Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Obtain a Ballot Just by Taking a Photo of a Signature

Posted on by

Ah what? A signature photo using your smart phone? Whose signature? How many signatures?

How This Solo Founder Got Into a Top Tech Accelerator ...

Meet Debra Cleaver, Founder & CEO, of Vote.org. February of 2017. The Institute of Politics as Harvard hosted a panel discussion, titled “Leaders of the Resistance’. The Panelists included Debra Cleaver, Founder & CEO of Vote.org; Leah Greenberg, Co-Founder of Indivisible; Andrea Hailey, Founder of Civic Engagement Fund; Amanda Litman, Founder of Run for Something; and Jess Morales Rocketto, Digital Community Organizer for OccupyAirports joined moderator Meighan Stone, a Spring 2017 Entrepreneurship Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and President of Malala Fund for a panel discussion on the women-led “Resistance” against the current White House. The panelists discussed recent events in voter and candidate outreach, especially on the local level, in achieving their efforts to advance Democratic causes in the upcoming 2018 and 2020 elections.

Meanwhile……

With November looming, the scramble to protect the 2020 U.S. election from coronavirus chaos is on.

To that end, a small, skilled cluster of voting rights advocates are launching a new voter mobilization project. Called VoteAmerica, the new non-profit shares DNA with Vote.org, the esteemed nonpartisan voter mobilization site VoteAmerica founder Debra Cleaver first launched in 2008.

VoteAmerica’s goal is to boost voter turnout by helping people vote by mail. In a normal year that might mean striving to drive record turnout. But in the midst of the pandemic, the team is working to ensure that 2020’s presidential election turnout doesn’t slump like it would in a midterm election year.

“It seems at this point that Americans are either going to be unable or unwilling to vote in person in the November election, which could lead to catastrophically low turnout,” Cleaver said in an interview with TechCrunch . “But if we have our way, there will be no perceivable dip in turnout in November.”

While Vote.org is still around, the organization severed ties with Cleaver last summer in a drawn out battle with the group’s board. As Recode reported last month, some key Vote.org partners and donors walked out the door with Cleaver—a major concern for an organization with valuable ties in Silicon Valley and a more dire mission than ever in 2020.

With VoteAmerica, they might be back in the picture. Some of Cleaver’s previous Silicon Valley backers include Y Combinator’s Sam Altman (Cleaver is a YC alum), LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and angel investor Ron Conway. In a conversation with TechCrunch, Cleaver noted that at least Conway is back on board, pitching in with the $5 million in initial funding—a mix of grants and early contributions—to get the fledgling organization off the ground.

“We have the expertise, the team, the experience, and the plan,” Cleaver wrote in a Facebook post last month, adding that a “generous donor” had already stepped up to cover the nascent organization’s payroll costs.

Cleaver describes VoteAmerica as a lean team with deep experience—and one ready to hit the ground running. The project’s new website VoteAmerica.com fittingly displays an election day countdown clock in stark white-on-red lettering to convey the urgency of its task.

In the announcement for the new project, Cleaver said she believes that the 2020 elections “will be the most chaotic in American history”—a prediction that unfortunately is very difficult to argue with.

“Chaos driven by a global pandemic, foreign interference, threats of political violence, a radicalized electorate, a virulent campaign of disinformation, and fragile election administration technology all combine to make voting in person more difficult and less secure than ever before,” Cleaver said.

Because states conduct elections in the United States, her group’s core mission is to shepherd voters through the national patchwork of voting registration systems. On the simple site, visitors can register to vote, check their registration status, find a polling place, request an absentee ballot or sign up to vote-by-mail.

While many states in the U.S. already administer a large chunk of their voting through absentee vote-by-mail, It looks likely that the urgent public health threat posed by the coronavirus will mean that mass public gatherings in crowded polling places remain unwise. In light of that threat, states are looking to dramatically scale up those systems now to get them ready in time for November.

Old systems, new solutions

For VoteAmerica, navigating the quirks of American election systems can look like lending voters a fax machine.

“You can only sign up [for a mail-in ballot] online in 15 states, which is not actually a significant number, but there’s another 15 more where you can fax in your form, which doesn’t seem relevant because it’s 2020 and who uses a fax machine?”

But using fax APIs, VoteAmerica is building out a system that allows voters to request a vote-by-mail application just by taking a photo of their signature. VoteAmerica’s tool then uses code to put the signature in the right spot on the form and then programmatically faxes it to the relevant local election official.

“This is kind of wonky because we’re using truly antiquated technology to modernize the vote-by-mail process,” Cleaver said. “But if you have a mobile device—and 87% of Americans have a smartphone—we’re building technology that lets you sign up directly from your mobile device without printing and mailing.”

It’s just one way that VoteAmerica plans to employ technology solutions to civic problems—like the outdated government systems that still haunt American life. The solution sounds small, but at scale it can mobilize a huge amount of voters who otherwise could have been tangled up in the bureaucratic process. Naturally, that kind of elegant workaround to inefficient systems attracts interest from the tech community.

“We definitely do get a lot of tech money, and I think it’s because tech people both appreciate and trust using technology to clear antiquated hurdles,” Cleaver said.

“The things that we do, people in Silicon Valley are very receptive to it, whereas people outside the Valley might take a little more time to warm up to it.” More here.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Partner with Netflix to Produce BLM

Posted on by

Anyone think this documentary would be comprehensive and honest? Anyone?

Source: As a part of her and Prince Harry’s mega-deal with Netflix, Meghan Markle is reportedly pitching a documentary about a Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder, The Sun reports.

Patrisse Cullors, who is one of the three individuals who founded the BLM movement, would be the subject of the documentary that Meghan Markle would apparently like to produce with Netflix.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as Meghan, 39, and Harry, 35, are also known, have inked a deal with the streaming giant estimated (by some prognosticators) to score them $100 million to $150 million over perhaps five years. These are desperately needed funds considering the couple’s lavish lifestyle, sky-high security costs, debt to the British taxpayers for the renovation of their English home, (now reimbursed) and the reported lack of financial support they are now receiving from the Windsor purse.

The Mirror heard from a source who said that Meghan Markle pitched the documentary to Netflix because she’s been “blown away by the incredible work Patrisse has done” in spearheading the BLM movement.

“She thinks her story needs to be told – and she would love to be the one to make it.”

Meghan Markle pitches movie idea to Netflix about Black Lives Matter co-founder

Patrisse, 36, was driven into action by the acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting young Trayvon Martin to death in Florida.

She, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi founded Black Lives Matter in 2013. And if Meghan Markle has anything to do with it, Patrisse will soon star in a Netflix documentary.

Meghan Markle is a historic first for the British royal family: an African-American spouse of a senior royal. So perhaps it is a natural fit she should seek to produce a Black Lives Matter documentary with Netflix.

Meanwhile, outspoken British TV host Piers Morgan has lashed out at the Sussexes for being such greedy gobble gannets where money is concerned, according to the Daily Star. Sure, they’ve reported paid back the millions of dollars in British taxpayer funds used to renovate their English home, Frogmore Cottage. But the great wealth that the couple has sought out rubs the ever stuffy and huffy TV personality quite the wrong way.

Taking a jibe a Meghan, 39, and Harry, 35, Piers exclaimed: “It’s great they’ve paid back the Frogmore money, it’s great they’re not taking any more of Charles’s money, but they’ve kept the titles – and if you really want to find freedom, and you really want to divorce the country, why would you keep the titles ‘Duke and Duchess of Sussex’?

Meghan Markle ‘has pitched Black Lives Matter movie to Netflix’ amid £112m deal

In a lamentation evocative of Welsh complaints that ever-English Prince Charles was undeserving of the Prince of Wales title he received at his 1969 investiture, Morgan continued in his verbal thrashing of Meghan and Harry: “I’m from Sussex and I bet I’ve spent more time there over the past week than they have in their entire lives, and yet they want to trade off their royal names to get all this money.”

Oh, but Morgan wasn’t done. As the duchess reportedly plans for a Black Lives Matter documentary, he said, “The only reason Netflix is paying them all this money is because of their royal titles – you think Meghan Markle would have got £1.50 out of them without it?

Co-founder of Black Lives Matter Movement Patrisse Cullors

When Meghan Markle and Harry announced their Netflix mega-deal earlier this month — one that may spawn the Black Lives Matter documentary — they said, “Our focus will be on creating content that informs but also gives hope. As new parents, making inspirational family programming is also important to us.”

Other royal commentators, according to the Express, have recently reflected that Harry and Meghan have apparently severed the last cord tying them to their past lives as working senior royals in the British royal family.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have repaid their £2.4 million taxpayer-funded renovation of Frogmore Cottage, their UK residence. The New York Times also reports that the Sussexes are no longer receiving any income from Prince Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall. ITV Royal Rota podcast hosts Chris Ship and Lizzie Robinson discussed how the couple’s financial independence is sending a stark message.

‘They are done’ – Meghan and Harry issue ‘clear warning’ as they cut final royal ties

According to Ship, Harry and Meghan cut these financial ties to the Windsor fortune to serve as a justification for blocking the media from their lives.

Which is ironic, since media interest in Meghan and Harry has only grown since they announced in January that they were bolting from their positions as senior royals.

Now, eight months later, they’re firmly ensconced in the Los Angeles area, having purchased a $14.7 estate in Montecito, California. And of course they have landed the deal with Netflix. Apparently to come: the Black Lives Matter documentary.

For Harry’s, a considerable downside to the split, the Mirror reports, has been the loss of the duke’s treasured military titles.

Prince Harry was “emotional and demoralised” after being stripped of his military titles when he stepped down from the royal duties, a biography has claimed. The Duke of Sussex was forced to relinquish his cherished roles in the British Army after moving to California with Meghan earlier this year. Harry vowed to maintain links with servicemen and women after leaving the forces in 2015, reports the Daily Star. It is this aspect of ‘Megxit’ that he found most “demoralising”, according to Finding Freedom authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.

Prince Harry ’emotional and demoralised’ after being stripped of military titles

Debate = Vindman is the Whistleblower not Ciaramella

Posted on by

Head fakes or rather deep fakes everywhere. Remember there was some robust chatter claiming that Ukraine was the genesis of the Trump impeachment process? Looks like he could be more right than wrong….

Hat tip to Byron York:

The most interesting thing about Byron York’s exhaustively reported and richly detailed new impeachment book, “Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump,” is that the whistleblower who filed the official complaint that got impeachment rolling isn’t ever identified.

It turns out that the heated discussion over the whistleblower, who was previously identified by Real Clear Investigations as the CIA’s Eric Ciaramella, was a diversion from allowing the American people to understand who was the actual instigator of the failed effort to oust President Donald Trump from office.

Rather than being a witness who independently supported the claims of the whistleblower, the National Security Council’s Lt. Col Alex Vindman was the driving force behind the entire operation, according to the book’s interviews with key figures in the impeachment probe and other evidence. The whistleblower’s information came directly from Vindman, investigators determined.

“Vindman was the person on the call who went to the whistleblower after the call, to give the whistleblower the information he needed to file his complaint,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.

“For all intents and purposes, Vindman is the whistleblower here, but he was able to get somebody else to do his dirty work for him,” explained one senior congressional aide.

Vindman was the only person at the National Security Council (NSC) listening in on the infamous call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to be concerned by it. Vindman immediately began talking to his identical twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also worked at the NSC. The twins both complained to NSC Counsel John Eisenberg. Alex Vindman talked about it with his direct supervisor Tim Morrison, who was also on the call. He talked about it with another NSC lawyer, Michael Ellis.

Vindman’s identical twin may be called in impeachment probe Vindman twins

Vindman testified that he talked to only two people outside the NSC. One was George Kent, a State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. He refused to say who the other person was. Both Vindman and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the impeachment proceedings, strenuously resisted any attempt by investigators to discuss who the other individual was, admitting only that it was a member of the “intelligence community,” the same nebulous descriptor used for the whistleblower.

In his complaint, the whistleblower claimed “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” described to him the contents of the conversation. It is unclear if he was sourcing his knowledge  just to multiple Vindmans or any other White House officials.

The description of the call appeared to come from the White House’s rough transcript, which Vindman helped prepare. It repeated Vindman’s unique interpretation of the call as seeking foreign interference in a campaign. It mentioned that lawyers had been informed, and Vindman had done just that. The complaint also included information from public news reports.

At first Schiff publicly promised that the whistleblower would testify and that any attempt by the White House to thwart that would be fought vigorously. But then news broke that Schiff’s office had worked with the whistleblower prior to him filing his complaint. Schiff switched his stance to refusing to allow the whistleblower to testify. What’s more, he refused to allow any investigation into how the Ukraine investigation began.

The real instigator of the Ukraine investigation, Vindman, testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on October 29, 2019, and returned to the House in November for public testimony. York writes that Vindman’s extensive testimony was more complex than news reports suggested.

Vindman repeatedly said that he viewed Trump’s phone call with Zelensky as “wrong,” but he was unable to articulate precisely why. He expressed frustration that the elected president was pushing a foreign policy at odds from the “interagency consensus” of the bureaucracy that he felt should control foreign policy.

Vindman admitted under questioning that he had thrice been offered the prestigious position of defense minister for the Ukraine government. Despite his focus on Ukraine at the NSC, Vindman did not appear knowledgeable about well-established Ukrainian corruption problems. Vindman is a Ukrainian American. He grew hostile with members who sought to understand exactly to whom he had disclosed the phone call.

Using detailed information from interviews with White House officials, members of Congress, and their key staff, York shows how Republicans had to deal with Rep. Adam Schiff’s determination to hide from the American public not just who the whistleblower was but anything about the process that led to the whistleblower complaint.

But Schiff’s behavior inadvertently confirmed how the whistleblower found his information. Every time that members asked about the second non-NSC person Vindman disclosed the call to, Schiff and other Democrats would direct the witness to not answer in order to “protect the whistleblower.” York writes:

Could that have been any clearer? The Republican line of questioning established that: 1) Vindman told two people outside the NSC. 2) One of them was George Kent. And 3) The other was in the Intelligence Community but could not be revealed because Democrats did not want to identify the whistleblower. It did not take a rocket scientist to conclude that that unidentified other person was the whistleblower.

York shows that one of the reasons Republicans stopped pressing the issue was that while they opposed Vindman pushing his own foreign policy goals over the president’s, they respected his military service. “Republicans saw Vindman as a loyal American who had strong and inflexible views on what U.S. policy toward Ukraine should be and who was offended, and spurred to action, when the President of the United States appeared to change them,” York writes.

When Vindman retired from the Army in July 2020, media reports claimed he did so because of a hostile work environment. He had been transferred from the NSC in February 2020, following Trump’s acquittal on the charges that Vindman’s complaints instigated. Vindman received no punishment for his insubordination and disobeying of a direct order to not work with Congress on impeachment.

“Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump” was released today.

‘I Was A Master At Fixing Mail-In Ballots’

Posted on by

First question here is challenging the word ‘was’……

The next question to consider is voting or not voting is free speech at least….notice how the Democrats are now forcing speech by manipulating the voting process and votes themselves?

But first, begin with this potential scandal. A Constitutional crisis is upon the nation.

The building crisis is real for those who care to see it.

A top Democratic data firm is warning that a huge increase in mail-in ballots in 2020 may have the election night effect of making President Trump appear to have a landslide lead, even though he may lose once all the mail-in votes are counted.

Hawkfish, a Democratic data firm funded by billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, expects far more Democrats to vote by mail than Republicans. That expectation is based on a July 1-Aug. 16 survey of 17,263 registered voters nationwide, which measured how people intend to vote and who they intend to vote for.

Because it could take days or weeks to tally the mail-in ballots, that could create the effect of making Trump look like he is in the lead on election night.

“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn told Axios, calling the effect a “red mirage.”

In one scenario, if only 15% of mail-in ballots are counted on election night, that could make Trump look on pace to get a 408-130 Electoral College vote lead. But by four days later, if 75% of mail-in ballots are counted, then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden could show a lead.

“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage,” Mendelsohn said. “It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead, and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted.”

The project is a warning to news outlets and voters on what to expect during election night. Part of that “mirage” scenario assumes that those who project election winners like the Associated Press will not make adjustments in how they portray results on election night due to the rise in mail-in votes — but many newsrooms are preparing for a different pace and method of election results reporting due to mail-in ballots, in order to prevent the scenario that Hawkfish describes.

Trump could further complicate matters. The president has said that he thinks that the results of the election should be announced on election night.

Election analysts have warned for months that due to the expected large increase in mail-in and absentee voting, it may take days or weeks to know the final results from the Nov. 3 election.

(Hawkfish is a US political data and technology-based agency headquartered in New York City founded by Michael Bloomberg.The firm was founded in the spring of 2019 to support, “Democratic candidates, good causes, and common sense solutions.”)

Hawkfish - Who We Are

***

One top Democratic operative took it upon himself to whistleblow on the fraudulent practices of voting, especially with mail-in ballots. Speaking on condition of anonymity because of his own criminal activities participating in voter fraud, the Democratic operative sought out New York Post reporter Jon Levine to explain it all.

Levine’s article published over the weekend was titled, “Confessions of voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots.” A “top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows This because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades” writes Levine. The anonymous operative admitted, “this is a real thing…and there is going to be a f-king war coming November 3rd over this stuff” but admits “if they knew how the sausage was made, they could fix it.”

Operative trick #1: “the ballot has no specific security features – like a stamp or a watermark – so the insider said he would just make his own ballots. ‘I just put [the ballot] through the copy machine and it comes out the same way’ the insider said.” The man admitted, “his dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State.”

The Post confirmed the whistleblower’s identity, rap sheet and “long history working as a consultant to various campaigns.” The insider “says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.” Unfortunately, “some of the biggest names and highest officeholders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.”

The whistleblower is a self-admitted Bernie Sanders “die-hard with no horse in the presidential race.” He simply said he “felt compelled to come forward in the hope that states would act now to fix the glaring security problems present in mail-in ballots.”

Additional unethical practices the insider engaged in, is “he would have his operatives fan out, going house to house, convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service. The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold them over boiling water. ‘You have to steam it to loosen the glue’ said the insider.” They would then replace the real ballot with a counterfeit ballot and reseal the envelope.

 

 

He and his operatives would be careful to sprinkle fake ballots in mailboxes around town. He even said sometimes postal employees are in on the scam. “You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he’s working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold…He can take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.”

 

From DeRay McKesson to Obama, to Kamala to Minneapolis

Posted on by

Must we remind the media about Ferguson or Baltimore? Yes.

Let’s travel back in time to 2016, when a few of the early founders/advocates for Black Lives Matter were invited to the Obama White House. Remember?

I am thinking RICO charges about now too….anyway….read on.

Barack Obama praised young Black Lives Matter activists in the White House on Thursday, taking special notice of prominent Ferguson protesters and describing the meeting as a moment to bridge differences in a younger, changing civil rights movement.

“They are much better organizers than I was when I was their age, and I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights,” Obama said of Brittany Packnett, DeRay Mckesson and other young protest leaders.

“The degree of focus and seriousness and constructiveness” they show reminded him of older, existing civil rights organizations, he added.

According to the White House, the meeting to bring young Black Lives Matter protesters together with long-time leaders from the civil rights movement was the “first of its kind”.

The panel, which included the Rev Al Sharpton and congressman John Lewis, was convened to discuss the administration’s efforts to reform the criminal justice system, as well as the process of building trust between law enforcement and communities.

Brittany Packnett of Black Lives Matter listens as Barak Obama addresses the media during the meeting at the White House. Brittany Packnett of Black Lives Matter listens as Barak Obama addresses the media during the meeting at the White House. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

To placate the visitors to the White House, in July, the president commuted the sentences of 46 prisoners, and became the first sitting president to visit a federal correctional facility. The visit accompanied a major criminal justice policy speech delivered to the NAACP national convention where Obama declared that “mass incarceration makes our entire country worse off, and we need to do something about it”. Then a few months later, Obama commuted another 95 sentences. Read in full context here.

***

This brings us to today, recent weeks.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have a problem. They know it, the media knows it, everyone knows it.

For three months they have ignored the deadly rioting that spread across the nation’s cities on both coasts and in between. They insisted that what we were seeing was “mostly peaceful” protests and that Donald Trump and his evil allies were defaming decent Americans who just want social justice. Now they want to denounce these riots, but there is a problem: Harris is a financial supporter of the rioters she now claims to denounce.

Yes, that’s right, the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate was a huckster for a bail fund that sought to free violent criminals who were rioting on the streets of Minneapolis, and she was very effective at it. In the wake of deadly fires and looting, Harris asked her five million plus Twitter followers to donate money to bail out the “protesters” arrested in the riots. Let’s meet a few of the beneficiaries of her largesse, shall we?

Fox 9 News in Minneapolis did the research for us. Here are a few of the criminals they found Harris did a solid for.

Among those bailed out by the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) is a suspect who shot at police, a woman accused of killing a friend, and a twice convicted sex offender, according to court records reviewed by the FOX 9 Investigators.

According to attempted murder charges, Jaleel Stallings shot at members of a SWAT Team during the riots in May. Police recovered a modified pistol that looks like an AK-47. MFF paid $75,000 in cash to get Stallings out of jail.

Darnika Floyd is charged with second degree murder, for stabbing a friend to death. MFF paid $100,000 cash for her release.

Christopher Boswell, a twice convicted rapist, is currently charged with kidnapping, assault, and sexual assault in two separate cases. MFF paid $350,00 [sic] in cash for his release.

Kamala Harris and her friends in the corporate media, otherwise known as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, will pretend this never happened and they are counting on voters to be too ignorant to know that it did. Harris was so eager to be on the rioters’ team that she literally raised money for them in the hopes that they could be released and foster further mayhem.

That on its own would be bad enough. But the fact that she is now attempting to pretend she was against all of this violence, and looting, and arson, and destruction from the get go is an insulting joke. Did Harris really think that peaceful protesters obeying the rules were the ones arrested in Minneapolis? Of course she didn’t. She just assumed that justifying the unrest would help Democrats’ political chances. Now that this has been shown to be false, she is trying to change her position. It’s way too late for that.

The American people aren’t stupid, they know exactly where Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party stood on the riots. They stood side by side with the rioters. That they have now cynically come to regret that position is, I suppose, a good thing. But it does not erase the harm done in lives, property, and opportunity that their approval of rioting did. We know whose side they were on, and it wasn’t the police. The American people will not forget that. Hat tip to the Federalist.