Reply
Fri 30 Jul, 2004 10:43 am
This was in Paul Krugman's New York Times column today. It is pretty much a given that the electronic voting machines as currently configured are unreliable. Does anyone know anything more about this? Has any other state Republican Party tried this tactic?
"Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote." '
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html
Acq, there was a post about this in the Bear's thread, and it appears that a group successfully lobbied the Mercer county, New Jersey board of elections to use paper ballots . . . I'll go get a lnk . . .
Thanks Set. These are what I would consider Democrat efforts. What is interesting in Florida is that it appears to be Republicans that are bailing out.
The plot thickens?
Why can't the republican's see the inherent fraud of their party politics? They believe in christian values, but cheating in politics is okay? I just don't get it!
cicerone imposter wrote:Why can't the republican's see the inherent fraud of their party politics? They believe in christian values, but cheating in politics is okay? I just don't get it!
Perhaps they do and at the same time they see just as much fraud in the Democratic Party - the party who's failings you seem to be blind to.
cicerone imposter wrote:Why can't the republican's see the inherent fraud of their party politics? They believe in christian values, but cheating in politics is okay? I just don't get it!
Yes, you know, it isn't an honest disagreement between us. Republicans are all cheaters, in sharp contrast to Democrats.
It's gonna be hanging and pregnant chads deja vu.
fishin and Brandon, I never said all democrats are pure and ethical, but at least they don't go around pushing their religious beliefs on the populace. On the other hand, please tell us about the democrats trying to slant the election by fraud.
Wait a minute.
There's no election fraud in Florida.
McGentrix said so.
cicerone imposter wrote:fishin and Brandon, I never said all democrats are pure and ethical, but at least they don't go around pushing their religious beliefs on the populace. On the other hand, please tell us about the democrats trying to slant the election by fraud.
Your reference to religion is irrelevant to the thread, however, the fact is that I don't go around trying to foist my religious beliefs on others, since I'm an atheist. My belief that abortion is immoral, etc., etc., etc. has nothing to do with religion, since I have no religion. People who do have a religion, however, have a perfect right to take it into account in deciding what laws they will support or oppose.
As far as your assertion that Republicans are planning to win the forthcoming election by fraud go, rather than do hours of research on who's doing what in connection to the election, I will merely say that I simply assume that some Republicans are trying to cheat, some Democrats are trying to cheat, but most are not. However, if you want to accuse a specific individual or group of cheating, you will have to make a much stronger case than your innuendo accompanied by a smattering of facts.
The fact that you accuse Republicans of
characteristically cheating, which is just on the face of it absurd, serves no purpose other than to show that you cannot accept the obvious fact that most people are well intentioned.
Here's a non-partisan article on voter fraud.
Eliminating fraud -- or Democrats?
Florida's controversial crusade to purge its voter rolls has revived an old partisan debate: Can states crack down on fraud without disqualifying eligible voters?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Anthony York
Dec. 8, 2000 | Behind all the squabbling about dimpled chads and manual recounts, the Florida election debacle has revived debate on an old partisan controversy: when and how to purge voter rolls, to reduce fraud and make sure the ineligible don't vote.
In Florida, Secretary of State Katherine Harris' office removed 173,000 names from state voter rolls this year, based on a list of supposedly ineligible voters provided by a private firm with strong Republican ties. A Salon examination of the list revealed that thousands of voters may have been mistakenly deemed ineligible to vote by ChoicePoint of Atlanta, Florida's private contractor.
ChoicePoint's list included 8,000 people the group said were convicted of felonies and therefore ineligible to vote. But as it turned out, those people had only been convicted of misdemeanors, and should have been able to cast votes in Florida. The mistakes on that list, Democrats argue, disproportionately penalized African-American voters in Florida, more than 90 percent of whom voted for Al Gore.
"The horror stories about perfectly innocent black voters being turned away from the polls because they had been targeted as convicted felons started coming in early on the morning of Nov. 7, Election Day. And they're still coming in," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. "Blacks turned out to vote in record numbers in Florida this year, but huge numbers were systematically turned away for one specious reason or another."
Yet some complain the state didn't go far enough in its efforts to prevent voter fraud. The Miami Herald reported that at least 455 felons voted illegally in Florida, most of them in Palm Beach and Duval counties, despite efforts by election supervisors in those counties to get them off the rolls.
"There's a lot about the way Palm Beach County has conducted itself in this election that upsets me, and this of course would be one more outrage," State Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, told the Herald.
The Voting Integrity Project, which has focused on cleaning up national voter rolls, said the problems in Florida have shined the spotlight on widespread voter fraud across the county. "Election 2000 and the ensuing controversy in Florida have focused public attention on the need to combat voting fraud," the group's Web site reads.
The Florida skirmish is just the latest battle in an old and partisan war: Republicans are usually on the side of cleansing the rolls energetically, and Democrats tend to fight back, claiming efforts to purge ineligible voters often cast eligible low-income and minority voters off the rolls. The battle goes back to Huey Long's Louisiana and Richard M. Daley's Chicago, cesspools of Democratic voter fraud where legend has it ballots were cast by dead people.
VIP itself has come under fire for leading what some have called partisan crusades, opposing programs that make it easier to register voters, and supporting those that aggressively clean the voter rolls, which Democrats say disproportionately knocks low income and minority voters off voter lists. Though the group maintains it is bipartisan, it is true that it often allies with Republicans on voter-roll cleanup efforts.
VIP gave an award to ChoicePoint for its Florida work, praising its "innovative excellence [in] cleansing" the state's voter rolls. VIP is promoting the firm's proprietary methods to purge voter rolls nationwide, and has partnered with Database Technologies, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, to identify small communities that need pro-bono voter roll "scrubbing."
This year, VIP launched a pilot voter registration clean-up program, focused on Fayette County, Pa., and Atlantic Beach, N.C. In Fayette County, Democrats outnumber registered Republicans better than 3-1, according to data from the Pennsylvania department of state. In Atlantic, Democrats hold a 58-42 percent registration advantage over Republicans, according to the state department of elections.
VIP says Fayette was chosen because it was home to an absentee ballot fraud scheme that resulted in three election fraud convictions earlier this year, according to its Web site.
Brandon, It seems to me, at least, that you haven't been listening to GWBush. I don't give a $hit what your religious' belief, but GWBush uses his religion all the time. Maybe you haven't noticed.
Brandon, Just because you don't believe in abortion doesn't mean your belief should impose on women who choose to do so. That's their choice to make; not yours.
Re: Florida Republican go for a paper ballot.
Acquiunk wrote:This was in Paul Krugman's New York Times column today. It is pretty much a given that the electronic voting machines as currently configured are unreliable. Does anyone know anything more about this? Has any other state Republican Party tried this tactic?
"Another story you may not see on TV: Jeb Bush insists that electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote." '
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html
It looks like Krugman is making things up again. Do a search on the St. Petersburg Times WWW site and the only story that even comes close is this one:
Quote:Voters are switching noticeably to the GOP; [STATE Edition]
BRIDGET HALL GRUMET. St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Jul 27, 2004. pg. 1
Full Text (622 words)
Copyright Times Publishing Co. Jul 27, 2004
The deadline for registering to vote or switching parties for the Aug. 31 primary is Monday, and already elections workers have seen a noticeable trickle of Pasco voters swapping their Democratic affiliation for a Republican one.
That's because only registered Republicans can cast a ballot in the heated school superintendent primary between state Rep. Heather Fiorentino and Chuck Rushe, the school district's chief financial officer.
"We are seeing a slight change in the numbers of people changing from D's to R's," said Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning. He didn't have the number of party-switchers, but said it's "enough that we've noticed it."
The reason is no mystery: "We've had some people say to us that they wanted to be able to vote for superintendent, or in the Republican primary for superintendent," Browning said.
In fact, Rushe's campaign recently sent a mailing to school employees and other residents that urges non-Republicans to switch parties to vote in the race. The mailing includes forms to change party registration and request an absentee ballot.
The complete article can be found
here.
That's hardly "urging voters to use absentee ballots" but it isn't beyond Krugman to stretch things to fit his own view of the world.
cicerone imposter wrote:Brandon, It seems to me, at least, that you haven't been listening to GWBush. I don't give a $hit what your religious' belief, but GWBush uses his religion all the time. Maybe you haven't noticed.
Some people are very religious and, therefore, talk about religion, as is their right. Some people, like me, are atheists, and don't talk about it much. As I said, people have the right to take their religious beliefs into account in deciding what laws to support or oppose. I do agree, though, that any attempt to promote government
sponsorship of religion is unconstitutional.
Religion (the candidates religious beliefs) have absolutely no place in politics.
As for the issue of abortion... if a person believes that having an abortion is morally reprehensible then they are free to never have one. However, to force your beliefs on other people who do not agree with you, that is morally reprehensible.
cicerone imposter wrote:Brandon, Just because you don't believe in abortion doesn't mean your belief should impose on women who choose to do so. That's their choice to make; not yours.
The law explicitly forbids all kinds of activities, under the assumption that people don't have a right to do them. That's a big part of what the law is for. I dispute your assertion that it's their choice to make and not society's. However, this thread was created for for the discussion of economics, and I will resist any further attempts to fragment it into a disorganized discussion of unrelated topics.
I've never understood the lefts hatred of babies.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace