Here's a fact about the 2000 Florida recount that I didn't know:
Hoodwinked – Why is Florida's voting system so corrupt?: Following the contentious 2000 recount, e-mails on former Sec. of State Katherine Harris' computer revealed that she had been in contact with Jeb Bush during the recount, contrary to both their claims. Miami Herald reporter Meg Laughlin discovered that e-mail messages sent to Jeb Bush from Harris had been deleted after the recount. Harris then had the operating system of her computer changed, a procedure that erased all its data. “What was odd about what she did,” said Mark Seibel, an editor at the Herald, “was that they installed an old operating system—not a new one—which makes you wonder why they did it.”
I think Kerry will need at least a three point lead in Florida to carry the state in the face of absentee ballot stuffing, and of the mischief that a smart, ruthless, Governor can cause when in cahoots with local officials. I hope the polls look good in Ohio…
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. Like Democrats don’t stuff ballot boxes too… There’s no telling who the NET beneficiary of ballot fraud will be in Florida, and many other states.
Neither party’s hands are clean in this. If you lose Florida to ballot fraud, it will be the irony of a bank robber who steps out of the bank to find his getaway car has been stolen.
3 point lead? According to the VNS, Gore was originally projected on election night 2000 to win Florida by 7 points. Now, granted, those projections often exaggerate the difference, but keep that in mind.
Another thing you probably didn’t know: during the recounts Kathleen Harris provided office space, supplies, and computers to out-of-state Republicans working to influence the recounts.
I think Brett’s reply says it all: There is no denying that multiple Republican cheating efforts occured in Florida in 2000 and 2002, and are occuring again. So their only defense is to say “the other side does it too”. No evidence is required to back up this assertion: instead just have an army of followers repeat it as often as possible until it is perceived as true.
Can we just take it as read that every time Michael posts about electoral fraud, Brett is going to say “Democrats do it too”? Or it probably wouldn’t be too hard to write a program to do it.
Well, every time he writes about electoral fraud, pretending that only Republicans are doing it. As I say, I don’t have a clue who the NET beneficiary of ballot fraud is. But I do know both sides do it, and get irate when either side pretends otherwise.
I’m a life member of the Libertarian party, and WE’VE been victimized by both sides. But, hey, you want proof?
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1999/investigative-reporting/works/980215_felons.html
You whine about the purge list, but don’t care a bit that lots of REAL felons, who coincidentally are mostly registered Democrats, don’t get purged by Democratic elections officials. And someone improperly purged might vote a provisional ballot, but there’s no way to remove an illegally cast vote once it’s in the ballot box.
Show some interest in doing a legitimate purge, or requiring people to actually prove they’re US citizens when they register, or ANYTHING that might make the voter rolls more reliable, and I’ll believe you care about ballot fraud. But until then, I’m going to figure you just care about winning.
Re: Dem failures…
Sounds like small potatoes to me. I’d much rather err on the side of not purging felons than purging all kinds of people who aren’t (which is what happened last time, IIRC). In fact, I personally think it’s wrong to deny felons the right to vote. Part of the reason for that is that minorities and the poor are overrepresented in the felon populations. That’s why felons are predominantly Dems, btw.
I’m sure there probably are some precincts in the country where Dems do bad things. That said, I don’t quite see the comparison between “not banning enough felons” on one hand and what happened in 2000, and what could happen in 2004 given what we’ve seen thus far.
I’ll mostly side with a fellow libertarian (who are the true conservatives, BTW, not the neocon trash dominating the Republican party). I’d rather see Kerry win honorably; if the country really wants to vote for Bush again, then–well–we’ll deserve everything that happens to us. Even so, while it would shame me, at least Bush’s election really would reflect the will of the people.
At the same time, my libertarian instincts suggest the more immediate concern is with the Republicans, as they are the ones in power across all branches of the national government (executive, legislative, judicial) and are free use that power, along with that of a few friends and relatives in strategic places, to manipulate the election. The Democrats simply don’t have that kind of clout–if they did, the Republicans would not have restrained themselves complaining in the most visible media they can. If the Dems win the elections, it would behoove every American to insist the political leadership remove control over the details of the electoral process from political appointees and the politicians. Too long have the foxes guarded the henhouses.