Election rigged? Nah ;)

[Cosmo]

Election rigged? Nah

Check this out. Thanks to Cerial for showing me the link:

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/07/tv_st..._reports_t.html

 

[Darkwolf]

Election rigged? Nah

Actually thats quite standard, they have a story worked out for a Bush win, a Kerry win, and probably one for an unintellagable mess. They just have to play with the numbers. Why they broadcast it? I kind of suspect that the moveon types are actually trying to lay a base for saying the election was a fraud if Bush clearly wins.

 

[DadOf5]

Election rigged? Nah

I'd say hang on to that screenshot and see if the elections play out in the exact manner that the article says. If it does, we'll know that something is fishy.

 

[Timescholar]

Election rigged? Nah

It was probably just a place-holder (just change some names, and stats, and there you have it!). How do you think those newspapers with "XYZ TEAM WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP!!" are given within 10 minutes? They probably have a few reporters writing rave reviews for each side "As it happens" (or even before). That story was probably accidently published (production server) instead of going on some sort of development server.

Even where I work (it's not news, but it does have a PR department), some forgotten webpages inadverdantly get posted, and search engines like Google pick it up.

 

[CaryP]

Election rigged? Nah

Looks like the Bush admin. wants to give John Ashcroft as Atty. General the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce election laws. This move would deprive individual voters of the ability to file suit to enforce voters rights laws. This is just getting bizarre. Check it out. The three big states where this is going on are Ohio, Michigan and Florida. Isn't that amazing!? Why not some podunk state like Louisiana? Cause there ain't no pay off in it. This is just disgusting. I'm almost tempted to vote for Kerry over it, and he's a piece of crap.

Cary

Bush Seeks Limit to Suits Over Voting Rights

Bush Seeks Limit to Suits Over Voting Rights
Administration lawyers argue that only the Justice Department, not the voters, may sue to enforce provisions in the Help America Vote Act.
by David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt,


WASHINGTON ? Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.

Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.

Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters or the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.

But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide \"uniform and nondiscriminatory\" voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.

\"Congress clearly did not intend to create a right enforceable\" in court by individual voters, the Justice Department briefs said.

In one case the Sandusky County Democratic Party sued Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, arguing that the county's voters should be permitted to file provisional ballots even if they go to the wrong polling place on election day.

The Justice Department intervened as a friend of the court on Blackwell's side.

Saturday's decision in that case, and in other recent cases from Michigan and Florida, gave the department a partial victory. On the one hand, the courts agreed with state officials who said voters may not obtain a provisional ballot if they go to the wrong polling place.

However, all three courts that ruled on the matter rejected the administration's broader view that voters may not sue state election officials in federal court.

Still, the issue may resurface and prove significant next week if disputes arise over voter qualifications. Some election-law experts believe the administration has set the stage for arguing that the federal courts may not second-guess decisions of state election officials in Ohio, Florida or elsewhere.

J. Gerald Hebert, a former chief of the department's voting-rights section, said he was dismayed that the government was seeking to weaken a measure designed to protect voters.

\"This is the first time in history the Justice Department has gone to court to side against voters who are trying to enforce their right to vote. I think this law will mean very little if the rights of American voters have to depend on this Justice Department,\" said Hebert, who worked in the voting-rights section from 1973 to 1994.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it was simply trying to implement what it considered to be the clear intent of Congress. Other voting-rights laws, including the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which required states to allow citizens a chance to register to vote while applying for or renewing driver's licenses, have been more explicit in allowing for private enforcement, it noted.

In contrast, the Help America Vote Act says in its enforcement section that \"the attorney general may bring a civil action\" in federal court to challenge the actions of states that fail to follow the law.

\"Where Congress expressly decided to trust judicial enforcement of a statute to the Department of Justice, as it did in HAVA, the Department has a practice of defending its jurisdiction in court,\" the department's statement said. The department said that, on occasion, it had opposed private enforcement in other voting-rights cases.

But some former Justice voting-rights officials and some election law and civil rights experts said the department's latest position represented a marked philosophical shift. Historically, they said, the department had been aggressive in supporting the idea of private suits as an important tool in fighting discrimination and other ills, even where such rights were not clearly spelled out by legislation.

\"Before this administration, I would say that almost uniformly, the Department of Justice would argue in favor of private rights of action ? to enforce statutes that regulate state and local government,\" said Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford University's Law School.

She said the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not originally include a private right to sue state officials who discriminated against aspiring black voters. The Justice Department backed the idea of private suits, nonetheless, in a test case that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969.

In their ruling, the justices said \"the achievement of the act's laudable goal would be severely hampered ? if each citizen were required to depend solely on litigation instituted at the discretion of the attorney general.\"

More recently, the Justice Department also sided with private plaintiffs in a 1996 case challenging a registration fee that had been instituted by the Virginia Republican Party as a racially motivated poll tax under Section 10 of the Voting Rights Act.

The section did not expressly mention private actions but the Supreme Court, at the urging of the Justice Department, found an \"implied\" right to sue, said Steven J. Mulroy, an assistant professor at the University of Memphis Law School and a former lawyer in the department's voting-rights section.

\"It is pretty rare for the Department of Justice to take a position that there is no private right of action to enforce a federal statute guaranteeing voting rights,\" he added.

In a related development, the Justice Department announced Thursday that it was sending nearly 1,100 federal workers ? more than twice the number four years ago ? to monitor and observe the election in 25 states for possible violations of the federal voting-rights laws.

About 840 federal observers will be stationed at polling places in 27 areas covered by federal court orders, including parts of Mississippi, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, the department said in a news release.

In addition, the department said it was deploying scores of attorneys and staff from its civil rights division to monitor voting in 58 jurisdictions in other parts of the country. Officials did not explain how they chose those locations, although many are in such battleground states as Michigan, Ohio and Florida.

Civil rights groups have been concerned that the spectacle of a growing number of federal workers stationed at polling places could have a chilling effect on potential voters.

The department said that most of the workers would be from the federal Office of Personnel Management and that none of the monitors at polling locations were criminal prosecutors.

? Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

 

[Judge Bean]

Election rigged? Nah

Wait until next week when all of the legal schemes come to the surface of the sump. Ashcroft and Rove will be the chief engineers of the worst damage to the Constitution that will ensue if the election is inconclusive or too close to call.

Louisiana, contrary to being "podunk," is considered to be one of the most civilized places on earth. New Orleans, particularly, is one of the places about which Americans ought to most proud, according to, for instance, the English novelist John Fowles.

I wish I was from there.

 

[CaryP]

Re: Election rigged? Nah

I know this is an old subject, but what the hell. Thought some of you might give a rat's ass.

Cary

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?...d=30826&ntpid=1

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Rob Zaleski: Voting glitches haunt statistician ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?By Rob Zaleski ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?March 4, 2005


? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Brian Joiner wishes he could \"just get over it.\"

He wishes he could ignore the thousands of reported voting irregularities that occurred in the Nov. 2 election, accept the fact that George W. is going to be around another four years and just hope that we haven't created even more enemies or fallen even deeper into debt by the time 2008 rolls around.

\"I'm sure the Republicans would like me to forget all that stuff, just like they wanted everyone to forget all the strange things that happened in the 2000 election,\" the retired 67-year-old UW-Madison statistics professor said this week.

Well, sorry guys, but he can't.

There were, Joiner says, too many things that occurred on Nov. 2 that \"still don't smell right.\" He can't just pretend everything is rosy, he says, when he reads that Steven Freeman, a respected University of Pennsylvania professor, says the odds of the exit polls in the critical states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being so far off were about 662,000 to 1.


And since no one in the mainstream media has yet to provide a plausible explanation for such discrepancies - \"investigative reporting essentially is just dead in this country,\" he groans - Joiner and many of his colleagues are going to continue to speak out and demand that government leaders provide some answers.

So that, at the very least, we don't find ourselves in the same situation in 2008.

But if the irregularities are as suspicious and troubling as he claims, why aren't John Kerry and other top Democrats making similar demands?

\"Boy, I wish I knew,\" says Joiner, who was a volunteer observer for the Ohio recount in early December. Because you can sure as heck bet that Republicans would be screaming and demanding an investigation if Kerry had won under similar circumstances, he says.

\"I think the Democrats read the tea leaves and think that people don't want to make a big fuss over this stuff. They'd just rather be quitters and move on.\"

Joiner knows full well some people will roll their eyes while reading this and dismiss him as yet another shoot-from-the-hip conspiracy nut.

Not quite.

In fact, he's among a group of prominent statisticians and academicians who contributed to a recent study that refutes a report by exit pollsters Edison and Mitofsky that exit poll errors on Nov. 2 were responsible for the unprecedented 5.5 percent discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results.

The study, done on behalf of US Count Votes, a volunteer scientific research project, not only disagrees with the Edison/Mitofsky findings but concludes that \"the possibility that the overall vote was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously\" and urges a thorough investigation.

Does Joiner personally believe the election was stolen?

\"I don't know, that's a very tough question,\" he says. \"But it's not clear to me that it wasn't, so it's a question of where the burden of proof is.\"

At the same time, Joiner says, he does believe the country's making a big mistake by relying so heavily on electronic voting machines.

\"It's just too easy to hack those machines,\" he says. \"And if they are hacked, how would we ever know?\"

Joiner, incidentally, isn't the least bit surprised that the study - which was released Jan. 28 - has been virtually ignored by the media. Neither is Bruce O'Dell, vice president of US Count Votes.

\"I think the mainstream media - like most Americans brought up to be proud of our Democratic traditions - simply assume that elections are honestly counted in the United States,\" O'Dell says. \"They discount anecdotal reports of election irregularities and refuse to believe that systematic corruption could occur - even though serious, systematic vulnerabilities both in voting equipment and in counting procedures have been well-documented.\"

He notes that when reports of widespread voting problems occurred in Ukraine last year, both local and international observers quickly concluded the election had been stolen.

\"But when precisely the same scenario occurred here, not only were mainstream journalists not alarmed, they quickly labeled those who questioned the results as conspiracy theorists.\"

O'Dell says US Count Votes wants to develop \"a single database of nation-wide precinct-level election results, along with matching U.S. Census demographic information and the type of voting equipment in use.\"

Its ultimate goal \"is to be able to gather and analyze data as it comes in on election night, and to spot vote counting problems in time for candidates to request an investigation or recount - before they concede.\"

And it hopes to have such a system in place by 2006.

Kjell Doksum, another UW-Madison statistician, says that if US Count Votes accomplishes just one thing, it's that there's a \"paper trail\" for every vote cast in 2008.

\"This is easy to achieve,\" he suggested in an e-mail.

\"Start a rumor that the Democrats have the world's best hackers and are going to fix the machines the next time.\"

?

 

[Darkwolf]

Re: Election rigged? Nah

Great article Cary. I have been looking into election practices in the electronic age, and I think I have gained some insight into what happened in this, and at least the last four previous elections. (I believe I've mentioned this before) They were rigged. However there was no widespread direct cheating. (note this works on the theory that the democratic and republican leadership are on some level working together) They use sociology, rather than stuffing ballot boxes. Through survays, and probably analisis of local elections, they know where certian groups are, and their approximate numbers. (evangelical christians, gays, environmentalists ect) Not all of these people vote in every election, however each group tends to favor one party or the other almose exclusively. When they want to swing an election, they make certian issues more prominent which makes the groups that they want to "activate" seem to have a personal stake in the election. They also differ the ammount and quality of coverage these things get in certian areas. These are usually the smokescreen issues on which necons and neolibs differ. They know approximatly how many votes this will gain them, and in which states, and therefore they control the results of the election. This is alot safer for them than hacking dibolds, or stuffing ballot boxes, and in the end it is alot more effective.

 

[K@t 5]

Re: Election rigged? Nah

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"Darkwolf\")</div>

Great article Cary. I have been looking into election practices in the electronic age, and I think I have gained some insight into what happened in this, and at least the last four previous elections. (I believe I've mentioned this before) They were rigged. However there was no widespread direct cheating. (note this works on the theory that the democratic and republican leadership are on some level working together) They use sociology, rather than stuffing ballot boxes. Through survays, and probably analisis of local elections, they know where certian groups are, and their approximate numbers. (evangelical christians, gays, environmentalists ect) Not all of these people vote in every election, however each group tends to favor one party or the other almose exclusively. When they want to swing an election, they make certian issues more prominent which makes the groups that they want to \"activate\" seem to have a personal stake in the election. They also differ the ammount and quality of coverage these things get in certian areas. These are usually the smokescreen issues on which necons and neolibs differ. They know approximatly how many votes this will gain them, and in which states, and therefore they control the results of the election. This is alot safer for them than hacking dibolds, or stuffing ballot boxes, and in the end it is alot more effective.[/b]

While that does seem a distinct possibility, I don't think that we can ignore the fact that certain machines started the voting process on Nov 2 loaded with votes in the first place. As well as the fact that certain people were denied the right to vote because their name resembled someone else's. Not to mention, how many districts recorded more votes than people?

Once again, the joke reigns. "I'm not saying the election was rigged, but 3 out of 2 people voted for him!"

 

[Darkwolf]

Re: Election rigged? Nah

Well K@t all I can say to that is that there was as much evedidence for democratic cheating as there was for the other side. There was local cheating on both sides as there has been in every election we've ever had. I know of quite a few people who had Ohio absentee ballots that they were going to use. The people who are actually pulling the strings however are smarter than that. They are not going to use means that will leave that much evidence. What I described them doing is more like it. Not only that but I don't think that if they got caught at it its even illeagal.