“There’s reason to suspect that our 2004 election was stolen.”
A House Administration Committee field hearing will be held today in Columbus, Ohio to look into the allegation that there is something odd about Ohio’s numbers. Although whether a Republican-chaired committee will give the matter a fair hearing, which would require breaking through the obstructionist tactics of a very partisan Republican Ohio Secretary of State, remains a question mark.
And the vote process in Ohio needs a real investigation.
Is there any way to understand this sort of tactic as anything other than an attempt to prevent an honest recount: Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote? (Note that the headline is British understatement — in fact the Ohio Secretary of State is apparently trying to get a court order to block having to explain the weird things he’s done to lock out recounters, prevent observers from actually observing, and other very suspicious hijinks.)
Update: The Kerry-Edwards team have intervened in the case to preserve the evidence
I still think Wayne Madsen is not a nut, and that’s why I have to give some credence to this well researched, and highly suggestive albeit not dispositive piece of reporting: Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for “vote switching” software:
An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration.
According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc., during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program to “control the vote.” At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the computer program was going to be used to suppress the Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic registrations.
According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows and the end-product designed to be portable across different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be “undetectable” to voters and election supervisors.
I just hope he’s wrong — and I worry that the same hope may cause other people to dismiss this one out of hand rather then trying to find out where the facts lead.
I have no idea what to make of this.
Allegedly, a down-ticket Democrat polled 257,000 more votes than Kerry in Ohio. If true — and the web site offers some county-by-county vote figures — that’s very odd, as barring the most unusual circumstances the top of the ticket polls well ahead of candidates with very limited advertising budgets. (spotted via Cosmic Iguana)
Bush is currently believed to have carried Ohio by circa 130,000 votes, although exit polls showed a narrow Kerry win. Were Kerry to have won Ohio he would have won the electoral collage although not, on current counts, the popular vote.
The Ohio vote count has had its oddities, notably the apparently false claim that the count in Warren County had to be held behind closed doors without the usual observers due to an FBI terror warning that … didn’t exist. It would be enough to make you suspect some hanky-panky were we not all in the grips of … of what exactly?
Slashdot collates allegations of voting machine error and/or fraud. Interesting stuff, but politically going nowhere.
Of course the GOP didn’t want UM students to vote. And they made it as hard as possible. But the students out-waited them.
e-Veritas, 11-04-04—Students turned out by the hundreds on Tuesday to vote at the new campus precinct at the UM Convocation Center. The turnout apparently caught the Miami-Dade Elections Department unprepared, despite the fact that their rolls reflected that students had registered in record numbers for this election. Nevertheless, the intrepid students and area neighbors maintained their good humor and endured wait times of up to five hours — sustained by dozens of pizzas and crates of bottled water provided by the University. The total number of voters exceeded 1,000, and there were as many as 300 people in line at any given time. University staff and student leaders provided support and helped maintain order, and the last voters finally cast their ballots just after midnight.
On Wednesday, President Donna E. Shalala praised students for their “passionate commitment to our democracy.” She subsequently filed a formal complaint with the Elections Department citing “woefully inadequate provision of voting equipment and knowledgeable staffing,” as well as the department’s “lack of flexibility and inability to adjust to what were extraordinary lines during the course of the day.” The president also requested that the elections supervisor come to campus to meet with student leaders and assure them of adequate preparation for the next election.
Once again Shalala seizes the moment — feeding and watering the students was a wonderful move.
A scary item (is it true?) submitted to Dave Farber’s Interesting People mailing list by one Ken Deifik:
It occurs to me that one of the questions that could be answered without too much trouble, at least for someone with lots of access to data and a knowlege of statistics, would be: is there any difference in the Bush - Kerry percentages in precincts that used eVoting, especially Diebold but all eVoting machines, as opposed to those that used paper ballots or some other method of voting. If this question has any meaning for you, I’d ask you to pose to the list, to see anyone with the proper skills and access could carry out such a study.
I hope in the next few days statisticians examine the issue of the exit polls. Since the early 70’s the exit polls have always been spot on. I feel ashamed for any journalist who says the exit polls got it wrong in FLA in 2000, because it is clear they got it right.
I have to wonder how John Zogby, who predicted 312 electoral votes for Kerry at 5PM EST 11/2, could have gotten the exit polls so wrong. Or really if he did.
One reason may be who votes at what time of day?
I just found this posting in the Democratic Underground site
…on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results.In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.
So we have MATCHING RESULTS for exit polls vs. voting with audits
vs.
A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without audits.
Say it ain’t so…
Avi Rubin blogs My day as an election judge - take 2. Everything looks like it works, but the system has vulnerabilities…and the worst ones are not ones you could detect….
I think we are in for a rough time.
Will people abroad want to hold dollars if the people running the country have a track record of deficits and talking down the dollar?
Will the weakened Senate Democrats have the guts to filibuster extreme Supreme Court nominees?
Will a more right-wing court stand up to this administration’s propensity for torture and arbitrary detention?
What will happen to global warming and environmental quality generally?
I would be delighted to be wrong, but I think that all but one of these questions are going to have really lousy answers, as will many others.
I’m in Logan airport between flights, making the most of the wi-fi. First thing I see: the latest Zogby showing an electoral vote tie, with Pennsylvania holding the balance (because it has more votes than Virginia).
Readers of this blog do not need to be told to vote. (So go call all your friends and relations in PA.)
We’ve been having some substantial work done on our house, which means that between periods of frustrating inactivity it is overrun by armies of sub-contracted workers. Last week it was painters.
The sign gets a reaction from these transient visitors. By and large the sub-contracting bosses are not very pro-Kerry, although at least around us they profess to not be very pro-Bush either. And our general contractor says he may vote for Nader, or may stay home. At first I thought he was saying that to tease us, now I think he means it.
Several of the workers’ cars have Kerry stickers.
The head painter, I’ll call him ‘Ernesto’, mentioned in imperfect English that he’d seen our Kerry-Edwards sign. Ernesto told us with quiet pride that this was going to be his first chance to vote here since immigrating from Honduras.
His first US vote ever would be cast for Kerry, Ernesto said. ‘Bush has not been good,’ he explained.
A few days later, Ernesto waved a bunch of Kerry-Edwards signs from the back of his truck: all his friends are getting them.
Slashdot | Absentee Ballots Go Missing in Florida.
I’ve said for months that the real election fraud in Florida would be absentee ballots not voting machines. This has a tip of the iceberg feel to it.
If Bush should win the state by fewer than 58,000 votes, I will not believe the result unless these ballots are found. (I could even understand why a Bush supporter would say the same thing about a narrow Kerry victory…which just underscores the importance of getting to the bottom of this.)
Called home yesterday evening (London time) and among other things learned that the ‘Morales’ family (read about them here) now has a Kerry-Edwards sign, bringing our street’s total to four!
Here’s what I get when I try to access www.georgebush.com from London:
Access Denied
You don’t have permission to access “http://www.georgewbush.com/” on this server.
And it’s not just me, as you can see from a comment in this thread at Electrolite. Oh, and others have noticed this too, all around the world.
Could it be connected to this ?
I’m told there was a spate of K-E sign thefts — well over a hundred stolen — earlier this week just south of me, in Pinecrest.
The Washington Post says that sign theft is running at normal levels nationwide, except for Ohio and Florida, where it’s stratospheric (and, says the Post, bipartisan).
The all-time best sign stealing story, however, is this one:
A Republican in Colorado fell flat on his face trying to steal campaign signs touting John Kerry and other local Democratic candidates.
According to Wheat Ridge Police spokesperson Officer Lisa Stigall, Randal Wagner was already wanted for questioning about a rash of campaign-sign thefts when he was discovered lying unconscious across a stolen sign Oct. 13.
Earlier that evening, a homeowner reported to police that he saw Wagner, 50, cutting down a campaign sign bolted to his fence. The sign was in support of a local Democratic candidate running for Congress.
The man confronted Wagner, who allegedly fled in a truck with his wife. The man gave the vehicle’s plate number to police.
While police located the Wagners’ home, Wagner was busy at work on another sign put up by a store in the business district, Stigall said.
But he encountered resistance.
“He already had the sign in hand and was running out of the parking lot when he tripped over a low chain that blocked off the driveway,” Stigall said.
Wagner fell flat on his face and was knocked unconscious.
Belief, faith, call it what you will, it can be a powerful thing. Indeed, this powerful confession of belief by Thomas Schaller, Executive Editor of the Gadflyer, explains in a fashion even I can understand Why I Believe in Our President. Yes, there’s much to ponder there.
Somehow I got on a GOP mailing list. Here’s today’s wisdom from Chairman Gillespie:
There are only 8 days left until the election and, if you can, we recommend voting early.
Click here to find your early voting location. Because on Election Day we will need your help getting more people involved and getting voters to the polls. The Democrats have already begun to implement their plans to use lawyers and baseless allegations to skew the results in their favor.
We believe no legitimate voter should be disenfranchised, either by being denied a vote or by having an honest vote cancelled out by a fraudulent vote.
But a little intimidation never hurt anyone?
Democrats appear to be setting the stage to use the new provisional balloting rules to convert registration fraud into vote fraud, with the possibility of Kerry supporters voting in multiple jurisdictions or under multiple names.
In one contested election where provisional ballots have been cast, somewhere between 7-to-23 percent of them were valid. Democrats seem intent on making the case that every provisional ballot cast must be counted, and are deploying a horde of 10,000 lawyers to compel the counting of votes that were not legally cast.
Note that this says nothing about when or where that election was, nor what party cast the provisional ballots! It undoubtedly has nothing to do with Kerry.
They have made their strategy clear: If they lose they will sue, and haul the electoral process into courtrooms across the country so activist liberal judges can undermine the will of the people.
The American people should be confident that legitimate voters casting legitimate votes determine the outcome of this election.
Compare the above FUD-like allegations of fraud to reality.
With a plethora of court decisions around the country stating that votes cast at the wrong poling place won’t be counted, this is a great thing to be doing:
My name is Keith Kritselis, and I have a website that I am trying to publicize.
The website’s goal is to help voters find their polling place. Our database of online poll locators has been slowly growing. We now can get 63% of the US population the exact location of their polling site in 4 clicks or less. For the other 37% we provide a local phone number where they can call to get the information they need. This service is free to the public, it has no political affiliation or agenda, and I truly believe that civic participation is the key to a responsive government. This is a small 1 man operation with no marketing dollars. Anything you can do to help get the word out would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time.
Keith Kritselis
Vote2004.eRiposte.Com is your one-stop-shopping site for news about vote/election fraud, vote suppression, voting irregularities, and voter intimidation in this election.
Lots (far too much for comfort) stuff here…
The site is well-organized: you can view news chronologically, or by red/swing/blue states or by state. Here, for example, is the Florida electoral vote fraud and suppression page.
Everyone is talking about the new GWB ad Wolves although I can’t see what all the fuss is about myself. Maybe it works better on a bigger screen? Perhaps I’m totally blind, but Brooke’s Story: He Just Doesn’t Get It seems waaay more effective to me.
Just A Day Off In Crawford: Bush is going to be taking a day of rest in Crawford on Saturday? With the election 10 fingers and two toes away? I mean, I know we’re stupid, but exactly how dumb do they think we are? So what’s the surprise gonna be, folks? Bush going to fight a lion? Going to personally snap a drugged Osama bin-laden’s neck in an arena duel, a la Gladiator? Parachute into Iraq? In the end, it all goes back to something Jon Stewart said:I don’t think Bush is stupid. I think we’re stupid, because otherwise he wouldn’t talk to us the way he does.That’s the operative dynamic of this election, a healthy disrespect for the wisdom and judgment of the American people. And to that, all I can say is Digby’s right, we need to convince the press of our intelligence before Bush snaps on the flightsuit, tapes down the codpiece, and slingshots into a warzone.
Update: Well, you may see it in your online newspaper.
Got my first piece of 527 propaganda in the mail today, from an outfit that calls itself All Children Matter. It seems to be an outfit that supports state subsidies to privatize schools, be it vouchers, charter schools, or tax credits, bankrolled by a former President of Alticor Inc. — parent corporation of Amway.
Schooling being a traditionally state and local issue, the mailing exhorts me to vote for G.W. Bush for President, because, er, why exactly? Bush “believes that education is the key to opportunity”? Is there anyone who doesn’t?
Or am I supposed to believe that Kerry “opposes equal opportunity in education”? Because he opposes tax credits for private schooling? Which by definition only go to those who pay taxes? Which means that there would be no benefit for poor people, and less money raised to pay for public schools, which puts the lie to “equal opportunity in education”.
It’s actually a surprisingly ineffective mailer, notable only for what must be the single most unflattering picture of Kerry I’ve ever seen, making him look like a survivor in a disaster movie.
The version of my name on the flyer suggests they may have sent it to people who subscribe to the Economist rather than to everyone in the area. In case anyone cares, I’ve put up a pdf of both sides of the glossy thing: Side one and side two (cropped to cut off my address, not that you couldn’t find it online in about three seconds if you really wanted to).
Pandagon reports in Terrorist Who?:
Did a quick term count in yesterday’s “major” speech on terrorism. The results, amazingly, are even more ridiculous than I expected:Assuming this was, as stated, a speech on terrorism, it seems quite clear that George W. Bush believes the main terrorist threat facing our country is John Kerry.
- Frequency of John Kerry (with the terms “Senator”, “Senator Kerry”, or “my opponent”): 41
- Frequency of “Saddam Hussein”: 4
- Frequency of “Al Qaeda”: 1
- Frequency of “Osama bin-Laden” or “bin-Laden”: 0
He probably does at that.
Needlenose says, Visualize Winning.
It’s good advice for the next two tense weeks.
Talk about two cultures divided by a common language. Wonkette channels the Guardian’s followup to its letter-writing campaign directed to Clark County, Ohio in So Long and Thanks for All the Castles:
Americans respond to the Guardian’s call for Britons to lobby Ohio voters against Bush. Mostly, they are not pleased, though some are more polite than others:I used to visit the UK every year. I love the history and culture of your country. But after I heard about your campaign to influence our elections, I’ve decided that neither myself, nor my family will ever visit again. I’m offended by your campaign and because of it, I’m remembering more of the negative aspects I’ve seen in the UK than the positive ones. Though I still love the castles!Versus, say:Who in the hell do you think you are??? Well, I’ll tell you, you’re a bunch of meddling socialist pricks! Stay the hell out of our country and politics. And another thing, John Kerry is a worthless lying sack of crap so it doesn’t surprise me that a socialist rag like yours would back him. I hope your cynical ploy blows up in your cowardly faces, you bunch of mealy-mouthed morons!Our take: Yeah! Imagine that! A foreign power trying to, you know, assert control over a sovereign nation by writing letters. Why don’t they just hand-pick a ruling coalition like a real empire would? Pussies.Dear Limey assholes [Guardian]
Not an unusual circumstance in the working world: speak the truth, criticize the boss, lose your job. Somewhat odder when the job is allegedly journalism.
Sinclair DC News Bureau Chief Fired After Publicly Criticizing Management on Kerry Special.
But it’s not about journalism, is it?
Philadelphia Daily News, GOP fails in effort to move polls:
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVES working to re-elect President Bush submitted last-minute requests in Philadelphia on Friday to relocate 63 polling places.
Bush’s Pennsylvania campaign staff filed the requests, using the names of two Republicans running for the U.S. Congress and seven Republican ward leaders.
Of the 63 requests for changes, 53 are in political divisions where the population of white voters is less than 10 percent. …
Bob Lee, voter registration administrator for the City Commission, said the requests appear to be “discriminatory” and were filed too late to be eligible for a hearing on Wednesday.
“They’re trying to suppress the vote,” Lee said of Republicans. …
Lee, who has worked for the commission for 21 years, said he became suspicious of the requests because of the last-minute timing, the unusually high number and the locations. …
Requests are sent to hearings before the City Commission after public notices are posted for five days at the polling place, the proposed new polling place and three other places in the division.
Lee said the City Commission on Wednesday will hold its last hearing on polling place changes before the Nov. 2 election.
Since the requests came in on Friday afternoon, he said, there is not time for the public notices.
Then, the understatement of the week,
The requests could potentially confuse voters. The city has already ordered postcards mailed to 1.1 million registered voters before Election Day, directing them to polling places.
Which is of course the whole point. Undoubtedly, Philadelphia is not the only place this will happen. And in Florida, if you vote in the wrong place, your vote will not be counted (FWIW, the court reached the only possible conclusion given the wording of the state legislation).
Meanwhile, in Michigan, the Justice Department has just moved to block a Democratic lawsuit challenging a similar rule blocking the counting of ‘provisional ballots’ when a registered voter appears at the wrong precinct.
Why can’t we allow people to vote in Post Offices or something? And why, in this computerized age, is it necessary to force people to vote in a given precinct?
The Carpetbagger Report: The media has its priorities; are they yours?
Words devoted to the Mary Cheney “story” in the Washington Post over the past three days: 1,099
Words devoted in the Washington Post over the past three days to the fact that the president’s top political aide testified before a federal grand jury on Friday as part of an ongoing criminal investigation of the Bush White House: 438
The New York Times’ ratio was even worse. The manufactured Mary Cheney flap has generated 3,074 words since Saturday (from two news items and two op-eds) in the paper of record; Rove’s testimony’s received 813 words.
Meet the Press, meanwhile, devoted 1,055 words to Mary Cheney yesterday; Rove’s grand jury testimony wasn’t mentioned at all.
The Washington Post even polled on the Mary Cheney “story” on Friday (64% said Kerry’s comment was “inappropriate”). There were no questions in the poll about the ongoing criminal investigation of the White House.
I’d like to see a poll about whether Bush saying he never said he didn’t care about Osama was “inappropriate”. No. How about a poll asking if invading Iraq with no plans at all for winning the peace was “inappropriate”?
Putin urges voters to back Bush. Actually the strangest part of this story isn’t that Putin supports a fellow Putinizer, but rather the reasons given for that support.
Putin claims to oppose the Iraq war, but to think that the ‘terrorist attacks’ against US forces “are aimed at preventing the re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush and that a Bush defeat ‘could lead to the spread of terrorism to other parts of the world.’”
In other words, if you were to substitute “US” for “Bush” in that statetment, Putin’s postiion on Iraq is much more like Kerry’s than like Bush’s: it was a mistake to go in, but now that we’re there a pullout would be an error too.
Fellow member of the reality-based community Matthew Yglesias looks into the abyss that he brilliantly labels the ‘Putanization of Amercian life’. It’s ugly down there.
Christopher Hitchens, in one of the few insightful things he’s said about the war on terrorism, took the chance in his final Nation column to criticize those on the left “who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.” At the time, I thought it was a very sharp remark. I never supported Bush and always hoped he would lose in 2004 since I thought his policies were misguided, but many people seemed to me at the time to have lost all sense of perspective about who the really threatening enemies were. Suskind’s article along with other pieces of evidence of what one might call the creeping Putinization of American life (the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the ‘terror alert’ system is nothing more than a political prop, the ‘torture memo’ asserting that the president is above the law, the imposition of rigid discipline on the congress, the abuse of the conference committee procedure, the ability of the administration to lie to congress without penalty, the exclusion of non-supporters from Bush’s public appearances, etc.) are beginning to make me think this assessment may have been misguided. Terrorist forces operating in and around Chechnya have done some horrible things — I was in Moscow for the big apartment bombings — but ultimately the most harmful thing they have done was to enable Putin to tighten his grip on power.
Update: For an example of how common culture produces similar responses, see this post by Kevin Drum on the same Yglesias text, using the same “abyss” metaphor for its headline!
The great Electoral Vote Predictions Blog summarizes today’s top polling news including this story which I think is the only piece of signal amidst the week’s polling noise:
Frank Luntz, the top Republican pollster wrote in the Financial Times: “Step by step, debate-by-debate, John Kerry has addressed and removed many remaining doubts among uncommitted voters. My own polling research after each debate suggests a rather bleak outlook for the Bush candidacy: many who still claim to be ‘undecided’ are in fact leaning to Mr. Kerry and are about ready to commit.” In a world where the spinmeisters constantly claim that their horse can not only walk on water, but also trot and gallop on it, having a top GOP strategist with access to real data say his horse is sinking fast is ominous for the Bush campaign. Read the whole story here.
Seriously now. What relevance does the attitude of uber-partisans Dick and Lynn Cheney about Kerry’s debate mention of their adult daughter have?
Can’t she speak for herself? After all, she’s working on her father’s campaign. Or is the GOP ban on Mary Cheney camera-presence still in effect?
My brother’s column today gets into the Bush bulge watch thing:
Salon is featuring a photo today that would appear to show Vanessa Kerry staring at Bush’s bulge last night.The bulge in question is what — again — looks like a rectangular object on Bush’s back, under his suit. Here’s the original photo.
Mike Allen wrote in The Washington Post last weekend that Bush’s aides have “tried to laugh off the controversy.”
Dave Lindorff wrote in Salon yesterday that “speculation continues to run wild” about the bulge, and that the White House’s half-hearted explanations don’t seem to wash.
A new poll from the Economist finds that of those who had seen a picture of the bulge, 49 percent said they think it’s caused by “a radio receiver so that his team could communicate with him during the debate;” 18 percent think it’s a fold in the suit; 13 percent something else; 20 percent don’t know.
Tim Grieve writes in Salon that Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman was repeatedly asked about the bulge yesterday, and finally said: “The president is an alien. You heard it here first. The president is an alien. That’s your quote of the day. He has been getting information from Mars. The shock of the debate will be the president’s alien past will be exposed, which is why that box is there.”
The problem with this story, as preposterous as it may sound to some, is that it risks perpetuating an image of Bush as a puppet. I think a lot of us are waiting for a definitive answer.
Someone should really ask Vernon Jordan who suggested the prohibition on photographing candidates from behind during the pre-debate negotiations and what reason if any was given. Because it’s that condition, said to have been demanded by the Bush negotiators, that gives this story what legs it has. That and the consistent strangenss of the shape of the bulge. Oh yes, and the absence of a physical this year.
So, the three main things are the attempt to stop the photos, the consistent strangeness of the shape and Bush’s decision to forgoe a physical before the election. Oh yes, and Bush’s odd behavior during the debates.
So, the four main things that give this story its legs are the attempt to stop the photos, the consistent strangeness of the shape, the lack of a physical this Oh yes, and Bush’s odd behavior during the debates. Oh yes, and also the fact that tin foil can be fun.
But no one expected the aliens to admit complicity in rigging the election for their puppet until the planet was almost unsuitable for human life due to global warming—which, combined with increased carbon dioxide and radioactivity will make it a perfect breeding grounds for
Ack. help. im beighalew2332o5 2432`72 fcds
The questions were limp. Ever hear of the environment? John Ashcroft?
If Bush could have bottled his best ten minutes he would have defeated Kerry’s worst. But it’s a 90 minute event. And Kerry stumbled only once that I caught (I think the Congressional Black Caucus has been in the White House1). Bush stumbled often, looking lost. That smirk crept back. And he got caught out badly on jobs, on how students are losing their lunches. Kerry had several zingers, on jobs, minimum wage, health care. For example, the line about telling union workers that he can’t stop all outsourcing is pretty obvious but it will play well.
Bush at his best was better than in the previous debates—notably in pointing up Kerry’s opposition to the First Gulf War authorization; but for the middle part of the debate he looked alternately lost, scared, smirky. It was odd. The line about not trusting the press oh never mind was not just unpresidential, it was strange. Bush ducked the Roe v. Wade question, and it showed. That helps with the base, but I don’t think it helps with the nation as a whole. Kerry also nailed the guns question after Bush said he ducked supporting the assault weapons ban because he didn’t think it would pass—Kerry said that was a failure of leadership, and he could do what Clinton did: pass the bill with the help of law enforcement officers who support it.
In my view, Bush was better than before — but so was Kerry. He looked like a President, and I think he actually inspired, yes John Kerry inspired, when he talked about fairness. Bush will have scored points talking about faith, but I’ll take works please. [It’s interesting that the candidates’ debate reflects the fault line in US Protestantism regarding faith vs. works, the tension that famously destroyed the hegemony of the Puritan divines in Massachusetts shortly after the American Revolution. It’s also interesting to hear Catholic Bostonian Kerry giving the salvation through works line, while it’s unchurched Protestant Southerner Bush, the man whose works are not working, is in essence arguing for blind faith. Sociologists of religion will be quoting this stuff for years.]
But it doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is what the country thought.
[Update 10/14: Insta-polls say Kerry won big. ]
1 [Update 10/14] Well, yes and no. See the details at The Carpetbagger Report
The brought out the genial bush for the start of the debate… Kerry stuck to the talking points. I think playing the same tape three times is boring.
I’m not going to try to live blog this, but I can’t help noting that it was only 2 minutes and we had our first lie: Bush denied he had ever said he wasn’t worried about Osama bin Laden.
President Bush said Tuesday in West Virginia that he is not worried about finding Osama bin Laden as he cannot hide from the U.S. forces forever.
snip
“There are only so many caves he (bin Laden) can hide in,” said Bush in arrival remarks at Yeager Airport in Charleston, W.Va. The United States, he said, is winning the war on terrorism, even if the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is still at large.“He’s the one who needs to be worried. But I want to assure you the objective is not bin Laden. We’ll get bin Laden. “We want him dead or alive … but we are not too worried about him. … He is the one who needs to be worried,” Bush said.
Update: Kevin Drum has a better quote:
I don’t know where he is. Nor — you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I….I truly am not that concerned about him.
Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry is available for free download. Beware, though, as “The file is approximately 650 megabytes and should take about two to four hours to download through a cable modem or a fast DSL connection”
It’s a catchy little country tune, Takin’ My Country Back, but I don’t expect to hear it on local radio somehow….
Someone sent me a link to a film contrasting the speaking style of GW Bush 10 years ago to today . It’s a striking contrast. Nevertheless, I’m conflicted about this one.
[Update (10/12): The server hosting the film seems to be melting down under the strain of links from all over the word. The URL is http://www.blogitics.com/footage/BushTenYrs4MB.mov, and I find that if I try it several times I get “not found” and other errors but eventually it works….]
On the one hand, I think that suggesting that a candidate is suffering from pre-senile dementia is a low blow. Too low.
On the other hand, the Bush campaign has left open the door to this sort of speculation, made it almost inevitable, by mysteriously cancelling Bush’s annual physical. (I’m sure his doctor would make a house call to the Bush hacienda if asked to.) The example of Paul Tsongas, who suggested he was well when he was in fact not, ought to make us demand that our candidates level with us about their health.
On the gripping hand, if this film clip is representative (and I have no idea if they just took a particularly good moment or if the ten-year-old clip is what he was like), then Bush was vastly — I mean vastly — more articulate ten years ago than he is today, and if there’s any chance that the cause for this striking deterioration is physical, as opposed to psychological, we have a right to know.
I hit the wrong button the radio today while driving to get the kids and was transported to AM Radio Land. Let me tell you, it’s different out there. On one station, the host spent ten minutes screaming at the top of his lungs about how Kerry insulted the nation during the second debate when he looked around and said that no one in the audience looked like they were earning over $200,000 per year. “He called you losers!!!” the guy kept shouting, “He said you are all losers!!!” over and over and over again. (Is everyone who makes under $200,000 a “loser” in AM Radioland?)
Three stations to the right, there’s a female evangelist saying that many people have asked her if the storms lashing Florida might be some chastisement that G-d has aimed at Florida. No, of course not, she replies, these storms come from the Enemy and are part of a plot to distract people into caring too much about daily life, and ignoring the really important thing we must all do. And what is that? Why, we must elect the right people to office come November 2: “G-dly people, not liberals.”
I am not making this up.
I commend to you a moving essay by Britt Blaser at Escapable Logic.
I don’t know if I agree that “At our nation’s birth, most voters were smarter, tougher, better educated and more patriotic than you and me” — that’s edging a little in the Straussian direction for my taste — but it’s a fine, heartfelt essay about war, heroics, politics, and the next election nonetheless.
Brad DeLong summarizes the first week in October over at the Shrillblog.
It’s not pretty, all that shrillness in one place. What happens if it escapes?
Kevin Drum argues convincingly that during the debate Bush uttered “one of the great whoppers of all time” regarding the economy when he said that “Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it’s less than 1 percent, because we’re working together to try to bring this deficit under control.”
No such thing:
Outside of the personal fantasyland Bush seems to inhabit, the truth is simple: spending of all kinds has skyrocketed under his administration and the Republican Congress. They’ve increased spending twice as fast as Clinton, three times as fast as Bush 1, and four times as fast as Carter. And remember: this doesn’t include defense spending, entitlement spending, or homeland security. 9/11 and Medicare have nothing to do with it.
See the whole post, and the great chart, for all the details.
One of GW Bush’s odder remarks last night was that he would appoint Supreme Court Justices who opposed Dred Scott. At the time it seemed an unfortuanate attempt to pick an uncontroversial example (even the hard right is against slavery) but, no, it seems it may have been code to the base.
For details, see Paperwight’s Fair Shot: Dred Scott = Roe v. Wade. (via Kevin Drum)
Bonus item:
What a weird event. The only thing clear is that the citizen questioners won. They are much better than the moderators.
As between the candidates, Bush did not self-destruct like in the first debate, but at the price of some strange behavior, notably a very blank expression when he was sitting down and a very odd speaking style for the first hour — shouting, almost ranting. His demeanor in the last half-hour was much better than in the first hour.
The Big Lie made its appearance early and often, as Bush claimed that yesterday’s report by the chief United States weapons inspector for Iraq (the Duelfer Report) somehow vindicated the decision to attack. There basically isn’t a shred of truth to that description of a thousand-page report most voters will never read. If anything, the report showed that the UN sanctions were working better than anyone suspected. And, if there is any justice, Bush’s claim that he isn’t blocking drug re-importation will come back to haunt him. He did much better in the last 30 minutes, even told what counts as a good joke about timber under the circumstances. [Although fact checking reveals that Kerry was right and Bush wrong on the facts as to Bush’s $84 in timber income making him a “small business”.] But Bush flubbed the Patriot Act question badly by patronizing the questioner. And he cratered again when asked if he could identify three mistakes he’s made in the last 3.5 years. He couldn’t bring himself to come up with even one specific example.
Kerry was forceful, although I find some of his canned speeches a bit robotic, and if I were drinking every time he said he had a Plan I would be blotto if not hospitalized. He started strong (“The military’s job is to win the war; the president’s job is to win the peace”; slamming Bush on the deficit) but as the night wore on he stumbled a few times, albeit more in style than substance, notably on the stem cell question where he seemed to be fumbling for words. Other than on the abortion issue, Kerry smashed Bush both on Iraq and domestic issues. Even on the abortion issue, Kerry did well in his rebuttal on explaining why parental notification and ‘partial birth’ abortion were more complex questions than Bush lets on, the only time on that subject when Kerry didn’t look uncomfortable.
In general, Kerry looked tired by the end, Bush looked better at the end than the start (when he looked awful). Kerry had better get more rest the day before the third debate. Even so, he won significantly on points — but not by a knockout until and unless the fact checkers hit the Big Lie issue squarely.
But within the four corners of the TV screen (or, in my case, Real Video feed) Bush did better than the first time. Bush looked substantially less stupid, albeit every bit as pig-headed. Some people see that as resolve. Others see it as denial of reality. Kerry’s domination on substance was perhaps insufficient to shake the faith of Bush supporters not already scared away from him.
And a lot depends on the factcheckers: if they do as good a job as they did for the first two debates, that should help Kerry substantially.
Wonkette accepts the NYT’s offer to craft a question for GW Bush:
Questions for Bush: Personal experience can often change political opinions. So, just hypothetically: Let’s say your vice president’s daughter was gay … Oh, wait. Umm … What if you were responsible for the biggest deficit in American history - oh, ha. O.K.: Let’s say you invaded a country based on faulty intelligence … Er, oops … No, we got it: How did “The Pet Goat” end, anyway?
Can’t. Resist. Low. Humor. “Wonkette Expectation Is So Low, It’s Below the Belt”
We live less than a block from campus, only a few blocks from where the first presidential debate was held. So the day before the debate we decided we needed a Kerry-Edwards yard sign. In an earlier post I described how I found the local Kerry-Edwards office. I went there the morning of the debate, and they gave me a yard sign, with the metal mount, saying it was just about the last one, they were going fast. We installed it as soon as we got home. That afternoon, returning from collecting the kids, I saw our neighbor from across the street, whom I’ll call Ms. ‘Morales’.
I should explain about the ‘Morales’ family. Viewed from across the street, they seem to be your typical Coral Gables residents—a very successful Cuban-American couple, a few years older than us, one college-age son. Mr. Morales is an accountant, she’s a not-quite-full-time Realtor.
(I will never forget one of my first encounters with Mr. Morales back in 1992. Having just arrived from London, we moved into our house a few days after Hurricane Andrew, at a time when there was no electricity anywhere in the neighborhood, roads were impassible due to trees down, and everything was in confusion. Our house was basically untouched, but theirs sustained severe damage. Despite this, we were more disoriented than they, in part because we were not used to the heat and humidity, had no clue where anything was, no emergency supplies, not even a candle or flashlight to unpack by when it got cool enough at night to actually move.
Despite their own serious damage, the Moraleses made every effort to be helpful. When the radio started warning about not leaving damaged houses unattended due to the danger of looters, Mr. Morales come over to comfort us. We had nothing to worry about, he said. He had an arsenal in his house, and was keeping watch on things. Any looter came by he was going to shoot him. The idea of an amateur, armed with an arsenal, poised for looters across the street scared me much more than the remote prospect of the looters themselves, though I understood that Mr. Morales meant his remarks to be friendly.)
So anyway, Ms. Morales made polite conversation about the construction on our house (which proceeds, but not fast enough). Then she came to the point. “I noticed you have a new sign on your lawn.” Uh-oh, thought I. She sees it all day out of her window. This isn’t going to be good.
Then she floored me: “Where can I get one?”
It seems the Moraleses, perhaps because of the college (ie draft!) age child, are now virulently anti-Bush. They voted for him in 2000, and boy are they sorry. She is angry about the war in Iraq, Ms. Morales told me—and she looked the way I feel, shaking with anger. And they’re angry about the new rules that restrict travel to Cuba, and limit helping any but the closest relatives still there. They’re very very anti-Bush; they’re voting Kerry.
Of such things are victories made.
(This is the first of at least three stories I plant to tell over the next few days about my Kerry-Edwards sign.)
Next: Someone steals my sign two days after I put it up.
There’s nothing in John Kerry’s life since he volunteered for combat in Vietnam and won five medals while I collected five deferrments that would suggest he is anywhere as tough against America’s adversaries as I am.
Actually, the offical transcript hardly needs improvement: “there isn’t anything in John Kerry’s background — oh, for the last 30 years — that gives you any reason to believe that he would, in fact, be tough in terms of prosecuting the war on terror.”
New poll results look much better for Kerry:
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry gained ground at President George W. Bush’s expense in polls taken in Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, New Mexico and New Hampshire after last week’s presidential debate.
Kerry has a 2 percentage point edge in Florida and the candidates are tied in New Hampshire, two states that were among those Bush won in 2000, according to the American Research Group.
In New Mexico and New Jersey, Kerry leads by 3 percentage points, within the error margin, according to polls. Bush and Kerry are tied in Iowa. The three states backed the Democratic nominee in 2000.
“Independent voters, who shifted to Bush from Kerry beginning just prior to the Republican convention, seem to be shifting back to Kerry, and that trend has intensified in the days following the first debate,” American Research Group President Dick Bennett said in an e-mail.
One’s tempted to say this is the start of major Kerry “momentum.” Trouble is, I have come to mistrust all the polls. In order to believe one, I’d need to know lots more, starting with what percentage of the electorate they think will vote, and how that number compares to 2000. I think that turnout, at least in the ‘swing’ states, will be substantially greater than four years ago, especially among the younger voters. Is this reflected in their models?
Then again, I suspect that exit polls got the Florida vote right (showing a Gore win), and the actual count got it wrong — in substantial part due to the “butterfly ballot” people who were polled but not properly counted. But with exit polls we don’t have any doubt about who the ‘likely voters’ might be, so the sampling problem is easier.
Could it be that there is hope for the Republic?
Yesterday I suggested that what people thought of the foreign policy part of the debate would depend a great deal on whether they had the facts to detect Cheney’s artfully delivered deadpan mendacity. Today the media — both blogs and traditional sources — went into high fact-check mode. Summaries at Needlenose and White House Briefing.
Cheney’s best zinger was the he went to the Senate to preside over it most every Tuesday and yet he’d never met Edwards before the debate. Both parts are a lie: Cheney’s Senate presiding record is rather limited, and Cheney is on archival TV footage sitting next to Edwards at a dinner three years ago. (The Democrats put out a nice video about it.) And the part about Edwards’s hometown paper was not real accurate either…
I think the major print and network media willingness to fact-check all of a sudden (where have they been for the past three years?) is largely due to pressure via blogs, which has served as a counter-weight to the right-wing domination of cable TV and AM radio, those modern yahoos who treat questioning the Maximum Leader as a form of treason. Now we have sane people noting that letting the Leader and Assistant Leader (however we sort the roles) lie with impunity is itself perhaps not the essence of patriotism.
Brad DeLong thinks that Cheney lying about the small stuff is major:
I believe that Cheney’s loss to Edwards will, by this weekend, be seen as even greater in magnitude than Bush’s loss to Kerry last Thursday. This is just too good a story not to dominate public memory.
In the future, when people talk about most devastating moments in vice presidential debates, they will not talk about Lloyd Bentsen’s riposte to Dan Quayle’s claim to be the second coming of JFK; they will talk about Dick Cheney’s forgetting that he had ever seen John Edwards before.
In other words, the conventional wisdom is hardening that Cheney has committed a gaffe—one of those silly small things that the press pounces on and turns into a mountain when it (1) thinks the small thing is sympathetic magic for a big important thing (2) that the press believes to be true, but (3) doesn’t have the guts to say directly.
Trial by gaffe is a nutty way to pick the government of the world’s greatest superpower. But it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Update: Digby points to Just My 2 where you will find some very high-ranking Republicans who have gone on record in the strongest and most definite terms that even minor mis-statements in a Presidential debate (even something as small as where and when you were with a public official) indicate something profound and troubling about a candidate.
Cheney would be one of the most effective TV presences — because of, not despite, his lies — were it not for his irrepressible mean streak. Whether people think he won or lost may well turn on their response to the meanness factor. TV does not like mean.
If you insist on substance, Cheney did almost as good a job as could be done to make the administration look good on foreign policy. Edwards as much as said, ‘who you gonna believe: this guy or your eyes?’ It’s a good argument, but there were others he could have used too. If you were not aware of the facts Cheney was distorting, you might well have thought he won the foreign affairs part, although not by much; if you knew the subtext, then Edwards won on foreign affairs, but didn’t do so as effectively as he might have. I think Edwards’s stock may rise if people fact check the debate thoroughly, as I think Edwards missed openings to nail Cheney mis-statements.
Conversely, Edwards simply crucified Cheney on domestic issues. Wasn’t even close.
Update (10/6): A quickie CBS poll “of 178 uncommitted voters found that 41 percent said Edwards won the debate, versus 28 percent who said Cheney won. Thirty-one percent said it was a tie.” One more time and it’s over…..
This is an awfully good short political video: Keeping America Scared.
It pushes back against one of the Bush administration’s most effective and improper tactics. For, instead of taking the FDR line (‘nothing to fear but fear itself’), Bush and his crew have stoked the fires of fear (mixed in with what we used to call ‘waving the bloody shirt’) for political gain.
The video not only shows an affable Bush and a creepy Cheney doing it, but also shows Rudy Guilliani trying too hard and overdoing it, and Laura Bush’s ability to say anything and make it sound OK. There’s also a brief (don’t blink) but very chilling cameo by Hollywood box-office star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like any piece of politcal argument that takes quotes out of context, there is a way in which this video could be called unfair. But the sheer volume of the repetition it exposes, and the setting in which it happened, shows, I think, that this retaliation is not in fact below the belt.
The DNC has kindly provided a highlights video called “Faces of Frustration” to show what I missed by not watching the split-screen TV version of the debate. It’s quite something.
Listening to the excerpts of the debate on the radio this morning, I realize Kerry won big. The soundbites are (1) Kerry saying he made a mistake speaking about the war, but Bush made a mistake invading, which is worse? and (2) Bush sounding amazingly lost and hesitant, then petulant, after being called on his sly suggestion that the Iraq invasion was retaliation for 9/11. His “I know OBL attacked us” sounds like a five year old in the playground trying unsuccessfully to deflect teacher’s ire.
According to the utterly unbiased Kerry-Edwards web page, the instapolls confirm that Kerry won big.
Here are the poll stats copied from the K-E web page
CNN / GALLUP POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE
Kerry: 53
Bush: 37CBS POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE:
Kerry: 44
Bush: 26
Tie: 30ABC POLL ON WHO WON DEBATE:
Kerry: 45
Bush 36:
Tie: 17
What the K-E page doesn’t address is whether this win changed any minds.
For the first time in about two years, I agree with NPR’s Juan Williams, who said this morning that it takes a few days of seeing the clips repeated on TV and radio before people make up their minds.
But if they keep playing the soundbites I heard this morning, it can only be good for Kerry…
Kerry’s worst mistakes: (1) a slip on a “global test” for preemptive war. While he meant that any war must be something we can justify to the world. It will be twisted to mean he’ll demand approval from the black-helicopter-UN before sneezing. (2) Somewhat robotic repetition of some of the same talking points.
Bush’s worst mistakes: (1) inarticulate, bad body language, sounded flustered by unexpected questions; (2) didn’t seem to have a full command of the facts
Kerry’s best moves: Great delivery: strong and dignified and articulate (when not repeating himself). Hit key points he had to hit
Bush’s best move — suggesting that Kerry’s claim the attack on Iraq was wrong doesn’t square with his expressed desire to “win” now. (Despite Kerry’s later reference to the Pottery Barn theory, which was not a great corrective.)
Things that await the spin: Korea 2-party or 6-party talks? Bush’s set-piece about meeting a war widow.
Prediction: The anti-Kerry soundbites will be all the same they were before — why let facts get in the way.
But I mostly heard this on the radio. Did it look different on TV?
First lie: Bush claims that “people know where I stand”; compare Daily Kos: Bush Supporters Clueless about Bush’s Policies
Bush’s best moment: pointing out the contradiction between Kerry saying the invasion was a mistake and saying he will win it with foreign help.
Fact check: How many countries have how many troops in Iraq? See this BBC account
Numbers fluctuate as troops are rotated in and out of the country. On 19 July 2004 there were about 133,000 foreign troops in Iraq, of whom about 112,000 were American.
Any major engagement with insurgents is run by US forces, except in the south-east, where British forces take the lead.
Bush’s claim that there are 30 or so countries represented among coalition troops is technically correct. But for almost all the contributions are, according to the BBC, negligible:
Coalition troops in Iraq
More than 30 countries have contributed troops to the multinational forces in Iraq.
The US is overwhelmingly the biggest foreign contributor, followed by the UK, Italy and Poland.
Numbers fluctuate as troops are rotated in and out of the country. On 19 July 2004 there were about 133,000 foreign troops in Iraq, of whom about 112,000 were American.
Any major engagement with insurgents is run by US forces, except in the south-east, where British forces take the lead.
Baghdad Area of Operations:
About 30,000 foreign soldiers, most from the US 1st Cavalry Division. There are 32 Estonians in the Abu Ghraib district of the city.Iraqi troops began patrols in Baghdad on 28 June, in co-ordination with the multinational forces.
Baghdad is also the location of the multinational force headquarters.
Multinational Brigade North (also known as Task Force Olympia):
About 20,000 soldiers, of whom 11,500 are Iraqi security forces (national guard, border patrol and army).The remaining 8,500 are nearly all American (mostly Third Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division). There is also an Albanian commando company.
In August 2004, South Korea is due to start deploying 3,000 new troops in Irbil. Most of the 700 South Koreans already in the country have been based in the south-east, but about half are now, reportedly, being redeployed to Irbil.
(Sources: Multinational Brigade North; Globalsecurity.org)
North-Central Area of Operations:
The US 1st Infantry is augmented by contingents from:
Georgia (150)
Latvia (about 40)
Moldova (30)
Macedonia (30)Western Area of Operations:
The US 1st Marine Division is augmented by contingents from:
Azerbaijan (150)
Tonga (45)Multinational Division Centre-South:
Poland (2,350)
Ukraine (1,550)
Thailand (450)
Bulgaria (420)
Hungary (290)
Romania (200)
Mongolia (140
Latvia (110)
Slovakia (110)
Lithuania (50)
My brother wants to harness blogs and their readers to do some distributed fact-checking of tonight’s debate.
Let the Fact Checking Begin! And here’s another way to make sure that the substance of Bush and Kerry’s comments are fully and quickly assessed.
Some key political bloggers, who have so effectively proven their ability to hold the press accountable, will tonight be posting their own debate fact-checks — and will be asking their readers to find and document substantively incorrect statements by the candidates, as well.
I’ve already talked to several bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum and they’re on board. I urge others in the blogging community to join in the experiment. Just make sure you e-mail me at froomkin@washingtonpost.com so I know you’re out there.
In tomorrow’s column, I’ll link to the bloggers who are actively fact-checking and I’ll try to highlight some of the best and best-documented posts.
Let’s help out! (Although I suspect it would need to be a really excellent gotcha! to get through the Post’s anti-nepotism firewall.)
CBS News: Bush’s Top Ten Flip-Flops. My favorite:
During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush argued against nation building and foreign military entanglements. In the second presidential debate, he said: “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it’s got to be.’”
The United States is currently involved in nation building in Iraq on a scale unseen since the years immediately following World War II.
During the 2000 election, Mr. Bush called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from the NATO peacekeeping mission in the Balkans. His administration now cites such missions as an example of how America must “stay the course.”
[I think this one is actually a double-flip-flop since we’re now abandoning nation-building in Iraq.]
NPR: Top 10 Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know About the Debates, including,
(7.) The secretly negotiated debate contract bars Kerry and Bush from any and all other debates for the entire campaign.
CBS News: Kerry’s Top Ten Flip-Flops. Most pandering and damning,
In October 2003, Kerry said Israel’s unilateral construction of a security fence was “a barrier to peace.”
“I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the decision to build the barrier off the Green Line,” he told the Arab American Institute National Leadership Conference. “We don’t need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israelis.”
But less than a year later, in February 2004, he reversed himself, calling the fence “a legitimate act of self-defense,” and saying “President Bush is rightly discussing with Israel the exact route of the fence to minimize the hardship it causes innocent Palestinians.”
Crawford, TX, GW Bush’s “hometown,” i.e. the place where Bush’s palatial family estate is located, has its own local newspaper, The Lone Star Iconoclast.
And it has something to say: Editorial, Opinion of the Publishers.
Read it.
I live in the ur-swing state. I’d like my vote to count. I’ll be voting on an electronic voting machine with no paper trail. I don’t trust it. Not at all. (Here’s one more reason I don’t trust the machines in use in my precinct.)
The most amazing thing about this to me as a person clinging to an increasingly sorely tested belief in the rule of law, is that the plain, plain, plain meaning of the relevant florida statute says that a machine with no backup records is illegal. Florida law demands the ability to do recounts in close elections. This theory is about to be tested in court — at last.
Here’s part of the Herald’s story.
Florida’s election system, ridiculed and maligned during the 2000 presidential election and then rebuilt with new technology, was thrown into chaos again Monday with five weeks to go before Election Day.
A federal appeals court in Atlanta reversed a lower-court judge and ordered him to hear a lawsuit that demands voters be given paper receipts when they use touch-screen voting machines so there is a paper trail in a close election.
The court’s decision is vindication for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, the Palm Beach County Democrat who filed the lawsuit, and a potential nightmare for election officials in the 15 counties that use the ATM-style equipment, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.
It also throws an unwelcome light once again on Florida, which was assailed Monday by former President Jimmy Carter, who said a repetition of problems from 2000 “seems likely in Florida.”
Regardless of whether Wexler wins his lawsuit in court, state officials said Monday that they will now draw up an emergency rule requiring touch-screen counties to do manual recounts in close elections — a startling turnaround, because the state fought for months to bar such recounts.
(emphasis added) Problem: how do you do a manual recount where there’s no record???
Critics of touch-screen technology are alarmed that there may be no way to know if a machine malfunctioned during a close election.
State law requires recounts when elections are decided by a razor-thin margin. If the difference in vote totals between candidates after the first automatic recount is less than one-quarter of 1 percent, election officials are required to do a manual, or hand, recount of all overvotes and undervotes. Overvotes are votes for more than one candidate in a race; undervotes are no votes at all in a particular race.
But the state elections division has argued that manual recounts aren’t needed for touch-screen machines because they are incapable of recording overvotes. State officials even issued a rule prohibiting counties from doing manual recounts — a rule the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups successfully challenged in court last month.
The law suit raises that issue, but I can’t imagine how some new rule relying on this technology can address it.
A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood called the ruling ”procedural” but acknowledged that the state now plans a new rule in time for the Nov. 2 elections spelling out how to do manual recounts in touch-screen counties. How recounts would be done hasn’t been decided, spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.
She said state officials were interested in doing what “we feel will best serve Florida. We are concerned with finality and not continued litigation.”
But the state’s solution does not at this time include paper receipts, because Florida hasn’t certified any printers that can legally be used with touch-screen machines.
And I predict there is no way it can in time for the election. Unless they scrap the machines, which is pretty unlikely.
Works for me: Jon Stewart For Debate Moderator.
Missing: 983,000 Tax Pages: Looks as though President Bush is due for an audit of his tax code facts. “The tax code is a complicated mess,” he said in Bangor, Maine, on Thursday. “You realize, it’s a million pages long.” Most Americans probably did not realize it was that long, because it is not. It is, in fact, 17,000 pages long, according to such experts as the conservative Heritage Foundation and Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).Update: As the an commentator noted, this was by Dana Milbank, who’s about as good as it gets at the Post. I hate to think what these proofs I’m working will look like when they are printed.
One of the reasons I ended up being a John Edwards fan was Elizabeth Edwards. I figured anyone who she would marry had to be OK. Here’s more evidence for the proposition that she’s great: Elizabeth Edwards reads Daily Kos. She also contributes to the Kerry-Edwards blog.
Even prior to his recent Satanic endorsement, GW Bush picked up plaudits of a sort from the next-most-evil source: active terrorists, in this case the group that is thought to be responsible for the Madrid train bombings:
The statement tells Americans that Abu Hafs al-Masri supports the re-election of President George W. Bush. "We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections," it said. Addressing Bush, it said: "We know that a heavyweight operation would destroy your government, and this is what we don’t want. We are not going to find a bigger idiot than you."
Source: International Herald Tribune (Mar. 18, 2004). Spotted via Needlenose.