Octopus Overlords

Ralph-Wiggum wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:35 pm This is the same sort of stunt that the GOP tried in NC after the 2016 election. I think (?) the NC Supreme Court ended up ruling that those actions violated the NC constitution. I'm guessing any news laws that are passed may also wind up in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The North Carolina Republican Party said Thursday that it would be open to a new election in the state’s ninth U.S. congressional district, where an absentee ballot probe is underway, if investigators can show “substantial likelihood” that the alleged fraud scheme changed the outcome of the race. Republican candidate Mark Harris unofficially leads in the race by just 905 votes over the Democrat Dan McCready.

Sepiche wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 2:49 pm https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... raud-probe

The North Carolina Republican Party said Thursday that it would be open to a new election in the state’s ninth U.S. congressional district, where an absentee ballot probe is underway, if investigators can show “substantial likelihood” that the alleged fraud scheme changed the outcome of the race. Republican candidate Mark Harris unofficially leads in the race by just 905 votes over the Democrat Dan McCready.

A few days ago their stance was "You must seat him now"... if the Republicans are playing this tune now, then the details coming in must be baaaad.

When GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger lost his primary by a narrow margin in May, he suspected something was amiss.

The congressman turned to a group of friends and family who had gathered with him on election night at a steakhouse near Charlotte and blamed the “ballot stuffers in Bladen,” according to three people at the gathering.

Pittenger’s concern stemmed from the vote tallies in rural Bladen County, where his challenger, a pastor from the Charlotte suburbs named Mark Harris, had won 437 absentee mail-in votes. Pittenger, a three-term incumbent, had received just 17.

In the days immediately after the race, aides to Pittenger told the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party and a regional political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee that they believed fraud had occurred, according to people familiar with their discussions.

GOP officials did little to scrutinize the results, instead turning their attention to Harris’s general-election campaign against a well-funded Democratic opponent, the people said.

Their accounts provide the first indication that state and national Republican officials received early warnings about voting irregularities in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, now the subject of multiple criminal probes.

A spokesman for the NRCC denied that Pittenger’s campaign raised the possibility of fraud in the primary.

Head of the Executive Branch wrote:Does the Fake News Media ever mention the fact that Republicans, with the very important help of my campaign Rallies, WON THE UNITED STATES SENATE, 53 to 47? All I hear is that the Open Border Dems won the House. Senate alone approves judges & others. Big Republican Win!

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:39 pm Am I correct in reading that a big win for republicans is losing a seat? Who wants to let me know per capita how many people voted for blue senators and how many voted for red?

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:39 pm Am I correct in reading that a big win for republicans is losing a seat? Who wants to let me know per capita how many people voted for blue senators and how many voted for red?

Alefroth wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:46 pm

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:39 pm Am I correct in reading that a big win for republicans is losing a seat? Who wants to let me know per capita how many people voted for blue senators and how many voted for red?

I really hope it's 1 per capita.

Holman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 10:47 pmRe-reading the tweet, I suspect Trump believes the whole senate is up for election every time.

North Carolina House candidate Mark Harris personally directed the hiring of a campaign aide who is now at the center of an investigation of election fraud, according to the Washington Post.

Harris sought out the local strategist, Leslie McCrae Dowless, after narrowly losing his 2016 primary to Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC), per the Post. Harris was gearing up for a rematch, and Dowless had helped a third candidate in that race achieve lopsided results in early voting — numbers that Dowless replicated for Harris’s campaign in both the primary and general election in 2018. How he got those numbers is now under investigation, with multiple people saying Dowless illegally took unsealed ballots from voters and alleging that he didn’t send in ballots from Democratic voters.

A federal court on Thursday blocked a major aspect of last year’s lame duck power grab by Republicans in Wisconsin. U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson restored early voting and other rights relevant to the franchise which were previously curtailed by GOP state legislators and then-outgoing now-former governor Scott Walker in December 2018.

“This is not a close question,” Judge Peterson notes, “the…challenged provisions are clearly inconsistent with” previous orders handed down by the court.

At issue are three provisions of Act 369. Those provisions: (1) limited the amount of time for early voting; (2) restricted the use of expired student identification cards for voting; and (3) placed a time limit on the use of temporary identification cards for voting. Three similar provisions were previously found to be unlawful and enjoined by an order of the same court in the summer of 2016.
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Wisconsin state officials argued unsuccessfully that because they passed a new law that wasn’t the target of the initial litigation. Judge Peterson rubbished this argument as “not persuasive.”

Effectively, the court says that GOP legislators just went back and attempted to re-pass laws that had already been found illegal.
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The Republican officials also unsuccessfully noted that they had done away with some of the harsher aspects of their previous attempts to throttle voting rights. Judge Peterson wasn’t satisfied with that argument either.

Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in a North Carolina congressional race that was tainted by ballot fraud, announced Tuesday that he will not run in the new election for the seat.

Harris said in a statement that he has decided not to seek the 9th District seat due to health problems.
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Harris has been recovering from a serious infection that had led to sepsis and two strokes.
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North Carolina election officials last week ordered a new contest in the 9th District, ending a dramatic months-long investigation focused on irregularities with mail-in ballots.

The board voted unanimously to throw out the November results between Harris and Democrat Dan McCready.
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His decision not to run follows four days of hearings last week revealing voluminous evidence that a political operative had led an illegal scheme to tamper with absentee ballots on behalf of Harris’s congressional campaign last year.

Evidence also surfaced that Harris had structured his campaign so that he wasn’t paying the operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, directly and to avoid public disclosure of those payments.

Through most of the hearing, Harris claimed no knowledge of Dowless’s methods and said there had been no red flags.

That changed last Thursday, after Harris falsely characterized a conversation with his son, Matthew, about whether emails in which he suggested that Dowless’s tactics were questionable and was warned by another son, John, not to hire him, would become public.

Facing potential perjury charges for that testimony -- and days of potentially damaging cross-examination about his own role in the ballot scheme — Harris abruptly called for a new election and declared that ballot fraud had sufficiently tainted the outcome in November to warrant a new election.
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Another Republican, former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, ruled out running for the seat on Monday.
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Usually under North Carolina election law, a new election is ordered as a rematch of the contest that was tainted -- in this case, the November election between Harris and McCready. But in December, sensing Harris’s political and legal vulnerability, the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature passed a law requiring a primary if a new election were called in the 9th District.
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The general election is likely to be scheduled for October.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Feb 26, 2019 5:57 pm The primary thing is just so much more bullshit. They can't help themselves from being shitbags, can they?

Leslie McCrae Dowless, a political operative at the center of a Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina tainted by evidence of ballot fraud, was indicted by a grand jury on seven counts, a prosecutor announced Wednesday.

Dowless, who worked for Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in the state’s 9th Congressional District, was arrested and charged with three counts of felonious obstruction of justice, two counts of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, and two counts of possession of absentee ballot, the Wake County district attorney’s office said.

Defiant wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:02 am

It looks like the Democrat won by 24%, a swing of about 30%.

Defiant wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:02 am

It looks like the Democrat won by 24%, a swing of about 30%.

The AP's analysis indicates that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats than would have been expected based on their average share of the vote in congressional districts across the country. In state House elections, Republicans' structural advantage might have helped them hold on to as many as seven chambers that otherwise could have flipped to Democrats, according to the analysis.

Defiant wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2019 5:38 pm

The AP's analysis indicates that Republicans won about 16 more U.S. House seats than would have been expected based on their average share of the vote in congressional districts across the country. In state House elections, Republicans' structural advantage might have helped them hold on to as many as seven chambers that otherwise could have flipped to Democrats, according to the analysis.

GOP redistricting edge moderated Democrats' 2018 gains, analysis finds

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:49 pm Wisconsin

A federal court on Thursday blocked a major aspect of last year’s lame duck power grab by Republicans in Wisconsin. U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson restored early voting and other rights relevant to the franchise which were previously curtailed by GOP state legislators and then-outgoing now-former governor Scott Walker in December 2018.

When Republican lawmakers rushed through laws to limit the power of Democrats who had been elected to some of Wisconsin’s highest posts late last year, thousands of angry residents held demonstrations. Democratic leaders objected, calling the move a blatant power grab. And lawsuits were filed.

On Friday, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court said the Republicans had behaved within the law, ending, at least for the moment, a chapter that had roiled Wisconsin.
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Other legal challenges to the laws passed during the lame-duck session remain. But a liberal justice will exit the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the coming weeks, and she will be replaced by a conservative.

Adigital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.

In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.

Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.

Defiant wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:39 pm Just the latest in a series of attempts by conservatives to help Green candidates in an attempt to hurt Democrats:

Adigital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.

In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.

Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies. the huge check would clear.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ally-forge