On today’s BradCast: The wheels seem to be coming off everywhere. That’s both good and bad news. [Audio link to show follows below.]
We start here: After a two month back and forth since the November 2017 off-year elections in Virginia, it appears that Republicans will retain — if just barely — their majority control of the Virginia House of Delegates (for now) following a random drawing out of a bowl in Richmond today resulted in Republican David Yancey being named the winner over Democrat Shelly Simonds.
That, despite a “recount” in the 94th District race finding the Democrat had won, until a Republican observer changed his mind and a Republican Circuit Court panel of judges agreed with him. That was followed by a rejected court challenge by the Democrat, today’s random drawing to determine the winner of that court-declared tie, a likely second “recount” to come in the same race, a court challenge to a separate very close race in the 28th district decided by 73 votes with at least 147 voters receiving the wrong ballot entirely, and Democrats across the obscenely gerrymandered state having out-voted Republicans by a “landslide” 10% margin in the November 7, 2017 elections.
We detail all of that today — including my brief, if telling, email conversation with the election official in the city of Newport News who supposedly oversaw the race in the 94th district. And, for the record, here is a JPG of the one single ballot in question which led to the current tie.
Then, in other election related news, we move on to Donald Trump’s monumentally failed “voter fraud” Commission, disastrously helmed by longtime GOP “voter fraud” fraudster and Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach. The Commission, created after Trump’s evidence-free assertions that millions of unlawful votes were cast against him in 2016, has been besieged with lawsuits against it, including by one of its own Commissioners. But there may be another reason that Trump suddenly, and without notice to anyone, disbanded it entirely by Executive Order on Wednesday evening: he got mad at Steve Bannon. Democrats and voting rights advocates are rejoicing after the news, but will the dissolution of the Commission result in even more concerns for advocates of free and fair elections?
Speaking of which, heads up! Trump’s Dept. of Justice appears to have a new idea for how to game the 2020 Census (which is also an election-related issue).
Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for a bone-chilling first Green News Report of the new year, as a dangerous blast from the melting Arctic slams much of the country, the Trump Administration guts even more environmental and safety regulations over the holiday weekend when few were noticing, before announcing a new disturbing scheme today to open up 90 percent of nation’s off-shore oil reserves to new commercial drilling.
The wheels seem to be coming off both the world and the Trump Administration. We’ll hope for the latter in time to prevent the former…
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_VirginiaHD94Dispute_TrumpKobachCommDisbanded_RecordColdRegsGutted_010418.mp3]
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Brad, the commission is not disbanded. It is moving to Homeland Security and will be able to avoid FOIA requests. THIS IS MUCH WORSE!
https://t.co/ToV6Tdv2nm
Adam Gladstone said @1:
Meh. I’m not so sure about that, as I noted in our conversation on the show linked above. That, despite my friend Palast’s assertions to the contrary.
While I could be wrong, of course, I think this reporting on the matter is likely closer to where things go from here. And it’s not nearly as dire as Kobach would like to pretend it is.
I think they should have brought The Amazing Randi in to oversee the drawing in Virginia and make sure one of the canisters wasn’t weighted. I watched the drawing and the first guy that stuck his hand in was stirring them around before he picked one.
Come on.
I agree, Larry. Incredibly easy to game the drawing the way they did it!
I didn’t realize Diebold made drawing lots sets.
They’re diversifying.
“Blue Bowl” voting is as bad as
“black box voting”,
as pictured here:
https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1657296/virginia-state-election-determined-by-name-being-drawn-random-bowl.jpg
Instead of hanging chad, this was a hanging curve ball. Was there any doubt as to how this would turn out? NO. Why? Because it was the latest from those who wear the T-shirt–“Cheaters R Us.”