“A recorded audio conversation appears to show Colorado District 4 Congressman Ken Buck pressuring an El Paso County GOP official to falsify election results in the State Senate District 10 race.”
— 5/18/20 #GOPElectionFraud 1/

I lost faith in the US govt to tell me the truth re: election security when Comey & @EACgov testified that it wld be really hard to hack an election bc voting machines supposedly don't connect to the internet, & an expert explained on C-Span this was BS.1/

2/ Here is one of Halderman's C-span videos.

3/ It was like a death. Never in my life would I have thought my government would lie about something like this. Or, alternatively, be this incompetent. I spent the next three years feeling like I need to try to micromanage the situation bc I didn't trust them anymore.

4/ I know some people think it's bad for me to say this because it undermines voter confidence in elections. But guess what? I started out as an ordinary voter. This is what I found out. And I was horrified. There has been no reckoning for the lies.

5/ Reality Winner, who tried to bring a dose of reality to the situation, remains in prison. I do not trust our government re: election security. I just don't. They have never told us the full truth about 2016. They don't even try to be transparent.

Dear @HouseDemocrats:

HR 1 requires that the voter “have the option to mark his or her ballot by hand.”

Pls add the following for clarity: “For jurisdictions w/ in person voting, this option shall be provided to the voter at the polling place.” @RepTedLieu @katieporteroc 1/

Without this clarifying language, jurisdictions cld still force all in person voters to use risky touchscreen voting machines called ballot marking devices (BMDs), as long as vote by mail is also an option. That won’t suffice to protect election integrity & faith in elections. 2/

Unlike #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen and paper), BMDs are vulnerable to electronic failure, screen freezes, miscalibration, disproportionate distribution (causing bottlenecks & long lines in suppressed areas), and hacking. 3/

4/ I also suggest that you supplement HR 1 to specify that BMDs “must not put votes into barcodes or QR codes.” This language is important because barcodes & QR codes are not transparent, further endangering integrity and confidence in elections.

5/ We are only beginning now to understand how these barcodes and QR code’s unnecessarily increase the attack surface for bad actors seeking to interfere in our elections. This is unacceptable & unnecessary.

The top recommendation of experts & election-protection groups to protect the 2020 election had been to conduct robust manual election audits using a reliable paper trail. But Rs blocked the SAFE Act which wld have required them. -@jennycohn1 4 @nybooks 1/

2/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, @philipbstark, ...told me a few weeks ago that “only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes.“

3/ “‘That requires a trustworthy paper trail—primarily hand-marked paper ballots kept demonstrably secure throughout the election and the audit—and [what is known as] a risk-limiting audit using that paper trail,’” Stark said.

4/ Stark added, “‘to the best of my knowledge, even those states only audit a few contests in each election.’” 😳

5/ “A report by the National Conference of State Legislators confirms that just three states (Colorado, Rhode Island, and Virginia) require risk-limiting audits for one or more races.”

@AlexandraChalup "As MAGA World’s hopes for an election redo have slipped away, an equally improbable idea has begun to percolate among Donald Trump’s most bitterly disappointed followers: secession." 12/21/20 h/t @AlexandraChalup 1/

2/"Texas GOP chair Allen West floated the idea of a new union of 'law-abiding states,' and Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann—previously best known for dressing up as “gay Hitler”—pledged to file a bill in Austin to put the question of Texas secession to voters."

"Rep. Randy Weber also posted pro-secession material on his Facebook page, becoming the first official in Washington to advocate for disintegrating the U.S. Trump’s most reliable media supporters have likewise spread the idea nationally." 3/

"Rush Limbaugh, recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this month claimed the country was suddenly 'trending toward secession.'" 4/

"Actual secession in the U.S. remains, for the moment, something outside the realm of feasibility." 5/

Rs made gains in state legislatures in 2020. Even where manual audits are conducted, they rarely include state races. 😢

“Ds spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn”

I reported on the sorry state of election auditing laws in the US in this pre-election piece for @NYRDaily. This must change. #RobustManualAuditsNOW
1/

2/ “Earlier this year, ... Republicans blocked federal legislation, the SAFE Act, which would have required such [manual] audits for most federal races.”

3/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at...UCB, told me a few weeks ago that “only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes.” @philipbstark

4/ “That requires a trustworthy paper trail—primarily hand-marked paper ballots kept demonstrably secure throughout the election and the audit—and [what is known as] a risk-limiting audit using that paper trail.” #HandMarkedPaperBallots

Three Little Pigs 1/

So what about the Senators? We saw that at least 7 Republican House Members were so certain they had committed federal crimes, they begged for Presidential pardons from Trump

What about the Senators? Let's look at Trump's Three Little Pigs in a this Thread

Three Little Pigs 2/

First off is the Kentucky Swamp Creature, #MoscowMitch McTurtle. Many associate Mitch McConnell with Trump & Trumpism & connect many of Trump's horrors like SCOTUS as enabled by Mitch

The reality is quite different, however. It is Mitch who played Trump

Three Little Pigs 3/

Yes, Mitch is a monster & had caused irreparable damage to America, partly during Trump. But this is more like Hitler & Stalin. Both men were vile monsters, but sometimes allied, sometimes enemies

Mitch HATES Trump, always hated him, to this day

Three Little Pigs 4/

I would argue that the Teenage Mutant Mitch McTurtle has caused MORE lasting damage to America (through SCOTUS in particular) than Trump. But McConnell used Trump to his own ends, and importantly, DENIED Trump what Trump most wanted

Three Little Pigs 5/

The one thing Donald the Duck McTrump wanted more than anything in the whole wide world - was to have his silly little Wall. Which would not have cost much (compared to tax cuts etc)

And Mitch denied this to Trump. Trump even shut down his OWN government..

So. Let's talk about Rick Perry calling Donald Trump "the chosen one" and discuss how American evangelicals became a white identity doomsday cult that threatens our safety and the very nature of reality. 1/

To begin, I have to give a bit of context. I grew up in the evangelical church. That means I was steeped in this stuff from my youngest years, even as I didn't understand it and was unable to imagine a reality outside of it. 2/

I had no idea that white evangelicals, in the 1960's, reacted to Civil Rights leaders like MLK using scripture to base their movement on Christianity by splitting the church and dismissing the ideas of Christianity in favor of a white identity gospel based on power and wealth 3/

People like Jerry Falwell, mostly southern televangelists, transformed Christianity from a religion of service and charity and inclusion to one of wealth and power, where God's will was shown via wealth and control over the world. 4/

We now know this as the Gospel of Wealth, but it started with the 1960's and that redirection from Civil Rights. Basically it was a doctrine that sought to base white power and domination under the dominion of an all-powerful God, thus making it right and defendable. 5/

Christian nationalism cannot be separated from naming whiteness as god.

They are the same movement, and they will only end in

Link to the full sermon

The idea of portability in the 80s