FL Elections

[ghuinness]

Wasn't sure if I should post this in humour ...

I heard a report on the local radio about FL Dems requesting the
UN assist with the 2004 elections.

Ran a search and found the petition.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/372796583?ts=1088814728&sign[partner_userID]=618519122&sign[memberID]=618519122&sign[partnerID]=1


I can't believe it. I am stunned....

Edited: to add a news link.
H of Rep Members pushing this as well (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&u=/afp/20040702/pl_afp/us_vote_congress_040702062257&printer=1) :rolleyes:

[Gypsy]

I was pretty stunned myself, they really have some nerve. The UN is useless or haven't they noticed? WTH is it with these people thinking this ineffectual body could come into OUR Country and regulate the election. Idiots all of them. NDD it is time to call for another jihad. :mad:

[The Reaper]

Sorry, would this be the same UN that ran the "Oil for Food" program?

Well, we see what paragons of virtue they were there, eh?

I think not! Someone send that link to O'Reilly!

TR

[Gypsy]

Obviously they don't have two brain cells to rub together and they haven't heard the news....lovely program, that Food for Oil. Corruption at its finest.

Done.

[CRad]

Several Members of House of Reps? Who are they? Can we have some names Please? I have seen nothing in the Miami Herald about this and I mean nothing. If there is somthing in the morning paper I will say so, but this website said Fri July 2 at 2 AM and I have recieved a morning paper since then. Frankly, I think it's a crock of shit.

The Herald is full of news about the new Cuba regulations, felon purges, and the like. The UN being involved in the voting? this is the first I have heard of any of it. Shocking is the best I can say.


WASHINGTON (AFP) - Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations (news - web sites) to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by CRad
Several Members of House of Reps? Who are they? Can we have some names Please? I have seen nothing in the Miami Herald about this and I mean nothing. If there is somthing in the morning paper I will say so, but this website said Fri July 2 at 2 AM and I have recieved a morning paper since then. Frankly, I think it's a crock of shit.


Looks like at least one of them is named in the referenced article:

Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

She appears to be a Texas 30th District Congresswoman, but it is not on her web site yet.

C, you no longer live in the United States, what do you expect from your local paper?

TR

[ghuinness]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Someone send that link to O'Reilly!

TR

Done - see if he does anything.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Looks like at least one of them is named in the referenced article:

Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

She appears to be a Texas 30th District Congresswoman, but it is not on her web site yet.

C, you no longer live in the United States, what do you expect from your local paper?

TR

The Fool (http://www.house.gov/ebjohnson/about_ebj/index.shtml)

[myclearcreek]

Originally posted by The Reaper
Looks like at least one of them is named in the referenced article:

Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

She appears to be a Texas 30th District Congresswoman, but it is not on her web site yet.

C, you no longer live in the United States, what do you expect from your local paper?

TR

Ugh. Not my district, but just having her [EBJ] in my state... Still nothing on her site today. UN involvement is the last thing we need - wrong vehicle, wrong signals to the world.

Edit for clarification.

[The Reaper]

It is being reported on Fox now.

TR

[Ghostrider]

In addition to Congresswoman Johnson, here is the list of the others.

Joseph Crowley (NY-07)
Raul Grijalva (AZ-07)
Danny Davis (IL-07)
Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Michael Honda (CA-15)
Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Julia Carson (IN-07)
Edolphus Towns (NY10)

edited to add: I just e-mailed Senator McCain, Senator Kyl and Congressman Flake. I would urge everyone to contact their own Senators and Congressperson. Here is what I wrote:

Dear Senator McCain,

It is with great distress that I have learned that several Congressional Representatives led by Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30) and including the following:
Joseph Crowley (NY-07), Raul Grijalva (AZ-07), Danny Davis (IL-07), Corrine Brown (FL-03), Carolyn Maloney (NY-14), Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Michael Honda (CA-15), Elijah Cummings (MD-07), Julia Carson (IN-07) Edolphus Towns (NY-10)

have forwarded a request to Mr. Kofi Annan of the United Nations that the U.N. provide observers for the Presidential Election this November. This is an unprecedented attack on the political process of the United States of America and without any doubt, the framers of our Constitution are turning in their graves. The mere thought that elected officials would defer even a small measure of their constituencies' voting rights to the United Nations is not only disturbing, but in my humble opinion borderline treason.

We as a nation are the envy of the world because we are able to conduct the election of our leaders in a manner that is fair and truly representative of the feelings of the people. It goes without saying that to turn over any aspect of our political process to a body that has it's share of corruption issues is not just ludicrous, but downright irresponsible. I urge you and your colleagues to strongly oppose this petition by all those involved and chastise them publicly for shirking their obligation not only to the people of their districts, the states they represent, and the United States of America.

Sincerely,

xxxxx

[Kyobanim]

Why is it that someone from Texas feels they can call on the un to watch over the Florida elections? We can screw things up nicely by ourselves, thank you very much.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Originally posted by Kyobanim
Why is it that someone from Texas feels they can call on the un to watch over the Florida elections? We can screw things up nicely by ourselves, thank you very much.

Why you gotta mention the Texas thing?:mad:

What I don't like about this is Fox said, "Well, it won't happen, the UN says they only go in if the executive branch asks them to and there would be about 20,000 UN observers required."

Where's the outrage? I don't give a fook what the UN has to say or if its feasible! I want outrage at the sponsors of this treason!

[The Reaper]

I would wager a small sum that more military votes were invalidated in the 2000 election than minority votes.

Can the UN monitor that as well?

They could just go to Iraq and collect the 140,000 votes there in person.

TR

[Kyobanim]

Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Why you gotta mention the Texas thing?:mad:


We all have our crosses to bear. :D

[ghuinness]

Carl Hiaasen Opinion on FL Voting. Some parts are funny.

Posted on Sun, Jun. 27, 2004

In this election, nothing will go wrongg

BY CARL HIAASEN

Late-night comedians are already making snarky jokes insinuating that Florida will botch the upcoming presidential election.

Enough already. One little fiasco that changed the course of history and dumped democracy on its ear, and they just can't let it be.

Well, forget what happened back in 2000. This is a new day, a new year and a new era of modernized voting technology. No more butterfly ballots, no more hanging chads, no more frenetic recounts.

As Gov. Jeb Bush declared last week, ``Floridians can be confident our state is fully prepared for the upcoming election season and the ones to come.''

All Americans should share that hearty confidence.

After the 2000 mess, Florida was one of the first states to rush out and purchase touch-screen voting machines. These babies weren't cheap, either, even though we didn't spring for the top-end model that gives each voter a paper receipt.

You might have read recently about a minor problem with the new machines being used in 11 counties. Not to worry -- the bugs are being worked out.

Here's what happened. During two municipal elections in Miami-Dade, the touch-screen devices failed to provide a full electronic log of ballot activity. Simply put, the machines were unable to recreate a complete record of who voted and how they voted.

Admittedly, without such a log it would be difficult to do an accurate recount, in the event of a close election. Nor do we dispute that tests conducted on the new machines found that, on other occasions, votes simply vanished when the totals were transferred for tabulation.

The manufacturer of the machines, Electronic Systems & Software, says that it has invented a software ''patch'' that will fix the glitch, although the state has yet to install it.

In the meantime, ES&S suggests that election workers download vote totals from each touch-screen unit onto laptop computers. This will take at least five minutes per machine, and there are 7,200 machines in Miami-Dade alone.

That means a full statewide recount might not be finished until, oh, the winter of 2007. But don't worry -- should you die of old age while waiting for the recount, your vote will stand. Unless, perhaps, you're one of the convicted felons whose name may be summarily erased from the voter rolls.

`No voter left behind'

Last month, the state ordered local elections officials to begin purging 47,000 voters as possible felons who had served their sentences but hadn't yet gotten their civil rights reinstated.

Because many of the applicants were African Americans, who tend to be Democrats, critics accused Gov. Bush of trying to disenfranchise those who might vote against his brother in the November presidential election.

Bush responded by speeding up clemency requests, and recently he announced that voting rights have been restored for 20,861 Floridians with past felony convictions.

Approximately 50,000 others with more-serious criminal records must appear personally before the governor and the cabinet. However, there's absolutely no truth to the rumor that those wearing Bush-Cheney sweatshirts will be moved to the top of the list.

Here in Florida, our new motto is: No voter left behind.

To that end, the governor has signed a law abolishing the requirement that all absentee ballots must be witnessed by a third party.

You might recall that contested absentee ballots played a large role in George W. Bush's puny 537-vote margin of victory four years ago here in the Sunshine State.

Among our 67 counties seemed to exist oddly differing standards for ballots sent in by absentee voters. What was accepted and counted in one jurisdiction was sometimes rejected and discarded in another.

But by eliminating the witness requirement, our Legislature has generously made it possible for practically anyone -- living or dead, real or imaginary -- to cast an absentee vote in Florida.

No more costly investigations of ballot brokers who prey on senior citizens and immigrants. No more embarrassing revelations of deceased citizens rising up to vote.

From now on, the legitimacy of each absentee vote can be determined only by visually comparing the signature on the ballot with that on the registration roll.

More than 416,000 Floridians voted absentee in 2000, and the number will be higher this fall. Obviously, there aren't enough election workers to check the authenticity of every signature, which is the whole point.

The second best thing to a free election is a scandal-free election, and ballots that can't be investigated can't very well blow up into a scandal. So let the comics make their snide little jokes.

Touch-free voting machines that leave no paper trail, absentee ballots that need no witnesses -- who says Florida's political leaders didn't learn anything from the debacle of 2000?

Just wait and see.

[ghuinness]

About Time ! (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39304)

[Ghostrider]

Originally posted by ghuinness
About Time ! (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39304)

Right on....what concerns me is that there isn't greater outrage. The more I think about it the more angry I become. :mad:

[Gypsy]

Originally posted by Ghostrider
Right on....what concerns me is that there isn't greater outrage. The more I think about it the more angry I become. :mad:

The media is too busy with...you know....Michael Moore and all the doom and gloom in Iraq...

I'm drafting a letter to the Speaker of the House....perhaps more people could do the same.

Congressman J. Dennis Hastert
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Phone: 202-225-2976
Fax: 202-225-0697

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally posted by The Reaper
I would wager a small sum that more military votes were invalidated in the 2000 election than minority votes.

Can the UN monitor that as well?

They could just go to Iraq and collect the 140,000 votes there in person.

TR The question of absentee ballots by military members is just one of many issues the media didn't care about too much because they inured to Bush/Cheney's benefit:

Absentee ballots

Federal overseas ballots (the ones you get at your embassy or your overseas base arranges to get at the embassy) heavily skewer toward Republicans because most are cast by servicemembers or businessmen working abroad. They went Bush/Cheney, 63.3% and Gore/Lieberman 33.6%.

But federal overseas ballots are just one category of absentee ballots. Many military personnel cast regular absentee ballots that they or a family member obtain from their county election officials. There is no separate breakdown of these military ballots from absentee ballots from other sources and, indeed, there is no breakdown in the county-by-county statistics of absentee ballots from regular election day ballots.

The real scandal in absentee ballots was not the undercounting of military ballots, which hurt Bush/Cheney, but the likely overcounting of certain other absentee ballots which helped Gore/Lieberman. These included a number of cases where people went to nursing homes and "helped" the elderly voters express their almost uniform support of the Democratic ticket.

Excuse me, but your chad is dangling

Of course, the scandal we are all familiar with is that of the chad; that is, the undervotes, where the pin failed to penetrate ("dimpled chad") or fully detach the chad ("hanging chad"), and the overvotes, where more than one hole was punched. A third category is the invalid write-in, where someone punched a chad and wrote in a candidate, or where the write-in name was illegible.

But hidden in all that media talk of disenfranchised would-be Palm Beach County Gore voters who voted for Buchanan is this fact: the rate of overvotes/undervotes/invalid write-ins as a percentage of voter turnout in Palm Beach County was 6.43%. In Dade and Broward, the other two counties the Gore team and the media focused on, the percentages were 4.37% and 2.49%, respectively. Of the ten counties with the highest percentages of invalidated ballots, eight were heavily Bush over Gore. In Duval, for example, it was 9.23% (the statewide percentage was 2.93%).

In Palm Beach County, total voter turnout was 462,588, and 433,186 presidential votes were cast. Bush/Cheney took 152,951 (35.3%) and Gore/Lieberman took 269,732 (62.3%). Based on that percentage above, about 29,700 votes weren't counted. If we assume the breakdown of these would have been the same as those counted, and some voter intent could have been discerned from all of these invalidated ballots, Gore might have added about 18,500 votes in my home county and Bush might have added 10,500 or so.

But in Duval County, that 9.23% rate means that with a voter turnout of 291,626, some 26,900 votes weren't counted. Presidential votes totaled 264,636, with Bush/Cheney taking 57.5% and Gore/Lieberman taking 40.8%. Applying the same assumptions as above, Bush might have netted an additional 4,500 or so votes, erasing much of Gore's gains down south. In Collier County (the Naples area), the difference was starker - Gore might have gained 1,030 votes, but Bush would have gained almost 2,090.

Naturally, Gore's people weren't pushing for recounts in Duval or Collier Counties, or in any of the other heavily Bush/Cheney counties. Gore didn't want the hoped-for gains in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach erased by Bush/Cheney gains in places like Duval and Escambia counties.

There is no empirical reason to believe that a statewide recount of all those invalidated votes would have resulted in a breakdown between Bush and Gore greater than that from votes that were counted. I suppose the operating theory is that there were more incompetent Democratic voters than Republican voters, so a higher percentage of the overvotes and undervotes should have been Gore votes than Bush votes. That was certainly what was claimed in Palm Beach, where the stories were all of Gore voters who accidentally voted for Buchanan because of that infernal butterfly ballot. And of course, the Duval counterargument is that nefarious Republicans were invalidating Democratic votes to deliver the county to Bush (but the same argument could be made with regard to Palm Beach's Democrat-controlled election commission).

What time you got, mister?

There is one other scandal. of course - the Western Counties Time Zone Controversy. Ten of Florida's 67 counties are located in the Central Time Zone, one hour behind the rest of the state. The major networks began calling Florida for Gore before polls closed in these counties. All of these counties - Bay, Calhoun, Escambia, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton and Washington - were overwhelmingly Bush/Cheney counties. Bush outpolled Gore 237,769 to 111,580 in these 10 counties.

It can never be known how many people on their way to a polling place at the last minute, or how many standing in line at a polling place at closing time, failed to vote once they heard the networks call the state. It may be that there weren't all that many, but even if it were one half of one percent of Bush voters in those counties, that would have added some 1,200 votes to Bush's total. Given the 537-vote difference between Bush and Gore, that would have been significant.

I haven't even addressed the 2,000 or so illegal votes in Florida in 2000 (people voting twice, felons voting, etc.), most of which seemed to be in the Democrats' favor.

In sum, the mythology of Florida 2000 is of disenfranchised Democrats and Bush "stealing" the election, when it may very well be that what really happened is that despite all their best efforts, the Democrats merely failed to steal the election themselves (unlike Wisconsin, where theft appears to have worked - Connie Milstein, a New York Democratic activist, was caught on camera bribing the homeless with cigarettes to vote for Al Gore, while some 361 felons were found to have illegally voted in Milwaukee County alone).

[tache18x]

The liberal media slants everything!!! fuck 'em.

[lrd]

Originally posted by Gypsy
The media is too busy with...you know....Michael Moore and all the doom and gloom in Iraq...

I'm drafting a letter to the Speaker of the House....perhaps more people could do the same.

Congressman J. Dennis Hastert
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Phone: 202-225-2976
Fax: 202-225-0697 Will do. Thanks for the contact info.

[ghuinness]

Just heard FOX News is covering this at 8:00pm tonight on the "Heartland" show.
(Sat July 10).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,71246,00.html

[ghuinness]

THIS (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39861) is beyond belief. :mad:

[Gypsy]

If this is true I am thoroughly shocked and beyond disappointed in this decision. :mad: