{"id":178063,"date":"2019-03-17T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/17\/what-a-surprise-ballot-fraud-by-conservatives\/"},"modified":"2019-03-17T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T23:16:00","slug":"what-a-surprise-ballot-fraud-by-conservatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/03\/17\/what-a-surprise-ballot-fraud-by-conservatives\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Surprise:  Ballot Fraud by Conservatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this case, it was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/14\/us\/united-methodist-vote.html\">anti-gay bigots in the Methodist Church who were stuffing ballot boxes<\/a>, because they need someone to hate:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">It was a momentous vote for the United Methodist Church, as the future of the country\u2019s second-largest Protestant church hung in the balance. In a former football stadium in St. Louis last month, church officials and lay leaders from around the world <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/26\/us\/united-methodists-vote.html?module=inline\">voted to strengthen their ban<\/a> on same-sex marriage and gay clergy, a decision that could now split the church.<\/p>\n<p>But at least four ballots were cast by individuals who were not authorized to vote, according to interviews and a review of the church\u2019s records. The individuals were from African delegations whose votes were critical to restricting the church\u2019s rules on homosexuality.<\/p>\n<p>The final 54-vote margin against gay clergy and same-sex marriage exceeds the number of unauthorized votes discovered so far. But the voting irregularities raised questions about the process behind the divisive decision, which devastated progressive members. Some have discussed leaving the denomination and possibly creating a new alliance for gay-friendly churches.<\/p>\n<p>Church leaders are now discussing whether new votes should be called, Bishop Thomas J. Bickerton, who serves on the commission on the general conference, said in a phone interview.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The United Methodist legal structure does not have a clear procedure on  how to investigate or adjudicate improper election activity. The  relevant ethics committee does not have jurisdiction when the general  conference is not in session.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure of the exact words to describe this behavor, but, &#8220;Godly,&#8221; and &#8220;Humane,&#8221; are most certainly not on this list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this case, it was anti-gay bigots in the Methodist Church who were stuffing ballot boxes, because they need someone to hate: It was a momentous vote for the United Methodist Church, as the future of the country\u2019s second-largest Protestant church hung in the balance. In a former football stadium in St. Louis last month, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,368,364,436,380],"class_list":["post-178063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-lgbtq","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178063"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}