Real Election Reform

[Cyber Wolf]

Several thousand ballots of African Americans were thrown out on technicalities in 2000, and a fumbling attempt has been made recently to disqualify 22,000 African Americans (likely Democrats), but only 61 Hispanics (likely Republicans), as alleged felons.

I'm going to pick at this one of several points made in the article. What I want to know is what's the number of White votes that were thrown out for whatever reason in the 2K election? Or Asian? And how exactly did they know which chad-ballot came from an African American or Hispanic? Is there a place where you indicate your race on the ballot? Do they assume all the ballots from XYZ polling station are, say, African American votes because the neighborhood has a large number of African Americans? Are the poll workers marking the ballots as they come in? I'm only seeing one side of the coin here.

[Happy Monkey]

It is based on statistical percentages of race in the districts under contention, I expect.

The 2004 felon list has more exact statistics, of course.

[Cyber Wolf]

I suppose that makes sense as far as statistics can be relied on. What about the number of statisical White votes that were thrown out for any reason?

[Radar]

Actually in 2000, felons were excluded, and non-felons with the same last name as felons.

When you commit a crime, you're still a citizen. Not only do I believe ex-felons should be able to vote, I believe they should be able to carry guns and have 100% of their rights restored to them. I think they should setup voting booths in prisons.

[glatt]

Florida state law says that former Florida felons can be purged from the voting rolls. Former felons who moved to Florida from other states (where they committed the felony) can't be purged. But Florida improperly purged both kinds of former felons before the 2000 election. The alleged margin of victory in Florida in 2000 was a couple hundred votes, but the number of improperly purged voters was in the tens of thousands. The former felons vote for Democrats something like 80-90% of the time. The improper and illegal purging of those tens of thousands of legitimate voters caused Bush to win the presidency.

This time around, they tried to purge another 48,000 voters, and refused to release the list to outsiders to check its accuracy. A lawsuit brought by CNN in the summer caused a judge to release the list to the public, against the Republican election officials' wishes. In fact, the Republicans fought in court to keep the list secret. I'm not sure where things stand now, but I think that CNN etc. have been scrutinizing the list to find errors in it so they can be fixed. At least it's in good hands. I don't know if there is time to fix any mistakes though.

Meanwhile, many of the improperly purged voters from the 2000 election still have not been put back on the list, so they still can't vote. There is all sorts of red tape that puts the burden of proof on them to show that they were mistakenly removed from the list. How many John Smiths are out there? If your name is John Smith, and another John Smith committed a felony in Florida, you lost your right to vote, and you have to go to court to get it back. Most people don't have the energy or resources to fight to get it back. The burden should be on the government to remove a name, not on the citizen to put the name back on.

The Florida Republicans are a bunch of evil, dirty SOBs who don't care about democracy. They use dirty tricks to hold on to power when the majority clearly supports the opposing party.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Florida Republicans are a bunch of evil, dirty SOBs who don't care about democracy. They use dirty tricks to hold on to power when the majority clearly supports the opposing party.

glatt, you should really try to indicate what is fact and what is your own opinion.

Oh,..wait,...that is fact,........nevermind.

[glatt]

My only hope for Florida is that they got rid of the butterfly ballots, so they won't have that problem again this time. That problem accounted for tens of thousands of votes not being counted for Gore. The Republicans aren't to blame for that problem, but it certainly helped them. If Florida is as close this election as it was last election, the absence of butterfly ballots alone should mean Kerry will win.

Of course, the wildcard for this election is the electronic voting machines. Diebold is run by a staunch Republican who donated the maximum to the Bush campaign. I hope the reports that the machines are easily hacked are wrong. I grew up in a little Maine town with paper ballots. They were fool proof. Call me a luddite, but paper ballots appeal to me a lot.

[russotto]

All right

#1: Compulsory voting. OK, you're dragging the most apathetic and lazy people out to vote. They don't know nor care about the issues. They turn off campaign ads. Who are they most likely to vote for? A certain percentage, whoever has a (D) after their name. Another percentage (about the same), an (R). And some percentage, whatever name is most familiar. Which means the incumbent.

#2: Eliminating soft money. Besides the free speech issues (which the Supreme Court derided last time around), the incumbent, being the incumbent, already has an advantage at fund-raising and can do better even with equal funds. By eliminating abilities for his challengers to outspend him, you protect the incumbent.

#3: Eliminating mass media advertising. OK, who has the best access to mass media without advertising? The incumbent, that's who.

#4: Shortening the campaign season --- but the incumbent can do all sorts of things in the course of his job that amount to campaigning.