The 2012 "Election" thread

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:29 pm

Nate Silver
Image

Will Romney Contest an Electoral Loss if He Wins Popular Vote, As Bush Planned To Do in 2000?

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

BuzzFlash goes back a long way to its founding in May of 2000, so we were around for the full 2000 presidential campaign.

Looking through some article print outs from the 2000 election, we came across this one from the New York Daily News, "Bush Set To Fight An Electoral College Loss" (November 1, 2000):

They're not only thinking the unthinkable, they're planning for it.

Quietly, some of George W. Bush's advisers are preparing for the ultimate "what if" scenario: What happens if Bush wins the popular vote for President, but loses the White House because Al Gore's won the majority of electoral votes?…

So what if Gore wins such crucial battleground states as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania and thus captures the magic 270 electoral votes while Bush wins the overall nationwide popular vote?

"The one thing we don't do is roll over," says a Bush aide. "We fight."

How? The core of the emerging Bush strategy assumes a popular uprising, stoked by the Bushies themselves, of course.

In league with the campaign - which is preparing talking points about the Electoral College's essential unfairness - a massive talk-radio operation would be encouraged. "We'd have ads, too," says a Bush aide, "and I think you can count on the media to fuel the thing big-time. Even papers that supported Gore might turn against him because the will of the people will have been thwarted."

Local business leaders will be urged to lobby their customers, the clergy will be asked to speak up for the popular will and Team Bush will enlist as many Democrats as possible to scream as loud as they can. "You think 'Democrats for Democracy' would be a catchy term for them?" asks a Bush adviser.

The irony, of course, is that Gore went on to win the popular vote in 2000 by more than a half a million votes (540,000). Bush only won the electoral vote – after massive voter suppression in Florida and voting hijinks – with the intervention of Antonin Scalia and United States Supreme Court, who appointed him president (after a highly questionable vote count that dwindled to just over 200 in the Sunshine State, despite Bush being assisted from various strategies to suppress the Democratic vote in Florida).

Fast forward to 2012. The scenario that the Bush campaign thought it was facing is exactly the one Romney confronts: he may win the popular vote, but the bets are that he will lose the electoral vote. (Of course, Obama may still win the popular vote, particularly given his incremental rise in the national polls this past week.)

So will Romney's campaign try to claim that the Electoral College system set up by the Constitution is "un-democratic," as the Bush 2000 campaign was planning to do? Probably not, given the precedent of Bush having the Supreme Court vote him in as president by allowing him to capture the Florida electoral vote, while he lost by hundreds of thousands of votes to Gore nationally.

But remember, Republicans don't let their own precedents get in the way of bullying their way into office. In any case, if Obama were to win electorally and lose the national vote, watch out for a Tea Party rebellion, because double standards are their claim to fame.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush – whose two terms in office brought America to economic ruin and instigated two failed wars – was recently off in the Cayman Islands speaking strictly off the record on offshore banking and investment.

According to Tom Robberson of the Dallas Morning News editorial department:

So why would George W. Bush, less than a week before the presidential election, go to the Caymans and give a top secret speech to selected audience members who, according to The Associated Press, were “forbidden” to discuss any of the contents of that discussion? Forbidden. Not, “we strongly discourage you from discussing this speech outside this room,” but “you are forbidden from discussing this.”

And what insights would Bush have about the Cayman Islands and secret offshore investing that he would garner so much attention from the likes of KPMG (the tax-shelter company that paid a $456 million penalty for criminal tax fraud during the Bush administration), Deutsche Bank (which this year paid $202.3 million in damages and penalties for falsely certifying loans to qualify for federal insurance) and billionaire Richard Branson (who hasn’t really done anything wrong, but maybe he’s thinking about it)? And why the need for so much secrecy that participants were not allowed even to say what the speech was about?

Whatever the answers, this Cayman Islands caper serves as a timely reminder from our last Republican president why Americans should be highly suspicious of the current Republican contender for president. Anyone who hides his money (Romney) — and/or his words (Bush) — behind a wall of secrecy in the Caribbean is up to something suspicious.

But maybe Bush, who has been exiled from Romney's campaign, will return to the United States in time to advise Mitt on how to get the lease to the White House even when losing the election (should that scenario occur).
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:47 pm

My friend brought up a good point. If Bush had personally ordered the assassination of an American teenager, good lord almight...the left would be going ape-fn-shit(and rightfully so)

Image

It's become deafening the amount of people on and offline I encounter trying to bully everyone into voting for Obama. Yeah that sucks the racist fucktard GOP is doing every dirty tactic for voter surpression, but doesn't mean
magically people should be forced to vote for Obama. I've just gotten sick of this attitude that if you don't vote/vote third party, then somehow you're part of the problem. There's still idiots that believe because people like me
voted Nader in 2000, that somehow we're to blame for Bush winning.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Project Willow » Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:54 pm

82_28 wrote:Willow, do you know of a place I can do of a provisional ballot tomorrow? I hear they are far and few between these days. I guess I can just google too.


Google is more of a friend than I in this situation. I was rather upset about having to pay for a stamp to vote last go around, but discovered a ballot drop box a block away from my place. I mean, come on, this is an election, there should be no costs involved whatsoever. I miss going to the booths, although I did enjoy voting at my kitchen table today.

Go Jill Stein!
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Project Willow » Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:58 pm

lupercal wrote:Willow normally I'd agree but this year really is different and every vote is going to count, even in big blue Pacific states.


Oh yes, do wring your hands over which figurehead of the cryptocracy is selected. I haven't played their game in 20 years, am not going to start now.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Project Willow » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:03 am

Luther Blisset, your dispatches are truly frightening.

Apologies if this is a repost.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12537-why-the-democrats-and-media-deny-election-rigging
Why the Democrats and Media Deny Election Rigging
Monday, 05 November 2012 10:04 By Ben Ptashnik , Truthout | Op-Ed

Are we really to believe that Karl Rove and other cynical GOP operatives who are engaged in massive voter suppression attempts right now would not take advantage of covert electronic rigging, which has repeatedly been proven feasible? What you can do.

    "An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained."
    Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi
It has been an axiom of the election reform movement since the 1970s that "sunlight is the best antiseptic." For that reason I spent more than a decade, including my two terms as a Democratic state senator in Vermont, attempting to shine a glaring light on the pernicious nature of money in politics. Much later, my political antennae led me to believe that finance reform was only one side of the coin, and that it is equally important to focus an antiseptic light on the machinery of elections - what is commonly called election integrity.

That our computerized voting machines could be hacked, even in the good old US of A, has been pronounced a national threat by no less than the Department of Homeland Security. The fact that the machines are ripe for fraud has been proven repeatedly by computer scientists from Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Stanford University, the GAO, the Brennan Center for Justice and government-commissioned studies in states like Ohio and California. The Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory - usually entrusted with matters of nuclear security - easily hacked into voting machines in a few hours with $26 dollars in parts.

Meanwhile, in this coming election, thousands of these privately programmed and serviced voting machines are counting the votes that will fundamentally affect the balance of power in US politics, perhaps irreversibly.

So it is vexing to me that, while our country is veering precipitously to the right, with dire consequences for the planet and society, some commentators in progressive and liberal media institutions refuse to believe that the GOP may not limit itself just to dirty tricks and voter suppression. These erstwhile defenders of democracy and justice immediately and emphatically deny the possibility that certain rogue right-wing elements, and GOP operators like Karl Rove, could possibly be complicit in rigging elections. This denial is preposterous; these right-wing operatives have proven that they will lie and cheat, so why would they not steal?

Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis of The Free Press, recently exposed the Romney family's questionable ownership stake in a voting machine company, Hart Intercivic. This story has even been picked up by numerous media outlets, including the right-leaning Forbes magazine.

These stories are forcing a fundamental question into the public sphere: Should private corporations be allowed to control the machinery and software of elections without serious oversight?

But instead of asking this question, the liberal-leaning ThinkProgress posts this article: "Why Romney Isn't Rigging Voting Machines," when they adduce no evidence one way or the other to make such a statement.

Then MSNBC's election "expert" Chuck Todd tweeted that concerns about e-voting machines are "conspiracy theory garbage."

This is truly perplexing. With all other issues where potential political scandal or conflict-of-interest has emerged, it is practically a blood sport for the press to fish for evidence and discuss the possibility of foul play. Witness the amount of attention that Voter ID laws have garnered. Yet on the issue of rigging the voting machines, we see the opposite; the flag of "conspiracy theory" promptly gets waved, before the problem has even been examined. The liberal deniers also take the baffling position that "it can't happen here," as Steve Rosenfeld does in his article "Five Ways Karl Rove Won't Steal an Election," published on AlterNet and Salon.

Rosenfeld completely dismisses all evidence that the machines can be tampered with and says, "Don't worry, I know it won't happen," offering reasons that have been proven wrong by myriad researchers. It is not true that elections administrators can catch or detect malicious coding inside the computer, and it is not true that discrepancies between electronic results and polling results will lead to an audit of the machines. And as the 2000 presidential race demonstrated, post-election audits and legal action can end up with a right-wing Supreme Court handing your opponent the election.

And are we really to believe that Karl Rove and other cynical GOP operatives engaged in massive voter suppression attempts right now, would not take advantage of covert electronic rigging? After all, we are talking about a cabal of slick operators who lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to start the war in Iraq. Why give them the benefit of the doubt?

What if Rosenfeld is wrong and Karl Rove is about to give orders to one of his dirty tricksters: "Hi, this is Karl. Hey, we need 70 voting machines to flip 5 percent of the votes to Romney in Ohio. And another 50 to flip 7 percent in Virginia. It's the only way we can win. Call the boys. But be careful to do it only in heavily Republican counties, so no one will notice."

Does Rosenfeld have absolute proof this above scenario can't, and won't happen?

Rosenfeld also smears Victoria Collier's cover-story article this month in Harper's magazine, "How to Rig an Election." This document clearly exposes the corruption permeating our vaunted American democracy, and gives an example I find particularly troubling: Tea Party hero and radical Christian-right candidate Jim DeMint's entirely implausible election to the US Senate from South Carolina in 2010.

DeMint somehow wound up running against Democratic Party candidate Alvin Greene, a homeless, 32-year-old accused sex offender, who was not only incoherent in media appearances, but essentially did not run any visible campaign, not even posting a lawn sign. Preposterously, in the Democratic primary, Greene beat Vic Rawl, a four-term state legislator, former judge, and 28-year National Guardsman with the rank of colonel.

The unknown Greene's margin of victory was reported to be an astounding 18 percent, which was tabulated on ES&S voting machines that voters reported flipped votes from Rawl to Greene all during Election Day. Greene also could not explain where he got the $10,400 dollars needed to file for the Democratic primary. It became obvious to most unbiased observers that Greene was a GOP plant rigged onto the ballot by hacked voting machines. DeMint then sailed into the Senate practically uncontested.

Though Vic Rawl lodged a formal protest in hearings with the South Carolina Democratic Party, his demand for a new primary was denied. Meanwhile, the press never once suggested election fraud could have been in play in DeMint's election. Why?

As a former state senator, I can offer this insight. Politicians won't touch the issue of election-rigging, foremost to avoid being labeled "conspiracy theorists" in the corporate press. But more pointedly, I believe the silence of the Democrats is rooted in a deeper fear. Most politicians, and political aspirants, live in - and profit by - the unquestioned paradigm of American exceptionalism - the idea that we are the "greatest democracy on earth." Democracy is what we Americans "export." Questioning the fundamental integrity of our elections may be our right under the First Amendment, but in politics it's the equivalent of openly supporting the Constitutional right to burn the American flag. Good luck running for dogcatcher afterward!

Democrats - who have the most to lose from a voting machine industry that is increasingly dominated by right-wingers - have therefore stuck their heads in the sand, fearing political suicide. Additionally, some Democrats clearly fear that voters will stay home if the truth is exposed about how unsafe our system has become. But I find this excuse wanting. Not only is there no evidence to support this conclusion - in fact, voters are often rallied to the breach - but also the American people are not children: They deserve to know the truth.

So we find ourselves in a desperate Catch-22. If political leaders won't speak the truth, neither will the press. And if the press does not report the truth - or worse, attacks whistleblowers as "nut cases," then politicians won't speak out.

Consequently, that leaves "we the people" to mobilize, educate ourselves and speak out, so that the leaders will follow. If we don't protest loudly, the cycle of implausible elections results spit out of corporate- and right-wing-controlled proprietary software will escalate, and the radical shift of American politics to the right will continue unabated.

The 2012 election may turn out to be the most fraudulent and contested election in US history. But we can perhaps deter outright rigging by shining a strong light on its potential - and also by turning out to vote in record numbers, making electronic vote "shifting" more difficult.

We must watch for the installation of uncertified software "patches" by voting machine companies, as has been reported this weekend in 39 counties in Ohio. This is considered illegal and probably constitutes fraud.

Most disturbing is that the GOP is planning to try to have voting machines "recalibrated" in many key states the day before the election, supposedly to correct errors. In a letter to election officials and secretaries of state in Ohio, Nevada, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri and North Carolina, the GOP's Chief Counsel, John R. Phillippe, Jr., directed that the officials:

1. Re-calibrate all voting machines on the morning of Election Day, or, if necessary, the day before the election.
2. Make arrangements for additional technicians on Election Day in case of increased calibration problems.

These are prime opportunities for rigging, as the software patches are likely proprietary, and most of the voting machine companies are controlled by the right wing.

We must be vigilant for vote-flipping in heavily Republican districts; areas where Romney is expected to win, but where "glitches," perhaps caused by "re-calibration," could heavily inflate GOP totals and threaten the elections for President and Congress. Such manipulation can be masked as a plausible "heavy turnout" by Republicans, and could add enough votes to win the electoral votes of a key swing state.

I am particularly concerned about Virginia and Pennsylvania, where many of the voting districts use DRE machines without a verifiable paper trail. The Romney-Ryan team put Pennsylvania, a blue-leaning state with 20 electoral votes, in play this past week, which gives me pause. A flood of GOP and PAC money has recently inundated the Pennsylvania airwaves with anti-Obama ads, and both Ryan and Romney switched plans to campaign there over the weekend. Pennsylvania voters and election officials Beware!

Please circulate this message to your friends, and urge them to vote this election cycle. Tell them that the basis of American democracy - our right to vote and choose our various elected representatives, governors and president - is no longer assured, and they must get involved.

I ask that you then join the Election Integrity movement to organize for reform of our voting process before the next election cycle. Campaign finance reform and publicly observable ballot counting are the two pillars of democratic reform that should be the central campaign platform of Democratic and progressive candidates in the 2014 election cycle.

Please visit:
Votescam.org
Bradblog.com
Occupy Rigged Elections
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:08 am

justdrew wrote:

nope. no viable option to.

think about what most people THINK (people not so jaded and cynical) Obama stands for. That's worth supporting, their instinct for something better.


My criticism and cynicism of Obama, even back in 2008, isn't meant to take away at all from the genuine euphoria/tears/hope/etc it gave to countless people, especially those with a history of being oppressed.
I always believed that feeling is immeasurable. I just can't help but also strongly feel that people cannot allow Obama to do all these things(and in some cases much worse) than what Obama did without holding the white house accountable...even if the right wing doesnt even notice. (it's strange what the GOP will criticize Obama over and what they won't)

However I also am not blind to the fact there are serious ugly feelings toward Obama, pure hate from the right wing. Scary shit, that I do fear may come to play in the coming seasons.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 8bitagent » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:18 am

Did Wall Street Just Give Up on Romney?

Many on Wall Street are increasingly convinced that Barack Obama will win the election.

On the eve of the election, many financial professionals on Wall Street believe that Mitt Romney has lost the election. In phone conversations, email and instant messaging exchanges, and text messages with over 20 people in different jobs on Wall Street today the message I picked up was almost universal: The president will be re-elected tomorrow.

Many of those with whom I spoke—all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity—had a sense of resignation about this forecast. They were Romney guys. They ate at expensive rubber-chicken fundraisers in midtown hotels, they coaxed friends and coworkers into donating to Romney and Republican campaign funds, and just a few weeks ago they were enthusiastically predicting a victory for Romney.

Not any longer. The word that comes to mind is: capitulation. The sudden and simultaneous collapse of hope that we sometimes see in markets just as they reach their lowest points.

(Please note: this is far from a scientific survey of opinion on Wall Street. It’s very possible that my list of contacts is heavily skewed toward pessimists or biased in some other way.)

My colleague Bob Pisani has explained that some on Wall Street believe that some stocks seem to be pricing in an Obama victory.

There has been something of a paralysis on Wall Street during this political cycle. Knowing that Romney could not afford to be branded the “Wall Street” candidate, a lot of folks on Wall Street shied away from too much visible support. But at off-the-record dinners and cocktails parties in New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island they took out their check books and quietly supported the candidate from Bain Capital.

Some said Super Storm Sandy was to blame.

“His candidacy was the ultimate hurricane victim. Once the storm loomed, he vanished from public thought,” one investment banker said.

“It’s a shame really. He had the momentum. Then Sandy overtook him. Now we have Chris Christie hugging Obama. Game over,” said another.

“Where was he in the last few weeks,” asked a young hedge fund Republican.

Others say that the Romney campaign just never really capitalized on its gains after winning the first debate.

“All eyes were on them and we got…nothing,” a Wall Street executive long involved in Republican politics said.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/49662650

I realize there are many different factions. There's the Rove/Cheney/neocon/Bolton strategists, the old money, the new money, wall street/corporations, etc.
I wonder if it's possible they realize they may not be able to steal the election per se, and are now hedging their bets.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby psynapz » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:26 am

Image

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby lupercal » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:34 am

^ Hoo boy. "What have we got left to lose," asks dressed-for-success Gary Johnson. How about Social Security? Parents' medicare? Our shitty 401Ks, again? Glad Gary's got his golden parachute ready but most of us don't.

Anyway, Willow thanks for the partial quote, but I hope you won't mind a full repost as it had some info in it, specifically a link that might be useful to 28 or anyone looking for polling place or ballot info:

lupercal wrote:
Luther Blissett wrote:We have heard from one additional friend, another woman who was registered as a Democrat in Pennsylvania, whose registration status has mysteriously disappeared, bringing the total to five.

Holy cow. Romney apparently has scheduled an election-day trip to PA tomorrow which is pretty weird so it looks like they're pulling out all the stops to steal it. :(

Project Willow wrote:^^ If I remember correctly in which state you live, it is far from swing, Obummer is a done deal there, so you can vote for whomever you want.


Willow normally I'd agree but this year really is different and every vote is going to count, even in big blue Pacific states. Between the hurricane, the super-pacs, and like-never-before caging in PA, Florida, and Ohio, the pundits are already talking about an electoral win for BO and a popular "win" for Romney and that's if BO gets to 270 electoral votes. The billionaire boys are sparing no effort to make sure that doesn't happen so I wouldn't waste an opportunity to vote BO if anyone still hasn't and is lucky enough to still be registered. :(
..................

p.s. Walk-in election day registration available in some states:

You can register at the polls on Election Day in the following 9 states and in the District of Columbia: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

http://www.longdistancevoter.org/voter_ ... Jh-0-xcyq0


:bigsmile
Last edited by lupercal on Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Elihu » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:37 am

are counting the votes that will fundamentally affect the balance of power
the two would have to be connected somehow to accomplish that.
in US politics
think of it as nielson ratings for the fall season. i heard those machines are rigged too ; )
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Elihu » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:39 am

How about Social Security? Parents' medicare? Our shitty 401Ks, again?
fyi, those are doomed regardless. be thankful for the time you had together! imo. ;)
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby justdrew » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:45 am

Luther Blissett wrote:We have heard from one additional friend, another woman who was registered as a Democrat in Pennsylvania, whose registration status has mysteriously disappeared, bringing the total to five.


you say you can't reach anyone at the county election board?

this situation is an emergency; that's a lot of canceled registrations...
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:51 am

As far as I know, they've all accepted that they will be voting provisionally.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby justdrew » Tue Nov 06, 2012 1:06 am

"data base errors" cropping up all over the place I guess. That is not acceptable, some heads had better roll. Incompetence is not a viable explanation. They knew how to do it last year.


The Serious Flaw With Ohio’s Plan To Count Provisional Ballots

By Aviva Shen on Nov 5, 2012 at 4:54 pm

Thousands of Ohio voters have been falsely notified that they are not registered to vote due to a database error in Ohio’s voter rolls. An Ohio voter advocacy group alerted Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to this major system problem on October 30. But instead of fixing it, Husted issued a directive instructing local boards to use the same flawed search method to count provisional ballots after Election Day.

Ohio’s computer search of the voter registration database will only find exact matches, meaning that voters could come up as unregistered due to typos, abbreviations, or partial entries. This flawed search mechanism missed huge numbers of registered voters in Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties, incorrectly rejecting 33,000 requests for absentee ballots. These two counties corrected the error, but thousands of others may have slipped through the cracks in the rest of the state. These voters were told they are not registered to vote and may be forced to use provisional ballots at the polls.

But if they do decide to file provisional ballots, along with a growing number of other legal voters in the state, the very same search method could disenfranchise their vote entirely. Husted has ignored warnings that the system is missing large numbers of registered voters. As the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, who first discovered the problem, explain:

Worse yet, Sec. Husted last night released a Directive with a proposed search method for Boards of Elections to verify registration status on provisional ballots. Yet Sec. Husted’s latest recommendations for search are entirely inadequate, likely to miss thousands of voters because of mis-spelling of names, variation in form of ID, failure to use all available tools for a reasonable search and other reasons. Once again, our warnings and suggestions, sent this morning, have gone unanswered. Unless this inadequacy is corrected, several thousand provisional ballots could be wrongfully rejected as “not registered.” If the election is close, this could be a source of endless legal battles.

NOVA has outlined an alternative, more accurate search method that will result in far fewer mistakes. Husted’s office has not yet responded.

Husted’s directive also jeopardizes legal ballots by shifting the burden of proof on the contested voter, even though Ohio law requires the poll worker to fill out the form. A federal judge will hear the case the morning after Election Day.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Elvis » Tue Nov 06, 2012 1:28 am

82_28 wrote:Hey guys. Try this site. http://www.isidewith.com


Fun!

I side with Jill Stein on most issues in the 2012 Presidential Election.
Candidates you side with...

96% Jill Stein Green
on healthcare, foreign policy, environmental, social, economic, immigration, and science issues

84% Rocky Anderson Justice
on healthcare, social, foreign policy, and immigration issues

75% Gary Johnson Libertarian
on foreign policy, social, domestic policy, and immigration issues

67% Barack Obama Democrat
on healthcare, science, and immigration issues

3% Mitt Romney Republican
no major issues

50% Washington Voters
on environmental, domestic policy, science, and immigration issues.

51% American Voters
on environmental, domestic policy, science, and immigration issues.


Parties you side with...

94% Democrat :oops:

90% Green

61% Libertarian

2% Republican :lol:

http://www.isidewith.com/results/216502399



That Democrat/GOP contrast is striking, but of course at least half the difference is in what they say, not what they do.

Funnily enough, I took this quiz right after I voted and sealed my mail-in ballot.

I voted for Jill Stein.

:yay

I also voted to let people marry people; to let people smoke & sell pot, albiet with some onerous restrictions; twice to raise taxes, for state revenue plus a municipal housing program for the poorest of the homeless; and against allowing the state universities to invest in stocks & bonds. To stem the rightward tide, and having no third-party challengers in my state & local contests, in those I voted straight Democrat. I voted for the 'leftier' non-partisan judges and utility-district dogcatchers. I affirmed, with a vote, those uncontested court judges who by all accounts are good people---some, damn good---generally doing the Right Thing.

My county operates its own ballot counting machines, as I understand it. I've heard one 'FOAF' story about fishy vote-counting down at the courthouse: a friend told me that a guy she knew, who worked for the city, claims that he saw the county auditor put the same ballot---for their favored mayoral candidate (a Democrat, btw)---through the counting machine many times, when 'the other guy' was edging ahead. He says (she says) that the Auditor's staff laughed and joked about it. My friend believes the story but I've never been able to talk to the guy myself. He told her, she told me, that he won't go public because no one would believe him against the long-time county official.
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