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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.
If they had gotten all the lawyers earlier, they might have been able to keep Nader off even *more* ballots!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Michael didn't report this story?
Maybe because it casts liberals in a bad light?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Basically, preparing for the inevitable republican legal hijinks is simply prudent. I wish they didn't have to do that, but having one election stolen is more than enough, IMHO.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Do you respect the property rights of all the Native peoples of America? If you have such a high regard for property rights, why don't you get off their land? Oh yeah, because you really only care about property rights when it benefits you.
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.
I was listening to CSPAN radio this evening and heard some Democrat senator, who, incidentally, had an ebonics overtone in her voice (seriously, no flamebait intended, this is what I heard), making absolutely outrageous accusations like "diebold, the company who is making the current electronic voting machines, has ties to the current administration" without substanciating this charge with a single piece of evidence, and continued to rant on with these mindless and baseless accusations.
Apparently this is the mindset we can expect to deal with November, possilby December, an godwilling (if you're a Democrat) on into 2005.
They really couldn't say that though, because these are just changes in assignment. After all, with the SCO suits winding down, Boies' firm had to do something with their junior attorneys. $31M only goes so far.
sigs, as if you care.
You're getting your cause and effect mixed up. The article isn't anti-Democratic; the editorial commentary is.
I can't say that I blame either party for preparing ranks of lawyers; litigation is apparently how you win close elections is this country.
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.
No, you dirtied the wrong spoon. You do know what spoons are for, don't you? Didn't that mother of yours teach you anything important?
Sorry. I think your stepmother and my ex-wife could have been good little harpy friends.
sigs, as if you care.
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.
How do I sign up?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The DEMS want it to be as messed up as 2000 was. If they didn't they would have already have hired all these lawyers and had the laws changed.
They didn't and the question you should ask is WHY they didn't.
That's tens of thousands of lawyers who are now too preoccupied to mess up other things.
Pretending that Bush was the obvious winner
"Pretending"? He won. Later recounts showed he would have won had the existing (unconstitutional) recount completed. This is all entirely factual, and obvious. No pretending necessary.
Bush's problem is that true conservatives remember their history. They recall that in recent years when the nation enjoyed the fruits of actual conservative fiscal and security policies, a Democrat occupied the White House and Congress was controlled by a Republican majority that actually fought for a substantive conservative agenda.
History's a troublesome thing for presidents. Even though most voters don't take much of a historical perspective into the voting booth with them, true conservatives do. Hmmm. Who's the Libertarian candidate again?
If someone like bob barr endorses Badnarik, this could get REALLY interesting.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Remember, last time Al Gore had the army of lawyers, and Bush had a premature declaration of victory from Fox News.
Guess who won.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
To quote the bottom of the article:
Kerry had about $4.6 million in his legal fund at the end of August, and Bush had about $6 million, commission reports show
Sorry, but that is not true. Fox news DID NOT prematurely declare Bush the winner in Florida, it did so after several other networks did.
Don't believe anything michael moore said, he's a liar and that movie you saw was full of lies. I honestly can't even believe that you believe something that has been proven false countless times already.
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
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
If EACH and EVERY one of us (EVERYONE nationwide) would just do their duty to Country and Nation by killing 10 lawyers apiece, we might bring teir numbers back under control and end this pestilence!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Hey, if you hire tens of thousands of lawyers, that becomes a veritable "army", you say? Hrm. While we suffer from an excess of lawyers in this country, we need to send tens of thousands of more personnel to Iraq in order to win...
Could it be that the Democrats have a secret plan for how to win the war?
Amazing that they can feel that way even after all the recounts sponsored by organizations that didn't like Bush failed to show he lost.
How does that paint liberals in a bad light?
Simple, it proves their blind hatred and refusal to admit defeat has led to ignorance that we don't even tolerate in children.
Keep pouting, its pretty fricking funny to observe.
Later recounts showed he would have won had the existing (unconstitutional) recount completed
They also showed that if a recount had happened across the entire state of FL (much more than what the Democrats were asking for), Gore would've won.
Gore got more votes in FL, and yet Bush won the state.
It seems that both parties are pretty lawyer'ed up. The last election showed that you need to geed the judge vote as well, so the campaigns are doing the necessary GOTjV activity.
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.
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.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
We (the US) don't need lawyers, we need UN monitors, and we've got those. Of course it wouldn't hurt if the media would hold off reporting a winner until there actually is one; the "gentlemanly" thing to do would be to stop depending on "forecasts" and guesses about projected winners, and wait until there's actually a winner, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Let me quote a few paragraphs:
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
If the LP is sucessfull, there will come a point of critical mass when a large group of people suddenly join the party. Unfortunately, they will share SOME but not ALL of the LP views. I think the question is, can we accomodate the growth without sacrificing our principles? I agree with you on Bob Barr. His record is deplorable. However you realize this is politics right? I know there are a number of Libertarian leaning people in congress, Ron Paul comes to mind. If we could get one person to endorse MB, then others may be willing to bolt en masse. With all the free press etc. That would go along with it. The question is and always has been how will the LP do when it gets to that painful growth spurt. I think we could do rather well as we will probably draw from both parties once the word "gets out". Time will tell.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Bush has hired judges. That wins every time.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Orignal Submission Text
Yes, in a democracy, our representatives are out there making sure our vote doesn't count. The city estimated that it only cost a few dollars to tabulate the votes, since it was electronic tabulation, but they could not get the authority to do so until the ACLU sued. Finally the votes were counted, and they won: But congress blocked its implementation.
I feel sorry for D.C. But even more sorry for anyone who thinks voting for Bob Barr is sensible. They ALL deserve bullets to the head. ALL.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I think the grandparent was mentioning the biased felon voter purges, which saw far more black felons purged than hispanic felons.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
The conservative pundits are quite correct in pointing out that Democratic supporters keep repeating their lies, despite their having been disproven, in hopes people will take them as fact. Another person has aleady posted a good rebuttal, so I won't have to.
You're right about the "trying times to come", though. Don't try and paint me as a Bush partisan, because I plan to vote for Badnarik in November. Bush may be bad, but you folks just scare me.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
They also showed that if a recount had happened across the entire state of FL (much more than what the Democrats were asking for), Gore would've won.
Yes, but that is hardly relevant to anything I can think of. No one seriously proposed doing that.
Laws govern elections. The votes were counted according to the laws. There is no "correct" final tally except that which is done according to the law. Every possible method of counting according to the law had Bush win.
There are often questions about election irregularities. There were some pretty serious irregularities in SoCal when I lived there, and Bob Dornan lost a close election. But in the end, the system does what the system does, and Lorett Sanchez won the seat. She was the winner, obvious or otherwise, and no pretending is necessary. Even if you think Dornan's claims of cheating are true, she is STILL the obvious winner, because the system -- elections, and the laws that govern them and disputes about them -- determines in the end what to do, and that system picked Sanchez.
I understand Britain's Silly Party, if their election monitoring team manages to show up, might outdo even the Democrats for associating themselves with dispised people as an election tactic. None of this namby-pamby shilly-shally halfway effort by creating an army of lawers (slightly annoying) when real irritants such as used car salesmen (very annoying) and telemarketers (extremely annoying) can be marshalled to dispute the election results.
The difference between
The Republican party is relying on state parties to hire the lawyers, if necessary.
This is a blatant lie. Only a few days ago, my wife recieved the following email from BC04 (lord knows why she's on their mailing list, but she is):
What a joke.