Who loves Ohio?
I always knew that Ohio had a diverse population, especially after growing up in Oberlin. 62 percent of Ohioans voted for a constitutional ban on gay marriage while Bush got 51 percent of the Ohio vote. So that means that a chunk of Kerry supporters probably voted for the ban. Is Ohio that conservative? Maybe the dems should have polled Ohioans' views on gay marriage before pumping all of their money into this State. Maybe they would have found that a Kerry victory here was unlikely because we're a bunch of homophobes (not me though--you know what I mean). Hopefully they'll learn next time. Maybe they can try to convert a couple of midwest States, like Missouri and Iowa, instead. We may be a lost cause.
posted by The Decider @ 9:44 PM
8 Comments:
Josh, the sad thing is that 'the trap' is always there, whether it's gays, or abortion, or anything that excited some people to the core...if there isn't one, they'll create. They can invent wars, so why not just a 'moral' issue to divide us. Maybe not falling for the trap again means learning to recognize it when it first appears, whatever it is, and neutralize it the moment that happens. Maybe they already set up the trap for 2008 and we don't know it. We have to build on the one thing we learned: they are good at it, excellent manipulators, maybe the only thing they know how to do.
The Guish / Dad/ Guille/ Superman. I have to find a nickname for this blog...So, Narl, what should it be?
Hi. What would the following CNN headline be if the 'glitch' had been for Kerry's benefit? Is Ken Blackwell going to ask to review all the other machines to see if there were any other 'glitches'? This smells like fraud to me. It sounds like this one case was so obvious that it was caught by observers right away...but what if all the other machines had less noticeable 'glitches' that, surprise, went to favor Bush? Well, if that was the case, I'm sure blackwell has a machine or two under his desk that were 'glitched' on Kerry's side. We'll never know. All it takes is this one case to raise doubts about the validity of the results. Sad.
Nan: you probably can confirm this. Is it true that Blackwell allowed voting up to 10 PM in Cincy?
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio
Friday, November 5, 2004 Posted: 4:15 PM EST (2115 GMT)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Hi
I like this idea. Congratulations!
As I got involved in the Lorain County (OH) Democratic Party near the election, doing law work, I could see what needs to be built. And what we started building for the election.
For example, people need to start paying attention to the Boards of Elections in their counties. And to their local Democratic parties or other progressive political groups. Lawyers should all learn something about election law. The best people should spend a little time in politics, to elevate it.
Yes it was disappointing. But it feels to me like a time to get more active. As we know, a lot less than 49% of the people can dominate the political arena, if they are well organized and focused.
Maybe we should continue meetings between the progressives in Oberlin, including students, professors, townspeople. Focus on local, county, state, and even national levels.
Maybe the college students should stay active in electoral politics and address why they had to stand in line for 4 hours to vote, while Republican precincts had no such delays.
Maybe the lawyers who banded together for the election should continue to meet and educate each other, possibly serve as a sounding board for the county counsel to the Democratic Party.
Maybe all of us, especially the computer-savvy, should learn about the machines that count our votes, and about security issues. Yes I need to be convinced that the machinery of voting was fair.
A personal project of mine is to research the Republican goon I met outside the polling place on Tuesday, a New York lawyer, Grant Lally. This seems to help my anger, to give it a face and the light of day. Anybody want to help me research him? He is, I believe, a Republican dirty tricks operative, maybe just one or two levels below Karl Rove. Fined $280,000 for campaign finance illegality in 1996, according to a Philadelphia newspaper and the Federal Election Commission's "Record." A participant in the 2000 Florida Republican TV "mini-riot" that caused a board of elections to stop recounting ballots. A member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, which held a "Florida school" this July, and whose largest funder is a German company that probably seeks government contracts -- Deutsche Post WorldNet (DHL). I actually met him and forced him to stay 100' from the polls. Am I strange to be interested in this little corner of politics and why things are going as they are?
Let me address the last two posts:
"Is it true that Blackwell allowed voting up to 10 PM in Cincy?" Yes--but it's legal. In fact, this happened in Columbus too. Voters only had to be in line at the time the polls closed. I know somebody in Columbus who got in line just in time and didn't get to vote until 9:00. The article below gives a good description of the situation in Ohio, including a shout-out to the Oberlin folk! (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/02/politics/main653166.shtml) That said, there was an incident in Cincy where all the machines didn’t work when the polls opened, delaying the start of voting (and racking up those lines!!). The machines arrived damaged and needed to be repaired on site.
"Am I strange to be interested in this little corner of politics and why things are going as they are?" First of all, thank you for taking time to help the process. People like you make me proud. I can't believe that there is no federally funded national election reform. Why haven't we made this a priority in national politics, especially after Florida in 2000? The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was a joke. Why did it take two years after the election to even address the issue in Congress? Could it have something to do with the fact that Republicans have run this country for the past 4 years and they seem to always end up benefiting from the current system? Coincidence? We’ve heard many reports of design problems—which I experienced myself—and the design of current mechanisms are not well suited for people who are not exceptionally attentive, not as educated, not willing or are ashamed to ask for help, or are short. As Thomas Paine wrote, "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected." This should be our main priority for 2008. We should demand uniform election standards, federal funds for better tested, better made, voter machines that ALL have paper trails, and increase the number of machines to meet the worse-case scenario (i.e. record voter turn-outs like in this election).
You're not strange at all. On the contrary, I think most non-Republicans just assume that there was a lot of funny business happening everywhere, probably on both sides. But somehow we tend to be the losers.
Keep us posted on the Grant Lally research. I’ll help research. Is this the same guy who ran for Congress in 1996 (http://www.unifx.com/lally)?
- Nan
Yeah, it's not hard to tell from a little searching that this guy is of the "new breed" of politician; on the '96 campaign website mentioned earlier in these comments, he even had [a page] devoted to soliciting comments (and presumably criticism) about his opponent.
I find it at least as interesting that in his spare time, barring the possibility of same-name confusion, he was apparently also a long-time paid participant in a play-by-mail game in which players "manage the nation's economy, direct research to develop new technologies, govern and acquire colonies, conduct diplomacy with other rulers, command the armed forces, and publish propaganda", the last of which he did quite well.
Small point to make...
Nan you said:
"The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was a joke. Why did it take two years after the election to even address the issue in Congress? Could it have something to do with the fact that Republicans have run this country for the past 4 years and they seem to always end up benefiting from the current system?"
From 2000 to 2002, there was a Democratic majority in the Senate.
But the Help America Vote Act, H.R. 3295, was introduced in the republican controlled House of Representatives (and the following adoption in the Senate only had a 1-vote majority for democrats). Let's also remind people that the President of the United States was a republican and the President's agenda wasn't exactly bursting with enthusiasm over the prospects of reform (imagine if they put the same fervor behind this as they put behind the elections in Iraq or Afghanistan).
...in other words, republicans were controlling the political agenda, especially after 9/11.
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