Yeah, I’m taking back that sentence. What I should say instead is the following:
We need to recognize & be prepared for the fact that our opponents may see elections as a kind of war, & feel morally obligated to cheat. And, if we have the understanding & humility to realize that honesty in voting is better, we need to be unafraid to prosecute their crimes with as much righteous determination as they had in committing them.
…and we’re still asserting that there is widespread cheating going on. I’m still waiting for some legitimate (not anecdotal, factual) substantiation about this.
I mean, if it happened I’m sure that, say, the Federal Election Commission, or maybe the election commissions of at least one of the states would be able to back you up, right? Right?
I repeat: just because your candidate lost doesn’t mean he/she was cheated.
Oh, please, more of this “we wuz never convicted so we’re not criminals” stuff.
Here’s the sort of stuff that has people worried:
Yeah, they weren’t able to convict anybody, but all the “anomalies” just happened to favor Bush. More conservative bullshit. When you guys gonna stop backing theieves and criminals?
I’m not backing Bush, blowhard. I am, however, sick of the “we didn’t win so we must have been cheated” mentality that some of you seem to have. If Kerry beat Bush, prove it. Frankly, since I voted for Kerry I’d like to see some proof, as that would give me more ammunition for my upcoming January 20, 2009 at 12:01 p.m. post.
That doesn’t mean that I’m willing to let disingenuous assertions go by unchallenged.
How did the Electoral College “evolve?” So far, the only difference between the EC today and originally is that the District of Columbia has Electors. Perhaps I’m missing another minor one.
Legal proof of vote rigging can be hard to come by, because the standards are very high and when your party is in control of the voting machinery, as the Repubs were in Florida and Ohio, it’s very easy to hide what you’re doing, and even easier to conceal responsibility for it. But simple, logical, practical proof is easily obtained. Check out that story I linked to.
Or not. I bet you also think O.J. didn’t kill his wife.
How about the purging of voting rolls of the felons who weren’t, in Florida in 2000?
The FEC is the most toothless of tigers; the FL government was and is pretty much owned by Jeb and the GOP.
What do you think of the recent Kennedy article regarding the election? Do you think the 2004 election in Ohio was conducted fairly or not? What of the Native American voters that drove hundreds of miles to cast blank ballots?
January 20, 2009 at 12:01 pm I will raise a glass at the same time as you. Then listen to President Gore’s speech. Let’s hope we live that long.
[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
What do you think of the recent Kennedy article regarding the election?
[quote]
I don’t have an opinion. I never saw it.
Barring proof, yes. Again, supposition and opinion do not constitute evidence. I want to see evidence of vote rigging. I want to see the program and how it electronically fixed the results. Let me ask you something… why the focus on Ohio? Ohio wasn’t the only swing state. Just because it came down to Ohio doesn’t mean that the election wasn’t decided somewhere else. Where’s the focus on other places? It’s almost as if you’re ignoring the results of the 49 other states and focusing in on a few commonly occurring “abnormalities” as the extent of the alleged cheating. If the cheating is endemic surely you’d have examples elsewhere, right?
What of them? Can you prove that they were disenfranchised intentionally? I ask because there were surely thousands, if not millions, in this country that were disenfranchised due to clerical error, electronic error, whatever. It happens in every election and it always has. Does that mean that every election has been rigged?
You need a lot more than anecdote to prove cheating. Emotion is not the same as fact.
Airman, I can tell you as a programmer that it would be very easy to write election machine software that threw, say, one in twenty votes to one party or another and then overwrite itself with an un"loaded" program at the end of the day. I wouldn’t throw an election for $100000, but I’m willing to bet there’s a programmer or six out there who would be.
Proof isn’t ever going to happen if that’s what’s going on. Similarly, how the hell do you expect to ever prove motive for various disenfranchised voters? Do you think there’s Snidely Whiplash in the background, twirling his mustache and keeping a detailed diary of exactly what is done? I have news for you; ain’t no such thing. What we DO have is a number of disenfranchised voters in a number of different states, and distributed fairly heavily in favor of one party. And we have the head of Diebold swearing to deliver Ohio to Bush in the election. No, we don’t know. We’ll *never * know, unless someone gets moral and decides to rat (assuming anything DID happen).
This is why it’s so amazing to me that any state or jurisdiction was willing to purchase voting machines without a paper trail. It simply makes no sense to me; are people so ignorant that they can’t conceive of data being entered into a computer system and being altered? In anycase, we need desperately to fix this. Because there’s nothing better suited to making voter fraud on a massive scale possible than having recordless electronics registering the votes.
I don’t know if there was any fraud in the 2004 election. What I DO know is that the morals demonstrated by certain members of the current administration - cough-Rove-cough - make me certain that there wouldn’t be any hesitation in TRYING. If caught, the penalty is huge, of course. But then, he’s already gotten away with outing a CIA agent - an act clearly against the law. And the administration has gotten away with illegal wire taps on American citizens - also clearly illegal.
No voting machines without a paper record. That should be the rallying cry for every honest voter in the country. At the moment, the Republicans are the likliest suspects, but that doesn’t preclude some rogue Democrat from doing the same sort of thing in the future.
And it’s just as easy to “find” boxes full of paper ballots, and “unfind” others. And just as hard to prove fraud.
Very convenient.
I’ll agree with you there. But paper trails are subject to fraud too.
You must have missed the recent news.
Just not true. Sorry. There was not “outing.”
This part’s not any more true.
Whatever is going on there, the debate is on the legality. My opinion is that what is going on is perfectly legal, if unpleasant. But that’s just my opinion.
It’s hardly amazing when one considers that the intent of these officials is to run a rigged election.
Airman, I’ll never convince you if you insist on courtroom-worthy proof. But Ohio is the focus because this state ran the most blatantly rigged election in 2004. Recall Blackwell’s ruling that registration forms must be on certain weight paper, a requirement that clearly is in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Recall how the wait in black precincts was in some cases hours due to deliberate shorting of voting machines in those areas. When the person running the election is in the Bush campaign and the guys making the voting machines have pleged to produce a Bush victory, it doesn’t take a hounddog to smell a rat.
I would like you to read the Kennedy article.
I’d cut and paste more chilling quotes but we don’t want to exceed fair use of copyrighted material. Please read for yourself and open your mind to the possibility that the election was rigged.
Well, there are 37 more states than then, too. 
Of course, what is meant is that rather than being the intended wise counselors chosen to select the best President, it has become a collection of loyal party hacks chosen for their allegiance to their party and a way to recognize selected campaign workers and minor dignitaries.
Apparently, that’s not working out as well as the parties choosing the hacks hope. After all, there’ve been a few “faithless Electors” over the years.
The President isn’t the venue for “having voices heard.” That venue is the Congress and there are two chambers for hearing voices (feel free to insert obvious joke).
I think that instead of attacking each other, it might be more productive to attack the problem. The point was raised that politicians apparently love to rig elections.
How might this problem be solved? I mean permanently solved.
It’s cheap to take pictures these days. What if we take a picture of every voter in front of the official voting portrait of their chosen candidate? The voter gets an official printed copy of this picture to keep.
Maybe I’m not smart enough to figure out how those tricky crooked politicians are gonna get away with cheating, but I honestly don’t think people would attempt to cheat if there is a good chance of being caught. Am I wrong?
If they try to pull that business with the blank ballots from the Native Americans, the scam is revealed as soon as one of those official printed copies turns up.
If anyone believes an election is rigged, they are welcome to verify as many random ballots as it takes to convince them otherwise. Suppose nobody could find a false vote. No news reporter, no average Joe, no curious math professor, no cranky senior citizen with entirely too much time on their hands. Would you still believe such an election was rigged if your candidate loses?
Well, since the election system is so carelessly organized, it’s difficult to verify much.
Which seems a sufficient answer to what you said awhile back:
Guess it isn’t that important that the President campaign in rural areas after all. Thanks for clearing this up.
I don’t check the SDMB as often as I used to and I only noticed this thread just before I left for vacation. When I got back I decided against bumping it. Now that someone else has done so I’ll limit just limit myself to responding to a couple things. Maybe I’ll come back and address some of the historical angles later.
Ahem. I developed the idea of states assigning electors based on the nationwide vote right here in Great Debates years before your post in 2004. So far as I know, I was the first to look outside the box on this. I considered, and rejected the idea of an explicit interstate compact because of constitutional concerns along the lines of those suggested by Monty. I have wondered if my epiphany triggered the current movement. I sent out a few emails to anti-EC election organizations so it is possible. But I never received any response so I guess it’s doubtful.
Moving to a popular vote is an inherently partisan move since the EC favors the GOP and looks to continue to do so. The “red states” tend to be less populous than the “blue states” and thus overrepresented by Electors. So long as Texas is controlled by the GOP it isn’t likely to adopt the idea even if most Texans approve. For the idea to work it has to be adopted by enough “blue” and “purple” states.
Lets not forget that once a nationwide vote is being considered we have to consider the votes of Americans who are completely disenfranchised in presidential elections: those living in Puerto Rico and the other insular territories. The GOP can’t be excited about the prospect of a bunch more nonwhites getting the ballot particularly if it is the Dems who are pushing to enfranchise the islanders.
This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the question at hand. We aren’t proposing to replace the EC with a direct democracy where every decision is put to a majority vote. Instead policy will continue to be decided by political considerations. In a representative democracy it is not only how people feel but how strongly they feel. The Idahoans could well get their way if they feel very strongly about the conflicting interest and Californians do not. They can give up something in trade to molify the other side.
By examining the political consideration more closely it is the EC which retards the political weight of the Idahoans in this example. Because right now it is basically all or nothing. You win all of Idaho’s Electoral Votes or you do not. And, since one party, the Democrats, have no realistic chance of earning those votes in the first place they are free to ignore the desires of Idahoans just as Republican presidents are free to ignore the wishes of millions of Californians ( Remember Bush turning a blind eye to his supporters in the energy business raping California in 2001? ) Even without that effect the fact is that the EC makes voter turnout less relevant. If 99.9% of Idahoans are energized to turn out and vote for or against a particular candidate their combined voice is no louder than if a mere 40% of the eligble voters bother to show up at the polls and with about half voting for or against the candidate.
Just my 2sense
The Supreme Court has historically been pretty friendly to interstate compacts. The current construction appears to be that compacts don’t require Congressional approval unless they’re “directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the States, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States”. Since states have explicit plenary power over the mode of choosing electors, it’s hard to see how this compact would encroach upon federal power.
(Actually, I’m not sure this plan even rises to the level of an “interstate compact”, since it doesn’t seem to entail any interstate enforcement mechanism. It sounds more like a simple reciprocity law. But the authors describe it as an interstate compact on their web site, so I’ll take their word for it.)
I don’t agree. It’s true that over-representation of small states favors the GOP; Bush carried 31 states with an average of 9.2 EV’s each in 2004, versus 20 states with an average of 12.6 EV’s for Kerry. This will persist as long as the GOP is popular in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, as they have been since the 1950’s.
However, the more important distorting effect of the EC is the WTA feature, and that can favor either party, almost randomly, from one election to the next. A small shift in Ohio–one which certain members of this board insist would have taken place if the votes had been counted correctly–would have left Kerry the minority-vote EC winner in 2004.
It’s probably true that there is a perception that the EC favors the GOP, because of (a) the 2000 result; (b) the small-state feature; and (c) the fact that Republicans tend to like it better on ideological grounds as an artifact of federalism. This perception may be enough to doom this plan.