With recount efforts now underway in Michigan - election officials have discovered something strange going on in Wayne County, the home of Detroit, and the largest single county in the state.

In hundreds of precincts, there appear to be discrepancies between the number of ballots issued on election day and the number of ballots recorded in voting machine printouts, probably caused by electronic vote counting machines not working properly in poor neighborhoods on Election Day.

Such widespread problems with electronic machines is a big enough story on its own, but what makes this a bigger deal is a Michigan law that says precincts with discrepancies between issued ballots and recorded ballots are ineligible for a statewide recount.

As the Detroit News reports, this means that

"One-third of precincts in Wayne County could [now] be disqualified from an unprecedented statewide recount... Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts."

This is obviously terrible news for Democrats.

Any real hope they had of using the recount to flip Michigan from red to blue depended on discovering new votes in Wayne County, and that's just not going to happen if one third of Wayne County precincts are disqualified.

And even if new votes are discovered, they'll be nullified by the losses from the excluded precincts.

This is about more than just one party's electoral hopes, though.

It's about the integrity of the entire election process.

The courts already effectively said there was good reason to double check the legitimacy of Michigan's election results by allowing the recount to go forward.

So if wide swathes of Wayne County aren't included in the recount because the Republican-controlled state put old and defective vote-counting machines in mostly-Black neighborhoods, and therefore those votes won't be counted, what's the point of having a recount at all?

And why should anyone accept the results?

Luckily, there's an easy solution to this: we exclude Michigan's electors from casting their 16 electoral votes in the electoral college votes for Donald Trump.

-Thom

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Wednesday's Daily Stack 

Quote: "The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism." -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Book: "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It" by Thom Hartmann

Law: "Glass-Steagall Act", 1933.

Article: "On 75th anniversary, U.S. veterans recall Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor" by Dana Feldman and Hugh Gentry.

Quote: "December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy" - Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation, 8 December 1941.

Video: Stockman: I see a 'fiscal blood bath' ahead.

Article: "Dems Raise Alarms About Keeping Government Open" by Michael McAuliff, Matt Fuller.

Article: "Congress faces Friday budget deadline; GOP hopes for stopgap measure to fund Trump's early months" by lizbirge.

Article: "Dems: GOP already undermining Trump's 'Buy America' promise" by Susan Crabtree.

Book: The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed by David Stockman.

Event: "Dec 7 - Good Jobs Nation Rally with Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison, Danny Glover - Washington DC".

Article: "Billionaires for Bush" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Dems press Trump to support 'Buy America' provision in water bill" by Melanie Zanona.

Site: Aden Forecast.

Article: "Trump cheers 1,100 Carrier jobs staying in Indiana; 1,300 still trimmed" by TMN.

Article: "Trump slams Boeing deal for new Air Force One" by Nathan Bomey.

Article: "Trump says SoftBank will invest $50 billion in the US, aiming to create 50,000 jobs" by Jacob Pramuk, Anita Balakrishnan.

Site: Deutsche Welle.

Site: France 24.

Site: RT.

Site: BBC News.

Article: "Trump faces unanswered questions about his stock portfolio" by Steve Benen.

Article: "Trump's Boeing attack follows article with CEO's pro-trade argument" by Jacob Pramuk.

Article: "The FBI Is Investigating Me Because I Tweeted A Joke About Fake News" by Nick Baumann.

Hour Two: Should Trump Continue to Use Taxpayer's Money to Bribe Companies to Stay Here?
- Steve Beaman  

Book: The American Dream Under Fire by Steve Beaman.

CD: "The Path to Prosperity: Financial Literacy For The 21st Century (Audio CD Library)" by Steve Beaman.

Article: "AP Explains: How Trump plans to punish firms that leave US" by Paul Wiseman.

 

Article: "McDonald's hires 7,000 touch-screen cashiers" by Amanda Kooser.

Book: "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith, 1776.

Article: "North American Free Trade Agreement" (NAFTA) by Wikipedia

Article: "General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade" (GATT) by Wikipedia

Law: "Buy American Act", 1933.

 

Article: "Paper Owned by Trump's Son-In-Law Runs Alarming Op-Ed Calling for FBI Crackdown on Anti-Trump Protests" by Sarah Lazare.

Article: "It's Official, New York Observer Now Propaganda Arm of President-Elect Trump" by Justin Baragona.

Article: "Comey's FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums" by Austin Bay.

Article: "What is young-onset dementia?" (early-onset dementia) by Alzheimer's Society.

 

Talk Media News Segment:
- Ellen Ratner, Bureau Chief 

Site: "Goats for the old Goat".

Site: Governor Free Don Siegelman 

Article: "Ohio passes 'heartbeat' abortion bill; leader cites Trump's election" by Max Blau, Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley and Jason Hanna.

Article: "Retired Gen. John Kelly picked to head the Department of Homeland Security" by TMN.

Article: "Trump picks longstanding friend of Beijing Terry Branstad as US ambassador to China" by DW.

Article: "White nationalist's speech at Texas A&M draws protesters and supporters" by Regina Holmes.

Article: "Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel announces 2018 U.S. Senate run for Sherrod Brown's seat" by Andrew J. Tobias.

Article: "Majority says Trump does not need to sell off his businesses: poll" by TMN.

Article: "Obamacare Repeal Without 'Replace' Doubles Uninsured To 59 Million" by Bruce Japsen.

Article: "Here's What Science Says About the Brains of Democrats and Republicans" by Dylan Goldstein.

Article: "Congressional Progressive Caucus Members Call for Scrutiny of Trump's Crony Cabinet" by Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Article: "The Powell Memo or Powell Manifesto".

Book: "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader.

Book: "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson.

Article: "Schumer new leader of Senate Democrats, Sanders & Warren on board" by RT.

Article: "Sharecropping" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Indentured servant" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Final Senate Seat to Be Settled in Louisiana Dec. 10 Runoff" by Melinda Deslatte.

Site: Foster Campbell for the United States Senate.

Article: "Stockholm syndrome " by Wikipedia.

Article: "Tariffs in United States history" by Wikipedia.

 

Where's the economy going?
- Craig Griffin, ITM Trading  

Article: "Quantitative easing" by Wikipedia.

Site: Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI).

Thursday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET 

 

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