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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScoop Coverage Indecision 2012: NZT - 11.30am - Stealing Ohio? Reasons to be Paranoid.
So for this election Scoop's political editor Gordon Campbell and I are live blogging the election at this link. The following update is from Gordon C. The Exit Poll data I have just seen with 73% White Vote turnout and good Black and Latino turnout looks good for Obama in theory.... Gordon is a very experienced watcher of US elections and this time it is interesting to see that he is far warmer to the impact of voter caging and electoral fraud.
On the edge of my seat.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2012/11/07/blogging-us-election-day-2012/
Update: 11.30am
Stealing Ohio? Reasons to be Paranoid.
Vote suppression among poor, black and Latino voters and tampering with the voting machines is the dark side of Election Day, USA. The latest example? Last Friday, just one working day before the election, Ohios secretary of state Jon Husted (who is a Republican) announced a change to the voter ID rules, thereby placing the onus onto voters of identifying on their ballot the type of voter ID they used in casting a provisional ballot. This is despite the clear wording under Ohio state law that this onus rests with the poll workers on election day.As one veteran Ohio poll observer told the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
I think we would find provisional ballots are disporportionally more common in poorer precincts. For financially stable voters, which in Ohio is middle-class and suburban populations that are statistically more likely to vote Republican, complying to this directive is both far less likely to even come up, and as some are saying, no big deal to comply to. But in the urban precincts where I have observed over three federal elections, use of, and confusion about, the correct use of provisional ballots was very common; and the poll workers were not clear or informed about how to use them correctly. The net effect of this directive is to create additional barriers to vote for poor, urban citizens. In that regard, it is like the poll taxes of old, which were relatively insignificant to white voters, but punitive to poorer blacks.
Husteds gambit will be challenged in an Ohio court tomorrow morning, the day after the election. So if the overall result is close, this will be the opening shot in the recount/litigation battle. Even more alarmingly, Husted has also been the central player in the decision to place 39 experimental (and as yet, unauthorized) software patches into the electronic voting machines in 39 counties across Ohio. This story is so disturbing it should be read in full.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
Sample extract:
Questions about a last-minute secret software patch to be used across multiple counties in Ohio, one that now resides on vote tabulation systems and is said to produce easily modifiable text files to be uploaded to a very partisan secretary of states Election Night Reporting System, certainly have a familiar, and to some, a chilling ring just over 24 hours before the next presidential election could well be decided in the Buckeye State.
As the Free Press notes, Government reports such as Ohios Everest study [PDF] [the landmark analysis of the state's electronic voting systems by world class academic and corporate computer science and security experts, commissioned by Husted's Democratic predecessor Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner] document that any single change to the system could corrupt the whole voting process.
Late on Sunday, in a new update from Bello and Fitrakis at the Free Press, the pair describe that The potential federal illegality of this software has been hidden from public scrutiny by the Secretary of States Election Counsel Brandi Seske. They report that a Sept. 29 memo from Seske describes de minimis changes in the ES&S software that allowed for use of the software updates without state testing. De minimis, they explain, is a legal term for minute.
And yet, they go on to cite a memo from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, the body tasked with certifying electronic voting and tabulation systems at the federal level, dated February 8, 2012 entitled Software and Firmware modifications are not de minimis changes.
Ohio election law provides for experimental equipment only in a limited number of precincts per county, they report. Installing uncertified and untested software on central tabulation equipment essentially affects every single precinct in a given county.
The method of execution chosen, for this effort, notes March in his affidavit for the Fitrakis/Arnebeck injunction lawsuit, is unspeakably stupid, excessively complex and insanely risky. In medical terms it is the equivalent of doing open heart surgery as part of a method of removing somebodys hemorrhoids. Whoever came up with this idea is either the dumbest Information Technology professional in the US or has criminal intent against the Ohio election process.
Not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
(Back in 20 minutes.)
kstewart33
(6,551 posts)Forget the paranoia posts, at least for the next few hours. No time for paranoia, at least not tonight, IMHO.
althecat
(5,747 posts).... to be Paranoid.
E.G. Republican Strategist on CNN has started talking about "Reticent Republican Responses" to the Exit Poll. I am guessing that the raw exit poll is showing an Obama Victory. That certainly seems to be what John King thinks.
However I reckon we are headed for something that looks like indecision.
althecat
(5,747 posts)Update 12.35pm
Wow. Without even blinking, CNN just gave us an incidental summary of Romneyeconomics : hell give everyone a 20% tax cut, and close some tax loopholes. Thats how hell deal with the deficit. Oh good. And hell massively increase defence spending. No wonder The Economistrecently endorsed Obama, however grudgingly. Their dissing of Romney was on the button :
Far from being the voice of fiscal prudence, Mr Romney wants to start with huge tax cuts (which will disproportionately favour the wealthy), while dramatically increasing defence spending. Together those measures would add $7 trillion to the ten-year deficit. He would balance the books through eliminating loopholes (a good idea, but he will not specify which ones) and through savage cuts to programmes that help Americas poor (a bad idea, which will increase inequality still further). At least Mr Obama .has made it clear that any long-term solution has to involve both entitlement reform and tax rises. Mr Romney is still in the cloud-cuckoo-land of thinking you can do it entirely through spending cuts: the Republican even rejected a ratio of ten parts spending cuts to one part tax rises. Backing business is important, but getting the macroeconomics right matters far more.
Loved this verdict from yesterdays Financial Times :
Investors are attempting to position themselves in different asset classes for an uncertain outcome. Romneys policy is dollar-bullish while Obamas re-election means the status quo: dovish monetary and expansionary fiscal policy and so dollar-bearish, says James Kwok, head of currency management at Amundi.
(Back in 15 minutes )