"I'm so confused".- Grandpop in ""Moonstruck"

[PCIntern]

I'm not too bright so bear with me:

There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of provisional and absentee ballots uncounted as of yet, many of them executed by people who were absolutely resolute in voting Bush out of the WH, and no one in the MSM or practically anywhere else is holding out any hope of reversing the 'decision' in close races? After what we saw in Florida in 2000?

Are people insane? This is a bigger story than...than...Scott Peterson! Or the new Generalissimo Francisco Franco: Arafat. WTF? If I were losing a student council race by 55 votes and many of my buddies had filled in absentee ballots and the student body had as well, I'd be damned sure to count them before I came to any conclusion.

Now what Kerry did may be a Trojan Horse, and maybe he had to do that for interesting reasons. But we don't have to just sit here with thumbs up our asses, not for any reason. We are asking that all ballots be counted - how is that un-American? Why hasn't anyone in the MSM looked at this story and run with it? Is it the Kool-Aid factor, are they in cahoots with * or amazingly, and less likely, with Kerry? I feel like the guy in Close Encounters where he knows something's going on but no one will talk to him.

After the whole business last time in Volusia county with lost ballots, and in Miami-Dade with errant numbers, doesn't anyone think that at least all the votes should be counted for the FIRST time? Where's the outrage? We just spent four frigging years on websites, listservs, e-mails, everything, and all of a sudden we're gonna listen to this crew? I don't think so. Not me. Something's very fishy here and I want it staistically and arithmetically explained to me why I'm not entitled in this day and age to a full count, supervised by both sides. My tax dollar paid for this election and for the campaigns and I demand accountability.

[CrispyQ]

1. Election reform must be done on so many levels, & here are just a few.

...starting with being able to vote on more than one day. And I don't just mean absentee ballots, but also early voting. I don't know how many states/counties offered early voting, but instead of offering voting on one day only (what if you're in an accident in the morning on your way to the polls & lose your only opportunity to vote?) voting should be a 2 week process.

Also, as an election judge for the first time ever, I believe it should be like jury duty -- all citizens are tossed into a lottery to serve as a judge & must attend. Corporations should also encourage this & not be a hinderance to those who are called or volunteer.

We have to get over this idea/desire of knowing who will be the winner on the eve of the election. If Election Day is the first Tuesday of November, then early election should begin 2 weeks prior & there should be an appropriate number of locations & voting booths for early election. Then we should not expect the winner to be announced for another week - maybe two. This will give each precinct/county/state time to count absentee/provisional ballots.

Unfortunately, our "I want what I want & I want it now," mentality, this will never go over.

[PCIntern]

3. You make some valid points...

I'll make a few:

That's why the Dems lose - there's no personal outrage. When those brownshirts showed up at the Miami-Dade Courthouse, there was a lot of "Let me in" and I'm a taxpayer" shit. You like losing? No? You don't want to stand up for your personal rights as a citizen? You think it's OK to disenfrancise the individual, all the while crowing about 'process'? We've seen process: rmember what Mel Brooks said in the film "Spaceballs": "Evil will always win out over Good, because Good is dumb."

Well we have to stop being dumb and be really relaly smart like the Rethugs. They're fucking smart - they go into a place and take no prisoners. No courtesies. Think there were any threads on FR which have the subject line: Let's give Clinton a chance? Right.

They were busy figuring out ways in which he committed capital murder, shooting Ron Brown in the head and then crashing his plane into a mountain in order to make sure he was really dead. And no one got too excited when that came out - ridiculous, right? But it began to take on a life of its own. And then it was quietly mentioned that maybe Clinton wanted Foster and Brown dead and before you knew it it was 'truth' in the RW minds and some middle of the road folk started believeing it themselves. They couldn't decide if Hillary was a Lesbo or if she had been having an affair with Vince Foster, or maybe both! This is how they do things - maybe it's how we should do things. When Kitty Kelley's book came out, we pooh-poohed it a bit - big mistake - we should have been pounding the airwavves and the blogs with that stuff 24/7, jsut like those bastards do over at FR and FOX. People shouldn't have been able to turn on their TV's without hearing someone talk about drugs and abortions and Laura scoring dope for her buddies when she was a MacGovernite. Maybe the Fundies would have stayed home. shit it would hav been worth the effort.

But that goes to the point here - the groups which support the left are basically lazy - not intellectually, but in an acton fashion. They figure if THEY understand something, then everyone else will. Not true - not by a longshot.

[melissaf]

2. Shhh....

Don't tell the mainstream media about it! We don't want a media circus! We just want all the votes to be counted. So that, uh...we can know how great a margin Bush won by! Yeah! That's the ticket! Because he's such a great debater, remember?

;-)