The last thing we should want is a partisan "poll watcher" illegally "handling 'ballots. My immediate reaction was: "Keep your Trumpist paws off my ballot." It appears to Lara Trump, RNC chair, that the only definition of integrity is a system handled by MAGA loyalists. Poll watchers are strictly watchers, not handlers, for a good reason. The key is who supervises the count and how well they abide by rules limiting ballot handling. According to most state rules, the process and count should be limited to employees and poll workers sworn to a neutral process regardless of their partisan beliefs. That is how accountability and trust in the outcome are maintained. This training poll watchers to handle ballots is why election officials need to be elected for their integrity ..to not turn over the process to one political party as Lara Trump, RNC, just promoted. As a former election official myself, I am particularly outraged by the RNC's attempt to train poll watchers to be ballot handlers.
The RNC is not interested in election integrity. They are interested in the RNC's control of voters and election outcomes. Not only is such action as Trump proposes the opposite of voter integrity, but what the RNC is proposing gives partisans power beyond watching before, during, and after election day. In charge of RNC "election integrity" is Christina Bobb, just indicted in Arizona for her role in the fake elector scheme. The RNC has been engaged in training "poll watchers" in anticipation that their lie about widespread fraud in 2020 was a reality, never proved in four years, that borders on or encourages illegal election interference at the polls charged with actually "handling ballots", intimidating voters before and after the process. Before is voter suppression. During voting is illegal interference. After the polls are closed whether a partisan non-staffer is given access to the counting process is such a violation of integrity it has landed a Colorado clerk in federal court it is so illegal.
Colorado has been the epicenter of the conflict between election deniers and the established election voting system. The issue is coming to a head with the RNC's announcement of plans to make GOP poll watchers ballot handlers.
-This"handling" plan, whatever that entails, could violate rules and laws, and as happened in Colorado, it has become a federal court case. Tina Peter's trial has been rescheduled for summer.
-Election deniers have taken over the GOP in Colorado. They are pressuring county clerks, nearly all Republicans, to be partisan in their administration, resulting in a revolt of most of the clerks.
-The MAGA GOP has also attempted to "impeach" the Colorado Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, for also being partisan because she was the vocal plaintiff in the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to remove Trump from the Colorado primary ballot. Trump's name was never removed from the ballot throughout the process, and the Supreme Court overturned the Colorado Supreme Court, though the original suit was brought by anti-Trumper Republicans and independents, not by Democrat Griswold, Secretary of State. The proof or evidence of her administration of the state voting laws (written by her GOP predecessor) was not at issue. Griswold abided by the US Supreme Court decision as she had pledged to do. The attempt was deep-sixed in a partisan vote in a legislative committee. -
-The attempt to claim Dominium Voting Systems, a Colorado corporation, swung the 2020 election to Biden went to court in a defamation court case that resulted in a hefty $787 million settlement against FOX News, the media that promoted the false claims of fraud. It was the largest defamation suit settlement in US history.
-The Colorado county clerk who gave the codes to the tabulating machines to a nonstaff party flunky will face a federal trial this summer.
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/12/colorado-county-clerks-revolt-against.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKYlDX5BH2w Griswold responds to Supreme Court ruling on Trump ballot issue
https://www.newsweek.com/lara-trump-wants-republican-national-committee-handle-ballots-2024-election-1893517#:~:text=During%20an%20interview%20with%20Newsmax,%22physically%20handle%20the%20ballots.%22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network#:~:text=Fox%20News%20agreed%20to%20pay,for%20defamation%20in%20U.S.%20history.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/election-deniers-turn-their-focus-to-state-gop-posts-after-failing-at-polls
The RNC is not interested in election integrity. They are interested in the RNC's control of voters and election outcomes. Not only is such action as Trump proposes the opposite of voter integrity, but what the RNC is proposing gives partisans power beyond watching before, during, and after election day. In charge of RNC "election integrity" is Christina Bobb, just indicted in Arizona for her role in the fake elector scheme. The RNC has been engaged in training "poll watchers" in anticipation that their lie about widespread fraud in 2020 was a reality, never proved in four years, that borders on or encourages illegal election interference at the polls charged with actually "handling ballots", intimidating voters before and after the process. Before is voter suppression. During voting is illegal interference. After the polls are closed whether a partisan non-staffer is given access to the counting process is such a violation of integrity it has landed a Colorado clerk in federal court it is so illegal.
Trump's outrage is the best case for the Colorado system of mail-in ballots. While Colorado has both polling places and mail-in-drop box and beau coup safeguards to prevent fraud, over 93% of ballots cast in 2020 and 2022 were by mail and not at a polling place. So few vote at the polls on election day, even if illegal ballot handling or bullying happens, the chance such underhanded techniques would have less effect on the results.
The real danger is also: who is in charge of your voting system at the county level? That is why poll watchers are still needed, but poll handlers need to be staffed, sworn to abide by integrity rules, and supervised by county clerks likewise sworn to uphold laws that Lara Trump and the RNC want to violate.
This is an excerpt in italics from a December 9 posting with additional commentary and updated status of the Tina Peter's federal trial scheduled for Febrary 2024
In Colorado, on December 8, 2023, there was an explosive report by Kyle Clark, KUSA, a local station, about threats and politics of election denialists that shows how MAGA lies are used to seize control of the election processes on a local government level. . Next Conversation: Head of Colorado's County Clerks Association talks election rigging lies - YouTube
This is a prelude to Trump's attempt at the Big Lie again to stay in power if he ever gets elected again, and it is his pretext for Trump loyalists to control the entire election process from registration to voter access, to vote casting, to tabulation, and to reporting at the exclusion of any opponents in the process. It is the end of free and fair elections if he succeeds is doing this throughout the country, and the attempt is already underway, as this Colorado GOP attempt illustrates. The message: elections are already corrupt (the Big Lie), not free or fair, so why not put your MAGA buddy in charge. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: An election denier will now be the Colorado state GOP chair Update 3 12 2023 Note: a critic of the Big Lie, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), was a casualty himself. He will not run for re-election in a ruby-red district.
The following comments are my additional ones to the December 9 posting. Note in Kyle Clark's interview of the executive director of the County Clerk's Association he and nearly all of the Colorado county clerks are Republicans. As a former county clerk (Denver) years ago, that was also the case. (I was usually the lone Democrat). Party ideology then was simple: do the best job to ensure the voting process goes smoothly and accurately and follow the rules. Those were low-technology processes back then, and voting machines were the lever type backed up by paper ballots. In every layer of the process in Denver, representatives of both political parties looked over each other's shoulders to ensure that the rules were followed and the process was honest.(*no longer required, though) In the time of high tech, in Colorado, those paper ballots are still available for any audits if questions are asked, and recounts that are triggered by a percentage in close races, and still are. Clerks were proud, and most still are (with several exceptions in 2020) of being accurate and rule-abiding. To have a state party GOP chair threatening to primary any GOP clerk who is not loyal to MAGA and claim the process for which they were proud and took responsibility is outrageous and insulting, but also a threat to clerk's positions to which they were elected after surviving their primaries .. As individuals, thanks to the threats of their own party chairs, they could not speak out individually, but their association did. on Clark's broadcast on NBC's Denver affiliate, 9 News..
In my own county, election denialism nearly caused the GOP candidate for the county clerk to lose her election in 2022.. It was a squeaker in a red county blushing a bit purple. She was running to fill the vacancy left by the previous Republican county clerk, respected by both parties who chose not to run again for the office. The candidate refused to say the 2020 election was not fraudulent, but when pressed, she admitted her Republican predecessor had run a clean election. It just was that every other county, by implication, was corrupt because she was MAGA.. In the meantime, seizing national attention was a GOP country clerk, Tina Peters, in Mesa County who had fallen for the national party election denialism, broke the rules, and gave the codes to a Trumpster nonstaff member to seize the county machinery and jeopardize the security and integrity of the vote count, ...
More on the Tina Peters case: Federal trial schedules in February 2024
Update: 12/10/2023 Tina Peters files federal lawsuit to halt investigations, prosecutions (coloradosun.com) Peters is facing trial early in 2024 after federal indictments for her actions in 2022.
Update: 2/11/23 New information from the FBI delays the Tina Peters election tampering trial. What is interesting is FBI evidence claiming that the "update of computer systems "was not performed by an employee of the clerk's office" as Peter's claimed but by someone else using a copy of an employee's access key.ttps://www.cpr.org/2023/02/
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/rnc-election-integrity-2024-election-trump
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