Republican Fingers on the Scale (More Election Fraud & Theft)
Republicans are set to steal more votes again, this time in Pennsylvania.
It has been true for some time that for Republicans, winning elections trumps everything else. Will a government shutdown or default on the debt wreck the nation’s economy? Who cares, so long as it trashes the Democratic president and gives Republicans a better chance to win the White House? Create jobs for American workers? Not now dude, if employment gets better before election day, Republicans won’t be able to play off it as much. Country First? Nation First? Don’t make us laugh–if it’s not run by Republicans, then it’s not worth it; if it’s not Republican, then screw the nation.
Republicans put winning first, over everything else, over the people and their welfare. And they will try to win however they can. If you lose, then try to force a recall. If you can, impeach the Democrat. However, these methods are hard to implement and don’t often work. Better to win by hook and crook. Steal the election any way you can, and, to deflect criticism and win points, accuse the other side of trying to steal it.
It’s not enough to try to get Republicans to vote–they need to stop Democrats from voting. Minorities vote Democrat most of the time, so how can we stop them? (Remember the Michigan Republican who was a bit too candid about suppressing the 88%-black “Detroit” vote?) In 2000, the answer in Florida was to create an inflated “felon’s list,” unilaterally stripping tens of thousands of people of their voting rights without informing them, tipping the scales toward disenfranchising Democrats via generalizing name selection on the list–felons are disproportionately minorities, so indiscriminate voter-roll washing of anyone with a name similar to a felon’s is a good way to steal votes from Democrats. That one act of election fraud put Bush in the White House and helped to cripple the nation.
There are many other tricks, employed with the same fervor and corruption as was common under Nixon. Voter caging is a popular one–find people who commonly vote Democrat and then try to get them kicked off voting lists. Students vote Democrat–so send registered mail to their dorms during summer vacation and then claim they don’t live there when they don’t receive the mail. (The guy who led that drive in Wisconsin now runs the GOP, by the way.) People who have lost their homes to foreclosure often vote Democratic, so get them kicked off voter lists on the basis of their not having a home any more.
Add to that nationwide efforts at forcing people to use special ID cards at the voting booth, along with a host of other schemes designed to maximize obstacles for Democratic voters.
And then there’s a classic: redistricting. This is an old one, going way back, and Republicans love it. They won a lot of state houses on a census cycle, and they are now salivating at all the seats they can steal by gerrymandering the lines. No census? No problem, gerrymander between censuses, like they did in Texas!
And if gerrymandering isn’t enough, then see if you can’t screw around with electoral votes. Remember in California, which currently is a Democratic stronghold, they tried to split the electoral vote so that as many votes as possible could be funneled to the Republican candidate? Now, if Republicans were trying to do that everywhere, I wouldn’t have so much problem with it–but they would rail against any attempts to do such a thing in a state like Texas. Bottom line, they only want this in big states that go Democratic–not for fairness, but for tipping the scales against the actual will of the people.
Well, now they are working on Pennsylvania, and they might actually be able to do it this time. Not satisfied with just gerrymandering the House seats, they want to restructure the electoral vote system so that electoral votes are awarded, not by winner-takes-all, not even by the number of votes cast for each candidate–but by how many gerrymandered districts Republicans can artificially generate. The more districts the Republicans can swing to Republican by redistricting, the more votes go to the Republican candidate.
The move in Pennsylvania would win Republicans as many as ten electoral votes, maybe more if they can gerrymander really well. This would be similar to Republicans simply stealing the whole state of Massachusetts and dropping it in their column.
All this would be accomplished without winning a single vote. Not one American would change their mind to vote Republican. Nothing would be earned, nothing would be deserved.
Taking the system as a whole, it is equivalent to Republicans grabbing and running off with, at a minimum, nearly six million votes–without any of those people actually voting Republican.
Now, THAT is “election fraud.”
I don’t see the endgame here.
Weren’t the Republicans satisfied at the whack they took at the country 1995-2006? Why do they want to take over again?
What ideas did they fail to implement in that timeframe such that we need them running things now?
Just how fucked are they going to make things here? How much destruction will sate them?
I wish now today’s Japan was the dynamic country it was when I started studying Japanese in Fall 1989. I didn’t know it then but Japan was approaching the 絶頂 and it was going to be all downhill from there soon enough.
I was still clueless about Japan when I was FOB in August 1992. I had been watching NHK’s Today’s Japan religiously, but that wasn’t a real news show, almost propaganda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6bW3YcWHdE
for how it was back in the day.
I had no idea then that their stock market had bottomed out in July 1992, at over 50% off the peak.
The nikkei now is about half that, and going down still.
Japan is not as screwed up as the US tho, even though their finances seem more out of whack.
You Japanese can produce enough to pay your way in the world, which is all that is necessary. There’s the debt issue and the massive government deficits that are being run to hide the debt problem, but that doesn’t affect the actual wealth balance.
The US has fundamental imbalances — we cannot pay our way in the world, not without the dollar weakening substantially.
The politicians are happier talking about bullshit than the fundamental problems.
Obama doesn’t apparently have the clarity of vision or at least the political calculations to level with the American people about what’s coming for us.
Oddly, if the Republicans defeat Obama next year I think they’ll just do another Bush pump & dump — let the debt money flow again, tea party be damned.
If Obama hangs on, there will still be this cold civil war and the country will continue to circle the bowl.
Republican legislators seem quite “confused” about the merits of the congressional district method. In Nebraska, Republican legislators are now saying they must change from the congressional district method to go back to state winner-take-all, while in Pennsylvania, Republican legislators are just as strongly arguing that they must change from the winner-take-all method to the congressional district method.
Dividing Pennsylvania’s electoral votes by congressional district would magnify the worst features of the Electoral College system and not reflect the diversity of Pennsylvania.
The district approach would provide less incentive for presidential candidates to campaign in all Pennsylvania districts and would not focus the candidates’ attention to issues of concern to the state as a whole. Candidates would have no reason to campaign in districts where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind.
Due to gerrymandering, in 2008, only 4 Pennsylvania congressional districts were competitive.
In Maine, where they award electoral votes by congressional district, the closely divided 2nd congressional district received campaign events in 2008 (whereas Maine’s 1st reliably Democratic district was ignored).
In Nebraska, which also uses the district method, the 2008 presidential campaigns did not pay the slightest attention to the people of Nebraska’s reliably Republican 1st and 3rd congressional districts because it was a foregone conclusion that McCain would win the most popular votes in both of those districts. The issues relevant to voters of the 2nd district (the Omaha area) mattered, while the (very different) issues relevant to the remaining (mostly rural) two-thirds of the state were irrelevant.
When votes matter, presidential candidates vigorously solicit those voters. When votes don’t matter, they ignore those areas.
Nationwide, there are only 55 “battleground” districts that are competitive in presidential elections. Seven-eighths of the nation’s congressional districts would be ignored if a district-level winner-take-all system were used nationally.
If the district approach were used nationally, it would be less fair and less accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country’s congressional districts.
Because there are generally more close votes on district levels than states as whole, district elections increase the opportunity for error. The larger the voting base, the less opportunity there is for an especially close vote.
Also, a second-place candidate could still win the White House without winning the national popular vote.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed iin recent polls in closely divided battleground states: CO– 68%, IA –75%, MI– 73%, MO– 70%, NH– 69%, NV– 72%, NM– 76%, NC– 74%, OH– 70%, PA — 78%, VA — 74%, and WI — 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE –75%, ME — 77%, NE — 74%, NH –69%, NV — 72%, NM — 76%, RI — 74%, and VT — 75%; in Southern and border states: AR –80%, KY — 80%, MS –77%, MO — 70%, NC — 74%, and VA — 74%; and in other states polled: CA — 70%, CT — 74% , MA — 73%, MN – 75%, NY — 79%, WA — 77%, and WV- 81%.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, New York, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA , RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, CA, NJ, MD, MA, VT, and WA. These 9 jurisdictions possess 132 electoral votes– 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
NationalPopularVote.com
I presume you’re being ironic–after all, in Nebraska, they stand to get all the electoral votes in winner-take-all situation there, which is exactly what they want. As noted, and as I think you mean, they are not playing these games to represent fairness, but to rig the system in their favor.
Well, arguably, it would do a better job than winner-take-all. However, representing the result of gerrymandered districts is not reflective of Pennsylvania’s true nature, either.
Yep. Too bad it’ll never happen. Because then the smaller states would lose almost all the disproportionate power they now enjoy–and it requires their consent to change the Constitution.
Whenever I see a new visitor making such a detailed post, I kind of wonder, and do a Google search. And lo, “Toto”s exact comments here, usually under the name “oldgulph,” are posted in dozens if not hundreds of sites around the web. That by hand or automated?
Automated? Pray tell.
Now political clout comes from being a battleground state.
Now with state-by-state winner-take-all laws presidential elections ignore 12 of the 13 lowest population states (3-4 electoral votes), that are almost invariably non-competitive, and ignored, in presidential elections. Six regularly vote Republican (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota), and six regularly vote Democratic (Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and DC) in presidential elections.
Support for a national popular vote is strong in every smallest state surveyed in recent polls among Republican voters, Democratic voters, and independent voters, as well as every demographic group. Support in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska — 70%, DC — 76%, Delaware –75%, Idaho – 77%, Maine — 77%, Montana – 72%, Nebraska — 74%, New Hampshire –69%, Nevada — 72%, New Mexico — 76%, Oklahoma – 81%, Rhode Island — 74%, South Dakota – 71%, Utah – 70%, Vermont — 75%, and West Virginia – 81%, and Wyoming – 69%.
Nine state legislative chambers in the lowest population states have passed the National Popular Vote bill. It has been enacted by the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Vermont.
When states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, CA, NJ, MD, MA, VT, and WA. These 9 jurisdictions possess 132 electoral votes– 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
I asked, didn’t assume. If you’re going to mass-post a generic comment across dozens or even hundreds of blogs, automation would certainly save some time.
Those states are not ignored because they have few votes, they are ignored because they are non-competitive. Republican presidential candidates, not being as competitive in more of the higher-population states (California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, & New Jersey versus Texas & North Carolina), have to depend on these states. If they don’t pay as much attention to them, it’s because they see them as “safe.”
Ironically, Pennsylvania gets much more attention as a winner-takes-all state than it would if it were broken up by district, because it is relatively susceptible to swinging either way, and politicians would much rather fight to gain the “extra” or “free” 10 votes with the 10 or 11 which they earned than to go into Pennsylvania and fight district by district, one vote at a time.
As for the polling, not seeing a source I will have to take your word for it, but it is one thing to poll popular opinion, and another to see what would happen if it actually came to a vote, or if we actually got close to such a system taking effect.
Curious to see the machine at work here.
234 matches for “Now political clout comes from being a battleground state.”
And so what if the candidates “ignore” states, ya know?
On the macro scale it’s a wash.
@Luis
Yes, size doesn’t matter for the 2/3rds of states and their voters (over 85 million) that are ignored under the current system because they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind And size wouldn’t matter for the 7/8ths of the country that would be ignored if all states used the congressional district method of awarding electoral votes.
Now, policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states or districts – that include 9 of the original 13 states – are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing, too.
Charlie Cook reported in 2004:
“Senior Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out yesterday that the Bush campaign hadn’t taken a national poll in almost two years; instead, it has been polling 18 battleground states.”
While under National Popular Vote, every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in every presidential election. Every vote would be included in the national count. The candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states would get the 270+ electoral votes from the enacting states. That majority of electoral votes guarantees the candidate with the most popular votes in all 50 states wins the presidency.
National Popular Vote would give a voice to the minority party voters in each state. Now their votes are counted only for the candidate they did not vote for. Now they don’t matter to their candidate.
With National Popular Vote, elections wouldn’t be about winning states or districts. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state or district maps. Every vote, everywhere would be counted for and directly assist the candidate for whom it was cast. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in the current handful of swing states or districts. The political reality would be that when every vote is equal, the campaign must be run in every part of the country.
I was pointing out that small states support a national popular vote.
Poll results can be found at http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
~ 8000 matches for “policies important to the citizens of ‘flyover’ states”, 5 in the past week, 20 in the past month, 290 for the past year.
Dude’s a machine, hopefully not literally.
Well, that Republican Movement Conservatives and teabaggers are an intrinsically corrupt bunch in no surprise.
When your politics are focused on manipulating the machinery, its an acknowledgment that they can’t win debates on the merits.
That’s another way of admitting that their policies are losers, failures, dead beats, and that there policies ARE ruining the country AND they don’t care.
They insist on having power, they insist on ruining the country, and they couldn’t give a rat’s ass if means millions of Americans are suffering in ways that most people in the first world cannot even imagine.
The problem is a function of media and MONEY in Politics: He who pays the piper calls the tune.
0.04% of Americans contribute more than $400 to political campaigns. 90% of the time the candidate with the most money wins. That tells me that most Americans are idiots and vote according to the way the media pushes them.
Most politicians don’t care about the people. They care about getting the money they need, to buy the media adds they need, to bash their opposing candidate in media buys and therefore program the public on who not to vote for and who they should vote for.
Mussolini famously said that Fascism is the merger of Corporate and State power. Citizens United made America an intrinsically Fascist country. And the Supreme Court went out of its way to do so.
Then Arizona passed a public campaign finance law that allowed floating point public contributions so that a candidate that relied on public financing wasn’t handicapped by excessive private contributions. The Arizona law essentially neutered or at least mitigated the fascist effect of Citizens United. At the very least, the law would tripple the cost to corporations of buying a single election.
If the public “pays the piper” then the candidate is likely to act in the public’s best interest. That negates the Fascist effect of Citizens United. The 5 committed Fascist on the supreme court couldn’t stand for that.
The legitimacy of the concept of public campaign financing has over 100 years of precedent in Supreme Court rulings – yet in “Arizona Free Enterprise club” the court went out of its way and voted to overturn Arizona’s novel floating point campaign finance law.
The vote, like Citizens United, was 5 to 4. Arizona Free Enterprise majority opinion was written by Justice Roberts. If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is found in Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion: the most cogent yet, almost entertaining opinion I have EVER read – she subtly dresses down Robert’s contortionist arguments to the point of rank embarrassment.
If Kagan wrote the opinion, and not one of her clerks, then there is something to look forward to. Unfortunately, such writing, in about 10 to 15 years time will get you thrown into one of President Rick Perry’s concentrations camps (where you will spend the rest of your life digging irrigation ditches for Texas ranchers in 110 degree heat).
If you care to read the opinion, and its absolutely great stuff (If you can’t stomach reading Roberts, and frankly, I couldn’t finish it, Kagan’s opinion starts on p.37) go to….:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/10-238.pdf