I spent my 37 seconds searching for news on the Ohio election activities today and found… Nothing.
I admit that I took my eye off of this ball, focusing more on Washington State, but still…
There should be something about Ohio out there, right?
Media bias = Silence.
Although I did find this interesting article on Salon.com:
Third World Democracy: The real problem with the American election system isn't fraud, it's good old-fashioned incompetence. And that's something we can fix -- if we have the will.
Big quote from the article:
But it can be fixed ... especially if activists take on the challenge. Before the election, many people -- people like Lockshin -- felt irrelevant with respect to politics in America. Now, after the election, many Americans are distressed by the results. Why not channel this despair into something productive for the future? ... Why not work to reform the abysmal American electoral system?
...
Unfortunately, in the past couple of weeks, while the Internet has been consumed by theories of a stolen election, the efforts of activists like Rodriguez-Taseff and of all the volunteers who manned the polls on Election Day have largely been overlooked. Focusing on the long-term reform of the system is not sexy, Rodriguez-Taseff concedes; it doesn't promise the kind of excitement you get from looking into ways that might overturn Nov. 2's results.
...
There should have been a big push for comprehensive election reform after the 2000 election in the United States, but that didn't happen. "Other things cut in line -- September 11, gay marriage, the war, you name it," Chapin says. Now, Chapin hopes, election reform will creep back onto the agenda.
Yet it's likely that the only way lawmakers will fix our elections is if citizens press for it -- and only if they press for it constantly, in a nonpartisan manner, as part of a broad effort to remake the way we vote rather than to reverse the results of the last election.
And for all the people who were so passionately involved in that election, what better way to spend the next four years than to dedicate your efforts to remaking our democracy? If you think the American system is broken, if you've felt alienated and abused by recent political affairs, doing the good, honest, hard work of fixing things may feel quite refreshing, activists say. Lockshin, the Berkeley student, offers this testimonial: "Now that I've worked on this with Election Protection, I'm sure I'll be doing it again. I'll be doing it every year, till they stop needing me."
I think I may have linked to this article before, but I am too lazy to review all of my posts this morning to check.
But I agree, election reform is the new black...
In the Salon article, I did find this link...
www.verifiedvoting.org
On this site, I found the following tidbit on Ohio...
The Ohio legislature passed a law that requires that ALL DREs in Ohio have a voter-verified paper audit trail (V-VPAT) by January 2006. Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections is planning to file a lawsuit to stop the purchase of any DREs in 2004 that do not have a V-VPAT.
Sexy stuff, this election reform jihad... But necessary.
Showing posts with label Washington State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington State. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Friday, December 17, 2004
Secession Wear... Moving the debate in the wrong direction?
While researching (Heh, I called it researching!) one of my posts for the evening, I saw an ad for Secession T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, etc.
It's funny and I would like one of the T-Shirts for my birthday, but I hope that this is not a mounting movement.
We do need to unify this country. Most of the values of Red America are shared by Blue America. I believe that it is the parties, both parties, harping on a few key issues that has created the feeling that there are irreconcilable differences between Iowa and California... Okay, maybe there are between those two states, but living my whole life in Washington and Oregon I feel there are irreconcilable differences between my states and California, but we both manage to come up Blue.
And that is my point, I suppose.
Unfortunately, we got Skippy the Wonder President saying his obligatory few words about reconciliation and unity after the election, so the Administration's efforts at building bipartisanship in America is complete for the next four years.
It is probably going to be up to the Democrats, to the lefties within the party, to reach out to Red America. We need to explore the issues important in rural America, we need to field candidates that are electable in rural America, we need to redefine the issues and control the message so our beliefs are not corrupted and labeled antagonistic to rural America, and we need to do all of this without sacrificing our principals and morals.
I believe it is possible.
This is one of the main themes that I mean to pursue with Democracy in Distress. At this point, most of my posting has been commenting on news items, but we do need to start organizing. We need to take control of the party, control of the issues, control of the message and we need to learn how to heal this nation.
On a side note, in my evening's running commentary on Comedy Central programming, The Daily Show just ran their Great Moments in Punditry segment where they had children reading transcripts from Scarborough Country on MSNBC. That is about the clearest illustration I have seen recently of the current state of political debate in this country.
Scary stuff. We must demand better from both the media and from our politicians. And from ourselves… Poopy heads.
And yet another final note on a rapidly growing post… Clicking over to the Scarborough Country for the web link, I noticed a clip of Al Franken and Ann Coulter debating whether The Passion of the Christ would be nominated for an Oscar. It turned into a “debate” on if either Mel Gibson’s controversial film or Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be nominated.
In the end, there wasn’t much debate. Neither of the talking heads had seen the other camp’s movie.
Could this be a part of the problem? It does illustrate part of the media’s problem, more and more the debate over controversy is being analyzed with out enough attention being paid to the root issues behind the debate. In this case, two movies. In the election, the media ignored the candidates' actual platforms and instead focused on the horse race of the campaigns themselves.
http://www.electionblues.us/
It's funny and I would like one of the T-Shirts for my birthday, but I hope that this is not a mounting movement.
We do need to unify this country. Most of the values of Red America are shared by Blue America. I believe that it is the parties, both parties, harping on a few key issues that has created the feeling that there are irreconcilable differences between Iowa and California... Okay, maybe there are between those two states, but living my whole life in Washington and Oregon I feel there are irreconcilable differences between my states and California, but we both manage to come up Blue.
And that is my point, I suppose.
Unfortunately, we got Skippy the Wonder President saying his obligatory few words about reconciliation and unity after the election, so the Administration's efforts at building bipartisanship in America is complete for the next four years.
It is probably going to be up to the Democrats, to the lefties within the party, to reach out to Red America. We need to explore the issues important in rural America, we need to field candidates that are electable in rural America, we need to redefine the issues and control the message so our beliefs are not corrupted and labeled antagonistic to rural America, and we need to do all of this without sacrificing our principals and morals.
I believe it is possible.
This is one of the main themes that I mean to pursue with Democracy in Distress. At this point, most of my posting has been commenting on news items, but we do need to start organizing. We need to take control of the party, control of the issues, control of the message and we need to learn how to heal this nation.
On a side note, in my evening's running commentary on Comedy Central programming, The Daily Show just ran their Great Moments in Punditry segment where they had children reading transcripts from Scarborough Country on MSNBC. That is about the clearest illustration I have seen recently of the current state of political debate in this country.
Scary stuff. We must demand better from both the media and from our politicians. And from ourselves… Poopy heads.
And yet another final note on a rapidly growing post… Clicking over to the Scarborough Country for the web link, I noticed a clip of Al Franken and Ann Coulter debating whether The Passion of the Christ would be nominated for an Oscar. It turned into a “debate” on if either Mel Gibson’s controversial film or Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be nominated.
In the end, there wasn’t much debate. Neither of the talking heads had seen the other camp’s movie.
Could this be a part of the problem? It does illustrate part of the media’s problem, more and more the debate over controversy is being analyzed with out enough attention being paid to the root issues behind the debate. In this case, two movies. In the election, the media ignored the candidates' actual platforms and instead focused on the horse race of the campaigns themselves.
http://www.electionblues.us/
Is the Fork Stuck In Christine Gregoire Yet?
The elusive couple dozen votes seem to be beyond reach for the Washington Democrat in that state’s newest sport, the eternal recount. Today, a judge sided with the Republicans, saying that several hundred ballots from the Seattle area that were mistakenly not counted in the first two counts could not be included in the new count. There is a very possible chance that this will toss the keys for the Olympia Goveneror’s Mansion over to Republican Dino Rossi.
[Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie ]Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining order to stop elections workers from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. County elections officials had said ballots would not be separated from their security envelopes until the lawsuit was decided.
Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots Arend said should not be counted.
"She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said Oxford, 50, an electrical field supervisor from Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very distressed."
Still, King County (the state’s most liberal) and Spokane County have not finished their counts yet, and the Democrats do plan on appealing the decision to the State Supreme court.
Time will tell…
Isn’t the foundation of our democracy the principal that every vote counts? Oh, how quaint of me.
Judge blocks count of newly discovered ballots in governor's race
Judge Blocks Count of New Wash. Ballots
[Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie ]Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining order to stop elections workers from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. County elections officials had said ballots would not be separated from their security envelopes until the lawsuit was decided.
Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots Arend said should not be counted.
"She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said Oxford, 50, an electrical field supervisor from Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very distressed."
Still, King County (the state’s most liberal) and Spokane County have not finished their counts yet, and the Democrats do plan on appealing the decision to the State Supreme court.
Time will tell…
Isn’t the foundation of our democracy the principal that every vote counts? Oh, how quaint of me.
Judge blocks count of newly discovered ballots in governor's race
Judge Blocks Count of New Wash. Ballots
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Washington Democrats Rule!
They pulled it off.
The Washington State Democrats delivered a $730,000 check to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed's office on Friday as payment for the hand recount, the first in the state's history.
It seems a bit weird that the State requires cash to do its job, but I suppose that they are a bit strapped for cash in this economy these days. Also, I am guessing that there is some logic in forcing the party to pay for it just in case they are being a sore loser. That is not the case when the certified results show a 42 vote difference between the two candidates.
Remember, this 42 vote difference was the result of the machine recount. It came down to 42 votes from 261 votes.
Anyway, it appears that the idea in Washington is a bit like the Replay Rule in the NFL. If you request a review of the call and it goes your way, it costs you nothing. However, if you stall the game and the refs got it right the first time, that’s going to cost you a time out. In this case “According to state election rules, a hand recount must be financed by the party requesting it, although the state will reimburse the money if the recount reverses the tally.”
Some thanks on this one also should go to the Kerry Campaign.
Democrats scrambled to raise the money for the recount, which was supported by a $200,000 contribution from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's unused campaign funds.
42 votes out of 2.8 million cast in the election. What do the Republicans have to say about this? "The Democrats are trying to steal the election," said Chis Vance, the Washington State Republican party chair.
Republicans wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would they? Sorry, cheap shot.
The argument they should be using is the one from 2000 in Florida. It went something along the lines of, “Well, you can’t just count over and over and over again until you get a result you are happy with. At some point you just have to say it’s enough and just stop and move on.”
However, to quote Dan Rather from the 2000 election, "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."
It seems like the most troubling aspect of this whole ordeal, just like the one in Florida, is that the tallies do change with every recount. Is every vote being counted each and every time? Is there an election official out there who is forgetting to carry a one every time? Or, everyone’s biggest fear, “Yes Mr. Rossi, no one will find that bag o’ ballots from Seattle. I got them stashed under my desk in my office… Hey, Paul, get out of my office, will ya’? I got stuff in there you don’t want to see.”
Supposedly, these were the sorts of issues that electronic voting machines was supposed to resolve. Unfortunately, those come with their own, new issues. In Washington, King County took a look at these machines and essentially laughed at them and moved on. Probably a good call.
Now they actually have ballots that they can recount.
It is unknown if this will actually put the Democrat, State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, into office, but it is good to see that the party isn't just rolling over and conceeding another loss in 2004. These battles must be joined. City by county by state by the nation... No more rolling over and conceeding one seat after another to the Republicans.
One final note: I pulled the Dan Rather quote from here. A page full of his election comments. Funny. I am going to miss Dan.
The Washington State Democrats delivered a $730,000 check to Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed's office on Friday as payment for the hand recount, the first in the state's history.
It seems a bit weird that the State requires cash to do its job, but I suppose that they are a bit strapped for cash in this economy these days. Also, I am guessing that there is some logic in forcing the party to pay for it just in case they are being a sore loser. That is not the case when the certified results show a 42 vote difference between the two candidates.
Remember, this 42 vote difference was the result of the machine recount. It came down to 42 votes from 261 votes.
Anyway, it appears that the idea in Washington is a bit like the Replay Rule in the NFL. If you request a review of the call and it goes your way, it costs you nothing. However, if you stall the game and the refs got it right the first time, that’s going to cost you a time out. In this case “According to state election rules, a hand recount must be financed by the party requesting it, although the state will reimburse the money if the recount reverses the tally.”
Some thanks on this one also should go to the Kerry Campaign.
Democrats scrambled to raise the money for the recount, which was supported by a $200,000 contribution from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's unused campaign funds.
42 votes out of 2.8 million cast in the election. What do the Republicans have to say about this? "The Democrats are trying to steal the election," said Chis Vance, the Washington State Republican party chair.
Republicans wouldn’t know anything about that, now, would they? Sorry, cheap shot.
The argument they should be using is the one from 2000 in Florida. It went something along the lines of, “Well, you can’t just count over and over and over again until you get a result you are happy with. At some point you just have to say it’s enough and just stop and move on.”
However, to quote Dan Rather from the 2000 election, "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."
It seems like the most troubling aspect of this whole ordeal, just like the one in Florida, is that the tallies do change with every recount. Is every vote being counted each and every time? Is there an election official out there who is forgetting to carry a one every time? Or, everyone’s biggest fear, “Yes Mr. Rossi, no one will find that bag o’ ballots from Seattle. I got them stashed under my desk in my office… Hey, Paul, get out of my office, will ya’? I got stuff in there you don’t want to see.”
Supposedly, these were the sorts of issues that electronic voting machines was supposed to resolve. Unfortunately, those come with their own, new issues. In Washington, King County took a look at these machines and essentially laughed at them and moved on. Probably a good call.
Now they actually have ballots that they can recount.
It is unknown if this will actually put the Democrat, State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, into office, but it is good to see that the party isn't just rolling over and conceeding another loss in 2004. These battles must be joined. City by county by state by the nation... No more rolling over and conceeding one seat after another to the Republicans.
One final note: I pulled the Dan Rather quote from here. A page full of his election comments. Funny. I am going to miss Dan.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Washington Needs Your Wome...I mean CASH!
No political ranting and raving this morning.
I came out of my post election media down period that crept up on me and kept me mostly out of the loop for a couple weeks and this week real life got in the way of me doing much on this blog. I did, however, tweak the home page for democracyindistress.com so it is not quite as dull as it was.
Let's see... Bu-bye Mr. Ridge. I thought this had already been announced, but I guess not. It is just not a surprise. I saw that there is a name out already for his replacement, but I do not know anything about this new Director yet.
More troops to Iraq before their election? Another surprise. Uh, not.
Today is the last day for the Democrats in Washington State to file for a recount. They have to pay for this re-count. This morning they were still about $100,000 short for a full, statewide recount.
Remember, this Govenorship may be decided by less than 50 votes, and it seems that there are still a decent number of ballots that may not have been counted. I am not sure of the details, been to busy this morning to do the research, but...
If you read this in time and can donate money: Give! Give! Give!
Give here!
So... That is it for now.
I came out of my post election media down period that crept up on me and kept me mostly out of the loop for a couple weeks and this week real life got in the way of me doing much on this blog. I did, however, tweak the home page for democracyindistress.com so it is not quite as dull as it was.
Let's see... Bu-bye Mr. Ridge. I thought this had already been announced, but I guess not. It is just not a surprise. I saw that there is a name out already for his replacement, but I do not know anything about this new Director yet.
More troops to Iraq before their election? Another surprise. Uh, not.
Today is the last day for the Democrats in Washington State to file for a recount. They have to pay for this re-count. This morning they were still about $100,000 short for a full, statewide recount.
Remember, this Govenorship may be decided by less than 50 votes, and it seems that there are still a decent number of ballots that may not have been counted. I am not sure of the details, been to busy this morning to do the research, but...
If you read this in time and can donate money: Give! Give! Give!
Give here!
So... That is it for now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)