The discussion revolves around the incident of a Florida voter potentially using a rare 1918 Inverted Jenny stamp to mail an absentee ballot, raising questions about the authenticity of the stamp and the implications for the election process. The conversation touches on themes of voter awareness, the value of rare stamps, and the possibility of a hoax.
Participants generally agree that the stamp is likely a hoax or forgery, but there is no consensus on the motivations behind its use or the identity of the voter.
The discussion does not resolve the authenticity of the stamp or the circumstances under which it was used. There are assumptions about the knowledge and intentions of the voter that remain unexamined.
MIAMI (Reuters) - A Florida voter may have unwittingly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars by using an extremely rare stamp to mail an absentee ballot in Tuesday's congressional election, a government official said on Friday.
The 1918 Inverted Jenny stamp, which takes its name from an image of a biplane accidentally printed upside-down, turned up on Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale, where election officials were inspecting ballots from parts of south Florida, Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom told Reuters.
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A block of four of the stamps sold for almost $3 million last year, however, and Rodstrom said the one that turned up Tuesday night could fetch about $500,000 for Broward County at auction.
"It's now government property," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061110/us_nm/life_stamp_dcRodstrom said he did not examine the envelope's postmark, but it had no return address and the ballot was disqualified because it gave no clue as to the identity of the voter.