I've corrected you before on inaccurate reporting regarding voting machines and procedures and am going to do it again. I'm an election worker in GA and have been since 2020. GA uses Dominion machines since switching from ES&S machines in 2019. Votes are NOT counted in secret by a corporation! They are counted at the County level by election workers who swear an oath the perform their duties correctly under penalty of long prison terms for violations of the oath. Voters vote on a touch screen, then are prompted to review their ballot before printing it. Then they are asked by an election worker if they have reviewed their printed ballot before they insert it into the tabulator. These paper ballots are required by law to be retained for 2 years in case of recounts or audits.
I like and respect your writing, but please do some fact checking before you spread misinformation. Our election system is under attack by Republicans who want to destroy our democracy. Please don't help them by spreading misinformation.
The real problem is not with the machines. It is with voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, voter purges and essentially who is permitted to cast a ballot. The machines aren’t the problem, it’s the issue of who is permitted to cast a meaningful ballot and the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and making it deliberately difficult for some voters to acquire the necessary ID.
John Spoonamore, an expert in the field would have serious disagreements with you. He gives chapter and verse as to why voting machines are inherently unreliable, because humans can manipulate them to their desired result. A hand recount of the last election would tell whether he's right or wrong. Harris conceded while the votes were still being counted.
Unfortunately your system is not used nationwide, which is what Thom was referring to. I believe Musk’s Starlink system had a hand in the elections process thus his speech about Dominion to distract folks away from Starlink.
When you have a printed paper ballot that was both machine counted and hand counted as GA did in 2020 with no change in results that proves that nothing nefarious was going on. And signature verification is just another way of suppressing the vote. My signature varies greatly depending on how much of a hurry I'm in. Presenting photo ID as we are required to do here in GA is a much better method.
The fact that 2020 was free and fair, in spite of Republican complaints, has no bearing on 2024. There was ample opportunity in between to fiddle with the software. They may not have been connected to the internet during the election but between elections who can say. Until a forensic audit is done we will never know
Again, anyone who questions this plague of privatization is a “radical” and a “socialist”. So far, there’s little indication that establishment (i.e., neoliberal) Democratic “leadership” has any awareness of or interest in the core principles of the New Deal or the common good. If we can overcome that fundamental inertia perhaps we can turn our attention to creating the sort of messaging that inspires voters. (Spoiler alert: “the left” isn’t remotely responsible for the Democrat’s most recent drubbing.)
Tom Hlastead, it is past time that the left, liberals, socialists stop letting the reactionary right from defining us and running away from labels. I don't, I had a rightard call me a lefty the other day, expecting that I would demur and disclaim. I didn't I confounded the fool by owning the label
We need to investigate this recent election. There are many anamolies. Please research! It's pointless to start analysing what we might have done differently if it really was illegal actions. We won't win the 2026midterms if we don't plug the holes.
1st priority should be election crimes. We need action NOW! National security issue. We should be discussing the War Powers Act. DOJ issued an order Sept. 4 . At a minimum circumstatial evidence shows that Russia, it's agents and willful idiots disrupted the election.
SCOTUS gave Biden all of the power he needs to derail the fascist train that is coming at us, If only he would use that power. My question is why doesn't he even try to save democracy and our country.?
Unfortunately his effort in Israel is taking up his attention, and he wants the hostages returned before he leaves office (his words). If the VP cannot face dealing with the election crimes, and Merrick Garland is a hopeless case, who can we turn to and what can we do? [I reached out to my FBI connection and he assured me that they have a huge dept. handling just these matters--I'm not assuaged.]
Israel is the least of our problems, and frankly should not be on anyone’s radar. There is no solution because it is a religious war. Our problem is survival of our constitutional democracy, the survival of the United States as a free democratic Republic. That is or should be our only concern .Israel is not a threat, neither are the Arabs, but Putin. That fire in the Mideast has been going on since Egypt had Pharaohs, and Turkey had Hittities
My wife just told me that Joe had pardoned Hunter, he should also pre pardon every that Trump will be going after with Project 25, then resign, Kamala will become #47, and Kamala can use the authority given her by SCOTUS, to imprison Trump, after all he is convicted felon, if not than, then throw huge monkey wrenches into the gears. BTW, that would make all the Trump 47 merch worthless, as he will be Trump 48
I totally agree. And...we care about leaving no one behind (the hostages). Yes, our most important "is survival of our constitutional democracy, the survival of the United States as a free democratic Republic." Is it possible that Biden and Harris do not realize the myriad criminal election issues that must be investigated?
The problem is that we, the people, look to our leaders as all powerful, all knowing gods. In reality they are mere mortals, with less intelligence and common sense that most of us, they have what most of us don’t have and that is political skills. Political skills require a lack of commitment, and even morality
Here is the truth, all plans, policies, even decisions are made by the personalities who have the hand up the presidents back side and uses him as a sock puppet. Actually marionette is more like it, because it is more than one person pulling the strings The best that can be said is to quote Dubya, “I’m the decider”
Only thing is the President staff/advisors present him with the decision, and he signs off. At very best he chooses between scenarios or decisions and often it is a forced choice.
The average IQ of a reader of RR’s is 10 – 15 points higher than Bidens, and 50 point higher than Trumps.
To make matters worse. The DOGE Boys plan to privatize as much of the government as they can make a profit off of. Our government is not bloated. 45 years in uniform and a GS 15, everyone I worked with was highly qualified, highly motivated, and did a wonderful job - right down to the mailboy and receptionist. Some of us became members of what Trump calls the "Deep State." We were boundary-spanners who collaborated with people in other agencies to enable better coordination to increase government effectiveness and efficiency. That is something the GOP hates because they thrive politically by making voters think that most civil servants are lazy and incompetent, and duplicate services. HS Civics classes do not teach how the government works. They teach how the founding fathers designed government. Things have changed over the centuries.
Back in the mid-1990s, I was surprised to learn that almost no federal agencies had a clue how their workforce perceived their bosses, co-workers, and mission achievement. I assembled an intra-agency team of highly experienced Deep-State government psychologists. We developed a survey for Al Gore to do just that and sent it out to the entire federal workforce - DOD too. The Clinton Cabinet was blown away. For the first time in the history of the Republic, they had comparative data on their agencies - and - it was rather positive too.
Today, the OPM Federal Workforce Viewpoint survey is a nearly annual event. It has enabled Departments and their agencies to identify problems and take action to fix them. It was all done without the direction or involvement of alt-right billionaire outsiders who think the best way to make the government more effective and efficient is to tear it down.
"Such privatization of our military functions has led to nearly half of the defense budget now going to for-profit corporations."
What privatizing does is move governance to the capital markets. These services are functions that maintain a democracy — our extreme form of capitalism isn't.
The only entities without a hidden agenda today are the appointed voting commissions and staff in our states. And, as much as I believe in technological solutions to technological issues, very little technology today is divorced from politics or profit motive. So, if we were to move towards online voting, it would have to be based in open-source apps easily examined by anyone, and votes recorded through an unassailable, distributed, encrypted system like blockchain. Voters should be able to examine and verify their own recorded votes, and public watchdogs should be able to view totals any time during and after voting time windows.
Since votes become money; trust shouldn't be assumed. Maybe counts with recounts should be the standard. Perhaps each done by different means. The costs couldn't possibly be more than what the country has now experienced in lack of faith.
If we gave voting control back to Government employees there would be no way to use voter roll purging and voter suppression by the the oligarchy to control the country as it does now. Benjamin Franklin's concern that we would not be able to hold on to democracy is well founded.
Not tomorrow…. Yesterday. Unbelievable once again at the audacity of the drooling greedy corporate class. Are they this needy. Are they so inept as to have to have everything “ mine, mine, mine”!!!
Now is the time to regulate all of our common needs. This lobbying, paying no taxes , controlling how all children grow up thinking only what greedy thieves want them to know. When will we get the word out and make them pay for their total greed. This is my country. Get out if you are too needy to live a comfortable life here. Vulgar, tasteless, boring. That pretty much describes Betsy DeVoe. Get out of my country before we the people have a revolution against theft!
Elections are won/lost in the margins which often are very few votes one way or the other. This one was lost by tiny margins all over the country. It wasn't the machines it was the "political machines."
Well, given that, how do you sway the marginal voters? One answer: You lie to a lot of people with constant, loud, emotion-packed lies. Anyone we know?
Second, you control the sources of information. In these days we like to call the “The Information Age,” local newspapers have gone away, cable is collapsing and much of the print waves and airwaves are dominated by entertaining music and sports. There’s precious little in the way of useful info that guides folks on policies that directly affect their lives enacted at the federal, state and local level. It is a fact that in this election the Republican vote was strongly associated with belief in several pieces of serious misinformation. For example, Trump proposes raising “tariffs” on imported goods, lying that it will bring in money from the importing country; the truth is that they are sales taxes paid by American importers and the customers, thus raising the price of those goods. They are inflationary and hurt consumers. Another example: There is virtually no problem of noncitizens voting in our elections. It’s all a lie!
As Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That seems to apply to our nation, state and even more so to rural counties.
Third, you suppress voting by your opponents by several means, such as gerrymandering, limiting public voting directly on issues (called Initiative), kicking people off the voter registration rolls, restricting information about candidates and complicating processes to cast a vote, etc ad nauseum. Anyone we know down here in Texas, Gov Abbott?
Finally, you give money to people to get them to vote how you want. It’s illegal and arguably immoral, but "patron" elections still exist. As it is said with a German accent “Ve have vays” (of getting you to vote our way). Elon Musk just bought himself a Country we all like to consider our own. Go back to my first statement and contemplate how many employees he directly or indirectly controls across the country. Nor is he alone since Big Oil and Gas has ruled for decades using the same playbook. They identified the places where the marginal vote could be swayed in their favor and set about changing the direction of the margin. That’s the real “Infowar” they run with help from “Mother Russia.” Trump was right about one thing – it was a rigged election, by whom and for whom we are just starting to find out.
This, of course, is what happened to Germany in the last century that caused her own downfall and worldwide carnage. It’s autocracy of, by and for the oligarchs, a nation wherein the policies and actions of the government are against the will of her own people. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, we may soon see and we should prepare with our own playbook, and be prepared to protect and help those who will suffer under this regime.
I've corrected you before on inaccurate reporting regarding voting machines and procedures and am going to do it again. I'm an election worker in GA and have been since 2020. GA uses Dominion machines since switching from ES&S machines in 2019. Votes are NOT counted in secret by a corporation! They are counted at the County level by election workers who swear an oath the perform their duties correctly under penalty of long prison terms for violations of the oath. Voters vote on a touch screen, then are prompted to review their ballot before printing it. Then they are asked by an election worker if they have reviewed their printed ballot before they insert it into the tabulator. These paper ballots are required by law to be retained for 2 years in case of recounts or audits.
I like and respect your writing, but please do some fact checking before you spread misinformation. Our election system is under attack by Republicans who want to destroy our democracy. Please don't help them by spreading misinformation.
The real problem is not with the machines. It is with voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, voter purges and essentially who is permitted to cast a ballot. The machines aren’t the problem, it’s the issue of who is permitted to cast a meaningful ballot and the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and making it deliberately difficult for some voters to acquire the necessary ID.
You're 100% correct.
John Spoonamore, an expert in the field would have serious disagreements with you. He gives chapter and verse as to why voting machines are inherently unreliable, because humans can manipulate them to their desired result. A hand recount of the last election would tell whether he's right or wrong. Harris conceded while the votes were still being counted.
Unfortunately your system is not used nationwide, which is what Thom was referring to. I believe Musk’s Starlink system had a hand in the elections process thus his speech about Dominion to distract folks away from Starlink.
I agree there should be one nationwide system of voting, but I was merely addressing the inaccuracies in Thoms post.
Doesn't mean the software wasn't corrupted.
Also, verifying stuff like signatures is not as objective as it should be.
When you have a printed paper ballot that was both machine counted and hand counted as GA did in 2020 with no change in results that proves that nothing nefarious was going on. And signature verification is just another way of suppressing the vote. My signature varies greatly depending on how much of a hurry I'm in. Presenting photo ID as we are required to do here in GA is a much better method.
The fact that 2020 was free and fair, in spite of Republican complaints, has no bearing on 2024. There was ample opportunity in between to fiddle with the software. They may not have been connected to the internet during the election but between elections who can say. Until a forensic audit is done we will never know
Again, anyone who questions this plague of privatization is a “radical” and a “socialist”. So far, there’s little indication that establishment (i.e., neoliberal) Democratic “leadership” has any awareness of or interest in the core principles of the New Deal or the common good. If we can overcome that fundamental inertia perhaps we can turn our attention to creating the sort of messaging that inspires voters. (Spoiler alert: “the left” isn’t remotely responsible for the Democrat’s most recent drubbing.)
We've been fighting this since Reagan. Where were you?
But for psy ops Dems would have won. Besides that, there are discrepancies re the count.
Tom Hlastead, it is past time that the left, liberals, socialists stop letting the reactionary right from defining us and running away from labels. I don't, I had a rightard call me a lefty the other day, expecting that I would demur and disclaim. I didn't I confounded the fool by owning the label
Yes. We should follow Ireland's example. But we won't. It's probably too late.
We need to investigate this recent election. There are many anamolies. Please research! It's pointless to start analysing what we might have done differently if it really was illegal actions. We won't win the 2026midterms if we don't plug the holes.
Well said
Margaret.. but who’s listening?
See above.
1st priority should be election crimes. We need action NOW! National security issue. We should be discussing the War Powers Act. DOJ issued an order Sept. 4 . At a minimum circumstatial evidence shows that Russia, it's agents and willful idiots disrupted the election.
SCOTUS gave Biden all of the power he needs to derail the fascist train that is coming at us, If only he would use that power. My question is why doesn't he even try to save democracy and our country.?
Unfortunately his effort in Israel is taking up his attention, and he wants the hostages returned before he leaves office (his words). If the VP cannot face dealing with the election crimes, and Merrick Garland is a hopeless case, who can we turn to and what can we do? [I reached out to my FBI connection and he assured me that they have a huge dept. handling just these matters--I'm not assuaged.]
Israel is the least of our problems, and frankly should not be on anyone’s radar. There is no solution because it is a religious war. Our problem is survival of our constitutional democracy, the survival of the United States as a free democratic Republic. That is or should be our only concern .Israel is not a threat, neither are the Arabs, but Putin. That fire in the Mideast has been going on since Egypt had Pharaohs, and Turkey had Hittities
My wife just told me that Joe had pardoned Hunter, he should also pre pardon every that Trump will be going after with Project 25, then resign, Kamala will become #47, and Kamala can use the authority given her by SCOTUS, to imprison Trump, after all he is convicted felon, if not than, then throw huge monkey wrenches into the gears. BTW, that would make all the Trump 47 merch worthless, as he will be Trump 48
I totally agree. And...we care about leaving no one behind (the hostages). Yes, our most important "is survival of our constitutional democracy, the survival of the United States as a free democratic Republic." Is it possible that Biden and Harris do not realize the myriad criminal election issues that must be investigated?
The problem is that we, the people, look to our leaders as all powerful, all knowing gods. In reality they are mere mortals, with less intelligence and common sense that most of us, they have what most of us don’t have and that is political skills. Political skills require a lack of commitment, and even morality
Here is the truth, all plans, policies, even decisions are made by the personalities who have the hand up the presidents back side and uses him as a sock puppet. Actually marionette is more like it, because it is more than one person pulling the strings The best that can be said is to quote Dubya, “I’m the decider”
Only thing is the President staff/advisors present him with the decision, and he signs off. At very best he chooses between scenarios or decisions and often it is a forced choice.
The average IQ of a reader of RR’s is 10 – 15 points higher than Bidens, and 50 point higher than Trumps.
Different methods of analysis. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/just-too-easy-to-hack-elon-musk-claims-voting-machines-rig-elections-calls-for-paper-ballots/articleshow/114387655.cms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrFb-rLVF10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfs2kC0xOmU
We've discussed Spoonamore previously.
THANK you! I've just spent a few hours with these, plus Stephen Schmidt, and Jon Stewart.
To make matters worse. The DOGE Boys plan to privatize as much of the government as they can make a profit off of. Our government is not bloated. 45 years in uniform and a GS 15, everyone I worked with was highly qualified, highly motivated, and did a wonderful job - right down to the mailboy and receptionist. Some of us became members of what Trump calls the "Deep State." We were boundary-spanners who collaborated with people in other agencies to enable better coordination to increase government effectiveness and efficiency. That is something the GOP hates because they thrive politically by making voters think that most civil servants are lazy and incompetent, and duplicate services. HS Civics classes do not teach how the government works. They teach how the founding fathers designed government. Things have changed over the centuries.
Back in the mid-1990s, I was surprised to learn that almost no federal agencies had a clue how their workforce perceived their bosses, co-workers, and mission achievement. I assembled an intra-agency team of highly experienced Deep-State government psychologists. We developed a survey for Al Gore to do just that and sent it out to the entire federal workforce - DOD too. The Clinton Cabinet was blown away. For the first time in the history of the Republic, they had comparative data on their agencies - and - it was rather positive too.
Today, the OPM Federal Workforce Viewpoint survey is a nearly annual event. It has enabled Departments and their agencies to identify problems and take action to fix them. It was all done without the direction or involvement of alt-right billionaire outsiders who think the best way to make the government more effective and efficient is to tear it down.
"HS Civics classes do not teach how the government works." Hopefully, this will change. Thank of how fascinating it could be if they do!
"Such privatization of our military functions has led to nearly half of the defense budget now going to for-profit corporations."
What privatizing does is move governance to the capital markets. These services are functions that maintain a democracy — our extreme form of capitalism isn't.
Truth, power, counting, ballots by hand should always be done and checked against a computer account
There are certain core functions of government that should not be privatized, and you have mentioned a number of them.
Not sure what else one can say but YES YES YES
The only entities without a hidden agenda today are the appointed voting commissions and staff in our states. And, as much as I believe in technological solutions to technological issues, very little technology today is divorced from politics or profit motive. So, if we were to move towards online voting, it would have to be based in open-source apps easily examined by anyone, and votes recorded through an unassailable, distributed, encrypted system like blockchain. Voters should be able to examine and verify their own recorded votes, and public watchdogs should be able to view totals any time during and after voting time windows.
Since votes become money; trust shouldn't be assumed. Maybe counts with recounts should be the standard. Perhaps each done by different means. The costs couldn't possibly be more than what the country has now experienced in lack of faith.
If we gave voting control back to Government employees there would be no way to use voter roll purging and voter suppression by the the oligarchy to control the country as it does now. Benjamin Franklin's concern that we would not be able to hold on to democracy is well founded.
Not tomorrow…. Yesterday. Unbelievable once again at the audacity of the drooling greedy corporate class. Are they this needy. Are they so inept as to have to have everything “ mine, mine, mine”!!!
Now is the time to regulate all of our common needs. This lobbying, paying no taxes , controlling how all children grow up thinking only what greedy thieves want them to know. When will we get the word out and make them pay for their total greed. This is my country. Get out if you are too needy to live a comfortable life here. Vulgar, tasteless, boring. That pretty much describes Betsy DeVoe. Get out of my country before we the people have a revolution against theft!
Thanks, Captain my Captain for helping us understand how all this came about in the first place.
resist Resist RESIST
resist Resist RESIST
Why did they vote that way?
Elections are won/lost in the margins which often are very few votes one way or the other. This one was lost by tiny margins all over the country. It wasn't the machines it was the "political machines."
Well, given that, how do you sway the marginal voters? One answer: You lie to a lot of people with constant, loud, emotion-packed lies. Anyone we know?
Second, you control the sources of information. In these days we like to call the “The Information Age,” local newspapers have gone away, cable is collapsing and much of the print waves and airwaves are dominated by entertaining music and sports. There’s precious little in the way of useful info that guides folks on policies that directly affect their lives enacted at the federal, state and local level. It is a fact that in this election the Republican vote was strongly associated with belief in several pieces of serious misinformation. For example, Trump proposes raising “tariffs” on imported goods, lying that it will bring in money from the importing country; the truth is that they are sales taxes paid by American importers and the customers, thus raising the price of those goods. They are inflationary and hurt consumers. Another example: There is virtually no problem of noncitizens voting in our elections. It’s all a lie!
As Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That seems to apply to our nation, state and even more so to rural counties.
Third, you suppress voting by your opponents by several means, such as gerrymandering, limiting public voting directly on issues (called Initiative), kicking people off the voter registration rolls, restricting information about candidates and complicating processes to cast a vote, etc ad nauseum. Anyone we know down here in Texas, Gov Abbott?
Finally, you give money to people to get them to vote how you want. It’s illegal and arguably immoral, but "patron" elections still exist. As it is said with a German accent “Ve have vays” (of getting you to vote our way). Elon Musk just bought himself a Country we all like to consider our own. Go back to my first statement and contemplate how many employees he directly or indirectly controls across the country. Nor is he alone since Big Oil and Gas has ruled for decades using the same playbook. They identified the places where the marginal vote could be swayed in their favor and set about changing the direction of the margin. That’s the real “Infowar” they run with help from “Mother Russia.” Trump was right about one thing – it was a rigged election, by whom and for whom we are just starting to find out.
This, of course, is what happened to Germany in the last century that caused her own downfall and worldwide carnage. It’s autocracy of, by and for the oligarchs, a nation wherein the policies and actions of the government are against the will of her own people. What could possibly go wrong? Sadly, we may soon see and we should prepare with our own playbook, and be prepared to protect and help those who will suffer under this regime.