2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumMassive voter purge -- ONLY of Democrats.
I'm heartbroken and furious this morning. Massive, widespread fraud and voter suppression, and nothing will be done about it. I can't respect the result of a primary when it looks rigged, plain and simple. Before electronic voting machines, exit polls were accurate. Last night, the CNN exit poll showed Clinton winning 52-48, but the results were 57-43. From a 4 point gap in exit polls to a 14 point margin when votes are counted.
Very interesting, and infuriating, comment on a Guardian article last night. 20%(39 people) of the Democratic voters in this precinct had to vote an affidavit ballot, which probably will not be counted. Only 2 Republicans had to file an affidavit ballot. This was NOT just normal election office screw-ups.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/19/hillary-clinton-wins-new-york-primary-bernie-sanders#comment-72701065
Rheannon 14h ago
Hillary Clinton did not win this fairly. I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official in East Hampton, NY. I am from this area and went canvassing for Bernie for 4 days here. While canvassing, I found overwhelming support for Bernie in my middle class area -- nearly every house where I actually talked to voters (about 40% of the houses), almost all were for Bernie.
But today at the polls, many of those had disappeared from the voter roll book. In my own ED district, which is the district I was working in, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. (ONLY 2 Republican voters had to file affidavits.) That's close to 20%. Let that sink in for a moment.
Many of these voters were long term registered Democrats -- some were in couples where one person was on the rolls and the other was not. Most had not moved since the last election and had voted in the most recent elections.
Hillary won by 11 votes in my ED -- not counting affidavits. THE AFFIDAVITS MUST NOT ONLY BE COUNTED, THEY MUST BE ALLOWED.
It was impossible for me, an election official, to get a straight story on whether the affidavits would be counted. The "coordinator" -- the top person at the site -- let slip that they count the affidavits "proportionately". If she is correct, that means, I assume, they take a sample of the ballots to count. Not all. If that sample is based on the proportion of official ballots cast, then I imagine it would just reproduce the first results WITHOUT the affidavits.
But it's worse than that. If the voter has been purged from the Board of Elections rolls -- like 125,000 Brooklyn voters were -- then it seems the affidavits (because no one could tell me for certain WHAT would happen to the affidavits -- are not counted. If you can't prove you are a registered Democrat, then you won't be counted, it seems. (If you received a voter card, you have some proof. But not everyone did or they may not be able to retrieve it.)
The ruling that came down from the emergency voter protection suit was no remedy. It allowed for getting a court order to vote. The nearest judge is more than an hour from here. And I was strongly discouraged from even informing voters that a court order was an option (I had to fight to be able to tell people of their right to a court order.)
Finally -- this was NOT business as usual. This was my second election. The last one I worked at, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot in my ED. Every poll worker there, at all the ED tables (there were 4) was shocked at the number of voters who were not on the rolls. Many have been working for years -- and had never seen anything remotely like this.
The whole purging and affidavit process needs to be investigated on an emergency basis BEFORE the election results are decided. Bernie's folks need to be on top of this. They need to fight for an honest election. They owe it to us who have worked so hard for them.
*****************************
Did anyone pay attention to the CNN Republican exit polls last night? Did they get it right? Were the initial exit polls reported equal to the final results?
One prominent person who had to file an affidavit ballot yesterday was Martha Stewart. She posted a tweet about it. The screw-ups were damn widespread.
New York needs to count all the affidavit ballots NOW and post the results, or else activists need to shut down NYC.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Exit polls showed Bernie won Massachusetts.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)You'd do it too if it belonged to you, boop boop ad dieu!
peacebird
(14,195 posts)How... Clintonian of you.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)who took their base into what is nothing other than the open breach of human rights violations.
Palast says 1/4 of all registered democratic voters may have been purged. We also have indications that the vast majority were Sanders supporters.
Clearly a new standard has been reached by the NeoDems...If a politician is unwilling to do something like -that- to their own electoral base, they lack sufficient ambition to lead.
Zira
(1,054 posts)They start talking about it at minute 28 of today's show.
peacebird
(14,195 posts)
Autumn
(45,107 posts)call for an investigation into this.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Autumn
(45,107 posts)nationwide splash
CorporatistNation
(2,546 posts)The Whole Thing REEKS! This is Democracy? Fuck NO!
amborin
(16,631 posts)
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)If they fail to secure the general.
winter is coming
(11,785 posts)
I've worked elections in other states. I've had very few voters who needed to use affidavits (a few percent at most, and sometimes none at all). This is bullshit. This is rigged. I hope the judge reads somebody the riot act.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)winter is coming
(11,785 posts)Chris Hayes didn't mention any sort of voting irregularities. Rachel Maddow said something generic about how NY elections are always messed up, then mentioned an area where Ben Carson got -1800 votes, then went on in the next sentence to say something like, "Nevertheless, Clinton won by 16 points." No mention of voter purges and no explanation as to why we'd be confident about election integrity if one candidate received a negative number of votes!
Barack_America
(28,876 posts)blm
(113,065 posts)They target ALL Dem voters and HRC voters were hurt just as much as Sanders voters. Anyone who thinks Dems do this are ignorant of how long GOP has been using this tactic and how this hurts ALL Dems. You need to realize that MOST voters vote in general election, not primary, and because of that most voters will never find out they have been caged out until the general election.
Now…WHO would spread the lie that Dems are doing this to Dem voters?
IMO, more of you need to get out there and work GOTV in your region or, if you're safe, in a purple state. You'd learn how precious every vote is to our party.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,378 posts)was the DNC on this back when we could have done something?
blm
(113,065 posts)I've known about it since the 2001 hearings. It has been discussed here at DU many times in the early years as you may recall. Mr blm and I now check our registration every year.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,378 posts)Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)When Repubs do it, they send mail to people, then if the mail is returned, they challenge the voter address at the polls. The Repubs have a person at each polling station with a list of voters they are going to challenge.
This voter purge was done by the state of New York elections office, and each New York county registrar. At least in NYC, these officials are presumably Democrats. Or some hacker unknown who had access to the voter rolls. And maybe the hacker unknown also had access to Bernie or Hillary's database, and could have preferentially purged Bernie supporters.
We have no idea the leanings of the purged voters until the affidavit ballots get counted. IF they get counted and accurately reported.
blm
(113,065 posts)election Dem the most, because that is when the purging is most often discovered, as primary voting is a lesser priority for most people who'd be satisfied with any nominee. That's just REALITY. Pretty certain that neither Dem candidate would have shot themselves in the foot like that. And I am pretty certain that HRC team always believed she would be that general election candidate. Seriously…..there were only recent moments where her campaign may have felt nervous, but, there was no serious threat to them back when a lot of this so-called dem on dem 'purging' would have occurred.
Listen, I voted for Sanders, and I am also a GOTV worker here in my state. The narrative being furthered here at DU by those who wish it to be true is highly unlikely and not particularly constructive or healthy, imo.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)This wasn't Republican-party caging, as I explained previously. Why did New York officials, many of them Democrats, purge Democrats selectively?
IdaBriggs
(10,559 posts)
Dem2
(8,168 posts)And no amount of conspiracy theory contemplation will change this result.
The issues with the voting should be sued over and fixed, but the idea that Bernie would have got 100% of those disenfranchised (and he still would have lost by 8 points) is ludicrous.
"Hillary Clinton did not win this fairly." Implying that she had something to do with the issues in NY is a flat out lie and any person who suggests this isn't a person to be taken seriously.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Neither you nor I know the contents of the affidavit ballots. Or the preferences of those who wanted to vote but were turned away without filing affidavit ballots.
What is known is that up to a quarter of the registered Democrats were purged from the rolls. That means what happened yesterday was not a fair election.
I'll wait for the evidence of said claims. I've been waiting for many years on previous claims.
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)into this totally unproductive 'conspiracy' theory that some are trying desperately to float.
Zira
(1,054 posts)EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)sorry.
and why is it that CNN is not on this shit?
Oh wait. that is why I used to read the NYT in my teens, Mexican Media did not cover this either.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)then they will be counted.
Kip Humphrey
(4,753 posts)Voters newly registered between 9-OCT-15 and 31-MAR-16 were not permitted to vote in the NY primary.
In addition,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280178724
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Pretty corrupt practice, to allow a political party to change a voter's party registration without the voter's knowledge. And incredibly stupid of New York Democratic party leaders to be so eager to push people out of the party.
Why would anyone who had been pushed out of the Democratic Party want to show up and vote for the party in November? I know I wouldn't.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)registrants.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Longtime voters who hadn't moved, who vote regularly, found themselves purged from the rolls.
Response to Dems to Win (Original post)
felix_numinous This message was self-deleted by its author.
