Have you now, a week before the election with Obama looking extremely good to win this thing, become an Obama supporter?Originally Posted by FutureTaoiseach
I want to see a fair fight. That comes first. But the reality is that the GOP's increasing resort to voter-suppression undermines the moral credibility of the McCain candidacy itself. The US will have little credibility in criticising Robert Mugabe if it starts running elections like he does.
The American people tolerated the rigged elections of 1876, 1886 and 2000 so why should this be any different?I can't believe I even need to answer that. In 1876 and 1886 there wasn't 24-hour news coverage, scientific opinion polling and exit polling, and a thing called the internet. Pretty much all you knew about how the vote was going was based on how YOU voted. And 2000 was the classic example, as I referred in my previous post, to the type of election that you CAN rig - i.e one where one state decides the whole thing, and the pre-election and exit poll figures have the state as a dead heat (not a "statistical dead heat", but a REAL one). I didn't realise the extent to which I'd have to explain that to you.
Like I said earlier, if you seriously think that, based on current polls, if the Americans were suddenly presented with a President McCain, they'd just shrug, have a giggle about it being "Dewey beats Truman" again, or say "Gee Whizz, the Bradley Effect", and go back to their lives, then you seriously do have a screw loose. If the polls stay like this, yet McCain was to then be declared the winner, American democracy would be facing its biggest crisis EVER. And a President with no mandate to govern simply would not be allowed to govern. America would come to a halt - with incalculable consequences for the rest of the world. But that will not happen, because, as I've told you several times - You. Don't. Rig. Blowout. Elections.And as for a discrepancy between the polls and the 'results', it will be portrayed as a "Dewey beats Truman" moment or evidence of the 'Bradley Effect'.
Because when you do, you get caught.
But a few of the polls, such as IBD, and the Gallup Likely Voter (Traditional) polls have this race within the margin-of-error. In that context, many would be deceived into believing it was the will of the people that McCain 'won'. E-voting is the perfect way to rig an election without paper-trails in many cases.
Like I said earlier, if you seriously think that, based on current polls, if the Americans were suddenly presented with a President McCain, they'd just shrug, have a giggle about it being "Dewey beats Truman" again, or say "Gee Whizz, the Bradley Effect", and go back to their lives, then you seriously do have a screw loose. If the polls stay like this, yet McCain was to then be declared the winner, American democracy would be facing its biggest crisis EVER. And a President with no mandate to govern simply would not be allowed to govern. America would come to a halt - with incalculable consequences for the rest of the world. But that will not happen, because, as I've told you several times - You. Don't. Rig. Blowout. Elections.
Because when you do, you get caught.
But by the figures you used previously, 79% of PBs were actually allowed, with 21% not allowed. So if you take Fox's 3% figure, and take 21% of that, you get 0.63% of the total poll not being allowed. And of course not all PBs will vote Obama. But even if they do, the fact therefore remains that if the exact situation on the ground in Florida (if you could, for the sake of argument, have a perfect opinion poll) were to have Obama ahead by just 0.64% statewide, then all those disallowed PBs wouldn't make a jot of difference, and he'd still win the state. And let's face it, perfect or otherwise, most polls have Obama more than 0.64% ahead in Florida.
Do you even know how the adjudication process on PBs works?A lot of the people getting PBs are simply victims of foreclosure/repossession, and are forced by Republican poll-workers to use them because they are either not in the books, or because they treat homeless people as people fraudulently registered at their old homes. In some states, up to 5% were forced to use PBs in 2004. Keep a close eye on the PB-rate in the swing states. If it's very high then we know what's going on.
No. Obama has now led in FIFTY-ONE successive national polls, and 59 of the last 60. No-one in America thinks that's "within the margin of error". If some polls showed McCain ahead, some were tied, and some showed Obama ahead, you'd have a point. But they don't, so you don't. Then there's the swing states - you claim Pennsylvania is ripe for fraud - well no, it isn't. Because its 50 polls since McCain last led in Pennsylvania, and Obama's average lead there is a whopping 9.8%. Now do you SERIOUSLY think a McCain victory there would be greeted by "Gee Whizz, there it is again, the Bradley Effect"? Will it f*ck. The greatest legal operation in history would swing into action rightaway.
Well HBAP, the fact that 97% of PBs in Chicago were dumped in a river in 2004 does not inspire confidence.
More on PBs. Among those being forced to use PBs are people who were purged from the rolls simply for inactivity i.e. not voting in the last 2 elections, people who lose their homes and whose former addresses go into Republican 'caging lists' whose validity will then be questioned by Republican 'voter-challengers' in the polling-stations between now and Nov 4th., possibly forcing them to vote with PBs which may or may not be counted. In Missouri, where the RCP average only gives Obama a 0.6% lead, PBs could easily be enough to swing the result either way, and Missouri law cynically doesn't count a PB unless they turn up in the "right" polling-station. In the New Mexico Democratic primary a few months ago, it turned out that entire streets of Democratic voters were turned away from the polls as they had been purged from the rolls. Those purged tend to be from groups likely to vote Democratic, including African-Americans and Hispanics.:
The Vote Grab: Voter purge could swing result to McCain
[COLOR=#0066cc]By Peter Tatchell[/COLOR]
Around [COLOR=#0066cc]13 million US voters[/COLOR] have been purged from the electoral rolls since 2004. That's 10 per cent of the 120 million votes cast in 2004 and twice as many voters as have been added through recent massive voter registration drives.
The proportion of electors dropped from the voters' lists is staggering: 17 per cent in Colorado, 15 per cent in Washington State, 14 per cent in New York, 13 per cent in Nevada and 10 per cent in Missouri.
This means that millions of Americans will not be allowed to vote on 4 November. It could cost Barack Obama the White House, even if he is ahead in the opinion polls on 4 November.
This sensational claim is confirmed by the New York Times (NYT). Its researchers have [COLOR=#0066cc]found[/COLOR] that in some states for every new voter registered in the last couple of months, two voters have been removed – negating Obama’s massive voter registration drive. This voter purging could mean fewer people voting in 2008 than voted in 2004.
In Colorado, for example, which has seen a significant population increase since the last presidential election, the state has [COLOR=#0066cc]recorded[/COLOR] a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004.
The NYT also reports that Louisiana, Michigan and Colorado are [COLOR=#0066cc]deleting[/COLOR] registered voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is illegal except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.
Deleting voters who have died or moved inter-state accounts for only some of this purge. The NYT discovered that in Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan the number of people removed from the election rolls since 1 August exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period by 300 per cent to 400 per cent. And people who have failed to vote in two or more previous elections are being dumped from the voter rolls, often without being informed. They may decide to vote this time, but when they turn up at the polling booths they will find their names erased and their eligibility voided.
Meanwhile, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Alabama and Georgia are [COLOR=#0066cc]improperly using[/COLOR] the less reliable Social Security database to verify registration applications for new voters, instead of using the more accurate and up-to-date state and local records. Vote applicants whose Social Security data doesn’t match their electoral registration data are being denied the right to vote.
According to analysis by the NYT:
Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.Some states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require a "perfect match." New registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — their Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records. Typos by government clerks are resulting in voters being scrubbed from the rolls.
The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid.
Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.
In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 non-matches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 non-matches.
In the first few days of early voting in Florida, 5,000 voters have [COLOR=#0066cc]already been rejected[/COLOR], mostly because of typos and bureaucratic blunders in the spelling of their names.
Non-match discrepancies could result in hundreds of thousands of US citizens - perhaps millions - losing their right to vote. Even those who are allowed to remain on the register may be required to vote using a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted.
Republicans are planning to use non-matches as the basis on which to challenge the voting rights of Democrats, which could affect the outcome of the presidential poll in close-run battleground states.
This evidence of vote suppression is independently corroborated by a BBC Newsnight investigation by reporter Greg Palast. You can watch his eye-popping report here:
Palast says that of the millions of voters who have been purged from the rolls, most seem to be poor and black voters who are more likely to vote Democrat.
During elections in New Mexico earlier this year, one in nine voters found that their names had disappeared from the voter rolls. Whole streets of voters in poor neighbourhoods just disappeared from the rolls.
The 2004 tactic of removing or challenging innocent voters who share the same or similar names is still being pursued by some states, especially in cases where they happen to correspond to the names of convicted criminals.
It has happened before. During the last presidential election, one in four Ohio voters who registered in 2004 turned up at the polling booth only to discover that their names were not on the voter roll – an exclusion rate of 25 per cent.
Palast argues that the next President of the US may not be chosen by counting the votes, but by blocking the voters. His damning report calls into question the credibility of US democracy;
Democrat Party leaders are too high on their "Yes we can" hype to kick up a fuss about this massive disenfranchisement of their voters. They naively assume that their big voter registration drive and Obama’s poll lead will give them victory, regardless of the election bias. But that is what they said about John Kerry in 2004. This combination of arrogance and complacency puts at risk the freedom and fairness of the 4 November ballot. Obama looks set to win, but don't bet on it.
To contact the author or for more information about his human rights campaigns visit[COLOR=#0066cc] www.petertatchell.net[/COLOR]
Link?
So, how much different is that to Ireland's revision of the electoral register pre-2007, along with the use by our main parties of personation officers at polling stations?Among those being forced to use PBs are people who were purged from the rolls simply for inactivity i.e. not voting in the last 2 elections, people who lose their homes and whose former addresses go into Republican 'caging lists' whose validity will then be questioned by Republican 'voter-challengers' in the polling-stations between now and Nov 4th., possibly forcing them to vote with PBs which may or may not be counted. In Missouri, where the RCP average only gives Obama a 0.6% lead, PBs could easily be enough to swing the result either way, and Missouri law cynically doesn't count a PB unless they turn up in the "right" polling-station. In the New Mexico Democratic primary a few months ago, it turned out that entire streets of Democratic voters were turned away from the polls as they had been purged from the rolls. Those purged tend to be from groups likely to vote Democratic, including African-Americans and Hispanics.
Of course it's different. We don't have people losing their vote when they lose their homes. We don't have politicians drawing up 'caging lists' of addresses of supporters of opposing parties and then deleting them from the electoral register if they lose their homes. The key difference is that in the US, elected politicians have day to day operational control of the electoral register and of administering the elections, right down to deciding where polling stations go in a way designed to suppress your opponents' vote with long lines. Also, we don't have different rules on removing names from the rolls in different counties, unlike in counties of US states, or laws allowing partisan poll oficials to 'challenge' voters to force them to use provisional ballots which then may or may not be counted. And unlike the US system, we don't have laws requiring your registration to be cancelled because your details don't match 100% with the PPS.no's or because of you being confused with the details of people with similar names (unlike what is required by the US Help America Vote Act 2002 which has helped disenfranchise millions because of erroneous federal records. If and when Black Irish citizens are having to wait for hours to vote in areas where they are heavily concentrated because of their party-allegiances then you could say our system is close to the US but as of now you are unjustified in doing so. And remember that our purge in Ireland still left us with a larger register when you added new voters, unlike the US where 13 million people were purged and 6 million added.
I saw that interview on y/t - Megyn Kelly was an absolute disgrace. Throwing out ridiculous 'balance' claims, both in their own favour and against the rest of the media - as if Faux News was a beacon of shining light. Nothing which hasn't become expected from that pisspot scratching of a channel.
EDITHaving lambasted them above, only right to proffer credit where it is due - here's a vid of Shepherd Smith interviewing Joe The Plumber on Faux last night about some craziness Joe's been shilling about Obama and Israel. During the interview, the McCain camp releases a statement which all but endorses Joe's paranoid rantings. To his credit, Smith ends the piece as follows:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQYcVO5DhqQ"]YouTube - McCain Stands By Joe Plumber's Fearmongering On Israel[/ame]I just want to make this 100% perfectly clear. Barack Obama has said repeatedly and demonstrated repeatedly that Israel will always be a friend to the United States no matter what happens once he becomes President of the United States. His words. Umm, the rest of it...man...some things...it just gets frightening sometimes.
Last edited by khavakoz; 29th October 2008 at 11:18 AM. Reason: INserting second element, fixing youtube ref.
entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Obama is ahead by an average of almost 6.4% in the national polls and by an average of 7.05% in the most accurate national polls (those with a weighting of 0.99 or over).The American people tolerated the rigged elections of 1876, 1886 and 2000 so why should this be any different?
And as for a discrepancy between the polls and the 'results', it will be portrayed as a "Dewey beats Truman" moment or evidence of the 'Bradley Effect'.
BTW, today's polls:
He's ahead by an average of 7.5% in the two most accurate PA polls and it looks like he's on course to win CO and probably FL and OH.
I don't share FutureTaoiseach's pessimistic (optimistic?) view that fraud will 'win' this election for McCain.
Any fraud would have to be on such a massive and widespread scale that McCain's 'victory' would have little or no credibility and would mark the end of democracy in the US.
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