The Midterms: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[formergothardite]

It sounds like even the primaries were rigged. Harris should be disqualified for hiring a guy like Dowless and IMO a new election should be held with the republican who lost the primary to Harris and the democrat. 

[AmazonGrace]

If anyone who voted for somebody else was disenfranchised I'd be the emperor now

[zeebaneighba]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 "Trump ally who served on voter integrity panel expresses concern about fraud in North Carolina"

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Kris Kobach, an ally of President Trump who served on a voter integrity panel, expressed worry Thursday that Republican fraud might have tainted a North Carolina congressional election, becoming one of the most prominent members of the GOP to publicly express alarm about the race.

“Based on what I have read, I am very concerned that voter fraud did occur,” Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. He said it was unclear whether the alleged wrongdoing was broad enough to change the outcome of the election.

Kobach’s comments contrasted with many other Republican elected officials, including Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who have opted not to comment on the allegations roiling North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.

The posture of Trump and other top Republicans for much of this week marked a departure from the recently concluded Florida recount, in which the president and fellow Republicans leveled unsubstantiated claims about Democratic malfeasance.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has not been shy about alleging fraud in elections. Without presenting evidence, he told lawmakers last year that between 3 million and 5 million illegal ballots caused him to lose the popular vote. He also formed a now-defunct commission to probe alleged voter fraud, with Vice President Pence as chairman and Kobach as vice chairman.

North Carolina officials are examining whether an operative who ran a get-out-the-vote effort for the campaign of Republican Mark Harris illegally collected or tampered with absentee ballots.

Harris, who topped Rep. Robert Pittenger in the Republican primary in the spring, finished ahead of Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the Nov. 6 vote. But the state has not certified the results, and on Thursday McCready withdrew his concession to Harris.

Democrats and at least one former Republican official have accused Trump and GOP leaders of partisanship in holding back in their rhetoric when it comes to North Carolina.

“Because it is the Republicans whose hands have been caught in that proverbial election fraud cookie jar,” said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the situation an “inconvenient truth” for the GOP.

The North Carolina operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who told the Charlotte Observer that he did not commit any wrongdoing, declined to comment Thursday. “I’m just not giving any comment at this time,” he told reporters and photographers in front of his house in Bladenboro, adding, “No disrespect to anybody.”

The Harris campaign has said it was not aware of illegal activities.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that in the days immediately after the primary, Pittenger suspected that something was not right.

Aides to Pittenger told the executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party and a regional political director for the National Republican Congressional Committee that they believed fraud had occurred, according to people familiar with their discussions.

An NRCC spokesman denied that Pittenger’s campaign raised the possibility of fraud in the primary.

Asked Thursday before The Post’s story was published whether he was concerned about potential fraud in the district, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) replied, “I trust the North Carolina Board of Elections to take whatever action they feel is necessary.”

Burr sidestepped a question about whether it was important for the president and other Republican leaders to speak out. “I think the appropriate thing is for the North Carolina Board of Elections to do their job,” he said.

On Wednesday, Republican senators had little to say about North Carolina.

“I don’t know any details about that,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). “But I’m concerned about Broward County [Fla.], I’m concerned about a couple of races in California, we had a situation in Georgia that [was] questionable,” he added, pointing to other states where Republicans have raised concerns.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also mentioned Broward County, a Democratic stronghold in his state where he and other Republicans criticized the vote-tallying process during the recount in the gubernatorial and Senate races. But he had little to say about North Carolina.

“I don’t know anything about the case,” Rubio said. “I’ve just heard, you know, headlines, but I haven’t read it in depth.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he had not paid attention to the North Carolina situation. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said: “I’m afraid I’m not an expert. I don’t know anything about it, really. I saw a headline, that’s it.”

Democratic lawmakers have had much more say.

“This is bigger than that one seat,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said Thursday. “This is about undermining the integrity of our elections.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) let out a laugh Wednesday when asked about North Carolina. “You couldn’t write the script any better,” he said juxtaposing the alleged GOP fraud with conservative efforts to tighten voter ID laws and limit early voting periods.

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said, “The entire election should be redone, all the way back to the primary.”

This week Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), incoming House majority leader, suggested that Democrats, who will control the House in January, may not seat Harris if he is certified the winner.

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, said, “There is an ongoing investigation by state officials, and the speaker believes that is appropriate.”

During a post-election interview with The Post, Ryan voiced some bewilderment about balloting in California, where Democrats performed well, though he stopped short of accusing the state of wrongdoing.

Dallas Woodhouse, the North Carolina GOP executive director, told The Post on Thursday that if the state elections board can “show a substantial likelihood” that possible fraud could have changed the outcome of November’s vote, “then we fully would support a new election.”

Representatives for Trump and Pence did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Kobach, who with Trump’s support made an unsuccessful bid for governor, said: “Voter fraud happens on both sides of the aisle. And if nothing else, I’m glad Democrats are acknowledging that it exists.”

 

I am baffled by this because Kobach is all about the suppression of voters who do not vote ultra-conservative.  He would have turned a blind eye to this if it has resulted in his election to governor of Kansas.

[GreyhoundFan]

I know it's The Onion, but I could see the repugs doing this:

 

[fraurosena]

Oh, I hope this works!

 

[onekidanddone]

10 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, I hope this works!

 

Might be time to hit up my Wisconsin Connection for more intel.  Of course I think I know what he will say "Fornicating fornicate face republicans... Fornicate them...Fornicate face Trump....".

Yea, pretty much that.

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Might be time to hit up my Wisconsin Connection for more intel.  Of course I think I know what he will say "Fornicating fornicate face republicans... Fornicate them...Fornicate face Trump....".

Yea, pretty much that.

Genuine question here - I read the article, and the way it came across to me was that electoral boundaries are drawn geographically, rather than to represent roughly equal numbers of people. Is that me totally misunderstanding something? I would have expected rural electorates to be larger than urban, but for both to be representing roughly equal numbers of people.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Crisis level’: Republican women sound warning after election losses"

Spoiler

Republicans lost the House in November as droves of female voters spurned the party, a reflection of the gaping gender gap. The election devastated the GOP’s already meager group of congresswomen. Almost none of the political survivors will hold positions of power in Congress next year.

Republican women recognize this is a serious problem. It’s unclear whether GOP men agree.

“It’s very painful,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), who championed female candidates for a decade as the only woman in Republican leadership. “We need to make sure that we are growing our ranks.”

The stark contrast between the parties on gender will be evident when the new Congress is sworn in Jan. 3.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is poised to reclaim the speaker’s gavel as 36 women join her caucus. But House Republicans, who have already elected men to their top two posts, will see their group of women reduced by almost half to just 13, with West Virginia’s Carol Miller the lone GOP woman in the freshman class.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said the number of Republican women in the House has fallen to “crisis level.”

“Women are a majority of voters in our country, and the GOP must do more to ensure our conference represents their views,” said Stefanik, who announced plans this month to help Republican women in their primaries in 2020.

The GOP’s poor performance with women this election cycle has exposed sensitive fault lines within the party over identity politics and how to win elections.

Republican leaders often hedge on whether recruiting female candidates should be a top priority, saying they want who­ever is most qualified. The need for more female lawmakers to better reflect the country — or at least to win votes from more women — has not been a given for all party members.

President Trump’s position as head of the party has not helped. His sexual boasts and vulgar comments about women such as former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels were seen as fueling this cycle’s gender gap and Republicans’ punishing defeat with female voters in the nation’s suburbs.

Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and allegations against him of sexual misconduct during his teen years — claims he denied — further galvanized female voters.

According to exit polls, the gender gap was 12 percentage points in the midterm elections as female voters favored Democrats over Republicans. The last time women voted for Democrats by anywhere near that margin was 1982, when the gap was 17 points.

The GOP’s problem with women could worsen as a number of female Democrats run for president in 2020 and newcomers like Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) become standard-bearers for the party.

“This is something we’ve got to come to grips with,” former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said of the 2018 gender gap.

“If you look at the post-election analysis and polling, you’d have to be pretty blind not to see the problem,” Cole said. “We’re maximizing rural voters, we’re maximizing white male voters, particularly white males without a college education. Those are all great to have, but they’re not enough to be a majority in the House.”

Disgust with Trump has turned some female Republican legislators into Democrats.

In Kansas last week, state Sen. Barbara Bollier left the GOP after more than four decades, citing Trump’s vulgar comments about women and issues such as the Medicaid expansion and reproductive health.

Bollier said she could no longer “stand up and say, ‘It’s fine to blindly support Trump Republicanism.’ ”

After changing parties, “now I can sleep better — it was a huge moral thing,” she said.

As another sign of the gender divide, Republican women will be limited in congressional leadership roles next year.

In the House, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) replaced McMorris Rodgers as the Republican Conference chair — and the leadership team’s only woman — last month, while Rep. Kay Granger (Texas) will be the only woman to serve as ranking Republican on a committee. The Democrats will have four female committee chairs and a number of women on their leadership roster, including Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) leading the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Tensions over the lack of women in GOP leadership flared last week amid reports that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had expressed a preference for Rep. Tom Emmer (Minn.) to lead the NRCC over Rep. Ann Wagner (Mo.) as she prepared to mount a bid for the post.

McCarthy denied discouraging Wagner; she said she understood from the Republican leader that he “had a different plan.”

“I respect that,” Wagner said Wednesday on Fox News. “And I decided, you know what, I’m not going to put my name in nomination. I want to be part of the team.” Emmer became the NRCC chairman.

Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Wagner whether GOP men “get it” when it comes to the party’s problems with women.

“They need to get it, or we won’t have the majority again,” Wagner said.

Stefanik, the party’s youngest woman in Congress, also faced pushback this month when she said that she would “play in primaries” on behalf of Republican women.

“If that’s what Elise wants to do, then that’s her call, her right . . . But I think that’s a mistake,” Emmer told Roll Call in an interview.

“It shouldn’t be just based on looking for a specific set of ingredients — gender, race, religion — and then we’re going to play in the primary,” he said.

Stefanik, who helped increase the number of GOP female candidates this cycle as the NRCC’s chair of recruitment, replied on Twitter.

“I will continue speaking out abt the crisis level of GOP women in Congress & will try to lead and change that by supporting strong GOP women candidates through my leadership PAC,” she wrote. “But NEWSFLASH — I wasn’t asking for permission.”

Outgoing Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said she fully supports Stefanik’s plan to support women in Republican primaries.

“Unless you get them out of the primaries, they can’t win a general,” Black said. “And women do need to be asked. That’s the difference between a guy and a gal. The guys just say, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this,’ and the women need to be encouraged.”

Stefanik is now circulating a letter urging Emmer and the NRCC to assess what went wrong this election cycle, including with female voters.

Emmer responded positively.

“I fully support what Elise’s letter is asking and her efforts because it’s going to make our conference better. We are on the same team, we want to find out what went wrong, correct it, and win the majority in 2020,” he said Friday in a statement.

In the Senate, Republicans added Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) to the leadership as GOP conference vice chair. The party has not formally chosen its committee chairs for next term, though Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) are expected to continue leading the Energy and Natural Resources, and Aging panels, respectively. On five Senate committees, the top Democrat will be a woman.

There were some positive signs for GOP women in the Senate. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) will replace Sen. Bob Corker next year and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.) won a race to serve out the rest of her predecessor’s term, becoming the first woman elected to Congress from her state.

Still, GOP women in the upper chamber have never held a rank higher than conference chair.

“We don’t see women in leadership, which is something that needs to happen if people are going to believe you’re serious,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican former governor of New Jersey.

Whitman predicted the GOP will “largely become irrelevant” if it doesn’t start appealing to more women. The party is “not only ignoring” women, she said — “they’re aggressively looking the other way.”

“We know that women are better than 50 percent of the voting population. So, to ignore them is a huge mistake,” she said.

Former congresswoman Mary Bono (R-Calif.), who left Congress in 2013, said Republican leaders often fail to give women opportunities to raise their profiles on Capitol Hill.

On that score, she said, “we are our own worst enemies.”

“We tried to address this five years ago, six years ago,” said Bono, who founded the Republican Women’s Policy Committee in 2012 to help GOP women present a unified voice to leadership. “The election results have proved that we’re just not connecting.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

 

[onekidanddone]

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

 

So how many does that make it now? Over 40 I think

[AmazonGrace]

Oh God what an asshole 

 

 

[Ozlsn]

10 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Oh God what an asshole 

 

 

So now I'm going to have to google "ranked choice voting" to see if/how it differs from the preferential voting I'm familiar with.  And dude, seriously - could you look any more like a sore loser there? Grow the hell up and learn some damn graciousness.

Googled  - it's pretty much preferential voting, going through preference distribution rounds until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote. Not sure if you have to number all the boxes though.

Also this idiot would wilt under our system, although at least he would be used to winning with a first preference count well under 50% though. I have no idea how he'd go with preference distributions going down to a 15 vote final margin though!

[AmazonGrace]