Warning: Los Angeles forces us to Get Ready to Fight on "The Bradley Effect" B.S.!!!!!

[Land Shark]

For those that don't know of me, at bottom I've outlined some legal experience credentials, only in the hopes that you will read this and take this post seriously.

THE APPEARANCE OF THE "BRADLEY EFFECT" IS BEING SET UP AS WE SPEAK (intentionally or not is irrelevant right now)

Here's what's going to happen late late election night, and the day after, especially in places like Los Angeles County, the hometown of Mayor Bill Bradley, who ran for Governor of California and lost narrowly after late absentees were counted.

FYI There are plenty of reasons besides closet racism to explain this result in Bradley's race or others, but politics is perception, so i take the "Bradley Effect" seriously only for that reason.

In truth, the Bradley Effect deserves to be laughed off the face of the earth because in order to believe it (rationally) you have to believe that a person answering a telephone poll, who is promised confidentiality, and where other people in the household can't hear the questions, and who happens to be a white or other kind of racist against blacks, will be AFRAID to tell the pollster they will vote for McCain, when there's a hundred colorable excuses to do so, and the person will definitely NEVER be subject to any punishment by the pollster for their answers, and nobody in the house will know if the question is "who will you vote for?" or whether the question is "Who is the least trustworthy candidate??"

:rofl: The so-called "Bradley Effect" relies solely on the notion that white racists are somehow too scared or namby-pamby to tell a pollster promising them confidentiality that they prefer the white guy!!! :rofl:

Like I said, this deserves to be laughed off the face of the earth... it is absurd on its face.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY (or other places) AS POSTER CHILD FOR THE FAKE BRADLEY EFFECT

LET'S CONNECT THE DOTS

(1) Early voting is on average around 9 points to the advantage of Democrats nationwide. This is true or even more true in heavily Democratic LA County. (Check the numbers yourself, it's the principle here that is important) My own Zogby poll in 11-06 in San Diego showed a 6 point difference between "emergency paper" and polling place ballots. SEe http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3772

(2) Those who say they will vote on election day, according to polls I've seen are more nearly equal (read "a tight race")

(3) However, in LA County, they are NOT distributing real ballots to early voters. They are distributing "demo ballots" that are yellow in color. These will not be counted timely because they aren't even real ballots. (this is effectively admitted by the plans of the Registrar, below, to "duplicate" them, later on...)

(4) LA County did this with overseas military ballots as well, as noted in the November 1 TIME magazine:

Los Angeles County, for instance, sent some sample ballots overseas early, before the real ballots were even printed. Mixed in the packet voters received was a line in red print that read, "Some early mailings may not receive Official Ballot Card. If this applies to you, mark choices on Official Sample Ballot pages." Yet Sandy Mansson of Stockholm, Sweden, found it odd. "It was very strange, it was just not what you normally do," says Mansson. Paul Drugan, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Board of Elections, defends the practice. "Our first priority is overseas and military voters, so we send them out first. For this election that was before actual ballots were printed," he says. "Our instructions were clear."

(5) The problem is, the LA County Registrar's office is STILL giving out sample or "demo" ballots in Los angeles, to heavily democratic early voters. (though not ALL of them)

(6) The Registrar's office says they will "duplicate" these onto the real ballots. They also say they will do this "duplication" in a "transparent" fashion. IN this narrow case, "transparency" is bad news because it means "visible" which must mean they will copy them over by hand.... The kind of discretion and "bias" that can creep in is precisely the kind of worry that was the excuse for terminating the recount in Bush v Gore, so "trusting" the LA Registrar isn't even an option -- because the law doesn't trust them, even if you do!

(7) The Registrar's office literally says "sooner or later" (!) these ballots will be counted. Certainly this doesn't mean election night. This means that all, or the vast majority will NOT be counted on election night. It took San Diego county 2 full weeks to finish counting ballots in 11-06, but the website said "100% of precincts reporting" which was technically true, but misleading...

(8) Because different populations of ballots are being created that are demographically different, the more heavily democratic early voting ballots will be SLOW COUNTED and the first returns from LA will be more republican than any polls show, because the early returns will NOT be statistically representative of the entire population.

(9) On this very issue of second class, slow-counted ballots, Ms. Kathleen Peterson was a plaintiff in San Diego county. See http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0611/S00016.htm

(10) Both the lawsuit to force the printing of more ballots lost, as well as the lawsuit to treat different ballot classes with equal dignity, but citizens were proven right in both instances. Registrar Haas ran out of ballots, and the slow counts did distort the election night results (plus giving weeks of time to, if desired, rig the counts of the slow counted ballots)

(10) HOWEVER, THIS WILL NOT STOP PUNDITS AND FOX AND MANY OTHERS FROM CLAIMING THAT A BRADLEY EFFECT EXISTS, IN BRADLEY'S HOME TOWN NO LESS! this will be a lie, but they will appear to have the numbers to back it up, right from the LA County Registrar's office.

(11) In 11-06 federal elections I had exit polls taken by phone by Zogby to cover all types of voters, specifically to track by BALLOT TYPE, including 'emergency ballots' which are available on request. As I suspected, these were heavily democratic, and Registrar Haas openly announced he wouldn't even START counting them until at least the Thursday after the election. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x457840
Psephos (see note below and http://www.psephos-us.org/ ) went to court to stop this process of second class balloting but the court upheld it was within the discretion of a registrar. "SEPARATE BUT EQUAL" was AOK, on the assumption these ballots would eventually be counted. Psephos also went to court to try to force the registrar to print enough ballots. The court turned that down too, but sure enough the registrar ran out of ballots and ended up using a photocopier.

(12) When the photocopied ballots are returned, they were then copied by hand onto "real" ballots, which are thicker card stock the registrar claimed their photocopier couldn't handle. THIS MEANS THAT THE BALLOT THAT THE VOTER FILLS OUT ON ELECTION DAY OR BEFORE IS NOT THE BALLOT THAT IS COUNTED. It is the functional equivalent of voting on a touch screen or optical scan which makes an electronic record first, and then counts THAT, so the voter, again, never sees the final form of their own ballot, much less approves it....

13) The BOTTOM LINE Putting two and two together, the heavy Democratic advantage in early voting, combined with the SLOW COUNTS that are guaranteed to take place in LA County with a totally uncertain process of hand-copying yellow ballot info onto real ballots, means that initial election results, even those with "100% of precincts reporting" will not include hundreds of thousands of Democratic ballots, and Dems will play 'catchup' or expand their lead over time, if ballots are counted fairly...

In the meantime, the seeming existence of the "bradley effect" in los angeles itself will create COVER for the 'bradley effect' in the form of election fraud EVERYWHERE. After all, if Hollywood ain't going as strong for Obama as thought, then ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, RIGHT?

So, get ready for BS on the Bradley effect. Tell EVERYONE that
(1) the ballots counted LATER will be more heavily democratic,

(2) that initial results will be slanted heavily republican, and

(3) that projections on results are difficult if not impossible under these conditions because populations of ballots are different demographically, and

(4) that there's no excuse for this level of mis-management in LA (like hand-copying ballots) or mis-management anywhere else given all the notice on the world of a record turnout election.

Chaos is the best friend of all kinds of fraud, and a standard military tactic.

People will want you to think this stuff is "incompetence" -- as if the most important election in our lifetimes is just "more trouble than it's worth" for local officials.

In any case, the election truly STARTS on election night, and will continue for many days or weeks afterward. With management practices like the LA Registrar's, even a landslide will take weeks to materialize, giving republican lawyers plenty of time to run into court and try to stop vote counts.

Paul R Lehto
Juris Doctor
[e-mail]
906-204-2333
(your help and support of any kind appreciated)
You can join my elections/legal announcement-only listserv at
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SHORT AUTHOR BIO: I am a co-founder of Psephos, a San Diego based Election protection organization but am no longer active as an officer, director or benefit in any way, though I support their ongoing work. http://www.psephos-us.org/ I suppose I can call myself an "internationally recognized" former election lawyer, since international election observers from the OSCE-ODIHR wrote up a congressional election contest that I was lead counsel in (the CA-50 congressional election of June 6, 2006 of Busby/Bilbray) as a case that raised significant issues for democracy. This gave me a lot of insight into southern California elections (though I live in Michigan now). I further toot my own horn solely in the hopes that you'll listen to me by saying I'm the author of four extended-length encyclopedic articles on federal election laws, state elections laws, Political Theorists of Democracy, and scandals in state and local elections, all published in 2008 in "US Campaigns, Elections and Electoral Behavior" by Sage Press. I also wrote a chapter in "Loser Take All" (ed. Mark Crispin Miller) on Bush v. Gore and that book, thanks mostly to other authors like Robert F Kennedy Jr., David Moore and Michael Collins and Larisa Alexandrovna has taken some turns in October 2008 as the #1 elections book in the land at Amazon.com, occasionally outperforming screeds both for and against Senator Obama)

[Warren DeMontague]

1. Take it from a Californian- the early results are ALWAYS slanted GOP. Everyone knows this.

Obama will kick some serious ass in L.A. County. Don't fret.

[Land Shark]

3. True, but you miss the point: This makes early returns worse & enables Fox-style propaganda

I probably have less doubt than you do about the true INTENT of the electorate. What concerns me is the MEASUREMENT of that, when it's released, and what legal arguments can be made.

I can't say I'm a Californian, I only founded an organization there and have only spent less than a year total there. But this article is based on talking to a lot of people on the ground in LA who are, other than the "officials" the best people to be in a position to know. Only problem is we can't count on officials to always give us the truth

[Warren DeMontague]

5. Right, but this happens every election. The early CA results are always misleading.

I'm not really sure what you want done about it. :shrug:

But no one is going to 'steal' California, much less Los Angeles County. It's not going to happen.

[2 Much Tribulation]

6. Do you think the Truth matters to fox and repubs, or do you think perception is politics?

Again, the OP doesn't dispute who's won california, or LA County. But if 3% is slowly reported, they can claim a 3% bradley effect and apply that to neutralize more real thefts Nationwide, to give just one example, and too many people will buy it, thinking 'yup, folks are still racist...'

[2 Much Tribulation]

2. This makes the early returns worse than usual, right? nt

[Land Shark]

4. UPDATE; They may be calling these "emergency ballots" or "demo ballots"

but as long as a week ago they claimed, i'm told, there's no time to print more ballots.

And they think that having ballots equal to 75% of the number of registered voters in each precinct is enough. When considering spoilage and the right to get a new ballot, it does not seem enough. Then, on election day, you get into the lower quality ballots about which the registrar himself speaks of "duplicating" them in a "transparent" way

[GuvWurld]

7. Legal question about ballot duplication

I've raised this question before when my county in CA introduced a "blended system," which comprised Diebold optical scanners for counting all our ballots, but a required ballot duplication for any disabled voters who may have voted on Hart Intercivic's eSlate. Any such "ballot," which is actually a DRE paper trail, can't be counted on the Diebold scanner and thus had to be duplicated.

The whole point of bringing in the eSlate was HAVA compliance, enabling all voters to vote privately and independently. I don't see how it can be considered independent when the act of the voter is insufficient to have his or her ballot counted. For the disabled voter's vote to count, it necessarily involved not just one other person, but I think the duplication process mandated two- (maybe three-?) member teams. Hardly independent voting.

I grant there may need to be protocols for duplicating ballots that may become damaged under certain circumstances so no need to consider this an absolute question. I would think that beyond those rare scenarios, it should definitely be impermissible for a Registrar's plan to be built around ballot duplication. So, Paul, do you think ballot duplication can be fundamentally challenged as a process not permitted by HAVA?