I love this chain of reasoning:
Repub: There’s no problem with electronic voting machines.
Dem: But they leave no evidence if voter fraud occurs. In fact, there oughtta be an investigation to see if this kind of stuff happened in the 2004 election.
Repub: You can’t start an investigation without evidence of some kind. And you have no evidence.
The very definition of a tautology.
Garfield226 has already demonstrated the absurdity of this. (thanks!).
Just as a point of information, “do my research for me” is NOT how the big boys do it. When you make a statement, you are expected to present some kind of evidence or reasoning to support it.
Again, a request for evidence is not a distraction, especially with posters of a certain nature.
Sorry, but that’s not the chain of “reasoning” as it seems to have developed.
Dem: Kerry lost a close election! The election was fixed!
Repub: What evidence do you have of that?
Dem: The exit polls don’t match the actuall tallies! FIXFIXFIXFIX!
Repub: But the patterns don’t show any problem with the election - just with the exit polls. What evidence do you have?
Dem: Karl Rove is EVIL!!!
Repub: Suppose he is. What EVIDENCE do you have that he fixed the election?
Dem: There isn’t any evidence - and that PROVES he did it!
Repub: 
You seem to be trying the sine qua non of a good conspiracy theory - the lack of any evidence to support it shows merely the power of the Illuminati.
There’s no evidence of a secret Jewish cabal to control the universe, either - do we need to investigate that too?
Sorry, but until you come up with some evidence, suggestions of a full-bore investigation into something nobody but the really extremist partisans think happened looks very little like a concern with fairness and very much like a search for reasons not to give up the delusion that the whole country is really on your side.
The election is long since over, and your side lost.
Deal with it.
Regards,
Shodan
As I recall, everybody said the election would be decided by 3 states, OH, FL, and PA. Whoever got 2 of 3 would win, it’s just that simple. We knew FL was not going Kerry’s way, we knew PA was. It all came down to Ohio and we all knew it going in.
Here is a well written article that sums it up.
A lot of little things were done to tip things Bush’s way. Voter registration rules were written to mandate a particular weight of paper on the forms , (an obvious violation of the Voting Rights Act) then later withdrawn but of course not all counties got the withdrawal notice.
From the above cite:
In Lake County, voters received letters on bogus Board of Elections letterhead informing voters that registered in NAACP and Democratic registration drives that they could not vote.
Then there were the thugs, ,(start on p 37 for the story) staying in rooms paid for the the Ohio GOP, that phoned ex-cons and threatened them if they dared exercise their votes.
Note: in the above for the sake of clarity I removed a misstatement that the witness corrected himself on.
The Ohio election was a fraud. The above examples are but a tip of the iceberg. From the first cite:
OK.
On behalf of the Evil Republican Conspiracy, I admit - for purposes of this thread only - that, in fact, your fears were correct. We stole the election. And we did it in such a way that leaves no evidence behind.
Ha! Ha!
What are you going to do about it?
As you’ve already admitted, there is no evidence beyond your supposition, which no major media outlet seems to be taking seriously. Nor are the vast majority of the American populace taking it seriously. What can you possibly do against such power?
I hope the rhetorical purpose of this post is clear.
Win the next election. Given four more years of Iraqalypse, a failed attempt to destroy Social Security, and the ethics problems of certain GOP leaders I think the Dems will win not only the White House and the Congress. Once we get the White House back, we get the FBI back and the honest investigations will begin.
Maybe you’d better state it directly to make sure.
But when the GOP can manipulate votes, how will you possibly win the White House?
Sure: Assuming, arguendo, that the election-theft allegations are true, and noting the relative malaise accompanying the issue in the public eye, what realistic strategy for chance exists?
chance = change
You recall incorrectly. It’s helpful if you read the posts.
annaplurabelle already attempted to make a very similar argument, and it holds no water. Firstly, everybody didn’t come to any sort of consensus, other than that it would probably be close. Secondly, “everybody” identified SO MANY “key” states, that it’s easy to look at it after the fact and cherrypick the one(s) you want to be important and say, “Well, everybody thought those would be important, so. . . [argument following from the invalid presupposition].”
The next election will not be close enough for all the dirty tricks in the world to carry the GOP. Plus I don’t see any charismatic successor to Bush.
Bricker, you asked the same thing way back when, and we’ve been discussing it since. One thing that needs to be done is to engage in discussion those who’d say things like
and
You have yet to acknowledge that there may well be a problem. That leaves us to wonder if you’re more results-oriented than you’re willing to say.
It isn’t how I recall. The pundits all agreed that the election would be decided in the “Big Three”. There aren’t that many competitive states and few of those are big prizes. Every newscast, every columnist that I read prior to the election focused on those three states.
Direct (or strongly implied) claims that a poster is stupid or insane are not appropriate to Great Debates. Please refrain from such statements in GD.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
Regarding the pundits boiling down the election to the “Big Three”, this is quite typical of the analyses going on immediately before the election. And I think most of us knew Florida would break for Bush either honestly or not. We really werern’t all that sure about Pennsylvania but we all thought Ohio would look large, as it did.
Sure seems like McCain is running. Will he be too old? If not, I foresee a McCain/Rice ticket, and that will be very hard for the Hillary/Edwards ticket to beat.
Yes. And the political agenda of University Professors and PhDs is pretty well known as leaning towards the Left.
If they are really worried about a stolen election, they should look more closely at the missing ballots for the governor’s election in Washington state.
Right issue. Wrong solution. This act would also allow anyone to go to any polling place without being registered and then to vote. Talk about a verification nightmare.
My husband mentioned an interesting and better solution after the last election. It involves voters receiving a unique receipt and then being able to log into a website to see how their votes were actually tabulated. This type of self-audit makes more sense than just opening up the polls to non-citizens, felons and non-registered residents.
I think McCain’s time is past. He might have been a strong choice in 2000, but he turns 72 on 8/29/08. Four more years of Father Time beating on him is going to make him seem too old for the job, especially if Edwards is his opponent.
I don’t get the Republican adoration of Condi. Put her on the ticket against a southern Democrat, and a lot of southern red states are going to look a lot bluer. Her close ties to Bush and total inability to utter a discouraging word about his policies are going to cost her.
We’ve of course got a long way to go and speculating about nominees now is a bit like predicting the papal election.
Like the Washington State GOP, he’ll suddenly acknowledge there’s a problem when his candidate loses a race.