Did Ted Cruz Really Win Every County in Maine?

Summary:

• The Maine GOP caucus turnout was 342% over 2008
  (VA and TX were 110% and 109% where millions spent in ads)
   
• Every expert expected Trump to win, yet Cruz inexplicably won EVERY county.  Cruz had only won a single county in New Hampshire in the NH and none, 4 hours away in MA 4 days before.
   
• The Chief Caucus Warden printed 80,000 ballots for a 30% turnout. No previous GOP caucus  had been over 7% or 6,500 ballots cast.
   
• 2 of the 3 billionaires who fund Cruz's campaign are leading computer technology icons including cutting edge campaigning systems and the first investor of Facebook who also owns the NSA's intelligence "engine."
   
• Hackers have published evidence that Minnesota's GOP had the EXACT primary results on their server ready to publish, the day before the MN primary was held.

*******UPDATE*********
The history of Utah voter fraud and machine obsolescence here.  Utah voter (fmr GOP leader) describes witnessing first hand voter fraud at Utah caucuses here.  Cruz asks followers to break Utah law for absentee votes here.
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Many were shocked at Ted Cruz's wins in Oklahoma, Kansas and Maine where, not only did he win states heavily polling for Trump by double digits, he won convincingly. Maine is especially interesting because, being a "blue" Northeastern state, not a single notable political pundit or the Cruz campaign itself, ever predicted this state would be in play, much less won by Ted Cruz.  The final tally was Ted Cruz 46% to Donald Trump at 33% a 13 point win.  This is especially shocking since nationally, in polls which aggregated Cruz-friendly red states, Trump was leading Cruz by approximately 35% to 20%.  This means Cruz exceeded expectations in Maine by nearly 30 points.  This is far worse than the 18 point swing in favor of Harry Reid's Senate race against Sharon Angle in 2010 who was leading the race by at least 7 points the day before the election.  Although never proven or addressed by complaints to the Department of Justice, the Democrat activist union SEIU had the contract to "service" voting machines in Clark County where Reid had an unprecedented turnout in his favor.

How then do we understand and account for the sudden rise in Cruz votes in Maine?

The GOP caucus was held on Saturday, March 5th and the DNC caucus was held the following day.  In Chelsea, there were reports that the lines were over two hours long and some people did leave early.  That certainly could account for some percentage of the vote.

There were other reports of names not on the voting rolls, and many first time voters.   Both Trump and Cruz visited Maine the week prior so neither had a substantial advantage in press or awareness.  This could account for a rise in Cruz's visibility over Rubio and Kaisch.


What we do know is that no official polls were done in Maine prior to the caucuses.  A straw poll done in September following the CNN debate had Carly Fiorina at 36% and Trump in second place at 26.9%.  Ted Cruz was in fifth place at 6.9% behind Rubio (10.7%) and Rand Paul (8%).  As an indicator of engagement we can look at fund raising in the state.  Jeb Bush raised the most money of all candidates in Maine ($134,000) and Cruz raised $49,000 after Carson ($69,000) and Fiorina ($69,000).  Rubio raised about $30,000.  Without any other hard information we have to rely on the experts familiar with the GOP political climate in Maine.  These ratios are basically the same for New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  Both major papers in Bangor and Portland, as well as the political staff of the Boston Globe had no reason to believe anyone but Trump would win. 

Last Friday, Maine Governor Paul LePage endorsed Trump (LePage originally backed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie before he dropped out). But the governor has only informally mobilized his political apparatus to help Trump because there was so little time to organize.

That said, many Maine political strategists view a Trump win in the state as inevitable given his momentum coming out of Super Tuesday and the LePage endorsement.

Boston Globe March 4, 2016

Despite Trump visit, Maine caucuses expected to be low-key

Indeed, Maine Governor LePage, who has cut welfare rolls to less than half of what they were when he took office and who has gained an "A" rating by many fiscal conservatives including the CATO Institute,  endorsed Donald Trump the week prior.  Although the left-leaning state is less than enamored of his conservative policy success, he is a hero among GOP and conservative circles in Maine.  The day of the caucus, the pundits polled by the Bangor paper reiterated that Trump would win and the LePage endorsement was important.

The same Bangor paper a few weeks earlier published a discussion between pundits which showed that Cruz wasn't considered in contention at all. In fact, he was only mentioned for his Princess Bride reference on the trail. With Trump's crushing of Kaisch by 20 points in New Hampshire a week earlier, no one had any objective reason to believe Trump would not be successful in Maine.

Ted Cruz could barely compete for his base of evangelical voters against Donald Trump in South Carolina and Alabama, much less all GOP voters in the blue states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  New Hampshire is the least religious state in the Union and Massachusetts is the fourth least.   Maine is the third least religious.

There are not more non-religious conservatives there either.  Maine is the 8th most liberal state, slightly less liberal than Massachusetts but more liberal than New Hampshire.  In other words, in voter make up, there doesn't seem to be a natural constituency for Cruz especially when Rubio and Kaisch are in the race.  Moreover, only Kaisch and Trump have had any consistent showing among this profile of voter to date in voting and in polling.

Ted Cruz placed third in New Hampshire, barely beating Jeb Bush by 0.7% with 11.7% of the vote.  In Massachusetts, Cruz came in 4th  (9.6%) to Marco's 17.9%.  Trump had 35.3% in the New Hampshire following his narrow Iowa loss to Cruz. Iowa is the most conservative GOP primary underscoring the breadth of competitiveness he holds in nearly every demographic.  Donald had 49.3% in Massachusetts winning more votes than Romney did in the state where Mitt previously was Governor.  This was only 3 days before the Maine caucus which is only four hours away by car.

So how on March 5th, following Trump's decisive 7 state win days before on Super Tuesday, did Cruz beat Donald 45.9% to Trump's 32.6%?  Moreover, how is it possible that following a decisive Minnesota win, that Rubio could only have attracted 8% of the vote when he had nearly doubled Cruz's vote totals in Massachusetts days before?  Between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, (as seen in the graphic to the right courtesy CNN Exit Polling), Cruz only won one single precinct or county.  This was the town of Millsville which had a total of 17 votes, among the smallest in New Hampshire.  By contrast Kaisch won 12 precincts in New Hampshire with over 11,000 total votes and over 16 counties in Massachusetts.  In Maine however, Kaisch supposedly only received 1/4th the votes Ted did - 12.2% of the vote - and didn't win a single county.  Again, although different states, the demographic makeup and media markets are not that dissimilar.

Here is the shocker. According to the Maine GOP results (PDF) Ted Cruz won EVERY county in Maine - mostly in convincing fashion - except tiny Somerset County where he lost to Trump 33 to 38 individual votes.  Kaisch never came in second place once, despite running first or second in nearly every other county in the Northeast.

Initial news reports claimed there were four times the number of voters over 2012, but the number ended up being about triple at 18,650.  Some who attended the caucuses wrote of serious concerns on the Portland Press Herald website about how accurate these totals were.

So there clearly was a large turnout.  Ironically, the Democrats reported the same overwhelming turnout, but actually recorded a slightly smaller turnout than in 2008 as we will see below.  Some where reporting actual voter totals.

Cfindlay reports above that there were 5500 in Cumberland. There is no source for that number although this writer is Assuming it came from an election official.  The combined total of all 3 polling locations in Cumberland county - reported by the Maine GOP - was 3,762 still a staggering number compared to previous years.

The published Maine 2016 GOP vote total of 18, 627 votes is 290% higher than 2012 and 342% higher than 2008.  This is significantly higher than the highest turnout in the Northeast (Vermont at 57%) and surpasses that of the highest states of all, Cruz's home state of Texas which had a 109% turnout over 2008 and Virginia at 110%.  In BOTH of these states, records amount of advertising was spent.  There is no public record of TV ad spending by any campaign or SuperPac in Maine.   Why would the turn out in Maine exceed the largest contested states by a factor of three?

It is hard to fathom that Cruz would generate a bigger turnout in the obscure state of Maine, than in his home state where he has 50,000 volunteer grassroots GOV workers and where he spent over $1 million in advertising.  Even where Cruz has spent effort in neutral states, he still has largely not generated near the voter participation or interest that Donald Trump has.

And, there is simply no explanation for this.  An even number vote total, equivalent to 62% of the vote of the entire county, over 2 and a half times the votes the leader in the national polls got.

H/T The
Conservative
Treehouse.com

While Trump was packing stadiums in the tens of thousands, Cruz often has empty seats in venues 3 to 7 times smaller.  A good analysis of the Oklahoma and Kansas venues can be found here.  In one example, in Oklahoma, Trump filled a 15,000 person stadium with lines outside, while Cruz generously attracted 3,000 with a much larger venue available only a few blocks away.   An Ohio GOP chairmen reported that of the 46,000 new voters they are registering, over 90% are registering to vote for Donald Trump.  According to the IBTimes, through Super Tuesday, Trump had about 3.37 million total votes. Romney, at this point in 2008, had 3.28 million — even though seven more states had voted.  Contrary to the protests of Cruz followers, analysts like Brownstein have concluded from exit polling that Trump is not so much drawing new voters to the GOP, as reinvigorating those who have left the party.  In fact, Republican turnout is the highest it has been since 1980  there is no data attributing any of that to Ted Cruz.

Cruz is not generating the audiences or voter participation at a fraction the rate Trump is.

This is why, like Maine, the victories in Kansas and Oklahoma are suspect.  Were Cruz to have won a convincing majority of his own state, a sudden double digit lead elsewhere might be harder to argue.  But, with the exception of Marco Rubio, Cruz performed worse than any other Presidential candidate in their home state in over 104 years.  How can he win a near majority in the northeastern state of Maine when he could not break 12% in neighboring states no more than a few hours away?


BBlogger Lame Cherry points out, that Cruz received more votes this year in Maine than the entire GOP field in 2012.  Mitt Romney carried Maine easily in 2008 and 2012 when GOP voter enthusiasm was still peaking. Yet Cruz's 8,880 votes exceeds Romney's by over 30% from 2008.  Trump, being from the Northeast is well known by those constituencies, while Cruz nationally is registering around 20% of undecideds.  

Is it possible that the electoral voting systems are compromised?  Every election cycle there are reports that a candidate is registered for a voter attempting to vote for their candidate.  There were confirmed reports of it happening in Austin Texas during this year's GOP Primary and over 298 cases have been reported in Kansas. Other, more disturbing irregularities are also being discovered.

 Hackers have found files with the exact final vote totals reported by the Minnesota GOP, stored on the GOP servers THE DAY BEFORE THE PRIMARY HAPPENED.

In the Minnesota, a hacker found the EXACT final results reported in the GOP primary on the GOP servers the day before the primary.  (h/t Lame Cherry) The national press won't cover the story.

How does this tie to Cruz?  Robert Mercer is one of the 4 billionaires who account for the majority of Ted Cruz's war chest.  Robert Mercer is a reclusive genius who writes software that tracks trends and automatically take advantage of these data systems. Mercer has been working with Cruz on predictive modeling and voter "micro-targeting" to expand campaigning beyond the limits of any other group to date.  It has been fully documented that these systems invade privacy and personal data including taking Facebook data from Cruz supporters without permission.  One of the other billionaires is none other than Peter Thiel, eBay co-founder, original Facebook investor, and primary owner of the primary US Intelligence NSA engine - Palantir.  These relationships are documented here.

Vote rigging is real.  Even in the GOP.   This from Dennis Michael Lynch:

Clinton Curtis was an everyday computer programmer in Florida until he was asked by a powerful Republican legislator to create vote-rigging software for electronic voting machines.

Curtis was a software programmer from Oviedo, FL who claimed in a sworn 2004 affidavit and then sworn testimony before members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, that he was asked to create a vote-rigging software prototype for touch-screen voting systems back in 2000 by then Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), a very powerful Republican in the Sunshine State and a close friend of the Bush family.

At the time, Curtis worked for a company named Yang Enterprises, Inc., which had many contracts with NASA and the state of Florida. In 2000, when he says Feeney asked him to create the vote-rigging software, Feeney was both the Speaker of the FL House, as well as a registered lobbyist for Yang.

So this was the Bush family doings.  Who now runs the Cruz campaign?  Neil Bush is the head of fund raising. Jeb Bush just endorsed Cruz.  Former Bush DHS head Larry Chertoff's partner RUNS the Cruz campaign.  Still think Cruz is an "outsider?"

Foreign interests control as much as 50% of the US voting system.  Many were concerned about Scytl electronic voting system - Soros affiliated - which the White House was adopting for military voting in 2010.  This writer's understanding has expanded into the spiderweb and history that goes much deeper in large part to one other source.  Here is an excerpt tracing these relationships: 

Andreu Riera of Spain created a vote counter which was based upon his casino gambling program.....meaning the program was to play the odds, so the house could generate wins at a 15% margin, and therefore always win.  Riera was murdered in Spain, and his program was stolen, and as I proved not one Conservative in the world ever won an election after this program was installed, and only leftists did.

LameCherry

The short version is that it is quite possible that this technology has been adapted or put to use in our elections.  The approach doesn't require that every precinct in America is compromised, but only key precincts, in key states in key elections that can remain unnoticed.  By "skimming" 15% of the actual votes across a number of precincts, the vote totals can remain intact but the concentration of votes can be flipped for the candidate of choice.  As shown in the link to the Minnesota vote totals above, it not only is possible this is happening in Maine, Kansas and Oklahoma, but very probable.  In the case where 15% was not enough to skim from the other candidates, the only other solution would be to artificially raise the total number of cast ballots.  Inexplicably, the official responsible for printing ballots printed 80,000 ballots - over TEN TIMES the number needed in past elections.  The highest turnout in a Maine GOP caucus prior to this year was 7% of registered voters.  From the Bangor Daily News:

Kim Pettengill, chief caucus warden for the Maine Republican Party, said she printed 80,000 ballots for Maine Republicans for Saturday. “I based it on a 30 percent voter turnout,” she said.

No formal connection to the Cruz campaign or Cruz endorsement officials could be found, but Pettengill was involved in a voting dispute in 2005.  The disputing party claimed the voting process was ambiguous and was attempting to address the crude accounting of votes by addressing it at a state level with new legislation, not any reported indictment or fault of Pettengill.

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NOTE: It must be addressed that those tracing the information to the Lame Cherry blog will find it insightful, bizarre, insulting, offensive and more.  The blog alludes to the possibly that in previous employment they were involve in our intelligence service.  The writer at times seems insane but their information - like the GOP MN - is often invaluable. In an acknowledgement to the reliability and accuracy of what they write, Lame Cherry, following the Kansas and Oklahoma voting aberrations and prior to the Michigan and Mississippi primaries, indicated that they had sources informing them that Cruz's team was told to stop their vote stealing program.  True to the prediction, both states reported final results very close to polling trends in the weeks previous.

The demand on Cruz's team to cease their vote stealing, if indeed it happened, may in part be due to the blatant differences in expectations and results from the voting programs - or the inability to fine them tune them.  It would be difficult to maintain faith in the system if you have a candidate with very little support winning EVERY county in Northeast without someone asking deeper questions that could lead to actions and problems such as indictments.  Although the DoJ in the current administration has shown no interest to prosecute these matters, prospective US Attorney Generals by the names of Joe Arpaio or Chris Christie, very well might do so.

These results simply don't make sense. 

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