Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

jZnat writes, "In June Rolling Stone ran an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delving into the statistical improbability that Bush won the 2004 election based on massive amounts of evidence that support a Republican-sponsored election fraud across the country, particularly in Ohio. The GOP used a number of tactics in its fraudulent campaign including ballot-stuffing, denying newly registered voters (particularly in urban and minority precincts) their voting privileges via illegal mailings known as caging lists, inane voter registration requirements, preventing thousands of voters from receiving provisional ballots, under-providing Democrat-majority precincts with voting machines thus creating enormous queues of voters, faulty machines (particularly from Diebold) that skewed results in the GOP's favor, mostly unnoticed ballot-stuffing and fraud in rural areas, and a fixed recount that was paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties that essentially supported the initial fraudulent numbers." From the article: "'Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me."

Comments

Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

There has been fraud, corruption, and all manner of crap going on in elections in the US since the beginning of time. (And, might I add, consider the source.)

This hasn't change since Bush took office, and won't be any different in 2008. It's not just Republicans that do it, nor is is just Democrats. (Witness the decades-old joke from Democratic stronghold cities: "Why did the Democrat walk into the cemetery? To thank his voters.")

As dirty and reeking of conflict-of-interest as it is, when Diebold's CEO said he was committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to Bush, he meant it as a Republican corporate leader and campaigner; not in the context of "rigging" an election.

No, the disenfranchisement that happens now and will continue to happen is the same disenfranchisement and dirty tricks that always happens: the rise of the internet for the general population, particularly since the last pre-Bush presidential election, has enabled the kinds of incredible information exchange on all manner of topics that we've seen in the last two elections. That will only increase, and it cuts both ways: as much as it allows the exchange of legitimate information, it acts as a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, some wacky, some not-so-wacky, some with elements of truth, but still serving to subvert any faith we ever had in our system.

The worst part is so many people believe that not one, but two, elections were actively and intentionally "stolen"/rigged exclusively by Republicans, that anytime any Republican/conservative candidate ever wins an election from this point forward, it will always be doubted. Even recounts will be doubted. People want to believe, well, what they want to believe.

All of the political, governmental, financial, famous and otherwise, and other powerhouse figures in the United States on the anti-Republican/conservative side(s) didn't just stand idly by while not one, but *two* elections were stolen.

Nothing new has happened on either side in 2000 or 2004 that hasn't ever happened before. That's just a fact of life. These are the same county election entities that have run elections in locales for generations. Yes, things change a bit, especially with the introduction of electronic voting machines (which, ironically, were the result of various Democratic and bipartisan initiatives designed to allow more equal and consistent management of and access to polling places). But all e-voting vendors offer permament voter-verified receipt options on current and some previous models of machines - but these additions cost even more money; money that many municipalities weren't willing to spend.

Worse still, we're talking about it two (or six, depending) years later. Not only do we have people who believe firmly that both elections were stolen, but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power. To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[koreth]

but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power.

To be fair, though, I've heard that about every president since I've been old enough to know what a presidential term was. At this point I'd be surprised if there weren't people thinking that toward the end of a given president's tenure. Happily, it's always a very small minority of extreme left-wingers (the Republican President is going to declare martial law or some national emergency) or right-wingers (the Democratic President is going to cede authority to the UN in exchange for being installed as a figurehead) and not something that most people really give any thought to.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[MindStalker]

He possibly has a subscription so he sees it early, or most likly he has debated this subject before so used his previously canned responce. It doesn't nessesarily make it wrong (though I admit I didn't read it all :)

Either way, the humor of Ohio and Floridas minority district problems are that they were mostly run by Democrats. Sure these minorities might have been disenfranchised, but it was out of incompitance and not nessesarily some scheme.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

Sorry to disappoint, but all of the words are my own, and were written in the 15 minutes or so before the story became public. Slashdot subscribers see stories a bit early.

No, counting ballots doesn't have to be hard. What's extremely hard is:

- Making sure everyone only votes once
- Keeping the entire process anonymous

If you only had to to either instead of both, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, having to do both is hard, and with each and every county running their own elections for tens of millions of people, all with different aims, populations, budgets, and so on, it's a lot harder than you think.

This isn't even about paper versus electronic (because we can make 100% trusted electronic systems, with a permanent voter-verified audit trail being present - but even with a paper trail, a lot of people seriously believe there will still be ways to rig the elections...and beyond that, there will still be claims of long lines, voter threats, and so on). It's about the intrinsic difficulties in doing a one-vote election while maintaining anonymity, and disallowing any external entity to find out who any particular person voted for.

Remember, too, that the voting acts (e.g., HAVA) were designed to allow fair and uniform access to ballots and polling places, while taking advantage of streamlining things with technology - something we have done in every other sector of society. Unfortunately, any federal, state, or local initiatives recommending or mandating electronic voting machines are incomplete without a permanent voter-verified paper trail. With that piece, it doesn't matter how complex it is, whether or not the systems are open source or proprietary, or anything else. But even with a paper trail, there will still be the increasing calls of fraud and disenfranchisement, as people who want to believe that will continue to organize and reinforce each other via the internet. Yes, some of the fraud and disenfranchisement is real. But there are people, as I said, who will continue to believe that any Republican victory is stolen, as if Democrats can't game the system (and make no mistake, they do).

I also don't know what you're talking about when you say that the "GOP" wants a complicated system, when the voting initiatives that mandated and extended things like electronic voting were either solidly Democratic or bipartisan.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[theshibboleth]

Yes there has always been corruption in American politics, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it. The last couple of eletions have been extremely close. As far as people being paranoid about the next election being cancelled, it is disturbing when a sitting administration talks about postponing the election.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[ptbarnett]

Worse still, we're talking about it two (or six, depending) years later. Not only do we have people who believe firmly that both elections were stolen, but we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power.

The right-wing believed Clinton would do the same thing in the late 1990's. Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time.

But, they viewed the 2000 fiasco in Florida through the same lens: for every person that believes that Bush stole that election, there is someone on the opposite side that believes that Gore was narrowly prevented from stealing the election. There is plenty of "evidence" for both, if you carefully choose what to believe.

To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.

I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".

But now, the center is fed up and stays home, leaving the party faithful to battle it out. And the parties need something to motivate their followers, and aren't above stretching the truth a little to do it.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Lonewolf666]

Nothing new has happened on either side in 2000 or 2004 that hasn't ever happened before. That's just a fact of life. These are the same county election entities that have run elections in locales for generations. Yes, things change a bit, especially with the introduction of electronic voting machines (which, ironically, were the result of various Democratic and bipartisan initiatives designed to allow more equal and consistent management of and access to polling places). But all e-voting vendors offer permament voter-verified receipt options on current and some previous models of machines - but these additions cost even more money; money that many municipalities weren't willing to spend.

In the meantime, it has become public knowledge how easy these machines can be manipulated. I do, however, not hear much about consequences. A few states or municipalities seem to take the problem seriously but they are a minority. That does not inspire much trust in future US elections.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[partisanX]

To me, the growing ranks of people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.

The question you have to ask is WHY? Why are people now so inclined to believe in "conspiracy theories" and distrust the government on this level now? Is it really just because of the internet? Could it have anything to do with the fact that this administration and its partisan drones have actively used conspiracy theories in pursuit of their political agenda? "Axis of Evil" conspiracy theory anyone? "Iraq has WMD and is going to use them against Americans" conspiracy theory anyone? "Liberals want to bring down america" conspiracy theory anyone?

When an administration rejects hard facts and logic and reason in its decisicion making process, that has an impact on the psyche of the nation. When an administration continues to lie and justify it's lies, why would any rational citizen in their right mind believe anything they say? They lied to us about wiretapping, secret prisons, and WMDs in Iraq. Why would I or anyone else logically trust what they say?

Indeed, their consistant violation of the trust of the American people is why these things persist. It isn't because of the internet boogeyman or those "whackey" conspiracy theorists. They have created an environment where secret plots and corruption on the level that is being alleged is not only not unthinkable, but seems plausible given their seeming dependency on deception.

Have politicians always lied? Damn straight. I wasn't born yesterday. But the severity of the lies have gotten worse in recent years. And the republicans planted a seed in the minds of the public that honesty and truthfulness was paramount, so much so that it was worth putting the country through an impeachment process because a man purjured himself trying to hide his humanity. Then the republicans get in office and tell lie after lie, which seems sinister in scale compared to what they impeached the previous president over.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[NoOneInParticular]

What keeps on surprising me however, is that the US is the only Western country I know that has a problem with organizing the vote. It's not an issue of scale, as voting really distributes well. Given my knowledge of the US voting system and the system in place in countries where it does work, two main differences jump out that are true in other countries, but not in the US. Maybe fix these.

Everyone registered as a citizen gets a voting ticket by regular mail well before the election. This ticket you need to bring to the voting office and can be checked against ID. No differences between states here

There's one single voting system for the entire nation.

Of course, this goes against the 'States' part of the 'United States', but then again, the reputation of the fairness of the US elections is currently seen as a bit lower than that of Uganda.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

Well, those aren't conspiracy theories.

"Axis of evil" is rhetoric, just as much now as it was then. Accurate? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that it's just political rhetoric, not a conspiracy theory.

As for WMD, to requote something I've said before, which applies here:

To quote something I've said before, but which applies here:

[w]hile I agree that there isn't going to be an Islamic ICBM delivering a nuclear weapon anytime soon, there were *hundreds of tons* of WMD unaccounted for in Iraq, post-1998. The intelligence capabilities of most western European nations, notably the UNSEC members, the UN as an organization, the US, UK, and so on, all believed Iraq to be in continuing possession of the WMD that were unaccounted for after 1998 when the inspectors left. After 7 years of utter lack of cooperation, deception, and all manner of lies from Iraq about its WMD programs, there was zero reason to believe anything changed for the better once it was left unsupervised. Over 700,000 tons of non-WMD UN-banned weapons were found in Iraq since March 2003. Entire fleets of fighter aircraft were found *completely buried* in remote areas of the desert. There is no reason to believe the hundreds of tons of remaining WMD that was unaccounted for with absolutely no acceptable proof of its disposition, combined with Iraq's lies and deception, didn't remain in Iraq's possession. Likely, it is now in the hands of nations like Syria.

The Iraq strategy isn't about "Iraq". It was about picking a nation for which a case could be expeditiously made to the American people, allowing a great number of resources, both monetary and military, to be brought to bear, on an omnibus strategy of political change in the mideast. It was a VERY RISKY proposition, but the threat of Panislamic radicalism is a very, very real one. And no, it's not something we "created". It's something that has come to this point for a variety of reasons, but the US and/or West isn't exclusively or even mostly to blame. (Is it impossible for people to believe that there are factions of people in the world who disagree about a great many things and who desire to kill those who don't agree with them?) And, FYI, we know we have problems with Saudi Arabia, but we hope for a domino affect, and also, we don't overtly attack official allies (for those who ask "Why don't we attack Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq, then?").

The big differences are intent. E.g., intent to kill innocent civilians vs not. Intent to allow people to live in a free(r) society vs not. These are very important distinctions to people who aren't pure moral relativists who think that everyone is just as "right" or justified in doing something as someone else.

While WMD wasn't the real "reason" we went to Iraq - the reasons were MUCH broader and not about "Iraq" per se - it's quite reasonable that the administration and planners would expect to find caches of WMD there, thus justifying the action on its face.

I realize you're talking more about nuclear, here, but if you're going to make incorrect claims about Iraq with regard to WMD, you should take a look at the following and educate yourself:

http://www.iraqwatch.org/wmd/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/

And as for nuclear problems, we now have Iran to worry about as well. If you choose to "blame" the US or US policy on any troubles we have with Iran, feel free. I'm just somewhat dumbfounded by the view that others outside the US are apparently incapable of doing "bad" things on their own without provocation of the evil US, especially given the thousands of years of human history.

As for "secret prisons", again, to requote something I said a couple of days ago for the sake of expediency:

I believe there are extraordinary circumstances where military or intelligence components may want to keep the capture of an enemy completely secret, and that this need

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[0WaitState]

I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".

I'm familiar with right-wing extremism (non-stop elective war, dismantle social security, sell off national parks (Richard Pombo, R-CA), fuck the Geneva convention, spy on anyone, anytime, at the ruling party's whim). But what would the polarizing left-wing extremism be? I mean, Clinton was (is) a centrist. As far as I can tell Dems have been moving to the center in decades after they broke the back of segregation. I mean, the Republican party has controlled all three branches of goverment for the last six years--who's the cause of polarization then?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[spun]

Do you deny that electronic voting and other new technologies make massive vote fraud easier than ever before. I know you, and I know you are a master of spin, so I'd like a yes or no, unqualified answer to that.

I agree that fraud is a problem common to both parties. But historically, it has been worst in the party in power, because they have more power to cover it up. You can argue all you like about the president of Diebold's actual meaning, but the fact is that no one in his position should ever say anything like that, and a company who's president says things like that, and who's machines have been proven to be insecure, should never be allowed anywhere near an election. That's just common sense, and it applies to either side.

Democrats were caught cheating long ago, there haven't been any democratic vote scandals on the same scale for years. If you ca refute this with evidence, I invite you to do so. This story does a good job of showing what the Republicans have done, if you are so sure the Demcrats have operated on the same scale, why don't you provide some references? Otherwise, it's just your opinion, isn't it?

Do the Democrats still cheat? Sure. Do they do it as much as the Republicans? Probably not. Is that why they lost the election? Partly, but their snooze-o-rama candidate probably did far more to lose the election for them than their opponants ever could. As a democrat, I can admit that. Can you, as a Republican admit that perhaps this cheating isn't as bipartisan as you make it out to be? If not, pony up some references or we will all know how much your opinion is really worth.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

I can't believe it.

You'll concede that both parties commit election fraud via various means, but still want to think of what one party does as "worse".

This is exactly the kind of problem I'm talking about.

I'll answer your question: NEITHER is "worse". I'm not talking about it from a scientific or statistical or emotional standpoint. They're both bad, and they're both dirty tricks.

And for what it's worth, I don't believe that people are flat-out denied their rights to vote en masse. I believe that there are hundreds of examples of isolated incidents, and also things like people believing legitimately long lines or legitimate road construction are actually parts of a carefully coordinated conspiracy to prevent people from voting, and the like. Humorously, where people claim the most "disenfranchisement" are in Democratically-controlled counties. This is a county issue, and ones that Democratic and bipartisan initiatives mandating electronic voting machines was ironically intended to solve.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

Do you deny that electronic voting and other new technologies make massive vote fraud easier than ever before. I know you, and I know you are a master of spin, so I'd like a yes or no, unqualified answer to that.

How am I a "master of spin"?

But to answer, it's not that simple, and you know it. Without a permanent voter verified paper trail, OF COURSE e-voting and any new technologies that are missing that crucial piece make the potential for fraud easier - not just for Republicans, but for anyone who wants to do it (unless people believe the e-voting vendors are somehow rigging votes centrally).

So, as it stands right now, "yes". But remember, these were Democratic and bipartisan initiatives that began to phase in and mandate electronic voting. No party benefits from the lack of a paper trail, since anyone of any stripe could potentially tamper with machines, and I fail to see why Republicans would be any more savvy or capable than anyone else at doing it.

Democrats were caught cheating long ago, there haven't been any democratic vote scandals on the same scale for years. If you ca refute this with evidence, I invite you to do so. This story does a good job of showing what the Republicans have done, if you are so sure the Demcrats have operated on the same scale, why don't you provide some references? Otherwise, it's just your opinion, isn't it?

I'm not a Republican operative or consultant (and didn't even vote for Bush), and I don't spend all my days and nights collecting references and examples of vote manipulation on either side. Since you've already acknowledged that everyone cheats, why are you still insistent on wanting the Republican cheating to be "worse". Elsewhere in this thread, someone acknowledged they both cheat, but the Democrats overvote and the Republicans deny voters their right to vote (paraphrasing what he said), again in an attempt to say, essentially, "they may both cheat, but the Republicans do it more/worse/etc." That's just ridiculous.

And I'm sure it's not *identical* between both parties. But I think it's really anyone's "opinion" on who's worse. I personally think there are a lot more people collecting data, information, and anything else they can get their hands on to "prove" that the Republicans stole the elections, because they're the ones in power. It always happens like this: no matter who's in power, the other side always thinks they're up to something. Sometimes they may be. But since the Democrats didn't win either election, it's probably not a priority for the Robert Kennedys of the "other side" to go digging on what the Democrats did wrong, is it?

Further, why has this story been trotted out on slashdot alone 3 times? What can we possibly learn new from the sure-to-be-divisive (or self-reinforcing) "debate" that is going to happen here?

Do the Democrats still cheat? Sure. Do they do it as much as the Republicans? Probably not. Is that why they lost the election? Partly, but their snooze-o-rama candidate probably did far more to lose the election for them than their opponants ever could. As a democrat, I can admit that. Can you, as a Republican admit that perhaps this cheating isn't as bipartisan as you make it out to be? If not, pony up some references or we will all know how much your opinion is really worth.

Where did you get the idea I was a Republican? Remember, I didn't vote for Bush in the last election.

Agreed with regard to being a CEO of an e-voting vendor and even putting yourself in a position to say something remotely like that. It's stupid, and I'm dumbfounded that he'd even do that.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[ksheff]

But it's easier to blame the other side for cheating than it is to fix the incompitance.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[dynamo52]

There has been fraud, corruption, and all manner of crap going on in elections in the US since the beginning of time

While true, There has never been wholesale, systemic manipulation of the electoral process on this scale. Previous acts of fraud tended to be minor and localised, mainly due to an overzaealous member of one or the other parties. The irregularities referrenced in the 200 and 2004 elections, however, appear to be a well planned and concerted effort by the extreme right wing to ensure thier agenda is enacted at all costs.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[partisanX]

Well, those aren't conspiracy theories.

Hogwash.

"Axis of evil" is rhetoric, just as much now as it was then. Accurate? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that it's just political rhetoric, not a conspiracy theory.

Axis of evil is an implication of a conspiracy on the part of the members of said group. It is very much a conspiracy theory in that it implies they are conspiring to do us wrong. Is it rhetoric? Sure, but it is also meant to get people thinking in terms of the axis plotting evil against them.

The often repeated claim, which you could call rhetoric, but which is also clearly a conspiracy theory, is that "liberals want to destroy the country". The people who espouse this will offer "evidence" to their audience to support it. They, in essence, offer factoids about "liberals" and then fill in the gaps as to their meaning.

But perhaps I'm wrong in my semantic use, but please, humor me, and explain to me what is the difference between a group of partisans advancing ideas that another group of partisans are out to destroy america, that a group of nations are out to do evil to us, etc... how are these really different in the effects they have on those that believe it, than the conspiracy theories are?

As for the rest of your stuff, it's all irrelevant to the point of my post.

You are asking for the villification of Bush to stop and you are saying that you view those who believe in "conspiracy theories" as a bigger threat to our system than government. On the former, I disagree, he has reaped what he's sown, on the later, I somewhat agree. Our system is not in a good place when over 1/3rd of the people believe not only that the government could take part(either actively or passively) in a terrible thing like 9/11, but actually did... that is not a good place for our system to be.

But, when you constantly lie, and lie, and lie, what is the logical result of that? People don't trust your word. People don't trust your character. People don't trust you.

This administration has lied, either knowingly or unknowingly on the WMD issue, the secret prisons, the wiretapping, etc... and your post about what you think Iraq was about, if it is indeed true, is a very good example of the people being told lies to hide true intentions(conspiracy theory?). If that's what it was about, then the president should have been forthcoming with our true goals there from day one. To suggest otherwise, is to compromise the integrity of our democratic republic, an integrity that is built on the trust the people have of the government. If the government can't trust the people with the truth, then the people can't trust the government to do their will, and then the conspiracy theories start to take hold. It's cause and effect.

Right or wrong, whether you believe it or not, Clinton lost a lot of clout and respect for himself and the office with the great many Americans when he did what he did

And it's amazing to me that you are sitting here telling me how Clinton lost clout for his lies, while seemingly unwilling to see that Bush has lost clout for his lies too. It really doesn't matter whether you think he deserves to lose clout for his lies, the fact is, he has lost clout and his lies are the reason(whether you think they are "good" lies or not). For the record, I supported Clinton's impeachment at the time, and I would again under the same circumstances. That was all irrelevant to my point.

And on that John Kerry bit...
Don't bother quoting John Kerry to me. I hold both parties in equal contempt. Quoting one liar to justify another means very little to me. I will say this, I don't subscribe to most of the conspiracy theories. In fact, I share a good deal of your concern, but rather than trying to VILLANIZE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE who believe them(which you are clearly trying to do), I see cause and effect at work. A deceptive government does not deserve to be believed. Whether they intentionally decieved or no

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[0WaitState]

Hundreds of examples of isolated incidents? Try 90,000 voters illegally and without notice removed from the Florida voter rolls prior to the 2000 election.

90,000 > 100, even for large values of 100.

The rest of your logic makes no sense: of course Dem precincts complain about disenfranchisement in states with Republican-controlled voting systems (hello, Ohio, Florida).

Tell you what--I'll agree that dirty electioneer tricks are a wash when I see both parties having results that are statistically unexpected. When I see some Dem upset wins in the face of pre and post election polling, to go along with the slew of Repub "upsets", then I'll think its "jest business, y'know?" There haven't been any in a long, long time.

BTW, I do not mean an upset where a candidate started behind in the polls months before the election then came to a win, I mean one where the polls the weeks and days before the election say A wins by 5%, the exit polls say A wins, and yet B somehow squeaks through on the basis of late reporting results, always it's the late, late reporting precincts that push the poll-defying winner over the top.

Six years of one party rule has not been six years of peace and prosperity. I want to make be we can throw the bums out when they screw up, Dem or Repub.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Doc Ruby]

I bet you didn't say anything like that in public in 1996 when Clinton was reelected, reassuring us that any purported Democratic vote fraud was "nothing new, don't worry your pretty little head about it".

Democrats didn't "stand by idly", but were locked out of any action. As you'd know if you'd RTFA, rather than just rush to First Post some spin to excuse Republican vote fraud "because everyone does it".

Don't you think that Harris saying 2004 in Ohio was as bad as it's ever been, meaning it's worse than almost every other election? If 2006 is rigged even worse, will that still be OK? Where is your limit to accepting vote fraud, where you no longer think "bad enough" is OK? When Democrats do it someday?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[spun]

Hey, "master of spin" is a complement. Sort of :-P. You are very good at responding to questions in such a way that it looks as though you have answered them, when in fact you have sidestepped them. Just my opinion, nut I have personally asked you questions before where you have done that. Are you perhaps a lawyer or a politician yourself? Again, it's just my opinion, it sometimes seems as if you care more about appearing to be right than finding out if you are or not.

As for why this story has been trotted out, perhaps it's important that people do something about vote fraud? Your position seems to be "Everyone does it, there's nothing you can do about it, so don't even bother talking about it." That position seems to be designed to encourage feelings of disenfranchisement, which generally swings the vote to the right. Is that what you are trying to do?

You acknowledge that a CEO of the major e-voting machine maufacturer made a comment that could easily be taken to mean "I'm going to help the republicans cheat on elections," but you deny that this is what he meant, based on nothing more than your opinion. But you state it as if it were a fact. Even given this, and no counterexamples on the democratic side, you seem to imply that the cheating cancels out. But you don't actually say that, so that if someone calls you on it, you can deny having said that and claim they misinterpreted you. But of coure, that will be so far down the thread that no one will read it, while everyone reads where you first makes the claim. Then they all walk away thinking you have proved something you not only haven't but would probably deny ever saying. At least, that's the way I've seen you operate in the past.

You may not be a Republican, but you have espoused some very neo-con positions here. Maybe you didn't vote for Bush, maybe you did. I wouldn't put it past you to lie about that to create a more sympathetic climate for yourself. Again, this is all based on your past posts here. Anyone can look them up and see for themselves.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[0WaitState]

Socialised med.

So Britain, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, etc. are all left-wing exteremists. Ok...

Gun control (other then hitting what your aiming at).

Six years of Republican rule, and we still have gun control. If this is such an extreme left-wing issue, how come they haven't done something about it?

BTU taxes, Koyoto treaty.

Actually, these are economic issues, not liberal: BTU taxes and Kyoto treaty is about paying for what you use. There is economic value to dumping your trash (waste, exhaust, etc) without having to pay for it. The above is about measuring and billing for what you dump.

World court. Loss of sovernty to the UN.

Sorry dude, but you're drinking some serious bunker koolaid there.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Nothing new has happened on either side in 2000 or 2004 that hasn't ever happened before.

In 2000 and again in 2004 the elections in a swing state were supervised by one candidate's bleeding *campaign manager*. That lethally toxic level of conflict of interest may have happened before, but it can't have been often, and it's always unforgivable.

>we have people who literally believe something will cause a suspension of the 2008 elections, allowing Bush to remain in power.

Simple fact, not conspiracy theory or opinion, is that the DHS has already studied how to postpone a Presidential election. Official denials that anyone would ever do this came in short order, from Condi Rice and maybe others.

An election might result in someone who critizes the government coming to power. Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2001 "to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists". Add the John Yoo theory of unlimited war powers. Follow the logic a short distance. Can a nation at war risk the election of a government that will "aid" the enemy?

Yes, elections are in the Constitution, but then so is habeas corpus (Article I, Section 9): so is Congressional authority "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces" (Article I Section 8), while this administration claims that Congress can't even outlaw torture: so is a prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure: so is a speedy and public trial: so is a ban on torture (8th amendment): so is the exclusive authority of Congress to declare war (Article I Section 8): so is free speech, but someone who holds up a "No War for Oil" sign in a crowd of pro-Bush demonstrators has been arrested and prosecuted.

>people who believe that with all their heart - growing mostly because of the internet, and sources of information that reinforce what they want to believe - are actually more of a threat to our system of government than anything else.

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."

  John Philpot Curran

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[canicus]

If you can't read that, then I certainly hope you didn't vote. How could you ever read one of the lengthier articles out there to inform yourself?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

spun,

While I appreciate that you're fairly sensible when you talk to me, you use half of your post to discredit what I'm saying based on things you think might be true about me instead of speaking to any of my points. I'm not saying vote fraud is a good thing. You don't really have to believe anything I say, but I'm genuine when I say it. It's pretty easy for people to find out who I am and what I do. I'm not astroturfing and I'm not trying to create disenfranchisement to swing future votes "to the right".

Also, I'm not saying OR implying that it "cancels out". I'm just saying that the two elections since 1996, along with the rise of the internet since 1996, and the ability to exchange and collect information that comes along with it, combined with the increased use of machines that many people feel may lend themselves to tampering (whether or not they actually ARE tampered with), and given that the Republicans have been in power in the White House for the last two elections, creates an environment where people will certainly be digging for everything they can that might support that Republicans "stole" the election(s), and many, many people will read and spread only things that support and reinforce that view in themselves and others.

You don't have to believe me when I said I didn't vote for Bush in 2004. But it's a point of information, and I find it ironic that you're doing the very thing I have a problem with, which is attributing even what *I'm* doing to a conspiracy theory of sorts, albeit a small one. I vote for candidates of many different political stripes, mostly Republicans and Democrats (as opposed to independents, libertarians, etc. - and even then, mostly non-Republicans in 2000 and 2004, as it happens). Different candidates at different levels of government often have different ideas and ideals, some of which are more or less applicable to politics and government at local, state, and federal levels.

As far as US foreign policy is concerned, I definitely do espouse neoconservative positions, and indeed believe in many of those principles firmly. I also believe that the general neoconservative movement is missing a lot of pieces and ignores a lot of other critical factors. But aside from that, I legitimately believe that, e.g., Panislamic radicalism and continuing US/Western access to critical resources (in light of demands on the same from China and India, and even considering potential future alternative replacements) are the two greatest challenges of the next fifty years. Does not that not mean other things aren't important? Of course not. But I think those are two items of grave concern to the United States and Europe in particular.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Israel? They have socialized Med, are they left-wing extremists?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Coryoth]

I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame. I believe the traditional coalitions of "left" and "right" that once wanted similar things (and differed only on the details) are drifting further apart as the extremists take control of the respective major parties. In the past (past 30-40 years), it typically happened to only one party and the other captured the "center".

The parties aren't getting wider apart in their policy, they are simply getting more divisive in the marketing. In practice the two parties are more similar in ideology than ever. Certainly they're more similar in methodology than ever - politics has ceased to be about ideas or leadership and has become about marketing, focus groups, and push button issues. The key to political campaigns in this day and age is analyse your potential voters and find whatever issues have emotional ties. Usually those issues are trivial ones because ultimately it's the little things that we encounter in day to day life that irk us, it's the things that often don't matter in the grand scheme that tend to piss us off in that deep emotional way that is being exploited by politicians. Once the political strategists have gotten a decent list of irrelevant but emotionally charged issues they use them as convenient push buttons to try and herd people in the direction they want. But they've gotten so obsessed with all the trivial issues themselves that they don't even have a direction anymore and are, ultimately, themselves driven by whatever helps them push the electorates buttons. Mostly that means cash for marketing campaigns. Both major parties in the US have become parties of corporate control. Sure they have their hand picked issues to bicker over, and certainly those are highly emotionally charged issues so that they're highly divisive, but ultimately they re both selling the same thing.

So let's repeat that: the parties haven't gotten more extremist over the last few decades. Rather they have simply gotten a lot better at mining the public psyche to find out what particular issues and bullet points currently carry the greatest emotional weight, and at focussing all discussion on those bullet points. Instead of considering the powerpoint style rhetoric on the hot button issues of the day, try comparing actual legislative records - what actually gets done - and compare that to legislative records of the past: In practical terms the two parties are more similar than ever.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[jazman_777]

"No one is thinking of postponing the elections."

As Bismarck once said, "Nothing is confirmed until officially denied."

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Mr2001]

And yes, politicians always lie, but when you say "Iraq has WMD", and you genuinely believe it (especially since the collective intelligence communities of the Western world believed it, the UN "believed" [un.int] it (but wasn't ready to commit to military action for a wide variety of reasons), and Saddam himself believed it), and then it later turns out to not be true, is that a "lie"?

If you believe it based on a gut feeling rather than evidence, it's incompetence. We legitimately expect our leaders to do their best to find out in good faith whether what they're saying is true. For that purpose, it doesn't matter how many other people believe it; an opinion poll is only evidence of those opinions, not the underlying facts.

Now, if you do have evidence, but it comes from a group you set up specifically to find evidence that supports your position, while ignoring evidence to the contrary--and especially if you force the inspectors on the ground out before they can reach a conclusion that might contradict you--then you may as well be lying. In that case, what you're doing is setting yourself up so you can believe something that isn't true. The difference between that and a more blatant lie is just philosophical nitpicking: you're lying to yourself by relying on cherry-picked intelligence, so the things you say based on that are either lies, or as close to lies as you can possibly get.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[vijayiyer]

In the United States, the Democrats, for the most part, are firmly against checking ID when voting, with the reasoning that it discriminates against those without ID. Unfortunately, that destroys the integrity of the voting process.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[LionKimbro]

Hm; This seems to be mainly metaphysical calculation in your head: "Center: Good, Off-Center: Bad."

"Of course, it didn't happen. And it's about as likely to happen this time."

One is spoken of in terms of a certainty, the other in terms of a probability.

Nary a shred of evidence, not even an argument.

Just: "Probably not." "I don't think so." "I don't know, and it's not worth checking."

Fascinating.

You can get away with anything, when people think like this.

I think it's good that you can cast off concerns about the world for a time, hole up in yourself, and so on. But I wouldn't go around encouraging others to do so.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[KingSkippus]

"Discriminates against the homeless" is a perfect excuse for allowing people to double- and triple-vote. Of course, getting a false driver's license is also a way to multiple-vote.

It doesn't matter, you can't discriminate against the homeless, period. (Duh.) They are, for the most part, citizens, too, and therefore, have the right to vote. If it comes down to discriminating against the homeless or figuring something else out, well, we'll just have to figure something else out. Or else next time, maybe we'll just discriminate against you.

Maybe the Iraqi ink-stain is the best way to ensure single-voting. But I still want each voter to have a signed gov't picture ID.

Why? Does anyone else remember the "good old days" when the people in this country didn't have to show thier "papers" just to exercise their basic rights?

A literacy test would also be useful. But not a poll tax.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I run across people with the nutty idea of keeping certain undesirable U.S. citizens from voting a lot. Wake up, Sherlock, illiterate people have just as much right to choose who represents them as literate people do.

It sure would be personally convenient for me if the country was run by people who catered to people just like me. Unfortuantely, I don't get that luxury, and neither do you. The purpose of government is to represent all of the people: black, red, yellow and white; male and female; smart and stupid; rich and poor; everyone.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[niktemadur]

Yes, there was a faction within the Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats, led by Strom Thurmond, that wanted segregation to remain in place. Thurmond filibustered for 24 hours, by himself in the spotlight, an unwinnable vote to maintain segregation. After his white supremacism was defeated in Congress, Thurmond switched to the Republican Party. Go figure...

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[stinerman]

things like people believing legitimately long lines or legitimate road construction are actually parts of a carefully coordinated conspiracy to prevent people from voting

Sir, the facts are that Republican precincts got more voting machines than Democratic precincts in Ohio. Voting machines in Ohio are distributed by the Secretary of State (in this case J. Kenneth Blackwell) upon the advice of county BOE chairpersons. That is, the chairperson puts in an order for what they think they need, but the SoS determines what county gets what. You may now draw any conclusions from these facts that you like.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[hswerdfe]

your system of government has created this 2 party polerized state.
Its a winner take all system with no room to encurage the middle ground.
you need to move to a system that allows voters to come to a comprimise,
I would suggest getting rid of the office of president all togeather.
but if you must still have it use a ranked ballot of some sort.
Condorcet would be my first choice but honestly anything is better then your current system.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Lord Kano]

Six years of Republican rule, and we still have gun control. If this is such an extreme left-wing issue, how come they haven't done something about it?

Were you in the US two years ago? The Clinton gun ban's sunset clause removed the largest gun control act of a generation.

In case you don't get what happened, let me sum it up.

In 1994, when the Clinton administration wanted to pass their gun ban, a congressional majority was not certain. As a compromise measure, they included a clause to make the law only last 10 years. Their thinking was that they'd have control of the congress and white house then so it would be little more than a rubber stamp to make the existing, but temporary, law permanent. Well, in the 1994 election gun rights voters were quite upset with the Democrats so they turned out in droves to vote against them. The Democrats lost the House and the Senate. In his 1995 State of The Union Address, Clinton even admitted that this loss was because of his gun ban.

Bush winning the 2000 election gave us two of the three branches of government. When the law was about to expire, President Bush (in a brilliant example of politicking) said that if congress passed the extension of the ban, he would sign it. President Bush KNEW that the ban had no chance. But saying that he'd sign it if passed took a huge campaign issue out of Kerry's pocket.

LK

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[DavidTC]

No. Just, no.

You are 90% correct, in that the two parties are mostly the same. However, the Administration we have is insane, and doesn't actually match either party, either what they actually believe or even claim to believe. One party is John Jackson, and one party is Jack Johnson, and the Administation is evil Richard Nixon, to make a Futurama reference.

But the Republicans won't get rid of the Administration or even restrain it. They are enabling it to completely beat our military up against rocks until it breaks. They are enabling it to cause terrorism, and violating everything we stand for, by imprisoning innnocent people. They are enabling it to debate torture like it's some sort of fucking game that we might allow for political reasons, where there is no legal reason that Bush can't crush the testicles of innocent children if he thinks it might get us useful information.(1) They are enabling it to arguing that, yeah, wiretapping without warrant is illegal, but not the 'illegal' kind of illegal. They are enabling it to rip off the entire nation with no-bid contracts. They are enabling it to replace competant people, even in traditionally non-political ares of the executive branch, with incompetant cronies. They are enabling the Administration to literally destroy this nation.

I don't get a flying fuck about what the Republicans 'policies' are at this point. I tended to agree with them about half the time, and the Democrats about half the time, but they have betrayed their duty to their country because of their loyality to party. If they'd have reversed course earlier, okay, they made a mistake. But it's too late now. I'll never vote for anyone who's still enabling the Administration ever again, under any circumstances, Democrat or Republican. I'll vote for the fucking Nazi party first...at least they're honest.

1) I'm not kidding. Google it.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[DavidTC]

I shouldn't do that, but let's dissect this troll.

Like making 100,000 on a 1,000 cattle futures investment (where can I get a deal like that!);

Stupidest. Conspiracy. Ever. First of all, the cattles future market was insane at that time. Hillary did, indeed, make that much money. In fact, she had to have made that money, you can't just magically get money out of a futures market. What she shouldn't have been able to do is trade on margin like she did. But a) she didn't break that rule, her broker did, and b) that rule is to keep problem from happening when people can't cover losses, which Hillary Clinton certanly could have done. Of course, all this was in 1979.

egregiously firing the WH travel office staff w/o any justification whatever;

Um, you mean the White House Travel staff that is the personal staff of the president, and traditionally gets replaced at each new administration? The travel staff that was already under investigation for misdeed done under a previous administration?

supposedly lost law firm billing records miraculously showing up in the WH living quarters year later;

You mean the billing records that...um...revealed nothing? (Why you think it's amazing that personal records of the president would be in the presidental living quarters is a bit beyond me.)

Webster Hubble in jail;

Okay, now I'm confused. You think he shouldn't be? He defrauded people and evaded taxes! I understand, though if you're saying it sucked that the Clintons misjudged him as trustworthy. (OTOH, don't start 'Clinton was friends with criminals'. You know the expression about what people in glass houses shouldn't do.)

Craig Livingstone(!);

Yup. Filegate sucked, and the Clintons might have been involved. And now I must point out 'glass houses' again with the fact the current president is wiretapping whoever he wants to.

a president lying in front of a grand jury about a stupid affair w/ an intern during the same timeframe as our embassies and barracks are bombed in the ME and Africa by the folks who would eventually take down the WTC;

Yes, because logically if he'd been telling the truth, that...no, wait, he'd still been questioned. Well, surely if he hadn't been doing anything illegal he wouldn't have been questioned...no, wait, he wasn't doing anything illegal before testifying. What was the claim again? The president was distracted by people making random and eventually disproven accusations against him? Well, that's hardly his fault, is it? You can complaing about The Lie, but The Lie is not a cause of the distraction.

illegally obtaining FBI records of the majority of republican lawmakers to dig up embarrasing dirt (unreal, and you guys piss and moan about wiretapping a few arabs with terrorist ties. the fucking gall!).

Yes, because we know for a fact that's all Bush is doing, because the process is so open.

Maybe if your buddy Bill had been more concerned about national security as opposed to getting his cock sucked 3000 people wouldn't have died.

Are we talking about the same Bill here? Because the Bill I know did do something about national security...he arrested the WTC bombers, for one thing. He repeatedly went after bin Laden, although at the time that was called 'wagging the dog' to try to distract everyone from his multiple murders or whatever. He warned the next president, he even made a plan for the invasion of Afganistan.

And interesting universe you live in where a blowjob is too time consuming, especially when you consider that Bush has now put in more vacation time than any two term president in history, and still has two years to go.

Maybe if Al Fucking Gore hadn't contested the election the GWB administration would have been put together in the normal timeframe, and we'd have been a couple of months up on the disaster of a National Security policy that w

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Chas]

So Britain, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, etc. are all left-wing exteremists. Ok...

No. But none of those countries have a population of 300 MILLION people, with fully 1/3rd getting ready to hit retirement.

Hit the CIA factbook and you'll see that, all together, the named countries only exceed the US population by about 15%. The cash outlay for something like that would be staggering.

Six years of Republican rule, and we still have gun control. If this is such an extreme left-wing issue, how come they haven't done something about it?

Because it's harder to repeal a bad law than it is to pass one.

BTU taxes and Kyoto treaty is about paying for what you use.

No, it's merely a set of socialist transfer payments to 3rd world countries. The US is already investing trillions in foreign aid. Why the fuck should we be required to pay more? ESPECIALLY when even the nations signatory to things like Kyoto are ignoring the guidelines set up? More toothless, but feel-good, legislation? No thanks!

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[FredThompson]

Yes, Italy most certainly is a very socialist, left-wing country.

They have a crushingly burdomesome social welfare system which rewards people to STOP working. They also have a very active Communist party. Yup, Commie, hammer and sickle on a red flag. Take a look at who holds the highest political offices in Italy. Income and business taxes in Italy are about twice that of the United States.

I've been in Italy for 3-4 months every year for the past 10 years, seen this with my own eyes. Every manufacturer I represent from Italy is trying to move to the U.S. because Europe is so stagnant and the welfare systems crush all incentives. Never mind their fears of the Muslim invasion (8x the birth rate of the "native" population) and the EU regulating virtually everything. Great Britain isn't that much better, actually.

Sorry, bud, those most certainly ARE very socialist, left-wing, countries who have crippled their economies. Granted, they're not all as bad as the French who decided it's illegal to fire unproductive workers or the Germans who have all but destroyed their industry with welfare programs and now farm out huge amounts of manufacturing to Czech and Polish factories. They've chosen to be socialist and destroy incentive to produce.

Do those countries have jack-booted secret police in the Stalinist model? No.

How your post got modded to 5 is beyond me, unless whoever modded you up has as little familiarity with economics as you do.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[nutrock69]

Sorry, that's what I get for thinking the quote was in context, which was in a reply to a post claiming that people think the 2008 elections will be indefinitely postponed. Silly me. Of course the repubs wouldn't try to postpone the 2004 election, since they already had that one in the bag and didn't have to worry about such things until the end of our tyrant's second term.

Remember - Hitler was elected before he stopped holding elections, and many of his other techniques are in use today. Using fear to keep us in line, claiming we are always minutes away from being attacked. Casting political opponents and outspoken citizens as being unpatriotic simply because they disagree. Starting wars under false pretense to keep the military growing at a rate that is able to sustain a police state. I especially like how Bush used the word "Nazi" this past friday as a general term to describe people who are fighting him in congress. I've never seen a blacker pot or kettle. Hermann Göring has a famous quote citing the best way to steal and hold political power - it's a good read, and every single thing in it is currently being done by the Bush administration. Are we going to learn from history before it becomes too late to do anything about it?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Randall311]

You're giving the government wayyy to much credit here. There is no "well planned" effort to commit voter fraud. There isn't even a half-assed plan to commit voter fraud. If you've ever worked for the U.S. Government, you would realise just how hilariously nonsencicle these conspiracy theories sound. Neither one of those elections you speak of were "rigged", nor is their any evidence to the contrary that cannot be explained from shear ineptitude.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[ceejayoz]

the Germans who have all but destroyed their industry with welfare programs and now farm out huge amounts of manufacturing to Czech and Polish factories

Um, it's called outsourcing, the US is a world leader at it, and it's hardly a socialist practice - quite the opposite, really.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[daveschroeder]

For the 2004 presidential election, I voted in relatively affluent Madison, WI, on the west, suburban side of the city, about 2 blocks away from one of the wealthiest developments in Madison (High Point Estates). My wife and I waited about 45 minutes to vote when we went at 7:30am. The line was very long, and about 90% of the people in line were white and at LEAST middle class, with mostly upper middle class (and quite a few who would qualify as upper class or wealthy, given the area that is contained in this precinct).

Madison is one of the most liberal, left-leaning cities in the country, and Dane county one of the most liberal/"progressive" counties. From a financial perspective, the city and county governments aren't hurting. I know some people will think I'm lying or making up the wait, but anyone who voted at the polling station on McKenna Road can easily verify this. The point? There can be lines anywhere, and there were...all over Dane county, but particularly in Madison.

Does this mean there was a concerted effort to suppress the upper middle class white vote on the west side of Madison?

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[jedidiah]

Nope. Capitalism is the notion that people will be productive when they have something to gain from it. Whether or not someone chooses to be a "do-gooder" is entirely orthogonal to this. What you are attempting to confuse through Keynes is the notion that building wealth in general is beneficial in general.

You only need to look at the successfully capitalist or quasi-capitalist countries to see this bourne out.

There's also a nice inverse relationship demonstrated by the nations that choose to interfere with productivity for whatever reason (Mexico, Belarus).

Industrial England may have more rober baron bastards but it will also have more resources available to the do-gooders.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[phantomlord]

then you're going to need to explain why black voters are almost all Democrats and why rural Southern whites are almost all Republicans

Democrat to inner city(which is primarily minority): "The republicans want to starve your children, kill the elderly and take away your entitlements. You need to vote for us to stop them. BTW, rural america is a bunch of uneducated racist rednecks."
Republican to rural America(which is primarily white): "The democrats continue to raise taxes to give your money to the people in the cities who would rather collect a welfare check than go to work. Vote for us and we'll reform the system."

There isn't really any racism involved, it's all about one side demogoguing the other to pander to their constituents and they're both really good at it.

Slow news day indeed...

[TopShelf]

Rehashing a Rolling Stone article from June, that was already covered on /. at the time? Running a dupe a few days or a week later is one thing, but it's been 3 months!

Re:Slow news day indeed...

[Keebler71]

Not to mention the fact that the story has been pretty much debunked already. The number one claim of "proof" that the election was stolen was the dicrepancy between the exit polls and the final polls. The company that did the exit polling did their own investigation (as seen in their 77-page report) and found that

• They screwed up.
• The early numbers released were inaccurate due to bad gender participation weighting factors. (the end-of-day results were actually much closer to the actuals than most people realize)
• There was no difference in exit poll errors between touch screen and other methods."Some have suggested that the exit poll data could be used as evidence of voter fraud in the 2004 Election by showing error rates were higher in precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting equipment. Our evaluation does not support this hypothesis. In our exit poll sample overall, precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting have essentially the same error rates as those using punch card systems. In the larger urban areas these systems had lower WPEs than punch card precincts."
• Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll
• strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate

I haven't given any credence to the notion that the election was stolen since I read this piece in the NYtimes. It follows Dem operatives in Ohio on election day in 2004. It documents their intial happiness and as they spend the day trying to get the vote out (for the Dems) and increasing nervousness as they see more and more indications that the Republicans simply had a stronger get-out-the-vote campaign. (Read it all - whatever your political leanings, it is very educational as to the lengths the parties will go to try to swing the vote up to the last second).

Re:Slow news day indeed...

[DisKurzion]

Mod parent up. People love conspiracy theories against the party in power, and this is no different.

That being said, if people really want change, they'll vote Libertarian. Democrats are the same as Republicans, except they take their money from different interest groups.

Re:Slow news day indeed...

[volkris]

You overlook the obvious answer: Kerry supporters are the ones looking for change so it stands to reason that they'd be the ones more likely to voice that opinion to a survey taker.

Re:Slow news day indeed...

[fymidos]

>Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll

This is not a problem for a survey. In exit polls, voters are chosen in a random way, (say every 5th that comes out the door), it's not up to them. And if someone diclines to answer, it is noted, and counted in the statistical error:
from 100 ppl, 40 voted for A, 30 voted for B, 20 for C and 10 refused, so you have a 40% +- 10% for A. You can further narrow down the error, but the point is that whether A's are more likely to participate is of no importance in a correct survey:
If there were such errors the survey methodology was wrong.

>strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate

Again, no problem with that if you corectly analyze the data.

There is however, one way for such a survey to be wrong:
If a huge number of B voters, decide to vote in, say, the last hour of the vote, which is clearly a possibility, as they are worried by earlier exit polls that show that A>B. Even so, if the survey continues untill the end of the process, the final data will be correct.

such an intellectual source

[dingDaShan]

We are talking about a Rolling Stone article... a half-gossip magazine. The "entertainment industry's" take on politics... why is this even on Slashdot? Of course the election was rigged! This would explain why the disjointed, disorganized, and divided Democratic party lost an election to an incumbent. Lets just keep making excuses if it makes us feel better.

Re:such an intellectual source

[Overly Critical Guy]

Exactly. The article was written by ROBERT KENNEDY, JR. It's like trusting a reporting a global warming written by Dick Cheney.If there had been a massive voter fraud conspiracy in 2004, we'd have known about it by now. Articles like this love to paint the GOP as the bad guys and conveniently forget that Democrats were, for instance, slashing the tires of GOP voter vans on election morning and registering dead people to vote. A bunch of stuff happened from both sides, but for some reason, magaines and newspapers only remember one side doing it, as if the poor, innocent Democrats just never do anything wrong. If the GOP had been registering dead people and paying homeless folks with drugs to go into voting booths, it'd be in Rolling Stone, but because the magazine leans left (as does most of the media, proven by a UCLA-Standford study on the subject), we don't hear about it.

Re:such an intellectual source

[Roger Wilcox]

All of these ad-hominem attacks on Robert Kennedy and Rolling Stone do nothing to address the questions that the article raises. They do allow many responders to sidestep the issues and smile smugly to themselves.

Nowhere in Kennedy's article or in the discussion of his article here on Slashdot has anyone claimed that Democrats are angels sent from Heaven to save us from the evil GOP. Many responders have pointed out that the Dems cheat as well, and no one is trying to refute this.

If you wish to convincingly discredit the arguments presented in the article (which, by the way, are backed with extensive reference material,) point out where its arguments are flawed. I have no doubt that Kennedy and the rest of the people that worked on research for this article put countless hours into assembling and analyzing the information it presents. Your quick and derisive response shows that you didn't even bother to think about the information that the article brings to the table. If you think that they are full of shit (and many of you seem to,) show the rest of us where they are pulling the wool over our eyes so that we might be enlightened as well. If they are fabricating the material in this article, I think we'd all appreciate reasoned evidence that they are doing so.

Obviously, there are people in here who are supporters of the Bush administration who do not want to hear that their pony is a cheater. Consider though, that a system which continues to allow anyone to cheat - your pony or mine - is headed to a bad place.

Washington State

[deanj]

If you want to see what a real stolen election looks like, take a close look at what happened in Washingon State when they tried to elect the last governor. They kept recounting until they got the result they desired, and then told everyone to stop.

THAT'S a stolen election.

Re:Washington State

[dingDaShan]

I don't see a Kennedy writing an article on the .ooo45 percentage point margin of victory for the Democrat winner of the Gubernatorial election in Washington... hmmm

Re:Washington State

[Vicissidude]

Yeah, and Dino Rossi could have continued by contesting the last recount as well. But, he chose not to. His loss.

The Secretary of State for Washington is a Republican. If there were any problems with the election, he certainly would have said something.

Re:Washington State

[Noksagt]

THAT'S a stolen election.

As a Washington state voter (an East sider at that!), I can tell you it wasn't a stolen election. It was a close election. There is a big difference.

Wikipedia has a nice summary.

But, in short: The dems lost both the first count and the machine recount (which they were legally entitled to). They did, however win the hand recount (which they were also legally entitled to).

The GOP's lawsuit contesting the election was dismissed by the Chelan County (a republican county) Court.

What was really disgusting is the GOP made personal attacks against the democrats for asking for a recount when the GOP was winning by a narrow margin, but then immediately started acting like the dems when they lost. I think that the WA vote was handled as well as could be expected other than this hypocrisy.

Re:Washington State

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>They kept recounting until they got the result they desired, and then told everyone to stop.

They went through precisely the recounts allowed and required by law, under the supervision of a Republican secretary of state. I remember when conservatives were in favor of the rule of law.

Re:Washington State

[ksheff]

Are you better off than you were in 2000, before President Bush?

Yes.

Re:Washington State

[jcr]

For that matter, how about JFK's run in 1960? Nixon knew all about the graveyard vote in Chicago, and the ballot-box stuffing in West Virginia, but he decided that calling for a recount would damage the country. He chose instead to run again another day. If Gore had taken the high road in 2000, instead of letting his campaign staff go on a tear of blaming everyone from Katherine Harris to Ralph Nader, he probably could have won in 2004.

-jcr

Re:Washington State

[AlbionTourgee]

Hmmm. Sounds kind of like the Florida election in 2000, when the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the counting. Actually, in Washington, they counted the number of times required by law, then we had a big lawsuit which the losing Republican brought. He tried to prove fraud, and lost the lawsuit, too. Foul play, cried the Republicans, who had cried sour grapes at the Dems about Florida. At least, in Washington, the court didn't stop the counting! What the WA election really brings up is, the question, when is an election a tie? As in Florida 2000, and several other counts I can remember, the margin of victory was less than the expected error of counting as I see it. For example, if you have 3 million votes, and the difference between the candidates' votes is less than 100, to give a striking example, really, it's a tie. We can't count accurately enough to have a meaningful difference. Given the variety of polling places, ambiguities of votes, etc. etc., the margin of error is just too great, even if you don't consider potential fraud or other manipulation of the vote. I think we should declare such an election to be a tie, and do whatever is done by law when we have a tie. I for one can't see how it's fair to count down to the razor margin where anyone who thinks about it realizes the error is greater than the vote-difference. (Aside: On the federal level, I don't know what would be done given our screwy electoral vote system. Any sensible system would divide the electoral vote from the state proportionally to the popular vote, but we insist on winner-take-all, meaning that in a national election, a state like Wisconsin might get more campaign attention than California, because of a closer division of the vote. This is unfair. (To Wisconsin, because they probably would get about 10,000 political ads a day on radio, TV, and those horrible auto-calls with recorded messages.))

KIcking up an ant's nest

[rumblin'rabbit]

Do you ever get the feeling that the people posting these stories do so just cause they like to rattle people's cages?

Democrats versus Republicans
Creationism versus evolution
Open software versus proprietary

These are all sure to create vicious back-and-forth arguments that'll put the responses over that magical 300 number.

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[Stonent1]

Maybe we should start moderating the stories? I give this one (-1 Flamebait)

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[deanj]

Yep. That's exactly what they're doing.

It's a left-leaning site. I have NEVER seen a right-leaning article approved here. Ever.

It does drive traffic though, so they're still making money, which is why they do it in the first place.

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[Flounder]

Wow, if that article is your idea of "open discussion and reason"....

Or is it simply more Democratic "free speech and tolerance, unless you disagree with us, then it's theft/fraud/racist/sexist/facist"

Like the ABC movie "The Path To 9/11"?? Yeah, threatening to revoke a network's broadcast license because you disagree with the content of their programming isn't censorship.

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[Temsi]

This is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with the "content" of a film.
This is a matter of the filmmakers sticking to the truth when dealing with a subject matter of this importance.
This is a matter of the filmmakers not claiming the film is based on the 9/11 Commission Report, when it clearly contradicts it.
This is a matter of ABC taking responsibility for serving the public trust, which is a qualification for their free use of OUR airwaves. Deliberately misleading and lying to your audience to score political points, is not serving the public interest, nor is it worthy of the public's trust. THAT is why lawmakers raised the licensing issue. (And by the way, you can't revoke a "network's" broadcast license, as it doesn't have one. Only the affiliates have broadcast licenses, so no lawmaker can shut down ABC as a whole, they'd have to go after each individual affiliate - which won't happen).

Remember the hoopla a few years ago when The Reagans was supposed to air on CBS? Republicans made such a major stink about it that CBS caved and didn't air it (it played on Showtime instead, which is also owned by Viacom). So don't think for a moment that objecting to a TV mini-series is a "leftist" thing to do. The funny thing... The Reagans was more factually accurate than The Path to 9/11.

I frankly don't see anything in your comment that could be considered an actual argument... more like regurgitation of Limbaugh's or Novak's talking points. But I could be wrong. It could just be your own mis-informed opinion. Somehow I doubt it. Republicans are renowned sheep.

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[Quantam]

It's a left-leaning site. I have NEVER seen a right-leaning article approved here. Ever.

I think the reason for that should be pretty self-evident. Just look at the left's policies from the perspective of the average Slashdot geek:
Welfare: Because working takes time away from completing my tier 17 class set
No war: Because I can only hit stuff in Counterstrike
No warrant-less surveillance: Because not everyone in my private collection is 18
Anti-trust legislation: Because Microsoft needs to die
Abortion: Because if I ever manage to find a girl that'll sleep with me, I sure don't want to have to worry about multiplication errors
Gay marriage: Because I'll probably never find that girl anyway

Need I go on?

Re:KIcking up an ant's nest

[swelke]

Like the ABC movie "The Path To 9/11"?? Yeah, threatening to revoke a network's broadcast license because you disagree with the content of their programming isn't censorship.

It's not that they "disagree" with the content, but that the content is factually incorrect about important (even nation-shaking) events. Either it's factually correct or it's not, but this is absolutely not about "agreement", it is about documented fact (I have not studied said documentation fully enough to know exactly what it says, however). People on a certain side of the political spectrum seem to have trouble distinguishing the two. The number of people who blindly believe that film could very well change the outcome of the midterm election. That just might be adequate to revoke a broadcast license (but since the alleged falsification was in favor of the party currently in power, it will never happen).

That being said, even lies are quite often protected speech, depending on the circumstances. What might come into play, however, is slander. As best I understand it, slander requires both that the statement be false (and known to the speaker to have been false), and to have been said with malicious intent. If I'm incorrect about that, please someone correct me.

BFD

[BCW2]

Like this is different from any other election? Look up what happened in 1960 in Texas and Illinois if you think 2000 or 2006 were the most crooked. The only difference was that Nixon refused to demand a recout because it would hurt the country and the last two don't care how much damage they do!

Re:BFD

[Scudsucker]

I might also point out that our Electoral College, as antiquated as it seems to some, has one great feature that (to me) redeems all of its faults: it tends to limit the scope of fraud (and the motivation to commit fraud) to a small subset of closely contested states.

Not if the staticians are correct, it isn't. Accoring to the exit polls, Kerry won by a landslide.

WTF is this garbage?!?

[the_skywise]

So now slashdot is reduced to pandering political gossip?

Any particular POLITICAL reason Slashdot waited until mid september to post a story about a JUNE Rolling Stone article?

I thought this was stuff that mattered...

[hawks5999]

C'mon Slashdot. This isn't news relevant to nerds or stuff that matters.

Ooh, a political flame war

[loraksus]

*grabs popcorn*

Seriously though, Diebold machines are a joke. What I don't understand is why widespread vandalism of these machines hasn't been done.
The exploits are, from what I understand, incredibly simple.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that even if Osama bin Laden won the 2008 presidential election based on votes from machines, it would just be blamed on "terrorist hackers" and no actual accountability would be implemented.
Then, 2 years later, the American public would go back to voting on the same buggy machines, as oblivious as usual. Nothing would of have changed.

Re:Ooh, a political flame war

[couchslug]

*grabs some of your popcorn*

I'm far more frightened by voter stupidity than election fraud, but would like to see widespread cracking of Diebold machines because that is the only way the public will exert pressure for change.
Theoretical exploitation of teh mysterious boxes is one thing, but grossly hacking an election would get the attention of the average tard on the street.

Re:Moo

[kjart]

Um, this is a bogus story. Sorry.

So where is your fact checking? I followed reference number 6 and it appeared to be accurate.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

So whats wrong with number 6? It's not a link to the onion or something inane like that, it looks like a real newspaper article about a Republican PR company sending out letters claiming that it's affiliated with America Votes, when America Votes has no knowledge of it, and as a non-partisian organization wouldn't have affiliated with a Republican firm or provided a phonenumber to a voice message asking people if they're interested in hitting the streets to get people to vote Republican.

WAAAAAA!!!!

[kaufmanmoore]

If Bush couldn't be ousted in '04 and if the Dems can't take control of Congress maybe its something they're doing wrong, cause Bush isn't doing anything right.

Cry Cry Cry

[jellomizer]

I am not a fan of our current president and I have never voted for him (but I did vote) But the democrats were stupid enough to put a Northern Liberal Democrat against a South Western Republican. So what it did was create a polarized nation during the election, it forced people to be deadly afraid of the other side. So they all voted for one side or the other. So being that bush won, all the people who got all hyped up the Bush will be the end of the world are now going on conspiracies and trying to find any thing to make them seem like they were cheated. While it was a fair fight and they lost. If the democrats were more willing to get a more middle of the road candidate they could have one. But they were betting on that GWB wouldn't win because he didn't win the last election with a majority vote so they were betting that if they get a Full to the left Democrat then they would win hands down. But guess what it didn't work. Next time I hope they get a more middle of the road democrat and perhaps I may vote for them.

Re:Cry Cry Cry

[Stalyn]

George W. Bush was born in Connecticut and went to college in Massachusetts (Yale and Harvard). The whole North vs. South or West-East Coast vs. Mid-West is all cooked up by the political party machines to make you afraid of their opponent. In reality the majority of America is pretty close on a lot of issues. The only really divisive issues are abortion and gay-rights which are of course inflated to appear more important than they really are. Not to say these issues aren't important but they aren't more important than say education and self-defense.

American politics has become based on fear. Not so much the policies because in the end politicians will only use fear to manipulate the public in order to get (re)elected. But after they get elected they go back to the normal business of corruption and cronyism. In the end it's our fault, we let it happen resulting from our own ignorance and apathy.

Re:Cry Cry Cry

[plasmacutter]

If you consider a conservative like kerry a "far left" democrat than you don't want "middle of the road".. you want hard right.

  (He can best be considered a centerist, but he's more conservative than clinton.. a democrat who friggin deregulated several industries for christ sake!)

Ever since reagan we've had center, right, and wackjob hard-right.

Both bush's were wackjob hard-right, reagan was between right and wackjob hard-right, clinton was centerist, and kerry was at best center-right.

You don't want "middle of the road", and if you consider right "middle of the road" than you need to stop watching fox news and listening to hannity and re-evaluate your outlook on the world.

This is a stupid story

[brennz]

On top of it, they never mention how US military overseas from Florida specifically (that overwhelmingly vote republican) didn't get their absentee ballots

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=15597
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/News/20001128-1.html
http://www.cwv.org/milvote/milvote.htm
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1 1/20/military.ballots/index.html
http://www.uhuh.com/laws/milivote.htm
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A2901_0_2_0_C/
http://www.mcsm.org/vetsvote.html

Re:This is a stupid story

[raddan]

On top of it, they never mention how US military overseas from Florida specifically (that overwhelmingly vote republican) didn't get their absentee ballots

You did notice that the whole point of this article was the 2004 election, right? All of your linked articles are about the one in 2000. Fuck, we're like barely literate here.

Plagiarism

[amliebsch]

Slashdot is now blatantly ripping off Salon.com, which also had an article headline about Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece staring with Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Too bad Slashdot, in its ridiculous slanting, removed the final word of Salon's headline: "No." Even Mother Jones and NPR repudiated Kennedy's claims. Mother Jones, fer Christ's sake! What's next, Slashdot? How about some articles about World Trade Center demolition conspiracies! And Was Paul Wellstone's Plane Shot Down?

Re:Plagiarism

[coaxial]

And Was Paul Wellstone's Plane Shot Down?

[sarcasam]
2000: Mel Carnahan and John Ashcroft are in a tight race for Senate. Mel Carnahan dies in a plane crash.
2002: Paul Welstone is in a tight race for Senate against Norm Coleman. Paul Welstone dies in a plane crash.

Do I have to spell it out for you?
[/sarcasam]

If these were Republicans, and there was Democrat in the whitehouse, there would no doubt be an investigation at the highest levels of the government. Not that there would be anything to it. Just to manufacture an air of murder and decit. Afterall, how many republican led investigations went into Vince Foster's suicide and the Ron Brown's plane crash? Hell, nothing was too fanciful for the republicans and their noise machine. Vince Foster was murdered because he was having an affair with that bitch dyke Hillary. (Why the supposed lesbian would be having a heterosexual affair is never explained.) The Clintons decorated the national christmas tree with crack pipes. Bill Clinton runs drugs out of an airport in Arkansas. All these were fanciful stories that were legitmized. There aren't.

Re:Plagiarism

[Scudsucker]

Too bad Slashdot, in its ridiculous slanting, removed the final word of Salon's headline: "No." Even Mother Jones and NPR repudiated Kennedy's claims.

Too bad you missed the rebuttal supporting Kennedy and showing that the naysayers are the ones who are full of it.

Re:Moo

[diablomonic]

NOT BOGUS STORY. wake the hell up sheeple. You may not care that bush stole the election, but youd have to be a complete frickin idiot not to realise that he did steal it. Dodgy exit polls, mathematical impossibilities, thousands of accounts of one sided errors, the voting machines manufacturer CEO PROMISED BUSH VOTES in a memo!!! how much more fricken obvious does it have to be? (bush promised votes (first link in google, no idea the site but it was a fairly widely printed story) more dodginess.

You can whinge about sources if you want, I dont give a crap, most murdoch/GE/etc owned news companies lie through their teeth, so the only place you CAN go for some of this news is "less reputable" sites.... (eg look up "outfoxed" on google video, a doco by ex fox news reporters, describing how dodgy the station ewnt after murdoch took over)

Bad excuses

[HangingChad]

Because one or the other party did it in the distant past does not make it okay. Technology gave the current ruling party the ability to subvert our election process in a broad and coordinated fashion not available historically.

The bottom line is a lot of good people fought and died to uphold the ideal of one person, one vote and take pride that we run honest elections. The current administration tramples on the Constitution and stacks government agencies with unqualified partisans. They've looted our national treasury and gotten three thousand of our people killed in an ideological war in Iraq. Not only should they be impeached, but if evidence of rigging elections come to light it should undo all that Bush has done in office, including his Supreme Court appointments.

I think Bush lost 2000 and 2004 and that represents a greater threat to our country than terrorism. If the right wing wasn't so shamelessly hypocritical they'd be rioting in the streets for Bush's impeachment. The fact they're lending tacit support to this fraud only demonstrates their lack of character.

Re:Maybe it is time to let this go. . .

[tomhudson]

If the election was in fact stolen, "moving on" is the worst thing you can do, since its a direct attack on both the constitution and the legitimacy of government - and through that, an attack on the US and its citizens. Finding the criminals who helped steal it would be the right thing.

Gotta love a good conspiracy theory!

[93 Escort Wagon]

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." - Robert Hanlon (disputed)

We had a fun 2004 election up here in Washington state. At the end of polling, the Republican Dino Rosse had defeated Democrat Gregoire by ~200 votes - so close that a recount was mandated. After one recount, Rossi was still ahead by about 60 votes. The Dems paid for a second recount, during which multiple small groups of uncounted ballots from highly-Democratic King County kept turning up. Gregoire won that recount, and is now our (rather uninspiring) governor.

Thing is, this really looked like a rigged election; and a lot of Republicans still think it was. But looking at the various pieces, my personal conclusion is just that the King County Elections department is largely incompetent, and has been for a while - it just hasn't come up because we've never had this close an election. Ballots left uncounted inside of voting machines; absentee ballots that get stored away, uncounted; ballots from overseas military people that were wrongly disqualified... it's all easily covered by incompetence.

I have no doubt that fraud occurs; but I also don't doubt it runs both ways.

Another other issue that everyone conveniently ignores, of course, is counting error. Simply put, the likely error in any given count of N random items (as long as N is sufficiently large) is 1/sqrt(N). With a really close election, you simply can't know who the true winner is.

Re:Gotta love a good conspiracy theory!

[internic]

Another other issue that everyone conveniently ignores, of course, is counting error. Simply put, the likely error in any given count of N random items (as long as N is sufficiently large) is 1/sqrt(N). With a really close election, you simply can't know who the true winner is.

While in many instances you can think of counting as having a poissonian distributed "counting error" (the uncertainty of which goes like sqrt(N), not 1/sqrt(N)), one actually has to justify whether such a model applies before using. It doesn't seem clear that it does apply in this case. If what were concerned with is the number of recorded votes for a particular candidate (arising from a number of actual votes for a candidate), then what we'd be interested in is the number of errors. If there's a constant error rate (meaning voting errors are a poissonian stochastic process), then the mean number of errors would be proportional to N rather than sqrt(N), but the important point is that the proportionality constant could be arbitrarily small, depending on the reliability of the voting method. Now it's true that the standard deviation of the number of errors would be equal to sqrt(N), but that really isn't relevant to the question at hand. In short, there's no a priori estimate of the number of voting errors without some model for how those errors occur, and there's no reason to think it should go as sqrt(N).

Now, if you were viewing voting totals as a poll of populous at large, then assuming the sample was large but still small compared to the total population, you might image that the vote total would approximate the will of the populous with a sqrt(N) counting error; however, this reasoning is invalid for two reasons: the proportional of the population is not that small (though still, perhaps, smaller than we'd like), and the sample of people that turnout to vote is not random, and therefore not represenative. In any case, the vote is not a poll but is supposed to reflect the will of the people who actually votes, so again this sqrt(N) counter error is not relevent.

I think there is some sense in determining what the error rates are on voting systems (perhaps this is already done) and what things are, statistically, too close to call, but you simply can't say that was the case in Washington or anywhere else without more evidence.

Re:All I need to see..

[dangitman]

Do you have anything to refute the content and the facts laid out in the article? It doesn't matter who the source is. It matters if it's true or not. Show me any human on this planet who is not biased.

Argue with the argument, not the arguer.

Re:All I need to see..

[badboy_tw2002]

Facts don't need bias. Whether something happened or not when evidence is available and verifiable makes the facts of the event immune from bias. The interpretation of those events "Bush won fair and square because of x" "Bush stole the election because of Y" is where the bias in this case comes in. You shouldn't dismiss something (well, something possible or probable) outright because you don't like the messenger or the possible implications.

No one will believe the it's unthinkable

[Jimmy_B]

So far, we've got posts bashing the slashdot article for not being current, bashing the Rolling Stone article for being by Rolling Stone, and a few posts of "it's not that bad, get over it". We remember the Florida 2000 fiasco, which was much ado about nothing, and assume this is the same.

It's not.

Seriously, read the article. This isn't just about a few dirty tricks, although there are plenty of those. It isn't about a few thousand votes, like Florida was. It's about outright, large-scale ballot stuffing, hundreds of thousands of votes, fraudulent manipulation of voter rolls, and deliberate sabotage by the Republican secretary of state (who was also the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee).

It's an extraordinary claim, which does indeed require extraordinary evidence, but the evidence IS there. But no one's willing to look at the naked emperor. Everyone made up their mind about whether Bush was good or bad a long time ago, but now the Bush-supporters have no defense but to close their eyes and plug their ears. And for the most part, they're doing exactly that.

Re:No one will believe the it's unthinkable

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, how about read the counter argument to that article here http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kenne dy/index_np.html

which pretty much says it's a bunch of crap.

Re:No one will believe the it's unthinkable

[thule]

Maybe Gore should have setup a parallel government. I think that is the plan for the looser in Mexico.

Re:No one will believe the it's unthinkable

[maxume]

This earlier comment:

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19680 0&cid=16126316

points here:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kenne dy/index.html

In my experience, Salon.com tends to lean towards being an excellent publication. The linked article goes through a bunch of Kennedy's claims and casts them into doubt.

STATISTICS, not hypothesis

[iendedi]

There is one indusputable fact and that is that the statistical proabibility that the exit-polls could have contradicted the actual results by such a huge margin are vanishingly small (on the order of 1 in a million). And further, that specific contradictions have an even more impossible probability.

You can trash this article all you want, but if you are a math-fearing geek (as you should be to have a slashdot membership card), then you simply cannot argue with the conclusion of this article. Being a republican or a democrat does not allow you to magically modify mathematical certainties. Personally, I am appalled at the number of people trashing this article because it is written by JFK Jr or published in the Rolling Stones. Use your geek sense! Geeks dont think like that... So who are you guys?

Re:All I need to see..

[Michael_Burton]

In June Rolling Stone ran an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yep, there's two bastions of unbiased opinion.

Oh, good. I was afraid there wouldn't be any ad hominem responses, without which we would have to judge on the basis of facts and reason. Who wants that?

Mentioning Diebold is like mentioning Hitler

[Dachannien]

You mention Hitler in your argument, you automatically lose. You mention Diebold in Ohio for 2004 and you also automatically lose.

Diebold machines were only used in two counties in Ohio - Hardin and Lucas - and in both counties, these were optical scan machines. The total population of these two counties is less than 500,000, or about 1.5x the vote margin in the entire state. Couple that with the fact that Lucas County went heavily in favor of Kerry in that election, and we see that implicating Diebold in improprieties in Ohio's 2004 election is a load of crap. Most left-wing noisemakers have the good sense not to implicate Diebold directly, instead trying to make a tenuous connection to the former Diebold CEO's comments about winning the election for Bush, and letting suspicion and paranoia take care of the rest. But never let the truth stand in the way of political propaganda on Slashdot!

Diebold machines were used in about half the state's counties in 2005, so if you want to rail about that, go right ahead.

Re:Maybe it is time to let this go. . .

[tomhudson]

The end result of your statement is circular logic at its finest:

If you have proof that's valid ...

... then we'll investigate ...

If you already have the proof, why investigate?

The simple fact is that more than half the population feels the election was stolen - an investigation is needed, even if it wasn't - to restore faith in the system.

So it's wrong because it was in the Rolling Stone?

[iendedi]

From TFA:

''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)

Whether you put faith in the Rolling Stone or JFK Jr is one thing. But to discredit mathematics because you don't like who is using it to prove their point is ... well ... it is not something any self-respecting geek would ever knowingly do...

If I were to put my tinfoil hat on for a second ... okay, here goes ... The fact that there are so many posters on this thread that are dismissing mathematics and using association with a magazine or a clearly democraticly bent author would indicate to me that they are not from the typical geeky slashdot croud. They would appear to be (drumroll) some other type of beast alltogether... Is slashdot picking up propaganda dispensers? If so, you would be wise to adopt certain religions to be taken seriously here and mathematics is at the very top of the list of those religions.

In fact, this has me thinking now... We may constitute a particularly difficult demographic to brainwash for exactly that reason - geeks don't take anyone but other geeks seriously and that means if you don't bow to geek religious beliefs (such as science and her language), you have very little chance of adjusting our opinions. If there are enough of you and you push buttons fast enough, you might be able to sling your comments around and mod-up the memes of your cohorts, but you will have little chance of making any difference to the thought process of the readership here.

Ok, tinfoil hat off... We geeks are probably just as gullible as everyone else and even easier to control... Just promise us dates if we go along with you...

Welcome to SlashKos

[ChePibe]

Please check your objectivity, nuance, and common sense at the door.

Now, we all get to read the political rantings in journal form of a slashdotter who finds himself/herself on a political extreme but, by chance, likely happens to coincide with an editor's own position. Oh joy. Particularly when the author of this journal is also the author of gems such as his own take on the Declaration of Independence.

SlashKos. Really old opinion pieces from music/culture magazines spun by random journal writers for far-left geeks. Stuff that really, truly doesn't matter, but hopefully will stir up some controversy and ad clicks.

I find myself on the right politically, but I'm not one to complain about stories that show the left's point of view, even the more extreme left. This however screams to me of "slow news day" and "must do something to get site traffic up" nonsense.

I realize my post is likely redundant, but some things simply must be said over and over. Why on earth was this posted here, now?

I come to Slashdot expecting Slashdot. Not SlashKos. For that matter, I'd also be unhappy to see SlashLGF, as well.

Re:Moo

[spun]

Look, it may not concern you that Bush stole the election, because you wanted him to win, but I garauntee it will concern you when someone you don't like uses the same techniques to steal it. Wake up. This isn't partisan, the Democrats have done the same thing in the past, and it sucked just as much then. But we did somethign about it.

Just read the friggin article and perhaps you will see some ways that our elections are unfair and should be fixed, ignore the fact that it's your man who did it. Mentally insert "Bill Clinton" in place of GWB if that helps, but read it, and believe it, and get riled up and do something or our country is going to go down the crapper in a big scary way. I gaurantee that if no one does anything about this, someone who you abhor is going to use these tricks. And by then it will probably be too late.

And if you think everyone here is lame and pathetic because they don't agree with you, well, maybe this isn't the place for you? I hear freerepublic.com is nice...

Re:Moo

[paintswithcolour]

First off, I'm not an American so I'm not as clued up on the political standings as other here. But what I am sure of is that if I was presented with this level of evidence (and it seems from some of the references that we are dealing with real, substanial evidence here) the very last thing I would want anyone to do is: "stop bitching and moaning about past elections".

It's nonsense to suggest that just because something happened in the past we should all simply accept the outcome and move on...past elections were rigged? Ah, well...better luck next time!

Accusing the Democrats of sour grapes seems within the realm of possibility but to suggest that even if this were all true just to ignore it undermines the very foundation of your democratic process. Like it or not (and I'm guessing not - as it is a clear and present threat to your obvious political alligence) free and fair voting for everyone matters in a democracy.

You don't like that because your side won't always win?

Tough.

Re:Maybe it is time to let this go. . .

[Jugalator]

No election frauds should be "let go".

Re:All I need to see..

[bcnstony]

If you'd like to educate yourself on what actually happened, I would suggest reading Harper's excellent and insightful None Dare Call it Stolen, which delves heavily into Representative John Conyers of Michigan's Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.

Re:Chacham (981) = NEOCON suck up stooge

[SteelFist]

I think the url is: http://www.freedomtofascism.com/

Re:Moo

[bcat24]

IANAA (I Am Not An Australian), so I don't know how things work there, but maybe voting in at least presidental elections should be required to maintain your US citizenship. The ability to (partially) elect your own goverment is what makes America so great, but it gets screwed up if people don't vote. I guess most people just don't care.

Dave Schroeder, you are kind of dopey.

[PopeRatzo]

Whether or not the elections in 2000 and 2004 were stolen does not change the fact that we are witnessing an unprecedented attempt to consolidate power in the hands of a very wealthy, very few. And they are mostly Republicans.

You say that people believing that the Bush Administration is capable of the most egregious types of illegal activities is more of a threat to our system of government than those illegal activities themselves. This is known as baloney.

Yesterday, we saw a President declare that a law must be passed that will have the effect of absolving him and his administration from any war crimes that may have been committed since 2001, retroactively. He is afraid that as the 14 prisoners that he's transferring from secret prisons (just the thought of secret prisons is anti-American) are interviewed by the Red Cross when they get to Guantanamo (Guantanamo is anti-American) we will learn that they were tortured in ways that violate a Convention that has served us well for more than half a century, and this will expose Mssrs Bush and Cheney to quite valid charges of War Crimes.

So, in a classic cover-your-butt move, this despicable man is going to pardon himself and his friends, in advance. I hope those of you who voted Republican are proud.

All this to protect his sudden need to try people with secret evidence. Let that sink in for a second. You are arrested and not told why. You are held for 3 years without any charges being brought against you. You are brought to court and a judge tells you that you are found guilty, based on evidence that you and your lawyer will not be allowed to see. Who wants to try to argue that any of this is the "American Way"?

And this entire charade, 2 wars and untold suffering is done because 19 guys in dirty nightshirts were able to commandeer a couple of planes and kill 3000 people. We're told not to worry about the guy who masterminded this crime because after all we can't find him anyway, and there's a much more important thing we have to do because of this massive crime and that's fight a war thousands of miles away from where this criminal is hiding. And it just so happens that this war that's so urgent is in a place that has a huge supply of oil. And, it just so happens that the President got into politics with the help of the oil industry, but that's all just a coincidence. And it's a further coincidence that the one corporation that has profited the most from this war was run by the Vice President until a short time before the election. And, by the way, that Vice President's income tax return last year showed income of tens of millions of dollars even though his salary is only about 250 thousand bucks. But ignore all of that because THIS PRESIDENT IS A-GONNA KEEP US SAFE. Safe from terrorists. Forget that you're more likely to die of toenail fungus than from terrorism.

One great thing about this country is that although it's possible to scare Americans, they don't stay scared for long. If there's a God in heaven, the Bush Administration and his Republican lickspittles are going to pay dearly for what they've done to a country that not too long ago was held in regard by the world as being a beacon of freedom, but is now known for secret prisons, torture, domestic spying and stupid, destructive wars.

To Hell with George W. Bush. And Dave Schroeder, regardless of whatever it is that would make you try to defend him, to Hell with you.

Re:All I need to see..

[dangitman]

Plus, while there's likely to be a correlation between exit polls and what people voted, there's no way to rule out a self-selection. Maybe Kerry supporters were more likely to answer the poll. Maybe people were embarrassed to admit they voted for Bush and lied on the exit poll. Maybe the people taking the exit poll rigged the exit poll for Kerry.

Perhaps, but why have exit polls been so amazingly accurate in the past - and now, when anomalies turn up, the exit polls don't match for those places where weird shit was going on, like voters being turned away from the polls, or machines malfunctioning?

On a related note, I love the duality of various far-left Democrats,

That doesn't make any sense. The terms "far left" and "Democrat" are mutually exlusive. Democrats are typically centrist, many of them increasingly right-leaning.

howling at the same time that the current administration is completely incompetent, while at the same time accusing them of managing to conspire to rig the election.

I don;t see the contradiction. They are incompetent at running the country, because they spend so much time on their corrupt self-serving schemes. Same with most bad politicians, of whatever persuasion

If they can't keep secret prisons secret, what's the chance that they'd keep an election conspiracy secret?

They can't, and they haven't. Anyone with their eyes open knows there's dodgy stuff going on. Of course, that doesn't mean most Americans care. Hell, we KNOW, for sure about hundreds of screw-ups and lies, and somehow Bush hasn't been impeached yet. They openly come out and advocate torture, and it seems nobody cares. Maybe it would be a different matter if the President got a Blow Job. Seems that harmless personal infidelity is evil in the eyes of the voters, but corruption on a massive scale is perfectly OK. People very quickly forget. How many people really even remember what happened at Abu Ghraib? How many people remember the "anthrax attacks" and who it was that was investigated for those?

If people don't even remember such major events and atrocities, they aren't going to remember much about the fiascos in Ohio and Florida. It's basically been revealed that Diebold machines are easily hackable, and the people that run the company have partisan intentions. Where is all the outrage? Why isn't that issue being covered every day on the national news networks? Instead, all you get is celebrity gossip and talking points about Democrats "giving aid to the enemy" or being "terrorist sympathizers" and other such nonsense.

LIARS

[Doc Ruby]

Condoleeza Rice: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources: Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01; White House release, 7/22/01]

Rhetoric? You cite Rice's reassurance that her gang won't postpone elections as reason to "cool the rhetoric"? Why wouldn't she lie, especially if it got people off our guard?

Re:Moo

[ThreeE]

I can't agree. I think people should be free to express their opinion as they see fit. If they don't want to vote, they shouldn't be forced to. Why encourage people who know nothing about the election to randomly vote? Encouraging civic responsibility is great -- forcing people to go to the polls and punch the left hand column is bad.

I'll speak my mind. I've got karma to burn.

[Chardish]

Seeing as this is a 4-month-old political opinion piece of a speculative, conspiratorial nature that doesn't even pretend to promote an unbiased or nonpartisan viewpoint, what business does it have on Slashdot?

If Slashdot is going to be linking to Robert Kennedy, Jr's writings, it better also link to those of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Bill O'Reilly. Frankly, I'd rather Slashdot stay away from all of them.

I wish the article itself could be modded down to -1 Flamebait.

Thank you, sir.

[ChePibe]

THANK YOU.

Geez...

I lean to the right politically, but I would love - LOVE - to have an alternative party. The Democrats have largely set themselves as simple contrarians with one plank on their platform - "vote for us, we're not the Republican party!"

Yes, I can see that. I saw that little "D" instead of the "R" which seems to be so dominant amongst elected officials these days.

But why on earth should I vote for a party which wants to get into power before stating a platform?

Economically speaking, the U.S. is doing quite well, so economics aren't much of the issue and elected officials have an often overstated effect on the economy as is. That's not much of a reason to vote for the Democrats. The present deficit level is high, to be sure, but that's not the sort of concern that really gets the voters out.

Iraq's a bit of a mess, but the Democrats haven't really stated what they're going to do with it beyond "we shouldn't have gone in". Great, we shouldn't have gone in, that's lovely and all, but guess what, we're there now - what do we do? They won't say. They don't have a plan at all... granted, the Bush administration's own plans are not particularly well-defined, but they are committed to staying for some time, which isn't the road map I'd like to see but it's heading in the right direction. Democrats can't decide to stay, go... or do anything else. Give me your party's POSITION on the matter! Do you have a position? Oh, that's right, I forgot, your position is, "we're not Bush!"

Then there's the "cultural issues". Democrats and their supporters alike can't seem to wrap their heads around this, but every time they lose an election they blame it on people who vote on "cultural issues". Perhaps if they learned that these cultural issues were really, truly important to many voters they could win votes, but noooo... instead, we hear the same mantra of, "stupid rednecks only care about x!" each election cycle. These stupid rednecks are voters, you know, and cultural issues are important to people, no matter how much the Democrats want to deny it. Responding to elections lost due to cultural issues by reaffirming your stance on these issues will NOT somehow magically bring people to your point of view.

I'm not entirely pleased with the Republican party at the moment, and would love to see some new ideas pop up on the hill. But the U.S. lacks an opposition party, and only has a band of contrarians without ideas.

It's like the Cola wars all over again, except instead of 'Coke' and 'Pepsi', I have 'Coke' and 'we're not Coke and we think Coke sucks!'

Please, SELL me some ideas and I might BUY THEM!

</rant>

Re:Thank you, sir.

[caffiend2049]

In large part, I agree with you. America has been in desperate need of an alternative to the "two sides of the same coin" party for a long time.

I spent several election cycles fighting the idea that I was "throwing away my vote" by actively supporting a third party candidate. Voting for someone you don't trust or believe in is the definition of throwing away one's vote as far as I am concerned.

But dire times call for desperate measures. Sometimes the devil you know is so bad that you couldn't possibly do worse picking one you don't know. What I find the most intriguing is the bait and switch of calling for specifics in a platform...only to attack the details of these plans when they are made public. It's a common tactic and the major reason that almost no one in government can actually talk about what they want to do before having the power to move it forward. The concept of good faith bipartisan negotiation is at a nadir.

At this point, each of the two megaparties have but one plank in the platform....win the election by any means. Unfortunately for the Dems, the means by which they try to put forth ideas is often still rooted in the antiquated tradition of debate and discussion. This often makes them appear unfocused and at odds with one another.

The republicans, on the other hand, often take the tack of supporting the party's leadership no matter what - it's a topdown world on the right. And this is IMO why they have been crushing the opposition in the past few cycles. It's also why I'm more likely to vote Dem this year.

You can't run a democracy with an authoritarian regime. And the characteristics that have made the Repubs successful are not what I need bleeding out into the mechanizations of how the country is run.

Can anyone argue that this isn't already happening?

Re:Moo

[TrekkieGod]

I don't know how things work there, but maybe voting in at least presidental elections should be required to maintain your US citizenship. The ability to (partially) elect your own goverment is what makes America so great, but it gets screwed up if people don't vote. I guess most people just don't care.

I don't know how it works in Australia, but I lived in Brazil for a long time, where it is also compulsory to vote. What they do is make your life difficult if you don't have the receipt that says you voted in the last election (they require the receipts in order for you to get renewed documents such as passports, etc). Thus, the system works in that people do vote. The argument there is similar to the one you're making. You have the right to vote, so you should damn well use it, because that's what makes a democratic government great. I disagree with that in so many ways that I can't cover it all, but I'll just discuss the major problems with it right now.

I suppose the most important reason is the practical one: It doesn't work. They can make you vote but they can't make you care. The ballots were secret as they are here (a very good thing), so there were a large number of nullified ballots by people who just didn't want to vote. Essentially, they'd check the mark next to all the candidates, making the ballot worthless. They're doing the electronic voting there too now, but that's after I moved out, so I have no idea if the software disallows that. If the software does prohibit you from doing that, it puts you in a much scarier situation. I imagine most people who didn't care would simply vote for the first person on the list.

The second reason why voting shouldn't be compulsory also relates to the fact that most people don't care. You say that the system gets screwed up if people don't vote, but I claim it gets screwed up even more when people who don't do their research vote. I really hate the whole "get out and vote" campaigns because they make it seem like just showing up and voting satisfies all your civic responsibilities. It's not about just making a decision, it's about making an informed decision (although I guess "The Decider" would disagree). I'd be seriously in favor of the "Get out and learn about the candidate's track records, their proposals, and the success rate of similar actions to the ones they are proposing in the past, then vote for the best candidate" campaign, but people don't seem to want to do the hard things. Frankly, people who just show up and vote based on the fact that, "I don't like the damn republicans, I shall vote democrat" or "I'm conservative, I shall vote republican" are ruining for the rest of us who are actually doing our research.

Finally, there's the freedom argument. I don't like any laws that restricts people's freedoms. Your right to not vote is as important to me as your right to vote. If you want to vote I'll fight against anyone trying to prevent you to do so, regardless of whether or not I agree with who you are voting for. If you do not want to vote, I'll fight against anyone trying to make you do that.

My Governor stole the election.

[riversky]

It is far clearer that the Democrats steal elections in my home State of Washington....It is not statistics but actual votes that were fraudent. Dead people, people voting twice etc...The more people counted and recounted the more the Democrats "found" new votes in Democratic districts won by Democrats. This wasn't the opposition finding new votes or uncounted ones to over turn things for the real winner ( ie Gore) after the winner was declared ( Bush in Flordia and Ohio) but it is a clearly a manufactered election by one party. Ohio, maybe tactics were used, but this was a stolen election in WA in black and white .

This is like the Democrats of the Chicago era.

Re:LIARS

[Doc Ruby]

Citation for parent post: "Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission"

Re:Moo

[monoqlith]

Oh goodie, another opportunity for Democrats to bitch about losing in 2004 and blame anyone but themselves. Run a decent candidate (Kerry was not it) and you'll have better results.

Ignoring the fact that you have failed to rebut any of the facts or arguments presented in the article:

1. Use a word processor to replace references to Kerry and Bush and election 2004 in that article with other names and a different election.

2. Read the article.

3. Note whether you form emotions of anger or if there is a "salty discharge" flowing down your cheeks due to feelings of sadness.

Because what the article shows is that regardless of who "won" that election, our election system as 1) far from perfect and 2) even outright broken.

Now, the fact that there is even a case to be made here means that our election system is seriously flawed. Counting is a mechanical process - it should not be subject to even the slightest error, and therefore should not be subject to even the slightest doubt. Transparency and perfection are achievable. And yet, at every turn, Mr. Kennedy has been able to show the continuing presence of openings and loopholes and conflicts of interest in the counting process and the registration process.

Now, why haven't we reformed the election process? It's in everyone's interest to make sure that the will of the people is realized, correct? It's in everyone's interest to see that the votes are counted and that we live in a truly Democratic society, right? Or is it?

This is so very important. Unless we establish transparency and reliability in our voting system we are forfeiting our democracy itself.

The Kennedy article was a rehash of all the nonsense liberals have been spewing since 2004.

Since 2004 Republicans have been calling these accusations "nonsense" when it appears to be in their interest to settle the question (and thereby obtain a stronger mandate) by discrediting the facts at hand. And yet this hasn't happened. A mandate was asserted even without rigorous testing of the election results. And here you are, defaming the article and its author as "nonsensical" without actually countering any of the facts.

It's almost like one side is screaming "Our democrcacy is dying" and the other side responds by tacitly and cynically admitting "Haven't you heard? Our democracy is already dead."

So the article itself was redundant when Kennedy wrote it.

As your best friend forever George W. Bush has stated, "Sometimes you need to repeat the truth over and over, so it sinks in." In this case, of course, the "real truth" is what's at stake, and we have an obligation to discover what the real truth is, and repair it if it offends us. Lots of credible people are still reporting on this issue, yet, for some reason, it hasn't made its way into the mainstream media besides in minimal ways.

And it's been months since it was published, so why exactly is it suddenly news now?

Good f*cking question. Nothing in our society stays relevant. Important articles disappear all the time - we live in an information world where, regardless of actual relevancy, nothing stays relevant for more than 24 hours. Or it could just be a collective will of our news media not to "rock the boat" too much, as I believe Keith Olbermann points out in the article.

Oh, that's right, because the elections are just over a month away and the Democrats are offering no clear and concise alternative to Republicans so all they can do is rehash the same assertions they've been making since 2004. Heck, let's be honest, since 2000. The close election of 2000 and the close election of 2004 gave them the idea that if they try to highlight how close the election was and try to make the case that they should've won, people won't realize they have no platform themselves.

Instant Runoff Voting

[The Rizz]

Quickest solution to fix the US political system: Instant Runoff Voting.

Actually, the quickest fix would be Approval Voting. It's as accurate (in terms of game theory / the 5 criteria of Arrow's Paradox) as IRV is, and is a hell of a lot easier both in implementation (the method of counting the votes is almost identical to how we do it now), and in explaining to people how it works (i.e. "Put a check next to anyone you think would do a good job. You are not limited to one choice.")

As for the best solution overall, one of the Condorcet methods would be the best — preferrably one of the clone-proof methods, such as CSSD.

Re:Been doing the rounds for a long time...

[bnenning]

Bush *is* an illegitimately elected aspirant dictator, a large scale mass murderer, and a war criminal.

This is why you guys are going to keep losing. As a conservative who actually believes in limited government and individual freedom, I strongly disagree with the current Republican leadership on many issues. But when the opposition is this unhinged, all I can do is either leave my ballot blank or "waste" it on a third party.

Re:Moo

[cheater512]

In Australia its manatory to vote in National and State elections and Referendums.
People who dont get fined.

Our system is very streamlined. Walk in, check your name off a list and vote. The process takes a minute tops.

If people dont care then they can part with some of their money.
Making voting compulsory solves many problems and when done correctly makes the country happier.
We are forced to pay attention to who we are voting for thus having a greater understanding about whats going on.
We also dont get people saying that the Ballots were rigged.

Re:Moo

[catalina]

If I don't vote and thereby lose my US citizenship, can I stop paying taxes too?
br>

You can actually stop paying taxes now, and retain your US citizenship. You'll even get room and board for some number of years, and never have to worry about voting again, since felons lose their right to vote...

Re:Maybe it is time to let this go. . .

[SanityInAnarchy]

You have no point, just propaganda.

The argument is that we should've investigated. Are you honestly arguing that we shouldn't investigate until we have proof? The whole point of an investigation is to find proof, one way or the other!

Please read this until you understand. Please do not reply with the same illogical line you keep repeating.

Re:Moo

[niktemadur]

Maybe voting in at least presidental elections should be required to maintain your US citizenship.

Or how about increasing voter turnout using the carrot instead of the rod:

- Change Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday. Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that elections must be held on Tuesday, and I'm sure many people agree it's not such a great day to do it.
- Give preferential treatment to responsible citizens when applying for a passport, driver's licence, etc. All you have to do is show your ID that proves you have voted in a number of consecutive elections.
- Discounts on the previous things for citizens who have voted in even more consecutive elections, while throwing in discounts for public transport when you show your special ID...hey, maybe even a parking fine amnesty!

I think these would be pragmatic steps to increase voter turnout. However, with the way things are, the Powers That Be intend on keeping the number low, because if you change the status quo, lobbyists and the corporations they represent lose the upper hand. The current levels of contributions that lobbyists hand out are the difference between winning and losing an election, channeled towards the few undecided people who will vote in battleground states. Their influence is exactly as tremendous as american electoral apathy. They have this down to a science and all of Washington knows it. However, if you increase voter turnout, their contributions will be diluted, which is to say, their power will be diminished. They would no longer be able to make or break presidents! Or governors, or congressmen, etc.

So I don't think any rods or carrots will appear in the foreseeable future.

Re:Moo

[sholden]

In Australia they issue you a small fine if you didn't get your named marked off at polling booth. You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home. And it's really easy to dispute the fine (speaking from experience) - if you have anything vaguely reasonable as an excuse you tell them and they drop it with no need to go to court or anything like with parking fines... There is no receipt and no way to prove you voted (other than the electoral commission checking their lists I guess).

The informal voting rate isn't that large - about 5% of the votes cast are informal (there's a great tradition of Donkey voting though - being first on the ballot can give you an extra 1.4% or so, unless you're a woman strangely enough when it gives you nada - Robson rotation would fix that but they don't bother). And the turn out rate is 95%. So 90% of the registered voters (which is essentially everyone 18+ with a few slipping through the cracks - made up for by the dead people who manage to vote somehow) cast a valid vote.

Compulsary voting gets rid of the "get out and vote" idiocy that clearly favours candidates with the resources to round people into buses... It also removes the ability to influence the outcome by preventing people from voting - or at least makes it very noticable if you try.

Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?

I suspect compulsary voting would interact badly with first past the post voting, and hence would be a bad thing for America - not that that's an issue - it goes completely against the concept of liberty the US has (though the last few years seem to have shown that liberty isn't so important to most americans but that's an unrelated issue).

Re:Moo

[Liam Slider]

You know what these stories and rants always fail to mention? That the Democrats cheat very heavily in elections as well. I don't think there's been a legitimate major election in Illinois (a Democrat stronghold) in decades, here we get dead people signed up to vote, fictional people voting, absentee votes coming from non-existance addresses....all votes for the Democrats. On top of that there's all sorts of fraud and corruption at pretty much all levels. And the Democrats haven't been above tactics like "slash the tires of the cars of volunteers of the opposition", or having the cops called with bogus complaints.

The Democrats cheat just as much, if not more than the Republicans....that in 2004 they just weren't as good as the Republicans at it is no reason to go whining about "stolen" elections.

Half of the voters lose

[RAMMS EIN]

Ignoring the question of whether the election was or wasn't stolen, I think it's fair to say that the last two elections in the USA have been very close, as has the latest one in Mexico. This leads to the interesting question: how valid is a system where the outcome goes against the wishes of up to half the voters?

In a parliamentary democracy, what would happen is probably that the largest few parties would form a coalition that held a majority in parliament. They would be in power, but the parliament would still have a say. This way, there's a much closer representation of the various wishes of the voting public.

"Democracy is the mistaken belief that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." It's a nice quote, and especially applicable to systems in where there's only one winner (e.g. the winner-take-all system in the US).

Re:wah...wah...wah... Get over it...

[plasmacutter]

and everyone that bitches about exit polls being lopsided, get a CLUE!

as a statistician I do have a clue. Considering how dead on accurate the exit polls have been for the entire history of the US electoral process.. this claim of "get over it" is nothing but an unsubstantiated partisan jab based on your own "junk science" conclusion that because you lie about it you can claim theyre wrong and no other evidence, such as a clear track record of accurate predictions for a century or two, is going to shake you of this cognitive dissonance.

Why is this so hard?

[Deadplant]

All these arguments about who's more biased or who has "sour grapes" are anti-intellectual clap-trap that serve only to stiffle open discussion of vitally important issues.

Evidence of Democratic fraud does not invalidate evidence of Republican fraud.
It is not "OK" if both sides cheated. Evidence that both sides cheated re-inforces the conclusion that the election was invalid.

Why do people keep doing that? countering accusations of fraud with counter-accusations of fraud? It does not follow from that argument that the election result was an accurate tally of voter intentions, quite the contrary. Are people seriously suggesting that we make an assumption that the level of fraud was "probably about even repub/dem" so we don't need to recount?

I also don't understand why there is any opposition to counting ballots.
If results are very close and/or if anyone doubts the validity of the results I can think of no legitimate reason to refuse to count the paper ballots.
Except one: cost. I have a hard time believing that americans are willing to forgo double-checking their election results because it would cost too much.
Am I the only one here who thinks that fighting to stop a ballot recount should be a criminal offence?

Dead on! MOD PARENT UP!

[plasmacutter]

particular points worth expending mod points for:

Evidence of Democratic fraud does not invalidate evidence of Republican fraud.
It is not "OK" if both sides cheated. Evidence that both sides cheated re-inforces the conclusion that the election was invalid.
Am I the only one here who thinks that fighting to stop a ballot recount should be a criminal offence?

Re:How about you RTFA

[Achromatic1978]

I'd still find the evidence disturbing if it were published in Penthorse

I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't need to read about evidence of electoral tampering to find Penthorse disturbing...

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. All those talking points being parroted by the mindless drones of the media come back to mind:

  Kerry = flip flopper (whatever the fuck that means).
  The sordid Swift Boat fiasco, while Bush = Hero (even though he was AWOL for a year and a half). There is a deep, deep circle of hell awaiting Karl Rove.
  A vote for Kerry is a vote for Bin Laden.

In fact, the CIA has officially stated that the Bin Laden tape was put out to scare americans into voting for Bush. Which is to say, Bin Laden wanted Bush to win. Which was obvious. But the press took the grey lard between peoples' ears and molded it in exactly the opposite direction. I can think of nothing worse than being ignorant and scared, and that's precisely what the american press has done to a large amount of its' people.

Who were partners in the failed oil venture Arbusto Inc back in the early nineties? Poppa Bush and Salim Bin Laden (one of Osama's big brothers).
Hey, just keep this tidbit a secret, 'cause whenever Bush supporters hear that one, they foam at the mouth and start screaming "bloody treason, you goddamned liberals, you want the terrorists to win blah blah blah". Well no, 'cause what I'm actually saying is that your beloved president has been compromised.

Re:Moo

[TrekkieGod]

In Australia they issue you a small fine if you didn't get your named marked off at polling booth. You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home.

Well, there's nobody watching you vote, so people turned in blank ballots too. The more paranoid people would nullify them instead to prevent people that are counting the votes from checking the boxes themselves (I don't know if it's actually an issue, but it doesn't hurt to be paranoid). As for the fine, it's the same method in Brazil. After all, they're not going to just not allow you to renew your documents. If you don't have your receipt, you pay a fine, and all is well. Still, generally people don't want to pay a fine, so you get extremely high voting turnout, but I argue that doesn't mean the system is better.

The informal voting rate isn't that large - about 5% of the votes cast are informal

That may be true, but still doesn't solve the problem of people voting for people without doing their research. Name recognition is a huge boost for example. It's the reason why Arnold gets to be governor of California. There are a whole bunch of stupid reasons that causes people to make choices, and although many of those people would stay home, more of them show up if they're forced to show up. Now, if they want to show up and vote for their stupid reason, that's their right, but I see no reason in forcing the other people who don't care to go.

there's a great tradition of Donkey voting though - being first on the ballot can give you an extra 1.4% or so, unless you're a woman strangely enough when it gives you nada - Robson rotation would fix that but they don't bother.

That's pretty interesting. I had no idea you could get so much of an advantage by being first, even when you can turn in a blank ballot. I guess the problem would be even worse if you couldn't because the software forced you to choose someone. Of course, it would also be easier to implement a rotation, but somehow I'd think that they still wouldn't bother.

Compulsary voting gets rid of the "get out and vote" idiocy that clearly favours candidates with the resources to round people into buses... It also removes the ability to influence the outcome by preventing people from voting - or at least makes it very noticable if you try.

Those are good points. I guess there are some advantages to compulsary voting, but I still don't think it's worth it.

Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?

Yep. Although that's an easy fight, anyone who wants to can get out of jury duty in the US. There's an old joke, "the only people in the jury are the ones that are too stupid to get out of jury duty."

Here, Here!

[gd2shoe]

At least in the states, mandatory voting would be bad. "Mandatory caring" (not possible) would be decent though...

Re:Moo

[soft_guy]

Unless you are rich. In that case, you probably aren't paying any taxes anyway.

They do have a platform pal.

[plasmacutter]

Their platform as it stands now:

-withdraw from iraq, try to do so gracefully since were damned if we stay and damned if we go.
-undo the damage to our civil liberties done by the patriot act
-reform social security by removing the blatant privatization bush put in which basically amounts to abolshment (but with the added benefit of commissions to brokers before your stock tanks)
-Universal health care (which responds to the increasing 10s of millions of people without healthcare, and which they make a damned good economic case for!)
-Investigation into bush's illegal activites, followed hopefully by impeachment
-Investigation into oil companies among others for gouging.

Among others.. it's all laid out..

Big media is owned by republicans so you don't see it.. listen to air america and they spend each and every day spelling out those exact same points.

Re:They do have a platform pal.

[espressojim]

I'm officially a 'brie eating cambridge, MA liberal'. Seriously, I live in Cambridge, MA (and I prefer St. Andre to regular brie. At least make it a triple cream, ok?)

Yet, when I listen to Air america (or a right wing talk show), I hear the same basic tactics. There's 14 kinds of logical falacies, and neither side takes a reasonable approach. I've heard people on air america (Jennene Garafalo, shut the Fuck up!) who are just embarrasing.

AA is fighting the right wing talk radio attitude with the same type of bullshit as the right wing, but they don't do it as well. They come off as just another group of idiots saying the exact opposite of the right wing, but don't sound a heck of a lot more reasonable.

I'd love for them to use dispassonate arguments, site facts and statistics, and speak to the common man. Instead, they preach only to the converted.

I'm a dem, but they just depress me.

Re:They do have a platform pal.

[letxa2000]

AA is fighting the right wing talk radio attitude with the same type of bullshit as the right wing,

not true, they fight stupidity with reason.. oh the concept!

Y'think? Back in March I was driving through Texas in the early AM and listening to talk radio to keep me company. The only station I found was an Air America station. The show that came on was Springer. So I listened to him. Now I've heard Rush's parodies, etc. so I was not surprised when Springer had the same idea. But you know what the parody was? It was basically making fun of the people that enlist in the military!! I couldn't believe it. It wasn't taking any shots at Bush but basically insulting those that are "stupid enough" to enlist. Amazing, but I let it go. Then not more than 10 minutes later Springer was bitching about how Rush was available in Iraq over military radio but Air America wasn't, and why was that? I actually grabbed my cell phone to call him and tell him, "Think about the damn parody you played not 10 minutes ago and ask yourself WHY the military isn't thrilled to broadcast you?" Unfortunately, the phone just rang and rang and rang. No-one even answered.

Later in the day, I tuned to another station and caught some Rush. At some point I felt compelled to call... busy signal constantly until I gave up trying to call. I found that to be interesting in and of itself, i.e., the contrast to the unending-ring-and-no-answer of Springer.

After Rush faded out, I again ended up catching Air America and for 20 minutes the guy (I don't remember his name, it was early afternoon mountain time) just sounded like an angry man that was doing nothing but complaining about "unfounded" rumors that Air America was going out of business in a couple of markets. He insisted it wasn't true and complained about conservative talk shows, and he sounded defiant. Basically he talked about nothing of interest for 20 minuts until I said, "Hell with this" and just listened to some music. I later found out that the markets he said weren't going out of business actually did go out of business. So much for honesty.

I can understand that people have a difference of opinion, but there as a decidedly negative attitude on Air America. I would've enjoyed some liberal commentary, but there wasn't any. It was just angry bitter men that weren't talking about anything remotely interesting in regards to politics. They were insulting to the military, overly concerned with their own business prospects, and basically just depressing. Say what you want about Rush, he's entertaining and while he does rip on liberals, his attitude is positive.

The energy is just different, and I think that's a difference in energy that goes beyond talk radio and is representative of Republicans and Democrats. That, too, is why Democrats continue to lose elections.

Re:They do have a platform pal.

[chrisbord]

-withdraw from iraq, try to do so gracefully since were damned if we stay and damned if we go.

We aren't winning Iraq, but we're not losing either; we're only holding back the hordes trying to drive us out. Unfortunately George W. Bush has proven a weak wartime leader unable or unwilling to prepare the American people to sacrifice in order to win a war, or to explain the consequences of abandoning Iraq to terrorist who will quickly proceed to make use of Iraq's vast oil wealth and WMD know-how and production facilities against us. Think Afghanistan under the Taliban was a threat? Wait until al Qaeda runs Iraq!

The good new is the problem with our strategy in Iraq are immenently solvable with a little leadership at the top. Too bad that's exactly what we're lacking with this idiot at the helm. Sad but true.

First, get our troops out of their bases where they can do some good. Currently most of our troops are holed up in ever-growing compounds, accomplishing very little in order to keep American casualty levels very low. Second, drastically increase the number of American 'advisors' to the Iraqi military. Third, stop pushing Iraqi troops into the field long before they are ready. Fourth, we need to permanently increase the size of our military by a million troops to support our military strategy in Iraq. 140,000 troops was never enough to successfully implement an oil-spot strategy in a country the size of Iraq. Rumsfeld should be fired for this one alone.
-undo the damage to our civil liberties done by the patriot act

There have been no serious abuses so far, so that's a hard sell.

-reform social security by removing the blatant privatization bush put in which basically amounts to abolshment (but with the added benefit of commissions to brokers before your stock tanks)

The current surplus in SS is being used to fund Medicaid and welfare and every other government program, and to say there is no budget shortfall in SS now is to pretend these programs are funded separately. They aren't. There is just one big pot of money out of which the Treasury pays all government obligations. And since today there is a budget deficit overall, every time two or three baby boomer retires to be replaced by one new worker, the Social Security solvency and the overal budget deficit gets worse as the ratio of payers to payees increases.

Bush's very small (2%), totally voluntary privatisation would help solve the problem by bringing in a whole lot more money than is possible now in the highly inefficient purely government system. Few remember this, but Bill Clinton actually proposed a similar solution several years ago, of course his solution was to allow the *government* to do the investing, a poison pill.

-Universal health care (which responds to the increasing 10s of millions of people without healthcare, and which they make a damned good economic case for!)

Yeah that one worked great for Hillary. I dare you to try it again. ;)

There are a lot of misconceptions about the American medical system such as a lack of emergency care for the uninsured, something which is actually illegal here. Or that people commonly do without necessary operations, in truth a rarity because charity almost always picks up the slack. I bet you buy into them all. But I would ask you why Canadians have to wait 6 months go south of the border whenever they have major operations? Why do those who can afford it instead opt to go south of the border to find timely care? Or maybe you could ask yourself why our medical care costs started to explode only when government HMOs took over? Or why virtually all the world's cutting edge medical research and new procedures are developed in the U.S., why such a large percentage of relevant Nobels are awarded here? Did it ever occur to you that all those great miracle drugs and other amazing advances wouldn't have happened in other places that make such long t

Re:Does it really matter anymore

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

1. Yes, it really does matter.
2. I have collected links to hair-raising material on the Ohio 2004 election, and they are just the tip of the iceberg; it was a complete scam.
3. There is a good new documentary coming out, Stealing America, by emmy award winning film maker Dorothy Fadiman.

Re:Disreali

[plasmacutter]

'There are lies, damn lies - and statistics.' - Disreali

in which case all election results in every democracy are a lie, since statistics is the science of drawing conclusions from raw data.

THe only time statistics can lie is when:

the conclusions drawn from the data collected are "interpreted" with bias
the questions used to gather the data are biased.
the choice of data to use in the analysis is biased.

a simple yes or no question is not biased, the exit polls are not biased.

Re:Moo

[niktemadur]

I did a little digging on Wikipedia, and came up with this:

Election Day in the United States is the day when polls most often open for the election of certain public officials. Election Day occurs on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November every year, which is always the Tuesday between November 2 and November 8, inclusively.

This rule was instituted by the U.S. Congress in 1845, and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November was chosen to keep the election day from falling on November 1, All Saints' Day, a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics. Tuesday was chosen to allow voters one day to travel to their polling place, as most residents at the time could not travel on Sunday because of church. The month of November was chosen because it was after the crops were harvested.

I think it's fair to say that all the reasons stated above for holding elections on a Tuesday, while stellar in their reasoning for the nineteenth century, are now obsolete. Read on...

Many social activists oppose this date, believing that it decreases voter turnout, since it is part of the workweek. Many advocate making election day a national holiday or allowing voters to cast their ballots over two or more days.

In response to this, many states have implemented early voting, which allows the voters to cast ballots, in many cases up to two weeks early. Also, all states have some kind of absentee ballot system. The state of Oregon, for example, performs all major elections through mail-in ballots that are sent to voters several weeks before Election Day.

Although measures have been taken in some places, clearly it's too little at this late stage of the game. If the american public wants to scare the pants off the Washington lobbyists, a good place to start would be to campaign for Election Saturdays. Ironically, it's something that will probably be decided on a Tuesday.

So what?

[a_nonamiss]

I wasn't going to post in this thread, but "The Man" probably already has a file on me, so I'll go ahead and excercise my first amendment rights and comment.

My comment is this: so what? The president cheated. It seems pretty clear that something fishy was going on in the 2004 election. I am from Ohio, I saw as our shameful Secretary of State (possibly our future governor) stood by his man and took 3rd party candidates off the ballot to make it easier for his master to get re-elected. As much as I didn't want Bush re-elected, I accepted the "truth" like everyone else did. I was even suspiscious. But what's going to happen? Is the Republican controlled Congress going to investigate? Is the Republican appointed Supreme Court going to invalidate the election two years after the fact? Is an armed militia going to march down to the White House and give control back to the people?

No. None of this is going to happen. As much as our commander in chief goes around waving his flag and talking about how we are "spreading freedom" across the globe, we have lost our freedom in this country. Even if this article is 100% true, nothing will ever come of it. You know why? There are two ways of dealing with those who dissent. One way is to kill them all. Stalin did this, and it worked for a while, but he tends to be frowned upon by history. The other way is to just ignore them. What are they going to do? Post an angry article in their blogs? Write a letter to their congressman? Write and host a satirical fake news show? Even worse, are they going to show the fat cats in Washington and run for office themselves? At the end of the day, nothing will happen. Don't think that the Democrats are any better. The illusion of politics is that you actually have a choice. You don't. All the people in power just take turns passing it around to each other. They pretend to disagree about the issues, but they all have one thing in common. They all want to wear the crown and carry the sceptre. The most devious ones make it to the top, and the others end up getting jobs as high paid lobbyists or fade out of existance.

So here is what I'm choosing to do. I'm not stupid enough to fight the system. It's like swimming against a rip tide. You swim and swim against the current, and you never get anywhere. Eventually it takes you out to sea, and you die. Instead, I'm going to make the best life I can for myself and my family. I stand up for my rights where I can. I write my congressman, and read about the issues, but I don't fool myself into thinking I can make a difference. Most importantly, I put blind faith in the idea that what goes around comes around. I am not a member of an organized religion, but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know how the universe works. I think there are other facets to our existance that we can't even begin to comprehend. I believe that in some way, in some form, the people who do evil in this world face subsequent consequences in the next. I strive to be the best person I can in this one, and hopefully I will be rewarded. If not, hey, at least I didn't waste my whole life on this Earth stressed out about something I can't do anything about. Sometimes, the blue pill isn't all that bad.

Re:So what?

[Stalyn]

There should be a term that classifies your line of thinking, perhaps "apathetic determinism".

Most importantly, I put blind faith in the idea that what goes around comes around. ...but I'm not arrogant enough to think I know how the universe works...

Isn't that position a contradiction? There has to be some level of arrogance to believe something without question.

If not, hey, at least I didn't waste my whole life on this Earth stressed out about something I can't do anything about. Sometimes, the blue pill isn't all that bad.

Why do anything then? Why have a family? Why don't you just kill yourself now? The thing is you don't actually believe this. But you convince yourself that you do for the sake of convenience. And the very fact this got modded insightful is no wonder why the world is in such a state.

Re:Moo

[niktemadur]

You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home.

While commendable when the only good option is "None Of The Above" Down Under, there are other countries where this is extremely dangerous for the democratic process. Certain parties in many countries will find it irresistible to fill in the ballots in the process of sorting and counting the ballot. A case in point would be Mexico, where the vote consists of crossing the candidate's country with a black crayon, one ballot for each public office under contest, then each ballot goes into the appropriate urn (again, one for each public office).

Here in Illinois

[slyborg]

We had Republican gubernatorial administrations for a quarter century until the most recent. So if, as you claim, there are no legitimate elections here, the Democrats apparently have been cheating for the purpose of bringing in Republican administrations for decades. So you have to admit that they at least are evenhanded in cheating on behalf of everyone.

As to Democratic corruption, the last Republican governor, George Ryan, was just sentenced to six years in Federal prison for...corruption. The point is not that both sides engage in this type of behavior, but that it can't be condoned or excused because "everybody does it". It needs to be exposed wherever it occurs by whoever engages in it.

(If you replace "Illinois" with "Chicago" in your post, I think i might be inclined to agree with you, though).

Re:Here in Illinois

[Obyron]

We had Republican gubernatorial administrations for a quarter century until the most recent.

This can actually be seen as further proof of cheating. No, seriously. Let me explain.

I live in Kentucky. We consistently elect Republicans for the Senate and have voted Bush in both elections, and there is only one Democrat in our national delegation (who happens to be from my district). Yet if you look at the State Senate and the State House, they are both overwhelmingly Democrat and have been for years. In other words, Republicans tend to get the majority of votes here, yet the State congressional districts have been gerrymandered to the point that it's pretty pointless to run against a Democrat in a State race. The only time Republicans tend to stand a chance here is in popular vote elections, or local elections in the Republican enclaves in the extreme western and northern parts of the state. The Democratic party in this state is as dirty as you'll find. They just lack the charisma of Louisiana's Dirty Dems, and the overtness of Illinois Dems. :P

State and local politics are so much more fun... PS: I'm a registered Democrat. Mod me +1 Ironic.

Play nice:: Re:"...you are kind of dopey."

[zubernerd]

And Dave Schroeder, regardless of whatever it is that would make you try to defend him, to Hell with you.

The above comment epitomize what, in part, I believe is wrong with political discourse in this country (USA). We can't disagree in a civil manner. No, no, no... We have to turn around and name call and tell people to "rot in hell" among other things. Our debates turn into the fights small children have:

Child 1 to Child 2: "you're a poop poop head"
Child 2 to Child 1: "You're a ca-ca face"

Except replace the names with nastier ones.
You don't have to agree with your oppenent, but remember they're a human being too. Be civil.

The Republican attitude here stinks

[kaffiene]

I'm not an American. I am gob-smacked at the head-in-the-sand attitude being displayed by Republican supporters on Slashdot.

From the article:

"According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion."

This is something to be VERY concerned about, not to be brushed aside with some facile quip.

The article also mentions the fact that the Democrats don't seem to be pushing the issue of electorial fraud, which rather puts the lie to all the posters claiming that this is about Democrats not accepting defeat. The reality is, that had this election been held in a third world country, we would all be decrying it as a case of clear electorial tampering and demanding a fresh election with neutral observers in place.

When you fail to care whether the electorial process was tampered with, you fail to care about democracy at all. What's more important? GW winning or democracy itself? To me, that's a no brainer, but clearly that's not the case for many of the Republican supporters here and as a member of TheRestOfTheWorld, that's a real worry for me. You need to sort your priorities out.

Re:Moo

[DavidTC]

Of course, even if the election of 1960 was stolen, it was to get JFK in office isntead of Nixon, whereas the election of 2004 was to keep GWB in office instead of any other random person.

It's akin to the difference between robbing a bank so you can live in the Caymans the rest of your life, vs. robbing a bank so you can purchase and torture small children(1). The means might be identical, even the ends might be the same, being president, but the actual results varied rather largely.

And now I'm imagining paranoid Nixon during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1) Like John Yoo says, the president is legally allowed to crush the testicles of the children of people we suspect of being terrorists to make the parents talk.

You know, with all of these fcts in mind..

[Khyber]

I'm surprised that some citizen in good standing (No tickets, no misdemeanors, no felonies, makes good money, is well respected in their neighborhood,) hasn't legally issued a citizen's arrest against the President for Treason. Our citizen's arrest powers, from what I'm reading, are not limited to other citizens, they can go all the way up the chain if one has the backing and evidence to support it. We've already 'witnessed' the crimes, everyday on Television, and Rumsfeld last week came out with the excuse that we invaded Iraq, crying "Think of the oil prices!" Which tells me we did start a war over another nation's oil. These morons are confessing right in front of our faces and we're damned-near blind to it.

Re:LIARS

[ptbarnett]

You cite Rice's reassurance that her gang won't postpone elections as reason to "cool the rhetoric"?

I reminded someone else that apparently didn't read the cited article in the grandparent posting, but it's worth repeating:

Rice made her comment about not postponing the elections in 2004, in response to concerns about discussion of what to do if terrorists tried to disrupt elections. This was shortly after the train bombings in Madrid, a few days before national elections in Spain.

You can choose not to believe her. But you cannot dispute the fact that the 2004 elections were held.

As the original poster cautioned: cool the rhetoric. The facts are making you look like a fool.

So, let me get this straight...

[ChePibe]

-withdraw from iraq, try to do so gracefully since were damned if we stay and damned if we go.

So, the Democrats' official position is that Iraq's hopeless? Wow, I'm inspired with confidence. The solution of "no solution". Great.

-undo the damage to our civil liberties done by the patriot act

Yes, because the majority of the U.S. population is so pissed off that you can look at library records. Forgive me, but the PATRIOT Act is by far the least of my concerns. As someone who has done more than his fair share of studying national security issues, I recognize the need for something that goes well beyond FISA, which was designed to operate against different kinds of threats.

-reform social security by removing the blatant privatization bush put in which basically amounts to abolshment (but with the added benefit of commissions to brokers before your stock tanks)

Make Social Security insoluble. Great. Pardon me as I run for the ballot box...

-Universal health care (which responds to the increasing 10s of millions of people without healthcare, and which they make a damned good economic case for!)

Because it's worked oh so well for Europe and Canada! Quick, let's all jump on that bandwagon! And where do you plan on getting the funding for all of this?

-Investigation into bush's illegal activites, followed hopefully by impeachment

DOWN WITH BUSHITLER! Please, did you bother to read the post above?

-Investigation into oil companies among others for gouging.

Because there could only be one source for all the world's problems - rich people.

Among others.. it's all laid out..

I sincerely hope this isn't a serious party platform. Please, please tell me that your post is some kind of sick joke. No serious group could put this forward and expect people to vote for them.

Big media is owned by republicans so you don't see it.. listen to air america and they spend each and every day spelling out those exact same points.

And, of course, the big time media conspiracy theory which I don't buy from the right wing and find particularly fatuous when coming from the left. Yes, I must listen to the great Air America and exorcise the right wing demons like Ted Turner! Save me! Why, I've been wasting all of this time reading ridiculous publications like Foreign Affairs, Policy Review, and the Christian Science Monitor when I could've been listening to some idiot and paid political actor with a BA in Government tell me what to think in the form of nice, compact bumper sticker slogans! Oh, the fool I must be! I must throw away my entire library of books written by influential political thinkers and replace it with Al Franken and Noam Chomsky ravings!

If you're looking to convince me your party has anything resembling a platform, you've failed miserably.

Re:So, let me get this straight...

[plasmacutter]

wow.. talk about right wing nutbag rant.. let's start from the beginning:

So, the Democrats' official position is that Iraq's hopeless? Wow, I'm inspired with confidence. The solution of "no solution". Great.

No.. that would be any sane person's official position. Ever hear of vietnam.. did you live through it.. ask anyone who lived through it what hope the united states has at imposing any kind of system when the existing system has popular support.

Iraq is hopeless, we got ourselves into it with good intentions, bungled it horribly, and utterly failed to gain the public trust, now we're reaping what we sow.. which even the rightest of right wing news organizations now acknowledges as out and out civil war.

there is a critical mass that wants us out and holds it against us for being there.. and there is also a significant portion who wants us to stay who will blame us if we leave. Since we're damned either way, our forces worldwide are stretched thin leaving us vulnerable to attack and incapable of responding to threats, and staying costs us more money and lives, leaving is the best option. Or maybe you want to stay and convince those few left who actually don't hate us that hating us is the right thing to do.

Yes, because the majority of the U.S. population is so pissed off that you can look at library records. Forgive me, but the PATRIOT Act is by far the least of my concerns. As someone who has done more than his fair share of studying national security issues, I recognize the need for something that goes well beyond FISA, which was designed to operate against different kinds of threats.

to paraphrase your statement "Oh trustworthy and competent government, please please PLEASE take away my civil liberties for the promise of security you can never deliver.. i know you can disappear me to prison for years without charges and torture me already... but I just want you to have more power"..

trust me.. you are in the minority in this view, and the majority is really scared of the patriot act and people like you who support it, live with it.

Make Social Security insoluble. Great. Pardon me as I run for the ballot box...

better than making it "nonexistant".. by the way making it actually worth something to people by reforming it and undoing bush's rediculous privatization does not necessarily mean making it insoluble.. it may however mean that corporate executives will have to get 3 solid gold hum-v's this year instead of 4.

Because it's worked oh so well for Europe and Canada! Quick, let's all jump on that bandwagon! And where do you plan on getting the funding for all of this?

First off, those two systems may not be "perfect", but they still rank much higher than the US in health care quality, and further we have the benefit of being able to analyze where their mistakes were and correct them, second people pay out hundreds a month for company or personal plans.. guess where that money could go instead? Finally, 30% of the money paid into the healthcare system right now pays for the overhead of dealing with the many many MANY different processes of filing claims with half a billion different insurance systems. That 30% cost goes away with a proper national heathcare system.. as does the discriminatory denial of coverage for people for the slightest headache or zit on their face.
If you'd think about things outside of your right-winger partisan box for a second you'd notice these possibilities. Maybe if your republican friends contributed their input would provide valuable perspective in ironing out potential problems. Instead they rig elections and preach shrilly about "godless communism" while selling the middle class off the big business.

Because there could only be one source for all the world's problems - rich people.

what poor person do you know that can lobby to congress for the erection of barriers to entry which destroy consumer choice and rights, how many poor people

Re:Moo

[Peter Cooper]

What would happen if you walked in, ticked your name off, then didn't vote and just wrote "Screw you!" on the ballot paper. It's a secret ballot, right? So you didn't vote, but.. you kinda did. That's what I'd do.

The source of extremism

[rjung2k]

"I agree that the polarization is getting worse, but I don't think the Internet is to blame."

Here's the cause (IMO): Tentacles of Rage: The Republican propaganda mill, Harpers, September 2004

Re:Chacham (981) = NEOCON suck up stooge

[DavidTC]

Hey! The neocons can run a war just fine! They're making plenty of money!

In related news, we've apparently completely lost the Anbar province, the entire western third of Iraqi, to 'al-Qaeda in Iraq'.(1) We no longer are bothering to even try to control Anbar, and apparently can't according to some recently leaked classified reports, so no longer have to drive across that damn desert anymore, and, hell, they didn't even have any oil.

And the north, of course, is happily in the hands of the Kurds, where they're having lots of fun advertising on TV and infiltrating across to Turkey and blowing up them up. I'm hoping it will be Turkey/Kurdistan trying for a 1980 Lebanon/Israel, where Turkey invades(2) and controls them for a few decades, and experiences even more and more terrorist working with native Turkey Kurds. They'll have their work cut out for them, because Lebanon is back in the game, baby, and they're not about to let their title get taken away sitting down!

And Iran is stepping in to control the remainer of the country. Luckily, they have experience at running oil wells, so that should work out nicely. Perhaps in a few years, they could remain themselves Iranq or Ira? The Kurds, of course, are 'Kurdistan', leaving 'Iraq' for the west, if they want it.

See, we should be entirely out of Iraq really soon, because soon the Iraqis will be able to fight the war all by themselves. Is it a civil war if there are three sides? Maybe a trivil war?

1) You know, the organization that didn't even exist until two years ago. Luckily, right now they're just killing us over there, and I'm sure they won't come over here, because...well..I forget, but I'm sure there's a good reason they won't. Probably they're scared of flying, what with all those airplanes flying into buildings. (And most soldiers are poor, anyway, so does it really matter if they die?)

2) We could complain, but seem to recall us invading a country just a few years ago because they supported terrorists, although I forget the name.(3) Starts with an A. Man am I glad that war was over, although it sucks we lost and the Taliban are back in charge. It probably wasn't that important, though. I mean, what did the Taliban ever do to anyone? They did blow up those giant Buddhas, but, frankly, those statues didn't look anything like Buddha anyway.

3) Not that we could complain if they just invaded for no reason at all. They could always assert that Kurdistan is hiding, for example, a black hole and a slingshot to launch it at them.

Re:Moo

[niktemadur]

Australia has good scrutiny making that unlikely.

I agree wholeheartedly. In fact that's my point. It speaks volumes about a society in which one can show up and perform a non-vote as a form of protest. In fact, I would love to think that non-votes are also tabulated and presented statistically, for they are also a voice.

If you're sufficiently paranoid you can just create an informal vote by putting 1s in all the boxes...
That is a great idea. Let me tell you why I'm interested in this. I happen to live in Mexico, and I voted this past July. I know some people who did not vote, as an act of protest. I was angry at them at first, but I've come to respect their decision. However, what still bugs me is the futility of their non-gesture, lost, as Roy in Blade Runner says, like tears in the rain.

Now, in Mexico we take it as a matter-of-fact that the government has for decades commited massive acts of electoral fraud. We hope this is changing, but the horrid electoral noise this year also makes us remember that we don't have the political maturity that Oz, Canada and many european countries have. But that's a story for another time.
My point is that in all truthfullness, we have to work on the assumption that only a limited number of governments will refuse to exploit a blank ballot to their advantage.

Re:The hazard is this simple:

[knifey]

Aussies (myself included) do tend to be defensive about our voting system. Because it works (even if we do currently have the government who coined the terms, "core and non-core promises"). And the reasons why it works for us maybe wouldn't work for other countries.

For one, Australia has pretty damned close to 100% literacy. I've seen what this means, and it's not literacy as in read shakespeare fluently, but from what I've seen of else-where it still translates into a population massively more informed than (for example) the US.

Media ownership control laws (which are currently in jeopardy) provide a slightly wider set of views, esp coupled with the government run media. (That sounds really stupid to anyone from a totalitarian country, but sadly, the most bipartisan media in Aust is the Australian Broadcasting Channel).

There are several other factors like disallowing massive media campaigns that assist.

Either way, your post was misinformed (or likely un-informed).

And to add my 2c on America's issues.

There are worse issues than the voting system. Population education being significant, which hinges again on media ownership. And lobby groups need to die. I have serious troubles believing that Americans can blindly accept such an institutionalised corruption.
:-P

Re:Moo

[newhoggy]

Voting should be compulsory - if only to guarantee that the government can't take short cuts by, for example:

only providing enough polling booths for the turnout based on the previous election

turning voters away at voting day based on some dubious criteria

disenfranchising working voters by holding elections on working days

The benefit of maintaining the integrity of the voting system (from the point of the government properly administering an election) far outweighs the cost to the "right not to vote".

Compulsory voting also diminishes the influence of ideologically extremists who vote not because they are informed.

The ballot should be preferential and the first candidate should be "The ballot ends here", so if someone numbers the ballot straight down, it is an indication that the voter votes for no one solving your "scary" scenario.

I'm so giddy with excitement!

[ChePibe]

As always, thanks for the laughs.

Most of your post is simply too absurd to bother with responding to, but I'll have some fun while I'm here:

First, naom chomsky and Al Franken are influential political thinkers.. or maybe lies and lying liars didnt make it to the the top 10 best sellers list?

So, I should read Ann Coulter as well? Great! She's influential! Stupid, but influential! She's on a top 10 list!

By influential, I mean people that write things policy makers read and have some hope of being implemented: Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Scott Sagan, John Mueller, Thomas Friedman, et al. People with doctorates in relevant fields, people who have worked on this. People who have done analysis or worked in the field. Not op/ed page dwellers that make a quick buck off of political rantings. Not linguistics professors who have made a living writing rants that find a home amongst Marxists.

Finally.. that whole rant just pegged you as an extreme neofascist right wing nutter.

Help, mommy, he's calling me names! Oooh... fascist. The left's favorite word! I'm so scared by it, ooooooh!

Those publications you seem to sarcastically laud in your shameless frothing rant have been thoroughly debunked as extreme right, and it's been shown from first hand witnesses that anything opposed to the right wing agenda since '01 has been kept out of the main stream by zealous editors, corporate chiefs, etc because it would be "bad for america"...

The Council on Foreign Relations has been "debunked as extreme right"? Are you really so stupid as to say something like that? No, seriously, if you post in response, I'd like you to type exactly those words - "The CFR has been debunked as an extreme right organization". They'll make a great sig for me. Do you have any idea what you're talking about? I mean at all? Have you heard of these publications? Read them? Or is anything other than The Nation simply a right-wing rag? Who, precisely, has debunked these publications? Where is your evidence? Oh wait... you don't need any... BUSH SUCKS, FASCIST!

Make Social Security insoluble. Great. Pardon me as I run for the ballot box...

better than making it "nonexistant".. by the way making it actually worth something to people by reforming it and undoing bush's rediculous privatization does not necessarily mean making it insoluble.. it may however mean that corporate executives will have to get 3 solid gold hum-v's this year instead of 4.

Yes, we should really stick with the present social security system, which is bound for failure in the next few decades, just to make sure no one gets "solid gold hum-v's" (which should be HMMWV, but hey, it's not like you're concerned with accuracy). Riiiiight...

Social Security will, effectively, become "nonexistent" unless massive reforms are made. Personally, since you're so concerned about rights and freedoms (vis-a-vis your position on the PATRIOT act), if the government wants to invest money in a retirement account for me, I'd like the choice of where that money goes rather than trusting the government (something you obviously have issues with) to put it into a system which depends on birth rates the U.S. is highly unlikely to sustain in the long-term.

Take a look at similar programs in countries whose present birth rate reflects what the U.S. birth rate will be in a few decades - here's a hint, it's not pretty. For someone who's supposedly so concerned about government intervention in our lives, working against a program that would allow people to exercise some freedom over how THEIR money is spent for THEIR retirement rather than just placing it all in a system that will not be able to provide for them in a few decades would seem to make sense. But your positions aren't based on personal consistency - simply arguing the contrary of what someone you don't like says.

As to the rest... heh, thanks for the laughs. It was a boring boring BORING (as you seem to like to type it) repeat of the gibberish found throughout the left and about as enlightening as reading a Franken/Chomsky/Coulter/Limbaugh debate.

Re:I'm so giddy with excitement!

[plasmacutter]

Wow.. more frothing.. tons of it.. calling my argument "rediculous" without any basis..

Also... people with Ph.D's in fields like those you are speaking about also tend to be in the elite echelons of the upper class, because those degrees tend to cost you more money than you make from them (without the right connections, of course.. wink wink).. and you wander why they espouse elitist right wing values and are listened to by elitist right wing leaders?

Yes, we should really stick with the present social security system, which is bound for failure in the next few decades, just to make sure no one gets "solid gold hum-v's" (which should be HMMWV, but hey, it's not like you're concerned with accuracy). Riiiiight...

You make the assumption that we would stick with the "present" social security system, reforming bush's policies does not necessarily mean putting in place the same old one that didn't work.. however restoring solvency would probably involve taxing the rich.. who have more than enough assets to bear that burdon without batting an eye..
so it wouldnt be "just" so they wouldn't have sold gold hum-v's, they would be taxed for a purpose.. the point would be they can bear it quite easily though..

if the government wants to invest money in a retirement account for me, I'd like the choice of where that money goes rather than trusting the government (something you obviously have issues with) to put it into a system which depends on birth rates the U.S.

So you'd rather put it in the hands of the ken leighs of the world? Have a tenth of it eaten up in commissions?
Did it ever occur to you that the majority of citizens view social security not as their retirement package but as a safety net, which is what it's supposed to be, immune to the instability of the stock market.. (after all social security was instituted after black tuesday wiped the nation's economy out.. do you want that to happen to your retirement fund?) Social security is managed by the government for stability. Maybe stronger protections need to be set up.. possibly constitutional.. to keep them from raiding the social security fund like they do.. maybe the press needs to be more responsible in decrying it.. but social security is supposed to function as a stable safety net, not a stock toy for every tom dick or harry to squander.

Take a look at similar programs in countries whose present birth rate reflects what the U.S. birth rate will be in a few decades - here's a hint, it's not pretty. For someone who's supposedly so concerned about government intervention in our lives, working against a program that would allow people to exercise some freedom over how THEIR money is spent for THEIR retiremen see statements above

But your positions aren't based on personal consistency - simply arguing the contrary of what someone you don't like says.

that's funny.. everything I said is consistent, you simply try to assert otherwise without proof or substance in order to discredit what I say.

Then again.. the end of your post was quite logical.. If I were crafting policy I would want you there for input, but dismissing policies which could be beneficial for the sake of one like "personal accounts" which do not fulfill the root purpose of social security is not the answer.

s to the rest... heh, thanks for the laughs. It was a boring boring BORING
Logic and reason are often boring.. theyre definitely not as interesting as dogma, zealotry, and irrationality. Then again, the government process is not supposed to be exciting.
If you want exciting you should get into extreme sports, or war, or exploration, archaeology, humanitarian aid in dangerous places... become a reporter assigned to interview people in dangerous parts of the middle east and africa for instance.. that'll be exciting.

repeat of the gibberish found throughout the left
Since the left speaks clearly, but with great complexity, I can only assume you simply don't understand the complexity theyre trying to convey to you.. you insult yourself wrongly here.. because I honestly think you're more competent than that.

Re:Moo

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I wouldn't asy the story is bogus outright, but I don't trust *any* of the political parties. My relatives are election judges ( the members themselves are fairly fluid as to their political affiliation voting for regan, then bush I, clinton, Dole, Bush II, and then Kerry) who were discusted with what they saw in 2004 by both parties. It was all local grass root partisan crap. Each Parties Observers kept challenging everything, the local party lawers were called in several times. It was weird stuff, In Wisconson, where its legal to register and vote at the same time, One party's operatives brought in a busload of people from a mental institiution who tried to use had writen birthday cards to establish residency, identification, and age. The other party, in apparent retaliation went to a retirement home and picke up a buch of people, most of which had already registered and voted at the same polling place. it was a mad house, in the southern Wisconson, Northern Illinois area. I wouldn't be suprised if it was repeated elsewhere, but I really couldn't blame any party more than the other. You'd thin that on a local level politics would be more civil, but you'd be wrong. I hate them both. Don't blame me, I voted for Kronos.

Where's the beef? (or is this merely infowar?)

[Dr. Zowie]

I've heard this meme (that "the Democrats also steal a lot of elections") a lot lately but I have not seen anyone substantiate it. I don't recall anyone getting up in arms about the process of the Clinton elections, though certainly there were people upset that he won.

Does anyone have anything other than innuendo on this talking point? It sounds a little too much like a Rove snowjob to me -- I hear the talking point a lot from different sources but never any deeply resourced, specific complaints such as RFK aired.

Re:The hazard is this simple:

[JimDaGeek]

For one, Australia has pretty damned close to 100% literacy. I've seen what this means, and it's not literacy as in read shakespeare fluently, but from what I've seen of else-where it still translates into a population massively more informed than (for example) the US.

Australia has a 99.9% literacy rate while the USA has a 97.0% literacy rate. I would not call that "massively more informed". A lot of those that are counted as being illiterate in the USA are immigrants from Mexico. Mexico has a literacy rate of only 90.3%. Many of the immigrants that come to the USA do not speak, read or write English. It is very, very, very rare to find someone that was born and raised in the USA that does not know how to read and write at a basic level.

Re:Moo

[killjoe]

"Change Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday. "

I'll go you one better.

Change the election date to the fourth of july. What better way to celebrate your independence then to vote. It's a holiday, people are running around getting BBQ supplies and beer anyway. Just pull into the polling place on your way to the supermarket.

Easy, simple, effective. There is no way it will get done.

Re:Moo

[letxa2000]

Accusing the Democrats of sour grapes seems within the realm of possibility but to suggest that even if this were all true just to ignore it undermines the very foundation of your democratic process. Like it or not (and I'm guessing not - as it is a clear and present threat to your obvious political alligence) free and fair voting for everyone matters in a democracy.

The point is that that's pretty much the only thing Democrats have talked about since 2000. If there's a case, take it up in court. I suspect the lack of significant successful court cases (or even filings) is due to a lack of evidence which is very curious given the supposed magnitude of the fraud. But to make that just about the only thing Democrats talk about as they head into another election is just stupid. Sure, they can talk about it until the cows come home but it doesn't matter unless they make their accusations in court, not in the court of public opinion. Making this the only issue (well, and Iraq of course, but without really explaining what their alternative is) might get your loyal Democrats upset and get them to the polls, but you generally need substance to bring in the independents and maybe grab some conservatives, too. And that's how you win elections.

Let me put it this way: You deal with past perceived transgressions in court. You secure the next election by giving the voters something of substance to vote in favor of. Hoping that voters will vote against someone or something will only get you so far, and that's pretty much the only thing Democrats have done since 2000--and they've continued to lose because of that. If they had presented a compelling platform that people could get excited about, and you add to that the general discontent with Bush and the war, they could've cleaned up in 2004 and sent Bush packing. They could have won by such a margin that fraud, even if true, wouldn't have made a difference.

I'll be the first to recognize that elections are not always clean, and it happens both at the hands of Republicans and Democrats--to suggest otherwise is naive. But even if we assume the Republicans engaged in some fraud, the only reason it even mattered is because the Democrats were unable to open up a statistically significant margin. And considering all they had in their favor going into 2004, it should've been cake. They should've won by 10% and all the Republican fraud in the world wasn't going to be able to overcome that. If the Democrats had a platform, I think they would've accomplished it.

It is my position that until we get a good, solid, open-source voting system with appropriate safeguards, there will always be some amount of fraud on both sides. That's just the ugly truth. I also think it is safe to assume that Republican fraud is generally counteracted by Democratic fraud in other places. I also believe that such fraud is always small-scale (nothing like what liberals suggest happened in Ohio) because anything large-scale would be impossible to cover up sufficiently to stand-up to legal scrutiny--so the fraud we face around the country is small-scale that could only have an impact on a race that is so close that it's in the statistical noise anyway. That doesn't excuse the fraud, but it does recognize that it's statistically irrelevant.

I do not accept allegations of fraud in the magnitude of hundreds of thousands of votes. It's just not possible. In the case of Ohio, the election came down consistent with the multiple polls done in the days and week ahead of the election. There is no statistical evidence of fraud in Ohio--the election agreed with numerous pre-election polls as close as the day before the election. The odd-man out were the exit polls, not the election. If hundreds of thousands of votes were really manipulated, then all the pre-election polls would've had to have been wrong.

Re:Moo

[JoGlo]

I think that the treatment of the Australian voting system has been a little simplistic, as there are other factors at work, as well as compulsory voting.

1. To win, a candidate must muster at least 50% + 1 of the number on his or her electoral role to secure the seat.

2. The vote is a SINGLE, TRANSFERRABLE VOTE, which means that for a ovte to be valind (and ocunted) it must list the voter's preferences from 1 to the last person on the ballot paper. Any missed candidates will render the vote invalid.

3. After the initial count, if no silgle candidate hass the magic 50% +1, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated, and the vote preferences are allocated to the other candidates, based on that person's voter's second preferences. This process, eliminating the bottom candidate, and allocating those votes based on next highets preference, goes on until one candidate has the mandatory 50% +1 vote.

4. Voting rolls are not within the control of any political party - the voting rolls are maintained by a federal department, which does not include political appointees (well, not officially), and there is open scrutiny of the rolls at all times.

5. The candidates in the election are all able to provide scrutineers to the count(so apart from so-called "drover's dog" electorates ("If it wore the right political colors, even a drover's dog could get elected in this constituency, there are scrutineers at all counting ststions).

6. Party advertising is not allowed inside the polling stations - party people can distribute their stuff outside, but not inside. 7. In federal and stae elections, people don't directly vote for the Prime Minister or state Premier, but that office is held by the leader of the majority party in the state or federal parliament. so, voting tends to be on party lines, and the chances of a good candidate of the "wrong" political persuasion getting up against a bad candidate of the "right" political persuasion is always very poor.

8. As a corrollory to 7., if you live in a marginal seat (one that changes election to election, or which may change with a smallish swing), your vote is worth commensurately more than if you live in a "safe" seat.

Hope that clears it up a bit.

Election Theft is Easy!

[Dr_Ish]

I have posted this before, but I will post it again. Election theft is easy. However, beware of the 'obvious' targets. People like to yell about the voting machines. This is a distractor. The machines have a bunch of problems, but cheating at that level is simply inefficient. What works better is to go for the tabulators. Take a look at http://www.ucs.ull.edu/~isb9112/election/. There I have run and photographed some studies on tabulator software and found out things that were beyond scarey. Sure, suppress the vote, initimidate voters, but if the ultimate counter cannot be trusted, neither can the outcome of the election. Should there be an election 'surprise' in November, this could well be the reason why. When will it be time for that armed insurrection? Dr_Ish [Just asking questions and causing trouble, as usual -- see you all in the Cuban 'holiday camp']

not so much

[Scudsucker]

The linked article goes through a bunch of Kennedy's claims and casts them into doubt.

Sure does, until you read the rebuttal that puts the smackdown on Manjoo.

Re:Moo

[10Ghz]

So name an older democracy?

Finland (first really democratic country in the world), Iceland and New Zealand come to mind. USA didn't become a real democracy until 1920, 14 years after Finland.

Read the Freeman and Bleifuss book

[doom]

Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:26 PM I've been reading the Freeman and Bleifuss book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?

I have to say that I think the situation is even worse than I thought it was... after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legit at least had some wiggle room, because it seemed like there was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found a discrepancy, but then the MIT study chimed in saying there wasn't, so who do you believe?

The thing is, the MIT guys later admitted that they screwed up: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never reported that development, and I missed it myself...

Freeman and Bleifuss do a very thorough analysis of the various theories that have been presented to cover the discrepancy, and none of them seem to hold up. It's difficult to see how anyone could read this book and not conclude that phrasing the title as a question was excessively polite...

And it's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system -- a paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? Even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be?

And anyone who speaks out against that point, is speaking out against Democracy itself, and needs to take a good long look in the mirror to think about what kind of world they want to live in.

(The "corrected" data by the way, is by definition "corrected" so that the discrepancy goes away. So what good is it? Why do people call it "corrected" and not, oh, say, "fudged"?)

Bzzt!

[Scudsucker]

Sorry, but your "debunking" was counter-debunked, on Salon as well. Turns out Manjoo was just using the right-wing's classic tricks of distraction and red herrings.

Re:Moo

[EugeneK]

since felons lose their right to vote...

Only in four states do felons permanently lose the right to vote.

election fraud and the media

[doom]

diablomonic wrote:

NOT BOGUS STORY. wake the hell up sheeple.

No, no, "sheeple" is what you say when you want to sound like a right-wing crazy... (the "tinfoil hats" line is good, too). If you want to sound like a left-wing crazy you need to accuse everyone of being a Nazi.

You may not care that bush stole the election,

You raise an interesting point here -- do people not care about fair and unbiased elections? It would seem that there are a large number of people who are comfortable with winning one for their own side and they don't much care how: God help the party, and devil take the country.

I mean, when you point out that there was chicanery in the 2004 election, why is it that the first question on everyone's minds is "was the fraud large enough to throw the election?" It doesn't bother you at all that there are people trying to rig elections? I mean, if the election wasn't stolen last time, wouldn't you be concerned that it might be stolen next time?

but youd have to be a complete frickin idiot not to realise that he did steal it.

No, not an idiot, just not paying very close attention. The major media hasn't exactly done a great job of covering the issues involved, you know?

Dodgy exit polls,

Check.

mathematical impossibilities,

Essentially.

thousands of accounts of one sided errors,

Yeah, essentially.

the voting machines manufacturer CEO PROMISED BUSH VOTES in a memo!!!

True, but this isn't really the strongest point. It helps establish motive, but not really intent, if you know what I mean.

I think a better point is that Diebold and ESS are both run by two brothers, and between the two of them they controlled a huge slice of the vote in 2004. That makes it start to look much less like some whacky theory of an insanely wide-spread conspiracy...

You can whinge about sources if you want, I dont give a crap, most murdoch/GE/etc owned news companies lie through their teeth, so the only place you CAN go for some of this news is "less reputable" sites.... (eg look up "outfoxed" on google video, a doco by ex fox news reporters,

Here we get down to another interesting point... how widespread a "conspiracy" do you need to presume to explain the media's behavior in recent years? The mainstream media has been looking like it's in the government's pocket, but that could easily be a sincere rallying-around-the-flag after the 9-11 attack.

Re:The hazard is this simple:

[oakgrove]

As a person born and raised in the United States, I can honestly say I have never met a single person that could not read and write on a level that could at least be considered basically literate. Where this supposed 3 percent comes from, I don't have the slightest clue. Though, you seem to have ignored the other poster's comment of illiterate Mexicans coming into the country; maybe that could be a not so subtle hint.

As for your assertion of an uninformed populace, has it occurred to you that Americans are informed and choose to act on that information in a different way than you do. Most Americans are pro-business, pro-democracy, pro-rule of law conservatives. Deal with it. Contrary to what seems to be the consensus belief of our European and Oceanic cousins, we are doing quite well, are quite happy, and still have the largest (and growing) economy in the world. Ask yourself, if the United States was really as bad as its made out to be, how are we still able to kick every other country in the world's ass economically, technologically, socially, etc. I know, this comment is getting more and more disjointed but its late and I'm tired. Just two more things. First, socio-economic mobility isn't just a buzzword here, its a reality. I was born dirt poor. Now, I run my own business and am doing quite well thank you. Only in America, baby. Second, if you insist on lecturing people about literacy, do yourself a favor and run a spell check on your posts. You'll look a lot less like the egotistical, asshat, pseudo-elitest, non-spelling bee winning idiot that you are.

Re: Third Parties

[Gnostic Ronin]

Actaully, the system is pretty stacked against 3rd parties. First off, it's pretty tough to get into the Pres debates if you're not a Dem or Rep. Greens and Libertarians are on the ballot in all 50 states, yet their candidates for president are shut out from the mainstream campaigning. They can't get into the debates, and other than CSPAN, they don't get coverage for their convention. Heck, they're not covered by the press period. Unless they have a big war-chest, they aren't likely to get adverts in the media. To make a long story short, unless you go looking for third party candidates, chances are pretty good that you'll never have heard of them. And unless a candidate can get his name out there in the minds of voters, he can't win.

A second problem, though I'm not sure that the parties themselves are to blame, is the meme that says voting for a third party is throwing your vote away. Apparently because they can't win.

better mod option for you

[Ender Ryan]

PS: I'm a registered Democrat. Mod me +1 Ironic

I think a better mod option for you would be "+1 Not a goddamn hypocrite." While your post would strike many people as ironic, and I suppose it is, it just strikes me as honest.

*Sigh*

I'm really sick of the Republicrats. However, I'm too politically center to support, say, the Libertarians or the Greens. If the Republicrats were at least *honest*, we'd be much better off, and could comfortably continue with our pathetic two party politics for some time to come. As it stands... IMNSHO, we're pretty much fucked.

I live in Ohio and it's true...

[Gildogg]

As a resident of Ohio and an active registered voter I can say that what this article suggests is more true than you would think. Just in my little city of about 25,000 people we had issues with Republicans "fixing the vote". Posting people outside of polling locations, harassing minorities, voting locations which previously had several machines being under staffed and not having as many machines as in the past. All of this stuff did happen, I was there, I witnessed it. It is pathetic to me that a man that lost the election in both 2000 and 2004 has persisted to be allowed to hold the presidency and screw up this country.

Democrats still sore losers after all this time?

[paranode]

Yeah he 'stole' it... I mean, this map right here just proves that Bush had no support!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/countymap.htm

Doesn't really help the Dems that they cry that the election was stolen every election year now. Especially given that there's at least as much conspiracy surrounding the Dems actively registering illegal immigrants to sway the vote in their direction.

I'm no fan of Bush, but this election stealing conspiracy is getting almost as tired as the 9/11 'inside job' stuff. Oops I probably sturred up the Slashdot believers.

SHOCK!!!

[Zaatxe]

Do you mean that the country that is liberating opressed countries and bringing Democracy to the world had two presidential elections stoled in a row?!?!? I'm SHOCKED!!!

Go ahead, mod me troll or flame-bait. I don't care for karma.

Re:Moo

[m1ddle]

Damn, I thought he said he wasn't a crook!! Well, at least he's a head in a jar now....

Re:Democrats still sore losers after all this time

[plague3106]

Yes, sore losers, nevermind that there seems to be a lot of proof (that is, its much more than a conspiracy theory) that the election results were tampered with, or other illegal methods were used to keep people from voting.

Call me a 'sore loser' if you will (I personally didn't like either choice), but concern of increased corruption in our election process is warranted. Governments have been overthrown for such things.

Why not national voter ID

[scjnsn]

We are capable of providing a system where voters have a national voting ID. We are also technologically capable of providing a system whereby everybody can vote from home. Republicans favor efforts in this direction and Democrats oppose them. This makes no sense if truly, Republicans are the ones defrauding the process.

Re:Moo

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I only ask one thing....PROOF. Not ONE instance have I seen anyone able to prove what is in the article. In fact, the local news here did a story on this right after the election (oh and by the way, Kerry won our county.....Franklin County, OH) and the only thing that they did seem to find was there was not enough machines at the polling locations. That's it. Nothing more. IN fact, because of this situation, the board of elections kept most polls open longer then the regular closing time. If there were still people in lines at the posted closing time, they let them vote.

This is just more democrats whining about not winning the election.

A criticism

[carpltunl]

I would have liked to see a comparison with the Presidential Election of 1960...

"Loss of sovereignty?"

[Medievalist]

It amazes me how the Bush administration can spout rhetoric in total opposition to its actions, and people will still buy in.

In case you haven't noticed, there have been several "State's Rights" issues during the Bush Interregnum. In all these cases, the Bush administration has come down solidly in favor of increased federal authority.

In one of the more egregious cases, the Federal Government is in favor of redrawing the boundaries of the state of Delaware so that a large foreign-owned oil company can construct a LNG pier serving the state of New Jersey. In that case, the Bush administration is actually championing the "rights" of British Petroleum, with collusion from corrupt New Jersey authorities, to override the demonstrated will of the citizenry of the US state of Delaware.

When will US conservatives realize they've been betrayed by a pack of radical facists, who favor any corporation from any nation over the rights of any individual anywhere?

To the point, and not so briefly:

[Catbeller]

"Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"

Yes. So was 2000. So, also, will 2008 be stolen.

Get rid of those damned voting machines, now. If the Republicans didn't know for th most part that the voting machines were being manipulated, they know now, after so many studies have shown how to do it. Even if you think no one stole an election using those damned things before, they will be stolen now. They've step-by-step instructions. How can they possibly stop themselves? You think a little vote change is going to present moral problems to the party that gave us an Iraqi invasion, an executive who claims he has authority to cancel the constitution, 14,000 people kidnapped into secret prisons, that gave us Swift-boating and Ken Starr?

Why just the Republicans? I've noodled it for years now (soapbox time) and I've narrowed it down to this: business morality. All seem to be profoundly religious, seem to anyway, and profess godly morality and all that. BUT. It's a party of businessmen, whereas Democrats tend to be a populist party. Businessmen, have you ever noticed, no matter their private morality, shut off the Ten Commandments as soon as they're on the clock? Lying, cheating, and stealing, even killing, is okay if you do it in the name of winning. This businessman's exemption to common ideas of morality is overwhelmingly present in the Republican party's situational ethics. Lying isn't just a necessity, it's practically a sport with them. There's so much BS pouring forth per second on Fox News that the heads are strangling, trying not to break out laughing in wonder at how much crap they can say without losing any professional credibilty.

Unfortunately, business's preocupation with fibbing and ignoring reality to make short-term gains inevitably butts up with reality. Cognitive dissonance, big time. Even a country that watches "Lost" instead of the news -- and who can blame it, considering how "balanced" and useless the news is now -- is noticing that the buggers are lying to them.

Re:Moo

[Darby]

And maybe you should try a little flag waving. That's one of the main reasons liberals in this country aren't taken seriously. You look like you hate this country and all it stands for.

What a laughable statement.

While you're waving your flag around desecrating it by your contempt for all that it stands for, people who actually do give a shit aobut this country are working to fix the problems created by the ignorant flag wavers.

Sorry, but you do not love this country if you think those who are actually defending it (from the savage assaults unleashed by cowardly traitors like *your* leaders look like they hate it.

Since you're the one demonstrating your complete ignorance of current events, Sparky, you are the one without the integrity to do your duty as a citizen to be informed.

I can understand you hating the current leadership but its hard to distinguish the difference when you use rhetoric like We turn off our brains and We hide under our beds

How else could you possibly explain the purely cowardly support for leaders who are going "boo! evil terrorists!! Now we need to repeal the bill of rights and the constitutional protections".

The fact is that your sort is backing the destruction of our liberty and you are doing it out of a largely nonsense fear.

That's about as canonical example of cowardice as you could ever find. It's blind ignorance as well, as it's one of the oldest tricks in the book which a little knowledge of history would have revealed to you as such. You just need to have the courage to actually think.

You just keep waving that flag as opposed to standing up for anything it represents, little coward.

It's time for you to grow a spine, Sparky. You're the coward who is working against what this country was founded on.

Bullshit

[pudge]

RFK Jr.'s article is utter bullshit.

If you actually examine his claims, they simply do not hold up.

Here's the executive summary: "[RFK Jr.] claims 357,000 legal voters were denied the right to vote, or did not have their legal vote counted. He has no actual data to justify the inclusion of at least 347,000 of the 357,000, and his claim that this is mostly the fault -- let alone the intent -- of Republicans is, to be kind, specious."

The right not to vote [Re:Moo]

[aber]

IMO, there are a few problems with your assessment here.

First of all, a factual error: Mandatory voting as implemented in Brazil does not affect your freedom of expression. Even with electronic voting, the voter has the option of anulling their vote, by selecting the "Annul Vote" option. So, if you refuse to vote for any of the candidates, you still have that option. That clearly indicates a protest vote. The one thing the electronic voting system did away with was the possbility of mistakenly annulling your vote (see Florida elections, 2000).

Second, I disagree that not being forced by law to vote generates better informed voters, necessarily. Again, using GWB as a case study, it seems to me that a lot of his voters were lured by vague things like "Values", or "Tough on Terror". I don't have especific references to that last statement, but it is the impression I have from following political news for the last few years. It seems to me that ellective voting tends to favor well-organized minorities, which simply by voting as one block may outnumber the votes on certain issues, even if the majority of Citizens have a different view on said issues. E.g.: A president is elected in singnificant part based on his positions on issues like Stem Cell Research and Abortion, while polls show that the majority of Americans disagrees with him.

Voting as a legal duty solves the issue above since most people are likely to have an opinion on most things, so vote counts are more likely to reflect the collective mind of the Citizens. And even if they don't have an opinion, they can still abstain by actively annulling their vote. The amount of annulled votes is a valuable statistic that reflects the fraction of the population that thinks the system has failed them. No such assessment can be made from the fraction of the Citizens that just didn't feel like voting that day.

In summary, we disagree on this: the right not to vote because you can't be bothered to do it doesn't mean much to me. But the right to actively abstain from voting by indicating so on a ballot, that to me is as important as voting.

Re:Moo

[demonbug]

Where I live, that would be counted as a clear vote for the Republican candidate(s).

Oh, please.

[porkchop_d_clown]

The "facts" listed in that article are all exaggerated, selective or distorted.

I notice he didn't mention how the only actual convictions for interfering with the Ohio elections were Democrats charged with vandalizing Republican campaign sites and vehicles.

Re:For serious?

[Lord Kano]

Or perhaps you're referring to the scads of Clinton administration officials convicted for malfeasance or corruption in the performance of their official duties. Or even indicted?/I>

I'm referring to the ones who fled the country to avoid indictment.

Let's take a look at some information that was compiled by a liberal source. The Progressive Review.

• ADMINISTRATION RECORDS SET
  - The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance
  - Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates
  - Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation
  - Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify
  - Most number of witnesses to die suddenly
  - First president sued for sexual harassment.
  - First president accused of rape.
  - First first lady to come under criminal investigation
  - Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case
  - First president to establish a legal defense fund.
  - Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions
  - Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad

• STARR INVESTIGATION
  - Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions or guilty pleas to date (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 15
  - Number of Clinton Cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5
  - Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4
  - Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3

I could go on, but there's really no point to it. It's never been about the law, it's always been about the politics with you people.

LK

Re: Crushing Testicles (Link)

[DavidTC]

And read that carefully, everyone.

John Yoo, for those who don't know who that is, is one of the major architeches of the presidents 'Unified executive' gibberish. See here.

And he's not asserting the president has the right to crush terrorists or even suspected terrorists testicles. He's asserting the president has the right to crush the testicles of people we know are innocent if that will make other people reveal information.

People, like, oh, you. If a terrorist likes you, Bush has the right to torture and mutilate you to make him talk, even if you have absolutely no connection to said terrorist.

And people think I'm being partisan when I talk about this administration literally being insane. That's even past '24' ground, it's into 'Evil Overlord' ground, where the villian menaces the love interest to make the hero talk.

Re:What does trust have to do with it?

[doom]

Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286) wrote:

I'm highlighting the fact that elections are controlled on a very local level. I have no doubt there was fraud on election day. Am I supposed to like the democrats more becuase they were less successful then they were in 1960?

Here we come to issue you're so stressed out about. Someone might actually dare to think that the Republicans should be voted out of office. Oh my.

I'll have to vote third party, cause I couldn't live with myself voting for either one.

Got it. They're all a bunch of crooks, so let's vote for Nader. That's your recommendation? You think that's going to fix the problem?

If the republicans conspired on a national level to steal the election, of course they should be punished, all the wrongs should be righted ect, ect... But you actually have to prove it was possible, and actually achived.

For that to happen, you'd actually have to be willing to investigate the problem, not try to sweep it under the rug.

Exit polls are not relieable. See Florida 2000 for more info.

Um, allow me to gently call "bullshit". Try reading Freeman and Bleifus on the subject. Why is it that an exit poll discrepancy can mean something in the Ukraine but not in the United States?

If all we needed was exit polls, why actually vote? I think we agree that the system is broke and needs to be fixed. I just have a higher burden of proof.

Proof of what? Freeman and Bleifus think they've proved that there are problems that need to be investigated. Proving that the system needs to be fixed, that ain't hard... all you need is a "conspiracy" scenario that looks plausible. This is different from proving that someone should be thrown in jail.

Remember, never assign to malice what can be easily explained by mass stupidity.

But sometimes, corruption really happens. Sometimes you actually run into a genuine "conspiracy". What happens then? Where's the check that balances out that particular failure?

If the party in power refuses to investigate it's own problems, then maybe you should vote them out of power.

Re:Sure they do...

[AmazingRuss]

I think one of the things that has made our democracy such a circus is the fact that people who have no ability to comprehend what they are voting for are allowed to vote. It ensures our government to be chosen by people whose only information comes from the screaming of pundits on tv...or the promise of some nebulous handout. I think not only should literacy be a requirement...voters should also be required to somehow demonstrate that they have a clue what they are voting for. No, I don't have any idea how to test for this, and yes, I can see how the parties would angle to use this as an exclusionary tool...but something needs to be done. Rule by the people is rule by idiots if the people are idiots. Look at what we have! And I fear for what we'll get next when the pendulum swings the other direction. An uneducated population is the Achilles heel of any democracy.