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Showing Original Post only (View all)Jill Stein Campaign Response to Accusation of Use of 2016 Recount Money for Legal Defense [View all]
An article by Charles Davis in the Daily Beast was featured in a recent DU post that blasted Jill Stein for using leftover money she raised for a recount of the 2016 election for legal defense purposes. The Daily Beast article was published before allowing Stein or her campaign to respond to the allegations. The Stein campaign did respond later that same day (July 13, 2018), and the Daily Beast stuck the response at the very end of their article, while making no comment about it at any place in their article.Given the Stein campaigns response and what I know about Steins efforts to obtain a valid recount in selected states for the 2016 election, I feel that the Daily Beast article utterly failed to put the issue in a proper and fair context. Also, the DU post on this issue made no mention of Steins response, it was not noted by any of the DU responders to the post, and all the comments to the post that I saw were very negative towards Stein. Therefore, the purpose of this OP is to attempt to correct the record by putting this issue into what I consider to be a more appropriate and fair context. This was the Stein campaigns response to the article:
Recount money was used to provide legal counsel for the Senate investigation of alleged Russian collusion that the recount and our campaign were accused of. It was outrageous that the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the recount of being a tool of Russian interference, when the recount was exactly the thing that could have detected any such election interference, had it not been obstructed. Legal counsel enabled us to defend the recount from the baseless accusations behind the Russia investigation, which allowed us to leverage the intense media interest in the Russia investigation to amplify the critical message that election integrity is our best defense against election interference.
That response makes perfect sense to me. If it is true, as indicated in the response, that the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the recount of being a tool of Russian interference, then using leftover recount money to pay for Steins legal defense was obviously legal and appropriate, and I dont begrudge her that at all. Keep in mind that this investigation was engineered by our Republican Senators, and apparently by them alone. As such, I dont have any more confidence in the validity of this investigation than I have in the House investigation of the Mueller probe of Trump or their continued investigation of the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal.
I have long believed that our election system is highly vulnerable to fraud and that it has been used as such on myriad occasions in the 21st Century. I believe that this is the primary reason why we are now ruled by a government that is so far to the right of the American people including a radical right wing psychopath President, a radical right wing majority Supreme Court, a radical right wing majority Senate and House (until January 3, 2019), and a good majority of Republican state legislatures throughout our country.
The 2016 Presidential election produced some very strange results. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1%, and yet lost the Electoral College resoundingly. Not counting three elections in U.S. history where the Electoral College did NOT choose our President (our President was chosen by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1824, by a special judiciary committee in 1876, and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000, when they halted the vote counting in Florida), there had previously been only one time in U.S. history when the popular vote did not align with the Electoral College in a Presidential election. That was 1888, when the losing candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the popular vote by only 0.8%.
There were 5 states in 2016 that pre-election polls predicted Clinton would win, but which Trump won, by small margins Michigan by 0.2%, Pennsylvania by 0.7%, Wisconsin by 0.8%, Florida by 1.2%, and North Carolina by 3.7%.
Exit polls are considered accurate enough in many countries that they are used to monitor the accuracy of election results. The United States too considers them accurate enough to have sponsored them in numerous countries in the 21st Century, as a means of monitoring their elections. Yet, although exit polls are routinely used in the United States, they are never used for the purpose of monitoring elections, even though they have greatly and consistently under-predicted Democratic candidate performance in Presidential, Congressional, and Gubernatorial elections since 2004.
Here is a table for the 2016 election that shows exit poll results, official vote counts, and red shifts for the 5 swing states that Trump won by small amounts after pre-election polls predicted a Clinton win. Red shift is the difference between the exit poll and the official vote count, when the official vote count is lower than the exit poll prediction for the more liberal candidate (if it is the other way around it is called a blue shift, but weve rarely seen blue shifts for state or national elections in the U.S. in the 21st Century).
State........................Exit poll result.....................Official vote count...............Red shift
North Carolina...........Clinton by 2.1%...................Trump by 3.7%..................5.8%
Pennsylvania.............Clinton by 4.4%...................Trump by 0.7%..................5.1%
Wisconsin.................Clinton by 3.9%...................Trump by 0.8%................. 4.7%
Florida......................Clinton by 1.3%...................Trump by 1.2%..................2.5%
Michigan...................Even...................................Trump by 0.2%..................0.2%
Red shifts high enough to flip the state from Clinton to Trump were seen in each of the 5 swing states. In 3 of those states (NC, PA, and WI) the red shift was larger than the statistical margin of error. Note the very small margins of victory for Trump in 4 out of the 5 states. The margin of victory in North Carolina was larger than the others, but so was the red shift.
The red shift for the popular vote (which doesnt count for any electoral votes) was only 1.1% -- within the statistical margin of error. All of the above considerations rightly combined to cast a good deal of suspicion on the election results in the 5 swing states with red shifts (as well as pre-election polls for Clinton) that Trump won. Consequently, election integrity activists all over the country searched for a losing Presidential candidate to request recounts in those 5 states (only candidates are allowed to request recounts in the United States). Jill Stein was the only candidate to agree to do that. Some characterize her agreement to do that as grandstanding. They have a right to their opinion. But the fact of the matter is that recounts were desperately needed, as they held out the only hope for a reversal of what many believed to be fraudulent election results, with the election of a President that many believed to pose a grave danger to our country.
The Trump campaign attempted to block all three recount requests in state courts. In summary: The Pennsylvania recount was disallowed, the Michigan recount was initially approved but quickly struck down on appeal shortly after the recount was started, and the Wisconsin recount was allowed, but individual counties were given the option of doing the recount by using the same machines that provided the initial vote counts. About half of the Wisconsin counties chose to conduct the recount with those machines, which made the statewide recount worthless.
There is a great taboo in the United States against questioning the accuracy or integrity of our electronic voting machines. Losing candidates who do so by requesting hand recounts are lambasted by our corporate news media as sore losers, as was Al Gore in 2000. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich was one of our biggest advocates in Congress for secure elections, until his District suddenly disappeared, thus ending his Congressional career. There have also been some associated deaths of brave people who have attempted to shine a light on election fraud at very high levels.
Thus, in 2004 John Kerry conceded a highly suspect Presidential election on the day after Election Day without requesting a recount, and in 2016 Hillary Clinton did the same. In both cases it fell upon the Green Party to fund the needed recounts, and in both cases the needed recounts were either not done or conducted in such an inadequate or corrupt manner that they were worthless.
It is easy to say in retrospect that the recount attempt in 2016 was a worthless exercise that shouldnt have been attempted. But to those of us who strongly believe that our election system has been widely corrupted by the use of voting machines that lack public accountability, the 2016 recounts of the 5 states in question provided the best potential opportunity to begin the process of restoring our democracy.
Thus, I give Jill Stein a great deal of credit for making that attempt. Given the great taboo in our country against questioning the validity of election results, and knowing the character of our Republican Senate, as well as the fact that thus far no credible evidence has emerged against Stein, I find it likely that the Senates investigation of Jill Stein is without merit and in large part if not wholly motivated by her attempt to obtain information bearing on the integrity of the 2016 Presidential election results.
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Jill Stein Campaign Response to Accusation of Use of 2016 Recount Money for Legal Defense [View all]
Time for change
Dec 2018
OP
Until/unless she is cleared I don't believe her. She was a guest of Putin's. THE END. nt
UniteFightBack
Dec 2018
#3
There needed to be a recount. Here are my responses in the thread you referred to:
diva77
Dec 2018
#18
I give Jillie the traitor no credit...I do not believe she wanted a recount to succeed since she
Demsrule86
Dec 2018
#19
I sincerely hope Jill Stein is indicted for collusion. I am convinced she was part of the Russian
Demsrule86
Dec 2018
#20
No, it's motivated by her duplicity -- pretending that if she raised enough money
pnwmom
Dec 2018
#32
She ased for more money because Wisconsin kept on raising the price and because she
Time for change
Dec 2018
#36
Reading through the responses, the common sentiment seems to be "F**k Jill Stein". I couldn't agree
Tarheel_Dem
Dec 2018
#54