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Greens and Libertarians Team Up to Demand Recount
cyberformer writes "The Ohio election rules state that any losing candidate can demand a manual recount. Today, David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the predidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, announced that they are joining forces to do just that. A manual recount is important because it will include every ballot cast, whereas the first count only includes ballots that can be read by machine. It could even tip the state (and thus the election) from Bush to Kerry."
Funny, I didn't think the first count was done yet.
They want $110,000 in donations to pay the required fees. Looks like $10 per precinct.
What would happen if it turned out Kerry won? Would Bush be forced to concede the election to Kerry?
I heard this story on NPR - it was just on All Things Considered tonight, so npr.org doesn't have the link up yet. At the end, they commented that the Libertarian and Green party is currently raising the ~$130,000 needed for the recount.
Where can i donate?
Kerry got ~45,000 vites on our Slashdot poll. If i can PayPal $5 or do a $5 credit card donation, how many other people would?
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Independent Ralph Nader is also asking for a recount in Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Kerry won NH, Bush won the rest. Polls had Kerry ahead by 10%, but he won only by 1%. I'd like to see a recount too, because we use those optical scan ballots that have been in controversy lately.
Personally, and interfering as one who isn't a US citizen and so has no right interfering in another country's affairs - ah but perhaps the current (sadly for another 4 years) US administration might like to respect that as well -, anyway. I reckon because a) this is so very important for the World and the American people and b) Bush and his cronies are basically a bunch of crooks, and now war criminals, that it should be essential to do a proper, manual recount of all votes cast and to have an investigation of all discrepencies (whoops we missed of a whole bunch of poor black people, never mind) before officially declaring a winner. At least that way the United States can demonstrate to the rest of the World that it is prepared to affirm it's democracy that it so willingly seems to be prepared to tout about and impose on others, heck if India can do it, so can the US.
Areas with E-Voting count all the votes.
Areas that still vote with the old machines lose something around two percent of the votes to the machine not understanding "hanging chads" and other problems. A manual recount generally counts many of the machine rejected votes.
So, assuming the e-voting districts were bush districts, and the machine voting districts are Kerry districts, Kerry has more to gain from a recount.
Well, this may be the way you feel, but most libertarian and green voters lean closer to the dems.
I watched an interview of a British MP the other night, whose was a 'left-libertarian'. This was considered to be somewhat of a contradiction apparently. However, the world's smallest political quiz puts libertarianism diametrically opposite statism, on a different axis from conservatism-liberalism.
I always thought that libertarianism was about individual freedoms, and not so much economic policy? Couldn't a libertarian quite legitimately have left- OR right- leanings in terms of economic policy, without compromising their libertarianism? (Note that I'm talking about what they believe in, not who would be more prudent to vote for given both those beliefs and present circumstance)
A quick search of Google News and a couple other websites revealed that this isn't being given all that much importance. It's probably because A.) Kerry doesn't have much of a change of winning in Ohio and B.) The major media outlets don't care about third parties.
That said, I agree with the many who said this is a worthwhile endeavor to see how well elections proceeded this time around.
They're not paying for it yet - they're "raising funds" to pay the large fee for it.
Personally - I can only think that we've got two political parties still "unencumbered" by incumbent political games and still able to actually act out of principle (egad, that's a FAR less cynical statement than usually comes from me on political matters...). It's all I can figure - there's obviously no chance that the recount will show the Greens or Libertarians winning the election, and in fact I honestly suspect the vote recount won't change the final result, but I do think it's important to get an accurate accounting of the votes. In so doing, we'll also get a good picture of how innacurate the initial count was. If it's way off, even assuming the recount still shows Bush winning, we'll have proof that there is something wrong with the voting procedures, and probably some idea of WHAT is wrong. And then, next time around, there's a chance there'll be fewer problems...
Besides, bear in mind that while the Democrats can't reasonably make this demand or formally donate money to the effort without being accused of being big babies and spreading political FUD about the vote in Ohio...but INDIVIDUAL Democrats ought to be able to easily donate to the cause. Maybe somebody should call that rich Soros guy.
And, yes, I DID vote for Michael Badnarik in this election...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I suspect that the DNC is doing their part to contribute to the re-count fund. Hell, if they emailed their base with nothing more than the news--not even asking for donations, they'd probably get enough folks to contribute to the fund that the GL consortium would have enough cash on hand to demand re-counts in as many states as they'd like.
Karma
>So what happens if the FIRST recount doesn't make Mr.
>Kerry President? Do we ask for ANOTHER recount ala 2000?
Wrong. In 2000, there was no "another" recount. There were ZERO recounts in Florida. The republicans (american flagwavers all) stood in the way of all recounts until it was too late. We now know that Gore would have won if real democracy had happened and the recount went ahead on schedule. And it would have been a landslide for Gore if the phony felons lists hadn't happened.
Marketing-driven companies end up over-marketing their products. Engineering-driven companies end up over-engineering
That definition of libertarianism is pretty much useless. Negative rights could be deduced to necessitate inverse positive rights, making such a distinction useless. Any political ideology could be sketched in such a way as to say to uphold only negative rights and not positive ones. You can even read this on the very dicsussion of that Wikipedia article. That's why that article is locked: it's such a mess.
Even if that definition was true, I've never met a person who calls themself a libertarian who agrees. Bring up the subject of children and then they'll say they want some positive rights too. That parents mustn't just not assault their children, but must also feed them and shelter them.
They are not about getting government out of everything: that's the anarchists. They want the government to save them from some things, but not others.
Greens, yes. Libertarians, no. Libertarians until recently always seemed to lean mildly "Republican" (if you must compare them with "The Two Parties"). Being for less government influence, political authority being devolved down towards State (and smaller) levels from the Federal level, non-interference in free commerce, and so on.
The only reason they may seem more Democrat this time around is that Bush, quite frankly, seems to be pushing the aspects of Republicanism that Libertarians disagree with (speech-restricting "Campaign Finance Reform", "Foreign Entanglements", attempts to amend the constitution for things like allowing congress to criminalize "desecration of the flag" and "banning gay marriage", restricting civil liberties (e.g. the "PATRIOT" act) in the name of "security" and "patriotism"...) while slacking badly on most of the issues Libertarians tend to agree with (reducing the size and power of the Federal government, fiscally responsible government policies, etc.).
Typically, on social freedoms, Libertarians lean slightly "Democrat" - except that Democrats are more likely to want to use government force to "require" social freedoms (i.e. through legislation -as an example, perhaps a hypothetical federal law requiring all states to recognize any other state's legal marriage contracts, including "gay" ones if the state where it was issued allows it), where Libertarians tend to prefer non-coercive approaches (i.e. it's none of the Federal government's business at all WHAT kind of social arrangement adults give informed consent to enter into...). . Any power not explicitly granted to the Federal government by the Constitution belongs to the states or the people...
Or at least that's my (simplistically-stated) understanding of the political philosophy, anyway.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Yeah, and let's all be good little Neo-Con ditto-heads and only believe what they tell us instead of using our Constitutionally granted rights to question everything the Government does.
"Mandate My Ass" will be a great rally-cry for the next four years. The 'Pubs are already hot to inform everyone, ad nasuem, that Bush had the largest number of ballots cast for him in any Presidential election. But, you know who the person with the second largest number of ballots cast for him is? Kerry. That means that Bush had the largest number of votes cast *against* him in any presidential election in US history.
His margin of victory is the smallest in a US Presidential election since Wilson beat Taft in 1913.
"Mandate My Ass" and who gives a flying $#@! about who thinks who won. We need the recount just because we can do it.
Do the democrates, the ones whom bitched about winning the popular vote and loosing electorally for 4 years really want to loose the popular vote, then win in the EC? (not that this sore-looser attempt will change anything.)
A minority president who would face an even more conservitive congress? Ya that'll be real good for the country. Look at the circluar fireing squad the dems are already involved in, a president kerry (not that it'll happen) is already politically dead in the water.
Remember the ill-famed John Titor story. It said things would get ugly with "civil unrest" after the 2004 US election. Well, what would happen if, by some reason, the recounts come back wildly different - or even declaring Kerry winner of the elections?
I'm bored, and that site is a fascinating read. It's like watching a trainwreck, you know you're not supposed to enjoy it but just can't look away.
At a bit less than 40% of the precincts reporting in Ohio, I saw David Cobb's votes go from around 10,000 down to ZERO. After that, I started taking screenshots of the Ohio state departments website.
you can see a few of them here: http://64.71.168.78/
Was Cobb a write-in in Ohio? Maybe that explains it. The ohio state department's website still only shows Cobb with 24 votes
-metric
"And do you know why I think [George W. Bush] is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals."
not entirely historically accurate, but i thought it was funny. you can read the full article here
You're already bitching about Gonzales? He's not even a conservative! Let's just be honest. You would complain if Bush appointed Papa Fucking Smurf to AG.
Not everything is about "social issues".
Gonzales is a social liberal. But he wrote memos authorizing torture.
Not exactly Papa Fucking Smurf.
And don't worry, after this election, the Catholics are definitely not on their way to any camp. Most of them voted the right way.
The margian really wasn't that big. 47% of Catholics voted for Kerry.
If Congress had declared war, by international treaty our soldiers would be facing international war crimes tribunals rather than simple court martials for Abu Gharib and the like- and such international tribunals would not stop with low-ranking soldiers, but travel up the chain of command to Bush himself. Do your really want that?
If soldiers and commanders committed war crimes, why wouldn't we want that? Would we not want it to happen just because it's "our guys"?
Fine. Re-count Ohio. It won't change anything. While we're at it, why don't we recount Pennsylvania, whose vote count was actually closer than Ohio? Or Wisconsin, which was even closer?
Oh, that's right. We only want to recount states that may cause Kerry to win.
Is it really every vote that we want counted, or is it just every vote in certain states?
Ohio: Bush by 136,483 votes, 2.5%
Pennsylvania: Kerry by 128,869 votes, 2.3%
Wisconsin: Kerry by 11,813 votes, 0.4%
Do not read this sig.
The Internet is abuzz with speculation that there were so many voting irregularities this election that President Bush may not have won after all.
... I get why people are frustrated, but [Republicans] did not steal this election. There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered."
c t. html
But the man who headed the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys, spread across the country to address irregularities, says, "that ain't the case." Kerry adviser Jack Corrigan, quoted by the Boston Globe, says, "No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won
Other Kerry campaign officials agree.
--------
You can find that quote in a number of news sources now. That blurb is from FoxNews.com but you can also find it here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/11/news/ele
He Lost, MoveOn.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The irony is that one of the biggest voting groups for Bush is the lower middle class. Most of these people are either not college-educated, possess a two-year degree, or work in a trade. These people are the primary victims of Bush's tax cut bonanza and his lack of concern for outsourcing.
If God didn't make them do this to themselves, then what should we call them?
I was curious to know if non-Americans can donate as well. As for all of us who're not in the US, we feel that mankind as a whole stands to pay the price for Bush's reelection.
-- rxMx --
Love all, Trust few, Follow one.