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Carter says Florida Voting Still Not Fair
linuxwrangler writes "Ex president Jimmy Carter is claiming that Florida has still not created conditions for a fair election. The Carter Center has monitored over 50 elections worldwide for fairness and says that the absence of uniformity in voting procedures and the lack of a non-partisan election commission sets the stage for a repeat of the 2000 election. That election, overseen by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (aka co-chair of the Bush-Cheney state campaign committee), was officially decided by a margin of 537 votes. According to Carter, Florida governor Jeb Bush (aka brother of George W. Bush) has done little to correct the problems found in the 2000 election. In addition, Harris' successor Glenda Hood, (aka an elector for George W. Bush in 2000) recently attempted to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons."
Posted on 08/25/2004 6:20:16 AM PDT by moonman
ABC News (radio) announced that over 46,000 New York City residents were registered to vote in both their home district and also in the state of Florida. The anouncement mentioned that two-thirds (2/3) are registered Democrats.
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NEW YORK, (UPI) -- Allegations first made by the New York Daily News that residents of New York state may have voted illegally in Florida elections has produced calls for a formal investigation by Florida officials.
A study of computer records in New York and Florida conducted by the Daily News found 46,000 New York residents illegally registered to vote in both states.
The paper's investigation also uncovered the fact that as few as 400 and as many as 1,000 of those illegally registered voted twice in at least one election.
In some cases, people were found to have violated the law by voting twice in as many as seven elections.
"We expect that people will follow the law," said Florida Department of State spokeswoman Alia Faraj. "If there is an indication that people haven't, then the appropriate agencies must look into this matter." -30-
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A convicted felon is banned from owning a handgun for life in this country. That's a second ammendment right.
Why should voting be treated differently?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
In the US electoral theory, a fair and valid election is one in which a sufficiently large number of competent people's opinions or estimates of what the public welfare is and requires are collected, so as to counteract the shortsightedness and biases of mere mortals who, being fewer in number, have less chance of accurately perceiving this. Lately an idea has sprung up that every breathing person of age should vote to make an election valid, but this ideal is not well linked to the idea that a large enough body of people have a better chance of correctly determining the public welfare. It is a very poorly thought through political ideal.
The difference between
I vote we discontinue the Politics category on Slashdot. The end result of this new category has been a venue for flames and nothing else. There are other forums for discussion on these issues; why clutter up a site dedicated to science and technology?
Let's see, after his interesting call on the Venezuelan elections (it is legit, said Carter before all of the votes were even certified, and well before all of the interesting information about electronic voting machines programmed by a company owned by Chavez's brother were out in the open), he now wants to call the Florida elections before they happen?
If I were to focus on this paragraph, I'm sure I'd be modded "offtopic". Aw, what the heck:
I wouldn't be surprised if Chavez hired some monkeys to play with the votes. As I recall, though, Chavez was nearly ousted in a coup orchestrated by the oil companies not so long ago. The Bush administration was falling all over itself to recognize the coup plotters as the "new government"... only to be red-faced (if not red-handed) when Chavez returned to the scene.
I doubt we're aligned politically, but you seem to know a lot more about the situation than I do... care to expand on the Venezuelan vote, the attempted coup, and possibly how neither side seems be anywhere close to trustworthy?
Hmmm... that last bit sounds familiar. That's why I'm voting Green.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This is actually very telling - even left wingers are essentially admitting that slashdot's politics posts are left-leaning. This is of course in direct contradiction with CmdrTaco's claim that the politics section would be promised fair with story selection.
The editors need to end this failed experiment - it is clear that fairness is not being implemented.
The problem isn't that felons can or can't vote. It's that people who are likely to vote for Democrats are getting their voting rights taken away, and that people who are likely to vote for Republicans aren't.
No! Wrong! That is HALF of the problem! The other half is the *reality* of voter fraud.
A little history is required to understand the voter disenfranchisement in 2000. Go back to 1998. In that election cycle there was a mayoral race in Miami. The Democratic party did a spectacular job of getting out the vote and won it for their candidate. Unfortunately they did a little TOO good of a job. They got out not just the convicted felon and illegal alien vote, the even got that traditionally Democratic demographic, the deceased-American vote. There were paid vote-brokers, forged signatures, ballot tampering, the whole nine yards. It was so bad that something VERY rare happened. A court overturned the election and installed the other candidate.
This was not the usual low level voter fraud by a small number of overzealous and ethically challenged individuals. This was widespread, organized classic corrupt machine politics, and subsequent state-wide investigation found it wasn't limited to Miami, and not just to that election. Some people had a better voting record in the years since their death than they had during their life.
It is wrong for legitimate voters to be disenfranchised. Having your vote essentially cancelled out by a dead man voting the other way is just as much disenfranchisement. In some ways it is worse since it is only rarely caught. The living disenfranchised voter will raise a stink, assuming the corpse is properly buried it won't - and the voters whose votes were essentially cancelled out never know.