Tag: 2026 elections

Idaho Election Officials Find 2,675 Ballots Left Out of Results

Officials have discovered that thousands of ballots were left out of reported election results in two Idaho counties during post-election reviews.

More than 2,600 ballots were either omitted from reported results or went uncounted on election night in two Idaho counties following last week’s midterm elections, prompting a full recount in one county.

Latah County in North Idaho began a full recount Tuesday after local officials discovered that votes from 2,342 ballots had not been included in publicly reported results.

The ballots, representing a portion of early voting, had been tabulated by election machines but were not included in the county’s publicly reported results. The discrepancy was discovered during the county’s review ahead of its official canvas.

Laura Heinse, a Democratic candidate for county commissioner, separately filed a formal complaint asking the Secretary of State’s Office to require a full recount of her race. She argued that the omission raised questions about election-night reconciliation and whether other reporting discrepancies existed.

“This is a significant discrepancy in results, and we are taking it very seriously,” Secretary of State Phil McGrane said in a statement on Monday. “Every Idahoan needs to have confidence that their vote counted, and we’re working closely with Latah County Clerk Julie Fry and her team to ensure the results are accurately reported, and every vote is properly accounted for.”

Newsweek reached out to McGrane via email for comment.

An early review by the Secretary of State’s Office indicated that the omitted votes would not change the winner of any race. However, the size of the discrepancy drew particular concern because several contests were relatively close, including races for three state legislative seats, two county commission seats, county clerk and county treasurer.

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Detroit Voters Elect a Disgraced Judge Barred from Serving Due to Misconduct

Detroit voters elected a defrocked judge to serve another term despite her being unable to be seated on the bench for another three years following a six-year suspension for misconduct.

Judge Kahlilia Davis, 50, won her election to Detroit’s 36th District Court on November 3, but will not be able to put on her robe until her suspension is over in 2029.

First elected in 2016, Davis’s tenure was “marked by scandal as she faced a number of allegations of abuse and misconduct, including wrongfully jailing defendants and throwing out legitimate cases,” the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Davis was also accused of intentionally ignoring instructions from the district’s chief judge, tampering with and disabling courtroom recording equipment, displaying an unauthorized disabled parking placard, and using Bible verses to threaten colleagues, the Mail and Click On Detroit reported.

According to the Mail:

She was initially suspended in 2020 and left the judgeship in 2022, and in 2023 the Michigan Supreme Court suspended Davis from serving on the bench for six years due to the allegations. In 2024, the Michigan secretary of state’s office was ordered by a judge to keep Davis off a future ballot, but Davis successfully sued to reverse that ruling earlier this year.

Davis received almost 84,000 votes in the election.

Due to the low-profile nature of judges, voters told news outlets that they were not aware of Davis’s alleged antics on the bench or her suspension by the state’s high court.

“They didn’t advertise that,” Detroit voter Jeffrey Williams told Click on Detroit.

He continued, “They should have let us know that she was suspended and wouldn’t be able to serve as a judge — and then we could have made a decision whether we wanted to vote for somebody else.”

Davis is not the only jurist in a major U.S. city that was elected to office despite a questionable record on the bench.

As Breitbart News reported last week, Chicago voters re-elected a Cook County judge who gave a pretrial release to a career criminal with more than 70 arrests — overriding prosecutors — only for him to allegedly set an innocent young woman on fire as she rode on a commuter train.

University of Chicago political science professor John Mark Hansen explained how the judiciary is not often held accountable for bad behavior or decisions.

“Judicial elections are what’s known in the political science business as ‘low information elections,’” he told CBS News, adding that most voters have little time or motivation to learn about their records.

When Davis was suspended, the state’s Supreme Court found she “engaged in a series of misconduct incidents that ‘besmirched the judiciary’s reputation and prejudiced the administration of justice,’” the Mail reported.

Davis’s inability to don a robe raises questions of how the court will operate without one of its judges being able to sit on the bench for another three years and whether Davis will receive pay during her suspension.

District Court Chief Judge William McConico told news outlets in a statement that the court’s status would be determined by the State Court Administrator’s Office but offered no immediate solution.

“The Court respects the decision of the people of Detroit to elect Judge Davis, just as we respect and recognize the authority and decision of the Michigan Supreme Court to suspend her,” she said in the statement.

She continued, “Both decisions must be acknowledged, and our responsibility is to ensure that the Court continues to fulfill its obligations to the public in the interim.”

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SOUR GRAPES: Florida Loser Angie Nixon Blames Her Loss on Lack of Funding From Democrat Leadership and Racism

Angie Nixon of Florida was not part of the blue wave election last week and she is clearly not happy about it.

She ran to the Don Lemon podcast to complain about the lack of funding support she received from Democrat leadership. She also blamed racism, because of course she did.

It can’t possibly be that people disagree with her ideas, or don’t believe she has the right skills for the job.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

ANGIE NIXON (D-FL), FORMER SENATE CANDIDATE: It is so wrong and disrespectful for people to not invest in black leadership. Like we, there were no, you know, I’m just going to say there were no black flip seats on the Senate side, like none. If [Mississippi Senator-elect] Scott Colom could have gotten a million more dollars early on, we would not be waiting right now for him to quote unquote win. We know he’s going to win.

If [Louisiana Senate candidate] Jamie Davis would have gotten 50, 500,000 to a million dollars, like in September, he would have won outright.

And so again, I don’t think, I think people want our labor. I think people want our labor. They don’t want our leadership. And we need to have a real long, hard conversation about how we show up, how we continue to time after time at the time show up for the party. And they don’t like in leadership, they don’t show up for our leadership.

I even, I even think about like, people are saying that I like statewide, I came in last as far as statewide, but that is because, you know, there’s racism within the Republican Party and there’s racism within the Democratic Party.

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Democratic Wave or Imperial Rebrand?: Time Will Tell

As a citizen and scholar, whose research, advocacy and moral framework have been dedicated to seeking justice and peace for the people of Palestine, Iran, Yemen and across West Asia, I find little cause for celebration in the recent Democratic Party midterm victories.

Political reveling makes sense if you trust the winning party offers a significant departure from the horrors of the status quo.

Applauding the Democratic Party means ignoring the ashes of Gaza, the massacre at Minab in southern Iran, and the violent legacy of 80 years of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy in the region.

When analyzing the unified bipartisan consensus that has governed U.S. policy in West Asia for decades, the apparent divide is exposed as mere illusion.  For those committed to international law, human rights and decolonization, a Democratic victory does not guarantee political reformation.  It is more likely to represent adaptation—a cosmetic shift in the stewardship of American empire.

Historical evidence demands a rejection of the conventional false binary political narrative that has framed U.S. elections:  the dichotomy between a unilateralist, militaristic Republican Party in opposition to a diplomacy oriented, human rights focused Democratic Party.  With regard to West Asia, both parties operate within a doctrine of institutional hegemony, military interventionism and colonial dominance.

While Republicans pursue aggression through overt unilateralism and unfiltered bellicose rhetoric, Democrats have executed similar policies behind a veneer of rules-based internationalism and institutional diplomacy.  The end result remains the same for the people in Gaza, Tehran, Beirut or San’a – structural violence, economic strangulation and military destruction.

The catastrophic legacy overshadowing Democratic leadership, past and present, makes it difficult for me to foresee, in the party’s electoral success, any departure from a foreign policy dictated by entrenched institutional systems.

The Biden-Harris administration did not simply miscalculate diplomacy; it actively embraced and underwrote what international legal bodies, human rights organizations and scholars worldwide have characterized as genocide in Gaza.

Most Democrats in Congress fast-tracked the shipment of munitions to Israel to carry out its devastating war on Gaza, rather than opposing it.

It is important to remember that it was Democratic leaders and representatives who stayed silent when:

  • President Joe Biden signed off on billions of dollars in unconditional military aid, transferring heavy weapons, artillery shells and precision-guided bombs to the Israeli regime that killed countless Palestinians and decimated civilian infrastructure across the Gaza Strip.
  • Democratic leaders repeatedly deployed the veto at the UN Security Council, neutralizing international legal mechanisms designed to enforce ceasefires and hold war criminals accountable.
  • The administration and party establishment sought to vilify and suppress student activists, scholars and dissenting citizens who demanded an end to American complicity in the destruction of Palestinian life.

A party that has, without conditions, armed, funded and morally shielded and enabled conduct that violates the baseline of human dignity cannot legitimately claim the mantle of progressivism, peace and democracy.

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Democratic Party turns a popular repudiation of Trump into a call for “moderation” and austerity

Just days after the 2026 midterm elections delivered a major popular repudiation of inequality, war and attacks on democratic rights, the Democratic Party has launched a campaign to redefine the election as a mandate for austerity, accommodation with Trump and opposition to socialism.

The New York Times, speaking for the Democratic Party, set out the program in an editorial published Monday. Under the headline “This Winning Combination Is the Future of American Politics,” the Times claims that Democratic candidates won in states Trump carried in 2024 because “they ran as economic populists and cultural moderates.” This combination, it writes, “meets the moment, after years of disappointing laissez-faire economic policies and a decade of cultural excesses by the progressive left.”

The editorial praises Democratic candidates for adopting right-wing positions on what it calls “hot-button culture issues.” On immigration, it highlights candidates who attacked the Biden administration as lax on the border, including Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who credited Trump for the fall in crossings.

But the assault on immigrants is not a “cultural” issue. It is the spearhead of the Trump administration’s war on the Constitution, including mass roundups and detention camps, deportations carried out in defiance of court orders, troops deployed in American cities and federal agents who have shot and killed citizens in Minneapolis. Its architect, Stephen Miller, took over as White House chief of staff the same morning the editorial appeared.

Nor is the epidemic of police violence a matter of “culture.” Yet the Times hails Democrats who embraced law-and-order demagogy and “well-funded police departments.” It applauds support for voter ID requirements, which disadvantage the poor and elderly and have been at the center of the administration’s efforts to delegitimize the elections.

The Times’ model candidate is Adam Hamilton, the Kansas senator-elect, whose campaign ad declared, “On one side, the far left pushes socialism and open borders.” The Times says this “captured the mood.” It praises another winner, Josh Turek in Iowa, for boasting that he voted with Republicans “more than 700 times.” The Democratic victors, it concludes, showed “an admirable pragmatism and a willingness to compromise that are central to maintaining democracy.”

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AIPAC Spent $84 Million Influencing American Midterm Elections

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated political organizations spent $84.1 million attempting to influence the 2026 midterm elections. According to an analysis by Responsible Statecraft, approximately $55.3 million, nearly two-thirds of that spending, went into races where AIPAC’s preferred candidates lost.

AIPAC does not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires certain organizations acting under foreign direction or control to disclose those relationships. AIPAC maintains that it is an American organization funded by Americans, and its activities are conducted under domestic lobbying and campaign-finance laws.

The 2026 midterms revealed just how much AIPAC was prepared to spend. Its super PAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), poured approximately $31.5 million into efforts to prevent Abdul El-Sayed from winning Michigan’s Senate seat. The spending began during the Democratic primary and continued into the general election, when groups associated with AIPAC supported Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed defeated both opponents. In his victory speech, he directly addressed AIPAC, declaring, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice.”

The organization spent another $6.3 million attempting to defeat Daniel Biss in Illinois’s 9th Congressional District. Biss won his primary and ultimately secured approximately 75% of the general election vote. In California, pro-Israel political groups directed more than $6 million toward Melissa Hernandez, who lost to Aisha Wahab. In Maine, AIPAC-linked organizations spent more than $4.8 million supporting Susan Collins, who was defeated by Democrat Troy Jackson. These were not insignificant expenditures. Millions of dollars were concentrated in individual congressional races because the organization considered the candidates’ positions on Israel important enough to justify substantial financial intervention.

AIPAC also supported numerous winning candidates. The organization reported more than 234 successful candidates it supported during the election cycle. In 26 Senate races where affiliated groups spent more than $100,000, 21 of their preferred candidates won. Its influence therefore remains substantial, even after the expensive defeats. The more important development is that candidates increasingly appear willing to reject its support publicly. James Talarico, who won the Texas Senate election, openly refused AIPAC funding. He explained that his opposition was connected to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. His victory demonstrated that refusing the organization’s support need not prevent a candidate from winning a major statewide election.

The financial results also represent a substantial deterioration from AIPAC’s previous electoral performance. Responsible Statecraft calculated that approximately 34% of the organization’s 2026 spending went into races producing its preferred outcome. Comparable figures were 69% in 2022 and 87% in 2024. These percentages measure the allocation of spending across successful and unsuccessful races, not the percentage of candidates who won. Nevertheless, they indicate that the organization’s largest expenditures were increasingly concentrated in unsuccessful campaigns. AIPAC spent heavily attempting to defeat candidates critical of Israel, yet voters in several prominent races rejected those efforts.

AIPAC announced in October that it would discontinue direct candidate endorsements and contributions after the election cycle, while its affiliated political organizations would continue operating. The organization has long maintained that its members are American citizens exercising their constitutional rights to participate in politics. Its super PAC operates under federal campaign-finance rules permitting unlimited independent expenditures, provided those expenditures are not coordinated with candidates. Such arrangements are legal under the current system, but legality does not eliminate legitimate questions about transparency, accountability, and the concentration of political influence.

The political establishment still cannot grasp that the people are fed up with career politicians who answer to everyone except the voters who put them in office. They do not want another Washington insider, and they certainly do not want one whose campaign is being bankrolled by a powerful lobbying organization devoted to the interests of a foreign nation. AIPAC poured millions into these races, apparently believing that enough money could buy the outcome. What they failed to understand is that the money itself became part of the problem. Americans are watching their standard of living decline, their national debt spiral out of control, and their government borrow endlessly to finance wars overseas. Then along comes another establishment candidate with millions in outside funding, telling the public why the interests of another country must remain a priority. How much more obvious can it get? This is precisely the sort of resentment that helped defeat several AIPAC-backed candidates. The people are losing confidence in the political establishment, and throwing more money at candidates who represent that establishment is not going to restore it. Washington has become so accustomed to buying political influence that it has forgotten the voters still have the final say.

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DEMOCRAT CIVIL WAR EXPLODES! Newly Elected Ohio Democrat Says Senior Party Members Threatened to Make His Life a “LIVING HELL” If He Refuses to Back Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker

The Democrat Party’s internal power struggle is getting uglier by the day.

Fresh off their victories in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are already turning on one another as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attempts to consolidate his grip on the speakership.

Now, a newly elected Democrat from Ohio is publicly accusing senior members of his own party of threatening political retaliation if he refuses to fall in line behind Jeffries.

Don Leonard, the progressive former Ohio State University professor who just flipped Ohio’s 15th Congressional District from Republican incumbent Mike Carey, posted a video saying senior House Democrats told him in no uncertain terms what happens if he refuses to support Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker.

According to Leonard, they warned it would mean “making my life a living hell for the next two years here in Washington as well as being sure to lose my election” in 2028. They expect him to “wear the team jersey” and “be a good team player.”

Leonard, a first-time candidate who branded himself a “Do Something Democrat,” defeated Carey in a district Trump carried by roughly 10 points in 2024. Unofficial results showed Leonard winning by about 6–7 points (roughly 52% to 45%).

He has conditioned any support for Jeffries on two demands: a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and ending “U.S. support for the war in Iran and the country Israel that led us into it.”

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AI’s 2026 Influence Pushed Democrats on Voters – Like Far-Left Google Before It

Although many AI models were released in 2023-04, it could be argued that this recent election is the first one where the American electorate was fully aware of AI…..and surrounded by it.

People have been seeking AI’s help for voting decisions. Heavy candidate bias is injected, incorrect instructions are given, races are invented, and even misleading candidate information has been provided.

Not long ago, Dr. Robert Epstein’s election-monitoring research proved Google’s Search bar results were manipulating users on a massive scale to favor Democratic candidates. Those list-based search results were rigged regarding elections, and he proved it.

Now, AI’s human-like answers and authoritative wording are infinitely more convincing than a list of links. AI chatbots give low-information voters a quick answer to a real question. This requires less thinking and less work than using search rankings.

A Pew survey of 5,273 U.S. adults found that 8% were using AI for election information. Among that group, 40% said they sought “suggestions on how to make voting choices.” As expected, people are using AI to help with political and candidate choices.

As the election got closer, more and more people used AI for election answers. In early October, the SSRS Carter Center survey found 11% of adults used AI to learn about House, Senate, and Governor candidates to decide how to vote. By the end of October, this was 25%.

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“Angry Voters”: What Are We Angry About?

Maybe voters are frustrated that no matter who they elect, nothing in the economic machinery of soaring inequality, debt and servitude changes.

Here’s the mainstream summary of the midterm election results: Angry Voters Usher in Beginning of the End to the Trump Era.

And what are voters angry about?

It’s a fairly lengthy shopping list:

“Many voters told pollsters and interviewers that they felt hoodwinked by Mr. Trump, believing that he was going to bring down prices and not start new wars. They expected him to close the border, but bristled at what they saw as heavy-handed arrests of people living in the country for years. They rebelled against the tariffs that increased costs for consumers.”

OK, fair enough. Those are all legitimate issues. But I submit voters are also angry about a reality larger than any of those issues: no matter which party they vote for, nothing changes. Scrape off the culture wars hot-button topics designed to inflame the loyalists and generate conveniently distracting rage and indignation, and we find that nothing actually changes in what matters to the hard-working bottom 90% who are being stripmined by the accelerating decline in the purchasing power of their earnings.

Look carefully at these three charts and point out the reversal of the primary trends delivered by either political party. You can’t, because the policies and Imperial Project continue on the same trajectory regardless of which party or administration is in power.

Here is a chart of TCMDO, total debt. We can call it “living on money borrowed from the future.” Note that way back in 1980, before the “borrow our way to prosperity” fantasy became the unofficial policy of the status quo, the ratio of GDP to total debt was 1.67: $3 trillion in GDP, $5 trillion in total debt.

Now the ratio is 3.7: $30.7 in GDP and $115 trillion in debt. So how is “borrowing our way to prosperity” working? This is a parody of a functional, sustainable economy. Both parties have relied on soaring debt to win the popularity contest of who promises more “free money” to the elites who fund their campaigns and the electorate.

Never mind it’s not actually “free”: we’ve perfected kicking the can down the road.

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Texas County Accused of Election Fraud Now Failing to Enforce Federal Voter Law

A Texas county at the center of a 2020 election controversy and previously run by a serially accused potential fraudster overseeing machines for 90 Texas counties is lacking the necessary legal compliance.

There is, of course, a great deal of debate surrounding how one of the most solid Republican bastions suddenly switched blue in one election cycle. Some people pointed out the 20 million votes that materialized for Democrats across the country as fraud, and others argued that Democrats changed or exploited voting rules to register many U.S.-hating migrants.

Whatever the explanation, it certainly does not help that Texas, while requiring ID to register for voting, does not verify all registrants’ citizenship, relying on their honesty to affirm they are citizens. And there were nearly 3 million new voter registrations in Texas just between 2022 and 2024.

Another piece of the puzzle is Heider Garcia, a Venezuelan Hart InterCivic vice president who helps oversee the election machines for 90 Texas counties, as mentioned above. He previously also worked for Smartmatic when officials in the Philippines accused him and his machines of dangerous and egregious fraud. Garcia subsequently served as an election official in California and more than one Texas county, including Tarrant County, which is the one I am looking at in this article.

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