Republicans Plan Voter Challenges in Florida 172
An anonymous reader writes "Greg Palast, the journalist who first reported on the initial Florida voter scandal (Warning large PDF), thinks he's found a new threat for this election, reported here at the BBC. He did uncover some interesting shenanigans last time, is this significant, or is he just fishing this time?"
Yeah, yeah ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Please... (Score:4, Interesting)
Palast's "Best Democracy" has a preface where he makes his bias clear. He grew up poor in LA, and resents the privilege of rich people to rig the game so they always win. He's made careers out of finding these rigged games, and exposing them. He's not a scientist, creating a detailed model of the laws of the universe. He's an investigative journalist, who finds out about serious wrongdoings, learns the facts of the story, and tells it.
Read "Best Democracy". The stories he uncovered are shocking enough that you won't be bored, or find yourself reading any long, convoluted justification for conclusions hung on meager facts. Instead you'll find details about serious wrongdoings by the Bush Republican Party, as it sacrifices democracy without blinking, to grab power and abuse it. If you want balance, try another book by someone uncovering Democratic wrongdoing. When you weigh them against another, factoring in the actual evidence presented, you'll find Palast's work a heavier truth.
Registration seems out of hand this election (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.cleveland.com/crime/plaindealer/index.
along with non-anecdotal evidence of potential fraud (higher incidence of registrations from incorrect address).
There is record voter registration in important states:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
The democrats have supposedly hired many lawyers to monitor polls, etc.:
http://www.voanews.com/english/US-Democrats-Repub
Al Gore is telling blacks to "vote early" so their vote will count, presumably not like the last time:
"Early voting is a good idea," he said. "You want to give them plenty of time to count all the votes."
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/24/gore.ap
In all, it seems like the making for a very big mess, and I think this election, with things so close, I for one would be suspicious and at least investigate.
One thing I find interesting about this story, is that there is no evidence of any actual wrongdoing, just innuendo, but perhaps this is just part of the democrat playbook, which is to allege claiming voter intimidation, whether it's true or not:
http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/12700
Insightful? (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, it concluded the exact opposite of what you pretend it concluded.
America sure is split (Score:3, Interesting)
A good leader should be able once elected to then be a leader to the whole country. Not just those that voted for him. Simply put considering the recent american election results a democrat should be half repiblican and a republican half democrat BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THE AMERICAN PUBLIC VOTED.
If you are reading about the current election you get the idea that 50% of america totally distrusts the other 50% of america. The democrats think the republicans will create a police state ruled by big business, the republicans think the democrats want to invite the UN as a police force to control their right to carry machine guns.
This article is about a list found. While there is some smoke here you can see the democrats leaping off to conclusions that just ain't supported by the findings but you also see the republicans leaping to defences that just ain't supported by history. It ain't that both are wrong, it is that both seem not to care about the truth instead twisting the few facts known to suit their mindset.
The "war on terror" has this as well. Republicans think that if only america hits hard enough the world will come to heel. Never realizing that perhaps the world is barking and biting precisly because america is hitting it.
The democrats seem to believe that its current enemies could have been apeaced if only it had done X or hadn't done Y. They never seem to capable of realizing that perhaps its current enemies hate america because it is there. That just being a democracy with freedom of religion is enough to be a bitter enemy.
The most amusing is the example of foreign support for the iraq war. Democrats seem to claim that it should have had support and that countries like france, germany and russia took the moral highroad by not giving support. Like hell. These countries had major money intrests in Iraq and didn't want to lose them. More recent evidence suggests that Iraq was even buying politicians in europe. Before people cry "Republican propaganda" think this. These are the same politicians who said they would vote against software patents and didn't. The same politicians who voted for DMCA style regulation desptite the publics opinion. If they are morally and ethically corrupt on one subject why should we trust them on others?
However republicans seem somehow to believe that foreign support is not needed and that america can stand alone to defend the entire world from evil. Worse that any who speak against them are part of the evil. That americans need not be held accountable for such silly little things as war crimes. There was even an attempt by republicans to pass allow allowing a friendly country (holland) to be invaded and its soldiers killed to "rescue" any american brought before the international court. A greater insult to the world could not have been delivered as america was at the same time busy to get other countries war criminals before those same courts. One law for the world, another for america. Talk about giving fuel to america haters.
But the most worrying thing is that these ideas seem to split america right down the middle. It doesn't matter who wins the election, the other side will spent the next four years bitterly opposing everything just because they didn't win.
Bush or Kerry has a far more important job to do then "the war on terror" or "domestic economy" or any of that crap. Their most important challenge is to turn their 50.0000000000001 election lead into something like 75% "well I don't agree with everything but overall he ain't a bad leader for america right now, next election he may be a goner but for now he is doing okay enough to not constantly be trying to get him out". Can either Bush or Kerry do that? I don't think so.
Note that this is not a typical american issue, other countries are having real problems with the nature of democracy right now. It is just that dutch internal politics have little effect on the rest of the world. But when america shivers the world trembles.
Re:Yeah, yeah ... (Score:5, Interesting)
You are probably not familiar with the controversy. The problem with the list, and the reason it was so controversial to begin with, was that it was full of people who were not criminals, who were put on the list by mistake. Criminality aside, blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic, so it was naturally seen as a very convenient mistake for Jeb to make, especially now that it's 4 years later and many of the same incorrect names are still on it.
So what you're saying, by not actually saying it, is that about 26,000 of those people were white.
More than half of the people on the list that you refer to are not black.
Yeah, so? Are you implying that these white people were all going to vote for Bush? Or they would split their votes between candidates any less evenly than any other group of white people?
Assuming that the numbers are accurate and that someone hasn't "cooked the books" so to speak. It still proves nothing. Let us not forget the numbers of hispanics who are counted as white.
Before you try to say that it doesn't happen...Have you ever seen the movie Blow? The very ethnic Diego Delgado is catagorized as "White" by the government.
Starting from the 2000 census data [census.gov], so that we include the effects of Florida's weird ideas about movie stars from Blow, Florida is 65.4% white (non-Hispanic), 16.8% Hispanic, and 14.6% black. The ex-felon population will have a slightly different racial makeup, but you can estimate it by assuming that the ratios of whites to Hispanics are about the same as for the rest of the state (blacks are obviously overrepresented). What's the probability that out of a random sampling of 26,000 non-black ex-felons, 4745 (18.25%) of which you'd expect to be Hispanic, you'll find exactly 61 Hispanics?
It's (.8175^(25939)) * (.1875^61) * 26000! / (25939! * 61!) That number is so small it's hard to calculate. You can use Stirling's Approximation to get the log of it: 25939*log(0.8175) + 61*log(.1875) + 26000*(log(26000)-1)) - 61*(log(61)-1) - 25939*(log(25939)-1) = -2270 - 18858 + 88789 - 47 - 88855 = -21241. Even allowing for the probability of finding fewer than 61 Hispanics, which changes the result by log(60) at most, you're still left with a probability of a 1 with at least 21240 zeroes to 1 of finding 61 or fewer Hispanics on the felons list by chance.
Maybe you're right and the felons list is full of movie stars from Blow. Even if the list "really" contains 600 Hispanics, ten times as many as are estimated, the log of the probability would be 25400*log(0.8175) + 600*log(.1875) + 26000*(log(26000)-1)) - 600*(log(600)-1) - 25400*(log(25400)-1) = -2223 - 436 +88789 - 1067 - 86482 = -1419, or a one with 1400 zeroes to one. We'd have to hold more elections than there are protons in the universe for even 600 Hispanics to appear on the list, without someone "cooking the books."
Don't you think you might be wrong?
*Some* of this is scary stuff! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds alot like a conspiracy nut who got lucky in 2000, and is desperately trying to sell his next wacky theory.
granted he was right the first time, and it'll be easy to determine if he is right this time (you just have to ask the people on the list afterwards). If he is, I'll be glad to retract my statement about him being a conspiracy theorist.
This (from TFA) is pretty scary though:
In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
Hasn't florida got laws against stuff like this?
Isn't there federal laws against this?
I can't see how non-state or non-government entities can be allowed to register voters without their consent? The potential for abuse definitely outweighs the chances that it can be used for anything good.
It sounds like something that you would expect to see in a third world or ex-communist country.
Oh yeah, and before you start spewing liberal media conspiracy theories, this is a BBC article. It is not an american news source!