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Ohio Recount Rigging Case Goes to Court
The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting that the trial of the three election workers accused of rigging the 2004 presidential election recount in Cuyahoga County is finally underway. As you may recall, this was the case where poll workers 'randomly' selected the precincts to recount by first eliminating from consideration precincts where the number of ballots handed out on Election Day failed to match the number of ballots cast and, then opening the ballot boxes in private and pre-counting until they found cases which would match up. What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really 'wrong,' presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
On when they would do a full hand-count, if needed: "Our plan was to regroup after Christmas and just work through it." That quote strikes me as awfully suspicious itself. If the election results were in dispute, waiting a couple months to actually start counting all the ballots by hand seems incredibly lax, at best.
Did you RTFA?
Prosecutors do not allege vote fraud or that the mishandling of the recount affected the outcome of the presidential election.
That's why it's not a big deal. But it doesn't stop you or the editors from making a mountain out of a molehill.
The biggest problem in a case like this is the time it takes to respond. In the time it's going to take this to wind its way through the legal system, multiple elections are going to have come and gone. If the goal really was to commit election fraud, their candidate would have been in office for (potentially) multiple terms before anything is done - assuming that anything would be done anyway!
Otherwise, the only excuse is maliciousness...
And admitting to that would really aggravate the charges against them
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If the goal really was to commit election fraud, their candidate would have been in office for (potentially) multiple terms before anything is done - assuming that anything would be done anyway!
Hypothetical: We find out that John Kerry actually won Ohio... so BushCo. gets evicted and Kerry gets to be President for two weeks before Hillary gets sworn in.
What does he do?
(think of this as a very unscientific poll)
Does this mean we'll be seeing criminal charges against others who subvert the voting process, say by shipping machines with different software than they submitted for certification, or trying to obstruct voting on election day?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Am I the only person that thinks that willfully subverting the electoral process, on which every thing in our country's governance hinges, should be tried as NOTHING LESS than treason?
I don't care if you're running for dog catcher... the democratic process should be defended with the most uncompromising principles possible, should it not?
>I think there's too much of an obsession with Ohio
Ohio was the state that the chairman of Diebold said would be delivered to the president.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
When a Republican wins a close election, it was stolen.
When a Dem wins a close election, it's the will of the people.
See Governor, Washington state. How many selective recounts did it take until the Dem won?
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Heh. I do believe I find the moderation on this post more interesting than the actual flamewar that it inspired. I almost wish we had meta-meta-moderation so I could see how this plays out...
But Badnarik's platform was horrible; he was an anti-libertarian, an authoritarian whose platform consisted of him forcing people he didn't agree with to follow his lead at gunpoint. Let me paste a summary I wrote of his platform on Usenet a few years ago (I won't get offended if nobody reads it, I just always wanted to paste it to Slashdot but there aren't that many Badnarik stories lately):
No real political experience, no real management experience, no college degree (and I'm not saying a candidate needs all three, but one would be helpful), and his views are just BIZARRE.
For example, in imagining his first day as president he states he would "Declare that all 20,000+ gun control laws in the United States are unconstitutional and unenforceable." Now you may agree with him, nothing wrong with the idea that all gun laws are unconstitutional (I don't agree with it, but I can recognize there are legitimate arguments for that position), but I'm not sure where he gets the idea that the President has the power to do that. It shows a serious lack of a sense of reality, especially for a man who styles himself a Constitutional scholar.
On that magical first day he'll also: "Issue another valid executive order to my subordinates executives working for the IRS. That order would instruct them to come to work, make a pot of coffee, and begin working on their resumes' pending a federal grand jury investigation as to the legitimacy of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Internal Revenue Code. High ranking officials from that department would be closely monitored as flight risks, pending indictments for fraud in the event that evidence proves that they knew that no statute exists that requires Americans to fill out a 1040 form and relinquish a significant percentage of their hard earned money to an unconstitutional government that refuses to operate within a budget."
Which sets off PCT alarms on two points. First is the utterly false belief that the 16th amendment isn't legitimate. It's at this point I'm cutting out the crosspost groups, by the way, I really don't want to argue with too many crazy people over this point.
Secondly is the weird obsession with holding government employees responsible for laws he doesn't like (he'll also prosecute BATF agents who dare confiscate firearms), a PCT hallmark. The idea that IRS officials have some conspiracy of silence is just bizarre.
But wait, it gets better! His obsession with punishing people who he doesn't like doesn't end at the executive branch. If elected he states:
" I would announce a special one-week session of Congress where all 535 members would be required to sit through a special version of my Constitution class. Once I was convinced that every member of Congress understood my interpretation of their very limited powers, I would insist that they restate their oath of office while being videotaped. Those videos could then be used as future evidence should they ever vote to violate the rights of Americans again."
So, he would violate the Constitution in the most fundamental way I can possibly imagine in order to teach a class on the Constitution. How on earth can you support this guy, even in a completely symbolic way?
We also get such gems from him such as "The Federal Reserve has been inflating our money supply ever since 1933, which makes our money worth less than Monopoly money." Really, Mike? So you'll trade me real currency for monopoly money? Here, I'll even give you a 2:1 conversion rate.
Then there are just plain inconsistencies in his position. His support of the electoral college, for example, seems to be based on self-interest more than libertarian ideology. Shouldn't it be one voter, one vote? If the majority of Americans think something, why should their votes be weighted based on where they live? Doesn't sound like a free marketplace of ideas to me. But compared to the rest of his lunatic platform I guess that's not so bad.
Agreed. But my point (which I made badly) was that in 2004 we were given the choice between an idiot who wouldn't change his mind even when he was obviously wrong, and one that was willing to change his even when he was obviously right.
**sigh**
I suppose (to paraphrase Rumsfield) you go to hell with the President you've got, not the President you wish you had. But I'd still rather an honest, intelligent statesman that I disagreed with on all the wedge issues than a corporate-puppet moron that parrots whatever they think I want to hear*.
--MarkusQ
* Al? Are your ears burning? Your nation needs you.