rowland
October 29, 2014, 11:41am
61
More on malfunctions in Maryland:
baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/10/2 … ch-claims/
In a statement to WJZ, board officials say “election officials receive similar reports in every election. Post-election analysis has shown that this is caused by voter error. Voters with large fingers or long nails or voters who hold the touchscreen with their palm resting on the screen seem to report this issue more frequently.”
Open the pod bay door please, HAL.
rowland
October 29, 2014, 12:33pm
62
washingtonexaminer.com/obama … le/2555403
Well, that’s reassuring. It’s not like he’s ever steered us wrong.
rowland
October 30, 2014, 1:56am
63
More Colorado questions:
dailycamera.com/boulder-coun … ion-judges
Boulder County GOP Chairwoman Ellyn Hilliard is recruiting new election judges because, she said, the county clerk’s office failed to assemble a bipartisan team to verify signatures on mail-in ballots for the Nov. 4 election.
Hilliard also said she witnessed some election judges approving signatures on mail-in ballots that did not match those of the voters.
Boulder County officials, for their part, said they did all they could to recruit Republicans to serve as election judges, but very few volunteered, and all signatures that are questionable are thoroughly reviewed.
What was scheduled as a rally to support Republican U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner on Tuesday at the party’s Boulder headquarters quickly became an emotional recruiting effort to find new Republican election judges amid the allegations.
Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert confirmed Tuesday night that state election officials visited the Boulder clerk’s office and found some troubling inconsistencies with some election judges.
“One of them was a Democrat who had changed party affiliation on Oct. 10, so we are concerned that Boulder didn’t follow the list, then resorted to advertising for these positions,” said Staiert, a member of Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s staff.
Staiert said state statute mandates that the ranks of election judges be equally split between Democrats and Republicans appointed by the party chair in their county. She said the law does provide leeway for county clerks’ offices to appoint judges who are unaffiliated or from other parties if they have “made reasonable efforts” to appoint people from the original lists.
If ther Dems are up to something sleazy, it seems the Republican organization is enabling them…
yuli
October 30, 2014, 3:25am
64
Nobody’s up to anything sleazy, things just happen (think “unintended side effect”):
“The Most Brazen Attempt at Voter Suppression Yet”slate.com/articles/news_and_ … lions.html
Bwahahaha (to quote a Forumosa PPP[super]*[/super])
More “best democracy money can buy” than ever.
*) playfully persistent poster
To whom, exactly, are you referring? One wonders…
[quote=“MikeN”]
Orman has said he’ll caucus with whichever party has the majority in the next Senate.
rowland
October 30, 2014, 11:40am
67
[quote=“hansioux”][quote=“MikeN”]
Orman has said he’ll caucus with whichever party has the majority in the next Senate.[/quote]
So he’s not a centrist. He’s an opportunist.
That’s a step up in by reckoning. He’s got no great convictions, but at least he’s not a complete fool.
rowland
October 30, 2014, 11:50am
68
An example of just why the Senate is in play:
washingtonexaminer.com/poof- … le/2555366
Nobody is saying “cover-up” just yet, but an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid received by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics nearly a year ago has mysteriously disappeared, and the panel claims it never received it despite a signed receipt.
This is the magic underpants guy we should have distrusted.
rowland
October 30, 2014, 11:59am
69
The news from Maryland gets worse:
watchdog.org/179354/maryland-illegal-voters/
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, asserts that individuals who opted out of jury duty because they were not legal U.S. residents have cast ballots in at least three Maryland elections.
Based on the number of potential unqualified voters identified in Frederick County, up to 7 percent of Maryland’s registered voters could be illegal immigrants, according to estimates.
You know things would just be a lot easier if we had some kind of, I don’t know, national ID card?
rowland
October 31, 2014, 2:49pm
71
Zuckerberg rocks the vote.
motherjones.com/politics/201 … er-turnout
Yet the process by which Facebook has developed this tool—what the firm calls the “voter megaphone”—has not been very transparent, raising questions about its use and Facebook’s ability to influence elections. Moreover, while Facebook has been developing and promoting this tool, it has also been quietly conducting experiments on how the company’s actions can affect the voting behavior of its users.
In particular, Facebook has studied how changes in the news feed seen by its users—the constant drip-drip-drip of information shared by friends that is heart of their Facebook experience—can affect their level of interest in politics and their likelihood of voting. For one such experiment, conducted in the three months prior to Election Day in 2012, Facebook increased the amount of hard news stories at the top of the feeds of 1.9 million users. According to one Facebook data scientist, that change—which users were not alerted to—measurably increased civic engagement and voter turnout.
No specific reason to think malfeasance, except the general unsavory reputation of the perp – which of course shifts the burden of proof.
rowland
October 31, 2014, 2:54pm
72
Given a secret ballot, this could conceivably backfire:
nypost.com/2014/10/30/democrats- … the-polls/
The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday.
“Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.
“We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.”
It ends with a line better suited to a mob movie than a major political party: “If you do not vote this year, we will be interested to hear why not.”
The letter and accompanying post card was criticized even by party members, with one Democratic consultant saying it was the wrong way to inspire votes.
rowland
November 2, 2014, 1:14pm
73
It’s scary when Republicans do it:
nytimes.com/2014/11/01/us/po … .html?_r=0
The digital track and chase in eastern Long Island — part of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s effort to catch up with Democrats’ sophisticated voter targeting — is an integral part of the modern ground game. Now campaigns know where you eat, what you watch, what you read, where you work, if you commute — and are tracking it in real time, delivering specifically tailored messages to individual voters and hounding them until the ballots are cast.
And in an election cycle with so many close races, the outcome, with control of Congress at stake, may turn on which party does the better job of, in effect, engineering the vote.
The use of this technology is not without risk. Its relentless and intrusive nature can quickly turn off voters, even though campaigns and committees on both sides work to address privacy concerns by making sure that at the individual level, each targeted voter remains anonymous.
“If you’re going to do this incredibly specific and intrusive form of advertising, the way you can make it successful is by making it feel less like advertising,” said Catherine Tucker, a professor from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You’re sacrificing the pushiness. It has to feel like a conversation.”
A conversation is a two-way exchange.
rowland
November 2, 2014, 8:38pm
74
kob.com/article/stories/S3607682.shtml
The first case of voter fraud in New Mexico this election has been confirmed by the Rio Arriba County Clerk’s Office.
According to the Rio Arriba County Clerk’s office, a voter trying to cast an early ballot in Espanola Saturday was told he had already voted three days prior.
The man told poll workers he hadn’t voted. He was then shown the signature of the voter, but he says it wasn’t his signature.
Officials say they were able to confirm that the signature on the original ballot did not match the legal voter’s signature on file.
Poll workers allowed the man to vote on a provisional ballot, but election officials will have to determine whether the provisional ballot can be counted. Elections officials have no legal means of actually verifying signatures or confirming identification of a voter.
yuli
November 3, 2014, 1:03am
75
[quote=“rowland”]http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3607682.shtml
[quote]
Governments on various levels have been, and are, committing voting fraud on a grand scale (disenfranchising voters through legalistic maneuvers, gerrymandering, pay-offs, dishonest advertising, etc.), so what is this bean counting about?
MikeN
November 3, 2014, 1:05am
76
[quote=“rowland”]http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3607682.shtml
[quote]
[/quote][/quote]
Can’t get the reference to open, but this is not necessarily fraud.
“My name’s James C. Barlow” “Okay, here’s your ballot”
3 days later. “My name’s James C. Barlow” “You’ve already voted- right here James Calhoun Barlow”
If you’re arguing that the American voting procedure, organized by state and county with different procedures /registration everywhere, maintained on a part-time basis, is screwed up, I certainly wouldn’t argue. Right To Vote Amendment with national procedures and regulations would be a good idea.
MikeN
November 3, 2014, 4:47am
78
More electoral fraud!
rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/nort … candidate/
rowland
November 3, 2014, 9:25am
79
[quote=“MikeN”]More electoral fraud!
rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/nort … candidate/
I’m guessing the Democrats will soon flip back into anti-Diebold mode? Maybe we’ll have bipartisan support for banning the damn things nationwide.
Bring back the butterfly ballot! All things considered, it was the lesser evil.
rowland
November 3, 2014, 2:35pm
80
This would have been an intriguing argument, if it had come out in, say, 2006:
nytimes.com/2014/11/03/opini … inion&_r=1
There’s an obvious, simple fix, though. The government should, through a constitutional amendment, extend the term of House members to four years and adjust the term of senators to either four or eight years, so that all elected federal officials would be chosen during presidential election years. Doing so would relieve some (though, of course, not all) of the systemic gridlock afflicting the federal government and provide members of Congress with the ability to focus more time and energy on governance instead of electioneering.
