Talk Elections

Interesting story about a congressional challenge to Bush's 're-election':

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050106/ap_on_el_pr/electoral_college_ohio&cid=694&ncid=2043

The report also contends there were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation, improper purging of voter registration lists, a lack of inspection for about 93,000 ballots where no vote was cast for president, and vote totals not matching registration numbers or exit poll data.

Just a snippet from the article.

1.  Widespread intimidation and misinformation - I do believe that challenging somebody does not fall under the scope of intimidation.  If you are legally registered, a question of your legality is not intimidation.  Only people who are not legally registered can feel intimidated.  There are instances of Democrat misinforming voters, will these be explored?

2.  a lack of inspection for about 93,000 ballots where no vote was cast for president - What is to inspect?  If their isn't a vote, you can't divine what the voter means.  Oh wait, if you're a Democrat you can.  Some people just don't cast a vote for the President.  To assume everybody does is wrong.

3.  vote totals not matching registration numbers - horribly wrong here, but okay in Washington.

4.  and vote totals not matching ... exit poll data - as if polls are completely accurate and actually vote counts are not.  Just look at Zogby's wonderful polls.  When Venezuela had elections, and the exit polls differed from the actually vote count, Jimmy Carter and follow Democrats discounted the exit polls as being wrong.  I guess that rationale doesn't apply here.


Everything they have to present has been debunked.  They just can't stand the fact that they lost.

I was for Kerry.  That said, this "challenge" is not good politics for our side.  In fact, it's just plain dumb.

This is really, really, really bad precedent if the Democrats do this. We do not want to even hint that Congress can un-do a Presidential election because they don't like the results. There could be a full-blown Constitutional crisis in the future when it transpires that the Congress is not controlled by the same party as the evident Presidential victor, and the party with the Congressional majority seeks to overturn the election.

Let me ask this: we hear how much is demanded of Bush to "reach out" and include Democrats in his decision making. How in the heck can a baseless challenge to his election do anything but spoil a spirit of co-operation?

This makes the Democrats look much worse.  You need to learn how to lose gracefully.

I agree.  This makes every election from this point forward fair game for a "challenge". 

On the other hand election reform is needed, period.

I do agree that we need voting reforms.  The system badly needs to be cleaned up.

But, dear god, this is NOT the way to make the point.   Why are these people intent on leaping off a cliff?

Maybe in there eyes this is the only way to clean things up.  Democrat or Republican if you have half a brain you would agree a paper trail is needed on these voting machines.  Still, contesting the election and pissing 60+million people off is probably not the best way to go.

If Ohio were much closer, say within 10,000 and no recount had been held, I might understand it, altho I would still think it foolish unless there were a blatant flouting of the election laws of Ohio that had occurred.  On the other hand, the two hours that Congress wastes on this is two less hours they can spend on other mischief.

Bush reached out? What crack are you smoking?

Ohio was "stolen"??

Do YOU really want to play the "you" card and make this personal??

My point is that why in the world should Bush reach out to these idiots after they pull a cynical, partisan, bitter stunt like this? And the fact that Democratic leadership went along with it shows that the Democrat leadership is willing to risk the very foundation of our democracy to score some short term political points.

Our democracy took a serious blow today and I am not happy about it.

So they actually did this? Ha! How long until it's over?

Our democracy died December 12th, 2000.

Can anyone name ONE THING that Bush has done to "reach out"?

The Department of Homeland Security and the perscription drugs bill.

The Democrats came up with a Dept. of Homeland Security plan right after 9/11.

Bush's Dept. of Homeland Security bill had anti-labor provisions, and his Dept. of Homeland Security is run by partisan Republicans.

Bush's medicare plan was a handout out to drug companies (no controls over drug prices).

Both of those make me angry. Try again.

I'm just asking for ONE THING, and I haven't heard it, because Bush is the most partisan, polarizing resident in US history.

Republicans whining about his stolen election being contested - priceless.

Like I said - the Department of Homeland Security was reaching out to Democrats.

Price controls are unconstitutional and would likely have been struck down by the Supreme Court anyway.


In case you haven't noticed, you're the only one here who thinks it was stolen.

No one here with a D avatar thinks it's fair.

Once again jFRAUD has shown in many limitations.  Even if all 93,000 votes were found to have been for Kerry, Bush still would have carried Ohio.  We now have demostrated that not only jFRAUD's reading skills are lacking, but so are his mathematical ones.

As for "reaching out" the "No Child Left Behind" Act was both a centerpiece of the Bush domestic policy and had bipartisan support.  I read some place that one of it's supporters was Ted Kennedy, and I kinda think that possibly he might be a Democrat.

Yeah, I have no mathematical skills, right.  Hahahahaha.
Ted Kennedy later said that supporting that was a mistake.
Teaching students just how to pass some dumb multiple choice test is not the best way to learn.

Here is an interesting quote from the article cited in the first part of the thread.  Some people looking at it "found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election."   Those people were Kerrry and his attornies.

If there's ever a murder, you'll say that there's no evidence that there's anything that would bring the person back to life.

I'm glad you realize you are mathematically challenged.  If it will help I will be happy to explain to you how subtration works


Are you suggesting that democrates are flipfloppers?  Oh my!


It is fairly to tell that you went to a school system where there was no testing at all.

I wouldn't think that every dead person is a murder victim.  I don't think that every every defeat in an election is due to fraud (I'll include Washington in that one).

I'm the one who supported the recount by the two third party candidates, because it was their legal right.

Oh yeah, that's why I'm in grad school.

If Ted Kennedy changed his mind about No Child Left Behind, that is his problem. Bush clearly reached out to Kennedy and Kennedy accepted. This counts as Bush reaching out, whether any other poster "likes" it or not.

Ted Kennedy said trusting Bush on NCLB was a mistake.

Exceptionally low standard, obviously. 

Do you ever having anything useful to say, J. Juvenile?

For the record, a solid majority of Democrats present (including the Minority Leader and the lone Independent) joined with the Republicans to defeat the motion to object to the OH electors.

Clearly, some members of Congress had questions about whether Ohio's electoral votes were "regularly given"--specifically, whether the election (and subsequent recount) in Ohio was held in accordance with all Ohio and federal laws.

Given that they had those questions, it was their duty to object to the votes and to call for a discussion.

They were doing their job.  Anybody who suggests they should have ignored their own doubts just to make the process run more smoothly is not really interested in fair elections.

And for what it's worth, the fact that only Ohio was challenged is absolute, undeniable proof that this was NOT about changing the outcome of the election--even if Ohio's votes had been rejected, Bush would have won, 266-251.  There was no alternate slate to allow, so there would have been only 518 votes cast, and only 260 would have been required to win.  The other states that might conceivably been contested had already been passed over.

Here is a problem with the idea of challenging Ohio on the basis that the votes were not "regularly given".

If there were discrepancies in the way the election was held compared to the law, it seriously looks to me like the discrepancies were minor, isolated, and had no bearing on the outcome of the election. To me, there simply is not enough to warrant a challenge.

If we accept that any violation of election law no matter how small or inconsequential to the outcome is allowed to be the basis for a challenge, we are opening up a Pandora's box that I think the country can ill afford. For instance, in my state there is a law that says campaign signs can be no closer than something like 50 feet from the entrance of a polling place. Suppose by accident some precinct measures wrong and allows signs 45 feet from the entrance. Now we have an illegal election, which by today's precedent and by the quoted argument, would be fair game for being challenged in the Joint Session. This can only lead to disaster.

In fact, what may happen is election workers will intentionally violate inconsequential parts of the law just to create grounds to challenge the election later.

In my view the challengers in Congress were derelict in their duty to the country. They were willing to undermine the entire democratic process in order to attempt to make political points. That is just awful. If there are ways to make the election process better, risking our democratic underpinnings to do it is irresponsible. There is a better place and time to make their point.


Now had Ohio's votes actually been thrown out, I don't agree that this would have simply reduced the number of appointed electors. I think it would have thrown the election to the House.

Quit whining fern.  Your candidate got beat.  End of story.  Your crybaby whining on this board day after day is pathetic.

Yes jFRAUD, that even John Kerry, and his lawyers found nothing.  I have no problem with looking, but there needs to be proof.  I've said the same thing, repeatedly, about Washington.

The problems with jFRAUD is that he is too immature to understand this.  He does even read the links he sites.

Ironically, even the Congress members today, who raised the Ohio issue (again the Loony Left) said that the did it not to challenge the results, but to call attention to what the preceived as voting problems, e.g. long lines.

There were very long lines at my polling place at 7:00 AM on Election Day, largely because a pretty sizable percent of the voters showed up at the same time.  When I voted at about 2:15 PM, I was the only voter at the polls; somebody else came in as I was voting.  This is the kind of problem the Loony Left, like j FRAUD, of the party complain about when they complain.

I would use the words "Loony Left" to describe this branch.  It doesn't represent the Congressional Democratic leadership here or Kerry himself, just the fringe group.

Pollworkers per voter were higher in minority areas.

Um, so? If you're legally able to vote, you won't have any problems with pollworkers.

Actually, this isn't the issue.  A voter spends very little time with the poll worker.  It's the time that voter spends in the booth voting that tends to be most time consuming part.

Further, if OH is anything like PA was, there were a large number of volunteers informing voters of their rights regarding voting.  When I voted, and when I drove past other polls, these volunteers outnumbered the voters.  You could tell from their tee shirts.

The Loony Left, like jFRAUD, seems to want to be able to tell voters at what time of day to vote.

That's a matter of opinion; obviously, some members of Congress disagree with you.



If anyone actually believed that, we probably would have seen 51 challenges today, rather than one.

 

This hasn't been a problem in local elections where small margins are common; there is no reason to suspect it will become a problem in Presidential elections.  Even if it were, it is reasonable for us to expect our Representatives and Senators to do their jobs, and to actually debate and consider any challenges to electoral votes.  As long as they
do this, frivolous challenges based on minor events will not result in overturning any elections.



They undermined nothing.  They followed the Constitutionally prescribed method of challenging questionable electoral votes.  They forced a discussion of voting problems that have been largely ignored.  We will see a number of election-reform proposals come from the 109th Congress.

Here's a guess:  Election-reform bills will be, for the most part, blocked by the Republicans in Congress.



I think that this was not only the best time to make their point, I think it was the ONLY time they would be able to get any media attention at all for the election-reform issue.



That's a matter of interpretation; you may be correct.  Of course, those making the challenge knew, as you and I both know, that Bush would win any election sent to the House.  There was no chance of any Republican-controlled delegation voting against him.  So my claim stands:  this was NOT an effort to take the election from George W. Bush.  It was an effort to shine a light on the numerous problems with our election system--problems which were most evident in Ohio.

If you're in a 10 hour long line, you might have a problem with the lack of them and/or voting machines.

Two hours in Congress is an outrageous delay.

Ten hours in Ohio is not even worth talking about.

I wish we could have had a fair election.   Like, say, the election in Washington.  LOL

Yeah, Democrats are only interested in having a fair election process.  Yeah, that's it.

Maybe Dems can get those King County election officials to run the Ohio vote in 2008.  That would insure an accurate count for sure - in the tradition of Mayor Daley and Duval County, Texas.  Dems have ALWAYS just been interested in a fair and accurate counting of every vote.

Bunch of phonies.

Q: What do Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, and Washington 2004 all have in common?

A: They were all certified by a Republican secretary of state

If the Democrats had just wanted to be obstructionists, they would have challenged Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and so on.

They were not doing it, by their own admission, because they doubted the vote result.  That was made clear.

Now, if they want to talk about increased funding for localities to increase voting capacity, that's different. 

They are still going to have problems if all the voters in the district decide to vote at the same time.  You are not going to be able to legislate that.

That's it genius.  The Washington Secretary of State "found" all those votes in Democratic King County and turned the election - for the Democratic candidate.

Ohio?  There was a 118 ing thousand vote difference.  All 88 counties are run by bipartisan election boards, each with an equal number of Democratic and Republican members serving on those boards.  Those boards certified the results in each of those counties.  You and Boxer need to share a padded cell together.

Oh, and of course no Democratic wingnut can have a discussion without bringing up Florida.  One last time.  The NY Times, CNN, and the AP all did independent studies of the Florida ballots.  All concluded that Bush got more votes.  Vorlon has pointed this out numerous times in the past.  Maybe you think that the NY Times is part of a right wing election coverup.  Yeah, that's it.  They and CNN are puppets of the Bush Administration.

You seem determined to make sure that facts don't get in the way of a good story.  Except, it's not even a good story anymore.  It's gotten beyond comedy.  

The whining Democrats have become an absolute national joke.  If you don't win it's either because 1) the election was "stolen" or 2) because the voters are "stupid".

And you wingnuts can't understand why the voters don't trust you to run any part of the national government?  

You guys used to be entertaining.  Now, you're just pathetic.

By the way, how many long lines are being alleged occurred in Ohio? I saw 1 on TV.

As we learned in another topic in the forum, Ohio has a law that there can be no more than 1400 voters per precinct. If the line is so long that it scares away even the ridiculously high number of one-half of the precincts voters, were are talking about 700 scared away voters per long line.

If every single one of these scared away voters would have voted for Kerry, we would need almost 200 long lines to have enough discouraged voters to make a difference. I am pretty sure that if there were actually 200 long lines, we would have seen more than 1 of them on TV.

And even if the line is long, so what? I was willing to wait for as long as it took for my 30 seconds of filing by RWR's coffin last year. The fact that it took me only 3 hours was a bonus. If voting is such a sacred right and all that, stand in the d*** line to exercise it.

Before the challenge in Congress, I would have agreed with you. Your post really makes my case for me -- it lays out the POLITICAL reason that the challenge was made. I do not think it was in good faith to  disrupt the system for a political point. This breach of good faith sets a bad precedent for future challenges based not on uncertainty of the election result.


Not true. There is no constitutionally prescribed method of challenging electoral votes, questionable or otherwise. (And the challengers admit the votes were not even questionable). The challengers acted in accordance with US Code, not the Constitution. The law they used was passed in the wake of the Hayes/Tilden dispute in the 1870s. Congress took it upon themselves to devise a method to handle cases where there was a disupte over a states electoral votes.

If the objection had been sustained, I would hope that Ohio would take the matter to the Supreme Court and let it determe if Congress had the power to reject the duly certified results submitted by a sovreign state.


First, the GOP did not block HAVA. Second, one man's reform is another man's complication. I heard one of the challengers (Jesse Jackson Jr.) say that we needed a standard nationwide voting system. I think this would create more problems that it would solve, and perhaps the GOP would agree with me and block that. I would prefer for each state to look at the experiences of the other states and come up with their own solution as opposed to have Washington bureaucrats decide what system is best for every precinct in the country.

I disagree.  I think it would "make a difference" if even one voter had to leave because--whether through incompetence or by design--there were not sufficient machines available to handle the number of voters trying to vote.  And if this is more likely to happen in the areas where people have less money, or more skin pigment, or both, then it makes a BIG difference.

Voters didn't get "scared away", by the way.  A voter might have to leave because they risk losing their jobs or because they can't take a chance that their babysitter might not be able to stay at their home, or because they literally can not afford to give up a few hours pay.  Don't minimize other people's difficulties just because you don't share them.

You are correct.  I meant "legally" rather than "Constitutionally"--my mistake.

Actually, Stephanie Tubbs Jones said that, "This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning or challenging the victory of the President," not that the votes were not questionable. 

In fact, her opening statement was, "I . . . object to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Ohio on the ground that they were not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given.

So now the Democrats want to mount legal challenges to any election they do not win.

Why did they pick Ohio to challenge?  There were other states, such as Iowa, that were much closer.  Could it be that those other states would not have provided the margin of victory.

The types of election irregularities described in Ohio occur in every election, and in various places around the country.  I have heard nightmare stories about voting in New York City.  Hours long waits, names not appearing on registration lists, etc.  Sounds like voter suppression to me.  And in New York, ancient mechanical lever machines that produce no paper trail are used.  The machine could fail to record any votes and nobody would know until the end of the day when the machine was opened.

Are the Democrats concerned about the integrity of New York City elections?  No, because NYC elections usually produce the results that they want.  If they're so concerned about these issues, why aren't they challenging the New York results, or maybe the Illinois results, given the history of blatant voter fraud in Chicago.  I haven't heard a word of concern about any of this from the Democrats.  I can't imagine why not, if they're so concerned about the integrity of the voting process.

The Democrats, frustrated by their recent losses, have advanced into playing a very ugly game of claiming that voters likely to support them are being denied the franchise any time they get an election result that they don't like.  By raising the spectre of egregious abuses of voting rights in the pre-civil rights era, and equating what is mostly incompetent governmental adminstration (usually controlled by the Democrats themselves, as we saw in Palm Beach County, FL) with such abuses, they have cheapened the reality of past abuses and the sacrifices that were made to end them.

What will this do for Democrats in future elections?  Florida may provide a clue.  After the 2000 debacle there, and the vows by the Democrats to get even for their loss, Jeb Bush won by a landslide in the 2002 governor's race, and George W. Bush won the state by a comfortable margin in 2002.  Let's hope the Democrats keep up their current behavior.

Fear not.  They will.

Enjoyable to watch their meltdown after every election.  And, they can't figure out why the electorate won't put them back in power.

Hey, I like those lever machines!

Please, let them claim fraud where ther is none and let the LoonyLeft speak for the pae party.  We'll still have a two party system in 20 years, Republicans and Libertarians.

At least kerry and the Democratic Congressional leaderhip has the good sense not to be invoved.

I gained a lot of respect for Kerry as a result of his refusal to engage in this Gore-like behavior and his graceful concession to Bush.

His VP, John Edwards, came off like a little punk, and he is said to have been in favor of not conceding, and going the Gore route in Ohio, even with a margin of 120,000 votes.  At least Gore was within striking distance.

I have always hated Barbara Boxer, and now I can see that my opinion of her was well founded.

Tell your boy Rossi up in Washington to give it up then.

I don't necessarily agree with the Rossi challenge.  But 42 votes is not the same thing as 118,000 votes, in any case.  And that is only a gubernatorial election, not a presidential election.

Yeah, since when does 129 vote lead equate to a 118,000+ election outcome? 

As far as having respect for Kerry not challenging the election, all I can say is wow.  Now the Dems have us complimenting them for not failing to concede when the race isn't even close.  Boy, have they got us conditioned or what?

I would have respect for anybody who conceded gracefully once it was clear that he had lost.  Let's not overdo it - I still don't think much of his politics, but give him credit for not acting like a crybaby pu**y, as the Democrats have become accustomed to doing.

Yeah, but come on.  When you've lost Ohio by (what at the time was) 140,000 votes and Florida by just under 400,000 votes, what the hell else can you do but concede?

Aside from Al Gore, I can't think of another presidential loser in recent memory who didn't concede gracefully.

I think your main point is largely correct - that we now have such low expectations of Democratic behavior that we are overly impressed if they even behave halfway human.

In case you have not notice, I've been saying he should without proof.  

If some proof surfaces, I may change my opinion.  I can only think of two that were overturned, neither was a governor.

I still cant get over Florida.  Im not brewing up any conspiracy theories but, god damn.  I dont think anyone saw it being that big of a win for Bush.  What was it in 2000?  Like 400 votes?  400,000 just seems unrealistic to me.  Did Kerry forget about Florida?  To much time in Ohio?

Al Gore set a horrible example, and it's going to haunt our system forever.  He let the genie out of the bottle.

I keep thinking about Nixon's concession in 60 when there were half a dozen states within several thousand votes, and an out and out theft in Illinois.

Florida wasn't surprising to me.  A Massachusetts lib was never going to win Florida.

Jeb won re-election by 13 pts two years earlier in a year Dems poured everything they had into trying to embarrass W by beating his brother.

The margin of victory is irrelevant to the question of whether or not there was fraud.  The one thing has nothing to do with the other.

There are valid reasons to be suspicious of both elections; there are valid reasons to feel confident about both elections.  The margin of victory is really not a factor.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating.  The margin of victory in the Ukrain was 871,402.  Nobody doubts that that outcome was the result of fraud.

If I hear one more mention of the Ukraine election in a discussion of the Ohio election results I think I'm going to hurl.  Paleeeez.

One last time.

1) Ohio elections are decentralized.  Each county has an election board which consists of an EQUAL number of Democrats and Republicans.  They oversee the counting of ballots and certification of elecion results for that individual county.

2) There was NO problem with the certification of the election results among the Democrat and Republican commission members serving on those boards.  NONE.  Democratic members on those boards did NOT contest any of the county results - not in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinatti, anywhere.

3).  The votes were counted and there was then a RECOUNT.  To my knowledge, there has NEVER been a recount in ANY state in ANY presidential election with anything like the spread in Ohio.  Not even close.

4) In the recount, Kerry picked up 300 votes statewide.  That is a pretty good indication that the vote count was on the up and up the first time the votes were counted.

Damn, people.  Facts are stubborn things.  What's it gonna take?  Kerry lost the national popular vote by over 3 million votes.  The Ohio vote was well in line with what happened nationally.

Is this the way it's going to be from now on?  Ohio wasn't even close.  Are we going to have to listen to conspiracy crap from now on after EVERY presidential election?  Is that the way it's going to be?  Because, if it is, it is going to undermine the ability to govern of every president elected from hear on - Democrat or Republican.

You really want that?  Discussion of an Ohio conspiracy needs to be taken to the Democratic Underground site.  If Democrats continue to cry wolf over something as clear cut as Ohio, how will you possibly expect ANYONE to take your protests seriously in the future if there is a REAL problem?  Do Dems not see how this wingnut conspiracy stuff is marginalizing themselves in the eyes of the mainstream?

Last time.  No one stole the 2004 presidential election, and everytime that claim is repeated it only hurts the Democratic Party in the future.

I mention the Ukraine because it is relevant to my point:  the margin of victory has nothing to do with whether or not the election was in accordance with the law.



It's not particularly surprising that none of the Boards of Election suggested that their county results were problematic, whatever the reason.  Most people don't like to issue public criticisms of themselves.



There was a recount, and it would have gone a long way toward eliminating any suspicions, if it had actually been done in accordance with Ohio law.  But it wasn't; it was a joke.  The local boards ignored the state's recount provisions, and did everything in their power to avoid counting ballots by hand.  They had an opportunity to put the issue to rest, but they failed.


In the 1960 Presidential election, they did a recount in Hawaii.  A real one.



It would be a very good indication, if they had actually followed Ohio's laws in conducting the recount.



You'll notice that I have never said Ohio was stolen.  But I have become very frustrated with those who think there are no problems with our election system; and with those who think, without actually considering it, that fraud is not a possibility; with those who think that the margin of victory precludes any discussion of irregularities; and with the Republicans in Congress who, during the debate on Thursday, refused to address the issue of election reform, and instead complained about having their time wasted.

Our election system is a mess.  A huge mess.  And whether or not the Presidency was stolen in 2000, or in 2004, or in 1960, or in 1876, or any other time--it WILL be stolen in some election to come, unless we repair the process.

It bothers me that most Democrats, and virtually all Republicans, don't think election reform is even an issue worth worrying about.

The margin in Hawaii was not 120,000 votes!

It wasn't even that this time.

He knows that.  It was a couple of hundred votes.

Hand recount?  In a state where the margin of victory was 118,000 votes?  You gonna pay for it Andrew? 

Why don't you take a long look at the vote in Ohio in 1976.  Gerald Ford lost the state by what, 11,000 votes?  You didn't see Republicans clammering for a "hand recount" in Ohio and Mississippi.  - Two states which, incidently, were actually close, unlike Ohio 04, and which had enough electors to allow Ford to stay in power.  Of course not.  Nor should they have barring hard evidence of fraud.  The losing party accepted the judgement of the electorate and moved on without whining like little crybabies.

However, we shouldn't be surprised by all the crybaby whining from the modern Democratic Party.  After all, what else would you expect from a party that has become nothing but a coalition of victims?

Nor am I terribly concerned that the wingnuts are "suspicious".  You could have a million handcounts and they'd never be satisfied.  You think a "handcount" would have shut these people up?  Please.  BTW, "handcounts" really cleared things up in Washington, didn't they?  Now they really have a mess on their hands.

Guess you'll just have to just be unhappy, because there is absolutely no shred of evidence that any fraud took place.  None.  Zero.  Whether two minor party candidates who garnered less than one percent between them want a "hand recount" makes no difference to rational people.  The key word here is "rational".  Something the Democratic Party has not been in at least the last four years.  At any rate, kindly cool the crap about the Ukraine.  It hurts an already ridiculous case.

I have never suggested that there should have been a hand recount.  I have said that there should have been a hand recount in the counties where it was required by law.  They were supposed to choose test precincts at random.  After hand-counting the test precincts, they were supposed to machine count them once.  If the counts were different, they were supposed to recount by hand.  If they were still different, they were supposed to count the entire county by hand. 

In practice, the test precincts were pre-selected.  If the hand count and machine count didn't match, they re-sorted the cards and machine counted again and again until they got a match.  If they didn't get a match, they tried again with a different machine.  If they never got a match, they still did the entire count by machine.  This happened in county after county.

They have the laws for a reason.  And if the bill for conducting the recount isn't high enough for your taste, don't blame me or the Greens or the Libertarians.  Blame the Republican and Democratic Ohio legislators who passed the recount law in the first place, and the Republican and Democratic legislators who have failed to adjust it in the years since.



I'm not sure why the choices made by the Republicans in 1976 are relevant. 


Bringing up Ohio and Mississippi in 1976 shows that you really don't understand the issue.  The objection to the electoral votes was not about finding a close state or trying to change the outcome of the election.  It was about highlighting a state where there were many irregularities and questions about the conduct of the election.



The problem they have there is that they followed the state's recount procedures, and Rossi didn't like the outcome.


I'm unhappy only because most people in our country could not possibly care less about whether our elections are well-run.  Voter intimidation?  Don't care.  No paper trail?  Don't care.  Totals come up different every time we count?  Don't care.    Voters removed from the rolls illegally?  Don't care.



I'll continue to refer to Ukraine as long as you fail to understand that the margin of victory is irrelevant.  I'd also like to remind you that you don't have the authority to tell me what I should and should not say.

You casually float out terms like "voter intimidation".   Sorry pal.  There wasn't any.  Got any evidence?  Didn't think so.

It's not even a question of hand recounts.  Explain to me on what basis there should be a recount anyway.  While you're at it, how about Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.  Why stop there?  How about Texas, Alabama, South Carolina.  It's only money and your guy didn't win.  Therefore, we MUST keep counting.

Oh, and Washington is not a mess?  It goes a little deeper than "Rossi didn't like the outcome" and you damn well know it.  You must not have been following the story the last 48 hours - a little matter of dead people voting.  Check the Seattle Times.  The fact that you're all bent out of shape about Ohio, but dismiss Washington as simply "Rossi didn't like the outcome" tells me you're just another party hack and just a tad disengenerous about "just wanting to fix the system".  Admit it.  You just didn't like the outcome.  Simple as that.  Outraged about Ohio, but nonchalant about Washington.  Why not be consistant for god's sake if you're really concerned about "fixing the system"?  I think we both know the answer to that one.

I think my point about the comparison of 76 is rather obvious.  Are you trying to say that election should have been contested as well?  Good lord man.

Finally, you bet, Ukraine away.  You're just marginalizing yourself with that kind of dribble.  I suggest you take it to Democratic Underground.com or whatever they call it.  Take Fern with you.  You'll be right at home with the rest of the conspiracy nutcases.

Kerry is history.  You and Barbara Boxer would do well to get over it.

Of course there was.  There is voter intimidation in every Presidential election.  My complaint was that nobody seems to care.  It gets dismissed with a "both sides do it."



There should be a recount because two of the candidates requested it, as they are allowed to under Ohio law.  Once the recount has been requested, they should follow the law in conducting it.



How about them?  If you have evidence of significant irregularities there, you should want a recount.



That's never been my point; you haven't been paying attention.



My comment wasn't really about fraud investigations.  My comment was about Rossi, who was very much opposed to any challenges to the results until he fell behind in the hand recount.  Then, all of a sudden, he wants a re-vote.   He wanted the re-vote as soon as the numbers were against him.  Obviously, if it turns out that there was fraud in the Washington election, then it is more evidence of a broken system in major need of repair.  I'm opposed to bad elections everywhere, regardless of the result.



You (and others) have put me in the position of having to defend the Ohio situation; that's why I've been discussing it.  The "outrage" seems to be coming from you.



The answer is that I'm very consistent.



I didn't try to say anything; I didn't even bring it up.  But I'll say now that if one side or the other had suspicions of fraud, then of course it should have been contested.  A close election, however, does not constitute evidence of fraud.



Saying that the margin of victory is irrelevant to the question of whether or not there was fraud is not dribble.  It's fact.  The Ukraine is a recent and well-known example of that fact.



I don't think you'll be able to find any posts where I have ever suggested any kind of conspiracy.  I'll take the high road and refrain from calling you any names.  I'd appreciate it if you would do the same.



My point is, and has always been, this:  our election system is a mess and needs to be fixed.  I was making that point here, and elsewhere, well before the election.  My point has nothing to do with John Kerry.

Our election system is not "a mess".  It's served us well for 200 years.  It suddenly became "a mess" when Democrats weren't dominating elections anymore.  How convenient.

It has always been a mess when elections have been close, and there has always been a lot of cheating.  2000 was just a little worse than anything previous.

Our elections are a mess even when they aren't close; it's just that nobody notices.

In every Presidential election, millions of votes are thrown out.  We have machines that leave no paper trail.  Why do we expect a recount to always produce different totals?  Because we know that the votes are not counted accurately.  The counts are usually pretty close--but why is "pretty close" considered good enough?

Both major parties work hard to keep minor parties off the ballot, unless it suits their purposes.  The Republicans seem to be more interested than the Democrats in keeping certain groups from coming out to vote, but both major parties are eager to find ways to disqualify the ballots of those who don't support them.

It's a mess.  And almost nobody cares.

It is impossible to count 100% of the votes correctly unless you're willing to go to a computerized system.

The computerized systems do not count the votes with 100% accuracy; both Snohomish and Yakima Counties in Washington, which use computer touchscreens, saw the results change with the recounts.  The results in Snohomish even changed during the machine recount.

That said, I don't have a problem with using the new DRE machines, as long as they provide a voter-verified paper trail.  Otherwise, we are just asking for fraud.

And the recount results are less accurate.

The COMPUTERS in Snohomish got different numbers each time.  How is that 100% accuracy?

I have never heard anyone claim this before. Mind backing this up?

Which counties?

You can read observer accounts from most of the counties at http://www.votecobb.org

According to one of their regional recount coordinators--I can't recall his name right now--only 2 of the 88 counties chose the test precincts randomly.  When you read the observer accounts, you will see many of the situations I described.

I looked at the report for Champaign County.  Why are the observers anonymized?  The affidavit on the web site misreported the total vote in the county by a factor of 10X (180,000+ votes).  Who is responsible for this error?  David Cobb?

I don't know; this seems to be the case for every county.  It's curious but unimportant, I think.

That is obviously a typo:  190,808 instead of 19,088.  This is made clear by the rest of the sentence:  "three percent of this total is 572."  The important part of that paragraph is the next sentence:  "Precinct chosen for recount was Salem North with 605 votes; chosen because it was closest precinct equal to or larger than 572."  This violates Ohio's recount regulations, which require the county to select the precincts for hand recount RANDOMLY.

It's not in the affidavit (which is at the bottom of the page), by the way; it's in the report (at the top of the page).

I would assume that David Cobb is ultimately responsible for any errors, even typos, on his website--although the fault probably lies with either the person who filed the report or with the webmaster.

yawn

Don't be a tool.

If you're not interested in the topic, don't read it.

The members of Congress challenging admitted that they didn't really question the results.  It was for political purposes and it backfired.

Most of them didn't question the results, but they questioned the process.

How did it backfire?  People who care about election reform appreciated what they did.  People who were already angry continue to be angry.  Most people have no idea it even happened.

Because they did it under the guise of challenging the election.  It, by using that vehicle, becomes another example of "Sore Loserman."

I think it's more an example of "things that happened that nobody knows about."

There were other ways to do that, that would have been appropriate.

I think it was very appropriate, but that really has nothing to do with whether or not it "backfired."  I'm assuming that by "backfire," you mean that it made them look bad to the public.  I don't agree, because I don't think most people have any awareness of it at all.

The reason most people don't know about it is because most rational people know Bush won Ohio.  There is no issue.  I was for Senator Kerry.  He lost Ohio, and it wasn't all that close.  Let's move on please.

The only thing that it generated was a soundbite, and the soundbite was, "We're challenging the electoral vote count."  That's how it sounded and was reported.

The election law permits each candidate appoint a recount observer in each county.  Surely the candidate must provide some documentation as to whom they have appointed, and this must be have validated by the county election board before admitting the observers to the recount (in Champaign County it was noted that the GOP had sent two observors, one for Bush and one for Cheney, and one was denied admittance.  So the name of the observers must be a matter of public record, and likely included in the documentation of the recount by the county election board.  So it seems totally bizarre that they were anonymized.

Who is responsible for the error, and why hasn't it been corrected?
Is there a written version of Ohio's recount regulations available on the web?

If Secretary of State Blackwell is going to be responsible for every mistake in Ohio, why shouldn't candidate Cobb take responsiblity for the recount effort that he has instigated.

I would guess that nobody has called it to their attention.  Have you called it to their attention?



There is:  http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/guide/recount.pdf



Actually, no.  That's part of Blackwell's job, too.

I hate to say, "I told you so," but I told you so:  http://www.ballot-access.org/2007/01/25/the-final-chapter-in-cobb-badnarik-2004-recount-requests/.