A "third" party is surveying its members

[Mike__M]

whether the party should endorse Bernie Sanders, and published a draft of the endorsement.

I am not advocating anyone to visit this other party's page, or to provide them your name. However, I think it is worth bringing to wider attention, to demonstrate how Bernie's message is resonating beyond the bounds of the Democratic Party.

Bernie Sanders is bringing people together, not just to support his candidacy for President, but
(more importantly) to address some of the major issues of our day through what could become a
major, effective social movement.

Disclosure. Yes -- I was, myself, aligned with this other party, until about six months ago, when I followed Bernie Sanders into the Democratic Party. I'm still on their email list, and still get their posts in my FB feed.

[Dandilions]

1. Not surprised Bernie's message reaches far and wide.....both left and right

It's the common call of the bottom 80% We all know the game is rigged and our Democracy is at risk. Bernie is the only one pointing directly at the problem.....the corporate elite ... he's not only pointing at them, he is outlining with thrilling specificity how the FEW are dominating our system and how we can begin to fix the problems. We need to act now !! We can't wait !! Feel the Bern !! Warren for VP

[eridani]

2. There is a great deal of support among Democrats for third party candidates who--

--actually take electoral politics seriously. In Seattle, the Socialist Alternative is the only third party with members who talk to voters who are not policy wonks. The others were much more interested in winning the mimeograph wars 40 years ago, and the Twitter and Facebook wars now. I'm glad to see 500 volunteers working for Sawant. SA is now a real alternative in Seattle, although only Democrats are so far able to run in smaller suburban cities.

[Stevepol]

3. Please don't forget the voting machines.

This is a central issue that, unless it is solved or gotten under control, will destroy everything.

How did these crackpots we have now in Congress get there? You can identify many causes but at some point they had to win an election and the vote had to be counted. How was that vote counted? Almost certainly on some form of electronic voting machine programmed and maintained almost entirely by the far right-wing owners and managers of voting machine companies: ES&S, Dominion, Hart Inter-Civic, etc. etc. How many actual "audits" were conducted in those elections in which actual paper ballots or maybe print-outs from the almost completely unverifiable touch screens were used and HAND-COUNTED? How many times was there a "recount" in which the actual ballots used to conduct "audits" and perhaps "recounts" that were HAND-COUNTED?

If your answer was close to zero or zilch or nada, you are close to correct. Al Fraken's MN recount comes to mind. Can anybody else think of others? And this despite the fact that there have been hundreds of very "suspicious" results. Here in KS, to take just one race, the Sec of State race in which Kris Kobach was re-elected involved pre-election polling that had the race close to a dead heat right up to the election. And how did it end? A 17%-point win for Kobach. Was it audited? recounted? Beth Clarkson's law suit is pending and will be addressed in March, but with everything now Republican the chances are very low that she will be allowed to see and HAND-COUNT actual papoer ballots or print-outs. And the latest strange outcome in the KY governor's race in which the AVG poll had the Dem candidate (a very popular Dem) winning by 3% and the lowest of the polls, a Republican poll, had the election even while every other poll had the Dem winning by 3-5% and the final tally had the tea party nut job winning by 9% points.

There are probably a hundred such examples that could be cited and that's just the more obvious ones. There are many many others where the race was close to begin with and the results invariably turned out Republican tea party victory parties.

What will it take for Dems to DEMAND that audits be conducted FOR EVERY ELECTION and where there's enough smoke to DEMAND A COMPLETE RECOUNT USING HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS?????? Cost shd be no problem. The Repubs have no problem forking over the money for completely unverifiable touch screens or semi-verifiable opti-scans, etc.

[LiberalArkie]

5. Hand counted paper ballots are what kept the incumbent Democrats in power for a long

time in the south. Deputies that went to the black polling places picked up the ballot box broke the seal replaced the ballots and put a new seal on it and took it to the court house for counting. It wasn't until they were replaced with the mechanical voting machines that a non incumbent was elected.

Many countries have electronic touch screen voting machines. The operating system is verified and cross verified and is never changed only the ballot titles are changed. like position 1: hillary clinton Postion 2: bernie sanders etc. The totals come out as number 1:nanny
number 2 nnnnnnn. Right now the operating systems are changed all the time and no one but the programer knows what is being done. Honest electronic voting machines are very easy to make. It takes time and money to make the dishonest ones.

[Zorra]

4. Here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280114

[MisterP]

6. Sanders is going after the whole way politics is done:

it's not about damning the Green or Republican swine who don't kneel in awe before our miraculous flavor of the week--not anymore, I should say

it's about getting people involved in their own rule and seeing through the political class's shrieking arbitrary distractions and pathetic ingroup/outgroup hostility

Daley Jr. treats Americans like a child near a stove--swat it away before it hurts itself!