I’m sure every Democratic governor promised Gore they’d do the same thing. Nobody seems to be crying “Fraud!” in those states.
Since the major news services all get their data on who’s winning the election from NES, if the NES is reporting that this or that state has gone for Bush or Kerry, the American public’s going to believe that, since the main on the TV says it (afterall, look at the mess that’s happened since the networks flipflopped on Florida). Meanwhile, you’re getting the real exit poll results, so you can send small numbers of henchmen out to do what’s necessary. Probably not the best way to explain it, but then again, I’m not the kind of paranoid nutbag like the guys who run the Votescam. (They think that’s there’s tons of corruption in Florida’s electoral system, and it dates to 1970 or before.)
IIRC, the USCRC was called in because at least one polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood was just flat out not there when people went to vote. It had been moved and somebody “forgot” to inform the voters in that area or bothered to transfer the voting rolls to the new place, so even the ones who managed to find the new polling place couldn’t vote.
Florida may have been the first state to do that (the flash makes that claim, I don’t know), but the idea had been kicked around by other states. Ross Perot was arguing for similar things and electronic voting over the telephone when he ran last.
Good question.
Nope. Even if everything had been done correctly, it still looks bad.
Dunno. But all in all, this is kind of pointless, since we can’t go back and undo the election, and if they’ve got this kind of power to rig an election, there’s not really anything we can do about it, since they’re not going to worry about what we do or say, because they can’t be held accountable to us. We can’t vote 'em out if we can’t vote 'em in, ya know?
From what I understand of the situation, it was a matter of identifying people as felons based on last names and (not or) birthdays. This is obviously inadequate identification, but will not eliminate millions of voters as you suggest. Rather more in the range of thousands. However, it should be obvious to all that merely having both the same last name as a felon and the same birthday as a felon does not make you a felon.
Prison populations in the United States overrepresent blacks and hispanics. Voters with black and hispanic last names would both be removed from the rolls, and black and hispanic voters tend to vote more frequently for Democrats. Note that there is considerable overlap between “black” and “caucasian” last names though.
Rigging an election may be impossible in the U.S., but I wouldn’t put it past either party to break both ethical standards and the law to give themselves an unfair advantage. Claiming they can determine that an election would go to the Supreme Court seems farfetched.
Have you considered the possibility that you’ve got this backwards? Perhaps Florida became a key state through manipulation of voter rolls and elimination of minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.
I don’t think this should be easily dismissed. Disenfranchising voters is a serious matter, whether it occurs in a key state or not. If this was the result of a partisan plan, we have a serious problem with our election methods and may need to change them (not just in Florida, but across the country) to make the process of determining who gets to vote and who doesn’t a process out of reach of manipulation by the major political parties.
That being said, I don’t know whether the allegations made in the link are correct or not. I sincerely hope they aren’t. I do believe they are serious enough to merit investigation.
I just didn’t want anyone to waste their time on a strawman arguement.
I’m sorry, but around here that doesn’t exactly constitute “evidence.” I’m sure that every Democratic governor didn’t. Now where does that put us? And claiming that you personally know the owner of the domain doesn’t really prove anything either. I personally know him too, and in my experience he’s been a bastion of honesty and integrity. Now where does that put us?
This thread is really smack in GD territory by now, as most of the poster’s (blowero being an exception, among others) have pretty much ignored the OP’s question and gone straight into opinion-ville.
I didn’t mean to suggest that millions would be eliminated, but if you’re going to be aiming for a certain demographic to be removed (i.e. voters most likely to vote for the opponent) then it’s a pretty scattershot method of doing it, and you’re liable to cull as many voters who’re in support of your candidate as you are those opposed.
And again, note that a considerable number of Cuban immigrants tend to vote Republican, so culling Hispanic names puts you at risk of eliminating Cuban voters (who are a powerful lobby in Floridian politics) and alienating people who give generously to your campaign.
Agreed.
Nope, because even if there’d been no problems with the voter rolls, there’d still be that whole business of the “hanging chads” to contend with. IIRC, in one of the bizarre twists of the whole thing a newspaper went through the ballots after the mess had been decided by SCOTUS and counted the votes three times. The first time they counted them using the methods the Gore camp wanted and the results were Bush won. The second time they used the methods the Bush camp wanted and Gore won. I don’t remember the outcome of what happened the third time they simply counted the ballots which were cleanly punched.
Agreed.
And they have been, have they not? Indeed, haven’t many states taken measures to try and prevent at least some of the things from happening again (California and other states have dropped their use of voting machines like Dade County in Florida was using.)? Whether those
efforts have gone far enough and produced acceptable results is the matter of some debate, but they are working on them.
Oh, and IKinSpelGud, I never said I didn’t like Eric, but I find some of his views on politics to be a bit wrongheaded. IAC, you’re going to try and tell me that a Democratic governor would never tell the Democratic presidential candidate that he’d “deliver the state” come election time? That somehow, Democrats are immune to saying platitudes which sound suspicious later on? That no Democrat would ever use a fine, hair-splitting point, to justify an answer they gave to a question? If so, then I want a DNA test ran on every Democratic politician because they’re obviously not human.
Considering the number of foul-ups the Bush Administration has done of late (the Patriot Act, the claims of WMDs in Iraq, etc.) I’m continually surprised by people who think that Bush & Co. could manage to successfully pull off a deliberate act like rigging the election, or secretly plotting the 9/11 hijackings. You’d think that if one of their plans to get elected was “rig election in Florida” they’d also have the sense to plant some WMDs in Iraq, ya know? I mean, if you’re gonna commit a crime, why not go all out? Why pick a pretty crappy method of rigging the election which isn’t certain to hand your candidate a healthy majority of votes in the state? Why come up with a halfassed method that’s going to be the subject of endless debate? Especially since you’ve got a candidate who’s apparently fixated on invading another country (Remember the people saying well before the election that if Bush wins we’re going to invade Iraq?), you’re going to want to get this guy into office with as large a majority as you possibly can, so that he’s got free-reign to do as he wishes.
You’ve just baited and switched. First, you said that Jeb would have had no way to know that his state would be pivotal in the election until it was too late to do anything. When I point out that he was in fact thinking about it before the election, you act as though that was supposed to be a point in and of itself. Well, it’s not.
I NEVER SAID IT WAS FRAUDULENT FOR JEB TO PROMISE THE STATE TO HIS BROTHER. I only said it to counter your ridiculous assertion that he would need a time machine to know that he wanted Bush to win Florida.
The issue at hand is whether black voters were improperly removed from the voter rolls, not whether Jeb promised Florida to George.
You’re arguing that the Bush campaign didn’t manipulate the vote in Florida because, if they were going to cheat, they would have used the procedure described above? That’s absurd. How does saying they didn’t cheat using (completely ridiculous) Method A, prove that they didn’t use Method B?
Nope - if you watch the piece I linked to, you’ll see that the names being removed from the rolls was definitely an issue. What you mention may have been another issue, but it wasn’t the only one.
But look at the makeup of the D.B.T. board. If you’re going to hire a private company to decide who gets to vote, shouldn’t it be politically neutral? And shouldn’t the results be verified? I notice you haven’t refuted the charge of 95% inaccuracy.
That’s an awfully defeatist attitude, and it’s really not consistent with the history of this country. Wrongs have been righted in this country because people spoke up about them. I don’t know if these charges are all true, but if they are, there are lots of things that can be done about it. For starters, how about a law that prevents the same person who is in charge of a political campaign to ALSO be the person who certifies the results in that election? We can’t go back and undo the election, but if there were shenanigans, we can try to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.
I said one would need a time machine to know that Florida would be the pivotal state in the damned cluster that was the 2000 election.
Well, I’m not a gambler, but it seems to me that if you’re gonna bet the farm, it’d better be a sure thing.
“Politically neutral”? How the hell do you have a politically neurtal organization if it’s staffed by human beings? I don’t care if none of the board of directors give money to campaigns or serve on any political action committees (though I’d be surprised if there were any corporations like that), you’re still dealing with human beings who have biases. And the reason I haven’t refuted the charge of 95% inaccuracy is that I don’t have time to dig through everything involved to see if that’s a legit figure. IAC, it’s a moot point as far as the election goes, because nothing one could find will reverse the fact that SCOTUS handed the Presidency to Bush in 2000.
Now, I ask you, if Gore had won (say, he took his home state of Tennessee), would people being making the kind of issue over the mess that went on in Florida? Or would there be a general muttering that it was something to do be dealt with and that was all (outside of the state making some changes)?
Oh, I agree that the problems with the system in Florida should be fixed, but if you read Truman by David McCullough which in discussing the political machine in Missouri, you’ll see that it’s well-nigh impossible for the common folks to dispose of the machine, because they like it. The successful machine ensures that lot’s of pork gets shifted back to the homefront and it’s only when the leaders of that machine get arrogant and stupid and forget to give back to the people that they’re inspired enough to shut the machine down, but this a local machine. It picks the county, city, state, and congressional people, not the President. If you’ve got a machine powerful enough to select the next President of the US, you can dispense with all the formalities of democracy. You can put your candidate in, manipulate the media so that a minor event (say a disgruntled postal worker shows up and whacks a couple of people at work) gives you the justification to dispose of all parts of the Constitution and go from there. At which point in time, there’s no debate about anything.
No election system is going to be perfect. Even if 99% of the votes are counted accurately in every election, sooner or later that 1% is going to mean the difference in which candidate wins. Working to ensure that vote counting is important, but screeching and hollering that it was outright fraud, when the evidence points cronyism (i.e. the awarding of a fat state contract to a political ally) and ineptitude, serves only to politicize the issue, forcing the line to be drawn along political boundries, and not along issues of fairness and accuracy.
I, personally, have faith that efforts will be made (sooner or later, if they haven’t already) to correct the problems. Discussing the proposed solutions is important, provided that one maintains a level head in the discussion and doesn’t run around yelling, “J’accuse!” all the time.
The real issue is not what went wrong in Florida, but what is being done to correct it? I know that Dade County and other places have disposed of the punched ballot machines, but that’s it. I know that there’s some controversy over Diebold’s effort in other states to sell their electronic voting machines, since the code for them isn’t open source (I’d point you to TechTV’s website with it’s articles about this, but it’s down at the moment.), but again, every election system is going to have problems, be it electronic, mechanical, or even the paper ballot system.
And I said it wasn’t necessary for Jeb to see the future, and then you baited & switched me. So here we are.
That makes no sense. Winning an election is never a sure thing. You think they wouldn’t have tried to influence the election results unless the outcome was 100% guaranteed. I disagree. Candidates spend millions of dollars and devote a major chunk of their life to campaigns for which the outcome is not definitively known. Not knowing the outcome for sure wouldn’t stop someone from trying to win. That’s an extremely weak argument.
No, you missed the point. He’s saying they are prominent republicans, not just some dudes who happen to be republican.
Why are you repeating this? You already said it, and I explained why it’s not moot. You’re just being silly now.
What a stupid question. :rolleyes:
[snipped next paragraph since it’s just nonsensical rambling]
Now you’re throwing out a red herring. We’re discussing whether fraud occured, not whether the system is “perfect”. A HUGE difference, there.
Y’know, I can always tell when somebody here has no valid point to make, because they invariably resort to colorful characterizing of the opposing point of view, in place of cogent arguments. “Oh, they’re ‘screeching’ and ‘hollering’.” You forgot ‘whining’ and ‘moaning’ :rolleyes:
No, according to Palast, an executive at D.B.T. said that they were asked to come up with more names after their original list of felons. And they were paid millions of dollars to verify the accuracy, but never did so. It would be impossible for that to happen accidentally. Either Palast is wrong, or it was deliberate fraud, but you can’t chalk it up to simple ineptitude.
You’ve already been called out for providing nothing more than ad hominem, yet you continue to do it. Why? We’re discussing whether the charges are true. Your colorful characterizations of those making the accusations are irrelevant.
If legitimate voters were scrubbed from the rolls improperly, it wouldn’t matter what kind of balloting system is in place. Those people wouldn’t get to vote either way.
But rigging an election is a crime. That shifts the odds considerably. You get caught, and not only is your political career over (along with many of your supporters), but you risk jail time, and possibly having the entire party booted out of office. Even a politican who loses an election gains contacts, and opportunities (look at Bob Dole and the various ads he was in, plus the high profile of a Presidential run enabled Elizabeth Dole to snag a Senate seat), one who spends time in jail, doesn’t.
And no abitious Republican, itchy to curry favor with the higher ups would do the same thing?
Then why the need charged language on either side? Given the importance of the issue, shouldn’t it be discussed in a dispassionate manner? After all, when a discussion becomes charged with emotion, whatever the subject matter, it quickly gets reduced to people screaming and shouting at one another.
And it’s a legit question to ask if people would be throwing such a fit over the Florida results if the election had gone the other way. No doubt if Gore had eeked out a narrow victory in Florida the Republicans would be crying “foul.”
You’re combing two different things here: 1.) That DBT was asked to come up with more names than were on their original list. 2.) That DBT didn’t make the phone calls they were supposed to. Assuming that both of these statements are true Palast’s story leaves out the reasons why DBT was told to come up with more names. Surely, even an official trying to throw an election would be smart enough to come up with a cover story. I’d think that Palast would report on that, don’t you? Even if they didn’t come up with a cover story, don’t you think that Palast would say, “They gave no explaination as to why they wanted this done.” As for DBT not making the calls, well, if we take the $4 million dollars that DBT was paid by the state to make the calls as an estimate of what it would cost DBT to make those calls, I can well see someone thinking that they’d make a tidy profit for the company by not making the calls, figuring that if they did get caught, they’d face a fine smaller than what they were paid. (Happens all the time with defense contractors.)
Actually, I haven’t been colorful in my accusations. I could spew mocking comments about people’s hair, make claims that the Democrats are the party of whiny brats, or call the Republicans rich bastards. Hell, I even e-mailed a link to this thread to Eric in hopes that he’d respond here. He’s a nice guy, and a hell of an artist, as I’ve said before.
No kidding, and if it was a criminal act on the parts of Harris and DBT, it should be possible to find out.
Did you notice the dateline on Palast’s story? Thursday, February 15, 2001. It’s been three years since then, shouldn’t there be something more recent? I mean, don’t you think that if Palast felt this was a big story that he’d do a followup? After all, many people seem to think that he’s hit the tip of the iceberg as to what happened with the mess in Florida, so don’t you think that out of a sense of journalistic responsibility that he’d want to keep tabs on the story? If he could prove more than a casual link, he’d be able to not only bring down a President, but also the Governor of Florida, and Harris, now a congresswoman. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t stop when they got a hint of the Watergate scandal, they kept digging and digging. I don’t know what kind of awards are handed out to the British press, but surely Palast would qualify for one if he managed to find the smoking gun which knocked Bush and others out of office and into jail.
Hmmm…you’re saying they couldn’t have cheated because they wouldn’t have risked getting caught. So I guess Nixon never made those tapes, huh?
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. I guess I assumed that the people who normally determine who is on the voter rolls don’t do that. Are you saying it’s commonplace?
I see no evidence that anyone was “screeching and hollering” in the context in which you used those words. You only used them to divert attention away from the issue at hand. YOU are the one who is preventing a dispassionate discussion.
No, it’s irrelevant.
What do you mean, I’m “combining” them? (I assume you meant ‘combining’ rather than ‘combing’) I said that both points were made by Palast. I said both things in the same post; is that what ‘combining’ means?
Would you please watch the video? You’re just embarassing yourself. Palast DID report on it. In fact, he tried to interview the head of Florida elections, and was escorted out of the building by police after only one question.
He didn’t have to. Not only did the person give no explanation, he said “This interview is over”, and had Palast forcibly removed. Sort of a ‘60 Minutes’-type tactic on Palast’s part, to keep the camera rolling as he was booted out, but it made the point that the guy wasn’t going to offer any explanations.
And I believe someone did offer some sort of weak explanation later in the piece. I’m going to have to watch it again. IIRC, D.B.T.s explanation was simply that that’s not how it’s done.
Doesn’t jibe with their nonsense explanation that phone calls are “not how it’s done”; which IIRC is what they said. If D.B.T. had taken the money and ran, why on Earth wouldn’t Harris and her cronies have quickly pointed that out? If someone steals $4 million from you and potentially gets you in a lot of trouble, wouldn’t you say something if you were totally innocent in the matter?
No, I’m talking about this stupid tactic that you and others engage in of using colorful words to describe your opponent’s manner of speaking, EVEN WHEN THE FORUM IS A WRITTEN ONE, such as “they’re whining”, or “they’re screaming”, or “they’re screeching and hollering”. It adds nothing to the discussion.
I don’t know, I thought that’s what we were trying to determine here. I’m wondering who it is you think would prosecute them if they did do something illegal? Jeb Bush was Governor of Florida at the time; certainly the State of Florida wasn’t going to prosecute. IIRC, there was a lawsuit filed against them, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and I think we all know what happened there.
Both of these statements were confirmed to a Congressional hearing by a DBT vice president. The reason should be obvious surely. Jeez, how much evidence do you people want?
If your name is not on the register, then you are turned away as inelligible to vote. Palast does present anecdotal evidence of this having happened. He also notes that there were differences in the way different districts used the scrub lists - some just deleted all of the names from the rolls, others carried out further verification off their own back. Leon County attempted to verify themselves that every name they were given was actually an illegible voter and were only able to successfully verify 34 of 694 names (hence the 95% error rate).
Procedurally, one would fill out a Provisional Ballot, then contact the Elections Office to protest your scrubbing. Problem was, the nitwits who “trained” the cerebrally-challenged poll workers did not press this issue home so they understood it to any significant degree, and for those who DID call the Elections Office, they could not get through. At least this was the sitch it Miami Dade.
Certainly true. But as you yourself have pointed out, if people used this plan, it may not have been the best way to fix an election. It’s possible the criteria used were: “Can we accomplish this? Can we get away with it?” If the allegations are true, the answer was “yes” to both questions. People rarely use the ‘best’ plan when there is an easier alternative that is ‘good enough.’
If there had been a few thousand more Gore votes (or, for that matter, a few thousand more Bush votes) in Florida, we probably never would have had the whole issue with hanging chads. The reason there was such drama in Florida is that Bush won by such a small margin (a margin that is smaller than the amount of error in ballot-counting).
And no one could have learned from Nixon’s mistake?
Nope. I am saying that just because someone isn’t a prominant party figure, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it.
Only because you don’t want to address the issue.
Yeah, it’s how he starts out his piece. Does he do the same at DBT offices? No. Does he do any digging to see what the public record might be? No.
Somewhat understandable, given the time period when the piece was done, don’t you think? I mean, it was at the lastest, Feburary 2001, and Florida had been overrun with reporters in the previous month because of the mess. The state was a laughing stock of the entire country and it might very well be that the official was sick of dealing with reporters, or that he was an asshole. Be interesting to see how many other reporters he did this to.
However, Palast doesn’t mention what those methods might have been.
Heck, I’d think that you’d want to say something if you were completely guilty in the matter. At least lie, right? After all, that’s a standard tactic when nearly anyone’s caught doing something wrong, is to deny the hell out of the accusations at least until one gets to the DA’s office where they can plea bargain.
Okay, so now you’ve got Florida officials being eliminated because they’re tainted. SCOTUS eliminated because of how they ruled on a previous case, who’s left to handle this? DOJ? Well, in addition to being convinced that calico cats are the spawn of Satan, Ashcroft’s a Bush appointee, can’t trust him, can we? The FBI, perhaps? Well, they couldn’t figure out what was going to happen on 9/11, so they might not be the best choice, either.
Huh? When did I say anything even remotely resembling that?
Thanks for the new link. I think it answers the question here:
So according to Palast, no, in the past it wasn’t the norm for those entrusted with maintaining voter rolls to be biased. Yes, they are humans, as you pointed out - but you compensate for that by having it be BI-partisan.
No, because it’s irrelevant.
Wrong. He did interview DBT people; he refers to it later in the piece. What do you mean by “public record”? He got ahold of the contract between the elections office and D.B.T.; what other records are you accusing Palast of deliberately overlooking?
You know, you have a bad habit of taking specific points that people make to counter your own assertions, and treating them out-of-context as though they were brought up as arguments in their own right. I never said whether or not it was “understandable”; I merely brought that up to counter your false assertion that “they would have come up with an explanation”.
But since you brought it up - no, I don’t think it’s “understandable” to make an appointment to be interviewed, and then kick the reporter out once he shows up. It was also stupid, because it made him look very bad.
I took that to mean that Palast is saying they offered no explanation for how they supposedly verified the list. Now, if they DID offer an explanation, and Palast deliberately excluded it from his piece, then that’s bad reporting. I don’t see any evidence that he did that, though.
Not really. The standard tactic is to say as little as possible. A lie can be proven false; an omission cannot. That’s why you invariably hear responses such as “no comment”, or “We cannot comment on an ongoing investigation”, etc.
Be honest, would you really expect Jeb to try to get the goods on his own brothers’ campaign people?
What do you mean, previous case? They ruled on the exact case, and they ruled in favor of Bush.
Actually, that’s a good question, despite your childish sarcasm. I don’t know why they didn’t investigate. Or did they investigate? To be honest, I don’t know how those things work, or who would have jurisdiction. Do you?
Most states generally require their to be transcripts of meetings held by government bodies. Wouldn’t there be those kind of records of the meetings where the contract was discussed? If the Florida legislature voted on the matter, there’d be records of the dicussion of the bill before it was voted on. What do those say?
Nope. And given what Palast claims he was told
I wouldn’t put any faith in the Democrats to up and up on this.
Right, and if another suit was brought to SCOTUS involving the matter, you run the risk of having the same justices rule against you again, citing the previous case as precident. Now, if Bush gets to add a justice to the court because of the death or retirement of one of the current justices, you get a court which could be further stacked in favor of Bush.
In previous instances it’s been the FBI and the Federal Elections Commission, there’s also been the US Attorney General’s Office in most cases as well, and there’s been a few Congressional investigations into various violations of the Voting Rights Act over the years, now that I think about it. (Any book on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s will have the full details on these.) So there’s your answer. Write your congress critter and see what they have to say about it. See what they say was the outcome of any investigations by those groups was. While you’re at it, write Sen. Clinton and see what kind of luck she’s had in getting an amendment passed to do away with the electorial college system. After all, it was the electorial college which determined who won the election, not the popular vote.
Sorry, your “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” and “Oh yeah? Well the democrats would have done it too” arguments don’t convince. The head of elections seemed taken aback when Palast brought out the contract. He was visibly angry. If that was all a matter of public record, why would he act that way? Quite obviously, they didn’t expect that to go public.
O.K., so you’ve answered your own question, then.
Tell you what - YOU’RE the one who asked why they didn’t investigate; why don’t YOU write them?
