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.

Comments

Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Hypocrisy

[greenhollow]

More clearly:
When the party in power in the state or county wins it is the will of the people.

When the other party wins, it was stolen.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Teresita]

The initial count showed her trailing Rossi by 261 votes Recount #1 diminished that lead to only 42 votes. Recount #2 gave her a 10-vote lead. Enter the courts, tossing in some ballots, tossing out others. The final results had Christine Gregoire ahead by 130 votes

Re:Hypocrisy

[Qzukk]

LOL recounts.

Republicans "asked county auditors statewide to reconsider ballots that were rejected on Election Day." Because apparently when Democrats can't punch out a hole right, they're stupid idiots, but when Republicans can't fill out a ballot, their voice deserves to be heard.

If you're going to point fingers and call hypocrisy, stand on less shaky ground next time. It also helps when you're not trying to defend people that explicitly broke the law.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Teresita]

"Because apparently when Democrats can't punch out a hole right, they're stupid idiots, but when Republicans can't fill out a ballot, their voice deserves to be heard."

Hey, are you calling those Palm Beach County butterfly ballot Buchanan voters stupid?

Re:Hypocrisy

[PhilipMarlowe9000]

I'm shocked-- the Republican party quite possibly did something illegal and unethical. I mean, it's not like they lied about an entire war, or kept a child molester from prosecution, or took bribes, or had drunken stripper parties in the Watergate with lobbyists!

Re:Hypocrisy

[zotz]

"If you're going to point fingers and call hypocrisy, stand on less shaky ground next time."

As a general rule, why should someone do this? When it comes to politics these days (always?) it seems you would be on fairly safe ground whenever you pointed your finger and called hypocrisy. Safe as to being right that is, not safe as to not being one while doing the pointing.

"It also helps when you're not trying to defend people that explicitly broke the law."

Now this statement is true in general, I am not up on the particulars in this instance to know of it applies here.

Feel free to take this whole post with a grain of salt. (Dash?)

all the best,

drew

Re:Hypocrisy

[Phantombrain]

Yes, Washington has some voting problems, but this is talking about the Ohio recount.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, it's not like they lied about an entire war, or kept a child molester from prosecution, or took bribes, or had drunken stripper parties in the Watergate with lobbyists!

Yeah, I would have figured it was the other party.

Re:Hypocrisy

[drooling-dog]

It's only hypocrisy if the GOP isn't genuinely a good deal more ruthless than the Dems. I'd argue that point with you, but unless your head is jammed permanently up your butt I suspect you already know it's true.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the rest of the paragraph and take off the blue-colored glasses. The Republicans asked for the same consideration of ballots for which the signatures had been rejected by a computer in their strongholds that the Dems GOT in theirs.

The Dems essentially got to manufacture additional votes in their strongholds while leaving the rest of the state unchanged...Precisely what they tried to do in Florida with less success six years earlier.

Re:Hypocrisy

[janeowit]

Less clearly:
When the party you affiliate yourself with wins, it is the will of the people.

When the other party wins, it was stolen.

Re:Hypocrisy

[udderly]

In reference to your assertion of cranial-rectal immersion, the Republicants (spelling error mine) happened to have the power, and thus the ability to be ruthless with it, which they undeniably did. As for the Democrats, it's difficult to abuse power that you don't have. But now that the Democrats have the power, they are already moving to abuse it.

In other words, don't be a shill for a particular party. They both suck and neither cares about your rights.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Pity you're such a lying kike. Stop lying and join the real world.

Re:Hypocrisy

[hxnwix]

Are anyone aside from Republicans saying that? Their credibility just so happens to be pretty shot... Oh, and also, they have a lot to gain by making that fatuous argument.

Perhaps the Democrats aren't child molesting, war mongering election thieves? Perhaps they aren't election thieves at all? Of course, this sort of thing is hard for a Republican to understand. Nonetheless, it's a point that you may want to consider.

Re:Hypocrisy

[jonadab]

> When the party in power in the state or county wins it is the
> will of the people.

I don't think there's any question about the outcome in this case. From TFA:

# Candidates for president from the Green and Libertarian parties requested
# the Ohio recount. State laws and regulations specify how a recount works.

In other words, the Democrats, who lost by a narrow margin, did not request the recount. If there'd been any real question about the outcome, they would have done so. So that's not what's at stake.

What *is* at stake is that we CANNOT have election officials violating election laws and getting away with it. They acted to avoid a painful and expensive recount process that would not change anything, but they did not have the authority to do that, and we cannot let them off with a stern lecture and a slap on the wrist, because if we do, it'll happen again, and again, and again, and at some point it'll happen when it matters. I hope the courts rake them over the coals but *good*. Make an example out of them: we will not tolerate election law violations.

The 2004 election isn't what's at stake here. The 2008 and 2012 and 2016 elections, and every one that follows, are what's at stake.

Re:Hypocrisy

[PhilipMarlowe9000]

The events you mentioned took place over a span of 40 years. Furthermore, they were done by a number of different people in different times with different political climates. The Republicans did those things in the span of year. Overachieving is great, but let's be sensible here. I don't claim that the Democrats are saints, but the Republicans completely discredited themselves in twelve months. That's why we have a democratic Congress.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

You started out strong, but lost all credibility when you linked to Michelle Malkin...

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm shocked-- the Republican party quite possibly did something illegal and unethical.

FTA: "In Cuyahoga, a Democratic stronghold where about 600,000 ballots were cast, the recount did not have much effect on the results. Kerry gained 17 votes and Bush lost six." Oh ... my ... God, Kerry actually gained votes and Bush lost them! This is most certainly the work of those evil Republicans!

FTA: "Kerger said he believes there are two reasons, generally, why an elections board would precount before a recount. The first is to change the results of the vote, which he does not believe happened. The second, he speculated, was that 'the workers were so tired and didn't want to hassle with doing a hand recount.'" If this whole process was biased, it was biased in favor of the Dems.

My advice: RTFA. There was no fraud. The election workers were just too lazy to do their jobs properly. I'm guessing they must have been liberals because it's obvious you were too lazy to read the article before blaming Republicans, but that's just a guess.

I mean, it's not like they lied about an entire war, or kept a child molester from prosecution, or took bribes, or had drunken stripper parties in the Watergate with lobbyists!

Well, I think the other AC handled that one quite well.

Re:Hypocrisy

[enharmonix]

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?

Starting Score: 0 points
Moderation 0
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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...

Re:Hypocrisy

[Skuld-Chan]

But that was the law - first count was close enough to call a recount, second recount happened because the first was close also - and she happened to win that one.

Good thing too - Rossi actually quoted as saying Alcohol and Cigarette taxes hurt families. (don't think too hard about that one).

Re:Hypocrisy

[wpegden]

In other words, the Democrats, who lost by a narrow margin, did not request the recount. If there'd been any real question about the outcome, they would have done so. So that's not what's at stake.

I'm not sure about this. In this particular case, you may well be right that there was no real question about the outcome---however, I don't think that necessarily follows from the fact that Democrats didn't challenge the votes. Sure, I agree that in cases where the vote counts are very close, the losing major party will often challenge the vote, hoping that a few incidental errors will be corrected in their favor. On the other hand, I think a losing major party will rarely, if ever, launch a concerted challenge over a bigger issue in voting: for example, challenging the idea evoting (as it is now) or broader voting procedures, even if they potentially stand to gain from doing so in that particular election. Both big parties stand to benefit from the "brave new world" of e-voting and Diebold, etc., and I think they realize that. Neither is willing to launch any sort of crusade to destroy it. Only the political outsiders (greens, libs, socialists, whoever) are in the position where the voting establishment will never work for their benefit, and so they are the only ones who really want to challenge it.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Ardeaem]

Good thing too - Rossi actually quoted as saying Alcohol and Cigarette taxes hurt families. (don't think too hard about that one). I was discussing cigarette taxes with a friend of mine who does research in addictions, and I stated my position that cigarette taxes are good. She made the point that cigarette taxes are very regressive. They hit the poor who are addicted much harder than the middle class or wealthy. There will be some who might stop smoking because of them, but the hardcore addicted will continue to smoke because the can't stop, and it higher taxes will take a significant toll on them and their families. It essentially makes a bad situation worse for poor families.

Don't dismiss the idea out of hand that sin taxes hurt (poor) families. I think a good argument can be made for it.

Re:Hypocrisy

[drooling-dog]

Can't say I disagree with a word you said. I lament our two (one and a half?) party system almost every day, and if the Dems win the trifecta in 2008, I'll be on their case on a daily basis as well.

But that being said, I still don't think they hold a candle to the Repugnicans (I prefer that mispelling) when it comes to ruthlessness, corruption, and contempt for constitutional limits. They will at least pay lip service to the notion of a public interest, and while they'll surely have their own scandals w.r.t. lobbyists and such, I doubt that they'll set up the same kind of brazen one-stop-shopping monopoly on corruption that the GOP did with their K Street Project.

And don't even get me started about who's benefitting from our middle east entanglements and who's not, and how that might affect their willingness to (ever) get off the Gravy Train...

Re:Hypocrisy

[Scudsucker]

But now that the Democrats have the power, they are already moving to abuse it.

Problem: at least two of the three examples you list are complete bullshit. And since the subject is hypocracy, where you appropriatly porportionally outraged at, for example, Tom Delay auctioning off chairmanships to the biggest fundraisers?

Re:Hypocrisy

[DavidTC]

I think it should be a general policy that any sin taxes on addictive substances get corresponding free medical treatments.

It's idiotic to tax people to try to reduce cigarette use, and not provide at least minimum levels of treatment to get them off of it if they want to.

It's really funny, sin taxes are odd leftovers from the progressive era, and are just kinda sitting around without anyone saying anything about them, but imagine how much outcry there would be if someone tries to implement them today.

That said, I don't think there should be sin 'taxes' on cigarettes, because I think tobacco companies should be dismantled, and tobacco products produced and sold by the government. I'm sorry, I believe in the corporate death penalty for companies that have operated in the manner they did. I think we should seize all their asserts and dismantle them, but I realize that is unlikely and I would happy if they, and everyone else, were just barred from producing tobacco products.

I think we should treat tobacco like we should treat heroin, where the government is the only entity allowed to produce products with it in it, because no company can be trusted to sell such an addictive substance, and it should be sold in carefully regulated places to keep it from children, I'm thinking more OTC in pharmacies than gas stations.

(Yeah, I know don't sell heroin like that either.)

Re:Hypocrisy

[udderly]

You could be right, and I actually hope that you are. In any event, we will see, but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.

Re:Hypocrisy

[DavidTC]

You dumbass, no one kept Mel Reynolds from being prosecuted from having an affair with a 16-year old campaign intern. He was forced to resign from Congress, charged, and convicted. (I have to point out that 16 is of age, and his affair wasn't technically illegal, so they had to come up with weird charges, hence 5 years instead of the 30 or so he'd have gotten if she was 15.)

He was sentenced August 22, 1995 to five years in prison. Everyone remember that, although I realize the person I'm responding to probably can't count. While in prison, he was charged and convicted of, like, a dozen counts of fraud and SEC violations. (Which was also from his campaign. Damn, that place was crime central.) He was sentenced to six and a half more years.

In January 2001, Clinton let him be released to a half-way house, that he lived at, leaving only to work, to earn money for him family.

This was technically something like three years into his fraud sentence, because his sex sentence was shortened to 2.5 years, and he'd probably been out early on his fraud sentence too. Also note that he wasn't pardoned, he wasn't even paroled. He was put on a work release program to earn money for his family, which is allowable for up to 15 months before release, but he was still a year away from that. The rules didn't allow work release yet, and Clinton overrode them from a personal plea from the former Congressman so he could 'earn money for his family'.

Even pretending the charges resulting from the affair hadn't been shortened, it would have ended six month before that, on August 21, 2000. At most it can be claimed Clinton got him out of a fraud charge, although that's a pretty silly thing to call 'Work release happened a year early'.

Re:Hypocrisy

[bcrowell]

Here's a meta-meta opinion for you: One thing that's particularly annoying about this kind of over-moderation is that it can actually lead to the poster getting banned from posting for a significant period. The dynamic I've encountered is that population A, which likes the post, moderates it up to +5. Then population B notices it and starts moderating it down. Population A tries to "defend" the post by up-moderating to cancel out the down-mods. They fight over the post like two dogs fighting over a bone. You can easily end up with a situation where the post gets moderated down to -1, and then stays there after that. In that situation, a post that started out at 2 could end up having had 10 + mods, and 13 - mods. If you make a couple of controversial posts like this, you can easily get banned. It's happened to me (once, in the ~5 years I've been on slashdot). What's more common, and also really annoying, is what happens when you post negatively on a topic where most of the posters and moderators are fanboys. Whatever you do, don't ever make the mistake of saying something negative about BSD on a BSD topic, or something negative about Freenet on a Freenet story.

Re:Hypocrisy

[udderly]

Problem: at least two of the three examples you list are complete bullshit.

Yeah? Which two? I guess you could say that they're "bullshit" as long as you don't mind the gov't telling us who can say what and where they can say it. As long as you don't mind the gov't making one have their "papers in order" before one can engage in certain types of political speech. Personally, I mind. A lot.

And since the subject is hypocracy, where you appropriatly porportionally outraged at, for example, Tom Delay auctioning off chairmanships to the biggest fundraisers?

Yes, I was. If you read my post, you would have been able to see that I am actually quite hostile to both parties. But, apparently, you are only hostile to one and you think that the other has your interests at heart. Pffft, all I can say is "grab the KY and bend over," because you're gonna get screwed.

Re:Hypocrisy

[packeteer]

It is not a voting problem. This is how a recount is suposed to go.

I live in Washington and followed the election cloesely. Here is a bgi fact most republican crybabies dont want you to know. Each recount counted MORE votes. That means that of the initial ballots that were not counted for whatever reason many of them were eventually counted. There was incidents of ballot boxes getting lost and not counted only to be found later. Just becuase there was an upset to the original election doesn't mean anythign was stolen. Im sure most of us have heard that whenever to TOTAL votes goes up its good for the dems. The GOP wants more ignorance, more apapthy, and less votes. That is how they win.

Re:Hypocrisy

[mgv]

Here's a meta-meta opinion for you: One thing that's particularly annoying about this kind of over-moderation is that it can actually lead to the poster getting banned from posting for a significant period. The dynamic I've encountered is that population A, which likes the post, moderates it up to +5. Then population B notices it and starts moderating it down. Population A tries to "defend" the post by up-moderating to cancel out the down-mods. They fight over the post like two dogs fighting over a bone. You can easily end up with a situation where the post gets moderated down to -1, and then stays there after that. In that situation, a post that started out at 2 could end up having had 10 + mods, and 13 - mods. If you make a couple of controversial posts like this, you can easily get banned. It's happened to me (once, in the ~5 years I've been on slashdot). What's more common, and also really annoying, is what happens when you post negatively on a topic where most of the posters and moderators are fanboys. Whatever you do, don't ever make the mistake of saying something negative about BSD on a BSD topic, or something negative about Freenet on a Freenet story.

I have to agree with you about the issues of overmoderation. I think that any post which gets massively moderated in conflicting directions should be exempted normal moderation and frozen (perhaps at the posters original level).

With regard to posting an anti BSD type comment in a BSD forum... Its probably more effective to change a persons viewpoint a small bit at a time anyway. Occasionally people have sudden swings in opinion on the basis of a single overwhelming bit of evidence. More likely it will be as a result of a series of smaller dissapointments.

Not to say that your posting points were right or wrong, just that its human nature to defend yourself against someone who comes in all guns firing. A bit like what would happen if you went out into the middle of Harlem and yelled out "nigger" as loud as you could. The response is fairly predictable, and almost independent of whether you are right or wrong. You may well get lynched by the mob. And you end up with a situation where neither the original action nor the response ends up looking so clever.

Strong opinions polarise people, and this doesn't engender rational change. Everyone's limbic systems kick in in response to threat, and rational thinking stops.

Just my thoughts,

Michael

Re:Hypocrisy

[MadAhab]

Right on.

These election workers should do serious prison time. You don't get to fuck with elections because you find it convenient to keep the initial, flawed result.

As for the trogolodyte motherfuckers who say "how many times do you want to count the ballots in this box", the answer, as anyone who has ever handled real quantities of cash knows, is: UNTIL YOU GET THE SAME FUCKING ANSWER TWICE.

Sheesh. They act like counting is some mysterious, subjective process.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

But now that the Democrats have the power, they are already [com.com] moving [senate.gov] to abuse [broadcastnewsroom.com] it.

Problem: at least two of the three examples you list are complete bullshit.

Yeah? Which two?

Easy: the two links about the "political bloggers" bill. It does not affect the average political blogger. You have to be paid $25,000 for political activism in a given quarter-year for it to affect you, and then you only have to publicly disclose your career as a lobbyist. That's it. It only affects astroturfers and paid professional shit-disturbers and it doesn't stop them from doing anything they're already doing. If you'd skimmed either of the two Slashdot discussions on it this week (in which the lazy editors got it wrong too) or if you'd read the bill yourself, you'd know this.

The cite of Kucinich wanting a return to the Fairness Doctrine is an extremely weak third cite if you're trying to show the Democratic Party as being just as bad as the Republicans. For one, Kucinich is not a powerful politician. He's a liberal ideologue with an independent streak who doesn't stay inside the bounds of his party's strategy, sort of like a liberal Ron Paul. Kucinich was the guy who got ABC to boycott his campaign in 2004 after he criticized their coverage of it to Ted Koppel's face. A powerful politician would have made hay of that situation and gotten the party to scream about it all the way into the White House, but the Democrats were glad to have Kucinich shut up. That's how important a politician Kucinich is.

Secondly, a return to the Fairness Doctrine is not a lot to complain about. I'm very wary of the idea of the government deciding what the truth is and what arguments have merit, but of the forty years of the Fairness Doctrine existing before Reagan abolished it, I can't recall ever hearing of its abuse. No one can seriously deny that the quality of the mainstream media has gotten worse and worse now that they are free to be partisan on the publicly-owned airwaves.

The point of the airwaves being publicly owned is important. The media are not all using their private property. Some of them are using public property, held by the government on the condition that it is used in the public interest. Partisanship and disinformation might be free speech, but it is not in the public interest. Look at it this way: Is it worse for the government-supplied media to support one party over the other or for the government-supplied media to attempt to be fair, by somebody's standard of fairness, under guidelines that could presumably be argued in court if someone found fault with them? As an argument against total deregulation: if no media is government-supplied, then the owners of the media threaten to supply the government, especially when allowed to consolidate as much as under the '96 telecomms bill.

Let me guess where you're coming from since I used to be this way myself in the Clinton years: You're accepting that what the Republicans are doing is outrageous, and then you're looking for any kind of outrage being committed by the Democrats so that you can balance the two against each other and consider yourself independent. The problem is that the two parties' wrongdoings just don't balance out evenly these days, and you're not any less independent once you figure this out. On the scale of outrages with 10 being most outrageous, reestablishing the Fairness Doctrine ranks as a 1 or a 2, higher if they try to extend it to private property. The past eighteen years of going without the Fairness Doctrine rank around a 6. The kind of stuff the Republican Congress let George W. Bush get away with every few weeks has ranked in the 8-10 range with plenty of lesser scandals in between. Clinton's perjury was up there in the 8-10 area too, but it only happened once. New Bush scandals are happening all the time.

Re:Hypocrisy

[dbIII]

I still don't think they hold a candle to the Repugnicans (I prefer that mispelling) when it comes to ruthlessness, corruption, and contempt for constitutional limits

That's because there never was an effort to remove all of Nixon's band of criminals and they trained a new generation. Actually making bribery illegal, especially by foreign powers, and doing something about it would be a good step - the situation where Nixon took a bribe from the President of Indonesia is the low point we never want to see again.

Re:Hypocrisy

[hyperventilate]

Actually Democrats aren't too dumb to fill out a ballot properly. Machines in democratic or black districts are set up to trick them in to submitting bad ballots.

Everyone can use a bit of help making sure they haven't spoiled their ballot, by marking two candidates for the same race, for example. So the Optical Scan machines are designed to spit out a spoiled ballot so the voter can fix it. Which they do, in white districts in Florida. In predominantly black districts, the machines accept spoiled ballots silently, which are then thrown out and not counted later. This is done "to speed things up" which is Floridian for "throw the election to the Repuglicans."

Same machine, different setting. THe voting officials have discretion.

In 2000, over 100,000 votes were not counted, using this cool setting.

Greg Palast wrote about it...
And of course there is always the electronic ballot stuffing option on the machines. Memory cards need to have 0 votes at the start of the election, but that can include 100 votes for bush and -100 votes for gore. One Florida precinct accidentally released interim counts for gore that shrank in 2000 due to such pre-loaded memory cards. Oh, they said it was a hardware failure... but what programmer would allow negative vote counts by mistake?

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't dismiss the idea out of hand that sin taxes hurt (poor) families. I think a good argument can be made for it.

Or they could just stop fucking smoking. Your friend is stupid.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Your an idiot, a liar.

There are a lot more folks than just the political outsiders that care about voter rights, and
the complete removal of all electronic voting machines.

This is a NON PARTY ISSUE.

You mention "incidental errors" being corrected in someone's favor.
I call that a "electronic voting machine failure."

Just because Electronic Voting Machine FAILURES didn't make it into the corporate mainstream media e.g. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS does not change the FACT it has destroyed our Constitution, wasted billions of dollars, and cost people their lives!

There are in fact Democrats challenging votes. As there should be Republicans as well as every other party. When you have an electronic voting machine FAILURE, you have denied citizens Constitutional right to vote. You have broken the only link that citizens have to tell the government what their will is.

You would do well to follow Bradblog.com Velvetrevolution.us and Blackboxvoting.org for the last few years, and then let see what you have to say about "incidental errors" (FAILURES)

At worst your comments just continue to spread the corporate voting machine manufacture's lies and allow the courts to decide what our votes were, instead of "we the people" physically doing it themselves. Not to mention the FACT that our current president was not elected BY THE PEOPLE, and has taken us into a FILTHY OIL WAR where thousands have been killed.

Man you better wake the fuck up.

It's not just OHIO! It's everywhere these fucking electronic voting machines were introduced!

There are several problems with recounts.

a.) Physics of electricity
          You CAN NOT re-count an electronic signal that is GONE. You can't validate an electronic signal when it exists.
b.) Large amount of money demanded by SOS's.
        In order to get a recount, it's costs money, even if the money were raised, the best recount you could get is the same fucking unvalidatable crap coming out of electronic voting machines that have already FAILED! THey will NEVER COUNT ON PAPER.

Re:Hypocrisy

[udderly]

I am perfectly aware of all of the Republicans power grabs and rights curtailment--I am against them as well. I am also aware of the public airwaves argument in the "Fairness" Doctrine and the "paid" provision (now thankfully struck down) in the S1 bill.

You made a cogent, well-thought-out and well-written argument, but even if you write 400 paragraphs, it's still the government controlling political speech. And I don't trust some committee of political hacks, whether Democrap or Republicant (spelling errors mine), to decide what's "fair." I would rather listen to some twit like Rush Limbaugh 24/7 than to give the government more authority over free-speech rights. Nor do I trust the government not to use the list or registered (albeit paid) bloggers for future retribution.

My opinion is that trusting the government is historically a bad idea, but if you're comfortable with that and you don't think that this is too much of a transgression, then that's your business and your right. However, I would be willing to riot in the street to keep my (and your) freedoms in this regard.

Re:Hypocrisy

[Mark_MF-WN]

You know, you'd think that if accountants can figure out how to count things and get consistent results, democracy would be a no-brainer. Maybe I'm giving Humans too much credit...

5 year olds REJOICE!

[kelarius]

So apperently the way this works is that if I do something wrong to basically avoid doing more work later, I'm supposed to get off the hook? If they aren't convicted mare sure to keep this news away from small children everywhere or there will be alot of angry parents!

Re:5 year olds REJOICE!

[Anonymous Coward]

The excuse doesn't hold water. If the election were fair, statistically it would be very unlikely for the selected boxes to require the recount. And these workers are all paid for their time. (Btw, they are on paid leave as I write this.) The only reason that really makes sense is these poll workers were involved in or had knowledge of the rigging of the election proper (and not just the small recount). And because of this, they knew it was immensely important to rig the small recount in hopes of covering up.

This should disturb anyone who read the article:

There were allegations in several counties of similar presorting of ballots for the recounts that state law says are to be random.

And this:

They just were doing it the way they were always doing it," [defense attorney Roger] Synenberg said.

Btw, isn't Ohio where a politician just got sent to prison for 30 months for defrauding the public trust?

Re:5 year olds REJOICE!

[sumdumass]

Umm your conclusions are a little off. Probably because you don't understand the the election systems in ohio works.

In each county there are about 3 or 4 full time election offices that are manned. It mainly consist of the bord of election/electors and a secretary or two. Sometime one of the board members becomes the secretary. In my county, the board isn't even full time, just a few data entry level secretaries.

Now this is important for several reasons. One, all the poll workers are volunteers. Sure they get paid but when I volunteered around 10 years ago, it was $12.00 a day for primary elections and $18.00 a day for regular elections. A regular poll worker usualy work 10-12 hour days unless they are the ones responsible for setting up or tearing down the polling place. Then it goes to 14-18 hours days depending on the precint. I havn't heard of the pay going up recently. You would almost likley make more per hour sitting on a jurry.

Now when I did it, I had a full time job and my boss gave me the day before and the day of the election off to get ready and help with it. But if I would have been invovled in a recount that took several days or months like in the florida situation, I would likley not have a job as well as starve because of the difference in pay. Even at minimum wage, a ten hour day would gross $50 plus compared to 12 or 18 (with taxes with held BTW). But I made considerably more then minimum wage and I also lived a lifestyle that reflected my pay. It wouldn't be long if tied up in a recount before my bills would go unpaid and someone at the bank would start talking reposesion and forclosure.

That doesn't mean we "knew something was rigged". It means that we couldn't afford to go thru the time needed to apease everyone without our regular level of income.

There were allegations in several counties of similar presorting of ballots for the recounts that state law says are to be random.

hey just were doing it the way they were always doing it," [defense attorney Roger] Synenberg said.

And there was policy that allowed this. although when the law was changed, the policy most likley should have been too. But the pol workers are there to follow instructions, not become lawers and check every policy in plac for thier legality. When you work for a governmental organization, you tend to believe all the foot work has been done for you.

How does that saying go, Never attribute to malice when ignorance could explain just as easily explain it.

I know you have an issue with republicans or that you side didn't do as well as you would have wished. This is obvious with your next statment. Don't let that cloud your judgement about other things. Because you disagree with something doesn't mean the intentions were evil, even if the enventual outcome apeared to be.

Btw, isn't Ohio where a politician just got sent to prison for 30 months for defrauding the public trust?

Yes, a senator was convicted for accepting gifts and expensive trips from lobyist in exchange for access to the senator. And yes that falls under the title of defrauding the puplic trust. But, not all of what these lobbyist consulted about was ever introduced into law as well as everything he did introduce was voted for and approved or disaproved by other members, some of which were democrate. I'm not trying to say they are just as guilty, I'm saying that the laws put in place were good enough for others to believe in them too. In no way does this contribute to the intent of anything done by state poll workers. I know your trying to imply that but there is just no conection whatsoever.

Away with them

[forand]

I can only hope that their excuse of "it was too hard to keep our democracy" falls on deaf ears and they are punished for their actions. That said I don't even know how this could be considered a reasonable argument since they had to count the boxes twice if I understand thing correctly.

Re:Away with them

[janeowit]

Wasn't that the excuse the Supreme Court gave when they sided with Bush in 2000?

The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Original Replica]

... and not CNN. I suppose if we had a respectable voter turn out, then big media might think we would find election fraud newsworthy. I guess the president just isn't as important as "American Idol".

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the president just isn't as important as "American Idol".

Didn't more people vote on the last American Idol than on the last presidential election?

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[janeowit]

No. The American Idol winner got more votes than the president did in the last election.
It's a subtle, less depressing difference. American Idol viewers can votes as many times as they want.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[E10Reads]

But what's the breakdown in thee age groups of AI voters? How many are under 18? Also, you don't have to leave your house to vote on AI. Some people don't have to do more than send a text message (depending on their wireless phone provider).

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[nutrock69]

American Idol viewers can votes as many times as they want.

Yeah, but people in cemetaries can't vote for an American Idol the same way they can for a President.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Snarfangel]

... and not CNN. I suppose if we had a respectable voter turn out, then big media might think we would find election fraud newsworthy. I guess the president just isn't as important as "American Idol".

ABC News also has the story, along with a picture of the defendents. I can't put my finger on it, but they don't appear to be stereotypical Bush operatives.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[rednip]

Didn't more people vote on the last American Idol than on the last presidential election?

No fewer people voted many, many, more times, over the entire season. It hardly translates into a good match against a real political poll.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Teresita]

"I can't put my finger on it, but they don't appear to be stereotypical Bush operatives."

I thought it was stereotypical Bush operatives who rejected science and went by appearances and by gut feelings that they can't put a finger on.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[caseydk]

Yes, but for American Idol, you can vote multiple times. In elections, you can only do that in Chicago.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[erroneus]

Yes, they are going WAY out of their way to avoid indicating that this set of wrong-doings don't lead to a much larger conspiracy. Yet even on the surface, it clearly leads to a much larger conspircy.

I'm hopeful that it doesn't stop just there and that this will lead to some much larger indictments and convictions.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you RTFA?
Of course we didn't RTFA -- are you new here?

But really, no one's making "a mountain out of a molehill" -- that's why it's not on one of the CNN/NBC/??C newsboys programs, heck it didn't even make the drudge report!

Simply put, there are 2 articles, one with the title "Prosecutor says presidential recount rigged in Ohio county"
the other,"Workers accused of fudging '04 recount Prosecutor says Cuyahoga skirted rules".

50% accuracy is PDG for internet news!

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[CrazyDuke]

I don't care if they are smoking weed and wearing big tie-dye peace sign t-shirts with Kerry '04 tatood on their foreheads. Election fraud is election fraud. If they are guilty let them be proven so.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[sunwukong]

AI voters

Please wake me up when it becomes sentient ...

In 2007 IdolNet beomes self aware and launches the attack that will end 3 billion lives in an instant of fire ...

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Gregg M]

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.

Did you RTFA? They said they didn't think it would change the out come of the election, because they weren't able to do a full recount. The recount they did was rigged. They said they were only following standard procedure. If that's not going to effect the outcome I don't know what is. The flawed recount still gave Kerry more votes. If this was done in every county in Ohio it could have swung the election.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[corngrower]

Of course CNN is not reporting on it. They failed to cover the large raids for illegal immigrants on the packing plants of a major U.S. meatpacker last month, instead reporting on an elderly couple that died in an automobile accident in North Carolina. If you're getting your news only from CNN, you'll get an EXTREMELY BIASED view of american news.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[whoever57]

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.

Just because prosecutors do not allege it does not remove the possibility that the election result would have been different if a proper recount had been held.

They are prosecuting these people and probably feel that any allegations about changes to the election result would only confuse the issue. Furthermore, they probably don't have admissable evidence to support such an allegation.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, so when I saw the coverage of the raids on CNN I was REALLY watch Fox News!?

Oh, no wait, you're just an idiot and a liar.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[ageoffri]

Did you RTFA? They said they didn't think it would change the out come of the election, because they weren't able to do a full recount. The recount they did was rigged. They said they were only following standard procedure. If that's not going to effect the outcome I don't know what is. The flawed recount still gave Kerry more votes. If this was done in every county in Ohio it could have swung the election.

Obviously you did not RTFA. A full machine recount was done according to the article. The workers made the 3% hand recount match the conditions that would trigger a full machine recount and not a full hand recount. This is still wrong, but isn't going to have a noticeable impact on the results.

I'll even be helpful for you and for the moderators who marked you up when they also didn't read or understand the article.

They did the hand and machine count of 3 percent of the votes 34 of the 1,436 precincts and when the totals matched, the recount was completed by machines.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[SnprBoB86]

Of course American Idol viewers can vote as many times as they want! Carriers make mega bucks off of American Idol vote txt messages!

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[DavidTC]

The workers made the 3% hand recount match the conditions that would trigger a full machine recount and not a full hand recount. This is still wrong, but isn't going to have a noticeable impact on the results.

If they went to the trouble of manually selecting ballots that matched the machine totals to recount in the machines, than that pretty clearly confirms they had a noticeable problem WRT the machine reading the ballots. Which pretty much confirms the full machine recount would be incorrect.

You moron.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[stinerman]

No, not really. Its just that if the counts were off by only 1 vote*, the Greens and Libertarians could sue for a full hand recount. Basically, the poll workers didn't want to put in overtime just to confirm that, yes Bush did win, but by 1,000 fewer votes than originally thought.

*I observed recounts in 3 counties. In Greene county, the vote was off by 1 and the board said that sometimes that happens because of the nature of the punch cards. Needless to say, we weren't getting a manual recount.

I can say with much certainty that Bush received more votes than Kerry in Ohio. With the poor allocation of voting machines and some voter intimidation, I can't say that more people intended to vote for Bush than Kerry.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Achromatic1978]

Unless, to quote Blackadder:

Commentator: One votes, 16,387 votes cast. A bit of anomaly, don't you think?
Blackadder: Not at all. The number of votes I cast reflects the strength of my belief in the candidate. I believe in him very strongly.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The crime is independent of whether it actually resulted in vote fraud or was intended to cover up such fraud. There's plenty to put them in jail for a while, keep them out of future offices of trust, and make an example of them to deter future misconduct by others. So there is no reason to bring up possible vote fraud except to smear the defendants.

(Putting them away for a while will make another point, too: Being a member of the local party-in-power's political machine won't get you a pass on vote counting crimes.)

Meanwhile, bringing up vote-fraud allegations would involve proving them. That's difficult. Yet they've apparently already admitted to the crimes alleged, making the existing case a slam-dunk.

Also, it's hardly necessary: The people in the Ohio jury pool aren't any dumber, on the average, than the rest of the population: You KNOW they will have figured out for themselves that another likely motive for screwing around with the recount - in plain view - is to cover up vote fraud. (Especially since Ohio is a "purple state" - about evenly split - so about half the jury pool will likely be from the other party. B-) ) The prosecutor doesn't have to bring it up for it to be on juror's minds.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Legion303]

"If you're getting your news only from $NEWS_CONGLOMERATE, you'll get an EXTREMELY BIASED view of american news."

I fixed that for you.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Malakusen]

Neither does SecState Rice.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are a shrill - just how much do you get paid to try and dismiss anything critical of your current government? I hope it's worth it and your morals are still feeling in touch.
Personally I'd hang myself if I ever had to stoop lower than pond scum.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[fatphil]

I agree with everything apart from the use of the words "election fraud".
It's a violation of procedure, and a violation of trust, and is very serious. Quite what the correct legalistic term to use for such things is I don't know. Who knows - it might even be in TFA!

Side note in response to something furhter upthread - it's _impossible_ to say whether a full manual recount would change the outcome, as the only statistical indicator we have (3% of districts), was not unbiassed, as it should be. That's why the random sampling is so important. There _ought_ to be a clearly defined and independently verifiable protocol for the selection of the districts - it's very sloppy if there wasn't one.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[DavidTC]

I think you're missing the point here.

I would explain this again, but if you didn't follow it the first time,you are unlikely to this time.

Re:The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting...

[stinerman]

I and will explain again. I trust mistakes to the very imprecise English language rather than the intelligence of my readers.

Punch card machines are inherently very good counters. The problem is that if there is a so-called "hanging chad" on the ballot, it might run through with the flap open or closed, thereby changing the vote tallied on the machine. In fact, if you kept running the ballots through the machine, you'd get a different count every time. In fact, in Greene county, Kerry gained ~30, Bush ~20, and Badnarik lost 3. The count would be different, but only by a few votes difference each time.

The board in Cuyahoga county decided that they'd try to avoid having to do a manual recount since they were sure that a manual recount on their part would not change the outcome of the election. So they did their best to skirt the law because they were basically too lazy to do their duty.

So, yes, there are problems with the counting of punch card ballots. These have been known for years. The reason why we still use them in some jurisdictions is that they are "close enough". No one really cares how much someone wins by, just so long as the correct person is chosen. Well, no one but me and a few others. Cuyahoga county decided "hey, we know the count might be off by a few, but we're not going to do a whole hand recount just because the machines can't tally perfectly. So we'll rig the count only because we know it won't change the outcome of the election." Obviously this is a dangerous precedent, so I look forward to having that BoE getting prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

2 Months is a Long Time

[Quilted Porcupine]

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.

Re:2 Months is a Long Time

[Guppy06]

"On when they would do a full hand-count, if needed: "Our plan was to regroup after Christmas and just work through it.""

Translation: "Our plan was to regroup after the presidential electors had already cast their votes on December 13 and just go through the motions."

Uhhh

[spiritraveller]

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.

Laziness is a great excuse for election fraud.

Re:Uhhh

[Socguy]

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!

Re:Uhhh

[TubeSteak]

Laziness is a great excuse for election fraud.

Think of it as an affirmative defense.
Otherwise, the only excuse is maliciousness...
And admitting to that would really aggravate the charges against them

Re:Uhhh

[spiritraveller]

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)

Re:Uhhh

[Deagol]

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?

He pays Madonna a million bucks to sit on his...

Oh wait! Wrong poll question.

Re:Uhhh

[Socguy]

A good point, I assume this is why the ballots are distroyed soon after both sides accept the result. On the other hand, surely their must be something that can be done, otherwise, there is very little deterent against this kind of behaviour.

Re:Uhhh

[rainman_bc]

He pays Madonna a million bucks to sit on his...

Lap??? Face??? Chihuahua???? What? :)

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, these were Democrats you know. The elections board in Cuyahoga County is controlled by Democrats.

Re:Uhhh

[Baricom]

On the other hand, surely their must be something that can be done

Not on the national level. Regardless of what one believes happened in the local elections, George W. Bush is the legitimate President of the United States, because there has been no allegations that the votes from the electoral college were coerced or otherwise counted incorrectly.

Locally, what can happen varies from state to state. Some states do not require their electors to vote according to the popular vote; they can break ranks. (Indeed, this has happened before.) The political parties, which typically nominate the electors, can refuse to nominate them in the future if the state's vote did not come out as expected. And of course, local poll workers can be sanctioned for wrongdoing.

Bush is the president. No doubt about it.

Thank goodness that will change in two years.

Re:Uhhh

[macshit]

Hey if I had a million bucks and a Chihuahua, I'd pay Madonna to sit on it. Boy it must be fun to be rich!

Re:Uhhh

[jZnat]

I thought Kerry conceded to Bush, so Bush won regardless of votes. Hell, it's the most active story on Slashdot!

Re:Uhhh

[BandwidthHog]

But what if you had a million Chihuahuas and a buck? What would Madonna pay John Kerry to do then, huh smart guy?

You are the hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nyah nyah nyah, Democrats this... Republicans that..."

It isn't about who won the election. It's about them violating the law and compromising the electoral process that they swore to uphold.

But I know that in the bottom-feeding Republican mind, it's all about tit-for-tat.

Re:You are the hypocrite

[CrashPoint]

But I know that in the bottom-feeding Republican, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, etc mind, it's all about tit-for-tat.

Fixed for accuracy.

I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[nixkuroi]

Would it be enough for the Dems to recall him?

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[Black Parrot]

> Would it be enough for the Dems to recall him?

The courts would never let something like that happen, no matter how glaring the discrepancies.

Court systems aren't about justice or fairness, they're about orderliness and predictability. They would find it necessary to sweep such a grand problem under the rug.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be enough for the Dems to recall him? No, once the vote is certified by the state (of Ohio, in this case), it cannot be recalled by Democrats, Republicans, CEOs, Unions, Fascists, the NRA, or anyone else.

Of course, a substantial voting fraud fiasco could convince a president to step down. But it seems very unlikely that this particular irregularity will directly impact the current president's position. However, it is likely to impact how elections are regulated in Ohio. As it should.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, a substantial voting fraud fiasco could convince a president to step down.

The Decider does not listen to any man, God himself gave him that position. We must impeach*.

*-not just for blowjobs any longer

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[ChipMonk]

*-not just for blowjobs any longer

It wasn't for a blowjob. It was for perjury.

Granted, he perjured himself in testimony about a blowjob, but it was still perjury listed in the Articles of Impeachment.

Sigh.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking about a private sexual encounter in the White House of the later '90s was so very crucial to the investigation of the Whitewater realestate transactions of the mid '80s.

Sigh.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[zCyl]

Would it be enough for the Dems to recall him?

A sitting and living president can only be removed by process of impeachment (or resignation), and this would only happen over voting problems if it were proven that he was personally involved.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[hal2814]

The problem with your scenario is that the vote that matters would already be carried out and that count is quite accurate. The state certifies the electors who really vote for the President. If the state were to certify the electors and then find out they are wrong in their elector selecting methodology (all states use a popular vorte for this methodology though they are not required to), I'm not so sure that state would be able to withdraw their electoral vote. Now if there were enough contention before the fact and it were possible that Ohio may not send a valid slate of electors in foresight, the Supreme Court may get involved like they did in Florida. In hindsight, I can only imagine it would be considered a done deal.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[Anonymous Coward]

He was /tried/ for perjury. He was not found to have actually committed it because the legal definition of "sex" pertained only to intercourse.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[stanmann]

The testimony wasn't surrounding whitewater, it was surrounding a lawsuit regarding another alleged sexual impropriety with an employee.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[AK Marc]

Would it be enough for the Dems to recall him?

The vote was undisputed. Remember, the popular vote is unrealted to who becomes president. The only vote that matters was uncontested. That a state screwed up in selecting the electors is (and should be) insufficient for invalidating a valid election by the electors.

Re:I wonder if they found that Bush didn't win....

[UdoKeir]

No, it wasn't perjury. He asked the judge for a definition of sex. That definition did not include oral sex.

He did not perjure himself.

A Republican in Cuyahoga County??

[Black-Man]

Please... you have a better chance of finding a do-do bird in Cuyahoga County. These workers were just too lazy to do their job.

Re:A Republican in Cuyahoga County??

[Anonymous Coward]

Please... you have a better chance of finding a do-do bird in Cuyahoga County. These workers were just too lazy to do their job.

Are you suggesting the home district of Dennis J. Kucinich is Democratic? Sir, I shall have to ask you to step outside.

Or I would, but the river caught fire. Again.

Re:A Republican in Cuyahoga County??

[Anonymous Coward]

during the '04 campaign they had Chaney and the other guy had a debate at csu they had to ship republicans up from Columbus cheer and shit i ate there pizza until the chick at the table noticed my bush Chaney shirt had fuck across the top in black marker

Re:A Republican in Cuyahoga County??

[ccmay]

during the '04 campaign they had Chaney and the other guy had a debate at csu they had to ship republicans up from Columbus cheer and shit i ate there pizza until the chick at the table noticed my bush Chaney shirt had fuck across the top in black marker

Assuming that your verbal skills and personal hygiene are of a piece with your writing ability and unimaginative vulgarity, would you do us right-wingers a favor? Please do this in every election for the rest of your life. Make sure everybody around you knows you are voting for the Democrat. Don't skimp on the piercings, tattoos, patchouli, and blond dreadlocks.

Thanks!

-ccm

oblig

[mastershake_phd]

Trying is the first step towards failure.

-- Homer Simpson

Re:oblig

[Quilted Porcupine]

Alternatively: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. -- Still Homer

Washington State

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Dino Rossi asked a judge to review the election. The (Republican) judge in (conservative) Chelan County heard the evidence and ruled that the (Republican) Secretary of State had followed the law. Rossi did not appeal, accusing the (fractured) state Supreme Court of bias.

The biggest problem with that election was outrageous sloppiness in (Democratic) King County. It looks more like sloppiness than fraud, given that the problem is that they misplaced and didn't count thousands of ballots that were likely to have favored Gregoire. The Secretary of State excoriated them for that and other screwups. (They also tried to cover up a spectacular failure to keep a record of how many absentee ballots came in).

For more about King County, see blackboxvoting.com.

I, for one...

[iamthefryguy]

WELCOME our new human overlords...

Obsession with Ohio

[Experiment 626]

While it's good to scrutinize problems with our electoral system, I think there's too much of an obsession with Ohio. It wasn't the narrowest race, nor was it the one with the most irregularities, but it's where all the hindsight gets focused. It's easy to see why... Ohio was the state that came closest to swinging the election the other way, and thus becomes the center of all the "OMG Bush stoled teh election AGAIN!" rhetoric. However, this emphasis exclusively on Ohio (and Florida in the previous election) overlooks the issues everywhere else. It effectively says, who cares if there were problems in Michigan (or wherever), Kerry won that state so let's not worry about the election there. Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[fishbowl]

>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.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[hxnwix]

It wasn't the narrowest race, nor was it the one with the most irregularities Would you care to elaborate on that? It sounds as if egregious fraud may have occured - thus, the trial.

Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario. Pardon me, but I voted for Kerry because I wanted to see him win. If these people had a hand in throwing the election, I want them in jail.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Chandon Seldon]

Pardon me, but I voted for Kerry because I wanted to see him win. If these people had a hand in throwing the election, I want them in jail.

Yea, and I voted for Badnarik because he was the only candidate left after eliminating all the obvious douchebags on the ballot. That doesn't mean I'd be OK with people committing election fraud if it had favored him - the whole concept of voting becomes utterly worthless (even more than it already is) if people can mess with the votes and get away with it.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Anonymous Coward]

Operating from memory here, but I believe what he said (while speaking in his capacity as a private citizen participating in politics) was something
like "I'm committing to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush."

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Experiment 626]

Sure, I can elaborate on that.

On the first claim, that other races were narrower, I refer you to Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and New Hampshire.

As for the most irregularities, there were, sadly, problems all over the country. Long lines in urban areas, lost absentee ballots, a nasty tire-slashing incident perpetrated by workers for one of the campaigns, voting machine problems, provisional ballots that were tossed that should have been counted, ones that should have been tossed but were counted (I recall hearing of people being allowed to vote who may have been ineligible to vote or casting votes in multiple precincts, though I don't recall details since it's been a while), and so on.

My point is, rather than the myopic fixation on Ohio, we should be looking at things that went wrong in the electoral process anywhere in the country and addressing them. Yet, it seems that a greatly disproportionate emphasis is placed on what happened in a single state.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[rlp]

I see you're new to Slashdot. Here's how it works:

      Republican elected == FRAUD
      Democrat elected == FAIR ELECTION

Cuyahoga County is run entirely by Democratic machine politics. But here at Slashdot, we ignore any facts that conflict with our preconceived notions. Hope that was helpful to you.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[skymt]

I was skeptical, so I did a web search. This Boing Boing post has links to coverage from CNN and CBS. I guess he really said it.

Here's the exact quote (from Wally O'Dell, Diebold CEO and former Republican fundraiser):

I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[radtea]

Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario.

But surely the effect on the outcome of the election is the best measure of "severity". If I wave a pointed stick around in a crowded room and kill someone, that is more severe than someone firing an RPG into an empty field.

Both acts, mind you, are serious crimes, but of two crimes commited with the same intent, the one that has the worst outcome is the more serious of the two.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[hxnwix]

Don't let me stop you. Call me a pessimist, but I'm glad to see more judicial scrutiny. You worry me because you seem to suggest that unless we can completely solve the entire problem all at once, nobody should do anything.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[hxnwix]

May I add that wanting to see your enemy punished for doing wrong does not necessarily mean that you would also commit his crime?

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[nomadic]

ea, and I voted for Badnarik because he was the only candidate left after eliminating all the obvious douchebags on the ballot.

I voted for Kerrey because he was the only candidate that I think could do a passable job. And that includes Badnarik.

I never understood why so many slashdotters supported a man so unsuitable for the job as Badnarik.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Sancho]

This is a common argument that you see narrow-minded people make. You see it ALL THE TIME on here and other web communities:

"Well I'm glad we've fixed erectile dysfunction. Now maybe we can work on curing cancer."

"Maybe we should fix the problems in our own country before we start trying to fix the problems in other countries."

"How can we devote tax dollars to X when Y is still going on all over the country?"

Of course, Ohio is important here for a number of reasons. These people admitted to failing to randomly select 3% to count by hand (instead, they hand-picked the 3% to count by hand). This is a symbol for voting fraud and negligence all over the country, and if they get slapped with a large penalty for their actions, it will hopefully lead to better overall voting conditions.

There may be more egregious violations, but they're not as evident or easily prosecuted as this case. Hell, in my hometown, several polls failed to maintain a queue between checking ID and getting your voting machine login number, leading to the possibility of people voting two or more times. A couple of polling places 'accidentally' hit the "end election" button, which requires that the machine be reset by one of the top election officials. This lead to downtime of HOURS in some places while they waited either for new machines or for the election officials to make their way there to reset them. The hope is that people will see what a mess it is, see what the penalties are for so royally screwing up, and work harder to make the elections more legitimate.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Solandri]

But surely the effect on the outcome of the election is the best measure of "severity". If I wave a pointed stick around in a crowded room and kill someone, that is more severe than someone firing an RPG into an empty field.

The key aspect you're missing is that we know Ohio was the swing state in hindsight. Until the ballots were counted, it was unknown (aside from statistical guesswork) where fraud could be most influencial. The corrected analogy is one person waving a pointed stick in the dark, while another fires an RPG into the dark. The fact that it later turns out the pointed stick killed a person while the RPG hit an empty field is purely a consequence of luck. The person firing the RPG committed the greater crime because he had the intent to cause more damage. The person waving the stick just ends up getting more scrutiny because he pisses off more people who might be interested in prosecuting him. We do the country a great disservice if we concentrate on a small threat like that while allowing the guy with the RPG get off free to fire again in the next election.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Peter La Casse]

I never understood why so many slashdotters supported a man so unsuitable for the job as Badnarik.

It's his platform. Since he had no chance of actually winning, it doesn't matter how well he would do the job. If enough people vote for any third party candidate, maybe the major parties will embrace more of that candidate's platform in the next election.

Plus, it feels really good to not vote for the lesser of two evils.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[nomadic]

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.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the troll mod is unjustified here. A large vocal majority if not literal majority on slashdot are liberal and accuse Republicans of being corrupt but not admitting that Democrats are at least as bad. For example, three of the most famously corrupt areas are Chicago, New Orleans, and New Jersey. Having lived in two of these places I can vouch for the corruption. Seeing an elected Republican is less likely than Bigfoot. If there are almost no Republicans in power how can there be corruption? All Democrats are pure of heart and only want what is best for their fellow man.

The vast majority of politicians of all parties are weasels. The voters need to make sure that they don't stay in office for long enough to get attached to power so they are tempted to abuse it. Never vote for an incumbent.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you're new to neoconservatism. Here's how it works:

      Things you agree with == conservative and moral
      Things you disagree with == liberal and treasonous

You might like to join the thinking conservatives, rather than blindly follow the Trotskyites turned neoconservatives.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[DavidTC]

Kerry wasn't evil. He wasn't good, but he wasn't evil.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[JimBobJoe]

I think there's too much of an obsession with Ohio.

I don't agree or disagree. Now for one thing, there's no doubt in my mind, as an Ohioan, that on the day of the 04 election, the state swung more in favor of Bush than Kerry.

In that regard, it's easy to say that there is too much obsession. On the other hand, a lot of the focus remains because there is always the ability for Ohio to create even closer election results (whereas Florida has become less unstable in that regard.)

Ohio's election system, arguably more than other states, is built of various layers of administration which are not fully discrete. Add to the fact that the last Secretary of State really had very little interest in the job and by all means ran his office that way, a legislature that really doesn't and probably will never understand elections, and you get significant vacuums of authority that lead to, in some instances, each precinct making its own decision about things. So when the recount came through, it started to flesh out all these issues.

It makes for a great car accident really. The new Secretary of State is settling alot of the cases against the old one, possibly to the tune of millions of dollars.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Anonymous Coward]

it was unknown (aside from statistical guesswork) where fraud could be most influencial.

Don't knock the guesswork. I know in the UK of one of the big 2 political parties there doing a major IT project to compute just that "statistical guesswork" in real time on election day as data comes in - i.e. exit polls, margins, results and so on. Not for purposes of committing fraud you understand, but to decide where to deploy voter buses and other such resources. It's completely legal, but it's IMHO quite close to the ethical line.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Catbeller]

You don't have to be a liberal to see that the Democrats didn't get a leg up with these voting irregularities. the Republicans did, and the story of how and why has been written about since at least the magical 2000 election. The Diebold company has far too many deep contacts with the Republicans, and have fought like madmen to prevent auditing or recounts on paper; no sane company would block a backup system to a computer network. They claim election results are trade secrets. They claim their systems cannot fail, to the bulge-eyed astonishment of any IT person. They have acted guilty, for years, without apology and without reason given. When the house is on fire, check for the guilty sots hanging around back with the can of kerosene and matches.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Catbeller]

Kerry was as good a man as life can produce. His oratory skills were pitched to a grade level so above the normal that people couldn't hear what he was saying. But for that, he was an excellent soldier who enlisted rather than be dragged or, as in every single case in the war-obsessed Bush White House, weaseled out through money and connections. I'm not saying that weaseling out of a stupid war is a bad character flaw, but after doing so, they shouldn't make a show of grinding up an all-volunteer army, saying, as Bush did last week, that they signed up for it, implying he had no responsibility for what happened after.

Kerry spent a life in public service when he could have done a hundred other things, and he seems to have done a good job. I'm not happy with his willingness to go along with Bush in the fake war push, but remember that he was a soldier, and they have deeply ingrained training to trust the CIC and the political process that send the US to war. And he was watching the same news media that everyone else but a few determined internet surfers were, so he believed the trainloads of crap that were being rolled out by Judith Miller and PBS and every damned outlet in the country.

He got better, he learned, so did everyone else. Now we are united, and the only question is how we disarm and tie up the "fucking loonies", as Bush 41's staff used to call the people who now run Bush 43's government.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[daddyrief]

Actually, from what I tend to see around here, most slashdotters seem libertarian-minded. (Small L.) Who knows, maybe you know better than me, your ID# clearly wins.

I guess stereotypes don't exist without someone reinforcing them, though.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[DavidTC]

Oh, I agree. I was just disapproving of calling him 'The less of two evils', because I didn't see any indication he'd be 'evil' in any way.

Bush is like, say, killing-thousands-of-people evil. A 'lesser' evil is killing maybe a dozen, and we can sit and argue whether it's moral to do that or do nothing instead and let thousands get killed by default.

Kerry, however, was more akin to 'washing your dog'. That's not some great and noble act, nor is it that interesting or fun. However, it's not evil by any regard. If someone said 'You can pick me or him. He'll wash your dog or I'll kill thousands of people', I think we can all agree there's no moral quandary there.

Just because someone wouldn't be a great or even good president doesn't mean they'd be an evil president. Kerry would not have been a great president, and probably wouldn't have been a very good one. He'd definitely gone down in history books as a failure, and the failure of the war would have been unfairly blamed on him.

But that's a hell of a lot better than 'clap your hands and say you do believe in victory in Iraq' non-reality-based Bush, and the evil cabal of people who are around him.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Peter La Casse]

In the context of American politics, "Choosing the lesser of two evils" is an idiom describing voting for a Republican or a Democrat that one doesn't like because voting for the "other" candidate (ignoring third parties entirely) would be worse. I don't believe that Kerry or Bush are actually evil. Misguided, yes; incorrect about a great many things, certainly. Malevolent? No. I don't think that either of them actually enjoys the suffering of innocents.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[DavidTC]

Bush is not evil. He's profoundly unsuited to be president, with very little knowledge, no curiosity, excessive pettiness, poor public speaking skills, and no respect for the government. He is, basically, the anti-Clinton, where Clinton was someone who probably was a little too well suited to president, which caused an all-out emergency continual attack on him his entire term in office by the opposition party.

However, several of the people that surround Bush are evil, and reelecting him was also reelecting those people.

They aren't cartoon evil, rubbing their hands together while cackling maniacally. But deliberately imprisoning and torturing innocent people is, simply, evil, no exceptions. There are lesser things I could mention, lesser arguments I could make, but deliberately implementing a system where we purchase people from warlords and imprison and torture them for years is far beyond where any possible line demarcating evil could be draw.

The Bush vs. Kerry election wasn't more evil vs. less evil, it was actual evil vs., possibly, mediocrity.

I understand the idiom, I just think it's incredibly stupid to keep sprouting it after the Bush administration has demonstrated that, apparently, we didn't know what 'evil' was.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[Peter La Casse]

I understand the idiom, I just think it's incredibly stupid to keep sprouting it after the Bush administration has demonstrated that, apparently, we didn't know what 'evil' was.

I empathize; I feel that it's incredibly stupid to say "I could care less" when what one really means is "I couldn't care less" or "begs the question" when what one really means is "makes me wonder". But those are idioms too, where the words are not related to the meaning.

Re:Obsession with Ohio

[fishbowl]

>"I'm committing to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush."

He said "The President" without specifying which President, otherwise O'Dell
might be in prison today.

OK

[Black Parrot]

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?

Re:OK

[hxnwix]

I hope you aren't implying that until every single person who may or may not have been involved in election fraud is arraigned, it would be improper to single anyone out for arraignment.

Because that would be extremely retarded.

Re:OK

[Cheapy]

Of course not. Why would that thought even be in your head?

Treason?

[rhakka]

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?

Re:Treason?

[toddhisattva]

Now that treason is treated like jaywalking, go right ahead.

Re:Treason?

[stabiesoft]

Absolutely, I just don't get this. It is treason, and when I used to work in defense, they continually reminded us that treason is punishable by the death penalty. Maybe we should remind elections people of this from time to time.

Re:Treason?

[skymt]

It seems very possible that in the minds of those committing vote fraud, their actions are patriotic. Republicans are Republicans and Democrats are Democrats because each believes their party has the best plan for America.

Let's imagine a (hopefully) rather extreme example. It's 2016 and America has suffered several tragic terror attacks, including one just a few months before the election. The Republicans play off the natural xenophobia the attacks have developed by announcing a plan to reject at the border all immigrants and visitors from Muslim Countries, and even those who have recently visited such "terrorist territories." Illegal immigrants from these countries would receive the death penalty with only a token trial. The Democrats believe this plan would cause much more harm than good, and fight it. The polls are close, but the Republicans have a slight edge.

What would a Democratic election official do in this situation? Commit vote fraud and damage one part of American freedom, or do nothing and allow the Republicans to damage another?

There's nothing like that in current American politics, but we're in no way lacking in charged political issues. Would a Democrat commit vote fraud to stop the Iraq war sooner and save the lives of a few troops? Would a Republican commit vote fraud to get a pro-life candidate into office and save the lives of a few babies?

Please note that I am neither approving vote fraud or condemning Republicans (I try to be party neutral, but someone had to take the fall to make my example work). I'm just trying to work out the motivations of those who do defraud the voters.

Re:Treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

The definition of treason is spelled out in the US Constitution.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Regardless of that, poll workers volunteer to help the electoral process. Most of them take their job seriously and do it properly. If you toss these people in jail for making mistakes it will be much more difficult to bring together enough people to conduct a proper election.

Re:Treason?

[rhakka]

Perhaps we should pay people to administer polls then. I mean.. it is only the basis for the entire operation of our country, after all. I understand your point, and agree, but this cannot be acceptable. Far too much to gain and too little to lose as it currently stands, IMHO.

Re:Treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether people vounteer for free or are paid, they will still make mistakes like this. Granted, many people consider this calculated fraud, but I could see a fairly thoughtless person thinking it was arguably legal and would serve the greater good by avoiding an expensive recount. More training might help, but that would apply whether they were paid or not.

Also, while many election officials are called "volunteers," they are often paid. Kind of like our all-volunteer military. Kind of a weird use of the word, as by that standard, McDonald's has an all-volunteer workforce, since nobody is forcing them to work for minimum wage, but "volunteer" is used in that context for some positions.

Re:Treason?

[DavidTC]

Election fraud is probably the most common form of treason in today's world.

Of course, that doesn't stop right-wing idiots from calling people with differing political opinions 'treason'.

Re:Treason?

[rhakka]

I can see it for the military (vs. conscription) but I wasn't aware of the use of that term for poll workers.

I thought I had already posted this, so if it shows up twice don't shoot me ;) but instead of "paid" I should have said "professional". Trained, well trained. Of course the danger there might be that with training comes the knowledge of how to "break the system", but I would think it would be a good deal better to have a well paid and trained force of electoral administrators that understand the consequences of their actions are quite severe should anything irregular be discovered. Of course they could still make things look like 'accidents', and there would still be accidents. But you would not be able to have willful fraud as easily as you could now.. and there would at least be some consequence!

Both parties probably already engage in shady electoral dealings on a regular basis though (dead people voting, for example), and so stepping up enforcement of existing laws and/or toughening of them is probably a pipe dream....

Re:Treason?

[JimBobJoe]

Perhaps we should pay people to administer polls then.

We do. Every lever of election helper in Ohio, from the pollworker ($100 for election day) to the Director of the county board of elections to the Secretary of State ($125k per year) is paid.

Re:Treason?

[rhakka]

See the continuing discussion; that isn't really a well trained, professional electoral process. I was, admittedly, not clear in my intentions in the post you were responding to.

Re:Treason?

[JimBobJoe]

Oh ok...sorry about that.

I've been involved in several Ohio elections. The law and its consequences has become too complex for pollworkers. I am pushing for all mail in voting because that way the legal complexities are centralized and could be better handled.

Re:Treason?

[laird]

You make an interesting ethical point, but in a properly designed voting system the outcome of the election does not depend on the honesty or integrity of any of the participants. Specifically, the system should work even if EVERY participant in the process is a partisan that is highly motivated to steal the election, because the process should be designed to assume that and still ensure the integrity of the result. That's why, for example, there should always be multiple witnesses for every step of the process representing all interested parties, each of whom is highly motivated to keep the other participants from getting away with anything.

Unfortunately, many states give quite a bit of power in determining how elections are run to a Secretary of State that is elected based on party affiliation, which undermines the system significantly. Combining that with the deployment of voting systems (DRE's) that are designed to be impossible to audit, it's hard to have faith in the integrity of the election process, because you have good reasons not to trust the people adminstering the process, and no way to verify the results independently.

Re:Treason?

[dbIII]

should be tried as NOTHING LESS than treason?

Treason only applies playing chess against Russians these days. Remember selling a lot of weapons to Iran and raking off a personal cut is way below the criteria and doesn't even disqualify you from later high paying goverment jobs - so election fraud is probably worth a medal instead.

Re:Treason?

[GodInHell]

Treason == death penalty.

That's not the real problem though, Treason is a Federal crime, but the voting process is run state by state under state law - this presents issues of federalism. (There's also an evidentiary problem, the constitution requires at least two wittnesses who will testify to the act, or an admission of treason in open court.)

It would be better to pass a law which allowed candidates to sue states for damages in some amount, tied to the cost of running ads and maintaining a campaign in their state when there is election fraud. Our legal system is based on the founding concept that all men are evil, and that we will act only in our best interest. That's why the powers of government are split into three competing brancehs, and that's why we settle the outcome of accidents with lawsuits. It's messy, and inefficient, and it seriously discourages abuse (which is the whole idea).

-GiH

Re:Treason?

[PopeJM]

"Unfortunately, many states give quite a bit of power in determining how elections are run to a Secretary of State that is elected based on party affiliation, which undermines the system significantly."

speaking of this, don't you think it's weird that Ohio's election director Kenneth Blackwell was running for governor right around this time?

Nicely done.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always get a kick out of how blindly everyone around here thrashes conservatives and praises liberals. I'm a liberal myself, but I don't pretend for one second that the liberal politicians or groups are any "better" or "worse" than their conservative counterparts; even independents have their problems.

Re:Nicely done.

[pnewhook]

I always get a kick out of how blindly everyone around here thrashes conservatives and praises liberals. I'm a liberal myself, but I don't pretend for one second that the liberal politicians or groups are any "better" or "worse" than their conservative counterparts; even independents have their problems.

Yes they are all corrupt or unethical in some manner.

The difference as I see it is republicans screw over the entire US population and selective populations of other countries that happen to have something they want, while Democrats just screw interns.

Re:Nicely done.

[Scudsucker]

I always get a kick out of how blindly everyone around here thrashes conservatives and praises liberals. I'm a liberal myself, but I don't pretend for one second that the liberal politicians or groups are any "better" or "worse" than their conservative counterparts; even independents have their problems.

Then you are either lying about being a liberal or are a self-hating one.

Re:Nicely done.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the Republicans are leaving out the interns either...

Re:Nicely done.

[laird]

"I don't pretend for one second that the liberal politicians or groups are any "better" or "worse" than their conservative counterparts; even independents have their problems."

To make the point more directly, while it's a "safe" pose to argue that "all politicians are corrupt" as if the differences between them don't matter, in reality there are important differences between different groups of politicians, because those groups have different standards and different goals.

To illustrate the difference in standards mattering, compare the administrations of Nixon and Bush Jr. Both groups were philosophically similar in many ways (and many of the same individuals were active in both administrations), but Nixon's administration was constrained by the standards that punished unethical behavior, at least when it became public and exceeded the public's tolerance. Nixon was resigned over a relatively incompetent attempt to gain inside information on his opposition in an election and then lying to cover that up. But Bush Jr.'s administration has dramatically lower standards of acceptable behavior, resulting in less punishment for far more serious errors - there is far more corruption than under Nixon, a record number of members of the administration have gone to jail (or resigned to avoid punishment), a foreign policy that has put the US in the worst position during my lifetime, actively working to subvert habeas corpus, the separation of church and state, and the system of "checks and balances" that has made our country work for centuries, and they've even given medals to the people that launched a failed war that has reduced our national security and resulted in 25,000 american casualties while wasting hundreds of billions of dollars that our children's children will be paying off. Of course, it's fairly easy to identify less corrupt administrations than either Nixon or Bush Jr., but I hope that the point is clear even from one comparison.

To illustrate that goals matter, imagine that there are two competing groups of politicians, equally corrupt, but that the first group's goal was raising the income of the poor, and the second group's goal was personal wealth. They're both "corrupt", in that both groups are willing to break the law, lie, cheat and steal, if it advances their goals. But the rest of the country is probably better of with politicians that cheat to help the poor than with the politicians that cheat to make themselves rich. Similarly, the country benefits from the government being run competently, we're better off having the government run by people whose goal is to make the government effective than people whose goal is to shut the government shut down, even if both groups of people were equally corrupt.

Re:Nicely done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, the interns are too physically mature, break out the Page Boys!

Succinctly:

[smittyoneeach]

Me

Actually ...

[willtsmith]

Actually, it's just the opposite. Lazy folks don't do preparation work and end up with even MORE work later. No, these folks were VERY dilligent VERY early making darn sure that they could eliminate any scent of voting irregularities.

A lazy Republican operative would have let someone choose precincts at random, counted just the three and then found out that they then had to recount every single ballot.

Counting twice, but fewer boxes

[MarkusQ]

That said I don't even know how this could be considered a reasonable argument since they had to count the boxes twice if I understand thing correctly.

The law says they have to manually recount a randomly selected 3%, and if that comes out close enough they can do the rest of the recount by running it through the machine again. Otherwise they would have had to manually recount them all.

So they did a quick search for precincts that might match (e.g., skip the ones where the total number of votes was way off or that otherwise looked fishy), counted some of them until the had 3% that would pass muster, and that became their "random sample" for the public recount.

What is amazing is that they (&, IIRC, the voting machine tech that helped them) admitted this to the people doing the recount.

--MarkusQ

Ahem!

[Anonymous Coward]

--Diebold

Agreed ...

[willtsmith]

To a Democratic society, elections are our most sacred ritual. Desecrating elections should be one of our highest crimes. We should treat those who murder democracy at least as harshly as those who murder people. I'd say a proof solid election fraud case should be a 10-20 years in prison. A further insult would be putting these individuals' jailhouse photos on the election training materials so that everyone KNOWS what happens to those who subvert democracy.

Ahhhh, yes.

[aussersterne]

"Me"

The American Way. Our values do persist in these troubled times! Hurrah!

Re:Ahhhh, yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. The dissonance between your reply and your sig is some kinda fierce...

You forgot ..

[willtsmith]

You forgot the issuance of press credentials and the subsequent destruction of visitation records for a certain male prostitute.

[url]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/8/123054 /5928[/url]

One has to wonder exactly who he was "interviewing" after hours?

Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Aren't they?

Plus, it's a heavily Democratic county.

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't they?

All three are women, and two of them are Black.

So there just isn't enough information to guess.

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are women allowed to take part in the election process? That sounds like the real crime here.

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you start out by stating it as fact and then go on to question it? Just curious.

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Adding a tag question to a statement softens the statement, thereby making it more likely to be believed or at least not questioned. Although, in this case the poster didn't use it as effectively as he could have. (Likely, he was not consciously aware of why he chose to add the question; it just sounded better to him to do so.)

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a HEAVILY democratic county, home of anti-war granola-eating uber-lefty Dennis Kucinich, where republicans are rare as hell, and yet it went strongly for Bush in 2004. Which is why the trouble with people asking about a recount -- hell, a lot of locals think that something fishy went on in 2004.

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a HEAVILY democratic county, home of anti-war granola-eating uber-lefty Dennis Kucinich, where republicans are rare as hell, and yet it went strongly for Bush in 2004. Which is why the trouble with people asking about a recount -- hell, a lot of locals think that something fishy went on in 2004.

Here is from Cuyahoga County Board of Elections official website:

MICHAEL BADNARIK/RICHARD V. CAMPAGNA 1,885 (.28%)
GEORGE W. BUSH/DICK CHENEY (REP) 221,600 (32.89%)
JOHN F. KERRY/JOHN EDWARDS (DEM) 448,503 (66.57%)
CANDIDATE DISQUALIFIED 0
MICHAEL A. PEROUTKA/CHUCK BALDWIN 1,752 (.26%)

Re:Those are DEMOCRATS on trial

[RSwan]

George Bush got almost 33%???? The election had to be rigged!!

So how many precincts were eliminated?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they precounted a selection likely to match and eliminated ones that where the count was wrong in order to avoid a recount.

So how many precincts did they have to eliminate to get their 34 'matching' precincts and who supplied the counting machines for those precincts that didn't match?

I 100% agree

[MarkusQ]

Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario.

I agree 100%. As I have said many times, I wouldn't be all that interested in having Kerry as President, though I don't like Bush either. But if we're going to have an election between two worthless shills I'd still insist on having an honest election between them.

Further, we should be (and, thankfully, some of us are) looking at the recent midterms as well. Cases like the guy that got no votes (even though he voted for himself), the close House race where 18000 votes went missing, and so on need to be investigated. Further, we should be paying a lot more attention to things like Rahm Emanuel's involvement in the timing of the Foley scandal, which constitute election rigging of a different sort.

And finally, we need to keep clear that this isn't a partisan issue. I am a registered Republican, but I want nothing to do with cheaters on "my side." This is actually a pretty common reaction at the grass roots level -- for instance, left leaning sites are as annoyed at Rahm as the right leaning sites.

Even in hyper-partisan times, the red team and the blue team (again, almost exclusively at the grass roots) have common ground in wanting a fair system.

--MarkusQ

Re:I 100% agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, Foley was election rigging? How the hell do you figure that?

The Democrats didn't set Foley up - he went after young (albiet legal) boys all by himself. They didn't force his leadership to avoid the issue for years. They didn't force the pages he was talking to to report him, first to their congressman, and then to the press. And they're certainly not responsible for the fact that he (and many other Republicans) ran on a platform to appeal to people who would be most horrified by this behavior.

That last part is probably the most important point. For a big chunk of the Republican base, the important issue was that he was sleeping with men, not their ages. So the lesson for the day is: "Don't run on a virulently anti-gay platform while furtively engaging in gay sex (or covering the same up). It'll end badly."

Be that as it may, it's not "election rigging" to bring up the bad behaviors of your opponent. For most of us, it's called running a campaign.

Re:I 100% agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice after the Democrat victories last election that there are not armies of Republican lawyers running around trying to inimidate people (like Democrats do). Democrats have gone over to the dark side - all the while pretending to be angles of goodness and light. Al Qeada loves them and they are going to get a lot kids killed because they embolden the enemy. Yesterday the Democrats announce "no attacks on Iran". It's plain they are on side of enemies and desire to cultivate unhealthy stresses from within. Republicans are weasels - but Democrat leadership is mentally ill.

Re:I 100% agree

[MarkusQ]

Umm, Foley was election rigging? How the hell do you figure that?

Foley wasn't election rigging, but the way Rahm Emmanuel dealt with it was (in my opinion at least). Different factions put different spin on it, but people from all across the political spectrum from the wing-nut right to the loony left agree on the basic outline:

1. Rahm Emmanuel, head of the DCCC, got wind of the fact that Foley was messing with underage pages
2. He did not notify authorities or the appropriate watchdogs of either party
3. Instead he contacted an associate who was eligible to run in FL-16 (Foley's district)
4. Together, they bribed/maneuvered the existing, grass roots supported candidate out of the race in FL-16 and convinced him to run in FL-10 instead
5. Rahm's buddy entered the race as the Democrat running against Foley in FL-16
6. After everything was set, they leaked the story

It really has nothing to do with Foley, or his party's homophobic platform, or even with Republicans vs. Democrats, and everything to do with cronyism and "fixers" working to thwart the will of the people. Foley was protected (and the pages weren't) because the people in power were more worried about the power of their little clique than about the will of the people and the responsibility that their position carries. Likewise, Foley was thrown from grace by an equally cynical clique that wanted the power for them selves.

And let me be perfectly clear here: Foley was not protected by "the Republican Party" (it was a safe seat for them, with or without him), but rather a corrupt faction within the party. And he was not undone by "the Democratic party" (they would have taken the seat regardless, once his hypocrisy became known) but rather by a corrupt faction within that party.

Be that as it may, it's not "election rigging" to bring up the bad behaviors of your opponent. For most of us, it's called running a campaign.

What Rahm Emanuel did was election rigging in my book. Not the tattling part, nor the hypocrisy (Rahm is quite possibly also gay), but manipulating the situation to get some elected in a district that, in the normal "will of the people" course of affairs, never would have elected him.

But if you don't like that example, there are lots more from the Democratic side; take Joe Lieberman's $387,000.00 "petty cash" shuffle in the primary for example.

--MarkusQ

Re:I 100% agree

[DavidTC]

No, he's right, we should be paying more attention, but not for that reason.

See, it's beginning to look, more and more, like Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC head, knew about Foley too.

The problem isn't when he released any information about this, because HE DIDN'T. The right has seized on the fact he knew about Foley to attempt to frame this, again, as being timed for the election, but there's still absolutely no evidence that he had anything to do with the discovery, which had been out there in the media for quite some time with limited evidence, and was just waiting for someone to actually investigate hard enough.

This, in my mind, is a lot worse than the Republicans sitting on the information. At least they have the excuse of protecting their own party. Rahm is a member of the other party. If he didn't want it to look like some sort of election rigging, well, he apparently knew about it for more than a year, so could have told the press about it at any time.

Rahm is a member of the 'old boys club', where he doesn't tell on other members of Congress if they don't tell on him, and he let Foley get away his behavior for a year. It's exactly the kind of backroom crap that everyone is tired of and it's even more absurd since the Republicans stopped playing that game a decade ago, but Democrats apparently have yet to realize that.

Combine that fact with Rahm's insanely bad electioneering that the grassroots and Dean had to fight tooth and nail to get the recent huge sweep, pretty much all Democrats except the ones in Washington want to see Rahm go, NOW. In fact, he can take the DLC along with him.

OTOH, I find it really ironic that the right has seized on the evidence that Rahm knew about it to demand his resignation. Hey, go right ahead with helping us Democrats get rid of that jackass.

Re:I 100% agree

[Catbeller]

"Partisan" doesn't mean "anti-Bush". The democrats were locked out of government, and that is a literal description of what happened in the Senate and the House committees in some cases, for the last six years. It's like a home invader complaining the the occupants are politicizing the burglary procedure. Fox News is running stories right now implying, saying, that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim. There is simply nothing like this class of filthy politics on the "liberal" side. the rightists have the field to themselves because they started out vile and have dived down into the cesspit of one-sided partisanship like nothing seen before in american history, and that is saying a lot. And the money that has been stolen, right out in front of god and man, it outclasses anything done in the Gilded Age of the 1800's. And the fake wars, and the military spending, and the secret torture gulags, and the claims that human rights don't exist if the President says not, even the majority of the people who call themselves rightwing are finally sounding out that what has happened is nothing like conservative government. We have a situation on our hands here, and it isn't the liberals vs. the conservatives, it's Bush's burgeoning fascists and their news outlets against the Democrats, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, the Republican majority, and finally a timid press that has hid out, fearing being labeled liberal.

Re:I 100% agree

[T-Ranger]

Extend your argument. Emanuel got a friend elected by working the system into putting him into a sport that he then timed a leak to make sure race. Simplify. Emanuel got a friend elected by working the system to put him in a sure race.

Wouldn't the same have been true of Foley in the first place? How did he run in a sure race for the Reps? The powers that be don't waist sure races on people they don't know.

Either way, pre scandal, post scandal, the race was a sure thing. They problem then is that races ever become sure things. Why does that happen? Because (in both these cases, at least) the population votes for the party. A color. A letter. Not paying attention to the man. The people are sheep. The are just voting based on an animal logo. They have no will. They are playing themselves.

Sure, no big deal

[MarkusQ]

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.

Sure, sure, just like it's no big deal if somebody opens fire in a shopping mall, so long as they don't hit anybody. Or like the way it's OK to swipe people's credit cards, as long as you don't buy anything with them.

--MarkusQ

Re:Sure, no big deal

[Original Replica]

"The evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless," Prosecutor Kevin Baxter said. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=28 06718

The potential problems caused by a thorough investigation into the ramifications of our broken election system might be a bit more than the prosecution wants to take on. That doesn't mean the election system isn't seriously flawed. My OP point was that we need to take off the blinders and deal with the flaws, and that means first admitting that we have a problem.

Re:Sure, no big deal

[dpilot]

But that wouldn't be Patriotic!

The terrorists WANT us to get mired in this recount morass!

(If you can't detect satire, never mind.)

Re:Sure, no big deal

[ArsonSmith]

Of which, both would be reported and forgotten about much the same way this is.

More applicable quotes from Homer (and Oscar)

[skymt]

"Victory passes back and forth between men." -- Homer "The will of Zeus was accomplished." -- Homer

Probably pardons them

[MarkusQ]

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?

Knowing Kerry, he'd probably pardon them for the various charges of election rigging, domestic wiretaps, ware crimes and other violations of international law, missing Iraq reconstruction funds, etc., etc. and then announce the next day that he hadn't meant to pardon them, but it was too late now and we should just move on.

--MarkusQ

Re:Probably pardons them

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing Kerry, he'd probably pardon them for the various charges of election rigging, domestic wiretaps, ware crimes and other violations of international law, missing Iraq reconstruction funds, etc., etc. and then announce the next day that he hadn't meant to pardon them, but it was too late now and we should just move on.

Or he could just give them the presidential medal of freedom and tell them they did a heck of a job. Then he could close his eyes, stick his fingers in his ears, say "La la la la la," and ignore reality while vegetating on his ranch.

Seriously, having a president willing to change his mind when the situation changes (like the contents of a bill, or the state of a war) is a blessing. Having a president which refuses to change his mind when reality bites us all on the ass is a curse.

Re:Probably pardons them

[MarkusQ]

Seriously, having a president willing to change his mind when the situation changes (like the contents of a bill, or the state of a war) is a blessing. Having a president which refuses to change his mind when reality bites us all on the ass is a curse.

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.

Seconded

[truthsearch]

Agreed. If these people broke the law they should spend the rest of their lives in jail. They took away a fundamental freedom of the people of their county. As a result their freedom should be taken away.

That's what started all this.

[MarkusQ]

A Republican in Cuyahoga County??

Please... you have a better chance of finding a do-do bird in Cuyahoga County.

You aren't the only one to have that reaction. The fact that such a large proportion of them apparently voted for Bush started some people wondering if the votes had been counted correctly.

Thus the 3rd party call for a recount, which the poll workers botched.

It's the very fact that the county is so heavily Democratic that got people wondering in the first place.

--MarkusQ

Oh, the irony

[MarkusQ]

Oh, the irony. My remarks about Kerry were not intended as a troll.

It was a botched attempt at a joke.

**sigh** I suppose I deserve it.

--MarkusQ

As a local, I gotta tell you

[Weaselmancer]

No offense, but I find it hilarious that a user named "Black-Man" is telling us what it's like in Cuyahoga Falls. If you're local, you know that it's usualy called Caucasian Falls for a reason.

For the rest of the Slashdot crowd, the Falls is still one of those places where you can get a ticket for driving while black. Or poor. I got pulled over once for simply having a crappy car. The cops there work very hard to keep "that element" out of their neighborhood, if you know what I mean.

Ohio can be a pretty embarrassing place to live.

Nixon said it best

[Weaselmancer]

"Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

The problem with both of you

[Solandri]

Is that you're assuming that both parties are single-minded, homogeneous entities, and that your side is the champion of goodness and truth, while the other side is the bastion of evil and lies.

The real truth is that when it comes to politics, a portion of the supporters of every party believes winning > fairness. All this talk about hypocrisy is just attempting to hide this fact behind partisan blinders.

well-put

[ChipMonk]

So well that you basically made the case of your parent poster for him/her.

USA election system is a joke all around

[Petkov]

To begin with, you gotto be a millionare or/and have a spare 100 millon dollars lying around to even run for a president. Do you think just about ANYBODY can run? Then you must really be living in fantasy world. Ralf nader was also a runner but he wasnt even allowed to be on the ballot of several states due to some technically in the law I forget at the moment.
Second the US system uses the electorial college which simply put uses procentages to round up the votes and throws out uwanted votes. For exmaple during 2004 I was living in nevada and I DID vote for Nader. Yet when the results came out, Nader had 0% total of the votes! It seemed NOBODY had voted for him yet I DID! Somehow my votes wasn't counted at all due to the electorial college bullshit. All of the 3 Nevada electoral votes went to Shrub Jr.

I could go on and on but who cares really. USA is on its way down and out. Soon it will be as irrelevant as the Soviet Union.

Mode me -1. See if I care.

Not exactly...

[Eric Damron]

Either party would call foul if they lost an election and the
voting anomalies were as great as they were in the last two
presidential elections!

The votes counted were outside of the possible margin of error of
several exit polls in key areas. This means that the votes had been
tampered with. Had they not George W Bush would NOT be President
right now. The war in Iraq, which is part of the Wolfowitz
Doctrine, would not have happened and THOUSANDS of Americans and
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of Iraqs would still be alive.

These elections were stolen and people are dead because of it. I
call it treason and thing that the people involved in stealing the
country should be hanged until dead. All of them.

Re:Not exactly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hanging... would be too good for them

Send them to Guantanamo, and North Korea

Re:Not exactly...

[toddhisattva]

The war in Iraq, which is part of the Wolfowitz
Doctrine, would not have happened and THOUSANDS of Americans and
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of Iraqs would still be alive.

Or tens of thousands of Americans would be dead and so would hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

How would tens of thousands of Americans die? Saddam shoots down a plane, and the US is forced to react on his timetable. Instead of the brilliant, near-perfect military campaign, we get a rush job, with typical and normal fatalities for such an operation. Think "Iwo Jima" and "Gettysburg" scaled up to the size of Iraq.

How would hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die without US intervention? Just a few more years of Saddam would do it.

Just because CNN refused to report on Saddam's travesties doesn't mean they didn't happen.

Re:Not exactly...

[PurpleBob]

I don't like Bush either, and I'd very much like to see what the result of this recount is, but you're making some pretty extreme statements based on unfounded assumptions. Particularly the one about the polls -- "margin of error" doesn't mean what you think it means, and exit polls are certainly far more inaccurate than elections.

Also, this should go without saying, but Americans shouldn't be hanged over a political vengeance.

Re:Not exactly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Touchy subject, apparently. Interesting that two contradictory opinions both get moderated down. From my observations, here's how I think moderation works on political subjects:

• Core liberal opinion, no supporting evidence = Flamebait (the GP)
• Core liberal opinion, w/ supporting evidence = Interesting
• Moderate liberal opinion, no supporting evidence = Interesting
• Moderate liberal opinion, w/ supporting evidence = Insightful
• Core conservative opinion, no supporting evidence = Troll
• Core conservative opinion, w/ supporting evidence = Troll (your post)
• Moderate conservative opinion, no supporting evidence = Troll (this post)
• Moderate conservative opinion, w/ supporting evidence = Overrated

Good points, btw. Cheers.

This is why...

[jd]

...it is vitally important to replace the existing system with something that works. The problem is, nobody really understands what would work - the quality of research is worse than the quality of the elections.

Ultimately, you want a system where true recounts aren't needed (but would be guaranteed, in full, if called for). This requires a system that is essentially non-partisan. There would be no quango (govt. appointee) in charge of running the elections or counting the votes. The separation of powers should ensure that a person cannot be elected by the same people they selected.

Some would argue that this is a case for secure electronic voting, provided the code was formally designed and thoroughly audited, and provided the votes cast were retained in some form (electronically or on paper), not merely tallied. Others would argue that it should require paper ballots but where each ballot box is under supervision so can't "go missing" (as often happens) and where each and every ballot is counted by three or more people - no statistical sampling, no "it fell under the table" and no "oh, I didn't think those mattered".

(In all cases, postal ballots should absolutely NEVER be handed to a politically aligned group for forwarding. In fact, if we're going to go with electronic ballots, postal ballots should not exist - you should be able to vote totally securely and totally anonymously - say via a tor-like setup - from any Internet-capable location. What we should not have is political parties able to dump ballots they don't like, which has happened and which will no doubt happen again.)

Wrong Law

[Striver]

This has always been a no brainer to me. This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The people ARE the government and they govern through their duly appointed representatives. When this system is circumvented by any means to place people in positions of power who were NOT duly elected by the people, then that is a change of government or, quite literally, the overthrow of the government of the United States, which under US code is punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison.

It could indeed be argued that such an act would constitute an act of war and therefore rise to treason but I really doubt any court would accept that (Even thought I would advocate it but I am rather intolerant of such acts).

But the fact is, the government of the United States has indeed been overthrown. We the People are no longer in control because the authority of our duly appointed representatives, and by proxy our own authority, has been usurped.

The inevitable argument of "well wouldn't you do the same if you felt it would save the country" has popped up here as well. The answer is a very vehement NO! The drafters of our constitution were not some ignorant hacks that threw something together that just happened to work. They were long time students of political theory who had spent years studying various real world applications of political concepts. They based our system of government on what has worked in the real world down through history, and time has proved them right. Read up on John Adams' statements on France's attempts and failures to form a new government. This system is a critical balance. You upset that balance at your own risk. It must, above all, remain a government of the people whether you or I agree with the decisions of the people or not. It must be our representatives in control. Not those appointed by some individual or small group who think they know better.

So now you have been overthrown. What do you intend to do about it?

Fault Tolerant System

[RexRhino]

Of course, if you were looking at this from an engineering perspective, you would realize there is going to be a certain amount of voter fraud in any election, and develop a system where the outcome would not change based on say a 5% or a 10% miscount of votes (or somewhere around the max voter fraud you can do without it being blatently obvious that the election has been rigged). You make the system fault tolerant.

Any system that pretends that there is no voting fraud, and depends on there being no voter fraud to function properly, is like developing a network protocal that catastrophicly fails if so much as a single packet is lost. Part of the trouble with politics is that we have given what are really communications systems (an election IS a communication system), a certain moral content. It is "right" that all votes need to be counted, and "wrong" that some should be lost, so we end up designing a system on a rather arbitrary set of moral beliefs instead of engineering it the same way we would a telephone switching system.

One book that kinda goes into the problem is "WHY MOST THINGS FAIL: Evolution, Extinction and Economics" by Paul Ormerod ( http://www.amazon.com/Most-Things-Fail-Paul-Ormero d/dp/0571220126 )... although the book is more about companies than politics, a lot of the same principles apply.

Re:Fault Tolerant System

[eluusive]

There's more to this than network protocols mr smartypants. It is _required_ that voters cannot prove to anyone that they voted one way or another. How do you build in checks and balances to that?

Re:Fault Tolerant System

[RexRhino]

Well, my point was to suggest a different aproach to solve the problem, not engineer the solution myself. But for the heck of it, I will come up with a solution. The solution is to tie votes to a scarce item or resource.

Now, you could use platinum or gold, but the urge to melt down platinum or gold instead of using it would probably be too high... so instead, have the U.S. Mint create a currency-like voting certificate. Something similiar to money that would be difficult and perhaps cost-prohibitive to counterfit.

Then, prior to an election, a vote certificate would be distributed to registered voters by the government. The registered voters would then "pay" the party they want to vote for with this currency. The parties would then take their votes, and "bid" on the election. The one who can "pay" the most voting certificates, wins.

The system would work a lot like money. While there is counterfitting and fraud with money, the money system is completly untraceable... and far less prone to corruption than the election system.

Re:Fault Tolerant System

[mdfst13]

The registered voters would then "pay" the party they want to vote for with this currency. The parties would then take their votes, and "bid" on the election. The one who can "pay" the most voting certificates, wins. And then the richer party (i.e. the Republicans) would always win. All they'd have to do is pay people for their votes. Since 50% of eligible voters don't vote anyway, they'd probably be happy to sell their vote certificate (rather than throw it away). Heck, what if they do throw it away? Homeless people would go dumpster diving and get certificates to sell.

This is why voting is anonymous, so people can't sell their votes this way. Adding a certificate that voters turn into a party rather than a vote official is asking for vote buying.

I also think that you are underestimating the costs of fraud in the monetary system. I'm not so sure that the monetary system is more secure than the current voting system. The difference is that counterfeit money is a continual cost, where vote fraud only shows up every six months (and only gets real traction every four years when a President is selected). Further, a vote is a mostly binary decision. Note that the margin of victory for the 2000 President came down to around a thousand votes in Florida. Counterfeit money doesn't have that much impact. It's not like you counterfeit $20,000 of twenties and win a billion dollars. If you counterfeit $20,000, you get $20,000. Fraudulently hide a thousand votes in Florida in 2000 and you win the election.

Your analysis would be far better spent on figuring out how to make votes less binary. For example, what if we replaced the single Presidency with a dual Presidency, where either President could issue vetoes? What if we aggregated across states rather than only voting within them (straight popular vote)? What if we switched to a Prime Ministry (essentially the Speaker of the House would be President). What if we had proportional voting (where if 1% of the population voted Libertarian, 1% of the Congressional seats would be filled by Libertarians)? What if we had true democracy rather than a republic? Those kind of proposals reduce the *impact* of individual votes. As such, they would make the system more like a network, where we simply don't care that some packets don't get through.

The truth is that mechanically counted paper ballots (where the voter gets to run the ballot through the counter before putting it in a secure box) are about as secure as any system possibly could be. That's why they aren't used. They require a black hat to compromise the poll workers. Machines only require hardware compromise, which is much easier.

Re:Fault Tolerant System

[dbIII]

Let's consider the Indian election. The central authority the runs elections (massive advantage just there) knew that some ballot boxes would be stuffed and even stolen at gunpoint. To get around this they built very simple voting machines with a transparent system any interested party could look at, subject to peer review and limited to a small number of votes per machine. Anyone wanting to rig the election would have to tamper with a lot of machines, obviously a difficult task becuase nobody other than a complete idiot would connect such devices to a network.

Just becuase the US situation is full of incompetance on so many levels in the areas where it fails does not mean it has to be that way. A voting machine should never be complex enough to require a PC and Microsoft Windows to operate it, should never be altered in any way on election day, should never continue to be used after the seals have been broken, should never be connected to a network and should be simple enough to operate. I find it bizzare that felons cannot vote in the USA but convicted fraudsters can run a voting machine division of a company and they still get the contract and don't let the government they contract to see the source code. Why do we have machines that cost thousands each when embedded systems that do so much more are so much easier to make - are the extra whistles and bells a distraction for county officials that don't have the resources to investigate every tender application?

Hypocrisy

[Mark_MF-WN]

Congratulations -- you get the "illiterate dumbass who didn't read the fucking article" award for the day.

There was a recount in this case because STATE LAW DICTATED THAT IT BE SO. Are you seriously suggsting that Ohio does not have the right to perform recounts, just because it offends your political sensibilities? Ohio should tolerate election fraud just because other states may have abused the recount process? No offense (just kidding, offense is totally intended), but fuck you. Fuck you right in the ear. Recounts are awesome. I'll take a hundred recounts, if the alternative is the selection of the head of state by a council of presidential appointees. If it requires a hundred recounts and total openness about the results of every single ballot, well then good. It's about time.

These traitors have already admitted that they broke the law, and rigged the recount. It doesn't matter who won -- they rigged the recount and broke the law. The interfered with the democratic process. They need to hang. It's as simple as that.

I know you're bitter that America is turning against the politics of cowardice, torture, paranoid delusions, and perpetual warfare -- but that's just progress, and you've got to learn to accept with it. The world described in 1984 was supposed to be a dire warning of things to come, not a proposal for the utopian society.

wait a min...

[Anonymous Coward]

so wait a min.. does that mean that bush will be kicked out cause it was ALL fraud!?!??!!?
keeping it Anonymous Coward so i don't have my door bashed in by the feds

who cares about hypocrisy - get it right

[dbIII]

It really shouldn't matter who asks for the recount - but then again I live in a country with a far less complex voting system and compulsory voting for every citizen over the age of 18. In my country there is no "unusual punishment" like removing people from the voting rolls which would appear to be against the US constitution.

The biggest problem I see with the voting machines in current use is the inability to do a recount. The general flakiness and complexity of the things and the actions of Diebold in deployment making it look like they are pulling fast ones to confuse poll workers (although it could just be criminal incompetance) is the other one. If the poll workers don't get hold of a test machine to learn how to use it proir to the election the contract should go to somebody who can no matter how much lobby money is paid.

The whole system is rotten

[Anonymous Coward]

Countries like Sweden and Canada can hold elections where ballots are cast on paper, which are manually counted on election day, with preliminary results available about 4 hours after the poll stations close. In Sweden the elections are always held on a Sunday. There is a mandatory recount of every vote cast done by the Thursday after the elections, when the election results are declared official and the ballots are archived, in case there should be an appeal. Every single step of the process is open to the public. I can go to the poll station on the night of election day and watch the officials break the seals of the ballot boxes, open the sealed envelopes of the ballots, sort the ballots and count them. There are stringent rules for the order in the area behind the ropes, making it virtually impossible for anyone to add, subtract or modify ballots.

The election officials come from all walks of life and are hired for the occasion. It is very common for people active in local politics to sign up for election day. Civil servants ensure that there is a mix of political affinities in every single group of officials.

For a democracy to work, there must not be a shadow of a doubt about the freedom and the fairness of the elections. It is THE foundation of a truly democratic state. Without it, nothing - from constitution to the president to the lowliest political appointee - can claim to have the legitimacy of being "of the People".

This said, I think there is a case in the USA for using machines to count ballots cast on paper, if there are safeguards, like manual sampling and double counts made using machines from different manufacturers, with the requirement that they must come up with the exact same result. This would probably require the machines to reject a number of border case ballots, leaving them for manual inspection.

Not quite so clear cut

[MarkusQ]

While I mostly agree, it's not quite so clear cut.

Joe Lieberman, Rahm Emanuele, etc. on the Democratic side are just as tainted / crooked as anyone on the Republican side. Likewise, there are several (not nearly enough) voices of courage and reason reason even among the corporate press. And while the Pentagon and the CIA undoubtedly have many good people, I am equally sure that they have their share of bad eggs.

We are playing "Sneaches on the Beaches" for the fate of the world here, and there really aren't any labels that we can use to separate the good from the bad. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care what somebody calls themselves (or what they are called by others) what matters is what they stand for, and what they won't.

--MarkusQ

No. Not treason.

[Peyre]

Treason is the one crime specifically defined by the Constitution--as such, I consider it especially important we follow that definition. Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

That said, you're absolutely right it should be treated as a very serious felony. I don't care if you're fixing an election for the Democrats, Republicans, or the Down With Lawyers party--damaging our electoral process is one of the worst things a person can do to our democracy, and it should be treated that way. Just we shouldn't label it treason.

Don't blame the people

[MarkusQ]

Emanuel got a friend elected by working the system into putting him into a sport that he then timed a leak to make sure race.

Where "working the system" means sitting on evidence of a felony committed by a member of the US House of Representatives?

I suppose that by those sorts of standards things like blackmail and even bank robbery could be written off as just "working the system"?

The fact that in doing so he also betrayed the people of Florida, his own party (except of course any that have sold out along with him), and his oath of office, which I suppose is just frosting on the cake when you're playing at that level.

The people are sheep. The are just voting based on an animal logo. They have no will. They are playing themselves.

Let me get this straight--you're saying in effect it's OK to lie to them because they are ignorant and make ill-informed choices? Did it ever occur to you that maybe they wouldn't be so blind and foolish if their leaders didn't get away with lying to them at every turn? I'm just saying.

--MarkusQ