# Won't this year's election be impossible to rig? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 19, 2004, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765 "2004-07-19T03:01:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/1 "2004-07-19T03:01:31Z")
I have friends who insist there’s no way Bush can be beaten this November, because the fix is already in. My thinking is, it will be impossible for either side to cheat in this election, because after what happened in 2000, and in light of the incredibly high stakes this year, this will be the most closely and carefully watched election in American history. How can anybody get away with any funny business? One example: Governor Jeb Bush in Florida tried to issue another “felons list” to purge (predominantly black and predominantly Democratic) voters from the rolls, and he fell flat on his face. See the current GD thread: “It couldn’t happen again in Florida, could it?” – [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=265501](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=265501) ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/2 "2004-07-19T03:32:14Z")
I won’t say it’s IMPOSSIBLE, because it isn’t. Is it likely that, if tried, it will be unnoticed by the public at large? I think it’s unlikely. But that won’t stop this thread from being an explosion of despair-filled conspiracy theories. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/3 "2004-07-19T03:59:44Z")
Out-and-out vote fraud will be difficult, but we still haven’t solved the problems revealed in the last presidential election, so you can bet it won’t be smooth sailing. We’re still using a whole raft of voting methods that are subject to unintentional voting errors, miscounting, non-recountability, etc. We’ve still got problems with voter registration, careless purging of the roles, and so on. What this means is that we might have several “Floridas” this time around, with party hacks from both sides trying to influence precisely how recounts are conducted, dragging election officials into friendly courts, state legislatures threatening to appoint electors, etc. Just guessing, but I’ll bet it ain’t gonna be pretty. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/4 "2004-07-19T04:23:19Z")
> [@Early Out](#): > > Out-and-out vote fraud will be difficult, but we still haven’t solved the problems revealed in the last presidential election, so you can bet it won’t be smooth sailing. We’re still using a whole raft of voting methods that are subject to unintentional voting errors, miscounting, non-recountability, etc. We’ve still got problems with voter registration, careless purging of the roles, and so on. > > What this means is that we might have several “Floridas” this time around, with party hacks from both sides trying to influence precisely how recounts are conducted, dragging election officials into friendly courts, state legislatures threatening to appoint electors, etc. Just guessing, but I’ll bet it ain’t gonna be pretty. Okay – but all that means Bush does **not** have a lock on it, just because he’s president and his brother is governor of a swing state and most Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re talking about “unintentional voting errors” – which don’t necessarily benefit either party more than the other. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/5 "2004-07-19T04:38:10Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Okay – but all that means Bush does **not** have a lock on it, just because he’s president and his brother is governor of a swing state and most Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re talking about “unintentional voting errors” – which don’t necessarily benefit either party more than the other. I agree - nobody’s got a “lock” on it. The messiness of our voting system stands ready and willing to bite either candidate on the butt. I think we’re going to see a lot of very close races, state by state, so the screw-ups can break either way. In some elections, it hasn’t been too bad. People have thought, “Well, I don’t want this guy to win, but if he does win, it won’t be the end of the world.” This time around, there are a lot of folks who are convinced that it _will_ be the end of the world if “the other guy” wins, so the closely-contested battles promise to be truly ugly. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/6 "2004-07-19T04:53:17Z")
> [@](#): > > Okay – but all that means Bush does not have a lock on it, just because he’s president and his brother is governor of a swing state and most Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. You’re talking about “unintentional voting errors” – which don’t necessarily benefit either party more than the other. No, but it means there could be a lot of jump balls, and most of the possession arrows seem to be pointed toward Bush. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/7 "2004-07-19T04:56:59Z")
> [@DoctorJ](#): > > No, but it means there could be a lot of jump balls, and most of the possession arrows seem to be pointed toward Bush. Please pardon my ignorance – I take almost no interest in sports, which I presume is the field from which you’re drawing these metaphors. What are “jump balls” and “possession arrows”? ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/8 "2004-07-19T06:19:19Z")
Don’t forget the post-Florida push towards electronic voting machines, which are as a whole (a) untraceable, (b) highly insecure, and © run by CEOs who donate big money to the GOP. “[I am] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” –Walden O’Dell, Diebold CEO, 8/14/2003 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/9 "2004-07-19T15:32:35Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Don’t forget the post-Florida push towards electronic voting machines, which are as a whole (a) untraceable, (b) highly insecure, and (c) run by CEOs who donate big money to the GOP. > > “[I am] committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” > –Walden O’Dell, Diebold CEO, 8/14/2003 Perhaps . . . but there is a dark and might force in the universe which even execs and hackers must fear: **Lawyers!** 😃 From the _New York Times:_ > **[CAMPAIGN 2004: BALLOTING; Kerry Building Legal Network For Vote Fights...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/us/campaign-2004-balloting-kerry-building-legal-network-for-vote-fights.html)** > > Sen John Kerry's campaign, mindful of election problems in Florida in 2000, is putting together far more intricate set of legal safeguards than any presidential candidate before him to monitor election; Kerry's aides are setting up nationwide legal... > [@](#): > > Mindful of the election problems in Florida four years ago, aides to Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, say his campaign is putting together a far more intricate set of legal safeguards than any presidential candidate before him to monitor the election. > > Aides to Mr. Kerry say the campaign is taking the unusual step of setting up a nationwide legal network under its own umbrella, rather than relying, as in the past, on lawyers associated with state Democratic parties. The aides said they were recruiting people based on their skills as litigators and election lawyers, rather than rewarding political connections or big donors. > > Lawyers for the campaign are gathering intelligence and preparing litigation over the ballot machines being used and the rules concerning how voters will be registered or their votes disqualified. In some cases, the lawyers are compiling dossiers on the people involved and their track records on enforcing voting rights. The disputed 2000 presidential election remains a fresh wound for Democrats, and Mr. Kerry has been referring to it on the stump while assuring his audiences that he will not let this year’s election be a repeat of the 2000 vote. > > \ > > The Bush-Cheney campaign says it will have party lawyers in every state, covering 30,000 precincts. An affiliated group, the Republican National Lawyers Association, held a two-day training session in Milwaukee over the weekend on “how to promote ballot access to all qualified voters,” according to the group’s Web site. > > Lawyers for nonpartisan advocacy groups conducting voter registration drives are also working behind the scenes and in court to ensure that their new registrants make it onto the rolls and that their ballots are counted. > > But it is the campaign of Mr. Kerry that appears to be doing the most to apply lessons from the Florida recount and that is adopting the more fiercely partisan posture in the early going. > > Its plans include setting up SWAT teams of specially trained lawyers, spokesmen and political experts to swoop into any state where a recount could be needed. > > “The U.S. has had a policy of being able to fight two regional conflicts and still defend the homeland,” said Marc E. Elias, the Kerry campaign’s general counsel. “We want to be able to fight five statewide recounts and still have resources available to the campaign.” > > \ > > This time, Kerry aides say, they are recruiting not only specialists in election law who work in small law firms or alone, but also litigators at large firms in every state who have the resources and office space to support a long-term, large-scale and pro bono recount operation. > > “We don’t want a situation where we wake up the next day and are scrambling to think of what our legal team looks like,” Mr. Elias said. > > The Kerry campaign has already enlisted lead lawyers in all 50 states, and those lawyers are recruiting lawyers at the county and the precinct level. > > “It’s our intention to have lawyers in one fashion or another covering all of Iowa’s 99 counties,” said Brent Appel, the Kerry lawyer in Des Moines. > > Kerry aides say the campaign has set up a national steering committee with task forces tackling different issues: one on ballot machines, another on voter education, and a third on absentee, early, and military voting, to name a few. > > At the Democratic convention next week in Boston, they say, any lawyers interested in volunteering will be offered training. And dozens of the lawyers already recruited by the Kerry organization will hold two days of intensive meetings to finalize strategy, tactics and assignments. Now with all those Democratic lawyers, and Republican lawyers, and nonpartisan lawyers, watching the election process like hawks, how could anybody pull off any irregularity? One other safeguard, which I haven’t heard discussed this year, might be considered: Revive exit polling, as a way of checking the official vote count against the exit poll results. Do enough exit polls, and they are statistically likely to show the same result as the vote count provided the votes are counted honestly. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/10 "2004-07-19T15:55:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Its plans include setting up SWAT teams of specially trained lawyers Holy Christ, this is getting stupid. We’re virtually guaranteeing a system where any close state will be contested and decided by the SC, by necessity, because neither side will heel. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/11 "2004-07-19T16:00:05Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Don’t forget the post-Florida push towards electronic voting machines . . . This is what worries me, the computerized, no-paper-trail voting machines. A moderately intelligent 8th-grader could hack them and get Britney Spears elected President. Not that that wouldn’t be an improvement . . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/12 "2004-07-19T22:40:25Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > This is what worries me, the computerized, no-paper-trail voting machines. A moderately intelligent 8th-grader could hack them and get Britney Spears elected President. > > Not that that wouldn’t be an improvement . . . I just heard on the radio that Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is calling for an independent audit of the touchscreen voting machines – for one thing, because they seem to produce too many “blank ballots” compared with optical-scanner machines. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/13 "2004-07-20T00:19:17Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Please pardon my ignorance – I take almost no interest in sports, which I presume is the field from which you’re drawing these metaphors. What are “jump balls” and “possession arrows”? On a jump ball, which is when a player from both teams have their hands on the ball, a tie so to speak, the NBA uses possesion arrows. Like this \< \> towards each team. He’s saying the arrow points to the pubbies. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/14 "2004-07-20T01:39:10Z")
The reality is, EVERY election, the people pull shit like the phone jamming scam they just convicted a guy for from New Hampshire. People always hand out cards telling African Americans that voting requires two forms of photo id (which most poor people don’t even have). You never hear about it except locally, and little ever comes into it because once the election happens, there’s nothing you can do. It just comes with the territory. It’ll happen this year like it happens every year. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/15 "2004-07-20T02:11:05Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > People always hand out cards telling African Americans that voting requires two forms of photo id (which most poor people don’t even have). You never hear about it except locally, and little ever comes into it because once the election happens, there’s nothing you can do. It just comes with the territory. It’ll happen this year like it happens every year. 😕 Where the heck is this happening and why isn’t it stopped? I’m a poll-worker in the Bronx. Almost all of the people who train me, most of the election officials, and most of my co-workers are black. We all get the same training. We all have exactly the same posters to put on the wall, the same machines, the same pollworker’s manuals, all of which say you don’t need to show ANY ID to vote. Our cop periodically puts down his _Daily News_ and lumbers outside to check to see nobody’s doing any electioneering within 150 feet of our entrance. And a few of our voters, usually the older Irish or Russian immigrants, occasionally try to show me an ID which I gently hand back to them and am not even supposed to look at. If somebody did insist that they’d been told they needed two kinds of ID, I’d call over a Coordinator and they’d ask the voter for more info, and the jerk outside would be caught pretty quickly. I would think if some party hacks were outside handing out such cards, anywhere in the city, they’d be noticed. Granted, my neighborhood is predominently Irish, but none of my black neighbors or co-workers or a single black newspaper or crusading TV news reporter has reported these cards. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/16 "2004-07-20T02:42:35Z")
> [@](#): > > Where the heck is this happening Usually smaller cities and towns, any place where things really matter. > [@](#): > > and why isn’t it stopped? Because it’s intermitant and disorganized. Occasionally you’ll get things like the Republican Party people officially getting caught organizing phone jamming schemes on election day in New Hampshire. But usually it’s here and there: hard to track, and hard to prosecute. Police are rarely willing to spend much time on it and under our system, even evidence of massive fraud is rarely enough to change anything: the election results are the election results. There aren’t any do overs. So there isn’t exactly much incentive to track it down: what’s done is done. > [@](#): > > I’m a poll-worker in the Bronx. There you go. Your votes don’t matter to anything larger scale than a bunch of local razmataz, so why should anyone care? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2004, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wont-this-years-election-be-impossible-to-rig/255765/17 "2004-07-20T03:45:56Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Usually smaller cities and towns, any place where things really matter. > > Because it’s intermitant and disorganized. Occasionally you’ll get things like the Republican Party people officially getting caught organizing phone jamming schemes on election day in New Hampshire. But usually it’s here and there: hard to track, and hard to prosecute. Police are rarely willing to spend much time on it and under our system, even evidence of massive fraud is rarely enough to change anything: the election results are the election results. There aren’t any do overs. So there isn’t exactly much incentive to track it down: what’s done is done. But do you enough of this happens to seriously affect the election results at a state or national level? What you’re describing sounds too furtive and small-time to make much of a difference.