greenearth
11-05-2006, 01:24 PM
I know this is not necessarily on topic here but feel it needs to be discussed.
Please pass this around.
You all need to go to this website and also watch the Hacking Democracy on HBO. I believe it is on Monday night but is also "on Demand" if you get it.
This works both ways republican and democrat. This is not a partisan group and this is very scary what is happening to us.
I would suggest you all get involved somehow either by being a poll watcher or an election judge or contact this organization. I signed up to be a check in judge.
Whatever you do at the very least vote and if you don't think that your vote was counted then contest it. We are Americans and we need to know what is going on. It is our right to have a fair election without some company or person coming in and changing our destiny
http://blackboxvoting.org
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(greenearth @ Nov 5 2006, 01:24 PM) 42029</div>
I know this is not necessarily on topic here but feel it needs to be discussed.
Please pass this around.
You all need to go to this website and also watch the Hacking Democracy on HBO. I believe it is on Monday night but is also "on Demand" if you get it.
This works both ways republican and democrat. This is not a partisan group and this is very scary what is happening to us.
I would suggest you all get involved somehow either by being a poll watcher or an election judge or contact this organization. I signed up to be a check in judge.
Whatever you do at the very least vote and if you don't think that your vote was counted then contest it. We are Americans and we need to know what is going on. It is our right to have a fair election without some company or person coming in and changing our destiny
http://blackboxvoting.org
[/b]
Having been involved in ballot counting many years ago, and knowing people who have been involved in recounts more recently, none of this is particular surprising. Here's a secret the special doesn't reveal. The error count and the cheating which has gone on through the years with paper ballots is just as bad. Frankly, the idea that computer use would eliminate cheating defies imagination.
We need to seriously improve our system, however, going back to paper ballots, counted by people, as so many have suggested in recent months (There's even a bill introduced in the House of Representatives which would require this.) makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. That will only make it even easier to cheat the American public.
greenearth
11-05-2006, 04:10 PM
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ned @ Nov 5 2006, 03:51 PM) 42036</div>
Having been involved in ballot counting many years ago, and knowing people who have been involved in recounts more recently, none of this is particular surprising. Here's a secret the special doesn't reveal. The error count and the cheating which has gone on through the years with paper ballots is just as bad. Frankly, the idea that computer use would eliminate cheating defies imagination.
We need to seriously improve our system, however, going back to paper ballots, counted by people, as so many have suggested in recent months (There's even a bill introduced in the House of Representatives which would require this.) makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. That will only make it even easier to cheat the American public.
[/b]
Actually Ned it does go into that. At the end. At least with the paper ballots you can go back and check and recheck-with electronic you can't at all. And with paper you can compare with the electronic results.
The only thing is is who can say whether or not the paper ballots have not been shredded?
The bottom line is people have to become pro-active if they want change. This is not a partisan problem. This happened to one republican who was running for governor in Maryland a few yrs back, although it seems to be a little more lopsided and hanging to the right then to the left.
greenearth
11-06-2006, 08:26 AM
Originally posted by The New York Times by Paul Krugman - November 6 2006
Limiting the Damage
President Bush isn't on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.
There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that "this is not about the midterm elections." But the editorial's authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won't fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won't change strategy in Iraq; he won't change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.
At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush's character. To put it bluntly, he's an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood - and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself "pleased with the progress we're making" in Iraq.
In other words, he's the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.
The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism - almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied - may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America's future.
And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.
The public, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 and was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, seems to have figured most of this out. It's too late to vote Mr. Bush out of office, but most Americans seem prepared to punish Mr. Bush's party for his personal failings. This is in spite of a vicious campaign in which Mr. Bush has gone further than any previous president - even Richard Nixon - in attacking the patriotism of anyone who criticizes him or his policies.
That said, it's still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry's botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I've got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.
Moreover, the potential for vote suppression and/or outright electoral fraud remains substantial. And it will be very hard for the Democrats to take the Senate for the very simple reason that only one-third of Senate seats are on this ballot.
What if the Democrats do win? That doesn't guarantee a change in policy.
The Constitution says that Congress and the White House are co-equal branches of government, but Mr. Bush and his people aren't big on constitutional niceties. Even with a docile Republican majority controlling Congress, Mr. Bush has been in the habit of declaring that he has the right to disobey the law he has just signed, whether it's a law prohibiting torture or a law requiring that he hire qualified people to run FEMA.
Just imagine, then, what he'll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don't have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a "cataclysmic fight to the death" if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas - which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush's history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.
But here's the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush's ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That's why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.This article can be found at the New York Time web site at: Limiting the Damage (http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/opinion/06krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and% 20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman) .
[This post was edited to enclose it in a quotation box, correct the title of the article, and add a link to the source. These are all necessary actions we ask every poster to do when quoting copyrighted material. We also request that all posters only quote excerpts from a long article, and put a link to the remainder of the article to reasonably follow the "fair use" provisions of Copyright law.]
clarkef
11-15-2006, 03:02 AM
This article can be found at the New York Time web site at: Limiting the Damage (http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/opinion/06krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and% 20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Krugman) .
[This post was edited to enclose it in a quotation box, correct the title of the article, and add a link to the source. These are all necessary actions we ask every poster to do when quoting copyrighted material. We also request that all posters only quote excerpts from a long article, and put a link to the remainder of the article to reasonably follow the "fair use" provisions of Copyright law.]
Of course, the fact that Mr. Klugman is a well known far left Bush hater doesn't influence that op-ed piece. :D