How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

Postby admin » Wed Jun 08, 2016 10:34 pm

How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now
by Greg Palast
June 7, 2016

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[Los Angeles] It’s not some grand conspiracy, but it’s grand theft nonetheless. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ voters will lose their ballots, their rights, by the tens of thousands.

The steal is baked into the way California handles No Party Preference –”NPP” voters –what we know as “independents.”

There are a mind-blowing 4.2 million voters in California registered NPP – and they share a love for sunshine and Bernie Sanders. According to the reliable Golden State poll, among NPP voters, Sen. Sanders whoops Sec. Hillary Clinton by a stunning 40 percentage points.

On the other team, registered Democrats prefer Clinton by a YUGE 30 points. NPP’s can vote in the Democratic primary, so, the California primary comes down to a fight between D’s and NPP’s.

And there’s the rub. In some counties like Los Angeles, it’s not easy for an NPP to claim their right vote in the Democratic primary – and in other counties, nearly impossible.

Example: In Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, if you don’t say the magic words, “I want a Democratic crossover ballot,” you are automatically given a ballot without the presidential race. And ready for this, if an NPP voter asks the poll worker, “How do I get to vote in the Democratic party primary, they are instructed to say that, “NPP voters can’t get Democratic ballots.” They are ordered not to breathe a word that the voter can get a “crossover” ballot that includes the presidential race.

I’m not kidding. This is from the official Election Officer Training Manual page 49:

“A No Party Preference voter will need to request a crossover ballot from the Roster Index Officer. (Do not offer them a crossover ballot if they do not ask).”

They’re not kidding. Poll worker Jeff Lewis filed a description of the training in an official declaration to a federal court:

Someone raised their hand and asked a follow-up question: ‘So, what if someone gets a nonpartisan ballot, notices it doesn’t have the presidential candidates on it, and asks you where they are?’ The answer poll workers are instructed to give: ‘Sorry, NPP ballots don’t have presidential candidates on them.’ That’s correct: even when people ask questions of that nature, obviously intending to vote with a party.

This affidavit, and several even more horrifying, come from Election Justice USA, a non-partisan watchdog, hoping to get injunctions to stop this nonsense. [Hear my talk with the group’s spokesman, Paul Thomas, on a special edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: Elections Crime Bulletin, which I host with Dennis Bernstein on the Pacifica Radio Network.]

Let me throw in another complication. Nearly half of Californians vote by mail, ballots sent to your home automatically. Most NPP voters don’t realize that, to vote in the Democratic primary today, they must bring in their NPP ballot with the envelope, and say these magic words: “I want to surrender my ballot in return for a Democratic ‘crossover’ ballot.”

Got that memorized? Because if you don’t, if you say the wrong syllables, in some counties, you will be denied a Democratic presidential ballot.

Bruce C. Carter is losing his mind over this. I interviewed Carter who arrived in his Black Men for Bernie bus, decorated with a giant image of Bernie’s arrest while demonstrating for civil rights. Carter warns that, If an NPP voter doesn’t say they are “surrendering” their NPP ballot, the clerk can take it and count it, blank, instead of giving the voter a new one.

It gets far worse. There are simply not enough “crossover” ballots printed. If they run out of ballots, Carter his telling voters to demand a recorded vocal vote using the voice recorders set up for the disabled.

Unfortunately, the games hardly end there. Election Justice filed still more declarations with the courts of poll workers being told to give NPP voters “provisional” ballots even if they say the magic words, “I want a crossover Democratic ballot.” As I’ve previously reported, provisional ballots are “placebo” ballots that let you feel like you’ve voted, but you haven’t. Provisional ballots are generally discarded.

Minutes ago I got a note from NPP voter Olga Martinez in Contra Costa County where she was told she must take a “provisional” ballot. She heard our reports and demanded the Democratic ballot and got it. ML King told us, you don’t get your rights unless you demand them.

And this note just came in minutes ago from my KPFK co-host, Cary Harrison.

“I am in West Hollywood and was just denied voting twice! I’m NPP. I do not even appear on the voting rolls nor does my STREET on the voting rolls. Voting suppression is in full swing.”

Cary just called. He drove to a new precinct as directed: and was again denied a ballot.

And dig this: Some counties are demanding that some of the first-time voters show official voter ID—as if California is now New Alabama. New voters are, in the main, the young Sanders supporters who are now finding out what it’s like to be treated as if they’ve turned Black.

There is no evidence this ‘Grand Theft Voto’ is part of a massive scheme by Hillary supporters to swipe the election. The voting system is run mostly by the Democratic Party which is totally in Hillary’s pocket. So while the establishment party officials know of the absurd impediments to voting, they see no reason to solve these problems because it doesn’t harm “their” voters.

Most of this procedural nonsense, like the need to surrender an NPP ballot with an envelope and request a “crossover” ballot – well, frankly, Bernie’s campaign has known about that all year.

The Sanders campaign was spending time talking policy at giant rallies instead of educating their voters on how to vote. In the rat maze called the American voting system, the painfully amateur Sanders campaign never provided a vote-guiding map.

I don’t believe Clinton booster Governor Jerry Brown intended to play Bull Connor. Nevertheless, Brown and the Democratic establishment’s mad hunger to see their candidate wrap up the nomination, has led them to turn a blind eye to a catastrophe for our democracy.
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Re: How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

Postby admin » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:02 pm

With Five Million Votes Still Uncounted and Unreported in the Democratic Primary, Sanders Could Still Win California!
by Dave Lindorff
June 13, 2016

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FLASH! The Los Angeles Times, actually a Hillary Clinton backer, reports that not 3.6 million votes, as reported on election night, but 8 million votes were actually cast in the California Democratic primary — a turnout of 47%. According to the Times article, the Secretary of State of California, Alex Padilla, concedes that 2.5 million of those votes, mostly mail-in ballots from young people and Hispanic voters, or Bernie’s strong point, have been counted, and another 2 million have yet to be counted by local county officials.

But Padilla has also not reported on what the results were of those other 2.5 million votes that have been counted thus far since election day. (This even though his office did report the count of early mail-in votes on election day before people had even finished voting.)

All the votes are legitimate and need to be counted — by hand. As long as a ballot was received by the end of the day Friday, June 10, and were postmarked by election day, they are valid.

The Times said that people should prepare to see the vote totals of not just the presidential race, but also down-ticket races, change dramatically.

A tsunami of 5 million mailed-in and provisional ballots could reverse the result of California's Democratic Primary

The problem is that the Secretary of State has 30 days to certify the votes and declare winners. That would be July 8! So far, most reporting on the uncounted votes has been limited to the alternative media. The NY Times and the big TV and radio news organizations haven’t said a word about it. The Washington Post did mention the uncounted votes, but scoffed at the notion that they could change the results, making the bogus argument that Clinton had won among early mail-in voters by 58-44% — but of course she was way ahead in the polls before Sanders really began campaigning in California, and the uncounted votes are also last-minute voters when Sanders was tied or ahead in the polls.

Don’t just take my word for it. Check it out at the Los Angeles Times.

Clearly, Sanders, who met with a group of key advisors and friends at his home in Burlington, VT Sunday evening, came out to announce that he was continuing his campaign for the Democratic nomination, probably right through to the July 25 convention. No doubt, he has the continuing California vote count in mind, as well as the potential for either a Justice Department indictment of Clinton in for violating national security law and FOIA through her use of a private email server as Secretary of State, or a scathing report on the FBI’s investigation of that issue, combined with her poor polling performance against Donald Trump. While he didn’t say what his plans going forward are, he has not rejected or so far even commented on an offer by Green Party activists, including presumptive Green presidential nominee Jill Stein, for him to accept that party’s nomination to be its candidate in the general election.
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Re: How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

Postby admin » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:12 pm

Wednesday's big question: How many uncounted California ballots?
by John Myers
June 7, 2016

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Tuesday may be in the record books, but the new day in California arrives without a full tally of votes cast in the state's presidential primary.

And that wasn't unexpected.

Cathleen Decker ✔ @cathleendecker
And....six minutes left in the California primary vote. Weeks left in the California primary vote count.
7:55 PM - 7 Jun 2016 · Los Angeles, CA, United States


With California's evolution to a state where most voters cast their ballots by mail, political watchers have concluded that election day has turned into election week .

The independent Target Book, a publication that handicaps congressional and legislative races, called it "probable" that as many as 3 million ballots could remain uncounted by time Tuesday night ended. And traditionally, said the analysts, those ballots tend to have come from Democrats, young and Latino voters.

As of early Wednesday morning, about 5 million ballots had already been counted, but there was no official word on how many remained. State election law gives counties 30 days to finish their canvassing of votes cast. Secretary of State Alex Padilla must receive certified results from each of California's 58 counties by July 8.

***********************

As the week ends, 2.4 million uncounted ballots from California's primary
by John Myers

For the politically curious, it's the best guessing game around: What's in the uncounted ballots from election day, and how many of them will change closely watched races across the state?

On Friday afternoon, Secretary of State Alex Padilla reported that there were 2,423,607 uncounted ballots statewide. About two-thirds of those are vote-by-mail ballots, with three Southern California counties leading the way: Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange.

Reports from a number of the state's 58 counties haven't changed for a few days, so expect the figures to shift pretty noticeably by early next week.

And one other part of the process: This is the first year in which ballots that arrive up to three days late -- Friday would be the deadline -- can be counted. So the number of ballots on hand could also change.

***********************

There are more than 2.5 million uncounted ballots left from Tuesday's statewide primary
by John Myers

More than 2.5 million ballots were left uncounted on election day across California, a process that could take several days or longer and leave close races in limbo.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla posted a report late Thursday on unprocessed ballots. Most of that total -- about 1.8 million -- were mailed to voters but returned only on Tuesday.

Six million ballots have already been counted from the statewide primary. The uncounted tally would push total voter turnout to about 8.5 million, or around 47% of all registered voters.

Los Angeles County had more unprocessed ballots than anywhere, about 616,000. San Diego County reported 285,000 uncounted ballots.

A portion of the unprocessed total are provisional ballots -- designated for voters whose registration status can't be immediately verified on election day. If a provisional ballot is later found to have been cast mistakenly, it may not be counted.
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Re: How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

Postby admin » Sat Jun 25, 2016 1:22 am

How Bernie Won California: The Official Un-Count
by Greg Palast with Dennis J. Bernstein
June 20, 2016

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his week on The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Election Crimes Bulletin we revisit the California primary crime scene and attempt to count the votes — something election officials in the state have failed to do. Officially, there are nearly 2 million votes that remain uncounted, and statistics show that the vast majority of these are favoring Bernie. If all votes were created equal and actually tallied, the Golden State would most likely be in Bernie’s pocked. Professional vote sleuth Greg Palast breaks down the numbers with Dennis J. Bernstein…

TRANSCRIPT (Originally broadcast on June 15, 2016)

Dennis J. Bernstein: Greg Palast, great to have you back… Are we talking millions of votes not counted? What is this?

Greg Palast: Are you ready for this?

DB: I don’t know.

Palast: Okay, take out a pencil and paper…

DB: I’m afraid.

Palast: The mail-in ballots: 1,173,943 uncounted. Provisional “placebo” ballots — when they don’t want you to vote, they give you pretend ballots — there are 712,849 uncounted. This is two weeks after the election! Even Iran counts the votes within two weeks. And we’re not done… 73,116 “other” votes have not been counted.

The other secret of American elections, that we’re not supposed to tell anyone, is that we don’t count all the ballots. We have ballots which are called “spoiled.” You’ve got some fly poop on the ballot so the computer kicks it out. There’re all kinds of reasons why your ballot would spoil. We’re looking at maybe 1 million in California — that’s a million “spoiled” that will never be counted. Not including those spoiled ones that are already thrown out, of the almost 2 million ballots officially uncounted (it may be closer to 3 million, but officially 2 million), at least 1 million will never be counted. Of the 2 million remaining, I would suspect that half will never, ever be counted — especially those provisional ballots. And the late mail-in ballots will not be counted. So you have 3 million votes out there and probably 2 million won’t be counted. Hey, it’s democracy-flavored, but it’s not real, organic democracy.

DB: Do we know who would be hurt most and who would be helped most by this lack of counting…? Is there anyway to gauge that?

Palast: We know who’s hurt most. That is the public and the voters. ‘Cause you just stood in line to vote and the guy or the woman who got the most votes doesn’t win. In terms of the politics… I’m a reporter. It’s not my business who should win or shouldn’t, but I can tell you this: Senator Sanders won California.

Let me do the math for you. Most of those late mailed-in ballots were what are called NPP, No Party Preference. These independent ballots were the ones that came in late because people had to switch their ballots. It’s a complex process, in California, that’s all I can tell you. The late ballots are Sanders ballots.

How do I know that NPP ballots are Sanders ballots? Because Golden State Polling, which is the gold standard in the Golden State for polling, put Sanders about 3 to 1 among No Party Preference, that is independent voters. The provisional ballots were almost entirely No Party Preference voters who did things like the woman in front of me who burst into tears at the polling station because she brought in her Independent Party ballot, and has the right under California law to vote in the Democratic primary. She turned in her ballot, as she’s supposed to, but she forgot to bring the blank envelope that comes with it. So they gave her a provisional ballot, and she burst into tears, cause she knew that it wouldn’t be counted…

Let’s not take 3 to 1, the California poll numbers. Let’s just call it 2 to 1, in which case Hillary has in that pile about three-quarters of a million votes; Sanders has in that pile about 1.25 million votes. That would give Sanders a plurality among uncounted votes, and I’m not talking spoiled votes, which is probably the same breakdown. But, if you do the arithmetic, Sanders gains out of that uncounted and spoiled pile, about 500,000-plus votes, which puts him over the top to win California… By next week, I’ll have more numbers for you, but Sanders won…

DB: There was clearly a full press court going on, which began with the declaring of Hillary as the presumptive nominee on the eve of the California election. This was incredibly suspicious in the context of who would be hurt… What’s the Secretary of State saying about all this?

Palast: I’m horrified. We’ve been on the phone with the Secretary of State’s office, Alex Padilla. And, number one, he has no count. He’s the Secretary of State, he’s in charge of the election, he has no count. No count of the number of ballots which have been rejected already. It’s about 1 million, give or take. So here you have a guy in charge of the election who can’t tell you what happened to 1 million ballots… It’s 2 weeks after the election, there are 2 million ballots still uncounted…

DB: How does he explain this? How does the Secretary of State explain not knowing?

Palast: You’ll love this answer. He said, “Well, it’s no worse than any of the other elections we’ve had.” Like, what?!? That’s like saying, “Well, you know, we were in Vietnam… hey, Iraq wasn’t that bad.” This guy’s, like, it’s okay because it’s always been this horrific in California. But because we’ve had a one-party state here, in the Golden State it was basically just the Democratic Party, no one cared. But now that you have a primary, a fight between two Democrats, someone is actually saying, “What happened to the 1 million ballots? …How come there are 2 million ballots still uncounted after 2 weeks? …What’s the rule for counting them or not counting them?”

And I got another one: You are supposed to, by California law, check the voting machines in the precincts. One percent of all precincts, you have to literally check the machine count versus the actual little punch cards that you get… By law, the precincts must be chosen randomly. There used to be someone who would stick their hand in a bucket with all the precinct numbers, in LA it’s 4,000 precincts, and you pull out a number. In LA you’d pull out 40 numbers and those are the precincts you would audit. Well, guess what? Mimi Kennedy just found out that they pre-designated the random precincts to audit. So, in other words, they randomly pre-selected… The reason you can’t do that guys, if you’re not a professor of statistics, is that it ain’t random if you’ve pre-selected…

DB: The closer the election gets, the more crucial these things are. If we have a landslide… there’s not as much concern about what’s going on. But say, for instance, you have a very close election between Clinton and Trump, if they are the ones, really it can be fixed easily in this context.

Palast: It’s easy to hold honest elections. It’s not that difficult. There’s no reason for California to have lost track of 2 million ballots. There’s just no reason… I mean in Kazakstan they don’t count the ballots either, but I thought California was not Kazakstan. I’ve just been educated.

Now, here’s the problem: Hillary Clinton was declared the landslide victor in California, which was an extreme oddity given that the polls taken days before showed her in a dead heat with Sanders. It just evaporated? Because Sanders people are not as enthusiastic as Clinton people for voting? No, it’s the games with the registrations… and with the mail-in ballots, and the so-called provisional ballots, what I call the placebo ballots. That problem is going to haunt Hillary… And by the way, I want to emphasize, I have no information that she’s behind this. The California Democratic Party machine runs the operation. They backed her. It’s not like she had to give the word to these guys to keep the system a mess so that she could win it. I’m not accusing her of that, that’s ridiculous. But I am saying that she will be the victim of the games with provisional ballots.

In the last elections, in 2008 and 2012, there were 2 million provisional ballots thrown in the garbage. That’s the official number from the United States Elections Assistance Commission. Two million provisional ballots were rejected. There’s no reason to believe that these were wrongful voters or illegal voters, because if they were, you’d arrest them. There were just gimmicks as a way to throw away people’s ballots…

DB: Maybe we have to invent a voter dumpster diving movement to pull the ballots back out of the garbage and figure out a way to count them.

Palast: Well, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to blame a little bit on Senator Sanders and his campaign. Right now they are counting some of those provisional ballots, there should be Sanders people at every one of those precincts to say, “Count that ballot, don’t throw that away…” The Sanders’ campaign should have been aware of this from the front end. Besides having get-out-the-vote volunteers, what he needed was count-the-vote volunteers. I know Senator Sanders, and I know he’s been concerned about vote suppression techniques aimed at minorities. That’s been a very big issue with him. We’ve talked about it together over the years. But I guess he didn’t expect it to happen to white people, his voters. Basically, you have a lot of middle-class voters in California that just found out what it is to vote like they’ve turned black, with provisional ballots or the ballots they throw in the garbage. We’re not used to it.

DB: And this will be the same system for the presidential vote, right? Nothings going to change here.

Palast: I think it will be worse. I think we’re going to see something worse going across the country. I was just in Ohio. If you think it was bad in California… It’s a blood sport there. Jon Husted, who is the Secretary State of Ohio, makes Katherine Harris look like Thomas Jefferson with make-up. This guy is rabid. The courts have just slapped down some of his most recent stuff — literally saying his activities were effectively racist… But you take away one trick through court action, he’s got another. And the problem we’re running into without the Voting Rights Act in full force, since 2013, is that a guy like Husted can put in all kinds of new, crazy rules and impediments to voting…

The second worst state after Ohio is North Carolina, another swing state. Obama won it one time and then lost it the second time. I can tell you why he lost it the second time, the games that were being played with the voter registration there. Hillary might be laughing and giggling at the foolishness of the Sanders people not watching the vote in California. But I’m going to tell you right now, what goes around, comes around. Every vote stolen in California, will be stolen back double in Ohio and North Carolina, and Florida, and in New Mexico, and Arizona. Look out Hillary, this is no joke.
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Re: How California Is Being Stolen from Sanders Right Now

Postby admin » Fri Jul 01, 2016 5:53 am

Clinton’s Heist of Democracy and the Voter-Driven Superdelegate and Platform Solution
by Veena Trehan
June 29, 2016

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Many of us have historically opposed the Republicans based on a fundamental antipathy to virtually all their policies. Their money in politics corroded their integrity, we said. And we thanked our lucky stars we were Democrats.

But beyond their positions this millennium, and far more egregious, was the Republicans utter lack of respect for democracy. Who, we asked ourselves, trashes voting rights, throws people off the voting rolls, and tampers with election outcomes? Who deprives young people of their votes? Who creates and exploits media that ignores the biggest issues, and scripts major events into narratives lacking perpetrators in order to promote popular ignorance and corporate-controlled candidates?

We now see that enemy. It is us: the Democratic Party.

Truth has a liberal bias, they say. Sanders sounded truth to power – articulating the realities of our wars, health care, climate, infrastructure and many other issues, in the service of equity and justice. Backed by a consistent record, he spoke of the creation of jobs and the transformative impact of elevating human and environmental rights.

He resonated with voters, especially young ones. Like in Brexit, younger voters who chose openness and diversity (although the narrative is more complicated than that) were overwhelmed by older voters whose ballots often reflected fear and media distortion. Here young voters chose the Vermont Senator seven times more in some states, and landed him a majority of voters under 45 in virtually every state. His call for “real change,” beautifully reiterated on Thursday, calls for a revolution to prioritize our bodies, prospects, community and planet over corporate profit.

How to deal with these truths and his popularity in a democracy? Clearly we’d have a contest of ideas and records. Instead, Clinton and her supporters decided to do everything possible to silence Sanders, trampling the institutions of party and democracy. I (and so many others) documented Clinton’s utter disregard of an open society model with equal participation in our government and accountability to our people.

A month after the primaries started, I wrote “Dear Hillary, You’re Losing My Vote,” which outlined her attempts to exploit the media to misrepresent her own and Sanders’ records. This escalated as I documented in early June’s Hillary’s Exploitation of Democratic Institutions (Including Superdelegates) Exposed. This subversion of democracy was not against those “terrible, evil, must-be-beaten-at-all-costs Republicans.” Instead it was used against the candidate with the most integrity, solid record, bold vision, and youth support in recent Democratic history. At least, we reassured ourselves, it could not possibly get worse.

Then she and the mainstream media— who have given millions to the Clinton Foundation— pulled off a heist unheard of in Democratic history. With the Democratic primary slated to go the Convention as neither candidate would otherwise amass sufficient pledged delegates, MSNBC announced they would call the election while California was voting and more than six weeks before the Convention. This despite DNC spokesman Luis Miranda’s statement that superdelegates should not be counted before the Convention. Of course this plan was widely condemned. But instead of backing down, they moved the announcement up. AP did a survey of superdelegates and the Associated Press, NBC, and the New York Times announced on the eve of the California primary that she had enough delegates to clinch the nomination without specifying which superdelegates.

This was obviously an attempt to depress voter turnout and distract from the expected mass disenfranchisement in the most populous state. Note well: the hounding of delegates to make this announcement could only have been done with the knowledge (if not urging) of Clinton insiders, given the majority of superdelegates allegedly favor her.

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald described this result: “The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identities the media organization — incredibly — conceals. … But for a party run by insiders and funded by corporate interests, it’s only fitting that its nomination process ends with such an ignominious, awkward, and undemocratic sputter.”

A day later Clinton vocally claimed the nomination in what appeared to be an attempt to redirect media and popular focus from an unprecedented electoral failure, even in a season of escalating electoral fraud. How big was it? Clinton was called the winner before 2.5 million votes – about 1/3 of the total – were counted. Many believe Sanders won California.

As shown in the illuminating and depressing documentary of the California primary — “Uncounted” by Rogue Kite Productions and The Young Turks — the election was a “shitshow.” Of course this was predictable after major problems in more than 10 states and expert Greg Palast’s prediction the No Party Preference (independent) voters who favored Bernie by about 40 points would be denied ballots unless they used very specific language. But the perspective of poll workers (and numerous articles) shows the full scope of the election catastrophe. Poll workers – some who were picked off the street – were inadequately or inaccurately trained with a “fire hose” of information and often unable to effectively run or supervise the elections. (The processes were designed by the office of Sec. of State Alex Padilla, who stumped for Clinton.) Voting machines were dropped off without checking IDs and opened by workers: machines that were “unreliable, vulnerable and can be hacked,” according to Bob Fitrakis. Who could vote? It wasn’t clear. There were massive voter purges such that one worker was “actually relieved when we found someone’s name on the roster,” many people were switched out of the Democratic party, voters were removed from the rolls or marked as vote by mail but not sent a ballot, voters who showed up were sometimes told they voted by mail and that ballot counted instead, first-time voters were instructed to show official voter IDs, an insufficient numbers of ballots were printed, broken machines occurred, supplementary rosters arrived late, and crossover ballots were not counted at the polls. The massive voter disenfranchisement was truly shocking.

“I have always believed elections were well run, I did not expect there to be a problem among Democrats,” said civil rights attorney Dwana Bain in “Uncounted.” “I believe that Democrats were suppressing the votes of Democrats and I would have not believed that if I was not closely involved in this election.” A couple of other poll workers said, “It can all sound like a conspiracy theory til you see it yourself” and “Voter suppression is real and it is happening here.”

Shockingly, two days after these massive electoral failures, things got worse. President Barack Obama endorsed Clinton. That same day Sen. Elizabeth Warren also endorsed Clinton to the disgust of many followers, who had previously viewed her as progressive willing to take on Wall Street. The endorsements were questionable for a variety of reasons, but the timing was truly unjustifiable.

Currently, about one million ballots appear to have been discarded (think the hanging chads in Florida many times over.) And while the Secretary of State’s office reports about 600,000 ballots haven’t been counted, the numbers don’t appear to add up. Final election results are to be reported to the Secretary of State on July 8, a date Clinton and the media pretend has no significance. Yet huge failures of the voting system have led many to claim Sanders won California, an assertion bolstered by a number of counties that have flipped to Sanders, reportedly including both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yup, the profoundly problematic Democratic primaries culminated in the smashing of the illusion of American democracy.

Yet this election is extremely significant. The political gap between Sanders and Clinton is far wider than it was between the Democratic frontrunners in 2008. So too are the issues more urgent. Critical decisions must be made on deteriorating climate, labor, environmental, and health care realities. Yet Sanders’ priorities are being torpedoed by the platform committee right now, often by the narrowest of margins, under the assumption he’s the loser.

Democracy is not being stifled to save the American people from “evil Republicans.” Rather the Clintons’ modus operandi is in effect: the mobilization of the powers with whom she is connected – in this case a complex web of government, election, establishment, party, multinational and media connections – to crush those who oppose her corporate and personal agenda. Instead of having them “cut it out,” she exploited democratic institutions to assure her coronation.

THE SOLUTION?

One possible solution is accountability. It is justified by the Democratic Party morphing “Animal Farm”-like, using the levers of power to shut down the machinery of democracy. And it is bolstered by everything from the sit-in in the House of Representatives over gun legislation, to Congress ignoring majority positions on guns, climate, trade, health care and other issues, to the thwarting of these positions on the platform. Whether Bernie Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee (and president) or not has almost inestimable influence on the direction of this country.

What to do? Voters could sign a pledge, saying they will only vote for their Democratic Senator or Congressman superdelegate if they vote for Bernie.

Dear Senator __,

I plan to decide who to vote for and whether to vote based on whether you support Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the far better general election candidate, as the Democratic presidential nominee. He is better for the following reasons: (easily updated from here or elsewhere or simply excluded).

Yours sincerely,

Voter


Or one could make it broader:

Dear Representative ___,

I plan to decide who to vote for and whether to vote for based on their avowal to the following priorities which are crucial to health, justice and sustainability in our nation and world.

– Your support of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee as a superdelegate.

– A $15 federal minimum wage indexed to inflation.

– Strong consumer, worker, and labor protections.

– Commitment to a Medicare-for-all single payor health care system.

– Commitment to reject the TPP, including during the lame duck session.

– Support for steps in accordance with dramatic greenhouse gas reductions targeted at no more than a 2-degree maximum global rise, including:

– An immediate moratorium on fracking.

– Imposition of a carbon tax.

– Support for a financial transaction tax.

– Commitment to reproductive access. (or any priorities suggested in Bernie Sanders’s recent op-ed).

I expect you to champion these priorities consistently in speeches from the campaign trail, and in fundraisers. I expect you to advocate for them through legislation that you sponsor, vocally support, and vote for on the floor of the House.

Sincerely,

Voter


Of course this could also be sent, in modified form, to all Democratic superdelegates with a stake in the party.

The idea is simple as any rating system, from those employed by NRA to NARAL. Certain demands, in this case by the electorate, would be spelled out for politicians they endorse. Should it be necessary? No. But neither should we live in a nation where our democracy has been pummeled by the Democrats. And short of simple measures to restore peace, justice, and sustainability, short of advancing a vision once again so clearly articulated by Sanders last Thursday, the alternative may well be chaos and more extreme right wing challenges now or in the near future.

Of course this doesn’t preclude a Sanders’ third party run or an option to vote Green Party. Indeed, it helps refocus and reenergize the splintered Democratic Party.

Because the quashing of our democratic process is undercovered by the mainstream media, I am also recapping the disintegration of democratic institutions during the primary.

ELECTORAL FRAUD

First, let’s revisit the massive electoral failures during this Democratic primary. The context: the United States, who holds what “worst elections of any long-established democracy [47 countries]” by Harvard and the University of Sydney, Australia. Major electoral failures and fraud that favored Clinton were engineered, reviewed and/or ignored by her supporters. These span the improbable Iowa coin flips; Bill Clinton’s potential voter violation felony and Clinton’s strength in places without a paper trail in Massachusetts that may have prevented Sanders’ fifth Super Tuesday win; the Arizona closure of polling places, resultant long waits, discarding of provisional ballots, and flipped registrations; and the purge of 125,000 Brooklynites—just miles from Clinton’s office—in New York with more flipped registrations. Even Clinton endorser Mayor Bill de Blasio called for major election reforms and a reversal of the voter purge. Election Fraud Watch documents potential election fraud in far more thorough detail.

All of this culminated in the extensive manipulations and failures of the California elections. But there is broad evidence that numerous Democratic primaries and caucuses have been affected. As suggested in March, many elections may well have been stripped then flipped. A reported 220,000 provisional ballots from 18 or more states were dumped. Additionally, the results of elections with paper trails vs. those without paper trails strongly favored Clinton, according to the Bern Report, a site unaffiliated with the campaign who asked, “Have we witnessed an honest primary election? then answered: “[W]e found that when there are possibilities of electoral fraud, Secretary Clinton wins by a large margin, even when adjusting for possible alternative explanations.” Spencer Gundhert calls for “an investigation into electoral fraud favoring Hillary Clinton” looking at the hackability of voting machines, the high variances in Democratic — but not Republican — primary results vs. exit polls, and the strong bias of voter suppression toward Sanders’ supporters which included closed polling places, election fraud, purged votes and changed registrations. The reported votes Sanders received decreased, a seemingly impossible phenomenon. Thousands of votes are yet to be counted in many states.

Election fraud experts Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis are seeking exit poll data in their current racketeering lawsuit to challenge poll results and show vote flipping.

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE

The Democratic National Committee led by Clinton’s 2008 campaign co-chair and DNC chair, the strongly condemned Debbie Wasserman Schultz, biased the primary against Sanders as shown by the Guccifer memos and subsequent events.

It started with the skimpy and inconveniently-timed six debates, one quarter of what Clinton participated in during her 2008 primary. Clinton refused to debate Sanders before California, despite her 2008 statement, “You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere.” Democratic insiders called a potential Sanders-Trump debate before California, “bullshit,” “peculiar” and “time to start winding down the primary,” in an attempt to silence Sanders.

Also early on, the DNC delayed Sanders’ access to the voter database at a crucial time, despite both campaigns receiving access to the other’s information. The DNC established Hillary’s PAC far earlier than usual, accepting checks of up to $353,400 and lobbying money. They was effectively laundered with 99 percent of state party donations sent back to the DNC. Wasserman Schultz’ interfered in Nevada also. The DNC then stacked convention leadership in favor of Clinton and rejected powerful labor and health care advocate National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, as the DNC sought to limit labor’s influence on the platform drafting committee. The statement of key Democratic values now excludes important Sanders’ priorities like a carbon tax, a national moratorium on fracking, rejection of the TPP, and single payor health care.

There have been widespread calls and petitions for Wasserman Schultz to step down and hopes she will lose her primary. Yet it’s clear neither would compensate for past acts, nor fix the party and the system going forward.

COLLUDING WITH THE MEDIA

The media has been the largest contributor to destroying democratic debate unfriendly to Clinton, which culminated in their refusal to discuss who is the better general election candidate before the superdelegates vote in Philadelphia.

Let’s start at the beginning. “[T]he greatest story [a journalist] could ever possibly ever cover” was Sanders’ rise according to media guru Robert McChesney. Yet it was reported by the corporate media “through the eyes of the Clinton campaign.” The extraordinarily well-known Democratic candidate — the former first lady, presidential candidate, and Secretary of State — saw her lead evaporate last year. People responded to Sanders’ visionary public ambition which addressed our daunting challenges, and was in line with courageous stances on housing integration, the Panama “Free Trade” agreement, the 1994 Crime Bill, the Iraq invasion, and the filibuster of Bush tax cut extension. Sanders rose in the polls like Donald Trump, but the media blacked out his packed stadiums and victory speeches. Clinton responded by moving her rhetoric and policies leftward to reflect Sanders’ progressive policies. Yet mainstream media networks generally ignored and occasionally belittled him, giving Clinton and Trump 23 times more coverage in 2015.

As early as October, the media reported superdelegates’ overwhelming support of Clinton. The unsubstantiated, premature and misleading attribution of 350-500 superdelegates likely influenced voters through either “the bandwagon effect” that leads people to support the expected winner, or led many not to vote out of a sense of futility. This despite DNC Spokesman Luis Miranda calling for—and doubling down—on the media not reporting superdelegate counts before the convention and the AP story which implied all previous tallies were illegitimate. Yet this reporting was the norm across the mainstream media all primary season.

Eventually, Secretary Clinton and her surrogates realized they could no longer ignore Sanders and many, with undisclosed ties, actively sought to manipulate the media. They relied on the media to promote her misleading statements, change the subject at her whim and highlight her successes. Her first debate used at least four carefully crafted deceptive answers. The compliant media, rather than fact-checking her or relying on focus groups and polling, declared her the “winner” which gave her crucial early momentum. Over time, Clinton and her supporters deceptively mischaracterized Bernie’s broad movement-based campaign as only being about the banks and his health care plan as causing millions to lose insurance. The list of manipulations would be too long to count. But consistently when the issue at hand didn’t favor her (regularly) or she or Bill Clinton were stumbling after being confronted with real people or their own records (frequently), they introduced a new talking point or a shallow policy. The corrupt media immediately changed their focus in full complicity with her anti-democratic strategy. The indication the election is over now is just an extreme version of her many attempts to silence discussion of Sanders’ sterling record, his progressive vision, or his better general election viability.

This media manipulation mattered even more because our public’s limited exposure to the societal realities and solutions implemented globally that are promoted by Bernie. Establishment institutions like colleges, left-leaning think tanks, large nonprofits, the DNC, much of the Democratic party, and arts institutions have failed to illuminate or advocate in a substantive way for progressive priorities, even as their funding from foreign governments, multinational corporations, and hedge fund and private equity managers have skyrocketed. Many of these institutions have strong connections with Clinton as a former colleague, speaker or campaign chair. By effectively declaring a process that should be decided at the Convention over, she aims to silence, largely successfully, this critical policy debate as well.

Additionally, Google and other search engines appeared to have manipulated their results to favor Clinton as this report shows (Google says it avoids offensive or disparaging phrase completions, which certainly works well for her.) Bing’s political index showed up as a top result when searching on candidates for many months, misleadingly avoiding critical issues like Wall Street reform, trade or war to make Sanders appear more out of touch with the American public.

She and/or her supporters even attacked the social media that sprung to life to promote Sanders’ campaign. Earlier Secretary Clinton championed internet freedom as the “cornerstone of the 21st century statecraft policy agenda.” Yet Hillary trolls took down most of Sanders’ Facebook pages. A pro-Clinton SuperPAC is spending $1 million to attack Sanders on social media. Popular news articles that seem like they should accept comments have done so sporadically or stopped them after a short time, even as they promote a highly flawed narrative from her campaign. Information from searches on important topics that did not favor her – like millennial or independent voting – have also been difficult to find.

The effort to silence, misreport or laugh off Sanders’ candidacy culminated in the unbelievable suppression of democracy. His incredibly—and probably unhelpfully—clean campaign needed to stop, according to establishment forces. Thus the most competitive, viable and important candidacy for our highest office in decades was left off the air. Clinton’s Bataan Death March to the nomination — now more than ever — employs the full power of the media and establishment to try to end Bernie’s campaign and the discussion of issues that could prevent Brexit-like results and the rise of the right wing.

SUPERDELEGATES

Superdelegates are an institution that was created for a particular purpose. Love them or hate them, eliminate them now or never. But for now, it is their job to choose the more electable candidate. Or so we were told.

“For a full year — from early 2015 to early 2016 — Sanders supporters were told that superdelegates pick whoever they believe is the strongest general-election candidate,” Seth Abramson wrote in “Sanders’ Supporters Have Been Lied to And Here’s How.” He elaborated on it in “How to Explain the Sanders Campaign to an Idiot, Paul Krugman or a Clintonite in 8 Sentences” and most recently pointed out how Clinton herself had subscribed to such a theory in “Clinton in 2008 Opposed Early Call of Primary, Told Media ‘Nomination Will Be Up to the Superdelegates.’” Now she’s switched to claiming superdelegates should support the candidate with more popular votes — the opposite reason of why they were created. For them to simply ratify the popular vote would make no sense.

The two—the popular leader and the better general election candidate—could coincide but they do not this year, as Brexit highlights concerns about Clinton’s candidacy yet again. But now superdelegates’ mysterious preferences are not only being used to declare the winner, but there is no discussion in the media as to why they should select Clinton over Sanders. A merited discussion over issues, records, and superdelegate voting is being squashed with her knowledge and consent.

This is all the more urgent as Clinton significantly lags Sanders in polling against Trump, potentially awaits indictment, is viewed as “honest and trustworthy” by about 30% of American voters. She is viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of white women and 75 percent of white male voters. (This after a remarkably clean primary, before what is likely to be an incredible dirty one.) Nationally and globally, those who champion corporate-friendly incrementalism, promising to do little to reverse planetary destruction and inequality, are scorned.

Matt Damon recently spoke at MIT’s commencement about the Wall Street bankers that brought us the biggest “heist” in history, saying they may have gotten away with it but “when we pass you on the street and look you in the eye” “you don’t have our respect.” And so some of us will vote for her in November, should Sanders not win in July or embark on a third party run, after we evaluate the platform and factor in this season. Some of us won’t. Regardless, she and her supporters should know that we see the utter corruption and exploitation of our democratic process being employed to smash an urgent and critical Democratic candidacy. We see something. We are saying something.

Finally, should she win the primary but lose in November, one can choose those responsible: a) the media, who hyped Trump while he performed similarly to Sanders at stadiums and in polls, then put Clinton’s fake lock on the nomination, b) the gutless wonders of the superdelegates — with the political influence of 10,000 voters – who lack the courage or integrity to discuss their convictions openly or with their constituents, c) Clinton herself, a candidate of enormous flaws especially in 2016, who exploited or played along with jettisoning of our democracy, d) the DNC, who rigged the debate schedule and cycled massive donations, or, e) the Democratic Party establishment, closely linked to many electoral failures. Blaming Sanders’ voters for any outcome is beyond ridiculous as a fair primary season would likely have produced a Sanders’ win. But even if it would not have, we deserve to have processes and institutions perform their assigned role of promoting debate, and electoral integrity. “Only systems that serve the planet and serve the population of the planet can be allowed to survive, not ones that serve elites, be they political or corporate elites,” as Russell Brand once said in an interview.

Sanders provokes what author Tom Frank says is an “almost an allergic reaction,” among Democratic insiders and the liberal establishment for being a New Dealer, with his proposals out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s platform. Yet it inspires many of us who will continue fighting. We will peacefully take to the streets, we’ll organize, we’ll battle in the courts, and we’ll create hyperlocal to global models of socially and environmentally responsible institutions. But we can also consider our true superpower — accountability for priorities and actions of those we have elected and will consider in November.

We disagree with Clinton and her clan: silence – and silencing — is not the answer. Accountability to democracy ideals and progressive, humanist, and environmental priorities is. #StillSanders. #DemocracyMatters.
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