election (1 Viewer)

[P. Littbarski]

I'd say Blair is counting his blessings that Bush got re-elected. He would have been the only big player who instigated the Iraqi invasion left.

and did you hear Bertie yesterday...delighted that Bush got re-elected as this will be very good for the Irish economy. He had issues with Kerrys policies as he wanted to tax American companies who set up over seas.

 

[jane]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/canada.us.reut/index.html

 

[snakybus]

find out what makes them tick...

mebbe dey were just born tick

 

[LMD64]

mebbe dey were just born tick

yeh gombeen man

 

[fmk]

and the point I was making was that he is retarded for thinking such a thing.

sorry for having a mind of my own. i forgot, i'm supposed to go with the left's hive mentality. will repeat to myself one hundred times before i go to bed each night for the next week "michael moore is good, we love michael moore."

actually, scub that, sarcasm is probly wasted on you.

just one point you're going to have to consider though: if all michael moore is doing is singing to the choir / preaching to the converted, he's a waste of space. what we need are people who are capable of speaking to the people who gave bush the mandate he received on tuesday. moore is incapable of doing that.

 

[fmk]

Yeah, but I think Michael Moore's rhetoric should be recognised for what it is: rhetoric.

i think his rhetoric should be recognised for what it is: bad propaganda, at least the equal of the sort of stuff karl rove puts out.

moore, defending f 9/11 against valid criticism, justifies himself with comments like the following:

"I am trying to reach the people who usually don't vote - the working class, the single mothers, minorities and young people. The rich all vote, and most of them vote Republican. Those who struggle often do not vote, but they support the Democratic candidates. If there is a huge turnout, then Bush will lose."

as with most everything he does, he's wrong in what he says. and now history has proved him wrong.

but still, among left-leaning liberals, it's not right to criticise the man?

the problem i have with is the problem i have with most of the people of the bush bashing variety: they think it's as simple as knocking bush, and everyone will wake up and vote for a democrat. it doesn't work like that. you have to give people a real reason to vote for you. the republicans gave people a real reason. you or i may disagree with it, but it's a real reason.

yes, we need people who can have the sort of profile moore does. but we need them to be saying something which people - the people who voted for bush on tuesday - are actually likely to listen to, and be swayed by.

 

[MDR]

I think Michael Moore is up there with Damian Dempsey in terms of the standard of his political commentary.

 

[broken arm]

but still, among left-leaning liberals, it's not right to criticise the man?

what?? I can't believe that people are still talking about MM. The fact he was taken so seriously and converted into a hate figure by many on the right-left-up-down in america shows the pathetic level of debate on any of the important issues. The guy had an opinion and he made films about those opinion, so what. Typically the right in america brought the the bar down to constant argumentum ad-hominem without actually facing any of the issues. conveniently ignorant.

mm isn't an issue so stop turning hin into one.

 

[spiritualtramp]

cool cover of G2 in the Gruaniad today.


totally black with "oh god" written in the middle.

 

[avernus]

sorry for having a mind of my own. i forgot, i'm supposed to go with the left's hive mentality. will repeat to myself one hundred times before i go to bed each night for the next week "michael moore is good, we love michael moore."

actually, scub that, sarcasm is probly wasted on you.

hehehe..youre an idiot.

whats almost as irritating as the "Bush is bad" mantra by people who have been informed by some barely literate rock star, is the "michael moore is a pointless fat mess" crap that assorted 'im hardcore man' liberals are spouting. do you honestly think that MM roused a bunch of lethargic fat conservatives to come and vote for Bush? like I mean, really.

not liking Moore or his books/films is not a crime. thinking he's to blame or largely to blame for Bush being elected is retarded.

 

[egg_]

among left-leaning liberals, it's not right to criticise the man

You're way off the mark there, dude. Most lefties seem to have little respect for the man ... MM is to the left what Linkin Park is to metal

 

[avernus]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

Kerry Won
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004



Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots.

Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this month on DVD .

Kerry won. Here's the facts.

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]

Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.

And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely—leaving a 'hanging chad,'—or was punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)

And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.

So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz). Nor are they demanding we look at the "overvotes" where voter intent may be discerned.

Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, “the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.”

But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.

Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.

The Impact Of Challenges

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws—almost never used—allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky "provisional" ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio.

Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote

Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality—if all votes are counted—is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted."

How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional ballots.

CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Your Kerry Victory Party

So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry—if we count all the votes.

But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.

What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act III.

I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in London. Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In light of the failure—a second time—to count all the votes, that won't be necessary. My country has left me.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

I suspect there won't be a female president of the US until there's a female VP who then runs for the big job and gets in that way, and I doubt if Hilary would lower herself to be a running mate for John Edwards or Barrack Obama, two of the likely candidates for 2008. I think she might run for the Democrat nomination but will be pipped at the post because the Democrats will chicken out and go for silver-tongue Edwards.

hmm, remember Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984? Mondale's VP running mate

Hillary Clinton is dead sexy. Seriously. And so is Monica Lewinsky.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

cool cover of G2 in the Gruaniad today.


totally black with "oh god" written in the middle.

yeah
I was showing this to people in work

some got it while others wondered why I keep "buying an English paper" as they glanced up from their Oirish Sun/Mirror.

what are you going to do?

 

[spady]

On Tom McRae's site today....

"Yesterday I was in New York and the world was a hopeful place. Today things are different. Go to the window, look outside. Smile at a stranger, speak to your loved ones, remind yourself that there is still beauty in the world. Remember….. there is always hope. Now go and buy canned goods, a torch, and a clockwork radio, for surely the end is nigh."

 

[broken arm]

Re: On Tom McRae's site today....

from dack.com

----------------------------------------------------------

Some final thoughts about the election, why it was so easy calling it for Bush, and a modest proposal for a way forward.

Consider these facts:

• NASCAR is the #1 spectator sport.
• The O'Reilly Factor is the #1 news show on cable.
• Rush Limbaugh is the #1 show on radio.
• Wal-Mart is the #1 retailer.

Also:

• 45% of Americans believe in creationism.
• Garfield: The Movie grossed $75 million at the box office, and
• The parking lot at the Olive Garden is always full.

That John Kerry -- an effete, egghead, Socialist Frenchman from Taxachusetts -- was only 130,000 votes short of becoming the next president is nothing short of remarkable.

Over the past 24 hours there has been a lot of discussion and hand-wringing among Democrats about whether they need to move to the left or to the right to be competitive in the next presidential race. Well, fuck the next election. The only way to avoid a full-on culture war (which will inevitably lead to a bloody bullet war), and to avoid further drubbing at the hands of the Christian Right, is for the blue states to peacefully secede from the Union.

We shall call this new state West Western Europe.

Now, WWE's obvious problem is the lack of contiguousity between its midwest and its west-coast regions, but there's is a simple solution: purchase from Canada a 1223 X 1 mile land bridge for an autobahn and bullet train, to connect Minnesota with Washington. Canadians will surely sell us this parcel for no more than a dozen jugs of firewater, a handfull of beads, and various trinkets.

Key cultural elements of West Western Europe:

• literacy
• jogging
• Volvo station wagons
• sodomy

The remaining "red" states shall become the new country of Dipshitistan.

Key cultural elements of Dipshitistan:

• diabetes
• country music
• God up the wazoo
• Legal requirement for a monument of the Ten Commandments in front of every courthouse and Waffle House.

-------------------------------------------------


"John Kerry -- an effete, egghead, Socialist Frenchman from Taxachusetts" "dipshitistan" with "God up the wazoo" thats some funny shit right there.

 

[ElderLemon]

I have a few issues toi raise regarding the article by Greg Palast above :

First one is the accuracy of the following statement :

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

The first problem with this statement is that we don't know at what time this poll was released. On Tuesday, several exit polls were conducted using only data from morning and possibly lunchtime voters. We don't know whether this poll was one of those or whether it included data from throughout the day. If it is one of the former, the data is skewed as different types of people vote at different times dependent on their motivation (strongly motivated people vote in the mornings - if Nice 2 had been conducted only on votes cast in the morning, the vote would have been 50-50), socio-economic status (urban dwellers are more likely to vote in the morning than rural people), and also whether there is a GOTV team active in the area. Data collected from sampling on only a portion of the hours that polls are open is incomplete, and can't be used without data collected from the other hours of polling.

If we assume that this exit poll was actually conducted over the whole day (with the data weighted for turnout strength in each portion of the day) is the statement 'So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.' correct? Not necessarily. We don't know the name of the polling organisation he is citing, or the methodology used, where their sampling points were, etc. (As you've probably already guessed, I've a nerdish interest in this area) Considering that there is wide variation between polling organisations asto their results (I surveyed several hundred state polls conducted during the election and found that Mason-Dixon on average gave Bush a 4% greater lead than Kerry than the American Research Group did in polls), it's hard to draw conclusions without more details. Another problem that has been found in polls (and exit polls in particular) is that simply people lie. Anyone remember the General Election in Britain in 1992? Between 1988 and Election day in February 1992, every poll (including the exit polls on the day) said Labour would beat the Tories; and yet the Tories won. What had happened? The polling industry had a big think-in afterwards, and came up with a series of conclusions. The main one was that respondents be sampled by Home Ownership Status (which they hadn't been before), but another one noted that in the exit polls, some people had just plain lied, and had done so because they didn't want to vote Tory, but simply couldn't trust Labour, and for whatever reason - a sense of shame perhaps - gave poll samplers misleading answers. Whether this could have been a factor here is hard to say but it's something to keep in mind. On top of this, most polls have a margin of error of 4% (and the margin is greater for subgroups such as Male or Female)

Another issue is that some spoiled votes are actually deliberately spoiled generally as a form of protest.

I think his thesis that Kerry actually won the election is far-fetched and not very convincing. However he does have a point regarding the monitoring and adjudication of spoiled votes and provisional ballots (although as far as I'm aware John Kerry did say in his concession speech that although he was conceding, all the provisional ballots will still be counted). I find it a bit hard to believe that the Democrats would willingly kowtow to Blackwell if they felt that a thorough scrutiny of the spoiled and provisional ballots might give them a shot at victory - they didn't hire several thousand lawyers for nothing. That said, the process for adjudicating the validity of these ballots has to be transparent.

Finally, what I do have a real problem (not mentioned in the article) with is the use of electronic voting without any form of paper trail (in some counties in Florida). This is a very unwelcome development, and thankfully its introduction was derailed here. Voting has to be totally above board, and has to be seen to be so.

I do feel vehemently about this as back in the day I was the Campaign Director for a candidate in a Student Union Presidential election and the election boxes were stuffed against us. It wasn't very professional (votes coming out in neatly folded bundles kind of gave the game away), and we still won, but it did obviously damage the credibility of the Union involved.

 

[oh shit]

i've said it before and i'll say it again: DEMOCRACY DOESN'T WORK

 

[It Will Never Last]

some got it while others wondered why I keep "buying an English paper" as they glanced up from their Oirish Sun/Mirror.

what are you going to do?

Stab them in the eye with a fork.

Where's your poxy Oirish paper now, cyclops?

Maybe not...

 

[It Will Never Last]

Re: On Tom McRae's site today....

We shall call this new state West Western Europe.

Now, WWE's obvious problem is the lack of contiguousity between its midwest and its west-coast regions

No, their obvious problem is Vince McMahon is gonna sue their ass. Big style.