November 7th Election

[zenbabe]

Is everyone voting on Tuesday?

I just watched this movie on HBO called "Hacking Democracy" and I am very scared.

This country is so corrupt. :( :mad:

[Jack Flanders]

Damn right I am. I was going to use an absentee ballot but remembered that during our mayoral election this past May some of the absentee votes were*misplaced* by the committee over-seeing the voting ethics. :mad: I'm scared, too.

[muggy21]

I just sent in my Absentee Ballot on Thursday. Hope it doesn't get lost.

[auntie aubrey]

i've been called for jiury duty on election day, and the courthouse is nowhere near the building where i vote. supposedly they'll let us out by 5:00 so i'm going to fight like hell through rush hour traffic way downtown to get back out to the suburbs before the polls close.

wish me luck. i'm a tiny blue dot in a big red sea.

[Smartypants]

Just in case you're on the fence as to how to cast your ballot, here's an editorial from today's NY Times with some very valid points:

------

November 5, 2006
Editorial
The Difference Two Years Made


On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican Congressional candidates for the first time in our memory. Although Times editorials tend to agree with Democrats on national policy, we have proudly and consistently endorsed a long line of moderate Republicans, particularly for the House. Our only political loyalty is to making the two-party system as vital and responsible as possible.

That is why things are different this year.

To begin with, the Republican majority that has run the House — and for the most part, the Senate — during President Bush’s tenure has done a terrible job on the basics. Its tax-cutting-above-all-else has wrecked the budget, hobbled the middle class and endangered the long-term economy. It has refused to face up to global warming and done pathetically little about the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Republican leaders, particularly in the House, have developed toxic symptoms of an overconfident majority that has been too long in power. They methodically shut the opposition — and even the more moderate members of their own party — out of any role in the legislative process. Their only mission seems to be self-perpetuation.

The current Republican majority managed to achieve that burned-out, brain-dead status in record time, and with a shocking disregard for the most minimal ethical standards. It was bad enough that a party that used to believe in fiscal austerity blew billions on pork-barrel projects. It is worse that many of the most expensive boondoggles were not even directed at their constituents, but at lobbyists who financed their campaigns and high-end lifestyles.

That was already the situation in 2004, and even then this page endorsed Republicans who had shown a high commitment to ethics reform and a willingness to buck their party on important issues like the environment, civil liberties and women’s rights.

For us, the breaking point came over the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the fundamental checks and balances that have safeguarded American democracy since its inception. The fact that the White House, House and Senate are all controlled by one party is not a threat to the balance of powers, as long as everyone understands the roles assigned to each by the Constitution. But over the past two years, the White House has made it clear that it claims sweeping powers that go well beyond any acceptable limits. Rather than doing their duty to curb these excesses, the Congressional Republicans have dedicated themselves to removing restraints on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants. To paraphrase Tom DeLay, the Republicans feel you don’t need to have oversight hearings if your party is in control of everything.

An administration convinced of its own perpetual rightness and a partisan Congress determined to deflect all criticism of the chief executive has been the recipe for what we live with today.

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen. On the eve of the election, and without even a pretense at debate in the House, Congress granted the White House permission to hold hundreds of noncitizens in jail forever, without due process, even though many of them were clearly sent there in error.

In the Senate, the path for this bill was cleared by a handful of Republicans who used their personal prestige and reputation for moderation to paper over the fact that the bill violates the Constitution in fundamental ways. Having acquiesced in the president’s campaign to dilute their own authority, lawmakers used this bill to further Mr. Bush’s goal of stripping the powers of the only remaining independent branch, the judiciary.

This election is indeed about George W. Bush — and the Congressional majority’s insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds. Mr. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and proceeded to govern as if he had an enormous mandate. After he actually beat his opponent in 2004, he announced he now had real political capital and intended to spend it. We have seen the results. It is frightening to contemplate the new excesses he could concoct if he woke up next Wednesday and found that his party had maintained its hold on the House and Senate.

[Jack Flanders]

I'm surprised your court office is open on an election day. In NJ most state employees are off. Good luck Tuesday - every vote is important.

Thanks, Smarty, I wish more people would read that editorial.

[Max Headroom]

i've been called for jiury duty on election day, and the courthouse is nowhere near the building where i vote. supposedly they'll let us out by 5:00 so i'm going to fight like hell through rush hour traffic way downtown to get back out to the suburbs before the polls close.

wish me luck. i'm a tiny blue dot in a big red sea.

No advance polls?

I guess it's too late eh?

[auntie aubrey]

oh the whole damn situation is messed up. i was called for jury duty only 4 months ago, and i shouldn't have been eligible again for at least 6. that bothered me but i didn't think much about it.

then last night my husband is looking at the notice and it's got my maiden name on it. which hasn't legally been my name for over 2 years.

so basically the city has suddenly decided that i am two people, both possessing the same SSN, living at the same address, and eligible for jury duty twice as often as anyone.

since it's not my legal name, i'm considering calling them and telling them to stick the notice where the sun don't shine. and THEN i'm going to go vote.

[Max Headroom]

Good luck with that....

I'm pullin for ya

[Brynn]

I've got jury duty this month too - second time this year.

I'm extremely pessimistic about elections this year and all elections to follow from now on as long as Diebold is running things. I'm convinced that we are no longer a democracy. We haven't been for a long time, but this is the election year that all illusions of a fair election are gone. In spite of all polls showing a victory for the Democrats, I'm positive that the Republicans will steal things again anyway just like they've done for the last eight years. If rigged voting machines and "mishaps" in minority neighborhoods and voter intimidation and brown shirts busting in to prevent recounts aren't enough, we also have all the bizarre Republican redistricting in play to tie up any other loose ends.
I really hope I'm wrong.

[Jack Flanders]

Jury dudy sucks. (Oh, my, :o I meant duty.) ...really - a typo.

[auntie aubrey]

In spite of all poles showing a victory for the Democrats, I'm positive that the Republicans will steal things again anyway just like they've done for the last eight years.

i don't have confidence that the polls have accurately predicted a democratic takeover of congress, but that has nothing to do with any misdeeds on the part of the republican party. i simply blame the people who are stupid enough to vote republican.

maybe i should be more worried about the electronic voting system, but at this point i think we should fear OURSELVES, the voters, first. we've already screwed ourselves eight ways from sunday using the traditional voting methods. it's not like the electronic system was suddenly going to iron out voter stupidity.

[Smartypants]

BTW, here's a link (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7236791207107726851&q=hacking+democracy) to that HBO show. (It's 1h22m, and posted in its entirety.)

Gawd, I just re-read something I'd written to friends when I was a poll watcher for Election Protection in 2004. Since then, I think I blocked from my memory how horrified I was by what I saw. Reading back through my account of it, I recall that any suspicions I had that the election might be stolen became a conviction -- no doubt at all -- that it had been stolen. Even if Ohio had legitimately gone for Bush (which was less a battleground state than ground zero for stolen votes), Florida, where I went, would have decided the election for Kerry had ALL democratic voters been allowed to vote and their votes been counted.

(If anyone's interested, my account -- which is admittedly long-winded -- is posted here (http://smartypants-wild-ride.blogspot.com/2004/11/election-protection-part-i.html) in two parts. It was written with humor, for my friends, but that doesn't make what I saw any less outrageous.)

Edited to add: This doesn't change my belief that my vote's important - just the opposite. Now more than ever: DON'T FORGET TO VOTE.

And if I were called to jury duty and it threatened my ability to vote, I'd walk right out of the courtroom when necessary to make it to the polls before they closed.

[auntie aubrey]

And if I were called to jury duty and it threatened my ability to vote, I'd walk right out of the courtroom when necessary to make it to the polls before they closed.

that's how important it is to me, too. my husband tried to give me his subway pass and i said "keep it, i'm not going. they can issue a warrant for my arrest, see if i care."

it was a bit of a blusteringly grandiose moment, and as it turns out entirely unnecessary. i called the courthouse and they acknowledged their clerical error. no jury duty for me now! i can vote any ol' time i please!

[Brynn]

It's reassuring that something in the system works!

eta: Smarty, I just read that election blog. Well done! I'd forgotten how angry I'd been at the time when all that was going on, though. You're right, it brings it all back.

This, however, made me laugh out loud:

"The attorney remained petulant until Elizabeth came up with a brilliant idea: "I'll tell you what," she told the woman. "I might be able to assign you as a Precinct Attorney. We are in dire need of Precinct Attorneys, assigned to specific polling places, who can resolve problems on the spot without having to call in or wait for a mobile attorney to arrive."

This new title for exactly the same assignment she had been previously offered pleased the woman, and she gladly ran off to do her part. And thus, the Precinct Attorney was born, and shortly Elizabeth was dispatching happy attorneys to polling places all over the county."

We will be having an election night party. We will be watching The Daily Show and getting extremely drunk.

[Smartypants]

.

[Smartypants]

Thanks Brynn. :D


Here's another NYT editorial which states the case yet again for an end to "one-party rule." Note, too, that all this week, access to Times Select -- the area of the NY Times' Web site (http://www.nytimes.com) with all the great stuff you normally have to pay for -- is free even for nonsubscribers. Definitely worth checking out.

-----

November 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Limiting the Damage


By PAUL KRUGMAN

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 of 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.

[Jack Flanders]

Smarty - see if you can find Wolf's (CNN) interview with Dick Army that was shown last night (Monday) - it is so telling about the Bush agenda.

[Gifa]

http://gifa.livejournal.com/data/phonepost/7416.mp3


My voting experience... :mad:

[Gifa]

oh the whole damn situation is messed up. i was called for jury duty only 4 months ago, and i shouldn't have been eligible again for at least 6. that bothered me but i didn't think much about it.

then last night my husband is looking at the notice and it's got my maiden name on it. which hasn't legally been my name for over 2 years.

so basically the city has suddenly decided that i am two people, both possessing the same SSN, living at the same address, and eligible for jury duty twice as often as anyone.

since it's not my legal name, i'm considering calling them and telling them to stick the notice where the sun don't shine. and THEN i'm going to go vote.

My husband got called in for Jury duty as well...an hour's drive away from our voting location... interesting.

[Smartypants]

Smarty - see if you can find Wolf's (CNN) interview with Dick Army that was shown last night (Monday) - it is so telling about the Bush agenda.

Thanks for the tip. I'll look for it.

[Smartypants]

DID EVERYONE VOTE TODAY??

[dinzdale]

No

[craig johnston]

^^^^
monster raving loony party's vote halved!

:eek:

[dinzdale]

La Ciccolina's not on the ballot. ;)

[smellyrayzin]

voted.


i got TWO "I Voted Today" stickers... you know, one for each nipple. :cool:

[zenbabe]

I am going after work. Haha, my voting place is at the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender center....

[Jack Flanders]

Yep! Had a scare, though. They (dipshit-guy) couldn't find my name. After two long minutes, he remembered he had another sign-in book. :mad:

[auntie aubrey]

my voting sticker has a peach on it. anyone care to venture a guess where i'm located? :rolleyes:

[Smartypants]

Mine has a lesbian in a Subaru and two men practicing safe sex. You wanna guess where I am? :p

[funkytuba]

voted.


i got TWO "I Voted Today" stickers... you know, one for each nipple. :cool:

TTIUWP

[priceyfatprude]

I voted & all I got was this lousy Sensenbrenner. :mad:

[topcat]

Mine has a lesbian in a Subaru and two men practicing safe sex. You wanna guess where I am? :p



at randy's house

[auntie aubrey]

I'm extremely pessimistic about elections this year and all elections to follow from now on as long as Diebold is running things. I'm convinced that we are no longer a democracy. We haven't been for a long time, but this is the election year that all illusions of a fair election are gone. In spite of all polls showing a victory for the Democrats, I'm positive that the Republicans will steal things again anyway just like they've done for the last eight years. If rigged voting machines and "mishaps" in minority neighborhoods and voter intimidation and brown shirts busting in to prevent recounts aren't enough, we also have all the bizarre Republican redistricting in play to tie up any other loose ends.
I really hope I'm wrong.

i'm wondering how you feel now that the democrats actually took the majority back.

and i'm not just talking about you specifically, but everyone who was terrified that republican evildoers would hack the voting machines at various points along the way. are we still a democracy? were machines "rigged?" were there any "mishaps?" how do you define mishap? if a democrat takes the election, everything is fine, but if a republican takes it, it's a mishap? do you owe an apology to the republicans for accusing them preemptively of criminal activity? i wonder.

honestly now, if the republicans HAD maintained control, how many people would have cried foul? are we only under the threat of wrongdoing if the republicans win? democrats have been accusing the republicans of stealing elections since the first bush victory.

i'm just curious for someone to offer up an explanation. if it was so easy for the republicans to steal it, and if they've been so willing and able to steal previous elections, what happened here yesterday?

[Smartypants]

Well regardless of who suffered from voting irregularities this time around, it is among the greatest shames of this country, which prides itself as the world model of democracy, that we've arrived where we are with these voting problems. The images on TV of lines of voters snaking around the block at precincts where machines didn't work were eerily reminscent of displaced New Orleaneans after Hurricane Katrina.

And who do we have to thank for this but the Republicans who fought tooth and nail to award contracts to Diebold and other voting machine manufacturers and disregard all complaints about their lack of reliability or integrity, or the abililty to verify their tallies?

Aside from the mechanical and technological failures of modern voting procedures, the rampant imediments that people put up to prevent or discourage voting come rarely at the expense of conservative, Republican voters. In 2000 and 2004, it was almost ALWAYS the precincts known to have heavy Democratic party registration and voting records that saw the most egregious attempts to thwart the will of the voters.

I doubt that any recount in Montana or Virginia precincts where it's possible to verify electronic results would turn up anything but previously uncounted votes for the Democratic candidates.

(BTW, I just don't get what the problem is with getting reliable voting equipment installed nationwide. In my San Francisco precinct, we mark a paper ballot, which is very clearly printed, and run it through a scanner. Votes are tallied electronically and immediately available to the Regsitrar or Voters, and there's a paper back-up -- not printed out by the computer, but the actual ballot completed by the voter -- in the case the need arises for a recount. I have never had to wait in line longer than a few minutes, and I've never suspected that my vote wasn't going to he properly counted. Maybe among other "San Francisco values" the new congress can bring to bear is our own modern method of voting.)

As for my general take on yesterday's outcome, I'll post here some thoughts I just wrote in an e-mail to a friend watching all this from London:

I think the most interesting and telling vote was in Rhode Island, where their incumbent US Senator Chaffee was incredibly popular (a 62% approval rating), but lost to the Dem challenger (and by a healthy margin). Chaffee was a Republican in the way that Lieberman was Democrat -- hardly the model; he was pro-choice, pro gay rights, and was a lone wolf in his voting against the war, but polling of RI voters showed that a resolve to end GOP control of the senate was more important than any good feelings they had for Chaffee personally. If he had switched parties, he probably would have won the election easily.

Also, the Dems only needed 15 new seats to gain control of the house. They won 27. And the Senate, with two seats per state, is hardly representative of the nation's population. Even if challenges to the outcomes in MT and VA succeed and the GOP remains in control of the upper house, the republicans represent a dramatically lower number of Americans than do the dems.

This election shows that for the most part Americans REALLY don't like this administration or the republicans that support him.

[Brynn]

i'm wondering how you feel now that the democrats actually took the majority back.

thrilled :) I'm afraid that the word "gracious" isn't really in my vocabulary today.

and i'm not just talking about you specifically, but everyone who was terrified that republican evildoers would hack the voting machines at various points along the way. are we still a democracy? were machines "rigged?" were there any "mishaps?" how do you define mishap?
First of all, the Republican administration has worked hard to earn it's widespread reputation as a corrupt, fascistic, gerry-mandering party. All I have to say is "Karl Rove" or "Tom Delay" or "Katherine Harris" or "Tom Foley'" or "Ohio 2004" or "Supreme Court Coup" or "Florida Brownshirts" or take a deep breath and go for another hour about the criminals and their Halliburton cronies who have run the country for the last eight years. Apologize? Hmmm. I'll get back to you about that.

if a democrat takes the election, everything is fine, but if a republican takes it, it's a mishap?
Yes, if a democrat takes the election, everything is fine. I'm doing a gloating little happy dance about that, yes.

Republicans did win legitimate races in a few states - and no one is accusing them of wrong doing.
But I find it amazing that even after all the corruption of past elections, this year's election, due to Diebold machine malfunctions, still has disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters yet again. I have no idea if they were all Republicans or Democrats - I think that's absolutely shameful either way. There was a fourteen-hour wait in one precinct. And I just love the story about how the Republicans called up Democrats and deliberately gave them directions to the wrong polling stations. That's not a "mishap" - that's crimninal activity that the FBI is investigating now.

do you owe an apology to the republicans for accusing them preemptively of criminal activity? i wonder.

I think the operative word here is "preemptively."

honestly now, if the republicans HAD maintained control, how many people would have cried foul? are we only under the threat of wrongdoing if the republicans win?

Everyone would have cried foul this time because of Congress' dismal approval ratings. I honestly think voters would have finally awakened and taken to the streets. Geez, I know of some furious lefties who were circulating emails about taking up arms for civil war! ("Uh hullo David, could you please take me off your cc list? Thanks.").
But the days when we don't bother to police the elections are over. Corrupt election terrorists/traitors hurt everyone on both sides of the aisle. It shouldn't be occurring. Period.

democrats have been accusing the republicans of stealing elections since the first bush victory.
Yes they have. For good reason. Gore unequivocably won the election. If he'd been allowed to serve, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. We might be in an entirely different one, but not this one.

i'm just curious for someone to offer up an explanation. if it was so easy for the republicans to steal it, and if they've been so willing and able to steal previous elections, what happened here yesterday?

The Gore/Bush race was extremely close. Victory came down to a single county, remember? All they had to do was fool around in a couple of states to steal the whole race. And nobody said it was easy. I think they worked very hard at it. Same with the Kerry/Bush race. This time around, voters have been so universally disgusted with Republican rule that their numbers completely overwhelmed Rove's dirty tricks department. Also I think the fact that people requested absentee ballots in record numbers this year speaks volumes.

Apologize? I think not.:) I do feel slightly sorry for a lame duck president obsessed with power (without policy) who thumbed his nose at citizens who had popularly elected an entirely different man, and then did so little to build consensus when he was able to.
But I fervently hope Rumsfeld cries himself to sleep tonight.

[Max Headroom]

I was watching the results come in last night.

I went to bed feeling just a little bit better about the world... but only a little

[Jack Flanders]

Looks like Virginia (the state you pervs) may be ours!!!!!

[auntie aubrey]

Geez, I know of some furious lefties who were circulating emails about taking up arms for civil war! ("Uh hullo David, could you please take me off your cc list? Thanks.").

crapinahat, i know intimately what you mean. "please please, stop sending me your conspiracy theories!!"

I do feel slightly sorry for a lame duck president obsessed with power (without policy) who thumbed his nose at citizens who had popularly elected an entirely different man, and then did so little to build consensus when he was able to.

i don't. :D he's a criminal. he should suffer sleepless nights for the rest of his godforsaken term.

[priceyfatprude]

DID EVERYONE VOTE for joey lawrence TODAY??...

[TulsaGuy]

i don't. :D he's a criminal. he should suffer sleepless nights for the rest of his godforsaken term. But... tell us how you REALLY feel!

I, too, feel better about the world. Sure, it's not like Iraq will solve itself overnight, but I'm more confident that a better way to "win" may yet be found -- better than staying the (non-existent) course, that is. Maybe we, as a country, can get some of our respect back, at home and abroad. <steaming> Man, the hypocrisy of the Right has rubbed me the wrong way ever since '94... :mad:

And yes, I voted! But in a red state (read "Oklahoma") there's only so much I could do... But we're definitely more "purple" now than we were before.

[TulsaGuy]

DID EVERYONE VOTE for joey lawrence TODAY??

...
LOL Just reminded me that we had an independent House candidate on the ballot here named E.Z. Million... Actually drew about 3% of the vote, I hear.