Hmmm

While I do not think Kerry should have conceded so quickly, I do think that fighting about it is counter productive.

This election was one small battle in the greater war regarding voter fraud (from both camps).

Without a verifiable, trusted, OPEN vote, our

federalist republic is a joke. I wont even get into the bigger dogfight on the electoral college… first we need a fair vote, something we have not had in ages, if ever.

Unless we move towards forcing this issue, paper trails, third party open audits ... all the things we are regulating in the corporate world with Sorbanes/Oxley, etc, should be a no brainer manditory requirement for our elections.

Open the system up or shut it down.

The big danger is one of hubris. There’s a tendency after you win your second term to think you’re invulnerable. You’re not just king of the mountain, you’ve mastered the mountain. That can often lead to mistakes of excessive pride.“

DAVID R. GERGEN, former presidential adviser.

What I was trying to say is ANYONE can start screaming “conspiracy!“ if the election does not go their way; I’m sure the republicans would be doing the same thing if Kerry won.

as Kerry said in his speech - he would not have conceded if there was ANY chance that he could have won.

I take it that the Washington Post is not a major paper!? They counted the 2000 Florida vote four different ways, two favored Bush and two favored Gore. Or is the Washington Post’s article (and all the other articles) in Lexis-Nexis that says Gore would have won if certain standards were used, fraudulent?

The 2000 results in Florida were within the statistical margin of error. Five hundred and some odd votes out of approximately 6 million is such a small margin that it is statistically impossible to know who actually won.  It was essentially a tie.

That said, I think Kerry did the right thing in conceding and not putting the country through that whole mess again.  And I also think that every instance of voter fraud/election rigging needs to be investigated, no matter whose behalf it was on.  What does it matter who won if half the population doesn’t trust the results.  And not all of that is just sour grapes, there seem to be some serious problems here.

So many people who felt robbed by the 2000 election are still, understandably, upset.  A president who lost the national popular vote was put in office by the electoral vote, and that outcome was hotly disputed for weeks.  I voted for Gore, and while I was disappointed in the outcome, I respected him for finally stepping down and ending the pain.

One thing that many people tend to forget is that if Gore had simply carried HIS OWN HOME STATE of Tennessee, he would have been running for re-election, not Dubya.  There were other missed opportunities, as well.

Now, John Kerry has lost not only the popular vote, but the electoral as well.  Was there some cheating involved?  Possibly.  However, even looking at a map of California, it’s hard to imagine that the intricacies of a Bush-headed Illuminati could have pulled off such a major coup.

The Democrats have come to ally themselves with the outcast, the disenfranchised, the intellectuals, the urbanites.  What do they actually stand for anymore?  What’s the message of the Dems?  Even a largely liberal thinker like myself has to admit that I don’t think they have a strong base, I’m just voting AGAINST what the Repubs stand for.

I try to tell my son, when he gets in trouble at school, don’t blame the kids who turned you in, blame yourself for being in a situation where you could be in trouble.  The Democrats have gotten lazy in the last 20 years.  If they’ve lost contact with the heart of America, they have only themselves to blame.  Consipiracies aside, someone left the alarm system off while the Religious Right crept in.

I also think that science and mythology are butting heads more now than ever, and with more force.  When you have to discount scientific evidence to maintain your religion, you are having a reality problem.  The real war isn’t in Iraq, it’s here, and it’s Freedom vs Fundamentalism. 

The problem, as I see it, is that even though I’d love to see a grass-roots movement overcome the traditional two parties, it’s very hard to convince these good, god-fearing Christians that they don’t have the right to impose their religion on everyone else.  Until we can get the Fundies out of the Republican agenda, the Sheople will continue to follow along.

An interesting take on this election mess:
in the NY times
It basically asserts that ignorance, not conspiracy, drove the results of this election.
Good point about the religious right, Skippy…this article goes into that, too.

I hate to throw my opinion in there at the end of the discussion, but Bush did win.  AND there were discrepencies on BOTH sides.  All the tires (about 30 vehicles) on the GOP get out the vote were slashed… These instences of so called “Voter intimidation” was not only against the kerry voters.  I understand that the 2000 election was bullshit, but kerry did do the right thing and concede. 

You cant question the way everysingle law works! The country would fall apart.  This country has been the most successful county in the world and the other countries were laughing at us because we could not even figure out who won the 2000 election! In other countries that would not have stood because they cant even question authority for fear of being killed.  This right of speech is a privlege and I for one am really f*cking proud to be an American.

And to Skippy- I am a godfearing American and I voted for bush, but I am not some kind of Holy-roller.  I want the right to be able to pray in school or in public, and I want my children (if I choose to have them) to stand every morning in class and say the pledge of Allegence with “God” in the pledge.  I do not mean to rain on your parade or to be a b*tch, but I just want to let you know I respect your thoughts and I am glad that you and the other message posters are educated, and would much rather have you vote than a lot of other poeple that know of nothing that goes on.

I definetly do agree that the gov’t is corrupt and there are bad things that go on, but that is with anyone that has any control of power.  Why do you think that the Marx/Engels ideas did not work?

Nothing stops kids from praying in schools.

Schools just don’t make kids pray.

As for the under God thing in the pledge… I don’t have a problem with it.  I have a problem with people having a problem with kids not saying it, like I didn’t, if they don’t believe in said God.

Yep, good thing we put in “under God” less than a century ago to prove “we” were different from the “Godless Commies” and now everyone acts like it has been there forever regardless of the authors original intent. Just remember the Supreme Court case about saying the pledge was because Jehovah Witnesses felt that the pledge was idolatry because it was pledging to a flag. Damn those religious people for wanting the freedom to not do exactly what some other religious people want. They MUST say the pledge and say God! 

You cant question the way everysingle law works! The country would fall apart.

If we don’t question how the law works then how are we to know when it’s being broken or abused? If the country is so fragile that an honest questioning of how the law works is enough to make it fall apart then it is not worthy of keeping together in the first place.

This country has been the most successful county in the world and the other countries were laughing at us because we could not even figure out who won the 2000 election! In other countries that would not have stood because they cant even question authority for fear of being killed.

Who cares if the other countries laugh as long as we make it through our process and come to a conclusion without resorting to civil war? Let them laugh if they must, but it’s a mistake to generalize that all other countries are essentially brutal dictatorships. There are countries out there where people actually have more freedom than in America.

This right of speech is a privlege and I for one am really f*cking proud to be an American.

That’s a bit of an contradiction in terms there, Nicki. Free speech is either a right or a privilege, but not both.

want the right to be able to pray in school or in public, and I want my children (if I choose to have them) to stand every morning in class and say the pledge of Allegence with “God� in the pledge.

You can pray in school and in public if you wish and so can your children. There’s no law stopping you. The schools just aren’t allowed to endorse such prayers or lead you and your children in reciting them. I can respect your desire to have your children recite the bastardized version of the Pledge if you really want them to, but what I don’t understand is why you think you should have the right to force everyone else’s children to say it along with yours.

I definetly do agree that the gov’t is corrupt and there are bad things that go on, but that is with anyone that has any control of power.  Why do you think that the Marx/Engels ideas did not work?

Honestly? I think they didn’t work due to poor execution and human nature, but not necessarily because the ideas themselves are flawed. I also disagree that the government is largely corrupt. I think aspects of the government may suffer from corruption and certainly some individuals within the government are corrupt, but overall I don’t think the government could be called corrupt.

Go, Les. 

Some more comments of interest:

How you could have had my vote

Ouch I am a little new to the post it comment thing and Les you did good work takin my little soapbox apart.

    -But getting back to the original
premise of this whole discussion -the “stealing
of the election.“  The problems with voting have
been going on for as long as we have been having
elections, but weren’t made so pronounced until
the 2000 election and Bush won Florida by 532 votes, thus giving him the victory.  The provisional ballots that you seem so concerned
with this year were not merely “thrown out”, but
evaluated to see if they should be counted.
What about the voting machines in Philadelphia
that already had 1200 votes for Kerry when they
were first booted up????? And, how about the
5300 absentee ballots that were collected in
the prisons in PA, and as we all know felons should not be voting….......Face it, Bush won
the election by getting over 50% of the votes, and 286 electoral votes.

There are countries out there that have democracies too, but where are the countries that have more freedom than us? Why are there people rushing into our borders everyday to escape the burdens of their government?

And now to the contradiction that I had made, in the first amendment of the constitution, it says that speech is a right.  In a crucial court case of 1962, Engel v. Vitale school prayer was the question.  They ruled against organized school prayer and with the pledge of allegence saying “God” it is to be considered an organized prayer.

The idea of communism is a system of common ownership of property and material things and everyone having equal social status is an idea filled with rainbows and lollypops.

Human nature is exactly why it did not work.  Laziness is a part of human nature.  The working man is receiving the same amount as the “slug”. What do you think the workaholic will do when he sees the slugs living as well as him? Become a lazy “slug” too…

Maybe I was a bit too general and too quick too write back thanks for keeping me on my toes Les! 

Well, how about Canada, where gay people can get married?

Or really, look into many western European countries’ situations.  None of these people are rushing for our borders.  New Zealand rocks my world.

Much as people like to bash Japan about their preference for abortion over birth control, it’s one of the few countries in the world where a woman’s right to an abortion is never in jeopardy. 

While I can see your points about communism, I can also see many advantages it offers…really, when I think about the future, my ideal will always be filled with rainbows and lollipops.  That’s what an ideal is. It keeps me going, anyway.  Not that I am a communist, but I think it would be interesting to see someone actually try to make it work instead of damning it with corrupt officials and ulterior motives from the start.  IMO, communism is what was going on before agriculture…it does actually exist (though they don’t call it that) in some small communities.  Sorry all my anth texts are packed away, so no evidence.  But think about Australian Aboriginees before the Aussies came in—they had no concept of personal property and all the Aussies thought they were theives.

Ouch I am a little new to the post it comment thing and Les you did good work takin my little soapbox apart.

Please don’t take my response as a personal attack. It wasn’t meant as such and I hope I didn’t make you feel like it was, but I did want to offer some counter-arguments for you to consider. I’m as human as you are and it can be tricky getting your point across in a text medium without the aid of body language to let folks know you aren’t attacking them.

The problems with voting have
been going on for as long as we have been having
elections, but weren’t made so pronounced until
the 2000 election…

Actually, this has happened before in the nation’s past. I don’t have references at hand at the moment and I’m short on time (I need to get to work), but there have been other contentious elections like these previously. Part of the problem with our current method of elections is the fact that it doesn’t deal with close elections very well. Landslides are no problem, but close elections quickly become a nightmare.

There are countries out there that have democracies too, but where are the countries that have more freedom than us? Why are there people rushing into our borders everyday to escape the burdens of their government?

We don’t technically have a democracy, we have a representative republic with democratic leanings. There are several countries out there that are much more of a democracy than the United States is. There are also plenty of countries that are prosperous and with citizens in no big hurry to move to the U.S., but you never hear about them because that’s not very exciting.

As for how free we are, there are a number of reports out there that attempt to rank how free any particular nation happens to be and they’ve become quite niche-oriented over the years. For example, the Reporters sans Frontières website does a survey to try and rank how free the press is in every country. The index for 2001-2002 takes ranks the United States as 17th out of 139 in terms of how free the press is.  Finland, Iceland, Norway, and the Netherlands all tied for first place.  Canada, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, France, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and even Slovenia and Costa Rica scored better than we did. According to the Cato Institutes’s Economic Freedom of the World report for 2004 the United States is tied with New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom for third. Hong Kong is number one followed closely by Singapore. Again, I don’t have a source handy so hopefully someone can help me out with this one, but in terms of overall freedom there’s a group out there that tries to track that as well (the Freedom House perhaps?) and I recall a report from a couple of years ago that ranked the U.S. at 13th in overall freedom though that’s probably changed by now.

And now to the contradiction that I had made, in the first amendment of the constitution, it says that speech is a right.  In a crucial court case of 1962, Engel v. Vitale school prayer was the question.  They ruled against organized school prayer and with the pledge of allegence saying “Godâ€? it is to be considered an organized prayer.

I see the point you’re getting at and that’s something that should have been taken into consideration back when Congress first decided to change the Pledge to include the words “under God” back in 1954. The Pledge was just fine without those words for 60+ years previously and even the comedian Red Skelton recognized that by adding those words it might someday come under fire for being a prayer saying in 1969, “Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: “under God.“ Wouldn’t it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer, and that would be eliminated from schools too?“

I have no problems with the Pledge if we restore it to its pre-1954 version which didn’t include those words, but as it currently stands it is effectively a prayer and has no business being forced onto a captive audience of school children.  Even as such there’s nothing stopping your children from reciting it in school now if they should so choose to do so and several laws requiring said recitation are still on the books in many states. They are considering a similar law here in Michigan and I have a daughter in school here. Unlike Michael Newdow, I would have standing in a court case challenging the Pledge.

The idea of communism is a system of common ownership of property and material things and everyone having equal social status is an idea filled with rainbows and lollypops.

Human nature is exactly why it did not work.  Laziness is a part of human nature.  The working man is receiving the same amount as the “slugâ€?. What do you think the workaholic will do when he sees the slugs living as well as him? Become a lazy “slugâ€? too…

I don’t know if it’s so much laziness or the fact that humans value their individuality and control over others that makes communism impractical, but Ants have proven that communism is an effective societal choice that can lead to massive success in preserving your species. But only if it’s done out of instinct rather than choice.

Maybe I was a bit too general and too quick too write back thanks for keeping me on my toes Les!

Happy to oblige. I’m late for work now so I’d better get going.

If I hear one more person say well but XYZ stole an election, or ABC had similar issues I am gonna go ballistic

So because some bad shit happened in the past, that justifies it? How quaint.

<rant>
Look. I supported Kerry, or more exactly I supported not-Bush. I did not demand that every vote in Ohio be counted… I want every vote cast to be counted and verified. I do not mind losing. I mind cheating. I do not want anyone disenfrancised - period…

I also would not want to have won by cheating either.

The Right to Vote and the sanctity of the poll is more important than ANY candidate, party or issue, for without this system of peaceful revolution every four years we are just screwed - and the rest of our rights mean nothing; and we could set ourselves up for a not-so-peaceful revolution.

Unfortunately the founders of our country did not place the Right to Vote as the first amendment, or a codicil thereof as with out this basic, fundamental right, all rest are naught.

We have quickly devolved our democracy into oneupmanship - chase elections instead of ideas - and accept that our leaders will not answer to us, or themselves. We want low risk candidates who give us low rewards. We want someone who’s ideas are so simple we can know everything they think, yet then they can’t think out of the boxes we create for them. We demand the lowest common denominator

Unfortunately, Americans get the government they deserve… I just want to know what kind of karmic mindfuck we must have done to deseve this one?

</rant>

Shit… that sounded too much like a stump speech… sorry about that… I just got my rant on and couldn’t turn it off

Sorry, that last rant o’mine was directed at Nicki’s last comment, not at Les’s comment

Shana- You are right my ideals are also filled with rainbows and lollipops but that is the point they are ideals, something to strive for, but I really do not think that communism is a way to obtain our candyland dreams…It has BEEN tried and it failed.

Les-I do not take it as a personal attack at all I am happy that someone could spend as much time contemplating our situation. But to let everyone know that corruption, stealing, lieing is something that goes on in communism, democracy, representative republic and so on, if there is people involved there are favors being done, money being laundered, rules being bent/broke everyday. There are always people that will try to correct these wrongs, like everyone on this site posting how they feel about what has happened these past elections. I am not bitching because I think everything in the United States is lined in gold but I do wish that everyone could appreciate what we have been blessed with here. At least we can bitch about the way things are done, I thank my lucky stars everyday that I am not wearing a cloth over my face, being raped, or threatened for speaking my mind. I know that is a bit of an extreme but, things could always be worse…In the mean time, we can all sit here and bitch and strive for something a little greater than we have today.

John Hoke- I do not think it is cute or quaint that there have been election F*CK ups in the past I am merely stating the point that when was the last time an election was taken to the supreme court (B4 2000)and made into a f-n production? And if the last comment was directed towards me, I was not saying “XYZ” or anyone stole any election. You must had misunderstood me.  As Les had commented: our system works great in landslide elections, but not too good when dealing with close elections.  Any laws or amendments take time to pass and yes we do need to change the way things work, but this election is over- Bush won, he did not cheat to win and yes I will compare campaigns, there was problems BOTH candidates encountered. I am proud to be an American/woman, the first amendment did not give anyone the right to vote, we did not get the right to vote until the 19th amendment and that sucks so you cannont say that this country is moving backwards, for you will be mistaken. I am not being trying to be a bitch though I am probably coming out like one, and I know “if I dish it I must take it” but please look at things from my point don’t agree but just try to understand. Please do not think I am mean, I respect your thoughts.

Voicing my opinion here I know well that I am one of the few conservatives if not the only one and am exhausted from trying to disprove everyone, I live in IL and have to do it everyday at school and work. I will continue to try to let all take a glimpse at things from my view, but I do not think I am making any progress- but back to my idealistic world of rainbows and lollipops…  Talk to y’all later

Nicki

Just to clarify… nope not comming across any bitchier than I am

You are right, the election is over, and once the Electoral College votes in December, Bush will win (he has not yet to be hyper-technical).

While I agree that at that point he will have narrowly won, I do not think that there was not any cheating going on - from both sides

I could give a damn who won, as I said above:

Look. I supported Kerry, or more exactly I supported not-Bush. I did not demand that every vote in Ohio be counted… I want every vote cast to be counted and verified. I do not mind losing. I mind cheating. I do not want anyone disenfrancised - period…

I also would not want to have won by cheating either.

To me the Vote is more important than the Election, call me crazy, but thats my stand

So, count every vote, open up the process, audit it.

We do more to protect our ATM transactions than our votes, *that* is the saddest part of the situation.

Librarian states:

I take it that the Washington Post is not a major paper!? They counted the 2000 Florida vote four different ways, two favored Bush and two favored Gore. Or is the Washington Post’s article (and all the other articles) in Lexis-Nexis that says Gore would have won if certain standards were used, fraudulent?

Librarian, can you point me to some URL’s? Thanks.

Nicki-
“I am proud to be an American/woman, the first amendment did not give anyone the right to vote, we did not get the right to vote until the 19th amendment and that sucks so you cannont say that this country is moving backwards, for you will be mistaken.“

I believe the point JH was trying to make was that it’s too bad the right to vote isn’t #1—that it isnt given the importance it deserves and that sucks because all our other rights depend on the right to vote for their justification/support.

The comment about devolving was in reference to the loss of concern about issues and ideas in favor of whomever is the best actor.

Correct me if I’m wrong, here, John.

“I am not bitching because I think everything in the United States is lined in gold but I do wish that everyone could appreciate what we have been blessed with here. At least we can bitch about the way things are done, I thank my lucky stars everyday that I am not wearing a cloth over my face, being raped, or threatened for speaking my mind. I know that is a bit of an extreme but, things could always be worse…In the mean time, we can all sit here and bitch and strive for something a little greater than we have today.“

So, which do you want?  I am not sure if you want us to stop bitching or keep on bitching.

I quite appreciate my freedom to discuss this stuff—that is why I do it.  And I will do everything in my power to discount legislations like the patriot act and pa 2 which attempt to take that freedom away.  I am doing my job.

Communism has not, however, been tried in a large group in earnestness.

If I may offer some advice, I suggest you stop trying to disprove us and spend more time trading points with us.  I sense a lot of emotion in your posts but I have a hard time finding your evidence.  I might have an easier time seeing your POV if you gave me some facts.