The media is now concerned about the quality of Ohio's vote?

[Botany]

Where were these people in 2004?

When 16,000 votes were loaded into Miami County's total
after all the voting had been over for hours and the new vote %
matched the old vote % down to .01.

When 24.9% of all voters in Cleveland were purged from voter
rolls.

When Ken Blackwell sent out voter registration forms from his
office and then ruled that the completed forms were invalid
because they were on the wrong weight of paper.

When exit polls showed that Kerry had won the state by
>500,000 votes.

[GOTV]

1. Small correction... Blackwell only threatened to invalidate forms that were the wrong weight...

... and he got so much flack for it he never implemented it. I'm pretty sure I'm remembering this right.


I wouldn't be surprised if he found other ways to invalidate those voters though.

[Botany]

2. You are right but his public statements about "paper weight" put

a "monky wrench" into the system and caused lots of problems
@ the county BOE level .... which I think was what he was trying
to do.

[Rancid Crabtree]

3. after an avalanche, every snowflake pleads "not guilty"

We need to make voters personally responsible for their own actions and for those of their Reps, instead of distributing (in secret) the consequences of their poor choices across the state. The answer is simple. Accepting the question is difficult. No more secret ballots. If the prospect of voter fraud seems like small potatoes when our candidate might win, imagine how gargantuan that prospect becomes when the other shoe drops.

[gollygee]

4. No more secret ballots? Are you kidding?

That's a cornerstone of the democratic process. If people know how you vote, they can fire you or beat you up for not voting how they want.

[Rancid Crabtree]

7. There's small choice in rotten apples

...we have secret ballots now and look how many people have given up on the process...why?...because it's an all or nothing proposition...democracy is "consent of the governed" but true liberty requires the unanimous consent of the governed...what we have now is a dog fight and the big money wins, every time...our reps hide behind closed committee doors...when the choice is the lesser of two evils, you chose when to take your beating and you assume a campaign promise is that...we all know campaign promises have been broken, time and again...it's always the other guy's fault...there's small choice in rotten apples...with increased representation, an increased percentage of people would have an actual voice in politics...will the fringe be able to push through their agenda (and beat you up if you don't support it?)...no, but whatever portion of their agenda is reasonable to the other increased numbers of representation, something more reasonable can be coalesced with other reps for results, instead of unintended consequences in which everyone pays...or sumpin...

[stillcool]

6. Why do we have to make it harder for..

people to vote, and easier for our votes not to count?

[Rancid Crabtree]

8. a large percentage of people DO NOT VOTE now...

...and registering them is admirable, but what's the point if a quota system is the stimulus...how many more will be turned off from the process after the news...the question should be why don't more people actually vote and the answer in part is likely their disillusion with partisan politics...there's small choice in rotten apples...

[stillcool]

9. After the 2004 election..

where people had to stand in line for 8 hours to vote, it's amazing that registrations in those same areas are up. Perhaps we are witnessing, through voters being challenged, etc., why so many are reluctant to vote.

[riverdeep]

5. Don't you get it?

When some Democrats talk about our vote not being counted, even though there is substantial and impartial documentation, it's a conspiracy theory that never reaches even the outer reaches of the mainstream media except maybe directly on election day, when they promptly forget about it for two to four years.

When the Republicans cook a story out of whole cloth from a set up of a suspicious 'raid', the media is instantly on the ball. It's what responsible journalists do.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[mod mom]

10. Botany, our own party called us conspiracy theorists back in 2004. I feel somewhat

vindicated. They even mentioned that when electronic voting machines vote flipped, we should immediate call down to the boiler room so they can take the machines down.

I believe that this year the party will fight for our votes, if I thought otherwise, I'd be working with the Greens.

This change has to do with the LEADERSHIP (as in Howard Dean and others). I am so glad progressives wrestled the power away from the corporate Dems-DLC.