Forget foreign election interference, concern is right here

IS FOREIGN ELECTION INTERFERENCE A DISTRACTION?

WE NEED TO BE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT HERE AT HOME

The first primary of the 2020 Presidential cycle is over, but no one seems to know who won. The Iowa caucus has about 125,000 voters in 1777 precincts. That averages about 70 attendees in each precinct. I watched a little of this last night and in the biggest precincts that were covered it was numbers in the 100's maybe 1000 at most. This process takes just several hours and while it is criticized by many, it is a real community event and may be good for the citizens of Iowa and the candidates.

The problem is they claim that there is a problem with an app used for the reporting. This is a little ridiculous, why not just a land line to report numbers and then a final tabulation of paper results in the next week. It immediately raises questions of foul play. That is not what anyone needs at the beginning of this process.

The Bernie Sanders supporters are already having thoughts of bias in the process and this will put them all in a state of anxiety.

If we recall, House seats in California where not decide for weeks and every seat was turned from republican to democrat after the election. Much of this was accomplished by collecting absentee votes after the election.

This will not be limited to Iowa, we already see that the new machines in Pennsylvania are looking like a fiasco in the making. We can expect that the winner of the next presidential election may not be known for weeks after the November election.  This doesn't even account for the possibility of irregularities with voter registration, non citizen voting and other cheating. There is no question that electronic machines will never be viewed as foolproof and will be suspect as long as they are in use.  We had the most foolproof system, and we scraped it so vendors could sell us machines that will be replaced on an annual basis and will never be considered to give us an honest count. We need mechanical machines with a paper read out.

All the while, we keep hearing about foreign interference, it is mostly a lot of exaggerated bullshit. The Russians must be the best political operatives in the world when we are told that $100,000 of Facebook ads, and only $40,000 before the vote, compromised our election. This in an election were both sides spent $2.5 billion in reported expenditures. This is beginning to look like a giant distraction aimed at having everyone worry about foreigners while chaos and corruption is going on right here at home.

Then there were the 13 indicted Russians who had lawyers show up for trial and the Federal prosecutors claimed there could be no disclosure and the whole affair has been buried.

Then there is the DNC hacking in itself, which is very suspicious when no one was allowed to examine the server. Julian Assange claimed it was not transmitted from a state actor. The information was not misinformation, just a revelation of facts about the Democratic National committee rigging their primary. Are they doing it again?

After watching 2 1/2 years of the Russian collusion investigation, the impeachment of the President for bringing up very obvious corruption by a former Vice President, the ongoing continuous investigations in search of a crime to nullify the last election and influence the next election, we can only assume that they have no limits in their quest for power.

The real threats to our democracy are right in front of us, being played out every day and disguised as protecting our democracy.