This morning, the powerhouse Drudge Report has a link to a YouTube video with the title, “Clinton voter fraud in Polk County, Iowa Caucus,” with this description:
The first chance they got they commit voter fraud.
Anything to which Drudge Report links, automatically takes on a sheen of credibility.
The video is a segment from CSPAN’s live coverage of the Democratic caucus of Polk County’s precinct #43, held in Roosevelt High School, Des Moines, on February 1, 2016.
In the caucus, votes were tallied by a primitive method of hand counting the raised hands of the people in the room. Bernie Sanders supporters are pointing to the video, claiming it showed there was Clinton voter fraud in Precinct #43 because of the discrepancy between the results of the first and second hand-counts.
Sanders won the first hand-count:
215 Sanders + 210 Clinton + 26 O’Malley + 8 Undecided = 459 Total
But Hillary won the second hand-count:
232 Clinton + 224 Sanders + 0 O’Malley = 456 Total
In other words, they lost 3 people but Clinton’s vote went up by 22, making her the winner of Precinct #43’s caucus.
Here’s the video:
The video begins with a woman in a red “Bernie” t-shirt doing a second hand count of Sanders supporters. At the 0:43 mark, she announces the result: 223!
At the 1:20 mark, a heavy-set woman with short brown hair in a blue t-shirt says the count for Hillary is 232. At the 1:40 mark, she says that some people had already left the caucus — “some people walked out the door” — which would account for why the total of the second hand count (456) was 3 fewer than the first hand count (459).
Beg. at 4:23 mark in the video, Precinct #43’s caucus chair Drew Gentsch announces the result of the second hand count:
232 Clinton + 224 Sanders + 0 O’Malley = 456 Total
Gentsch asked the people in the room if they wanted a recount. A majority raised their hands for “No”.
The discrepancy between the first and second hand-counts can easily be explained by the O’Malley supporters and the Undecided changing their minds:
- Some of them went for Sanders in the second hand-count, increasing his votes by 9, from the first hand-count’s 215 to 224.
- Others went for Hillary in the second hand-count, increasing her votes by 22, from the first hand-count’s 210 to 232.
- The discrepancy of 3 between the total number of votes at the first and second hand-counts can be explained by “some people walked out the door”.
I know this is terribly important to Bernie Sanders supporters, and far be it for me to actually defend Hillary Clinton, but I do care about the Truth.
From the CSPAN video, I’m not convinced there was voter fraud at Precinct #43. Besides, the people at that precinct overwhelmingly consented to the results of the second hand-count by rejecting a recount. If they don’t care, why should we?
As for reports that 6 precincts used coin tosses to decide Hillary as the winner, The Atlantic points out that coin flips were used where there was a tie, and that Bernie Sanders had won a sizable share of coin tosses as well, according to information provided by the state Democratic Party.
What really dismays me about the Democratic caucus at Precinct #43, Des Moines, Iowa, are the HUNDREDS of mentally-ill useful idiots assembled in that room at Roosevelt High School:
~Eowyn