Breaking - The Numbers Don't Lie (But the DNC Does!)

Hot off the presses is this final report from Peniel Cronin, the author of an incredible study, "2008 Democratic Presidential Preference Election: Primary versus Caucus: How millions of voters were systematically disenfranchised and election results were skewed," available at Dr. Lynette Long's site, which contains a great deal of information on issues of caucus fraud. Ms. Cronin's final study, "2008 Democratic Presidential Preference Election: The People's Vote: Delegate Allocation Per Original Votes Cast" is an eye-opener (and is available at the bottom of this post). No Quarter was the first to be able to share this data, and I thank Ms. Cronin for that. The bottom line is this - had the RBC not interfered, the difference between the PLEDGED delegates would have been - wait for it - 4 (FOUR). Yes, I said 4. And, while caucuses accounted for only 2.9% of voters, they accounted for over 14% of pledged delegates. Never even mind all of the massive caucus irregularities that benefited one person - Obama. Still, the bottom line difference: 4 delegates, AND Clinton won the popular vote. Holy smokes.

Before I go further, allow me to introduce Ms. Cronin to you, and present her credentials:

Peniel Cronin has been President & CEO of Global Basics since 1993. Cronin holds a B.S. in Accounting from Arizona State University and has over 16 years experience as an accountant and Director of Marketing for several SMEs.

Cronin directs product development and market research and developed the algorithms that power the eNameWiz multilingual domain creation and advanced Name Analytics technology.

Enterprise clients through Global Basics have included the Arizona Office of Tourism, the Nevada Commission on Tourism, the Arizona Shopping Consortium, Shop America Alliance, America West Airlines, Southwest Airlines, AeroMexico and numerous other travel and domain industry organizations. Cronin holds three US & German Patents, several trademarks and numerous copyrights.

Cronin has had a disability for 43 years since a car accident in 1965. She was the Director of Marketing for one of the largest Independent Living Centers in the US for over 5 years and is a disability rights activist, speaker, trainer, and peer mentor to both people with disabilities and minority/women business owners.

What an amazing woman she is!

And now to the results Ms. Cronin has compiled. It will knock your socks off to see the actual numbers, the graphs, and machinations involved to get Obama the nomination. Many of us are aware of the level of caucus fraud that occurred over the Democratic Primaries, but the Numbers Don't Lie, and here they are, including a spreadsheet of the votes state-by-state (click on the page to enlarge it):









Wow, right? There is more in this excellent report, but I thought this was of particular interest regarding the whole caucus returns:

Perhaps most troubling of all the elements that impacted the final delegate count was the lack of reliable election results –i.e., the undisclosed voter attendance data and non-certified caucus vote counts from 4 of the 6 largest caucus states in terms of votes cast. Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine did not even report total voter turnout and votes.

Together, these states cast an estimated 558,000 of the 1,057,136 million total caucus votes for Obama and Clinton. Thus, 53% of the total votes reported from the 13 caucus states were a guesstimate based on state Democratic Party estimates of voter turnout or based on projections by various researchers and news organizations.

Notably, the reported vote totals varied depending on the projection made by different news organizations and election researchers. There was no certification of results (and probably no solid audit trail) that would provide an exact vote count
as required to be reported through a primary voting system.

In addition to these 4 states, there were no solid vote-count numbers presented for the Texas caucus. In fact, the election vote tally there stopped after approximately 41% of the precincts had reported results.

From a delegate standpoint, these 4 caucus states plus the Texas caucus accounted for 239 pledged delegates – 48% of the total 498 pledged allocated to all caucuses.

Holy moly. Who knew that these were "ESTIMATES" and not actual counts for these caucuses? So let me understand this - not only did Obama have these caucuses gamed, but in most of them, they didn't even bother to COUNT them all?? Um, counting isn't rocket science, after all - addition is something you learn early on in grammar school. But it didn't happen in this election. That seems to be a theme for the Democratic Primaries - "let's not bother to count all of the votes this year, okey dokie?" Uh, yeah.

There is more, and I highly recommend you read the rest of it (it is short, but powerful). In conclusion, Ms. Cronin offers these thoughts (with slight corrections to web addresses):

With the overall election results being so starkly different between the two voting systems used – primary versus caucus,and given all the reports (and actual signed affidavits) of irregularities and fraud, why didn't the DNC call for an investigation into the caucus results?

With so many complaints of irregularities, why didn't superdelegates stop and question the legitimacy of the delegate count reported? As representatives of the people, why didn't they look back to the pledged delegate count as determined
by the People’s Vote – the original votes cast and take note of Clinton’s 175,000 vote-victory margin over Obama and consider the flawed nature of the caucus system along with the small number of total votes the caucus-goers represented – before casting their votes which in the end selected Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee? *

Think about it: 239 delegates, nearly half of all caucus pledged delegates, were impacted! That is more than enough to skew or sway any competitive election. And with what justification: under-funded, Party-financed elections, inadequate
volunteers to staff and monitor the caucuses, sloppy audit and paper trail systems? The State Democratic parties that run and finance caucus elections should not follow a separate, less-compliant set of rules. The DNC should act quickly to reform caucus voting systems and State Parties must be mandated to comply or get out of the electioneering business.

How is Democracy or the American voter served by the flawed caucus voting system or the Party's blindness to it? Caucuses, while exemplary as a forum of debate and discussion, must be reformed or abandoned as a voting system before the next election cycle. Never again should the will of the majority of voters be thwarted by the will of the minority.

To read my original research entitled “2008 Democratic Presidential Preference Election: Primary versus Caucus: How millions of voters were systemically disenfranchised and election results were skewed” and to investigate caucus fraud issues further, go to: http://www.lynettelong.com/caucusfraud/statistics/ and http://www.wewillnotbesilenced2008.com/. I also recommend “Has America Outgrown the Caucus?” by Tova Wang a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.

Another point to be made in terms of why the superdelegates did (or did not) do as they did was money, hence the *. I recommend this video by HRCinO8 to you - it is one you may have seen before, but it emphasizes how much money Obama shelled out to superdelegates.

These are excellent questions, Ms. Cronin. Another question raised in our email exchanges prior to this article was: Did ACORN have any involvement in the rampant caucus fraud that occurred this year? As of yet, I have no proof one way or the other, and would certainly be interested in any certifiable, authentic connections. It does seem plausible to me, though, given the extent of their voter registration fraud. Why would they do one and not the other?

And given the extent of that voter registration fraud, Ms. Cronin also questioned voting Third Party this year since the potential fraud is so pervasive that every vote against corruption is critical. While we know Gore actually won FL, the votes siphoned off to Nader made it easier to ignore the actual recount tally (post-Supreme Court decision). I think Ms. Cronin makes a good point regarding third party voting and the query about any connection to ACORN. I would like to thank her for making sense of all of the caucus irregularities and for showing, clearly, what we all suspected and knew in our hearts - that the DNC appointed Obama its nominee, not the votes or will of the people. For that, they have some 'splaining to do...

FULL REPORT:
To read the full report, click on each page image to enlarge it:

I made slight changes from the original published at No Quarter, but nothing that changes the substance of the post.