Third Party & Independents: Archives

OHIO WAS NOT CLOSE. There is no reasonable dispute. The two situations are similar because of the 250 fold diffence in the margin of victory. I personally don’t think we should or will revote Washington. But in theory maybe if the margin is that small, it makes sense.

Ohio’s margin is not small. Bush soundly defeated Kerry in that state and in the United States in general. Why not recount the whole U.S.? Bush’s margin of victory was greater than that of any democrat since 1964. That should tell you something.

No mythmaking in Ohio to match the Florida myth. Bush won Kerry lost. Dems can cry until 2008 and pretend they believe “they was robbed” but it won’t change the outcome.

Please don’t start this silliness again. It is going nowhere.

Jack, perhaps I should have mentioned how wrong I think it is that the two major parties focus on who won instead of what went wrong with the vote. They can’t see past their own victories into the truth of the matter. The truth that in some districts across America, this election did not represent the full spectrum of the American people. It doesn’t matter how many votes Bush won by in Ohio. Eligible voters were denied the counting of their vote. Re-vote Ohio. Re-vote Washington.

Look guys I am by no means a conservitive, and I’m so tired of all this. Kerry didn’t want it.
It’s over, lets move on

Adam,

As you may have noticed, I’ve posted a number of WatchBlog entries on the election fraud controversy, especially Ohio. And, putting aside the debate over the possible effect of irregularities on either state’s certified results, I would wholeheartedly support your call for a re-vote.

However, your assumptions about the exact number of allegations of fraud reported in each state, is faulty.

What you describe in the ‘Same In Both’ column, clearly applies (for the most part) to the extent of problems in Ohio - and I can present ample evidence of such. Sworn affidavits and testimony, most of which are included in numerous legal suits already filed in Ohio. I can produced an equal number of investigations into allegations of voter suppression and fraud complaints, published by local newspapers and other media outlets. I can provide documented evidence of fraud uncovered by voting rights, election watchdog groups and Third Party candidates.

But I challenge anyone, to come up with same amount of documented, corroborated and serious evidence or weighted allegations, when it comes to the Governor’s race in Washington State.

So far, I’ve read lots of hot air from the Right, consisting only of charges of suspicious behavior and partisan Blue State skulduggery. Bottom line, if Rossi and the GOP had credible evidence to challenge the results, there would be no swearing in ceremony in Ms. Gregoire’s immediate future. Claiming legal action would take to long, is a convenient cop out that plays only in the Conservative Echo Chamber.

Speaking as a Dem, Ohio just isn’t close enough. There are some sketchy things going on, but there’s a reason the Kerry campaign is publically saying they’re not going to do anything - it wouldn’t change anything, and it’d destroy Kerry’s chances in 2008 (which he seems to be aiming for).

Washington, ‘though, is so close there really should have a re-vote. When two million votes are decided by 200, then 150, then 42 votes… you’re going to get a different result each time you count. It’s just too close.

Bert:

No problem convincing me of Ohio. I think this website provides me enough information to say some of the things I wrote about Washington though. There has just not been as much real investigating there as in Ohio.

That website itself proves there needs to be some vast changes in the election system or every election is going to be less valid.

ceejayoz:

It isn’t about whether John Kerry won or lost. It’s about whether the people of Ohio and Washington won or lost. Right now it looks to me like they lost. This isn’t a party issue. This is a democracy issue.

Adam,

The irony is that most of the ‘anomalies’ the site documents, were uncovered and reported by those supporting the Dem Gregoire, and cited as evidence in lawsuits opposed by Rossi and the Republicans. However, the site does not acknowledge any reported resolution to most of the examples, which leads me to believe there was nothing the GOP could possibly hang their hat on.

And, I’d also doubt ‘any real investigating’ would produce any additional evidence. That race was already expected to be close, and although there was not the same level of scrutiny as Ohio, if there was more evidence of ‘anomalies’, we’d know about it.

Yet, for it all, there is no public outrage, no grass roots groundswell ringing Congress person’s phones off the wall, for a nationally enforced set of procedures, rules, enforcement agents, and proscribed stiff punishments for electoral negligence, fraud, or disenfranchisement by individuals, party machines, office holders, and voters.

Folks just care! Too much money to be earned, booze to swill, and sports games to attend to.

David:

I sure expected some outrage. I’m presonally outraged and I’ve been doing everything in my power to get that across to people. It doesn’t help that all my progressive friends tell me I’m wrong. Maybe I need new friends.

Elections are a practical exercise in determining the will of the people. They are not a metaphysical event where every voter’s intent is known with absolute certainty. When the vote is very close, you might have reason to doubt the result. Washington State and Florida in 2000 were such cases. They were essentially tie elections. They were decided by the rules in place before the election and no reasonable person can have a problem with that, except to say that it could have gone the other way and hope it doesn’t happen too often.

Ohio is not such a case. The monomaniacal quest after every single vote is not only useless, it is pernicious. The voting system is not designed to do that and cannot be made to do it. One problem is simply error. Count any very large number several times and you will get several different answers. You can test this yourself. Give ten friends 997 pennies. Ask them to count them. See how many come up with the exact number.

The other problem is the tension between fraud and disenfranchisement. You are always going to get some of both, but they tend to be inverses. If you make voting rules very loose, you encourage widespread fraud. If you tighten them too much, you get disenfranchisement. It is not science. Conditions change each election, so there also is not a just right - Goldie Locks – solution, but demanding perfection is certainly a fairy tale.

Why is the ostensibly noble desire to count every vote pernicious when taken too far? Precisely because it cannot be achieved, the enemies of democracy can use it to question the legitimacy of any election. It is an old Nazi trick. They would disparage the ballot box as illegitimate and then say that the will of the people was expressed on the street.

I am sure you motives for bringing this up are pure, but they lead toward an evil result of weakening the trust for democracy. The votes were counted and recounted. The margins are large. We know who won without a reasonable doubt. The exact vote count is unknown and unknowable.

I see the points made on both sides here. While I agree that focusing on problems in the voting system can have a horrible effect on voter morale, the idea that it’s even possible for a private company (or public party) to manipulate election results to the extent that has been uncovered shakes my faith in our government by its bones. I literally see this as a life-or-death of our prosperity and freedom.

The 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections lacked impartiality, transparency and auditability. There were a lot shady things that happened. That must stop, pure and simple. If it doesn’t, then we are an oligarchy that thinks it’s a republic, and I can’t think of anything more dangerous.

I fully understand that the investigations have a snowballs chance in Baghdad of changing any outcomes. As Adam pointed out, this is not about changing the outcome. I’m hoping that it’ll make everyone aware of the problems so that the system can be reformed and reinforce the legitimacy of the voting process.

Yes, Ohio needs a re-vote, actually, so does Florida.

Democratic representatives in the House will again be challenging the certification of the vote, exactly as they did in 2000. Their goal is to get just ONE Senator to join them - to call attention to the fact that our election process is broken and needs fixing.
This past Monday I attended the Pro-Democracy/Count Every Vote Rally in front of Senator Barbara Boxer’s San Francisco Office with the intention of meeting that goal - to get just one senator to refuse the certification of an election that had so many problems that those who think it went well are either too stupid, too lazy, or too partisan to want to protect American democracy.
On Thursday, January 6th, there will be another rally in front of Ms. Boxers San Francisco office from 12:00 Noon to 1:30 pm, the address is 1700 Montgomery St (near Chestnut & Embarcadero). I hope any readers who live in this area and who want to see that our elections are fair, transparent and fully verifiable in the future, will attend.

This rally will be called the VERIFYGRA RALLY - To Stop Electile Dysfunction!
Verifygra has been tested and proven effective in the Ukraine - and it is now available in the United States!
The active ingredients of Verifygra are:
1. Active citizenry in the streets demanding fair and accountable elections
2. Investigations into voting problems, irregularities, allegations of fraud and suppression.
3. Periodic audits, recounts and when necessary revotes.
4. An end to partisan oversight over elections and recounts.
5. The creation of unified federal standards for national elections.
6. Meaningful equal protection of voting rights by such means as equal voting systems, equal number of machines and equal time to vote.
7. Required paper ballot for all electronic and electronically tabulated voting systems.

Other Senators who may be likely to take Verifygra and stand up for fair elections are:
Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Harry Reid, and perhaps even John McCain or Arlen Specter. You can reach all these Senators and John Kerry toll free by calling 1-800- 839-5276. Operators are standing by. Kerry’s staff will tell you that they can’t take messages (but you can still leave a message anyway). They will refer you to the number for the DNC 202-863-8000 and you can leave a message there also.

We can talk about this topic endlessly, but we can also DO something to let them know we’re serious and that we want them to react.

Adrienne:

I’ve been writing letters to Senators both in my own state and some of the Senators suspected to be willing to sign off on this. It’s the best I can do right now. As you and several others have agreed on, this is way more than partisan. The major kickoff to all this work came from our third parties and even Ralph Nader who can’t stand the Democrats. It’s sad to see so many people shrug this off as an attempt to get Kerry in.

In re: Jack’s comments

I agree completely that the quest for determining the will of every voter is unattainable, but my years in the medical device industry taught me the value of striving for zero defects. You fail to make a distinction between the process of registering to vote and the voting itself, but I believe they are separate. We need to make the registration process uniform, unencumbered, and clear. Placing obstacles in the way of individuals without any evidence they decrease fraud should be forbidden. Networked electronic registration systems would prevent duplicate voting, presumably the easiest form of fraud under a “loose” registration system.

The voting itself, assuming the integity of the registration system, needs to be as accurate as possible. Having spent many years collecting health information from millions of individuals, I know that the mistakes people make are not only large in number, but the variety is astounding. Without care in the design of the method of collection, as a scientist you will be in for a lot of heartache. The voting system itself, however, is a mess. As far as I can tell, they are based on almost no systematic research (the R&D of the voting machine manufacturers doesn’t count); although the type of research needed is very well established in human factors laboratories all over the world. Once the optimal methods are established by such research, they ought to be mandated by law. The funky pathwork of voting technology we have in the US should be a source of constant shame to our mighty country. Finally, there should be some way of verifying the vote once it is cast. A manual mark showing that the voter agreed with the machine-generated vote would do this nicely, but cleverer people may come up with more reliable or efficient ways than I.

Briefly, Jack, you argued that we have to trade off completeness with fraud, but I am arguing that much can be done to improve both.

Mental

Medicine is a good analogy. Doctors will make mistakes a certain percentage of the time. We can set up systems to reduce those percentages, but we can’t eliminate them. Much has to do with how we define mistake. Even if a doctor follow reasonable procedure, the patient might die or the baby might be born with a birth defect. If we pursue this to its ridiculous extreme, we have the case where doctors won’t deliver babies for fear of malpractice penalties, thereby putting everyone at greater risk.

We don’t disagree that elections can be made better. But they will never be perfect. And they will never be acceptable to those who lose. Just like the mother whose baby dies will often not accept that it was nobody’s fault.

People talk all the time about giving a paper receipt.

What are you going to do with them? What if I get a receipt saying I voted for Bush? I am happy. I shove the receipt in my pocket. I still can’t prove my vote is counted accurately. I have a receipt; that’s all. It proves that at least one vote among all the thousands cast is for Bush. So what? If there is a problem, are you going to ask all the voters to bring their receipts to the precinct for a recount?

The citizens of this country should stand up to this country’s election fraud, as did the citizens of the ulkrainians. What are we afraid of? Being killed, murdered, financial ruin, yes to the above. We have here in this country a country club of white men who believed that they are above the law, and as citizens we condom their actions by allowing them to maintain their actions and positions without any accountability. Case in point Tom DeLay, election lies of John Kerry by Karl Rove, and the media (priority of ratings rather than truth.) Until accountability of election fraud, and all those involved and mostly, importantly, our voting boxing, a matter the Federal government should take control of, instead of by any person affiliated by any party, we will not have a fair and balance election in this country. Republican affiliation own the voting machines, as of now they will control every office in this country. I’m an independent 54 year woman who voted for the first time, and this is how I see our political system. A system that is not trustworthty and not be proud of.

Jack, the paper receipt would function very well as a tool in measuring whether there is fraud. There are exit polls in which voters are asked how they voted, then there could be exit polls that rely on the receipts. Which would provide a more scientific method of comparison between the exit poll and the vote tallies?

The receipts used in this manner can lend credibility to the vote tally results or point to the need for further investigation of the balloting and vote count procedures.

David

Secret ballot. Many people don’t want others to know how they voted. They lie to pollsters or refuse to answer their questions. We could well imagine manipulation of exit polls by activists.

Jack

If I understand you correctly, you agree that the process can be improved, much as medical testing is improved by adequate research. Process monitoring a la Deming during the election would help, too.

I wan’t suggesting receipts; we’re both smart enough to know how poorly that would work (“I lost mine”; counterfitting). Currently, paper tabulations are spit out by the machine for verification, but these just replicate what the machine recorded. The link back to the voter’s intention is not made, but could be at the time of the vote. As I said, others may have more clever suggestions, but it could be done.

The system suggested by David Remer is not really a receipt, but rather a duplicate system that could be used to validate the result (but not verify the individual votes). It does provide the voter the opportunity to check whether the machine recorded as intended. The privacy issue could be respected by the receipt not containing any identifying information and dropping it into a blind box. If the machine vote and the duplicate vote were at statistical variance with each other, this would be prima facie evidence of fraud or systematic error and, I would think, enough to invalidate the vote.

In any event, we have a lot of good minds that could work out much better voting methods, which would enhance my confidence in the voting process itself by limiting the opportunity for mischief while placing more control in the hands of the voter. The concerns about registration (too many or too few people allowed to vote) require a different tack, and one more sociologically complex.

Jack, exit polls currently and historically are reasonably reliable and valid especially as a test of consistency against actual vote tallies. I won’t go into the scientific metrics of why that is here, google ‘voting exit poll metrics’ or similar term, there is a lot of info. out there.

Exit polls are vulnerable to manipulation, but, what is the motivation of ABC News, Gallup or a host of other highly regarded polling firms to do so? There profitability and revenues depend directly on NOT manipulating the results. It is not a concern.

Receipts for ballots, like ballots themselves, have no identifying information about the voter. Non-issue.

Polling only those who choose to allow themselves to be exit polled, has small bias’ which can and are compensated for statistically based on historical data. Also, a non-issue.

David

Exit polls are not particularly reliable in close races. I heard the pollsters explain that a thousand times just after this election, but it gets worse.

If exit polls come to play a role other than as a rough measure for the network news, if they come to be a kind of a check on elections, activists will begin to manipulate them. Imagine how easily this could be done. You probably only need a couple hundred dedicated activists making sure they get counted maybe more than once. Exit pollsters can’t enter the polls. There is plenty of space for mischief.

Would the voter be required to surrender his receipt to the pollster? If not, you invite poll jumping. If so, you intimidate. The number of potential abuses pale even those people fabricated about Ohio. And remember this, the Ohio accusations are just that, accusations no more. We can discount most of them because the law would step in to adjudicate. Exit polling would have no such bottom line.

It is amazing that you would have more confidence is such a Rube Goldberg system and not in a flawed, but much better regulated one we have now.

I live in Washington state and I am not old enough to vote but at my school we had a vote and I voted for Dino Rossi.

At first when Dino came out ahead but not by much we recounted twice and Christine Gregoire was the winner. Still no by much. Dino clearly opposed recounting and revoting while he was ahead but now he wants a revote.

I disagree with him because:

-A revote will cost washington millions and some counties are having trouble just recounting
-The vote will be different because people have died and others have become old enough to vote.
-If there is no winner i dont think the constitution allows for a revote but says our legislator will decide

It is reasonable to ask for a recount because the last count was hand counted and humans do make mistakes.

Barbara Boxer steps up - YA HOO!

Jack says in the very first comment: “Bush’s margin of victory was greater than that of any democrat since 1964”. Not true. Bush’s margin of victory was 286-252 EC, ~3,000,000 pop vote margin, which is 51-48=3% spread.

Clinton in 1996 won the EC 379-159, pop vote was 8,400,00 margin (8.5% spread). Clinton in 1992 won the EC 370-168, pop vote was 5,800,000 margin (5.6% spread).

So, although it’s true that Perot kept any candidate from getting a clear % (Clinton had 43% in 1992 and 49.2% in 1996), the truth neither of those elections was close.

The final spread in Ohio was 50.8-48.7 (2.1%), closer than the national spread in an election marred by controversy (long lines, etc). Obviously recounting will not change the results, but Democrats believe in making sure every vote is counted. In Washington there was an automatic recanvass followed by a statewide recount. The interesting thing in both of these states…and Florida in 2000 also…the recounts overseen by partisans on both sides have all resulted in vote pick ups by democrats. That’s what we are pointing to in Ohio. That the districts who are more likely to be democratic had fewer voting booths, and older equipment more likely to fail. No democrat is against a recount in Washington. But both sides were represented in decisions of what votes to count in the recounts. Now that a legally mandated, fair recount has taken place, they want a re-vote in Washington? If there were disenfranchised republican voters in Washington, their complaints should be heard also. No one is claiming that any of these recounts is LESS accurate than the original vote. Let’s fix the system. All we want is the legally mandated, fair recounts to take place.

After watching an interview with Sam Reed I have decided that if we want to fix the voting system the best time to start is now. If a re-vote is done now Washington voter confidence will be restored. It will also help us learn if having a re-vote works. Maybe the same problems will come up but Washington should try several times to fix voting before simpley giving up.

Okay Kevin

My mistake if you talk about only the two candidates. But Bush won a larger percentage of the total vote than any Democrats since 1964 and before that since Franklin Roosevelt.

It does highlight the other interesting statistic – that no Democrat has won a majority (not a plurality) of the popular vote since 1976.

I believe in fixing the electoral process to minimize both fraud and disentrancement, and support such reforms. But as I wrote in these blogs before this election, we have to decide elections by means of the rules and procedures in place before the election.

We can’t cherry pick afterwards the parts that further our partisan cause.

Pennsylvania was closer than Ohio. Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin were also very close. Why no call the recount them?

Following Rules in place before the election: Exactly what has happened in Washington to this point. (recanvass automatically, recount on request); Also what happened in Ohio (Candidate requested and paid required fees for recounts).

Technically, Pennsylvania and Ohio were very close, but Ohio was a 50.8-48.7 (2.1% spread) and Pennsylvania was 50.8-48.5% (2.3% spread), so again it is not fair to say that Pennsylvania was “closer than Ohio”. You are going to say this is a minor point, but there are so many statistics floated by both sides that aren’t true that it is important. That Pennsylvania was almost AS close as Ohio is very different than to say it was closer.

On the basis of number of votes difference, Kerry was only 41,112 votes away from a tie for the White House with his combined total deficit in Iowa (13,498 votes), Nevada (21,567), and New Mexico (6,047). Ohio was the state that had questionable happenings, it was the state that made the most sense to question the outcomes. The LAWS IN PLACE AS OF RIGHT NOW don’t call for recounting “all close races”, but had Ohio gone the other way, I am sure any of the states you mentioned would have undergone recounts.

Finally, the Democrats have not cherry picked. All the procedures were based on the “rules and procedures in place before the election”. Even in 2000, if you recall, the Democrats were asking for a recount according to the “rules and procedures in place before the election”, and the Supreme Court ruled that those rules were not clear cut ENOUGH to eliminate the concern that different counties had different standards. So the rules and procedures of the state of Florida were set asides.

What Boxer did, as you are aware, also fell under the rules and procedures there were in place before the election. The rules and procedures were stacked against it changing anything, but it was within her rights as a Senator to force Congress into a debate on the legitimacy of the Electors.

SO THE REPUBS WANT A MULLIGAN IN THE WA. ELECTION. HOW COME THEY WANT DIFFERENT RULES FOR THEM. WA. CONSTITUTION DOES NOT PROVIDE FOR DO OVERS. YOU ARE ALLOWED THREE COUNTS WE HAD THEM THEY LOST, LIVE WITH IT. IF THE ELECTION WAS SO FLAWED WHY WEREN’Y THEY CRYING FOR A REVOTE WHEN THEIR MAN WAS AHEAD. THE LAWS OF WASHINGTON STATE WERE FOLLOWED, IF A REVOTE WERE POSSIBLE I’M SURE ROSSI BY HIS ACTIONS AND THE ACTIONS OF HIS PARTY WOULD FINISH THIRD TO THE LIBERTARIANS. CRY CRY CRY

bottom line is….no one knows who really won! We need electoral reform in this country desp.

Was Ohio stolen?
Then why was Ohio re-count stonewalled ?

So was Florida!
Elections manupulated back (2000) to back (2004)!

Exit polls were correct!
Vote counts was skewed!

Revote or recount in Ohio or Washington
Will not change the destiny,

The country is headed the wrong way
Based on the moral value of the christian right

Bush cartel still trying to find WMD
Alas our troops are taking the toll,

Sixty million americans voted for a President
Who proved that it ‘pays to lie’.

Just another case of fanatics having nothing but irrational knee-jerk reactions against any suggestion that votes be recounted with their religious dogma that “Bush won”, as if that is the only issue involved.

I didn’t know that near straight-A students were allowed to cheat once in awhile. How many votes a candidate does get has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue of whether their party and members of the government deliberately commit FRAUD and TERRORIST INTIMIDATION. Independent parties in one precinct in Ohio had the legal right to get the validation printouts from a polling place. But the officials used violent intimidation to try to stop them.

If there is any unfairness one wants to forget,
tell judges and cops to forget the past and move on if a citizen plants a bomb and blows up a courthouse so they are not forced to go to jury duty. If you want to forget about deception and unfairness, then you had better not make an issue about whether someone uses a fake ID or name on the internet or in a courtroom. THOSE are trivialities that only cowardly sore-loser lazy cops and lawyers and judges give a damn about. Don’t rant and rave just because an environmentalist doesn’t show up to court for a trial for some petty damage suit against a logging company.

If election officials refuse to uphold the law, then nobody else should be forced to obey the law.

I’m proud to be Socialist-American!