WHAT DO WE DO NEXT? Or . . . Funny Things Will Happen on the Way to the Trumpocalypse

Harvey Wasserman & Honored Guests

FOUR Bay Area Talks

(Sunday & Monday – December 18 & 19)

Sunday, December 18, 2016

12 Noon San Francisco Public Library hispanic-room 100 Larkin Street San Francisco, California 94102 (Downstairs in the Latino/Hispanic Room) ““““`

Sunday, December 18, 2016

7 – 9 PM POT LUCK with Joanna Macy and Dennis Bernstein (plus Kris Welch – hopefully) Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists berkeley-uu 1606 Bonita (@Cedar) Berkeley Second Floor, Connie Barbour Room. $5 donation requested – no one turned away for lack of funds (sponsored by BFUU Social Justice Committee & Code Pink Women for Peace)

Monday, December 19, 2016

12 Noon Forest Books forest-books Japantown Peace Plaza 1748 Buchanan at Sutter San Francisco, California 94115

Monday, December 19, 2016

6 – 9 PM OCCUPY! at Global Exchange global-exchange 2017 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94110 (Near 16th Street BART) ““““`
Funny things will happen on the way to the Trumpocalypse.  We will fight like hell.  We will win a few (already the TPP). And we’ll never lose, because it’s never over til it’s over. We will also take California (and then the world) to Solartopia, because we have no choice.
At this gathering we’ll discuss the 2016 Selection, including how it was REALLY rigged, how we will cope with the coming of The Donald, and how we will shut Diablo Canyon while making California the decentralized post-grid renewable energy capital of the world.
And all because of you!  Don’t miss these talks!!!
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What Would Constitute an Electoral College "December Surprise"?

  by Harvey Wasserman   As millions of Americans desperately seek an alternative to Donald Trump, the 2016 presidential election now faces the volatile possibility of a “December Surprise”. Here are some Constitutional realities: The Electoral College is set to vote Monday, December 19. Of 538 electors, Donald Trump apparently has 306 committed to him.  Exactly 270 are needed to win.  Hillary Clinton apparently has 232.  There do not seem to be any other candidates with confirmed committed electors at this point. The Twelfth Amendment stipulates that if no one gets 270 votes, the decision reverts to the House of Representatives. But the House would vote state by state, with each delegation getting one vote.  A strong majority of the delegations are controlled by Republicans. The House can only choose among the top three candidates with actual electoral votes. So if Trump fails to get 270 votes, but no one else has electoral votes besides Hillary Clinton, the House will still choose between Trump and Clinton.  If 37 electors abandon Trump, but don’t give their votes to Clinton, the only other choice would be whoever has the next highest number of electoral votes. In other words, the House can’t anoint a candidate that does not have at least one electoral vote. (There are also complex circumstances whereby the Senate might choose the new vice president, who would become president if no new one is chosen.  At this point, the likeliest nominee might be Mike Pence). Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig is offering legal advice to Electors who may want to vote for candidates other than those to whom they are apparently committed.  He has estimated 20 or more electors may jump from voting for Trump. But so far, the only other candidate named by a possible “faithless elector” from a Trump state is Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich. That elector is Chris Suprun, a Texas-based paramedic who penned an op ed in the New York Times saying Trump is unfit to be president, and mentioning Kasich as someone he might support. Kasich was one of Trump’s most vehement opponents during the primaries.  He now says he does not want the Electoral College to consider him as an alternative candidate. Nonetheless, Colorado elector Michael Baca,  who is committed to Hillary Clinton, has told Brad Friedman on his BradBlog radio show that he would consider voting for Kasich if that would help rally Republican electors around a candidate other than Trump. He cites a Hamilton Electors website  aimed at informing the public about the possibility of an Electoral College not voting for the candidate with the apparent majority of electoral votes. Given the fluidity of the situation, things may have changed between the time I am writing this and the time you are reading it. But this much seems firm: Hillary Clinton still stands to become the sixth presidential candidate to win the majority of eligible voters but lose the White House.  At nearly 3 million votes, hers is by far the largest margin of any popular vote victory to frame an Electoral College defeat. Despite his claims that three million Americans voted fraudulently, the Trump campaign brutally stonewalled Jill Stein’s attempts to get meaningful recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Greg Palast has shown that this year hundreds of thousands of mostly black and Hispanic citizens were systematically stripped from the voter rolls. Numerous statisticians have also warned that vote counts could have been flipped in many states by “black box” electronic machines. Until we have a transparent system based on universal automatic voter registration, hand counted paper ballots, mandatory audited recounts, and more, we have nothing resembling a democracy. What we DO have in 2016 is this:  Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes but is apparently leading in the Electoral College with official victories in five states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida) where he lost in the exit polls.  Those vote counts were not contested by Hillary Clinton, and green recount attempts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were stymied. Those wanting someone other than Donald Trump to become president must now persuade some 37 electors from states officially won by Trump to not vote for him.  They must either switch those votes to Hillary Clinton or produce at least one electoral vote for a third candidate who would then be selected in the House of Representatives by a majority of the state delegations. Such a “December Surprise” has never happened in US history.  It would appear to be a Constitutional possibility.  But the only certainty at this point seems to be that the clock is ticking. Stay tuned. ======================== Harvey Wasserman co-wrote (with Bob Fitrakis) THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016: FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT, at freepress.org and solartopia.org, where his SOLARTOPIA!  OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH also appears.  He is Secretary of Energy in Jill Stein’s Green Party shadow cabinet.    ]]>

Harvey Wasserman | Ask the Electoral College to Not Vote Until Russian Hacks of Our Election are Fully Investigated

(photo: AP)

By Harvey Wasserman A petition asking the Electoral College not to vote on the next president until a full investigation is done of Russian interference in the 2016 US election can be signed here. Why? Because according to the New York Times and the Washington Post and other mainstream media sources, the Central Intelligence Agency has confirmed substantial evidence that the government of Russia may have hacked this election. But at least one top-ranked Republican leader—-US Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)—-agrees. The Agency says it has “high confidence” the Russians meant to help make Donald Trump president. Trump is now attacking the Agency, The hacking, he told Time Magazine, ““could be Russia, it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.” As the CIA has reported it, such foreign meddling in an American election is unprecedented—-and illegal. If Trump or any of his staff or associates conspired with the Russians to thus win the US Presidency, it would clearly be an impeachable offense. The legal ramifications would ignite a Constitutional crisis even before Trump could take office. Meanwhile, preliminary citizen-funded attempts to require recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are under continual attack from well-funded Trump interventions. The recounts have been spearheaded by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Support can be contributed here. Trump claims three million people illegally voted in 2016. But he’s relentlessly sabotaged recounts in three states that could decide the Electoral vote. In those and many other states, massive disenfranchisement, inconsistencies, irregularities, targeted machine breakdowns and more have already been uncovered. More than enough 2016 votes were cast on hackable black box electronic voting machines to flip the outcome of the Electoral College vote. As has been widely reported, those machines could have been hacked by computer experts from Russia. Until that possibility is also fully investigated, no Electoral College vote should proceed. The Clinton campaign and Democratic party have sent legal observers but no tangible support for these recounts, These new revelations about Russian intervention make them more critical than ever. A petition asking Clinton’s tangible support for the recounts can be signed here: www.solartopia.org.
The CIA’s evidence indicates Russia hacked internal Democratic National Committee Party emails indicating party leaders conspired to deny the nomination to US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT). The revelations led to the resignation of DNC Chair Deborah Wasserman (no relation) Schultz. Trump has repeatedly urged the Russians to hack and release Clinton’s own emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s email servers, he has said. But he’s denied conspiring with the Russians. Clinton was also slammed by FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the Bureau was investigating an aide’s emails. As the Times reports, an October report issued by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr., and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson says the DNC hack “had to have been approved at the highest levels of the Russian government.” But the Times says that “until now, intelligence findings have been scattered in fragmentary reports”. On Friday, December 9, White House aide Lisa Monaco said “we may have crossed into a new threshold here.” President Obama wants the investigation done before he’s slated to leave office on January 20. The Electoral College is currently scheduled to vote on December 19. But the Electors should not certify anyone implicated in an impeachable offense. Nor should it entrust him, once president, to act on or make public a report that might indict him of one. President Obama should require the CIA to complete and release this report before December 19. The Electoral College should not vote until it can be fully examined. Nor should the Electoral College certify an outcome prior to a full recount of an election in which more than enough votes were cast on hackable electronic machines to flip the outcome, and where the presumptive winner still claims more than three million were fraudulent.
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Harvey Wasserman co-wrote (with Bob Fitrakis) THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016: FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT, at freepress.org and solartopia.org, where his SOLARTOPIA!  OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH also appears.  He is Secretary of Energy in Jill Stein’s Green Party shadow cabinet.
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Hey! Donald!! Let's Make a Deal on Those 3 Million "Rigged" Votes and a National Recount

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

By Harvey Wasserman, (Originally published on Reader Supported News)

29 November 16

  onald Trump says there were 3 million fraudulent voters in a “rigged” election he lost by more than 2 million popular votes.

But he has no proof.

The solution is obvious: He should fund a 50-state recount.

He could pay for it with a tiny fraction of the windfall profits he may already have made by cashing in on his apparent title upgrade.

Trump is angry that thousands of citizens have sent $5 million in small Bernie-style donations for Jill Stein’s recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Contributions are still pouring in at https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/recount.

The Donald is also mad that Hillary Clinton will send lawyers (but no funding) to observe those recounts. Many are still urging her to do more via www.solartopia.org.

But the burden is on Trump.

Of course he’s uncomfortable about losing the popular vote by such a large (and growing) margin. And this, of course, does not account for the thousands of black/Hispanic/Asian-American/Muslim and other citizens who were stripped from the voter rolls even though they were legally eligible.

So, Donald, here’s a win-win-win:

You’ve already made millions on the presumption that you will soon be president.

Mission accomplished.

But you’ve apparently lost the popular vote by a huge margin.

And the city of New York is now paying millions to protect you and your family at Trump Tower. You clearly don’t want the downgrade to public housing in DC.

So here’s an artful deal:

Take a tiny fraction of those profits to fund the national recount.

If those fraudulent “rigged” votes don’t really exist, and you really did lose the popular majority, just call it a day.

Take your short-term profits, concede the presidency to the popular choice, and stay a private citizen at Trump Tower, saving New York taxpayers millions in security costs.

That’s a win for Trump Inc., a win for popular democracy, and a win for New York taxpayers.

How about it, Donald. Do we have a deal?

 
 

Harvey Wasserman co-wrote THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016 (with Bob Fitrakis), soon to become THE STRIP & FLIP DISASTER OF AMERICA’S STOLEN ELECTIONS: FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT atwww.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org, where SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH currently abides. He is Secretary of Energy in Jill Stein’s shadow cabinet.

Follow Harvey Wasserman on Twitter

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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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Will Hillary Cave on the Recounts While Jill Stein Saves the Day?

h-v-j-2

 
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
 
Hillary Clinton’s victory in the 2016 presidential popular vote count keeps climbing.  According to the New York Times  it’s now well over 2 million votes.
 
Meanwhile Jill Stein’s grassroots fundraising tally to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where the election actually could be decided, is now over $4 million, according to CBS News.  Donations are coming to:  https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/recount
 
Which will matter more?
 
A swing of well under 200,000 votes in those three states could shift the Electoral College from Trump to Clinton.  All three are fraught with irregularities.  So are swing states Florida and North Carolina, which are also very close, but which thus far are being left without recounts.
 
Clinton and the Democrats are being swamped by public requests that they demand recounts and pay for them.  One of the many petitions appears at www.solartopia.org.  So far there has been no response from Clinton or the party.
 
But Stein and the Greens have come forward to pay for the recounts themselves. A torrent of small donations is pouring in, echoing those that supported the Bernie Sanders campaign.  Stein estimates that with legal fees, the challenges could cost up to $7 million for the three states.
 
The filing deadline for a recount in Wisconsin is today.  The Green Party filing is underway there.
 
There has been little or no public discussion of recounts in the US Senate races in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Missouri, where exit polls show Democrats winning Senate seats with razor-thin margins.  A swing of those three seats would swing control of the US Senate for this coming term—-and possibly on the US Supreme Court for decades to come.   Presidential margins are also extremely close in Florida and North Carolina, where exit polls showed Clinton winning.  Stein was on the ballot in Florida, but not North Carolina.
 
With some 2,000,000 votes still uncounted in California alone, Clinton’s public triumph over Donald Trump could reach 2.5 million votes or more.  Such a margin would dwarf John Kennedy’s in 1960 (by a factor of more than fifteen), Richard Nixon’s in 1968 (by a factor of more than four) and Al Gore’s in 2000 (by a factor of five).
 
Had this election been held in a foreign country, the State Department would not certify it.  (Columbus Free Press).
 
Greg Palast and others report that computer programs like Crosscheck have been used to strip several million mostly black/Hispanic/Asian-American/Muslim citizens from the voter rolls in some 30 or more other states.  Bev Harris, Jon Simon and others report that the electronic vote counts in numerous states throughout the country are highly suspect (Black Box Voting)
 
Computer expert J. Alex Halderman and election attorney John Bonifaz have joined many others in calling for recounts.
 
In 2000, Gore won the national vote by more than 500,000 ballots.  A full recount in Florida would have given him Florida’s Electoral votes and the presidency.  But the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Bush v. Gore decision stopped the recount.
 
In Ohio 2004, US Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and US Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-Cleveland, since deceased) challenged Ohio’s Electoral College delegation.  More than 300,000 citizens were stripped from Ohio’s registration rolls and more 100,000 votes remain uncounted from an election officially decided by 118,775.   Despite a federal court order, no legitimate recount has ever been held.
 
Neither Gore nor Kerry has ever supported investigations the massive irregularities surrounding the 2000 and 2004 elections.  Kerry had raised a $7,000,000 legal fund to protect the 2004 balloting, but never allocated any of it to an independent investigation. Kerry declined to fund a recount.
 
This year the incumbent Republican Governor of North Carolina lost the popular vote in his re-election bid, but may use a loophole in state law so the Republican-controlled legislature can keep him in office.
 
Few commentators doubt what Trump’s GOP would be doing now had they won the popular vote but were behind in the Electoral College, or in those key Senate races.
 
As much as $100,000/hour has been pouring into the Greens’ fund for those recounts at a time when Clinton and the Democrats could pay for them in a matter of moments.
 
But Stein and the Greens have vowed to do those recounts.   At very least they’ll shine a light on how our elections are conducted.
 
Whether the Democrats will help, and whether the results can change history, remains to be seen.
 
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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION OF 2016:  FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT is at www.freepress.org and www.solartopia.org, along with Bob’s FITRAKIS FILES and Harvey’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH.
For a good time, see Pete Seeger, Dar Williams, David Bernz & the Rivertown Kidz  sing “SOLARTOPIA!” at www.solartopia.org
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PETITION! ASK CLINTON & THE DEMOCRATS TO FUND 2016 RECOUNTS

clinton

Petition by  harvey wasserman

Please sign and share  this petition posted at Move.On.org

To be delivered to Hillary Clinton & Democratic Party, Democratic nominee & party officials

WE ASK HILLARY CLINTON AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO FUND PRESIDENTIAL RECOUNTS IN FLORIDA, NORTH CAROLINA, PENNSYLVANIA, MICHIGAN, WISCONSIN, AND ALL OTHER APPROPRIATE STATES. WE ALSO ASK THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO FUND RECOUNTS IN US SENATE RACES IN PENNSYLVANIA, WISCONSIN AND MISSOURI, AND ALL OTHER APPROPRIATE ELECTORAL RACES.
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GOP Flip & Strip Led to Trump Win?

By

My guest today is Harvey Wasserman, author, teacher, environmental and election activist. He just co-wrote a piece with Bob Fitrakis, How the GOP Flipped & Stripped Yet Another American Election  [11.20.16].

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Harvey. Is this just more post-election sour grapes? How would you like to get this started?

Harvey Wasserman: Let’s just say we have another STRIP & FLIP DISASTER OF AMERICA’S STOLEN ELECTIONS, this one perhaps the worst ever.

JB: I recall you wrote a piece back in February AFTER IOWA, CAN BERNIE WIN A “STRIP & FLIP” SELECTION?, albeit in a Democratic primary context. Is that relevant to our discussion today?

HW: Our statistics indicate the nomination was stolen from Bernie and now the election has been stolen from Hillary.

The 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen from Gore and from Kerry.

So we had eight years of W. and now a nightmare coming up from Trump.

It appears Hillary will win the popular vote by almost two million. An honest vote count would also have given her a landslide in the Electoral College.

How much longer will this go on?

JB: Great question. Let’s get to some facts and figures, Harvey. Otherwise, this sounds like so much wishful thinking. What have you got to back up your brash statements?

HW: We should have been doing this since 2000. Instead of forming a circular firing squad around Ralph Nader, there should’ve been an organized movement to deal with our election disease STARTING THEN.

We all know the votes were flipped and stripped in Florida (and elsewhere). Then, the Supreme Court intervened to stop the recount. Then, the Electoral College nailed the coffin shut.

And then they all ganged up on Ralph for daring to run.

If everybody who voted for Ralph Nader in Florida 2000 had voted instead for Al Gore, George W. Bush still would’ve become president.

So, first we apologize to Ralph.

Then, we form a national coalition with a very specific set of goals:

1. Universal automatic voter registration, with transparent voter rolls.

2. Four-day national holiday for voting.

3. No photo ID for voting.

4. Ample voting stations everywhere

5. Universal hand-counted paper ballots.

6. End the Electoral College.

7. End gerrymandering.

8. No corporate money in campaigns.

Then we find out how to win. Our lives depend on it.

JB: A comprehensive list, Harvey. What if any energy is being devoted to initiating audits or recounts in key states? How do we take advantage of that small window before the Electoral College votes on December 19th?

HW: There are people working hard to raise money for recounts and I hope they succeed.

I’m a bit skeptical because I’d prefer to see a big grassroots long-term movement dug in for the deep fight of establishing a democratic (small d) election procedure which includes universal automatic voter registration, no photo ID, transparent voter rolls, universal hand counted paper ballots, ban on corporate money in campaigns, end to gerrymandering, end to electoral college and more.

This was yet another electronic Jim Crow election and we cannot allow it to happen again.

Al Gore, John Kerry and now Hillary Clinton have allowed their elections to be stolen and have not say a word. Hillary could pay for all the recounts out of petty cash.

Meanwhile, under Obama, the good people at the Dakota pipeline are being assaulted. Trump will probably use live ammunition.

But we have to find a better way.

JB: If, as you say, Hillary could sponsor a recount out of petty cash, why is she silent? What’s your theory?

HW: Like Gore and Kerry, Hillary is a multi-millionaire. Her first loyalty is to the establishment that keeps her rich. She would never challenge the basic illusions of our democracy. It’s too radical a thing for her to do. Like that line in “A Few Good Men”: ‘TRUTH! YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”

This election marks a shocking and tragic end to democracy in the US as we’ve known it. Our nation has been on a death spiral since the murders of JFK, MLK and RFK, and the horrible miasma of the Vietnam War. We have never really recovered from Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam.

This is the basic message of a history of the US I’ll soon publish entitled: AMERICA AT THE BRINK OF REBIRTH: THE ORGANIC SPIRAL OF US HISTORY.

Our democratic process, which was far from perfect, has now deteriorated (like our nuclear plants) into something that can only be described as rigor mortis.

A fascist party has stolen control of the government from a corporate one which has no interest in fighting for even those elections it has won but were stolen from it.

Yet at the grassroots, we have a vibrant, savvy and committed core.

We don’t know what is forthcoming for our civil rights and liberties. The internet will be attacked, as will free speech. Our survival on this planet is about to be assaulted as never before.

In other words: We are all about to be tested. As never before.

JB: Sheesh. Not a very uplifting or hopeful message. Do you have anything you’d like to add before we wrap this up?

HW: I’m a born optimist. one has to be to be an activist. I believe in the survival instincts of our species, and our core beliefs in social justice and civic responsibility.

I also believe we understand what we have to do to have our families’ survival. This must be a fit world for our children, and it’s our responsibility to make it so.

So, I believe we will get through this. It’ll stretch every muscle in our psychic bodies, but we’ll get there, whatever it takes within a non-violent framework.

And, somehow, we’ll have fun doing it. I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. but i’ll let you know when I do. And we’ll see you in solartopia.

JB: Thanks so much for talking with me again, Harvey. Looking forward to seeing your new book when it comes out. Good luck with it!

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Pokey Anderson put together a good synopsis of post-election articles about voting irregularities. Thank you, Pokey. Check it out here.

Things are not looking good but we don’t have to passively acquiesce either. Here are two simple actions you can take. Share widely:

Publicize this petition demanding a post-election audit of the paper ballots in seven key states (Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan).

Donate funds to facilitate audit here.

Tell the Electoral College electors: Honor the majority vote and reject Donald Trump

This interview of Harvey Wasserman by Joan Brunwasser was originally published at Op-Ed News

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How the GOP Flipped and Stripped Yet Another American Election

Voting rights. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Crossposted on Reader Supported News

20 November 16

  illary Clinton has won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election by well over a million votes.

But her impending defeat in the Electoral College comes with familiar signs that yet another American election has been stripped and flipped.

This article presents a comprehensive overview of how it was done, and a brief summary of how our electoral system needs to be changed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The primary indicators of the massive election theft are by now familiar. They include the realities of pre- and post-election polling; the massive stripping of primarily black, Hispanic, Muslim and Asian-American voters from computer-generated registration rolls mostly maintained by private, partisan companies; unverifiable “black box” electronic voting machines and central tabulators, also mostly manufactured and maintained by private corporations; and much more.

Were this election held in any other country, the US State Department and independent monitors from around the world would denounce it as a fraud and contemplate international intervention.

What follows only begins to scratch the surface:

The Electoral College

Much is finally being said about the Electoral College, with new popular demands for its abolition. Clinton is about to become the sixth presidential candidate to win a legitimate majority but lose the presidency. It also happened in 1800, 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000. Nearly 15% of our 45 presidents have been “selected” with the denial of the public will through an institution established in large part to enhance the power of slaveowners.

In February, 2013, at progressive.org, we joined the multitudes throughout our history in calling for the Electoral College’s abolition:

It will take a Constitutional Amendment, and a hell of a lot of work, to abolish this corrupt anachronism. But unless we want to see an endless succession of George W. Bushes in the White House, something had better be done – and quick.

The consequences of inaction are all too clear.

Computerized Jim Crow Stripping of Voter Registration Rolls

US elections have been defined throughout history by a divide-and-conquer strategy of racial manipulation. As we outline in our new Strip & Flip Death of American Democracy(freepress.org/solartopia.org): chattel slavery, the Constitution’s “three-fifths bonus,” Jim Crow segregation, third world imperial conquest, and the Drug War have all played a role in denying African-American/Hispanic/Asian-American citizens their right to vote. From the foundation of the Republic, this disenfranchisement has defined the balance of power.

In recent years, the disenfranchisement has been most importantly done by the Republican Party, and by computer. As investigative reporter Greg Palast has shown in his book/movie The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (www.gregpalast.com), in 2000 Florida governor Jeb Bush used a program called ChoicePoint to strip more than 90,000 predominantly black and Hispanic citizens from the voter registration rolls in an election decided by 537 votes. The pretext was alleged felony convictions. The selection was “won” by Bush’s brother George W., although a full recount (which was stopped 5-4 by the US Supreme Court in its infamous Bush v. Gore decision) would have given Al Gore the majority in Florida, and in the Electoral College.

As we have reported from Columbus, in 2004 more than 300,000 predominantly urban citizens were stripped from the voter registration rolls in an election the GOP won by 118,775. A quarter of all voters in heavily Democratic Cleveland were de-registered. Ohio’s ill-gotten electoral votes gave George W. Bush a second term. This became the only time in US history an entire state’s Electoral College delegation was challenged on the floor of the US Congress.

This year, Palast has reported that a new program called Crosscheck has been used by some 30 GOP secretaries of state to strip more than 1.1 million predominantly black, Hispanic, Islamic, and Asian-American citizens from the voter rolls.

Originating with far-right Republican Kris Kobach, Kansas’s secretary of state, Crosscheck eliminated more than enough minority voters in at least three swing states to flip the entire presidential election.

Palast has reported that Ohio’s GOP secretary of state Jon Husted also used Crosscheck to eliminate some 497,000 mostly black, Latino, and African-American citizens from the voter rolls in Ohio, falsely accusing them of registering in more than one state. Such eliminations went on throughout the US.

According to Reuters, over the past five years Husted himself has stripped some two million citizens from the voter rolls in Ohio, even without Crosscheck, with Democratic areas twice as likely to be stripped as Republican ones. Reuters writers Andy Sullivan and Grant Smith point out that the neighborhoods that most heavily backed President Obama lost the most voters. In heavily Democratic Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, they report, Democrat-leaning areas were purged at twice the rate as Republican ones.

The mass disenfranchisement also impacted races for the US Senate. If not for the usual “irregularities,” at least four Democrats would likely have won seats (in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Missouri) that they officially lost. Similar results are evident from 2014 Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado and Alaska. Thus in the past two years, mass disenfranchisement and computerized vote stripping may well have flipped seven Upper House seats from the Democrats to the GOP.

Thus the electronic race-based stripping of voter rolls in the GOP’s favor has probably on its own taken to the far right the presidency, control of the US Senate, and ultimately the US Supreme Court.

It should be noted that out of disgust with Donald Trump, the GOP multi-billionaire Koch Brothers shifted much of their massive financial weight from the presidential race to Congressional and other “down-ballot contests,” where these key Senate seats and others in the US House and state governments were almost certainly impacted.

Traditional Jim Crow Stripping of Voter Registration Rolls

Alongside computerized techniques, the Republicans have effectively deployed still more traditional Jim Crow tactics to strip black/Hispanic/Asian-American/Muslim citizens of their ability to vote, many of which have been delineated in the New York Times.

In part these include: demands for photo ID, elimination of polling places, narrowing time frames in which citizens can vote, deliberate distribution of misinformation about voting requirements, non-counting of provisional ballots, failure to send out absentee ballots, intimidation and widespread confusion at polling places, and much more.

Throughout the corporate media, the obligatory hand-wringing about a drop in voter turnout invariably avoids the obvious cause of race-based restrictions that make it harder to vote, selective limitations on when citizens can vote, and targeted reductions in where they can vote.

In its 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder decision, the US Supreme Court gutted protections provided by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates for such Jim Crow abuse throughout the electoral system.

Numerous reports indicate that citizens were often confronted with photo ID requirements even where they were voided by the courts. As in Ohio 2004, reports indicate many citizens were directed by official websites to polling places that did not actually exist. This year Ohio secretary of state Jon Husted failed to distribute more than 1,050,000 absentee ballot applications to citizens entitled to them.Husted also waged a relentless war against early voting periods, such as “souls to the polls” Sundays, that encouraged African-Americans to vote. He also worked hard to strip out polling stations from urban areas.

In Wisconsin, which Trump allegedly carried by about 27,000 votes, some 300,000 registered voters lacked required photo ID. According to Ari Berman’s “Did the Republicans Rig the Election?” appearing in The Nation, Wisconsin’s turnout was the lowest in two decades. That includes a drop of 52,000 in heavily African-American Milwaukee, nearly twice Trump’s margin of victory in the entire state.

According to a report by Richard Hayes Philips, extremely high turnouts for Trump in rural areas of Wisconsin “are not credible.” Among other things, the vote counts in five Republican towns exceed the number of registered voters. (www.freepress.org)

On election day, media throughout the US reported the kinds of mass delays and confusion that defined the elections of 2000 and 2004. According to Berman, there were 868 fewer polling stations in Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina alone, accompanied by a notable drop in African-American turnouts. According to Berman, 14 states imposed new restrictions on voting. Three of them – Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio – were never before under federal Voting Rights Act supervision.

Said The New York Times: “Voters nationwide endured long waits in line, malfunctioning voting machines, ill-informed poll workers and a litany of lesser annoyances on Tuesday with scattered reports that some voters gave up trying to cast ballots.”

David Becker, the Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation, told the Times, “There are scattered indications of machine breakdowns that are being addressed.”

A typical description has been provided by Steven Rosenfeld, writing at Alternet about the “Democratic epicenter” in Durham County, North Carolina:

the state’s voter registration database and e-poll books tied into it were down, prompting long lines, delays and necessitating people fill out provisional ballots. The data was also scrambled, with voter rolls in the wrong locations, people tagged as voting when they had not, and people not on lists even though they had their state registration cards.

In an editorial the day after the election, the Times lamented that in North Carolina “The state’s Republican Party issued a news release boasting that cutbacks in early voting hours reduced black turnout by 8.5% below 2012 levels, even as the numbers of white early voters increased by 22.5%.”

Throughout the US, voters with “problems” in their registration are routinely given provisional ballots, which are allegedly to be counted later. But the forms are often impossibly complex, with poll workers often failing to count them at the sight of a single minor error, such as writing below a line, omitting a middle initial, failing to include a birthday and much more. Ohio secretary of state Husted won the right from the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to not count provisional ballots that contain a minor mistake. Thus tens of thousands of provisional ballots have been routinely left uncounted, unbeknownst to the voters. More than 115,000 provisional and “spoiled” ballots from Ohio’s 2004 election remain uncounted.

Often absurd discrepancies have become normalized. In 2004 hundreds of mostly Democratic Native Americans allegedly cast ballots on their New Mexico reservations without signifying a choice for president. This year in North Carolina, Trump and the GOP’s US Senate candidate allegedly won by nearly 200,000 votes while the incumbent Republican governor was allegedly defeated (he’s demanding a recount). In Michigan, tens of thousands of voters allegedly filled out their entire ballots but somehow left the presidential choice vacant in a race essentially too close to call.

Polling Indicators

In the lead-up to November 8, pre-election polls strongly indicated a Clinton victory. Post-election exit polls showed her winning as well, most critically in the swing states whose Electoral College votes could have given her the presidency.

Exit polls are the accepted international standard for indications of election fraud and vote tampering. Eric Bjornlund and Glenn Cowan’s 2011 pamphlet “Vote Count Verification: a User’s Guide for Funders, Implementers and Stakeholders” was done under the auspices of Democracy International for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It outlines how exit polling is used to ensure free and fair elections.

It adds that “U.S-funded organizations have sponsored exit polls as part of democracy assistance programs in Macedonia (2005), Afghanistan (2004), Ukraine (2004), Azerbaijan (2005), the West Bank and Gaza Strip (2005), Lebanon (2005), Kazakhstan (2005), Kenya (2005, 2007), and Bangladesh (2009), among other places.”

In countries like Germany and Switzerland, which use hand-counted paper ballots, exit polls are accurate to a margin error of less than 1%.

Here the 2016 exit polls were paid for by a major corporate media consortium, as has been standard practice for years. Here they are designed to reflect the actual vote count within a 2% margin of error nationally.

But in the US, if exit polls don’t agree with official vote counts, they are regularly “adjusted” to conform to official results, no matter how implausible. This makes fraudulent elections appear legitimate.

During this year’s Republican primaries, unadjusted exit polls confirmed official vote counts in all cases. In the Democratic primaries, unadjusted exit polls significantly varied from the official outcome in 12 of 26 primaries. All the errors went in Hillary Clinton’s favor in her race against Bernie Sanders. This is a virtual statistical impossibility and suggests a rigged vote count.

In the general election against Donald Trump, things went the other way. In 24 of 28 states, unadjusted exit polls also showed Clinton with vote counts significantly higher than the final official outcome. The likelihood of this happening in an election that is not rigged are in the realm of virtual statistical impossibility.

In fact, based on the exit polls, the odds against such an unexplained “Trump Shift” are one in 13,110 presidential elections.

For example, Ohio’s exit polls showed Trump and Clinton in a dead heat – 47 percent for Clinton to 47.1 for Trump. Officially, Trump won with 52.1 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 43.5 percent. This unexplained and unexpected 8.5 percent shift for Trump is mathematically impossible.

The exit polls also showed Clinton winning in Florida.But an unaccounted for 2.5 percent shift to Trump gave him a victory that was a virtual statistical impossibility. Similar numbers abide in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Given the prevalence of other Jim Crow tactics, it’s likely the exit polls were impacted by non-white voters in all the key swing states who were given provisional ballots (or they voted electronically) leading them to believe their votes were being counted, even though they were not.

In key Senate races in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Missouri, exit polls also showed Democratic candidates winning by statistically significant margins, but then losing the official vote count.

In 2014, Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado, and Alaska ended with exit polls also showing Democratic Senate candidates winning the popular vote, while ultimately losing the official vote count. The odds against this happening in two consecutive elections that are not rigged are also astronomical.

The tendency of such official outcomes to slide to the GOP after showing “blue” for Democrats in the exit polls is more fully documented by Jon Simon in his definitive book CODE RED. Simon coined the phrase “Red Shift” and discusses what has once again become a dominant factor in a presidential election claimed by the Republicans at OpEdNews.

Electronic Flipping

The vast majority of the popular votes in this election nationwide were cast on either computerized touch-screen electronic machines, or on Scantron ballots that are counted by computer. In neither case are there public monitoring capabilities or legal recourse for vote counts that are flipped.

In 2016, as in all previous US elections at least since 2000, the electronic vote count remains anyone’s guess. In states with a governor and secretary of state from the same party, the final tally can be whatever they want it to be.

Such techniques were used in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 to strip voter rolls and flip George W. Bush into the White House. More than 90,000 black/Hispanic voters were disenfranchised by Gov. Jeb Bush (George’s brother) in a Florida election officially decided by 537 votes. More than 300,000 primarily black/Hispanic voters were stripped from voter rolls in an Ohio 2004 election officially decided by 118,775.

In Florida’s 2000 presidential election, 16,000 votes cast for Gore in Volusia County were electronically subtracted and 4,000 were credited to Bush, giving him a leg up on the evening’s vote count. This caused Fox News commentator John Ellis (Bush’s first cousin) to call the election for the GOP.

In Ohio 2004, John Kerry was shown winning the election by 4.2%, more than 200,000 votes, at12:20 a.m. Then the electronic vote count ceased. At2 a.m.,a Bush lead began to emerge, somehow reaching 2.5%. The 6.7% flip is a virtual statistical impossibility.

All of this was done by private contractors working for the company SmarTech, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The key information technology specialist in charge of the vote count was Michael Connell, an Akron-based associate of the Bush family, who was hired by the Ohio secretary of state with a no-bid contract to supervise the state’s official vote count. Connell later died in a mysterious plane crash after being deposed in federal court.

The fact that electronic voting machines cannot be monitored was voted a Most Censoredstory in 2016, with a key interview with co-author Harvey Wasserman appearing on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!

Computer “Black Box Voting” specialist Bev Harris, who uncovered the electronic vote flipping in Florida 2000, has warned this year that a method of “fractionated voting” could have been easily used to manipulate electronic vote counts. The manipulation could be done by secretaries of state in conjunction with partisan for-profit corporations in ways that are virtually impossible to detect, and simply not open to legal challenge. According to Harris, this “fraction magic,” used in counties’ central tabulators, could have flipped hundreds of thousands of votes.

In Ohio this year, a new generation of electronic vote scanning machines makes it possible to retrieve electronic images of ballots that have been cast on paper in the order that they were cast. These machines come with an audit log that would detect any illegitimate vote changes by central tabulators.

Traditional Jim Crow Stripping of Voter Registration Rolls

Alongside computerized techniques, the Republicans have effectively deployed still more traditional Jim Crow tactics to strip black/Hispanic/Asian-American/Muslim citizens of their ability to vote, many of which have been delineated in the New York Times.

In part these include: demands for photo ID, elimination of polling places, narrowing time frames in which citizens can vote, deliberate distribution of misinformation about voting requirements, non-counting of provisional ballots, failure to send out absentee ballots, intimidation and widespread confusion at polling places, and much more.

Throughout the corporate media, the obligatory hand-wringing about a drop in voter turnout invariably avoids the obvious cause of race-based restrictions that make it harder to vote, selective limitations on when citizens can vote, and targeted reductions in where they can vote.

In its 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder decision, the US Supreme Court gutted protections provided by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the floodgates for such Jim Crow abuse throughout the electoral system.

Numerous reports indicate that citizens were often confronted with photo ID requirements even where they were voided by the courts. As in Ohio 2004, reports indicate many citizens were directed by official websites to polling places that did not actually exist. This year Ohio secretary of state Jon Husted failed to distribute more than 1,050,000 absentee ballot applications to citizens entitled to them.Husted also waged a relentless war against early voting periods, such as “souls to the polls” Sundays, that encouraged African-Americans to vote. He also worked hard to strip out polling stations from urban areas.

In Wisconsin, which Trump allegedly carried by about 27,000 votes, some 300,000 registered voters lacked required photo ID. According to Ari Berman’s “Did the Republicans Rig the Election?” appearing in The Nation, Wisconsin’s turnout was the lowest in two decades. That includes a drop of 52,000 in heavily African-American Milwaukee, nearly twice Trump’s margin of victory in the entire state.

According to a report by Richard Hayes Philips, extremely high turnouts for Trump in rural areas of Wisconsin “are not credible.” Among other things, the vote counts in five Republican towns exceed the number of registered voters. (www.freepress.org)

On election day, media throughout the US reported the kinds of mass delays and confusion that defined the elections of 2000 and 2004. According to Berman, there were 868 fewer polling stations in Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina alone, accompanied by a notable drop in African-American turnouts. According to Berman, 14 states imposed new restrictions on voting. Three of them – Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio – were never before under federal Voting Rights Act supervision.

Said The New York Times: “Voters nationwide endured long waits in line, malfunctioning voting machines, ill-informed poll workers and a litany of lesser annoyances on Tuesday with scattered reports that some voters gave up trying to cast ballots.”

David Becker, the Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation, told the Times, “There are scattered indications of machine breakdowns that are being addressed.”

A typical description has been provided by Steven Rosenfeld, writing at Alternet about the “Democratic epicenter” in Durham County, North Carolina:

the state’s voter registration database and e-poll books tied into it were down, prompting long lines, delays and necessitating people fill out provisional ballots. The data was also scrambled, with voter rolls in the wrong locations, people tagged as voting when they had not, and people not on lists even though they had their state registration cards.

In an editorial the day after the election, the Times lamented that in North Carolina “The state’s Republican Party issued a news release boasting that cutbacks in early voting hours reduced black turnout by 8.5% below 2012 levels, even as the numbers of white early voters increased by 22.5%.”

Throughout the US, voters with “problems” in their registration are routinely given provisional ballots, which are allegedly to be counted later. But the forms are often impossibly complex, with poll workers often failing to count them at the sight of a single minor error, such as writing below a line, omitting a middle initial, failing to include a birthday and much more. Ohio secretary of state Husted won the right from the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to not count provisional ballots that contain a minor mistake. Thus tens of thousands of provisional ballots have been routinely left uncounted, unbeknownst to the voters. More than 115,000 provisional and “spoiled” ballots from Ohio’s 2004 election remain uncounted.

Often absurd discrepancies have become normalized. In 2004 hundreds of mostly Democratic Native Americans allegedly cast ballots on their New Mexico reservations without signifying a choice for president. This year in North Carolina, Trump and the GOP’s US Senate candidate allegedly won by nearly 200,000 votes while the incumbent Republican governor was allegedly defeated (he’s demanding a recount). In Michigan, tens of thousands of voters allegedly filled out their entire ballots but somehow left the presidential choice vacant in a race essentially too close to call.

Polling Indicators

In the lead-up to November 8, pre-election polls strongly indicated a Clinton victory. Post-election exit polls showed her winning as well, most critically in the swing states whose Electoral College votes could have given her the presidency.

Exit polls are the accepted international standard for indications of election fraud and vote tampering. Eric Bjornlund and Glenn Cowan’s 2011 pamphlet “Vote Count Verification: a User’s Guide for Funders, Implementers and Stakeholders” was done under the auspices of Democracy International for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It outlines how exit polling is used to ensure free and fair elections.

It adds that “U.S-funded organizations have sponsored exit polls as part of democracy assistance programs in Macedonia (2005), Afghanistan (2004), Ukraine (2004), Azerbaijan (2005), the West Bank and Gaza Strip (2005), Lebanon (2005), Kazakhstan (2005), Kenya (2005, 2007), and Bangladesh (2009), among other places.”

In countries like Germany and Switzerland, which use hand-counted paper ballots, exit polls are accurate to a margin error of less than 1%.

Here the 2016 exit polls were paid for by a major corporate media consortium, as has been standard practice for years. Here they are designed to reflect the actual vote count within a 2% margin of error nationally.

But in the US, if exit polls don’t agree with official vote counts, they are regularly “adjusted” to conform to official results, no matter how implausible. This makes fraudulent elections appear legitimate.

During this year’s Republican primaries, unadjusted exit polls confirmed official vote counts in all cases. In the Democratic primaries, unadjusted exit polls significantly varied from the official outcome in 12 of 26 primaries. All the errors went in Hillary Clinton’s favor in her race against Bernie Sanders. This is a virtual statistical impossibility and suggests a rigged vote count.

In the general election against Donald Trump, things went the other way. In 24 of 28 states, unadjusted exit polls also showed Clinton with vote counts significantly higher than the final official outcome. The likelihood of this happening in an election that is not rigged are in the realm of virtual statistical impossibility.

In fact, based on the exit polls, the odds against such an unexplained “Trump Shift” are one in 13,110 presidential elections.

For example, Ohio’s exit polls showed Trump and Clinton in a dead heat – 47 percent for Clinton to 47.1 for Trump. Officially, Trump won with 52.1 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 43.5 percent. This unexplained and unexpected 8.5 percent shift for Trump is mathematically impossible.

The exit polls also showed Clinton winning in Florida.But an unaccounted for 2.5 percent shift to Trump gave him a victory that was a virtual statistical impossibility. Similar numbers abide in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Given the prevalence of other Jim Crow tactics, it’s likely the exit polls were impacted by non-white voters in all the key swing states who were given provisional ballots (or they voted electronically) leading them to believe their votes were being counted, even though they were not.

In key Senate races in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Missouri, exit polls also showed Democratic candidates winning by statistically significant margins, but then losing the official vote count.

In 2014, Senate races in North Carolina, Colorado, and Alaska ended with exit polls also showing Democratic Senate candidates winning the popular vote, while ultimately losing the official vote count. The odds against this happening in two consecutive elections that are not rigged are also astronomical.

The tendency of such official outcomes to slide to the GOP after showing “blue” for Democrats in the exit polls is more fully documented by Jon Simon in his definitive book CODE RED. Simon coined the phrase “Red Shift” and discusses what has once again become a dominant factor in a presidential election claimed by the Republicans at OpEdNews.

Electronic Flipping

The vast majority of the popular votes in this election nationwide were cast on either computerized touch-screen electronic machines, or on Scantron ballots that are counted by computer. In neither case are there public monitoring capabilities or legal recourse for vote counts that are flipped.

In 2016, as in all previous US elections at least since 2000, the electronic vote count remains anyone’s guess. In states with a governor and secretary of state from the same party, the final tally can be whatever they want it to be.

Such techniques were used in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 to strip voter rolls and flip George W. Bush into the White House. More than 90,000 black/Hispanic voters were disenfranchised by Gov. Jeb Bush (George’s brother) in a Florida election officially decided by 537 votes. More than 300,000 primarily black/Hispanic voters were stripped from voter rolls in an Ohio 2004 election officially decided by 118,775.

In Florida’s 2000 presidential election, 16,000 votes cast for Gore in Volusia County were electronically subtracted and 4,000 were credited to Bush, giving him a leg up on the evening’s vote count. This caused Fox News commentator John Ellis (Bush’s first cousin) to call the election for the GOP.

In Ohio 2004, John Kerry was shown winning the election by 4.2%, more than 200,000 votes, at12:20 a.m. Then the electronic vote count ceased. At2 a.m.,a Bush lead began to emerge, somehow reaching 2.5%. The 6.7% flip is a virtual statistical impossibility.

All of this was done by private contractors working for the company SmarTech, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The key information technology specialist in charge of the vote count was Michael Connell, an Akron-based associate of the Bush family, who was hired by the Ohio secretary of state with a no-bid contract to supervise the state’s official vote count. Connell later died in a mysterious plane crash after being deposed in federal court.

The fact that electronic voting machines cannot be monitored was voted a Most Censoredstory in 2016, with a key interview with co-author Harvey Wasserman appearing on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!

Computer “Black Box Voting” specialist Bev Harris, who uncovered the electronic vote flipping in Florida 2000, has warned this year that a method of “fractionated voting” could have been easily used to manipulate electronic vote counts. The manipulation could be done by secretaries of state in conjunction with partisan for-profit corporations in ways that are virtually impossible to detect, and simply not open to legal challenge. According to Harris, this “fraction magic,” used in counties’ central tabulators, could have flipped hundreds of thousands of votes.

In Ohio this year, a new generation of electronic vote scanning machines makes it possible to retrieve electronic images of ballots that have been cast on paper in the order that they were cast. These machines come with an audit log that would detect any illegitimate vote changes by central tabulators.

But Secretary of State Husted opted to allow local election boards to leave both security functions – the audit log and the image scanners – turned off. Co-author Bob Fitrakis sued in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas to have the monitoring functions turned on. But Judge David Cain ruled on Election Day that the election officials need not turn on those security features, leaving the public with no way to monitor the outcome. (A similar lawsuit filed in Arizona by election protection activist John Brakey actually succeeded.)

Such problems are built into the system nationwide. In Pennsylvania, for example, Rosenfeld reports that “16 counties are still using aging countywide tabulators which” are easily hacked and “use old versions of Microsoft operating systems, which have security vulnerabilities that have never been fixed.”

Throughout the US, including the swing states that will decide the presidential outcome in the Electoral College and states that have increased the GOP margin in the US Senate, the entire vote count remains an electronic mystery.

VR Systems, based in Tallahassee, handles registration records in Florida and more than a dozen other states. It was hacked prior to the election, possibly by Russians. Indeed, much finger-pointing against alleged Russian electronic intruders still goes on. But there are more than enough open portals into our electronic voting system to let domestic hackers easily flip an election.

Sources cited by Rosenfeld say Clinton won only those Wisconsin counties with paper ballots, while losing those with a mix of paper and machine voting by 1-2%, and those with only machines only by 10-15%.

Those results echo outcomes in New Mexico 2004, where Kerry won all precincts with hand-counted paper ballots and lost all those with machines, a reality he personally noted in a post-election conference call.

Millions of dollars would be required to do meaningful recounts in states like Wisconsin, which may well have legitimately gone for Clinton and chosen a Democratic US Senator. Michigan’s 4,800 precincts could cost up to $125 each to recount. The impact of such recounts, even if they show Clinton winning, would then be up for grabs.

So did the GOP strip and flip the 2016 election?

Let’s count the ways:

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton won America’s popular vote by more than a million votes.

That popular vote victory will be reversed in an Electoral College originally designed to enhance the power of slaveowners and now being used for the sixth time to deny the White House to the rightful winner.

There is no doubt that more than enough black, Hispanic, Islamic and Asian-Americans were electronically stripped from the voter registration rolls by Crosscheck and other means to have given Clinton victories in those swing states that would have swung the Electoral College in her favor.

There is no doubt additional Jim Crow tactics meant to further disenfranchise black/Hispanic/Asian-American voters – such as stripping away voting times and precincts, denial of absentee ballots, non-counting of provisional ballots, and much more – stripped Clinton of hundreds of thousands of additional legitimate votes.

There is no doubt exit polls showed her winning in more than enough states to have given her a victory in the Electoral College. They also indicated a seven-seat swing in the US Senate in 2014 and 2016, more than enough to give the GOP control of the US Supreme Court.

There is no doubt that the election was largely conducted on electronic machines, and with electronically-counted Scantron ballots that are completely beyond public accountability. These voting machines are run on secret, proprietary corporate software to which the public is not allowed access.

As in 2000 and 2004, the actual final vote count once again resides in black box machines controlled by private corporations, GOP governors, and secretaries of state, whose ability to easily hack and flip the official outcome cannot be monitored or brought to accountability. In at least one state (Ohio) the GOP took legal action to prevent the public from gaining potential access to the electronic vote count … and won!

There is also no doubt that had this election been conducted as it was in virtually any other country, the civilized world would have denounced it as completely unreliable and almost certainly false. Had it been in our “national interest” to do so, American troops would have poured in to “restore democracy” after such an obviously rigged charade.

Throughout the campaign, GOP candidate Trump cleverly complained of a “rigged election.” He continually warned of innumerable non-whites and Muslims voting multiple times for Hillary Clinton.

Of course the opposite happened. Hundreds of thousands of non-white citizens were systematically denied their right to vote. Since even that wasn’t enough to elect Donald Trump, the Electoral College will once again deny democracy. And thanks to the dark magic of electronic voting machines, we will never really know 2016’s true vote count.

Today’s most tangible tragedy is what may soon unfold in this country.

But the underlying nightmare is that this has been done before, that we’ve known about stripped and flipped elections for at least sixteen years, and that nothing has been done.

If anything, due to the spread of electronic voting machines, our electoral system is more corrupt and less accountable than it was in 2000, when the GOP first stripped and flipped George W. Bush into the White House.

We advocate universal automatic voter registration, transparent voter rolls, a four-day national holiday for voting, universal hand-counted paper ballots, abolition of the Electoral College, an end to gerrymandering, a ban on corporate money in politics.

There’s much more. But until we win those basics, democracy in America is an illusion … as is our chance to survive on this planet.

 
 

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of the upcoming The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft. at www.freepress.org  and www.solartopia.org, where Bob’s Fitrakis Files and Harvey’s Solartopia! Our Green-powered Earth are also available.

Critical charts from Ron Baiman are also available athttp://columbusfreepress.com/article/did-gop-strip-flip-2016-selection.

Special thanks to Lori Grace and Mimi Kennedy.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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Losers Win, Winners Lose

Harvey Wasserman: At this point in time Hillary Clinton seems to be leading Donald Trump by 200,000 votes – nation wide. This would be – if that’s the case, this would be the sixth time in United States history where the person who lost the popular vote won the election. And so all the media is filled with how Trump won – I couldn’t even find the popular vote count on the front page of the New York Times – They’re all talking about the electoral college. Nobody’s talking about the fact that apparently Hillary Clinton won the election. And this has got to stop. This is what happened in 2000. It happened four times in the eighteen hundreds. And this is the death of the democracy here. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org /www.solartopia.org) and six other books on election protection.For more info: FreePress,org]]>

Clinton on Track to Win the Most Votes. Abolish the Electoral College!

Harvey Wasserman clinton-4-harvey For the sixth time in our history, a candidate for President of the United States may have won the popular vote and lost the White House. This must end. While the nation—and much of the world—shudders at the thought of a Donald Trump presidency, our electoral system has once again failed to deliver a formal victory to the person who got the most votes. Hillary Clinton appears to have won the nationwide popular vote. As of about 1 PM eastern time, the tally was roughly 58,909,774 votes (47.6%) for Clinton, versus 58,864,233 votes (47.5%) for Trump. (The exact numbers will change as the vote count continues.) But Donald Trump’s Electoral College tally has exceeded the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House. There is much more to tell about this. This year’s vote has once again been stripped and flipped by GOP Jim Crow segregationist tactics that disenfranchised millions of primarily African-American and Hispanic citizens. But if the current vote tallies continue roughly they way they are, Donald Trump will join Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush as presidents who lost the popular vote but still took the nation’s highest office, in every case with huge impacts. The Electoral College was established at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to prevent the public from voting directly on our national leader. Ostensibly, it was meant in part to protect small states from being bullied by bigger ones. It also installed a “three-fifth bonus” that gave plantation owners a 60 percent headcount for their slaves. The ruse was counted into Congressional districting, giving the south a distinct advantage over the northern free states. That’s why every President from Jefferson to Lincoln either owned slaves or had a vice president who did. In 1800, Jefferson beat the incumbent John Adams in an Electoral College swung by “bonus votes” that came from slaves who could not actually cast them. In 1824, John Quincy Adams made a deal with Kentucky slaveowner Henry Clay to steal the presidency from Andrew Jackson, who had beaten Adams by about 50,000 popular votes. In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes lost to Democrat Samuel Tilden by about 250,000 votes. But the GOP  used federal troops in the south to shift enough Electoral College votes to create a deadlock. Hayes then became president by agreeing to remove those troops and end Reconstruction, a catastrophe for southern blacks and a triumph for the Jim Crow segregation that has defined our national politics ever since. In 1888, Republican Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote to incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland but became president anyway. Cleveland won back the White House in 1892. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Republican George W. Bush by a nationwide tally of about 500,000 votes. Gore was also ultimately shown to have won the popular vote in Florida. But Bush’s brother Jeb, then governor of Florida, used a computerized system to remove voters from the rolls, to steal Florida’s electoral votes and put George in the White House. Much the same was done in Ohio 2004 to defeat John Kerry. Bush ultimately was credited with a victory in the nationwide popular vote. This year, Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory will change history in unimaginable ways. But nationwide it appears he did not win the popular vote. Hillary Clinton did. There is much more to this story. But one thing is clear: There is no useful function for the Electoral College, a vile 230-year-old holdover from the bad old days of the southern slaveocracy. It poisons our electoral process. It will require a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of it. But if we are to have anything that resembles a democracy, the Electoral College must be abolished. #### This article is cross-posted at The Progressive Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org / www.solartopia.org) and six other books on election protection. ]]>