Here we go again

I don't know which is worse--Republicans openly sending jackbooted thugs to rig the elections, or Democrats thinking they can cover up their own incompetence in court yet again.

Only in America ...

 

Maybe Florida needs poll-watcher-watchers to watch the poll-watchers.

 

We would, but then we'd have to decide who would watch the poll-watcher-watchers.

 

How about someone from Haiti?

 

"The Democrats...said in the complaint that GOP officials unfairly benefited from new rules the Democrats did not learn of until it was too late to submit forms."

So they fell asleep at the wheel. I hear this happens in FL all the time.

 

To me, this was a horrible article. Father, how do you know, from the article, that the Dems' claim isn't 100% valid?

I'm not asserting it is, I'm just saying the article doesn't say how the Dems missed out. After the revelations regarding e-mails in the 2000 recount debacle, it's not inconceivable that the Reeps dealt off the bottom of the deck. They are still using improperly scrubbed voter rolls, disenfranchising thousands of legal voters.

 

Florida rocks the vote

Agreed.
That article makes no sense and I know a few things about making zero sense, right super?

It doesn't go a quality job of explaining the problem or how it affected the parties.

At any rate, it is nice to see Janet Reno getting work. Who said she had no political capital left in her tank. I wonder if she will fill up her tank, drive the red pickup with her significant other off in the sunset Thelma and Louise style?

 

One can only hope. The Democrats could have won this election running a friggin' chimpanzee, as long as they dressed him like Lancelot Link. Instead, they run Reno. The nicest thing I can say about her is that she looks like Lancelot Link.

Thank God they dredged McBride out from under whatever log they found him--it would've been totally embarassing otherwise.

The Republicans could've saved the $30 they spent hiring 600 pollwatchers with four teeth among them--it's not like they're going to need to steal this election--it's theirs for the taking.

 

Broward County (FL) "loses" over 100,000 votes

By EVAN S. BENN

More than 100,000 votes went missing on Tuesday between the time they were counted by electronic machines and the time they were reported on cable-access television and on the Supervisor of Elections web site.

A glitch in the vote reporting system left a 104,000-vote difference between Tuesday night's totals and those reported late Wednesday.

Election officials said the error has no effect on the outcome of any races, though voter turnout jumped from 35 percent to 45 percent after it was corrected.

And it raises questions about how the supervisor's office could have missed that many votes.

''The initial reports didn't include everything we tabulated,'' Deputy Supervisor Joe Cotter said. ``It was a minor software thing. Once we realized it, we took the proper steps to fix it.''

Before the county canvassing board members went home early Wednesday, they saw a discrepancy in the vote reports, which showed 402,951 people voted in the governor's race, but only 337,976 total ballots were cast.

''That was the red flag,'' said Charles Lindsey, an election monitor from the state Division of Elections.

Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant said the problem was ''small,'' but admitted she didn't know what prompted it. ''That's what the technical folks, the [Election Systems & Software] people, are trying to figure out,'' she said.

The canvassing board plans to meet at 9:30 tonight to certify all the votes, except for about 3,000 provisional ballots. Those will be certified Thursday morning, before the canvassing board releases official tallies to the state.

 

Computer-only voting systems are a really bad idea to me. It is really suspicious when there a tech comes in and suddenly thousands of votes show up. And with no paper backup, there is no autiting or recounting ability.

Even worse, because of the contracts states sign, they have no right to look at the internal workings of the machines or their databases - it is all a trade secret.

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/05/voting_machines/index.html

 

After the big mess that was the Presidential elections, it sounds like Florida might need some lessons in conducting an election . Perhaps Saddam Hussain can help.

What's the thinking behind each party having it's own poll watcher anyway ?. Surely you should try and find someone neutral (admittidly that may be difficult in America) to do this. Any 18 year old is suitably apathetic for the job.

 

What is wrong with each party having a poll watcher. If we are supposedly an open political system, why not? It is, hopefully, a way to keep things in the open and honest. Though it seems in Alabama, some election officials may have gotten away with some funny business after the poll watchers left in one precinct (the vote tally for governor changed).

It isn't a perfect system, however, I don't see how anyone can truly object to having a system more open to public scrutiny, unless you are trying to play with the results of the people's vote.

 

There may be more motivation for the watchers to do some funny business, since they're probably dyed in the wool Republicans/Democrats. Don't forget the big fuss over the votes in Florida when the President was elected, although the state Guv'nor and the Supreme Court got involved.

If your interested, the British system of watchers/counters or whatever is open, and are usually filled by teenagers and housewives who would like an extra bit of cash.

 

What does it tell you about the state of the Florida Democratic party when the "good" choice is Bill McBride?

 

Like I said--Republicans didn't need to steal this election; it was theirs for the taking.