Dear @timkaine. This is an awful idea. Even if the senate refuses to convict, we NEED a public trial and to put witnesses under oath. We need answers and sunlight. What we don’t need? A bipartisan slap on Trump’s wrist so that Congress can sweep these crimes under the rug.
Censure wld be “in lieu” of a trial. This is an awful idea. We need a public trial w/ witnesses under oath, regardless of whether senators convict. We need transparency, not a slap on Trump’s wrist so Congress can shove these GOP crimes under the rug w/ all the other dead bodies.
Apparently the envisioned censure wld prevent Trump from holding federal office again. I still say no. It would not ban Ivanka & Don Jr. from holding federal office. We need transparency and witnesses under oath to expose the full extent of the rot, regardless of a conviction.
ES&S downplays problems w/ its voting machines. To know what occurred, we need public records requests. @RGarella did one in 2019 & found that, “‘poll workers & technicians reported issues with the new machines at more than 40 % of polling locations,’...1/ nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/…
...[in Philadelphia], yet the voting machine vendor ES&S said that ‘it was ‘simply inaccurate’ for anyone to imply there were widespread issues.’” 2/
Although the GOP wants everyone focused on Dominion, it is ES&S that for years has arguably caused the most concern among election-integrity advocates and experts. I wrote about these concerns in detail here. 3/ link.medium.com/y3LUkCASrdb
Good news! The New York State Board of Elections voted yesterday to REJECT certification of ES&S’s ExpressVote XL all-in-one barcode ballot marking device (BMD), a glitchy & hackable touchscreen that ES&S has hoped officials would stupidly buy in lieu of pen and paper. 1/
I’m still trying to find out @NYSBOE’s reasoning, but I know one problem was that the ExpressVote XL runs on Windows 7 and can only mark ballots in English. If the XL were a person, it would be a MAGA. 2/
The XL has other problems. It runs the barcode “paper ballot” back under the printout AFTER the voter reviews it, which experts say means it could be maliciously programmed to eff with the barcode that is the only part of the “paper ballot” counted as your vote. 3/
Targeting African Americans in 2016, white nationalist encouraged these voters to “vote” via text. Text voting doesn’t exist. 4900 people apparently fell for the scam, & were thus disenfranchised. Vaughn now faces up to ten years in prison. 1/
Oh no. “Paper-based” sounds like touchscreens (BMDs), not #HandMarkedPaperBallots (pen and paper). Hope I’m wrong and that it’s not ES&S with its effed up software verification tool. 1/
Just what we didn’t need: “In recent days, Fox has taken a sharp turn toward a more extreme approach as it confronts a post-Trump ratings dip — the result of some of its furthest-right viewers moving to outlets such as Newsmax & One America News...” 1/ washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/medi…
...and some middle-of-the-roaders apparently finding CNN or MSNBC more to their liking.” 2/
Fox has thus “decided to add an hour of opinion programming to its prime-time offerings. The 7 p.m. hour will no longer be nominally news but straight-up outrage production.” 3/