Wisconsin agrees to presidential recount, but even before it starts they are dismissing over a thousand votes for Trump. Update!

Courtesy of NPR:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission announced Friday that it would hold a statewide recount of the presidential vote. The move was in response to petitions from two candidates, the Green Party's Jill Stein and independent Rocky Roque De La Fuente. 

Federal law requires that all recounts be finished 35 days after the election, which is Dec. 13. One or both of the candidates will be required to pay for the recount.

Well that is certainly good news, and it is especially important in light of this news:

Same deal in Hortonville. Trump’s number down by 400+ votes, Clinton’s unchanged. Ballots cast now matches votes counted. 3/x pic.twitter.com/65lsNVMn6x

— dan solo (@dansolomon) November 22, 2016

The presidential election of 2016 was the most contentious and bizarre in American history. On top of the vile rhetoric that was spewed by now President-elect Donald Trump, it now appears that certain voting tallies in Wisconsin were hedged in Trump’s favor. A county in Wisconsin named Outagamie County had four precincts in the areas of Cicero, Grand Chute, Bear Creek, and Hortonville which all showed that they had fewer people overall than had voted in the presidential election. This instance, naturally, caused the Internet to fly in a fury claiming, rightly, that voter fraud was taking place. The precincts quickly adjusted their voting totals, which removed over a thousand votes from Donald Trump’s side. What a coincidence, the party which has spent years decrying voter fraud were once again benefiting from voter fraud. 

And THAT is only one county in Wisconsin.

Here is more from The Palmer Report:

At the end of election night the New York Times reported that Donald Trump had won the state of Wisconsin with a total of 1,409,467 votes, giving him a winning margin of 27,257 votes over Hillary Clinton’s total of 1,382,210. These numbers were based on what the individual counties and precincts were reporting that night. But now seventeen days later, based on various Wisconsin precincts revising their own totals, Dave Wasserman of the respected Cook Political Report has updated the totals. Donald Trump now has 1,404,536 total votes in Wisconsin, while Hillary Clinton now has 1,382,011 total votes. 

Two things immediately jump out, as first spotted by music critic Dave Greenwald. The first is that, even ahead of the forthcoming recount in Wisconsin, Donald Trump’s lead has already shrunk to just 22,525 votes. That means 18% of his “lead” has already vanished, based on precincts catching some of their own incorrect numbers, and internet gawkers catching others. But the second thing that jumps out is that the revisions have served to erase thousands of votes from Trump, while affirming that Clinton’s vote total was essentially correct to begin with.

So is it possible that Philadelphia and Michigan also have disparities like this among their election results? Do you really even need to ask?

Which brings me to my Saturday morning rant.

I am sick and tired of people saying some version of "Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate," or "The Democrats simply did not get their message out," or "The Clinton Campaign's arrogance cost them this election."

No, No, and NO!

This election was not lost. This election was stolen.

Even if you dismiss this stuff in Wisconsin as being nothing more than a few aberrations which did not affect the outcome, the evidence that this election was stolen is still overwhelming.

First there is the incredible disparity between the electoral vote and the popular vote which now shows Hillary Clinton ahead by 2.2 million votes.

Add to that the fact that the Republicans launched an investigation designed to implant in the American psyche the idea that Hillary was a criminal of some kind.

Then add Russian hackers who targeted ONLY institutions that might have dirt on Hillary, Wikileaks who then dumped that data for public consumption, a media that gleefully reported that illegally attained information to the public while also exaggerating it to attract consumers, and then finally FBI Director James Comey who gambled with his very future by coming out and alluding to the possibility that Hillary might still be indicted.

So you tell me, which presidential candidate could have withstood all of that and emerged victorious?

Bernie Sanders? Don't make me laugh.

Donald Trump? Not on your life.

Barack Obama? No, probably not even him.

NO candidate in American history has had to weather this kind of shit storm.

And now it turns out that the final vote tally might not be accurate.

The Republicans are counting on Democrats to blame ourselves or each other for this "loss," after all that's the same thing we did back in 2000

"Oh if only AL Gore had not been so stiff, or maybe if he had allowed Bill Clinton to campaign for him, or maybe if he had not used the term 'blind trust' so much."

No we won that election, and we allowed it to be stolen from us.

And the same thing just happened again.

So go ahead and blame the most qualified candidate that we have ever run for office, or blame the DNC for not "allowing" Sanders to win instead, or maybe just blame yourselves. After all that is what we do.

And that is what the Republicans, the Right Wing media, and Vladimir Putin are counting on.

But if we don't start looking at the reality of what went on in this election, we are going to find ourselves right back here again in four, eight, or twelve years.

Update: Well now the Clinton Campaign is officially participating in this recount effort.

Good for them!