Tag: democrats

Democrat Michigan Secretary of State Misprints Trump Ticket on Ballots for Troops

The Michigan secretary of state misprinted the Trump line on ballots intended to be mailed to troops serving overseas, the Detroit News reported.

Jocelyn Benson, who has endorsed President Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, and spoke at the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC), made the apparent error. The ballot listed Jeremy Cohen as Trump’s running mate. Cohen is running for vice president on the libertarian ticket with Jo Jorgensen.

The name of the incumbent vice president, Mike Pence, was omitted altogether. Jorgensen’s line lacked a running mate, thus creating three errors on the ballot.

Over 400 incorrect ballots were downloaded from the secretary’s website by local clerks to be sent to voters. It is not clear how many were actually mailed.

The ballots were “meant to be mailed or emailed to Michigan residents living abroad under the Military and Overseas Empowerment (MOVE) Act,” the paper reported.

“Replacement” ballots will be issued to those who may have been mailed incorrect ones, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“If a voter does happen to return the incorrect ballot instead of the correct ballot, it will still count,” Benson spokeswoman Tracy Wimmer said.

“The clerk will be instructed to duplicate a vote for Trump onto a ballot for Trump/Pence.”

The secretary of state has endorsed Biden for president.

During the DNC, Benson pushed voting by mail.

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DARK WEB VOTER DATABASE REPORT CASTS NEW DOUBTS ON RUSSIAN ELECTION HACK NARRATIVE

A new report showing that US state-level voter databases were publicly available calls into question the narrative that Russian intelligence “targeted” US state election-related websites in 2016.

A September 1 report in the Moscow daily Kommersant on a “dark web” site offering a database of personal information on millions of registered American voters undermines one of the central themes of the Russia hysteria pervading US politics.

Democratic politicians and corporate media pundits have long accepted it as fact that Russian intelligence “targeted” US state election-related websites in 2016. But the Kommersant report shows that those state registered voter databases were already available to anyone in the public domain, eliminating any official Russian motive for hacking state websites.

Kommersant reported that a user on a dark web Forum known as Gorka9 offered free access to databases containing the information of 7.6 million Michigan voters, along with the state voter databases of Connecticut, Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina.

There are differences between the Michigan database described by Gorka9 and the one that the State of Michigan releases to the public upon request. Tracy Wimmer, the spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State, said in an e-mail to Grayzone that when the Michigan voter registration database is released to the public upon request, the state withholds “date of birth (year of birth is included), driver’s license number, the last four digitals of someone’s social security number, email address and phone number….”  However, Gorka9’s description of the Michigan data includes driver’s license numbers, full dates of birth, social security numbers and emails.

In fact both un-redacted and redacted state voter files are obviously widely available on the dark web as well as elsewhere on the internet. Meduza, a Russian-language news site based in Riga, Latvia, published the Kommersant story along with an “anonFiles” download portal for access to the Michigan voter database and a page from it showing that it is the officially redacted version. The DHS and the FBI both acknowledged in response to the Kommersant story that “a lot of voter registration data is publicly available or easily purchased.” 

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Democrats Campaigning to Keep Green Party off the Ballot in Key Swing States

The 2020 presidential election is already underway — or, at least, it should be. Because of an ongoing legal battle, none of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties will be sending out mail-in ballots today like they were originally scheduled to. Democrats are attempting to remove Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins from the ballot because of an alleged procedural mistake his running mate Angela Walker made when informing election authorities about a change in her South Carolina address. A similar battle is raging between the two parties in Wisconsin, another key battleground state.

That such a minor procedural error could, in effect, disbar an entire political party from running might be news to many Americans. It is also a charge the Green Party strenuously denies. “I filed my address change properly to the Wisconsin Elections Commission as they instructed me to when our campaign informed them of my address change,” Walker said in a press release this morning,

The Democrat chairing the hearing concerning Democratic objections to my filing prevented that documentation from being presented. They had that information in hand. The Democratic commissioners could have resolved the problem last month at the hearing. Instead, they are playing politics with Wisconsin voters. They could end this now by withdrawing their phony objections. The Democratic commissioners are as guilty as the Republican justices in this hold-up of absentee ballots.”

“The court should have made a decision by now. We want a decision today to put us on the ballot. We want the absentee ballot process to proceed without further delay,” Hawkins added.

Why the Democrats might benefit from the removal of the Greens is clear. With many predicting a close election, third party votes could prove crucial in preventing one of the two major parties from getting over the line. One Emerson poll found that 51 percent of Bernie Sanders primary voters were at least considering opting for a third party come November. Hawkins and Walker have been pitching hard to disenchanted leftists, reminding voters that they embrace a Green New Deal, while Biden has rejected it.

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Heiress to Predatory Mortgage Empire to Spend $200 Million for Dems

The heiress to the subprime mortgage empire that preyed on minorities on its way to earning billions of dollars is now spending $200 million to boost liberal groups in battleground states, according to the New York Times.

Susan Sandler, the daughter of billionaire banking giants Herb and Marion Sandler, announced Monday that she is investing $200 million in “racial justice groups” as part of an effort to build a liberal infrastructure in states “undergoing rapid demographic change” such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia. The move from Sandler, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and groups, is the start of a transition away from the short-term world of supporting campaigns to a long-term effort at building power, according to the Times.

The source of Sandler’s cash injection is her parents’ subprime mortgage company, Golden West Financial Corp., which was sold to Wachovia Bank in 2006 for a reported $25 billion. The couple built its fortune by offering millions of adjustable-rate mortgage loans to individuals, many of whom couldn’t afford them and eventually defaulted on their homes.

While the Sandlers came away with billions of dollars, many blame the loans they offered for causing the burst of the U.S. housing bubble and resulting financial crisis of 2007. The defaulted loans cost Wachovia billions of dollars, forcing it to merge with Wells Fargo, which eventually agreed to pay a $50 million settlement to borrowers who were misled by the Sandlers.

The Times, which covered the Sandlers’ predatory loan practices both in 2008 after the housing bust and last year in Herb Sandler’s obituary, made no mention of the source of Susan Sandler’s wealth. The 2008 Times article referred to the loans created by the Sandlers as the “Typhoid Mary” of the financial crisis.

The Times did not respond to a request for comment.

Though Sandler’s money is characterized in the Times as an investment in “racial justice groups,” the money will largely flow to political groups working to elect Democrats across the country. The listed recipients of the $200 million include the Texas Organizing Project, New Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority, and New Georgia Project.

Sandler’s political spending continues the tradition set by her parents, who used the billions of dollars they earned through offering risky loans to vulnerable populations to fund liberal giants such as Human Rights Watch and the Center for American Progress.

Documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon in 2016 revealed that the Sandler Foundation directed at least $24.4 million to the Center for American Progress alone. Wikileaks emails released in 2016 showed that the liberal nonprofit worked to push back against criticism of the Sandlers’ loan business and its role in causing the financial collapse.

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