The Latest Update on California Lawsuits September 7, 2016
A little movie of our California exit pollers… Sorry about the size…
Hi Everyone,
I would like to share with all of you the results of the exit poll that we did at the Institute for American Democracy and Election Integrity (ADEI). And, I also want to THANK ALL OF YOU PEOPLE at TrustVote.org who donated to the Institute for the exit poll. Your donations definitely helped us pay our cost over-runs. The Institute and Election Justice USA decided to jointly sponsor an exit poll because Edison Media Research decided to cancel exit polls for the rest of the USA after Attorney Cliff Arnebeck wrote a letter to Edison Research Media asking to see the unadjusted data. There was also an article by Tim Robbins questioning the exit polls that were showing dramatic differences between the exit poll totals and the election night results. At about that time, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was showing a very distinct lead against Clinton in 12 states which disappeared shortly after the polls closed. This suggested that electronic manipulation of the polls was taking place. We at the Institute decided to run an exit poll close to our area in California to try to give voters a better picture of the true election results for at least three counties in California.
ADEI conducted exit polls during the 2016 California presidential primary in three counties at 12 precincts. This was organized and managed, initially, by Josh and Sarah Mittel. The polls were randomized and representative of the demographic data in the precinct area. The counties were Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties and four polling places were chosen in each county. The sample size was 3, 321. This is an impressive number of people,by the way, as Edison Research Media will often poll only 1200 people in a national presidential election. Lori Grace of the Institute managed the followup which included a week of filing the 3,321 exit poll results into an Excel spread sheet. After that Tina Kimmel PhD, MPH, MSW and Josh Mittel PhD analyzed the data. Both people have an extensive background in statistics.
With respect to the Democratic primary, the results were the following: The official vote for these three counties show Sanders winning over Clinton 49.2% to 46.1%, a 3.1% margin. By official, I mean what was reported at the Secretary of State’s office. The exit polls conducted by the Institute showed Sanders winning over Clinton in a unadjusted exit poll 52.6% to Clinton’s 43.8%. Then we adjusted the results for demographic data and the difference became 51.9% for Sanders and Clinton 44.4%-still a fairly large Sanders victory of 7.5% . You might ask what kind of demographic data did we adjust for. The exit pollers found that older white men did not often agree to fill out the exit poll. They tended to be Trump, Johnson and occasionally Clinton supporters. Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate. So for the people who did not participate in the exit poll, many of which were older white men, we added some votes for Trump, Johnson and Clinton proportionally to the exit poll results that we already had.
The Institute used the Senate race as a “benchmark” against the presidential race. This is done in all good polling where you pair a vote you are interested in, like the presidential candidate with the senatorial candidate. The ADEI exit poll results for both candidates Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez matched the official voting tally within the 2 percent margin of error. A 2 percent difference in the margin of error is common in most exit polls and is not considered a fraction of election irregularities or fraud.
One thing that I, Lori of the Institute would like to share is that the people who were helping us with the exit poll were very enthusiastic. This shows me that ordinary citizens can get very excited about ensuring the integrity of the vote. Another thing that I learned from organizing this exit poll is that it was quite expensive. Our total costs, shared between the Institute and Election Justice USA were about $25,000. Also,as you might expect, I learned that exit polling is a great job for people who are very detail-oriented.
Another thing that I would like to acknowledge is that we received many small donations to help us financially with the exit polls. THANK YOU AGAIN, Trust Vote People, you really care about democracy and accurate election results. We at the Institute SO APPRECIATE YOU! We are sad that Bernie decided to give in. He and his staff did not seriously consider the outstanding poll analyses done by Lulu Fries’dat of Election Justice USA together with Anselmo Sampietro and Fritz Scheuren, President of the American Statistical Association. http://www.hollerbackfilm.com/electoral-system-in-crisis/ This habit of not considering electronic manipulation and the strange statistical results that can appear has been a longstanding pattern in American culture. Also, at this point, I have seen three presidential candidates refuse to fight for their right to the presidency based upon evidence of serious electronic fraud. I sat with with a small group of people together Al Gore one day in 2006 as a Climate Project trainee and asked him why he did not push for being president since he felt that the election was stolen. He said to us that he would have caused a revolution and just did not have the stamina to survive what would ensue.I was part of Audit the Vote in 2004. We watched Kerry be evasive and back out of fighting for what was rightfully his. Finally, we have watched Bernie Sanders this year give in in spite of excellent statistics and an army of supporters and make a choice to promote Clinton for president. I am hoping that we can change the system so that presidential candidates will one day be able to stand up for what appears to be very rightfully theirs. – Lori Grace
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This link contains an article about the San Diego lawsuit against Michael Vu. It is written by Bill Simpich, one of the attorneys involved. If you click on it, you will see once more a picture of the shredding truck, a short YouTube on whiting out ballots and Bill’s writing about the lawsuit ruling, its meaning and its impact. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/38373-focus-california-court-upholds-a-method-to-detect-election-fraud
With respect to the future, there are two other lawsuits that are going to be submitted in California. Please make sure you are on our TrustVote mailing list, so that you can get our announcements hot off the press! We will be asking for your donations for these lawsuits later in August! Thanks for being people who care SO MUCH about democracy and election integrity!
Updated August 8, 2016
Report from Philadelphia and the Progressive Democratic Convention
A group of us, Bill Simpich, Bob Fitrakis, Steve Enzer (TrustVote.TV) and Naomi Anderson went to Philadelphia to present along with Andrea Miller of People Demanding Action on creating a more trustworthy, more democratic election system. We also filmed some of the demonstrations that were occurring around the Democratic convention. We noted that the theme of election fraud was very prominent in the signs carried by protestors. We were glad to see that this topic has now become widely acknowledged. (Picture- Lori Grace)
In the presentation below, Andrea Miller Of PDA talks about voter suppression Southern style with Voter ID laws and continued disenfranchisement of former felons. Lori follows 
with reaching out to people for support in changing this and many other election integrity issues through joining the mailing list of TrustVote.org (aka The Institute of American Democracy and Election Integrity). Bill Simpich talks about the California lawsuits and making Michael Vu and Secretary of State Padilla accountable for how they manipulated California primary results. Lori follows with talking about how TrustVote.org is going to hold some seminars on new contributions to election integrity such as open source election auditing, reintroducing the Trachtenberg system, and hand counting paper ballots on a precinct level in a number of pilot projects in our upcoming November election.
Movie of the presentation that we did in Philadelphia…
There are three main areas in which the Institute hopes to make an additional contribution this year. One is dealing with the lawsuit against Edison Media Research. Another is dealing with the California lawsuits and the third area is on highlighting solutions to create more integrity in our election systems. We will seek to introduce possible solutions to our election system by introducing an open source election audit system called Democracy Counts and reintroducing the Trachtenberg system. We hope also to introduce some pilot projects of precinct base hand counting which we feel stimulates citizen participation in our democracy, creates more accuracy than electronic systems and has shown itself to be very time-efficient in the past. With respect to the lawsuits, we hope to follow up by communicating about and fundraising for those lawsuits and other actions in California and in Ohio that will bring the issue of election manipulation forward to the American public and hold accountable election officials that have not been supporting this.
In this update here, we will talk about the Ohio Election Integrity lawsuit. During the primary, it appears to be the case that Edison Research edited exit poll results, taking votes from Bernie Sanders and giving them to Hilary Clinton, so that the election results would match the electronic vote totals. Currently Bob Fitrakis has sued Edison Media Research to release unadjusted exit polls for 12 states in the primary. Edison Media Research has told Bob Fitrakis now to communicate with their lawyers. This response is basically a carefully worded refusal. Their law firm is BakerHostetler, a global law firm that reported earnings of over 600 million dollars in 2015. It will be very difficult for Bob Fitrakis to get the unadjusted exit poll results from Edison Media Research for the primary. The Media consortium and the DNC clearly favored Hillary Clinton getting the DNC nomination throughout the time that Bernie was campaigning. When looking at the nature of the law firm used by Edison Media Research, we can see clearly how much power lies in our country in the hands of extremely large corporations and the legal firms associated with them.
Of course, when Bernie was running the Washington Post called people wondering about the hacking of the primary results ” conspiracy theorists”. This term, originated by Karl Rove in 2004 has been used to discredit people who have been concerned about hacking all the time. The issue is that the mainstream media is being biased in its reporting in that it did not support people concerned about the hacking of the primary, but would very much be concerned about the hacking of the November election where Hillary is concerned.
Hopefully, 2016 will be the final year where people concerned about hacking and exit poll manipulation will be labeled “conspiracy theorists”. In developing and promoting the term “conspiracy theorists” to defend the stealing in 2004, Karl Rove did a serious disservice to American Democracy. We at the Institute would deeply appreciate some contributions so that we can possibly go ahead with the lawsuit to demand the raw data of the primary or at least to publicize widely the Edison Media Research’s refusal to release the data. DONATE TODAY
With Guccifer 2.0 possibly cooperating with the Russians in hacking the DNC website,people have become much more aware that foreign country or person could hack our national elections this year. A call for more transparency, for releasing unadjusted data of exit polls becomes critical. In contrast with the primary, the hacking of the November election is very important to the media.
Edison Media Research has been unwilling to release raw exit data that would have shown that Bernie Sanders won in these twelve states. They may change their policy very quickly if the electronic voting machines are hacked by a foreign country. Of course that has to be proven first. If a foreign country like Russia or Israel hacks the US elections and gives votes to Trump, they may release their raw data if it shows conflicting results. The mainstream media will definitely change how they report about hacking as well. Click Here for the article talking about hacking that the Washington Post has just released.
The BIG ISSUE is that the Mainstream Media is acting like a corporate person with favorites and with lots of autonomy and choices as to what they will reveal. So the question is: Is this fair in a democracy or should the media report fairly and equally on all issues? I would answer yes to this question.
Update below July 19, 2016
We are also seeking to raise funds to cover the expenses of the California lawsuits and declarations discussed below. Before looking at the lawsuits (see PDF links at the bottom of this article), I recommend looking at the the Youtube movies, or some of them below, so that you can understand the situations that generated them. I would like to give you the movie and background behind them. We showed the movie UNCOUNTED: The True Story of the California Primary about two weeks ago but it is featured below for those of you who have missed it. One of the lawsuits challenges the poor training of pollworkers as organized by California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla who was also holding fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. Another lawsuit challenges Michael Vu, San Diego’s Registrar of Voters. Other lawsuits are being formulated for other counties. As the press conference video shows below, these lawsuits will involve about 60% of the total number of voters in California. A Northern California lawsuit filed by Bill Simpich will challenge the guidelines that election officials gave vote-counting observers. These guidelines were not consistent in any way with the California elections manual says about how one observes.
A personal note from Lori: I love Youtubes when I can find them on any issue that I care about because it gives me an emotional feeling for what I care about.
These Youtube movies will outline for you some of the reasons why election integrity lawsuits have been submitted:
The videos below will show you how the election process was corrupted in San Diego. It was corrupted in other places as well. Young people were profiled within the Democratic party using the Minivan system and were challenged with obstacles to voting such as the one mentioned by the Ballot Monitors where their votes was thrown away if they were part of a university and did not put down their dorm room number.
In the video below, you will see how choices for president were being whited-out before counting the ballots. This was by order of the California Democratic party. Citizen election monitors in San Diego have captured film of ballots which have been tampered with, with white-out erasing only Sanders votes, sometimes with part of Bernie Sanders’ first name obscured as well. In the video, a monitor reports that almost half the ballots in the box of ballots she witnessed had been so altered, always against Sanders. She says the box she witnessed contained about 300 ballots, and that it was only one of many counting stations she could not witness.
This is how people were treated when they wanted to observe ballots being counted. The distance restrictions mentioned by the election officials and the prohibition against videotaping are not listed in the Secretary of State’s manual on observing, although election officials told these observers that those were the rules. You can also see in this youtube how defensive the election officials are.
A shredding truck was parked outside the Registrar’s office during the firstpress conference. In a staff inquiry later, the shredding of ballots was mentioned, although no shredding should be occurring at this time. We do not know as of yet which ballots were shredded. The presence of a shredding truck creates suspicion in voters. Trust in our voting system is essential for it to work. Michael Vu who worked formerly in Ohio had shredded provisional ballots in 2004 before he was told to resign from his post there in 2006. He was then hired by the city of San Diego as the Registrar of Voters. Michael Vu’s behavior in no way supports public trust and engagement in our electoral process.
Lawsuit Budget
Here are expenses for the lawsuits that we are seeking to raise money for. Ray Lutz has also been raising money down in San Diego. As you can see, these lawsuits are being conducted entirely by volunteers. We will be extremely grateful for whatever you can donate!
Per diem is an inaccurate phrase for Netra and Dwana. $50 per day for Netra and Dwana is the accurate per diem.
California Election Integrity Lawsuits
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First Ohio Election Integrity Lawsuit filed…
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I am thrilled to announce that Bob Fitrakis the lawyer and board member and writer of the Columbus Institute of Contemporary Journalism, has filed the first Ohio Election Integrity Lawsuit against Edison Media Research to release the raw data which shows such dramatic differences on exit polls and electronic vote totals in eleven states in the presidential primaries throughout the US. The file number and details of this lawsuit as transmitted to me are as follows:
Although I have presented the file number of the lawsuit at this time, as you may find out the contents are not available for viewing at this time. Nonetheless since so many of you wanted the file number, I am including it in this announcement for you. I will let all of you know as soon as the details of the lawsuit will become available. The biggest opportunity in informing you in detail about this lawsuit is the education that goes with informing you about our election systems.
The following transaction was entered by Fitrakis, Robert on 7/11/2016 at 5:03 PM EDT and filed on 7/11/2016
Case Name: Johnson v. Edison Media Research, Inc
Case Number: 2:16-cv-00670-EAS-TPK
Filer: Peter M Johnson Document Number: 2
Docket Text: COMPLAINT with civil cover sheet against Edison Media Research, Inc, filed by Peter M Johnson. (Attachments: # (1) Civil Cover Sheet) (Fitrakis, Robert)
The exit polls have been adjusted to fit electronic vote totals since 2004 when they appeared to show Kerry winning against Bush. Explanations were developed at that time to explain the differences between the exit polls and the vote totals which was that exit polls are generally unreliable. This assessment of exit poll reliability was developed by Karl Rove who was an assistant to George Bush. In order to keep the Media Consortium business money coming in, Edison Media Research has always edited, or “cleaned” as they put it their data since that time. The raw data exit polls are stored at the University of Connecticut. No one has ever requested them. We are requesting it for the first time.
People who want to see raw data are often labeled “conspiracy theorists”. We want to make sure you know that we will be described as such. Actually, we are just people wanting to see unedited exit polls and to learn what really happened during our primary elections. As you may know, the exit polls and the electronic vote totals are very different in eleven states. The Media Consortium and Edison Media Research canceled the exit polls for California, New Jersey, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, New Mexico and Puerto Rico, after receiving a letter from Cliff Arnebeck, the other lawyer who works with Bob Fitrakis asking the Edison Research to put a hold on the raw data.
We are expecting the Edison Media Research to file a motion to dismiss. They have up to sixty days to do this. During this time, we need to spread the word about this lawsuit to as many people as possible. We also need to raise funds to address further legal costs. If you feel inspired to support us, please donate to this lawsuit on the Ohio Election Integrity lawsuit button on Trustvote.org. We really appreciate your help however large or small. Thank you!! Our costs are going to rise significantly now. If we raise money beyond our legal costs, we will be able to direct some of this money towards alternative media education so that many people in the US begin to know about the kind of election editing that goes on.
If we are successful with this lawsuit, we will then file another lawsuit to look at the paper ballots. Everyone will be educated throughout this process about the real role of Edison Media Research and the Media Consortium in presenting news about our elections. The Media Consortium consists of CBS, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, Fox News and the Associated Press (AP). Our examining the ballots will show us who really won the Democratic presidential primary. Although Bernie may have already conceded by that time or before then, at least he will know what the truth was about how many votes he really garnered. He can do with that what he wants. Additionally, voters will know the truth about the Democratic presidential primary and how votes were handled.
The results of looking at these ballots has substantial consequences for American people. Americans will have been educated about what really happens when large corporations with partisan interests who are part of the 1% count our ballots with proprietary software that no one is allowed to look at to see if the vote totals have changed. This process in our country makes our elections extremely vulnerable to hacking and manipulation. As a large group of people, perhaps millions of people, learn about the unfortunate nature of our election process, that same large group will have a chance to begin to demand and create a much more transparent system, a system that is run by the people and for the people. A system that is hopefully not run by private partisan corporations. This is also the deep heartfelt wish of both the Institute of American Democracy and Election Integrity and the Institute of Contemporary Journalism. It is a wish which members of both Institutes feel will require the support of millions of people to effect a change.
Come join us in manifesting this change. It will take time, but it will be extremely satisfying!
Bob Fitrakis, Lori Grace, and Bill Simpich were on KPFA radio July 12th.
KPFA Flashpoints with Bob Fitrakis, Lori Grace and Bill Simpich… Click Here for the video.
Click here to see the video from the Saturday July 2, 2016 meeting at Sunrise Center about this issue.