New York Elections Board to Face Audit Over Primary Problems

After the numerous voting irregularities, including suspicion of election fraud and voter suppression, it has been announced an official audit and investigation.

First, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced an official investigation, stating that he is “deeply troubled by the volume and consistency of voting irregularities.”

http://twitter.com/AGSchneiderman/status/722880473043587073/photo/1
New York City comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, announced on Tuesday that his office will audit the city’s Board of Elections for their part in the irregularities.

The fact that Stringer is a delegate for Hillary Clinton has raised some eyebrows. Stringer stated that if he finds any issues that call for him to recuse himself he will and that he isn’t “auditing the election results. We are auditing the management of the agency that conducts the elections.” Stringer called for the audit before polls closed and the results were in.

http://www.nationofchange.org/news/2016/04/21/new-york-elections-board-face-audit-primary-problems/

Fellow Sanders Voters: Remember That Bernie Has Benefited From Closed Caucuses

Again, the Rude Pundit has to state, for the record, that he threw his lot in with Bernie Sanders. But, for chrissake, get yer facts together, Bernie voters, or you just sound like you're crazy.

For instance, we love touting the many victories Sanders has and then we turn around and get all angry about how New York held a closed primary - that is, only registered Democrats could vote in it. So, sorry, independents, but go fuck yourselves. This has upset the Sanders side because they think that their candidate would have won an open primary in New York (and that's kind of a big leap).

But that whole discussion is undermined by your very support for Sanders and his victories elsewhere. Because, see, many of the states Sanders has won have held caucuses, not primaries. And those fuckers are almost always meant only for the party faithful. It's their fuckin' rules.

* Colorado. where Sanders beat Hillary Clinton by 19 points? Closed caucus for voting. Anyone could watch, if that's your thing. But only registered Democrats could vote.

* Wyoming, where Sanders won with 56% to 44% for Clinton? Closed.

...

While Sanders won the open primaries in Vermont, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Wisconsin, you could make a strong argument that much of the momentum of his campaign comes from closed caucuses for Democrats only and not from the mythical independent voters. You could also make the case that Clinton has captured those independents because of all the open primaries she's won (Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and more). Sorry, but results are results.

...

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2016/04/fellow-sanders-voters-remember-that.html

Did New York’s Voting Problems Hurt Hillary Clinton?

Sam Frizell @Sam_Frizell April 20, 2016

When Gemma Gonsalves gave her name at a public school off of Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway, she was expecting to be ushered in quickly to vote.

But she said poll workers said she wasn’t listed in the voter rolls, telling her to go to a nearby courthouse and come back with a court order to vote. Already running late for her job cutting hair at a local Supercuts, she left and never did cast a ballot in the Democratic primary.

“I’ve been in this country more than fifty years,” says Gonsalves, an immigrant from Trinidad who voted for John McCain in 2008 and Barack Obama in 2012 at the same polling place. “It’s just so baffling.”

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Both the Sanders and the Clinton campaigns are crying foul, but it may be the Clinton campaign that suffered the most. The areas where the most votes were lost was in Brooklyn—which she won with 60% of the vote, better than throughout the state as a whole.

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A total of 1.82 million people cast votes in New York. If tens of thousands of people were unable to vote, it could have meant a swing of a handful of delegates for either Clinton or Sanders. The voter affidavits have not been counted, so it is not clear which candidate they may have benefited. Still, most of the voters stricken from the registers lived in neighborhoods that were favorable to Clinton, based on Tuesday night’s results.

Gonsalves, at least, had been planning to vote for Clinton.

http://time.com/4301762/new-york-voting-problems-hillary-clinton/

2016 National Democratic Primary - Hillary 51%(+3), Bernie 45%(-4) (Ipsos/Reuters (Web) 4/16-4/20)

I know nobody cares about national polls, but Bernie was up 1 in the previous Ipsos/Reuters poll done 4/9 - 4/13 - 49-48.

Sanders Has Been Losing In States Where Income Inequality Is Worse

Here's some irony: Bernie Sanders is winning the states where income inequality is lowest. Where it's highest? Those states are all Hillary Clinton, and her win in highly-unequal New York only made the trend more pronounced.

It's a counterintuitive trend because Bernie Sanders' whole campaign is built on inequality. The phrase "millionaire and billionaire class" (or some variation on it) seems to feature in every single one of his speeches.

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Direct relationship? Probably not.

The fascinating question is why this is happening.

Spoiler: There's no single great explanation.

Sorry about that. But there are a few things we can say.

One is that this doesn't necessarily mean that Clinton is beating Sanders at appealing to voters on the basis of inequality. Put another way, it's not that all of the Democrats of New York (the most unequal state yet that Clinton has won) looked around and thought, "Huh. Inequality is high here, so I should vote for Clinton."

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What it means

Really, it might be that there are lots of trends going on alongside these inequality numbers. Race may play into what's going on here. The south is both heavily unequal and heavily black. And American blacks in general are more economically disadvantaged than whites nationwide, as research from the Brookings Institution has found, due in part to what they call "deep-rooted, systemic problems." And it is also true that many black voters have been for a variety of reasons loyal to the Clintons over the years.

Sanders also appeals explicitly to rural voters in particular with his gun control stances, which may have helped fuel his performance in states with larger rural populations — think those large western states like Wyoming, Alaska, and Idaho.

...

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/19/474835424/sanders-has-been-losing-in-states-where-income-inequality-is-worse

2016 National Democratic Primary - Clinton 50%, Sanders 43% (NBC News/SurveyMonkey 4/11-4/17)

2016 National Democratic Primary
Asked of Democratic registered voters
Hillary Clinton (D) 50%
Bernie Sanders (D) 43%
Undecided 7%

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/polls/nbc-surveymonkey-24307

Bernie Sanders bashes New York election law

2016 New York Democratic Presidential Primary - Hillary 55%, Bernie 40% (4/16-4/17)

SSDD

Same s***, different debate.

Everybody wants more debates...until they happen.

These two are polished in their arguments --- their performances don't vary much from one debate to the next.

Add the annoying audience yipping and, well, I'm busy doing laundry - this is rather boring.

Bernie Sanders’ Rally in New York City Is Insanely Large (PHOTOS)