Home > "Emergency Paper Ballots" will sink Dems in Nov (& I’m a paper ballot guy)

"Emergency Paper Ballots" will sink Dems in Nov (& I’m a paper ballot guy)

by Open-Publishing - Friday 13 October 2006
1 comment

Parties Elections-Elected USA

I’m against emergency paper ballots and am starting to say so in various writings. Ironically, emergency paper ballots will greatly help to snatch Democratic defeat from the jaws of Democratic victory.

On the other hand, if you’re one of my Republican friends you will like these emergency paper ballots.

And indeed, my favorite top political operative for Republicans in the Republican California Secretary of STate’s office is indeed highly in favor of emergency paper ballots: Susan Lapsley.

Per a letter of instructions from Susan Lapsley to all California Counties, I note that 10 days ago, this key political operative for the Republicans and highly vendor-connected Susan Lapsley of the California Secretary of State’s office had already instructed California counties to have emergency paper ballots on hand, photocopying them if necessary. (email me for copy at lehtolawyer@gmail.com, and check replies below because there may be a weblink to it soon)

Especially since Susan Lapsley is the one who wrote to the House of Representatives which interpreted her letter as the green light to swear in Bilbray one week after the election in California’s 50th Congressional District’s special election this past June 6, this enthusiastic support by Lapsley for emergency paper ballots should, at the very least, give pause. Lapsley is the one person in the California Secretary of State’s office that has the authority to do things without checkin’ with anybody, and has had that authority since arriving on Day One, not too long ago, so she’s some sort of big wheel.

Problems with Emergency Ballots:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: All of the votes that get siphoned off into absentees and "emergency paper ballots" will be very disproportionately Dem votes. That will mean that in many critical races the Dems will start off LOSING on election night and will have to fight not just on November 7 (election day) to have votes counted, but on November 8, again on November 9, November 10, November 11, November 12, November 13, November 14, November 15, November 16, November 17, November 18, November 19 .... in fact DON’T PLAN ON EATING ANY TURKEY ON THANKSGIVING DAY because it puts you to sleep with typtophan and then your votes will definitely not be counted. Seriously, the election STARTS on November 8 in any jurisdiction where folks are investing in an absentee or emergency paper ballot strategery (sic). And this long slog back through the slime of media defeat based on election night touch screen DRE results will be subject to definite legal risks of court-ordered stoppage of the count, because the emergency paper ballots are being deployed without the HAVA-required and LAVA-provided legal infrastructure required by HAVA and Bush v. Gore to be set prior to the election and not made up after the election.... As such, the entire class is subject to being considered "illegal ballots" and although notice of this risk is not required in order to make this claim, we are surely on notice that emergency paper ballots may well lack the necessary legal authorization because folks pushed for LAVA and obviously it DID NOT PASS. In any event, the Busby Bilbray race was the first federal election after the January 2006 HAVA deadline and it took them over three weeks after the June 6 election to finish counting the ballots, and there will be MORE of them in November. They of course reported DRE results immediately.

Here’s the risks, spelled out plainly:

FIRST: Thru emergency ballot hysteria, We create a stampede of Democratic and progressive voters into emergency ballots based on the fear of DREs, a fear which is disproportionately shared by Dems over Republicans. This stampede into an identifiable population of "emergency ballots" (as opposed to swimming in the sea of all ballots) means that if there is any legal infirmities to the emergency ballots, they can be cut out of the election results, thus hurting Dems much more than Republicans.

Example of Easy to Find "legal infirmity" resulting in mass disfranchisement: In San Diego county in 2004, a mayoral candidate who was a write in and actually WON the fucking election got thousands of ballots disqualified because the voters wrote in her name properly as a write in, but failed to ALSO check the box for write in candidate. No rational person would think a write in would be written in by the voter WITHOUT the intent to vote for that candidate, but that did not stop the counters or the courts from disenfranchising thousands of voters based on this legal technicality.

There are four main consequences of causing the stampede into emergencies, the first TWO are GUARANTEED, and the second two are likely:

THerefore, at a minimum the stampede of Dems into emergencies can

(1) "explain" REALLY pro-Republican results on DREs that are in fact fraudulent hacked results, because of the democratic stampede into emergency ballots draining Dem numbers from touch screen or other election night-announced numbers, even if there is no subsequent election contest challenge. (This will be enough to suppress stories about the election numbers and their discrepancies, once again, providing plausible denial of irregularity in the touch screen DRE results).

(2) EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOTS IF "SUCCESSFUL" GUARANTEE THAT THE REPUBLICANS ARE WINNING ON THE DAY AFTER THE &^$%! ELECTION! The DREs announce the first results on election night because they are the fastest horse for reporting results, and therefore the Republicans will be ahead on election night AND the day after and Dems will have to play catchup as provisionals and emergency ballots are slowly counted over days

(3) often times ballots don’t EVER get counted, as we all know, and there won’t be control numbers on the total numbers of ballots if the elections officials are just using photocopiers as seems to be suggested by Lapsley’s letter, and

(4) there appears to be a reasonably strong case that all such emergency ballots votes would be "illegal votes" just like the San Diego mayoral write-ins were illegal votes for technical reasons, and would not count and would be stricken in an election contest, so a court order halting any counting of said ballots could likely be obtained. Seems like a court might do that, just as Bush v Gore stopped recounts, or the courts might be avoided, if they can arrange a premature swearing in like Bilbray. The reasons would revolve around inadequate legal infrastructure being in place for the proper counting of those ballots, which I won’t go into too much detail on here.

We need to face an uncomfortable fact: elections systems are now "locked in" for November. There are no magic bullets.

Keep in mind that in the June 6 special election in CA’s 50th Cong. District, with lower turnout than will occur on November 7, they DID NOT FINISH COUNTING THE BALLOTS UNTIL JUNE 28, 22 days after the election, and they certified on June 29 and 30th. There will be plenty of time for the Republicans to fire up lawyers to stop the democratic "comeback" as results continue to drip in based on provisionals, absentees, and emergency ballots....

But not to worry, even though the emergencies don’t get counted on election day or up to a week after election day, they’ll eventually get counted — two *&$%! years later — like Richard Hayes Phillips is doing right now in Ohio regarding 2004 ballots.

At the end of the day: You can gamble on emergency ballots, but not happily, only shaking and quivering with fear and dread. (and preparing to fight through all of November to have them counted)

Would people take to the streets? They didn’t with Busby Bilbray but this is obviously bigger and folks didn’t know the premature swearing in of Bilbray would be argued to terminate any further judicial inquiry into that election. But now they have the microwave weapons expressly ready for testing on mobs as expressly stated by the Air Force Secretary, and they have habeas corpus suspended, and Halliburton apparently has built those huge detention camps. Can you feel the intimidation yet? This will attempt to chill dissent even if it were all a bunch of lies and propaganda. Most likely, in November We will see how much of a land of the free and a home of the brave we have left.

—Paul Lehto
Attorney at Law
Counsel in CA50 Election Contest San Diego, WA
lehtolawyer@gmail.com

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2384945

Forum posts

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