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Election Day Discussion
With the polls now already open in most of the country, this is the official on-topic place for all Slashdot readers to discuss the election itself. And get out and vote if you can. Also, if you haven't noticed, the Slashdot poll shows once and for all where Slashdot readers fall on the election. I'm off to vote in a couple hours. Wonder if we'll have Diebolds in my district.
..it is also obvious that Slashdot has an international readership. Would there be any way to re-run the poll restricting it to US bound IP address to see if the race isn't so runaway for Kerry from the slashdot side?
That being said, I'm all for Kerry to win. But I live in a pretty red state. Though while standing in line to feed my paper ballot marked with a pen into some thing I saw that the few people in front of me had all voted for Kerry/Edwards which I found interesting, considering how little either party has paid attention to North Carolina this year.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
They were touch screen devices that were named "WinVote". The first thing I saw was a blue screen. Man was I scared.
On a side note, I don't remember seeing voter turnout like this before, but the only elections I was involved with in this state were strictly senatorial or congressional. Those times I was in line for a good 10 minutes, this morning was a little over an hour. There was a great turnout and just about everyone in line seemed pretty excited. The folks at the polls who weren't election officials (people from the different parties) did a good job of helping people out without bugging the hell out of us (handing out copies of the ballots, walking the old people to the building and through the line - BUT not to the voting machines).
All in all it was a good experience, and I hope it works like this across the whole country.
The polls are swamped in fairfax. The procedure is as follows:
1) Stand in line to get your id checked. If you are registered you get a blue index card.
2) Stand in a different line with your card and wait for a winvote machine to open up.
3) When it is your turn you present your card to the election worker that supervises the terminal that just opened up. She takes your blue card and unlocks the machine.
4) You vote.
Note that thing differentiating a random person that walked up to the machine and a registered, approved voter is posession of the blue card. Multiple people left after receiving their blue cards, saying they couldn't wait another hour and that they would return later. There is nothing stopping these people from reproducing the cards and returning multiple times. The voting places are an absolute packed madhouse, NO ONE would notice if someone just walked up to the second line with a blue card.
Did anyone else see any other glaring holes in their election procedures?
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
In the rest of the democratic world, as far as I know, this is illegal. It seems to us that it goes against having a fair election. And yet in America it is normal practice. Why?
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I leaned in and looked at the book (breaking every rule in the book by looking at the book) and saw my name and pointed to it. The attendant looked at my name and stated, "but your drivers license says 2950 Ridge Rd, but in my book it says 2951 Ridge Rd" (an address which does not exist)
She spent 20 minutes on the phone with the board of elections trying to figure out what it is she was supposed to do.
Despite having a drivers license with 2950, a voter registration card with 2950, she was bound and determined not to let me vote because her book said 2951. I asked what paperwork I would need to fill out if I wanted to claim that I had moved. She explained that I could fill out the paperwork, but my vote would not be counted until the paperwork cleared. Figuring that would mean my vote would only be counted in a disputed recount situation (if even then) this wasn't acceptable to me either.
Finally another attendant called the Board of Elections (because I was starting to get very agitated) and discovered I could fill out the change of address forms with me, vote, and then turn the forms into the board of elections today.
I'm still not convinced my vote will get counted. I was given an "I Voted" sticker, and wondered if I did or not.
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All around the world, we're watching you today. We love America, we want you to lead and inspire and show us what democracy and freedom and technology can do. But right now we're feeling scared, confused, and angry about what your President has lead you to do over the past three years.
Please, give us back the America we admire and believe in. Don't turn yourselves into a religious state. Don't turn your back on the UN and the other peoples of the world - in the end we are people first, American or French or Iraqi or Chinese second. Give us back the America that went to the moon and carried out the Berlin airlift and brought us the IT revolution. Give us back the America of Kennedy's vision and MLK's dream.
And please, don't let the world's most successful democracy be reduced to a joke with a repeat of last election's Floridan antics.
Read Pynchon.
The BBC has a pretty cool Flash election map - presumably it'll get updated with results as they come in, but for a European like me there's lots of historical information too.
:-)
Want to find out how states voted in the past? Or read potted summaries of previous candidates and so on? I've learned quite a lot already.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
A year ago, my wife and I moved from an apartment to our house.
A week later, we went and got our drivers licenses changed, and both registered.
I registered Green, she registered Republican.
A few months later, we both received our registration cards.
She voted this morning.
When I tried to vote, after waiting for two hours I was told that I wasn't on the rolls. 20 minutes later of me refusing to leave, especially since I had my voter registeration card, they told me that I was registered at my old address.
Which is garbage, because I _never_ registered to vote at my old address.
Evidently, this is pretty common. Now i'm expected to say "Gosh, i'm not going to wait another two hours to vote. I have to get to work."
Well fuck them, i'm voting after work today. I don't care if i'm there for 6 hours.
I'm still disenfranchised, as I cannot vote for my local representatives.
I tried to write-in a vote for Nader in Illinois and was told by my precinct captain that my balot would not be "signed" and counted.
Apparantly, we actually do not have the right to vote for whomever we choose. It is actually up to the states to decide for whom we are allowed to vote.
It really sucks to be told for whom you are allowed to vote.
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has an excellent article today about how the election results are going to play out, hour by hour. He tells you what states are going to close their polls at what time, and discusses what are the key races and key factors in the election around the country. Great read.
You have a very good point, but it also begs the question:
Are you supposed to vote for who you think will do a better overall job or who best represents your beliefs and opinions?
Personally, I was really torn by this very question for the last few weeks...
- Tony
(aside: Jesus it's hard to post with all of these 503 errors, I can't even check to see if this is redundant)
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Got this message from a tailgating friend in Florida about his wife:
I thought you all would be interested to know what just happened in the past 30 minutes (It is 9:20AM here).
My wife went to the polls. I voted at the same precinct early this morning with no problems. However, when she went to vote, she was not allowed because they said a) she had changed her address one month ago and b) she had voted absentee. Obviously, neither is true.
She is now standing in line at the County Election office who told her they had the absentee records on file for her to review once she shows proof of ID.
It will be fascinating to find out "who" filed a change of address and absentee ballot "in her name". It was obviously intentional (fraudulent) and obviously targeted at a registered Republican.
Get ready for a rocky ride folks.
---
Anyone hear about anything like this happening before?
Party representatives are allowed to touch the Ballots???
Here in Canada, the only people allowed to touch the Ballots are the Deputy Returning Officer (who is sworn to be non-partisan) and the Voter. The DRO isn't allowed to touch the voter list, that's the Poll Clerk's job.
The scrutineers and the candidate's representative (who oversees the scrutineers for their party) aren't allowed to touch anything. They also aren't allowed to talk about politics or have any signs or material which might identify their party etc. asside from their scrutineer badge (which has their name and party).
The election before last, I went up to the table to vote and the Poll Clerk, DRO, and scrutineer were telling me who to vote for. They turned absolutely white when right after putting my ballot in the box I walked over to the candidate's rep (for a different party) handed him my paperwork and got my scrutineer badge. They stopped telling people how to vote after that (I was assigned to their table).
A third party President would likely unite the other two parties against him, allowing Congress to pass veto-proof legislation. It might be interesting, but since there's no viable 3rd party candidate, this isn't a serious option.
A Republican President will keep the House, Senate, and Presidency in the hands of one party. The Republican-controlled Congress has already proven itself to be Bush's lap-dog, giving him anything he asks for. [I'd be just as opposed to the Democrats controlling everything, BTW]. Another 4 years of total Republican control will kill the last vestiges of freedom we have left.
A Democratic president will unite the Democratic minority in Congress behind him. He'll have to struggle and COMPROMISE to get anything done, however, because the Republicans will likely retain control of both houses. This should cancel out the more extreme partisan agendas coming from either party. This will at least keep the far-right fundimentalist Christian wing of the Republican party in check, and they're the ones who really scare me.
The most important issue for me is the fact that potentially 3 supreme court justices are going to die or retire in the next 4 years. Right now the court is balanced between an arch-conservitive wing and a moderate liberal wing, with one swing justice who leans to the left. Another Bush presidency combined with a Republican-controlled House and Senate will allow them to stack the deck with more hard-right, anti-freedom justices like Scalia and Thomas. However, any Kerry appointee will still have to be confirmed by the same Republican Congress; therefore Kerry would have to chose someone moderate in order to get them past the Republicans. Scant as it is, this is the best hope we have to retain at least some of our freedoms and undo some of the worst excesses of the last 4 years.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
An update:
After an hour in the county election office, my wife was allowed to vote. They confirmed to her that someone fraudulently switched her address and voted absentee for her. They obviously don't know who it is, but they do know the address of where they are located (where the absentee ballot was mailed). All they could promise her was that the county sherriff would be investigating immediately and that the duplicate absentee ballot would be invalid.
In addition, the Hindi news channel was carrying a very detailed analysis of the two candidates. Also, they had a pannel of people give their opinion about what the effects of either candidates foreign policies would be on India. I'd guess that most nation's media are carrying similar analysis and what-is-in-store for me analysis.
I live in the Philly suburbs, and when we showed up to vote this morning there was an "extra" person who didn't seem to be official, but checked a computer printout. He didn't find our name, and when we told him that we had been voting there for over 20 years, he kept mumbling "you're not on this list". He went outside to talk to the local sleaze-ball republican politician who is there every year.
The official folks said there was no problem, since we were in the official book (the old-fashioned paper type). I'm wondering how many other Democratic names were "accidentally" lost from the list. I'm also wondering how a first-time voter might react to not being on the list.
Meaning Bush has some sense of reality, unlike Kerry the career politician and money-marrier.
What evidence do you have that Bush is a "puppet"? Further, the idea that the President is solely responsible for his entire policy is a joke...he has experts in various narrow fields to advise him. Being President is a management job, and delegation is key.
Bush has done a good job in several respects. His tax policy has stimulated the economy, which is rebounding nicely from the Clinton recession and 9/11. Two million new jobs this year. No attacks on mainland America since 9/11. Two hotbeds of anti-American sentiment moving towards democracy.
Granted Iraq is not an ideal situation right now. However, it is also ridiculous to call it a failure. We had a valid reason to go to war - Saddam's failure to account for his WMDs. We've accomplished far more than we ever did in Vietnam, at the cost of around 1,100 American lives - as opposed to 50,000 lost in Vietnam. (Bear in mind that we lose ~50,000 people a year to traffic accidents, and ~35,000 people a year to the flu.) There is a good chance (if Kerry doesn't win) that Iraq will be transformed into a stable democracy, which would be a tremendous achievement. It could be the start of major, positive change in the Middle East. There is also something to be said for the idea of fighting terror over there rather than here in the streets of America.
I think the majority of Americans are smart enough to sort all this out, and we'll see the result tonight - a solid Bush win.
Now, let's consider the downsides of Kerry.
First of all, we have no idea what he'll do if by some mischance he's elected. His positions have changed constantly during the campaign, no one knows what he'd ultimately decide to do. It's easy to claim you have a "better plan" when you don't actually have to produce any results.
His track record is weak on defense, high on taxation - a classic New England liberal. His behavior in the Vietnam era was inexcusable. He is disliked by the military, and morale will suffer terribly if he's elected. He is ultra-rich yet claiming to speak for the common man. (The Kerry's paid around 15% taxes on $5 million income last year, the Bush's paid around 30% on their income.) Kerry will do nothing differently than Bush on the issue of offshoring, they are both globalists. In fact, he is probably more likely to bump the number of H1-B visas, just as Clinton did when President.
I don't believe Bush is perfect, I don't like the USAPA as currently implemented, and I detest Ashcroft. However, Kerry is such a poor excuse for a candidate, and has such a poor public record, that I have no choice but to support Bush. Sometimes in life we have to make tough decisions. Kerry is simply unacceptable as President.
It boggles my mind that the Democrats couldn't come up with a better candidate. The two party system seems a bad idea about now...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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I'm a first time voter and I asked how to do a write-in on the machines here. The first poll worker asked me if I was voting for Mickey Mouse, told me it messes everything up, and that I didn't want to do it. The next told me she didn't know and would have to get the book out and start reading. Fortunately there happened to be an election official from the county present, who showed me how to do it, and even comforted me by saying that there are a lot of write ins today. He also gave me his number so he could personally replace my voter registration card, which the poll workers had "lost."
Dear poll workers, sorry about "messing everything up," and fuck you.
I am confident that my write in vote will not be counted unless that election official is hanging over their heads.
Horray for the republic?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You display your bias by calling it the Clinton recession.
Of course it was the Clinton recession. The stock market crashed before Bush's policies could possibly have had any effect.
At any rate, that tax cut resulted in breaking all the records for debt spending. Bush has plunged the USA deeper in debt than was thought imaginable.
Not true. The current deficits are a lower percentage of GDP than at other points historically.
Two hotbeds of anti-American sentiment moving towards democracy.
No, two new hotbeds of anti-American sentiment. Period. Afghanstan is now ruled by drug-pushing warlords and former Taliban rulers, and Iraq has converted a neutral populace (with an anti-American dictator) into a vehemently anti-American populace (with an American-backed dictator). He's done the same thing with Terrorism that he did with taxes - he postponed them in such a way that it will be a hundred times worse for your children.
I disagree. The elections in Afghanistan were a stunning success. I find it amusing that liberals such as yourself heap scorn on something that did so much to advance traditional liberal values such as freedom and women's rights.
There was already a culture of rabid anti-American hate in both of those countries. It now has a chance of getting better, and I assure you that there are strong pro-American factions in both countries now.
(Bear in mind that we lose ~50,000 people a year to traffic accidents, and ~35,000 people a year to the flu.)
Funny, I don't hear you using this justification when discussing the psychotic and aimless reaction to Terrorism. I mean, was it _only_ 3000 people who died in 9/11? Death is death, and whether it was 10 000 or 100 000 Iraqis who're dead for some bad judgement, it still sucks.
Yeah, it was "only" 3,000 (three times as many as the troops we've lost, eh?). However, it could easily have been 30,000 or more if the terrorists had planned a bit better. Not to be callous, but it was equally bad that a major part of our financial infrastructure was taken out. Together, these events caused $1 trillion in damage to the US economy.
The bigger concern is terrorists of whatever ilk coming up with NBC weapons that would take out millions instead of thousands. I think that makes the war against terrorism justifiable in it's present form.
His behaviour in Vietnam was far more excusable than his opponents - he went, he fought, and he found out how horribly it sucked so he did whatever he could to get home (the three-purple-heart-loophole). Then, once home, he informed the people of how badly it sucked. Some people couldn't handle the truth, so they go apeshit on him.
He went, he fought (to some extent, how well or bravely is very open to question). He most likely injured himself for at least one of the Purple Hearts. Then, when he returned, he committed the truly inexcusable act of lying about supposed atrocities committed by American soldiers in Vietnam. This gave aid and comfort to the enemy, and directly hurt American POWs in prison. That alone should disqualify him from being Commander in Chief.
Kerry has shown far more interest in protecting American jobs than Bush (who does not seem to have shown any) so I don't see where you're getting that H1B note. Kerry has actually campaigned on that platform.
Once again, Kerry has paid lip service to something he thinks might get him a few votes. We'll see what happens if he actually gets into a position to do something about it. His wife's company outsources as much as any.
high on taxation
Frankly, the US cannot afford the current levels of taxes and spending. Its like running a million dollars of credit because you don't want to make your car payments.
Of course not. That's why the plan, over time, is to
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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