2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumArizona Election FRAUD Hearing Stream Bernie Sanders vs Hillary Clinton
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)...for not telling voters that there was early voting." (--the speaker in the vid)
This wonderful, on-fire speaker also calls Clinton out about this fiasco: 4,000 voters' registrations were changed so they couldn't vote in the Democratic Party primary, and ALL were Bernie Sanders voters!
Here is a scenario for how Clinton could have stolen this election--for the purposes of making sense of the known facts:
First, early on, her campaign consults with AZ Dem party establishment, to find out about the early voting vs. same-day voting arrangements (or to make those arrangements).
I don't know if early voting was a new thing in AZ. The speaker in the vid implied that it was. In any case, the Democratic party did NOT apprize voters that early voting was possible. It meanwhile arbitrarily cut the same-day voting polling stations, in the most populist county in the state, from 200 to 60, which produced maximum inconvenience for same day voters.
This is a possible scenario, remember, just to explore what makes sense of the known facts:
Then, well before election day, but within the early voting period, Clinton campaign staff (or maybe local Dem pols) went to retirement parks, elder care facilities, gated communities, in general, places of low information voters or where voters weren't paying much attention (it was so early), and either showed people a false ballot, with only one candidate on it--Clinton--or told the voter that Sanders was a minor candidate or had dropped out, then produced a real ballot and had them fill it out for Clinton.
This could be how Clinton ended up with 60% of the early voting, while Sanders was the opposite--60% of the same day voting--with Sanders getting a much lower overall % of voters, since thousands of same-day voters had been disenfranchised on election day. This was a weird result and inexplicable really, unless some such scenario as the above occurred. The 60% flip is just too neat.
You could reasonably say that elder voters would likely take advantage of early voting, and elder voters might well go for Clinton (even if they weren't told that she was the only candidate), but wouldn't those votes balance out better with younger voters and same day voters, in any reasonable scenario? 60% for Clinton, early voting; 60% for Sanders, same day voting--but he loses, big time, because of the massive disenfranchisement on election day.
Questions: When did the voter registrations get changed? Did any early voters registrations get changed? Has there been any contact with the early voters to find out what occurred when they voted?
The other weird thing that occurred on election day was that AZ declared the state for Clinton with only 1% of the precincts reporting, and thousands of people still in line to vote. Their declaring the state for Clinton was based on the early voting, which apparently many people in line didn't know about (according to the speaker in the vid). They were flabbergasted to hear the state had been called for Clinton when they were still in the middle of a 4 hour or 6 hour wait to vote.
Next, how did so many same-day voters get disenfranchised--besides making them wait 4 to 6 hours to vote? Again, thousands of people experienced the following: When they finally, exhaustedly, got to the front of the line, they found that their voter registration had been CHANGED, without their knowledge, and they couldn't vote. There was no remedy. They couldn't change their registration to the correct registration--the one they had filed--on that day. They were all given provisional ballots, which are tossed out unless the race is very close.
The speaker says that 4,000 people, to his personal knowledge, had this happen to them and ALL were Bernie Sanders voters.
That is just TOO selective to be a mistake, or mere incompetence, or computer glitches.
The prime question in any fraud investigation is "cui bono?"--who benefits?
Does the Republican party that runs the state benefit from disenfranchising specifically Sanders voters? Possibly. They may realize that Sanders is the far stronger candidate for the GE and wanted to help Clinton knock him out. They may also benefit long term--by discouraging all these young, fired up, Democratic voters from voting, i.e., in the GE and future elections. This is plausible. It's what Republicans do.
So let me pull back short of suggesting that Clinton operatives hacked the voter database. They may have just CAPITALIZED on the Republican crime. Or maybe it was a surprise bonus. They had the early voting/same-day voting thing set up by the drastic reduction of polling places in the most populous county, and possibly their early work to get the early voters in the bag. And maybe they were just pleasantly surprised that this additional vote suppression was occurring--and of course did nothing about it. And still haven't done anything about it. 'Cui bono?'
I've listened to many of the speakers at these public hearings on the Democratic Party election fiasco in AZ. (The official chair of the hearings called it just that--"a fiasco."
Many speakers insisted on a RE-VOTE. They feel that the AZ primary was so fraudulent that the results cannot stand.
The crowd was overflowing; hundreds of people related their stories of disenfranchisement and those of others around them in the long lines. One college student body president told of a woman U.S. army soldier, just returned from a war zone, only to find that her vote had been taken away.
The stories were very moving. The massive disenfranchisement is nothing short of outrageous. But any remedy of officialdom will merely be for the future. What about THIS Arizona primary?
In my view, the Clinton campaign was, at best, sneaking around in order to capitalize on Republican crimes, as well as sneaking around with the local Dem establishment to set things up for disenfranchisement, or they were doing that and also engaged in fraud (in actual hacking of the voter database).
Clinton--if she wants to maintain any credibility with the rest of us--needs to remedy this NOW. She needs to condemn what happened, fire anyone responsible and call for a RE-VOTE.
A federal investigation will take too long. Local remedies will not apply to this primary. Does she want to be known as the first woman president in the White House (if she gets there) with election fraud attached to her name?
paulthompson
(2,398 posts)I'm a Sanders supporter, but you're being too conspiratorial. For one thing, early voting has favored Clinton in state after state. The numbers for Arizona are no different than the usual. One reason is that a high percent of senior citizens vote early, and they go for Clinton by huge numbers. Another is that Clinton has big name recognition and a long career, whereas voters are only starting to get to know Sanders. Sanders only had about a week to campaign in Arizona, to make personal appearances and run a lot of ads. So it's no surprise that he did much better with election day voters.
I agree that Sanders got screwed in Arizona. Keeping the election day vote in Maricopa County way down hurt him a lot more than Clinton. But the question is who to blame and what exactly went wrong. For instance, who was behind those voter registration switches, and how did they do it?
I don't know about this guy who says 4,000 voters who got switched were all Sanders voters. I'd like to see the proof for that.
paulthompson
(2,398 posts)By the way, this thread has actual numbers and not just speculation:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511606922#post9
Chezboo
(230 posts)snowy owl
(2,145 posts)I doubt there is a remedy that will really put right this travesty. And Clintonites keep ignoring and denying this behavior. What can one do? But I'm glad there's light on it at least.