Russian Hacks Just Gave Courts Legal Precedent To Replace Trump With Hillary - Occupy Democrats

[Bill USA]

http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/12/10/russian-hacks-just-gave-courts-legal-precedent-replace-trump-hillary/

In light of revelations on Friday that Russian hackers interfered with the presidential election specifically to elect Donald Trump, Clinton supporters and advocates of free democracy are eagerly searching for potential measures to prevent Trump from assuming the presidency at the hands of the Kremlin. One important legal precedent for such an impeachment is Marks v. Stinson, a 1994 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a state senate election and ordered the vacancy to be filled by the losing opponent after massive fraud was uncovered.

The Pennsylvania state senate held a special election in 1993 to fill a seat left vacant by the death of the previous senator. The contest pitted Republican Bruce Marks against Democrat William Stinson, who was ultimately successful in winning the seat. After Stinson was elected, however, evidence of widespread fraud in the election came to light.

Moreover, two elected officials testified under oath that they had been aware of the fraud and did nothing. Thus after Stinson had already taken office a federal judge ordered that he vacate his seat within 72 hours and hand it over to Marks, a ruling that was maintained upon appeal by the Supreme Court.

While the circumstances of the 1994 case are obviously significantly different from the controversy surrounding last month’s election, the ruling does establish some degree of a precedent for a high court overturning the results of an election based on evidence of malfeasance.
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The CIA Just Confirmed Russia Hacked DNC To Help Trump Win

America’s top lawmakers were given a secret CIA briefing that declares that Russia interfered in this year’s presidential elections on behalf of Republican nominee Donald Trump against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Tonight’s revelatory news comes hot on the heels of President Obama’s announcement that he will assemble a complete intelligence report about Russian hacking and propaganda activities today. The Washington Post reports:

The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter. “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

Only a week after the election, the head of the secretive NSA gave a very public interview to the Wall Street Journal where he tacitly indicated that Russia helped Donald Trump. Tonight’s revelation that the CIA believes Donald Trump was a direct recipient of aid intended to assist his Republican campaign for the presidency goes beyond the NSA’s coy admission and well beyond pre-election intelligence reports in identifying the reason for the blizzard of hacked emails.

In October, seventeen federal intelligence agencies released a brief saying that Russia was openly interfering in this year’s elections and that the orders came from the highest levels of their government, i.e. from dictator Vladimir Putin. Tonight’s report that Putin favored Trump isn’t surprising to anyone following the story of this year’s elections, where the Republican denied having a relationship with the Russian dictator even though he told MSNBC the opposite in 2013.

On the eve of the election, three bombshell reports emerged – that Trump had a secret server to communicate with Russia, that a Western intelligence official provided a major dossier to the FBI which was being investigated, and the FBI leaked that it had been investigating Trump. At the end of last month, Vice News reported an unusual receipt of “the Glomar Response” when asking the FBI if it was investigating Donald Trump. It’s extremely rare for the FBI to use that kind of response.
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[Qutzupalotl]

1. Write to the electors here:

http://www.asktheelectors.org

[CousinIT]

5. Response from TX Elector:

Thank you for writing.

I am receiving about 4,000 emails a day so I have set this to an auto-response.

You should know that I have no interest in Hillary Clinton becoming our next President. I reject the Democratic Party principles and I reject Hillary Clinton.

I will not do anything that will open a path for HRC to become our next President.

There is no such thing as a national popular vote. The only vote that matters to me as a Texas Elector is the Texas vote.

We are not a democracy, we are a republic, for good cause.

We all have differing opinions and I respect your part in the political process, but frankly, since I am a Texas elector, the political opinions of non-Texas voters means nothing to me. I do not vote or get involved in your state, I am not sure why you are trying to interfere in mine. As an American citizen, your voice should be able to be heard by all, so I have this email address available, but I owe no duty to any non-Texan.

I encourage you to be active in the political process where your vote matters.

Finally, I will not vote for a 3rd candidate. A 3rd candidate only opens the door for HRC to enter the White House through the House of Representatives. I will do nothing to enable HRC to become President of the United States, no matter how remote the chances are.

Best Regards,

Alex

Elector, Texas Congressional District 24

...and another from TX:

Good Citizen,

I am sorry that, because I have received more than 75,000 emails, I can no longer personally respond to you. I gave up after about 1200. Given that the content is fairly universal, I am comfortable offering this universal response.

Thank you for your communication and for your passion for the Republic. I prefer writers to rioters.

Several things merit mentioning. First, you have every right to lobby an elector. I delight in receiving this type of communication from a fellow American.

Second, this is not a pure democracy, it is a republic. The corollary to that fact is that even if the majority did rule, and it does not, there was no absolute majority winner in this election.

Third, the Electoral College does not exist in order to give you a "do over" because you don't like the results; it exists to preserve the nature of the the republic.

Finally, your feelings notwithstanding, it is not my duty to care one whit what the plurality or majority of Americans want. My job is to represent the decision of the winning party in the Texas Presidential election.

It's not that your feelings don't matter at all, they just don't matter here. The law and U.S. Constitution do.

For those who believe I should change my vote to HRC because of your intense feelings about Donald Trump, surely you must know that for every person who feels you have elected the worst person to ever hold the office, there is another who would have felt exactly the same that had we elected HRC: that she is unfit for office and her husband has committed multiple sexual assaults.

Nevertheless, I think it safe to say, my good citizen, you would not have agreed with electoral nullification of a Clinton victory. Nor would I.

This is why we have elections.

If you disagree with the electoral college concept, and some do, you have the opportunity amend the constitution. But elector nullification is not the answer.

I will vote my conscience. You need have no fear. I have never intended to do anything more or less.

Please allow me to illustrate my point with an analogy from America's favorite pastime, baseball. In the 1960 World Series the Pirates beat the Yankees 4 games to three. But, the Yankees scored a total of 55 runs while the Pirates could only muster 27 total runs.

Unfair? No, those are the rules of baseball. We choose the winner of the World Series by number of games won, regardless of the disparity of the total runs. If the rules were different, teams would strategize differently and the result would likely be different. That the Yankees outscored the Pirates in 1960, or that the Cubs tied the Indians in runs scored this year, is nothing more than an interesting statistic.

In a Presidential campaign, if the rules were different, candidates would strategize differently and the result would likely be different. Donald Trump won according to the rules. Everything else, including the popular vote, is merely an interesting statistic.

Indirect election of the chief executive is the rule under parliamentary forms of government. No one in Canada or the United Kingdom votes for Prime Minister. The election is indirect.

In closing, I am delighted that many are reading the Federalist Papers. I've been reading them for twenty years. They are a fascinating insight into the minds of the framers of the Constitution, aren't they? The Anti-Federalist papers, from which came the Bill of Rights, are equally educational. I recommend them for your reading also.

Yes, I agree with Hamilton in Federalist 68. No, I do not believe that the election of Donald Trump rises to that level. Consequently, to those who would have me vote for some Republican other than Trump, I decline for the same reason.

If you have read this far you deserve my thanks, and to know that I do browse for responses. I read them and sometimes respond personally as time allows.

May God bless America and may God bless the great state of Texas.

Best regards,


L. Scott Mann
Texas Elector, Congressional District 19

[forgotmylogin]

2. It's amazing.

Initially we were like "Why is Trump always bringing up Putin and Russia?"

Then we were like "Why is Trump asking Russia to hack Hillary's emails?"

Now we know. I hypothesize Trump always knew the fix was in and couldn't keep his big gloating mouth shut before anyone even realized what was up.

[Bill USA]

3. he's like an 8 yr old kid. He speaks and acts before he thinks! Pray he doesn't start a nuclear war.

IT will be the last one the Earth sees.

[Raster]

4. And he couldn't keep his big gloating mouth shut...

...about honoring the election results..."if I win."

[ananda]

6. That would sound promising ..

.. if we didn't have a Republican/corporate rigged court and justice system.

[INdemo]

7. This is what Putin wanted becasue he knew if Trump was not allowed to take office

during an investigation this would cause total civil unrest and this is exactly what he wants.
Our Democracy has withstood threats before and we have survived.
We cannot allow a foreign country to get away with election theft or as a Democracy we are finished.
Trump,Reince Priebus,Karl Rove and all the other thieving SOB's that should be headed to prison instead of the White House

[red dog 1]

8. Where is Obama?

Why isn't he fighting like hell in the courts to nullify the entire election due to a foreign power interfering in the U.S. Presidential election?

Doesn't he have a Justice Department with power to investigate and seek federal court action due to interference in our elections by a foreign power?

Didn't his own NSA Director say weeks ago that the election was hacked by Russia?

Didn't ALL the US security agencies say that Russia interfered in the election?

Where is our President in all this?

Why has he not taken action against Russia?

Why hasn't he called for new elections?

We have been "attacked" by a foreign nation which hacked into our basic constitutional right to a fair election, so, I repeat:

Where is Obama?

[Igel]

9. Because the interference wasn't election fraud.

It was manipulating a gullible populace, to the extent that it was manipulated.

With election fraud, you can see it. You can find how the vote was manipulated *after* the voters cast their votes. Votes could be added, votes could be tampered with, votes could be subtracted from the total. The one recount that's taken place seems to have shown that there *was* no election fraud, at least not in that state. Or somebody took a lot of time after the fact to produce a lot of fraudulent ballots--and still got it wrong, since both sides had votes tossed that the hand count is including in the totals.

Of course, the real point is, "Prove to me that there was no election fraud." It's the old "proving a negative" problem. You *can* prove a negative, either by logic (as in math) or by examining every instance to show that every instance is negative. You can't do this logically, meaning that every vote gets to be counted a second time--and if the hand recount isn't good proof, counted again. And again. It becomes a question of meeting too high a bar and becomes a fallacy.


The real question is then, How many people voted for Trump because of the release of HRC's emails?

There's the question, and it's unanswerable. Most of the damage was done early on and apparently fixed. Comey's bit at the last second revived it, but few supporters were bothered by it and the matter was put to rest. Those who objected weren't likely to vote for her in the first place. In fact, the claim that Trump was in Putin's pocket was probably a put-off for a lot of (R) voters and has to be included in the calculus.

(I'm also not sure how the CIA determined that the Russians were acting *for* Trump and not *against* HRC. Keep in mind that during the election a lot of foreign leaders also condemned Trump and in so doing were trying to sway US voters. Just as Obama opined concerning Brexit, no doubt to sway British voters.)

[red dog 1]

11. The Russian interference WAS election fraud..

"Electoral fraud refers to illegal interference with the process of an election."
(USLegal.com)

Your "with election fraud, you can see it. You can find out how the vote was manipulated 'after' the votes cast their votes" is not necessarily true.
Even if there was a recount, those voting machines with no "paper trail"..(like those used extensively in Ohio, Michigan, PA, Florida & other states Trump won) would not "prove" anything as to whether or not there was
"election fraud"..because, without a paper trail to use in a recount, these
"Touch & Pray" voting machines could have easily been hacked, and a recount wouldn't find anything "wrong"..since the machines would still just spit back out the same figures they spit out on Election Day.

These "Touch & Pray" voting machines could have been hacked & votes for Clinton could easily have been "flipped" into votes for Trump.
Trump did much better than Clinton in states that used these "hackable" voting machines.

"The real question is then, How many people voted for Trump because of the release of HRC's emails?"

I disagree.

That traitor Julian Assange & WikiLeaks released HRC's emails WEEKS before that other traitor, James Comey, sent his Hatch Act-violating letter to GOP leaders in Congress.
HRC was still up by between 11 and 15 points over Trump in the polls; but, after Comey's letter, she immediately lost between 5-8 points over Trump, just 10 days before the election, and she never regained that "good-sized" lead over Trump.

As far as your: "I'm not sure how the CIA determined that the Russians were acting "for" Trump and not "against" HRC"..
What the hell difference does it make?
It amounted to the same thing...

FACT: The DNC was hacked into by Russians..Intelligence agencies know that for sure...the RNC was not hacked into.

FACT: Trump ASKED for Russia to help him defeat HRC, which they did.

FACT: President Obama did NOT step in on the day after the election and use his Executive Powers to temporarily nullify the election results pending an in-depth investigation of all the irregularities of the election, including Trump getting MANY more votes than the exit polls indicated he should have.
In fact, Obama called HRC early on Nov 9th and suggested to her that she should concede...even while millions of votes still hadn't been counted..and even though Trump won states like Michigan with only a 10,000 vote margin,
Hillary should NOT have conceded until a through vote recount in all the "key" states Trump mysteriously won, not only in Wisconsin, Michigan & PA, but also in states like Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, where HRC had an "insurmountable" early lead, but still lost to Trump
Obama could have addressed the nation on Nov. 9th, and spoken about how there was clear evidence that the Russians had, indeed, hacked into our presidential election, and that he, as Commander-in-Chief was going to order a thorough investigation into this unprecedented act by a foreign nation....putting the election results on "hold" until the investigation was complete

FACT: In Europe, exit polls are usually consistent with the final election results.

FACT; In America, exit polls USED to be consistent with the final election results, but, since the debacle in 2000, exit polls have not matched the final results.
Why is that?
Because since 2000, most of the voting machines used in the USA were the "Touch & Pray" type, which are easy to hack into, and even the ones with a "paper-trail" can be hacked, since the paper trail doesn't guarantee anything...Despite your "paper" saying you voted for HRC, it could well be that "electronically" your vote went to Trump.

So, Obama didn't act.
HRC didn't act.
No recounts were requested by HRC in any of the key states, especially Florida, where widespread "vote flipping" likely occured.

Only much later did anyone ask for any recounts..but it wasn't Hillary, it was Jill Stein, and she only tried to get a recount in 3 states, WI, MI, and PA....By then it was too late to even request a recount in states like Florida.

Comey's letter, (sent 11 days before the election), about the FBI finding new Clinton emails was probably the single most important factor in that rat bastard Trump "winning" the election.

Putin wanted Trump to win, so he "interfered' with our election, and thus helped his good pal, Donald J. Trump defeat HRC

Your statement in response to my question about Obama's total inaction regarding this "fixed" election,
,"because the interference wasn't election fraud" ...doesn't hold water, imo.

[Igel]

13. Still no.

The tampering wasn't with machines. It was with news.

Now, a lot of the email-related news was true. But it was obtained by phishing.

A lot of the fake news was just insane. From the stories like what led to the guy with the gun in the pizza shop to the incessant stories about how Americans of this or that skin tone or religion would be rounded up or deported. Speculation was rife, but in this is just American partisanship and confirmation-bias related stupidity. The sheer distrust and hatred of each side's true believers for all things on the other side of a fairly arbitrary dividing line blinds them to each a modicum of common sense.

There are different sorts of exit polls, built on different methodologies and assumptions. It's easy to think that because we have one word for both they must be the same. They're not.

[oberliner]

10. Zero similarity with what happened with Stinson

Preposterous comparison.

[BainsBane]

12. A local court decision on a state senate race

Is not precedent for the presidency, for which the terms of election are specified by the US Constitution. This is just one example why this site makes the fake news list. It may not be the same level of fake as the pizza pedophile ring story, but it is irresponsible and misleading.