Voter ID laws in Wisconsin suppressed as many as 200,000 votes. Trump won by a mere 22,748.

Courtesy of The Nation:

According to federal court records, 300,000 registered voters, 9 percent of the electorate, lacked strict forms of voter ID in Wisconsin. A new study by Priorities USA, shared exclusively with The Nation, shows that strict voter-ID laws, in Wisconsin and other states, led to a significant reduction in voter turnout in 2016, with a disproportionate impact on African-American and Democratic-leaning voters. Wisconsin’s voter-ID law reduced turnout by 200,000 votes, according to the new analysis. Donald Trump won the state by only 22,748 votes. 

The study compared turnout in states that adopted strict voter-ID laws between 2012 and 2016, like Wisconsin, to states that did not. 

While states with no change to voter identification laws witnessed an average increased turnout of +1.3% from 2012 to 2016, Wisconsin’s turnout (where voter ID laws changed to strict) dropped by -3.3%. If turnout had instead increased by the national no-change average, we estimate that over 200,000 more voters would have voted in Wisconsin in 2016. 

This reduction in turnout particularly hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

The lost voters skewed more African-American and more Democrat. For example, Wisconsin’s 2016 electorate was 6.1% more Republican, and 5.7% less Democrat, than the group of ‘lost voters’. Furthermore, the WI electorate was 3.7% more White and 3.8% less African American than the group of ‘lost voters.’ This analysis suggests that the 200,000 lost voters would have both been more racially diverse and have voted more Democratic. 

Just another reminder that Trump could not have won the 2016 election without significant cheating.

He not only had the help of the Russians and the Comey letter, but he also had voter ID laws suppressing turnout all throughout the country. 

Let's face it the man stole this election, and the sooner we get his orange tinted corpulent ass out of the People's House the better it will be for the country.

Democrats use old KKK law to sue Donald Trump campaign over voter intimidation. Update!

Source

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

After a wave of reports from battleground states of voter intimidation and voter suppression, the Democratic Party is taking legal action. 

The party filed lawsuits on Monday against Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Parties of Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. The federal suits also name Trump ally Roger Stone, who through his “Stop the Steal” super PAC is recruiting volunteers to patrol hundreds of voting precincts in Democratic-leaning cities with large minority populations. 

The lawsuits accuse Trump, Stone, and the GOP of violating both the Voting Rights Act and the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by “conspiring to threaten, intimidate, and thereby prevent minority voters in urban neighborhoods from voting in the 2016 election.” 

“Trump’s calls for unlawful intimidation have grown louder and louder, and the conspiracy to harass and threaten voters on Election Day has already resulted in numerous acts that threaten to interfere with the voting rights of registered…voters,” the lawsuit says. “Untold numbers of…voters will suffer irreparable harm if the right to vote is imperiled by the same forms of virulent harassment that federal law has prohibited since shortly after the Civil War.”

You know it somehow seems perfect that the Democrats are using an old law to protect voters from the Klu Klux Klan to now protect voters from the Trump campaign.

Assuming there's a difference of course.

As I have said before any political party, or campaign, that resorts to voter suppression and intimidation to come out on top does not deserve to win anything.

REAL Americans want everybody to vote and respect the outcome of elections even if their candidate does not emerge victorious.

Update: A little more news on this front courtesy of Politico:  

A federal judge is ordering the Republican National Committee to detail any agreements it has with Donald Trump's campaign to engage in "ballot security" efforts in connection with next week's election — something the national GOP has been banned from doing for decades without court approval. 

The order also instructs the RNC to explain by 5 p.m. Tuesday what Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence were talking about in recent comments when they said that Trump's campaign was working closely with the RNC to make sure there is no fraud at the polls. 

Oh you can bet the farm that the RNC does NOT want to comply with this order. 

Trump supporter caught on video openly discussing plans to suppress votes for Hillary Clinton.

Trump supporter Jesse Benton.

Courtesy of the Telegraph: 

Supporters of Donald Trump are engaging in a "voter suppression" strategy under which pro-Clinton "African Americans and suburban mums" are being persuaded not to vote, a campaigner told undercover Telegraph reporters. 

A senior figure involved in funding efforts to support the billionaire’s campaign against Hillary Clinton boasted of how activists had adopted a scheme to “try to drop her turn-out two or three points” in key areas of the country. 

Jesse Benton, who described himself as a “consultant” to the Great America PAC, said the strategy involved “trying to take their taste for her away."

The disclosure appears to confirm suspicions that pro-Trump campaigners have been deliberately focusing on dissuading groups of Clinton supporters from voting.

By the way this is not an exaggeration by the reporters at the Telegraph, they literally have this Benton guy saying the words "voter suppression."

Nor is he the only Trump supporter planning this kind of thing.

Courtesy of HuffPo:

Vote Protectors, the anti-voter-fraud group hosted by Donald Trump ally and political dirty trickster Roger Stone, plans to send volunteers to monitor polling places in nine cities with high minority populations on Election Day, Stone said last week. Untrained poll-watchers have intimidated voters in previous elections. But Vote Protectors is going further than its predecessors. 

Stone’s group created an official-looking ID badge for its volunteers to wear, and its volunteers planned to videotape voters and conduct fake “exit polls,” efforts that election experts say risks intimidating and confusing voters. Or at least that’s what the group was planning to do before The Huffington Post asked Stone about it on Tuesday. The controversial Trump ally, long known for his bare-knuckled political tactics, said that key proposals on his group’s websites were there without his knowledge, and assured HuffPost that he would operate within the confines of election law. 

Stone had initially refused to explain just how Vote Protectors planned to accomplish its goals. 

I think is called "rigging the election" which is exactly what Donald Trump has accused Hillary Clinton and the media of doing. 

Projection baby, it's all about projection.

American elections ranked worst of among long established democracies.

Five hour lines during Arizona primary

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

What do Argentina, Costa Rica and Brazil have in common? 

They all outranked the United States in a comparison of election standards and procedures conducted by the Electoral Integrity Project. The United States ranked 47th worldwide, out of 139 countries. 

The survey is a measure of dozens of factors, including voter registration, campaign financing rules, election laws, the voting process and vote count. 

Worldwide, vague campaign financing rules and the quality of media coverage were identified as the most frequent problems. In the United States, "experts expressed concern about the quality of the electoral laws, voter registration, the process of drawing district boundaries, as well as the regulation of campaign finance," the report states. 

"In the United States, the 2012 Presidential election and the 2014 Congressional elections were ranked worst of any long-established democracy, especially on campaign finance and electoral registration," the report's authors concluded. 

"It remains to be seen how experts assess the 2016 US presidential contest,"the expert commission assesses. "But the overall country ranking seems unlikely to improve given persistent problems of campaign funding, heated partisan polarization over registration and balloting procedures, claims of fraud in the Iowa GOP primaries, and an early primary campaign season characterized by the politics of personal attacks, dissatisfied voters, and populist appeals."

Gee, isn't America great? 

And don't fool yourselves, it's not going to get better in 2016.

Now that the Supreme Court has essentially struck down the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we are going to see more voter suppression, and attempts to keep a certain segment of the population away from the polls by hook or by crook.

In fact we already saw that happen just this week in Arizona.


Remember folks THIS is the America we live in when the conservatives have the power. 

Alabama passes law requiring photo ID's for voters, then stops issuing drivers licenses in mostly black counties. Gee, what a coincidence.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

The state of Alabama, which requires a photo ID to vote, announced this week that it would stop issuing driver’s licenses in counties where 75 percent of registered voters are black. 

Due to budget cuts, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said that 31 satellite DMV offices would no longer have access to driver’s licenses examiners, meaning that residents will need to travel to other counties to apply for licenses. The move comes just one year after the state’s voter photo ID law went into effect. 

AL.com’s John Archibald asserted in a column on Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Justice should open an investigation into the closings. 

“Because Alabama just took a giant step backward,” he wrote. “Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them.” 

“Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one,” Archibald explained. “But maybe it’s not racial at all, right? Maybe it’s just political. And let’s face it, it may not be either… But no matter the intent, the consequence is the same.”

Okay seriously does anybody NOT think this is racially and politically motivated?

Republican concept of smaller government explained.

Well gee now it makes perfect sense.

Was the 2014 loss due voter apathy on the side of progressives, or was there something else at play?

Courtesy of The Intercept:  

On Tuesday, older, white voters — who traditionally support Republicans — went to the polls in droves, while turnout among traditionally Democratic groups — the young, the minoritized, and women — was down. Indeed, overall turnout declined to an estimated 36.6% of eligible voters, the lowest rate of participation since the 1940s, despite the $3 billion spent by candidates, political parties, and super PACs. 

Yes, President Barack Obama’s poor performance and approval rating undoubtedly played a role in the lower turnout. But the evidence is piling up that systematic voter suppression, including voter ID laws and dubious vote-fraud prevention software, played a significant part in keeping people from casting ballots, as well.

The Intercept goes on to point out irregularities in both Texas and Georgia.  

Georgia, it must also be noted, is one of 27 states using the controversial software Crosscheck to weed out supposed voter fraud. Al Jazeera, which recently finished a months-long investigation of the program, found an astonishing 7 million Americans suspected of voter fraud on the Crosscheck lists. That despite the fact that voter fraud is almost unbelievably rare. One dogged investigator, a professor focused on election administration at Loyola University Law School, found just 31 credible incidents between 2000 and mid 2014, nationwide. 

Crosscheck scours the names of voters who live in the 27 states, and if a first and last name matches in two states both persons are flagged and purged. The surnames most likely to be flagged? “The lists are heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel and Kim — ones common among minorities”, Al Jazeera reported. “List matching is an inaccurate science that burdens, disproportionately, minority voters”, said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Weiser also claimed that voter complaints to her group’s hotline were higher this year than ever before.

I think most of us have known that our voting rights have been under attack since as least 2000, and  it seems that as time goes on the Republican's ability to rob us of our fundamental right to vote is getting more sophisticated and harder to track.

If we are going to have any hope of electing a representative government in this country we are going to have to do something very serious about reforming our voting structure.

GOP suggests to Iowa voters that everybody will know if they do not vote Republican.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

The GOP is trying to convince Iowa voters on Facebook that their neighbors will know if they voted Republican. 

Screenshots of Facebook ads, promoted by the official Facebook page of the Republican National Committee feature an ominous message: “NOTICE: All Voting Is Public.” The ad tell voters that “In a few months, Iowa will release the list of individual who voted in this election.” Most troublingly, the ad includes an arial view of a neighborhood with checkmarks indicating that “These People Voted GOP.” 

It is true that voter participation in elections in public information. But how a someone voted, including what party they voted for, is not. The secret ballot has long been considered a hallmark of American democracy.

Interesting tactic don't you think?

Made even more so by the fact that something similar was being done up here in Alaska, only with letters instead of Facebook posts.

Similar tactics are also being used in Kentucky:

In a move that Democrats are lambasting as a voter suppression tactic, Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign and its GOP allies are distributing a mailer to Kentucky voters with the title "ELECTION VIOLATION NOTICE." 

It warns of "a possible fraud" and reads, "You are at risk of acting on fraudulent information." It says it's paid for by the Republican Party of Kentucky and authorized by the McConnell Senate Committee '14. 

The mailer is ultimately a rather creative attack on Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, telling the voter that she is feeding them "fraudulent information" and "blatant lies solely to deceive Kentucky voters" about McConnell and her own candidacy. 

Clearly these are yet more attempts to suppress the vote by Republicans who realize that the fewer people voting means a better chance for their candidates.

Just another reason to make damn sure that you all get out and vote.

Remember if the Republicans don't want you to do it, you KNOW it must be a good idea.

The Republican's most aggressive attempt to suppress votes yet. And it looks like it will succeed.

Courtesy of Slate:  

According to a six-month-long investigation conducted by Greg Palast for Al Jazeera, “voting officials in 27 states, almost all of them Republicans, have launched what is threatening to become a massive purge of black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters. Already, tens of thousands have been removed from voter rolls in battleground states, and the numbers are set to climb.” 

Specifically, officials have a master list of 6.9 million suspected “potential double voters.” And in Virginia, Georgia, and Washington the lists are “heavily over-weighted with names such as Jackson, Garcia, Patel, and Kim,” all common to Democratic-leaning minority groups. 

The process for checking those names, a computer program called Crosscheck—touted by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a vocal supporter for voter identification—is incredibly inaccurate. “The actual lists,” notes Al Jazeera America, “show that not only are middle names mismatched, and suffix discrepancies ignored, even conflicting birthdates are disregarded. Moreover, Crosscheck deliberately ignores any Social Security mismatches, in the few instances when the numbers are even collected.” 

Given the tight races in Georgia and other battleground states, even a small number of false positives could turn the tide of an election, giving a strong advantage to Republican candidates for statewide and congressional offices.

In Georgia they simply misplace voter registrations that they don't want to accept:

On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Brasher of the Fulton County Superior Court denied a petition from civil rights advocates to force Georgia’s Secretary of State to process an estimated 40,000 voter registrations that have gone missing from the public database. 

All of that bullshit the conservatives have been throwing around about voter fraud, and the need for stricter restrictions at the polls, was all to lay the groundwork for crap like this.

You know there are a whole lot of reasons to vote for the Democrats in this next election. But perhaps one of the best is because they respect EVERY American's right to vote, and rather than attempt to suppress any group's ability to cast their ballot, they work overtime to make it easy for all of us.

I for one am beyond fed up with this underhanded shit.

Koch brother funded mailer flagged for sending misleading information to North Carolina voters. Because you know tricking people into missing election day is an official conservative tactic.

Courtesy of The American Prospect:  

The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced this week that it is investigating a controversial mailer the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) sent to thousands of state residents that contained inaccurate information about voter registration. 

The board was required to launch an investigation after a formal complaint was filed by Casey Mann, executive director of the N.C. Democratic Party. The complaint noted that the mailer, sent by the AFP Foundation—whose chairman is David Koch—included incorrect information on the registration deadline, where to send voter registration applications, and where to get answers to questions about registration. As Mann wrote in the complaint: 

The above referenced statements were certainly known by the Respondent to be false and known by the Respondents to have the effect of misleading, intimidating, and/or discouraging participation in the North Carolina General Election by recipients not yet sufficiently informed with respect to the voter registration requirements. 

Under North Carolina law, sending out a mass mailing or taking any other action where "the intent and effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters" is a Class I felony. The elections board told the News & Observer that it has received at least 2,000 calls about the mailers, and has asked the AFP Foundation to send accurate information to the homes that received the misinformation. 

AFPF has downplayed the significance of the mailers, releasing a statement that said they "contained a few administrative errors" that "were not substantive."

Yeah telling voters the wrong information about registration deadlines and where to send their registrations, is clearly "not substantive."

Let's face it these assholes know that the more of us that vote across the country, the worse it is for them.

This is another reason why I hate the false equivalency I see lately of comparing the Koch brothers to Unions, or wealthy Democratic donors. The difference is that those people are encouraging people to register and vote, while the Koch brothers and their minions are attempting to suppress voter turnout, or steal elections outright.

This Wisconsin ad from the ACLU featuring Lewis Black may the best thing you'll see today.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Comedian Lewis Black blasted voting restrictions in Wisconsin in an ad posted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday. 

“Elected officials shouldn’t get to choose who gets to choose elected officials,” Black rants. “Look, people marched and fought and died for the right to vote. And they want to legislate away that sacrifice to stay in power? Not on my watch, baby.”

In my opinion any time you can get Lewis Black in an ad for ANYTHING, you should do exactly that. 

And I think in this ad he perfectly reflects my feelings concerning anybody who would suppress our right to vote in this country.

Hey, it's primary day again! Let's take a look at the losers Sarah Palin is backing this time.

Courtesy of the political Albatross's Facebook page:  

Friends, there are important primaries across the country tomorrow (Okay obviously this was posted late yesterday.)  with many good grassroots conservatives running against Washington insiders, and they need our help! In two states in particular, please help us send conservative fighters Chris McDaniel from Mississippi and T.W. Shannon from Oklahoma to the U.S. Senate. America's future depends on good leaders like Chris and T.W. who will fight for what is best about America! - Sarah Palin

Now there are a number of interesting primaries taking place today, but let's focus on these two since Palin has put her cottage cheese ass on the line again.

As of now it appears that T.W. Shannon is not exactly setting Oklahoma on fire with his campaign, and is currently trailing James Lankford by several points.

However Oklahoma is another state that mandates a runoff if no candidate can reach 50% so it is somewhat likely that this will not be over until later in the summer.

Speaking of runoff elections, currently the race in Mississippi is a toss up between Palin favorite Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran.

Thad Cochran has even appealed to support from the African American demographic in Mississippi to help him against the more radical Tea Party favorite.

In response, conservative organizations are organizing groups of poll watchers to intimidate the black voters in a state where Jim Crow laws and lynchings are still burned into the memories of the African American community.

So the question is will these tactics intimidate black voters into staying home? Or will they anger them into turning out in droves?

To sum up, it looks like Palin may, or may not, get at least one victory in Mississippi, and the race in Oklahoma will likely go into extra innings.

It is hard to put either of these into the winners column for Palin, so her endorsement scoreboard still records far more misses than it does hits. 

But hey, who needs to be good at political prognostication when you have that amazing Rainbow Bay Lodge money to fall back on.

New voting restrictions in Texas so tight they result in former House Speaker's request for voter ID card to be rejected.

Courtesy of USA Today:  

Just how tough are new voter identification requirements in Texas? Apparently tough enough that former U.S. House speaker Jim Wright reportedly was denied a voter ID card on Saturday. 

"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," Wright, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 1989, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about his experience at a Texas Department of Public Safety office. 

The 90-year-old told the newspaper he realized last week that he didn't have a valid ID to vote in Tuesday's elections. He was refused a voter ID card because his driver's license expired in 2010 and his faculty identification from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he teaches, doesn't meet requirements under the state law enacted in 2011.

Well look at that, in their attempt to reduce the number of voters for Wendy Davis they have stopped an elderly white guy as well.

They disenfranchise enough to THEM and it will be  the republicans who will find their voter ranks trimmed down to the bone.

And by the way this is, once again, a solution without a legitimate problem.

This from Politifact who looked into voter fraud in Texas:

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us records showing that from August 2002 through September 2012, the office received 616 allegations of election-code violations and recorded 78 election-code prosecutions. 

By our count, 46 of the prosecutions ended with a conviction, guilty plea, no-contest plea or guilty plea as part of deferred adjudication. Of those, 18 cases appeared to involve fraud committed by individual voters: 12 cases with ineligible voters, five cases of voter impersonation and one case of voting more than once. 

So, by our reading of the attorney general’s records, 18 instances of voter fraud have been confirmed in Texas since 2002. 

18 instances of somebody voting using somebody else's name in ten years.

And THAT was enough of a reason to disenfranchise thousands of potential voters, and one former Speaker of the House?

Fear of Wendy Davis has caused the Republican party in Texas to attempt to suppress the female vote. Cowards!

Courtesy of The New Civil Rights Movement:  

They’ve targeted Blacks, Latinos and college students. Now Texas has come up with a Voter ID law that will disproportionately affect women – the constituency they most fear will support Wendy Davis. 

Women are Wendy Davis’ natural base. Her eleven-hour filibuster of an abortion bill that closed family planning clinics in Texas is the reason she has the name recognition and the political capital to make a run for governor. Anti-choice groups who have never before had to spend money opposing a pro-choice candidate are scrambling to form political action groups to run ads against her. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the man who is most likely to be her opponent, has been touting himself as the real pro-woman candidate for his success at collecting back child support from deadbeat dads. Now, Republicans have found what they hope will be a more reliable plan than trying to persuade women that Republicans have their best interest at heart: 

Don’t let women vote. 

Think Progress reports that as of November 5, Texans must show a photo ID with their up-to-date legal name. It sounds like such a small thing, but according to the Brennan Center for Justice, only 66% of voting age women have ready access to a photo document that will attest to proof of citizenship. This is largely because young women have not updated their documents with their married names, a circumstance that doesn’t affect male voters in any significant way. Suddenly 34% of women voters are scrambling for an acceptable ID, while 99% of men are home free.

So much for all of that macho talk, huh Texas?

So afraid of one little ole girl politician that they are willing to disenfranchise thousands of female voters. Pathetic!

You know somehow I don't think the women of Texas will take that lying down.

New Republican voter ID requirements revealed.

Oh laugh now, but you KNOW it's coming. Especially in the South.

Though unable to steal the election for Mitt Romney, Florida Republicans DID manage to cost the President 11,000 votes.

Florida Governor Rick Scott.

Courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel:  

As many as 49,000 people across Central Florida were discouraged from voting because of long lines on Election Day, according to a researcher at Ohio State University who analyzed election data compiled by the Orlando Sentinel. About 30,000 of those discouraged voters — most of them in Orange and Osceola counties — likely would have backed Democratic President Barack Obama, according to Theodore Allen, an associate professor of industrial engineering at OSU. About 19,000 voters would have likely backed Republican Mitt Romney, Allen said. This suggests that Obama's margin over Romney in Florida could have been roughly 11,000 votes higher than it was, based just on Central Florida results. Obama carried the state by 74,309 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast.

Keep this in mind when you hear Republicans spouting off about patriotism or wanting to take this country back to "traditional values." One of those traditional values was the idea that everybody's vote counted and that American's right to vote was sacrosanct. (Well except for the female vote and the black vote of course. Those took a little longer to seem important to the white males running the place. And clearly to some they are still not terribly important.)

You know maybe it is just me, but I would NEVER be able to hold my head high if my candidate only won an election by cheating.

I guess that is yet another thing that separates me from the Republicans. Apparently THEY have no problem with it at all.

Senator Barbara Boxer introduces legislation that should get unanimous support from BOTH sides of the aisle. Unless one side doesn't WANT people to vote that is.

Courtesy of Political Insider:

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer wants to make sure people don’t have to wait all day to cast their vote. 

The Rancho Mirage Democrat today introduced the LINE Act, which would require the Attorney General and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission work together on national polling place standards. Those standards, which would need to be issued by January 2014, would include setting a minimum number of voting machines, election workers and other resources to ensure no one waits longer than an hour. 

“It is unacceptable that many Americans had to wait in line for five, six or seven hours to cast their ballots,” Boxer said in a statement today. “The LINE Act will help ensure that every American has an equal chance to vote without enduring hours-long delays at their polling places.”

We need to watch as this works its way through the Senate to see who will DARE to speak out against it. Then we will be able to easily identify those that only want voter rights to go to the people that THEY want to have the opportunity to vote in this country.

Personally I would LOVE to see this enacted well before the 2014 elections and it is imperative that it be in place before the 2016 elections.

NOBODY in America should have to wait in seven hour lines to vote, and the fact that they do should be a source of national shame. And anybody who is NOT shamed by that is not worthy to represent the people of the United States of America.

Karl Rove, yes THAT Karl Rove, claims that President Obama won due to voter suppression. WTF?

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Rove — whose American Crossroads organizations spent $300 million in a mostly unsuccessful effort to defeat Democrats — attempted to diminish Obama’s victory by explaining that the president won less popular votes in 2012 than in 2008, and only “got more votes…among Latinos.” He complained that Obama characterized Romney, a former Bain executive, as “a rich guy who cares about himself” — a message voters largely embraced: 

ROVE: I think the Republicans lost in this election because of two things. One is that the Obama campaign was very effective in keeping roughly 92 percent of the people who voted for President Obama before to vote for him again. But they didn’t do a good job of growing the electorate…The Democrats, the the only group that they got more votes this time around than they got four years ago were among Latinos. About 700,000 more Latinos voted Democratic this year than the year before. But the president succeed by suppressing the vote, by saying to people, ‘you may not like who I am and I know you can’t bring yourself to vote for me, but I’m going to paint this other guy as simply a rich guy who only cares about himself.’

Here is a man who has used EVERY dirty trick imaginable to get his candidates elected in the past, and whose party, this time around, was caught red handed attempting to cut voter hours in Ohio ONLY for those most likely to vote for Obama, had programs installed that flipped votes for Romney, and whose operatives were caught throwing away voter registration forms.

And yet he accuses the President of "suppressing the vote?" What an asshole!

This is just another example of projection from this GOP criminal enterprise. They blame the other side for successfully doing, what they themselves know they tried unsuccessfully to do.

Clearly Rove is simply desperate to find SOME what to justify his humiliating defeat, and in his demented mind he MUST blame it on some kind of cheating. After all HOW could he be beaten fair and square?

However what Rove is purposefully ignoring is that the folks who were first able to "paint this other guy as a rich guy who only cares about himself" were Romney's Republican primary opponents. And some of the most damaging attacks, done on Newt Gingrich's behalf, were funded by GOP sugar daddy Shelden Adelson. You know, the same guy who then tried to buy THIS election for Mittens.

In fact ALL that the Obama campaign had to do was let Mitt's own words speak for themselves, demonstrate his affinity for lying, and then work hard to help get the Obama supporters to the polls.

Essentially the case Rove is making is that the Obama campaign "suppressed the vote" by not allowing the Republicans to steal, discard, or suppress votes from the Democrats. (How dare they?)

So all I have to say is "Fuck Karl Rove!" And let's all hope that this is the LAST time we see his malformed Mr. Potato Head involved in our political system.

He is nothing more than a malignant cancer in American politics, and it is high time we get that tumor removed.

Thankfully we now have Obamacare to help us with that.

Anti-voter suppression video from Michael Moore. Better label this one NSFW.

Okay those old people scared me a little.

But I do admire the message, and I agree that if we let the Republicans steal this election we deserve to be haunted by angry grandparents.

So remember, VOTE! Vote like your life depends on it!

Or simply vote like you're afraid your granny is going to watch you have sex. That certainly motivates me!

More information on that GOP formula to steal votes.

Last Friday I wrote a post titled "Proof that the Republicans are actively stealing our elections, and have been doing so since at least 2008." That post received quite a lot of attention, both from Obama supporters wanting to get that word out, and Romney supporters questioning, and even insulting, the data.

I actually don't think I receive a whole lot of Romney trolls so I was pretty sure we were on to something big when they started showing up in substantial numbers.

Anyhow since that post the information has indeed gone viral and I thought I would provide you with the findings of another progressive blog, Addicting Info: 

When these reports first came out, we went over the numbers instead of just rushing in with the story. The numbers are clear as day. The fix is in all across the country, and it is restricted to states run by Republicans. This kind of manipulation can only be done subtly: votes are not shifted more than 10%. 

The reason why the fraud is so easy to spot when you examine the primaries is because the tampering was not restricted to stealing votes from one specific competitor, but from several, which increased the rate of shift as the voting population increased. The large Republican primary base becomes the scam’s undoing. The computerized manipulation algorithm leaves a fingerprint easy to identify; all such things do…and now we know what to look for. 

To show how the manipulation works, here is a sample of the Ohio primary breakdown: 

• In Mercer County, a total of 383 people voted in the Republican primary. Of those, 42% voted for Santorum, while 30% voted for Romney. 
• In Highland County, 5,590 people voted, 39% for Santorum and 31% for Romney. 
• Now examine the results from larger Ashtabula County, with its 8,932 voter turnout: it shows that Santorum suddenly dropped to 35% while Romney’s votes climbed to 33%. 
• In the largest, Montgomery County, with its 56,283 voter turnout, Romney’s vote tally suddenly zoomed up to 38%, and Santorum’s tally dropped to a distant 31%. 

These results have been verified by cross-checking with the election results numbers posted on the Ohio Secretary of State‘s website. For the above charts, Choquette and Johnson also used Wisconsin‘s election results information by precinct, district and ward. 

For once, the Tea Party is correct: there is fraud afoot. But it is not dead people voting, it’s not non-citizens voting or people trying to impersonate other voters. It’s not voter fraud, it is election fraud. The election fraud going on is this: votes are being stolen by manipulating electronic voting machines to take votes from one or more candidates to benefit whomever someone (the vote counter?) has decided should win. This lucky candidate is always a Republican. State after state, case after case, the Republicans are clearly committing widespread, systematic election fraud.

I am not a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that this is a fairly simple  calculation for somebody with a good head for numbers to work through.

I have sent this to Nate Silver, Alex Wagner, Sam Stein, and a few other Twitter friends, and hopefully SOMEBODY will seriously address this well before next Tuesday.

Though to be honest I actually worry that since many of them think that the President is well ahead of Romney they might put this off until AFTER the election so as not to attract charges of launching a partisan conspiracy theory. Personally I think that would be a mistake.