Election Post Mortum ~ KATHY’S LAWRENCE NOTEBOOK

By: Kathy Runge – Dec. 2016

The election is finally over, but it just won’t go away. Donald Trump is our president-elect and the crybabies won’t stop whining. When it was speculated that Trump could win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College there were no complaints from the Hillary supporters, but now they’re complaining. Here’s a message for all of the complainers:

Both sides campaigned to win the Electoral College, which Trump won. Magnificently. If the winner of the election were decided by the popular vote, both sides would have spent their campaign money and time differently. They’d have gone to different states and advertised differently. I don’t know what the results would have been, but it’s certain that the final vote tallies would have been different. Trump won. Get over it.

It was disappointing to watch some of our local Democratic politicians being good little robots, jumping on every hash tag that the political elite came up with. I don’t want to see another hash tag about Chachi or “nasty hombres” ever again.
I went to two city polling locations around closing time and was concerned by what I saw.

At precinct B2, which votes at Valebrook, Councilor at Large Brian DePena was hanging out behind the check-in table, inside the voting area. No one’s supposed to be inside the rail except poll workers and people who are voting. I took a picture of him and a few minutes later DePena, with a policeman beside him, asked me if I took his picture. He told me that it was illegal to take pictures at a polling location. I denied taking the picture. What was he going to do? Tell the officer to arrest me? Make me delete the picture?

ictures aren’t prohibited; photographs of people’s marked ballots are prohibited. Councilor DePena had no business hanging out inside the voting area, he shouldn’t have been anywhere near there.

Also at Valebrook, before the 8pm closing there was a stack of ballots sitting on one table. I assume they had been taken out of the envelopes they were placed in during early voting. After 8 PM they started running these ballots through the machine. I don’t know how long that stack had been sitting around, but it doesn’t look good having a pile of uncounted completed ballots laying on a table, especially with a City Councilor wandering around. When a ballot comes out of the envelope it should be fed into the machine.

After 8 PM I went to the Brien building, where C3 votes. The doors to the voting room were locked. There were stacks of ballots in their envelopes and poll workers visible through a small window in the door. Council President Kendrys Vasquez was inside the locked room observing. Elections are a public process. They should never be conducted behind locked doors, and an elected official should never be locked in there with them.

Elected officials and candidates should be made to vote early (both DePena and Vasquez did) and stay 150 feet away from the entrance to polling locations with the sign holders.

The Board of Registrars was supposed to meet on Nov. 9 to discuss the election. The meeting was cancelled. The Board of Registrars was supposed to meet on Nov. 15 to discuss the election. The meeting was cancelled. The Board of Registrars was supposed to meet on Nov. 16 to discuss the election. The meeting was cancelled.

Next month we’ll have an analysis of the voting list from the election and yes, we have many cases of potential fraudulent voting. Was there a connection to early voting?

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Make America Great Again!