"The Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression"

For decades we've heard the Democrats yell and scream and shed crocodile tears about the GOP's voter suppression efforts. Yet for some reason, the Democrats never seemed to be able to do anything about it.
The reason for the Democrats inability to fight back on this issue is extremely simple: They are hypocrites.

It is no accident that, as confirmed by Politifact, "New York consistently ranks as one of the worst voting turnout states in the nation." In the recent New York primary (which was only for federal offices -- more on that in a minute), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored her surprise victory in the state's 14th Congressional District with voter turnout in that district of an abysmal 12%.... What's the matter with New York?
One of the ways that New York slams the door in the face of voters is the one-two punch of its closed primaries and its draconian party switch rules.
...
In New York, independents -- those who haven't enrolled in a party -- are the second largest group after Democrats in terms of party registration. (Republicans are effectively the third party in New York.) Who are these independents? Many of them are reliably Democratic voters, donors, and volunteers on campaigns. They are disproportionately young. Nationally, some 44% of millennial voters are registering as independents rather than with a party, yet polls show this age group overwhelmingly self-identifies as Democratically-leaning. African American millennials comprise the highest percentage of Democratic-leaning independents, followed by Latino millennials. Why does the New York Democratic Party insist on locking them out of the primaries and creating a culture of non-participation?
The answer is simple. These closed primaries allow party bosses to exert control over the elections. That gets us to the issue of the split primary in New York, where state and federal primaries are being held on different days. As a senior Democratic National Committee official quipped to me the other day, there's no reason to separate the primaries other than to decrease voter turnout.

Closed primaries, draconian party switch rules, and splitting the primaries are only just some of the ways that Democrats suppress voting.
Another way is the random scheduling of off-cycle elections.

when it comes to scheduling off-cycle elections1 like those taking place today, the Democratic Party is the champion of voter suppression...
Scheduling local elections at odd times appears to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping turnout low, which gives more influence to groups like teachers unions that have a direct stake in the election’s outcome. But before getting into the details of off-cycle elections, consider the parties’ basic positions on issues of voter participation.
The election calendar in the United States is an insane mess. Exhibit A is New Jersey. New Jersey holds federal elections with the rest of the country on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. But elections for state office in New Jersey are held in November of odd-numbered years. School district elections are held on the third Tuesday in April or else in November. And fire district commissioner elections are held on the third Saturday in February.
It isn’t just New Jersey.

So just how effective are these Democratic party voter suppression tactics?
Consider the progressive insurgency in the Democratic Party since 2016. It's made some dramatic victories, but note where those victories are.
partisan.jpg
Progressives are winning the most primaries where the Democratic Party establishment is the weakest. Coincidence? I doubt it.

If there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's retaining the two-party duopoly.

The major party governor candidates only needed 5,000 signatures from registered voters to get on the ballot. Third-party folks needed 25,000. Plus their window to collect those signatures didn't start until a week after the primary and ran until Monday's filing deadline....
Both outsiders collected more than needed because the signatures will be challenged. Illinois tosses entire pages of signatures over minor flaws regarding signatures, addresses, petition circulators' signatures, circulators' addresses, party affiliation of signers, page numbering, page size, binding and other arcane rules designed to prove a candidate would make an especially fastidious clerk as opposed to whether they are fit to lead the world's 20th largest economy.
Democrats across the nation cry about voter suppression, but here in Illinois we actively engage in candidate suppression.

So the next time you hear a Democrat ranting about voter suppression, give them your very best eye roll.
Be sure to practice beforehand. You wouldn't want to hurt yourself.
eyeroll.jpg

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lotlizard's picture

I assume that means 12% of registered Democrats, is that correct? Since they’re the only ones who would be allowed to vote D in the primary? Or is that, less logically, 12% of all registered voters?

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boriscleto's picture

@lotlizard Bronx County had 491,052 active registered Democrats in 2016 and Queens County had 675,963. I don't know how many of those are in the district, the PDF on elections.ny.gov doesn't break it down that way.

But the results I can find show that with 98% of precincts reporting 27,658 votes had been cast...

In NY 24 (Onondaga, 99,484 - Oswego 17,037 (Only half of Oswego County is in the district, but the cities of Oswego and Fulton are both included) - Cayuga 14,745 - Madison 11,051) 22,183 votes (100% of precincts reporting) had been cast. NY 24 wasn't as big of a primary because the incumbent is a Republican...but the DC3 candidate lost.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

WoodsDweller's picture

The purpose of both parties is to enact policies favorable to big business and the wealthy. The purpose of the Republican party is to win general elections, so they set rules to suppress Democratic voters.
The purpose of the Democratic party is to make sure that no progressives make it onto the ballot, so they set rules to suppress progressive voters.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

@WoodsDweller

.

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lotlizard's picture

@FreeSociety  
Centrists and the Left are in denial about effects of migration numbering in the millions.

I’d like to see more coverage of demographic shifts and their effects. Population modelling and projections, where are the news reports? Economic and environmental impacts?

Keeping borders wide open while at the same time raising wages — how does that work?

As an example, this 2015 Pew report projecting demographic changes in Europe is already obsolete.

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/europe/

Europe’s Muslim population is projected to increase by 63%, growing from 43 million in 2010 to 71 million in 2050.

Obviously not considered are large population movements that have occurred since this report was prepared — 2 million Muslims to Germany alone, many of whom are entitled under German law to have all their close relatives follow them later.

If the Left continues to block talk of “societal/cultural climate change” as racist and taboo, the loudmouth New Right will be only too happy to jump into the vacuum.

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detroitmechworks's picture

They will be talking specifically about Minority voter suppression in red states. That's the only one that counts apparently.

Lost voter registrations, closed polling places, few debates, closed primaries, and everything else are just the normal state of affairs, and have been in New York since Tammany Hall. You could say New York and corruption are one of Americas Oldest Traditions.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Hearing the cries of the Dems when Bush stole the election using massive vote suppression but watching the Dems not lift a finger, even shutting down investegation, against the suppression taught me a lot.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter
Anyone that doesn't recognize it by now, will never get it.

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@gjohnsit own eyes, esp. younger people. It's like flipping a coin 35 times, and it comes up heads 29 times. The awareness that somethings wrong, over and over. The other thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it's that the left is their common enemy.

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Pricknick's picture

@Snode
but I firmly believe that the majority of

esp. younger people.

see things more clearly than many of those in my boomer generation.
They just see no solution to the corruption. They are giving up.
I'm not far behind them.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick I've been waiting for years for the kids to just call the bullshit. Somehow when you're younger you can get those moments of clarity. If there was ever an emperor with no clothes time it's now. After pouring all that hope and good will into Obama, and to experience his indifference and powerlessness it was no surprise that they didn't show up in the midterms. But like most of us, you have to start believing your eyes over what the noise machine is telling you.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pricknick I am a bit stunned by how readily people in America's two Cold War generations are embracing this Russiagate nonsense. We weren't this pliable at the height of the Cold War, as McCarthy eventually discovered.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lily O Lady's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

“better dead than Red” mentality. I was just a little kid, but to my parents, nothing was worse than communism. They could never explain it to me, but when I was about 12 I told my dad what I thought a perfect world would be. His shocked response was, “That’s communism!” At last a definition, but I was just hoping for a fair world.

It’s kind of like the “kootie” mentality when we were kids. None of us had any experience with actual lice but we believed in kooties. And nobody wanted them. They were invisible and if you had them you were beyond the pale—untouchable.

Human emotions are strong and easily manipulated by powerful people, whether they be the Clintons or Trump or Putin for that matter. We need to remember not to be stampeded due to an emotional response.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lily O Lady But McCarthy eventually fell, because people realized he was cruel ("Have you no decency, sir?") and making poor arguments often based on lies and misconceptions ("Good night, and good luck.") Being irrational, cruel, and untrue to the basic principles of American democracy as we were being taught them at that time, actually mattered back then. Today, would Joe McCarthy fall? My guess is he'd be leading a pink pussy hat parade.

Worse than that, decades ago, most of us had already learned from those mistakes. By the time I was of an age to understand any of this (in the 70s) people generally understood that McCarthyism was a terrible mistake and that Joe McCarthy had done a horrible, indefensible thing. Only people on the lunatic fringe of the right wing believed otherwise. We had also learned, by the time I was young, that the Cuban missile crisis was a bad and dangerous thing, and that we needed not to do things which would get us in that position again.

Reagan made a dent in all these ideas--it became more fashionable to be better dead than red again. But even during Reagan, there was a sizable left wing critical of that sort of bloviating jingoism. Hell, there were even a few right-wing people critical of it.

Nowadays, the people who understood perfectly well in the 70s and 80s that McCarthyism was wrong and Cold War histrionics were dangerous are screaming bloody murder at the idea that we might draw NATO forces down on Russia's western border. In the 70s or 80s, those same people would have been asking why those forces were there in the first place. Hell, as recently as 2008, those people would have been asking that question.

My shock comes from the fact that people who lived through the Cold War, born into it, grew up in it, came to adulthood in it, like me and I assume you, have apparently flushed everything the Cold War taught them. When I was a teenager, we all understood we were standing on the edge of a knife, and if things fell the wrong way, all of us would die. Nuclear war was not an option on anyone's table--at least, not anyone considered sane.

Now, apparently, nuclear war is just one more item in our policy arsenal. Yay us.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lily O Lady's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

percent’s solution to global warming. Crazy seems to be the new sane.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Lily O Lady I've considered that too. Either way, I wonder what they're going to eat.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lily O Lady's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

they eat us and turn “Eat the rich,” on its head.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

NonnyO's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Exeunt.... All the bad actors....

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I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@NonnyO Thank you for the reference. Smile Cheesy sci-fi forever!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

ggersh's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal also contains two of each
of whatever species are left in this dying planet

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@ggersh I doubt it. I don't think they're interested in preserving any species but their own, which interestingly, by their definition, doesn't seem to include us.

The jury's out on whether or not they've figured out yet that they can't eat money.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

ggersh's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

The jury's out on whether or not they've figured out yet that they can't eat money.

Let them eat I-Phones, really cant make this shit up

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141190/jason-chaffetz-uninsured-let-eat-...

I tried duckduckgo to find out who actually said that
it must be secret
about iphones w/no luck, but I do remember that is was
said...

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Snode The people are their common enemy. It's just that they can exploit the rebellion and anger of the right-wing little guy, while the anger of the left-wing little guy is more difficult to digest.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal mostly I don't think they afford us that high a status. We're subjects with our repellent little needy lives, our stupid customs, superstitions and beliefs and our hilarious sentimentality for our ratty little families. The most galling thing, for them, is every 2 or four years they have to walk among us, and pander to our pathetic little hopes, dreams and feel our pain, in exchange for a vote. Then after we revert to consumer and labor, and don't bother them until the next time.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Snode @Snode Good point. OK, let me rephrase: the people are their target.

On the other hand, the NSA/CIA part of the operation seems to view the people as their adversaries. At least, they certainly treat us like adversaries.

This is well worth a listen. A student from the University of Wisconsin asks the NSA recruiters: "Who is not an adversary?"

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Good one. If they were smart they would've hired that young woman on the spot. But, they're not so she's prob on a bunch of lists now. It reminds me of cop talk. He's dirty, she's dirty, and you come to realize that you, me, in their eyes, everyone is a dirtbag, they just haven't run them through the system yet. You question them and all of a sudden English becomes a second language and then devolves into "well, I got a badge".

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Snode

Watership Down puts it well:

"I'm sick and tired of it," he said. "It's the same all the time. 'These are my claws, so this is my cowslip.' 'These are my teeth, so this is my burrow.'

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Snode I doubt she would have taken the job.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

GreatLakeSailor's picture

@gjohnsit

Start at about 21 minutes.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@GreatLakeSailor

So, this is what gets me. This is hard data. And that is something you want your voters to have in great supply so that they can participate competently in a democracy. "News" is mostly dumb, even if it did really happen. It's the hard data about outcomes that brings accuracy to critical thinking. Otherwise, people are just proxy voters for the corporations.

How can than that data reach voters when it is considered "politically inconvenient" by the news media?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
GreatLakeSailor's picture

@Pluto's Republic

How can than that data reach voters when it is considered "politically inconvenient" by the news media?

The vid I posted is part 1. Part 2 very much worth a watch too.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

snoopydawg's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

got up to speak about how black votes were suppressed in Florida. I kept waiting for him to yawn. I'm pretty sure that he promised to not accept the election results. But then Sandra wanted to retire during a republican president's term so she voted to stop the recount.

Kerry also promised not to accept the results, but he too folded like a wet suit even though there was evidence of hanky panky in Ohio. And lo and behold there was proof that Rove did steal that election for Bush.

Now there's this little gem from Glen Ford:

Black folks think the crisis is about race. It is – and it isn’t. If the ruling class, including those that fund and run the Democratic Party, were really concerned about Black people’s rights, they would have challenged Trump’s election victory based on blatant Black voter suppression in key Midwest states. As Greg Palast pointed out, the Republican “Crosscheck” scheme fraudulently and illegally purged 449,000 disproportionately Black voters from the rolls in Michigan, alone -- about 40 times larger than Trump's 10,700-vote margin of victory. Yet, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats only reluctantly joined in Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount action, and the first words out of Black Congressman John Lewis’s mouth when the polls closed in November were “Russia…Russia...Russia.” Republicans have been stealing elections through Black voter suppression in broad daylight since 2000, but only one Democratic senator and one congresswoman -- California’s Barbara Boxer and Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, in 2004 – have in this century challenged the thefts . Black voter suppression has been part of the gentlemen’s agreement between the two corporate parties. Rich white people do not plunge the system into crisis for the sake of Black voting rights, or any Black rights at all, including the right to life. But the Lords of Capital will roll the dice on the fate of all humanity to preserve and expand their global dominion and the military machine that is their only remaining advantage. Their survival as a class is at stake. Trump must go because he cannot be depended on to preserve the Washington Consensus -- the imperial project.

Russia Gate started after the "It's My Turn" candidate lost to the Orange Turd for various reasons, but the biggest one was ....

It was not Trump’s flaming racism that made him a traitor to his class and to the empire. One of the U.S. duopoly parties has always played the role of White Man’s Party, with white supremacy as its organizing principle. Were it not for endemic, fervent, nationwide white racism, the most reactionary wing of the U.S. ruling class would have no effective electoral base. Trump simply serves up a stronger brew of white supremacist elixir for the good ole boys and girls. His heresy – precipitating the crisis in ruling class politics -- was to rhetorically oppose “free trade” and U.S. “regime change” policies, and to call for normalizing relations with Russia. “Free trade” -- a euphemism for the unfettered ability of the ruling class to move money and jobs wherever it chooses on the planet – and the “exceptional” right of U.S. imperialism to remove and replace sovereign governments at will, are the pillars of the Washington Consensus. Donald Trump became anathema to the Lords of Capital and their servants in the national security “deep state,” who crowded into Hillary Clinton’s Democratic tent, where Russiagate was invented out of whole cloth.

Every person who was involved with writing the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) abandoned Trump because he was a big enough warmonger and got behind the Clinton Creature's campaign. Wolfolwitz, Pearle, Kagan and I'm betting that the Dick Cheney went inside the Creature's tent because she would have continued their plans in the Middle East just like Barry did. Even though he said something completely opposite during his first campaign.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. After then, I never just pulled the level for D believing they were the good team.

Agree with your other points too. But anyone who isn’t familiar with that clip of Gore should be. That was when I knew the game was fixed.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg You don't think that the Bush/Cheney machine was just going to let legal challenges to their victories move forward, do you? Of course, they had a plan to corral the opposing candidates--probably a separate plan for each candidate likely to emerge from the primary fray. They didn't hire Rove for his good looks.

It always seemed fairly clear to me that these politicians are being intimidated. I can't figure that a person, or in this case a faction, who's willing to subvert the vote would also be willing to let the legal chips fall where they may.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg Glen Ford is right, however (as usual).

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  
And then there was his choice of Joe Lieberman in the first place.

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@Dr. John Carpenter Having worked in city controlled by democratic party machine, I have seen let's say less than honest elections. But after 2000 I was amazed by the methods used by the gop to cheat. Database manipulation? Hadn't see that one.

But even outside FL, there were credible of reports of newly installed voting machines not allowing votes for democrats. Right after the election independent people looked at machines using various statistical methods and concluded the "errors" were not random.

I thought democratic leadership would jump on all the cheating by the gop and fix the process and systems. Never happened as you say.

Instead the democrats did do something: they blamed Nader for the loss. Even now on TOP if one brings up Nader, I swear within minutes, some lackey will jump on you.

So why do nothing? Well, in making voting more secure and bullet proof, democrats would also lose their ability to cheat. Look at what happened in Brooklyn with the changing of party affiliation of around 110,000 voters. This massive change was not noticed by anybody? Really.

While democrats do nothing to protect the privileged of cheating their base, the gopers have gone forward with developing new and innovative ways to cheat the system and beating the democrats in the general election.

The irony is that the gop primaries were probably more honest as the Trump won who the establishment absolutely hated.

And this goes back to the supposed Russian meddling. Stepping back when one looks at the voting systems, the only people who can meddle, game, and cheat are the people inside running the system, which are Americans. It is Americans, who for example, reduce and move polling locations to suppress the vote--not the Russians.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@MrWebster

Well put.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

of voter suppression, such as changing a person's party registration without their consent or knowledge. Or shutting down their polling place without telling anyone. Or simply changing the rules of how caucuses work in their state by fiat, ignoring the people yelling "Nay" at the top of their lungs, and then making some delegates retroactively not count.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Progressives are winning the most primaries where the Democratic Party establishment is the weakest. Coincidence? I doubt it.

I was suspecting this--thanks for the graph.

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