Greetings, my friends! As many of you have probably heard, “tensions were high” at the state convention in Nevada yesterday. Now, because CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the usual “news” outlets seem to have forgotten to mention it, I’ve decided (as usual) to step in to inform you all and clean up the mess of misinformation.

You see, all of this happened because there has been a bit of a misunderstanding between the “Democratic” Party and ourselves — they’ve been laboring under the impression that we — you know, the people — are supposed to subserviently accept what the democratic party officials have decreed but — meanwhile — we (having been misled by the word “democratic” being in their name) thought that we would get to have a say in choosing our nominee for president. As you can guess, this embarrassing miscommunication has led to a lot of confusion — but worry not! I believe that we can clear all of that up in this article by taking a look at a few numbers. First up, let’s talk about…

1,693 and 1,662

Those were the numbers of both Clinton and Sanders delegates that were at the state “democratic” convention in Nevada on Saturday — well, actually, those are the numbers of delegates that were allowed to participate in the convention on Saturday — and, as you can see:

\mathtt{1,693 - 1,662 = 31}

Clinton had 31 more delegates inside of the convention — which wasn’t very good news for the Sanders supporters yesterday. But wait! There’s another number that you should probably know about and that is…

58

58 is the number of Bernie Sanders delegates that were not allowed to participate — this is because they were de-certified and denied entry into the convention. I’ll only point out the obvious — that 64 delegates would have been immensely useful for the Sanders-supporters, who were 31 short of Clinton’s suddenly higher delegate count.

UPDATE: 5/16, 2:06pm PDT, 64 delegates were originally denied delegate status, 6 of whom were later admitted, for a total of 58 delegates that were de-certified. These delegates were rejected by committees made up of officials that Roberta Lange had chosen. As Chair, Lange was empowered to do this by an illegitimate rule change that Sanders’ delegates had attempted to contest, both with a petition to the Nevada State Democratic Party and by attempting to challenge the decision in court prior to the convention. To better understand the illegitimate rule changes, I suggest you examine this petition to the Nevada State Democratic Party, which describes how Lange accomplished the takeover in detail and was begun before the convention on Saturday.

Now, at this point, many of you may find yourselves wondering, “what do you mean ‘de-certified?’ How does that work?” Well, it’s really quite fascinating — let me tell you!

First, I’ll need to quickly explain that the Nevada caucuses are a three-tiered process — the first tier was made up of the caucuses that were held on Feb. 20th, which Clinton narrowly won with 52.6% to Sanders’ 47.3%. The second tier was made up of county conventions, which Bernie Sanders’ delegates ended up winning because a large portion of Clinton delegates simply couldn’t be bothered to show up and, therefore, didn’t vote. The third, and final, tier was the state convention, where the delegate counts in Nevada were to be finalized — which is what happened yesterday.

Now, what happened at the convention!?

Yesterday morning, around 9:30AM (while many delegates were still in line to get in ), the leadership at the convention, led by Roberta Lange, decided to hold a quick “voice vote” (essentially, a shouting match between the two sides) about whether to change the rules of the convention. Now, I must warn you — prepare to get angry. The rule change that they voted about was, in a nutshell, to disregard the results of the second-tier county conventions — where Sanders’ had won — and only to count the results of the first-tier caucus that Clinton had won. I’d like to remind you that this “voice vote” was held before all of the delegates were present and — as is fairly clear in this video — was, at the very least, inconclusive.

“The ruling by the chair is not debatable. It cannot be challenged, and I move that – I announce that the rules have passed by the body.”

-Roberta Lange

UPDATE: 5/15 8:21pm PDT, See note at bottom of article for additional info about the rule change.

Despite the unclear results of this voice vote, Lange decided to call the vote for the Clinton camp and the rule-change passed. This is against the rules. Lange also decided that this rule-change was not debatable— this is when things started to get, as the media has so cutely put it, “chaotic.” The Sanders delegates (let’s all give them a round of applause, please) stuck it out for upwards of 13 hours, demanding a re-vote, while our poor, disenfranchised 64 delegates waited patiently outside. During these hours, the brown-shirts were called several times — the details are still emerging, but I understand that they arrested 2 peacefully protesting Sanders-delegates earlier in the day, before reportedly throwing the Sanders-delegates’ food into the trash.

Ultimately, after Sanders delegates had called for a recount many times throughout the day, Lange took control of the convention — the 64 delegates were never allowed in, the convention was denied the opportunity to re-vote, and, finally, adjourned the convention without the delegates’ consent. As both pictures, video, and first-hand accounts show, a small army of brown-shirts then cleared out the convention hall and it appears that the Democratic Party has no plans to re-visit what happened yesterday.

UPDATE: [5/15 5:38pm PDT] I’ve been informed by first-hand witnesses (who requested not to be named) that, “the DNC reserved the hall until midnight, but Roberta adjourned at 10:30 without concluding business that was on the agenda such as voting on At Large delegates.”

That’s right — the “democratic” party has disenfranchised the people’s elected delegates by changing the rules when it no longer suited them to follow them. The message that they have sent is that it does not matter if you disagree with this because the police are on their side and they will forcibly remove the people when they insist on voting. This is nothing short of a deliberate sabotage of democracy.

Let’s Put Our Numbers To Use…

My friends, there are a lot of us! Let’s put those numbers into action! I plan on updating this article and writing more on the subject as I further examine the many hours of footage and as the details continue to emerge — but, in the meantime, it is very important that this information reach the people of both the United States and the rest of the world. Last night’s events prove that the state of our democracy is worse than many of us have feared — but I believe that, if the people are made aware of what happened, they will not stand for it. But they must first be made aware! The “news” will not do this for us — we must be the media, now.

That is why I am asking you to share this article

(and every other relevant article, meme, and video that you can find!) as widely as you can!and we must go out of our way to make sure that the world is aware of the situation.I must bid you all farewell so that I can continue to research — oh! Wait!

I almost forgot — a little #birdie told me that the contact info below this paragraph is the contact info for Roberta Lange, the “democratic” party official that presided over the disaster yesterday. Perhaps, a couple thousand of you would like to call/email/FB/Tweet her to let her know how all of this makes you feel? If all of you, my dear readers, did this, Roberta Lange will be contacted 50,000 times today! That’d be math in action! In any case, I shall leave this information here:

Roberta Lange, State Chair

6233 Dean Martin Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89118

Nevada Democrats phone#: (702) 737-8683

Cell#: 702-767-5332

Roberta’s Facebook: ://m.facebook.com/roberta.gustavelange

Roberta’s Twitter: @rlange9

There. I have already sent her a Tweet & I shall be calling her throughout my spare-time for at least the next few days — we’ll see how things unfold.

@rlange9 Hi Roberta! This is your opportunity to apologize for the #nvdemconvention & help fix what you've done. Or we could go to plan B. — John Laurits (@JohnLaurits) May 15, 2016

I shall leave you with that — I trust that you all will make excellent use of it. I shall write to you all again, soon. Peace!

In solidarity,

John Laurits #SeeYouInPhilly

P.S. Readers of Nevada! If you’re out there protesting this, please send me pictures and I will give you an audience in the next article! Email me or Tweet me or send them by carrier pigeon…

P.P.S. For more information & videos about this please visit this website. If you are interested in raising awareness about what happened, please answer THIS CALL TO ACTION.

UPDATE: 5/15 8:21pm PDT, Because I’ve gotten quite a few messages and a handful of twitter trolls about this, I’ve decided to provide clarification about the rule change that I’ve written about. Obviously, there is a great amount of confusion around these events (in general) as the details emerge and as reports from the DNC conflict with the reports of the delegates and video evidence. I’m confident that the video evidence shall prevail. As for the “rule change,” it is my current understanding that (though the corporate “news” seems to be purposefully clouding the topic with misleading information) the DNC had adopted a set of “temporary rules” which decreed that the state convention would be abiding by the 1st tier results instead of the 2nd tier results, effectively undoing Sanders’ win at the county-convention level. These rules were apparently adopted and made permanent with a vote that took place at 9:30am, while many delegates were still in line to enter the convention hall. All reports that I’ve read indicate that the vote was scheduled for 10am. If anyone has any sources that they believe would be useful for me, please do not hesitate to contact me with them. In order to be transparent and to help you all do your own independent research, here is a list of links to articles from various sources that include different (and sometimes conflicting) reports about this event:

http://www.berniesandersvideo.com/the-nevada-democratic-convention.html

Nevada Democratic Convention: Stories of Voter Suppression

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/may/14/at-democratic-convention-in-las-vegas-rules-divide/

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279930-nevada-dem-convention-devolves-into-chaos

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/15/chaos_at_nevada_democratic_convention_dnc_leaders_flee_building_as_sanders_supporters_demand_recount.html



† UPDATE/REQUEST: 5/15 5:38pm PDT, I’ve gotten conflicting reports about the 64 delegates. Some say that 6 were eventually admitted but I have heard multiple accounts. I am waiting on definitely reliable sources (thanks to you all who have contacted me. Until that time, just know that this number may be “fuzzy” but is probably either 64 or 58 (or perhaps somewhere in between)

*Very special thanks to my friend, Kalani Plushy Baluga for the image — check out her art on instagram, it’s awesome! Seriously. Check. It. Out.

**You may follow John on Twitter or send him pictures of your dinner or (more usefully) send him crappy corporate-media articles w/ math to debunk: @JohnLaurits. If ye’d like, you can also help out by buying John coffee HERE, which he is always very grateful for.