One week

We’re a week away from the election. In a number of states, including Missouri, people have already voted. In Missouri, it absentee voting. The other states have early voting, a scheme by democrats to make vote fraud easier.

Easier? How?

It’s simple. Most county clerks really don’t do a passable job. For them it’s best to just ease along, not making any waves. When people register to vote, they don’t cross check to see if the person is already registered with another name. For instance, I, like most Americans, that three names. Let’s make up one, John Thomas Roberts. Mr Roberts could be registered as John Roberts, Tom Roberts, John T. Roberts, J. Thomas Roberts at 123 Main Street. If the clerk mistypes the address, some of those entries could be at 123 Main Street, others at 124 Main Street—and everyone version would be registered as a real voters. Mr. Roberts could, therefore, vote four times—more if he voted early and then showed up at the polls as well. You see, most county clerks never cross-check, nor remove early voters from the poll registry. Mr. Roberts could, theoretically, vote eight times.

In areas in Kansas City, St. Louis, and other liberal bastions across the state, the local poll judges wouldn’t be able to stop them. In times past, some judges were blocked from the polls, or intimidated by thugs. Kansas City’s past history in the last decades has had both.

http://media.cleveland.com/plain_dealer_metro/photo/11647531-large.jpg

Polling station with paper ballots

Can we eliminate vote fraud? No, not completely. What we can do, however, is make vote fraud much more difficult. First, require voting by paper ballots. In my county, we mark our choices in black ink on the ballot and then it is scanned and read. Fool proof? No. If the ballot is improperly marked it could be misread. The scanner can have basic logic to reject ballots that have no votes, two votes for the same office, or marks outside of the selection box. But, if there is a question later on the vote count, those paper ballots are still available for a real person to check.

What else can be done? Photo Voter-ID, using a photo taken at the time of registration. Liberal claims to the contrary, if a photo ID is required to cash a check, there is no reason why a photo-ID can’t be required to vote. All claims to the contrary are just tactics by liberals to preserve their ability for vote fraud.

What else? Eliminate early voting. The democrat adage, “Vote early, vote often,” is real. Should we eliminate absentee voting? No, there are legitimate reasons for absentee voting. Citizens in the military, deployed  outside the country or based in other states, retain their right to vote and to have their votes counted. There are mechanisms in place for the military to vote. There are also legitimate reason why others, not in the military, cannot be present to vote at their polls. But, in those cases, the absentee voter should present and sign an affidavit attesting to their reason for not voting at their home polling station, such as travel or illness to name two.

Our Republic is based on the fundamental right of its citizens who meet the established requirements for a voter. That means that aliens, non-citizens, whether here legally or illegally, do NOT vote. The democrats want those illegal votes, it dilutes the votes of citizens and the democrats believe those illegal votes can be bought. The legality of voting is irrelevant to them. Voting is nothing more than a means for them to gain and retain power. If they thought they could get away with it, and if we don’t fight them, one day our right to vote and have it counted, will be no more.

This election appears to be leading to a ‘Pub victory in many areas of the country and in Missouri. Let’s work with our legislators, local and national, in the 2015 session to pass, and override vetos, for some real voter security—paper ballots, audits of the voting rolls and insuring they are clean, passing Photo-IDs for registration and voting, and putting some real teeth in penalties for vote fraud. In many instances, vote fraud is only a misdemeanor. Vote fraud should be a felony with a long prison term and heavy fines.

The United States is a republic, not a democracy nor a mobocracy. We must have the tools to insure it remains a republic. Else, we will have not a republic, not a democracy, but the rule of elites of a single party—just like the old USSR.

After Action Report

With one exception, the primary came out much as I expected. Amendments 1, 5, and 9 passed, number 1 narrowly but the other two with very wide margins. Amendment 7 failed, again with wide margins as did Kansas City’s Street Car issue. The Amendments will be in force as soon as the election results are certified.

Great news!

On the Cass County front, Jeff Cox won against Dave Morris for Presiding Commissioner with nearly 60% of the votes and Stacey Lett won against Meryl Lange for Associate Circuit Court Judge by a larger margin against Lange than did Jeff Cox against Morris. The one disappointment was the loss by Ron Johnson against Ryan Wescoat in a race that can only be called a grudge match.

I was not surprised by any of the above. According to information I’ve been receiving this last week, I was not surprised by any of the outcomes. I was given some raw polling information taken about a week to ten days ago covering the Cox, Johnson and Lett races. The election yesterday confirmed the poll taken a week earlier.

In Jackson County, Jacob Turk will run again against Emmanuel Cleaver winning his primary race with almost 69% of the votes. I’m not sure how many times Turk has run against Cleaver, but he gains more ground every time. Perhaps this time he’ll beat out Cleaver in the Kansas City democrat enclave. Congratulations to Jacob Turk on his primary win.

The Missouri House is now complete. Three new ‘Pub legislators, elected via special election to fill three vacancies, will be sworn in on September 10th just in time for the Veto Override session. Jay Nixon had failed to fill those vacancies leaving the Republican majority weakened. With the three new legislators, the ‘Pubs once again have a veto proof margin in the House.

THE NEXT LEGISLATURE — ‘GOP regains veto-proof majority in Missouri House,’ AP: “Republicans regained a two-thirds majority in the Missouri House on Tuesday heading into a big showdown with Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon over his vetoes of tax breaks, abortion restrictions and other issues. Republicans won two of the three special elections for vacant House seats. That will give them 110 House seats – one more than the two-thirds majority required to override vetoes. Republicans already hold a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Republican Shawn Sisco, of Rolla, won in the 120th District while Republican Tila Hubrecht, of Dexter, won in the 151st District. Democrat Alan Green, of Florissant, was leading in a special election for the 67th District. The special election winners are expected to be sworn into office by Sept. 10, when lawmakers will convene to consider overriding Nixon’s vetoes of 32 bills and 136 budget sections. … The Legislature’s September agenda includes the consideration of veto overrides on a series of bills granting tax breaks to particular businesses, which Nixon contends could bust a hole in the budget. Republican legislative leaders say the measures could help the economy while overturning what they describe as misinterpretations of tax policies by the courts and the Department of Revenue. Nixon said the numerous budget vetoes were needed because of falling state revenues and to guard against the potential for the Legislature to override his vetoes on the tax breaks. Among Nixon’s other high-profile vetoes are bills extending Missouri’s one-day abortion waiting period to 72 hours and allowing specially trained teachers to carry concealed guns in public schools. The special elections were called after incumbents resigned for a variety of reasons. Republican Rep. Jason Smith, of Salem, stepped down from the 120th District seat after winning a special election to Congress in June 2013.” — PoliticMO Newsletter, August 6, 2014 and The Southeast Missourian.

Taken as a whole, the primary was good for republicans.

Primary Day! Go Vote!

Today is Primary Day in Kansas and Missouri and probably a few other states, too, but, I’m only interested in these two. I was Facebook chatting with a friend earlier. We were wondering if the turnout would be high or low and whether one would benefit our folks more or less. In the end, we just didn’t know.

It did remind me of the first time I voted. The time was 1956. Adlai Stevenson was running against Dwight Eisenhower. My folks lived in southern Illinois. My mother was a grade school teacher. My father was a coal miner and part-time farmer. A few years later when the near yearly strikes by the UMWA permanently closed most of the coal mines, he became a full time farmer.

Being a miner, he was a member of the UMWA, the United Mine Workers of America. Dad remained a member of the union after the mine, where he worked for thirty years, closed. He wanted to retain his pension and health benefits. If he didn’t continue to pay union dues, he would lose pension and benefits.

Elections in coal country were a bit different from other areas of the country. There were highly organized affairs with the unions firmly in control. On election day, each poll would have a collection of union officials outside. Every union had a representative at every polling station. When union members arrived to vote, they checked with their union representative who, in turn, checked their name off the union roster. Heaven help the union member who didn’t vote or check in with the union before voting. Fines up to $100 was not uncommon.

In Illinois at that time, schools and many businesses closed on election day. Mom and Grandma had voted earlier. Dad had some chores to do. He voted later and I, nine-years old, went with him.

We arrived at the polling station that was set up in the yard of the township headquarters in West City, IL. Dad was recognized by a number of other union members and waved over. The union rep at that polling place was a man whose name I’ve forgotten. I do remember Dad calling him a ‘loud-mouth.’

Dad checked in, had his name checked as voting on the union roster and was given a ballot with all the union-backed candidates already checked off. There were few, if any, items on the ballot unchecked. Dad introduced me to Loud-mouth. I remember he hollered, “Another UMWA vote here!” and pushed a ballot into my hands. He told me to follow my father and put the ballot into the same box as did my Dad. I looked at Dad. He looked down at me and gave a slight nod of his head.

A few steps away were the election judges, both union men. One took my ballot and Dad’s and stuffed them in the ballot box. The other had my Dad sign the voter roster. He asked my name and I gave it. The judge wrote it on the voter roster just below my Dad’s name.

I had just voted in my first election, at age nine. It was the union and Illinois way. In parts of the county today, I’m told the voting practices haven’t changed in the near-sixty years since I first voted.

Happy Pre-Primary Day, Kansas and Missouri!

First, for the morning headlines…

Drudge: DOZENS FROM EBOLA-STRUCK COUNTRIES CAUGHT SNEAKING INTO USA

Now that is a disconcerting headline! Local talk-shows Friday and over the weekend were up in arms about Obama bringing two American missionaries with Ebola back to the US to the CDC research center in Atlanta. The Ebola survivor rate is between 10 to 50% depending on the version.

What makes Ebola deadly is its long incubation period, ten days to two weeks, when it masks itself with flu-like symptoms. After that point, organ failure occurs and death quickly follows.

More importantly, there is no vaccine for Ebola. That is one factor in bringing the two Americans home—the hope of developing an Ebola vaccine.

***

Jeff Cox, running for re-election for Cass County Presiding Commissioner, received a very favorable write-up from the Kansas City Star. A surprisingly fair report from that liberal, propaganda rag. It contrasted the two candidates—Cox, returning the county to its primary purpose, and paying off the massive debt created by the prior commissioners, and Morris, whose backers are those previous commissioners, Brian Baker and Bill Cook. Morris wants a return to unconstrained spending in the name of economic growth. It’s interesting that Brian Baker, one of the commissioners who supported the failed Broadband and TriGen projects, now works for the company, UAM, the company that failed to deliver those two failed projects. Hmmmm.

Can we say ‘conflict of interest’, Mr. Morris, by your mentors and backers?

***

A poll has been released on four of the five proposed constitutional amendments that will appear on tomorrow ballot. One amendment, number 7, was not polled due to ‘conflict of interest.’ It does make one wonder how #7 is doing. From what I’ve heard from the grapevine, the words, “tax increase,” is killing it.

Poll: Remington Research Group surveys ballot measures

August 04, 2014 / by

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Remington Research Group in Kansas City conducted surveys on Tuesday’s ballot measures between July 31-August 2, showing a split between heavily supported and too-close-to-call measures less than 48 hours from election day.

Ballot measurers campaigns have raised millions to reach voters.

Screenshot 2014-08-04 08.15.47Amendment 1, also known as “Right to Farm” holds a lead but the race is too close to call. Supporters of Amendment 1 totaled 48%, with opponents at 40%, and undecided at 12%.

“Amendment 1 is going to be determined by turnout and could go either way,” Titus Bond of Remington Research Group said. “With nothing else at the top of the ballot to drive turnout it will really come down to who is more passionate about this issue. Amendment 1 supporters appear to have lost their message to Amendment 1 opponents but the ballot language may be able drive their campaign to a victory,” said Bond.

The other close race is with Constitutional Amendment 8, which seeks to create a lottery system to benefit veterans is very close with a high number of undecided voters. 41% of voters support Amendment 8, 46% oppose, and 13% are undecided. It has received far less attention than the other two races, but appears to be just as close.

Screenshot 2014-08-04 08.15.58There are two other proposed Constitutional Amendment appearing on Tuesday’s primary election ballot. Constitutional Amendment 5, which directs the state to protect 2nd Amendment gun rights, is cruising towards victory with 60% of voters supporting, 31% opposing, and 9% undecided.

Constitutional Amendment 9, which protects Missourian’s electronic communications from unreasonable searches and seizure is strongly supported by voters according to the survey. 67% of voters support Amendment 9, only 20% oppose it, with 14% undecided.

The demographics of the poll was said to match the turnout for the last four Missouri primaries.

Election Day: the Start of the Political Season

http://cmsimg.fdlreporter.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Avis=U0&Dato=99999999&Kategori=FON&Lopenr=140326041&Ref=AR&MaxW=280&Election-2014Today is Election Day in Cass County. The elections are for some city council seats, a few mayoral races and for school and other boards across the county.

Locally, there are three amendments to our city charter—no tax deadbeats nor felons can run for mayor or city council and language to modify citizen-led petitions. Mrs. Crucis and I will go vote later this morning.

These elections are non-partisan. That means there is no party identification which makes it more difficult to choose which ones are wolves in sheep clothing. You had to really dig this time around to determine their positions because the libs and progressives know that if their real agenda was known, they would likely not be elected.

Here’s my rule-of-thumb deciding for whom to vote. First for city council: does the candidate promote section 8 housing (at least one here does,) wasteful spending (we don’t need a community center when there is one just three miles down the road,) and/or ‘sustainability.’ If the candidate has a record of supporting any of these issues, or has supported these issues outside of office, I’ll not vote for them.

Likewise for school board: if the candidate supports the teacher’s unions, more spending but less accountability, or Common Core, they will not get my vote. There is one school board candidate who has been soft on spending and unions that I’ve not yet decided whether that candidate will get my vote. I probably won’t decided until I’m about to mark my ballot. That happens sometimes. There is nothing that says I have to vote for every open position.

This Election Day is for local positions and issues. County, state and federal elections will come later, a primary this summer and national mid-term elections in the Fall.

The political season is upon us. This election will likely be small if it follows the trend of previous years. Some folks just can’t get worked up over local issues and elections. The worst of it all is that these local elections can be more important in people’s daily lives than many of the broader issues and elections decided later this year. What can be more important that the qualify and effectiveness of your children’s education? Many, myself included, believe public schools have stopped educating students and instead are indoctrinating them to be unquestioning young progressives.

I hope you all are registered and will go vote today!

The day after…

UPDATE: Tea Party wins big in Colorado.

Yesterday was Election Day in a number of states. A huge tax increase in neighboring Kansas City—$800M for supposed medical research with no oversight, lost in a 5 to 1 verdict or 84% against. The tax supporters spent over $2M dollars unsuccessfully for another case of corporate and union welfare.

(Update) In Colorado, liberals proposed a massive, $950 million tax hike that was earmarked specifically to increase education spending. It lost by a 66% to 34% margin only receiving half the votes in liberal Denver and Boulder.

Teacher unions spent $4 million promoting the measure, outspending opponents by at least ten-to-one. 

But the model crashed on takeoff tonight. Coloradans didn’t just defeat Amendment 66, they repudiated it by a vote of 66 percent to 34. With almost all the results in, the tax hike was only winning half the votes in liberal Denver and Boulder Counties.

The Centennial State may have tilted left in recent years, but tonight’s results suggest there’s a solid counterrevolution against the liberal direction state government has taken. Two Democratic state senators, including the senate president, were recalled in September after voting for gun restrictions. Now the state’s tax-and-spend constituencies have been given a huge black eye by voters who clearly rejected the idea that education could be improved by pouring more money into the existing system. The National Review.

***

Democrats won the governorships In Virginia and New Jersey,. What? Christie ran as a ‘Pub? So? I stand by my statement. Christie ran up a large margin in the election with the active assistance of the ‘Pub establishment and democrats. Therefore, if it quacks like a democrat, waddles like a democrat, it is a democrat.

In Virginia, McAuliffe won by a squeaker. For him to win, he had help from the GOP establishment in the state—‘Pubs who campaigned for McAuliffe, assistance from Karl Rove and the national ‘Pub establishment, and by democrat collusion with the Libertarian party who ran an Obama supporter and political bundler on the Libertarian ticket to siphon conservative votes away from Cuccinelli. McAuliffe’s double-digit poll margin shrank to less than 3% once the votes were counted.

Cuccinelli had to battle the democrats, democrats running as libertarians and his own party. With all that opposition, he lost by a slim margin. Some pundits declared that if Cuccinelli has a few more days, as the news about Obamacare reached more VA voters, he could have won. McAuliffe ran on his support for Obamacare. Cuccinelli ran against it.

The GOP Declares War On Obamacare Conservatives

By: streiff (Diary)  |  November 5th, 2013 at 10:30 AM

GOP-Tea-PartySince the this summer a low level civil war has been simmering within the GOP between conservatives who have grown tired of the lack of desire on the part of the Establishment to resist the radical statism that has epitomized the regime of Barack Obama and the Establishment that seems more than happy to go along with Obama so long as they are kept in champagne and caviar. Many solid conservatives have insisted that the division is overblown and that a big tent is necessary to win elections.

To anyone remaining that thinks a reasonable accommodation may be made with the GOP Establishment, today’s op-ed by Michael Gerson (The GOP’s new reality) should serve as a wake up call. In fact, it is apparent from Gerson’s op-ed that the Establishment views conservatives, not the Democrats, as the existential threat to their place at the trough.

Following the recent tea party Tet Offensive — tactically disastrous but symbolically important — the Republican establishment has commenced counterinsurgency operations. Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — both facing primary challenges from the right — are responding more forcefully to their populist opponents. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut ties with a Republican advertising firm employed by tea party challengers. “We’re not going to do business,” says a spokesman, “with people who profit off of attacking Republicans. Purity for profit is a disease that threatens the Republican Party.”

This vivid turn of phrase — “purity for profit” — captures the main reason Republican leaders are edging away from a strategy of accommodation. The Obama era has unleashed a great deal of genuine populist and libertarian energy. But a good portion of it is being channeled into business and fundraising models that depend on stoking resentment against the GOP itself (at least as currently constituted).

The result is a paradox. Over the past few decades, Republican members of Congress have become more reliably conservative (as their Democratic colleagues, to a lesser extent, have become more liberal). Liberal Republicanism has essentially ceased to exist. This means that tea party conservatives are revolting against a more uniformly conservative party. The RINOs they hunt are actually an endangered species. So they have transformed tactical disagreements — over, say, a hopeless attempt to defund Obamacare — into defining ideological struggles.

I’m going to pause here to address some of the strawmen Gerson has immolated.

First, the disagreement over the government shutdown was only a disagreement over tactics in the shallowest sense. I wrote about that in The Budget Showdown Was About Ideology Not About Tactics.

The disagreement was between those of us who see really clearly that the objective of Obamacare is the implementation of a single payer healthcare system after trashing one-sixth of the US economy and those who agree with what Obama is trying to do but prefer to do it more efficiently and maintain the artifice of a market based economy. Remember, it was the Establishment making the rounds of Sunday shows deriding those who were fighting as “whacko birds” and doubting whether they were Republicans. They were too busy to fight Obama but they had plenty of time to fight conservatives. They had plenty of time to send out fundraising letters based on the three dozen or so staged Potemkin votes they’d made to repeal Obamacare, but when push came to shove, when it became, as we Southerners call it, nut cutting time, they were nowhere to be seen.

The column continues and you can read it here. The column ends with these last two paragraphs.

There is exactly zero evidence today that the GOP exists to win elections.

To the contrary all the evidence indicates that it exists to perpetuate the perks and power of the party leadership and to provide sinecures for a coterie of pathetic losers like former NRSC director Rob Jesmer. They aren’t trying to win elections, they are selecting their buddies to become members of their country club and if their buddy loses the primary they are more than willing to help the Democrats win the general election. As Erick posted in The Hungry and the Well Fed,  they play us for chumps asking for money and assuring us that they will fight like the very devil himself… after the next election… and provided the right guy wins.

That last paragraph says it all.

Elections have Conseqences

Elections, and actions, have consequences. Missouri is suffering under those consequences as more and more revelations are uncovered about the illegal release of confidential information to the FedGov—in particular, to the DHS and the IRS.

The first case of individual data being illegally collected was disclosed when the Department of Revenue, through their licensing bureau, refused to issue a CCW permit. The DoR has been collecting and scanning private documents and forwarding that information out of state in violation of Missouri law.

One CCW applicant refused to submit the requested documents. The Dor refused to issue the permit—although the DoR has no legal authority to refuse a permit once it has been approved by the county’s Sheriff! That applicant sued the DoR and a Judge issued the Injuction prohibiting the DoR from collecting any further data pending the resolution of the suit.

Jay Nixon initially denied the accusations. However, later, in testimony before the state legislature, the DoR confirmed they did collect private information as they have been accused. A Missouri Judge granted an injunction to block the DoR from collecting private data from Missouri’s citizens.

Today, new allegations broke about illegal actions by the Nixon administration. By Missouri law, personal information of the state’s CCW holders is confidential. That data is held by the DoR and can only be released for criminal investigations—individual information. The Missouri Highway Patrol admitted this week it had requested the complete CCW database from the DoR, twice, and had sent that information to the IRS. Again, in violation of Missouri law.

Highway patrol gave feds Missouri weapon permits data

JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.

Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.

After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.

Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.

Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.

The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.

“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”

Chris Koster, Missouri’s Attorney General, whose office is administratively under the Governor, has not, so far, investigated these violations of state law despite numerous request for him to do so.

What has all this to do with today’s post title? It’s the fact that Jax Nixon and Chris Koster was re-elected to office by a large margin last November. Does anyone truly believe if either, or both of them had lost that election, that the heads of the DoR, the DMV and the Highway Patrol would still be in office? If Ed Martin had beaten Koster last November, I guarantee that all three agency heads would be under investigation. If Nixon had lost his election, all three agency heads would be under suspension pending the results of that investigation.

But—neither lost and now we have a massive cover-up by Nixon’s department heads. Those are the consequences of that election. The voter’s action in that election has lead directly to this situation. Yes, elections have consequences.