Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

As a palate cleanser, here's a reminder of what politics in America used to look like.

 

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

With respect, politics in America has been going downhill for at least 50 years. Once the oligarchy got enough control, all bets were off.

[archer]

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-08-19/new-election-ordered-in-race-marred-by-voter-fraud-charges

 

Mail-in election fraud in New Jersey.

 

800 ballots were found in one of the city's maildrop boxes, all apparently for the winner of a Patterson, NJ city council race. Other ballots for that candidate were found bundled together in the mail in a nearby city. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885074932/n-j-election-fraud-case-draws-a-trump-tweet-but-suggests-safeguards-are-working 

 

Those ballots just happened to be the edge which put that candidate over the top.

 

Another 2300 ballots were disqualified because of signature mismatch.

 

The bundled ballots plus the signature mismatch ballots equaled 19% of the total number of ballots which were returned. https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2020/05/20/paterson-nj-election-officials-disqualify-19-percent-votes-cast/5233032002/

 

 

The suspects are 4 people...who scheming among themselves apparently managed to vote a significant percentage of the total number of ballots cast in a city of 150,000 people. 

 

A judge is throwing out the results of the original election and is requiring a new election for the seat.

 

If the people trying to commit the fraud had been so minimally clever as to put the ballots into the mailbox over a number of days and/or splitting them between a number of different mailboxes, they wouldn't have gotten caught.

 

Thank your favorite deity figure for dumb criminals.

 

 

[archer]

3 minutes ago, archer said:

,.,.

 

 

[Starlord]

Mitch McConnell says the election will occur safely and credibly

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, archer said:

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-08-19/new-election-ordered-in-race-marred-by-voter-fraud-charges

 

Mail-in election fraud in New Jersey.

 

800 ballots were found in one of the city's maildrop boxes, all apparently for the winner of a Patterson, NJ city council race. Other ballots for that candidate were found bundled together in the mail in a nearby city. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885074932/n-j-election-fraud-case-draws-a-trump-tweet-but-suggests-safeguards-are-working 

 

Those ballots just happened to be the edge which put that candidate over the top.

 

Another 2300 ballots were disqualified because of signature mismatch.

 

The bundled ballots plus the signature mismatch ballots equaled 19% of the total number of ballots which were returned. https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/paterson-press/2020/05/20/paterson-nj-election-officials-disqualify-19-percent-votes-cast/5233032002/

 

 

The suspects are 4 people...who scheming among themselves apparently managed to vote a significant percentage of the total number of ballots cast in a city of 150,000 people. 

 

A judge is throwing out the results of the original election and is requiring a new election for the seat.

 

If the people trying to commit the fraud had been so minimally clever as to put the ballots into the mailbox over a number of days and/or splitting them between a number of different mailboxes, they wouldn't have gotten caught.

 

Thank your favorite deity figure for dumb criminals.

 

 

 

As that story and your own comment points out, signatures on mail-in ballots are compared to those on record; someone who bears more than three ballots for others than himself raises alarms, particularly if it's a candidate; and voter registrations for people not eligible to vote are also checked. It wouldn't be that simple to avoid being caught. And this was for an election in a city of 150,000. Fraud using this technique to influence the outcome of an election as massive as the American presidential one would be logistically impossible.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

As that story and your own comment points out, signatures on mail-in ballots are compared to those on record; someone who bears more than three ballots for others than himself raises alarms, particularly if it's a candidate; and voter registrations for people not eligible to vote are also checked. It wouldn't be that simple to avoid being caught. And this was for an election in a city of 150,000. Fraud using this technique to influence the outcome of an election as massive as the American presidential one would be logistically impossible.

Would it? You’d really only have to get away with ballot stuffing in a few key counties in certain battleground states. If you have a crony running the Post Office it’d be even easier. 

[archer]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

As that story and your own comment points out, signatures on mail-in ballots are compared to those on record; someone who bears more than three ballots for others than himself raises alarms, particularly if it's a candidate; and voter registrations for people not eligible to vote are also checked. It wouldn't be that simple to avoid being caught. And this was for an election in a city of 150,000. Fraud using this technique to influence the outcome of an election as massive as the American presidential one would be logistically impossible.

 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any news reports discussing the 800 bundled ballots.

 

Yes, the 2300 with mismatched signatures were caught.

 

We don't know whether any of the 800 others had mismatched signatures or not. In an earlier discussion, I pointed out a very easy way to collect and open legit ballots and for someone wanting to defraud an election to mark downballot races which the voter hadn't bothered to mark (such as this city council race).

 

Heck, we don't even know if the bundle-frauders only bundled 800 ballots or whether there was a lot more. They could have systematically frauded their way through the whole mail-in voting season by distributing the ballots evenly enough that the fraud wasn't detected, then panicked when running out of time and dumped in their remaining ballots into one mailbox at the end hoping that the last ones made it through in time to be counted.

 

None of the news reports I could find were detailed enough about the contents of the 800 ballots or about the timing of when they were found in the mailbrop boxes to be able to draw any firm conclusions.

 

We can hope that all of the fraudulent ballots were caught. But that's all that it is: a hope.

 

California's mail-in primary election had problems, there's the MIT study about the problems of New York's mail-in primary, and now there's a story about an active organized attempt for mail-in fraud in New Jersey which was bad enough to cause a new election to be held. Obviously the judge in the New Jersey case doesn't have confidence that they caught all the fraudulent ballots or he wouldn't be compelling the city to hold a new election.

 

The situation just doesn't fill my heart with warm feelings, particularly with a president who has shown a willingness to cheat his way into victory and to contest any election results which he doesn't like.

[archer]

49 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Would it? You’d really only have to get away with ballot stuffing in a few key counties in certain battleground states. If you have a crony running the Post Office it’d be even easier. 

 

Or cronies in the office which count the ballots and whose task is to weed out the ballots which look suspicious.

 

You see the ballot's signature at the same time that you have access to be able to see the votes on that ballot. If someone was determined to sway the election, he could be really strict on the ballots which voted against his favorite party and not suspicious at all about the ballots which were voted "correctly".

[archer]

13 minutes ago, archer said:

,.,.,

 

[csyphrett]

Steve Bannon got picked up for mail fraud. Bolo posted a link to ABC on the other news thread, and this is one from Fortune. This is a page on google search

CES 

https://fortune.com/2020/08/20/steve-bannon-arrested-indictment-fraud-details-charges-us-postal-inspection-service-usps-we-build-the-wall/

[archer]

1 minute ago, csyphrett said:

Steve Bannon got picked up for mail fraud. Bolo posted a link to ABC on the other news thread, and this is one from Fortune. This is a page on google search

CES 

https://fortune.com/2020/08/20/steve-bannon-arrested-indictment-fraud-details-charges-us-postal-inspection-service-usps-we-build-the-wall/

 

The sad thing is that they probably could have been honest with the donors that they were going to pay the organization's officers and have collected the same amount of donations.

 

It's like these Alt-Right people have a compulsion to be dishonest, even when it's unnecessary.

[Cygnia]

USPS Headquarters Tells Managers Not to Reconnect Mail Sorting Machines, Emails Show

[csyphrett]

33 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

USPS Headquarters Tells Managers Not to Reconnect Mail Sorting Machines, Emails Show

Dejoy must love all the extra company showing up at his house.

CES 

[Old Man]

Postal delays cause newly hatched chicks sent through the mail to arrive dead

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Old Man said:

Would it? You’d really only have to get away with ballot stuffing in a few key counties in certain battleground states. If you have a crony running the Post Office it’d be even easier. 

 

For the coordination of the number of cronies needed to identify the key counties in multiple states, stuff the ballots, and obscure the ballot stuffing from detection, we're getting into Deep State territory. I don't think that's a line of speculation that should be fertilized further, by adherents to either side.

[archer]

18 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

For the coordination of the number of cronies needed to identify the key counties in multiple states, stuff the ballots, and obscure the ballot stuffing from detection, we're getting into Deep State territory. I don't think that's a line of speculation that should be fertilized further, by adherents to either side.

 

You're assuming coordination.

[Cygnia]

How Men’s Rights Groups Helped Rewrite Regulations on Campus Rape

[Lord Liaden]

9 hours ago, archer said:

 

You're assuming coordination.

Yes. Necessarily.

[megaplayboy]

Joe Biden put a few nails in the coffin of the "Joe is senile" argument last night.  

[Starlord]

Not for me.  I'll still be waiting for the debate when he has to think on his feet, not read a well-written, well-rehearsed speech.  Though, I'll still be voting for him regardless.

[megaplayboy]

29 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Not for me.  I'll still be waiting for the debate when he has to think on his feet, not read a well-written, well-rehearsed speech.  Though, I'll still be voting for him regardless.

Senile people can't be "well-rehearsed" and they can't hit all the nonverbal "marks" for a speech like that.  

I think he will handle Trump in short order at the debates.  In fact, he may do so well, and Trump so poorly, in the first debate, that there may not be a 2nd or 3rd debate.

[Tom Cowan]

31 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Not for me.  I'll still be waiting for the debate when he has to think on his feet, not read a well-written, well-rehearsed speech.  Though, I'll still be voting for him regardless.

Well, Joe can read, that has to be a step up

[Starlord]

23 minutes ago, megaplayboy said:

Senile people can't be "well-rehearsed" and they can't hit all the nonverbal "marks" for a speech like that.  

I think he will handle Trump in short order at the debates.  In fact, he may do so well, and Trump so poorly, in the first debate, that there may not be a 2nd or 3rd debate.

 

Obviously, he has not settled into 'true senility', or 'Alzheimer's'/'Dementia'.  This is hyperbole.  I won't comment any further on my view of his mental capabilities as I've already been given a moderator warning on the subject.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

Joe Biden put a few nails in the coffin of the "Joe is senile" argument last night.  

 

But I fear he'll be hobbled by the DNC adopting a ban on assault weapons as part of their platform. The party chose Biden in part to lure moderate Republicans, but a move like this could very well scare some of them back toward Trump. Americans who want such a ban were almost certain to vote Democrat anyway.