Federal Elections Committee Chair Is Sick Of Donald Trump's Bullshit: Put Up Or Shut Up About Voter Fraud
from the the-hero-we-need dept
Just days after the two Republican members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) blocked an investigation into the NRA and its use of Russian funds to influence the election, the chair of the FEC (who voted for that investigation) has pointed out that Donald Trump should put up or shut up with his totally baseless, absolutely insane, claims that “voter fraud” cost him millions of votes in the election.
SAD: Last night, @realDonaldTrump again made unfounded claims about massive voter fraud in NH in 2016.
In this letter, I ask him to back up his claims in terms a former casino operator should understand: ?There comes a time when you need to lay your cards on the table or fold.? pic.twitter.com/vkddT1jGmH
— Ellen L Weintraub (@EllenLWeintraub) August 16, 2019
The letter itself is too good not to share, so I’ll reprint it here. Don’t miss the kicker at the end.
Mr. President,
Back in February 2017, when you first alleged a voter-fraud scheme of astonishing scale in New Hampshire in 2016, I publicly called upon you to provide your evidence to the American people and the appropriate law enforcement authorities so that your very serious claims could be investigated. I followed up in March 2017 with a letter to you repeating my request.
You have not, so far, provided any proof of these allegations.
Last night, you repeated your claim: “New Hampshire should’ve been won last time,” you told reporters before your rally, “except we had a lot of people come in at the last moment, which was a rather strange situations, thousands and thousands of people, coming in from locations unknown. But I knew where their location was.” During your rally, you told the crowd that New Hampshire was “taken away from us.”
What I wrote to you in March 2017 is just as true now: Our democracy depends on the American people’s faith in our elections. Your voter-fraud allegations run the risk of undermining that faith. Just as seriously, baseless allegation of fraud have been used to rationalize indefensible laws that deter certain U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote. Words matter, and facts matter.
The American people count on me, as the Chair of their Federal Election Commission, to protect the integrity of our elections. So I ask you, once again, to provide any evidence you may have to the American people and the appropriate law-enforcement authorities to substantiate your claims. The American people are ill-served when our leaders put forward unfounded allegations of voter fraud.
To put it in terms a former casino operator should understand: There comes a time when you need to lay your cards on the table or fold.
This is an excellent letter that will make no difference in the world, unfortunately. The FEC has no real power, and as the vote on the NRA/Russia shows, even if she wanted to do something about it Weintraub is blocked by the others on the Commission. But the larger point is that the President doesn’t care. Because he doesn’t need to. He will make up whatever he wants, and whatever he needs to soothe his ego of himself and his angry sycophantic fans (yes, I’m looking forward to the comments on this one), because that’s really all he’s got to go on these days. He can and will ignore the chair of the FEC and he will continue to spout this completely made up nonsense of voter fraud in New Hampshire because it suits his narrative — and his narrative is always facts-optional.
Filed Under: donald trump, ellen weintraub, evidence, fec, new hampshire, voter fraud
Comments on “Federal Elections Committee Chair Is Sick Of Donald Trump's Bullshit: Put Up Or Shut Up About Voter Fraud”
Even that den of libby liberal liberalism, the Heritage Foundation can only find a few documented cases of voter fraud.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
Umm… this is actually pretty well-documented. NH got "swung" to Hillary by a bunch of people from Massachusetts fraudulently registering with same-day voter registration as people who "had just moved to New Hampshire". NH had tried to pass a voter ID law to prevent this sort of crap from happening, only to have it overturned by a court that found the usual race-baiting nonsense persuasive. (Riiiiight. If anyone thinks New Hampshire, one of the most milk-white states in the entire nation — approximately 95% — has enough minorities to even be worth suppressing, I’ve got a bridge to sell them. There simply aren’t enough minorities there to be able to affect the election by their presence or absence anyway. But that’s not stopping the usual suspects from pulling out the same tired old narrative no matter how obviously false it is.)
Afterwards, attempts to find these newly-moved-in "residents" failed for approximately 5,000 of them, nearly double the margin by which Clinton "won" the state. Why? Because they weren’t residents and never had been. It’s hard to reach any other conclusion than that the state was stolen by massive voter fraud, by the party that consistently undermines legitimate attempts to combat voter fraud.
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[Citation needed]
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You say this is well documented. Yet you don’t provide a reference to said documents. Interesting.
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Evidence not presented, case dismissed.
Re: Re: Electoral Fraud evidence
Evidence does not conveniently fall from the sky — it requires very large investigative resources by unbiased people seeking truth.
Thus far, we only have a few small studies by a few small political groups on the left and right. These little studies reach contradictory conclusions and are highly controversial.
Federal/state/local politicians are not interested in conducting serious investigations of electoral fraud because the findings might cast doubt upon the validity of many elections … and the many government officials who assumed power from those elections.
Most all observers agree there is "some" fraud in American elections, but the government & establishment media claim it is very exaggerated (without proof of that)
Terminology is a big confusion factor and handy dodge.
"Voter-Fraud" is just a narrow subset of overall "Electoral Fraud" categories.
Voter Fraud is basically an individual casting an illegal ballot — it’s a relatively small part of Electoral-Fraud and more easily detected.
The biggest part of Electoral-Fraud is Fraud by government election officials–illegal manipulation of ballots by officials trusted to administer the election.
This "insider" fraud is difficult to detect; it usually involves some method of creating extra illegal votes and/or losing/hiding legitimate votes. This fraud is fairly common, but if noticed is usually dismissed as balloting"irregularities" or innocent administrative error.
NYC election officials somehow "lost" 200,000 legitimate votes in November 2010. Clay County Kentucky election officials were recently convicted of egregious vote manipulation. Palm Beach Florida Elections Office was a cesspool of corruption in the 2018 elections.
Few people consider the more serious problem of "Electoral Fraud", preferring to focus on the lesser issue of "Voter Fraud".
Absence of obvious "evidence" does not prove the absence of criminality– there are significant irregularities in many American elections.
(how many people here think the 2016 U.S. elections were totally honest and fair ??)
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“President Trump … abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt.” — The New York Times, 3 January 2018
Re: Re: Re: Electoral Fraud evidence
OMG they asked for a source. Any source and you provided nothing. Not even the "few small studies". So now shut up or put up.
Re: Re: Re:2 Electoral Fraud evidence
Or to quote the article, there comes a time when you need to lay your cards on the table or fold.
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The proper solution isn’t just voter ID (all ballots should be mailed and only those official ballots accepted at the polls; No absentee ballots; No same-day registration) but also eliminating borders and the electoral college for federal elections. State reps should still only be "votable" by residents of those states but it doesn’t matter if "NH voted for Soandso for president!". What matters is how many votes each candidate got. It’s time to shed the archaic detritus saddling our voting system and move into the modern era.
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No absentee ballots?
How do the armed services cast their vote when deployed?
Thank you for your service … now run along.
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They can use the official ballots mailed to them. Even when deployed they can receive mail.
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But that’s not how they do it right now is it?
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The number, 5,000 voters, is the number of same day voter registrations filed. That much is well documented. However, no evidence has been submitted to prove that all of these registrations were Clinton voters. Given that NC considers out of state College students eligible for voting, thousands of 18 year-olds could have easily moved to NC 2 months earlier and not registered to vote because they did not get a NC ID. Since lots of the "evidence" relates to these people not having NC DL/ID, a lot of the evidence that does exist doesn’t actually prove voter fraud, but rather that the republican-instituted voter registration policies are operating as intended.
Despite repeated calls and promises of an investigation, there has been no evidence presented that any significant amount of these registrations were fake. No evidence was found or presented of bussing or other widespread voter fraud.
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I dearly hope that your college student theory is true, because then it means that Trump could say: "And I would have won the election too if not for those meddling kids!"
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But he did win the election. The question no one has been able to answer is: Did he win because of or in spite of the meddling of those Russian kids?
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I guess it depends upon your definition of "win the election".
If you have to cheat in order to win, is it really considered a win?
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It is to the cheater.
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And the cheater is still in office and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Clearly this is a case of the ends justifying the means.
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Sorry, the end never justifies the means.
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Well if it worked for everyone before then why is it considered bad now?
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"It" has never "worked" for everyone and was never considered to be not bad by everyone, so I’m not sure what it is you are trying to say.
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He won because the system is so broken that it ignored the votes of over 3 million people in favour of a couple of small districts that voted a few thousand his way. Whether those votes were swayed by Russians or not is almost secondary to the fact that so many voters were disenfranchised due to their address.
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The system isn’t broken. The rules were well known to all concerned and have been in place since 1787. Hillary chose to campaign in California which by all accounts, she had wrapped up even with no campaigning. Her husband, Bill, the guy who had won 4 executive level campaigns, begged her in early October to campaign in many of those states where she lost by a few thousand votes. She ignored him and instead listened to her overpaid advisors. The rest is history.
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None of what you said changes the fact that roughly three million people might as well have filled out and then burned their votes for all the good those votes did thanks to the system in place, such that the candidate that actually got more votes by literal millions ended up losing.
A system that is meant to reflect the will of the majority of voters and yet can have something like that happen is most certainly one that’s got some serious problems.
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You describe a system where millions of voters were essentially disenfranchised and the country has to depend on politicians playing specific games as "not broken". I respectfully disagree.
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It’s not broken and it didn’t ignore anyone, it worked exactly like its supposed to. Now, the fact that California is grossly overpopulated but still only carries so many electoral college votes is the reason they appear to be ignored, but trust me, they were not, they just simply didn’t matter because no matter how many people live in California they still only have so many electoral college votes and rightly so because the ppl of California dont share the same values that the rest of the country has and shouldn’t be able or allowed to ever decide the fate of a nation that they purposely alienate themselves from just because they have more ppl in the state in welfare than all of the south had citizens combined. The electoral college is in place just so states like California and New York cant have more power than they deserve.
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Have more ppl on* welfare than all of the south has citizens combined.
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… while paying for the red states’ welfare.
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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Umm… this is actually pretty well-documented.
Where?
NH got "swung" to Hillary by a bunch of people from Massachusetts fraudulently registering with same-day voter registration as people who "had just moved to New Hampshire".
Then why has no one presented such evidence before the FEC?
Because they weren’t residents and never had been. It’s hard to reach any other conclusion than that the state was stolen by massive voter fraud
For which no evidence has actually been presented. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
You’ve bought into a myth.
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Then why aren’t you linking to the documentation?
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Funny when the truth does not equal the liberal narrative the article is hidden.
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It’s only hidden because they didn’t explain the facts, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Any day now.
You mean the one you failed to link too? Jesus you RWNJs are dumber than three day old road kill.
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What article?
It was a well written letter.
This may be a stupid question, so forgive me if it is. If the FEC has no power, why do they exist?
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Wikipedia says "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of [p]residential elections."
It also says it’s "made up of six members, who are appointed by the president of the United States….and at least four votes are required for any official commission action." But there are only 4 people; their terms all expired 6-12 years ago (all were appointed by Bush 2) and they haven’t been replaced. One might conclude that the presidents since Bush have been trying to sabotage the agency.
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Thanks for the info!
Maybe these aren't the rubes you are looking for
Still hunting the Great Red Russian Snark, Masnick?
Re: Maybe these aren't the rubes you are looking for
Howdy Ivan. How’s the weather in mama Russia today?
‘his angry sycophantic fans (yes, I’m looking forward to the comments on this one)"
I think few will show up.
1) They have to look up "sycophantic"
2) They have to figure out how to look up "sycophantic"
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I remember we used to have one troll who loved saying "sycophantic".
He didn’t seem to think looking it up was a necessary part of the process.
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Right lol, and as if they themselves aren’t the other side of the exact same silly coin. In my experience, hypocrites never actually think that they are hypocrites as much as they think they are heroes among they’re own ilk. They love to call out ppl for exactly what they are guilty of.
It can’t be Republican policies are unpopular and the party only propped up by gerrymandering and flyover states occupied by 20 people and a mule, Democrats winning the popular vote has to be fraud! It has to be people being willing to risk prosecution or deportation to do something designed to be as inconvenient and unrewarding as possible.
Cue people linking to ‘proof’ of voter fraud, which is 55 and a half minutes into a two hour long youtube video of someone who never looks into the camera, citing studies that were discredited in the 1950s, speaking as fast as possible to make it hard for people to debate them.
"Put up or shut up"
That’s not fair.
He has nothing to put up, and he’s so full of shit that if he stops spouting it for longer than five minutes, there’ll be a 20kt explosion of shit that will level the White House.
Please, think of the preservation of historical buildings before you ask him to shut up again.
Re: "Put up or shut up"
The casino operator comment wasn’t really fair either. He was never any good at that, given how often his casinos went bankrupt.
Re: Re: "Put up or shut up"
To be fair, it did just say "former casino operator," which is true. It didn’t say "successful former casino operator."
Re: Re: Re: "Put up or shut up"
The phrase used was that a former casino operator should know "when you need to lay your cards on the table or fold."
On the one hand, someone as bad at running a casino as Donald Trump might not, in fact, know what that phrase means.
On the other hand, he has enough experience with the casinos themselves folding, so…
Undermined elections == poor turnout
I believe that the intent of the voter fraud allegations is to undermine that faith, resulting in a depressed voter turnout, just like many, many other Republican actions.
Republicans can only win elections if the Democrats don’t turn out.
Re: Undermined elections == poor turnout
It’s not simply a matter of undermining people’s faith in institutions (though that’s part of it); it’s a justification for passing "voter fraud" laws that, by an astonishing coincidence, disproportionately affect Democratic voters.
Re: Undermined elections == poor turnout
Particularly since it looks bad if more votes have been cast than there are registered voters. The higher the voter turnout, the less opportunity for Russian votes to bolster the turnout numbers.
Re: Undermined elections == poor turnout
whoa….so spending the last two and a half years on the Russian collusion hoax did not undermine people’s faith in our elections? LOLOLOLOL….uh ok
Re: Re: Undermined elections == poor turnout
Nothing to see, nothing to say?
How are your three monkeys doing these days?
Ah, conspiracy theories.
Hillary Clinton organized a voter fraud campaign so massive that it included…what’s Trump’s latest claim? 15 million voters? Approximately one out of every twenty people in America?
And so disciplined that not a single one of those 15 million illegal voters has actually come forward and admitted to it.
And so incompetent that it focused on solid blue states like California, solid red states like Texas, and, apparently, swing states like New Hampshire with its 4 electoral votes.
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Yeah, this is exactly why conspiracy theories involving more than a handful of people are nigh-impossible to believe: Secrets leak, and the more people in on the secret tends to raise the probability of a leak occuring. If millions of people in multiple states were involved with a plan to defraud the 2016 presidential election, there is no chance in hell that all of them would stay quiet about it.
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This is something that everyone at large needs to be educated on. So many of these claims (not just regarding elections but social media bias, etc…) rely on hundreds, thousands, or millions of people being "in the know" and there’s just no way that could be possible and not one single person come forward with concrete, indisputable, damning proof of it happening. I mean, even the government couldn’t get away with spying on its own citizens for more than a few years before somebody spilled the beans.
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Simple counter example to your thesis.
There are millions of people that know Trump cannot function as an adult, much less be president. Yet no one has come forth with enough proof to have him impeached.
QED
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Mueller made the gist of his report clear: Were it not for the fact that Donald Trump is the sitting president of the United States, he likely would have directed the Justice Department to indict Trump on obstruction charges. The only reason Trump has yet to be impeached lies within Congress — namely its cowardice, on both sides of the aisle and for various reasons, to start the impeachment process.
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This was all but confirmed during testimony. One of the Congressmen went through a few of the examples in the report and asked Mueller if it met the prongs of an obstruction charge. Mueller was answering yes on every prong for the first couple of questions until he went "I see what you did there" and started waving off the questions.
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"Stone": in put-up-or-shut-up piece you continue baseless claims
1) "Obstruction" is always a prosecutor’s last, desperate, most vague weapon, and Mueller didn’t have enough for even that. Period.
2) "Obstruction" is FAR more difficult to prove when are NO underlying charges. OBSTRUCTING WHAT, SONNY? STATE SPECIFIC.
3) Going on muttering darkly without evidence is exactly what this piece is about. But LACK OF FACTS doesn’t apply to YOU, right? — It’s utterly typical of Techdirt fanboys to A) accuse with ZERO facts, and B) to do exactly what accuse opponents of.
4) In America, even YOUR political enemies are innocent until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. — And don’t just say you can still believe so: SHOW ME your basis other than claim Trump only got off because duly elected. SHOW JUST ONE SPECIFIC CHARGE, who, when, what, where. — You can’t, let alone enough to prove it in court. — Without evidence, you are both crazy and lying.
However, I do NOT say to you put-up-or-shut-up! Because serves my purpose for you and similar idiots to keep lying your heads off even after the baseles claims were investigated for two years by dedicated attack dog, 500 witnesses, and all could come up with was what you now CLING to: hint at "obstruction" without any actual charges that could have been obstructed.
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If you had actually read the report you would have the answers to all of these questions.
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Here you go.
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That is an insult, not a factual statement backed up by evidence. Your counterpoint fails.
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To be fair, Trump himself provides all the evidence needed to back up that claim on a day-to-day basis.
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"Yet no one has come forth with enough proof to have him impeached."
Moscow Mitch might have something to say about your claim.
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"There are millions of people that know Trump cannot function as an adult, much less be president. Yet no one has come forth with enough proof to have him impeached"
The issue isn’t one of proof, the issue is that nobody wants President Pence, and anyone else who replaces him will be blamed for the inevitable implosion of the country that he’s triggered. Best to let his senile ass stay in the seat for as long as possible so that he owns the damage he’s done.
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That’s right- the issue comes down to what to do about Pence.
So far, I don’t believe he’s done anything that could get him impeached… but no one wants him as president.
But let’s say Pelosi can start impeachment proceedings against Pence: the Republicans and the media would go nuts over the fact that a Democrat woman was trying to steal power from 2 Republican men!
This is the same reason why Pelosi never started impeachment hearings against Bush and Cheney for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: if it worked (which again, was probably a long shot), she’d become the first female president, but by a political process, not by getting elected.
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Their OPSEC is so good I bet it makes all the governments jealous.
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Manhattan project.
innocuous leader
because sometimes can’t get in without such…
Re: innocuous leader
that prove to be the case this time, but at last got around Techdirt’s mighty "filter" by omitting name and subject line.
Sheesh.
Re: Re: ignorant motherfucker
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Speak English.
You can’t "put up" what ain’t there… and a fool will never "shut up".
There are a few ways to mess things up..
I could explain Some of the methods used in the past.
But They are trying to fix this behind the curtain.
Picture ID, they didnt keep any Pictures at the DOT, until early 2000’s.. Now its a huge data base.
Anyone know about STAR ID?? you have to Prove who you are, and where you live.
AND then we can add Facial ID…
There are problems with all this. Unless all the states Join up and SHARE the pictures and residence, and use Facial ID at voter locations… It means nothing.
there are a few reasons NOT to have ID…but they are enforcing this for everyone, EVERYONE… and they dont care if you Had good ID, and its expired they want it NEW/updated.
And they are saying this is based on Terrorism. and I just cant see how this is going to stop anything. for a few reasons.
A person from another nation can get a passport and other documentation, before they enter the USA…and use THAT as a proper ID.. How many locations KNOW how to look at a Passport and KNOW its real? and if every nation has their OWN, thats like looking at another nations money and deciding which one to use, Where…Not Easy.
They keep reporting that Facial ID isnt working very well.. But in the past, they said they were doing very well.. But Who is looking at the Pictures?? Automated system?? SUCKS..
Waiting for 3D pictures to help with this…And all the NEW ID we would all need to get AGAIN.
Stores are going to hate all this.
this is a Whole new business of creating a central location withall this data and ID, all connected to 1 location (sounds like Credit cards dont it)
With all the lost Data and files on All of us, from Many locations. They already have problems Proving ID.. Your bank and Credit card corps…Love and hate this.
Re: There are a few ways to mess things up..
This comment utilizes the same lexical quirk that I’ve noticed permeates the troll’s Twitter feed. Strange capitalization of common nouns and verbs.
I’ve thought about this usage and I guess it makes sense when needing to cram more information into the great nuance-eliminator that is Twitter. But when you have no restrictions on use of characters it really just makes you look either paranoid or like you don’t understand how to use the English language.
Re: Re: There are a few ways to mess things up..
Maybe it’s a secret code. Have you looked to see if the random caps spell out words? hmm…. STIPPF Nope. Well that’s failing so far. Any other ideas?
How about the 2+ years of Russiagate that has wasted millions that was complete B.S.!!! How about that!!! If anything, Hillary’s hands are dirty.
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That’a a very pure specimen of "WhatAboutism?" It should be studied.
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"the 2+ years of Russiagate that has wasted millions"
You mean the Mueller investigation, that found enough people to convict that it turned a profit?
"angry sycophantic fans" is the truest description of Trump’s base I’ve ever read. (cue angry replies from said sycophants. Good luck.)
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I wouldn’t call myself a sycophant, but I will say that even my Hispanic dreamer girlfriend likes trump because she likes a low unemployment rate and a booming economy more than she likes her u documented cousins sneaking around making her look bad. Ts, js..
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Undocumented*
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"my hispanic dreamer girlfriend…"
Is that like the Trumpland equivalent of "Sure, I have a girlfriend. She’s Canadian."?
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How generous of that hispanic guy to donate his hand for the transplant though.
Trump
Trump's response
Trump’s response… if he bothers to say anything:
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have plenty of evidence and it’s huge. The biggest evidence you’ve ever seen. Big evidence. In fact, it’s right over here.
Have you see what China is doing in the trade war? We need to build a wall to keep the brown people out of Texas or they’ll make goods cheaper so I want American companies to stop using Chinese labor so Mexico will build the wall and help me buy Greenland because it’s the best country for stopping immigration.
Thank you"