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S.L.K.s. Ghost
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1612
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 5:32 am: | 
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FOJ-
Semantic mantics. Your boy lost, get over it.
-SLK |
Steve R Jones
Citizen
Username: Sjthinker
Post Number: 66
Registered: 2-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 6:11 am: |
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/index_np.html |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1416
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 8:53 am: |
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Foj - keep up the good fight. The voting machines we used yesterday were absolutely horrible. I am an average height man and it hurt me to vote. These machines are ergonomically poor. The actual voting was on a board that had what seems like wax paper pulled over it with the names of the people that are up for election in columns. Physically it was difficult to read but pushing the actual choices was not hard.
I have no confidence that these machines are error free, nor do I have a receipt with a record of who I selected. We can do better. |
Southerner
Citizen
Username: Southerner
Post Number: 1121
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 9:16 am: |
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I love this. |
Hoops
Citizen
Username: Hoops
Post Number: 1418
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 9:22 am: |
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Here is the my question to people who think either
1) They trust all election officials and private companies to tabulate honestly our votes because it is the moral and patriotic thing to do.
2) There was no election fraud and there are no problems that have to be addressed.
Q: What is your objection to a system of voting that can be verified, that can not be hacked, that is fair for all Americans and enables all Americans to believe that our democracy is the shining example for the rest of the world?
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Larry Seltzer
Citizen
Username: Elvis
Post Number: 19
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 9:33 am: |
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Hoops,
Were you as outraged last year with the old machines? You didn't have any receipt for your vote then either. How do you know those machines recorded votes accurately?
You really ought not to be so credulous about paper receipts. There is no hack-proof voting system.
And the height problem with the machines was not a machine problem, it was a problem with how high the machines were placed. If they put them on a higher table they would have been fine for you. Complain to the election officials, it's easily remedied if they want to do it. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5059
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 11:49 am: |
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SLK, there is no "national" election for president. There are 50 state elections, which are for the purpose of selecting electors to send to the Electoral College.
And if there were, the same argument would hold. Republicans hold the cards in the Justice Department. Is Gonzales going to launch an investigation into his boss' win? No more likely than Blackwell launching one. |
notehead
Supporter
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 3407
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 3:40 pm: |
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I can see it now:
"So, the country is completely bankrupt. It has been for ten years already... get over it!"
"Yeah, the climate scientists were right... tens of millions of people's homes are now underwater... get over it!"
"So, elections aren't legitimate any more. Puppet presidents are purchased by self-serving industrial factions. That's old news... get over it!"
SLK, if you can't see how profoundly important this is, and if you are incapable of accepting the well-documented evidence collected by Kennedy for the article, then I don't see the point of even reading your posts anymore. |
Rastro
Citizen
Username: Rastro
Post Number: 3334
Registered: 5-2004
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 3:56 pm: |
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To me, it's not a question of accepting the evidence at face value. It's accepting that this kind of thing can happen here. And being open to the possibility that it did. If you close your mind to the possibility, then no amount of evidence would ever convince you. |
S.L.K.s. Ghost
Citizen
Username: Scrotisloknows
Post Number: 1621
Registered: 10-2005
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 3:59 pm: |
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notehead-
First, stop being so melodramatic.
So I should just ignore Steve Jone's Salon's Post above (like you apparently did) why?
-SLK |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5060
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 4:21 pm: |
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The Salon story is, all of these suspicious things happened, but cumulatively weren't enough to swing the vote. It does not follow that in future elections they won't make the difference either.
We're in no way immune to abuse of power in this country, and there's not a country on earth that hasn't fallen into a repressive dictatorship at one point or another in its history. Remember what they say about eternal vigilance being the price of liberty? That wasn't some paranoid talking, it was one of our founding fathers. Take it seriously. |
joel dranove
Citizen
Username: Jdranove
Post Number: 566
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 4:22 pm: |
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Paranoia runs deep.
Into their thoughts it did creep.
By the way, I have it on good authority that the Republican thought police, constantly reading your thoughts, yes, right now, will send new imprint scans to the chips in your little heads, and you will finally agree the election is over, and you lost.
Get over it.
jd |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5062
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 4:25 pm: |
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Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. If we're wrong, we're wrong, but that doesn't mean we should always just roll over. |
3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 233
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 6:01 pm: |
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It's kind of ironic to read an article about a stolen election by a guy whose grandfather helped to steal an election for his uncle. What a family.
Cheers |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14623
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 6:05 pm: |
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3ringale, your implication leads to a useless point, as far as I can see.
Sure, it's possible that he'll speak up about fairness only when "his side" loses. Does that make the election fair somehow? If so, I'd like to know how. Most of us have political preferences, so does that disqualify all of those people from speaking out about election fairness? Who is left to speak about it?
And are you implying that Robert Jr is somehow responsible for what his ancestors might have done?
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5063
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 6:16 pm: |
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The conservative position seems to boil down to, "Don't be stupid, no one can steal an election. Besides, Kennedy stole one in 1960." |
3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 235
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 7:13 pm: |
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Tom Reingold,
My comment was meant to be a wry observation more than anything else. My sense of humor just doesn't seem to translate to the internet. I am certainly not saying that RFK Jr. should not speak about the 2004 election or any other subject on which he wishes to unbosom himself. For all I know, he might even be right! I voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000, and did not pull a lever for President in 2004, so I wasn't really biting my nails over the outcome. I certainly don't hold RFK Jr. or anyone accountable for the sins of his fathers.
Here is a question for you: Who do you think really won the 1960 election?
Cheers
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ae35unit
Citizen
Username: Ae35unit
Post Number: 90
Registered: 2-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 8:30 pm: |
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3ringale- I agree with you. Your sense of humor doesn't translate. I'm not sure if the internet has anything to do with it. Blackwell in Ohio is actively trying to alter an election, again. It's not an open secret, its just a fact, and there seems to be no body in authority to counter it. I don't think that's the America the writers of the Constitution or The Declaration of Independence had in mind. I couldn't help but notice your opinion on gay marriage, in another post, is very close to Rick Santorum's. Educate me. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14626
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 9:20 pm: |
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I don't remember reading about the 1960 election, so I can't say.
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5065
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - 9:35 pm: |
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The deal with 1960 is that supposedly the Chicago machine got enough corpses to vote to put Kennedy over the top. Without Illinois, Nixon is inaugurated in 1961.
I seriously doubt there's enough hard data at this point to make an informed judgment one way or the other. |
Larry Seltzer
Citizen
Username: Elvis
Post Number: 25
Registered: 4-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 6:49 am: |
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Actually, Illinois doesn't make the complete difference in 1960. The electoral total was 303 to 219, and Illinois was 27 votes. The popular vote difference in Illinois was less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million. There were a few other suspicious states, including Texas, where Johnson could probably pull a few levers, and was also very close. That's another 24 votes + 27 = 51 votes, so if they flipped it would be 270 to 252, a bare majority for Nixon. (The numbers don't completely add up because Alabama and Mississippi elected their electors in strange ways that year, and most ended up voting for Harry Byrd and Strom Thurmond.) |
3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 238
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 8:27 am: |
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ae35unit,
I don't know what to tell you. People who know me think I am very amusing. I read a book by Tom Wicker (no Nixon booster) years ago, the title escapes me. His conclusion on the 1960 electio was that we'll probably never know who was really elected. Imagine how different things would have been. No Vietnam, no LBJ, no Great Society, no Watergate, no Jimmy Carter........etc.
Since no one in 2006 seems to care about the 1960 election, I wonder if anyone in 2050 will still be bellyaching about the 2004 election.
Cheers |
ae35unit
Citizen
Username: Ae35unit
Post Number: 91
Registered: 2-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 8:57 am: |
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3ringale- My understanding of the 1960 election is pretty much the way Larry Seltzer outlines it in his post, and yes, one of the conclusions you could draw is that we may never know who won that election. What makes me wonder about the health of our nation right now, in real time, is that the Republican party, because of it's current absolute power, is making it very clear that voter suppression is very much on the table for the upcoming elections and instead of outrage, we as a nation offer only wry observations. Furthermore, the stories of Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000 were not only not adequately covered by our media, but were covered up. The current state of semi willful ignorance and a sort of bread and circus, I work to hard to understand every little thing that's happening around me attitude, is obscene. Yeah, the 1960 election may have made a huge historical difference, but it's what's happening right now that we should be working, as good citizens, to confront.
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3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 239
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 1:35 pm: |
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ae35unit,
For the sake of argument, let's say there was Republican chicanery in Ohio in 2004. I am not a Republican, so I can live with that. My question is, for whose benefit? Some other posters have mentioned sinister corprate entities pulling Republican strings, etc. I can't buy that explanation. What, is someone going to say that the Democratic party is hostile to corporate interests? I don't think so.
America has been a plutocracy since at least the 1880's and there has been no serious opposition to money power since the 1930's, in my opinion. So, if corporate America wants to call the shots, they really don't need to steal elections, they can always be accomodated by the Democrats as well as the Republicans. In 2004, we were offered a choice of a Yale/Skull and Bones man who was in favor of war, Wilsonian internationalism, free trade, open borders and spending more money than we have. His opponent was more of the same.
So, if there was electoral fraud, by all means let's expose it. But I just can't hold my breath waiting for a righteous Democrat to rescue me from these evil Republicans.
Cheers |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 5067
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 1:40 pm: |
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One reason might be that, for a lot of people, power is an end in itself.
But aside from that, surely you can't imagine that a Gore presidency would have looked like the Bush presidency has. While I'll stipulate that in the big picture corporate America pulls a lot of the shots, in the areas of environmental regulation, tax policy, and international relations -- to name just three -- there would have been zero resemblance. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14627
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 2:11 pm: |
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3ringale wrote:
Since no one in 2006 seems to care about the 1960 election, I wonder if anyone in 2050 will still be bellyaching about the 2004 election.
Probably not, and it's a fair point, but not strong enough for us not to care about recent and present things. You seem to imply that since history decides to leave these things alone, they don't matter. Am I reading you wrong? I hope so, because I would strongly disagree with that.
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ae35unit
Citizen
Username: Ae35unit
Post Number: 93
Registered: 2-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 2:19 pm: |
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3ringale- Your post literally takes my breath away. Let me humbly try to address a couple of points.
My question is, for whose benefit?
My answer to that is, obviously, for a much smaller group of people than for general corporate interests. For the benefit of the people in the administration directly. Corporate interests will be taken care of by any party, no question.
As for the second paragraph of your post, to say that the men involved in the election were the same and there was no real choice, maybe that's the part that takes my breath away, while your statement about the obvious similarities is, well, obvious, it's also just ludicrous. These guys may have been cut from the same cloth, but they were stuffed with something completely different.
Finally, I'm not saying we should wait for a righteous Democrat, and that last statement is tantamount to putting words in my mouth. Election fraud is a matter of record now, both in the recent past and ongoing. In my opinion nobody should be waiting around for anybody. The hubris of the controlling party is to the point where they are not even really trying to hide it. I'm personally more of a traditional Republican by nature than a Democrat. What the Republican party has become in it's current incarnation is basically a right wing hate group that steals elections and owns the media. Unfortunately, that is not a melodramatic overstatement. It's reality.
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3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 240
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 7:39 pm: |
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tom,
You are right that for a lot of people, power is an end in itself. Sometimes,I think that is why there is so much bitterness today between Dems and Repubs. Not only do they disagree on policy, they are uncomfortable with the other side having any power.
But you also admit that corporate America exerts a lot of influence, but that a Gore presidency would have had a very different approach to enviromental regulation, tax policy, and international relations. Maybe, maybe not. These subjects are of great interest to corporate America and it doesn't sound realistic to me that President Gore would have thwarted their plans. President Clinton threw a birthday party in the Rose Garden for the Chairman of Arco in 1996 and even carried in the cake. I don't know if VP Gore was there, but I wonder what he thought about it.
Tom Reingold,
I'm not saying that these things don't matter, but what is to be done about it?
Dems will have to organize, energize the voters, retake Congress and impeach. A pretty tall order, in my opinion. But if it doesn't happen, most people in 2050 will think that the charge of electoral fraud in 2004 didn't matter. Sad, but true.
ae35unit,
I don't see why the election had to be stolen by a smaller group of people, rather than for general corporate interests, especially when these people already had corporate connections that would ensure that they would be well cared for. But then you did say: Corporate interests will be taken care of by any party, no question. I think this confirms my point that corporations don't need to steal elections when they can buy them.
My comparison of Bush and Kerry may have seemed over-the-top to you, but it fits in with my perspective on the American 2 party system. I see the parties like the sides of a pyramid, wide at the bottom, converging at the top. I think there is more truth to this than most Dems or Repubs would care to admit.
If you want to reach that top rung of the ladder, you are going to be vetted, screened and made to jump through enough hoops to ensure that only someone with the "right" views will be selected. Mass voting, by fostering the illusion of consent, merely conceals the true oligarchic nature of the system. Maybe I'm just cynical.
Finally, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth by saying that you should be waiting for a righteous Democrat, (if there actually are any). That's just my style.
Cheers |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 5701
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 7:55 pm: |
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ae35 -- you're wrong. That was melodramatic. |
ae35unit
Citizen
Username: Ae35unit
Post Number: 94
Registered: 2-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, June 8, 2006 - 8:26 pm: |
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3ringale- I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I just think your perspective is whack. So whatever. I think I get your screen name...........
cjc- That was pretty funny..... |
3ringale
Citizen
Username: Threeringale
Post Number: 241
Registered: 1-2006
| | Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006 - 7:39 am: |
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ae35unit,
Everyone I know thinks my perspective is whack, so welcome to the club!
Cheers
PS You did figure out the basis for my screen name. |
Tom Reingold
Supporter
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 14679
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 12:23 am: |
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June 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Those Pesky Voters
By BOB HERBERT
I remember fielding telephone calls on Election Day 2004 from friends and colleagues anxious to talk about the exit polls, which seemed to show that John Kerry was beating George W. Bush and would be the next president.
As the afternoon faded into evening, reports started coming in that the Bush camp was dispirited, maybe even despondent, and that the Kerry crowd was set to celebrate. (In an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes, "In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.")
I was skeptical.
The election was bound to be close, and I knew that Kerry couldn't win Florida. I had been monitoring the efforts to suppress Democratic votes there and had reported on the thuggish practice (by the Jeb Bush administration) of sending armed state police officers into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando to "investigate" allegations of voter fraud.
As far as I was concerned, Florida was safe for the G.O.P. That left Ohio.
Republicans, and even a surprising number of Democrats, have been anxious to leave the 2004 Ohio election debacle behind. But Mr. Kennedy, in his long, heavily footnoted article ("Was the 2004 Election Stolen?"), leaves no doubt that the democratic process was trampled and left for dead in the Buckeye State. Mr. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio if all of his votes had been counted, and if all of the eligible voters who tried to vote for him had been allowed to cast their ballots.
Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's ("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer. Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially those in urban and heavily black areas.
The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.
No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.
For example, the shortages of voting machines and the long lines with waits of seven hours or more occurred mostly in urban areas and discouraged untold numbers of mostly Kerry voters.
Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Mr. Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans."
Mr. Mebane told me that he compared the distribution of voting machines in Ohio's 2004 presidential election with the distribution of machines for a primary election held the previous spring. For the primary, he said, "There was no sign of racial bias in the distribution of the machines." But for the general election in November, "there was substantial bias, with fewer voting machines per voter in areas that were heavily African-American."
Mr. Mebane said he was unable to determine whether the machines were "intentionally" allocated "to create these biases."
Mr. Kennedy noted that this was just one of an endless sequence of difficulties confronting Democratic voters that stretched from the registration process to the post-election recount. Statistical analyses — not just of the distribution of voting machines, but of wildly anomalous voting patterns — have left nonpartisan experts shaking their heads.
The lesson out of Ohio (and Florida before it) is that the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media and ordinary voters need to fight back.
The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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