Right Wing group attempting to raise money by frightening people into believing that Hillary Clinton will steal the presidency. You know, like Barack Obama already did.

via @rickhasen, #td4NEVER pic.twitter.com/Me4GroMBuW

— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) February 19, 2016

Courtesy of the Daily Mail: 

Remember True the Vote? 

It’s the right-wing voter-monitoring group based out of Houston dedicated to cracking down on (largely imaginary!) voter fraud. The organization, led by Catherine Engelbrecht, recruits eager, aggressive election monitors and (naturally) advocates for controversial voter ID laws. True the Vote has also itself been accused of intimidating minority (read: Democratic) voters and having a slippery grip on facts, so it has that going for it, as well. 

One of the group’s latest fundraising emails floats the idea that the Republican National Committee is absolutely powerless to stop the Democrats and Hillary Clinton from rigging and stealing the 2016 election. 

"It's really a simple question," the email reads. "Do you believe Hillary is capable of stealing the election? If your answer is yes, then please give generously to True the Vote. The Republican Party can't and won't stop this election from being stolen...I kid you not...If you want honest elections, True the Vote is your best defense. We will keep fighting when others cannot — or will not."

Of course the Daily Beast goes on to remind its readers that in person voter fraud is as rare as UFO sightings.

However that is not enough to dissuade people who are absolutely convinced that we live in a country based on conservative values, and that anyone elected who does not embrace that ideology must have cheated.

Remember projection is a real thing. Accusing others of the unethical things that you, or your party, engage in is more common than you might think. 

Which is funny because the only REAL evidence of vote tampering comes from conservatives, using things like voter caging and rigged voting machines.  

More good news as President Obama extends his advantage over Mitt Romney.

Courtesy of Five Thirty Eight:  

Barack Obama’s standing in the FiveThirtyEight forecast reached its strongest position to date on Tuesday as a result of favorable polls in a set of swing states. The forecast model now gives Mr. Obama a 70.8 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from 69.0 percent on Monday and from 65.0 percent last Tuesday. 

Three of the polls were conducted by Quinnipiac University in conjunction with The New York Times and CBS News. The polls gave Mr. Obama leads of 6 points in each of Ohio and Florida, and an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania. 

In each state, the polls are at the high end of the range of numbers produced by other polling firms. As we frequently advise, no one set of polls — no matter how reputable the pollster — should be read as gospel. Differences in the numbers from survey firm to survey firm often reflect sampling error or methodological differences rather than any fundamental change in the condition of the race.

Now remember this is Nate Silver, the guru of election predictions, if he thinks that Obama is pulling significantly ahead of Romney, and that his chances for winning are promising, then you can take THAT to the bank.

Now all we have to do is keep the GOP from using Diebold machines, the Right Wing SuperPACs, or the fucking Supreme Court from stealing this election, and we should be home free.

Let me tell you right now, if Romney wins this election, we will know with absolute certainty that it was stolen. And THIS time we will NOT sit quietly by and let it happen!

Democracy in danger as laboratory discovers that Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control!

Courtesy of Salon:

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date. 

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind. 

"We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines," said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team "We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine."

I cannot for the life of me understand why we have not done away with ALL of the e-voting machines in this country!

I have a great deal of faith in the American people to make the right decision and vote to give President Obama a second term.

I have virtually NO faith in the Republican party to play by the rules.

After what happened in 2000 during the Bush v Gore election, I have been convinced that the Republican motto is "win at all cost."

They no longer care about democracy, or fair play, or the will of the people. All they care about is winning.

And as long as these incredibly faulty machines are still being controlled by that party, and we know that they are, the ONLY way we have of beating them is by having our candidates win by the largest margin possible.

Unless something changes concerning these machines in the next year, the only way that we can ensure a victory for our democracy is by making sure that people turn out to vote, and to make sure the vote they cast is the one that is recorded.

Which is why whenever I hear a progressive suggest that they will stay home because this President is not EXACTLY who he  wanted him to be, I literally want to throttle them into unconsciousness.

This is not a game, this is serious.  The very definition of who Americans are is at risk and the Republicans have already demonstrated that they have NO intention of playing by the rules.

In other words, THIS seems like the perfect job for Homeland Security.

I have sent them an e-mail with the article, if you would like to do the same here is their contact information.

Voting machines in Ohio contain critical programming error.

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

We have these exact same machines in Alaska.

I have already written a letter to the editor about this problem and how important it is to change out these machines to insure the integrity of our elections.

The fact that we still have these machines in the system after eight years of reported glitches is a criminal act, and the blame should land firmly on the shoulders of the Republicans who are in charge of the voting in not only Ohio and Alaska, but also many other states which also have these machines just waiting to be tampered with by those who want to steal our democracy right out from under our noses.

Until this serious problem is addressed we CANNOT trust the integrity of our election process.

You can see the Real Time segment talking about the New Hampshire voting discrepancy here.

It is really painful watching Tony Snow try to connect the question of hacked voting machines to the Republicans "voter fraud" red herring by suggesting the answer to the problem might be new "Voter I.D.'s". That is simply anohter way for the Republicans to try and fix the election.

"The machines aren't working, let's go to plan B."

While I do support the striking writers, I have to say that last night's Real Time was one of the best ones I have ever seen. Even WITH Tony Snow.

This is what should be done everytime Diebold machines are involved in any part of the process.

Could New Hampshire be headed for Florida redux?

Just three days after Tuesday’s primary election, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office says it will conduct a hand recount of the votes in both the Republican and Democratic primaries starting next Wednesday after receiving formal requests from two candidates this week.

On Friday, Albert Howard, an obscure candidate from Ann Arbor, Mich., who appeared on the Republican ballot and received 44 votes in the primary, hand-delivered his recount request and a down payment of $2,000 to the statehouse in Concord, N.H.

And Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Congressman and presidential candidate, sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of the Democratic ballots. Mr. Kucinich’s letter cited “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.”

I have no idea if the Hillary surge was the result of any hanky panky or not.

I watched "real Time" last night where Bill Maher pointedly brought up the idea that the Republicans want Hillary to be the nominee, and that they might cheat to get that result.

Essentially that is what a lot of us believe. We are convinced that the Republicans do not want to run against Obama, and fear him ever becoming Prresident.

I just cannot understand why ALL of the elections are not being done with paper ballots. After the 2000 and 2004 elections it just seems completely insane that we would allow such a possibly unreliable system to determine the next leader of this country.

BradBlog has been doing an excellent job of tracking the activities of Diebold and the problems that exist with it's machines. There are very serious questions remaining and more then enough reason to walk away from any contracts with that company.

(By the way I simply must give a hat tip to Skippy for bringing my attention to this article.)