2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Jacob]

Seems like Russian hackers have been skimming credit card numbers from GOP sites. Might want to check your credit card statements if you've donated to Senate Republicans.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/hacked-republican-website-skimmed-donor-credit-cards-for-6-months/

[CountDeMoney]

Poll: 41 percent of voters say election could be 'stolen' from Trump
By Jake Sherman and Steven Shepard
10/17/16 06:45 AM EDT

The American electorate has turned deeply skeptical about the integrity of the nation's election apparatus, with 41 percent of voters saying November's election could be "stolen" from Donald Trump due to widespread voter fraud.

The new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll -- conducted among 1,999 registered voters Oct. 13 through Oct. 15 -- shows that Trump's repeated warnings about a "rigged" election are having effect: 73 percent of Republicans think the election could be swiped from him. Just 17 percent of Democrats agree with the prospect of massive fraud at the ballot box.

The public sentiment is beginning to reflect Trump's campaign message. Over the last week, the GOP nominee has intensified his criticism of the U.S. electoral system, much to the chagrin of elected Republicans, who think it threatens the peaceful transfer of power. Trump calls the process rigged, and has said the media is colluding with Hillary Clinton to throw the presidential race in her favor.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/poll-41-percent-of-voters-say-the-election-could-be-stolen-from-trump-229871

https://youtu.be/Tvvf_6Yg6fQ

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/18/donald-trump-rejects-election-result-before-the-votes-have-been-counted

Donald Trump's dark warning that dead will rise from the voter rolls

Donald Trump has continued an unprecedented effort by a major presidential candidate to effectively declare the presidential election invalid before voters have even had their say.

On Monday, just over three weeks before election day, the Republican nominee repeated his unsupported claim that voter fraud was rampant and specifically stated in a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin that ballots cast by illegal immigrants led to Barack Obama's victory in North Carolina in 2008. "People who died 10 years ago are still voting," he claimed.

Trump's Wisconsin appearance came after a series of provocative tweets culminating on Monday morning when he wrote: "Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!" Never before has a major presidential candidate in effect rejected the results before the election has been held.

In remarks that were mostly scripted Trump spoke darkly about the election he has long described as "rigged" and made specific unfounded claims about in-person voter fraud.

Previously Trump has only spoken in dogwhistles about voter fraud in "certain communities".

On Monday he specifically said that 1.8 million dead people would vote – and for "somebody else". The statement was apparently a reference to the fact that one 2012 study found up to 1.8 million active voter registrations from deceased voters. In reality the study it found no evidence of fraud or that any illegitimate ballots were cast – it simply meant state voter databases were out of date.

Trump also insisted without evidence: "We have voters all over the country where they're not even citizens of the country and they're voting."

The Republican nominee's unsupported allegations came as he continued to attack the press for reporting on a series of accusations against him of sexual assault and misconduct.

Since a tape was released of Trump bragging about grabbing women "by the pussy", nine women have come forward with accusations that he groped them without consent.

Trump has insisted that the allegations are "false stuff", suggested the women were motivated by financial gain and that some of them were not attractive enough for him to grope anyway. On Friday he portrayed the New York Times' reporting on the subject as part of a Mexican conspiracy to defeat him.

On Monday Trump described the press at the Wisconsin rally as "the enemies back there" and repeatedly accused the media of "poisoning the minds of voters ... the media is an extension of the Clinton campaign".

As the crowd chanted "CNN sucks," Trump answered: "They really do."

He continued to conjure imagery of shadowy backers behind Hillary Clinton: "Her international donors control every move she made ... history will record that 2017 is the year America lost its independence."

In one display of policy substance, Trump proposed ethics reforms including a five-year ban on executive branch officials lobbying the government after leaving public service, and a similar ban for staffers on Capitol Hill.

Trump also showed some restraint towards at least one of his Republican critics. After attacking Paul Ryan repeatedly on Twitter on Sunday, describing him as "a man who doesn't know how to win", the candidate refrained in the speaker's home state.

The two have had a notably frosty relationship, although Ryan insists he will vote for Trump in November. Still, Trump's Wisconsin crowd chanted "Paul Ryan sucks".

Ryan had implicitly rebuked Trump's claims of a rigged election on Saturday when AshLee Strong, his spokesperson, said in a statement: "Our democracy relies on confidence in election results and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity."

The Republican nominee's wife, Melania, made her first public appearance since her plagiarized speech at the RNC in July. She spoke to Anderson Cooper to defend her husband in the aftermath of the leaked tape and the barrage of allegations of sexual misconduct.

Melania Trump insisted that Access Hollywood host Billy Bush had "egged on" her husband to make inappropriate remarks and blamed a media conspiracy for their release. "It was the media, it was NBC, it was Access Hollywood, it was the left-leaning media," she told CNN.

With the third presidential debate looming, Hillary Clinton didn't hold any rallies but Bill and Chelsea Clinton did appear at a celebrity-studded concert to raise campaign funds in midtown Manhattan on Monday night.

[Syt]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/18/controversial-republican-mike-roman-to-run-donald-trumps-election-protection

Controversial Republican Mike Roman to run Donald Trump's 'election protection'

Operative best known for promoting video of apparent voter intimidation by New Black Panthers will oversee poll-watching efforts

Donald Trump's "election protection" effort will be run by Mike Roman, a Republican operative best known for promoting a video of apparent voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers outside a polling place in 2008.

Roman is to oversee poll-watching efforts as Trump undertakes an unprecedented effort by a major party nominee by calling into question the legitimacy of the popular vote weeks before election day.

The Republican nominee has insisted, without evidence, that dead people and illegal immigrants are voting in the United States.

Trump has long claimed that the 2016 election is rigged but has amplified his claims of voter fraud in recent days. On Monday he tweeted: "Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!" In particular Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News that voter fraud was rampant in cities like Philadelphia, St Louis and Chicago after long warning vaguely about fraud in "certain communities".

Multiple sources have confirmed to the Guardian that Roman, who also previously ran the Koch network's now defunct internal intelligence agency, will oversee the Trump campaign's efforts to monitor polling places for any signs of voter fraud.

Roman is best known for his role in promoting a video that showed two members of the New Black Panthers – a fringe group that claims descent from the 1960s radicals – standing outside a Philadelphia polling place dressed in uniforms, with one carrying a nightstick. Police are called and the two men leave.

A justice department investigation into the incident – filed in the weeks before George W Bush left office – became a political football that divided career lawyers within the justice department. The incident was repeatedly cited as evidence of Democrats setting out to harm the election process.

The case was eventually dropped but not before it became a conservative cause célèbre. As Rick Hasen, a election law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told the Guardian: "It was one of the most retold stories on Fox News and the right for years and took on almost mythical status as evidence of thuggery by Democrats to harm the voting process."

Hasen, who viewed the case as a "complete tempest in teapot", said of Roman that he was "somebody who has been more willing to put forth more outrageous statements about voter fraud and election process". Hansen added: "I don't consider him a very responsible voice among Republicans on this question and I'm not surprised that Trump would be using him for polling related efforts."

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[Zoupa]

Jesus Christ. Dark times ahead down south...

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/oct/18/donald-trump-campaign-election-news-hillary-clinton-live

Here's some data via NBC News that's catching a lot of interest this morning. The provocative suggestion is that, your blood pressure medication aside, the presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton remains essentially unchanged since January 2016.

There, there. It was all but a dream.

The comparison is built on favorability ratings and polling of head-to-head matchups between Trump and Clinton over the last 10 months:

[Martinus]

So, you are saying Trump will win? 

[derspiess]

No, that we'll get that dude to win Utah and then every other state will fall just as it has to for neither Hillary nor Trump to get an electoral majority.  So then Congress will elect the Utah dude.  That's what will happen.

[celedhring]

What a stupid article. The reporter just picked two arbitrary points in time where the numbers were the same and ignored all in between.

[garbon]

What a stupid article. The reporter just picked two arbitrary points in time where the numbers were the same and ignored all in between.

True. To say it is static is a mistake. Still amusing to note that everything the candidates and we've been through, got us to the same perceptions of candidates (on those 3 metrics) that Americans had at the start of the year.

[garbon]

So, you are saying Trump will win? 

I don't see how that could be a possible construction from that.

[garbon]

"Mr Trump rarely surprises me these days. I'm much more surprised by Republican officials now supporting and in some cases echoing" Putin's policy approaches, Obama says.

[CountDeMoney]

Anything to oppose Obama, even if it means rooting for the bad guys.

[garbon]

Obama also called on "Mr.Trump to stop whining" and to make his case to win votes.

Twitter: Obama just asked Trump to take his bait and complain about him for several days.

[CountDeMoney]

Lol

"If he got the most votes then it would be my expectation of Hillary Clinton to offer a gracious concession speech and pledge to work with him in order to make sure that the American people benefit from an effective government," he said. "And it would be my job to welcome Mr. Trump, regardless of what he's said about me or my differences with him on my opinions, and escort him over to the Capitol, in which there would be a peaceful transfer of power. That's what Americans do. That's why America's already great."

#POTUSFaced