Joe Scarborough blasted the media for its hypocritical debate coverage during Thursday’s broadcast of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.
By Christian Datoc
“This is just an example of the media finding something they can absolutely freak out about,” Scarborough said of Trump’s waviness on accepting the election results, should he lose. “It’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out.”
“As a Republican, I have listened to Democrats talking about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years, we stole both elections,” he continued. “I had to sit through Fahrenheit 911, and a lady sobbing violently behind me on the Upper West Side about the election being stolen for George Bush.”
Continue reading, The Daily Caller.
Our elections are at risk because of bad technology.
By Jason Smith
When Dorothy discovers fraud in the land of Oz, she is told by the Wizard, “Don’t look behind the curtain.” But she does. In America, we demand truth and accountability in so many aspects of our daily lives, and yet somehow there’s little public outcry for transparency within voting, the sacred cornerstone of our democracy. For the most part, we sleep soundly under the blanket of assurances from government officials. FBI Director James Comey even attempted a spin of irony recently, noting that our “clunky” voting process actually makes wholesale rigging more difficult. However, Comey misses the bigger picture.
U.S. elections offer scant assurance of accuracy or security, and our nation would fail recognized international election criteria that we impose on emerging democracies. This November, millions of Americans will cast their ballots on unverifiable paperless voting computers. These machines incorporate flawed, buggy software that would not pass a college freshman computer science class.
Hardly anyone uses the same computer from 12 years ago, yet large sections of the country currently vote on aging electronic systems which utilize proprietary software that cannot be publicly examined. Unverifiable technology remains deployed in 29 states – including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida – and other key battleground states, which may determine our next president. Races in these areas are not evidence based, and consequently, we cannot be certain ballots reflect voter intent. Bereft of such knowledge, how can we put faith in the legitimacy of our government?
Two simple solutions would dramatically improve American elections: paper ballots and meaningful post election audits.
Jurisdiction over elections gets complicated quickly – by tradition, states run elections, but Congress has authority over federal races. Consequently, national standards for technology often filter across to state and local races. And for those who balk at federal intervention, state mandates for paper ballots and audits provide another viable path.
Concerns of rigged elections tend to focus on the presidency. Yet the outcomes of municipal and state races often play a greater role in our lives than who is in the White House, and we generally use the same exact systems for all elections. Everyone loves to talk about Pennsylvania, but we don’t look behind “the curtain” to see that at least half of the Keystone State’s counties use completely digital voting up and down the ballot. There is no verifiable paper trail whatsoever for these races.
The greatest doubt of all looms large in the rise of internet voting. Currently, 32 states incorporate some form of internet voting, mainly to service military and overseas voters. Two states, Alaska and Washington, allow anyone to vote online, creating a potential camel’s nose under the tent. Once the nose gets in, get ready for the whole camel.
If we can bank and buy things online, what’s wrong with voting online? Essentially, the obstacle rests with meeting the requirement for anonymity. Were fraud to occur in an online financial transaction, the transaction can be reversed. Elections require severing any connection of voter identity to voter intent. A successful hack on the internet or a digital voting computer would leave no trace of malfeasance. Plus, we must remember that even with state of the art security, banks and companies write off billions every year due to online fraud. Can we afford to write off our votes?
Leading computer science experts who study these issues have been ringing alarm bells for years, J. Alex Halderman a computer science professor at the University of Michigan once hacked an open test of Washington D.C.’s online voting system by leaving a unique calling card. Anytime someone cast a vote, the online system would play Michigan’s fight song.
Continue reading, US News.
Reporters at Vegas Debate Caught Cheering for Hillary
By: Kristinn Taylor
Reporters covering the presidential debate in Las Vegas Wednesday night between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton were cheering Clinton and groaning at Trump during the debate according to a report by Fox News’ Jesse Watters posted to Twitter.
“Watching debate in enormous room of media in Vegas. Press laughs and cheers for Hillary and groans and gasps when Trump speaks. #inthetank”
Continue reading , Gateway Pundit.
Check out this video from our friends at The Washington Free Beacon.
By Andrew Kugle
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been under fire for recent claims that the election is rigged.
On Sunday afternoon, Trump tweeted, “This election absolutely is being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary–but also at many polling places–SAD.”
This statement prompted backlash from Democrats and a few fellow Republicans. President Obama responded to Trump’s charges that the election is rigged during a Tuesday press conference.
“I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place,” Obama said. “It’s unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts.”
Before Trump’s recent comments, however, Democrats were not shy in claiming that U.S. institutions were “rigged.” From the U.S. economy to the country’s political system, Democrats shouted claims of those institutions being rigged.
“The game is rigged,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said.
“They’ll do anything to rig the system,” Obama echoed.
Continue reading, Washington Free Beacon.
Watchdog calls for investigation into whether Clinton campaign, Dem groups violated campaign finance laws
By Joe Schoffstall
An election integrity group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission following the release of undercover videos from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based group that litigates to protect election integrity, submitted the complaint Tuesday to the Office of the General Counsel at the FEC claiming that Hillary Clinton’s campaign committee and other left-wing groups may have violated campaign finance laws.
“This complaint is based on information and belief that respondents have engaged in public communications, campaign activity, targeted voter registration drives, and other targeted GOTV [get out the vote] activity under 11 C.F.R. 100.26 and 11 C.F.R. 114.4 at the request, direction, and approval of the Hillary for America campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee in violation of 11 C.F.R. 109.20 and 11 C.F.R. 114.4(d)(2) and (3),” the complaint states.
“Complainant’s information and belief is based on findings from an investigation conducted by Project Veritas Action and their published reports regarding the same, as well as on news sources.”
“‘If the Commission, upon receiving a complaint … has reason to believe that a person has committed, or is about to commit, a violation of [the FECA] … [t]he Commission shall make an investigation of such alleged violation … ‘ 52 U.S.C. § 30109(a)(2); see also 11 C.F.R. § 111.4(a).”
PILF argues that the groups within the videos–which were caught on tape discussing possible voter fraud scenarios–have organized voter registration drives and other GOTV activities that could have potentially registered people who are not United States citizens.
“On the same information and belief, these voter registration drives and other GOTV activity were coordinated with DNC and HFA by express communication through agents of Democracy Partners and The Foval Group,” the complaint reads. “These communications resulted in coordination of voter registration activity in violation of 11 C.F.R. 114.4(c)(2) and (d)(2)-(4) by all parties involved.”
The complaint also mentions the “paid protesters” referenced by Democratic operatives within the videos who were allegedly paid to incite violence at Donald Trump rallies.
“Upon information and belief, and based upon the facts set forth above, Respondents Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee, Democracy Partners, Americans United for Change, and their agents, named and unnamed above, have, each of them, individually and collectively, violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended, and must be held accountable and liable for their unlawful actions,” the complaint concludes.
Clinton campaign treasurer Jose H. Villarreal, the Democratic National Committee, Democracy Partners, Americans United for Change, Scott Foval, and Voces de la Frontera Action are additionally listed as respondents on the complaint alongside Hillary for America.
Continue reading, Free Beacon.
‘Discreet conversations’ also started with Facebook, Apple in 2014
By Joe Schoffstall
Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working directly with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to a memo contained within an email released by WikiLeaks.
“Discreet conversations” of forming “working relationships” with companies such as Facebook and Apple were also facilitated as early as October 2014, the memo stated. This is at least six months prior to when Clinton announced her candidacy for president.
The document was attached to an Oct. 26, 2014 email sent from Robby Mook, now Clinton’s campaign manager, to Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide; David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s previous campaign manager; and John Podesta, Clinton’s current campaign chairman whose email account was compromised.
The email was posted to Wikileaks after hackers believed to be working with the Russian government breached Podesta’s email account.
Teddy Goff, now a digital strategist for the Clinton campaign who is the former digital director for Obama’s reelection campaign, wrote the memo, which was addressed to Clinton. It touched base on “Technology and digital priorities.”
Goff began by listing “priorities” for the Clinton digital team to undertake. In his estimation—in order of importance—these included: “Raising lots of money,” “Creating and distributing excellent content, for both supportive and persuadable audiences, on social and paid media and in videos,” and “Recruiting, engaging, and organizing volunteers and prospective volunteers.”
Goff then provided an update on these developments. Within this section, he repeatedly referenced the work “Eric Schmidt’s group” and “team” is performing. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that John Podesta emailed Schmidt in April 2014 to set up meetings with Cheryl Mills and Robby Mook.
“I have been kept apprised of the work being done by Eric Schmidt’s group and others working directly and indirectly with your team. On the whole, I am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond,” Goff wrote.
Goff wrote that they have selected a team of developers unaffiliated with Schmidt to build the front end of Clinton’s website.
“They are apprised of what Eric is building but not dependent on it, having identified commercially available products for all mission-critical functions in the event Eric’s group is delayed or otherwise derailed,” he wrote.
“We have instructed Eric’s team to build the most important products in their portfolio—specifically, the back-end of the website, the ability to accept donations (along with associated features, most importantly the ability to store credit card information), and the ability to acquire email addresses—first,” Goff says. “Given how much time remains between now and launch—and, again, the availability of alternative solutions—I believe there is effectively no chance that these core functionalities will not be in place in time for launch.”
Goff continued by saying that he is confident that the digital infrastructure they are building will be far more advanced than those of any challengers in either political party:
Eric’s team is also developing products that are not, strictly speaking, critical for launch, but would be extremely useful to have as early in the cycle as possible. Chief among these is the system that consolidates data from disparate sources to allow you to develop more complete user profiles and therefore more effective programs. I shared the concern, voiced by many, that the initial scope for these products was overly ambitious and unrealistic; they have since been cut down to a much more manageable size, without sacrificing core functionalities. (Of note, many of the problems that stifled us in 2012 have since been tackled by private companies with whom we have relationships and whose tools we can license rather than attempt to replicate.) I am cautiously optimistic that the most important of these will be completed in time for launch; if they are delayed, I have no reason to believe they will not be ready shortly thereafter, long before potential challengers in either party will have been able to build anything similar.
Goff concluded by speaking of the importance of the campaign forming “working relationships” with the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, and other technology companies.
“We have begun having discreet conversations with some of these companies to get a sense of their priorities for the coming cycle, but would encourage you, as soon as your technology leadership is in place, to initiate more formal discussions,” he wrote.
While the exact Schmidt-backed group is not named within the memo, Schmidt has provided funding to a tech startup called The Groundwork, which is paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Michael Slaby, the former chief integration and innovation officer for the Obama campaign, developed The Groundwork through a company he co-founded called Timshel. Slaby has been tight-lipped about details of its partnership with the Clinton campaign. The group has been paid nearly $600,000 from Hillary for America since its inception.
Continue reading, Free Beacon.
Data suggests millions of voter registrations are fraudulent or invalid. That’s enough to tip an election, easily.
By John Gibbs
This week, liberals have been repeating their frequent claim that voter fraud doesn’t exist. A recent Salon article argues that “voter fraud just isn’t a problem in Pennsylvania,” despite evidence to the contrary. Another article argues that voter fraud is entirely in the imagination of those who use voter ID laws to deny minorities the right to vote.
Yet as the election approaches, more and more cases of voter fraud are beginning to surface. In Colorado, multiple instances were found of dead people attempting to vote. Stunningly, “a woman named Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.” In Virginia, it was found that nearly 20 voter applications were turned in under the names of dead people.
In Texas, authorities are investigatingcriminals who are using the technique of “vote harvesting” to illegally procure votes for their candidates. “Harvesting” is the practice of illegally obtaining the signatures of valid voters in order to vote in their name without their consent for the candidate(s) the criminal supports.
These are just some instances of voter fraud we know about. It would be silly to assume cases that have been discovered are the only cases of fraud. Indeed according to a Pew Research report from February 2012, one in eight voter registrations are “significantly inaccurate or no longer valid.” Since there are 146 million Americans registered to vote, this translates to a stunning 18 million invalid voter registrations on the books. Further, “More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters, and approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” Numbers of this scale obviously provide ripe opportunity for fraud.
Don’t Let Data Contradict My Narrative
Yet in spite of all this, a report by the Brennan Center at New York Univeristy claims voter fraud is a myth. It argues that North Carolina, which passed comprehensive measures to prevent voter fraud, “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.” However, this faulty reasoning does not point to the lack of in-person voter fraud, but rather to lack of enforcement mechanisms to identify and prosecute in-person voter fraud.
The science of criminal justice tells us that many crimes go unreported, and the more “victimless” the crime, the more this happens. The fact is, a person attempting to commit voter fraud is very unlikely to be caught, which increases the incentive to commit the crime.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a sophisticated, comprehensive effort to catalog “the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities.” However, it tends to deal mostly in violent crimes. As complex as the NCVS is, gathering accurate data for unreported victimless crimes such as voter fraud is even harder, since 1) outside of the criminal, no one may know a crime has taken place, and 2) there is no direct victim to report the crime in the first place. Yet we are expected to believe that, unlike violent crime, voter fraud is limited only to the cases that are actually reported and prosecuted? This is a senseless position.
Further, the Brennan Center report argues that because prosecutor Kris Kobach’s review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states found only 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution (which amounts to a 0.00000017 percent fraud rate), voter fraud is so statistically small that it’s a non-issue. Let’s follow this logic. Does the fact that 109 people were cited for jaywalking in Seattle in 2009 mean that only 109 people jaywalked in Seattle that year? Does the fact that 103,733 people were cited for driving without a seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015 mean that only that many people were driving without seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015?
Absolutely not. This can be proven easily because in 2014, the previous year, only 29,470 people were cited. The disparity is largely due to increased enforcement efforts in 2015. In other words, increasing enforcement of the crime revealed a much larger number of people committing the crime.
The exact same is true for voter fraud. We have no reason to believe that the low number of prosecutions means only that exact amount of voter fraud is happening. Rather, it could mean a lack of enforcement is failing to reveal the bulk of the violations that are occurring. Thus, as with many types of crimes, especially victimless crimes, the real number of cases is likely significantly higher than the number reported.
How to Effectively Target Voter Fraud
So now that we know voter fraud is a serious issue, what are some solutions to this problem? States like Michigan have Poll Challenger programs, where observers from both parties may be present at voter check-in tables at precincts. They check each voter’s ID against a database of registered voters for that precinct to ensure the person attempting to vote is actually legally qualified to vote in that precinct. If there’s a discrepancy, the poll challenger may officially challenge the ballot. Other states should implement similar programs.
Continue Reading, The Federalist.
What John Podesta’s emails from 2008 reveal about the way power works in the Democratic Party.
By David Dayen
The most important revelation in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. The messages go all the way back to 2008, when Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. And a month before the election, the key staffing for that future administration was almost entirely in place, revealing that some of the most crucial decisions an administration can make occur well before a vote has been cast.
Michael Froman, who is now U.S. trade representative but at the time was an executive at Citigroup, wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”
The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.
This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.
Many already suspected that Froman, a longtime Obama consigliere, did the key economic policy hiring while part of the transition team. We didn’t know he had so much influence that he could lock in key staff that early, without fanfare, while everyone was busy trying to get Obama elected. The WikiLeaks emails show even earlier planning; by September the transition was getting pre-clearance to assist nominees with financial disclosure forms.
We certainly want an incoming administration to be well-prepared and ready to go when power is transferred. For Obama, coming into office while the economy was melting down, this was particularly true. But the revelations also reinforce the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance.
Many liberal pundits have talked about the need to focus exclusively on Donald Trump, and the existential threat he presents, in the critical period before Election Day. And there is a logic to that idea: Trump would legitimately be a terrifying leader of the free world. But there are consequences to the kind of home-team political atmosphere that rejects any critical thought about your own side. If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.
Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.
The wing of the Democratic Party concerned about personnel decisions made its opinion known almost two years ago. Dan Geldon, now chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Warren, met with Dan Schwerin, a top adviser to Clinton’s campaign, in January 2015. According to an email follow-up with Podesta and others, Geldon “was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers.” He was also “very critical of the Obama administration’s choices.”
The “Bob Rubin school” is named for the former top executive at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and first Clinton administration Treasury secretary. It is composed precisely of the kinds of Democrats that the Warren wing opposes on domestic policy, particularly on financial matters. In the Obama administration, that school won out. Froman, chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, gave options for Treasury secretary that ranged from Rubin himself to Summers and Geithner, two of his key protégés. In another 2008 email Rubin imagined for himself a “Harry Hopkins” position in the Obama administration, referring to Franklin Roosevelt’s top adviser.
The Rubin school dictated the Obama administration’s light-touch policy on bank misconduct (which resulted in no serious legal or fiduciary consequences for the major players) and its first-term approach to the financial crisis (which was defined by a stimulus package that even at the time was criticized for being woefully inadequate, as well as a premature turn to budget-cutting). These are exactly the flaws that Geldon, Warren’s emissary, stressed. According to Schwerin, he “spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.”
Around the same time as that meeting with Geldon, the Clinton campaign wassetting up a dinner meeting with its economic policy team, Geithner, Summers, and members of the investment firm Blackstone (along with Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement security researcher).
This is a fight over who dominates the Democratic Party’s policy thinking in the short and long term. In 2008 the fight was invisible and one-sided, and the fix was in. In 2016 both sides are angling to get Clinton to adopt their framework. Those predisposed to consider Clinton some neoliberal sap might not agree, but this is actually a live ball. Presidents lead coalitions, and they have to understand where their coalition is and how things change over time. Peter Orszag this week suggested a trade-off: Give the Warren wing its choices on personnel, in exchange for more leeway to negotiate an infrastructure package with Republicans that gives big tax breaks to corporations with money stashed overseas. While that deal needs more detail, it reveals the power the Warren wing has, relative to the Obama era, to make significant strides on appointments.
Continue Reading, New Republic.
As reporters focus on Trump, they miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.
But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.
It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.