On today’s BradCast: The boondoggles continue — from the Pentagon to the U.S. House and American elections — as we can’t look ahead to the new year without the continuing unresolved muck from this year. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
When Democrats take the majority in the new Congress after the first of the year, one of their first orders of business will be determining who actually is allowed to be seated following the November 2018 midterm elections. There could be as many as three (and possibly more) seats challenged in the 116th Congress, thanks to the burgeoning GOP absentee ballot election fraud scandal in North Carolina, an admission by a newly-elected Florida Republican that he “may have” violated federal campaign finance laws, and a lengthy hand-count process in Maine‘s first-ever Ranked Choice Voting election for a U.S. House seat.
In NC’s 9th Congressional District, Mark Harris — the GOP candidate whose uncertified 905-vote “victory” is now being probed by state and federal officials after the emergence of evidence of absentee ballot fraud by a GOP contractor Harris hired in both the primary and general elections — has said he’d agree to a new election, but only if evidence surfaces that the fraud in question would have changed the final results. That’s a much higher bar than called for by state law, which allows the State Board of Election to take any necessary actions to “assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption.”
In FL, Ross Spano, the Republican who is said to have won the race in the state’s 15th Congressional District, now admits he received nearly $200,000 in personal loans for his campaign from two friends, in violation of the $2,700 per person federal contribution limit. One of those friends, despite having no official government role, is today reported to be helping to select Spano’s Congressional hires. In both the NC and FL cases, it’s not just Democrats crying foul. Tthe Republicans who were defeated in the primaries by Harris and Spano are also joining the public outcries.
In ME, a “recount” request by ousted Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin in the 2nd Congressional District could result in a vacant seat for a while, as a hand-count of the complicated RCV counting process — initially carried out after the election by a computer algorithm — is a lengthy and onerous one that could stretch beyond January 3, when the new Congress is sworn in.
In non-election related news today, Donald Trump will reportedly call for an unprecedented $750 billion budget next year for the Pentagon after his previous increases to military spending. That, despite his description of Defense Department spending last week as “crazy” and previous vows to cut DoD’s budget by 5 percent. The Administration’s proposal for $750 billion is reported to be a “negotiating tactic” to ensure the $733 billion requested by the Pentagon, which is a far cry from the $700 billion Trump had called for previously and a substantial bump from the “crazy” $716 billion allocated for the current fiscal year.
We’re joined today by investigative journalist DAVE LINDORFF to discuss the decades-long “accounting fraud” being carried out by the Pentagon, as detailed in his new exclusive exposé for The Nation. Citing whistleblowers, Inspector General’s reports and a recent admission by the private accounting firm Ernst & Young that the Pentagon’s books were so poorly documented that they simply cannot be audited, Lindorff explains how the DoD continues to seek — and receive — more tax-payer dollars year-after-year, even without needing or spending all they received in previous years. Rather than returning unpsent funds to the federal Treasury, DoD accounting gimmicks (“nippering” and “plugs”) ensure endlessly increasing budgets and payments to Defense Contractors. The unchecked spending — which amounts to trillions of dollars — also helps to ensures that services Americans may actually need and want — like healthcare, education and maintenance for infrastructure — continue to be on the chopping block every fiscal year, even as Defense spending now accounts for 54 cents out of every federal tax-payer dollar collected.
“What the Pentagon does is they ask for more money than they need. They don’t spend it all, and then they tuck away what isn’t spent in ways that it won’t be found — violating the Constitution, by the way — then that unspent money becomes a slush fund that’s available to use however they want,” Lindorff tells me.
“They’ve known about this stonewalling by the Pentagon for 26 years, which includes a lot of Democratic Congresses. Nobody has ever called them to the carpet on this,” he charges. Despite Inspector General reports detailing the gimmicks and unaccounted for budget holes, “Nobody has been prosecuted for this. Nobody has been fired for this….If it’s signed off on by the proper authority in the chain of command then it’s ‘supported’ whether or not there’s evidentiary material to back it.”
Lindorff also argues that, with one recent exception, Democrats — including progressives from Bernie Sanders to Beto O’Rourke — have been largely silent on what he describes as a massive account fraud.
Finally today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who will chair the U.S. House Intelligence Committee after Dems take over Congress next year, argued over the weekend that new filings from federal prosecutors on Friday suggest “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him” and “that he may be the first President in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.” Schiff was referencing, among other things, details from a sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors in New York on Friday charging that Trump “directed” a criminal conspiracy with his former attorney Michael Cohen to pay hush money to two women with whom Trump had affairs, in order to effect election results in violation of federal campaign finance laws…
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Hi Brad!
It has occurred to me that ranked-choice voting could be conducted in a simpler way that might address both your concerns with it and also the legal issue brought up in that lawsuit, i.e. that some voters were getting a second vote and others weren’t.
That is, ranked-choice votes could be counted as follows:
First-choice votes are counted. If somebody gets 50% + 1 vote, that candidate wins.
Otherwise, second-choice votes are added. ALL the second-choice votes. Nobody is “eliminated,” that’s not part of this process. NOW, if any candidate has 50% + 1 vote, as compared to the same threshold as before, then the candidate with the most votes wins. NOTE that in the second and later rounds, it’s possible that more than one candidate could get 50% + 1 at the same time. This is fine. Most votes wins.
If nobody has 50% + 1 based on first+second choices, then add the third choices and compare again.
This has the advantage over the instant-runoff version that you don’t have to separate the second, third, … etc. votes according to who the first choice was. You know Senator Claghorn got 17 million first-choice votes, 8 million second-choice votes, and 14 million third-choice votes, and that’s all you need to know to go through the process. Thus it’s possible for human vote-counters to keep track of it.
Smart, Nemo. I think that is both a fairer and slightly less complicated way to do it. Though still not as simple as Approval Voting (Yes/No for each candidate). So, just curious, what’s wrong with the simpler Approval Voting method?
My major concern is not the fairness issue you cite (that some voters, essentially, get two bites at the apple), but the difficulty in public oversight of the counting.
Your suggestion, while easier to understand, would still require that all ballots be tabulated in one place, versus at the precinct before ballots are moved. I suppose in your version that *could* be counted at the precinct — and by hand, if possible — though it would seem to make such a process wildly more complicated…Bringing me back to my previous question: Why not AV instead?
Brad, about that timely RCV hand-count, I think you meant: time-consuming, protracted, prolonged, tedious.
“recount” request … “initially carried out after the election by a computer algorithm ”
Awe, isn’t the little election machinery so cute (Awe Topsy – 4).
Rich H. @ 3:
You are correct! Sorry I missed your comment previously! Have corrected my poor word choice above. Thanks!