GOP Senator Accidentally Admits Georgia Special Election Already Rigged?

[RealityChik]

So, does surging Democrat, Ossoff, really have a chance? I'm sure Georgia is not the only state to be gerrymandered for Repub success. Very discouraged to read these of many articles about this. Don't know if throwing more money at his campaign will help, but I donated a few bucks in spite of being pretty tapped out these days.

Still hopeful though. Go Ossoff!

http://www.learnprogress.org/republican-confirms-rigging-scandal/

or

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/04/15/warring-republicans-try-to-unite-against-ossoff-in-georgias-sixth/

or

http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/04/17/gop-senator-accidentally-admits-to-gerrymandering-while-venting-about-jon-ossoff/

[elleng]

1. They've surely gerrymandered it,

and then stolen voting equipment. https://www.democraticunderground.com/10028942647

They CAN'T win a fair fight, the majority wouldn't do that, so they STEAL.

[L. Coyote]

13. This story: "Georgias Sixth District is totally rigged due to gerrymandering." That's illegal.

A lot of gerrymandered districts are vulnerable if the electorate shifts just the right amount. Gerrymandering can be too greedy to maximize the result. Then when the electorate shifts just a bit more than anticipated, the gerrymander backfires. We may witness that today.

Erica Klarreich 04.16.17.
Gerrymandering Is Illegal, but Only Mathematicians Can Prove It

Partisan gerrymandering—the practice of drawing voting districts to give one political party an unfair edge—is one of the few political issues that voters of all stripes find common cause in condemning. Voters should choose their elected officials, the thinking goes, rather than elected officials choosing their voters. The Supreme Court agrees, at least in theory: In 1986 it ruled that partisan gerrymandering, if extreme enough, is unconstitutional. ..............

[elleng]

15. 'but only mathematicians can prove it.'

FORTUNATELY some courts are agreeing.

[L. Coyote]

17. And for most people MATH is a huge woooosh.

Ignorance make it easier for the plutocrats to stay on the top of the pyramid and parasitize the masses.

[elleng]

18. Right, ignorance makes a lot of things 'easier.'

Hate to say I'm one of those for whom math is a huge woooosh.

[L. Coyote]

21. Esp. when the exit polls are off by 3 times as much as the very alarming 2004 red shift.

And no one understands that statistics is a science and results have levels of confidence that cannot be ignored.

[Judi Lynn]

2. If Republicans don't lie cheat, and steal, they don't win. n/t

[elleng]

3. Right, and they've been allowed to do it for many years.

WTF is wrong with We the People?

[RealityChik]

4. And the Dems have been letting them since 2000, at least!

First Gore in 2000, then Kerry in 2004, and now the 2016 Grand Larceny, the mother of them all! Have they learned anything? If the Dems come away with nothing in the special elections, it's time to hold all the Dems in Congress and the DNC accountable!

[elleng]

5. Right, you said what I omitted.

It is SURELY time to hold all the Dems accountable.

[poli3]

6. It started with Reagan in 1980

Reagan actually openly colluded with the iranians to delay the hostage release, that's even more collusion than what Trump did.

Then he repaid the iranians for their support with iran-contra. Meanwhile, Dems didn't stop him. The problem is that the GOP is willing to do 'anything' to get elected, while Dems are still stuck in the 'for the country' mentality. It gives the GOP an unfair advantage where the Dems are held to standards, and they aren't. Remember the movie 'Recount' with the Gore lawyer refusing to fight Bush in a more aggressive manner?

[retread]

9. Nixon did it in '68.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/yes-nixon-scuttled-the-vietnam-peace-talks-107623

[FakeNoose]

26. How many people remember now that Nixon

... got elected on a PEACE ticket?

He pledged to end the Vietnam War before he got elected in 1968.

But by 1972 the war was going stronger than ever. By then he was saying "Peace with honor" like it mattered to the 58,000 boys who were dying there. Such a tragedy it was, and it will never be taught in any American high school what happened during that war.

Fuck Nixon FOREVER!

[elleng]

16. Right! Many of us recall waking that day and

[flotsam]

25. It only started with Reagan if you ignore Nixon's treason.

"Is it too late to dig up Richard Nixon and set his mouldering corpse on fire on the National Mall, preferably in front of that portion of the Vietnam Memorial in which are carved the names of every American who died there between the years 1969 and 1972? My buddy Jack Farrell has a new Nixon biography coming out and, over the weekend, in The New York Times, he provided the final evidence in support of a flaming national catharsis."

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52002/nixon-vietnam-peace-talks-1968/

[ananda]

19. Agree!

Dems need to have fighting spirit all the time!

[Submariner]

27. On Nov 22, 1963 the country officially turned to sh*t

[LisaM]

28. Eric Holder worked really hard on this (and continues to).

It's a problem that is very difficult to combat, particularly since it has to be done jurisdiction by jurisdiction and is very expensive. You don't think people have been trying to fight it? Worse, even when a battle is won, the other side refuses to follow court orders; look at what's happening in Wisconsin right now?

Add in a healthy dose of people who refuse to accept that this tilted the scales in 2016 - even Democrats - and it's just a gargantuan task.

[Hortensis]

7. That's it exactly. Voting machines were stolen too,

The Hill is reporting this morning.

Of course. And if their leaders stopped lying, cheating, and stealing now, most conservatives, who've come to realize that numerically, if not morally, "true Americans" are a minority, who believe their virtuous ends always justify the means, and who've been well trained to support absolutely anything their side does to win, would toss them out and replace them with ones who would.

The Hill:

Voting machines were reported stolen a day before Georgia’s special congressional election, according to a new report. The equipment was stolen last Saturday evening from a Cobb County precinct manager’s vehicle, Channel 2 Action News said Monday. He did not immediately report the theft. “It is unacceptable that the Cobb County Elections Office waited two days to notify my office of this theft,” Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said in a statement.

“We have opened an investigation, and we are taking steps to ensure that it has no effect on the election tomorrow. I am confident that the results will not be compromised.”
Action News said the four so-called ExpressPoll machines taken are computers poll workers use for checking-in voters and checking off those who cast ballots. Cobb County Elections Director Janine Eveler said information on the machines is “hard to access,” adding that they cannot be used to fraudulently vote in Tuesday’s election. Eveler said Cobb County will replace the devices at its Piedmont Road precinct before voters cast their ballots.

[mythology]

12. Your own link points out these aren't the machines people vote

[Hortensis]

14. Seemingly the thief/thieves did not know that.

[CottonBear]

20. I'm a GA resident. The stolen machines are used to tally who voted.

GA went 100% Diebold in 2002 thanks to then Democratic SoS, Cathy Cox (fuck you Cathy).

The GA GOP has stolen our elections since then.

NEVER FORGET WHAT THE GA GOP DID TO MAX CLELAND.

[ecstatic]

22. I agree with you. Remember, there were democratic senators and

governors prior to the machine change.

[onenote]

23. Yes, but there also were republican house members before 2002

Particularly in Price's district, which has been solidly repub for a long time.

Price has a chance to make it a runoff because the repubs are divided and no one candidate will get 50 percent. Price might even finish first, but it's unlikely he'll do much better than the low 40 percent range (if that). Looking at past Sixth District elections, that would be a better result than any Democrat has achieved in a long time, but if I had to bet, when Ossoff goes up against a single repub in that district's run off election, he will have a very tough time winning unless the repubs stay massively divided.

[CottonBear]

29. Yes. After 2000, everything changed for the worse. n/t

[Mr. Ected]

8. If the vote tallies do not comport with pre-election polls

The Democratic Party needs to use every law and every avenue available to it to challenge the results.

You wanna go nuclear? We'll show you nuclear.

[n2doc]

10. Georgia is an EV state

Don't expect fairness. You tap at a virtual button on a screen and your vote is 'recorded' on a credit card sized plastic ballot, and you hand it off to a person at the voting site with absolutely no assurance that it will be counted, or recorded, correctly.

[Demsrule86]

11. Yes he has a chance...and the district has not changed since Newt Gingrich. He was the

Rep from that district before Price.

[Hortensis]

24. 1:57 pm "Computer Issues Are Causing Voting Problems"

By Jason Easley on Tue, Apr 18th, 2017 at 1:57 pm

Election officials are hoping to keep two polling places open later than the 7 PM closing time after computer errors, and late poll workers caused some voting problems in Georgia's US House special election.

After experiencing some issues on Tuesday, Fulton County officials are hoping to keep two polling precincts open later.

Richard Barron, the director of elections and registration for Fulton County, said they are trying to extend voting hours for Centennial High School in Roswell and the Johns Creek Environmental Campus.

The problem is, the judge that has to OK voting extension, Shawn Ellen LaGrua, is hearing a criminal case today.

If local officials can get the judge to squeeze them in, they want to keep the Centennial High School polling place open until 7:35 PM, and the Johns Creek polling place open until 7:55 PM ET.

I'm not familiar with the first, but Johns Creek is affluent and educated, one of the voting populations one would expect to be tampered with.