Serious 2020 Democratic Primaries

If this caucus is a sign of things to come, 2020 is going to be a LONG year. I would've never thought Mayor Pete would've gotten 2nd place (or higher).
 
Now Mayor Pete is an interesting case the more I dig into this.I visited Pete Buttigieg's website, and according to the data his team posted they picked up a lot of votes on re-alignment.
https://peteforamerica.com/results/

Re-alignment as a process has always intrigued me because we don't have anything like it in my state. One of the many unique things about the Iowa Caucus is that if the candidate you support doesn't reach at least 15% during the first round of voting, that candidate becomes no longer viable, and a second round of voting begins. Caucus-goers supporting candidates who did not get enough votes in the first round then have the option to either walk out or re-align with one of the candidates still available.

I guess I could see that on re-alignment voters might be looking for somewhere in the middle and crossover to somebody like Pete. Maybe some Yang voters are looking for a younger alternative. I am not terribly surprised Pete would perform well in Iowa either because the media really covers this candidate and likes him. I also heard he was pouring almost everything he had time and money-wise into campaigning in Iowa as well. It is after all the first state and so pivotal that it can change the whole momentum of the primary. When Obama won Iowa people who initially laughed at his candidacy started taking him seriously. Usually whoever is announced the winner of Iowa becomes the winner of the primary. This night really sucks for whoever the winner is because all of this controversy and uncertainty in a protracted fiasco undercuts whatever momentum they might have had as the frontrunner going into the next state primary.

Buttigieg's campaign issued a statement saying, "We saw that turnout this year was in line with 2016 turnout and our first and final alignment numbers were around 22% and 25%, respectively. In calculating the State Delegate Equivalents from the final alignment numbers, we came in with 480.44 SDEs (28%) in the precincts that have reported."

https://whotv.com/2020/02/04/buttigieg-campaign-releases-internal-iowa-caucus-data/

This would seem to correspond with the numbers that the Bernie Sanders campaign collected from some of the different captain precints. The data they released to the press from 4 different locations shows Bernie himself with 29.66% of the votes, Mayor Pete with 24.59%, Elizabeth Warren at 21.24% of the vote and Biden shockingly with only 12.37% and with Amy Klobuchar a little behind him at 11.00%. Now this would represent just around 40% of precincts, it isn't all of the data, but still I thought Biden would be appearing in the top 2.

I'm glad somebody had the foresight to record data independent of the Shadow app that caused all this turmoil. That piece of junk is not downloading, preventing workers from logging in, giving weird warning messages that it can damage their phone if downloaded and going down in complete system crashes, and worse still-- the results it does show are deviating from the numbers that the captain precincts took photos of. This is scary as hell.
https://www.kcci.com/article/democrats-expected-to-release-caucus-results-tuesday-afternoon/30763394

The Democratic party wants to use shadow app again in Nevada to record the results coming in. Oh Joy! The chair of the Iowa democratic party says that there was a coding issue that was preventing the app from transmitting accurate data, and that it's is fixable. No...just no.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/iowa-caucus-app-issues/index.html

In the 2016 Iowa caucus Microsoft was the developer of the app used to record the results. Why is the party so determined to keep using Shadow Inc instead? I don't believe they could genuinely be this stupid twice.

Now this is something else weird and it pertains to Pete Buttigieg. The LA Times, which has an especially good record for factual reporting-- scoring higher than MSNBC at mediabiasfsctcheck.com for instance, reported that Pete Buttigieg is a client of Shadow. Information from the FEC shows that Pete Buttigieg's Presidential campaign paid over 40,000 dollars to the tech firm this summer for software rights and subscriptions. Buttigieg's campaign spokesperson has issued a statement that the services they purchased were for texting out messages to supporters. Even if this is just a bad coincidence and you don't believe that there was any sinister intent I think it is highly inappropriate for Shadow to have anything more to do with recording the results because it is a potential conflict of interest, and after this debacle with data not matching no voters will place their trust in this developer. Shadow has already disqualified itself in my view 10 times over.

https://www.latimes.com/business/te...mpaign-vets-behind-2020-iowa-caucus-app-snafu
 
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The Iowa Caucus was on Monday. It is Thursday morning and we're still waiting for the full results to come in and be verified. This is unprecedented! I signed a petition calling for the resignation of Tom Perez as DNC chair that's gotten 18,000 signatures. He won't of course, but I signed it on principle. I would have Troy Price the Chair of the Iowa Democratic party removed too if I could.

A political activist Shaun King reported that numerous precint captains say they submit results to the Iowa Democratic party, but the party will not immediately post, and over 24 hours will go by without information being made public.

https://wqad.com/2020/02/05/voters-...bers-dont-add-up-and-people-are-freaking-out/

Why are they just sitting on results and slowly posting batches of data day by day here and there, protracting this circus beyond what is necessary? Are we trying to make sure the media has enough time to get their spin game going?

There's been some butterfingers counting in Iowa as well. One instance in particular that stood out to me is that in certain counties state delegates won by Bernie Sanders were awarded to Deval Patrick! Fortunately in Black Hawk County Iowa a supervisor and co-chair Chris Schwartz took to social media and sounded the alarm about the inaccuracies he saw, confirming that Patrick received 0 votes in this county. Patrick did not win anything. The Iowa state democrats tweeted that they'd correct it.

https://kwwl.com/2020/02/05/error-i...ection-possibly-to-black-hawk-county-results/

Schwartz tweeted that the results in his area were 2,149 votes for Bernie Sanders with 155 county delegates, 1,578 votes for Pete Buttigieg with 111 county delegates, Elizabeth Warren with 1,244 votes and 87 county delegates, Joe Biden 986 votes and 85 county delegates, Amy Klobuchar 862 and 55 county delegates, Andrew Yang 33 votes and 5 county delegates, Tom Steyer 27 votes and 4 county delegates.

https://mobile.twitter.com/schwartzforiowa/status/1225177618485522432

The numbers being reported by the party have resulted in Elizabeth Warren losing votes too, which were then attributed to Tom Steyer. There were also instances where no support was ever tallied for Andrew Yang though there were voters standing in the room who had committed to Yang.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/s...s-iowa-caucus-results-with-errors/4672474002/

In one precinct when there was supposed to be a three-way tie between Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren they literally picked a name at random out of a damn hat--and called it for Biden.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/iowa-caucus-night-is-an-utter-disaster

I have heard several different off the record stories as well from activists and voters who were on the ground inside the caucus that have concerned me about the integrity of the process.

I am having trouble online finding the most recent pledged delegates and vote totals for the Iowa Caucus. Many news sites are just showing the state delegates/sde which slightly favor Mayor Pete with him at 26.2% vs Bernie at 26.1% from the most recent reports I have read--this may have changed. The pledged delegates last I read were tied 11-11 between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, with Bernie Sanders ahead in the actual amount of votes by 1200. Again these numbers may have changed as more data is posted, so If anyone has more recent info go ahead and please share so I can be better informed. Most news outlets are saying that although like 85% of the data has been posted it's still too early or close to call.

In 2008 the results of the Democratic primary Florida and Michigan got effectively cancelled at the time by the party. These states were stripped of their Democratic delegates to the national convention because the primary was held outside the DNC's approved timetable. If I were the DNC I would do that with Iowa because of all of the shenanigans and irregularities. I am not even going to get into some of the potential voter suppression issues that's happened in areas like Johnson county, where the caucus sites were changed to different places at the last minute. I really would be uncomfortable declaring anyone a winner in a caucus this controversial, even if it's the guy I'm voting for, this whole caucus still stinks and casts a shadow over the victory. My condolences to the people of Iowa-- y'all deserved better than this muk.
 
VisionofMilotic said:
The Iowa Caucus was on Monday. It is Thursday morning and we're still waiting for the full results to come in and be verified. This is unprecedented!
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In 2012, the Republican Party took two weeks to correctly announce the caucus results. So they are still within the margin.

The issue is just that caucuses are a deranged way to elect anything, not how competent the organisations are.
 
Ivysaur said:
In 2012, the Republican Party took two weeks to correctly announce the caucus results. So they are still within the margin.

The issue is just that caucuses are a deranged way to elect anything, not how competent the organisations are.
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My current understanding of the GOP Iowa Caucus from 2012 is that results were reported within hours, and they called it for Romney. It didn't take them all week to go through the process of just communicating with the public like this year's Iowa Democratic caucus. Now, I am more familiar with ths Democratic leadership so if this is not correct let me know, but what it sounds like is that after two weeks the results were corrected to show that Rick Santorum was the winner, and not Romney. While this still sounds like a nightmare and my sympathies to GOP voters on this one, what stands out to me as different about the caucus on Monday was the lack of transparency in this extended period of time before the party made public all of the data they had. So much time passed with so much still concealed, and despite this delay for "quality control" there clearly was no quality. The full results we have don't make any sense. There's precinct data that's literally gone missing, more people voting (in large numbers) than were even counted in the room, reports of precincts pushing votes to a coin toss to break a tie when there was never a tie to begin with, numbers incorrectly rounded up and down, delegates being removed from one candidate and given to another, viable candidates declared unviable, huge numbers of votes disappearing on re-alignment. The data is so horribly mangled that The Associated Press refuses to even call a winner. My understanding of the republican caucus in 2012 is that they reported the results in a normal span of time, but it took two weeks to fully resolve the difficulties they had. In this 2020 Democratic caucus they took days to tell us everything they knew, and it's not all correct, and there's yet to be a really thorough analysis of what happened here in Iowa recently, and I don't know if there is ever going to be one two weeks from now otherwise. We have a hot mess on our hands that is no closer to being cleaned up.

I know a lot of voices are calling for the end of caucuses all together in backlash to this 2020 Democratic Iowa Caucus, and even that Iowa doesn't deserve to be the first state in the primary anymore. I don't actually agree with breaking with that tradition because democracy can fail in any state, and it doesn't have to be a caucus state. In the 2000 presidential election the state that our country's fate hinged on was Florida, and Gore may have won that state and not Bush had there been a complete statewide recount of the ballots. 170,000 votes were not read by the machines just because of where people signed their names or because the holes next to the candidate of choice weren't fully punched through in the "hanging chad" fiasco. There was also the deceptive and confusing design of the butterfly ballot that misled voters to select the exact opposite candidate of whom they thought they were voting for, and lots of would-be Gore votes were given to Pat Buchanan.

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10...t-the-presidency-with-a-preemptive-surrender/

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/...da-s-voting-system-still-can-t-get-it-right-1

I think there is some benefit to having a caucus. Because you have to vote in public it's harder for irregularities to get through without being flagged. Whether it's a case where there are genuine mistakes and oversights due to human error or there's corruption on the part of an official to rig it, whatever the reason when there are irregularities they immediately are very glaring as they were in this caucus.

The fact that there is no secrecy with regard to a ballot is potentially an advantage in my opinion, unlike any other primary a caucus-goer has to stand up in a public space and declare support for a candidate in front of strangers. Since there is no privacy in this process, a reform to the caucus that I think would be interesting is if it was televised live as public service just like you can watch a senate hearing. That way it would be more accurate than any other way of voting because there is a video record that can be reviewed objectively.
 
We're onto New Hampshire this week. I'm braced for anything after Iowa.

All of the frontrunners Sanders, Warren, Biden and Buttigieg have acknowledged that there were irregularities from several Iowa precints, and candidates have submitted documentation to support it.

https://www.abc57.com/news/democratic-candidates-submit-caucus-irregularity-claims-to-iowa-democrats

Last week as voices cried out for Tom Perez to step down as DNC chair he did what he should have done days ago, called for a re-canvass, conceding that the there were too many problems with the Iowa Caucus for public confidence, with the infamous "Enough is enough" tweet. Troy Price the Iowa Democratic party chair essentially said that Perez had no authority, and that this was a matter for the state. To consider moving forward the Iowa Democratic party pressed that one or more presidential campaign needed to request a recanvass. Meanwhile Mayor Pete was given the most delegates.

The Bernie Sanders campaign has contested the results of the Iowa Caucus, demanding a recanvass of the data throughout various precincts. I think Bernie is right to be noisy about this, and not just let the machine run over the voters and install Pete without a word. He should fight for every delegate he may have won, as should everyone in the race, whether it is Warren, Biden or Klobuchar who had votes disappear that they should have received. That's just fair.

A re-canvass in Iowa is going to be a charade though. Price has readily acknowledged that several of the tallies on the precinct worksheets presented to the Iowa Democratic Party are wrong. The math doesn't add up from data just vanishing to more people voting than even possible. However, in the internal party emails Troy Price has been plain that no corrections can be made. It doesn't matter what the worksheets say, how ridiculous the numbers may look because well... it's official folks. The worksheets can show results that are mathematically impossible, but there can be no adjustment. Yes, these results stand, even if they know the results are wrong! The Iowa Democratic party and their lawyers have argued that it would compromise the integrity of the process to make any corrections, comparing it to tampering with someone's ballot based on a subjective opinion. This is insane. I know I am double posting, but this is an update that was so bewildering to me that I couldn't not share the madness.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020...ead-but-refuses-to-correct-caucus-math-errors

This not a matter of opinion. The math is either correct or it isn't, and what is unethical is for the Democratic party to just crown Mayor Pete no matter what. If Tom Perez was honest he would respond to the Iowa Democratic party by calling for a vote for the DNC to strip Iowa of her delegates at the convention, and give nobody any delegates from this state. Just erase them if they don't want to redo the Iowa Caucus or have a real recanvass, and start everything with a clean race in New Hampshire. That would be the example I would make of Iowa, and I guarantee there would be less of these discrepancies in future states. But he is not serious of course, he is playing good cop to Troy Price's bad cop. Iowa is not going to be the last controversial state in the primary. The fix is in.
 
Not even trying to be subtle now, are they? You would think that in the presidential election after the one where there were concerns about election security and foreign influence that the people running these things would make sure that it all goes well this time. But instead they do the caucus with a very new app from a questionable entity, and one that one of the candidates has given money to at that (and then said candidate just happens to win the state), then just basically come out and say "we know the results are probably wrong but we ain't gonna fix". They don't really expect people to be fine with this, do they? Or maybe they do and just don't care, that wouldn't surprise me.

great way way to start really
 
Nah said:
Not even trying to be subtle now, are they? You would think that in the presidential election after the one where there were concerns about election security and foreign influence that the people running these things would make sure that it all goes well this time. But instead they do the caucus with a very new app from a questionable entity, and one that one of the candidates has given money to at that (and then said candidate just happens to win the state), then just basically come out and say "we know the results are probably wrong but we ain't gonna fix". They don't really expect people to be fine with this, do they? Or maybe they do and just don't care, that wouldn't surprise me.

great way way to start really
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Did you think it would just be the Republicans emboldened by Trump getting away with the Russia and Ukraine shit? The DNC is just as corrupt as the Trump crew and after seeing how easily he got away with what he did, they probably don't see any reason to even try and be subtle about their shady shit anymore. Politics over there are just all around broken and it's getting laughable to actually call the US a democracy at this point.
 
I'm also going to add that, in the great scheme of things, one delegate in a caucus, a messy system that luckily is used by a clear minority of states, is not going to change the outcome. I know, I know that many Bernie Sanders suporters are just dying to scream conspiracy and, certainly, they are delighted by the evidence that he got the short end of the stick from the problems in the caucus. But wait until he sweeps NH and NV and goes into SuperTuesday as the leading candidate before claiming that there's a massive DNC conspiracy to defeat him, please.

A very good rule of thumb is "don't assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity". I honestly doubt the Iowa DP set out to specifically rig the caucus against Sanders in particular, it's more likely the whole thing was a massive mess (just ask Santorum in 2012) and Sanders was in the wrong place. Again, wait to see if there are ballot boxes disappearing mysteriously in NH or something before assuming the Evil Washington Elites are just rigging everything.

And let me ask: let's say that the real caucus result had been Sanders 26%, Buttigieg 24%. Other than the one delegate (out of over one thousand needed to win the nomination) changing hands, what would have changed? Sanders has got a bounce in the polls. Pete would have got a bounce anyway because he was the winner of the "moderate" lane while Biden was in free-fall, and if you think ex-Biden voters would have flocked to Sanders just because he had narrowly won instead of narrowly lost, well, think again. So yeah, if suddenly mysterious shit starts happening in the upcoming three states, then I can buy it's a conspiracy. But if everything goes smoothly in the following days and the actual effect is... that Sanders lost one delegate, then what is the problem...?

PD: Sanders lost 2016 because more people just happened to cast their votes for Clinton.
PD2: I donated money to Sanders in 2016 and would love to see him win the general if he wins the primary.
 
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Ivysaur said:
I'm also going to add that, in the great scheme of things, one delegate in a caucus, a messy system that luckily is used by a clear minority of states, is not going to change the outcome. I know, I know that many Bernie Sanders suporters are just dying to scream conspiracy and, certainly, they are delighted by the evidence that he got the short end of the stick from the problems in the caucus. But wait until he sweeps NH and NV and goes into SuperTuesday as the leading candidate before claiming that there's a massive DNC conspiracy to defeat him, please.

A very good rule of thumb is "don't assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity". I honestly doubt the Iowa DP set out to specifically rig the caucus against Sanders in particular, it's more likely the whole thing was a massive mess (just ask Santorum in 2012) and Sanders was in the wrong place. Again, wait to see if there are ballot boxes disappearing mysteriously in NH or something before assuming the Evil Washington Elites are just rigging everything.

And let me ask: let's say that the real caucus result had been Sanders 26%, Buttigieg 24%. Other than the one delegate (out of over one thousand needed to win the nomination) changing hands, what would have changed? Sanders has got a bounce in the polls. Pete would have got a bounce anyway because he was the winner of the "moderate" lane while Biden was in free-fall, and if you think ex-Biden voters would have flocked to Sanders just because he had narrowly won instead of narrowly lost, well, think again. So yeah, if suddenly mysterious shit starts happening in the upcoming three states, then I can buy it's a conspiracy. But if everything goes smoothly in the following days and the actual effect is... that Sanders lost one delegate, then what is the problem...?

PD: Sanders lost 2016 because more people just happened to cast their votes for Clinton.
PD2: I donated money to Sanders in 2016 and would love to see him win the general if he wins the primary.
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It's not so much that I think there's a huge anti-Sanders conspiracy, it's more of a principal matter for me because I feel fairly confident in saying that they would be a lot happier to strip delegates or re-canvass if it had been a more moderate candidate like Buttigieg or Biden being screwed over. Plus, it's pretty hard to deny the conflict of interest in one candidate having given money to the company overseeing voting.

It's not likely to have a huge impact in the overall end result of the nomination, but that doesn't mean this sort of thing is okay, regardless of whether it's because of conspiracy, stupidity or some other maliciousness.
 
gimmepie said:
It's not likely to have a huge impact in the overall end result of the nomination, but that doesn't mean this sort of thing is okay, regardless of whether it's because of conspiracy, stupidity or some other maliciousness.
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This I agree completely. But I insist things shouldn't be blown out of proportion just yet.
 
These victories for Sanders have been very underwhelming. There's a strong chance he might not get the nomination. It feels like there's a ceiling to the amount of support he can get, and it won't net him a majority of delegates.
 
Ivysaur said:
I'm also going to add that, in the great scheme of things, one delegate in a caucus, a messy system that luckily is used by a clear minority of states, is not going to change the outcome. I know, I know that many Bernie Sanders suporters are just dying to scream conspiracy and, certainly, they are delighted by the evidence that he got the short end of the stick from the problems in the caucus. But wait until he sweeps NH and NV and goes into SuperTuesday as the leading candidate before claiming that there's a massive DNC conspiracy to defeat him, please.

A very good rule of thumb is "don't assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity". I honestly doubt the Iowa DP set out to specifically rig the caucus against Sanders in particular, it's more likely the whole thing was a massive mess (just ask Santorum in 2012) and Sanders was in the wrong place. Again, wait to see if there are ballot boxes disappearing mysteriously in NH or something before assuming the Evil Washington Elites are just rigging everything.

And let me ask: let's say that the real caucus result had been Sanders 26%, Buttigieg 24%. Other than the one delegate (out of over one thousand needed to win the nomination) changing hands, what would have changed? Sanders has got a bounce in the polls. Pete would have got a bounce anyway because he was the winner of the "moderate" lane while Biden was in free-fall, and if you think ex-Biden voters would have flocked to Sanders just because he had narrowly won instead of narrowly lost, well, think again. So yeah, if suddenly mysterious shit starts happening in the upcoming three states, then I can buy it's a conspiracy. But if everything goes smoothly in the following days and the actual effect is... that Sanders lost one delegate, then what is the problem...?

PD: Sanders lost 2016 because more people just happened to cast their votes for Clinton.
PD2: I donated money to Sanders in 2016 and would love to see him win the general if he wins the primary.
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I can assure you that nobody is "delighted" to find evidence of the democratic process being compromised. C'mon, give us more credit than that. Having a secure process is something we should all be serious about, and only a crazy person would be "dying" to tell you some bad news.

It's also worth noting while you are characterizing Bernie Sanders supporters as screaming conspiracists, not everybody who expresses skepticism about the fairness of the process we saw in Iowa is necessarily even a Sanders supporter. There are people who have shared concern about the integrity of the process who have not identified themselves as Bernie Sanders supporters and made no comment about who they support, or may have even indicated support for another candidate entirely in previous comments. Some people who have expressed skepticism have even said specifically that they are not democrats, therefore won't be casting a vote for Sanders or otherwise. There are also people who are not United States citizens viewing this thread that can't be voting for Bernie and won't be directly affected by who wins this primary, yet even so they registered concern about what has been reported. Preserving a free and fair election is something that should have bipartisan support larger than Bernie. While yes, I personally am going to vote for Bernie Sanders, I have also posted my dismay to learn of inconsistencies that occurred affecting candidates that I don't necessarily support such as Andrew Yang and Elizabeth Warren. Even if I disagree with a candidate I still want the process of challenging them to be done properly, based on whose ideas won the most voters and not failings in the procedure. Any candidate being negatively impacted by irregularities or suppression is of interest to me.

While you dismissed the idea that there is corruption in Iowa, and that instead these are all honest mistakes that happened to Bernie Sanders. However, bear in mind that data from 90 precincts also went missing in the 2016 Iowa caucus, a controversial caucus which Clinton was declared the winner of by a fraction of a point after a number of precincts reportedly being tied and decided by coin tosses. When Bernie Sanders asked to look at what data the party had to verify the accuracy of these results in such a close race the Iowa Democratic chairwoman refused to turn over anything for a review. You say that we should learn not to "assume evil is behind things that can be explained by human stupidity," but how do you explain trying to prevent anyone from seeing the results as just human stupidity? There would be no reason for the Iowa democratic chair to do this unless there was something to hide.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_9550670

Bernie Sanders may have won the New Hampshire, but I wouldn't celebrate just yet that there is no bias in this process against us, because there are some red flags coming out of the Nevada Caucus already that this process may not be above aboard entirely. This is Nevada's first time doing early voting, and the Nevada Democrats are getting a brand new piece of software to help them count the data again just like the present we got in Iowa. We've been told by the party that it's not the same shadow app, but we don't know anything about this tool, other than that it was recommended by a "group of tech and security folks whose names and affiliations were not provided." This app is still being knocked together, and has not been live tested. The press has received no response so far to questions about how early votes will be tabulated. Voting starts in 2 days, yet people running the caucus sites have said there has been no training on how to use this new gadget.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/nevada-democrats-caucus-new-software-despite-iowa-app-problems/264777/

The DNC would have to be more than stupid to do exactly what they just did in Iowa again in Nevada and expect no problems might occur. It would be Einstein's definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result."

I think it's more likely that the DNC wants the dodgy results they will probably receive, than they are crazy.

It's also surfaced that Buttigieg's staff was hired by the Nevada state party to be the "Voter Protection Director of the caucus." This is an unsubtle conflict of interest, just as it should have been a conflict of interest that Buttigieg's campaign paid over 40,000 dollars to Shadow Inc whose app did the faulty counting, and a potential conflict of interest that the founder of the corporation that launched Shadow is tied to the senior strategist in Buttigieg's campaign.

https://news3lv.com/news/local/vote...vada-democratic-party-hires-buttigieg-staffer

I think it's frankly dangerous to brush away the irregularities we saw in Iowa just because there are more states out there and more delegates to be won, and not that much changed. Iowa alone may not change the winner of the caucus, but if there's not a public outcry it will enable more "careless" mistakes like that or outright cheating in the margins because there's no accountability or pressure to be as accurate as possible. The Iowa Democratic party has acknowledgd that the results are mathematically wrong, but that they won't be corrected even if they are wrong. Delegates skimmed off the top here and there from state to state will indeed affect the outcome of the primary. Fight for every delegate that you think is yours, because you are going to need it at the convention.
 
So has anyone cast a vote yet in their state?

Early voting started a couple of weeks ago where I live. I was planning to wait and just vote right before work on Super Tuesday, which is March 3rd. The states that can vote then will be Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.

However, I got a message from my dad who is a teacher that there's going to be tomorrow rally in our city taking place at one of our Historically Black Colleges, and a march to early vote at 11:30 am. Bernie Sanders is going to be there speaking, and going to that event sounds like fun. So I'm there.

Good luck to anyone voting soon. Hope you have a nice, easy experience. May the best man or woman win.

If you are looking forward to voting on any bonds or candidates nationally or locally you can share, but no pressure to do so.

There's a sales tax up for vote here in my state NC that will be used to increase funding for teachers. I will be voting for it.
 
I'm super excited for South Carolina and Super Tuesday. So much is going to happen and there could be some significant shifts in the race.
 
What's happening around Mike Blomberg in this primary is really sickening. I wanted to make less critical posts lately, but I read something from the Intercept last night that really was thr straw that broke the camel's back. This man keeps brazenly buying the election right in front of our eyes.

I knew for awhile that he was spending more than anyone flooding the airways with half a billion dollars of propaganda during the short time he's been running, a million dollars per day just for the Facebook ads alone.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...llion-a-day-on-facebook-ads-in-last-two-weeks

It's also pretty well-known by now that he donated more than a quarter of a million dollars to the DNC. After doing so the debate rules that restricted everyone else were changed. Had this not happened he wouldn't have met the threshold of grassroots support required. He should not even be on this stage.

https://www.insider.com/dnc-debate-qualification-rules-bloomberg-donation-2020-2

He has even told us to our face on television that half of the congress we have now he bought to the tune of 100 million dollars.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...uth-carolina-congress-citizens-united-958322/

For some time I thought the most disturbing thing about Blomberg of all was that he donated to virtually every state left in the primary. 10,000 to the New York State Democratic Committee, 10,000 over there to the Democratic Party of California, 10k more to Massachusetts and another to Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma. The list goes on and on, one by one he is trying to bribe his way through the state primaries.

https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup

This is not even counting the collective group for the state parties that he gave nearly 1 million dollars to.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/11/bloomberg-billionaire-bounce-112133

He's going on the ballot for the first time I think on Super Tuesday, so we'll see how high a placement his money bought him next week. I expect shenanigans on a local level.

It gets even worse though. Bloomberg has hired the vice chairs of both the Texas and California state democratic parties to work on his campaign. This should be illegal, and that it isn't just illustrates how broken our campaign finance is, and why we need a real reformer in the white house pronto.

https://theintercept.com/2020/02/28/bloomberg-super-tuesday-texas-california-democratic-party-hires/

The chairs Bloomberg purchased don't just have state-wide influence, they have nationwide political influence. He owns chairs that are sitting on the rules committee, deciding the rules we play by, dictating the party's agenda, amending the party's charter, recommending the officers. His senior advisors Carla Brailey and Alexander Rooker who vice chair California and Texas are also superdelegates.

Unlike the pledged delegates when you win a state the superdelates don't have to vote for what their constituents voted for, they are powerful party elites that get a special vote on who the nominee will be at Democratic convention, and these guys work for Bloomberg. If it's a brokered convention, which is very possible looking at the size of the field, that means a second round of voting starts that invites the super delegates in. One candidate may have won more than anyone else as they campaigned throughout the primary, the can have the majority, but if it isn't a victory by a huge majority of over 1900 pledged delegates then the convention is open to being contested. It would be very controversial to drag us down this road, but in this scenario the party elders can get up off of their chairs and theoretically vote to install Mike Bloomberg over our protests.

I really hope the party does not go this way, the American people expect them to support whoever has won the majority, whether that is Sanders, Biden, Roger Rabbit it doesn't matter, they should not use this mechanism to overturn what the people voted for and install a favorite. It would crack the party into a thousand fragments, and not only hand Trump the general election but be the end of the Democratic party. I'm not saying they are going to go that far, let's hope not, but I am saying that this is the outcome that Bloomberg is bidding for. He made the purchases that he did because he is looking for a brokered convention, and it's quite scary to watch. If the DNC goes for this they will be saying in no uncertain terms that they care more about the donors than they do about us the people.
 
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