Unfortunately, looks like a clear case of election fraud.
These results were nowhere near the surveys I saw and I got less than half the votes as last time even as it was clear a lot more people were voting for me and the anti incumbent atmosphere was intense.
And as the votes came in her % stayed the same throughout.
Will know more soon.
🙁
Does not seem to pass the sniff test. Do you know how most of the ballots were cast? Paper ballot? Optical scanner? Lever machine?
uncertified and untested very old push button machines
@WARREN MOSLER, What are the conditions for requesting a recount and an audit of the equipment?
What about other races? Are they also anomalous? Twenty thousand votes ought not to be too hard to audit. Is there a paper trail? Is there a software program? A shift of every second or third vote might account for a stagnant percentage.
nothing done yet, working on all that
@WARREN MOSLER,
Aren’t those the ones that open up at the back where you can see which button hit what? If so, you can see if a vote for you was calibrated as a vote for her.
I saw a great video after the 2000 race in FL. The candidate went to where they were stored the next day acting as an election official following up. She asked how they worked. The man in charge of the machines explained it. That’s when she saw what happened. Every time a voter hit a button for her opponent, she got the vote and vice versa.
@WARREN MOSLER,
You just ask to see the “chain of command.” That’s the record of who calibrated the machines for the vote, and entered your names against the buttons. THEN you ask to see the machines.
thanks!
@WARREN MOSLER,
Those are the same kind of machines that caused so much trouble in Florida in the infamous hanging chad election of 2000.
@WARREN MOSLER,
Warren, one more thing. I’m pretty sure the report is called “the chain of command.” Call the US Election Board, or whatever it’s called. They could give you the exact name of the report. It’s a federally required report. All candidates are allowed access to this document before the vote is ‘verified’, or whatever the official term is.
Contact Bev Harris at blackboxvoting.org. As in, now. She is the leading US advocate and activist about voter fraud. She will tell you what you need to do within the FIRST FEW DAYS after a vote that you are legally entitled to do as a candidate. The really really really wonderful thing about Bev Harris is that she’s extraordinarily knowledgable, business-like, and unemotional. This is not an amygdala-fueled activist, if you get my drift. She’s Seattle-based.
will do thanks!
@Ed Rombach,
Sorry. I don’t buy this election fraud argument. Christensen got 66% of the vote in 2006, 99.6% in 2008 (running unopposed), 71% in 2010, and now I’m supposed to believe that she got 60% on the strength of fraud?
Warren, I know you’re upset. Believe me, I found the election results around the country, including yours, deeply depressing. But don’t taint your reputation by making unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
First, I’m not ‘upset’ or otherwise acting emotionally.
Second, for all practical purposes she ran unopposed in 2008 and 2010.
Third, in 2006 and 2004 when I ran my surveys and others were pretty much in line with the actual results.
This time she got 15%+ more than any survey and I got that much less.
And the others running got at least double of what any surveys showed as well.
That is, my votes were redistributed to the others.
Fourth, it was clear that this time she was in ‘trouble’ with a massive ‘anti donna’ sentiment
to the extreme. Unlike last time, our door to door campaigning revealed an alarming negative emotional
reaction to just her name. Common unsolicited responses were ’16 years is too long for anyone’ ‘time for her to go’
all spoken with near hatred as electric bills went over 50cents/kw and gas currently at 4.50/gallon, and
thousands of lost jobs and an unemployment rate over 20%. Also, people were coming to me in droves, including the police
and govt. workers, saying ‘this time we’re all voting for you’. Seems impossible my vote total would only be just over 3,000 for both islands, when I was showing maybe 5,000+ just on St. Croix in my surveys.
And much more.
@WARREN MOSLER,
Godspeed on that, Warren. Win or lose, that kind of fraud needs to be exposed to the light of day. Three hots and a cot for the perps!
and you can take comfort in this type of thing from the St. Croix Source:
“When asked whether the test was really open to the public when it was not formally announced until several hours after the fact, Wells said the first test on Oct. 27 – the one that revealed the problems with the machines in the first place – was publicized in the media, therefore the board met the law’s requirement. She also said some members of the public witnessed a successful test on St. John and that a St. Thomas polling place judge was present for the successful voting test that Daniel used to certify the machines.”
@WARREN MOSLER,
For 90% of Congressmen are reelected year after year.
@WARREN MOSLER,
Sorry. Post got cutoff.
I believe you can get a 1,000 sample poll done of the island for 90% of Congressmen are reelected over and over again.
It’s not obvious to me why USVI voters would blame Christensen for high gas prices or high unemployment. The US electorate didn’t even blame the president for that, and he has a tad more power over the economy than the delegate from the USVI.
@WARREN MOSLER,
Whoa, another mutilated post.
I believe you can get a poll done for <$20K by a nationally recognized pollster. That's the first step in substantiating your claims of election fraud.
And I was trying to say that Congress has a 9% approval rating, but 90% of Congress get reelected each cycle anyway.
@WARREN MOSLER,
You are completely entitled to contest the vote, and furthermore, there are legal protections for you as a candidate to “Protect the Count,” especially when you have absentee votes left to count. You don’t have to pay for a poll as ESM suggests. There are SOPs in place.
Scroll up and see the amendment to my original post about blackboxvoting.org and Bev Harris. She can help you. Harris is the person who uncovered the Diebold machine scandals, and enlisted the help of forensic software experts from around the world to decipher how the frauds were being committed. She showed Congress. No one would know anything about software and hardware voting fraud if it wasn’t for her. She’s been at it since the 2000 election. She’s a former PR executive who decided this effort was in the public interest and has since dedicated her life to it.
just talked to her.
she only works on pre election transparency and can’t help
@WARREN MOSLER,
Software fraud testimony by Clint Curtis – Congress. Pay attention to “set a flag to flip the votes” on simple vote tabulation machines
YouTube: “Proof of voter fraud in the USA – from the horse’s mouth”
Might be able to contact him through this:
http://www.clintcurtis.com/about.asp
@ESM,
It doesn’t matter if Warren is upset or not. He has very important mission in behalf of everybody, the world really, and should do ANYTHING legally possible to accomplish it.
It does not seem to me that you are acting emotionally. Keep up the good work — see this through whatever the result! I can’t understand this modern obsession with machine voting — whatever was wrong with paper ballots and scrutineers? It is not just in the US that this is a growing problem. Many other countries are starting to emulate your example. Unfortunately, many of my younger colleagues believe that ever more computerization is the way to solve all these problems, which seems dangerously naive to me — and like something out of an Alduous Huxley novel.
Exactly! Dumb, offline computer systems can still be used, but merely to print a filled-out ballot that goes in the good, old ballot box.
I don’t understand why the US uses voting machines. In the UK it’s just paper and pen and everything works fine without US-style election fraud.
@y, Well, paper and ink are more difficult to manipulate. So we went to machines.
maybe they were just working it to get her well over 50% so there wasnt a runoff required? rsp,
Known problems with USVI machines:
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/board-certifies-machines-just-hours-ahead-of-vote-1.1399205
Frum – US voting system a disgrace:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/index.html
Well, it would really suck if this was not fraud.
As a 26 yr old with a great job and a good education, I was disappointed in the broader election results.
Reading your blog regularly, I believe your ideas to be more deserving of attention than any other politician’s out there. I even agree with most of them.
Not sure how else to approach, but we need more plans to get your points out there.
Would be nice to have something to look forward to politics wise.
If you can hold out on falling back to your cars, nice boat and potential vacations, like most reasonable people in your position would do, it would be much appreciated!
Hope people’s voices are (or will be) truly reflected in the counts.
That sucks. Unknown to most, this might have been the most important race of all in this election.
@RonT,
@Zach Nelson, I agree, Warren needs to be in congress.
@RonT,
Agreed
Well … still … great work Mr. Mosler …
So proud of you, will support you always …
This just probably means that there is something even bigger awaiting you in the future … keep a look out and when you see it just go after it like you did this one.
A continued thanks for all you have done and keep on doing. All the best.
Either you need better polling or there was fraud.
Study the polling data. 300 is a more than significant count for an election that only got 18,000 votes.
Saying that the demographics are against you big time.
@Adam2, 16,000 votes…
@Adam2,
It is immaterial whether the vote total is 16K or 16MM. That being said, an unbiased sample of 300 is plenty large. The problem is that we don’t know if the sample was unbiased.
@ESM, Right. Before calling fraud on the election you need to study the survey. A survey without demographic data is worthless.
@Adam2, The survey must also be random.
Also, anecdotes that government workers/police saying they will vote for you is meaningless without an unbiased survey to back that up.
@Adam2 & WARREN,
Not sure if published, but have a look the percentage of overseas ballots. If that’s very high it could be the reason why local polls are off.
they are yet to be included
Warren I hope you try again in the future.
Dear Warren,
has followed you to Rimini. You have been great. You have made us see a best and possible future. Here in many Italy they hoped in one election of yours to the Congress. I have been sorry quite a lot for your fellow citizens that don’t know what they are lost. But not to despair! What you are doing is immense. One day will be on the books of history and economy.
A great embrace from Italy
Roberto Bergonzini
P.S: excuse mi bud english (of google)
thanks!!
@WARREN MOSLER, Running for public office is a lot more rewarding than being in public office. Now that you’ve got an organization on the ground, you can be much more effective as a citizen who can demand information from every agency of the federal and territorial government than you would be as a member of a committee who has to rely on a chairman agreeing to forward a request for information.
However, electoral fraud via the mechanical systems is a good issue to follow up because it provides a handle for getting a look at the inner workings of various organizations and it’s a controversy some media outlets like to cover.
Yes, the political parties are no more keen than elected office holders to have interference from the grass roots. It is charged that Barack Obama was promoted by the Chicago machine. That’s not true. His first election to the Senate was due in large part to the efforts of Howard Dean and the organization he had left over after his aborted try for the presidency in 2003. The grass roots propelled Dean to the DNC even as DFA started funding progressive candidates and Obama was the first to be endorsed. That Dean did not stay at the DNC after 2008 was always expected because the President is expected to select his own team. Besides, Obama took over most of the functions of the DNC and transfered them to OFA (Organizing for America) which has remained functional throughout his tenure. So, there was no need to start from scratch in 2011 for 2012 since the organizing had never lapsed. The media don’t cover this kind of stuff because they have their own story lines. As regards the DNC, for example, the story line is that there was a rift. The reality is that the traditional Democratic party is not keen on grass roots. Citizen activists challenge their power base.
Regardless whether there was election fraud or whether polls were unreliable – the key barrier is that people from outside of the “system” are prevented from entering the Sanctum Sanctorum. From the Democratic perspective it’s better to have 10 Republicans than one Independent. From the Republican perspective it is exactly the same. We don’t live in ancient Greece. Exactly the same happens here in Australia and almost anywhere else.
I have already mentioned it – challenging the “system” openly is a waste of time, money and effort, just as the activities of Chinese dissidents. Were voting machines “broken”? Possibly. But so what? Let’s move on. Repeating unsubstantiated claims may only make things worse as it will mean that people supporting Warren are conspiracy theorists. The ‘Mainstreamers” of Paul Krugman’s variety will be very happy to point at the MMT crowd as deluded idiots believing in UFO and similar stuff.
Spending some limited amount of money also won’t work and I don’t expect Warren to waste a really significant amount of money on lawyers.
There are other, more efficient ways. How is it possible that a few rich people (Peter G Peterson, Koch Brothers, George Soros) have managed to exercise enormous political influence? I doubt they directly spent too much money. Soros bragged one time that the whole Georgian “revolution” cost him about $42 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Revolution
My advice is – for the moment, let’s forget about this unpleasant experience, learn a few useful things and move on.
Just a quick google on her… looks like a gem of a politician
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/04/virgin-islands-delegate-got-money-from-dc-donor-under-investigation-75070.html
@Adam (ak)
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
🙂
In response to ESM above, I just want to note for the record that in 2010, there were 85 new members in the House (the second largest turn-over in history) and 19 of those replaced people who’d been there for five terms or more. Nobody’s been touting incumbency this time around because the old timers are still shaking from 2010. Some old war horses were also removed in Republican primaries this time around. The Capitol Hill Gang have been running an extortion ring in which corporations’ access to contracts, grants and favorable legislation is conditioned on the delivery of the workers’ votes. Which is why workers keep seeming to vote against their own interests and unions are despised. The latter make the loss of employment and wages less credible and give workers reason not to vote as they were told. That this strategy was actually made public in connection to the Romney campaign merely tells us that his campaign managers were familiar with legislative strategies and didn’t bother to develop a viable campaign for an executive.
Anyway, it’s my sense that the Tea Party people got arrogated by some corporate folk who got tired of being jerked around by the incumbents who promised to deliver legislation and then failed because “the Senate wouldn’t go along.” It’s a classic con. The opposition to ear marks is a tell that some people had caught on. That the new members of Congress didn’t play well with others is mostly a consequence of the leadership trying to maintain control of an eroding organization.
warren, though i’m convinced there was election fraud in your case, i think that’s a fight you can’t win.
if you run on the democratic or republican ticket, i can’t see you getting elected to any office if the party “machine” is not behind you and/or if you haven’t distinguished yourself in the local community.
i hate to say it,but i honestly think that the best that you can hope for is to become an economic advisor to some politician. and, in that capacity, i think you shouldn’t limit yourself to just politicians here in the US.
that’s my 2 cents. good luck!
Hi, Warren, being an Italian fan of you, may I suggest you to look at the POSITIVE side of this coin?: more time left for you to spread the gospel of FULL EMPLOYMENT and of MMT all around the world…
Welcome back to Italy ASAP !
Leopoldo
🙂
Warren you have changed a lot of people’s understanding of the monetary system for the better via the internet ..the internet gives you access to 2bn people and you cannot be blocked by party politics.
The internet is the portal for change ..politicians take notice once their voters take notice …
i cannot vote for you in USVI but i can vote for you in cyberspace ..
🙂 .
Currently you need to focus on the potential fraud issue. How about offering a small reward for information leading to the overturn of the current election results? Pull a Trump rather than a Gore. Since this might seem like stooping, get Trump to make the offer 🙂
Later, invite in various groups interested in creating an un-riggable system for voting.
I hear Venezuela has a pretty good system according to international observers. The suggestion the USVI should model itself after Venezuela would get media attention 🙂 Given the USVI’s small size, it arguably would be a good test site for a new system, at least in terms of cost.
Warren,
just talked to her.
she only works on pre election transparency and can’t help
Then she was blowing you off because she did a major campaign after the 2004 election helping people collect the filled-in ballots and telling them what to do. What reports to collect, etc. Sorry it didn’t work out with her.
@MRW,
Remember well – it is voter fraud when Republican Party hacks do it – not when Democratic Party hacks do it!
i think things have changed with her since then. she seemed down on working with candidates in general
Well, there may be a bright side: non-voters were a larger bloc than either the burro or elephant voters (40 vs. 30-30). This is the bloc that could make all the difference. The trick will be to find the ways to influence those who can most influence them; to find the small but vital percentage of them that can move the rest.
You might consider hiring an expert(s)in using the social media to further your message, in particular, Linked-in, in conjunction with a professional, expertly done YouTube channel. You could reach them with scheduled webinar presentations with Q & A, and targeting groups within Linked-in; ditto with Podcasts; you could join Linked-in groups and join the conversations there, and so on and on. Blogs are good, but not enough, and the blog itself could be much more integrated with an overall web strategy, or perhaps a new, additional blog would servce that function better, or perhaps the NEP blog could be integrated into this effort. Not only an expert or so in using social media, but many of your readers would probably have very creative ideas. 40% of the voting population is out there waiting for something better.
Warren,
Indeed, i second your doubts on fairness of voting system. 15% difference between polls and official votes constitute too much error. If polls were done professionally (statistically sound) the problem must lie in voting system.
No matter what would come up out of your “investigation” you did great work so far promoting MMT, more and more people all over the world find themselves enlighted and will support your line of economical thought. I’m from Europe (not Italy but Poland!)and good example of your growing popularity. Congratulations ! Thank you for your efforts and please continue your work.
Best wishes
Cezary