Asymmetrical Information

[Blinks several times]

Jimmy Carter still has a reputation? @_@

- S.P.M.

Unfortunately, the reputation he now has will only be reinforced.

It would be a shame to squander your reputation

If I had Jimmy Carter's reputation, I'd be begging to squander it...

Hi,

I'm writing from Venezuela. There is this feeling that Jimmy and the CC screwed us pretty well. They did not do a very good job at monitoring the procedures, and since the government controlled all the options in the game such as deciding not to allow the counting of the paper receipts printed along with the touch screen voting. (My advice, run from electronic voting; beware a Florida company called smartmatic, they sell voting machines, but violated their own protocol by allowing all day two-way communications between the voting machines and the network back at HQ, i.e. communications were supposed to be one way, and only after the voting ended)
Some interesting articles have appeared in the WSJ opinion section penned by Mary Anastasia Grady, counterpointed by Mr. Carter. Also, Dr. Jennifer McCoy has engaged a group of statisticians, most notably Jonathan Taylor from Stanford, to counter arguments from a group that includes two Harvard and MIT economists as well as a super-string physicist (who knew we had any!) who are analyzing the data in undreamed of ways. All for nothing, since we can't get rid of Chavez; but Carter and his group have lost quite a bit of prestige, even if it's just among us third worlders.

He ought to confine himself to building houses for the homeless and we should all decide to cease paying attention when he speaks.

maybe you ought to take off those pink sunglasses for a second.

The top election official has also played a leading role in qualifying Ralph Nader as a candidate, knowing that two-thirds of his votes in the previous election came at the expense of Al Gore.

Your outrage at the idea of a supervisor brazenly allowing people to vote for someone other than Al Gore might give people the mistaken idea that you care less about having democratic elections than having Democratic elections.

I believe you are unfairly misparsing the intent of the statement and should have given Carter the benefit of the doubt.

Some background:

Nader originally qualified for the Florida ballot with the endorsement of the state's Reform Party. The Reform Party had competed in the last election, so they had a right to a ballot line. A judge hordered Glenda Hood, Florida's Secretary of State, to strike Nader from the ballot because the Reform Party was no longer a viable entity in Florida and could not endorse any candidate for automatic access. Sounds reasonable to me; Nader was endorsed over a conference call because the RP couldn't even get its act together to hold a nom con.

Hood immediately appealed the decision. Rightly or wrongly, why do you suppose she did that? It appeared to all concerned that she had a strong interest in getting Nader on the ballot. She's not alone among Secretaries of State and partisan judges around the country who have acted to exclude or include Nader when he has tested gray areas of ballot access law. And he's been doing that in a lot of states.

Does anyone believe partisan Secretaries of State haven't been acting in a partisan way?

In light of events, it is obvious that Carter added the part about Nader winning likely Democratic voters as an explanation why Glenda Hood appealed a judicial order to strike Nader from the ballot, not why Nader doesn't belong on the ballot in the first place.

Even if you think Glenda Hood was right to appeal--and apparently the Florida Supreme Court agreed with her--it still puts Carter's statement in a different and wholly understandable light.

For more info on Carter and his role in Venezuela please visit www.venezuelatoday.net. The gold stars in the English section have plenty on Carter and what just happened in Venezuela.

Carter does not consider any election to be fair unless a ruthless dictator is elected.

Jane,

This is unfair and over the line.

The article is clear that Carter is responding to questions he has been asked specifically about Florida. His comments go to an important point: that election officials should be nonpartisan, and he is giving examples of situations in Florida where they clearly are not. Whatever you think of Democratic maneuverings in FL, it is the Republicans who control the election process, and criticizing them for real abuses is wholly legitimate.

Please retract this post, or if you refuse, have the honesty to drop your "I'm not a Republican partisan" posturing.

You don't have one percent of Carter's integrity.

Well Bernard,
I think we all recognize your type by now.
You can't address the argument directly, so you impugn the motives and integrity of your host.

If you move in the kind of circles where everyone KNOWS that GWB stole the election, then you are never going to be open to some of the arguments presented above.

Please stick to the arguments; if you can't resist getting shrill then your post just becomes so much noise for the rest of us to have to scroll through.

Gazzer,

I did address the arguments. I guess your reading skills aren't too good. Carter focussed his article on Florida because that's what he gets asked about. He talks about Republicans because they are the ones who control the state's electoral machinery, which he plainly thinks should be run by a nonpartisan group.

Do I impugn Jane's motives? Yes I do. The post badly distorts the content of the article. Jane has repeatedly claimed that she is not a Republican partisan, that if she votes for Bush it will be only afer agonizing reflection, etc. Well, I don't believe her.

Bernie,
My reading skills are good enough to recognize when someone misspells "focused" as "focussed" in their second sentence.
Impugn Jane's integrity and my reading skills if you must. The fact remains that Democrats and liberals have a very selective outrage over what has happened in Florida (being outraged over Kathleen Harris while ignoring the behavior of the Florida Supreme court being just one example).
After all, one can hardly claim that Kathleen Harris had a free hand when we have seen what a juiced-up judiciary is capable of.

If you want to claim that Jimmy Carter was misrepresented, then you should address Jane's point that he glossed over what the Democrats did with the convicted felons (they liked them) but didn't do for military voters (didn't like them and tried to invalidate their ballots).

No more snarky comments from me and, I hope, none from you

Gazzer,

Both my dictionaries, an old Webster's Collegiate and a recent American Heritage, give "focussed" as an acceptable spelling, along with "focused." They do not, however, give "Kathleen" as an alternative spelling for "Katherine."

Jane's complaint is twofold: that Carter talks only about Florida and that he talks only about Republicans. For the third time, the reasons are clear in the article. He discusses Florida because he is frequently asked about Florida. He discusses Republicans because they control the procedures there, and Carter is advocate of having elections run on a non-partisan basis. I'm not familiar with the Democratic activities you describe, but if there was a conscious effort to register ineligible voters then I disapprove, and so, I bet, does Carter.

But that's not what the article is about. It's about the problems that arise when election procedures are controlled by one side.

If Jane wants to criticize something the Democrats are doing, in Florida or elsewhere, let her. But she should not misrepresent what Carter writes.

Jane has made a great show of her political objectivity. I have always been dubious, and this post helps to confirm my suspicions that this is just posturing. That is why I impugn her motives.

I take your remarks about snarky posts to mean that you recognize the that your last post was not altogether snark-free. Fine. We all do that sometimes.

Jimmy Carter has just trashed the credibility of Carter Center. How can he purport to be a non-partisan monitor of international elections after launching such a transparently partisan attack on the exemplary electoral practices of the United States? This outburst WILL be used against his center, and it will hurt the cause of democracy.

Actually, if Jimmy could pull his head out for a moment, he might have noticed that Florida law actually puts most of the control over elections in the hands of local officials... and in FL that would be Democrats. He might also have noted that the judiciary also has a say... and in FL that would be Democrats. He might have noted that in 2000, that supposedly confusing "butterfly" ballot was designed by a Democrat. And that in Jacksonville, a fair number of people voted for Harry Browne (the Libertarian) because they misunderstood instructions to vote for Democrat Corrine Brown for Congress. And that those instructions were given by the Democrats who registered these people and drove them to the polls.

I'm not saying that Bush and Hood don't have a role also, just that Jimmy (as usual) is performing his duty as a party hack, not looking at the entire picture. If you want to criticise partisanship, don't act like a partisan, Jimbo.

Brittain33,
"Even if you think Glenda Hood was right to appeal--and apparently the Florida Supreme Court agreed with her--it still puts Carter's statement in a different and wholly understandable light."

No it doesn't. Unless you are postulating that Jimmy Carter is a telepath revealing his mutant powers for the very first time he is merely making a random accusation without evidence to back it up. Now if he had pointed to a Liberterian or some Perrotgie type candidate being excluded from being on the ballot by the mean ole Republicans I might have had more sympathy for his tale of woe. As it is he's merely sounding like he had another run-in with a killer rabbit.

BTW, can you refresh my memory and explain why a Democrat like Mr. Carter would be more concerned with the wellbeing of the Democratic Party than he would be with having as many options for the voters as possible if he were truly being nonpartisan? Just a question. If you don't like it then perhaps you should accept the fact that Mr. Carter's charges were clearly illfounded as well. ^_~

- S.P.M.

Jane Galt's response to Carter is one long tu quoque, which does nothing to rebut his premise: Florida's elections are being rigged, and that's wrong.

I dunno, Bernard. IIRC, you and I are usually in agreement. But this time I think you're judging Jane too harshly. Most regular readers of this blog know on whose side of political issues Jane reliably lines up. I don't think anyone is confused or misled about her politics. The rest of it is just nomenclature. In a world in which Insty can call himself a centrist, Jane can surely label herself an independent. She's written often enough about political issues that her regular readers have got a pretty good predictive model of which way her support wends.

As for Carter - he's partisan, and I'm glad of it. I can't imagine that, as time passes, it won't look better to have been against this apostasy of an Administration than to have been "neutral" or a Bush supporter. In any case, I'm sure Carter's not sweating the claims on his credibility made by supporters of an Administration with its own credibility problems(see, e.g., WMD, Hussein-Al Qaeda, candy and flowers, Medicare cost estimates, budget estimates, etc.).

I live in Florida. So far there are eight choices for President on the 2004 ballot

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/CanList.exe

In 2000 we had 12 choices for President. This lead to the infamous butterfly ballot. Palm Beach County in an effort to improve legibility for their elderly voters increased the font size and went to a two page format with infamous results.

Calm down, people. Bernie and Dim are merely following their usual orthodoxy: Liberals good, conservatives bad...always. The fact that Carter was arguably the worst president of the 20th century doesn't matter: he meant well, and now he builds houses for poor people. That's integrity, all right.

Carry on.

Unless you are postulating that Jimmy Carter is a telepath revealing his mutant powers for the very first time

Please. There has been loads of institutional and private Republican support ($$$) for Nader's candidacy, just as there has been loads of institutional Democratic opposition. No one has been shy about explaining their reasoning, either. If you believe it's all a coincidence, you're welcome to disagree with Carter's assessment of her motives.

In any event we can all agree he was not making the silly argument Jane ascribed to him. That was just ludicrous.

Among other things, Carter calls for uniformity of ballots and methods of counting, thereby agreeing with the 2000 SCOTUS ruling overturning the Florida Court which had ruled to allow counties to determine their own methods of "re-" counting of ballots.

In an OpEd in the WSJ today it is stated: "In 24 of the 25 Florida counties with the highest ballot spoilage rate, the county supervisor was a Democrat. In the 25th county, the supervisor was an Independent."

Those Republicans are so smart and clever that they were able to rig the election despite the fact that voting was supervised by Democrats.

Well, from a Venezuelan perspective Carter's little ditty was simply incredible. Not two months ago Carter was signing off on an election run by certainly the most partisan Elections Commission in Venezuela's history, calling it free and fair, and saying allegations of wrongdoing have to be based on more than a systematic pattern of partisan behavior from the elections authorities...(you should see the crew that ran our referendum - ideological hardliners handpicked by Chavez's handpicked judges.) Now...this!

Not, of course, that we're not used to double standards coming from the north. Florida, of course, must have elections authorities purer than the virgin snow...but it's ok if the barbarians in South America get one of the sides to run their polls...

Sigh...

"Florida law actually puts most of the control over elections in the hands of local officials... and in FL that would be Democrats." I'd hardly think that all the counties would be dominated by Democrats when the same voters have put Republicans in most state offices. However, where there were big problems in 2000, most of the officials were Democrats. Out of all the available options, Democrats picked the cheapest and most inherently inaccurate vote counting method (punch card machines). Democrats designed the butterfly ballot. And as I understand it, Democrats in Palm Beach ignored similar problems with the butterfly ballot in 1996, when Bob Dole (Republican) was #2 on the left-hand side and the #3 punch-hole, and it appeared that some thousands of his votes might have gone to whomever was at the top of the right-hand side.

Despite the logical fallacy that you make (as pointed out by Scott Forbes's comment), there is another problem with your argument. You have not demonstrated moral equivalence. Are illegals or felons voting in large numbers anywhere due to the efforts of Democrat operatives? Are there any states that have election systems as screwed up as Florida? As far as I know, the problems you raise are hypothetical wheareas the problems that Carter talks about are well-documented.

If I'm wrong, please set me straight (links, please)!

Interesting.

I think you could have made a strong argument here; alas you chose to flail around in a fit of pique against Jimmy Carter because, well, you just don't seem to like him very much. Fair enough.

But here's the thing: you don't actually make the case that Florida's elections are, in fact, going to be fair.

Maybe you should give it another try.

Of all the parts of this post that I enjoy, I especially like the link-rich section that begins "you might want to display some token outrage at the at least equally abusive Democratic drive to register people such as illegal aliens and, oh convicted felons, who are not legally allowed to vote."

I guess it demonstrates that you've got no case, when you attempt to "refute" the points Jimmy Carter made... by attacking Carter. ;-) Try again...

I guess it demonstrates that you've got no case, when you attempt to "refute" the points Jimmy Carter made... by attacking Carter. ;-) Try again...

Gee, Jesurgislac, I guess everyone here is really sorry for trying to do a "refute" though I'm not sure how that is different from a rebuttal but since its in "scare quotes" it must be something really bad that only people not as bright as "you" do.

Mr. Carter's opinion piece sounds exactly like what the Venezuelan opposition was complaining about in a referendum that took place in August. This vote was not transparent, was presided by a an Electoral Board that made all major decisions by a three to two vote, failed to do an agreed audit the day of the vote and never considered the opposition's request to open ballt boxes specified by it. For Mr. Carter it is "unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation", but with his quick certification of the Venezuelan vote he did excatly that.

Finally, it was the Court that allowed Nader on the ballot and it is the Democartic party that is trying to stop Nader from running in 17 states. So much for the "pure" democracy that Mr. Carter talks about.

Curiously, Mr. Nader's VP candidate is a Venezuelan ...

Tell me, RMc. what exactly does Carter's presidency have to do with the way elections are run in Florida?

Tim,

In a world in which Insty can call himself a centrist, Jane can surely label herself an independent.

So Insty's dishonesty justifies Jane's? Strange argument.

You're right that she's predictable, which is exactly why I find her claims to being an independent phoney. It's interesting that she doesn't spend much time trying to refute any of Carter's points. She's just upset at his choice of topics.

What happened is plain. Jane decided to take a cheap shot at Carter. It was poorly-thought out and mean-spirited, not to mention written in the snide "advice to Democrats" tone that she is so fond of.

I stand by my criticism.

Tell me, RMc. (W)hat exactly does Carter's presidency have to do with the way elections are run in Florida?

How about "Jimmy Carter is a freakin' moron who has absolutely no right to lecture anybody about anything"? Works for me.

You're right that she's predictable, which is exactly why I find her claims to being an independent phoney [sic].

One thing I've noticed about being an Independent (and, yes, I'm one, too): Nobody ever believes you. "How can you be an independent," the Bernies of the world bellow, "when you actually believe Bushitler is a human being, and not a killbot from the planet Zatox?!" And of course, it works the other way, too: "How can you be independent and pro-choice? Only Democrats like killing babies!"

Pigeonhole me (and Jane) at your own risk, folks.

It's interesting that she doesn't spend much time trying to refute any of Carter's points.

Could Jane (or anyone) "refute" Carter's idiotic "points" to your satisfaction, Bernie? Of course not. So why bother?

What happened is plain. Jane decided to take a cheap shot at Carter. It was poorly-thought out and mean-spirited, not to mention written in the snide "advice to Democrats" tone that she is so fond of.

"Cheap shot"...check. "Mean-spirited"...check. "Snide"...check. OK, I guess we're done here.

I stand by my criticism.

Well, somebody's gotta do it.

You mistake the source of my outrage. I am not trying to rebut Mr Carter's claims that there are problems with the Florida election, although as far as I know the felon list a) contained actual felons who weren't allowed to vote and b) is not being used in this election, which makes his charge that this is tantamount to vote fraud pretty hollow. If they are felons, they should be removed from the list, since they are not legally allowed to vote. Failing to remove them will effectively disenfranchise 22,000 legitimate voters who vote against the people the felons vote for.

Jimmy Carter's piece doesn't just say "there are still problems in Florida"; it compares the Republican party to some one-party-state election fixers, and thus implies that his country is effectively holding sham elections. That's a pretty serious charge to make, especially when your party hasn't exactly covered itself in glory on the electoral fraud front, and you just oversaw the certification of an election in Venezuela that suffered from far worse irregularities than anything Mr Carter manages to substantiate. His complaint boils down to:

1) They tried to remove our illegal voters, but not theirs. This is probably (although not certainly) true, but that doesn't make a good argument for leaving Democratic illegal voters on the rolls.

2) The voting system is not uniform. True, but that's the price of a Federalist system. But non-uniformity is only a problem if it is designed to produce systematic error in favour of one party or another. There's no evidence that this is so in Florida; rather the reverse, in fact, since the worst problems in Florida in 2000 were the handiwork of Democratic election supervisors, as has been exhaustively reported. Attributing this, through verbal slight-of-hand, to the Republican party in order to score political points takes some of the shine off Mr Carter's self-imposed halo.

3) Waaa! They're letting Nader on the ballot! As someone else has pointed out, the 100% Democratic Florida Supreme Court has backed this up . . . how did James Carter, International Man of Integrity, not see fit to mention this? Plus, while there may be a technical legal reason to keep Mr Nader off the ballot, it's of about the same class as arguments against letting Lautenberg sub for Torricelli; it violates the spirit of the law while adhering to the letter. Now, while I'm a firm believer in strict application of electoral laws after the election, when there is a danger that the new set of rules may be selected with an eye to producing, undemocratically, the outcome desired by teh rule-setter, I can see no good reason for forcing parties to keep awful candidates on the ballot (or off, in Nader's case), so as to force voters to vote for someone they don't want very much. There's reasonable argument on the margins, as too many candidates can be confusing, and I suppose expensive in terms of paper and ink. But Nader is not a marginal question; he will almost certainly receive the most votes after the two major parties, wish though I do that it were not so. There is no non-partisan argument for excluding him. Yes, the Republicans are pushing to have him on the ballot because it will hurt the Dems. But in our society we permit people to do good things for bad motives, and expanding voter choice is a good thing. Democrats seem to think that they have some sort of a civil right to Nader voters, which the Republicans are violating. Bizarre.

As for links, let's start with the fact that Democrats systematically block attempts to require photo ID. A trivial number of people in America are able to get by without some form of government-issued ID. You cannot do anything -- rent an apartment, get utilities, drive a car, buy liquor or cigarettes, get on an airplane, get on a train, hold a job, collect government benefits, etc -- without a government-issued ID. Yes, there are probably three squatters and a guy living in Montana who have no government ID, but this leaves me unmoved. I can find a few people who are unfairly disadvantaged by any electoral law, the world being what it is. The number of people who do not have suitable ID is so trivial as to be not worth talking about. What good reason is there to block photo ID requirements, except that you think your party benefits more from people voting under someone else's name?

1) F. Toro has won this debate. Anyone who hasn't read Toro's post should scroll up and read it before posting.

2) Carter should have compared Florida to the other states in the country. His primary complaints about Florida are that (1) the top-level officials in charge of the election are partisan; and (2) those partisan officials allow the counties, including the democratic counties, to run their own election procedures, which leads to varying standards.

At a minimum, Carter should have discussed whether the other states in the country have partisan senior election officals and local control. I suspect that it's the rule, not the exception, but of course, Carter doesn't care.

3) As Toro and others have pointed out, Carter just signed off on Venezuela, which has a lot more issues to be concerned about than Florida.

Do we really want "nonpartisans" overseeing our elections? I know it sounds good at first hearing, but is it an idea that can withstand closer scrutiny? The reason someone is a nonpartisan (an agnostic on the outcome of the election) is that they don't care enough about politics to pay attention to what the candidates and the parties stand for. That would imply a lazy attitude towards the conduct of the election. I much prefer a system where people interested in elections conduct them -- with the requirement that they do so in the light. You know, a system much like the one Florida has.

Carter is a perfect example of the Peter Principle in action. He was at best marginally competent as a state governor (and that is questionable). He was completely out of his depth as President. In fact, he may well be judged by history as THE WORST US president ever.

His "pontifications" (Lord, I love the irony of using that word with respect to a Southern Babtist!) here are completely transparent. He is motivated by a desire to support his party - nothing more and nothing less. He is doing nothing except planting seeds of doubt in the case the coming presidential election is close in Florida or elsewhere.

If Carter was truly interested in fair elections, he would come out publicly in favor of a NATIONWIDE requirement for proof of identity, citizenship, residency, and eligibility to vote (e.g., the prospective voter is both properly regisered and not legally disenfranchised) before voting in any election - federal or otherwise. Others here have observed the truth: allowing those not entitled to vote effectively disenfranchises those who are legally entitled to do so. Carter is now either too old and senile to grasp this concept - or is willfully disregarding it.

Carter will NEVER advocate mandatory positive identification and proof of voter eligibility because it would hurt his party. His party gets more support from convicted felons, alien permanent residents, and others not legally entitled to vote than does their opposition.

But then again, what do you expect from someone who worked as a nuclear engineer for several years and never learned how to pronounce the word "nuclear"? Hell, I grew up about 150 miles from his home town and could pronounce the word correctly in grammer school.

And no, I can PROUDLY say that in spite of the fact that I grew up near him, I NEVER voted for the man.

Still whatever Carter's flapping about you do have to ask whether its right to strip felons of the right to vote.

Megan,

How, pray tell, you conclude thaT the Toricelli/Lautenberg swap "violates the spirit of the law while adhering to the letter".

Didn't it rather violate both the spirit and the letter of the law, with the NJ Supreme Court ignoring both what the law said and the express choice of the Dem voters who, in their primary election, had chosen Toricelli to represent their party in the election?

So we're agreed that mentioning some flaws in a state's voting obliges you to bring up the rest.

In that case, since we've brought up Ohio, don't we have to mention the GOP secretary of state trying to throw out thousands of voter registrations because they're on the wrong stock paper--in what looks like violation of federal law.

(http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/9/27/125755/309; look at the second comment for the legal question)

Since Jane's last big voter-fraud campaign concerned Native American in the 2002 Senatorial election--and since the fraud in that election turned out to be primarily GOP factota swearing false affidavits alleging voter fraud (http://www.dailykos.net/archives/000705.html)--I'm not so worried in this case.

(As for Torricelli/Lautenberg, the GOP had apparently done something very similar in their primary; so if the law was violated, it was violated by both sides.)

Sounds reasonable to me; Nader was endorsed over a conference call because the RP couldn't even get its act together to hold a nom con.

So the reason you think Nader ought to have been struck from the ballot is that the Reform national convention didn't meet some ill-defined requirement? Hack Florida state statute all you want; I do. But you can't say that there was no national convention; there indisputably was. The problem is the state statute leaves it completely open to interpretation as to what constitutes a national convention. They could hold one via I.M., and they'd be completely within the statute.

Hood disputed it because it's Hood's job to conduct elections. She may have had ulterior motives for doing so, but it's her job. I'm no Hood fan; God knows she spent enough taxpayer money erecting monuments to herself in Orlando. But in this, she did the correct thing.

There's nothing you can do about either party either assisting other parties or outright fabricating them for the purposes of collecting the fringe vote of the other. Nothing under the current law, that is.

carter is not a nuclear engineer.. he has claimed to be, but records show that he didn't finish his training as a nuc officer.. and beyond that doesn't have a degree in nuclear engineering, or anything close..

I believe that he left the service before he finished his training (at work and can't find the links.. i'll try later)

Carter is nothing if not ambitious. Not content to be the worst US President of the modern era, he now has his sights on being the worst ex-President as well.

Congratulations.

Jane Galt wrote:

As someone else has pointed out, the 100% Democratic Florida Supreme Court has backed this up . . . how did James Carter, International Man of Integrity, not see fit to mention this?

To be fair, IIRC only six of the seven justices on the SCOFLA are actually Democrats, the seventh is an “independent.” But your larger point is a good one, the argument that there was some sort of partisan shenanigans on the part of the FL Secretary of State for appealing a judge’s ruling to the SCOFLA and having the overwhelmingly Democratic court side with the Republican SecState pretty much undercuts the central thrust of Carter’s argument on that particular point.

That being said, I’m not familiar with the election laws of Florida and whether a Secretary of State there is required or expected to appeal judicial decisions that affect election law or decisions made by the office. She could have been acting quite properly and the fact that the SCOFLA upheld her decision and without knowing the specific legal reasons as to (a) why Nader was placed on the ballot originally, (b) why the trial court ordered his name removed, and (c) why the SCOFLA apparently overruled the trial court, I have no opinions as to the merits of the decision.

For the record, I’m Republican and I’m opposed to allowing any gadfly candidate that does not meet the statutory requirements to be placed on the ballot. If Nader (or in Minnesota’s case the “Independence Party” candidates) actually met the statutory requirements to be on the ballot, then they go on the ballot. If not, then they shouldn’t. I don’t know whether it was the trial or the SCOFLA though who acted improperly.

Jane Galt: I am not trying to rebut Mr Carter's claims that there are problems with the Florida election, although as far as I know the felon list a) contained actual felons who weren't allowed to vote and b) is not being used in this election

The problem is that the last time a felon list was used, it did indeed contain some actual felons - but any time its accuracy was checked, it was 95% wrong. And you are wrong when you say it is "not being used" in this election: many of the 57 000 people who were (for the most part) wrongly dropped from the electoral roll in 2000, are still off the electoral roll. So that flawed list is still effectively in use, 4 years later.

1) They tried to remove our illegal voters, but not theirs. This is probably (although not certainly) true, but that doesn't make a good argument for leaving Democratic illegal voters on the rolls.

They tried to remove Democratic legal voters, Jane. (And succeeded.)

There's no evidence that this is so in Florida; rather the reverse, in fact, since the worst problems in Florida in 2000 were the handiwork of Democratic election supervisors, as has been exhaustively reported.

And incorrectly. The worst problem in Florida in 2000 was the illegal removal of over 57 000 voters from the electoral rolls, a problem which was the handiwork of Katherine Harris. Who is not a Democratic election supervisor.

Jesurgislac wrote:

And incorrectly. The worst problem in Florida in 2000 was the illegal removal of over 57 000 voters from the electoral rolls, a problem which was the handiwork of Katherine Harris. Who is not a Democratic election supervisor.

That’s a lie. It wasn’t Katherine Harris, it was the Florida Division of Elections Director, Ethel Baxter (a Democrat) who in 1998 hired DBT to compile the list of voters that were either deceased or felons. Katherine Harris neither set up the contract (she wasn’t even Secretary of State then) nor carried out any voter purges which were (by law) left up to the local election supervisors to verify the names on the list.

If any legitimate voters were actually disenfranchised in 2000 (and that’s a mighty big “if” since so many supervisors rejected the flawed list and I have yet to see anyone come forward to affirm that they were eligible to vote but kept from voting because they were improperly put on the list) the blame for this resides squarely with the Democrat Division of Elections Director who set up the contract and the Democrat election supervisors whose duty it was to verify the names on the list.

As everyone knows there is a huge fraud cloud above Chavez' recent electoral win. The reason is quite simple, the international observers -namely OAS and Carter Center- did not do the job properly nor were they allowed to conduct and control the audits that would have cloaked with legitimacy the end result.

At the request of Sumate, the civic electoral NGO, Harvard's Ricardo Hausmann and MIT's Roberto Rigobon came up with a hypothesis on the electoral fraud that has become the benchmark against all posterior studies have been compared to. The Carter Center (CC) on the other hand, trying desperately to save face, recourse to Stanford's Jonathan Taylor, whose initial findings were readily commented upon by Jennifer McCoy in The Economist. As it happens, Taylor's backtracked on it, conceding that he had an error in his calculations. We then see yet another publication produced by the CC where an attempt is made to ensure the randomness of the sample used for the second audit. Let me make a halt here for there seems to be a confusion between the first audit and the second.

The first audit, a.k.a. "hot audit" could not be conducted in fair and speedy manner according to Jennifer McCoy due to the following reasons:

"the sites were restricted by the CNE for logistical reasons -- since the sample was only drawn in the afternoon of the August 15 (by previous agreement with the political parties in order to avoid the possibility of the machines being tampered with before August 15), it would not be possible to send the CNE auditors to far-flung or rural places in time for the scheduled closing of the polls and the "hot audit". Our reports all refer to the second audit, August 18."

Ergo all reports produced so far by the CC, as admitted by Dr McCoy, refer to the second audit, that is that of August 18. Nevertheless a clumsy first audit attempt was made.

"On Saturday, August 14, 1 (one) day before the recall referendum, the Electoral Council decided that this audit, in which the totals of ballots contained in the boxes would be contrasted with the printed results of the electronic tally, would only be done in 20 (twenty) of the 336 (three hundred and thirty-six) municipalities, in 14 (fourteen) of the 24 (twenty-four) states of the country. On Sunday, August 15, between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM, a sample of 192 (one hundred and ninety-two) machines was selected, which had to be audited immediately upon completion of the voting event in the same voting table, reviewing the content of the boxes and checking its exact coincidence with the tally of the corresponding machine and with the number of registered voters in the corresponding electoral roll (or cuaderno). It is worth noting that on the day of the recall only 76 (seventy-six) of the 192 (one hundred and ninety-two) stipulated boxes were audited. The promoters for the SI were present in only 27 (twenty-seven) of these audits and the international observers in approximately 10 (ten) tables;" [Sumate report page 39] nonetheless in those audits witnessed by the opposition the SI option (Chavez to be recalled) won with 63% of the votes It is also extremely important to note that none of the international observers were allowed into the tallying room of the National Electoral Council (CNE) -as it was agreed- during the tallying process. Former OAS Secretary Gaviria is on the record correcting Jimmy Carter with respect to their absence in the said room. They did not witness the process that led to the announcement of the preliminary results on August 16 at 4AM by CNE's director Carrasquero. In light of the aforementioned, how on earth could they have endorsed those preliminary results is something that truly escapes me.

But it gets better still in the second audit. The opposition, feeling quite betrayed by the international electoral observers, requested for a second audit whose aim was to dissipate any doubts vis-a-vis the results by taking away the control that the CNE had over the first audit and passing it to the international entities, OAS and CC that is. A conciliatory Gaviria sort of force fed the initiative to a Jimmy Carter who had itchy feet to abandon the country. Sufficient assurances were given to the opposition in relation to the manner in which the second audit was to be conducted. Key element here was the software to be used to randomly generate a statistically representative sample of voting centres. Again and again it was assured by OAS and CC representatives, that solely their software programme were to be used. However the latter screwed it all up the second time too. Allegedly their random generator was "faulty" and as a result a very diligent Jorge Rodriguez, CNE director, considered fitting to use the same software programme that was used on the first audit. Hence the CNE had absolute control of the second audit for the data fed to a CNE's computer was introduced by CNE's employee Tibisay Lucena using a CNE devised software and not the one proposed by the international observers as agreed. Moreover, the second audit was done on August 18, by then the 'CNE randomly selected' boxes had been out of the international observer's watch for 60 hours. Alas the second time round they did not see anything out of the ordinary either. Never mind their lies and breach of duty with the opposition.

It was once said that Jimmy Carter was the worst U.S. President in memory but the best ex-President in our nation's history.

I am now convinced Jimmy Carter was not only a disaster while in office, his antics out of office are thoroughly dispicable.

Jimmy Carter: Worst ex-President in U.S. history.

I'd agree that this is pretty much the low point of AI postings.

As I understand it, the rejection of the list only came after judicial intervention forced it public. It was all-in-all a pretty brazen attempt to bias the electoral process.

No fan of Jimmy Carter though.

With respect to the posting by Bernard Yomtov, in Florida the Secretary of State does not have an enormous degree of control over the electoral process. The Secretary's role is primarily in setting initial conditions and then certifying the result. The actual conduct of the election, design of the ballot, etc.,e is in the hands of the ELECTED county supervisor of elections. It is worth noting that in the counties with the greatest question in the 2000 election, the supervisors of elections were Democrats! (BTW, under Florida law the Governor has even less influence and control.)

The unmitigated disaster of the 2000 election was due to various assinine shenaningans pulled by Democrat canvasssing boards to harvest as many votes for Gore as they could. Remember the infamous picture of the guy squinting for the dimpled chad? Broward County. Supervisor: Democrat. Palm Beach and the infamous butterfly ballot? Supervisor: Democrat. (It is also worth noting that the so-called butterfly ballot layout has been used in numerous elections throughout the country without a problem. Cause of problem in Palm Beach County: Idiot Voters.

And in the four counties where the recounts were going on there were DIFFERENT STANDARDS for determining whether a ballot had been 'punched'. And in Broward County they CHANGED THE DAMNED STANDARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RECOUNT. Supervisor of Elections: Democrat.

And we're back to vote fraud in Florida.

Here's a question.

What's an 'undervote'?

There is no law mandating that American citizens must vote for every office. So where does the lack of a choice for president make a ballot an 'undervote'?

Why was it so important to count these particular ballots?

Doesn't anyone find it odd that Gore had so mane ballots with 'dimpled chads' as 'undervotes'?

There's no such thing as an undervote.

Florida Democrats should let go of their grips on allowing convicted felons and illegal aliens to vote. Just do what the Democrats in Texas have always done: get all the dead people to vote. They obviously know something on the other side that we don't here, since these dead folks always seem to vote Democrat to a man (er, spirit).

What will the old fool say if Florida goes to the Democrats? Will he be bitching about electoral irregularities then?

I am amazed that anyone pays any attention to anything Jimmy Carter says. It is obvious to all but the demented that he suffers from post tramatic stress syndrome, caused by the confrontation with the "killer rabbit".

Please, a little charity for the guy. after all, wouldn't you be a little jumpy if you were the absolute worst to ever have held a certain office?

I'm a recovering Democrat who was appalled by that party's attempt to steal the 2000 election in broad daylight. When prevented by Constitutional procedure, they accused the Republicans of their own crime. The only thing more revolting than their attempt has been their efforts to convince their voters that the present administration is illegitimate.

Now I see them gearing up to contenst any close election.

Don't they know how dangerous this is?

If they do know, do they care?

If you are going to complain about Carter, then you should also mention the voter intimidation tactics Jeb Bush is using to scare black voter registration drives in Orlando. See the Orlando paper for details.

The authorities conducted an investigation into alleged voter fraud involving two black's who were registering voters. Although a grand jury DID NOT RETURN AN INDICTMENT, the investigation continues.

As for your comments about Carter, he was a horrible President in some areas. But, unlike the current administration with all of its talk of religious values, Carter tried to put his values into practice. He made human rights an element of foreign policy. And regarding his post Presidential activities, I don't see Bush 41 building affordable housing for poor people.

Michael W. asks: "Are there any states that have election systems as screwed up as Florida?" Yes. Most of them are screwed up in one fashion or another. The big difference is that in FL the election was close enough that it mattered. Also, remember that the only documented cases of someone attempting to not count someone's vote was that of the democrats trying to have declared invalid the overseas absentee ballots.

In 1960, Kennedy won in Illinois because of Richard Daley's well known political motto, "vote early and often". Does any one remember Tammany Hall?

Democrats crying about election fraud is pure BS.
The most egrgious election frauds in US history have been perpertrated by the Democts.

Look it up. It is a matter of record. As much as Nixon was a whiner, he refused to ask for a recount in 1960 because he feared it would cause a serious division among the people. The inventer of the internet did not have the class of Nixon.

Yes, Mr. Aziz. It took Bill Clinton and Al Gore to make Dick Nixon look classy.

I can't imagine that anyone is actually impressed by Carter anymore, about anything. His performance in Venezuela was nothing less than grotesque. For him to point fingers at Florida is blatantly partisan, since the sorts of issues he complains about are 1) not confined to the state of Florida, and 2) not confined to one political party.

How can you possibly certify an election when the ruling party doesn't allow a recount or an independent examination of the ballots? Apparently Carter has some magical ability to do so in places like Venezuela.

I wish the guy would die already so we don't have to keep hearing his blather.

I don't understand what all the fuss is...Jimmy C was crap for a President...remember gas lines, double-digit inflation, etc....he builds cheap houses and we're supposed to treat his thoughts as gospel...please

Jane

Three cheers for you & your well-reasoned post.

Ignore the usual irrelevant comments by those WUI (writing under the influence, i.e., of the DNC). BTW, not one of the WUIs has dared to defend Jimmy's disgraceful sanctification of the Venezuelan election. And not one of the WUIs, normally frightened to death by, gasp, fundamentalists, has condemned Jimmy for his manqué fundamentalist preacher routine.

TomCom

Bonddad:

Is this the Orlando paper article you're referring to?

Bernard wants to excuse Carter for speaking just about Florida because "He discusses Florida because he is frequently asked about Florida." Why is "frequently asked about Florida?" Who is doing the asking and why? If Carter cared at all about this country, he would field such a question about Florida by drawing attention to the antiquated, fraud-vulnerable voting systems in many of our states (as John Fund has in his recent book and in numerous articles.) He could say that concerns about election practices should have a wider focus than just Florida. In fact, he could use his (inexplicable) prestige to spearhead an effort to reform elction practices nationwide, something for which there is urgent need. But no. He takes the opportunity to cast doubt, in advance, on the upcoming U.S. election his fellow party member currently appears in danger of losing---to delegitimize Bush's re-election by tacking onto the urban myth of the "stolen" 2000 election. Not because that's what he's asked, but because that's who he is. A shrill, small man with marrow ideologies, a massive personal ego, and a vasy reservoir of personal resentment towrd the country that so justifiably rejected him in 2000. Castri si fine. Venezuela? No problems there. Yasser Arafat? I love the guy. He was elected too, you know. But Florida? No, the election there will not pass "international standards.

Who in hell would take anything Jimmy Carter said seriously? The man was a joke as president and he's still a joke. He's one of the few people who doesn't realize it yet.

Happened to catch Bernard Yomtov's jab at Ms. Galt. Funny, but I knew right away that I was reading an opinion piece, and I didn't need a disclaimer about objectivity. I guess some people are less capable than others of functioning in society without gentle reminders of what is fact and what is opinion.

Speaking of objectivity, Mr. Yomtov, would you be the same Bernard Yomtov that gave $300 to John Kerry on May 28, 2004? ( http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=yomtov&txtState=%28all+states%29&txtZip=&txtEmploy=&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N )

If you assert that Ms. Galt's piece is so biased as to laughably demand a retraction (a retraction?!), wouldn't that lunatic standard require you also to at least disclose your partisan leanings?

Thank you. I have been searching the web on how to send a message to Jimmy Carter, although I know he certainly doesn't care about what we think -- but it would make me feel better. All his house-building doesn't cover up his mean, narrow, traitorous core. He is right up there with Kofi Anan in my book.

Things Republican officials in Florida can do to win Carter's respect:

1. Be communists.

2. Starve 2 million North Koreans to death.

3. Denounce Israel.

4. Put on a sweater and turn down the heat.

5. Say "peace" over and over and over again as if the mere repetition of the word brings actual peace into existence.

Well one does have to consider the source...

Carter is a lying, liberal coward after all...

Just look at the track record of shame Cater is trying to live down...

Carter gave away the Panama Canal, stranded people in Teheran, foisted that joke called the, "Camp David Accords" off onto the Israelis, sold out Taiwan, let the Soviets tackle Afghanistan with nary a word of critism, got the US stuck in a oil debacle that drove up the price of gasoline, interest rates rose to usurious levels, corrupt family member took money from Libya and then there was a banking scandal...

Is it any wonder this loser won some sort of leftie/liberal & totally parasitic peace prize for having a spine with the consistincy of jello?

So what is Carter's new claim to fame? HOVELS FOR WASTRELS!...

Where oh where in this track record of shame does Carter show that he has any idea of what planet he's on let alone know something about how the party for the SEDITIOUS & SLEAZY are going to try to steal the elections in Florida?

I'm gripped by the fact that 32% of the felons voted GOP.

If you are going to complain about Carter, then you should also mention the voter intimidation tactics Jeb Bush is using to scare black voter registration drives in Orlando. See the Orlando paper for details. - Bondad

Bondad, unless you're talking about something else, you're all wet. The Orlando vote fraud investigation is a result of a p-ssing match between two local candidates - the only state official who's requested an investigation is a democrat.

http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/alerts/attach/NYTimesOrlando_Billman.html

For bonus point, try to find a story in which Jimmy Carter gives this [Ohio absentee ballot worry] 1/10th the attention he has given a Florida felon list that was old news two months ago.

Well, given that the Ohio issue relates to 800 votes whereas the Florida one relates to 22,000, I would say somewhat more like 1/30th the attention is what would be warranted.

That post certainly reveals a lot about the mentality of the blog manager.
Rationalize this: after learning that ACT had registered thousands of Ohio voters, the Republican Sec. of State has annouced that the new voters will be disallowed because of a never-before-enforced law requiring that registration be done on 80lb paper.
It's the REpublicans who hate democracy and will do anything to win.

new voters will be disallowed because of a never-before-enforced law requiring that registration be done on 80lb paper

Classic!

People who are happy with the 2000 election tend to justify the result's validity in the face of contrary indications from the news organization recounts and the Palm Beach statistical analyses by:

1) raising the letter of the law above the spirit;

2) pointing in a tit-for-tat way to possible factors influencing the result in favor of the Democrats, yet neglecting to examine the quantitative relations involved (cf. 800 vs. 22,000 votes);

3) pointing out flaws in the recount procedures, yet neglecting to consider that things could have perhaps been done to everyone's greater satisfaction if people had just cooperated in determining standards, etc.; the point was to get the most accurate possible result, and yes, recounts in other states where statistically it could have made a difference should have been carried out as well, for fairness.

In any case, it looks like squabbling a la 2000 will be the rule this election, so let's hope Bush (OR Kerry) just wins by 10 points so it doesn't matter.

Carter is part of the Democratic Party's attempt to set up the Florida elections. From the remarks of some here it is obvious the ploy is already working. A photo ID/proof of identification should absolutely be a requirement before a CITIZEN votes. If people are too stupid to vote properly- oh well... (and that doesn't matter which Party they belong to!)
In the wake of the last Presidential election cycle, it was very interesting that the plaintive cry was that the voting apparatus/methods in the Florida elections were so "primitive"-when here in GEORGIA we were filling in little circles with our pencils (am I voting for President or taking the SAT's?.) And all along I'd been lead to believe that machinery marked a forward evolution... I guess we didn't count- (maybe if we were felons?)...

Some have said that Carter is history's greatest monster.

By "some" I mean a cartoon extra in an episode of the Simpsons.

Hugo quipped:

I'm gripped by the fact that 32% of the felons voted GOP.

It is indeed fitting to observe Carter'observer role observed in turn.

The Florida comments of Carter smack of third world contempt for us in Venezuela who have now to pay the conseqences of a failed observation. Regardless of his hurried comments on August 16 at noon (and being contradicted during the press conference by the OAS head, incidentally), the Carter Center appears now to have failed at observing adequately the rigging of the electoral system BEFORE August 15 Venezuelan referendum.

This story will eventually be told, of the spineless Carter Center role in June and July 2004, not to say even encouraging the Venezuelan opposition to "play" the game under the pretense that the Carter Center would ensure a fair result. The governemental electoral abuse was for all to see and the Carter Center cannot not have seen it.

Thus, for one, I am not surpised at the different democratic standards that Carter applies in Florida. If anything I am embarrassed that I have supported him for so long in my blog. Whatever good he did in Venezuela was not only wiped out in a few days, but the peace maker probably left us closer to violence than when he started his "services".

Hey Megan, you're on fire!

There was not a drop of moral equivalency or self-doubt in this post. I love it, keep it up!

As for Carter, I just do not understand him anymore. He really did seem to be a good ex-Prez when he was first doing his Habitats for Humanity thing. But now he's just lost it.

If America can survive a campaign cycle of Dean, Kerry, Kennedy, Moore, and Carter, then we can deal with anything the Islamist nutjobs lob our way. Unfortunately, though, the blame-America-first crowd just fuels the fires in Iraq and elsewhere, and I'm afraid innocent blood gets spilled unnecessarily because of it.

You'd think Kerry at least would have learned the first time, in 1971, that you don't trash talk your country when the enemy THAT YOU'RE FIGHTING A WAR WITH can use it as propaganda. I hope he gets fewer votes than Nader.

Jimmy needs to chill with his private stash of Billy Beer and Georgia peanuts (needs some good ventilation).

I did a humorous take on this at my website.

Ah, Jimmy Carter...

The two smartest US presidents of the twentieth century were, by a mile, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. They were also the two worst US presidents of the century, again by a mile. And the next smartest was Herbert Hoover (look him up), and he was the next worst president.

Remind me again why Bush is dumber than Kerry and that's a bad thing?

Hey Megan, you're on fire!

There was not a drop of moral equivalency or self-doubt in this post. I love it, keep it up!

Ditto that.

What gives Carter away is that as the former chief Constitutional officer of the US, he simply knows better: the "time, manner, and place" of elections are determined by state legislatures, not some bullshit "non-partisan" "international standard." Exactly none of the states run elections in any way resembling that for which he criticizes Florida for failing to accomplish.

The writing is on the wall, folks. Get ready for "Dumpster-Diving for the Presidency, 2004 Edition."

:jackson

Some guy,

Congratulations on learning how to use the Web. Actually, I gave Kerry more than that.

At least I have the guts to post under my own name.

ABR:

I never cease to be amazed at the numerical illiteracy - or utter lack of shame, I'm not sure which - of many Democratic Party apologists.

The Ohio incident of 800 questionable and apparently fradulent voter registrations was from a SINGLE OHIO COUNTY. The Florida list of presumed felons ineligible to vote - obtained by review of official state records - was a STATEWIDE LIST. Comparing these mathematically isn't a case of comparing apples and oranges; it's more like comparing a grape to a watermelon.

I will be charitable and assume you are merely numerically illiterate and not dishonest. Therefore, let me spell things out for you. Pay close attention. I'll try to be simple and clear, but there is some arithmetic involved. Feel free to take off your shoes and socks if you need more than ten fingers in order to follow along with the math.

There are 88 counties in Ohio. If every county had 800 fradulent voters registered, this would be OVER 70,000 INELIGIBLE VOTERS fradulently registered. Based on the number of votes cast in the 2000 presidential election, Ohio has quite a bit fewer voters than Florida - less than 79% as many, to be precise. Therefore, as a percentage the Ohio incident - if true in all Ohio counties - has (70,400/22,000) x (1 / 0.79) = 4.05, or ROUGHLY FOUR TIMES AS MUCH FRADULENT IMPACT, than the Florida list of presumed felons to which Carter objects so vehemently.

Seems to me that if Carter REALLY was interested in honest elections - rather than transparently shilling for his party - he would be AT LEAST AS vocal about the Ohio incident; it has potentially much larger impact. However, my guess is that Carter will never say squat about Ohio - period. In Ohio, those apparently fradulent voter registrations seem to be linked to unions. Guess which party most unions strongly support?

"Impartial observer" my butt. At this point, IMO Carter has given up the right to criticise anyone regarding "fair elections". He's now nothing but another partisan shill - and a clumsy one at that.

Here, have a laugh! But does "never attribute to malice what can be properly attributed to stupidity" or extreme naiveté really explain Jimmy Carter?

WSJ Opinion

Observers Rush to Judgment
Jimmy Carter gets rolled--first by Fidel Castro, now by Hugo Chávez.

BY MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Saturday, August 21, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

When Jimmy Carter went to Cuba in 2002, Fidel Castro reveled in the photo-ops with a former U.S. president. Mr. Carter seemed to think he was heroically "engaging" the Cuban despot. But in the documentary "Dissident," celluloid captures something most Americans didn't see: Castro giggling sardonically as Mr. Carter lectures the Cuban politburo on democracy. That foreshadowed what happened when the media splash ended and the former president went home: Dissidents he went to "help" today languish in gulag punishment cells.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/wsj/?id=110005509

In 2000, wasn't there a duplicately numbered ballot box found in the office of the hotel workers local in Miami? AFAIR, the head of that local was a leading Gore supporter in Miami-Dade.

Yomtov:

I thought your end of the political spectrum held that privacy was an individual's right. For the record, this was an issue where I agreed with you. I too believe in a strong - though not absolute - right to individual privacy. A hell of a lot of other conservatives agree with me.

However, you also seem to be quite bothered by the fact that "some guy" chooses to conceal his/her identity in this forum.

If "some guy" chooses to remain anonymous, he/she is merely exercising his/her right to privacy. That's his/her choice. You choose not to do the same. That's your choice. Rights are not mandatory; they may be exercised or not - at the option of the individual.

Belitting someone for exercising a right you yourself support is shamefully hypocritical. That's exactly what you appear to have done in your last post.

Based on other posts you've made here in the past, however, I'm not surprised at all.

PS: Yes, "Hondo" is a pseudonym, and the e-mail address I use when I post here is bogus. And no, I don't plan to change this. Don't like it? Bite me. My right to privacy; my choice.

Apologies for another post and a long one at that; i just saw this, and wanted to make sure everyone understands the ramifications of Carter's rubberstamping Vzla's elections. I'm getting to be quite a fan of Ms. O'Grady.

Venezuela's Oil-for-MiGs Program

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

September 24, 2004; Page A15

In the all too familiar tradition of appeasing the neighborhood bully,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has been granted "legitimacy" by the
Organization of American States and Jimmy Carter. Well supported charges that
the president rigged the voting to avoid a recall have not been refuted, but
Venezuelans are being told to get over it.

The only question now is how long it will take before the hemisphere's
democracies have reason to regret the free pass given to Mr. Chávez.

A survey of the region suggests it won't be long. Not only might a showdown
be brewing at home but Mr. Chávez seems fully prepared to menace neighboring
states. Some of his targets, Bolivia for example, appear to be cowed. Another,
Colombia, is in his cross-hairs. A Sept. 14 United Press International
story quoted a Venezuelan military intelligence officer saying that his
country is "heading toward a war with Colombia."

Mr. Chávez has made no secret of his dream of spreading his Bolivarian
revolution all over the South American continent. The OAS had no trouble
throwing the Venezuelan population to this wolf so as to have peace in our
time. But now that Mr. Chávez has tightened his grip on power, he is pursuing
his bolder ambitions. ...

...Russian news services are reporting that both U.S. and Colombian
military sources have confirmed that Venezuela's defense ministry has
purchased several advanced MiG-29 fighters and that that U.S. sources have
detected them on training missions.

On Monday, the Russian Business Monitor reported that "Venezuela plans to
spend approximately $5 billion on acquisition of Russian fighters including
purchase of armament, airdrome and airborne equipment."

...The OAS may have stamped Mr. Chávez "legitimate" but a dark cloud of
public doubt hangs over the Miraflores presidential palace and the Venezuelan
people are clearly restive about the direction their president is heading.

This may explain why he cancelled his trip to New York for the U.N. General
Assembly this week and instead visited a spot on the Colombian border where
five Venezuelan soldiers had been killed by guerrillas. It's said he was
poorly received by his own men. The OAS and the Carter Center may one day
be sorry that they rushed to validate the results of the recall vote.

URL for this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109598103597626706,00.html

If we want to talk about voter fraud and stealing elections in Florida, why don't we talk about all the dual state citizens who illegally cast ballots in both states? As I recall, there was a link on commandpost.org not too long ago which reported that there were some 46,000 people who were registered to vote both in New York and Florida. How many, I wonder, voted in both places in the 2000 election? And that's just the people fron New York. Southern Florida is the retirement haven for the Blue States on the East Coast. I do not know for a fact but I do suspect that their voting patterns tend to mirror that of their native states.

I think a concerted effort should be made to get these people and convict them all. It would be one great step forward to ending voter fraud in Florida, but I suspect that this is not the kind of fraud that those who are most stridently screaming for reform really care about, or even want to have mentioned.

Im not intrested in supporting Carters comments or fighting the 2000 election again. But Fla was a mess last time, and imo whos to blame for 2000 isnt nearly as important as doing what it takes to make Flas vote beyond reproach this time. Theres smart people in Fla, and they have over a month to troubleshoot, double check lists and limit contriversey this time. Jeb Bush has to realize that his states looked at sceptically because of who his brother is and make the vote going smoothly a priority. But I fear the hurricanes are a built in excuse.

Maybe Jimmy Carter mouthing off about elections in Florida will be good for G.W. That state is full of ex-pat Venezuelans who fled the despotism of Chavez-Way to go Jimmah.

President Carter was hands down the worst president of the last century, and that's after giving him full credit for the few good things he did (de-regulation of the airline and trucking industries, appointing Paul Volker to the Fed and helping to negotiate the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt). Responding to an act of war by Iran with yellow ribbons rather than cruise missiles and aircraft carriers led directly, in my opinion, to 9/11.

Given the opportunity to rehabilitate his reputation as other presidents have done (e.g., Nixon), he started off on the right foot, focusing his efforts on pure humanitarian projects. Unhappily, he was unable to stay away from politics so we have been treated to the unprecedented spectacle of a former president of the United States attacking a sitting president in time of war, running around the world defending and befriending tinpot dictators, and now making one-sided partisan attacks on election procedures in one state, apparently as part of a coordinated effort by the DNC to arouse the Democratic base. The result is that we can now say that Mr. Carter is the worst former president ever.

“Not, of course, that we're not used to double standards coming from the north. Florida, of course, must have elections authorities purer than the virgin snow...but it's ok if the barbarians in South America get one of the sides to run their polls...
Sigh...

Posted by F. Toro at September 28, 2004 07:54 AM”

Since I voted for Jimmy, twice, I can certainly say that your country was not the only country invaded by the gentle man from Plains, with the same result. Apparently you haven’t lived in Chicago where the Democrats are a die-hard lot and hardy enough to vote every year after death. The Dems run the polls and behave barbarically. Please don’t put reasonable anger at the outrage of your resent election debacle. Frankly rigged elections aren’t exactly new for South America either.

I voted for him because I thought he was a “good and moral” man. He has since shown to me how wrong I was. He and Clinton broke the tradition of ex-presidents keeping quiet on sitting presidents and US policy. I believe that the controversy of the felon vote was that people were incorrectly on the felon list, but while they have been used as a battle cry for disenfranchising the “black” vote, twice as many whites were incorrectly on the list. No one to date has made the claim that whites were disenfranchised. Jimmy’s lack of candor was not in bringing up the problem, necessarily, but in the omission of facts.

From the archives
Steve Dunleavy wrote the attached article chronicling vote mismanagement observed in the disputed 2000 under the designer of the butterfly ballot, in the election she oversaw. 7 recounts later by such right wing organizations like CNN, only differed by the number of votes Bush won by.

“"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.”
“In rural Calhoun County, one absentee military vote triggered a long debate. Democrats argued that military votes should be in red ink and not black ink as was received.
Democrats in Seminole County are trying to throw out 15,000 votes, 10,000 of which went to Bush, because they say absentee-ballot requests - not ballots, mind you, but requests - were wrongly numbered.
We have a canvassing board made up of three Democrats. One, Theresa LePore, who started this mess in the first place by an allegedly badly designed ballot; a second, Carol Roberts, who was less than frank about her Democratic Party activities, pushing this hand-count nonsense. “

It is Jimmy Carter's claim that is disgraceful; he has certainly fulfilled Stalin’s definition of useful idiot. Since the Dems don’t seem to do well when the vote counting is being watched, perhaps we do need observers making sure that the Mob and the unions don’t turn in late ballots as they did in Tennessee, West Virginia, and the other coal states that helped JFK win.

Jane was far fairer to America's favorite peaNUT than truth would allow. He is my greatest mistake. At least Billy had an excuse.

Link source
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

What? Carter didn't bother to mention California either? Although a Democratic stronghold, our Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley, nontheless felt the need to misuse HAVA federal funds.

Instead of using these funds, as they were intended: to provide the state with the financial support to replace punch card voting systems and to help with voter outreach and education, Mr. Shelly used the money for “federally funded consultants to register voters for largely Democratic constituency groups and at partisan rallies, including one to ‘take back the White House,’ according to staff activity reports released Thursday.” (Sacramento Bee, Sept. 17, 2004)

So,
Bernie is using his real name, whereas the rest of us are a bunch of cowardly frauds for using pseudonyms?
Guess what - none of us are famous!!! Even if we used our real names, you still wouldn't know who we were.
Going back to a point I made much earlier, childish debating points and name calling may make the puffed-up feel good, but they hardly win converts to the cause.

Hugo makes the unsubstantiated claim: "I'm gripped by the fact that 32% of the felons voted GOP"...

I guess this means that if you are correct, 68% of the felons voted for the party of the SEDITIOUS & SLEAZY, right?

No really, if you have some credible info on your 32% claim, I wish you'd post it...

BTW did you note what one of the leading sleazoids was whining about and how much money he wants to burn to push his delusional view of reality?

Maybe the moron who equated 9-11 with Abu Ghraib should be spending his money instead helping these these dim-witted Dems instead...

Yomtov,
You are obviously not a very smart man-- you have donated your money to (by your own admision) to a LOSER. that being said why should anyone take anything you say seriously.

As for Jimmah Catah( "I'll never lie to you"- NOT), he is singlehandedly responsable for more death and misery and terrorism in this world than any of the openly avowed terrorists on the scene today. His charade in Venezuela was just the latest in his catastrophic interference in the affairs of innocent people. He sold them down the river into a totalitarian hell, he truly deserves to be put in front of a wall and shot. What an evil, dried up, old man he is. Just thinking about him and all of the incompetent and vile things he has done in his 'career' makes me want to puke.

The repudiation continues and gains speed. Kerry is (cold, French) Toast. The democrat party is disintegrating before our very eyes and what a welcome sight it is.
Any party that has Ted Kennedy, Robert KKK Byrd, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, and you (Yomtov, SCMTim) and the dumbest man in the US Senate - Joe (the plagiarist) Biden as its spokesmen, is only to be ridiculed and repudiated.

"Maybe the moron who equated 9-11 with Abu Ghraib"

Speaking of Abu-Garib, I would like to throw this into the pot.

The story was spewed out into the world by -- wait for it-- Dan Rather with the able assistance of his producer l'il Ms Mary. I seem to remember that Michael Moore said at one point that he had Abu-Garib footage but that he didn't use it F-9/11.

I am proposing that the whole Abu-Garib B/S was staged and filmed by or at the behest of Mr.Moore with the eager encouragement of Danny Boy and L'il Ms Mary.

I have no proof obviously but if you think of it this way the film makes some sort of sense. Remember nobody could figure out why anyone would film these so called torture scenes. Forged documents, Staged films, and other trumped up news stories by Danny Boy et al would seem to be just another one in a long series.
I leave it for the rest of you to do the anal exam that only the blogosphere can do. Please prove me wrong or right but let's get to the bottom of this once and for all.

"None Dare Call It Treason" was Barry Goldwaters response to the type of behaviour we have seen from Kerry, Carter, and Lockhart. Look at the facts: Carter built too many houses without a hardhat. Kennedy would have been indicted for manslaughter in any state other than the "Peoples Republic of Massachusetts.

Kerry consorted with the enemy. Pure and simple, gave comfort to the enemy. Kerry has accomplished 2 things in life, married rich women. I remember when he was still Irish.

He kissed the butt of the brother of a man charged with close to 30 murders.

Hi,
Just saw the link on Instapundit, and as I have just read Joel Mowbray's column on Frontpage:
"Jimmy Carter's Election Fraud" http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15283

thought I would check it out as I also read another comment as well on Jimmy in the print version of the Jpost.
I cannot find a web link but the following is part of a column on elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

It was in the Jpost's print magazine "UPFRONT" of September 24, 2004 where on page 6, Khaled Abu Taomeh has a column entitled "The other municipal crisis".

He starts off writing:
"The ballot boxes had just been closed at the end of the election daywhen the lights suddenly and mysteriously went out."
He then goes on to describe how people witnessed
the changing of ballot boxes
He carries on describing the 1996 election of the first legislative and presidential representatives of the "newly established Palestinian Authority", and further on has
this bit:
"The incidents did not prevent the international community from dubbing the elections "free and democratic". After all, former US president Jimmy Carter personally supervised the voting, running from one polling station to another and interviewing supervisors and voters."

See, it's not just the poor voters in Florida who have problems thanks to the arrogance of a self appointed Saint.

Jane Galt said: "What good reason is there to block photo ID requirements, except that you think your party benefits more from people voting under someone else's name?"

I say: Amen. In my small, mostly Republican town in Connecticut, everyone has to show ID, and no one thinks it's a plot to disenfranchise anyone. Because it's obviously not. It's just a prudent way to prevent fraud.

Carter's comments on Florida are disgusting, given what he just did in Venezuela. People who were trying to give Carter the benefit of the doubt on the Venezuelan election speculated that perhaps he thought it was truly best for the people to encourage confidence in the "winner". After all, doubt and suspicion aren't likely to get Chavez out, so perhaps he thought it was better to try to unite the people of Venezuela. But here, Carter is trying to undermine confidence in an election before it has even occurred.

Another poster earlier said that, as President, Carter brought human rights into foreign policy. Perhaps that's why he was such a strong supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?

Hondo writes,

I never cease to be amazed at the numerical illiteracy - or utter lack of shame, I'm not sure which - of many Democratic Party apologists.

Despite your condescension you make one of the same errors that I pointed out other 2000 election supporters make. You state in absence of evidence that an observation in one Ohio county automatically applies to others. This is typical reasoning of the form "I see a small incident here and if you multiply it by all the places I didn't look the result must be really bad". No. You need to actually find the evidence in the places you didn't look as well. That's called standard of proof, and it is what the Democrats had in 2000 with Palm Beach. Other cases were less clearcut, but Palm Beach would have made the difference. Look, if you really want to silence these annoying Democrats, stop anecdote-peddling and start living up to the same standards of evidence that they do.

Bernard,

You're right, you did post under your real name, and thus, you were quickly exposed as a partisan hack demanding that opposing opinions be silenced. What's your point?

Assume I gave $1000 to Bush this cycle, it still doesn't mean that you have somehow magically transformed into a semi-intelligent being who can tell fact from opinion and doesn't demand ideological conformity from everyone you encounter.

I would have been embarassed to put my real name to your post, but that's just me...

Jane Galt...I love you! You are so right! Why is it only okay with Jimmy Carter if the eligible voters are "disenfranchised"? Maybe for the same reason that only Christians have to take down their monuments and biblical verses from public places while anyone who desecrates our flag has the right to do so??

I know this is a little off topic, but as Americans who love our country, everyone of us should look twice at anyone who intentionally goes outside our country to degrade our nation and its people! We should look twice at dignitaries and former dignitaries who feel it is their right to demean our government and blame our country for everything wrong in the world and say so to the leaders of other countries. Since when do we allow ex-presidents to dictate current foreign policy? I am not ashamed of our country, our president, our military or our citizens. Although there may be flaws in our elections that need to be corrected (I am all for the ID - why the hell shouldn't we have to show it????) but to make us look like our elections are rigged or coerced or bullied is BS and these Democraps know it...unless they are so guilty they think everyone is like them!!

And you are right Brett...do they care?

I would like just ONE of the many posters here who describe Carter as the worst, or one of the two worst, presidents of the 20th Century to tell me exactly what they admired about Warren G. Harding and how he was not a worse president than Carter.

This is not a partisan issue. Given my political interests, I think the 1920s-era Democratic party is one of the last organizations in U.S. History I would want to be associated with.

Brittain33:

Don't hold your breath. We all have our votes for worst president ever(hello - unnecessary war, ludicrous tax plan, etc. Jeebus, I can't believe you guys picked this guy to represent you), but I think it's pretty hard to credibly pick Carter. He may not have done much that was exciting or terribly right, but I don't think he did much that was terribly wrong.

But I'm surprised that the wingnuts picked Carter. I would have guessed they'd go for LBJ. You've got Vietnam, civil rights, and the Great Society - what's there for a wingnut not to hate. Yeah,Vietnam was a war (which they like), and it was against commen'ists (which they like), but we didn't win it and the deficits it fueled were part part of the economic horror that was the 70s. Civil rights - well, there's a reason Nixon was able to pursue a "southern strategy." And he put an African American on the Court - quotas. As for the rest of the Great Society - huge government programs, and all they do is try to help the less fortunate. What a waste. (Not like the military - guns is good).

So I'm not sure what wingnut brief makes Carter worse than LBJ. And shouldn't they be going nuts about FDR? And going back further, just look what that bastard Lincoln did to the notion of states' rights.

Good choices, Tim! You get some things right.

I enjoyed all the comments about the peanut farmer .... especially all the adulation heaped on him for "building affordable housing for poor people".
Just when did home ownership become a right?
Just when did having a large family that you can't afford become an indicator that you needed home ownership to complete your life?
Just when did being poor become a reason for having others subsidize your mortgage?
Have you seen the default rate on these houses? And the costs to get them ready for the next owner?

I think that the peanut farmer is as good at Habitat as he was at playing president .... an unmitigated absolute total failure!

All you chardonnay-swilling, brie-noshing elitist Republicans should learn how to treat a normal working peanut farmer with respect.

You know, it still amazes me how a thread can morph; how some folks managed to start arguing about Kerry's post-war activities is beyond me... Heh.

Anyway. Yes, Carter has never met a socialist he hasn't wanted to hug. It doesn't necessarily follow that he doesn't understand how to run election, does it?

Well, let's look at the facts. I recall someone above citing that Carter called the PLA election "free and democratic," as well as the recent Venezuelan election. There are also two posters -apparently from that country- on this thread who consider Carter to be full of it.

Carter also had nice things to say about the Sandanista regime, too.

So far it's not looking good for for ol' "Peanut" Jimmmy.

But, perhaps, you think that I'm being partisan. Maybe, maybe not. But please return to Carter's article, and note that practically one of the first things he does is recommend electronic voting as a superior form of counting votes!

Ladies and gentlemen, that by itself convinces me that Carter is an idiot. Electronic voting is neither secure, nor does it protect the privacy of the voter. The only way to ensure valid results is to have a paper trail for each machine, which invalidates voter privacy.

In other words, electronic voting is a very bad idea. The method may, in the far future, become trustworthy, but not now. I can't see anyone, Republican or Democrat, seriously considering this.

What's wrong with an "X" on a piece of paper? Hell, it works for over a hundred years, before Americans got excited over mechanized vote-counting systems. But then, I don't see much wrong with punch cards either. The Florida controversy was based on a poorly-written specification as to what counted as a vote, and what didn't.

The basic fact of the matter is that, 99% of the time, there has always been a 1-2% margin of error for every election in America; but 99% of the time it doesn't matter since the margin of decision is larger than that. The 2000 election was a bizarre, one in a million longshot. Statistically speaking, the election was a precise 50/50 split.

I will go out on a limb and say that there will never be a vote-counting system which provides greater accuracy than current methods, and still protects the anonymity of the voter.

Just when did having a large family that you can't afford become an indicator that you needed home ownership to complete your life?

Unless you're proposing the Chinese solution, then you better be prepared to accept that some folks have larger families -- particularly among the low-income, who often marry young, may see a large family as a future road to financial security once the offsrping come of age, and may even be, say, having sex more often, since it's a pleasure they can afford in the short-term, unlike cinema tickets or a 42" television. And it would, at least in theory, be preferable that the kids have an opportunity to be raised in a home rather than a badly overcrowded apartment or mobile home unit.

I, as a member of a family of five, grew up in a comparatively nice 1100sqft+unfinished basement trilevel and we still managed to use every square inch of it to the fullest. Consequently I have a hard time criticizing a charitable organization for at least trying to give that kind of opportunity to others whose parents weren't so well off as my own.

Perhaps you could limit your criticisms to Carter's actual screw-ups?

SomeCallMeTim, your comment makes a good point. Almost all of the "wingnuts" that I know despise Jimmy Carter in a way that they do not despise LBJ or FDR. They generally do not like either LBJ or FDR, although there exist exceptions even to that, as both Ronald Reagan and Conrad Black admired FDR, neither LBJ nor FDR inspire the same level of vitirol as Carter. Lincoln is typically admired among the"wingnut" crowd; I have personally met no exceptions to this rule. The people who truly hate Lincoln are a rare, exotic species unto themselves with little influence.

Contra your statement, all of the "wingnuts" that I know think of civil rights as being one of the good things that LBJ did, not really surprising as the Republicans voted for civil rights in greater proportion than the Democrats. This difference in voting mirrored the voting of the parties in the 20th Century. FDR wanted the Democrats to focus on "national" issues, which was code language for avoid discussions of civil rights. Woodrow Wilson was an out and out segratationist, a marked contrast to his predecessor, TR. Bull Conner was a delegate at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Given this lamentable party history, knowledgable "wingnuts" admire Johnson for his courage on civil rights even as they critize his Great Society proposals which, though well-intentioned, were obviously going to lead to a fiasco.

I could go on further about LBJ and FDR vs. Carter, but I wish to make a more important point. My conversations with actual "wingnuts" demonstrate that your ideas of what "wingnuts" believe (and by the term "wingnut" I am assuming that you mean Republican who will vote for, and would consider campaigning for, Bush) are completely wrong. It certainly describes a kind of person that I have only very, very rarely met and I know a lot of "wingnuts." In fact, your implied description of "wingnut" seems to me to be a figament of your hatred. I think that you should reconsider your image of people whose politics disagrees with yours. This image may make you feel good, but it is just wrong.

Let's put Carter's presidency in perspective. I haved lived through the Administrations of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter,Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II.

American history is my favorite subject. I am very grateful my grandparents