I believe there was a lot more pro-action this time before the vote and at the voting stations.
Things like emails and flyers telling potential voters that Pubs will vote on Tuesday and Dems on Wednesday were sniffed out and debunked easily. A lot of notice was given to false claims about being out-of-state students, having financial aid, owing traffic tickets, and the like incorrectly barring people from voting.
One other case has surfaced in the Minnesota race for Senate. Seems a Coleman staffer also worked voting stations as an interpreter for Somali immigrants who needed additional help with language on the ballots. He reportedly told the voters to cast their ballot for Coleman. Nothing in concrete on this yet - no “F” of “C” carved into faces backwards. This action is a felony and could result in votes being cast out at poling places where this guy worked.
My opinion: Reasonably fair. Still some problems with voter registration, distribution of voting machines, and ID laws but nothing insurmountable.
I don’t understand why elections are so shoddily organized in America. On the other hand it seems like less than one third of people actually bother to vote so it seems that for most people the whole voting thing is of no interest to them and they would not care much who won or if he won by stealing the election.
On the other side of this you have the people who are reduced to patriotic tears on election day believing they are the only people on earth who can get to vote and how, somehow, this makes America special and how lucky they are to be a part of that. I do not understand why they are not reduced to patriotic tears when paying their taxes or when getting a building permit. People in other countries vote without getting all teary-eyed.
The trouble with all those links is that almost every instance of so-called “GOP voter suppression” is linked to an accusation of “voter fraud” by a Republican operative or a pro-Republican citizen. Both parties are claiming innocence: the pro-Democrats just want people to register to vote, and the pro-GOPs want to scour the lists for any fraud. Both are technically right, I suppose — but in many of those links you’ll find that the law isn’t on the GOP’s side. It seems that the method of operation for the GOP is to strongly insinuate voter fraud in order to get their hands on the voter rolls.
In any case, I agree that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; simply because there are no widely disseminated stories of fraud and/or suppression since the election doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Did it happen on a sufficient scale to tip the election? I highly doubt it.
Isn’t most voter ‘fraud’ just people who have moved going back to their old precinct to vote? I know in college, I moved several times as is typical for a college student. But I always went to the same place to vote which was close to all the places I lived even though I technically wasn’t registered there.
Thanks for the correction. I just have some notion that voter participation is much lower in America than it is in similarly developed countries but even though I searched I could not find concrete data.
Here are the number for the UK- 2001 was the low-water mark, at 59%.
And Germany - ~78% in 2005 (and that was the lowest turnout since WWII).
And Japan - turnout was 45% in 1995, but that was a major outlier; the average is 59%.
I suspect the numbers would be much closer [to ours] if these countries didn’t have viable third parties (or more, as in the case of Germany and Japan).
Interestingly, the numbers for at least one less-developed country are roundly similar to Britain and Japan- here’s the table for India, with turnout between 55-60% pretty consistently.
Highest voter turnout in a Canadian federal election - 79.4% (1958). Lowest - 59.1% (2008) (cite). The just concluded general election is the first in which the turnout dropped below 60%, probably because the reaction of many voters was “So just why are we having an election right now? Harper decided he wants one, you say? KTHXBYE.”
The simple reason why there was no reports of fraud is because it was an overwhelming victory. The dems have no reason to complain and the reps would need to question the entire election for it to make any difference. If the election had came down to one state like the last two you better believe there would have been complaints.
Does the relative paucity of fraud–especially after the grandiose claims against Acorn et al–mean (hehe) that the issue (snicker) won’t be (hahahah) used as a wedge against (no, wait, stopitstopitstopit!) voter registration drives?
