Do you trust the US government to run an honest election

[Ivan Seeking]

If anything, you have blindly accepted the word of a loon. What's worse?

I haven't drawn any conclusions regarding this particular example. Funny that you would, considering the implications.

If I was sure that Bush Sr had some of his operatives scare Perot out of the race this thread would read quite differently. It is naive to ignore the claim entirely.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

From the first post in this thread:

Very late edit: Please make that second option "significant election fraud"; meaning enough to affect the outcome of the election. Any votes already made in error should be clarified and I will post the correction here. I sure don't want to start any polling fraud conspiracy theories!

 

[ray b]

The Revised 2000 census for Florida shows the following figures (rounded) for the hispanic population:

Cuban population 900,000
New Latinos (mostly of South America origin) 850,000
Puerto Ricans 500,000
Mexicans 400,000
Total 2,650,000
900,000/2,650,000=34% Cuban

Cuban fast tracked for citizenship and many who are not yet citizens DO VOTE
New Latinos maybe low# BUT most are illegal or notyet citizens and DONOT VOTE
Puerto Ricans 500,000 high # maybe includes people who claim to Puerto Ricans falsely to avoid INS
Mexicans 400,000 mostly migrant labor noncitizen and don't vote

most latins running for office here are both cuban and republican
their crooks are far more likely to ingauge in white collar crime
of a republican nature like medicare fraud, then to knock over a gas station.
remember allmost all of the cuban upper classes came here and very few from lower class a natural republican base group to start with, that events like the bay of pigs only reinforced

 

[loseyourname]

Oh come now, Ray. I'd like to see numbers showing that even though Cubans represent only 34% of the Hispanic population of Florida, they in fact represent almost all of the convicted and released felons. If that's true, then maybe Njorl can begin to build a case.

 

[JohnDubYa]

Heh. The Florida voting scandal reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where they are playing with the Ouiji board.

"Oh Great Ouiji Board, which of us is the smartest?"

"Quit pushing, the Ouji board is clearly trying to move to the letter 'C'!"

"No, the board is clearly trying to move to the letter 'H'!"

 

[amp]

It is common knowledge know that the voting in Florida was rigged. Multiple ballots(votes) for Bush by the same people, Military ballots that were counted with postmarks after the deadline, Thugs who prevented many blacks from voting. It goes on ... The election official in charge switched from Rep. to Dem. was involved in Florida's use of the 'Butterfly' ballot then after the election switched back to Rep. again.

 

[Njorl]

The Revised 2000 census for Florida shows the following figures (rounded) for the hispanic population:

Cuban population 900,000
New Latinos (mostly of South America origin) 850,000
Puerto Ricans 500,000
Mexicans 400,000
Total 2,650,000
900,000/2,650,000=34% Cuban

Thank you. I find this relevant. I no longer believe that the list was an intentional attempt at manipulating the vote. I no longer see a way that Republicans could expect to benefit from this.

While Cubans are more likely to be citizens than Mexicans or Central Americans, they are less likely to be citizens than Puero Ricans.

My original thinking was there should be about 8000 Hispanics on the list who were not, 5000 of them Cuban, 2500 would vote, producing about 500 extra Republican votes state wide. That is a number that is empirically worth risk-free fraud.

As it is, if we assume 8000 Hispanics missing from the list, only about 2700 will be Cuban, about 1350 will vote, producing about 270 unwarranted surplus Republican votes. However, the other Hispanics who were wrongfully allowed to vote would probably tend to vote Democratic, though not as uniformly. The result would tend to be a wash statistically.

I no longer believe they were being nefarious.

They were just being incompetent.

Njorl

 

[russ_watters]

I missed this before and its a good post:

More to the point would be something like Jacobs v. Seminole County Canvassing Board concerning the Republican voter registrar who invited a Republican party official to the Seminole County registrar's office to add missing id numbers to Republican requests for absentee ballots.

Something I didn't touch on before was the courts' influence. Courts aren't a voting watchdog group and aren't capable of being one. One obvious flaw is that they only rule on cases they see. That means they don't have the power to investigate and find problems. If someone argues for a recount in one county, for example, they can't take it upon themselves to order a full-state recount.

In this specific case, being former military, I want as many military absentee ballots counted as possible. Military should be given the benefit of the doubt and get a little help with the paperwork if necessary. But clearly doing it for one party and not the other is wrong. In this case, it would seem the judge tried to go outside her scope of power and look at "the big picture," when her job description says she must rule on the case she is presented with.

Whatever shenanigans may be attributable to either or both parties, I doubt that the claim that the election was "stolen" really makes sense (precisely because it was a statistical tie). The legitimacy of the result, however, has a big question mark over it because the issue was forced by a Supreme Court that gave the impression of being motivated (whether conciously or unconciously) by unreflective partisanship rather than the integrity of the U.S. electoral process.

I would certainly agree that Bush won the election in the courtroom, not the voting booth (no one won in the voting booth), but I don't see a remedy for that in that election. Clearly though, the USSC should not be deciding elections. The rules/methods need to be changed to prevent that in the future.

 

[russ_watters]

I no longer believe that the list was an intentional attempt at manipulating the vote. I no longer see a way that Republicans could expect to benefit from this...

I no longer believe they were being nefarious.

They were just being incompetent.

Fair enough, but that is, of course, a fine line. In fact, politicians have a knack for being both corrupt and incompetent simultaneously...

 

[Njorl]

The person who demanded that 1400 military absentee ballots be thrown out.

"With regard to the status of overseas absentee ballots, they must have been executed as of last Tuesday. They must bear a
foreign postmark as provide[d] in Section 101.62(7), and they must be received by the supervisors of elections by midnight Friday. They are not required, however, to be postmarked on or prior to last Tuesday."

-Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State, Republican

 

[Dayle Record]

I think there was fraud in the last election, and I fear that this next election won't happen. There have been key statements, from the current administration that indicate that. One statement being that if there were terrorism attendant to the election, the election would be postponed. Then the statement by Tommy Franks, that if a nuclear weapon detonated in the US, we would scrap the Constitution and go with a military form of government. There are currents now, I have never seen before that this government is obsolete, and needs to be scrapped. The obsolescence has to do with failure to follow a rightwing sort of agenda. Bush said on television that he would not lose this election, but the way he said it, sounded like fait accompli.

 

[amp]

Dayle, ... do you mean this sort of way - "IF I CAN'T HAVE IT NOONE CAN! MU WHO ha HA hA Ha HA hhaaa" Oh, sorry just daydreaming, addressing the comment a few posts ago, "Would it be fraud if Kerry won?" Simple answer ...No. Kerry isn't the one who's supporters(cronies) owns the company that makes the easy to tamper with electonic voting machines! Duh.

 

[JohnDubYa]

I haven't drawn any conclusions regarding this particular example. Funny that you would, considering the implications.

Claims are worthless in the absence of credibility. Perot has simply made too many bizarre comments over his career.

There are people out there that think Bill Clinton murdered some of his opponents. Without any evidence to support those claims, what good are they?

 

[JohnDubYa]

I think there was fraud in the last election, and I fear that this next election won't happen. There have been key statements, from the current administration that indicate that. One statement being that if there were terrorism attendant to the election, the election would be postponed.

This has been debated in another thread. I fail to see how this would bring the end to democracy.

Then the statement by Tommy Franks, that if a nuclear weapon detonated in the US, we would scrap the Constitution and go with a military form of government.

Link? I want to see his actual quote.

There are currents now, I have never seen before that this government is obsolete, and needs to be scrapped. The obsolescence has to do with failure to follow a rightwing sort of agenda.

Can you back up any of this with real statements?

Bush said on television that he would not lose this election, but the way he said it, sounded like fait accompli.

I think you are letting your hatred of Bush get the best of you. (Bill Clinton had the same effect on conservatives.)

 

[russ_watters]

I think there was fraud in the last election, and I fear that this next election won't happen. There have been key statements, from the current administration that indicate that. One statement being that if there were terrorism attendant to the election, the election would be postponed. Then the statement by Tommy Franks, that if a nuclear weapon detonated in the US, we would scrap the Constitution and go with a military form of government. There are currents now, I have never seen before that this government is obsolete, and needs to be scrapped. The obsolescence has to do with failure to follow a rightwing sort of agenda. Bush said on television that he would not lose this election, but the way he said it, sounded like fait accompli.

This is very similar to a common Clinton conspiracy theory: Clinton passed a law re-organizing or updating FEMA. The conspiracy theory was that that was in preparation for siezing dictatorial power at the turn of the milenium after a manufactured Y2K bug.

More entertaining than yours, but just as absurd.

The person who demanded that 1400 military absentee ballots be thrown out...

-Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State, Republican

That's fine, Njorl, there were notable dissenters on both sides (Clinton's SecDef was one who was opposed to the attempt to have them thrown out): but those dissenters didn't take any actions.

 

[amp]

Gore did finally, in his concern for the nation concede to Bush.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

ho di doe di doe, ho di doe, ho.