We're all grossly ignorant, but some of us are arrogant enough to think that our ignorance is better than the other guys.
It's all about coming up with strategies for managing our stupidity...
Representative democracy itself is a hack for dealing with the limitations of individual citizens.
(What do you think you need a representative for, anyway? Let's have a governing body composed of all
the citizens, who vote on things directly! You don't want to hassle with that? What, are you lazy or
something? If you're too stupid to be your own congressional reprsentative, maybe you should just stay home.)
This is a good set of rules of thumb, that I would summarize as "use proxies".
When you don't have time to make up your mind about something, you can choose
to follow the advice of someone that you're willing to trust (at least provisionally)
to have thought the issue through more carefully than you have.
This amounts to choosing a representative to help you choose a representative.
Why not?
Well okay. As long as you promise not to drown the facts
in another "he said/she said" shouting match.
If you think Republicans steal elections, please be intellectually honest and admit that Democrats do so too.
Oops, too late.
I think the Democrats are too timid to cross the street without a helicopter, the idea of them committing election fraud on the scale that the Republicans have been getting away with is completely laughable.
Even if it were really the case that the Democrats were just as slimey as those damn Republicans, then what? Would everything suddenly be okay?
Oh wait: if you thought that were true, you might feel too apathetic to bother going out to vote. Is that the concept here?
Neither party has clean hands historically.
Hm... so those specs of dirt over there justify the wallowing in the mud over here?
The Democrats just happen to be the first party that pretty much justifies their losses exclusively on perceived fraud rather than looking internally to finding out why they don't win elections.
*phffft*. There are so many things wrong with this kind of thing, I don't know where to start. (1) You don't think Democrats internally reexamine their positions? You can turn-around without stumbling over some monday-morning quarterback explaining their grand scheme to get out the word, get out the vote, and really win one next time.
(2) These people very, very rarely have a grasp of the possibility that the Democrats really have been winning: it is now eminently possible to win the vote and lose the election. The idea that The Democrats just won't shut up about election fraud is ridiculous: Mark Crispin Miller has been arguing that they're in denial about how bad the problem is, and he may well be right.
Are you so blinded by partisan stupidity that you believe there aren't just as many rabid bush haters doing the exact same thing?
Wow. If people doing the same thing on the other side, there is no problem? The problem is that people are able to do this in the first place! Which party is doing it is completely immaterial. (especially to me, I don't even live in the US)
Yeah, it does seem like a particularly lame argument, doesn't it? The best that I can figure is that they've decided that slashdot is an essentially liberal forum where they're not likely to win any Republican converts, so one of the best things they can do is play for cynical apathy.
If they can convince the average slash-kid to stay home because it just doesn't matter,
then that's a win.
And while I'm pointing fingers -- George W. Bush won by a narrow enough margin that vote fraud would have been enough to push the election either way. That usually doesn't happen, and if he had done what he said he was going to in 2000 (be "a uniter, not a divider" and kept to his origial lead on the War on Terrorism) it wouldn't have happened in 2004.
It's not rocket science when it comes to winning an election by a large enough margin that you're beyond the margin of error. I hope most of tomorrow's elections succeed where 2004's presidential election failed in that respect. It'll make the outcome, either way, less of an obstacle for Congress doing the people's work.
I sympathise with what you're saying here, but I'm afraid what's probably really going on is a little worse than you imagine.
A "close election" is one of the symptoms of election fraud -- which is not to say that it's proof of election fraud -- there's no point in stealing more votes than you need to win, and if you're going to surprise people with a result that differs from what the polls predicted,
it looks a little better if the difference isn't that big.
If you want a prediction for tomorrow's election: at a bare minimum, the Senate races in Virgina and Tennessee are going to be stolen -- they're projected to be close enough to make that relatively easy, and they're both "high risk" states with a lot of DRE machines in use.
With just those two wins, the Republicans will -- just barely -- maintain control of the Senate.
The Democratic lead in the House looks much too big to be shaved discretely: I would predict that
the Republicans will lose control of the House. Though I don't know, maybe that's crazy optimism on my part: those guys have balls of steel and no shame -- they might actually be bold enough (and short-sighted enough) to try to hold onto the house by "crook", if "hook" ain't going to work. In which case, we are in for Interesting Times (in case you thought they were interesting
enough already).
This election is telling. I read in the last 24 hours that polls indicate that while most of the people that are voting Republican are voting for the Republican, most of those that are voting Democrat are voting against the Republican. That might be enough for the Democrats tomorrow, but it isn't indicative of a long-term groundswell of support for Democrats that would help them in 2008 or beyond.
Democrats lose because people think their policies suck; sure, there might be some fraud here and there. I'm sure the Democrats do it too. But the main reason they are where they are is because people don't like their policies.
This is definitely a year for the lesser-of-two evils: all we've got is a choice between evil and incompetent, so if you ask me incompetence is the best pick.
Overall, I disagree with your assessment of the American political character. If you did down into people's attitudes about issues, you find that they're a lot more "liberal" than you would think, even when they vote Republican.
After the 2004 election there was an interesting poll that showed that the people who voted for George Bush actually didn't understand his position on a lot of issues, whereas the people who "voted against him" had a more accurate grasp of these things. Just as an example, most people want the government to Do Something about global warming, and had trouble believing Bush was against the Kyoto accord.
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
In 2000, the Democrats said that the Republicans stole the election because of the confusing butterfly ballots and that we needed a new and modern way of voting.
Now that we have it,
Now think very carefully here. Is it possible that both ways of doing an election
could be fucked? That the Republicans looked at the demand for a "new and modern" way
of voting and did an excellent job of subverting that demand, replacing the old
somewhat corrupt techniques with a new, more massively corrupt technique?
The thing is you can't possibly deny that, say, Diebold Accuvote machines aren't pieces of swiss-cheese as far as vote security is concerned, and you can't possibly deny that the management of the big electronic voting companies (Diebold and ES&S) have a known Republican bias -- both of those points are tremendously well documented. The one and only thing you can possibly deny is that maybe those two points weren't put together to steal the 2004 election -- except that there is that nasty little problem of explaining away the peculiarly large exit-poll discrepancies that correlated with the use of those voting machines.
Hence, I vehemently deny your accusation that this is all Democratic spin, and I reiterate that this is just an attempt at Republican counter-spin.
It smacks of arrogance. These people honestly believe that they only way that they can possibly lose is if the opposition cheats.
El wrongo... if you really believe that (and I find it unlikely that you really do) you're not paying attention.
Is it really that unbelievable that there are actually people out here who don't vote the same way that you do? Is it really that unbelievable to you that roughly 50% of the American electorate feels differently about the issues than you do?
Well, at the moment it's a little hard to believe that, because all polls seem to agree that
most people are sick of the Iraq war, and annoyed at the Bush regime's handling of it.
The American people can be a little slow on occasion, but they do catch on eventually
(you know, "some of the people some of the time" and so on, as was once said by a man who doesn't deserve to be associated with the current crop of people calling themselves Republicans).
There is no need for paid operatives to infiltrate Slashdot, K5 and where ever else geeks like us congregate online.
What is so hard to believe about Karl Rove engaging in an internet astro-turf campaign?
Wouldn't it seem weird if he didn't try something like that?
In any case, I'm not suggesting that every conservative voice on slashdot
is necessarily a hired Republican-sock puppet. What I am saying is that there's a surprising
number of folks doing mindless reiteration of the same pretty lame talking points, like "Oh the democrats do it too!", or "oh polls are so inaccurate", or "oh you're just a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut like those 9/11 truthies!" Those folks, I find, shall we say, suspicious.
And you're a real paragon of bravery for posting material that defames Republicans in a forum where there is a clear pro-Democrat bias.
It must be biased. We just don't realize that The Democrats Do It Too (so it must be okay).
In any case: if anyone is so whacked as to still be reading this: don't get so wrapped up in the "the elections are rigged!" business that you don't bother voting. Yeah, they're rigged, but none of us know how badly they're rigged, and if it's just a finger on the scale (and not a two-ton weight) we need all the legit voters out there we can get.
In case anyone does continue reading this, they should understand that polls are notoriously inaccurate and when someone quotes pre-election polls as what the results would be, then they're pretty stupid.
Actually, they should understand that anyone who claims polls are "notoriously inaccurate" is most likely making excuses for election fraud,
because while polls are clearly not perfect they are, at this point, the one and only check remaining on the integrity of the electoral process. Unless you go for the "it can't happen here" faith-based approach.
Americans should not have to take this sort of thing on faith.
We're supposed to be the pros at democracy, not the laughing-stock.
Furthermore, all that BS about the Republicans rigging the elections (to a large extent, because as most people are aware, there is fraud in both camps) is well, BS and conspiracy theories akin to the 9/11 ones.
Ah, the good old "you're just like those truthies" smear, combined with an "oh, everyone does it".
You guys really need some better talking points.
I wish the 2004 election fraud were bullshit. In fact, I wish it were at least plausibly deniable, but it just isn't: you had unusually large exit-poll discrepancies that were nearly always in the Republicans favor, correlating with multiple different factors, e.g. (1) the use of electronic voting machines, (2) the presence of Republican governors, (3) "battle ground" states...
That is over and above the many and various well-documented dirty tricks pulled in Ohio.
(Funny having a bunch of Canadians taking a Republican line all of a sudden, isn't it?
Usually they just laugh at us for not using paper ballots.)
Look mon, on the internet no one knows if you're a dog, but everyone can tell if you're a Rover Boy.
In any case, the reason you're wrong is that the reason we're worried about the Republicans rigging elections is there's some pretty good evidence that they've been rigging elections of late.
No, a "fair" election is not one where the Democrat is guaranteed to win... however
if you could expect that the official election result would have some relation to the unofficial polls before and after the election, that might be an indication that you've got something like a fair election going.
If you had Secretaries of State in every State throughout the US objecting to the use of DREs such as Diebold, that are becoming legendary for their unreliability... that might be a hint that you were getting near having fair elections.
I could go on, but the odds are good that most people out there have heard it,
and no one is left reading the political threads like this except for trolls and troll swatters... so see you later.
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
This is exactly the point the parent was making! It's turning into 'If we Dems don't win, then the election must have been a fraud! It's the only explanation!".
It doesn't matter how people vote or how many safeguards are put in place,
The "safeguards" in place border on the non-existant at this point. No one who understands those DRE machines thought they were a good idea.
I would not believe the 2004 election was stolen were it not for
the patterns in the exit-poll data discrepancies
the huge number of conventional election corruption techniques deployed in Ohio.
In other words, you can spin, spin, spin all you want, but there's a reality-based world out there, and some day the truth (if you will excuse the expression) will out.
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
My favorite part of politics is when the fanatics come out and ignore the sins of their own party while accusing others.
Yeah, and the Republicans are really good at that one. You got to hand it to them, whenever they're under-fire they
go on a really strong counter-attack (kind of like this one).
Voter fraud on the part of Democrats was well-documented in 2004,
from paying homeless people with crack to go in and vote to signing up dead people as voters.
Bullshit. You don't have documentation of that.
Even GOP voter vans had their tires slashed the night before the election.
Now this at least actually happened. Against the long litany of sins in Ohio in 2004,
against the use of hired thugs to interfere with the vote count in Florida in 2000,
you can point to this one mindless prank.
But of course, only the Republicans cheat!
Hardly. But they cheat so well!
Or at least, the new breed of Republicans do... give 'em one or two more elections
and maybe we can forget about the rest of them.
When I have asked whether the election was stolen, I am not talking about these suppressed votes. If the election were won through such tactics, it would be unjust and undemocratic and even unprecedented in scale of sophistication, but not new. If such were the case, we might simply say that the Bush/Cheney campaign "stole it fair and square" because such tricks are part of the game, and that Democrats are complicit because for decades such tricks have helped white and "moderate" Democrats win primary battles and maintain control of the party.
What we are saying is they did not steal it fair and square. Rather, that even by the rules of the game, which amount to something like a hockey game played on a 15 degree incline, Bush/Cheney still couldn't win; and that had the votes been counted as cast, Kerry would have won the presidency with something on the order of a six million vote plurality. In short, the official count is off by something on the order of nine million votes!
Unfortunately, I find myself slipping into a more cynical attitude than yours because of those darn polls that repeatedly show that the vast majority of Americans think Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 --
What? But how could they think that? George Bush says (now) that there was no connection.
On the other hand, you'll notice that polls have been showing for some time that
most people in the US think we should get out of Iraq, already...
Just to pick one.
I think the American people can be awfully slow-witted -- certainly they seem like it to someone willing
to sit down with a DSL line and do some web searches, but they do catch on eventually.
Try listening to this if you need your spirits picked-up a bit: My Strange Nation
(warning: flash site, non-flash alternative is broken).
Hmm, could you possibly list these checks and balances, for other people who may feel the need to take action?
I take your drift, of course, because we've seen remarkably
little of "checks and balances" in action of late. To take one
example, the election fraud in Ohio was pretty scandalous, but
the Republican congress got out their rubberstamp and accepted
the result anyway: party loyalty seems to have paralyzed
the US system of "checks and balances".
But then, that suggests to me that in the near term the fix
is simple: we need split government, we can't put one party in
charge of all branches of the government.
So here's some things a citizen might do about it:
Tommorow (Tuesday, Nov 7) you go to the polls and vote, and hope that the vote rigging in your area is just a finger on the scale and not a two-ton weight. You should almost certainly vote Democrat: they're more likely to try to replace the system that raped them twice.
Note: if you've got a video camera, bring it with you. You never know.
You write your congressional reps, and tell them you really think they should push through the "Paper Ballot Act of 2006".
You keep an eye on sites like this, looking for ideas:
You get ready to do some serious protesting in the streets
if things don't improve. You might have to ask someone from
Mexico how this is done, Americans seem to have lost their
backbone.
Yes, now I will have something to blame if "my people" lose! Being a sore loser has never been so easy!
Ah, you've got to love the general tenor of political debate in America, eh?
According to some accounts, the reason John Kerry caved-in so quickly and refused
to challenge what had gone down in Ohio is he was afraid people would call him a
"sore loser".
Way to go John... we weren't using that democracy for much any way.
The movie makes some great points but rarely does it go into enough detail for the viewer to be able to make any real conclusions. Also, most of the movie focuses on this really mouthy woman I don't really care for. She seems so much like a typical pain in the ass neighbor.
Oh yeah, Bev Harris can be so annoying. Going around causing trouble, starting things like Black Box Voting.
Life would be so much more peaceful if people would just shut up about Election Fraud.
By the way, Bev Harris was interviewed recently on Democracy Now. She didn't
strike me as being a "mouthy woman" (but then, I've got no problem with Amy Goodman, either).
The weird thing about electronic voting is that after 2000, the Democrats were decrying paper ballots and were all about "modernizing" the system and adopting electronic voting.
This year, they're decrying electronic voting and all for paper voting because it "leaves a trail."
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal
them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
Why the sudden 180? Is it just to cover their backs if they fail to gain a majority in the mid-term elections ("We would've won if it wasn't for those darn electronic voting machines") or is it just a pattern of blaming the system whenever they lose an election ("We would've won if it wasn't for those darn paper ballots")? What's the deal?
Well, if you ask me, the deal is that the Bush machine is getting ready to pull some fast ones tomorrow, and they
expect they're going to have some peculiar "upsets" that need to be explained away, so they're sending folks
like yourself around to soften up the crowd in advance. But hey, some people think I'm paranoid.
Posted anonymously because raising questions about Democrats can be risky business on Slashdot.
why is the method of voting, the operation of government, only a problem when Republicans win?
Well the simple explanation is that this just isn't true, however it is a popular form of smoke blown by Republican sock-puppets.
The reason everyone is worried about the electoral system just now is that we all know that the forms
of electronic voting machines that were pushed into use are horribly vulnerable to wholesale fraud...
the fear is that it's not just a finger on the scale anymore, it could be that this is a two ton weight.
You got it? This could be the death of the Republic, the end of democracy.
The one hope is that they're not quite that good at rigging elections yet;
the hope is that this election control of the House can be taken away from
the bastards that have eaten the brain of the Republican party; and then after
that we can try to get the "Paper Ballot Act" pushed through, and begin
restoring some integrity to the process.
This is an important election. It may be the last election.
Why is this modded down? It's 100% true. No one was complaining about democracy being dead until Republicans gained control of Congress and the White House. Suddenly every intellectual in the world started talking about how "democracy was dead in America".
Actually, anonymous, we're worried that "democracy is dead" because the Republicans have
got electoral corruption down to a fine art, and the media can't be bothered to notice.
One of the reasons I'm going to be voting Democratic tomorrow is that I'm hoping that we
can get a big enough Democratic vote to overwhelm the Republican corruption machine in
enough places to begin instituting real electoral reform.
On the off chance that you or anyone reading this is a sincere Republican voter:
please look at the bastards that have taken over your party really closely.
Your team ain't your team any more: they're taken you for a ride, and taking the
rest of the country down the tubes with them.
People vote Republican because, here's a shocking concept, THEY AGREE WITH THEM!
Actually, this isn't true. Even if you're convinced that the 2004 election was a legitmate win, it's
still not true: post election polling showed that the people who voted Republican then were
amazingly ignorant of the stated positions of the Bush regime. Just one example: if you asked them
if Bush supported the Kyoto accord on global warming, they would say "yes".
That isn't a mandate: that's an electorate being kept in the dark by a fundamentally
broken news media.
There are only two parties even allowed to be on the ballot in most states, and many states even throw away write-in votes. At this point, it's like voting for Coke or Pepsi.
Look, are you a Republican shill? That seems to be one of their talking points for forums
like this that they perceive as being liberal/left: "Oh, there's no damn difference between
Democrats and Republicans. I'm going to stay home. Anyone with me?".
In the United States we have a clear choice at the polls on Tuesday: we get to choose between
evil and incompetence. Think about it. If you ask me, some incompetence would be a nice change
right now.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all about coming up with strategies for managing our stupidity...
Representative democracy itself is a hack for dealing with the limitations of individual citizens.
(What do you think you need a representative for, anyway? Let's have a governing body composed of all the citizens, who vote on things directly! You don't want to hassle with that? What, are you lazy or something? If you're too stupid to be your own congressional reprsentative, maybe you should just stay home.)
This amounts to choosing a representative to help you choose a representative. Why not?
Don't worry too much, they're calling it part of the "Mozilla 2.0" project. They've got to break through the second system syndrome first.
(second-second system?)
You see! That's why no one wants to use linux! P
Well okay. As long as you promise not to drown the facts in another "he said/she said" shouting match.
Oops, too late.
I think the Democrats are too timid to cross the street without a helicopter, the idea of them committing election fraud on the scale that the Republicans have been getting away with is completely laughable.
Even if it were really the case that the Democrats were just as slimey as those damn Republicans, then what? Would everything suddenly be okay? Oh wait: if you thought that were true, you might feel too apathetic to bother going out to vote. Is that the concept here?
Hm... so those specs of dirt over there justify the wallowing in the mud over here?
*phffft*. There are so many things wrong with this kind of thing, I don't know where to start. (1) You don't think Democrats internally reexamine their positions? You can turn-around without stumbling over some monday-morning quarterback explaining their grand scheme to get out the word, get out the vote, and really win one next time. (2) These people very, very rarely have a grasp of the possibility that the Democrats really have been winning: it is now eminently possible to win the vote and lose the election. The idea that The Democrats just won't shut up about election fraud is ridiculous: Mark Crispin Miller has been arguing that they're in denial about how bad the problem is, and he may well be right.
Yeah, it does seem like a particularly lame argument, doesn't it? The best that I can figure is that they've decided that slashdot is an essentially liberal forum where they're not likely to win any Republican converts, so one of the best things they can do is play for cynical apathy. If they can convince the average slash-kid to stay home because it just doesn't matter, then that's a win.
I sympathise with what you're saying here, but I'm afraid what's probably really going on is a little worse than you imagine.
A "close election" is one of the symptoms of election fraud -- which is not to say that it's proof of election fraud -- there's no point in stealing more votes than you need to win, and if you're going to surprise people with a result that differs from what the polls predicted, it looks a little better if the difference isn't that big.
If you want a prediction for tomorrow's election: at a bare minimum, the Senate races in Virgina and Tennessee are going to be stolen -- they're projected to be close enough to make that relatively easy, and they're both "high risk" states with a lot of DRE machines in use. With just those two wins, the Republicans will -- just barely -- maintain control of the Senate.
The Democratic lead in the House looks much too big to be shaved discretely: I would predict that the Republicans will lose control of the House. Though I don't know, maybe that's crazy optimism on my part: those guys have balls of steel and no shame -- they might actually be bold enough (and short-sighted enough) to try to hold onto the house by "crook", if "hook" ain't going to work. In which case, we are in for Interesting Times (in case you thought they were interesting enough already).
This is definitely a year for the lesser-of-two evils: all we've got is a choice between evil and incompetent, so if you ask me incompetence is the best pick.
Overall, I disagree with your assessment of the American political character. If you did down into people's attitudes about issues, you find that they're a lot more "liberal" than you would think, even when they vote Republican.
After the 2004 election there was an interesting poll that showed that the people who voted for George Bush actually didn't understand his position on a lot of issues, whereas the people who "voted against him" had a more accurate grasp of these things. Just as an example, most people want the government to Do Something about global warming, and had trouble believing Bush was against the Kyoto accord.
The thing is you can't possibly deny that, say, Diebold Accuvote machines aren't pieces of swiss-cheese as far as vote security is concerned, and you can't possibly deny that the management of the big electronic voting companies (Diebold and ES&S) have a known Republican bias -- both of those points are tremendously well documented. The one and only thing you can possibly deny is that maybe those two points weren't put together to steal the 2004 election -- except that there is that nasty little problem of explaining away the peculiarly large exit-poll discrepancies that correlated with the use of those voting machines.
Hence, I vehemently deny your accusation that this is all Democratic spin, and I reiterate that this is just an attempt at Republican counter-spin.
El wrongo... if you really believe that (and I find it unlikely that you really do) you're not paying attention.
Well, at the moment it's a little hard to believe that, because all polls seem to agree that most people are sick of the Iraq war, and annoyed at the Bush regime's handling of it. The American people can be a little slow on occasion, but they do catch on eventually (you know, "some of the people some of the time" and so on, as was once said by a man who doesn't deserve to be associated with the current crop of people calling themselves Republicans).
What is so hard to believe about Karl Rove engaging in an internet astro-turf campaign? Wouldn't it seem weird if he didn't try something like that?
In any case, I'm not suggesting that every conservative voice on slashdot is necessarily a hired Republican-sock puppet. What I am saying is that there's a surprising number of folks doing mindless reiteration of the same pretty lame talking points, like "Oh the democrats do it too!", or "oh polls are so inaccurate", or "oh you're just a tinfoil hat conspiracy nut like those 9/11 truthies!" Those folks, I find, shall we say, suspicious.
It must be biased. We just don't realize that The Democrats Do It Too (so it must be okay).
In any case: if anyone is so whacked as to still be reading this: don't get so wrapped up in the "the elections are rigged!" business that you don't bother voting. Yeah, they're rigged, but none of us know how badly they're rigged, and if it's just a finger on the scale (and not a two-ton weight) we need all the legit voters out there we can get.
Actually, they should understand that anyone who claims polls are "notoriously inaccurate" is most likely making excuses for election fraud, because while polls are clearly not perfect they are, at this point, the one and only check remaining on the integrity of the electoral process. Unless you go for the "it can't happen here" faith-based approach.
Americans should not have to take this sort of thing on faith. We're supposed to be the pros at democracy, not the laughing-stock.
Ah, the good old "you're just like those truthies" smear, combined with an "oh, everyone does it". You guys really need some better talking points.
I wish the 2004 election fraud were bullshit. In fact, I wish it were at least plausibly deniable, but it just isn't: you had unusually large exit-poll discrepancies that were nearly always in the Republicans favor, correlating with multiple different factors, e.g. (1) the use of electronic voting machines, (2) the presence of Republican governors, (3) "battle ground" states...
That is over and above the many and various well-documented dirty tricks pulled in Ohio.
(Funny having a bunch of Canadians taking a Republican line all of a sudden, isn't it? Usually they just laugh at us for not using paper ballots.)
In any case, the reason you're wrong is that the reason we're worried about the Republicans rigging elections is there's some pretty good evidence that they've been rigging elections of late.
No, a "fair" election is not one where the Democrat is guaranteed to win... however if you could expect that the official election result would have some relation to the unofficial polls before and after the election, that might be an indication that you've got something like a fair election going.
If you had Secretaries of State in every State throughout the US objecting to the use of DREs such as Diebold, that are becoming legendary for their unreliability... that might be a hint that you were getting near having fair elections.
I could go on, but the odds are good that most people out there have heard it, and no one is left reading the political threads like this except for trolls and troll swatters... so see you later.
- The "safeguards" in place border on the non-existant at this point. No one who understands those DRE machines thought they were a good idea.
- I would not believe the 2004 election was stolen were it not for
- the patterns in the exit-poll data discrepancies
- the huge number of conventional election corruption techniques deployed in Ohio.
In other words, you can spin, spin, spin all you want, but there's a reality-based world out there, and some day the truth (if you will excuse the expression) will out.Yeah, and the Republicans are really good at that one. You got to hand it to them, whenever they're under-fire they go on a really strong counter-attack (kind of like this one).
Bullshit. You don't have documentation of that.
Now this at least actually happened. Against the long litany of sins in Ohio in 2004, against the use of hired thugs to interfere with the vote count in Florida in 2000, you can point to this one mindless prank.Hardly. But they cheat so well! Or at least, the new breed of Republicans do... give 'em one or two more elections and maybe we can forget about the rest of them.
To quote an interview with Steven Freeman:
*Bzzt!* Wrong!
Ask your boss for some new talking points, that one is getting pretty stale.
What? But how could they think that? George Bush says (now) that there was no connection.
On the other hand, you'll notice that polls have been showing for some time that most people in the US think we should get out of Iraq, already... Just to pick one.
I think the American people can be awfully slow-witted -- certainly they seem like it to someone willing to sit down with a DSL line and do some web searches, but they do catch on eventually.
Try listening to this if you need your spirits picked-up a bit: My Strange Nation (warning: flash site, non-flash alternative is broken).
I take your drift, of course, because we've seen remarkably little of "checks and balances" in action of late. To take one example, the election fraud in Ohio was pretty scandalous, but the Republican congress got out their rubberstamp and accepted the result anyway: party loyalty seems to have paralyzed the US system of "checks and balances".
But then, that suggests to me that in the near term the fix is simple: we need split government, we can't put one party in charge of all branches of the government.
So here's some things a citizen might do about it:
How do you know it doesn't work? Have you tried it?
You're expecting a slashdot article to be written in English? Don't worry about it, whatever the guy was trying to say it doesn't make any sense.
You would be referring to Bev Harris, who runs the site Black Box Voting.
Ah, you've got to love the general tenor of political debate in America, eh?
According to some accounts, the reason John Kerry caved-in so quickly and refused to challenge what had gone down in Ohio is he was afraid people would call him a "sore loser".
Way to go John... we weren't using that democracy for much any way.
Oh yeah, Bev Harris can be so annoying. Going around causing trouble, starting things like Black Box Voting. Life would be so much more peaceful if people would just shut up about Election Fraud.
By the way, Bev Harris was interviewed recently on Democracy Now. She didn't strike me as being a "mouthy woman" (but then, I've got no problem with Amy Goodman, either).
Yeah, those silly Democrats. They're not happy if Republicans steal an election with paper ballots, they're not happy if Republicans steal them with electronic ballots. How do they want you to steal them, eh?
Well, if you ask me, the deal is that the Bush machine is getting ready to pull some fast ones tomorrow, and they expect they're going to have some peculiar "upsets" that need to be explained away, so they're sending folks like yourself around to soften up the crowd in advance. But hey, some people think I'm paranoid.
Aw, poor baby. You might lose some karma.
Well the simple explanation is that this just isn't true, however it is a popular form of smoke blown by Republican sock-puppets.
The reason everyone is worried about the electoral system just now is that we all know that the forms of electronic voting machines that were pushed into use are horribly vulnerable to wholesale fraud... the fear is that it's not just a finger on the scale anymore, it could be that this is a two ton weight. You got it? This could be the death of the Republic, the end of democracy.
The one hope is that they're not quite that good at rigging elections yet; the hope is that this election control of the House can be taken away from the bastards that have eaten the brain of the Republican party; and then after that we can try to get the "Paper Ballot Act" pushed through, and begin restoring some integrity to the process.
This is an important election. It may be the last election.
Actually, anonymous, we're worried that "democracy is dead" because the Republicans have got electoral corruption down to a fine art, and the media can't be bothered to notice.
One of the reasons I'm going to be voting Democratic tomorrow is that I'm hoping that we can get a big enough Democratic vote to overwhelm the Republican corruption machine in enough places to begin instituting real electoral reform.
On the off chance that you or anyone reading this is a sincere Republican voter: please look at the bastards that have taken over your party really closely. Your team ain't your team any more: they're taken you for a ride, and taking the rest of the country down the tubes with them.
Actually, this isn't true. Even if you're convinced that the 2004 election was a legitmate win, it's still not true: post election polling showed that the people who voted Republican then were amazingly ignorant of the stated positions of the Bush regime. Just one example: if you asked them if Bush supported the Kyoto accord on global warming, they would say "yes".
That isn't a mandate: that's an electorate being kept in the dark by a fundamentally broken news media.
Look, are you a Republican shill? That seems to be one of their talking points for forums like this that they perceive as being liberal/left: "Oh, there's no damn difference between Democrats and Republicans. I'm going to stay home. Anyone with me?".
In the United States we have a clear choice at the polls on Tuesday: we get to choose between evil and incompetence. Think about it. If you ask me, some incompetence would be a nice change right now.