So, Iowa speaks. Clinton by a hair, and Trump loses to Cruz with Rubio nipping at his heels.
Vermont’s own Bernie Sanders had a good night, coming within less than half a percentage point with Clinton. Basically, a tie. As one commenter somewhere on the Internet pointed out – Sanders was foiled again by the 1%.
Huckabee, O’Malley, and probably a few others soon, will be bowing out of consideration.
On to our neighbors in New Hampshire.
Let's Get Small
Officially, in Iowa for Clinton/Sanders:
49.86% to 49.57%, or 0.29 percentage points.
From The Des Moines Register
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/some-democratic-precinct-results-unaccounted/79682184/
Votes from one precinct in Iowa were still missing Tuesday morning, and Democrats from that neighborhood scrambled to find party officials so that they could report their tally: Bernie Sanders won by 2 delegates over Hillary Clinton.
With Des Moines precinct No. 42’s results, Clinton’s excruciatingly close lead narrowed further, making the final tally for delegate equivalents in the Democratic Iowa caucuses:
Clinton: 699.57
Sanders: 697.77.
It quickly raised questions about whether Sanders had won the popular vote in Iowa. Sanders backers called for Iowa Democratic Party officials to release the raw vote totals.
Nice Tie!
I’ve been doing my best to keep it low key in the last few months. I’ve worked through all the reasons that Bernie’s my candidate, and this last week, every day, I had to tell myself that I had to be prepared for disappointment. I mean, Iowa? How was Bernie going to win Iowa? But yesterday was a different story. I couldn’t contain my excitement. And when Bernie started creeping up in the numbers until he was within a single percentage point of Hillary’s lead, I was just giddy. Crazy, man. This almost never happens (to me when I root for a candidate).
I’m glad that NH is next and that Bernie has a good shot at winning. I’m glad that regular people and young people especially are caring enough about the future to want to try to make it better. For such a long time, it’s seemed as though we as a people were selling ourselves short. It’s nice to see people stand up and say “enough is enough,” as they say.
I know that Bernie isn’t perfect and that he and I won’t agree on everything, but I do think that he will do more for the average American than anyone else because he’ll actually try. Go Bernie!
VT and NH
I see that the Clinton team is trying to downplay their likely loss in NH due to VT being right next to them. (NY is just a few more miles… ahem)
Note to major media: typically if something is from Vermont, New Hampshire dislikes it on principal. Vice versa. We have a friendly rivalry. No one in NH is voting for Sanders “because he is from Vermont” – he’s overcoming that liability, which should be the real story.
At last ...
… recognition that being from VT is not “a home-state advantage” in NH, and instead is somewhat of a liability to be overcome:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/us/more-than-a-riverseparates-bernie-sanderss-state-from-primarys.html?_r=0
Close Proximity
That was a good article about VT and NH…something most people in the two states would recognize and agree with. It supports the notion that VT in NH is not “a home-state advantage” for Bernie. (Still, he might go well on Tuesday.)
If there is an advantage,it’s that Bernie supports in VT and parts of New England have a close and easy to get to proximity to make a supporting presence in NH.
Anybody but a Repubican
It feels odd to know that Shumlin, Leahy and other Dem Politico’s in VT do not support Bernie. What do they know that Bernie supporters don’t?
Shumlin seems to be gambling
Shumlin seems to be gambling for some sort of position with the Clinton administration. An ambassador to somewhere? He lost credibility with many Vermonters while serving, and not sure people in other states would know who he was or listen to him.
Leahy seems very much like Clinton.
I don’t think it is what they know as much as who they know. They both like the business-as-usual, play-it-safe side of the Democrats.
I’m not an “anyone but…” type of voter. I always vote for someone I want, even if it takes writing someone in.
…
Last night’s “debate” (what’s with debates where the debaters aren’t on stage together?) – Clinton doubled down on her “vast right wing conspiracy” remark of decades ago. She probably should have said that it isn’t that vast, but it is well-funded and the Koch bros are holding get-togethers to determine how to deploy their vast right wing sums.
I thought Sanders “won” the debate about being progressive. Clinton has never been “progressive.” At times she can go as far left as being a solid Democrat (helping kids), but at worse she sometimes seems like a light Republican (war).
CNN loses points for putting the entire thing behind a paywall, depriving many of participating. (I had to jump from computer to computer, using new browsers, and only got to see about 40 minutes of it.
CNN loses more points for allowing the commercial breaks to count against viewer’s “free preview time”. A 10 minute preview had 4 minutes of commercials.
Clinton/Sanders?
Another rather good debate last night.
Early on Clinton said her strategy to win relied on winning over Sanders’ supporters. That didn’t sound very realistic a plan to me (most I know are considering not voting, or possibly voting for a republican to re-energize the left in opposition, if Clinton is the nominee)
But, then she may have revealed how she plans to do it: Clinton said she’d ask Sanders to be her VP.
Would that be a winning ticket? Would Sanders take a VP position? (And, since they are momentarily tied, would Clinton accept a VP position in a Sanders administration?) Would our heads explode?
Chris, I just re-watched that
Chris, I just re-watched that section of the debate to see if I missed something. Clinton didn’t say she’d ask Sanders to be her VP. She said she didn’t think “we should get ahead of ourselves.” And that she wasn’t going to comment on that. She then said, “Listen the first person I’ll call will be Senator Sanders to see where we are and how we should proceed.” I didn’t get the impression at all that she was saying she would ask him to be Vice President. She just said that she would reconnect with him at that point. She made absolutely no commitment about asking him to be VP that I could see
Although I'd love it if she
Although I’d love it if she did and/or vice versa.
New poll - Sanders Up, Clinton Down - National Tie
And Sanders appears to be tied with Clinton now nationally:
“The Democratic race has dramatically tightened, according to a new Quinnipiac University national poll out Friday that shows Hillary Clinton with a razor-thin lead over Bernie Sanders.
Clinton leads Sanders 44 percent to 42 percent, well within the margin of error of the poll, which was conducted after the Iowa caucuses.”
Last poll, in December, was 61-30 in Clinton’s favor.
..
Republicans nationally – Trump, Cruz, Rubio…. (31, 22, 19)
"possibly voting for a
“possibly voting for a republican to re-energize the left in opposition, if Clinton is the nominee)”
Great, so they can take credit for a roll back on social services and rights for eons due to the Supreme Court nominations that are coming up. This is lunacy.
person x
Well, maybe it won’t be a worry if she’s not the candidate. Sanders would protect those nominees and probably put in good people.
I do notice that team Clinton is resorting to lots of threats of awfulness if she isn’t the one, which Sanders isn’t doing. Most of it seems along the lines of “elect me to keep things the way they are!” and “you don’t want to lose what others fought for.” True, but I think people are hungry for more. That’s why Sanders’ talking of a rigged system is resonating. It is rigged. People know this.
Sanders seems much like Obama, but one major difference. he plans to be president with his supporters, and tap them via the bully pulpit to take action, which Obama never did and was a great missed opportunity on his part. Obama supporters would have done anything to get the hope and change he promised, but after the election he didn’t take advantage of his huge following, supporter database, etc. in any meaningful way.
The real problem with getting things done, as I see it, is rightwing vows to never work with person X. X certainly equals Obama. X very likely means Clinton, too. I’d imagine Sanders, if the nominee, would also gain this status.
It's not unusual to have
It’s not unusual to have differing campaigns assert that their candidate is the only one that will “save” things. And I disagree, I certainly get that “vibe” from some Sander’s supporters. In fact they seem to think that their guy is the only one that can save the country and if he doesn’t get the nomination as you said, they’ll either not vote or vote Republican. And this even after Sanders himself explicitly stated when announcing that he would support whoever won the nomination. Seems to me that “elect me to keep things the way they are” is a far lesser evil than “elect me captain or I’ll go home or even worse go play on the other guy’s team.”
Quick, to the Default Position!!!
Ah yes, the *old* “‘elect me to keep things the way they are’ is a far lesser evil” position. Except it is extremely important to point out that a majority of democratic voters aged 45 and younger (over 70% of this demographic) have lost all hope in that position and are supporting Sanders. They truly want change. They’re no longer idealistic voters either, they’re angry, they’re impatient, they’re fed up with the “far lesser evil position.” Enough is enough. Sanders is picking up endorsements from leaders in the African American community now on a daily basis. A Sanders’ New Hampshire victory next Tuesday will give him the momentum to win in Nevada and South Carolina, and do very well with black voters in the South on Super Tuesday. Clinton is turning desperately to Washington’s democratic establishment to sound the alarm about Sanders, and that just looks truly desperate on her part, as Sanders has not resorted to that tactic. Clinton’s desperation will only help him win more voters who are fed up and angry at those very endorsers of Clinton. The question really should be, will Clinton’s followers yell, “elect me captain or I’ll go home or even worse go play on the other guy’s team.”
As Chris points out these
As Chris points out these cries of “my way or the highway”, it’s either Bernie or I won’t vote or, even worse, in my opinion, I’ll vote Republican, aren’t coming from Hillary’s supporters. Do you want to comment at all on the fact that Bernie says as far as he’s concerned the worst thing that could happen would be if his supporters did this and the Republican candidate was elected? I find it really odd that some of the people who embrace him as their candidate don’t seem to know or acknowledge his position as far as their not supporting Hillary if he doesn’t get the nomination. I guess they only think he’s correct on everything else. But you see, what Bernie knows and I know, having lived through too many Republican Presidencies, is that it will be another nightmare if any of those Republican candidates get elected. And a nightmare that could go on forever if the Supreme Court gets more people like Scalia on forever.
Sanders not talking Republicans, he's talking about Americans
“Do you want to comment at all on the fact that Bernie says as far as he’s concerned the worst thing that could happen would be if his supporters did this and the Republican candidate was elected?”
I don’t recall hearing anything Senator Sanders has said recently about being concerned about the worst thing that could happen if his supporters blah blah blah. You do not cite any evidence.
Sanders is not talking about Republicans, he is talking about the American People. He’s not talking about losing, he’s talking about winning. He’s not talking about fear, he’s talking about courage and heart and brains. And he’s very effective, because he’s erased Clinton’s lead of 30 points from a month ago to a virtual tie.
Sanders on Republicans Getting the Presidency
Google it. This one’s from the Washington Post.
Bernie Sanders keeps getting asked, and keeps saying no. No, he will not run as an independent candidate for president.
“I made the promise that I would not, and I will keep that promise,” Sanders said in his most widely shared version of the answer. “The reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States.”
He’s gone on to state that he will support whoever the nominee is.
Irrelevant
And why is this relevant? Still not one citation from Sanders nor from Clinton. They’re not discussing losing. Who brought this up?
Really you just need to relax
Really you just need to relax a bit, this is going to be a long drawn out process that’s going to last all spring. You wanted a cite where Bernie said the last thing he wanted was a Republican in the White House and I gave you one. Quit splitting hairs and relax a bit or you’re going to explode by the time this is over.
To clarify
My point is about supporters – it is about the campaign team. Clinton’s team floats more fear, Sanders team doesn’t. It’s just how they are plotting their paths to victory.
Both sides have good and bad supporters. Elections aren’t about which supporters we want. It’s which candidate.
I'm well aware of that Chris
I’m well aware of that Chris (each campaign having good and bad supporters) but I have heard few if any Clinton supporters making those claims you say you’ve heard Sanders supporters make of not voting or voting Republican if she gets the nomination. I don’t hear fear from Clinton’s team unless you’re referencing fear that Bernie isn’t as electable. That’s pretty common in elections and I’ve heard the same thing from the other camp. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes but it makes me very uncomfortable to hear those “then I’m not voting” charges for reasons I wrote further on in this thread. Everytime a Sanders supporter says that I suspect that confetti and balloons come falling down from the ceilings in every right wing think tank office amidst cheers of joy and cries of “We’ve got the Supreme Court.” You can kiss Title IX, abortion rights, work place rights, rights to healthcare all goodbye.
Lesser Evil
The lesser evil unfortunately keeps paving the way to the greater evil. Because when the lesser evil is just one shy, one step shy of awful, people don’t come out to vote. Jill Stein
Why bother?
The reason I feel enlivened by this year’s presidential elections is because I have a candidate I can actually support. Without Bernie Sanders I could not get up any enthusiasm at all for the status quo. The status quo is not only crappy, it’s getting worse… How can I be in favor of that or of candidates who are running on that?
Bernie’s strong showing in Iowa gave me hope that people might be willing to be on their own side for a change.
Well LIse get ready for a
Well LIse get ready for a long ride because according to Politico Hillary just moved up to within 9 points of Bernie in New Hampshire.. Not being locked into either candidate, I actually can see positives with both of them. Like Bernie, I don’t see Hillary as some sort of she-devil who would cause me to vote for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. I’m finding this a rather fascinating run on the Dem side and to be quite honest, the most frightening slate of candidates since I began voting years ago on the Republican side. And that was a long long time ago, Bernie doesn’t have too many years on me as far as length of voting and we’ve seen a lot. There’s a reason he says he wouldn’t want to see one of those Republican candidates in the White House.
Politico is one website and one biased web site
Here is the polling of all of the polls combined, and Sanders is leading Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire by far more than single digits, closer to 20 points. Cherry picking poll results is not helpful to your candidate.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-new-hampshire-presidential-democratic-primary
The Polls are all over the
The Polls are all over the place. Politico is a reliable source which I credited. I find RealClearPolitics more useful than HuffPost, they list all the same polls but give the actual point difference also. It’s ranging from plus 6 to plus 31 right now but who knows what that means. In the last election cycle Obama was ahead of Clinton but she took the state. However the margin was a bit narrower and Obama didn’t have the advantage of being a next door neighbor. Historically that can make a big difference. I don’t have a candidate, well, actually whoever wins the Democratic nomination will be my candidate.
Polls are not all over the place
When you see that the entire group of polls combined have Sanders winning by about 20 points, you cannot say that they are all over place. You should not walk back what you have said that Sanders only leads by single digits. Every major, all polls, show that he is leading by double digits. Sanders must get out his voters on Feb. 9. It will be a huge turnout.
What I said was the polls are
What I said was the polls are all over the place and I stand by that, it’s irrefutable. Since 1/31 the range has been from plus 6 all the way to plus 31. To me that’s a pretty wide discrepancy. What I said earlier was Sanders was only ahead by plus 9 points in the latest poll I had seen, which was true. Take a look, at a site where it’s subtracted for you. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_presidential_primary-3351.html
And, as Vidda so astutely points out, the polls really don’t mean anything usually anyway except what the media wants you to believe. Look at the Republican polls for Iowa for crying out loud. It’s just beginning, relax and flow a bit.
Poll Cats
At one time the only poll that really mattered was in the polling booth. Today, polls are indelibly tied to the media. It is a powerful indicator of the undue influence the media has in the running of America.
I find the whole thing disgusting or more so, it stinks.
proverbial salt
If you read polling sites, pollsters feel similar this time out. They don’t have much confidence in their results. Too many people avoid land lines, which is how official polls are done. So results get skewed, and then they try to interpret them with varying caveats.
A poll can be quite useful – a quick, rough gauge of people on an issue. It should be part of a set of tools being used by those tracking these sorts of things.
The political teams don’t rely on polls exclusively. They look at who you are, where you live, what you buy, who you’ve donated to, who you’ve voted for before, if you’ve voted before, you age, your income, your sex, your race, and such. Their challenge, they say, is that about 1/3 of the country moves between elections, so they have to re-do 1/3 of the work each presidential election cycle.
Of course, there’s the electoral college, too. And weather. And current events. Anything can happen.
I enjoy polls, but take them with a grain of proverbial salt.
Too many voters are influenced by the polls
I don’t think political teams or voters rely on polls exclusively.
I know about the political teams marketing efforts to sell their product. The process is the same in market research to sell cars.
But my main concern is the voters. (As everyone knows the nonvoters don’t count.)
You and many others may take the polls with a grain of salt, but there is also no question that too many voters are influenced by the polls.
Like
Like
Dancing around polls
I think voters and nonvoters aren’t quite as dumb as some think, though I agree that there is some crowd psychology going on (our team has momentum! translates into momentum sometimes, people like to be associated with a “winner,” and so on.) I’d like to think people are doing their best to make their decisions.
Part of the professional strategy can be to create confusion and disgust, in the hope that turnout is low. Fewer people = more predictable and controllable.
Ian K. used to like to draw a diagram showing all the possible voters, then dividing it into who votes and who doesn’t, then by party…. to show that tiny slivers of the possible voting electorate make the decisions. His theory is that someone should run to appeal specifically to non-voters, then they’d win. : )
And there’s still the great idea of a randomocracy – pull a social security number from a hat and that’s our president! I’d be up for trying that once or twice. How much worse than, say, Cruz, would it be?
I agree with Rosa’s comment above about being a interesting election year – democrats trying to out policy one another, for the most part, and republicans imploding in more ways than anyone could have imagined.
Lotterocracy
There’s more than a little Shirley Jackson in your idea, and that adds to its merit. Given how gamed the system is, and how many levels of levers lie between power and the people, a president is largely a media-made figurehead nowadays. Why not have them be randomly chosen- for sacrifice. One benefit of the lottery; there would be a statistically better chance in that system, the person chosen would not have avarice and Machiavellian impulses developed to such a degree that they’d cause real damage.
Dumb voters??
CG: “I think voters and nonvoters aren’t quite as dumb as some think.”
Let me get this straight:
In 1968 voters elected Tricky Dick, next Stumble-Bunny Ford, in 1980 voters elected a Grade B Hollywood actor and his astrology controlling wife, then elected a Devious CIA Director, in 2000 voters elected his Howdy Doody cowboy soulless son. Now with Trump, Cruz, and Rubio leading in the polls, need I say more?
(As I said before, no matter what nonvoters think or don’t think, they simple do not count. They are neither here nor there. I might, in fact, be ‘neither here nor there’ myself this election.))
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I Predict Clinton!!
The danger of vote theft from easily-hackable electronic voting machines is a very serious one, and Bernie’s campaign should be prepared to document and counter this. The 2008 NH primary was most likely stolen.
Bernie organizers, be alert! Also please note, there are likely to be thefts of votes in many other states, and also in the general election.
The folks at Black Box Voting suggest that at the end at each precinct’s work, Bernie organizers take photos of the poll tapes with the final results (ask to see them if need be) and the report form if there is one. These should be saved, and preferably all be tallied by the Sanders organization. (Black Box Voting is a nationally recognized, scrupulously impartial source of information about the theft of elections, and the hacking of voting machines.) You can phone them at 206-335-7747.
Below is a list of sources on the probable theft of votes in NH for Hillary in 2008, resulting in her win over Obama. The Election Defense Alliance is a reputable group. (I personally know enough statistics and polling methodology to be able to vet the likelihood of these claims being accurate. Please note, the hand-counted ballots matched the exit polls, and Obama won them. The machine-counted ballots did not match the exit polls, and Hillary won them.)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_gr_080131_was_the_new_hampshir.htm
http://electiondefensealliance.org/New_Hampshire_Binomial_Statistics
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19050.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKQEQ7qHvgM
(which shows that NH oddly did not put the votes in the vault the night after the 2008 primary, so they could have been altered)
Finally, with regard to the national elections: The theft of votes in 2004 and 2008 by Republicans has been essentially confessed to. Court testimony began the day before the 2012 election, which may have saved that election. I can send you more info if desired.
Forwarded message from Martha Older, MA in sociology, including statistics and public opinion, MSW, LCSW
That's my other prediction,
That’s my other prediction, if Clinton wins anything there’ll be cries of stolen votes. Thanks for verifying that Will Stomp. Thanks. Even though all information available shows that Bernie is probably going to take NH and then Clinton will start picking up states pretty readily there will then be cries of stolen votes. NH will be close so it’s even not a given depending on turn-out how the vote will go. Everyone wants to look at the polls where he’s 20 points out but RealClearPolitics says this morning that the race has narrowed to 9 points, where it was when she and Obama ran, and she took the race. It depends on turnout, and young people tend to not turnout so it’ll be interesting to see what happens today. But yes, if Clinton wins anything it’ll probably be because she stole it. Kind of like the way she killed Vince Foster. Great. Let’s just hand this to President Cruz right now because this sort of bickering will probably do that. Nice work Will Stomp. And btw I’d say the same thing about any Hillary supporters who want to start claiming voter fraud if Sanders takes some states he wasn’t predicted to.
Vote DNA!
Iowa already had problems counting, already.
I predict that someone will say they predicted stolen votes after someone mentions them. : )
Will, don’t you know that Clinton cannot be criticized for anything? Not her history, or record, or current actions, company she keeps, decisions she makes, or future promises! She, like Obama, is great and doing the best they possibly can! If you say bad things about Obama’s record you might be racist; say it about Clinton and you are probably sexist.
And if one criticizes Clinton for anything, the worst Republican will win and it will be you’re fault that the Supreme Court is destroyed for a century! You know, because we “support” Bernie but won’t elect him if it is him vs. a republican.
….
Back to reality – the worry for Sanders supporters should be the behind-the-scenes counting of delegates and super delegates. He could win a popular vote in a state yet lose the electoral vote, and the nomination. And that would be somewhat related to the Clinton team’s status as inside party favorites.
Chris, you are
Chris, you are misrepresenting what I’m saying. I’m not saying criticizing Clinton will throw the national race to the Republicans. I’m saying that bickering over either of these candidates Bernie or Clinton can leave the primary winner wounded for the more difficult part of the process. I don’t want to see Clinton supporters criticizing Bernie over anything but policy either. As for the Iowa vote problems if you’re referring to the supposed coin tosses going to Clinton this is a good case in point. Turned out to be false, in fact turned out that 6 or 7 out of whatever 8 or 9 coin tosses went for Bernie. But that information gets buried and no one sees the corrections so now there’s this belief floating around that Iowa had problems counting. Even without the coin tosses (because they went to Bernie, they went over everything and did a recalculation in Bernie’s favor which amounted to the count being off by a miniscule amount like 000.1% (I don’t remember the exact amount but it was that small pretty much) But that report about Clinton winning 6 out of 7 coin tosses and it being against the law of probability turned out to be bogus and in fact Sanders won 6 out of 7 or whatever. Clinton can be criticized, there are a lot of areas where she can be criticized. If you are implying that I think criticizing Obama or Clinton on policy is automatically racist or sexist you are simply wrong. As I said, I just think that automatically assuming wrong or attempts to mess with votes counts on the side of either candidate if you don’t like the results is not helpful. And FYI I think it’s pretty obvious that Iowa was a tie and find it kind of silly of the Clinton camp to claim a “win” when it was that close. Win by a cat’s whisker looks like to me. It’ll be interesting to see what transpires today.
Just a little FYI: “But Iowa Democratic Party spokesman Sam Lau tells The Des Moines Register that seven coin flips were reported statewide, and that Bernie Sanders won six of them. The Register, looking at social media and one first-person report, also identified seven coin tosses at Democratic caucuses, with Clinton winning six. The newspaper has requested an official tally of precinct coin tosses and their outcomes to clear up the confusion.
But regardless, it’s unlikely that the coin tosses affected the outcome — the official results are 700.59 state delegate equivalents for Clinton (49.8 percent), 696.82 SDEs for Sanders (49.6 percent). That’s because, unlike MSNBC’s report, the coin tosses don’t decide statewide delegates but county delegates, of which there are about 11,000 across Iowa, versus 1,400 state delegate equivalents. The county-level delegates are used in a formula to determine the SDEs, but each one has only a tiny impact on the SDE count.”
NH as the Birthplace of Electronic Voter Fraud
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35069-focusnew-hampshire-the-birthplace-of-electronic-election-theft
New Hampshire: The Birthplace of Electronic Election Theft
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
08 February 16
s the New Hampshire primary lurches toward the finish line, the reality of electronic election theft looms over the vote count.
The actual computer voting machines were introduced on a grand scale in New Hampshire’s 1988 primary. The godfather was George H.W. Bush, then the vice president. As former boss of the CIA, Bush was thoroughly familiar with the methods of changing election outcomes. The Agency had been doing it for decades in client states throughout the world.
In the Granite State, Bush was up against Bob Dole, long-time senator from Kansas. Dole was much loved in hard-core Republican circles. But Bush had an ace-in-the-hole. For the first time, the votes would be cast and counted on electronic voting machines, in this case from Shoup Electronics.
Governor John Sununu, later Bush’s White House Chief of Staff, brought the highly-suspect computer voting machines into New Hampshire’s most populous city, Manchester.
The results were predictable. Former CIA director George H.W. Bush won a huge upset over Dole and the mainstream for-profit corporate media refused to consider election rigging.
Here’s the Washington Post’s account of the bizarre and unexplainable election results when touchscreens were first used: In 1988, H.W. Bush was trailing Dole by 8 points in the last Gallup poll before the New Hampshire primary. Bush won by 9 points. The Washington Post covered the Bush upset with the following headline: “Voters Were a Step Ahead of Tracking Measurements.”
Was it a late surge of Bush devotees who reversed all reasonable expectation? Or was it the kind of electoral manipulation that had been perfected by the Agency over the decades, this time with an electronic assist?
While the mainstream for-profit media tried to explain it away, the Manchester Union Leader had been suspicious of the former CIA director going back to his first presidential bid in 1980.
“The Bush operation has all the smell of a CIA covert operation … strange aspects of the Iowa operation [include] a long, slow count and then the computers broke down at a very convenient point, with Bush having a six percent bulge over Reagan,” according to the Union Leader.
In the next presidential election, in 1984, Bush’s rival, President Reagan, signed National Security Directive Decision NSDD245. A year later, the New York Times explained the details of Reagan’s secret directive: “A branch of the National Security Agency is investigating whether a computer program that counted more than one-third of all the votes cast in the United States in 1984 is vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation.
In 1987, Gary Greenhalgh resigned as director of the Election Center to become vice-president of operations for the R.F. Shoup Company. The company’s founder, Ransom Shoup, had been convicted in 1979 for conspiring to defraud the federal government in connection with a bribe attempt to obtain voting machine business, according to the Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal. His machines were known as Shouptronics. Under the name Danaher they were used in the disputed 2004 election in Columbus, Ohio, where numerous voters complained that their vote for Kerry “faded away” on the screen.
Computerized voting machines, with software programmed by partisan for-profit corporations, make election fraud even easier. We have known about this for four decades. Roy G. Saltman’s work at the National Bureau of Standards has documented the vulnerability of computer voting since the 1970s.
Saltman issued a report for the Bureau numbered NBSIR-75-687 documenting the lack of computer security in vote tallying and the potential for election tampering. He traced the use of computers to tally vote results from September 1964 through his 1975 report. He found that in 1971, Bob’s junior year in high school, “an error in programming” had caused a levy to pass by 1000 votes in Bob’s hometown, Redford Township, Michigan, rather than failing by 100.
A follow-up report by Saltman in 1988 pointed out other problems with computer voting. In 1986 in Stark County, Ohio, a recount programming error reversed the correct election results. There’s a question on whether this was a real error, since a special programmer was brought in to write the code for the recount.
The ultimate implication for this year’s primary has yet to be played out. This year in New Hampshire, we have Bernie Sanders rolling into Election Day with a very strong lead. Barack Obama did much the same (though with far smaller margins) in 2008, and emerged the loser. Could a similar outcome follow for Bernie?
On the Republican side, it’s anyone’s guess.
But whatever happens, remember that for decades the Granite State has set the tone for the general election, and could do so again on Tuesday. It remains to be seen whether we get a legitimate outcome, or another strip and flip selection, with ultimate control of the government still at stake. But the whole world had better be watching.
Harvey Wasserman’s “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, AD 2030” is at http://www.solartopia.org. Wasserman is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for http://www.freepress.org. He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including “Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election?,” “As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004,” “How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008,” and “What Happened in Ohio?”
Interesting read. I used to
Interesting read. I used to think that we should just go back to paper ballots, until I saw them throwing slips of paper all over the place in Iowa the other day. Ballots flying up into the air, onto the floor, seem a little chaotic. And no one checking the name as the guy read it out, no verification at the poll place I saw. I guess the key is to win big, then there’s no question about it. Here’s an interesting piece from today’s Huffington Post for anyone who likes this stuff. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-2016_us_56b91726e4b01d80b2478746