I really like that picture. I honestly cannot see McCain stooping like that.

I can’t believe I’m at work! I want to go home and watch the election show on CNN and fret about Prop 8.

I don’t blame you, at all, after the last two elections, but even Karl Rove produced a more favorable map for Obama!

Clearly machines require less effort, but I submit that in the end it is actually more easily combated. One or two whistle blowers and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Diebold is already taking heat – although I have no idea why they even exist today. They should have been sued into oblivion just for equipment malfunctions alone, let alone malfeseance.

Distributed, “Army of Davids” style fraud however is much more difficult to police. Compare the resources of a one class-action lawsuit against Diebold, Sequoia, etc. versus 10,000 individual, criminal lawsuits. The later also affords more deniability for the political parties.

Both are already happening right now in this election and it completely sickens me. At this point every ballot should be done on paper and the voter should be given a paper receipt.

A few links to get you fired up (as fraud of any color should):

Machines in Philly switching Obama votes – http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/10/the-vote-grab-1.html

Military folks don’t get enough time to cast their ballots legally because VA didn’t mail them soon enough – http://hamptonroads.com/print/486648

Just total crazy time in Philly – Repub. monitors tossed because they weren’t the people on the pre-established list – now it’s in court – http://townhall.com/blog/g/cf47766b-5a6d-44ab-95e7-ce60631bcadc

Street Money – legally paying people to vote? Total BS and both sides do it – http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/blogs/fortyfourthestate/show_comments.php?entry_id=3481

Woman from NY illegally voting in FL – idiot blogged and took pictures of it – http://wthrockmorton.com/2008/11/02/hey-florida-is-this-ok-with-you/

More machine problems in Philly – http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/politics/18002279.html

At least our local paper the Cincinnati Enquirer has a fantastic website that let’s voters post problems out to a public area. http://dunes.cincinnati.com/data/election/

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

Voting Machine Controversy

by Julie Carr Smyth

COLUMBUS – The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O’Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. – who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush – prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O’Dell’s company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O’Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors – known as Rangers and Pioneers – at the president’s Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party’s federal campaign fund – partially benefiting Bush – at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
…

If you can’t admin that both sides cheat then you are not thinking critically. Both parties stand to gain from cheating and the process of monitoring and addressing issues of fraud are ridiculous. Right now there are tons of examples across the web of folks registering and voting in states they are not residents in, Diebold machines not working properly, all sorts of crap. They are all equally guilty.

Repeat after me – there is no such thing as an honest politician. They will all cheat if given the opportunity and deniability.

However, disturbing reports heard already about machines (Diebold!) failing and backup paper balloting required in some regions, which curiously happen to be black sections of town. Also, a woman voting in Grissom Library reported that when she fed her sheet into such a machine, it sucked in but the *counter* didn’t turn over. She told an election official, that means the vote wasn’t counted. The official claimed, yes it was because the machine took in the sheet! (wrong) The local Obama campaign has reported this. Folks: there is no excuse for simply placing out trust in the hands of mfrs of these machines. If the vote goes really far from what polling predicts, I will think the vote was scammed. I also think intelligent people should have the guts to say so and proceed accordingly.

In VA there’s a law forbidding wearing campaign buttons/clothes etc. into the polls. A big-bellied fellow went to my precinct room wearing a Ron Paul tee. They insisted he take it off or turn it inside out (what most people do.) He said, I’ll show them, and took off the shirt and then voted bare-chested. They let him do that, at least! I talked to him later, and wish I had a pic of him voting like that!

BTW there were three city policemen hanging around right outside the doors, I wonder why someone thinks we need that much protection from voters or challengers around there. Also, flags half mast at library I voted, who died or what else? I can’t imagine they’d do it for Obama’s grandma, but if so a nice gesture.

The thing could be over early for us Left Coasters.

That may be true, but you Left Coasters still have the luxury of watching sports events at earlier times in the day.

While MJN can’t vote in this election it is interesting to see how the world would vote if it could:

http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/blogs

1/20/09, if the cards are honest we might start to work our way out of this hole we have dug ourselves into over the last eight years.

Lawrence B. Crowell

But I think by now the Winter Olympics and the midterm elections are used to being forgotten.

And if you start making the same fuss as in 2000 after the vote, American politics should be banned globally from TV for at least a decade!