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Literally the only thing about this that surprises me is that they actually fired Strategic Allied Consulting this time around.
Like, I remember them. They have been shady evil dicks since forever. when their founder guy fled state in a loaded car, and all that, that was tops
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Anybody have any good idea about what to do about voter suppression and voter fraud? Would volunteering to poll watch help?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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There needs to be rules against that sort of thing Samprimary. There would be a fire storm if President Obama was investing in or had family that were board members of a company producing voting machines, no matter how hard they worked to ensure impartiality.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Seriously? How much more of this crap are they going to do?
Ohio County Gets Election Date Wrong In Notices To 2,200 Voters
quote: The notice also included an incorrect listing for the location of a polling place. Election board director JoAnn Friar, a Republican, blamed the mistake on a computer glitch and told the Washington Post that new notices would be sent out to the voters affected. The county is on Lake Erie near Toledo and voted 52 percent for Barack Obama in 2008
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Seriously? How much more of this crap are they going to do?
I'm assuming by "they" you meant, in this case, the computer glitch. Well, it's hard to say. Computers are complex machines and prone to the occasional error. Plus, their output is affected by the input received.
Posts: 570 | Registered: Sep 2009
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You want to explain the computer glitch that changed Tuesday to a Thursday and Nov 6 to Nov 8? Do you think it was sthe same glitch that glitched just the Spanish voter cards in AZ?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Whether or not there was a computer glitch (which, frankly, just sounds like plausible deniability to me), someone should have checked the notice before it was sent out.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Hmmm. The problem in question-actually there are two-is that a single digit was used incorrectly-an 8 instead of a six. It didn't, for example, say 'Thursday November 8th', which would be tougher to swallow.
But there was also an incorrect location given, which I'm not sure is being defended as a 'glitch'. Some unanswered questions would seem to be: why did only about 7% of the county's 30,000 voters get these incorrect postcards? Was there some reason why these particular postcards were, in the usual course of creating and posting them, their own group and thus potentially subject to glitch? How likely *is* it that a computer glitch would misplace a digit like that and what is the reasoning for the incorrect location? If that too is a glitch, how likely is it that a glitch would swap a digit and then select an entirely wrong address, presumably chosen from a list of addresses?
Here's one thing that's straightforward, though: it's unwise to simply credit a politician's excuse of unforseen random accident when that politician stands to benefit from said accident. Those who assume she is telling the truth are thus partisan hacks.
Conveniently, this story *does* further illustrate that problems with voting are hugely unlikely to be the sort that could be thwarted by greater ID requirements. It's past time the GOP establishment stopped treating people like they were freaking idiots with that line of bull, though I suppose that won't happen until their base insists upon it.
An anecdotal sign of hope for me: my father, who has never ventured closer to voting Democrat in a Presidential election than leaving it blank (that is, only once-the last election) is seriously considering voting Democrat this time, he who has voted Republican on that at least 8 times. He's willing like many Americans to stomach a lot in terms of the usual political truth-stretching, but this particular decades-long Republican voter sees more than he can stand in Romney. It's nice.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I just looked at the postcard, and I'm wondering how a glitch could produce that error. I edit and lay out documents for a living, and I've never seen a digit randomly change itself between layout and printing. Careless typo? Absolutely. "Computer glitch"? I highly doubt it.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Glitch, I think, is a convenient way for the Director of the Board to waylay blame for an error on the part of his staff. I'm not credible of the idea that such a person would risk a federal prison term for organizing such a scheme as sending false reminder postcards to voters (voters of all parties, it seems)- particularly given that it would be likely to be covered in the news, and would present more risk than reward for whomever organized it.
It is reminiscent of the deeply cynical "reminders," that do circulate among voters giving them incorrect information intentionally, but it doesn't seem to be in that vein.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Anybody have any good idea about what to do about voter suppression and voter fraud? Would volunteering to poll watch help?
Is this a serious question? I can't tell.
If it is, I'd just like to point out that there were only like eleven known cases of voter fraud last election. The sentence for getting caught is jail time and a lofty 500 dollar fee (or more, depending on the state). And for what? A single extra vote? I don't think people are generally stupid enough to waste their time. The benefit simply doesn't outweigh the risk. Not by a long shot.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Anybody have any good idea about what to do about voter suppression and voter fraud? Would volunteering to poll watch help?
Is this a serious question? I can't tell.
If it is, I'd just like to point out that there were only like eleven known cases of voter fraud last election. The sentence for getting caught is jail time and a lofty 500 dollar fee (or more, depending on the state). And for what? A single extra vote? I don't think people are generally stupid enough to waste their time. The benefit simply doesn't outweigh the risk. Not by a long shot.
It was a serious question. I am not concerned with the kind of voter fraud you are talking about. I am concerned with the kind of voter fraud and suppression as practiced by folks like Jon Husted in Ohio (illegal purges, shortening polling hours, sending out incorrect information, throwing out absentee ballots). What can be done to stop this kind of thing?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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ATTENTION HATRACKERS. IF YOU INTEND TO VOTE REPUBLICAN ESPECIALLY IN A SWING STATE: Please know that your vote date has been changed to November 8th in order to alleviate overworked ballot areas. Straight-ticket and primarily conservative voters will receive their own polling locations on that date after everyone else has voted. Free coffee and pastries will be provided. Failure to vote appropriately on the 8th rather than national election day based on your straight-ticket post-polling analysis is a federal offense and can result in fines and jail time.
MEMBERS OF THE MORMON CHURCH: Your votes have been moved to the 9th and will take place at a temple closest to your place of residence. Please do NOT contact church officials for information about this change, they are very overburdened with making sure that they have ballot equipment and staff for these events and cannot field information calls. Poll instructions will be provided by mail.
LIBERTARIANS: please vote for gary. He totally stands a chance and will actually hand his position over to ron paul the second he is elected. Ron paul revolution 2012 end the fed.
REPUBLICANS IN GENERAL OTHERWISE: Unskewedpolls.com has the right of it and Romney is totally a shoo-in for the election, don't worry about it. You all have jobs anyway right, don't lose your coveted status of Productives just to go vote in a silly election, its okay don't worry about it you got this.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I recently read "The Stainless Steel Rat For President". It was written in the early 80's. It described how computerized voting machines would be sold as "cheaper and more accurate" to the voting public, and would then be used to steal elections. Sometimes the Sci-fi guys get it right.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.
Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.
Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
"The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.’ They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue. It’s all a marketing ploy."
quote:Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, said he knew targeting Democrats was the goal.
“In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines. And in 2008, it didn’t have the impact that we were afraid of. It got close, but it wasn’t the impact that they had this election cycle,” Bertsch said, referring to the fact that Democrats picked up seven legislative seats in Florida in 2012 despite the early voting limitations.
Another GOP consultant, who did not want to be named, also confirmed that influential consultants to the Republican Party of Florida were intent on beating back Democratic turnout in early voting after 2008.
In 2008 Democrats, especially African-Americans, turned out in unprecedented numbers for President Barack Obama, many of them casting ballots during 14 early voting days. In Palm Beach County, 61.2 percent of all early voting ballots were cast by Democrats that year, compared with 18.7 percent by Republicans.
In 2011 Republicans, who had super majorities in both chambers of the legislature, passed HB 1355, which curtailed early voting days from 14 to eight; greatly proscribed the activities of voter registration organizations like the League of Women Voters; and made it harder for voters who had changed counties since the last election to cast ballots, a move that affected minorities proportionately more than whites. The League and others challenged the law in court, and a federal judge threw out most of the provisions related to voter registration organizations.
Do tell me who here still believes that these measures were there to combat the Looming Menace of Voter Fraud.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:epublican campaign consultant Scott Tranter appeared on a panel Monday hosted by the Pew Center on the States to discuss the long lines and voter ID controversies that plagued the 2012 election. In his comments, Tranter seemed to imply that he believed these issues were helpful to Republicans and should be pursued for that reason.
"A lot of us are campaign officials -- or campaign professionals -- and we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think that's voter ID, sometimes we think that's longer lines -- whatever it may be," Tranter said with a laugh.
Can we take this as given from now an and lose the notion that voter ID is about fraud?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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and the same republicans will gleefully and racistly pack minorities into minimum-damage districts while gerrymandering
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Crist testifies in Senate that there was voter suppression in Florida
quote:It showed that the Republican attorney who engineered the 2000 Florida felons list, which African American leaders said purged thousands of eligible blacks from voter rolls, drafted Florida’s controversial law that restricted early voting and voter registration campaigns in 2012. Nelson also included into the Congressional record a story by The Palm Beach Post on so-called voter suppression efforts. In a written statement to the committee, he said: “For me it’s pretty straight-forward: Florida’s 2011 election law changes were politically motivated and clearly designed to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters – and, not, as its Republican sponsors contended, to prevent voter fraud.”
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