If it hadn’t been for that damned meddling hurricane! A clear message from God that He hates Obama, and that’s why He made him win! Mysterious ways indeed…
Anyone else here was REALLY REALLY glad that Obama, in his victory speech, made mention of the fraudulent voter suppression stuff going on by the Republicans, telling the crowd “We have to do something about that”?
I know that its uncouth to whine about election fraud before the election, and then if you lose, but Obama won and this is the best state of affairs that can be if we’re trying to get rid of these voter suppression tactics by the GOP. Now that he’s elected, he cannot be seen as having a selfish interest in looking at voter fraud and I hope this is something the Democrats get started working on right after Inauguration Day. The next Democrat to run may not have as good a ground game as Obama, nor be such a great campaigner. I worry about losing the Ohios and Floridas if the Dems sit back and bask in the victory instead of working to ensure it
So many people forget who Obama is at his core: A community organizer.
During the campaign the worrywarts forgot about the organizer part of that title.
Looking ahead, don’t lose sight of the community part of that title.
He will not leave his party dangling. He basically said as much in his final rally speech when he said this was the last time he’d be campaigning … for himself.
Equality in voting. Period, full stop, nothing less. If I have to spend two hours to vote, the rich guy should spend two hours to vote, but I want neither. We can do this, it isn’t that hard. Early voting, voting by mail, whatever. Give them the voter ID stuff, we can live with that. Plus, that Id could have a lot of beneficial effects, like proving legality if you look too brown. Show it to la Migra and all he can say is “Have a nice day, citizen, sorry to have bothered you.” Stuff like that.
A lot of our tighty righties simply cannot accept that they are not the majority, its an article of faith with them. So they have to believe the elections are being stolen, otherwise, how could they be losing?
I see no good reason for the poor dears to suffer under this burden. Let us extend the hand of comity and forbearance, and relieve them of this dreadful illusion. And in return, we get full, fair and free elections.
Works for me. What’s not to like?
Actually, that’s not what he said. What he said was:
[QUOTE=Barack Obama]
I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that.
[/QUOTE]
Hs comment is much more expansive than the issue of voter suppression, which in this election appears to have had no general effect at all. His comment is on voter FAIRNESS, which goes way beyond voter ID laws.
If I can make a critical comment as an outsider (I’m Canadian) the greater problem is not voter ID laws, it’s the fact that the USA has no common system of conducting elections and no central, nonpartisan authority for running elections. Voter ID laws are not even the greatest concern that that situation creates; what’s worse is that there isn’t anyone whose job it is to say “let’s run a clear, fair election.” And even if some state’s election authority TRIES to do so, they’re usually in a conflict of interest anyway because they’re a partisan.
So you get things like imbecilic voting systems, like the butterfly ballot, and systems that vary from state to state for no reason at all. You have places that don’t have enough voting resources and places with too many. You have a situation where voters are apparently using the beta version of a voting machine on Election Day. I won’t even get into gerrymandering. the system is inherently flawed even before you talk about voters suppression. In fact, I would argue that voter suppression is made possible by the already existing flaws in the elections process, and would not be an issue if those problems were fixed.
In Canada - sorry, I don’t mean to lecture, we’re not perfect but this is one thing we do better - one organization runs elections: Elections Canada. While it reports directly to Parliament, it’s an arms-length organization that had a standing mandate to ensure elections are fair, open, and accessible. It decides everything about where the polling places are, how the elections are run, how ballots are designed, how financial information is disclosed, how spending is monitored, and even supervising the design of the borders of districts (we call them “ridings,” actually, but same thing.)
While there is a partisan connection, in theory - EC reports to Parliament, which is of course usually dominated by one party - the nature of EC’s organization and position as an independent organization makes political interference with it practically impossible (it would be a national scandal that would bring down the government and result in the immediate electoral annihilation of the ruling party) and puts EC officials in a position where they have no conflict of interest. EC reports not to the ruling party, but to PARLIAMENT - all the parties - and even suggesting the appointment of a partisan jerk would be political poison. The current head of Elections Canada was elected by Parliament in a unanimous vote - I mean, that’s how clean the guy is. It’s a position of tremendous honor and importance, usually served for a very long time, and that’s very deliberate; the Chief Elections Officer is quite consciously set up as being a person who is public, visible, nonpartisan and very hard to get rid of.
More importantly, this system prevents conflicting interests from screwing things up. You could have a situation in the USA where the state’s Secretary of State, despite her or his conflict of interest, is doing their level best to run a fair election but it doesn’t matter in a sense because the state’s district boundaries are so ridiculously gerrymandered that the outcome is preordained, or the state’s voter laws make it harder for black people to vote, or the secretary of transportation is a rabid partisan who closes down DMV offices in Republican or Democratic areas so as to make those people less likely to be able to get voter ID.
With due respect - and again I stress there are many things in Canada that are not perfect, and that could be improved, and things we could learn from you - your system could learn from ours. Have the right basic system in place and this voter ID bullshit won’t matter. Indeed, Canada has some voter ID requirements; you can’t just walk in and vote just by claiming to be who you are. But the ID requirements are relatively fair, and they’re ALWAYS THE SAME, no matter where you are.
Yeah, but you guys don’t even have a “South”.
An interesting thought. Look at how much Bill Clinton did during this campaign cycle. The next guy (or gal) will have Clinton AND Obama in their corner.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, quite a few Americans have the complete inability to properly determine what should be handled at the federal level, and instead demand that everything be as localized as possible.
It makes a sort of sense: when you have district elections, municipal elections, county elections, state elections, and federal elections to contend with, an obvious answer is to let the individual districts handle everything and just report the results up the line. But that also cedes control to lots and lots of individuals with very little oversight, and while most honestly want to do a good job, those individuals inclined to be petty and power-grabbing have a whole lot of opportunity to be so.
Working top-down by instituting a federal agency to handle things with roots stretching down into the states provides significant and impartial oversight, but also requires a lot of visible federal money which people always complain about. As well, top-down organization can get snarled up pretty fast the farther down you go, and since it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have federal elections handled by one group with more local elections handled by another, said federal organization might have to go down pretty far.
It’s an awkward problem and one that’s as much defined by ideology as pragmatism.
And, under our current electoral system, it’s the states that elect the president. The constitution explicitly empowers the states to do this, although it does allow for some fed involvement. I think you’d have a constitutional problem if the feds completely took over.
Congress can set the day, but that’s about it, unless there are other rights that are infringed. But the states are clearly tasked with holding the election for president.
Yeah, that too.