We are seeing the beginning of a long process of paring down the field of Teathuglican candidates. Having been in the double digits, the large number of candidates has certainly not turned up any desirable skills, intellectual capacities, statesmen or stateswomen and certainly no diplomats.One of the dropouts was facing legal woes for breaking election laws and collusion, but that was barely discussed. The Governor of Wisconsin, who also committed election fraud and racketeering, although he has the State Attorney General and State Supreme Court in his pocket and has managed to avoid prosecution thus far.
See, I have the distinct, and perhaps odd, awareness of how elections are counted. Having been a poll worker since the eighties, I can only say that elections have become far easier to steal. Our Governor has done it three times. Anyone who was paying attention to the Republican debates, or indeed any of the electioneering that has been done by Scott Walker over the past couple years knows that he is not very smart, yet even his organization could figure out how to game the system. The evidence, for those who do not follow electoral politics very closely was evidenced by the returns on election night. I have been a long time poll watcher and know that the way votes are counted, with the smaller towns and villages posting their returns first and larger districts posting later, there has historically been a late night trend line that predominantly favors the Democrats.
In the last three elections, the trend line makes a sharp break from the way it behaved in the past. Instead of Republicans starting out well and slowly losing found, the Democrats had the opposite pattern. They usually start out doing poorly, but gain steam as urban areas begin to report later in the evening or early in the morning the day after the polls close. This has gone on for decades and is as regularly seen as elections themselves. The lead of Republicans always trickles away at the end of the night. If the trend lines cross, the Democrats win, if the Democrats cannot surpass the early lead that the Republicans build up, when rural districts report, as the urban votes come in, the Republicans tend to win.
The last three elections in Wisconsin have had the exact opposite thing happen at the end of the night. The first time I saw the trend lines reverse course, I did not understand what was going on. That was the first time that optical scan balloting was used in our district. The only way to assure that the scanning devices are not rigged is to hand-count the paper ballots.
This will not stop the illegal and immoral acts of the ruling class, but it could help us make a dent in their unequal power. There have been millions of voters who have been disenfranchised across our nation. Over the last four years, 120 cases of voter fraud have been charged and investigated. Of these about eighty have been proven to have taken place. However, hundreds of times that many people are dropped from the poll lists because of a process called caging. In the process, nondescript letters are sent to registered voters. They often are made to look like junk mail and require their contents to be returned to remain on the poll list of registered voters. In my polling place alone, where I am the chairperson, we get several of these at every election. People I know, who have voted every election as long as I can remember will be required to re-register if they want to vote.
At the very least this is an inconvenience, but it speaks to a larger issue because occasionally the voter will be so disgusted, or too busy to go through the process again. They may have left their documents at home or just stopped by on their way to work knowing that they can be in and out in just a few minutes...why wouldn't they? After all, we pollworkers have always found their name quickly and efficiently before. For years I wondered why there were several people at every election who had been purged from poll lists, even though they had been voting for years and just recently I was informed how this works and the intention behind the dropping of names from the lists.
Additionally, there are continuous attacks on organizations that perform voter registration drives, people living out of state and registered to vote in their new locations are still eligible to receive ballots form our state and I have had several Republicans boast that they help others who do not even live in Wisconsin, keep their voting rights, even though their friends or relatives live out of state. One of these "conservative" braggarts was even a pollworker herself! Imagine, participating in the democratic process but gaming the system to assure your own votes get counted twice as often as the average person. This is why the entire field of Teathuglicans is so out of touch with reality. They actually believe that we are at war against one another. We all know what that leads to, demonizing your enemy, underhanded tricks and the idea that all is fair. Lying, cheating and even stealing elections is permitted under these questionable moral standards.
The Republican primary may just pick the best clown. It must just be too much to ask, but having candidates that understand the issues, have ideas about the relative importance of issues and logical plans that make sense would be too much to ask. I have often wondered why we allow such morally inept and politically confused group to be taken seriously. Oddly enough, when you step back and look at the overall picture, the Teathiuglicans have made plenty of hay by demonizing anyone willing to advocate for compassion, diplomacy, humanitarian ideas or paying fair taxes for government services. The biggest players in our oligarchy are the Banksters and Wall Street's hedge fund managers, the insurance industry and their cohorts in the drug companies, and the media giants who tell us what to think. The Emperor wears no clothes however. The clown car of candidates are only there as court jesters, the real bosses remain sequestered in their lavish apartments away from public scrutiny and they are the ones pulling the strings of their political puppets. Rigging elections is just one of the techniques that the uberwealthy use to keep us as slaves to their continued power and control over our nation and the world.
See, I have the distinct, and perhaps odd, awareness of how elections are counted. Having been a poll worker since the eighties, I can only say that elections have become far easier to steal. Our Governor has done it three times. Anyone who was paying attention to the Republican debates, or indeed any of the electioneering that has been done by Scott Walker over the past couple years knows that he is not very smart, yet even his organization could figure out how to game the system. The evidence, for those who do not follow electoral politics very closely was evidenced by the returns on election night. I have been a long time poll watcher and know that the way votes are counted, with the smaller towns and villages posting their returns first and larger districts posting later, there has historically been a late night trend line that predominantly favors the Democrats.
In the last three elections, the trend line makes a sharp break from the way it behaved in the past. Instead of Republicans starting out well and slowly losing found, the Democrats had the opposite pattern. They usually start out doing poorly, but gain steam as urban areas begin to report later in the evening or early in the morning the day after the polls close. This has gone on for decades and is as regularly seen as elections themselves. The lead of Republicans always trickles away at the end of the night. If the trend lines cross, the Democrats win, if the Democrats cannot surpass the early lead that the Republicans build up, when rural districts report, as the urban votes come in, the Republicans tend to win.
The last three elections in Wisconsin have had the exact opposite thing happen at the end of the night. The first time I saw the trend lines reverse course, I did not understand what was going on. That was the first time that optical scan balloting was used in our district. The only way to assure that the scanning devices are not rigged is to hand-count the paper ballots.
This will not stop the illegal and immoral acts of the ruling class, but it could help us make a dent in their unequal power. There have been millions of voters who have been disenfranchised across our nation. Over the last four years, 120 cases of voter fraud have been charged and investigated. Of these about eighty have been proven to have taken place. However, hundreds of times that many people are dropped from the poll lists because of a process called caging. In the process, nondescript letters are sent to registered voters. They often are made to look like junk mail and require their contents to be returned to remain on the poll list of registered voters. In my polling place alone, where I am the chairperson, we get several of these at every election. People I know, who have voted every election as long as I can remember will be required to re-register if they want to vote.
At the very least this is an inconvenience, but it speaks to a larger issue because occasionally the voter will be so disgusted, or too busy to go through the process again. They may have left their documents at home or just stopped by on their way to work knowing that they can be in and out in just a few minutes...why wouldn't they? After all, we pollworkers have always found their name quickly and efficiently before. For years I wondered why there were several people at every election who had been purged from poll lists, even though they had been voting for years and just recently I was informed how this works and the intention behind the dropping of names from the lists.
Additionally, there are continuous attacks on organizations that perform voter registration drives, people living out of state and registered to vote in their new locations are still eligible to receive ballots form our state and I have had several Republicans boast that they help others who do not even live in Wisconsin, keep their voting rights, even though their friends or relatives live out of state. One of these "conservative" braggarts was even a pollworker herself! Imagine, participating in the democratic process but gaming the system to assure your own votes get counted twice as often as the average person. This is why the entire field of Teathuglicans is so out of touch with reality. They actually believe that we are at war against one another. We all know what that leads to, demonizing your enemy, underhanded tricks and the idea that all is fair. Lying, cheating and even stealing elections is permitted under these questionable moral standards.
The Republican primary may just pick the best clown. It must just be too much to ask, but having candidates that understand the issues, have ideas about the relative importance of issues and logical plans that make sense would be too much to ask. I have often wondered why we allow such morally inept and politically confused group to be taken seriously. Oddly enough, when you step back and look at the overall picture, the Teathiuglicans have made plenty of hay by demonizing anyone willing to advocate for compassion, diplomacy, humanitarian ideas or paying fair taxes for government services. The biggest players in our oligarchy are the Banksters and Wall Street's hedge fund managers, the insurance industry and their cohorts in the drug companies, and the media giants who tell us what to think. The Emperor wears no clothes however. The clown car of candidates are only there as court jesters, the real bosses remain sequestered in their lavish apartments away from public scrutiny and they are the ones pulling the strings of their political puppets. Rigging elections is just one of the techniques that the uberwealthy use to keep us as slaves to their continued power and control over our nation and the world.
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