Electoral Fraud in Puerto Rico

Yesterday, 5 June 2016, the Puerto Rico Democratic Party may have committed the greatest voter suppression of the 2016 election cycle.

Start with the most egregious: in the week before the primary, the party slashed the number of polling places from 1510 to 432. As a comparison, in 2008, there were 2306 polling places, and slightly under 400,000 people voted. According to one source, local officials estimated that up to 700,000 people might show up to vote. So why did the party reduce the number of polling places?

Ostensibly, there was a shortage of volunteer poll workers, since the local primary was being held on the same day, and they had been committed to the local campaign. And why were the national and local primaries being held on the same day? According to the party, it was a means of containing costs.

And so it was uncertain, in many people’s minds, exactly where they were to vote. In fact, I received an email from the Sanders campaign that allowed me to enter my electoral card number. I then received the information: I am 59, 6’2”, male, blue eyed. Oh, and I was to vote a mile or so away from my home in Old San Juan. So my husband and I planned to take the bus, zip into the polling place, vote, and enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

In fact, we arrived and found that the local primary had at most a line of ten or fifteen people. The Democratic Primary, in contrast, had a line of about 100 people. In addition, there were only two people with the list of registered voters. And so we began a long wait.

We had arrived at 1:45; I voted at 3:15. At that time, the line was essentially the same length as it had been when we arrived: it was going to be a long time before the poll workers could start counting the votes.

Elections in Puerto Rico historically have been comparatively clean, since up until now, we have chosen low-tech versus high. Which means that both parties (or all parties) have a representative working the polls, paper ballots are used, voters mark an “X” for their party or candidate, and the votes are counted manually and verified by all parties. As deeply green as I am, this is one use of paper that is completely justified.

Our line was one of two: we were the “orphans” from other polling places. And so there was a much shorter line of fifteen or twenty people voting in their usual polling place. So what was the final vote, and how many voters were able to cast their ballot? Well, here are two screens shot of the State Elections Commission, posted as of 1 AM this morning, ten hours after the polls closed.

 Several things are interesting: first, “reported polling stations 232 of 335.” 335? Wait, first it was 1510, then on Friday it was 432, and on Sunday, the day of the election, it was 335?

Second, Clinton has “won” by a nearly 60% lead. But that’s 36,000 votes: some 70% of the total. I admit it: I am math-challenged. Still, even I can tell you that if that 36,000 votes were from 50% of polling stations, then you would reasonably expect 72,000 votes for Clinton. So in 2008, almost 400,000 people voted: now, Clinton is winning with 60% of the vote, with almost 70% of the vote counted, and that’s only 36000 votes? These numbers don’t add up.

Third, there were irregularities at the polls. In regular elections, there are cardboard voting booths—flimsy affairs, yes, but they do assure privacy. There was none of that here, and so I calmly observed my brother-in-law as he voted for Sanders (easy—Sanders was on the right margin of the ballot). In addition, the finger-marking ink was not used (the ink is visible only to ultra-violet light).  

As well, the polls were open only from 8 AM to 3 PM. Puerto Ricans are religious: we go to church. So if mass ends around 11 AM, you need to eat lunch, you want to vote in the local primary, and then you have to go to possibly another polling place to vote in the Democratic Primary—well, that’s a scramble. Oh, and where is that polling place? Because in the space of a week, the number went from 1510 to (apparently) 335.

Nor was this all. In Puerto Rico, prisoners can vote. They do so, and then their votes are sealed in locked boxes to be counted with the non-prisoner votes. But the Sanders campaign is alleging that the Democratic Party didn’t certify their delegates to go into the prison: they had to use a well-known local lawyer, Manny Suárez, to get their way into the prison. Nor was that all: Suárez stated:

el pasado jueves “se celebraron sorpresivamente elecciones de las primarias presidenciales en forma adelantada para la Policía de Puerto Rico y nunca nos avisaron”.    

(Last Thursday, the presidential primaries were held by surprise in advance for the Police of Puerto Rico and we were never notified.)

Worse, Suárez alleges that the Ñeta gang, which controls many of the prisons, had threatened any members with death if they voted for anyone other than Clinton, as well as the NPP, or statehood party.

The result?

“Vamos a radicar un recurso legal en el Tribunal Federal pidiendo la anulación de todas esas papeletas. A nosotros nunca nos avisaron y cada una de esas papeletas es nula porque no tiene nuestra firma. En adición a eso, hay otros funcionarios del Gobierno que también votaron por adelantado y que entiendo que son los que van a estar activados el domingo”, apuntó.

(We’re going to file a legal suit in Federal Court requesting the annulment of all these ballots. They never notified us, and every one of these ballots is void because they don’t have our signature. In addition to that, there are other government official who also voted in advance, and who will be active on Sunday (ed. the day of the primary).

In addition, Suárez alleges that a local politician prominent in the Democratic Party, Kenneth McClintock, tweeted on Thursday that the prison vote was favoring Clinton. Given that the votes are supposed to be sealed unseen, how would he know?

Well, I though about all this as I waited in line, since I had quite a bit of time to occupy. And where, I wondered, was the press? Because there we all were, enjoying or not the unique pleasure of having our vote suppressed, and shouldn’t somebody be noticing? Ah, and then the televisions news appeared, and began filming people voting; as well, they interviewed several officials. It was WAPA television, and can I find their clip? No, though I did get the clip of the results of the primary. Unfortunately, the clip failed to load: you try it.

According to the print edition of the largest paper on the island, El Nuevo Día, the local Democratic Party president is well satisfied with the primary, although he admitted there were long lines. (You can read the electronic version here.) He is upset, however, by the allegation of one of Sander’s staff, Betsy Franceschini. Here’s what he said:

I am appalled at the remarks. Ms. Franceschini is playing a preemption game because she knows of a potentially serious issue regarding one of their poll workers who took two boxes full of cast ballots from one of the prisons and later that evening delivered them to a regional elections committee center, claiming she did not know what to do with them. The matter is under investigation.

To my knowledge, El Nuevo Día has said little about this, though in one story, they reported that it was the Sanders campaign that requested the reduction of polling places by two thirds. A photo of the long lines at the polls also appeared. The Sanders campaign responded:

Some Puerto Rico Democratic officials are claiming that the Sanders campaign requested fewer polling places in today’s primary contest. That’s completely false. The opposite is true. In emails with the party, Sanders’ staff asked the party to maintain the 1,500 plus presidential primary locations promised by the Puerto Rico Democratic party in testimony before the DNC in April, when the party was asking to have its caucus changed to a primary. They cannot blame their shoddy running of the primary on our campaign. This is just one example of irregularities going on in Puerto Rico voting today. We are the campaign that has been fighting to increase voter participation.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/sanders-campaign-no-bernie-sanders-did-not-try-to-close-polling-locations-in-puerto-rico/

So what happened yesterday? Perhaps nothing tells the story better than the last line of today’s electronic report from El Nuevo Día:

En estas elecciones demócratas, participaron alrededor de 100,000 electores.

The lines were huge, the wait was long, and in the end, only 100,000 votes were cast. That’s 300,000 less than 2008. I was there, I saw it, and I can call it.

So I will!

Voter suppression!

     

Everybody's Drunk at the Ritz

“I’m completely annoyed by you,” I told Lady, “since not only have you drifted, or rather wafted, off to France, but now you are writing, again. And so there you are, and what’s a poem? Let’s face it, a poem is a one-morning-affair, unless you work it to death, as my mother tended to do. Anyway, you write it, everybody reads it, and it gets 6,000 likes on Facebook. Then it’s time to have a glass of wine and a dinner of truffles and foie gras. Oh, sorry, that’s champagne, not wine….”

“That’s completely untrue and unfair,” cried Lady trans-Atlantically, which shows you how indignant she was. “I hate champagne, as well as foie gras. Do you think Naïa would allow me to eat that? She’d report me to the ASPCA first. Anyway, writing poetry is a lot harder than you think….”

“Yeah? Because you guys get to write thirty poems or so, and then put them together in a little book, and bam! You’re a poet! But what about me, struggling to write a novel? In the first place, all of my characters keep misbehaving—I currently have a 16-year old sheltered girl from the Midwest in a dirty bookstore on 42d Street, sometime in the 1970’s. Oh, and she’s with two Puerto Rican drag queens, though she doesn’t know they’re drag queens. And do I have any idea how she got there, much less how to get her out of there?”

“Well, if she got there by herself, then let her get herself out of there.”

“What is this, laissez faire? Even the smallest exposure to French culture has ruinous affects on you, Lady!”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that writing a novel is a race—actually it’s a series of marathons. And writing poetry is just a sprint!”

“I completely reject that,” said Lady. “Anyway, why all the fuss? Aren’t you the guy who believes in ‘just-sit-down-and-do-it?’”

“Excellent advice for others,” I tell her. “Oh, and the 16-year old’s mother is sleeping off an afternoon drunk in the Ritz bar. That’s how bad that novel is….”

“Well, an afternoon drunk at the Ritz sounds rather lovely to me,” said Lady. "Though who knows, it may be a rather submerged affair, given what’s happening in France. They closed the Louvre, you know, since the Seine…”

“I read the paper,” I told her.

“C'est vraiment très dommage” Lady tossed off.

“Certainement,” I responded. Then we glared at each other, as all of our French lay exhausted on the pavement…..

“Anyway, to get me out of writing a novel, I decided to write a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress. Julian—I see you stiffen up, there—is still rattling around down the centuries.”

“You’re stalking her, Marc! She’s 700 years gone, for God’s sake. Let her rest…..”

“Well, now I have a hill talking to a pilgrim, if you can believe that….”

“You know, I really think you have to come with us, the next time I go to France. The things you get up to, when I’m away.”

“Mais oui” I told her. “Or maybe I mean bien sur…. Although I suppose I could send the 16-year old up the hill, to get the pilgrim back home….”

“Or to talk to the hill….”

“Anyway, I looked up Pilgrim’s Progress, which I used to know about, and it turns out that it’s even worse than writing a novel. I have to fiddle around with characters named Pliable and Trustworthy, as well as visit places like Gaius’s Inn, which is between the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Vanity Fair. Then I have to kill four monsters, called Giant Grim, Giant Maul, Giant Slay-Good, and Giant Despair. Oh, and this is all in the first part, since there are two parts. Unfortunately, I was too tired out by reading about the first part to tackle the second part. So sorry, no info there….”

“Quite ruined, my day,” said Lady, whose humor has dried quite considerably by her sojourn in France. “Can’t you get them drunk at the Ritz?”

“Definitely a thought,” I said. “Though it’s fearsome, the idea of footing the tab for Giant Despair. Can you imagine how much he’d soak up? He’d be a bottomless pit!”

“Well, Mommy Dearest has her credit cards,” said Lady. “Do you know, I really do think a glass of wine, just now, wouldn’t be a bad idea. Somehow all this talk of drinking at the Ritz….”

“Bother the Ritz,” I said, “I definitely am switching to poetry. One poem a day, and poof, by the time you come back, puffing on your Gauloise and sipping your absinthe, I’ll have a book in my hand! Bam, just like that! Then, I can host the Tuesday night poetry slam, since I will be a poet! Screw novels, and screw theology! I’m taking the literary life easy, and playing in the fields of the Lord. Which in this case is poetry….”

“Do it,” said Lady. “I dare you!’’

Wait and see! 

Rifs on Rilke

I love the dark hours of my being,

Where time is exiled, where sighs

Stitch together the boredom, the sorrows,

The expectation that nothing, after all, will come, and that…

…slowly, the soul lies down with despair,

Takes it into her arms, caresses it, and tells it

That she is lovely.

Despair—who taught night to the dusk,

Who taught time to the hours. 

Nothing At All

Who knows why she did it?

After she was gone, her friends met to discuss it.

“She didn’t seem depressed,” one said.

“You can never really know a person,” said another.

“She was never quite the same after the divorce,” said a third.

Her body had been found in a heavily wooded area outside of town. A bird watcher, his gaze intent on the trees, had literally stumbled over the body. It was fortunate, perhaps, because he might well have fainted had he been standing. She had been dead over a week, and the decomposition was advanced.

The friends told each other that they had called, that they had noticed her absence almost immediately. John, her closest friend, knew that wasn’t true: he had been the person to gather her belongings; he had also listened to the messages on her machine. And beyond a few perfunctory messages, nobody had reached out; nobody had called.

The weapon had been found at her side; the bullet had entered from the back of her throat and hit the brainstem. Death would have been instantaneous.

What did she leave behind? A small amount of money—enough to bury her. Personal possessions. A few debts. But mostly, she left questions, and memories.

“Remember that birthday party, when everybody got totally wasted, and we all decided to jump into the fountain, at three in morning, naked? She was the first one in…”

“And she was splashing everybody else, until you had no choice to strip and get in too….”

“And when the cops came? Only she could have talked her way out of it. Remember her saying, ‘hey, it’s my birthday! You can’t arrest me on my birthday!’ And then she jumped naked out of the fountain, went to her purse, and got her ID to prove it….”

“She should have been a lawyer,” said John. “She was totally wasted as a teacher. But she loved to argue about anything.”

“She got it from her father,” said Joan. “God, that guy was ornery! You could have told him he’d won the lottery, and he’d argue that the numbers were wrong. Or that the game had been fixed. She was just like him….”

They tried to imagine it. Why had she chosen that particular spot? She wasn’t a nature person, particularly: what had attracted her to the woods? And the gun, how had she gotten it? Had she known, when she bought it, that she would use it on herself? Or had she acted impulsively, triggered by who knew what?

‘Nobody is saying what they really think,” thought John. ‘Because everyone of us is pissed. Why the hell didn’t she call? Why didn’t she say something? All of the times that we shared—the parties, the dinners, the calls over stupid things. And then, one day, she’s gone, and nobody knows where she is. And all that time, she was lying dead in the woods. Had any animals discovered her? Eaten her? Crows flying overhead? God, it’s too horrible.’

“Well, if a person doesn’t want help, then there’s nothing we can do,” said Mary. “She knew she could have called any one of us….”

‘Did she,’ thought John. ‘God, what if she did call us? What if we had been so busy, so self-absorbed, that we couldn’t pick up the phone? Or maybe she had called us, wanting to talk, but we had cut her off, and complained about some stupid shit of our own.’

He tried to remember. He thought of the calls she had made; he heard her voice and her peculiar, high-pitched laugh. Had she seemed stressed, or at any time different than usual? He didn’t think so.

“She had everything to live for,” said Pam. “A good job, friends, money enough. True, there wasn’t a man in her life, but she didn’t really seem to mind about that….”

‘She minded a lot,’ thought John. ‘She was just too proud to show it. And her ex, who is so very much not here, treated her like shit. Where is that bastard, anyway? They were married 17 years, and he doesn’t show for her funeral? 17 years? And where is he, at the beach?”

“I feel sorry for her students,” said Joan. “Imagine, knowing that your teacher had killed herself. And you’re like fifteen or so—which is not the age when you want to be facing existential questions. At least, not like that….”

‘Is there any good age to face a suicide?’ thought John. ‘Look at her mother over there—well into her eighties, and does that keep her from being anything but completely destroyed? There’s no good age for this.’

“We’re gathered here today to celebrate the life of Mary Lou Washington,” said the priest.

‘Mary Lou? Jesus Christ, she never used the “Lou.” She’d be raving bonkers if she could hear this guy. Do these guys ever talk to the family? How fucking difficult can that be?’

“She lived her life fully…”

‘So why’d she kill herself?’

“And she leaves behind many friends…”

‘None of whom called…..’

“And a deeply loving family….”

All of a sudden, John was tired. He’d slept badly for a week, and he’d been the person to go into her apartment, alone, and face the memories and the emptiness of the person who was so much there. And not.

“In the weeks ahead, we will pray for the strength of those whom she left behind…”

‘Bullshit. If they couldn’t call, are they now gonna pray?’

He looked around the chapel, and nearly startled when the revelation came to him. She hadn’t killed herself.

She’d been murdered.