Bernie has swept the last 6 states: Who's Losing Now?
Scott Baker
Quietly, and with barely acknowledged change, if at all, by the mainstream media, Bernie Sanders has taken the momentum away from Hillary Clinton with sweeping victories in the last 6 primaries and caucuses.
With 88% of the vote counted in Hawaii as of this writing, he is the clear winner there: 70.6 to 29.2.
In the Democrats voting Abroad contest, completely overlooked by the mainstream media, it's Sanders with 9 delegates to Clinton with 4 (a further breakdown is not provided by the New York Times, unlike the other contests below). This contest's results were delayed for weeks, and just announced a few days ago...to no one's fanfare except the Sanders' campaign itself. But this serves now as contest 1 of the most recent 6 called.
In the Idaho Caucuses, with 100% reporting, it's Sanders with 78% (17 delegates) to Clinton with 21.2 (5 delegates).
In Utah's Caucuses, with 99% reporting, it's Sanders with 79.3% (26 delegates) to Clinton with 20.3% (6 delegates). Rich, Piute, and Beaver County have 0 districts reporting and make up the 1% remaining (more on this kind of undercounting in a moment).
In Alaska, with 100% reporting, it's Sanders with 81.6% (13 delegates) to Clinton with 18.4% (3 delegates)
In Washington State, which is larger than all but 5 of the remaining 22 states, and with 100% reporting, it's Sanders with 72.7% (23 delegates) to Clinton with 27.1% (8 delegates).
Note: The delegate counts in the latest contests are likely to increase substantially as the votes are finally tallied and delegate pledges are made later.
Caucuses are becoming more prevalent this year, with districts everywhere trying to save money. They severely undercount voters. I've seen districts with ballot stuffing and opportunities for repetitive counting, with no one checking ANY ID so a voter could vote in multiple districts, or even vote on multiple ballots in the same district. In some places, Democratic ballots have simply run out, preventing voting at all. It's a complete mess, and it explains why in small states like Idaho, there is such a lopsided Republican victory for Cruz that didn't show up in pre-primary polls.
Dear (recipient),Voter suppression/electoral manipulation. We saw it in Arizona on Tuesday, but it started long before then. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin once said, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."Stalin simply announced whatever voting results he wanted. Here, in the United States, we do things differently. As the ghost of Stalin might say: "The people who attempt to cast the votes in the United States decide nothing. The people who determine how many polling locations there will be, where they'll be, and how long they'll be open decide everything."We saw it this week in Arizona. We have seen it over and over again in Florida. Police roadblocks between black neighborhoods and the polls. Criminalization of voter registration efforts. Touchscreen machines where a vote for X magically becomes a vote for Y. Exclusion from the voter rolls because you have the same name -- the same name! -- as someone else who was convicted of a felony. (John Smith, you're screwed.) One or two voting machines for a college with 60,000 students. Butterfly ballots and hanging chads.But we here at the Grayson Campaign, we fight back against that....
All of this benefits the status quo candidates, of course.
I've seen another thing, though it's a moving target and when I started tallying the results, the factors changed before I could finish. It seems like the contests are called by AP (which is used by most Mainstream Media) early with 1-8% of the votes uncounted, mostly in rural areas that normally go to Sanders. I started creating a table that showed this, but then a few days later, they caught up, but by then, of course, people aren't looking at the states that already had primaries over a week ago, so they could have missed the adjustments. This is sort of what the writer is saying here, because it is disproportionately counting those pre-election day votes and ignoring the election day votes that are more likely to swing to Sanders.
http://newthinking.blogspot.com/
Scott Baker is a Managing Editor & The Economics Editor at Opednews, and a blogger for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Global Economic Intersection.
His anthology of updated Opednews articles "America is Not Broke" was published by Tayen Lane Publishing (March, 2015) and may be found here:
http://www.americaisnotbroke.net/
Scott is former President of Common Ground-NYC (http://commongroundnyc.org/), a Geoist/Georgist activist group. He has written (more...)
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