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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?
stop running for president, and help the Democratic campaign.
Why? I would never have voted for Kerry. I might have voted for Badnarik (too young to be eligible). The Democratic philosophy is as different from the Libertarian one as it is from the Republican -- so much so that I find myself more or less half-libertarian and half-Republican, but nowhere near Democratic.
You may as well say they should help the Republican campaign; the two seem to me ideologically closer, Bush himself notwithstanding.
Ohio doesn't use electronic voting. Over 70% of the state [including Cleveland, where I live and voted] still use the old "hanging chad" ballots.
The only regions that use the electronic voting machines are the wealthy republican suburban areas. Therefore any recount will help Kerry. Whether it will help enough is anyone's guess.
I've been listening to Air America lately - and mostly what I hear is disgruntled people not wanting to believe that Bush won. The conspiracy theories out there are amazing!
So what happens if the FIRST recount doesn't make Mr. Kerry President? Do we ask for ANOTHER recount ala 2000? 100K votes ain't that close folks!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
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.
Well, this may be the way you feel, but most libertarian and green voters lean closer to the dems.
I think it's just a PR stunt, something the Libertarians have always been good at.
Apparently they aren't very good at PR or maybe they'd have a better showing in the elections.
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.
Agreed. Moreover, I've been hearing too many theories about how voters were forced, deceived or generally brainwashed into voting for Bush. I've heard similar gripes about 'stupid' vs. 'smart', and of course seen the standard IQ by state chart.
Guess what, kids: sometimes in a democracy, other people win. This is what most of the American voters wanted, and that's the way it works.
Disclaimer: Kerry voter.
Don't give up hope yet. Go Libertarians!!
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Here. And please do, it's worth every penny, even if just to confirm the ability / inability of the machines.
The ______ Agenda
Why would a recount automatically help Kerry?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The New Hampshire recount will really be the most interesting one. They used the Diebold machines, there was a large difference in the exit polls & the actual votes, and Kerry already won it (so right-wingers won't object to it on partisan grounds). Moderates and all concerned about evoting should watch that state closely. Partisans should also watch it, as it could be the first domino for the states where the outcome may actually change things. If anyone contests the New Hampshire recount, quietly chuckle that they don't care about voting & just care about their man. Kerry fans might protest because he did win & Bush fans might object in anticipation of those other states.
I am saddened to see the LP making fools of themselves, because I agree with a lot of libertarian ideas and vote Libertarian sometimes.
because like I said before the ballots that have the highest fault rate are in highly democratic areas. The repulbican areas have ballots with lower margins of error / no paper trails and therefore recounts there would have less of an impact. PS - Great Grandparent post is just wrong - Ohio uses punch card ballots for the most part. Whomever modded it "informative" needs to check thier facts first next time.
Face it, BUSH WON.
And I am thankful.
You may not like it
but I do.
changing ohio STILL won't win it for Kerry.
Good.
I however would like to know that the votes were counted right. I like Bush being in office, but fair voting is more important than which politician holds the office.
It's not just rabid Kerryists that want the recounts, and acting like a rabid Bushist doesn't help your argument any. The point here is not who won, but how fairly.
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.
Should the votes be recounted because the Libertarians or Greens think they may win? No.
Should the votes be recounted because Kerry may have won, and not Bush? Er, I doubt it, but maybe.
Should the votes be recounted as a check on how well the new computerized systems tallied the votes? Definitely.
I really don't think that the point is to change the out come of the election. I mean, sure, that may be one of their hopes, but they must realize that it probally won't happen.
They are just most likely making sure that every vote counts. That was one of the things that the democrats were pushing, that every vote counts, so why not accualy count them? We have a while until 13 Dec.
exactly. Thanks for putting it succiently.
The Greens might, but the Libertarians don't.
Democrats and Libertarians are very very different when it comes to economic policy.
most libertarian and green voters lean closer to the dems
That's why there are separate parties: so D-like libertarians like a lot of Slashdot and R-like libertarians like myself can have a party that's a lot closer to our common beliefs instead of being shuffled off into the Democratic and Republican parties. The libertarian philosophy is not part of the linear left/right spectrum (that incidentally dates from the French Revolution, where there were about 3 major ideological factions, and the third was centrist).
Besides, I didn't consider Kerry that good a candidate, even if I did agree with the Democratic platform. Given the choice between Kerry and Badnarik, I would've undoubtedly chosen Badnarik. There's enough difference in philosophy that allows me to agree with the latter but not the former. I don't think it's fair for them to endorse Kerry.
On the other hand, I do agree that the third parties should concentrate first on local elections, where parties matter less and it's easier to find an independent (or barely partisan) candidate who fits the third-party ideology better; yet they should keep running some presidential candidate to keep their representation up.
Um, changing Ohio WOULD be enough electoral votes for Kerry to win it over Bush. You sound like a Bush supporter, so it's no wonder you have no understanding of Politics or fancy numbers.
I know more than you drink.
Don't group libertarian, green, and dems. Only a slashdot drone or an "anyone-but-Bush" bigot would do that. I suggest you spend more time understanding the party line of each of these. Start with the issue of Gun Control. You'll be amazed at the differences.
Guess they are helping the democrats out on this one.
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)
Well, if you think libertarians like Bush, then you're beyond all reason.
Regardless, neither party is doing this to help Kerry. They're doing it because many of us don't have a lot of faith in the election "system" in the United States. If this helps improve the process, it's worth a thousand times what they're spending to do it.
The only regions that use the electronic voting machines are the wealthy republican suburban areas.
We used electronic voting in Columbus (democratic - franklin county). The real travesty for us was that it took 2-3 hours of standing in line to vote, and there's no way to recount that.
All the while standing in line, I kept wondering if there was some way a person could just bring a prefilled out ballot and simply drop it off instead of spending two minutes in one of three booths with a line of 200 people behind you stuck in a cramped crowded hot hallway occupied by an additional 200 people whose precinct's voting location just happened to be in the same room. Then again, at least we could wait inside. I heard others were stuck outside in the rain while standing in line.
is why is Badnarik and Cobb the only two making noise? Kerry and the democratic party leadership should be demanding a recount more than anyone.
Kerry lost too. The Democrats have just a bit more cash than the Libs or the Greens, why aren't they the ones paying for this?
As someone who's voted Libertarian in the past two presidential elections, it seems like a terrible waste of limited party funds to do this. Why not spend that money toward winning more local elections?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others. In this respect they agree with many other modern political ideologies. The difference arises from the definition of "rights". For libertarians, there are no material "positive rights" (such as to food, shelter, or health care), only "negative rights" (such as to not be assaulted, abused or robbed). Libertarians further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect these rights.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
He's smart enough to not want the Democratic Party to look like a bunch of sore losers two elections in a row.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I've stopped thinking along a single axis with regards to political thought. Here's a paper http://www.umich.edu/~umisl/articles/parties.htm that mentions the two axis system I feel is more desriptive. I like to think about social policy on one axis and economic policy on the other. free social policy (legalizing drugs, abortion, guns etc) and free economic policy (low tax, less laws restricting trade) would describe libertarian. restrictive social policy + free economic policy would describe some conservatives. Free social policy and restrictive economic policy might describe democrats. Someone like old Ross Perot might be restrictive socially and economically. Yes its veering from the topic. But what a dead horse. :)
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
It could also be related to maintaining ballot status, which exempts a party from needing to collect massive numbers of signatures if they got X% in the previous election.
And you are the reason the democrats weren't able to win. Calling the otherside stupid isn't the best way to sway their opinion.
That's pretty crap logic there. There's some significant weirdness in the automated vote counting. There's not reason to believe that a hand count would be wrong. By your logic we should object to anyone doing or asking for anything even once because they might bother you about it forever.
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.
I'm seeing Slashdot user numbers in the 350k range. If roughly 50% of these are Democrats, then 1 dollar each will pay for the recount. I donated $20.
Let's do our civic duty
..........FULL STOP.
From here.
pre-filled in ballots are a bad idea. Part of the voting process is to sequester the person voting from undue influence and thus assure a secret ballot. Absentee ballots are problematical on that score as well. Hopefully early voting will reduce the need for both conditions.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
> It could even tip the state (and thus the election) from Bush to Kerry.
Statistically, no, it couldn't. In fantasy fiction, it could, but in real life,
with Bush leading by over a hundred thousand votes, it ain't gonna happen. For
Gore in Florida in 2000, trailing by about a thousand votes, the recount was a
bit of a longshot, although it was not beyond the realm of possibility that it
could, against the odds, pan out -- but here, the margin is plainly way too
large. (Kerry knew this, presumably, which is why he conceded.) Do all the
recounts you want. Recount from now till inauguration day if you like -- but
don't hold your breath waiting for any big announcements reversing the outcome.
130 thousand votes is close, yes, but it's not so razor thin that a recount
has any realistic chance to alter the outcome. The counting process just
isn't as sloppy as that. (Yes, there are ballots that weren't counted, but
statistically they aren't going to deviate as wildly as all that from the
rest. Even if 100% of them are valid and countable, and even if there are
250 thousand of them outstanding (the highest, most optimistic estimates for
the Dems; the Blackwell figure of 175 thousand is probably much closer), and,
indeed, even if Kerry gets a wildly unlikely 70% of those 250 thousand (in
Ohio, where it is very unlikely for either party to top 60%), Bush would
still have a comfortable enough margin of victory to be confident of the
outcome of any recount (at least, any recount observed by representatives
from both parties).)
I'm all for the hand recounts. They will verify what we already know.
(What we do not know is what would have happened if it hadn't rained all day
statewide. There are always unknowns in life.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
>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.
Nader was actually one of the first to demand a recount. On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, Jay Leno got his witless jab in at Nader's recount call. But, ironically, this recount will end up being little more than an academic excercise if Kerry doesn't recant his premature concession.
Also ironic that the man (and, now, a party) who the Democrats spent so much time and money on in order to prevent appearance on the ballot are now those who ask for democracy in the form of counting all the ballots (and accounting for the ballots). Also, ironic that the Greens are so vocal in asking for this: Cobb's stumped for Kerry in contested states, yet the Democrats tried to keep Greens off the ballot as well this year. Meanwhile, in Illinois, the Democrats are changing the law to make sure the Republicans got their candidate on Illinois ballots.
I'm guessing that in 3 years this will all be forgotten and we'll see an unapologetic Democratic party ready to spread more lies and half-truths about their left-leaning competition (this time, the smear job included failing to point out the orders of magnitude more Republican financial support that went to the Kerry campaign versus the Nader campaign: $10.7 Million for Kerry vs. $111,700 for Nader, according to Counterpunch). Ah, if only that time and money had gone to winning senate seats instead, the Democrats could have won back the senate.
Nader's campaign platform more closely matched what Democratic party voters wanted (most importantly, getting out of the occupation of Iraq). Yet Democrats lost with a combination of "lesser evil" and fearmongering.
What does the future for the Democrats hold? I think not much of interest for those who don't like corporate-funded good-cop/bad-cop: When Nader says
I look at the Democrats and I look forward to seeing such action.
Digital Citizen
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
Erm. Errr. I can't see your comment being any less idiotic.
"Your side is stupid because you called the other side stupid"
Right.
Reading this, I realize someone might misinterpret the reversal of concession as some kind of legally binding prerequisite. It is not, however it will not happen even if Kerry did somehow get the votes needed to win key states (and thus their electoral votes). I believe that the Democrats are firmly committed to not putting the country through a long pursuit of determining who actually won.
Digital Citizen
...in the form of a flash animation may be found on newgrounds.com here...
Obviously in the real world, practical matters soften the idealistic concepts in the animation, but it gives you a good idea of the direction that Libertarian political philosophy takes.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
72% of Ohio voters used punchcards.
12% of Ohio voters used optical scan (bubble on paper)
16% of Ohio voters used electronic voting.
Should be possible to recount 84% of the votes
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:AEDmyoVJM-YJ:ww w.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/9982287.ht m%3F1c+Ohio++voting+system&hl=en
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.
Libritarians ally themselves with Republicans on in the sence that there are still many Paleo-cons out there. Bush is anything but a Paleocon, he is a neocon. Lets look.
Libritarians hate anything that has to do with making the government bigger. Well lets look, the largest deficit(number not % of GDP, but still huge) in history.
Libritarians are generally about liberty and human(negitive) rights. Bush and his new appointment to Attorny General think human rights are up for discussion(ala Gitmo, Abu Grab). The Patiot Act certianly doesn't make us libritarians happy campers.
Lets see, faith based inititives, i.e funding churches do create social programs, which is no better then when the government does it.
Heck in his 2003 budget, he proposed and increase in NEA funding, which is a hot button issue for palocons and libritarians.
Libritarians see the purpose of the Military for defence, not nation building or premtive/preventive war. Even Bush said in 2000 that he didn't believe in nation building.
Ultimately the only thing that Bush has done right by libritarians is cutting taxes, but all the other stuff he has done soooo out weighs that.
I have been a libritarian for as long as I have been interested in politics. I supported and worked for campains in 1994 to put the conservatives in control of the house and senate. Heck I even voted for Bush the first time around. The fact of the matter for me is, Bush's performance has been anything but remotely close to "libritarian" ideals. This year I voted for Kerry, because at least with Kerry we would have dead lock, and if 1994-2000 is any measure, it was the only chance to stall the growth of government.
Shameless self promotion : The Misadvetures of the in
Even if he did win Ohio Kerry still would have lost the popular vote... Sure he would have one the electorial college but... Wouldn't that be stealing the electon on a technicality?
Frankly it is not going to happen. So scream away.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Have you seen the political compass? It's great - they plot ideologies on two dimensions rather than one. If you've ever been confused about what's a left vs. right point, it's probably because compressing everything into one dimension makes no sense. This site uses two dimensions, which is better. (Still imperfect, but a third dimension would probably be more confusing than beneficial.) The horizontal axis is economic; the vertical is social.
Going back to what you were saying, Democrats are left of Republicans, as always. But both Democrats and Republicans are in the upper right quadrant. Libertarians are in the lower right; the Green Party is in the lower left. They have Democrats and Republicans roughly equidistant from the Libertarians. But I think the social axis (libertarian vs. authoritarian) is more central to the Libertarian's beliefs (thus the name), so I'd consider Democrats closer than Republicans.
By your logic we should object to anyone doing or asking for anything even once because they might bother you about it forever.
Ever raised a kid?
From where I sit, not saying no, firmly, the first time, is a Top 5 parental mistake. Make that mistake a couple of times and suddenly the kid is effectively in charge.
While the logic may or may not apply in this case, it is not always useless, as you imply, and more work is needed to establish the invalidity of the argument. I think you're probably right in general, though.
I think you're missing the point -- the Libs and the Greens want ALL of the votes counted to bolster thier numbers a tad. Voting for a third party is only a truly wasted vote if you use an absentee ballot, which won't be counted at all, thus not give to the party total.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Umm...
May I ask where you have been for the past four years? A President who lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote ring any bells?
As a libertarien, I can more easily accept the federal government disallowing a state from infringing upon individual liberties by means of discrimination than I can accept the federal government discriminating itself.
I am uncertain that the state has the right to do anything based on marriage, but I am certain that if the state does have that right, it does not have the right to descriminate based on the form of a particular marriage.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Agreed. I donated 20.
The ______ Agenda
BTW, the film mentioned in the second link, votergate, is worth downloading. A torrent is available if the main site is going slowly, though they seem to have upgraded their bandwidth.
The ______ Agenda
Seems like Badnarik and Cobb would do anything for attention. Well, since the media is ignoring them, I think that's justified. More power to 'em!
who believes that the purpose of the Democratic party should be to provide "cute but not that bright" comfort women to Republicans.
No, he's not joking. Yes, he's publishing a book.
There are jokes about how "he needed killin'" is a valid murder defense in Texas. Sheesh, this guy qualifies.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Tell me how many votes Badnarik got nationwide. Honestly - I went looking (CNN.COM, Foxnews.com, google) and only found contradictory evidence (LP says they got more than 1% in 8 states, Fox says they didn't crack 1% anywhere).
I did find one story with numbers.
Nader: 395000
Badnarik: 377000
But I barely heard Badnarik mentioned, especially considering how much coverage Nader got.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Who needs math when you've got Jesus?
If the recount goes kerry's way (and I doubt they'll find 130K votes) he will be the president, Ill have no complaints about it (I voted 3rd Party). What I will love to see is the left embrace their guy and ignore the partisan crap they have been spewing for four years..
You can view a county-by-county breakdown of the kind of voting equipment used in each state here.
The election was last week. The decisions were made last week. Right now there's no point in swaying anyone's opinion, and we can fairly judge them by the decision they eventually made.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
Real libertarians want the government to get out of the institute of marriage.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
(Please note I didn't call all Republican voters idiots, just ones who voted for them because they promised to (and did) lower taxes. Lowering taxes and raising spending is worse than raising taxes and raising spending.)
You are correct, the Republican party has managed to get as far away as possible from the Libertarian party, very very recently. Which is, of course, why the LP is asking for a recount of Ohio...they disagree with Kerry on 50% of his platform, but they disagree nearly completely with Bush.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
However, we're certainly unlikely to get more votes off them in a recount.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Somehow Nader suddenly got a bunch of votes or somebody's sources are funky...
Ralph Nader: 505,013
Michael Badnarik: 400,871
Updated 11/11 9:37AM
Source: SFGate
I however would like to know that the votes were counted right. I like Bush being in office, but fair voting is more important than which politician holds the office.
Even though I hate Bush, I'm glad to know that there are people who think like you among his supporters.
My site
Agreed. Moreover, I've been hearing too many theories about how voters were forced, deceived or generally brainwashed into voting for Bush. I've heard similar gripes about 'stupid' vs. 'smart', and of course seen the standard IQ by state chart.
Guess what, kids: sometimes in a democracy, other people win. This is what most of the American voters wanted, and that's the way it works.
The following is presented for discussion only -- I don't necessarily endorse these viewpoint, but I think they are interesting.
The founding fathers did not have voting for the common man. Those only in good standing in the community (property owners) could vote[1]. There was also was the barrier that the horribly uneducated tended to be illiterate.
Now, anyone who wants to vote can vote. This may be an improvement. It may not be.
People occasionally come up with the idea of manditory voting, or a vacation day on election day. For the health of the country, are we better off forcing people to vote? Polls are open all day, and are easy to find. If the only reason you have to vote is to avoid a fine, perhaps the country is better off if you don't vote.
In the same light, imagine a ballot that has no party affiliation listed. George Washington was against political parties, he thought they'd be the death of the country. Perhaps he was right. Imagine a country where any party was unable to voice any support for a candidate[2].
Or perhaps a ballot that only has positions listed, no names. You must remember the correct spelling of your candidates' names, or at least write them down on a slip of paper beforehand. If you can't spell "John Kerry and John Edwards" or "George Bush and Dick Cheney", perhaps your vote is better off uncounted.[3]
Just food for thought.
[1] Of course, they also had sexist exclusions, as well as discounting the votes of slaves.
[2] A party could still work for a candidate, but could not publicaly state that it was aiding a candidate.
[3] I'm imagining the political ads right now: Democrats for John Kerry. That is J- O- H- N- Space- K- E- R- R- Y-. Remember, an 'h' in "John" and two 'r's in "Kerry".
"Get with the program?" People like you are why there are minor parties and independents to begin with.
It's not just rabid Kerryists that want the recounts, and acting like a rabid Bushist doesn't help your argument any. The point here is not who won, but how fairly.
Problem is that we don't trust the "recount" to be as fair as the initial count.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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
The whole stolen election thing isn't with regards to winning or losing the popular vote. It's the opinion that Bush one Florida in 2000 on Fraud.
So long as there is the appearance of impropriaty, thats all you'll get. Same goes of Kerry, except it wasn't people close to Kerry disenfranchising the voters of Ohio and it wasn't people close to Gore disenfranchising the voters of Florida.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
I believe in smaller government, less taxes, less intervention in people's lives (at home and abroad) by the government.
Republicans have shown themselves to be the opposite of that.
One theory is that the Republicans are trying to reduce the entitlement programs (like Medicare) by growing them (and other government spending) in an uncontrollable fashion while cutting taxes, to the point where force cutbacks across the board become mandatory. I doubt that it is intentional. I think that the Republicans are just incompetent fiscal managers.
"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
Dread the day when the right embraces cloning! Imagine what they could do with a thousand Jesuses.
Or would that be Jesii?
... the left embrace their guy ...
Kerry == left? Okay, it may be difficult to be not left of Bush, but left in the real sense - no way.
Here is an interesting reading about the "two" choices Bush vs. Kerry.
You're on slashdot, and you're glad Bush won?
I'm not a Bush-ite, but your comment was as illogical as the arguments used by the Right to support morality laws in order to abate the impending wrath of God.
We are so partisan that our idea of political discourse is like a junior high dance--boys on the left side of the gymnasium, girls on the right.
About the economy comment, I see the Democrats have programmed you well. Unfortunately, Bush isn't on the Ways and Means committee, nor is he on the Federal Reserve board, nor is he part of any decision making process that Constitutionally *ought* to have anything to do with the control of the economy.
And Congress did declare war. It may or may not have been political suicide to go against it, but at the time there was a lot of false intelligence floating around, and it sure seemed like Saddamm wasn't really planning on letting the US in to check for WMD. I'm not saying it's right--I think the war is wrong, but I don't think we should blame the President for the economic ramifications.
I'm sick of liberals who think that the President and his staff are the only officials that we hold accountable in this country.
This zealous, blind hatred for Bush probably turned off a lot of would-be Kerry voters. And now Democrats have started coming down on Kerry for being too soft.
Democrats *hate* the Witchunter logic used by the Right Wing today (I'm thinking evangelicals). Of course, human nature being what it is, I suppose I shouldn't expect anything more out of them than the same rabid hatred and unwillingness to understand the "other side."
The two-party system has destroyed this country and made the more intelligent succumb to groupthink and a willingness to abandon truth in favor of getting a quick bash in on those with whom you disagree.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
> Who needs math when you've got Jesus?
Even Jesus needed math - he was a carpenter until he was 30 or so - I bet he was pretty good at fractions!
When has Bush ever been held responsible? When has he ever admitted to a mistake? Was he held responsible for ignoring warnings about Osama bin Laden being determined to strike inside the United States? Was he held accountable for not planning the occupation of Iraq? Has he been held accountable for the massive deficit caused by his tax cuts? Has he been held accountable for the massive cockup of Falluja (when we first went in)? Quite the contrary, he's actually managed to capitalize on these errors.
Maybe I'm completely wrong about Bush being bad for the nation... all I can say is, check back in a few years, and if he's fucked up completely (like he's done the first four years) don't say we didn't warn you.
I'm not sure it matters anymore. The problem is, democracy depends on an informed public making decisions, but the public isn't informed, and doesn't want to be informed.
Couldn't they better spend their money on philanthropy or something? It's not as if they are going to win the election by doing this. They are wasting time and money. John Kerry is behind by a lot in Ohio, and he has already conceded. A recount will not change that many votes. It did not in Florida last election, and it won't in Ohio now.
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.
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.
I'm aware that the NORC study does not label itself as a "recount", but they have surely amassed far more data than any court-ordered recount could possibly have accrued.
Wow, you know that, even though you claim no recounts were ever done?The truth is that the NORC results were massively inconclusive. "Who would have won" would have depended entirely on what ruleset you used to validate or disqualify ballots. Such a detailed ruleset does not exist in any legislative or voter-approved constitutional text. Therefore, any ruleset picked would have been annointed by a set of judges.
No matter what ruleset emerged, the winner would have been appointed by the judiciary. You can't escape that conclusion. I agree with those who, at the time, decided it would be better to simply go with the first count, which was in fact in accordance with existing voter-enacted law.
Hello World
Bush may have neoconservatives on his staff, but he is not a neoconservative. He's a social conservative who spends like a Democrat (a Democrat in Republican's clothing?).
Bush was never a neoconservative. It's my belief that after September 11th, he pulled a Kennedy and said (something along the lines of) no idea should be left off the table, and the worst thing that we can do here is nothing. (I suppose that he also took a page from Jimmy Carter's failure in the hostage crisis on the dosomethingism ideal). I can't say that I agree with his decision to listen to the neoconservatives, but I seriously do not believe that he's a neoconservative. Neocons don't care much about a conservative social policy like he does. Neocon's are like libertarians who don't care about domestic policy (well, as long as the policy is good for business and the economy) and also believe in preemptive wars, as opposed to Nixon's foreign policy which revolved around diplomacy.
-Turkey
And you are the reason the democrats weren't able to win. Calling the otherside stupid isn't the best way to sway their opinion.
Because it's not like anybody on the right-wing ever calls us stupid or cowards or anything like that. Oh wait....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Even if he did win Ohio Kerry still would have lost the popular vote... Sure he would have one the electorial college but... Wouldn't that be stealing the electon on a technicality?
WTF? Why is it that we make immigrants learn and understand the electoral process before they can become naturalized citizens, but people who were born in this country have no such requirement?
Start here Article II Section I
girls on the right
;)
Are you calling the Republicans a bunch of sissies?
Developers: We can use your help.
Sounds like an opening to plug Condorcet and Approval voting and ask everyone who agrees to write their state legislators about it. The two-party system will never collapse if we don't do something about it -- too many politicians have made their careers out of playing the duopoly, and they need a fire lit under their ass before they'll upset it. (Oh, and please try not to spook the horses, so to speak. Don't say the "d" word, even if you might be thinking it -- phrase it in positive terms like voter expressiveness, legislative teamwork, and the like. You should also butter them up with some examples specific to their party, like Libertarians and Perot for the Republicans, or Greens and Nader for the Democrats. Think of your target audience. And if you send an e-mail, follow up with a written letter if you don't get a reply in a reasonable amount of time.)
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
It's a question I have to those who believe that we should take everything our president says on faith, and agree without question.
If we take everything on faith, how is that democracy?
Seriously; I can't see how that differs from dictatorship. If everyone gets their view from the same source, and no one questions the validity or utility of that view, doesn't the system become a monoculture? A democracy where everyone agrees is just an obfuscated kingdom.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I am not completely sure about this, but I heard that one person from each state goes to a meeting to cast the state electoral votes, I also heard (please correct me if wrong) that there is no regulation or checks, that someone from a bush state could walk in and say the vote goes to kerry, and vice versa. as an american voter this thaught scares me. Please respond and clarify, is there any kind of checks or regulastion of the electoral vote casting? Location: California Age: 21 Profession: Student/Programmer Vote: Bush yeah I broke the steriotype.
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.
I would say that that test is not very accurate, it did not ask enouph questions, yes I know that all political tests fail at some point. But the problem with this test, is it put me very close to the center. .97
Economic 2.79
Social
But I know on the Social area I should be stronger an higher in the number and closer to the right. And I did not know I was that high in the economic, but that is assuming that that number is also correct.
You insensitive clod, etc..
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think the rumours alone warrant a recount. If only just to disprove them. The fact that nobody seems to be interested in disproving what are very serious allegations is more worrysome then any outcome of the election.
Jilles
A justice who made rulings that clearly violated SCOTUS's precedents to match his personal beliefs isn't a conservative, he's an idiot. Why would they expect Gonzales to make rulings that would have just been appealed to a federal court and overturned, making the Texas court completely irrelevant?
I'd hope that regardless of political beliefs, anyone could agree that a judge or attorney general should at least have respect for current law and precedent and follow the law instead of his conscience. For all the talk about "activist judges", it sure seems like it's the conservatives who are demanding judicial activism. Only the Supreme Court can overturn its own rulings. It's not that hard to understand.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Why not change to the Direct Election System nation wide? Electoral Colleges do not reflect people's wish well any longer.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
What would happen if it turned out Kerry won?
Suddenly, the Democratic support for abolishing the electoral college, which, in the 2000 election permitted Bush to win despite Gore carrying a majority of the popular vote, would vanish in a puff of smoke.
And it would be the Republicans complaining because a mere 60,000 vote switch in Ohio gave Kerry the presidency through the electoral college system despite Bush having won the popular vote by over 3 million.
It would be hilarious to watch as strident principled Democrats fell silent while the vocal Republicans would begin attacking positions that they themselves previously held onto with great fervor.
As if the whole thing weren't farcical enough already.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
sorry the blog lists her as columnist worth reading. I think I lost a kidney processing the shock (ok so it wasn't really a surprise) of that one.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
And, you know, the American people would have been okay with raised taxes after 9/11. Instead, they got lowered civil liberties and no tax change. Oh, wait, I forgot...they lowered taxes again, didn't they.
As for the GOP in congress in 94, I feel for them, I really do, except the 'slash government spending' crowd basically existed because of them. It was their issue, they created it, and created a bunch of cheerleaders for it, and then rode it into power.
And then people came to their senses and said 'Why, you want to cut [insert favorite program here]? You can't cut that, we need that!'. The entire situtation was basically the GOP's fault. It's what happens when you hype something that people wouldn't actually want to happen, and get people cheering for it...you'll be completely and utterly screwed if you ever get into a positition to do it. You don't do it, you'll anger those supporters, and look like a liar, you do it, and you'll anger everyone. The GOP took as good an exit as the middle ground allowed.
I think the Libertarian Party existed before that, to get back on topic, but that craziness managed to get a lot of Republicans believing that slashing government spending as much as possible was the way to go, so when the GOP left that platform behind, those people were left standing, confused, inside the Libertarian Party headquarters, where they were quickly handed a pamplet.
Luckily, the GOP now picks better things to get people riled up about, ones it can't do anything about, like those gays getting married, wimmin have abortions, and those athiests banning prayer in schools.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Since the republicans dominate the rural areas, maybe i am going to be rich.
Can i still get a copyright on the word "backwatergate" ?
And Congress did declare war.
Uh, no, they didn't declare war. They gave the President the authority to use force, but stopped short of a true Declaration of War- the likes of which we have not seen since WWII
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?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The margian really wasn't that big. 47% of Catholics voted for Kerry.
Only those of us who hate fundamentalism more than we hate abortion...either that or know that the best weapon against abortion is Charity and thus Kerry was the pro-seamless-garment-of-life candidate all along.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
His margin of victory is the smallest in a US Presidential election since Wilson beat Taft in 1913.
Surely you mean when Gore beat Bush in 2000?
You think those on the Ways And Means Committee (majority Republican) aren't influenced by Bush?
You think that Bush's budget busting tax cuts are not affecting the economy? They were nominally intended to provide short-term stimulus (which it did not provide), but the long term effect of the excessive borrowing required to finance the deficit will likely be higher interest rates.
You think that war (especially unnecessary war) does not have an effect on the market? Do you think war in Iraq and $55/bbl oil are a coincidence?
Your comment about the president not having control of the economy reminds me of a quote from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone compares himself to a Senator:
Kate: "Senators don't have people killed, Michael."
Michael: "Now who's being naive, Kate?"
This looks like it's from Michael Moore's "17 reasons not to slit your wrists" that he sent out a day or two after the election. The actual quote is:
2. Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
It's only sitting presidents, and it doesn't count the incumbents that lost (Bush 41, Carter, etc). In other words, the following Presidents won reelection by a wider margin than Bush did:
Clinton (1996)
Reagan (1984)
Nixon (1972)
Johnson (1964)
Eisenhower (1956)
Truman (1948)
FDR (1944)
FDR (1940)
FDR (1936)
Coolidge (1924)
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Besides, changing ohio STILL won't win it for Kerry.
According to the final tallies at http://www.electoral-vote.com/, Kerry currently has 252 EVs, Bush 286. Flip Ohio's 20 votes- and Kerry has 272 Evs to Bush's 266. Thus Kerry will win. So sorry- you're wrong- changing Ohio WOULD win it for Kerry. Of course, the FIRST count in Ohio isn't done yet (absentee and provisional ballots legally will be able to be counted tomorrow), so we'll have more data then.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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?
Yes.
No Bush did not win Florida on fraud. They had recounts. Not as many as some would have liked and Bush won. The place that was the most disputed was Palm Beach and there the supervisor of elections was a democrat. A democrat "screwed" up the ballot. Frankly I am a bit of an eliteist and feel if you screwed up voting it is a good thing it did not get counted. Frankly you can not in all honesty say that Gore won the popular vote. It was so close that you would have to have a nation wide recount "maybe several" to prove it if it is even possible. Frankly it was a HUGE mess but not some great evil plot. In retrospect it looks like Bush is liked by a greater percentage of people in the US then even Clinton since he won a clear majority of the popular vote "Clinton never won a majority just a plurality" and the number of Republicans in congress went up. Frankly for those that do not like it all I can say is your congressman is going to be up for an election in two years. Get out and vote the one you want in that is the way the system works.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If you can't spell "John Kerry and John Edwards" or "George Bush and Dick Cheney", perhaps your vote is better off uncounted.[3]
I hope in your alternative universe,
Mieczyslaw Krzyzewski never runs for president.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Yeah, I think it misplaced me, too. (I expected to be in the center, and ended up basically around the Green Party.) I'm more impressed with their scale and their placement of world leaders than their test of where you stand.
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"?
It's amazing how funny everything is since I stopped caring (roughly nov 3). Thanks for the laff. You funny!
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
You think those on the Ways And Means Committee (majority Republican) aren't influenced by Bush?
No, I didn't say that. They (the committee) should be held more accountable than the President. Ideally, thy wouldn't be influenced by him at all. At any rate, the President will continue to have influence in this committee as long as we hold him accountable for the economy.
You think that Bush's budget busting tax cuts are not affecting the economy? They were nominally intended to provide short-term stimulus (which it did not provide), but the long term effect of the excessive borrowing required to finance the deficit will likely be higher interest rates.
I don't think that the President should have the kind of power to propose legislation and have it pushed through. The reason he does is because we expect the President to fix our economy. If we began holding our senators and reps accountable, then the President, who is usually not an economist by trade, will no longer have to be responsible. Besides, I think you've overestimated the effect that these tax cuts have had--which is exactly what King George wants us to do.
You think that war (especially unnecessary war) does not have an effect on the market? Do you think war in Iraq and $55/bbl oil are a coincidence?
Of course not--but whether or not we should go to war should be based on whether or not the political reasons for going to war are correct. Where in my original statement did I fail to make this clear?
Your comment about the president not having control of the economy reminds me of a quote from one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone compares himself to a Senator:
He has de facto power, but he doesn't have power granted to him by the Constitution. This is something about American politics I can't stand, and the solution (as I see it) is to not blame the President for a bad economy, and not praise a President for a good one.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
And most liberals, of course, do not consider redneck conservative christian bigots to make up the bulk of Americans. But you wouldn't understand that, as you surround yourself with so many of them you can't see anyone else.
You're hardly bright now are you? You just re-elected the worst President in living memory.And, for what it's worth, the left will continue to remind you of that. We'll continue to point out that you, and 52% of the population with you, just made one of the most disasterously stupid decisions you'll ever make in your lives.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
why?
the initial count varied greatly from the exit polls - in most countries, if the election result is different than the exit polls, the people REVOLT.
it happened with shreverdnazi (however the hell you spell that name), and it should have happened in 2k, and 2002, and 2004.
in closing, let me quote che guevarra:
"if you cannot trust the election results, then the war has already begun"
so - if the election is kosher, then the recount is not a threat. if the election was not kosher, and the recount changes results, then the american people have won.
the only bad choice here is to deny the recount.
... hi bingo
I am not a Republican--I disagree with Bush on the war in Iraq, and I did not vote for him.
I even said that I am not a Bush supporter in my post.
Do I need to say it again? I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Or perhaps we just don't trust the exit polls? You know lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
bullshit.
the purpose of exit polls is to audit the election results, its not to give you a "horse race" feeling throughout the day, you are supposed to compare the tallies, against the projected results, and figure out why there is a discrepency.
exi polls wrong in three national elections in a row? no effing way.
all we want to do, is count the votes, accurately.
if everything is fine, then we'll be on our merry way.
... hi bingo
Good point. They barely maintained ballot status in Nevada. I would wonder, however, if the $100K spent on verifying the votes would be better spent on just gathering the needed signatures if/when the time comes.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I'm truly sorry I'm glad Bush won. I made a fundamental error in my thinking. I mean, we should vote for the only good candidate, since his enemy is purely evil. That's the foundation of democracy, isn't it? Knowing that this candidate is the only one worth voting for, and not allowing people to disagree with you?
Oh, wait...
(I have my right to support Bush, and you have your right to support Kerry. If that is infringed upon, our country is in far more danger than either Bush or Kerry could inflict if they wanted to.)
What is the point of registering for a party if you're going to vote differently?
I'm both fiscally and socially conservative. Since it seems easier to go fiscally conservative than socially liberal, I wouldn't mind a Libertarian in office.
Completely off-topic but vaguely related: Wednesday I returned from a math club work meeting at about 4:30. I left for church choir practice at around 6:00.
> > I'd bet more of us Red staters have read Jane Smiley's tirade on
/. stirring the pot. And we do have a bit of a right to be pissed, between the piece I referrenced and the headlines on most of the world's newspapers calling people like myself 'idiots' and worse for daring to disagree with your side.
>Never heard of her. Should I have done?
Considering the damage she is inflicting on your cause, compounded by the fact nary a word of reproach has yet to issue from your side to what by any definition of the word would be 'hate speech', I'd say yes you probably should go look it up.
> Oh, pot calling the kettle black, I love it.
Yea, but I'm just a guy on
I mean, sure we have bombthrowers and fringe elements on our side, life is more fun with em on both sides for us political junkies. Hell, as above, I like lobbing a few myself. Difference is Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson aren't considered major policymaking forces in our party unlike Howard Dean (who could have actually WON your party's nomination!), Micheal Moore and James Carville.
> And most liberals, of course, do not consider redneck conservative
> christian bigots to make up the bulk of Americans. But you wouldn't
> understand that, as you surround yourself with so many of them you
> can't see anyone else.
If you would carry your butt out of your blue state cocoon you would discover a few facts:
1. Out here in the Red States, most of us aren't mouth breathing morons.
2. Most are Christians, a reality you on the pagan left are just going to have to deal with. (Although I am not, being an Agnostic.)
3. We are conservative. The only reason Democrats won elections in the past was the phenomenon of the Southern "Yellow Dog" Democrats who are dying off and/or finally realizing that the Democratic party has totally changed and they now vote Republican.
4. Voting Republican is NOT a codeword for a return to the Jim Crow era. (Who by the way, like most Southern Politicians of the era, were lifelong Democrats.) The sooner you guys figure that out the sooner you can return to being a viable opposition party again.
> You're hardly bright now are you? You just re-elected the worst
> President in living memory.
Yea, right. I am old enough to have heard all this crap before. You intellectual lightweights were spouting this same line twenty years ago about a certain "senile old actor who thinks he is some sort of cowboy". Earlier this year Democrats could line up fast enough to say nice things about the Gipper they used to hate. Nothing succeeds like success, if Bush can push through on Iraq and win you guys will be pretending you never opposed him at every step either.
For some reason, in your perverted fantasy world, every Republican is an idiot. Nixon was an evil idiot, Reagan was a senile old idiot, Bush the elder did get somewhat of a pass on the idiot charge but it is back with a vengence for Shrub. Graduating both Harvard AND Yale isn't enough for a Republican to escape being called an idiot, so why don't you explain what it takes for a Republican to be deemed of 'average intelligence' in you worldview? Yes, Bush 43 has his dreaded speech impediment but after listening to him I always know exactly what he was trying to say, couldn't for the life of me figure out what Kerry was really saying half the time even though his use of English was perfect.... perfect but so nuanced you could read into it whatever you wanted to.
Democrat delenda est
Unless the election was FRAUDULANT.
Please see: http://www.indyvoter.org/ http://www.blacboxvoting.org Etc. ...
As for gay marriage, the constitution does say that you have to respect contracts in other states...but, hey, if they want to ignore each other's marriages, they are happy to do so. They did it with interracial marriages.
Interesting that everyone seems to forget that. There's plenty of precedent that it's legal to consider marriages made in other states not really marriages. Of course, it's rather obvious why the religious right hasn't brought this up as a solution, because it would draw attention to the fact that, yet again, they're calling bigotry 'moral issues'. Before, it was black men having sex with our wimmin, this time it's women having sex with our wimmin.
However, I think with the progess being made on banning gay marriage, or at least pretending to ban it, the GOP is finding itself having to do stupid things. Pretty soon some religions are going to go 'Hey, who put these guys in charge of marriage, anyway?'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
Join me in the hills, democratic brothers! Any freedom fighter who dies in the glorious fight to liberate our country goes straight to Democratic Heaven, where nubile, liberal virgins await!
... Um. Are you really an American? And are you really a supporter of the Libertarian Party?
Because, you know, you misspelled 'Libertarian' NINE TIMES in a single post. You also made sixteen or seventeen other mistakes. I hope you didn't learn that in private school. :/
Not quite. Most of the state (84%) didn't use electronic voting. But... some of them certainly did.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Well, given that the majority of the US apparently supports Bush ...
Just for the record: What you forget is that 40% or so did not vote at all, therefore, only approximately 30% support Bush, and this is not the majority.
You assume that people who didn't vote don't support the president. Somehow, I would think that if you're truly opposed to Bush, you wouldn't not vote, and that those who support the incumbent are less likely to vote. Either way, you can't say that "only 30% support Bush" - at least some of the nonvoters support him.
Thanks, you've just inspired me to never use a spell checker when posting to /. I know many intelligent people who cannot spell. I know many idiots who can spell. If English spelling were based on a logically consistant set of rules maybe you'd have a point, but spelling is almost arbitrary. The ability to remember random strings is a relatively insignificant aspect of intelligence.
Perhaps an obsessive desire to remember random strings and insistance that others do the same should be a disqualification for voting!-)
Dyslexics of the world unite!
http://www.marxist.com/
Sure he would have one the electorial college but... Wouldn't that be stealing the electon on a technicality?
You must have been sick the day in Civics Class when they explained the Constitution and how electors work.
Here's it in a nutshell: the popular vote means fuck-all. The state legislators determine how to pick electors, then those electors pick the President. Technically, the state legislators could use a random lottery to pick 'em, since the Constitution just says "as the State legislators may determine". Nothing is mentioned about ordinary people voting for them.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Much of that $100K will probably be collected from Democrats who would have otherwise donated it to Kerry, had he contested the results... so it's not completely a matter of diverting funds into a recount effort.
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
And then there's the situation with the provisional ballots.
See Just count the ballots at the back of the bus.
Exit polls are statistical estimates, not actual enumeration of votes.
But, your logic is the same that people are trying to apply to the census, where actually counting people isn't as important as statistically estimating how many are "undercounted" and "correcting" the actual enumeration.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
No. Why waste time in states that won't sway the election?
WI won't. Ohio will. If they find Ohio for kerry this time around, expect Bush to want a recount in PA...
What we need is a better voting system. The electorial college is crap. It needs to be updated.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Correction Bush had more people vote against him than any other sitting President. Clinton was not a sitting President in 1992.
Unprecedented and still inconsequential and incomplete. Funny how that works... If I allow you unprecedented access to my front porch, but keep you out of my kitchen bathroom and bedroom, I still haven't let you search my house.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I bet he didn't use metric. :)
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
In announcing their choice for a recount location, Cobb and Badnarik talk a lot about "reports of irregularities", "the integrity of the democratic process" being compromised, "voter intimidation", "voter suppression", and so on. Are we understand that these things are fine as long as Kerry won a state, but make one "compelled to demand a recount" if Bush won?
A recount and investigation should look into all the states, especially the close ones, whichever way they fell. How accurate WAS electronic voting? Were the new provisional ballot rules followed properly, or were they a means of stuffing ballot boxes with phony votes? How much "voter intimidation" took place in states where exercising your First Amendment rights with a Bush bumper sticker would get your tires slashed?
If Cobb and Badnarik are really serious about looking into irregularities and protecting the integrity of the democratic process, let's do it across the country. Sure, Ohio has the appeal of that of the "if this one state had voted the other way, the whole election would have turned out differently" states, it was closer than Florida or Texas, but Bush still won by a significant margin and counting the ballots over and over isn't going to alter that. Rather than doing a symbolic recount in a single state that was neither the closest nor home to the most irregularities, we should be looking into reported problems across the country and trying to fix things instead of doing this sort of ridiculous grandstanding.
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 might not get tired of repeating this anytime soon, because it's an important point:
Almost all the states are purple.
There were only five states in which one candidate or the other won 2/3 of the vote (Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah for Bush, the District of Columbia for Kerry). Most of the other states were extremely close. The margin of victory was 10% or less in 25 states.
"Blue State" Demorctats: Unless you are from DC, Mass, RI, or VT (states where Kerry had a margin of victory over 20%), you are not really from a blue state. There are several neighbors on your block who voted for Bush.
Notice that neither Texas nor California, states which were supposedly extremely partisan one way or the other, turned out to be not as lopsided as everybody thought.
Democrats and Republicans live near each other all over the country, so we can all drop this "Jesusland" and "People's Republic of Canada" crap any time now, okay?
(Disclaimer: I voted for Bush, but come from Minnesota, which Kerry won by 3%... and I get along great with friends who voted Democrat. People who actively dislike members of the opposite party genuinely baffle me.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
When people say "left" in America, they mean "left" in the American sense of the word (Howard Dean, Jessie Jackson, and yes... John Kerry), not in the European Socialist sense of the word.
I know that no leader among the Democrats has been left enough to keep the wackos at the Villiage Voice happy, but in the US, anybody that far left is considered part of the lunatic fringe.
In fact, no Democrat since Mondale has advocated returning tax policy to pre-Reagan levels.
For that matter, the left-right battles of 40 years ago on social issues are mostly over, with the exception of abortion rights. All of the other hot-button civil rights issues of the 20th Century (integrated schools, anti-segregation laws, sexual harrassment and discrimination, accissibility for people with disabilities, etc.) have not only been won by the progressives, but won so firmly that you would have a hard time finding a Republican who disagrees with them.
On social issues, we are down to wrangling over whether same-sex couples can call their union a "marriage" or not. On fiscal matters, we are debating on whether the top marginal rate should be in the high 30s or the low 30s.
In spite of how noisy the last election was, the fact is that most Americans have already reached a consensus on most of the big issues. There are new defninitions for "right" and "left", based on how one wishes to make minor tweaks within the kind of society we currently have, and that's simply how it's going to be for the immediate future.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Just $20, but I really want to be a part of this.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Tax records show that Bush & Cheney have been much more generous charitable givers than Kerry & Edwards, but you keep telling yourself whatever you gotta tell yourself to make it okay that you are voting against the principles of your own religion.
Ah, but how generous are Bush and Cheney with GOVERNMENT money? Are they willing to give up say, 1% of all corporate profits to insure that no woman is forced into an abortion ever again?
Then again, I suppose you think of taxing poor working families to give AFDC checks to poor non-working families the only real definition of "Charity." Too bad for that argument that the Bush administration did nothing to change Clinton-era welfare systems in the first term, apart from broadly extending Unemployment benifits.
Once again, idiots, being against Bush doesn't mean being for Clinton. One can be equally against both. Heck- I'm equally against Kerry on that score- his wife is yet another one of the parasites that I wish we could rid society of. But unemployment benefits do not an anti-ABORTION program make; I was thinking more about universal health care with a requirement that every woman who tested positive for pregnancy have an ultrasound before any decisions were made.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Lets just make sure all the votes get counted ok?
Blogging because I can...
Ohio: Bush by 136,483 votes, 2.5%
More like ~132,000 or so. 4000 of those votes for Bush in Gahanna in Columbus, OH were some election worker (or machine)'s fantasy, remember?
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.
I second this
-- IndianCitizen --
Love all, Trust few, Follow one.
I was genuinely wondering if there's a way for the e-voting machine manufacturers to reveal the exact code that was used on the physical voting machines. This could put to sleep quite a bit of the often-unpleasant debating going around all over the world (apart from /., of course).
-- rxMx --
Love all, Trust few, Follow one.
No, but there are still 45000 floorboards left to peel up.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Sometimes the only way you can know the truth is by confronting it. And that is what "W" did. And when you find out your wife was not sleeping with someone else but you are already divorced and NOW she is. It is too late to go back and say "Honey, I didn't mean it." If you don't understand this maybe her life is much better without you.
I don't know about you, but it sounds like you just fucked up your marriage. For no reason. Because of bad information. (sound familiar?)
Sure, absolute numbers may differ, but given the number of non-voters, you can not claim that the majority of the US supports Bush - there is still a long way from 30% of the votes to 50% = being a majority. Anyway, I would guess that most of the non-voters either don't care, or they just don't think that it would make a difference. Therefore, it is my opinion that non-voters can not be counted as supporters of any candidate.
Sure I can, in light of the massive fraud that seems to have gone on: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/index. html
Covered elsewhere in Slashdot.
Sorry for the flamebait, I'm still quite angry that the voting process was hacked.