Monday, November 22, 2004
Election games
For those of you not tracking this stuff, but nonetheless interested, here's the score:
1. The exit poll discrepancies remain somewhat smelly, and some studies make much ado of these, but I find the evidence still not altogether convincing, merely suggestive. (The latter site is worth reading in depth, if this interests you... excellent, unbiased coverage.)
2. More recent kerfuffles surround efforts which don't rely on the exit polls and nonetheless find a rather foul stench in the air as well. This paper's methodology has, however, been attacked, and some of the points it finds questionable are ones which I (with minimal effort on research) have had answered to my satisfaction.
Nonetheless, I'd call this the current flag-bearer for the basic troublesome question, "Why is it that every anomaly found, even by the more responsible and bipartisan investigators, favours Bush?"
3. Ohio is looking messy. Hearing after hearing, deposition after deposition shows a hugely systematic pattern of voter suppression, mostly in the form of lineups - American's don't get the day off to vote, and three or more hours in line is often more than your job is worth - in primarily Democratic districts, and not in others. Shorting their voting machines, generally, while keeping a decent number in storage and never deploying them at all.
My question is what they can do with it... how do you 'recount' the votes that were never cast because Blackwell violated the guideline (one machine per 100 people) by some three- to ten-fold? Turnout hit 70-75% in some counties... but multiplying the time allowed (5 min. per voter) by the machines provided, gets you enough for maybe 40-50% turnout tops, before close of polls. Nasty. And this is just the cleanest, simplest suppression tactic... some of them are downright brutal.
Need we mention how much harder it would be to make a properly educated populace fall for this sort of thing? No? Good.
4. Bev Harris's group, Black Box Voting (dot org) is either running a monkeyshow of beyond Michael-Moorish proportions, stunting for the public with heavily spiced halftruths, or else they've uncovered something truly vile, way beyond stinky and straight on into pestilential and in need of cauterization. Their website has been updated only infrequently... I would guess that whichever hypothesis is correct, they're bloody busy just now. Keep an eye on this one, folks. It could be the spike that cracks the turtle's egg open.
So... yeah. Yuck. Our cousins to the south are as fucked-up as I had feared they were. And probably shit out of luck or recourse, more's the pity. Well, my friends, there are a few things we can potentially do to help. After all, helping your neighbour is a Canadian kind of thing...
1. The exit poll discrepancies remain somewhat smelly, and some studies make much ado of these, but I find the evidence still not altogether convincing, merely suggestive. (The latter site is worth reading in depth, if this interests you... excellent, unbiased coverage.)
2. More recent kerfuffles surround efforts which don't rely on the exit polls and nonetheless find a rather foul stench in the air as well. This paper's methodology has, however, been attacked, and some of the points it finds questionable are ones which I (with minimal effort on research) have had answered to my satisfaction.
Nonetheless, I'd call this the current flag-bearer for the basic troublesome question, "Why is it that every anomaly found, even by the more responsible and bipartisan investigators, favours Bush?"
3. Ohio is looking messy. Hearing after hearing, deposition after deposition shows a hugely systematic pattern of voter suppression, mostly in the form of lineups - American's don't get the day off to vote, and three or more hours in line is often more than your job is worth - in primarily Democratic districts, and not in others. Shorting their voting machines, generally, while keeping a decent number in storage and never deploying them at all.
My question is what they can do with it... how do you 'recount' the votes that were never cast because Blackwell violated the guideline (one machine per 100 people) by some three- to ten-fold? Turnout hit 70-75% in some counties... but multiplying the time allowed (5 min. per voter) by the machines provided, gets you enough for maybe 40-50% turnout tops, before close of polls. Nasty. And this is just the cleanest, simplest suppression tactic... some of them are downright brutal.
Need we mention how much harder it would be to make a properly educated populace fall for this sort of thing? No? Good.
4. Bev Harris's group, Black Box Voting (dot org) is either running a monkeyshow of beyond Michael-Moorish proportions, stunting for the public with heavily spiced halftruths, or else they've uncovered something truly vile, way beyond stinky and straight on into pestilential and in need of cauterization. Their website has been updated only infrequently... I would guess that whichever hypothesis is correct, they're bloody busy just now. Keep an eye on this one, folks. It could be the spike that cracks the turtle's egg open.
So... yeah. Yuck. Our cousins to the south are as fucked-up as I had feared they were. And probably shit out of luck or recourse, more's the pity. Well, my friends, there are a few things we can potentially do to help. After all, helping your neighbour is a Canadian kind of thing...
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