BY: Paul Crookston Follow
@P_Crookston

November 15, 2018 2:06 pm

Florida Democratic officials intentionally sent false information to voters in a last-minute attempt to drive up the number of absentee ballots for Sen. Bill Nelson (D.) in his tight race for reelection.

USA Today’s Florida network obtained an email showing Florida Democrats engaged in a statewide effort “to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline.” Those altered forms gave voters a false deadline to send in their absentee ballots, in the hopes a judge would allow those ballots to be counted.

The Florida Department of State forwarded the altered forms to federal prosecutors, and the use of a false date on the forms appears to qualify under federal law’s definition of voter fraud.

“Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a ‘cure affidavit,’ that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline,” USA Today Florida’s Naples Daily News reported. “One Palm Beach Democrat said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.”

U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker on Thursday ruled voters can correct signatures on ballots until Saturday, which may allow the ballots returned with those altered forms to count in the election. Republicans appealed the ruling, supporting Gov. Rick Scott’s bid to keep the victory he’d apparently won on Election Day.

Jennifer Kim, the Democratic Party’s central Florida deputy field director, emailed step-by-step instructions for staffers to use the altered forms, in English and Spanish, to pull in as many voters as they could after the deadline.

Meanwhile, Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo was saying to follow the law and focus on provisional ballots, not absentee ballots, when it comes to fixing signatures. Kim’s email shows she wanted to go after those who voted by mail.

The altered form Kim attached to her email had modified the state’s original document by falsely extending the deadline by three days, to Nov. 8.

This comes after Palm Beach County Democrat Pam Keith deleted a tweet she sent telling people to submit forms to fix absentee ballots days after the state’s deadline had passed. She admitted she was telling them to submit the forms after the deadline in the hopes the courts would rule in Democrats’ favor.

Keith told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that she was aware the deadline to submit those forms had expired even though she was telling them there was still time to fix their absentee ballots. She then directed people to email Katharine Priegues, a field organizer with the Florida Democratic Party, with the subject line “I want to help” for instructions on what to do.

“I was trying to show that if given notice, voters would try to fix their ballots,” Keith said. “I was putting the word out because I was anticipating a challenge of that deadline (in court).”

Keith insisted what she did is not fraud. After a judge ruled in their favor, she said what she did was right because the deadline was “arbitrary” anyway.

“The deadline wasn’t ‘wrong,’ per se. It was functionally meaningless and arbitrary,” Keith said. “Most people never get notice, and many ballots weren’t even looked at until the deadline had passed.”

The Florida Department of State expressed concern and said making changes to state forms is a crime in Florida.

“Making or using an altered form is a criminal offense under Florida law,” said State Department lawyer Bradley McVay in reference to altered forms in Broward and other counties, which Florida officials forwarded to federal prosecutors. “More fundamentally, altering a form in a manner that provides the incorrect date for a voter to cure a defect (or an incorrect method as it related to provisional ballots) imposes a burden on the voter significant enough to frustrate the voter’s ability to vote.”

While much of the nation’s attention has been focused on the post-election shenanigans in south Florida that resulted in a recount for the U.S. Senate seat and governorship, the governor’s race in Georgia also remains uncalled at this time as Democrat-led legal fights have delayed the certification of the vote totals in the hope of similarly triggering a recount or runoff election.

Those efforts to delay the inevitable declaration of victory for Republican candidate Brian Kemp may have finally run their course, though, and even as Democrat candidate Stacey Abrams camp is calling a federal judge’s ruling on Wednesday a “major victory” for Democrats, the reality is the ruling was a split decision that ultimately favored Kemp and should result in a swift conclusion to the legal battles.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that U.S District Judge Steve Jones issued a ruling on three separate but related issues Abrams had raised, ruling in favor of Abrams on one issue while ruling in favor of Kemp on the other two.

The favorable ruling for Abrams was in regard to a request that absentee ballots with a missing or incorrect birth date still be counted if all other information for the registered voter checked out, which the judge agreed with and ordered the state to accept prior to finalizing the vote results.

However, that “major victory” was actually something of a moot point, as another judge had already ordered as much with respect to Gwinnet County, the Secretary of State’s Office had already agreed to accept such ballots and four other major counties — Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Henry — had already counted and reported such ballots.

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Meanwhile, the judge ruled against two other requests from Abrams, namely a request that absentee ballots with incorrect residence addresses be counted as well as a request that provisional ballots cast in a county separate from the one a voter was registered in be counted.

Under existing state law, voters who go to the wrong precinct on Election Day are allowed to cast provisional ballots that will be counted, provided they are still inside of the county in which they are registered and haven’t already voted elsewhere. The Abrams campaign had been hopeful that hundreds, potentially thousands, of rejected provisional ballots cast in separate counties from where the voters were registered would be counted, but that effort failed.

Jones wrote, “Plaintiffs have shown that they are entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to the absentee ballot (date of birth) issue. Plaintiffs have not shown that they are entitled to preliminary injunctive relief as to the absentee ballot (residence) issue and provisional ballot issues.”

Kemp’s campaign issued a brief statement following the judge’s ruling which noted that it was essentially now mathematically impossible for Abrams to gain enough additional votes to compel a runoff election.

The reax from @BrianKempGA campaign: “This ruling solidifies Brian Kemp’s insurmountable lead. The election is over and Brian Kemp is the Governor-elect.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/khXikK0mlt

— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) November 15, 2018

Ryan Mahoney, communications director for the Kemp campaign, said, “Tonight, Judge Jones rejected efforts by Stacey Abrams and her radical allies to undermine the democratic process and rule of law in Georgia.”

“He denied her requests to create new voters and slammed the door on attempts to count illegal votes,” he continued. “The judge’s ruling puts the people of Georgia and their voice ahead of Abrams and her political ambitions.”

“This ruling solidifies Brian Kemp’s insurmountable lead. The election is over and Brian Kemp is the Governor-elect. It’s time for Abrams to concede and join our efforts to keep Georgia moving in the right direction,” Mahoney added.

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The deadline for all 159 counties in the state to finalize their vote totals is Tuesday, but that could be delayed until after all absentee ballots with incorrect birth dates are counted and already-submitted vote totals are adjusted, if necessary.

The Abrams campaign nevertheless described the ruling as a “victory” and vowed to continue their fight, but the reality is that Abrams remains roughly 18,000 votes below the threshold required to trigger a runoff election, a margin that is now virtually impossible for her to close. In total, Abrams trails Kemp by roughly 60,000 votes.

The Kemp campaign is absolutely correct to point out that, for all intents and purposes, the governor’s race is over, Abrams has all but exhausted every effort to scrounge up more votes in her favor and has virtually no chance to even garner enough additional votes to trigger a runoff, much less be declared the victor in the race. Abrams should gracefully concede that this race is now finished.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

More than seven in ten Americans think the media are “dividing Americans” and spread “hate and misunderstanding,” according to a new poll.

In a poll conducted November 7-8, Zogby Analytics asked 1,024 likely voters “Do you agree or disagree: The mainstream media has played a major role in dividing Americans along racial, gender and political lines. This has led to a spread of hate and misunderstanding among some people.”

Some 72% said they “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree.” Another 29% said they “somewhat disagree” or “strongly disagree.”

But President Trump didn’t fare too well in the poll, either. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they agreed that he “has played a major role in dividing Americans,” while just one-third disagreed.

“… [M]ajorities of voters in many of the same groups that felt the mainstream media spreads hate and misunderstanding, also felt that President Trump is responsible for the spread of hate and misunderstanding, but more voters overall, and in most sub-groups, blame the media slightly more!” Zogby wrote.

“The intense feelings about the mainstream media, and the political divide they play a role in, were common among many different demographics,” Zogby noted, “but there were instances where some groups agreed or disagreed more or less.

There were also some instances of demographics agreeing with each other, which rarely do, when it comes to politics and social issues. Men (70% agree) and women (73% agree) were very much in agreement (strongly and somewhat agree combined) about the role the mainstream media plays in dividing the public and spreading hate.

While both genders were in agreement, generational age groups had an inverse relationship. Interestingly, younger voters age 18-24 and age 18-29 (81-82% strongly and somewhat agree/18-19% strongly and somewhat disagree) were much more likely to blame the media for spreading hate and misunderstanding than older voters age 65+ (62% strongly and somewhat agree/38% strongly and somewhat disagree) and age 70+ (67% strongly and somewhat agree/33% strongly and somewhat disagree).

Zogby also found that party identification played a role in the views of those surveyed: 94% of Republicans agreed that the media sows division while just 51% of Democrats agreed.

Based on the results of the recent midterm election in the U.S., in which the Democrats took back control of the House and the Republicans regained a majority in the Senate, suffice it to say, Americans are politically divided. The country is also divided as to who should shoulder the blame: There are some people who feel racial, gender, and political issues are made worse by the coverage of the mainstream media, while there are others who feel the divide we currently suffer from is the result of President Trump’s rhetoric.

Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes was questioned earlier this week about emergency voting centers as debate continued over the handling of voters’ ballots in Arizona’s U.S Senate race.

As reported by the Arizona Republic, the emergency voting centers were opened in Maricopa County, Arizona, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Saturday and Monday before Election Day.  What constituted as an “emergency” was left entirely up to the discretion of the voters, according to the Recorder’s Office.

Republicans have been critical of Arizona’s use of emergency voting centers, seeing them as being used as a way out of following voting election deadlines set by law.  GOP officials sent letters to all the county recorders in Arizona, expressing their concern over the legality of some of the methods used to collect ballots.

They singled out the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, writing, “It has come to our attention that the Maricopa County Recorder’s office may be systematically permitting electors to cast in-person early ballots between Saturday, November 3 and Monday, November 5, irrespective of whether such individuals have cited any articulable emergency.”

“If true, this practice impermissibly circumvents the statutory deadline and constitutes a de facto extension of general early voting,” the letter continued.

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Republicans officials requested that county recorders separate the ballots that came from emergency voting centers for clarification in case legal issues arose, with the Arizona Republic estimating that there were around 3,000 ballots at issue.

However, the Arizona Republic reports that “(Fontes) would not confirm whether the office is complying with the request and separating the ballots.”

Earlier this week on “Sunday Square Off” on local NBC associate 12News, reporter Brahm Resnik interviewed Fontes on the question of the emergency voting centers favoring Democratic voters due to their locations in the state.

“There were five of them open on Saturday and Monday … two of them along I-10, Avondale and Tolleson. Not very far apart … there were none in the northwest valley, and some other areas didn’t have any.”

“How fair is this when vast swaths of the valley (Phoenix metro area) — and maybe some Republican districts some might argue — were left out of these voting centers while you have two very close to each other in a Democratic area?” Resnik asked.

“Here’s what’s interesting about this. On the one hand, we have people complaining that I shouldn’t be doing something in the first place. And on the other hand, when I do it they criticize me for the way it happens. And that’s fair. I’m an elected official, and I’ve got big shoulders,” Fontes said by way of an answer.

Fontes also clarified that the request to open the emergency voting centers came from the Democratic mayor of Tolleson, Anna Tovar. Tovar had endorsed Democratic Senate candidate Krysten Sinema almost a year ago.

After Fontes acknowledged that this was the first time Maricopa County offered early voting, Resnick asked Fontes about the integrity of emergency voting centers.

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“I could have gone, without any illness and — for any reason I could have gone to one of these centers for any reason at all,” Resnick prompted.

“You would have had to have had an emergency,” Fontes responded.

“Democratic candidates were putting this number and address out on door hangers saying, ‘Just show up,’” Resnick pressed.

Fontes told him that by law, states can have emergency voting available, but admitted that those who voted at the emergency voting centers weren’t evaluated for whether they had emergencies.

“It’s not my business what your emergency is, Brahm. I’ve got HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) laws that prevent me from asking. You’ve got your privacy that I have to respect, and by the way, what, pray tell, is the problem with giving voters access to the ballot box? That’s my first question,” Fontes said.

Arizona law states that early voting should end on the Friday before Election Day; however, the law also provides for emergency voting centers created after this time.

The details of emergency voting statutes have spurred ongoing debate, with this instance of possible misapplication adding to the controversy.  Many see the timing and locations of the emergency voting centers in Maricopa County as giving Democratic voters the upper hand during the elections.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

A conservative retailer released a “Build the Wall” building blocks toy set just in time for the holiday shopping season.

The Lego-like building block sets are being sold by the conservative website “Keep and Bear” for $29.95, and each set contains more than 100 grey building blocks and a figurine of President Trump with a red MAGA construction hat.

New MAGA building blocks encourage kids to “Build the Wall” https://t.co/fGwPZ0OobD pic.twitter.com/9M8TwLmxWs

— New York Post (@nypost) November 13, 2018

The description of the building set includes a statement promoting Trump’s border wall, opposing illegal immigration, and denouncing the caravan of Honduran migrants headed towards the U.S. border.

“We understand why they want to flee Honduras and live and work in America. After all, we are the greatest nation on earth,” the product description reads. “In the interest of national security, however, we cannot allow just anyone and everyone to cross our borders.”

“The wall must be built,” the description continues. “The wall will keep America safe and strong. Only then will we be able to help those in need.”

Some Twitter users were not so keen on the toy, calling it “offensive,” but others already placed their pre-orders for the toy in time for the Christmas holiday season.

The website states that it is currently accepting orders for the “Build the Wall” toy set, and will begin shipping the orders on November 23.

Election recounts would be more plausible if Democrats occasionally let the Republican win. But they don’t. Ballots miraculously discovered days and weeks after the election — in the back seat of a car, after helpful “corrections” to the ballots by election supervisors, etc. — invariably result in a surprise win for the Democrat.

Voters are just supposed to accept that, unless Republicans win an election by an insuperable margin, the Democrats will steal it.

And the thieving is cheered on by our media. Whenever President Trump has the effrontery to mention that GOP victories are being stolen by corrupt Democratic officials, the media snippily note that his claim is “UNSUBSTANTIATED.”

Thus, for example, in the first 60 seconds of CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Monday, Burnett said:

— “(The email from Trump headquarters) without providing any evidence … warns that, quote, corrupt Democrats are trying to, quote, steal election victories in Florida. …

— “It’s a baseless claim that President Trump has been pushing for days. …

— “(Gov. Rick) Scott (is) talking about rampant fraud without providing any evidence. …

— “Now, ‘steal an election,’ ‘committing fraud’ are big claims to make without having evidence.”

Hey! I have an idea! Why doesn’t CNN rustle up some reporters to go and investigate the biggest story of the year?

No, the burden is on random Republicans — who have jobs other than “reporting the news” — to produce bulletproof evidence of voter fraud. Otherwise, it’s just a wacky coincidence that these “recounts” always result in mysterious new votes for Democrats.

If a freelance investigative reporter like James O’Keefe actually does produce the evidence that our media are too lazy and biased to get for themselves, they sneer that O’Keefe can’t be trusted. He’s not a real reporter!

What a real reporter does is call up some left-wing outfit, get a quote, and peremptorily announce that there has never been an illegal ballot cast in any election, ever.

We called the Brennan Center for Justice, and they assured us that voter fraud doesn’t exist. I can prove I called — I’ll show you my phone records! We’re not going to send our reporters on a snipe hunt. Oh, and we also got an interesting brochure on voter suppression, such as the Nazi-inspired idea that voters should know how to spell their own names.

That’s what we get from our crackerjack media. Journalists’ phones should be taken away, so they’d be forced to do actual reporting.

Republicans control the state legislature and governor’s office in Florida. They control the U.S. Congress and the presidency. If that’s not enough to prevent two statewide Florida elections from being stolen, the GOP is more useless than I’d already imagined.

Here’s a primer for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on how to deal with all the Senate and House election “recounts” that keep magically flipping seats to the Democrats.

In 1974, Republican Louis Wyman won his race for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, beating Democrat John Durkin by 355 votes. Durkin demanded a recount — which went back and forth by a handful of votes until the state’s Ballot Law Commission concluded that Wyman had indeed won.

Wyman was certified the winner by the New Hampshire secretary of state and was on his way to Washington, D.C., when … the Senate refused to seat him. New Hampshire’s certification of Wyman as the winner meant nothing, because, you see, Democrats held a majority in the Senate.

The Senate spent months examining disputed ballots. Unable to come up with any method whereby they could declare the Democrat the winner, the Senate forced New Hampshire to hold another election.

Demoralized Republicans stayed home and, this time, the Democrat won.

Hey, Mitch! Don’t Republicans hold a majority in the Senate?

In 1984, Democrat Frank McCloskey won a razor-thin re-election to the House from Indiana’s 8th Congressional District. The state held two recounts, both of which the Republican won. The Washington Post reported that there were “no allegations of fraud” in the recount, and 90 percent of ballot disqualifications had been agreed to “by election commissions dominated by Democrats.”

Consequently, Indiana’s secretary of state certified Republican Rick McIntyre the winner.

But the Democratic-controlled House simply refused to seat McIntyre. Instead, the House undertook its own “recount.” You’ll never guess who won!

Don’t Republicans have a majority in the House for six more weeks?

In 2008, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota won his re-election bid against challenger Al Franken by 725 votes. But for several weeks after the election, Democratic precincts kept discovering new votes for Franken — including ballots sitting in cars, as well as a write-in vote for “Frankenstein” — which was counted as a vote for Franken. (Duh.)

These late-discovered ballots eventually put Frankenstein ahead by 312 votes, whereupon he was immediately certified the winner by the George Soros-backed secretary of state.

The U.S. Senate was in Democratic hands, so there was no question but that Majority Leader Harry Reid would seat the cheater, Franken. And that, kids, is how the Democrats got the 60th vote for Obamacare.

Four years later, we found out that more than 1,000 felons — ineligible to vote — had cast ballots in the 2008 Minnesota election. (To state the obvious, felons support Democrats by about 10-1.)

In the middle of the Democrats’ open theft of the Indiana seat in 1984, The New York Times pompously reminded readers of the “basic constitutional principle that Congress is the judge of its own membership and that lawmakers can overrule state laws in making that determination.”

You’ve already caved on Arizona, Mitch. How about taking a page from the Democrats’ playbook? You don’t have to go full Daley Machine. Democrats steal elections they actually lost. Republicans just want you to hang on to the seats they won.

Portions of the migrant caravan consisting of nearly 900 Central Americans in 22 buses arrived in the northern border state of Sonora, escorted by state and federal police on Wednesday.

A video posted online captures the caravan traveling along Mexican federal highway 15, through Esperanza, just north of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora. A smaller caravan reportedly passed through Tuesday night with an additional 400 in transit.

The 22-bus caravan is expected to continue north on Mexican Federal Highway 15–temporarily stopping or passing through Hermosillo and north through Santa Ana, then west onto Mexican Federal Highway 2 past Caborca, San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexicali, Tecate and then to Tijuana.

This segment of the migrant caravan is part of the 7,000 to 10,000 Central Americans who crossed into Mexico approximately one month ago. Roughly 6,531 migrants crossed the state of Queretaro over the weekend, according to the local government. The figure is greater than the count made by authorities when the group spent several days in Mexico City, which suggests the possibility that other migrants joined the caravan. The group eventually stopped in Guadalajara after passing through Guanajuato. Authorities provided federal police escorts since they are traveling through some of the most dangerous territories of Mexico. Guanajuato experienced a 400% increase in murders since 2015 as organized crime gangs fight over lucrative drug trafficking routes and illegal fuel pipeline taps.

Breitbart News reported extensively on the cartel violence in Tijuana, with a total of 2,152 homicides in 2018. Some in the caravan are aiming for the California-Mexico border area to avoid Tamaulipas and Coahuila. There, cartels tend to direct their violence against the migrant community via extortion schemes.

Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.) You can follow him on Twitter. He can be reached at robertrarce@gmail.com