The GOP are fascists who hate our form of government (democracy)

Cuddles · Apr 6, 2021

incarceration/100k

Cuddles · Apr 10, 2021

Cuddles · Apr 11, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/11/politics/voting-restrictions-analysis/index.html
Polls show majority of Republicans mistakenly think the 2020 election wasn't legitimate

(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that 55% of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election was the result of illegal voting or rigging. Additionally, 60% of Republicans incorrectly agree that the election was stolen from Republican Donald Trump.

But the lion's share of Republicans (65%) disagreed and said they were not confident at all the election was conducted fairly and accurately, which is consistent with the Ipsos polling spoken about above. This 65% is truly an anomaly in recent times.

Following every election from 2004 to 2016, the Pew Research Center queried voters on whether they were confident that the votes around the country were counted accurately.

The voters for the losing candidate in those elections had a lot more faith than Trump voters had in the results of the 2020 election. In every election from 2004 to 2016, between 8% and 14% of the voters of the losing candidate said they had no confidence at all that the election was legitimate. In 2016, just 11% of Hillary Clinton voters were not at all confident.

Today, a mere 28% of Republicans say everything should be done to make it easy for citizens to vote. That compares with 71% who say citizens should have to prove they really want to vote.

Back in 2018 (before Trump lost), the split was far closer at 48% of Republicans who believed voting should be made easy as easy as possible to 51% who thought voters should have to prove it.
(Democrats, by comparison, have barely moved on the question with 85% arguing voting should be made as easy as possible. That was 84% in 2018.)

Cuddles · Apr 14, 2021

Cuddles · Apr 15, 2021

gwb-trading said:
Ron DeSantis personally had his ballot tossed once because of strict voting laws: report
https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/ron-desantis-2652522119/

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) works with Republican lawmakers to pass more restrictive voting laws, his own 2016 election mishap is resurfacing amid the latest controversy. According to NBC Miami, the Republican governor had his own ballot tossed out when he cast his vote by mail for Florida's 2016 primary election. Flagler County elections officials reportedly flagged the then-congressman's ballot and labeled

When DeSantis contacted the canvassing board and provided a new signature, the board did not budge. In fact, they "determined that handwriting also had "no similarities" to the signature on DeSantis' ballot and rejected the vote," Flagler County elections officials confirmed.

Now, DeSantis is being questioned about why the signatures did not match but reportedly continues to decline to comment on the matter, according to NBCLX.

The publication also highlights the contradictions in DeSantis' actions in comparison to the proposed bills he and Republican lawmakers are hoping to sign into law. Like many other Republican lawmakers in various states, Florida Republicans are targeting mail-in voting as they work to implement restrictive measures to make it more difficult to vote. But despite their efforts, public records reportedly show that DeSantis often utilized many of the very voting practices he's now aiming to prohibit:

DeSantis' public voting history – obtained through public records requests from the St. Johns and Flagler supervisors of elections – shows he regularly took advantage of Florida's no-excuse absentee option, casting votes by mail in six out of seven elections between March 2016 and August 2020. The only time he voted in-person during that period was at a well-choreographed photo opportunity, when he appeared atop the ballot during his 2018 gubernatorial run.

The proposed voting reforms in Florida have even left some Republicans baffled. Pasco Co. Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley, also a Republican, shared his reaction to the proposed voting and election reforms.

"I was perplexed, disappointed, and confused," said Corley. "Florida was held up as the model of (election) success. State leaders took victory laps after the election."

He added, "I'm not really sure the 'why' of these measures. Voters love dropboxes. There were no issues in Florida with dropboxes…nobody can really address the legitimate reason why we're doing this…there are so many safeguards in place."

Florida lawmakers have joined Republicans nationwide in their push to pass restrictive voting laws. Since last year, Republican lawmakers have proposed more than 240 voting bills nationwide.
More...

gwb-trading said:
DeSantis wants voters’ signatures to match. Would his pass the test?
If the Florida governor gets his way, mail-in ballot signatures would have to match the most recent signature on file with the state. His own signature history shows how autographs evolve.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/flori...-signatures-to-match-would-his-pass-the-test/

Ronald DeSantis had just turned 30 when the up-and-coming prosecutor sent a Mayport Navy sailor to prison for six years on child pornography charges. DeSantis’ signature on the 2008 plea agreement was crisp and elegant: A sharp “R” to start; a stately “D” for Dion, his middle name; and “DeSantis” written with an artistic flourish.

Over the next 13 years, DeSantis’ signature would evolve from the neat cursive as a prosecutor to the hurried one he uses frequently today as Florida’s governor. Along the way, he dropped the middle initial. He altered the look of the “R,” and then switched it back. A quick squiggle and a big swoop replaced most of the letters in his last name.

Handwriting experts say no two signatures from one person are the same. It’s why Florida election officials for years have used all the signatures at their disposal — sometimes more than a dozen — when they authenticate a voter’s signature on a mail-in ballot.

DeSantis wants to rein-in that long-standing practice. Vote-by-mail signatures “must match the most recent signature on file” with the state Department of Elections, DeSantis declared in February. A bill moving through the Florida Senate would make that one-to-one matchthe law.

Some election officials say limiting signature samples could make it harder to authenticate the identities of thosewho voteby mail, perhaps leading to more rejected ballots. Signatures change over time, they say, and are often affected by the choice of pen, the writing surface, fatigue or a person’s health.

DeSantis’ own John Hancock has undergone a transformation during his time in government, as demonstrated by 16 of his signatures compiled by the Tampa Bay Times from publicly available sources between 2008 and now.

Experts and election officials who reviewed DeSantis’ signature history for the Times said some of the modifications in his penmanship could have posed trouble for election workers, especially if constrained to one point of comparison. In a handful of instances, it’s possible the ballot could have been rejected, they said.

“It shows why it is better to have multiple signatures for review than to have one,” said Tom Vastrick, a forensic document examiner based in Apopka.

The Times sent DeSantis’ office copiesof his signatures along with a summary of the expertopinions. His spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on the analysis nor did they say why this change in law is needed.

The new limitations on signature matching are included in a larger bill, sponsored by Sen. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican, that would overhaul mail-in voting. Baxley said comparing the signature on the ballot to the most recent one on file with the state will simplify the verification process.

“It’s the most current and more likely to be how they’re signing things now,” Baxley said. “That is the key.”

Thebill is part of a package of voting legislation that Republicans are pushing this session, even though DeSantis praised Florida for how it conducted its 2020 election. “The way Florida did it, I think inspires confidence, I think that’s how elections should be run,” DeSantis said at the time.

Yet five months later, Florida has joined other GOP-controlled states in proposing restrictions on voting. That includes limits on mail-in ballots, a form of voting that former President Donald Trump used as a Florida resident but ridiculed in his failed bid to overturn the election.

The bill is scheduled for a committee vote Wednesday. Baxley said changes could be forthcoming.

The past and the present
The signature on the state paperwork for DeSantis’ first congressional campaign in 2012 bears only a passing resemblance to the one he often scribbles these days on executive actions.

Richard Orsini, a forensic document examiner from Jacksonville Beach, teaches election officials how to spot the similarities.

The initial downstroke of the “R” in “Ron” is consistent in the two signatures, he said. And the finishing stroke in both samples is a cursive “s” that crosses back over the last name in a clockwise curl. Despite other differences, Orsini said it would be reasonable to conclude these signatures belong to the same person.

Orsini and other handwriting experts cram a lifetime of knowledge into their hours-long training sessions with election workers and canvassing boards — the volunteers who make quick decisions on whether to reject or accept a mail-in ballot based on the signature. One of the pieces of wisdom they impart is the importance of having multiple specimens to make a fair determination.

“If I get a call from an attorney for a contested will, here’s my standard ask of them: I need the best copy of the questioned document signature, and then I need 10 to 20 uncontested, known general signatures that you can find written as close to the date of the contested signature,” Orsini said. “That’s my first request.”

Those additional examples could help election workers if they encounter a signature like the one DeSantis adopted as a U.S. representative.

This signature appeared on a 2017 letter DeSantis penned to former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Unlike previous signatures or his current one, the finishing stroke is counter-clockwise, noted Vastrick.

“That really sticks out to me,” he said.

Herb Polson, a former St. Petersburg Council member, madedeterminations on mail ballot signatures when he sat on the Pinellas County canvassing board in 2018 and 2020. He said it would be difficult to match that 2017 signature with the one DeSantis has used more recently.

“If those were the only two I had to choose from, I’d have trouble with those two,” Polson said. “It’s a completely different style of start. That in itself could lead me to say, ‘Huh, that doesn’t look like the one from a year earlier.’ "

LX.com, a NBC news website, reported on Tuesday that DeSantis’ ballot in 2016 was rejected because Flagler County officials deemed his signature did not match the one on file with the state.

Under Florida law, if a mail-in ballot is rejected, the voter has an opportunity to fix it at their local elections office, a process called a “cure.” When DeSantis attempted to cure his 2016 ballot, it was rejected as well, LX reported.

The most recent signature for many voters may be the one they used when they signed their driver’s licenses at a Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles office. That signature is often recorded on a digital pad with a stylus — not with a pen, like how a ballot is signed.

Daniel Smith, a political scientist at the University of Florida, studies the application of voter signature matching laws. His research has shown counties often apply signature rules unevenly, and students and minorities are more likely to have their ballots rejected because of a mismatch.

“It’s really silly you would want to limit the signature to compare,” Smith said. DeSantis’ “own signatures show the reason for that.”

Instead of limiting signatures or relying on a digital facsimile, it would be more helpful to have people sign their names 10 times in ink when they register to vote, Vastrick said.

In response to these concerns, Rep. Blaise Ingoglia last week tweaked his voting bill to allow election officials to use a signature on file from the past four years. Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, said the limitation is needed “to make sure there wasn’t signature shopping where you would have 20 different signature iterations going back 20 years.”

State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat, said the amended bill is “better than what we had before” but she added: “It’s trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.”

“Our poll workers have been trained to use multiple signatures,” she said, “and it seems wholly inefficient to be changing the procedures for them.”

Election security?
Lawmakers, students and teachers surrounded DeSantis in May 2019 when he ceremoniously signed the top policy priority of his first year in office: a massive expansion of the state’s school voucher program. After capping a blue Sharpie, DeSantis flashed the signed bills for the cameras.

If that signature appeared on a mail-in ballot, an election worker would have a hard time matching it to a single sample, said Ion Sancho, the former supervisor of elections in Leon County.

“This probably would be rejected,” Sancho said. “It’s one of the reasons you need multiple pieces of evidence.”

Polson agreed.

“That is more than a reach for me,” he said. “I would have a tough time giving an affirmative to that.”

DeSantis has often voted by mail in Florida, including as recently as the 2020 August Republican primary. After Trump’s months-long crusade against mail-in voting last year, DeSantis has made it his priority to put restrictions on the popular voting method. Most of the attention has centered on DeSantis’ proposals to eliminate ballot drop boxes and a new requirement that people re-register to vote by mail every year.

DeSantis has said these measures are needed for election security. He has said less about why he wants to change the signature matching rules.

“If there needs to be ways to bolster the signature verification, then we need to do that as well,” he said in February in West Palm Beach.

Smith said limiting signatures could have the opposite effect on election security. Fewer signatures means less evidence to verify a positive match.

“If you’re interested in election integrity, wouldn’t you want more signatures to validate the one that is coming in?” Smith said. “Unless that is really not your intention.”
More...

Cuddles · Apr 19, 2021

Here4money said:
GOP cancelling the 1st amendment again:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kentucky-bill-insult-police-officer-crime/
Kentucky bill would make it a crime to insult a police officer

A bill moving through Kentucky's Senate would make it a crime to insult or taunt a police officer during a riot. Supporters say the bill targets people who unlawfully "cross the line" but opponents call it a blatant attempt to crush protests and a violation of First Amendment rights.

Senate Bill 211 mandates up to three months' imprisonment for a person who "accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words," or makes "gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person."

A person convicted of this misdemeanor charge could also face a $250 fine and be disqualified from public assistance benefits for three months.

The bill also has a provision pushing back on the "defund the police" movement, stating that government entities that fund law enforcement agencies must "maintain and improve their respective financial support."

The bill advanced through the Senate's Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection committee on Thursday in a 7-3 vote, with only Republicans supporting it. It now moves to the full Senate and could be passed there as early as next week, and would then need to be passed in the House. Republicans control both chambers of Kentucky's legislature.

CBS News requested comment from state Senator David Carroll, a Republican and retired police officer who is the bill's lead sponsor. Following publication of this story, he wrote in an email, "After looking at you're headline, I don't think I have anything to say to you. I miss the time when we actually had unbiased journalists!!" [SIC]

CBS News also reached out to the staff of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat.

Carroll told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the bill is a response to riots that broke out in many cities across the country last summer. Louisville was an epicenter for racial justice protests due to the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in March 2020 during a raid of her home by Louisville police officers.

"This country was built on lawful protest, and it's something that we must maintain — our citizens' right to do so," Carroll told the Courier-Journal. "What this deals with are those who cross the line and commit criminal acts."

The ACLU of Kentucky called the legislation "an extreme bill to stifle dissent" and said it would criminalize free speech.
More...

inb4 all the state has to do to bail from student grant obligations is declare a protest a riot and nab people left and right.

gwb-trading said:

More...

Cuddles · Apr 23, 2021

Cuddles · Apr 24, 2021

gwb-trading said:
Founder of firm hired to conduct Arizona election audit promoted election fraud theories
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...an-pushed-election-fraud-theories/4831465001/

The head of a Florida-based technology company who has used social media to promote a range of unfounded election fraud claims and was involved with a previous effort to overturn election results in Michigan has been hired by the Arizona Senate to oversee the recount of 2.1 million general election ballots.

The company, called Cyber Ninjas, will lead a team that includes three other firms as part of a $150,000 contract the Senate has awarded to conduct an unprecedented audit of the election results in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county.

But a deleted Twitter account that appears to belong to Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan suggests he has already made up his mind about the security of Arizona's elections. It includes a litany of unsubstantiated allegations about fraud in the last election.

"I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast," said one post he shared from another Twitter user around the end of 2020.

He also appears to have shared posts by Sidney Powell, an attorney who supported former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, and U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., a prominent proponent of conspiracy theories about the last election.

Logan was also involved in efforts to try to prove there was election fraud in Antrim County, Michigan, according to an Antrim County court document.

He was part of a team that examined the county’s voting machines and claimed in a report that they found errors designed to create fraud. State and county officials said the report was biased and identified a slew of problems with the team's analysis.

That team included a member of Allied Security Operations Group, a firm with connections to the Trump campaign's efforts to overturn election results in several states.

More: Arizona Senate hires firms to recount 2.1 million ballots in state's biggest county

Senate President Karen Fann at first considered hiring Allied Security Operations Group to do the Senate’s audit, but changed her mind after she said she realized that they would not be considered impartial.

For the Antrim County report, Logan reviewed the “forensics images” obtained from the Antrim County computer system, Dominion Voting Systems documents, and other evidence, according to the court document.

While the Twitter account bearing Logan's name and photo was deleted, old posts from earlier this year remain archived online.

"The parallels between the statistical analysis of Venezuela and this year's election are astonishing," Logan wrote in a December post.

Another post he shared from a different Twitter user read, "With all due respect, if you can't see the blatant cheating, malfeasence and outright voter fraud, then you are ignorant or lying."

Neither Logan nor the company immediately responded to requests for comment from The Arizona Republic on Wednesday.

Fann said she was confident in the firms, however.

"These guys are well qualified, well experienced," Fann said. She did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about the Twitter account that appeared to belong to Logan.

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said in a statement on Wednesday that he was "not familiar with any of the firms" the Senate has hired.

"Elections are complicated and highly regulated operations," he wrote. "Maricopa County hired certified experts to conduct its audits and examinations of equipment. I hope the auditors hired by the Senate will take great care with your ballots and the election equipment leased with your tax dollars."

Sellers said he has not had discussions with Fann regarding the use of county facilities to do the audit.

Other firms involved in audit
Cyber Ninjas' LinkedIn page says it was founded in 2013 and employs between two and 10 people.

The company’s ninja-themed website says it specializes in “all areas of application security, ranging from your traditional web application to mobile or thick client applications.” That includes ethical hacking, training and general consulting.

There is no mention of whether the company has experience working on elections or voting systems.

Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, an inventor lauded by Trump supporters, said Wednesday that his technology will be used in the audit. Pulitzer has claimed fraudulent ballots were cast in the election and that his technology can detect them.

The audit team also will include CyFIR LLC, Digital Discovery and Wake Technology Services Inc.

CyFIR is a digital security company based in Ashburn, Virginia. Ben Cotton is the founder. His biography indicates he spent 21 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces, and previously served as a board member at Brigham Young University.

The company’s chief executive is Andrew Ward, who spent 26 years as a partner at PriceWaterHouseCoopers, according to his biography.

The company declined a request for an interview about their qualifications to conduct the Arizona audit.

“By contractual agreement, we are unable to speak with the press regarding this topic until the audits are complete,” CyFIR Chief Product Officer John Irvine said.

The company was involved in discovering and investigating a high-profile cyberattack on the U.S. government several years ago.

In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported Cotton’s affiliated company, CyTech Services, discovered that a federal database was breached while it was performing a demonstration for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, which maintains employee records and background checks for the government. It was performing the demonstration with its software, CyFIR Enterprise.

Cotton told the Journal that the company was running a diagnostic on the OPM network and discovered malware, which OPM later said it had previously discovered on its own.

CyFIR, upon the federal government’s request, began “providing significant incident response and forensic support to OPM related to the 2015 incident,” according to a subsequent report on the events from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

CyFIR has continued to work with the federal government since then.

In announcing the hiring, the Senate said members from another one of the firms, Wake Technology Services, have performed hand-count audits in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, and in New Mexico, and have assisted in election fraud investigations since the 1990s.

Neither Wake Technology Services nor Digital Discovery responded to inquiries from The Republic.

What the companies were hired to do
The Senate said the scope of work includes scanning all of the ballots, a full manual recount of the 2.1 million ballots cast in the election, auditing the registration and votes cast as well as the vote counts and the electronic voting system.

Fann said Senate leadership will not have direct involvement in the audit and that the firms will issue a report in about 60 days.

It remains unclear whether the Senate will take custody of the county's ballots or if the county will retain control of them.

Fann said that the Senate does not yet have an agreement with Maricopa County on whether the work will happen at county facilities.

"We'd rather keep everything secure where it is so there are zero questions about chain of custody," said Fann, R-Prescott.

Democrats: 'It's about undermining the will of the voters'
Fann has argued that the audit is merely meant to allay concerns about the last election after former President Donald Trump disputed his defeat.

"This is not about overturning an election," Fann said on Wednesday. "This is 100% about instilling confidence in our elections."

But many Republican lawmakers who have pushed for an audit had also called for overturning the results altogether. They have not waited for the outcome of the Senate's review to promote a range of conspiracy theories about the election.

"What are we doing other than just undermining the past election and voter confidence?" Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, D-Phoenix, said after the firms were selected.

Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the county board of supervisors, has argued the Senate is trying to undermine the results of the election after Republicans lost the presidential race here, along with a U.S. Senate seat.

"This isn’t about finding the truth. It’s about undermining the will of the voters. This is about not liking the results of the election. You lost the election. Deal with it," Gallardo said at a press conference outside the Capitol last week.

The county already has performed several audits of the election, including a hand count of ballots required under state law and logic and accuracy tests on the voting machines. The audits showed that votes were counted correctly and machines were not tampered with.

Under pressure from the Senate to do more, the county also hired two independent firms to conduct a thorough examination of the voting machines.

The auditors found that the election was sound. The county used certified equipment and software, no malicious hardware was found on voting machines, the machines were not connected to the internet, and the machines were programmed to tabulate ballots accurately, according to a letter from county election directors to the supervisors.
More...

Cuddles · Apr 24, 2021

WeToddDid2 · Apr 24, 2021

Why are libtards so scared? It is very telling.

GREAT NEWS! Arizona Justice Confirms Lower Court’s Ruling — FORENSIC AUDIT WILL CONTINUE — Until At Least THURSDAY!

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/20...cked-lower-court-actions-scheduled-next-week/

The litigation related to the Arizona audit is not over. It may just be the beginning. The Democrats and RINOs will do anything to stop the audit.