Time to start over (Garrison Keillor)Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 2/6/08

[kpete]

Time to start over (Garrison Keillor)Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 2/6/08

Time to start over
The American people are looking for a change this year, and so am I.

By Garrison Keillor

Feb. 6, 2008 | Only February and already it's a fine political year here in our great roisterous republic with a carnival cast of colorful drones and smiley eminences huffing and puffing across the field of battle and tumbling off the cliff, leaving two serious contenders in each party. Thanks to all the candidates for their nerve. Hurray for democracy, which has been so generous to keyboard wretches like me. And to all the soreheads who say the presidential campaign season is too long, a big Bronx cheer (pppppppppppppp). Not when it's this interesting, it isn't.

It is a wonderful system indeed that can take a long look at America's Mayor and hand him his hat. The man thought he could get by on symbolism, but the more people saw of him, the less they liked him. The more he spent on marketing, the better John McCain looked. And there, in a nutshell, is why you and I have sensibly stayed out of the race. Delusional grandiose self-absorption is not a qualification for high office. Goodbye, Rudy and Judy. Have a nice day somewhere.

Goodbye, John Edwards, whom friends of mine liked and who ran against the Current Occupant, which is a forlorn and fruitless endeavor, like yelling at a horse. If the Democrats run on anger and the urge to pay back the God, Guns & Capital Gains Party, they're likely to lose. Move on. That's my problem with Sen. Clinton: If she becomes president, must we relive Renaissance Weekends and New Age narcissism, and then do we also get the return of Kenneth Starr and the Mellon man?

...................

The American people are looking for change this year, and so am I, and yet my imagination is planted in the past. Is that sad or what? I wander through the museum and the art of 2007 strikes me as shallow and zany, and the modern art of the early 20th century -- Matisse, Kandinsky, Klee, Chagall, Hopper -- seems noble and full of tenderness. A Chopin étude is a porcelain bowl holding powerful affections, and if someone sits at the piano and plays Chopin, the house is filled with images of beautiful women in lamplight looking out at fields of snow, children asleep on a pile of coats at a party, quiet husbands starved for love, the dignity of dogs, the taste of caviar and onion on toast, the pleasure of the forbidden kiss, the feeling of silk. I listen to Sarah Songwriter's lines about the boyfriend who disappointed her and wonder if she is getting enough exercise. I listen to Mahler's Fourth and it seems to contain the lives of everyone I ever knew.

I think of when I was in college and owned about three cardboard boxes of stuff and a corduroy sport coat and six pairs of jeans and a Webster's Third Unabridged and an Underwood typewriter. I can't be that guy again, but sometimes when life is too much, you want to walk out the front door and leave it all behind and start over. That's how I feel about this election. The White House is a vacuum. The man is a mistake on two legs, a national wrong turn. Stop the car and turn around.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)





more at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/02/06/change/

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[kpete]

1. Darth Vader guarding the ballot box

Darth Vader guarding the ballot box

Maybe it's a giant conspiracy -- nothing should surprise us when it comes to odd voting problems. Maybe it's simply further evidence (there's been a lot lately) that America is losing its wits and with them its competency. Shouldn't we be able to organize and count votes?

The California voting predictions were so far from the outcome that we'd be fools not to ask questions. Suspicion is easier. It's harder to accept so much incompetence, so often.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/us/politics/05cnd-calif.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1202303158-QEkpUey+P6ZdIjVRQOIHpA&oref=slogin

In Los Angeles County, independents in at least 15 precincts said they were never told that they had to mark an extra box on their ballots in order for the ballots to be counted, and voters from more than a dozen polling places also reported being erroneously told that they were not allowed to vote for a Democratic candidate.

Unaffiliated or “decline-to-state” voters account for nearly 20 percent of registered voters in California, and more than 700,000 voters in Los Angeles County.

Conpiracy or incompetence? Doesn't matter much anymore. Eight years after Florida 2000, we may have proof here in Los Angeles, finally, that we are unable to provide the necessary structure for a democracy.

more at:
http://prairieweather.typepad.com/big_blue_stem/2008/02/darth-vader-gua.html

[kpete]

2. More Details on 'Double Bubble Trouble' in Los Angeles County

February 6th, 2008

More Details on 'Double Bubble Trouble' in Los Angeles County

Hundreds of Thousands of Non-Partisan Voter Ballots May Not be Counted in California's Open Democratic Primary Election

City Attorney Calls for Review by CA SoS, County Registrar of Voters...
Alright, we've got a bona fide mess here in Los Angeles County. We covered this a bit earlier tonight, but have been speaking with various precinct captains and trying to figure out exactly what's going on. As mentioned it's a confusing mess, and could indeed be shaping up as "California's Butterfly Ballot" as far as we can tell.

There are two main problems:

Many voters who thought they were registering as non-partisan independents have been surprised to learn they registered instead as members of the "American Independent" party, and thus, were not allowed to vote in the open Democratic primary.

More insidiously, those independent non-partisan voters who did successfully manage to get registered as "Decline to State" (or DTS, or Non-Partisan), were allowed to vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary if they requested to do so when voting. However, without filling in a certain bubble on the ballot, specifying they wanted it to be counted in the Dem Primary, their vote for President, according to LA County's Registrar of Voters, will not be counted.
After being up since dawn, we hope to get some rest tonight shortly, and will then get a clearer picture on all of this, and the myriad other problems reported elsewhere in California and around the nation tomorrow (and beyond).

more at:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5659

[kpete]

3. Myth that Touch-Screen Voting Machines Mean Faster Election Results Debunked

Myth that Touch-Screen Voting Machines Mean Faster Election Results Debunked

By Kim Zetter February 05, 2008 | 3:13:46 PMCategories: E-Voting, Election '08

California election officials who have been forced by the state to replace their touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan machines due to security issues have been complaining to reporters that going back to paper ballots will mean long delays for election results -- possibly "hours or even days." In fact nearly every story I read that mentions the California primary quotes an official saying this.

But Kim Alexander, President of the California Voter Foundation, debunks the oft-repeated claim that electronic voting machines automatically mean faster results.
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51331

Alexander reviewed past status reports that were posted to the CA secretary of state's web site on election nights to see how prompt counties were in delivering results after polls closed. The only pattern she found among counties that produced late results was the size of the jurisdiction. Larger counties tended to be slower in producing results. She says election officials who try to claim that results were delivered faster in the past when electronic voting machines were used are engaging in revisionism.

She also found that some touch-screen counties were actually slower to produce results than paper counties, due to problems experienced with the machines.

For example, San Bernardino was one of the earliest adopters of electronic voting and has had repeated problems getting its results up on a timely basis. In March 2004, the county had zero percent of its precincts reported by 12:17 a.m. on election night. In the 2004 General election, the county managed to get 47 percent of its precincts reported by 1:29 a.m. In the 2005 statewide special election, zero precincts were reported by 9:46 p.m. and in the 2006 primary, zero precincts were reported by 10:32 p.m.

I wouldn't be picking on San Bernardino County if not for the fact that its spokesperson told the Riverside Press Enterrpise that "compared to what we'vebeen working with, this is very much a Stone Age process." It is simply a matter of historical revision for any county - and particularly, San Bernardino - to claim that electronic voting has resulted in speedy, accurate results.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51331

[kpete]

4. State Victory Breakdowns

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

State Victory Breakdowns -- and what will Mitt do?
by Joe Sudbay (DC) ·


Below are the states won by the respective candidates.

Democrats

Clinton: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee

Obama: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah

New Mexico is still undecided -- and very, very close. Vote counting starts again at 11:00 a.m. Eastern.

Republicans

Huckabee: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia

McCain: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma

Romney: Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah

http://www.americablog.com/2008/02/state-victory-breakdowns-and-what-will.html

[kpete]

5. Whatever Happened to "One Person, One Vote"?

jurisprudence: The law, lawyers, and the court.
Whatever Happened to "One Person, One Vote"?
Why the crazy caucus and primary rules are legal.
By Richard L. Hasen

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008, at 5:33 PM ET

In the Iowa Democratic caucuses last month, Democrats had no right to cast a secret ballot. In tonight's Super Tuesday primary, Republican Party rules dictate that the state of Georgia will send more delegates (72) than Illinois (70) to the party's presidential nominating convention. Illinois has a larger population than Georgia, but Georgia has more reliable Republican voters. In the Democratic Nevada caucuses, rural votes counted more than urban ones, and while Hillary Clinton got more popular votes in the state than Barack Obama, it appears Obama will capture 13 of Nevada's Democratic delegates compared to Clinton's 12. Orthodox Jews complained that they couldn't vote in the Saturday morning Nevada caucuses. In California tonight, if neither Clinton nor Obama gets more than 62 percent of the vote in a congressional district, the two are likely to split the district-based delegates evenly. On the Republican side in the California primary, Romney and McCain are targeting the few Republican voters in heavily Democratic districts, because some of California's Republican delegates are awarded based on the winner of each congressional district, not the statewide winner. And when the primaries are over, under the Democratic Party rules, "superdelegates" such as big-city mayors—who have not been chosen by voters—could hold the balance of power between Clinton and Obama in a brokered summer convention.

What gives? Didn't the Supreme Court declare a "one person, one vote" principle back in the 1960s requiring the equal weighting of votes? And shouldn't this render most of these party rules unconstitutional? The short answer is no. Although most of the deviations from "one person, one vote" would be unconstitutional if a state put them to work in the general election for president, party primaries and caucuses are different. Aside from some really egregious no-nos, such as weighting candidate delegate strength according to the race of their supporters, courts are likely to stay out of disputes over the rules for choosing the parties' presidential nominees.

The reason for the different treatment is the hybrid nature of our electoral system. Party primaries and caucuses have elements that are public (the state often pays to run them, and they lead to choices on the public general election ballot) and elements that are private (political parties are not government entities, they are private associations). Private associations have a First Amendment right to exclude those who disagree with them, and to structure their internal affairs as they see fit. Presidential primaries straddle this public-private divide because presidential nominations are ultimately made at party-run conventions.

http://www.slate.com/id/2183751/

[paparush]

6. Going Back to Reagan, We've had a Bush or Clinton in the WH for the last 28 years

Based on that alone, I'm willing to vote for someone other than Hillary.

[mzmolly]

7. Recommending because I adore Garrison Keillor.

:toast:

[robinlynne]

8. Los Angeles undervote question: Looking at the registrar's numbers, I found

that of the voters who cast ballots, 11.048% did not vote for president. Does anyone know what the normal statistics are? We witnessed huge eleciton probelms here, and I am tying to determine if in fact there was a significant undervote for president because of the "check this extra box if you are independent and want to vote for president" ballot.

Feedback would be appreciated if you have any idea of what a normal undervote should be. (I thought 3% was around the norm.)

[Wilms]

10. Haven't figured it out but don't be surprised if it's the Double Bubble Trouble Rubble. n/t

[2 Much Tribulation]

9. Amen for stopping the car, and even for Kandinsky! nt