Democrats Hire Army of Lawyers for Elections

Neil Blender writes in that the Democrats are hiring tens of thousands of lawyers to contest election results. This is nothing new, except for the apparent magnitude of it, and it gives the idea of tort reform a whole new meaning. The Republican party is relying on state parties to hire the lawyers, if necessary.

Comments

Please stop with the "election stolen" crap.

[TheSHAD0W]

The election was never stolen. The lawsuit was to prevent the Democrats from cherry-picking where and how they recounted votes. Furthermore, a recount WAS completed in early 2001 and Bush still won.

Perhaps misleading?

[lskziq]

The article tells us the democrats "plan to mobilize tens of thousands of lawyers on Election Day." However, the post suggests that their behavior is largely unmatched by the republicans (perhaps I am misinterpreting the poster).

I'm not sure of the implications, but the final paragraph tells us the Bush campaign has $6 million in their legal fund while the Kerry has $4.6 (as of the end of august). I suppose it's unclear whether that's a result of expenditures Kerry has already made or if it indicates the Bush campaign's willingness to engage in similar tactics.

Regardless, I think I agree with the spirit of the poster. This is depressing. Is it better for there to be fierce litigation, proving the affair to be the horse and pony show it is, or for one of these rather lackluster candidates to win a definitive victory?

Do you know your candidates? At least go to http://www.vote-smart.org/ and learn their names.

Re:Perhaps misleading?

[werfele]

The article says Democrats are mobilizing and "lining up" lawyers, but doesn't say anything about hiring them. It does say that they're training thousands of volunteers. That would explain why Kerry is expecting more bang for the buck.

Also, I believe the plan is for the volunteer attorneys to intervene or document instances where people are excluded from the polls. Democrats believe that more voters at the polls will favor them (that's the conventional wisdom). Assuming Repulicans also believe this, they're not likely to want to make the same effort to get people into the polling place, but it would be embarrassing to make an obvious effort to exclude people on election day.

Re:Please stop with the crap.

[Guuge]

Sigh... how soon we forget.

When an election is very close (and the 2000 election was *extremely* close) you can always ask what would have happened if, say, voters weren't improperly purged from the rolls. There are a million ways in which things didn't turn out as maybe they should have.

So please don't ignore the obvious problems of the 2000 election. Pretending that Bush was the obvious winner shows both ignorace and disrespect for democratic values.

Re:I wonder why....

[krymsin01]

Perhaps the reason that the Dems are getting lawyer'd up is that they feel (as do a lot of Americans) that the Republicans stole the last election? I fail to see how that paints liberals in a bad light.

Re:Alright Libertarians.

[Anonymous Coward]

"[I]s there some outstanding battle to get back land?"

Many Native people work every day to get the land back that they would have recieved from their forefathers.

Your forefathers did, yes, and you recieved it from them. It is stolen. What you are saying is as that if your father stole a painting, and you received it from him, then the true owner or the inheritor of his estate doesn't have any right to it anymore.

Perhaps, you're right, perhaps it can't be reasonably undone completely, but it can be undone somewhat. And which Libertarians, those O' so noble defenders of natural rights, have ever given the stolen land they've recieved back to its rightful owner? I'm going to have to lean towards "not a single one."

The native Americans of today are the ones that have had their land taken away. It is their land, they are people to, they have an inalienable right to their own property, and they havve rights to the property of their ancestors passed down to them as their people did for thousands of years before it was mostly stolen by settlers. Their "inalienable" rights are not respected by scarcely anyone apart from themselves. And that's why the Libertarians are hypocrites: they will gladly disrespect others property rights when it benefits them.

Re:Big shocker here, huh?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Maybe because it implies that they are somehow going to rig their machines?

They have rigged their machines, and that is also accepted fact. They have rigged them to remove the possibility of a legitimate audit.

That is certainly different from rigging it for a particular candidate, but the fact that they are willing to do this lesser form of fraud makes it seem completely plausible that they could do a greater form of fraud.

While it is certainly not proven that Diebold machines will be used to give an advantage to GW, it is also not irrational to suspect them. Their machines are begging for election fraud, in favor of either candidate.

Re:I wonder why....

[tsm_sf]

Let's see...

- Republican president
- Republican-controlled House
- Republican-controlled Senate AND
- 5-to-4 Repuglican control of the Supreme Court

And here's How A Bill Becomes A Law

Did we learn NOTHING from Schoolhouse Rock?

Re:I wonder why....

[N3WBI3]

Let's see...
- Republican president
- Republican-controlled House
- Republican-controlled Senate AND
- 5-to-4 Repuglican control of the Supreme Court

President: Yes

House: Yes

Senate: From 2000 - 2002 the Democrats held the majority 50-49-1 (D) - (R) - (I) with the defection for Jeffords who was a republican, went indep, and caucases with the Democrats.

Supreme Court: Neither party controls the court, the court rules for the boy scouts one day, and against the ten commandments the next, the day after striking down a texas sodomy law. It really is a rather unpredictable body right now.
You have two judges who are solidly conservative, two judges who are solidly Liberal, two who lean and one who floats depending on the issue.. Almost every major decision is 5-4 but there is not pattern to what 'side' wins..

Dont feel bad one out of 2 out of 4 is a great average if you were playing baseball...

Re:Still less than the Republicans.

[Banner]

Kerry isn't the one hiring the lawyers. It's the DNC. How much money do THEY have?

Re:Please stop with the crap.

[bsdbigot]

I almost agree with you, here. It doesn't get any closer than Bush vs. Gore, but I don't think we're going to see a landslide for another 12 years. In other words, get used to these legal battles.

You lose me when you start with a salient point, but conclude with partisan BS. There were dozens of lawsuits filed by/on behalf of Bush and Gore, with respect to different issues, in Florida. Republicans initiated many of these suits, but Democrats initiated the rest. IIRC, the majority of these suits were brought by Democrats, and many of them had little or no factual or legal basis whatsoever.

And, let's not forget, we do NOT live in a democracy, so the tired battle cry of "Gore won the popular vote," means nothing. While we can sit here and maybe even be strangely comfortable with a purely democratic system amongst ourselves, a relatively small community of people that share a number of common ideals, the situation is a bit more complex when you take into account the number of people that vote purely on emotion/ego/peer-pressure. Surely, you don't want to bow to the popular opinion of all the people that think Farenheit 9/11 is an unbiased, upstanding representation of facts, just as you probably don't want to subjugate yourself to the will of people that hate Kerry solely based on his post-war activities.

Now, as you are reading this and thinking about what a Republican puppet I am, you can realize that the Electoral College is there to insulate you somewhat from the massive defection that might be caused by my release of a video showing Kerry having goat.cx with a bunch of ketchup bottles, while still giving a great deal more than lip service to your trumpet about democratic values.

As someone over at Despair, Inc. realized, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." I personally like the footnote there about disoriented Palm Beach voters.

Sincerely, a Palm Beach Libertarian

Not rocket science

[jbarr]

From the article:

So they have decided this year to fight legal skirmishes across the country, hoping to change state election rules that make it more difficult for voters to cast ballots. In New Mexico, for instance, the Democrats argued against a rule that would have required new voters to show IDs at the polls, which they said would disproportionately affect minority voters. The state Supreme Court ruled last week in favor of the Democrats.

This is a great example of the contradiction and hypocracy where people want each vote to be counted, verified, and validated, but they are unwilling to put into place a mechanism that properly validates the voter. There are plenty of ways to legally identify yourself, and if you don't take the time to obtain and provide the proper identification, you deserve the consequenses for your lack of responsibility. This is not rocket science.

Much of the Democratic litigation centers on how various states are interpreting a new provision in the federal voting law that gives voters who believe they are registered -- but whose names don't appear on voter rolls -- the right to cast so-called provisional ballots.

WTF. You have had four years since the last election to register. You have had four years of multiple state and local elections and primaries to go and verify that you are properly registered. If you decide not to be involved in the process, then don't expect the process to involve you.

The real problem is gradual the removal of personal responsibility from the process through poltically correct and partisan legislation that is killing a process that should not be rocket science.

This is all about "laying the groundwork"

[Shivetya]

Just as having someone "Monitor" the elections. The Democrat party is attempting to setup escape routes should the election be close and they are on the losing end. They are implying that any close election they lose is fradulent. They are even go so far as saying any election they don't win is fraudulent.

Combined with the ever famous use of the race card (Kerry's little speech recently promising that they will NOT allow millions of African Americans from being "disenfranchised" AGAIN") it only shows how low the political parties are willing to go.

If you live in a battleground state I fully expect you to see more local evidence of "election protetection" squads and such. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is a form of intimidation. It also is an insult to the many public election officials who do a great and THANKLESS job. Remember, 19 out of 20 counties in Florida with voting issues were adminstered by Democrats and the last by an independant. How would you feel if your party was making you out to be a buffoon?

There is just too much money in politics. Political parties are the worst incarnation of a corporation ever seen. Worse they are funded by our money.

I wonder if there will ever be an election where 10% of the House turns over.