rigorousintuition.ca

Morty » Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:13 pm wrote:Maybe a nation of 300+ million people is simply incapable of holding fair elections? Maybe once you get that many people, you can't control what goes on and no group large enough or strong enough is capable of being formed to redress the irregularities?

Morty » Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:13 pm wrote:Maybe the ethos in the USA is too anti-government for fair elections to be possible? Where I'm from, having a stated political persuasion one way or another is a serious hindrance/disqualifies you from becoming a judge of any sort. This in order to maintain at least the pretense of a lack of bias in decision making. In the USA, having a political persuasion seems to be a prerequisite to becoming a judge. How can you have an uncorrupted society when even your judiciary doesn't have a long-standing culture of attempting to arrive at decisions in an unbiased, non-partisan manner?

The tragedy isn't that the Republicans are going to be able to stack the supreme court with conservative judges for the next generation, the tragedy is that the US has a system where benches are able to be stacked with partisan judges in the first place.

So yeah, same thing will be happening in 4 years time no doubt.

stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Dec 30, 2016 6:21 am wrote: Morty, what country are you from? I might consider moving there in the future if the creeping fascism in the USA becomes more intense and entrenched. I'm kidding. I think.

Seriously, as far as judicial impartiality goes, while I do think that the partisan and ideological aspects have debased that branch of our government to the point I think lifetime appointments should be abolished, there is a deeper problem that goes beyond partisan or ideological concerns to the real tragedy: our judiciary is stacked to reflect the concerns of private corporate interests frequently at odds with public interests.

Perhaps this has been endemic within our culture since its inception, but on a judiciary level I believe it has been entrenched since at least 1886 when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people. And it continues regardless of who is President, Obama's selections were really no better than Bush or any other Republican where vested interests are concerned. As long as civilization continues to have an economic and monetary system predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet, this is the fate we're stuck with. And when I write we're stuck with, I am not limiting that to the citizens of the USA; globalization will see that once the limits of that unsustainable system have been reached, anyone stuck in the so-called 'civilized world' will be affected.

https://www.votingjustice.us/pa_recount ... everywhere

http://www.votingjustice.us

PA Recount Settlement a Victory for Voters Everywhere

Posted by Robert Blackmon
on November 28, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2018

Stein Recount 2016

Contact: Dave Schwab, schwab@jill2016.com 518-610-2708

Historic PA recount settlement is a victory for voters everywhere - Jill Stein.

Today, Green Party 2016 Presidential nominee Jill Stein announced the formal settlement of her 2016 lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania. The lawsuit called for an end to the use of paperless voting machines known to be vulnerable to hacking, tampering and error, and for the reform of unworkable recount procedures that prevent verification of the vote. The settlement guarantees that Pennsylvania will provide new voting systems using paper ballots by 2020, followed in 2022 by automatic robust audits after every election to confirm the accuracy of the vote before results are certified.

Stein declared, “This is a critical victory for everyone concerned with the integrity of our elections. We congratulate the state of Pennsylvania for raising the bar not only for Pennsylvanians, but for voters everywhere. By agreeing to end the use of paperless voting machines, Pennsylvania is not only safeguarding its citizens’ right to vote. By example, the agreement is also a big step towards the retirement of paperless voting machines that one in four voters across the nation are still required to use, despite their demonstrated vulnerability to hacking, tampering, and error. Automatic robust audits provide an essential safeguard by cross-checking paper ballots against machine totals using hand counts and the human eye to make sure every election is verified before the results are official. These two reforms are a first step to restoring confidence in our broken elections.”

Read the Settlement Agreement

“With this settlement, Pennsylvania will go from an election integrity backwater to a national leader,” said Ilann M. Maazel, of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, counsel for the plaintiffs. “We will be watching closely to ensure Pennsylvania implements every one of these important election reforms.”

In 2016, Jill Stein’s presidential campaign conducted a multi-state recount campaign in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania on behalf of thousands of concerned voters across the nation. Powered by over 10,000 volunteers and 161,000 donors contributing an average of $45 per person, the recounts of 2016 brought into the national spotlight the urgent call for elections we can trust, that are accurate, secure and just, and free from Jim Crow voter suppression.

In Pennsylvania, thousands of voters calling for a recount were thwarted by a bureaucratic nightmare of vague, obstructive rules requiring at least three voters in each of over 9,000 precincts to file notarized requests by undefined deadlines at unknown locations - all of which was required within days following the election. After multiple attempts to compel a statewide recount were blocked, Jill Stein and five citizen plaintiffs challenged the state's reliance on paperless voting machines and its dysfunctional procedure for recounts in federal court.

In addition to paper ballots and automatic audits, the settlement reached today allows Jill Stein and fellow plaintiffs to designate observers to ensure that the state carries out its commitments in full. Today’s agreement builds on the state of Pennsylvania’s statement in February 2018 requiring voting machines with a paper trail by the 2020 elections - an apparent concession announced the very day of a court-imposed deadline for the state to respond to the recount lawsuit. Today’s agreement goes further by replacing the requirement for a paper trail with a paper ballot specifically - a far more secure, reliable and enduring record of the actual vote cast. Furthermore, the court will retain jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement. The state has also agreed to pay $150,000 in attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs.

The Stein campaign is still in court in Wisconsin, where they have established the right to examine key voting machine software for evidence of tampering or errors that could compromise an election. The Stein campaign is still fighting a gag rule sought by voting machine corporations to prevent any public disclosure of the findings, a move that could bury discoveries critical to the security and accuracy of our elections.

The Stein campaign has committed to distributing any recount money left over - after recount-related litigation is completed - to election protection / voting justice organizations that will be chosen by the recount donors.

Stein observed, “The continuing controversies, uncertainties and injustices of the 2018 midterm elections, including the epidemic of voter suppression, illustrate the ongoing crisis of our elections. This includes many instances of machine malfunction reported in New York, California and Arizona and vote flipping observed in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and Illinois. These problems underscore the importance of the solutions provided in today’s settlement - paper ballots and automatic robust audits - which together ensure that any errors in the count will be detected and corrected.”

“To provide an overarching framework for restoring trust in our elections, the Stein campaign and the 2016 recount team have called for a nonpartisan Citizen Commission for Election Protection & Voting Justice to push for urgently needed follow-on reforms - including an end to voter suppression, gerrymandering and barriers to voting, and the adoption of open debates, ranked choice voting and proportional representation, public financing of elections, fair access to the ballot, and rigorous chain of custody laws to safeguard ballots cast.”

“Today’s agreement with the State of Pennsylvania to replace paperless voting machines with paper ballots and automatic robust audits is a critical step towards rebuilding confidence in our elections. We look forward to working with the state of Pennsylvania to raise the bar for election integrity in Pennsylvania and across the nation and ensure elections we can trust.”

Read the Settlement Agreement

https://blackagendareport.com/jill-stei ... nnsylvania

blackagendareport.com
Jill Stein Lawsuit Forces Adoption of Paper Ballots and Election Audits in Pennsylvania | Black Agenda Report

Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor 29 Nov 2018

When you absolutely, positively need to steal an election, nothing beats the simple elegance of modern, computerized faith based voting machines. You can gerrymander districts, you can conduct malicious purges on spurious grounds like people convicted of felonies in other states having similar names. You can close polling places in neighborhoods unlikely to vote for you. You can even intimidate voters at the polling place, but all these things either leave paper trails or can generate unwanted publicity.

But with modern faith-based voting you allow the voter to touch a screen and press a button, apparently casting a vote. But no paper trail is created, no audit or recount is possible. The official and certifiable result is whatever the machine says it is, period exclamation point. State officials and corporate news talkers doggedly insist that questioning the machines is conspiracy theory, akin to questioning the integrity of arithmetic itself. And the machine’s manufacturer makes a healthy investment – I mean a healthy campaign contribution to the officials responsible.

In 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed lawsuits in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania demanding recounts and audits of the vote in that year’s presidential election, following numerous irregularities including tens of thousands of votes that vanished or went uncounted in Wisconsin and Michigan. The suits in Michigan and Wisconsin were dismissed on flimsy grounds, a judge in Michigan directly ruling that US voters had no right to any kind of audit of election results. But the case dragged on in Pennsylvania, and was finally settled yesterday.

In an out of court settlement reached in order to dismiss the suit, the state of Pennsylvania agreed to begin using paper ballots in 2020, with automatic audits beginning in 2022. The precise details of how the state will manage the introduction, or re-introduction of paper ballots by 2020 and audits by 2022 are still to be negotiated, but this is a significant step away from the faith-based voting regimes in place in much of the US.

The Hillary Clinton campaign had the same information the Greens had, but refused to question the crooked 2016 election results. There was a split among Democrats, and many small amount contributors like those affiliated with MoveOn.Org supported Stein’s effort for a 2016 recount and audit pitched in to make the lawsuit possible. Likewise there was dissension inside the Green Party as to whether this was a good idea as well, with some complaining that Stein had essentially joined the Democrats. This seems to be groundless, since the Democratic party and its presidential candidates in 2000 and 2004 threw away their own legitimacy by prematurely conceding to their Republican opponents and stubbornly refusing to wage any sort of public fight against Republicans who orchestrated a nationwide electoral crime wave to secure the White House and more than a few seats in Congress. It’s more accurate to suggest that the Stein lawsuit, and the Green effort to abolish some of the most flagrant electoral theft tactics was an invitation to Democrats and Republicans to join not just Greens, but the rest of the planet in rejecting this obvious abuse of the pubic trust.

Fact is, the lawsuit contributed mightily to what is now a broad and nonpartisan groundswell against faith-based electronic voting, a groundswell that includes Republican candidates for office as well as Democrats and Greens. That’s right – just like Democrats borrowed the name, if not the substance of the “Green New Deal,” a surprising number of state level Republican candidates for the offices which administer elections are insisting that they too want to see paper ballots, and the possibility of audits and recounts. The persistence of Stein’s legal team, and the original good call in filing the suit doubtless contributed to what looks like the beginning of the end of faith based electronic voting. Even the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Georgia of all places, without even being asked, says he is for paper ballots now.

There are still plenty of other ways to steal elections, of course, many justified in opinions of the black robed crooks who sit on our nation’s state and federal courts – gerrymandering, caging, purges, outrageous restrictions on voter registration and early voting just to name a few. You can visit gregpalst.com for a summary of the ways elections can and are still being gamed.

But we should take a moment to thank Jill Stein and her team for pursuing this legal angle, and that’s what it is not liberation but a legal angle, to make elections in this country a little closer to fairness. It’s important. After all Greens and opposition Democrats and independents across the country will have to compete in local elections in 2019, and another round of primary and general elections in 2020. This is one less piece of skullduggery they’ll have to worry about.

Please , if you haven’t done so already, do visit our site at http://www.blackagendareport.com and subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter which delivers links to all our new print and audio content published each week at Black Agenda Report. Facebook, ]Google and other corporate social media do game their algorithnms to suppress the appearance of news, commentary and analysis from the black left. I’m Bruce Dixon for Black Agenda Radio Commentaries.