No! It was a commercial for Amway! 
Well then, barring a better alternative, we may have our winner.
I believe election fraud is inevitable (sadly), and has been around as long as the US has. I’m not sure what BrainGlutton is proposing exactly, I haven’t read the entire article yet. But if this is it:
… it’s as easy as distributing bad toner cartridges to certain precincts or declaring a terror alert right after the polls close (as outlined in the RS article). Hell, I’m not very imaginative, I’m sure there are plenty of things you could do.
I don’t think eliminating election fraud is possible without shaking the entire government up, from top to bottom. There are just too many layers of bureaucracy. I think the only thing that has changed recently is that people have realized just how frigging big the federal government is.
Not WRT to elections. We’ve got the county supervisors of elections’ offices; state secretaries of state; the Federal Elections Commission; and that’s all.
When will people learn? Democracy just doesn’t work!
But in all seriousness…I don’t think there is any way you can have mass voting in a democratic system without some corruption seeping in, if those in power have the will to do so. Sure, the US is egregious in this case, but there has been some (admittedly) small-scale attempted vote-rigging in the UK, and I’m sure most other countries have experienced something similar. Even if it’s not vote-rigging, it’s jerrymandering. Sometimes I just think we should go back to dropping pebbles in jars to elect a tyrant.
I’ll confess ignorance as to exactly how elections are administered. But it seems to me that there are plenty of ways to disenfranchise voters. From the second paragraph of the RS article:
I wish the article had a hyperlink for cite #5, because having the Pentagon involved strikes me as surreal. I’m not claiming this particular allegation is true, or that there aren’t more details to the story - RS doesn’t strike me as an unbiased source - but it’s within the realm of possibility.
Possibly, but does that make it wrong?
Amen. Voter apathy is what keeps the system the way it is. Unless that changes, there’s no way of reforming it.
It would be hard to make Americans care about politics again. We have The Moral Panic of the Month to get people worked up on occasion, but we generally have no real crisises facing us. To put it bluntly, we’re too fat and lazy to care much about who’s in office or how they got there. For most, it doesn’t affect their daily lives, so doesn’t seem to matter.
And frankly, there’s not all that much difference in our political parties and leaders. They have differences in opinions about various issues, but when it comes down to it, very little real changes coming from each administration.
**gonzomax ** and I were discussing this while walking the dogs last night. It would take something HUGE for the voting public to get into it again. He seems to think that proof of voter fraud would do it, but I contend that it’d only piss off the educated folk/the people that are pissed about it anyways (for the most part).
Next on the list was Iraq. If it could be proven that Iraq is a fraud, then you’d garner a lot more people, however you’d still have a strong contingent that says “hey, we screwed it up, so we need to stay indefinitely”.
We’d have to prove that American Idol was rigged and that the Real World is really propaganda. That’d energize the plebes.
And what is the ratio of Republicans among the self-employed and professionals that can easily take the time away from their work to go to the polls? I have as much evidence as you have presented for your claim. I do know it was far easier for myself to find time as a manager than as an employee.
And I think that the easiest way to commit election fraud is by understaffing at the opposing parties precints and refusing to allow polls to stay open late enough for every citizen to cast their vote.
Missouri just passed a bill requiring a state-issued photo ID for all voters. This from the state that still has not sent me my voter registration card since I got my license last November. And that law was extremely self-serving for the 'Pubs considering the ratio of elderly and poor in metro areas that do not have any ID other than maybe their SSN and their birth certificate - which are now required to get a state ID or driver’s license, thanks to a new law passed by last year’s legislators, who are the same crop as this years. I have yet to see any evidence of a local elections in Missouri that were tainted by voter fraud, or in any other state for that matter. I would love to see any evidence if there has been.
If every ATM machine can provide a paper receipt, I fail to see any technological barrier why an electronic voting machine cannot do the same. It is also a non-issue in my book, or rather a very good diversionary tactic.
Instead of pushing for the electronic chimera to reform elections, I think Oregon had the right approach by allowing mail-in voting to any and all, rather than just absentees. Washington state was moving in a similar direction.
I think election reform will require three major changes: 1) Constitutional ban on jerrymandering. It has become absolutely ridiculous. An independent non-partisan (f*ck bi-partisanship) agency should be created for all redistricting nationwide. Pass whatever amendments are necessary, but that is essential to any long-term reform. 2) Follow the Australian model and make voting mandatory. If you don’t want to vote as a form of protest, put a hundred into the kitty. 3) Make it easy as possible to vote. The greatest irony about our current government is that we have upwards of eight months to pay our taxes, but one day to make the decision on how they will be spent. The government should spend at least as much on making voting possible as it does on collecting revenue.
I see no problem with mailing every registered voter a ballot thirty days before the election with the requirement that they are post-marked by ‘election’ day. And if identification is required, then it is the government’s responsibility to bend over backwards to provide that identification. Place the burden on them, not the individual citizen. States should be required to provide a basic ID card at no cost to whoever wants one - hell, stick a photo on the voter registration cards. How bloody difficult can that be?
The current Republican attempts at ‘reform’ are laughable at best, deeply disturbing at worst, and it is probably closer to the latter than the former.
I have another idea for the next Democratic president, if we ever have one. Grant a pardon to every non-violent offender, especially the ‘crackheads’ and give them a free ride at whatever junior college or trade school they want - I am pretty sure he or she would have their votes from every election then forward. If the Christian right starts screaming, remind them about the whole concept of mercy and charity and all the other stuff from the Sermon on the Mount (not to hijack, but how come no one ever wants to post that at a courthouse.) Well, its one of my better pipe dreams anyways.
AP
(Wow, that went on for longer than I thought)
This is me agreeing with these two points in particular (and the entire post at large).
One can only hope that such things will make it through.
Most of the people you’re talking about are state-level convicts. The president has no authority to pardon them.
Fraud starts before election day. In Florida 2000 The election committe purged 65 000 people from the voting rosters. They strated wuth any felons. Then any body with similar or the same name. .They removed them from predominantly black(democratic) areas. The program for chosing was written and implemented by the company that made the touch csreens. It was overseen by Kathlene Harris. She was largely responible for getting Bush in yr2000. They had much love for her and she was elected to a safe seat. They have turned on her now. They suddenly discoverered that she is weird and as a willing to cheat ,so can not be trusted.
In Ohio,Blackwell’ did the same thing in 2004. Plus coingate.
It is not just the machines that can be rigged. The point is that it all subverts democracy. Winning at all cost. These are the guys that buy term papers.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
In Ohio,Blackwell’ did the same thing in 2004. Plus coingate. /QUOTE]
Coingate had absolutely nothing to do with election fraud.
Yes, Coingate was just good old-fashioned fraud for monetary gain.
How do the exit pollsters achieve a representative sample? Conventional wisdom is that Dems are willing to talk and Reps blow them off.
well since the data has held up in every election ever in the world, except for the last presidential election, it would seem that they know how to get a qualified sample.
Cite? And preferably something a bit better founded than “conventional wisdom.”
Correct. I did not realize the disparity was so great though. About 10 to 1. Still, it would be start, and would a have an interesting ripple effect. Get Democratic governors in California and Texas, then we could really start to have some fun. Of course, kids would start committing non-violent crimes so they could go to school.
A few minor details to work out.
A related question that a letter to the editor brought up. If requiring citizens to pay for an ID in order to vote, would that be considered a poll tax?