Starting early this election season
Usually, this stuff happens on Wednesday:
On the eve of one of the nation’s most contentious and intensely watched elections, investigators have opened a criminal probe into suspected early voting fraud in Shelby County.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is reviewing reports by the Shelby County Election Commission that two people voted twice during early voting in Memphis.
“Paid Political Advertisement”Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons said Thursday he’s referred the cases to the TBI for investigation along with other matters he declined to discuss.
Will Americans ever have faith in elections again?
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:22 pm
But wait, there’s more.
I am predicting Ford will carry Shelby County.
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
#9:
I don’t think Ford needs voter fraud to carry Shelby County. It’s the rest of the state where that would matter.
Uncle:
Will Americans ever have faith in elections again?
Not without a paper trail. The “response” to the 2000 debacle has moved things in precisely the wrong direction.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I like the Luddite-era assumption that folks who can alter the programming of such a machine so greatly as to significantly affect an election, all while leaving not a single trace of their altered code on the machine, are someone able to be beaten – nah, destroyed – by a paper receipt printed by the same machine, or a paper ballot going into a closed box that won’t be looked at or read until it’s already been transported.
Friggen hilarious.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I find it hilarious for someone to have so much faith in government as to assume that anyone would even bother to inspect the machine for altered code, much less have the competence to detect it if they did look.
It is an interesting point — if the system gets thrown out, and no one has any faith in polling, what will we use to ensure that the government governs according to the will and consent of the people?
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hey, I didn’t suggest the government would look into it. It’s the losers that will. Remember, your court case is only as strong as the
anecdotesevidence that youfakeprovide.November 3rd, 2006 at 3:56 pm
OK, parade-pissers, got a better idea? 😉
Didn’t think so.
“Trust us!”
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Making votes and record collection public. Big numbers glowing on a billboard and instant counting, any errors.
Sadly, many people would be harassed by this (I can certainly imagine how many more tires would have been slashed after 04’s election), so short of a (really) nonpartisan board to overview and be held gagged about who voted how except to disclose issues to a judge, we’d be hard-pressed to get it accepted.
The secret vote is dead, I’m afraid. Either they’ll be flooded with other false non-secret votes (anyone care to guess how many people voted illegal or more than once in the 2000 election in Florida?), or they’ll need to be somewhat viewable.
November 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
LOL
I graduated from Bishop Byrne.
November 3rd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
gatt:
I think that’s way too pessimistic. For one thing, there are other countries that manage to do secret-ballot voting without such rampant accusations of voter fraud. Maybe we could learn from them. I know he’s the incarnation of evil to you, but Carter’s organization has made great strides in this area.
It seems to me that a human-readable first, machine-readable second paper ballot, with a system of checks and balances, would be plenty good. Ballots would be filled out by hand (could be a simple check box or connect-the-line ballot) and fed into a machine, which counts them. A small percentage of ballots for each machine is randomly selected for auditing, and these audit ballots would be hand-counted and checked against the machine count for those ballots. Any discrepancies would trigger a full hand recount of that machine’s ballots. In addition, a few machines in each district would be randomly selected for full hand count audit.
You can put in other checks, also. For example, split the responsibility of those who give out the ballots and those who work the machines with no overlap. The total ballot count must match the total vote count. Stuff like that.
While I don’t think the secret ballot needs to die, I do think that there are other reforms that need to be implemented. For one thing, more stringent voter ID requirements, which might mean the death of same-day registration and voting. For another, it might be a good idea to move election day to a weekend (or make it a national holiday) so that people would have more time to get to the polls.
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Even with the best solution, you end up with a single group of people charged with the ability to hold the future of society in their hands, and by necessity or by law can not be meaningfully observed (assume the group can expand outwards, not particularly hard given that in many places all election officials are either volunteers or politically appointed).
I won’t repeat the truism about power corrupting, because I think it’s actually false, but unchecked power is a pretty powerful counter.
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:38 pm
WIll americans ever have faith in elections again?
Will sore losers ever stop being sore?
November 4th, 2006 at 11:58 am
I don’t think Ford needs voter fraud to carry Shelby County. It’s the rest of the state where that would matter.
Very true, but if he carries Shelby County by 225%, he doesn’t have to worry about the margin in the rest of the state quite as much.
For one thing, there are other countries that manage to do secret-ballot voting without such rampant accusations of voter fraud.
Is the lack of rampant accusation in other countries evidence that the fraud didn’t occur? Are the rampant accusations in this country evidence that the fraud DOES occur?
I find it interesting that the VAST majority of indictments and prosecutions for vote fraud are handed down against Democrats. This incident occured in Memphis. Considering that Memphis is about as much a Democrat stronghold as there gets, it doesn’t take much imagination to divine the probable political party of the miscreants in this case.
This is typical. The Democrats have “projection” down to an art. They cheat at elections in any way that they think they can get away with, they know it, it is a part of their political philosophy. They project that trait onto Republicans and, so, any time they lose an election, it was OBVIOUSLY because the Republicans cheated, or “disenfranchised voters” or stole the election. Never mind that there is no evidence to support such charges, never mind that investigations disprove the charges; the Democrats make the “rampant accusations” so they MUST be true right?
It seems to me that the arguments against machine voting stem from the fact that there are flaws. The machines aren’t perfect. Um…neither is paper balloting, or punch card balloting, or any other method that involves human beings. Does ANYONE remember Florida 2000? The machines have GOT to be better than that…anyone ever seen a hanging chad on a computer screen?
In my humble opinion, the machines will be better and more accurate than any other method even if they do have inevitable flaws (and inevitable hysterical accusations of flaws that are blown all out of proportion to the actual danger).
As gattsuru pointed out. No system is infallible. The only way to make something completely secure is to make it completely inaccessible to anyone and then it is useless. The best we can do is try to minimize the danger of fraud and vigorously pursue prosecution of those found guilty of it. I’d be willing to bet that a mandatory 10 year prison sentence and losing the right to vote forever would be a pretty good incentive for people to keep things on the up and up.
November 5th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Saddam had free and open elections. He consitently won by 99%. The other 1% were taken out and shot. But their dumbass heirs kept coming back for more, for some reason.