Europeans Set to Babysit Our Election Process This Fall

[bobbcat]

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I find this to be very odious; it is on the order of allowing the UN to command our military operations.

[CagedTroll]

Oh! I was wondering why Colin Powell wasn't speaking at the Republican convention!

[mayfly]

Thank you Democrats. This has never happened to another super power country, so thank you democrats for bringing our country to her knees and telling the world that us poor widdle Americans need our little wee hands held while we elect our president. That did more damage than any president ever could.

[CagedTroll]

We've got nothing to hide though..., right???

[Dyllan]

So when Bush wins, the Democrats will have their buddies from the OSCE to make up rediculous allegations about voting fraud and disenfranchisement. Joy.

-Dyllan

[patti1]

I wouldn't blame all of this on the Dems. The 2000 election will forever be a question mark in many minds. I think it can only help us if everything is fair, what's the big deal. It may erase questions in many minds around the world.

[bobbcat]

Originally Posted by patti1

I wouldn't blame all of this on the Dems. The 2000 election will forever be a question mark in many minds. I think it can only help us if everything is fair, what's the big deal. It may erase questions in many minds around the world.

I don't see it quite that way. I see it as opening the door to political hanky-panky on an order that we have yet to ever see in the entire history of our nation.

Albeit the 2000 election was controversial, repeated recounts of all the ballots, hanging chads, barely perforated chads, hanging-by-a-nose chads by numerous media outlets never failed to show Bush as the winner. Stories of disinfranchisement have never been verified to be credible beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Democrats are simply going to stop at nothing in their attempts to destroy the political career of GWB.

[crazytimes]

After the Florida fiasco it seems we need someone to babysit our elections.

You know what though, was it REALLY that difficult to follow an arrow and poke a hole?

Why why WHY don't they use the ScanTron ballots? In school that's all we use for tests...seems to me like a pretty good way to ensure that people don't make mistakes. Then they could just feed their ballot into the machine and if there's a problem, it could just spit it out. And there would be no need to connect it to a modem or anything, the results could just be called in, therefore you wouldn't have to worry about hackers.

[mayfly]

I am HUMILIATED that we are implimenting this plan, with so many better options out there. Democrats have opened our country up, opened up what makes us stand so great, which is our Democratic base. How can we ever advise another country about the benefits of democracy again?

[Twinplets]

Originally Posted by crazytimes

Why why WHY don't they use the ScanTron ballots? In school that's all we use for tests...seems to me like a pretty good way to ensure that people don't make mistakes. Then they could just feed their ballot into the machine and if there's a problem, it could just spit it out. And there would be no need to connect it to a modem or anything, the results could just be called in, therefore you wouldn't have to worry about hackers.

My guess? Cost. Imagine the number of machines you'd need, given the number of polling places and the volume of voters in each one. Although I wonder if the state asked the residents to each (optionally) chip in a nominal fee, like $1 or $5, they might get a rather large participation in order to prevent a fiasco like in 2000.

Massachusetts, or at least my area of it, uses the ScanTron-type ballots. I think they're great. When I was first old enough to vote, I lived in Michigan, and we had the punchcards. Then I moved to New York and we had the ballot boxes with the little levers. Of the three systems, I like the scan-sheets the best. They make it much easier to use write-in candidates, too.

[CagedTroll]

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The biggest wholesale theft occurred inside the voting booths in black rural counties. In Gadsden County, one of the blackest in the state, thousands of votes were simply thrown away. Gadsden used paper ballots which are read by an optical reader. Ballots with a single extra mark were considered “spoiled“ and not counted. The buttons used to fill out the ballots were set up – with approval from Bush and Harris – to make votes appear unclear to the machine. One in eight ballots in Gadsden was voided by the state.

The same ballots were used in Tallahassee County, which is mostly white. There only one in 100 votes was “spoiled.” What made the difference? In Tallahassee, ballots were read on the premises, and if they were marked incorrectly, voters were sent to revote until they got it right. In the black counties, the votes were trucked off immediately. There were no machines on site. Voters weren’t told that their votes were spoiled, and they certainly weren’t permitted to re-vote.

When Ted Koppel investigated voter theft in Florida, he concluded that blacks lost votes because they weren’t well educated, and made mistakes that whites hadn‘t. He didn’t even bother to ask how the machines were set up. This is the kind of reporting we get in America. In Britain, this story ran 3 weeks after the election, when Gore was still in race. It was in the papers and on TV. In the US, it was seven months before the Washington Post ran it, and then it was only a partial version. After the election, Gadsden County replaced its voting commissioner. In 2002 they only lost one in 500 votes. So you can say blacks in Gadsden got smarter in one way – they elected a black elections chief.

I say take Palast for what he's worth. If, for example, he got the Gadsden/Tallahassee story correct, then who cares that he's Matt Drudge's slightly funnier, liberal twin?

[mayor]

I think Bush gave this the ok because we have nothing to hide. Democrats are more notorious for manipulating elections anyhow. There is more than enough evidence to show that Nixon beat Kennedy. And why weren't the votes recounted in New Mexico in 2000? Gore only won by something like 300 votes and there are plenty of allegations of fraud in that state. Then there is Missourri, ad infinitum.

I think Bush is believing the Dems will hang themselves.

Mayor

[mrbowler]

Maybe we should be more worried about allowing some of these ideas

• Let voters practice voting on the equipment they will be using.

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[luvmetender]

whatever happened to Twonkey's post? ya know, not bashing each other's party??? Seems like mayor isn't listening.

[crazytimes]

Originally Posted by Twinplets

My guess? Cost. Imagine the number of machines you'd need, given the number of polling places and the volume of voters in each one. Although I wonder if the state asked the residents to each (optionally) chip in a nominal fee, like $1 or $5, they might get a rather large participation in order to prevent a fiasco like in 2000.

I'm sure they would be quite a cost, but I think they'd be well worth it. When you think about it, most schools have the machines, so I don't think they can be THAT expensive. And I bet the government could work out a contract with the company that makes the machines.

I think the best thing would be to create a list of polling places, and those with the highest turnout would be the first to get the machines, etc. and each year they could go down the list? I'm sure the feds could allocate some money and states could just add like a $5 tax per person or something like that.