the opportunity. But there is nothing moderate about wars of aggression or giving away trillions of dollars with no oversight whatsoever, and neither party has shown an inclination towards moderation.
Ghost-voting in nearly single-party precincts that are totally controlled by that single party, could only, at best, give the preordained winner a wider margin of victory. Since we have a winner take all system, ghost-voting orchestrated by the party in control of a nearly single party precinct could in no way alter the results of a local, state, or federal election.
It is when the results of an election in a nearly single party precinct indicate that voters voted differently from the way that they have always voted before and since, meaning that they did not vote for the single party in total control of that precinct, that there is a reason to suspect that the votes were not counted accurately. |
Mark E. Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mymarkx
Post Number: 641
Registered: 7-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 7, 2009 - 12:39 am: |
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I guess I should go back and reread your earlier comments more often, as you seem to have a habit of editing them to include more personal attacks.
Kurt (on edit) wrote, "By the way, jackass...."
I'm surprised that you haven't already spoken to me the way Dick Cheney spoke to Senator Leahey. Maybe there are some foul-mouthed personal attacks that even Bev draws the line at despite valuing a forum member who is incapable of treating others with a minimum of civility. I just checked the rules, and there is no policy against name-calling. While it does say to focus on issues rather than personalities, there are some issues that have no logical or reasonable basis and require name-calling because there is no other way to defend them.
If anyone is going to have to do some mea culpas, it is far more likely to be the foul-mouthed, name-calling, immoral, unethical, self-seeking, politicians and their corrupt lackeys and henchmen, than populist groups like ACORN serving decent working class Americans. Casey is not going to have to apologize for not voting for an unconstitutional bill of attainder, it is those who voted for it who will have to apologize. But that's only when they get through apologizing for voting for torture, crimes against humanity, giving taxpayer money to wealthy cronies with no oversight whatsoever, representing the interests of their corporate donors instead of the interests of their constituents, and everything else they are likely to be held accountable for once the dollar crashes and they can no longer pay their "security" forces to suppress civil dissent. Even private military corporations will have to bring in foreign mercenaries when their American assassins refuse to kill their own families, and there are many Americans with guns who won't like seeing their neighbors killed by foreign mercenaries, not to mention that foreign mercenaries aren't likely to want to be paid in a worthless currency.
And just to reiterate, the ghost-voting that you're so worried might "open corruption vectors," is only possible in precincts such as you describe where ALL the pollworkers are already corrupt co-conspirators, i.e., what you called "nearly single-party precincts" where the party in control is already guaranteed to get nearly all the votes and can derive no possible benefit from driving vanloads of fraudulent voters around to improve their already overwhelming margin of victory by a completely unnecessary fraction. |
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