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Senate Candidate Wants to Ban Polling
Masker writes "This is just too funny. Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, who is running against Democrat Barack Obama, wants to ban political polling for 'a certain period' before the election, since such polls are 'manipulative and degrading and damaging to our political system.' Could his opinion be influenced by a recent poll that shows Keyes trails by 45 percentage points behind Obama?" Could be. But it could also be influenced by the fact that polls are often wrong; they influence how people vote (people are less likely to vote for someone who "doesn't have a chance"), and polls get reported on more than issues, which can't be good for anyone except the pollsters and whoever happens to be leading the polls.
Please, please, somebody tell me that my browser mangled the <sarcasm> tags.
For those who did take that seriosuly, you'll get a good idea of who Barack Obama is by reading the transcript of his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
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A few years back Alan Keyes was quite vocal in his claims that Hillary Clinton shouldn't have been allowed to run in the NY senate race since she had just purchased a house there. Of course she was a strong Democrat going up against a very week Republican, but that probably didn't have anything to do with it...(ha!)
Sorry to distrub your editorializing here, but there are in fact quite a number of countries that do this. Other things more modern democracies have found out work pretty well are not announcing any election results until everybody's vote is in (aw, the Californian says, why go vote, Gore is going to win anyway); vote on a Sunday so people don't have to skip work; give everybody the same ballot sheet; give every person one vote instead of some screwy system with a bunch of middlemen who distort the effect of the popular vote.
As with the legal system and electricity, America's electorial system suffers enormously from being one of the first ones implemented and the inability of Congress to pass any serious reforms. Get rid of trial by jury, switch to 220 volts, make it a direct vote, and then you will be ready to enter the 21. Century. Computers that run with 220 volts are twice as fast!
Separation of Church and State? What is that?
Stances like this are why he will lose the election here. I am sure that Republicans like Jim Thompson are very much beside themselves about it actually. They can look at this as illustrating how Illinoisans want more moderate Republicans and Keyes' royal trouncing will help shift the Republican agenda in IL back to where it can be palatable to the majority again. Too bad for the RNC which was so dead set on a candidate like Keyes that they forgot to actually rally behind one that the majority would accept...
Separation of church and state:
- Is not in the constitution (as most people think)
- Does not mean nobody can have religion
- Even if their in public office
- Is *not* about removing religious symbols from public property
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" not "Congress shall tear down religious symbols wherever it may annoy citizens."Allowing a court house to have the 10 commandments in front of it is hardly passing a law respecting or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This is called "Freedom of Religion" people. The right to actually have a religion.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin