And I totally agree that either party should be able to inspect the sealed containers by look and feel after they are dumped out but prior to the draw. The canisters should be new, with no distinguishing marks. And maybe the drawer could use tongs to pick up the container as well.
I see! One flips, other calls it in the air. Sure.
That’s the problem: who’s to say it wasn’t a strikeout?
I think you know my answer to this.
Personally I would say this Examples for handcounting document says its not a strikeout.
On pg 2. A single slash is an example of a vote to be counted.
On pg. 5 it shows that any ballot marked for more than one candidate should be deemed an overvote and not counted unless all other candidates are stricketh through like shown on pg. 5
On pg. 11, it shows examples of candidates “partially erased, scratched out, or otherwise obliterated” which show examples far more extreme than a single line or slash which shows approval or is an indication of voting in other parts of the document.
Here’s an interesting story — somebody kick Dear Esquire in the balls and wake him up since it concerns The Law.
It seems that way back in 1982, a Federal Judge felt that the GOP’s efforts to “give citizens confidence in elections” — or whatever Bricker’s name for vote suppression is — were so brazenly malicious, that the RNC signed a consent decree limiting what cheating they could do in future!
But when the RNC violated this order recently, as Brickhead will be delighted to learn, the new District Judge seems inclined to let RNC cheating to resume.
I’m sure Dear Esquire views this as a “triumph for democracy.” What do real lawyers think?
May turn out to be too clever by half. See, these voter suppression things were not meant to carry heavy weight. They aren’t meant to overwhelm, they are snipers, not artillery barrages. Its clever math, in a stable environment. Shove all the Dem voters into a few intensely blue districts, and spread the rest out so that R voters have a smallish but solid majority. More districts where R wins by a slim margin, and a few where they get utterly clobbered.
That works, or more importantly, that did work. More people vote for Dem Representatives, more R’s go to Congress. More people vote for Hillary, Trump infects the Oval Office. Some people see that as a problem, others, like me, see blasphemy.
But when the numbers look like they do today, with a huge preponderance for Dems as it stands now…that ain’t gonna get it. The tactics the R’s are using gets them a few percentage points they do not deserve, but it won’t protect them from their own machine. If they cheat to gain a one percent advantage but lose by two…then they lose massively. All those districts so cleverly designed to win by a whisker lose by a whisker. Oopsy-daisy, boned!
Political karma grinds slow, but it grinds exceeding fine.
“Taste the sweetness of Destiny, facist pig!”
= Trashman
Another interesting article on vote suppression, this time in North Carolina. Has Dear Esquire explained why shutting down voting sites in Mecklenburg County increases confidence in electoral integrity?
Anyway, it seems that the suppressors were foiled because N.C. voters accidentally elected a black judge, who then cast the deciding vote to overrule the suppressors.
Was this Democrat chicanery? Shouldn’t the N.C. government have been required to identify candidates’ race on the ballot to prevent citizens from being bamboozled like this? What do you think, Esquire?
Activist judge thwarts election laws passed by lawfully elected legislature.
Looks to me like a solid example of why letting elected officials set the rules for elections is a manifestly bad idea.
Elected activist judge thwarts election laws passed by lawfully gerrymandered legislature. So they propose a bill to cut all judgeship terms to 2 years.
Since the Repubs (or at least their leaders, Drumpf and Smellerson) are in de facto alliance with Russia, I think Russia’s attempts at voter fraud or voter suppression are on-topic here.
But I want to cross-post this to the Republican stupidity thread.
“Exceptionally small number,” hunh? Does that mean 1 or 2? Ms. Manfra is proud that only Pennsylvania and Michigan were hacked?
And it’s a white Republican Judge
Tarrant County judge pleads guilty, resigns after using fake signatures to get on ballot
Here is link with a different take:
Black woman casts illegal ballot (in what could be considered a simple mistake), gets 5 years in jail.
Brown woman casts 2 illegal ballots (in what could be considered a simple mistake), gets 8 years in jail.
White Judge knowingly sought to defraud the electorate of which he was supposed to serve. Pleads Guilty, gets probation, allowed to resign.
And this guy even filed a lawsuit, accusing others of doing what he himself had done!
So we have to ask. Why did Casey get probation while Mason and Ortega got jail time? Which one of these three actually threatened the integrity of an election?
At least it makes sense as to why the conservatives are so worried about voter fraud, and are convinced that their political opponents are involved in it.
They and their peers are all neck deep in defrauding the constituency, and they expect that others must be as well.
Before I researched this, I made a bet with myself for $1000. I bet that your summary left out material facts that answer the question without the racial explanation.
And I won.
Because I learned that Casey pled guilty to a misdemeanor for which the maximum penalty is a fine and a year in jail, and Ortega, charged with a felony, insisted on a trial and was found guilty by a jury.
The reason prosecutors accept plea bargains is that very tradeoff: the lesser plea in exchange for the certainty of a conviction.
It’s also true that (so far as I can see) the conduct from Casey wasn’t felonious. I welcome correction on the point: what felony do you believe he committed?
Or are you suggesting that even though his conduct wasn’t a felony, we should just give him a prison sentence anyway?
Or are you suggesting that even though Ortega’s conduct was a felony, we should give her a good conduct medal instead?
Did you deliberately ignore the fact that two different crimes, one a felony and one a misdemeanor, were involved here?
I missed something crucial, what positions of public trust and civic duty had the other defendants soiled and defamed?
What would have happened had you lost?
I bet myself that **Bricker **would use his grand reappearance to provide some smarmy legalistic rationalization that would entirely avoid the uncomfortable issues of either actual justice or electoral integrity.
I won, of course.
Before I even knew who Casey and Ortega were, I made a $50 bet with myself that you were missing the forest for the trees, seizing on some retarded legalism and demonstrating your own immorality.
And I won. (I’m sorry I only bet $50 but I’m not awash in cash from plea-bargaining GOP criminals. 
)
Casey presumably knew the law very well — he’s a judge :smack: — yet committed a fraud that is both illegal and immoral. Do you deny that, Counselor?
The marginal value of one vote is typically measured in pennies, not dollars, so if Ortega’s crime were deliberate it was an unusually stupid crime. More likely is that she just didn’t know she wasn’t entitled to vote. Yes, they probably teach that in citizenship class … but if she’d taken and passed a citizenship class she’d probably have had the right to vote. :smack:
Yet the criminal white judge gets probation, while the confused colored woman gets prison time. Ignore, for the moment, whatever you think you learned in law school, Counselor and tell us: Was that just? Was it moral?
The “need” for plea bargaining is a big part of the problem, of course. I don’t expect you to understand that, billing GOP fraudsters for $1000/hour while the colored people trapped in the system serve time because they weren’t “good” enough to prostitute themselves or whatever to afford your fees. Dog eat dog. What a disgusting world it would be if we all had your morality.
If only that were the only thing you didn’t understand. Your posting history would be vastly improved if this were so.
We do not, in this country, send people to prison because we believe they soiled or defamed concepts. We send them because we can prove to a neutral tribunal beyond a reasonable doubt the presence of each and every element of a felony.
So when answering the question of why one defendant got a light sentence and the other a heavy sentence, we don’t ask about soiling and defamation. We ask what crimes each committed. And by “crimes,” we mean criminal statutes, not metaphorical crimes against lofty concepts and ideals.
I would have paid up promptly.
Good, it would be a shame if something were to… happen to you.