On September 18, 2014, in a record voter turnout of 84.59%, the people of Scotland seemingly rejected independence from the United Kingdom by a whopping 55% “no” vs. 45% “yes”.
Scottish unionists won by a wider-than-expected 10-percentage-point margin, to the surprise of everyone because right up to the actual referendum, polls had shown a neck-to-neck race between “yes” and “no”.
It is, therefore, sobering that clear and visual evidence of vote fraud has been uncovered, as shown in this video, where a vote counter is seen periodically moving ballot sheets from the “yes” to the “no” pile, and where stacks of ballots are piled up in the “no” section when the top ballots can be seen to have the “yes” box checked off.
[H/t FOTM's Gingercake for the video]
So who/what is thwarting Scotland’s independence?
How about TPTB of the European Union, for one?
Two days before the Scottish referendum, Dina Spector reports for Business Insider:
The Scottish independence movement will embolden other active separatist groups in Europe to win their freedom, whether or not Scotland votes to secede from the UK on Thursday. From Catalonia and Basque Country in Spain to Veneto, South Tyrol, and the island of Sardinia in Italy to Flanders in Belgium, ‘the precedent of the vote on self-determination will reverberate around the Continent,’ The New York Times writes. If you want a rough idea of how European borders would have to be redrawn if regions with a separatist agenda got their way, you can look at the map below, put together by the European Free Alliance [EFA], to which “40 progressive nationalist, regionalist and autonomous parties throughout the European Union” belong.
Click map to enlarge
Meanwhile, back in the good ol’ U. S. of A., a new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that as many as a quarter of Americans, or 1 in 4, are open to their states leaving the union — a move no U.S. state has tried in the 150 years since the bloody Civil War that led to the end of slavery in the South.
Some 23.9% of Americans polled from Aug. 23 through Sept. 16 said they strongly support or tend to support the idea of their state breaking away, while 53.3% of the 8,952 respondents strongly oppose or tend to oppose secession.
Some other findings of the poll:
- The urge to sever ties with Washington cuts across party lines and regions, though Republicans and residents of rural Western states generally favor the idea more than Democrats and Northeasterners. By region, the idea was least popular in New England, the cradle of the Revolutionary War, with just 17.4% of respondents open to pulling their state out. It was most popular in the Southwest, where 34.1% of respondents back the idea. That region includes Texas, where an activist group is calling the state’s legislature to put the secession question on a statewide ballot.
- Anger with Obama‘s handling of issues ranging from Obamacare to the Islamic State (aka ISIL) jihidasts drives some of the secessionist feeling. Mordecai Lee, professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, who has studied secessionist movements, said interest in secession “seems to have heated up, especially since the election of President Obama.” Brittany Royal, a 31-year-old nurse from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, said anger over Obamacare made her wonder if her state would be better off on its own, “That has really hurt a lot of people here, myself included. My insurance went from $40 a week for a family of four up to over $600 a month for a family of four. The North Carolina government itself is sustainable. Governor (Pat) McCrory, I think he has a better healthcare plan than President Obama.”
- Others say long-running Washington gridlock prompted them to wonder if their states would be better off striking out on their own. Roy Gustafson, 61, of Camden, South Carolina, who (ironically) lives on disability payments from the federal government, said, “I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference anymore which political party is running things. Nothing gets done. The state would be better off handling things on its own.”
~Eowyn
