Seriously. Normally, by now there is enough bile and bickering in threads to fill the SDMB to the point of overloading the server.
Odd.
Not that I am complaining, just wondering why there is this almost Zen attitude on the SDMB for this election - especially considering polls show that nationwide, turnout might be better than average this time around.
As long as things are so peaceful, just though I would share - I voted early and pretty much voted a straight Democratic ticket here in Nevada…lots of tight races here, despite what the national news is reporting. Will find out what happens late Tuesday night, or early Wednesday morning.
While recent events (recent meaning last couple of years) have definately spurred a lot strong feelings and a lot of debate on all sides of all issues it has had the opposite effect on me. As I’m getting older (I know, I know, I’m only 26) I feel like I’m just getting more and more apathetic in general. That’s why you will hardly ever see me in the GD any time of the year nevertheless in November.
I’ve even mulled over skipping the elections, something I haven’t done since I turned 18. I probably won’t (meaning I will get out and vote), but probably just for as many third party candidates as I can regardless of the sides. I am very much opposed to pretty much the entire platform of the Green party, but I am just so sick of Dems vs the Reps.
(Just FYI, with some exceptions I have voted mostly Republican for the past eight years)
One side has totally blocked the other from the government decision-making process for 6 years. During that time, we have had not one, but repeated train wrecks.
By and large, the old “ask not for whom the Banshee howls, it howls for Thine Own @ss” Syndrome has come into play. The only people slandering the Dems are the ones paid to do it.
As a conservative, I’d like to challenge the notion that we are silent out of shame.
Yes, I have reservations about the Bush administration, the War on Terror, and the rest of it. I’d be happy to discuss these, but…
…when you merely open your mouth to say “I’m a conser…” and you get howled down with “you’re SHRILL!!!”, you tend to lose the will to discuss politics. I have come to be deeply concerned about Bush and Iraq probably within the last six to twelve months, but I stopped (or greatly reduced) my political input to the SDMB well before that. The two aren’t connected.
I found bitching about a contested election result got a bit old after years and years of it, as did the thousands of new threads with slight variations on the “Bush is an idiot” theme. I can’t prove it (not even to myself), but I suspect were I on the liberal/left side, I’d be just as annoyed by it. At least I hope I would be, and I hope some lib/left/dem people on these boards are.
Mid-terms aren’t as exciting, I guess. Straight Democratic ticket voted this year, because my local incumbents are all Republicans and haven’t done a damn thing ever. Anyone who can still vote for Doc Hastings (R-yes man) is an idiot; I’m not backing down on that one–if you vote for Doc you are stupid.
The ads have been about 50/50 negative around here. The best ads are in the Hinman/Skinner race for our district state house rep–Hinman started off his campaign by calling Skinner a fine lady and then has been concentrating on what he will do if elected; Skinner just responds with the few things that have been accomplished in her long tenure as rep. Skinner has been quite useless during her many terms, but at least she’s always been polite.
We’re an all mail-in county, so we voted last week. Yesterday, I had a phone call from Bill Clinton urging me to vote, and from Rob McKenna (current AG) asking me to vote republican.
This was also the year that I was polled about 10 times. I wonder how I got picked? I wonder how I, the token moderate in our mega-conservative region, skewed the results.
Just wait till Wednesday when the trends or results are released.
Then the anxiety over close races and the bellyaching over wrong or stolen races commences. THEN the SDMB servers will think DSA is in progress.
I don’t think it’s been any less vitriolic. Look at the Kerry thread. If anything it seems like it’s the conservatives who are uncharacteristically silent. I also think that liberals know better than to get too excited over polls, especially since the right still controls the voting machines. I expect more cheating now than ever before.
So … Democrats will never win an election again, ever? That’s the logical conclusion of your statement. All Republicans have to do is rig the machines, and they’re in every time. Why campaign? And why not do fun things, like make all the elections nation wide end up with the lead Republican candidate getting exactly 80.0% of the vote – I mean, the election returns would look so cool … 80%, 80%, 80%, etc.
I mean … heck … when you’ve got that foolproof election-winning system in place, might as well flaunt it. Checks and balances? Who cares? That’s those non-election-manipulators to worry about.
So anyway … if a Democrat does happen to win a race … what happened to all that vote machine rigging and that army of Republican hackers at the ready to turn the tide of any election?
That’s exactly what the paranoid part of my brain keeps screaming. Right now I’m only about 25% sure that’s how things are going. I don’t know if the Diebold “errors” and some of the other cheating tactics routinely used by the right is enough to stave off a nationwide turn in the temperament of the electorate, but I think they’re sure as hell going to try and may be able to steal a couple of close races, at least enough to keep Cheney in charge of the Senate.
But hey, give me some paper trails and I’ll shut up.
It just means the cheating wasn’t enough, not that it didn’t happen. Cheating doesn’t always guarantee victory.
I’ve been on my local message boards, trying to fight ignorance about candidates and issues. (And, man, am I discovering all kinds of stupid. Really makes you appreciate the Dope.)
Well, as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t much to decide at the congressional level. The Republican-dominated White House has managed to screw up absolutely everything in the worst way imaginable and seems hellbent on doing nothing positive whatsoever (Rolling Stone recently did an excellent article about this). I mean, even if you’re willing to forgive the endless Titanic sinking that is Iraq and the bungling of Katrina and the various scandals and that ludicrous drama over Terry Schiavo etc., what the hell happened to the Republican platform? Y’know, cutting spending, keeping our borders secure, enforcing laws, bringing accountability back to government, that sorta thing?
Screw it. I tell you right now, the ONLY thing that’ll prevent this from becoming a massacre is the Democrats’ own miserable track record at getting things done (which liberals like Ted Rall and August Pollack have been pretty vocal about). Things are so fragged up, now, that I don’t care. I’m voting straight Democratic ticket for the first time ever, and I’m doing it in an effort to, if not stop, at least check the endless nightmare our federal government has become. And I know I’m not the only one.
As for the gubernatorial race, there hasn’t been any serious challenge to Linda Lingle, and I think she’s as good a choice as anyone. Unless someone comes on strong very quickly (like in a day or two), she has my vote.
Ballot initiatives? Well, the monorail issue has come up again. I adamantly refuse to support any plan that involves connecting one goddam part of Honolulu to another goddam part of Honolulu (am I the only one who finds it bizarre that Waikele hasn’t been mentioned once in the discussion?); otherwise, I give it my tentative support. My mother has also admonished me to vote no on initiaitve 3. Or yes. Well, it’s supposedly a slam dunk, so I’m not sweating it. Rest looks to be the same predictable petty stuff that doesn’t affect anything.
So on the whole, pretty open and shut for me. Of course, it’s probably a different story in the “battleground” states.
Why wouldn’t the cheaters cheat in all cases, and cheat completely? How could they let the electorate have even a 1% say in the vote? Why not just rig all the votes, and leave nothing to chance? No worries about getting caught … anyone that could do anything about it would be a in-by-cheating Republican. Right?
Seems to me *that * would be the world’s easiest thing to rig. How could you know the paper trail was legit? Seriously … I am interested in your faith in easily faked paper tape.
How could you rig a paper trail? You get a printout after you vote, you verify it and you drop it in a locked container which is watched at all times by a bipartisan contigent of election officials. Even if you could think of some arcane way to tamper with that, it would still be a lot harder than it is to hack an e-voting machine.