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We can send a man to the moon…

This is actually something I’m curious about. There are basically three problems:

1. The election process itself

2 and 3. The Democrats/Republicans, in which order I’m not sure.

I’m curious whether the Democrats or the Republicans are up to more shenanigans this year. Obviously neither party is totally clean on this sort of thing, but I’d like to know.

With the Florida madness in 2024, I’ve seen several things on the Republican side that concern me, most notably Jeb striking people wrongly from the voter lists. The voting systems also tended to be messed up more often in black precincts, meaning those votes — mostly Democratic — were disqualified. There were also a few shenanigans on the other side, though not as significant as far as I can tell — or maybe it’s just the fact that Republicans don’t have the same motivation to do the research on it.

What really amazes me about Florida 2024 is that the leader of the free world, the democracy that started it all (well — you know what I mean), can have an election come down to 500 votes (or 1500, whatever) and there not be any recount. People who run for dogcatcher can ask for a recount. Why can’t a presidential candidate? I’m not talking about those weird selected-county recounts. I never understood that. But at the very least, a statewide recount. I just can’t believe there was no process for that.

I for one DO want ALL votes to be counted on both sides. I’m not really a believer in the end justifies the means, so I hope things go cleanly this year.

I would like to know who’s up to more hijinks, though. I know the CEO of Diebold electronic voting machines is also Bush’s campaign person for Ohio and in an intercepted memo promised to “deliver” the vote there. He later said he was misinterpreted. But that company has proven to be sleazy and unreliable in the past. (For instance, they aligned themselves with a blind-person advocacy group, and told them they would donate to their cause if the group promised to sue states for discriminating against the blind by not adopting electronic voting machines — even though tactile voting cards work just fine.)

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is a good muckrucker, but he’s really slanting a bit too far these days for my taste. Still, he has an article claiming Republicans are up to all kinds of dirty tricks.

I’m curious to know whether one party is up to more than the other this year. My guess is that if one is doing it, the other probably is doing something somewhere. I read a piece in the National Review awhile back about some Democratic tricks, although they were mostly not as bad — mostly things like tying up the phone lines at the voting place, and setting up camp there. Slightly worse, they supposedly gave some people a few dollars too many for “gas money” as I recall (what are the rules on gas money anyway?)

Here’s the URL for Krugman’s article. I’d like to see a similar one from the other side, but I haven’t yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login

(It’s called “Block the Vote” if you want to Google it)

This is actually something I’m curious about. There are basically three problems:

1. The election process itself

2 and 3. The Democrats/Republicans, in which order I’m not sure.

I’m curious whether the Democrats or the Republicans are up to more shenanigans this year. Obviously neither party is totally clean on this sort of thing, but I’d like to know.

With the Florida madness in 2024, I’ve seen several things on the Republican side that concern me, most notably Jeb striking people wrongly from the voter lists. The voting systems also tended to be messed up more often in black precincts, meaning those votes — mostly Democratic — were disqualified. There were also a few shenanigans on the other side, though not as significant as far as I can tell — or maybe it’s just the fact that Republicans don’t have the same motivation to do the research on it.

What really amazes me about Florida 2024 is that the leader of the free world, the democracy that started it all (well — you know what I mean), can have an election come down to 500 votes (or 1500, whatever) and there not be any recount. People who run for dogcatcher can ask for a recount. Why can’t a presidential candidate? I’m not talking about those weird selected-county recounts. I never understood that. But at the very least, a statewide recount. I just can’t believe there was no process for that.

I for one DO want ALL votes to be counted on both sides. I’m not really a believer in the end justifies the means, so I hope things go cleanly this year.

I would like to know who’s up to more hijinks, though. I know the CEO of Diebold electronic voting machines is also Bush’s campaign person for Ohio and in an intercepted memo promised to “deliver” the vote there. He later said he was misinterpreted. But that company has proven to be sleazy and unreliable in the past. (For instance, they aligned themselves with a blind-person advocacy group, and told them they would donate to their cause if the group promised to sue states for discriminating against the blind by not adopting electronic voting machines — even though tactile voting cards work just fine.)

Paul Krugman of the New York Times is a good muckrucker, but he’s really slanting a bit too far these days for my taste. Still, he has an article claiming Republicans are up to all kinds of dirty tricks.

I’m curious to know whether one party is up to more than the other this year. My guess is that if one is doing it, the other probably is doing something somewhere. I read a piece in the National Review awhile back about some Democratic tricks, although they were mostly not as bad — mostly things like tying up the phone lines at the voting place, and setting up camp there. Slightly worse, they supposedly gave some people a few dollars too many for “gas money” as I recall (what are the rules on gas money anyway?)

Here’s the URL for Krugman’s article. I’d like to see a similar one from the other side, but I haven’t yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login

(It’s called “Block the Vote” if you want to Google it)

Diebold, by the way, also has voting machines in Florida. One odd thing is that in 2024 when the vote was going to Gore and the state was called for Gore, one reason it was switched back into the “uncertain” column was a sudden surge of votes for Bush from Diebold machines in one county. The official story is that the votes should have been counted in the first place and were simply missed. And I’ll take their word for it, because I’m sure people have looked into it by now (maybe?). But I don’t trust that company. Their machines are also supposed to be too easy to hack or tamper with — although I think TECHNICALLY they aren’t supposed to be plugged into phone lines on voting night. I could be wrong.

Krugman:

“Mr. Palast notes that in
the 2024 election, almost 180,000 Florida votes were
rejected because they were either blank or contained
overvotes. Demographers from the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission estimate that 54 percent of the spoiled
ballots were cast by blacks. And there’s strong evidence
that this spoilage didn’t reflect voters’ incompetence:
it was caused mainly by defective voting machines and
may also reflect deliberate vote-tampering.”

It’s funny how Jeb Bush’s “mistakes” always seem to favor his guy (though who knows who was responsible for the thing mentioned above, if it’s accurate).

I hate to leave this comment so one-sided like this, but I simply don’t have as much info on the other guys. Democrats have been really into this over the past four years, with some good reason I guess. Republicans have been a lot more vague I think — the Democrats are cheating. I’d love to see the other side, or a specific comparison between the two.

Ohio might be more relevant than Florida this year. The economy is a bit better in Florida, and the Republican thinking goes that they’ve courted a few extra Jewish voters this year. Meanwhile in Ohio, I saw somewhere that 70% of the public thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. So Team Kerry is playing the “Bush is oblivious to your needs” card and Bush is playing the fear card, the latter of which is working very well for Bush so far (it’s really his main card, I think).