Slashdot Mirror
Absentee Ballots Go Missing in Florida
RonnyJ writes "The BBC is reporting that 58,000 ballot papers have gone missing in Broward County, Florida. A police investigation has 'not uncovered any sign of criminal wrongdoing', however, the US postal service has said it is highly unlikely for 58,000 pieces of mail to just disappear. In 2000, Broward County gave Al Gore his biggest margin among Florida counties, winning 67% of the votes there."
Maybe the Iraqi's looted them. On the other hand its probably Bill Clintons fault.
I'm sure that those ballots not being sent out was just a precaution to ensure that those who were voting absentee aren't going to vote Nader.
Seriously, though, I'd like to see a break out of voting irregularities by county nation wide. That is, count the number of bona fide complaints such as missing ballots, dropped voters, etc. and post the results by county. Why by county? Because, in a majority of states the counties run the election. To what purpose? Well, once you have such irregularities mapped, then you can see which party (Dems. or Reps.) is more prone to these problems.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Is that the finger pointing begins before the facts have even been established. It's not clear whether this is an innocent mistake, but already voices are raised and accusations are being levelled. This may be nice for news corporations, but this is meant to be a calm and adult, and above all, very important process that should be treated with more seriousness. Perhaps dirty tricks are involved in the missing ballots. More likely they are not.
The serious point is that it debases the whole debate: look at the explosives question for example. A serious error may have been made, in the inadequate securing of high explosives placed under seal by the IAEE. Kerry immediately accuses Bush of failure to correctly secure them. But the information isn't at all clear cut, the explosives may in fact have already been moved, there are conflicting reports. From the initial hasty accusations, you have Bush aides furiously spinning a defense based on lies, then suddenly Kerry aides furiously spinning a defense of their candidates position. Somewhere in all the kerfluffle, the truth is lost, people become apathetic, and an important issue is trivialised, made "old news" and drops off the radar.
The fact is, candidates nowadays are so eager not to miss an opportunity to win a few points that the "news hysteria" near to election reaches fever pitch.
America needs a publicly funded TV and Newspaper source dedicated to impartiality like we have the Guardian and the BBC. The Guardian recently had an outreach program to get UK readers to help educate voters about how the world percieves America, to give them some perspective that is missing from their weekly digest. Unfortunately the campaign was DDOS and filibustered out of existence by republicans spinning a "foreign interference" false call to arms, but while it was ongoing I felt it did useful work and contributed myself. I hope I get an answer!
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
that the strongest correlation is with median income and not political affiliation?
Here we learn that in democratic dictatorships you need to dis-enfranchise only a few people and not an entire nation.
Something the east could have done well to learn - and with Putin wanting to make direct appointments - maybe they have now?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
"Meanwhile, the US postal service inspectorate said it was highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail had just disappeared."
Having heard this kind of thing before, I managed to fish out a couple references from the newsgroups:
1 and 2.
Anyway, our county clerk is strongly partisian and has pulled questionably legal stunts before, so I have planned to vote in person to reduce the chances of voting fraud.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I don't care if the votes are mostly for Democrats or Republicans - no partisans on either side should ever be able to get away with this sort of thing (assuming the votes were intentionally 'misplaced').
I plan to vote for Badnarik this year, mainly because I live in Georgia, a state Bush is pretty much guaranteed to win. If it looked close, I'd be voting for Bush. If there were no Libertarian candidate on the ballot here, I'd vote for Bush. Given that it's a certainty that either Bush or Kerry will win the Presidency, I'd rather have Bush - though the choice between the two of them is akin to the choice between having a root canal without anesthesia and having my toenails pulled out with pliers. Even though one could say I'm rooting for Bush, I want him to win fair and square, not through cheating.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Sounds like the UN will have to send in independant Elections Inspectors. Its always a pity when developing countires can't hold their own elections properly :).
Rich
This is just more of the same.
When will this nonsense end? Remember the days where it didn't matter so much who was president? I mean sure, you liked one guy better than the other, but if you lost it wasn't the end of the world. I long for those days. When politics existed, but in general everything just worked. But now through combination of media and other factors everything is about ten times worse. I just want to go back to the days when I don't have to worry about government so much. I'm a computer programmer, I want to spend my time thinking about software and gizmos and things without worrying about people dying, lying, cheating, stealing and taking away civil liberties. So let's do our best to get back to those days.
Oh, and anyone who wants to make a joke about those days not ever existing, I present to you the 90's when the internet and technology was more important that politics. And that's just example 1.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
No, what the article says is that 60,000 ballots were sent out to the voters, "However, only 2,000 of them have been delivered." (article quote) -- as in only 2,000 of the 60,000 recipients actually got them.
Noplace in the article does it even suggest what you claim.
Remember that the ballots need to be postmarked by election day. Delays in their delivery is basically the same as denying them of their vote.
And you're right, there is no way the post office would lose that many letters. Which leads me to this next article quote: "Meanwhile, the US postal service inspectorate said it was highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail had just disappeared. A spokesman said inspectors were trying to establish whether the ballots were ever delivered to the postal service."
So there is a possibility that the 58,000 "missing" ballots never even made it to the post office in the first place, so they are investigating that. If this proves to be the case, someone's in a lot of trouble. If there is proof that all 60k ballots were delivered to the post office, then there will have to be more investigation as to how they didn't get to their destination. (And someone will STILL be in a lot of trouble, because the post office isn't prone to simply "misplacing" letters by the tens of thousands...)
=Smidge=
This is exactly what you could expect in any third-world banana republic: A rigged election to make it look like you have a democratic society when the real decisions are made in smoke-filled rooms.
How ya like dat?
During the 2000 election, Irving Schlossberg was found with a voting machine in the trunk of his car. He was not charged, as per Theresa LaPore, the head of elections for Palm Beach County. Oh, and both were Democrats.
Link to story on ABC's site
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
From the article: "Some 60,000 absentee ballots were despatched by authorities in Broward County, north of Miami, this month. However, only 2,000 of them have been delivered."
Delivered, not returned. Note the HUGE FREAKING DIFFERENCE. Why do you lie? What's in it for you? Especially such an obvious and easy to see through lie, since everyone can see in the FIRST PARAGRAPH that what you posted is blatantly untrue?
digitect>>There is no way the post office is going to loose 58,000 pieces of individually mailed letters, all which happen to be ballots.
Yeah, which means someone else probably did it. Now, lets see... who has a vested interest in and history of suppressing votes in florida... rrr.... reee.... repuh.... republi.... republicaaa... (note: the completion of this word is left as an excersize to anyone with at least one functioning brain cell).
digitect>> This is yet another case of Slashdot maliciously pumping false headlines and summaries to generate controversy (and thereby, hits) again.
Dude, you changed the wording of the story, then you attack slashdot for reporting something false. I think that digitect is clearly trolling.
digitect>>Would everybody please stop reading "Politics:" topics so we can get back to Nerd stuff please?
Oh, yeah, I'm going to turn my back on politics on the eve of debatably the most important election ever, because you don't like the light reality casts on a certain state or party. Don't like the truth? Try honesty. It's better than booze or church, and it's 100% compatible with reality!
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
The days when Jefferson's opponents accused him of planning to undermine every form of morality?
The days when Lincoln was accused of having sired bastards?
The days when, who was it, Adams?, was accused of procuring women for the Russian Tsar?
The days when fist fights were breaking out on the floor of Congress?
The days when candidates were being accused of insanity? Senility? Stupidity?
American elections have always been nasty.
Clear, Dark Skies
That it's the Democrats who control Broward county, and all its absentee ballots - so when you look around for who to blame, "Darth Rove" isn't an option.
Clear, Dark Skies
You betray your Libertarian principles with this statement.
Forget for the moment how much you may dislike Kerry, even pretend that he is the WORST person in the entire world. For the purposes of this election, he is STILL a more Libertarian choice than Bush.
Bush, with the current Congress, is *effective*. They are pushing an agenda, including their view of religion, and are effective at doing so. If Kerry were to win, he would have to work with a hostile House, if not Senate, too. There isn't much he can do that can directly cross what Congress wants to let him do. In particular, with this Congress there'll be no much-feared single-insurer health care (regardless of merit, which I won't pretend to fully understand, and I don't believe anyone in the US can, without truly understanding how things work in other countries, and most of us do a poor job of that) or any of the other more controversial plans.
So you have two choices...
Another Bush presidency with a Republican Congress, effectively pushing an Agenda... (do you know the whole agenda, and how much of it do you agree with?)
A Kerry presidency with a Republican Congress, effectively gridlocked, doing only what MUST be done.
Seems to me that the latter is more Libertarian.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
LOLOLOL An absentee ballet?
That's about the only kind of ballet I'd ever want to attend. But then, I don't suppose I'd actually be present, so...
Umm...
*my head asplode*
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Can't handle that division stuff to well, can you? 5.8 ballots per pound is more correct. that's about 2.75 ounces per ballot, for those who can handle the math. About three times as heavy as a First Class Stamp will move through the system. When you consider the size of a ballot, plus the envelope for returning it, plus the envelope for delivering it, I don't find that too out to lunch.
I haven't dismissed anything. I have merely looked at the evidence. Of which there is very little. Let's see:
1) ~58,000 ballots are not accounted for.
2) USPS Inspectorate says they couldn't be lost by accident. Note that he doesn't really know, but he thinks it couldn't happen that way. Given that a few years ago the USPS found an 18-wheeler parked under a bridge up north packed with mail that hadn't been delivered for 18 years, I wonder.
3) The Election Commissioner doesn't know anything about it. Or claims not to. I have no reason to doubt her, but we must consider the possibility. NOTE: New Orleans had a local election just after Ivan passed by. The Election Commissioner (she's not called that, but that's what she does) totally screwed the election up - didn't deliver voting machines on time, things like that. She blamed the storm, even though the election held the same day six miles away had no problems. So I have recent experience of the effects of a less thancompetent Elections Commissioner on an election.
That's about it, really. Police say no evidence of wrongdoing. Noone has come forward to admit to anything, even incompetence. No leads reported. No political Parties implicated. Nada, zilch, zip.
You, on the other hand, seem to believe that this must, by definition, be a Republican plot. As you believe that everything that happens is a Republican plot. Your evidence that this is so, if you please. And evidence is what I want to see, not suggestions that this could only be a Republican plot because the County is 2/3 Dem. It's just as likely (given that it is a plot) that the voters being disnfranchised were the 1/3 Republicans in the County, pending some actual information.
Interestingly, it would be pretty easy to get the information. The Election Commissioner has to have a list of people who have requested Absentee Ballots, and a list of those to whom Absentee Ballots were sent (otherwise, how could she know that 58,000 were missing, and 2000 were sent?). Cross-check the lists against Party affiliations, and look for patterns, and voila, you suddenly have an "indication of criminal wrongdoing", if say, the Republican ballots were sent, and the Democrat ballots were not sent. Or vice versa.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm not against electronic voting because it is electronic, I am against it because there is no paper trail. But there is no paper trail for paper voting either! Seriously: Do you get a receipt? Do you get a cryptographic hash of your vote? Or the ID number for your ballot? Can you call the election commission on the following day and verify that ballot 12345 was received and has hash 0A57F2? If not -- then you can be sure of nothing.
Without this type of validation, a ballot can be lost and nobody knows. Electronic voting gives us the possibility of implementing truly modern methods for eliminating this problem. Granted, it could be done on paper too -- but nobody wants to reform the paper system.
Here Here let's not bother questioning what were fed by politicians etc. and we should all stop looking at independent news and believe only those who show partisanship to our favourite party.
shame on whoever posted this story for highlighting a possible election problem it's not as if it's important.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Here is the deal:
Four years ago, every American learned that there are problems with how votes are tallied in the United States.
We have had four years to come up with a replacement.
In four years, the powers-that-be *have not come up with an acceptable replacement*.
*That* is the problem - there are huge problems remaining with the voting system in America (in addition to the huge problems that have been put into place with some of the replacement system put into place since 2000).
Both Democrats and Republicans have begun planning for the legal battle that will ensue after the November election. What they will not tell you is that not only is it their fault (meaning both parties) that there are still problems, but that they have a vested interest in making sure the problems are not fixed.
It seems that the two parties would rather the election be decided in the courts after the election than by the actual voters.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Someone else said the Republican party is more "salvagable" then the Democrats, and if only they'd get rid of the neocons...
My response... Ain't gonna happen, at least not until the neocons start losing elections for the Republicans, and make it HURT.
So I still say, the combination of a President Kerry and a Republican Congress is more conservative than Bush with that same Congress.
I'll also add that if you want to reform the Republican party, and get the neocons (and their religious throat-shoving) out, start at the Top. In this respect, a vote for Kerry is better for the traditional Republican party.
I was raised Republican. I am currently Independent, with Contrarian leanings. My brother holds that the current Republican party has deserted the Republican virtues we were raised with.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sorry, my bad. I was inferring your position. (I'm not particularly pro-Kerry, I'm anti-Bush. You can see my positions elsewhere on this thread, I try to answer.)
My opinion on terrorism goes like this...
Pretend terrorists are a hornet's nest. (particularly poisonous, even lethally poisonous hornets)
Bush is out there yelling, "I'll protect you!" and in one hand he sprays a can of insecticide at the hornets flying around. With the other hand, he's got a stick and is poking at the nest stirring the hornets up.
Last time I had a hornet's nest, (this past Summer) I got up early, put a net over the bush the nest was in, and then began spraying the nest, directly. Some hornets got out of the nest quickly, but then got caught in the net. I had several more seconds of good, effective spraying before they started finding their way toward the edge of the net, and I figured it would be safer to get away.
The nest was killed off.
Lesson:
The current adminstration has said, "We don't do subtle," and that certainly describes their actions.
Sometimes subtle is called for.
One other point...
Bush has been calling for international assistance, but in the past he has so offended the people he's now asking for help, that none has been forthcoming. He would have to eat excessive amounts of humble pie, more than *any* President should have to, in order to get help.
The bar would be lower for Kerry, or any significant regime change, to get international assistance.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.