As I write this post, there are federal investigations ongoing into meddling in America’s elections last year by Russia, a hostile foreign power. There are daily discussions about protecting investigators and members of the Justice Department from interference or firing by some of the subjects of these investigations. This is HUGE. This is Nixon level huge. Hell, this has the potential to be even bigger than Watergate since there is a very real possibility that the president and/or some of his team entered into a conspiracy with Russia against the United States. Comrade bots and Trumpettes can’t have this. There must be a distraction. So, what are the trolls pushing us to talk about instead?

The Clintons. Uranium. No, seriously.

President Obama’s popularity. Apparently, there is a contest for popularity outside of junior high (what on earth for?!), and President Obama won. No surprise.

Oh, and Roy Moore, the slimeball who lost his bid for election to the Senate to Doug Jones. This is to fill the seat vacated by Jeff “Black Identity Extremists” Sessions, in case you had forgotten. You’d think this would be over by now, but Roy Moore just can’t grow the fuck up and concede. He was always a terrible candidate and a terrible human being so none of this should come as a surprise to anyone.

(Trolls go pretty far out of their way to argue with me as if my opinion matters. I picture them as this cat, frantically tapping away at their keyboards, desperate to make me agree with them. I’m just one vote. I’m nobody. Why do they care what I think?)

The trolls pushing the Roy Moore story just can’t get enough wallowing in this man’s filth, and they want to drag us down to their level, into the muck with them. They go on and on about fraud and “irregularities” in the election, but so far, there has been no concrete evidence available to the public (that I can find, and I’ve looked). One troll provided a link to the court documents (see links below) for Roy Moore’s complaint filed a couple of days ago which the Judge in the case has already rejected. For all these pages, they’re suspiciously short of any kind of solid evidence a court could use to justify honoring the complaint and redoing a statewide election for federal office at the state’s expense. The trolls, though, believe the 80-page collection of dazzling bullshit and cannot fathom why everyone else isn’t falling for it.

So far, the only “evidence” I’ve seen that could, if pursued and found to be actual fraud, be used. . . maybe. . . is that someone thought it strange that some white voters in a predominately black city used out of state driver’s licenses as voter ID. No, this post isn’t about how shitty it is to require the ID/poll tax, though I do need to go into that some day. I suppose in the south a white person never moves? Or maybe white people in the south are in a huge hurry to skip being paid to hang out at the DMV for a day to replace their old license that is perfectly valid and has not expired. In Wisconsin (and Missouri, where I’m from), we take our time. The DMV is nowhere close to as fun as they say they are in the brochure. Don’t let them lie to you; there is no slide at the pool.

I did read where there are claims that 60 people voted fraudulently. But that claim came from the same group who filed the 80 pages of dazzling bullshit. I’m sure they’ll have something to back up those claims as voter fraud is a punishable offense, and those 60 cases need to be investigated. Right? Right? Hello?

The same troll who provided the link to the complaint was freaking out about all the evidence in the court documents but couldn’t point to anything. I did finally get that person to be specific enough to point to page 39 (though after all the bragging about their genius as a math/statistics wiz they couldn’t explain what exactly page 39 meant to them, why the court should have ruled differently). This person was seriously pushing statistics for anomalies in a swing district as important evidence – I kid you not – as if maths are the be all and end all even when the facts of the math are based on iffy data, clearly twisted to fit this person’s weird worldview. The best part is “the three national Election Integrity experts” (aka wingnuts) who came up with these all-important “facts.” (see NPR story in links – seriously, wish I had it earlier)

What did I see when I looked at page 39? All I saw was an outlier. The problem with it was that this election was an outlier. The polls leading up to it were wildly variable depending on who did it and when. The candidate himself is an outlier. As much as I’ve come to distrust all Republicans, I find Moore to be an extreme example of just how awful a Republican can be. Just like Trump.

This troll truly has no idea why this one statistic doesn’t make the court and the entire state of Alabama start throwing their hard-earned money at them in order to redo the whole election.

This is where our education system is now, guys. I have a troll angry at me for not accepting the math of nutty statisticians as proof that there is something hinky in the election. I don’t doubt the statistician’s math, exactly. What I doubt is the data it is based upon. Not that my opinion matters. BTW, this was yesterday, before I’d had time to research any of this beyond reading some/skimming the rest of the complaint. Since that time I’ve found the complaint even less compelling than I did when I spoke with the most recent troll, an emotional little Twit with some reading comprehension issues. It’s sad, really. We pay a lot for education, and people leave without critical thinking skills? Without being able to comprehend what others write? Perhaps this particular troll’s first language is not English. Maybe it’s Russian or Tatar or something. Anyway, the court already ruled. It turns out they didn’t find the complaint compelling either. Back to the troll’s statistics worship. . .

One outlier can, but doesn’t always, disprove a theory. Data, even an outlier, can help support an argument in some situations. It is no more or less important than other statistics, an imprecise science. Notice that polling was used as a reason to redo the election, but polling is nothing more than another imprecise way to gather data for statistics. All of it can be helpful, but do not use polling/statistics to make important decisions. Ever. Especially in such a crazy election as this one. Before an abnormal observation can be singled out of the rest of the data it is necessary to characterize normal observations. But there was nothing normal about this election or about that Republican candidate.

Keep in mind you need solid information if you’re trying to convince a court to overturn an election at their state’s expense.

Our trolls looked at the results or this statistic or that, but they refuse to look at context or at anything else around the one point they are focused on. They ask, “what could possibly make so many people get up and vote” in this particular election as if they really have no idea?

Before I go any further, I’ll point out that a lot of Jones’ voters were black. Jones, as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama in 2001 and 2002, prosecuted the two living Ku Klux Klan members who were involved in the 1963 church bombing that killed four little girls. The Republican opponent, Moore, appears to be pro-slavery and is quite racist judging by his public comments and attitudes.

Still wonder why so many were motivated to vote in this Senate race?

Many of Jones’ voters were women. In his 30’s (unknown if he still acts on this attraction to young girls), Moore stalked his young “dates” in malls, the YMCA, and in his own courthouse. He has attacked and used the state to attack his victims, girls and women who were ages 14-28 at the time of his advances and attacks, as the case may be.

Still wonder why so many in Alabama did what they did in this election?

Moore disobeyed a federal judge’s order to take down a 5,200-pound statue of the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the state judicial building which resulted in his first removal from office in 2003. Moore thinks Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges should be ignored. His opinion on the latter got him suspended from the bench for a second time in 2016 which lasted the remainder of that term.

“Moore has made painfully clear that facts do not matter to him. Neither does he feel compelled to respect laws with which he disagrees.” – The Atlantic

Roy Moore thinks that scrapping the Amendments after the Tenth would “eliminate many problems.” Yeah, he thinks all would be fine in the USA if we brought back slavery, stopped recognizing women’s and non-white’s right to vote, etc.

“We’ve got to remember that most of what we do in court comes from some Scripture or is backed by Scripture,” Moore said after taking the oath of office to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012. It would seem the First Amendment means NOTHING to Moore. He calls Islam a “false religion” (as if some religions are not false).

Roy Moore’s law school professor nicknamed him “fruit salad” because, as his professor put it, Moore was “the most mixed-up person I’ve ever taught.”

Gee. Why would so many Democrats get off their asses and vote this time? And why would so many Republicans either skip the vote altogether or vote for the Democrat instead of their candidate?

Let’s also not forget just how important every single seat in the House and Senate are right now. Democrats and the Resistance worked for months, mostly in the cities, to give people information about the candidates and to get them to vote. They sent postcards and made calls from all over the country. They knocked on doors. If you get people out in numbers to vote, they tend to vote democrat. That is why the Republicans are so into voter suppression and gerrymandering these days. Between that and outright election interference, it’s the only way their shitty candidates can get elected.

So, no, trolls, there is nothing in those court documents that suggests the results of this special election were “irregular.” Look at the candidate, the political climate, and the information and “sources” provided in the court document. Look at what is there and not what you want to see, and it’s obvious. Face it; Roy Moore is a bridge too far even for Alabama.

In the end, I find that all this trolling and misdirection is not about facts or evidence or fairness in election practices. In fact, it’s the opposite:

These trolls/Trumpettes/Putin bots don’t care that they’re dumb. They don’t even care that they’re advertising, broadcasting, that they’re dumb. They don’t care that we can all clearly see just how dumb they are. They only care that those “others” don’t get to have a say. As long as we don’t also notice their racism and sexism, their dumb doesn’t embarrass these people in the least.

The trolls are trying their hardest to get us to forget the important issues, including the Russia investigation, their raids on the Treasury, and the upcoming efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare, among others.

The trolls are trying their hardest to get me to be concerned and upset about that Alabama election. Don’t get me wrong; I am concerned, but not for the reason they want. My concern is that 650,436 people voted for Roy Moore. More than six hundred and fifty THOUSAND people voted for a sexist pedophile (is it technically hebephilia?) who supports slavery, who was removed from the bench twice for ignoring the law, who fully intends to impose his hateful religion on us, and who believes most of the nation’s problems would be fixed if we would just eliminate all the Amendments to the Constitution after the Tenth. FFS, women voted for this man. People who claim to be Christians voted for this man.

These are not good people. These people have chosen one of the worst examples of humanity to represent them. And they vote. It didn’t work this time, but what about next time?

Vote as if your life depends on it. Because it does.

I’m sorry, dear readers, that we keep getting dragged back here, but racism and ignorance are alive and well in the USA. I’m doing my best to eliminate both. I hope you are, too. *hugs*

Link: Roy Moore’s Complaint against Alabama Secretary of State regarding vote count filed 27 December 2017

Link: “Jones certified U.S. Senate winner despite Moore challenge” – Reuters

Link: “FACT CHECK: Where Roy Moore’s Voter Fraud Claims Fall Flat” – by Jessica Taylor at NPR. Be careful if you’re having a drink while reading this lest some come out your nose. The complaint is even worse than it appears once researched.

Link: The Trouble With Statistical Evidence – Richard Schmalbeck, Professor of Law at Duke University. This is an old link, but it was clear and concise which is handy for a relative layperson like myself. Law is fascinating, but I’d need another lifetime to study it.

Link to a Twitter thread on various aspects of the original complaint by Taniel.

Link to original Tweet from Clint Smith III.

Link: Through – by E. Brooks at Gray Matters

Link: Never Trust a Republican – by E. Brooks at Gray Matters

Edited for typos and to add two links 0200, 30 Dec 2017. I hope I caught them all.

#Outlier #Vote #VoteThemAllOut #FireproofMueller #TrumpRussia