Fair Elections
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Unless, of course, you are the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Blanco, who has issued an executive order to that effect.
I can understand, politically, why she might want to do this. It's undoubtedly difficult to hold elections after a devastating hurricane, especially when said hurricane exposed your own incompetence along with the incompetence of your political allies. You might rightly fear a backlash from the voters. You might even realize that you deserve a backlash from the voters. But you do NOT suspend the elections indefinitely. Not in America. |
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While having UN observers (or really, any foreign observers at all) on the US elections tends to raise my hackles, it doesn't mean it's time to head for the hills. We're talking about beaurocrats watching the conduct of public officials at polling places, and presumably checking to make sure that people legally able to vote are allowed to do so, examining voting equipment for signs of fraud, and so on. Those are tasks that someone needs to do, at least on a spot-check basis. I definitely do NOT think we should expect to see UN blue-helmeted soldiers at our polling places. Some people in Florida will likely see men in suits. But no men in helmets. And the odds are that those men in suits will watch, maybe find a few minor things to complain about, and then go away. |
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Michelle Malkin has a roundup of voter fraud problems that loom large for this election. I don't know how these incidents compare to earlier years, but following the 2000 Presidential Election and the way the Democrats have kept the issue alive despite 9-11 and the results of recounts favoring Bush, I suspect that many Democratic activists are willing to go a little beyond the usual in order to give their candidates an advantage. The stakes are high for Republicans too, of course, but that kind of thing seems to be more frowned upon. That said, however, I would not be surprised to see allegations of fraud in any races using the Diebold electronic voting machines, due to their well-publicized security issues. So should we require ID to vote? It's a tricky question. It's a lot harder to fake an ID card than it is to fake a voter registration; the latter simply requires mailing in a card using a valid address and then taking the card to the polls. But we don't generally require ID in this country; the closest thing we have to a universal identification document is the driver's licence, and that is voluntary. However, there are already some basic requirements of citizenship that require ID; the most obvious being entering and exitting the country (passports). Reluctant as I am to endorse any serious requirement for a national ID, it is clear that identification documents are a necessity for an honest and fair voting process. The alternative is massive and widespread voter fraud. Some might even say that we are already living the alternative. |
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Powerline has a warning about vote fraud in Minnesota. |
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Reports from Washington State speak of a break-in at a Republican party office; the thieves stole several key computers with important election plans, but left others alone. UPDATE: There's another possible explanation for this event, now that I think about it. Although taking the computers doesn't fit that scenario. UPDATE: Another break in has occurred in Washington State.
There are basically two possibilities here. Either this is a simple theft of opportunity, or it was a deliberate attempt to obtain data on election efforts. If it's the latter, well, the last time we had something like that happen we called it "Watergate" and a sitting President was impeached and resigned his office because of it. I find it hard to believe the Democratic Party would officially be that stupid, but someone acting on their own is a clear possibility with tensions so high. The reporter indicates that they took only three computers, all of which would have contained sensitive information, leaving many others behind. I'll be watching for more information on this one. |
Read the whole thing; it's worthwhile, and goes a long way towards explaining why Libertarian ideas don't get a lot of play. |
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comes this story about new electronic voting machines in Florida crashing. C'mon, folks, I know software development is hard, but it's not that hard. |
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Amazingly, it's possibly for an illegal immigrant to become a deputy registrar of voters in Wisconsin -- simply because no one asks for proof of citizenship. And when someone does just that, it translates directly into voter fraud. |
The Times piece was published just one week ahead of the U.S. presidential election on November 2nd, undoubtedly timed to directly influence the electoral debate. Whatever the merits of the accusations in the Times article (which have been strongly contested by the Bush Administration and are largely unproven), critical questions need to be asked with regard to the behavior of the IAEA and its overseeing body, the United Nations. The credibility of the IAEA, currently headed by a Muslim, has been called into question by accusations of political motivations for the timing of their letter to news organizations regarding the "missing explosives" controversy. |
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For once, the opinions expressed by the New York Times mostly make sense. I'm less concerned about whether rules are federal vs local as I am about whether the rules make sense. Foremost on that list should be open-source software for electronic voting machines. We have a right to see how the votes are counted, especially when a machine -- rather than many individuals relatively trusted by the community -- is announcing the totals. Unsurprisingly, the Times focuses their suggestions on issues that reflect poorly on Republicans. But there are some good ideas buried here, if actually applied in a non-partisan manner:
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Earlier this year, 13 Democratic congressfolk wrote a letter to the UN requesting election observers for the US. They got their wish: election observers from the OSCE will be observing elections in the US. Gunner has the details. |
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The New York Times has an article talking about some of the vote fraud and suppression accusations already flying around. When you read it, remember that the Democratic campaign manual instructs their poll workers to allege voter intimidation against minorities whether there actually IS any intimidation or not. |
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Dirty tricks roundup
Speculation that the left wing would try to win the election by means of dirty tricks -- vote fraud, black-bag operations, etc -- have been running rampant. We've already seen quite a few examples. I'll be using this post to chronicle such instances on election day as I come across them.
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This website, www.votebuddy.org, presents the idea that voters can team up while voting. One Bush-is-the-lesser-evil voter can team up with one Kerry-is-the-lesser evil voter. Once they've found each other, they can agree that neither will vote for their lesser-evil, and instead both will vote for the third-party candidate they really want. Because they have agreed ahead of time, they can be sure that their third-party vote won't help the greater-evil win. It's an interesting idea. And it's got me thinking. |
This debate ends up being between Badnarik (Libertarian) and Cobb (Green). I'll be watching out for any post-debate video before C-Span airs it. Although the lack of most of the candidates is somewhat disappointing, the Libertarian and Green platforms clash quite a bit, so it promises to be an exciting debate! |
We, the undersigned Members of Congress, hereby request the Electoral Assistance Division of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs to send election observers to monitor the presidential election in the United States scheduled for November 2, 2004. We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy. I've been seeing red ever since I saw the letter that was sent, and I've finally calmed down enough to put a coherent message together. Here's the lowdown: these Democrats have taken it upon themselves to subordinate the government of America to a democracy of dictators, and they have done it all on the basis of the absolutely completely utterly fucking trivial accusations. Were there problems during the 2000 elections? I don't doubt it; in a nation of 290 million people there are always going to be problems. But were the problems any more serious than in the 1996 elections, or the 1998 elections? I doubt it. Would the Democrats be bitching about it if their candidate had won the election in 2000? Of course not. But they've been chanting their selected. not elected mantra for so long that they are starting to believe it. And they are desperate enough to sink to this, because they see the economy improving and Iraq stabilizing and they know that their chances of victory in 2004 are low. And somehow they think that this situation is serious enough to merit calling in the UN to monitor elections in the United States. Simply because they didn't like the result of the last election, elected representatives of our government have appealed to a foreign power. They are literally asking for troops on our soil, as if they do not trust the results of the very elections that put them in power! I am frankly appalled. These are members of Congress we are talking about here. They are members of our government, and if they were truly concerned about this, they could initiate an investigation on their own. Instead they choose to embarass the United States before the world. I am forced to conclude that embarassing the United States was, in fact, their primary objective; they would like nothing better than to delegitimatize any elections whose results run counter to their ideas of who "should" win. Here's the list of Representatives signing the letter. If any of these are "yours", you should probably give them a call and remind them that we don't need any blue helmets "overseeing" our elections. Not that it will matter -- this type of politician won't listen to anything you have to say. So after you call them, you need to find out if they are up for election in November and who is running against them. Then you can offer to volunteer for their campaign, and you can tell them why you are offering.
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What we really need is an open-source voting system. |
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products. Hopefully this will lead to something I consider inevitable: open-source voting software. |
Letting the candidates read from soundbite scripts is obscene. We need real debates so we can judge how well the candidates actually understand the issues. It's hard to argue ANY position when you don't know beans about policy, and any candidate for President needs to know beans about policy. You can argue something you don't believe in, with enough research, but you can't argue something you don't understand. |
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The Diebold folks are the ones who don't want to provide a paper trail yet have machines that are horrifyingly vulnerable to attack. |
The actual changes have fewer teeth; they are completely decertifying one type of machine only, and allowing others to be used with changes. But it's a step in the right direction. |
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Someone whipped up a bunch of poster-style images referencing Diebold, and their electronic voting machines. Nice work. |
Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will -- but only if we adopt the techniques of the ''open source'' geeks. This is the only way to have trustworthy electronic voting. |
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Just go read. |
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