Asymmetrical Information

Not strong enough. The entire Completists' Full House Platinum Edition DVD with running audio commentary by Dave Coulier in his Bullwinkle voice.

Um, if you're talking about the GOP-funded Voter Outreach of America, well...it was a Republican ruse. So I think the line is, "All political parties play these sorts of games. Democrats tried to make Nader meet state ballot requirements, and worse...."

Anyway, for those who care: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_10.php#003670, and down.

What you said. Voter fraud is a crime against all of us, of whatever political stripe, and hardly ever punished. If you are interested in reading more, Bill Hobbs is collecting stories about it at: http://billhobbs.com/hobbsonline/cat_voter_fraud.html.

Also interesting is the story in Drudge today about how the DNC is advising Democratic operatives around the country to claim voter intimidation even when there isn't any:

"The Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee are advising election operatives to declare voter intimidation -- even if none exists, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

"A 66-page mobilization plan to be issued by the Kerry/Edwards campaign and the Democratic National Committee states: 'If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a 'pre-emptive strike.''"

The DNC and its "non-partisan" allies such as People for the American Way claim, of course, that there is no such thing as voter fraud, it never happens, and the only voting crime consists of nasty Republicans intimidating minority voters by, for example, seeking to enforce laws requiring a photo ID to vote.

DBL:

"... and [Dems say] the only voting crime consists of nasty Republicans intimidating minority voters by, for example, seeking to enforce laws requiring a photo ID to vote."

And (AFAIK) the GOP-backed voter fraud she's actually talking about in the post. Not that you could tell that from the post, given that there were no links, no party references, and no name attached to the actual group alleged to be committing the fraud.

Ah, studied neutrality. A thing of beauty, indeed.

This is all very horrendous. If we can not hold bipartisan elections, our republic can not survive. And, to me, the worst of all is the Kerry Edwards memo; it indicates a form of fraud at the highest levels.

And if Mssrs Kerry and Edwards do not themselves disavow these actions done on their behalves, a pox on them too.

I'm calling for a constitutional amendment mandating the death penalty for vote fraud.

Unless you think that's not strict enough.

Method of execution to be left to the states - although I think you have a good starting point...

Jane's right; hanging's not good enough for 'em. That's why the English devised for treason the special punishment of drawing (that is, being dragged on the ground to the place of execution behind a horse), hanging (but not until death), disemboweling, and quartering (including beheading). (I think the convict's privates were also cut off and, together with the entrails, burned before his eyes.) In a democracy, it seems peculiarly apt to equate vote- and voter-fraud with treason.

When I read DBL's cut-and-paste of the Drudge piece, I immediately when to the Drudge website. This is what I found: a single image, apparently edited, of one paragraph from what is described as a 66-page memo. For readers' convenience (and because it's so short), I've transcribed it here.

Kerry[flag]Edwards
COLORADO
ELECTION DAY MANUAL
NOVEMBER 2004
[DNC logo]
Democratic National Committee
www.democrats.org
2. [sic] If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a "pre-emptive strike" (particularly well-suited to states in which there [sic] techniques have been tried in the past).
* Issue a press release
i. Reviewing Republican tactic [sic] used in the past in your area or state
ii. Quoting party/minority/civil rights leadership as denouncing tactics that discourage people from voting
* Prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points
* Place stories in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics
* Warn local newspapers not to accept advertising that is not properly disclaimed or that contains false warnings about voting requirements and/or about what will happen at the polls

Hmmm..., interesting is the point about Drudge's pdf document being doctored. If this document does not accurately reflect Kerry / Edwards campaign activity, I withdraw my criticism.

But if the editting merely takes one page of the document and transposes to another; and if taking the paragraph out of context does not change the meaning, I stand by my criticism and still await the disavowal.

And if the document was editted, I would also criticise Drudge and / or Drudge's source for not being more forthcoming about the nature of the evidence.

Shouldn't they have to watch Full House before we quarter them? The bit with the hanging and entrails weren't always the immediate cause of death, but making a quartered corpse watch Full House only punishes the innocent on clean up duty.

mike p -

I think it's to avoid running into the prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishment'.

If the founding fathers had foreseen this, though, there would have been an exception.

Its amazing people choose to concentrate on right wing dreck from Drudge, who makes Rather look like the God of document authentication, and ignore the fact the police are investigating reps for destroying dems voter registration. It seems the witness that went to the police had "liberated" some of the destroyed voter registration papers from the garbage, this story could be big...

Vote fraud is a specialty of the Democratic party. They've been at it for decades and they're darn good at it. Heck, they probably couldn't elect many of their candidates without it.

Begbee-- I don't think people are ignoring it, and this group does look bad. Of course, ACORN has been investigated over doing the same thing in several places as well, registering Democrats and throwing out Republican registrations.

Tim, do you lack something in your diet? A woman, maybe?

As the Dems say in Chicago, vote early, vote often, and don't let death cheat your relitives out of their vote (so, apparently, they vote for them).

The biggest vote fraud todate was the (real) JFK election, augmented by ballots-R-us, the mob and their lackys the minors unions. What a country.

And to agree with Jeff, the Repubs don't hold a candle. Remember the "millions of minorities" cheated out of their votes last election, they were people who were wrongly listed as felons, the majority were whites, as we know they don't count. It is interesting to note that 90% of felons vote Democratic, that really doesn't suprise me, since character doesn't count. Let's see the present candidate is a self proclaimed war criminal and the last Dem in the oral office is a convicted perjurer. Check and double check.

Here's a golden oldy from 2000 in Florida:

"We have just discovered what we believe to be the most troubling case so far," said Tucker Eskew, Bush spokesman.

He was talking about what happened between 8:30 a.m. and 8:45 a.m. yesterday.

"Yesterday, we took a handful of ballots at random out of the ballot box under full view of Democrat observers. We quickly found six votes for Bush in the Gore stack," Eskew said.

Republican lawyers immediately approached Theresa LePore and told her what they had found - her response knocked them for a loop.

"Oh, I have heard something about that," Eskew quoted her as saying.

According to Eskew, a young woman counter had called a county worker and said she thought she might have miscounted.

"We now know the county worker dutifully reported this to LePore. For some reason unknown to us, LePore did not utter a word to our side," Eskew said.

"It was just dumb luck that we found a bad count at random."

"One can't escape a perception of an accidental mistake compounded by the effect of what looks like a cover-up."

Source Link:

http://www.kressworks.com/Politics/Election_2000/Results/NYPOST_COM_News_Columnists_CAUGHT_RED_HANDED_AT_SHENANIGANS_WITH_HAND_COUNTED_VOTES_By_STEVE_DUNLEAVY.htm

Shouldn't we wait at least until someone investigates the charges (made by a fired employee) before we condemn the Republicans in mass to death?

Beloney:

You're not supposed to mention that she's talking about Republicans. Studied neutrality, remember?

To tell you the truth, this makes me smile. The Dems have been getting away with so much fraud it makes my head spin, now that the GOP is wising up maybe something will finally be done about it. This is the way it always seems to go, the Dems practice slash and burn politics for years and finally the GOP wises up and gets someone like Ann Coulter to counter them on the same level and they squeal unfair like stuck pigs. The media ridicules conservatives for years then finally Rush and now the internet come along and again, Unfair!!! from the liberals--who still completely dominate the media.

It is actually too bad that the GOP is continually going down to their level, but it isn't suprising.

Florida, where I lived and had friends involved in the actual vote count during 2000, really did it for me. There was no vote fraud in Florida, and to see what was manufactured by Gore and company was truly apalling. I have no sympathy for the Dems.

One example, the Palm Beach ballot. Teresa LaPore. She was a Democrat, the ballot was designed by Democrats, it was signed off and pre tested by Democrats before the election. Democratic operatives under the guidance of Donna Brazile went around to all these really old senile people in West Palm and registered them up to vote, the day of the election they went around in vans and picked them up, gave them free food and took them to the polling place.

Then early in the morning a long time Democratic party activist complained that he thought he marked his ballot wrong for Pat Buchanan, yada yada yada, went to court and filed suit, then the Dems hire a telemarketing firm that somehow knew how to target all the old people that they had taken to the polls, by 5:00 pm on *election day*! they had already called *5000* of them and convinced them they had mistakenly voted for Buchanan. All this happens by 5 on election day, 3 full hours before the polls have even closed.

Tell me they didn't have this planned in advance.

Back when I was a Freshman in college I was approached by a Democratic activist on campus and asked to register to vote. I figured hey, what the hell, and filled out the paperwork, registering as a Libertarian, and handed the forms back to the guy.

I guess he either threw them away or forgot to turn them in, because I didn't get registered that time around. It didn't matter that much to me, since I didn't have an real interest in any of the candidates, but it was still annoying.

Unfortunately, voter fraud is something both sides have engaged in. It's a non-partisan problem.

It goes without saying that the Republican group that threw out those registrations need ot be condemned, and I think some sort of legal punishment should be meted out as well (don't know the law or if that's possible).

As for voter fraud, all I know is anytime I hear someone speaking AGAINST having voters identify themselves with a valid ID before they are allowed to cast a ballot is someone who is telling me they are strongly, strongly in favor of voter fraud. My guess is those people are afraid that requiring ID would prevent their side from getting people to vote multiple times, getting illegals to vote, etc.

It is insanely easy to get some sort of government ID if you are a U.S. citizen. Anyone against ID at thew polls wants fraud.

"napablogger" correctly notes that in the past Democratic candidates benefited from various fraudulent practices. Of course, the fact that those candidates are not the candidates now standing, and had different positions and agendas doesn't make any difference to "napablogger". "napablogger" implies that those past wrongs justify fraud by today's Republicans, presumably some sort of eye-for-an-eye justice, even though the people losing their eyes now weren't the people taking out eyes forty years ago. Perhaps "napablogger" should move to the Middle East, where his kind of reasoning has wider acceptance.

Having at least in his mind justified Republican-oriented fraud, "napablogger" continues by asserting that in fact there was no fraud in Florida. Attempting to prove that assertion, "napablogger" notes (correctly) that the Palm Beach County "butterfly" ballot was devised by a Democrat and was published for comments in advance of the election. "napablogger" then recites a sequence of election day events which he claims must indicate some sort of pre-planned conspiracy.

I don't know about the sequence of events that "napablogger" recites, but assuming that it is true, it still doesn't amount to proof that (1) there was no Florida vote fraud in 2000 or (2) the Democrats were behind some nefarious plan to call the election into question.

First, nobody claims that the "butterfly" ballot was fraudulent. In fact, if "napablogger" really knew the facts, he would know that the "butterfly" ballot by itself was not the problem. The problem was that when the ballot was inserted into some of the punch card holders used to cast actual ballots, the arrows on the "butterfly" ballot did not align with the holes in the punch card. I know this for two reasons: First, I actually read the detailed accounts of the problems with the "butterfly" ballot and looked at illustrations of the ballot, rather than merely relying on "Rush's" conclusions.

Second, on the morning of the election, I spoke with my mother, who was living in Palm Beach County in 2000, and who is neither senile nor blind nor especially elderly and who has voted in every election since 1960. Moreover, she is very familiar with punchcards, having used them to program computers in the early sixties. She said that when she went to vote, she had a hard time figuring out which hole to punch because the arrows did not align with the perforated holes in the punchcard.

But the "butterfly" ballot, while demonstrating some of the problems with the voting technology in use, was not an example of vote fraud. The vote fraud consisted in such practices as (1) turning away black voters; (2) de-registering black voters without notice based on a list known to be inaccurate; (3) throwing away Democratic registrations while retaining Republican ones; (4) adopting inconsistent standards for absentee ballots, which favored Republican voters; (5) halting manual recounts even when there was positive proof that the machines produced inaccurate results even on correctly completed ballots; (6) halting manual recounts even where inaccurately completed ballots made absolutely clear what candidate the voter intended to vote for (such as where the voter both punched and wrote-in the same candidate); (7) abandoning the formerly uniform rule of "voter intent" in favor of "machine intent" when it suited Republican desires.

Tellingly, "napablogger" disregards all of those instances of real vote fraud in favor of an inaccurate and incomplete account of what amounted to administrative incompetence and a determined attempt to get it corrected before it was too late. (Oh, but Republicans don't believe in correcting mistakes, because that might mean they would have to admit them.)

Nor does "napablogger" even mention the continuing intimidation, disparities and deliberate obfuscation that Florida Republicans have engaged in since 2000. It seems the only thing the Republicans have learned is that vote fraud pays off. Certainly, that is the lesson I would draw from the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore.

The reps get caught red handed destroying voter registration, and suddenly half century old speculation on Joe Kennedy, Sam Giancanna, and Daily having dead people in Cook County is presented as fact. Then we hear about Fla in 2000, but theres no mention that the firm hired by jrs brother to record the Fla vote had a Bush cousin as company President. I'll give it up for you reps, you sure know how to stay on offense...

Regarding yesterday's Drudge Report on the Democratic Election Manual, the party has posted the text of the entire section, which puts in context the one paragraph Drudge saw fit post. So far, no update by Drudge; I guess he figures he's done his work: The truth never catches up with the lie.

As a Republican, I condemn any sort of effort to keep anyone from voting, providing they're eligible to do so. It doesn't matter who's doing it.

Dredging up past sins (even when said dredging is completely unsupported in fact) is something we've endured so long from the Left that, hey, sometimes some of us can't resist the temptation ourselves. As someone's pointed out already, though, screwing with the votes of the other guy's party is something that's not confined to Republicans. You can pretend that it is, but that would be dishonest.

Michael and Begbee,

Quit crying. All that guy was doing was relating a personal experience he had. Everybody knows that both parties cheat. Quit taking sides, it's immature.

Full House is too good for 'em.

Biodome.

Several things:

1) I saw the head of one of the major "non-partisan" activitist groups on C-SPAN calling for 30,000 volunteers to poll watch in November. He explicitly said that voter fraud was a myth, it never happens, that all they were concerned with was right wing intimidation of minority voters.

2) All voting fraud should be severely punished, whether by ACORN (which has apparently adided and abetted thousands of fraudulent registrations around the country this year) or by Republicans. It's all evil.

3) No one has yet responded to Jane's question: What's wrong with requiring photo ID or some other form of reliable ID to vote? Is voting less important than renting a video?

4) Ed Cox (President Nixon's son-in-law) tells the following story. In 1960, Mayor Daley delivered the Chicago vote totals long after the downstate votes were posted, and surprise, surprise, Kennedy carried Chicago by a sufficient margin to carry the state. In 1968, the downstate Republicans decided they weren't going to play that game and refused to turn in any votes until Chicago did. Finally, around 2 or 3 a.m., long after all the other states were in, Daley gave up and turned in the Chicago vote totals, whereupon the downstate Republicans turned in their votes.

Republican attempts to steal this election are well-documented, and orchestrated from the top.
1. The inclusion on the felon list of hundreds of innocent black men. The failure of Florida to clean up the lists even though they have known of the problem for years.
@. The attempt by the Ohio Sec. of State to distroy Democratic registration forms by enforcing a never-before-enforced provison in the law. The Ohio registration forms were provided by the state. why should people (mostly Democrats) lose their vote for a mistake made by the state?
3. The chair of the New Hampshire Republican party was convicted of election fraud. Yet he remains the chair.
4. The use of Florida police offficers in an attempt to intimadate elderly or ill black women who voted last election by way of absentee ballots. They were told a bogus story about an investigation of absentee ballot fraud in an attempt to scare them out of voting absentee this year.

Given this reality of course the Democrats should be beating the drum about Republican fraud and beating it now. The Republicans will cheat in this election. They already have.

1) How many disenfranchised because of the felon list? Within a factor of two is ok, but you'll need to supply a link. A lot of time and taxpayer dollars were spent in determining the exact extent of disenfranchisement in Florida, so this should be no problem for you.
4) No one but Bob Herbert actually believes this to be true.

Miss Wonkie,

Please note that your point number 4 has been thoroughly discredited. It never happened. You might want to revise your list. I don't know about your other items, they may or may not be true.

If the Democrats are now worried about election fraud, that's good, I applaud that. Several weeks ago, the head of the RNC suggested to the head of the DNC that they send joint poll watching teams out to all precincts in all battleground states to combat both illegal voter intimidation and voting fraud. The head of the DNC dismissed this out of hand, presumably because the DNC seeks to whip up minority sentiment against Bush by raising false claims of intimidation. Well, politics ain't beanball, as they say, and I guess that strategy has worked for the Dems before.

While we are on the subject of Florida, I would also note that the US Civil Rights Commission, notwithstanding its control by Mary Frances Berry, an extremely partisan Democrat, was unable to come up with any evidence of intentional discrimination against minority voters in Florida in 2000. What it found was negligence and incomptence, which Miss Berry tried mightily to characterize as malign. Justice Holmes once wrote that even a dog can tell the difference between being kicked and tripped over, but I guess Miss Berry and the Democrats cannot.

In the 25 counties that had the most balloting problems in Florida, 24 of them had Democratic supervisors of election. Damn those evil Republicans to hell.

Lets see, Jeb Bush is Gov of Fla, K Harris is a Bush cousin and is President of the company responsible for recording the vote in Fla in 2000, and we are expected to believe that the thousands of disenfranchised voters is a matter of negligence and incompetence? It does fit the pattern.

911 wasn't a Bush failure, it was bad Intell. Even though nobody in the Intell community was fired for 911, we are expected to believe that the lack of Iraqi wmd lies at the feet of the Intell community and not Bush. And the net loss of jobs over the past 4 years is Clintons fault. And the fact the tax cuts didnt provide nearly the number of jobs they were expected to as an "economic stimulus", lets make them permenant anyway.

Voter fraud is like everything other bad thing thats happened in the past 4 years, its not jrs fault. The reps seem to think stupidity is an acceptable excuse for across the board incompetence and corruption.

Michael, you have mischaracterized my comments, I know that there are now Republicans at least credibly accused of throwing away registrations, etc. I believe Republicans have committed vote fraud in the past in some isolated incidents. My smile is over the fact that the Democrats are squealing like pigs over something that they themselves are doing like crazy, and have done much more than Republicans in the past.

Also, there was no fraud in Florida. I can read too. Try the human rights commission report chaired by that idiot Mary Frances Berry. The worst instance of a black person being "denied" the right to vote was a guy stopped at a police stop that was up every month at the request of the local neighborhood, a stop located two miles from the polling place. He just "felt" intimidated from voting by being stopped and asked for his drivers license, even though he went ahead and voted.

There are more details about this that make it even worse. I just saw one of the members of the Human Rights Commission on TV two days ago and he said their investigation found NO fraud in the Florida 2000 vote. The whole thing was a huge propaganda campaign by Gore to try to win the election. Mistakes are made in every election and always will be. The felons? the fraud was that more of them voted than should have. Every single felon scratched off a voting list got a letter saying that they were being scratched off well before the election and could have responded to it. 6500 felons voted that shouldn't have, meaning Gore got votes he shouldn't have gotten, according to Democrat logic. It was well known that there was a problem with the accuracy of the felon lists long before the election and twenty counties opted out of it at their descretion. That means felons were able to vote in those twenty counties, which is more illegal votes for Gore.

Your mentioning of Bush's cousin or whatever being in some elections position is meaningless conspiracy babble invented by Democrats. In Florida, the counties have total control over the conduct of the elections, and they are elected positions. Teresa LaPore was an elected Democrat in charge of Palm Beach county. The counties that had so called problems according to Gore and his legal army were ALL DEMOCRATIC RUN COUNTIES!!! Volusia, Dade, Palm, and Brevard.

If Bush is so awful why do the Democrats have to constantly lie about him?

I can't believe we are still talking about this. Get over it, your side lost.

From the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Executive Summary, Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election:

The disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters. The magnitude of the impact can be seen from any of several perspectives:

• Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, black voters were nearly 10 times more likely than nonblack voters to have their ballots rejected.


• Estimates indicate that approximately 14.4 percent of Florida’s black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of nonblack Florida voters who did not have their presidential votes counted.


• Statistical analysis shows that the disparity in ballot spoilage rates—i.e., ballots cast but not counted—between black and nonblack voters is not the result of education or literacy differences. This conclusion is supported by Governor Jeb Bush’s Select Task Force on Election Procedures, Standards and Technology, which found that error rates stemming from uneducated, uninformed, or disinterested voters account for less than 1 percent of the problems.


• Approximately 11 percent of Florida voters were African American; however, African Americans cast about 54 percent of the 180,000 spoiled ballots in Florida during the November 2000 election based on estimates derived from county-level data. These statewide estimates were corroborated by the results in several counties based on actual precinct data.
  

Poor counties, particularly those with large minority populations, were more likely to possess voting systems with higher spoilage rates than the more affluent counties with significant white populations. There is a high correlation between counties and precincts with a high percentage of African American voters and the percentage of spoiled ballots. For example:

• Nine of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of African American voters had spoilage rates above the Florida average.


• Of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of white voters, only two counties had spoilage rates above the state average.


• Gadsden County, with the highest rate of spoiled ballots, also had the highest percentage of African American voters.


• Where precinct data were available, the data show that 83 of the 100 precincts with the highest numbers of spoiled ballots are black-majority precincts.
  

The magnitude of the disenfranchisement, including the disparity between black and nonblack voters, is supported by the testimony of witnesses at the Commission’s hearings. These witnesses include local election officials, poll workers, ordinary voters, and activists. Among the sworn testimony:

• One potential voter waited hours at the polls because of a registration mix-up as poll workers attempted to call the office of the supervisor of elections. The call never got through and the individual was not allowed to vote. A former poll worker herself, she testified that she never saw anything like it during her 18 years as a poll worker.


• 
  A poll worker in Miami-Dade County with 15 years of experience testified, “By far this was the worst election I have ever experienced. After that election, I decided I didn’t want to work as a clerk anymore.”


• 
  A poll worker in Palm Beach County testified that she had to use her personal cell phone to attempt to contact the election supervisor’s office. Despite trying all day, she only got through two or three times over the course of 12 hours.


• A Broward County poll worker testified that in past elections it took about 10 minutes to get through to the elections supervisor. During the course of the November 2000 election, she turned away approximately 40–50 potential voters because she could not access the supervisor of elections.
  
• A Boynton Beach poll worker explained how his precinct workers turned away about 30–50 potential voters because they could not get through to the supervisor of elections. He was successful only once during an eight-hour period.


• Other persons testified about waiting in long lines only to be ultimately denied their right to vote.

The Commission calls upon the attorney general of the United States to immediately begin the litigation process to determine liability under the VRA and appropriate remedies. The Commission is a fact-finding body, authorized to investigate allegations of voting discrimination, fraud, and other irregularities. However, it does not adjudicate violations of the law, hold trials, or determine civil or criminal liability. It is within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice and Florida law enforcement officials to seek appropriate sanctions and remedies. In addition to calling on the attorney general to initiate the litigation process on this issue, the Commission requests this action on a number of other issues as well, such as Florida’s handling of its voter roll purge and its failure to accommodate voters with disabilities and limited English proficiency.

Again, the counties with the worst spoilage records were run by Democrats. You can argue all you like that this was some conspiracy foisted upon the poor black people of Florida by Jeb Bush, but Jeb doesn't run the elections, nor does Kathleen Harris. In fact, the implementation of the felon lists to cull the rolls was left up to the supervisors of election, most of whom were Democrats. Democrats, incidentally, who are elected (and frequently reelected) by the voters in those very counties. Self-inflicted wounds are the worst, I hear.

The USCCR report is a joke. They spend months of time, money and effort to investigate disenfranchisement, and pretty much all they can come up with is a dozen or so anecdotes.

I blame Bush for one thing only: his failure to dismiss the lot of them for gross incompetence. He did fire one supervisor (IIRC) just before the 2002 elections, but that only happened after proof of gross mismanagement of funds became public.

Can someone explain briefly, for this non-Murrican, exactly what is the purpose of registering for one party or the other? The primaries are past, so why not register as 'a legal voter', affiliation not anybody's business.

Thank’s for the following:

“A poll worker in Miami-Dade County with 15 years of experience testified, “By far this was the worst election I have ever experienced.

A poll worker in Palm Beach County testified that she had to use her personal cell phone to attempt to contact the election supervisor’s office.

A Broward County poll worker testified that in past elections it took about 10 minutes to get through to the elections supervisor”

Good Point.
“The counties that had so called problems according to Gore and his legal army were ALL DEMOCRATIC RUN COUNTIES!!! Volusia, Dade, Palm, and Brevard.”

If Michael truely wants Ashcroft to give him his pound of flesh Ashcroft would have to throw people like Lepore in the clink, I can hear the howling now (did Lepore get re-elected?). But the real solution in Fla is that you'd have to have the Dems elect more competent people. You’d think that if you were defrauding someone, you wouldn’t defraud your own votes. But ‘ah well, “stupid is as stupid does”. It would appear that in the Dems most cited fraud case last election, they were caught ‘frauding’ themselves. Can you do that? Lets see, if a tree falls in a forest…

The Repub’s have, for the most part been inept at voter fraud, and shouldn’t. I would more whole-heartedly say “bad repub, bad repub”, but the dems have been at it too long and too consistently. I would prefer that the repubs get smarter at catching the dems at it. This would certainly upset the “BS” stations “instant result” program format. It would, however end the practice of the Rather/Brokaw group from influencing the results in the west with results from the east coast.

The only reason not to have a photo ID requirement would be states like California giving Illegal aliens drivers licenses, but requiring them not to state whether or not the owner of the license is an illegal or not, on the premise that the term illegal makes someone here illegally feel bad.

Under since you asked...

Can someone explain briefly, for this non-Murrican, exactly what is the purpose of registering for one party or the other? The primaries are past, so why not register as 'a legal voter', affiliation not anybody's business.

Posted by rgt at October 16, 2004 11:07 AM

Actually, that is the third choice. Registering as an Independent normally means that you can't vote in the primaries. However, in some states anyone can vote in any primary, that seems a bit odd.

Republicans are truly the scum of the earth. They are destroying our country with their partisan attacks on America. We need to stand up and fight them on every front, everywhere, all the time.

Michael, all those pseudo problems you listed that the Democrats on the HRC ginned up happened in DEMOCRATICALLY controlled counties. Maybe you all will finally admit that you are racists now.

Just because there were more errors by black voters does not mean there was fraud. You need to find some evidence of fraud. Just because some commission pronounces it was not the result of poorer english skills or education does not make it so. Maybe it was the result of Democratic operatives in the counties who prepared and counted the ballots doing fraud. Who knows, but to claim fraud you have to have more than statistics, especially with something that has been studied as much as this election.

“Posted by ken at October 16, 2004 11:58 AM”

Ken, I just wanted to thank you for your well-reasoned assessment of your position. You obviously have the gift. Feel free to go to the source below for a reasoned position similar to yours. Before you do the Queen of Hearts, “off with there heads” thing, you might become more informed, keep trying, check back after puberty.

Have a nice day.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=6317

You're right. The people who got cheated should go find those jokers and give them a good scare.

Michael, thanks for the link to the DOJ letter. I assume you read the letter; I note that only one of the 10 FL cases that the DOJ did not pursue mentions lack of jurisdiction. That one was the butterfly ballot case; I invite you to explain why you think ballot design is a federal responsibility.

I also note that of the 21 investigations the DOJ pursued (14 in Florida), 5 were going to court as of mid-2002. 12 investigations were closed (10 in Florida), and 4 were continuing.

The Civil Rights Commission threw around a lot of charges, but remember that no one actually can trace which ballots were minority votes and which were not. The claims about minority votes having a higher spoilage rate are strictly statistical; and it's not surprising that poorer counties had worse voting machines and higher minority populations. As several people have pointed out, these areas were run by Democrats; apparently the antique voting machines hadn't bothered these officials earlier.

Can someone explain briefly, for this non-Murrican, exactly what is the purpose of registering for one party or the other? The primaries are past, so why not register as 'a legal voter', affiliation not anybody's business.

RGT, you can see the Maryland voter registration form in this PDF. You can register as: Democrat, Republican, Green, Constitution, Libertarian, Populist, Unaffiliated, or Other. If you register for a party that holds a primary, you get notified about it; my impression is that only the Republicans and Democrats holds primaries in Maryland. Even if the primary is past, you would probably want to choose your party now so you'll be notified of future primaries. (As long as you vote every 4 years, your registration continues in force.)

TNT, PJ;

Thanks. That's what I thought, but confirmation is always good. I'd forgotten/overlooked the differences between states, though.

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