The Democrat candidate lost after the suspicious disappearance of 7000 votes from a certain county after campaign workers had left for the night. The candidate has demanded a recount.
But the recount will not happen. Quoth the GOP AG: “As of right now, no one is going to recount the votes in Baldwin County”
We’ve seen this trend in Florida and now in Alabama. Will the GOP stop at nothing, even to disenfranchising an entire county, to ensure victory? Is this the latest GOP strategy, to rig elections wherever possible?
Isn’t that the county that only has 800 voters? The one where the computer glitch that reported the wild number was quickly corrected?
Or was that the district where the Democrat’s claimed number of votes he should have received, combined with the Republicans, exceeds the total registered voter population by 1000 votes or something?
I just caught part of this story, but it sure sounded to me like the Democrat’s claim was specious.
Sam: honestly, the details available on the web seem very conflicting. But I am honestly upset at the “we don’t care who voted, we’re following the rules” attitude that seems to be conveyed in this situation. And it seems to parallel a certain notoriously close contest a couple of years ago.
Maybe the Republicans did stop at nothing… i.e., they didn’t do anything. SOMEONE has to decide where the disputes in elections end. When elections are really really close, it’s statistical bullcrap to assert that strictly more votes counted means more actual votes. The null hypothesis is almost always true. Who’s to say who “really” won?
So, how about this: don’t have a problem with the party in power calling the election at that point (which could benefit either side, really). At the very worst, it is just another reason for the other side ot care about who is in power and gets to appoint the AG: a legal/tactical advantage in close elections.
Aside from both sides resorting to typical political posturing, the information, so far, indicates simply that the AG is abiding by the law that requires a court order and his “As of right now, no one is going to recount the votes in Baldwin County” statement is merely one of fact: As of right now, neither the AG nor the Secretary of State (the ex oficio chief elections officer) have the authority to unseal the ballots for recounting under the laws of Alabama.
Respectfully, tomndebb, this seems to add up to “we don’t care who really won, we’re following the rules.” No?
A recount seems called for. The GOP officials seem opposed to this. A recount would decide the issue once and for all, correct?
I understand that local election law is a quagmire, but any election official in this situation should be screaming to get an accurate count. The quoted GOP officials seem (from my limited cites) to be at best disinterested in this issue as long as thier candidate won. In my book, this is corruption. At best.
I agree with SPOOFE and Tom. It may take all the air out of your moral outrage, but I didn’t read anything in the cite that smacked of disregard for voter intent from the AG. Florida at least had something of an argument for an expansive recount.
Yeah, and if there were 10,000 votes miscounted in the Republicans’ favor in every county, then it’s really a Democratic landslide. But is there a reason to suppose that a vote was miscounted in the Republicans’ favor in every county, other than Seigelman’s desire that it be so?
The Democrats maintained a majority in both houses of the North Carolina state legislature, in the lower house (state House of Representatives) by a very slim margin.
I find it ironic that the Republicans are insisting on a recount that could give them a majority, as this article details.
What’s sauce for the donkey is evidently not sauce for the elephant. ::: insert rueful smiley indicating philosophical view of human nature here :::
Does North Carolina law require a hand count for races decided by certain margins? If not, what prompted the recounts for all the districts other than 11? Do you think that the District 11 issue is not a recount issue in the sense we typically think of them–i.e., an “everything’s tallied” count that is disputed for some reason? This one is not really the same thing, is it? It doesn’t read as if anyone “demanded” a recount here, or that state law automatically invoked one. It read as if election workers in the course of finalizing the count discovered an outright error and corrected it. Maybe I’m misreading, but I’m missing where any Republican is insisting on anything over the objections of the Democratic side.
Bottom line, if in both NC and Alabama the Republicans are insisting that the respective state laws governing vote counts be followed (perhaps that’s not so), is it really ironic if in one instance it leads to recounts and in another it does not? BTW, I’m a registered Democrat, lest this seem knee-jerk partisan.
The population of Baldwin County, Alabama, is 135,820, according to the 2001 World Almanac. I don’t know how many registered voters live there, but I’d say it’s a safe bet there are more than 800.
Frankly, I think Governor Siegelman has a point: if it can happen in one county, why not another? You can say all you want about what’s a “statistical dead heat,” but the fact is we need to know who it was that most voters wanted to vote for, however small the margin. “Close enough” just doesn’t cut it.
I’m not sure what Riley himself is saying, but his attorney sure is spitting fire, and trying to evoke the name of Al Gore to win himself some sort of sympathy among the press or Alabama county executives or what have you. This does not make the Republicans look good. Trying to stop recounts that are perfectly legal (though cumbersome) is bad press. If the press were to turn up the heat on Siegelman like it did on Gore in 2000, perhaps another recount could be turned into a national media event instead of the state event that it’s supposed to be. I don’t suspect Republicans will be importing protesters from around the country to head to the Baldwin County courthouse for rowdy protests again, but you never do know until it’s all over.
Riley probably won, but this is close enough to call for a recount. It’s sad that there’s a demand to stop the recount, since the election is close enough to mandate one, just like the presidential elections in Florida and New Mexico were in 2000. People will eventually get sick of opportunists who demand that the contest be stopped before it’s over, just because they’re ahead.
Having read the article, it appears to me that the AG is saying “Here are the ways the governor can legally request and be granted a recount” and the Governor (and/or his attorney) is saying “The law is inconvenient, so let’s throw it out the window and do whatever the hell we want.”:
I think one thing is evident - we would do better handing over our election procedures to a committee of retarded chimps.
Heck, I can walk into any convenience store and use any one of dozens of types of ATM’s and be certain that my bank account will be debited properly. And we can’t count votes? We don’t have a consistent procedure for doing it? This is ridiculous.
The Supreme Court decided to let the Dems put Lautenberg on the ballow last month because they said election law should be interpreted in such a way that we should err on the side of as much freedom for voter choice as possible. The AG in question in this thread could certainly choose to do the same.
That’s my unbiased opinion. Here’s my biased one:
I have to believe that it’s not in the best interest of some group of people to have everyone vote, and have the votes counted accurately. My personal belief is that the Republicans stand to lose big time if everyone were to vote. This is because there are far more people without wealth than with.
My evidence for this opinion is the fact that the Republicans oppose every attempt to make voting easier. Every so often it is suggested that we register people to vote in our state when they obtain or renew their driver’s license. Won’t ever happen if the Republicans have their way.
I believe it was in Florida during this election that election officials were quoted as not caring if lines were long and people had to wait a long time to vote. To me, that suggests that they are happiest if fewer people vote.
Count the ballots. All of them. Twice. Five times. Whatever it takes. If it’s accurate I won’t complain if my guy doesn’t win. But the rhetoric I hear these days on this issue is very specious.
The above links pretty much agree that Theresa LePore, the “Democrat” who designed the butterfly ballot, was registered as an Independent prior to accepting the job, and was previously registered as a Republican…
Suspicious? Maybe. One could easily make the case that after the 1996 presidential election, where Bill Clinton pretty much stomped Bob Dole in a fair fight, and there was no Perot for the GOP to cast blame on, they decided to turn the dirty tricks up a notch.
The above links pretty much agree that Theresa LePore, the “Democrat” who designed the butterfly ballot, was registered as an Independent prior to accepting the job, and was previously registered as a Republican…
Suspicious? Maybe. One could easily make the case that after the 1996 presidential election, where Bill Clinton pretty much stomped Bob Dole in a fair fight, and there was no Perot for the GOP to cast blame on, they decided to turn the dirty tricks up a notch.
