Block the Vote
October 22, 2008 7:38 AM   Subscribe

A veeeery interesting article in Rolling Stone magazine, described by these words: Block the Vote, Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president? The article is signed by R.F.Kennedy Jr. and G. Palast
posted by acrobat (175 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Dear United States,

I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.

Signed,

The Rest Of The World
posted by you just lost the game at 7:48 AM on October 22, 2008 [9 favorites]


They try this every election. Why do you think all those stories about ACORN started popping up all of a sudden? To give them cover, and an excuse.

Does the rolling stone article talk about how the U.S. attorney firing scandal is a big part of this? In order to legitimize their efforts, the republicans wanted some convictions for voter fraud. Only problem: No actual voter fraud was taking place (as opposed too a few people ripping off ACORN by filling out fake forms and claiming to have done real registration work. But that's has to do with voter registration not actual voting).

Since the USAs refused to prosecute dubious cases, they got canned. On the other hand, several USAs were willing to do bogus prosecutions and do so right before the election 2004 election, violating the DOJ's own guidelines.

Oh well, it won't be enough to win this year.
posted by delmoi at 7:55 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Oh well, it won't be enough to win this year.
We hope.
posted by SPUTNIK at 7:57 AM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


delmoi: yes, they do mention that in the article:
Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."
RIF.
posted by mephron at 8:08 AM on October 22, 2008


Consider the source, peeps. C'mon, a Rolling Stone article? That's your big mind-blower? Gee, they go for the Democrat. Who'd a-thunk?
posted by gorgor_balabala at 8:08 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.

eponysterical!
posted by hellojed at 8:11 AM on October 22, 2008


Seriously America, you need to get out and vote. Please. The world can't take another 4 years of Republican policies.
posted by carfullofpandas at 8:12 AM on October 22, 2008


Do you realize that you just linked to Fox News in the same sentence where you said "consider the source"? Just checking.
posted by ND¢ at 8:14 AM on October 22, 2008 [10 favorites]


Consider the source? Hm. Well, Rolling Stone is generally known for extensive fact-checking. Are you saying that any single thing in the story they published is factually incorrect? Or you arguing with their conclusions?

Oh, no; you're dismissing the story wholecloth because of a perceived bias that you haven't bothered to demonstrate. And then you have the audacity to respond by linking to explicitly partisan web sites.

Nice.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:22 AM on October 22, 2008 [20 favorites]


Yes, dear, which is just to say that both sides do this. Big whoop.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 8:22 AM on October 22, 2008


Is this how democracy dies
Is this how democracy dies
Is this how democracy dies
Not with a bang
But a big whoop?
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:23 AM on October 22, 2008 [14 favorites]


Hey Canada/New Zealand/Japan, you don't mind if I show up on your doorstep on Nov 5th if things go sour here in the USA? I remember wanting to move in 2004, but then it was like "Dude, it's only 4 years, and who's going to want to vote for a Republican after Bush's wrenched decade?" and now we have Obama, who is favored 4 to 1 worldwide . Basically, the best Democratic candidate in forever. If, by hook or by crook, McCain wins, America's basically FUBAR'D. Mind if I crash at your place?
posted by hellojed at 8:26 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


No, even stipulating that both sides are engaged in cheating, which I don't think is obvious at all: one side is trying to prevent legitimate voters from casting their votes, and the other side is trying to get more people to cast votes. One of these problems is more toxic to the democratic process than the other.
posted by penduluum at 8:27 AM on October 22, 2008 [16 favorites]


"Yes, dear, which is just to say that both sides do this. Big whoop."


Oh please, will you stop with that already.

Fox is a well known, independently investigated, and clear partisan voice box for the right. There is evidence of this everywhere, it's ubiquitous and so painfully obvious that you, yourself, don't even deny it.

You accuse Rolling Stone of being the same for the left, with no support.

Yes, that's exactly the same! IT"S NOT THE SAME AT ALL!
posted by oddman at 8:32 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Yeah, RS is a really liberal mag, but it is very in-depth and well done. Then compare it to Fox and friends, where they alter the photos of "enemy" reporters, and in a rather heavy-handed way, too. But then again, would your grandmother (or even your mother) recognize the tell-tale blur of a cheap stretch effect?
posted by filthy light thief at 8:36 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


His previous article investigating the 2004 election

Oddman -- erm, you haven't exactly given support for your writeoff of FOX, either. I'd actually be curious if any comparable study had been done on Rolling Stone. Seriously, have those studies been done? Numbers, people, I want numbers!
posted by FuManchu at 8:37 AM on October 22, 2008


> one side is trying to prevent legitimate voters from casting their votes, and the other side is trying to get more people to cast votes.

A choice quote from the article:

"Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

The U.S. right has always claimed to be the (Moral or otherwise) "Majority," but they can't win if the majority of voters go out and actually vote.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:39 AM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.

You realize you just convinced a dozen readers to vote for McCain, right?
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:40 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


God why can't republicans just admit that it is all their fault and go away for a few years. I swear if there is any form of cheating in this election I think I might open up a pickfork and torch shop in DC at the edge of town .
posted by Mastercheddaar at 8:41 AM on October 22, 2008


Media Bias: Going beyond Fair and Balanced

FOX News showed a statistically significant pro-Republican bias in the most controlled of the three models Groeling tested: its Special Report program was 67 percent less likely to report a rise in approval for Clinton than a decrease and 36 percent more likely to report the increase rather than the decrease for Bush.
posted by ND¢ at 8:43 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Yes, dear, which is just to say that both sides do this.

Not to even the vaguest kind of equivalence.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:43 AM on October 22, 2008


Other Fox-related studies here FuManchu.
posted by ND¢ at 8:46 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


> You realize you just convinced a dozen readers to vote for McCain, right?

Anyone who would cast their vote for the leader of their nation based entirely on one comment made by a foreigner on a website...well, I better not finish that sentence. Wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings!
posted by you just lost the game at 8:46 AM on October 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Democrat's Gloom Deepens
posted by stbalbach at 8:47 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Dear Rest of the World:

Thanks for your concern. We appreciate it. But, honestly, we're not sure about your judgment when it comes to politics. Weren't you the same folks who brought the world colonial imperialism, communism and fascism? You were. And didn't we help bail you out when those "enlightened" projects went south, really far south? We did. Don't worry, you don't have to pay us back or anything.

So again, thanks for the note, but we'll take care of things round here and pray that you do the same over there.

Warmest, U.S.A.
posted by MarshallPoe at 8:48 AM on October 22, 2008 [15 favorites]


Don't trust Rolling Stone? OK, fair enough. How about the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, a "a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on fundamental issues of democracy and justice." Maybe? OK then, give this a read and get back to me.
posted by Otis at 8:48 AM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Dear United States,

I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.

Signed,

The Rest Of The World


That's quite a bit of disrespect to show your parents.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 8:49 AM on October 22, 2008


And didn't we help bail you out when those "enlightened" projects went south, really far south?

Oh xist, not one of these idiots.
posted by DU at 8:50 AM on October 22, 2008 [13 favorites]


Thanks ND¢, those studies would seem to be damned hard. I doubt any reasonable number could be taken from RS, given the low aritcle count, and that most aren't political.

Funny enough, those results seem to line up with most complaints from both sides -- the other three major networks tilt slightly left, and FOX tilts solidly right.
posted by FuManchu at 8:51 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear Rest of the World:

Since you don't get to vote in this coming election, but it will profoundly impact you, sometimes because we invade you, sometimes because we use you as places to station weapons of war or soldiers, sometimes because we topple your governments or throw our considerably weight behind your dictators, or arm your terrorists, or use you for cheap labor, feel free to let us know what you think about this coming election, and go ahead and tell people who want you to shut up where they can stick their undeserved rankling that someone who is not from this country might dare to express an opinion.

Signed,

Those of us in the USA who aren't obnoxious clots
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:52 AM on October 22, 2008 [65 favorites]


Zogby, today:

"Three big days for Obama. Anything can happen, but time is running short for McCain. These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan's victory over Carter -- but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment: he leads by 27 points among Independents, 27 points among those who have already voted, 16 among newly registered voters, 31 among Hispanics, 93%-2% among African Americans, 16 among women, 27 among those 18-29, 5 among 30-49 year olds, 8 among 50-64s, 4 among those over 65, 25 among Moderates, and 12 among Catholics (which is better than Bill Clinton's 10-point victory among Catholics in 1996). He leads with men by 2 points, and is down among whites by only 6 points, down 2 in armed forces households, 3 among investors, and is tied among NASCAR fans."

If Obama's tied with McCain amongst *NASCAR voters*...this one is probably too far out of reach for the GOP to steal. Which isn't to say all of this should be investigated, prosecuted and done away with. And if you're a liberal, don't get complacent!
posted by Stonewall Jackson at 8:55 AM on October 22, 2008


Voter Suppression and You: A guide for Unreal Americans.

Incredibly upsetting, but it ends with a list of things you can do to make sure your vote counts.

I love Megan Carpentier something fierce.

Rest of the world: I understand if you write us off if McCain gets elected. If such a thing happens, I will do my best to be sure that Massachusetts secedes from the rest of the country. Can we maybe join the EU? Thanks!
posted by giraffe at 8:56 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Gorgor_balabala, the article is signed by R.F.Kennedy Jr. and G. Palast. Come on! Don't you have something nasty to say about them too?
posted by acrobat at 8:59 AM on October 22, 2008


Robert Draper's Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored Story is not entirely uncritical of Rolling Stone mag, although it was published in 1991 ... which leaves us with seventeen years of uncovered ground.

Its main digs are aimed at founder Jan Wenner's fanboy tendencies and problematic ego. As for lies, distortions and sloppy journalism, this seems to mostly happen on the music side. Look no further than the inclusion of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" on a 1990s Top 100 songs of all time list, a guy that Wenner was hanging with at the time.
posted by philip-random at 9:08 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear friends DU and AstroZombie: I'm not entirely sure how calling someone with a different opinion an "idiot" or an "obnoxious clot" helps the discussion, but I'm sure you will explain.

My only point was that historically speaking the judgment of many of those who would presume to favor one candidate or another in a U.S. election has been rather suspect, and in a few cases just downright awful. Not to say of course that we in the U.S. are without sin. Not at all. But by and large our political judgment in the 20th century was much sounder than, say, that of most Europeans, Arabs, Africans or Asians (all people I'm very fond of and wish the best for). Perhaps the 21st century will break that trend, I don't know. But for now, I'll politely disregard what most foreigners say about U.S. elections.
posted by MarshallPoe at 9:14 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Dear Rest of the World-

HAVE THE BEST SUMMER EVER!
Holla at me if yall want to go down to the shore!!!

Signed,
Tiffany "Boo-boo" Garvey
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:15 AM on October 22, 2008 [7 favorites]


Dear Individual MeFites who are not American citizens:

Please stop referring to the United States as if it were some sort of monolithic entity. It's not. Just like your nation, it's composed of individual human beings. While I agree with Astro Zombie in that's perfectly okay and even welcome for you to express opinions about our politics, stop acting like it's every U.S. citizens fault when bad stuff happens. I doubt you're perfectly happy with your government, either, or that you yourself have complete and total control over who gets elected or otherwise runs your nation.

Thanks,
Caduceus
posted by Caduceus at 9:17 AM on October 22, 2008 [14 favorites]


Don't worry, you don't have to pay us back or anything.

You've changed your tune! Surely you remember receiving the final WWII war loan repayment of $83 million in 2006. I'm pretty sure we have the receipt somewhere.

Cheers,

The UK

P.S. I think you're going to have to write off the $4.4 billion we still owe you from WWI, though. Since you haven't really mentioned it since 1934 we assume you're cool with that.
posted by jack_mo at 9:19 AM on October 22, 2008 [8 favorites]


Dear MeFites:

Please knock it off with the direct-address meme. It's played out.

Thanks,
yhbc
posted by yhbc at 9:20 AM on October 22, 2008 [8 favorites]


It's well-known that the GOP harbors a love for Jim Crow vote suppression tactics. But I grew a little concerned about Robert Kennedy's good judgment on stories starting around 2005, when he pushed the autism vaccine theory and gave a paid speech to Shirley MacLaine's Ramtha reincarnation cult.
posted by Kirklander at 9:22 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


FINISH HIM
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:22 AM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


P.S. I think you're going to have to write off the $4.4 billion we still owe you from WWI, though. Since you haven't really mentioned it since 1934 we assume you're cool with that.

I defy you to find 10 people on the streets of America who know WWI even happened.
posted by mr_book at 9:23 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


As a Canadian with a friend who worked for Elections Canada during our most recent election, I feel a bit more confident now in saying that the hoops you Americans have to jump through in order to VOTE are ridiculous.

We just instituted new laws that raised the requirements for voter ID that many people were caught out by, especially freshman university students away from home. You know what these laws required? That when you show up to a voting booth, you present one (1) piece of photo ID with your address, or one piece of ID with your photo and another with your address. The piece of ID with your address didn't even need to be ID—a phone bill with your name and address on it would've sufficed. And if you had neither, you still had the option of having someone else with proper ID swear that you were able to vote in that riding.

There's no such thing up here as registering your party affiliation, or worrying about not being on the voter rolls, or having third parties handle voter registrations. What on earth do you have all these things in place for, anyways?
posted by chrominance at 9:25 AM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


The majority of the bad stuff is via the GOP. Why? It is the poor, the blacks and the relatively uneducated who get offed from the voter rolls. They tend mostly to vote Democratic. When such stuff began, as in Colorado, the head person for voting, found ways to dismiss names from the rolls. She is a Republican. Other states are using similar techniques and are usually under the oversight of guidance of GOP control (the lady in Colorado went oon to get a poitical reward via Bush). Now you don't toss out so many people randomly but cherry pick among those readily singled out for one or another reason, and these nearly always tend to be Democrat voters.

We have already read of cases where voters (early) claimed that their votes got "somehow" switched to Republican though they had voted Democrat.

The Obama team has recruited a huge army of lawyers to counter such maneuvers, and we can but hope (ray if you are a believer) that they can dampen the passions of the vote deprivers.

Wonder if RICO can be brought in as charge, or conspiracy to deny civil rights?
posted by Postroad at 9:28 AM on October 22, 2008


Rest of word:

"Please, oh please would you ..."

US:

Sticks fingers in ears, goes "La-la-la, I can't hear you!"

Alternatively:

"No YOU!"

"Your mom!"

"Hey, you started it!"

But it's okay, because some of your best friends are rest of worlders.
posted by ZeroAmbition at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2008


David Iglesias: "I'm Astounded" By DOJ's ACORN Probe
posted by homunculus at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2008


OK, MarshallPoe, I see your point. I was going to make a point about the US elections, but my vote for Hitler back in '33 pretty much makes anything I have to say irrelevant. Boy, do I regret that now.
posted by flashboy at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Two things that aggravate me to no end (speaking as an American who has traveled widely):

1. Citizens of other country who somehow extrapolate from the behavior of our voraciously war-hungry, imperial administration the belief that ALL Americans are thusly so. (There are 300 million of us, ffs.)

2. Americans who threaten to leave because they disagree with the policies of the current administration. Thanks a million, guys. Most of us can't leave, we don't have the means - and those of you who do should consider sticking around and helping us fix shit.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:34 AM on October 22, 2008


It's always so lovely when, every four years, Republicans Concerned about Voter Fraud Won't Someone Think of the Children! get all worried about voter fraud. They get so worried about it that they just make shit up.

But why should we expect anything different?
posted by rtha at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear citizens of earth!

At last we can reveal our plan! Your planet was carefully seeded with life millions of years ago by us, the Overlords! And why? So that one day, this glorious day, we can hunt and then consume you! You have 13 minutes to say prayers to whatever gods you believe in and say your farewells to your loved ones, and then the hunt is on ---

Wait. Just a second. What are you saying to me, Zontan?

When? Next year?

...

People of earth! Good luck in your forthcoming election!
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


If McPainlin wins, it would seem to me that opening a torch & pitchfork storefront and/or working to get your state to secede from the Union would be preferable alternatives to going and crashing over at Canada/New Zealand/Japan's place.

OTOH, one neighbor is going to vote Obama because he "just makes me feel good" and the other's voting on the fact that Palin is so "gosh darned cute."

I am afraid to discuss this with any other of my neighbors now.
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:43 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Mastercheddaar : I swear if there is any form of cheating in this election I think I might open up a pickfork and torch shop in DC at the edge of town .

It would probably get a lot of customers. I've said this before, but I'm honestly afraid that if there is the perception of impropriety or election fraud, that people might seriously take to the streets and we may have riots the likes of which haven't been seen for a couple of decades.

I think a lot of people are really keyed up about this election, and if they believe that it was illegally stolen from them, the fires won't stay constrained to the torches.
posted by quin at 9:47 AM on October 22, 2008




Not to distract from the very important left vs right fox vs rollingstone USA vs REST OF WORLD debate but I just thought I'd point out the elephant in the room - the fact is that the US election system is hands-down the worst in the "free" world. In every other "civilized" country it is considered a given that elections should be run by an independent and non-partisan agency, the members of which are expressly forbidden from taking part in political activity, or from even expressing their opinions in public. In America, it is a partisan street fight at every level, from start to finish, and top to bottom.

That both parties have historically participated in some form of election chicanery is pretty much undeniable, and no doubt this goes a long way toward explaining why neither party has taken the lead in ensuring that the various processes and procedures are not overly complex, opaque, and wide open for abuse. A situation in which politically partisan officials, all the way up to and including campaign managers, are actually making decisions about who is allowed to vote, the distribution of polling places, and the processes of counting and tabulation. This is a very clear conflict of interest, and would not be considered acceptable in any other context, and yet it barely passes mention year after year and election after election. If, [insert diety here] forbid, Palast and Kennedy are correct, and hundreds of thousands or millions of swing-state dems find themselves unable to vote on election day, things could get very ugly indeed.
posted by dinsdale at 9:54 AM on October 22, 2008 [22 favorites]


I feel a bit more confident now in saying that the hoops you Americans have to jump through in order to VOTE are ridiculous.

As an American, I agree with you in general, but I'll address some of your specific points:

That when you show up to a voting booth, you present one (1) piece of photo ID with your address, or one piece of ID with your photo and another with your address.

Serious question: how do you distinguish between citizens and non-citizen residents? Or do you allow non-citizen residents to vote?

There's no such thing up here as registering your party affiliation

Also true in some US states as well—that's one of those varies-from-state-to-state things. I take a bit of pride in living in a state that doesn't register voters by party and agree with you that doing so is rather silly.

...or having third parties handle voter registrations. What on earth do you have all these things in place for, anyways?

Well, the third-party voter registration is a feature, not a bug. It allows people to register to vote at times and places beyond what the government provides. People who can't easily leave their house can be registered by someone coming to their door, for example.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:57 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


the other three major networks tilt slightly left, ...

Just looks left from waaayyyy over there on the right.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:00 AM on October 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Yesterday in court (and I can only wish that I was making this up), there was a man appearing in front of the judge to plead guilty to some sort of misdemeanor.

The Judge looked down at the file and said, "Mr. Smith, you are from Delaware?"

The man nodded.

"That's where Joe Biden is from." He stretched the name out like it was an insult. "I hope you're not going to vote for....I'm not even going to ask you who you are going to vote for. Joe Biden cheated in law school. Did you know that? He plagiarized. So you might want to think about that."

This was said by the judge in open court.
posted by flarbuse at 10:00 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Dear Oddman,

You really need to stop reading Metafilter and get back to that dissertation.


Kindest Regards,

Oddman

P.s. You totally rock for voting early. Way to go.
posted by oddman at 10:04 AM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Chrominance: ...(1) piece of photo ID with your address, or one piece of ID with your photo and another with your address. The piece of ID with your address didn't even need to be ID—a phone bill with your name and address on it would've sufficed. And if you had neither, you still had the option of having someone else with proper ID swear that you were able to vote in that riding...

That "very simple" requirement disenfranchised my wife, a natural born citizen simply because she doesn't have ID or Mail that shows our current address.

She had photo ID to prove she is a Canadian, A tax Payer and legally able to get free health care, but since she had nothing with her address on it, no vote.

How "Smart" is that? You can guffaw all you like at The Americans, but the Canadian system is no less capricious. If you are interested, they wouldn't let me swear to her as the Canadian Voter Rolls didn't recognize when I contacted service Canada and updated my address (even when I double-checked to ensure that I would be registered at my current address) The Federal Bureaucracy simply forgot to update the rolls.

Then there is the ballot itself, three or so white circles, that if you go out of them (making a big X if you will) but not into the other circles, invalidates your vote.

The ballot is black, except for the white text candidates and white circles, but if my pencil goes out of the circle, I lose my vote? How is that not capricious?

The Canadian System works doubly hard to ensure the minimum of poor and migrant voter finds it difficult to vote. It essentially states, if you have no roots in a community, you are not a valid voter and therefore disenfranchised.

I move around alot, so unless I want to maintain that I still live at my parent's place, I have to constantly plumb the depths of the sometimes incompetent (but mostly slow) Service Canada to get anything done. It took 6 months to get my Passport last time, and they LOST the cheque I stapled to my daughters application (it took 6 months to tell us that though) so she traveled with an expired passport, thank goodness it was accepted at the border.

So scoff if you like, the Canadian System is worse, it's designed to Disenfranchise people through what on the surface seem to be very sane rules.
posted by NiteMayr at 10:05 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Dear Rest of the World:

Thanks for your concern. We appreciate it. But, honestly, we're not sure about your judgment when it comes to politics. Weren't you the same folks who brought the world colonial imperialism, communism and fascism? You were.


Dear America,

Personally I'm from the part of the world who had been fighting German fascism for two years before you managed to work out who the bad guys were. I'll trust our judgment over yours on that one, thanks.
posted by Infinite Jest at 10:12 AM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


the other three major networks tilt slightly left, ...

Don't you know that Reality has a left-wing slant? Like if a network states "Evolution is a scientific postulate that states organisms change over time as a reaction to changes in their biology and environment. These organisms sometimes form new species through these species" That's a fact. But it's a left-wing because it doesn't read "God put his finger on the earth aaaaand POOF, Rabbits!"
posted by NiteMayr at 10:14 AM on October 22, 2008 [6 favorites]


Thanks for that giraffe. We need to know about the dirty tricks that are going on, BUT it's even more important to tell people HOW they can stop these crooks from stealing their vote.
posted by marsha56 at 10:15 AM on October 22, 2008


People in the USA who get upset when foreigners dare get involved in discussions on whom the Americans should be going for in this or any other election should really hold their horses. Us foreigners do not get to vote; that much is true. But when YOU vote, we get OUR arms twisted, dictatorships imposed, puppet governments, policies dictated, globalisations rammed down our throats, civil wars up our arses, etc etc.
So, please consider this before you flame those who do put their word in.
posted by acrobat at 10:20 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


FINISH HIM

RAIDEN WINS!

(Where Raiden = Obama)

I'm Barack Obama and I approve [RIGHT LEFT LEFT LEFT HIGHPUNCH]
posted by Mister_A at 10:24 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Greg Palast is a hack. There's a reason he's been shrieking about this stuff for years and no one cares -- because when you get past the smoke and mirrors it's utterly unconvincing.

And consider this article by RFK Jr. Why should I believe that Republicans are involved in a massive vote stealing conspiracy when that same guy has also taken to the pages of RS arguing that there's a government cover-up over the fact vaccines cause autism, all legitimate scientific evidence to the contrary? He seems awfully paranoid to me.

Reality has a left-wing slant my ass.
posted by Heminator at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


Serious question: how do you distinguish between citizens and non-citizen residents? Or do you allow non-citizen residents to vote?

Can't answer for other countries, but here's the general idea in the Netherlands: the town I live in has my basic administration details - birth records, passport data, driver license database, etc. They also know where I live. And, probably most important to your question, they know my citizenship status.

A few weeks before the election, they send me:

1) a postcard sized piece of paper, with on it the date of the election and the occasion, my name and address, and the location of the voting station where I'm supposed to vote. That'd be within walking distance of my house

2) a full list of candidates and there affiliation.

On election day, I walk over to the voting station, hand them number one, and they may (but usually won't) ask me for identification. They cross off my name of the voters roster, throw away the card, and let me vote.

There's all kind of details in addition to this for absentee voting, authorizing somebody else to vote for me, etc, but those are irrelevant to your question.
posted by DreamerFi at 10:29 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear America And Rest Of The World --

didn't we just do this in the Colin Powell thread?
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:31 AM on October 22, 2008


(speaking as a rest-of-the-worlder) I reckon that by and large, the actions of a country do determine what others think of it, irrespective of the proportion of the people inside said country who oppose those actions.
posted by dhruva at 10:34 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


"I defy you to find 10 people on the streets of America who know WWI even happened."

I defy you to find 10 people on the streets of America who could recognize the Roman Numeral used in your sentence.
posted by mystyk at 10:35 AM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Are you there God? It's me, Sarah.
posted by swift at 10:36 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear Canada,

It's been a while since I last wrote. How are things? Did you get the card I sent on your birthday? I've been having some crises lately, thanks for calling, sorry I wasn't able to answer, but keep in touch.

What do you think of the Blue Jays chances next year?

Out,

America
posted by drezdn at 10:39 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


How do you distinguish between citizens and non-citizen residents? Or do you allow non-citizen residents to vote?

Electors are registered by a federal agency whose job it is to run federal elections: Elections Canada. Our provinces have little to do with federal elections, unlike your states. Only citizens are allowed to vote. Permanent residents (similar to green-card holders) and others can't vote federally.

Voter lists are culled from a bunch of sources: driver's licenses, income tax forms (there's a tick bock on the form to share your info with Elections), new citizen forms, provincial and municipal registers of voters, and, of course, by self-registration. EC sends you a form in the mail to confirm registration. Most people use this to vote with.

NiteMayr's wife's problem was that she couldn't prove which riding (district) she belonged in. If NiteMayr himself is on the rolls, he would have been able to vouch for his wife at his polling station (and you can only vouch once). I saw a bunch of people doing this when I voted. No trouble or forms to fill out. It looked pretty simple. Vouching is new so we'll have to see if there were a lot of problems with it.
posted by bonehead at 10:44 AM on October 22, 2008


Oh well, it won't be enough to win this year.

well, one hopes. two wars going on and the general disarray of two Bush-Cheney terms didn't seem to give Obama that big a lead until the biggest financial crisis since 1929 has eventually come.

so, to sum it up, in the last couple of weeks the situation is:

a) two wars

b) biggest financial crisis since 1929

for less, poor Jimmy Carter was buried under a landslide in 1980.

to be perfectly blunt (an unpopular modus operandi around here), we shouldn't even be having this conversation, except for betting how many States -- two, three, maybe four at most? -- the Republicans -- no matter who they run, McCain, Reagan's ghost, Jesus himself -- are going to get.

if the Democrats can't win this time, with this kind of wind blowing in the Republicans face, they might as well retire the party. consider the economy and the two wars, this should be a 1984 landslide with McCain in poor Fritz Mondale's place.
posted by matteo at 10:47 AM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Because I was elsewhere in Canada, I was away from my riding during the election. Still, I wanted to vote for the MP in the riding where I grew up and call home. This is how I did it:

I walked into an Elections Canada office and I showed them a piece of identification linking me to my riding. They verified that I was on the voter rolls and the information was correct in substance (a hyphen in my records I think was off when compared to my ID, but the spelling of my name, and my address, were correct).

I was then asked to sign a declaration that I'm voting in my home riding, and that I won't vote again, or do anything that I wasn't suppose to do. I did, and then I voted.

There were no threats, no questions about about my background, and no one assessed what the demographics of my community were. The people who worked in Elections Canada had a simple mission - make sure people who can and want to vote gets to vote.

That's how elections should be - a person should be able to identify themselves, declare that they will not usurp the democratic system, and the politicians should just TRUST their voters. We're the people who pay our taxes and receive social care, we understand the weight and importance of voting.

HAVA concerns me, as do the perfect match requirements, and stopping voter drives; they take what people expect as a civic duty and turn it into something like a gift that only the few deserve.
posted by phyrewerx at 10:53 AM on October 22, 2008


I'm Barack Obama and I approve [RIGHT LEFT LEFT LEFT HIGHPUNCH]

[BACK BACK TOWARDS} seems more fitting
posted by sarcasman at 11:00 AM on October 22, 2008




Unpaid comment section commercial break/hijacking:


GO PHILS!!!!
posted by VicNebulous at 11:03 AM on October 22, 2008


flarbuse said at 12:00 PM : This was said by the judge in open court.



Not to get all "jump on my white horse and save the town" about this, but dude (dudette), you absolutely have to report that somewhere else than just the blue. Find a friendly local reporter, call the Justice Department, file a complaint, something.

We cannot afford for our judicial system to be even more taken over by partisan politics. We must, absolutely MUST, retake the country for the citizens.

Judicial restraint varies from state to state, but I cannot imagine that actions like that are permissible anywhere.
posted by dejah420 at 11:04 AM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


As far as I can tell, Biden actually did plagiarize a paper back in law school. He failed the course, managed to keep from being thrown out of school, retook the class, and got a b.

That's enough to convince me to vote for Palin.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:10 AM on October 22, 2008


Dear USA and all planets of the Solar Federation:

We have assumed control.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:13 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


A big part of me hopes that someone hacks a Diebold voting machine in an obvious but low-impact and untraceable way (say, giving a very liberal NY district to McCain 80085-1337)1 so that people finally get MAD about Diebold.

A bigger part of me hopes that doesn't happen, because it would mean lots of votes being contested in an election which my candidate is favored to win.

[1] Yes, BOOBS to LEET
posted by lostburner at 11:13 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


A big part of me hopes that someone hacks a Diebold voting machine in an obvious but low-impact and untraceable way

No, someone hack the voting machines in a completely traceable way, say with their name and address, so that they can stand up and point out exactly what is wrong with the process for all to see. The crucial part of this is being willing to accept the consequences, such as jail-time or fines, so it'll probably never happen.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:20 AM on October 22, 2008




Dear USA and all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control.

Because your intervention worked out so well for the Chelgrians, ROU_Xenophobe.
posted by Justinian at 11:30 AM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


The crucial part of this is being willing to accept the consequences

Why would the perp have to be the spokesman? There's plenty of evidence out there that the system is insecure, and the demonstration would be enough to get the country's attention.
posted by lostburner at 11:32 AM on October 22, 2008




Dear USA,

I just wanted you to know I don't actually hate every last one of you, as you may have heard. In fact, Chuck Berry is about as good a human being as it gets (cameras in toilets aside), and he is one of you so... So yeah, just don't let McCain somehow assume the presidency, OK?

Thanks a lot, and remember, I don't hate you all,
stinkycheese
posted by stinkycheese at 11:53 AM on October 22, 2008


Chuck D's cool too, while I'm thinking of cool Chucks.
posted by stinkycheese at 11:56 AM on October 22, 2008


And consider this article by RFK Jr. Why should I believe that Republicans are involved in a massive vote stealing conspiracy when that same guy has also taken to the pages of RS arguing that there's a government cover-up over the fact vaccines cause autism, all legitimate scientific evidence to the contrary? He seems awfully paranoid to me.

Thereby saving you the trouble of actually reading the article for verifiable information!

Ad hominem™ saves so much time and energy - order yours today!
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:59 AM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Dear rest of the world,

Can you keep it quiet, please? We're trying to work.

Thanks!
--America
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:04 PM on October 22, 2008


Because your intervention worked out so well for the Chelgrians, ROU_Xenophobe.

It was for the good of all of them except the ones who are dead.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:09 PM on October 22, 2008 [3 favorites]


Dear Mental Wimp and NiteMayr,

I hope you were satisfied with your little snarks up there. Got some favorites, too. Good for you. But the thing is, if you read the link that ND¢ posted above, where FOX is shown to show slant Right (in numbers!), you'll also see that the other stations slant Left. In numbers. Less skewed than Fox, but skewed nontheless.

Eat me,
FuManchu
posted by FuManchu at 12:18 PM on October 22, 2008


Okay, so giving the benefit of the doubt to everyone involved: Democrats worry about negative voter fraud (disenfranchisement) while Republicans worry about positive voter fraud (Mickey Mouse and dead people voting). Typical of the "jail 10 innocent men or let 10 guilty men free" kind of conundrum.

I'm just a bit confused about how the positive voter fraud can be implemented. Are you not required to provide any documentation with your name at the poll besides your registration card? And wouldn't a viable address be needed for both absentee ballots and typical registration cards? Just how easy is it to get away with that? I've only used absentee ballots so don't know.
posted by FuManchu at 12:20 PM on October 22, 2008


Dear America,

So that's what you call looking at pr0n now?

Hugs,

Canada
posted by drezdn at 12:20 PM on October 22, 2008


I'm just a bit confused about how the positive voter fraud can be implemented.

It's a bit of a misnomer to start with. False/incorrectly completed registration forms are tossed out. Mickey Mouse won't get to vote.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:24 PM on October 22, 2008


"Nothing like deploying a bunch of cops on the streets of American cities, looking for marauding African Americans to help get out the vote."

From the link:
Some worry that if Barack Obama loses and there is suspicion of foul play in the election, violence could ensue in cities with large black populations.
It may be more than black populations...
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:25 PM on October 22, 2008 [4 favorites]


I'm just a bit confused about how the positive voter fraud can be implemented.

Well, that's just exactly it. It's almost impossible for the thing that they're worrying about to actually happen. As MStPT notes. Even if you turn in a lot of voter forms with Mickey Mouse on them, Mickey Mouse isn't going to show up at the booth. It's vote fraud vs. voter registration fraud, and the two aren't really comparable.
posted by penduluum at 12:28 PM on October 22, 2008


it is considered a given that elections should be run by an independent and non-partisan agency,

In America, we would call such a thing a "Republican" agency, that being the political party which has recently been more adept at infiltrating officially non-partisan organizations with unofficially very partisan members.

This sounds like the same flaw as with electronic voting. Put a completely unbiased decisionmaker in charge, ignore the possibility of that decionmaker being subverted, and everything should be good? At least building an unbiased machine is theoretically possible.

I'd much rather have elections which are run by representatives of competing candidates who each have an incentive to spot any unfairness. It's possible to design election systems in which either side can catch cheating . So far as such systems exist no independent referee is necessary, and where they don't exist no "independent" referee is a good substitute.

the members of which are expressly forbidden from taking part in political activity, or from even expressing their opinions in public.

Kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, aren't you? I hate to veer into "USA v. REST OF WORLD", but one of the founding US principles was that the freedom to publically express your opinions is even more important than majority rule, and that's still one of the best things about this country.

Still, I did enjoy reading the implied assumption that people with private opinions who don't take part in political activity (except for, you know, running the election system) are somehow inherently trustworthy. It's like seeing a little kitten at play: adorable, but not exactly the opponent you want to put in front of Rove and comrades.
posted by roystgnr at 12:28 PM on October 22, 2008


The list of acceptable ID for Canadian elections. Yes, if you don't have anything with your address on it, the polling station won't be able to determine if you're able to vote in that riding. Like I said, the change in the rules disenfranchised a number of groups, including new university students and people who were unaware of the rules. But I still think the American system sounds far worse.

Having moved around a fair bit myself, most recently two weeks before the election just past, it would have been quite easy for me to vote in my new riding had I decided to (I ended up voting on an advance day): bring my ID and get my roommate to swear I lived with him. Technically I didn't even need the ID. It's much, much harder to get a passport than it is to vote.

As for the idea that drawing outside the lines will invalidate your ballot, Elections Canada says otherwise:
3.1.2 Insufficient grounds to reject ballots

A ballot should not be rejected by a judge simply because it was: (...)

marked where the mark extends outside the circle to the right of the candidate's name [304(3), DRO Manual]
If they can't tell who you voted for, the ballot is invalid. If you didn't use a cross to mark your ballot, or filled in the whole circle, or your X left the circle? You're fine. And since you brought it up, the simple "check the circle beside the candidate of your choice" system is far more transparent and difficult to screw up than electronic voting systems or anything involving punchcards. Granted, this is partially due to the huge number of decisions Americans must make in every election, versus the simple "elect one person" of the Canadian system, but still.
posted by chrominance at 12:31 PM on October 22, 2008


But the thing is, if you read the link that ND¢ posted above, where FOX is shown to show slant Right (in numbers!), you'll also see that the other stations slant Left. In numbers. Less skewed than Fox, but skewed nontheless.

Ya, see, Fu it helps to read and understand all the words, especially these (emphasis added):
Groeling found that, with varying degrees of statistical significance, CBS, NBC and ABC showed what Groeling calls a pro-Democrat bias. For instance, CBS was 35 percent less likely to report a five-point drop in approval for Bill Clinton than a similar rise in approval and was 33 percent more likely to report a five-point drop than a rise for George W. Bush. Meanwhile FOX News showed a statistically significant pro-Republican bias in the most controlled of the three models Groeling tested: its Special Report program was 67 percent less likely to report a rise in approval for Clinton than a decrease and 36 percent more likely to report the increase rather than the decrease for Bush.
What this means is that the CBS, NBC, and ABC results were not statistically significant at the 0.05 level, the usual measure of statistical significance, the Fox News results were. The conclusion is that Fox News shows statistical evidence of bias, and the others do not, even though the observed data were in a direction consistent with bias. So, no the link doesn't don't pull your bacon out of the fire.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:35 PM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


More to your question, FuManchu, there's this, from the article:
Passed in 2002, HAVA [Help America Vote Act] was hailed by leaders in both parties as a reform designed to avoid a repeat of the 2000 debacle in Florida that threw the presidential election to the U.S. Supreme Court. The measure set standards for voting systems, created an independent commission to oversee elections, and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters whose eligibility is challenged at the polls.

To justify this battery of new voting impediments, Republicans cite an alleged upsurge in voting fraud. Indeed, the U.S.-attorney scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales began when the White House fired federal prosecutors who resisted political pressure to drum up nonexistent cases of voting fraud against Democrats. "They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments that would scare these alleged hordes of illegal voters away," says David Iglesias, a U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was fired in December 2006. "We took over 100 complaints and investigated for almost two years — but I didn't find one prosecutable case of voter fraud in the entire state of New Mexico."

The Bush administration's main point person on "ballot protection" has been Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department attorney who has advised states on how to use HAVA to erect more barriers to voting. Appointed to the Federal Election Commission by Bush, von Spakovsky has suggested that voter rolls may be stuffed with 5 million illegal aliens. In fact, studies have repeatedly shown that voter fraud is extremely rare. According to a recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Barnard College, federal courts found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast. "The claim of widespread voter fraud," Minnite says, "is itself a fraud."
In a nutshell: Republicans create a "voter fraud" boogeyman, and then toss up barriers that block demographics who typically vote Democratic, which is implemented on a local level (e.g., "In California, a Republican secretary of state blocked 43 percent of all new voters in Los Angeles from registering in early 2006 — many because of the state's failure to produce a tight match. In Florida, GOP officials created "match" rules that rejected more than 15,000 new registrants in 2006 and 2007 — nearly three-fourths of them Hispanic and black voters.")

On the surface, it seems like HAVA is just trying to keep things on the level. In practice, it can be wielded locally to knock thousands of the registration records.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:37 PM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


It's vote fraud vs. voter registration fraud, and the two aren't really comparable.

Okay, so I'm not a complete dummy. I also don't quite get the hubub of the latest GOP guy in California who registered a bunch of people as Republicans -- I don't see how that could actually affect their vote. The dead voter fraud seems to be the only possible way to do it, but that takes such detailed knowledge and can't really be scaled.

Mickey Mouse won't get to vote.

Yea, I'm wondering whether the kid who did that is actually sorry about the resulting chaos or just laughing about it and how he stole $8/hr from ACORN.
posted by FuManchu at 12:40 PM on October 22, 2008


Video of Paul Weyrich stating "Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up, as the voting populous goes down"
posted by clearly at 12:41 PM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


FuManchu:

ACORN proactively marks suspiciously registrations when they turn them in to the election boards for review.

The video above puts the GOP argument in context. Mickey Mouse would have to register, get the registration through the board of elections, show up at the polls with a valid ID, vote for a particular candidate, and rinse and repeat hundreds of thousands of times.
posted by clearly at 12:47 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Thanks, Marisa Stole the Precious Thing. I'm still one to attribute the whole thing to idiocy rather than conspiracy, though. I think just like terrorism or the drug war, most people see a wrong that must be righted at any cost. And that cost is so minimal to them anyhow, they just don't understand the relative importance. .... clearly's link notwithstanding.

Mental Wimp -- come on, "varying degrees" does not equal "no".
posted by FuManchu at 12:50 PM on October 22, 2008


Thanks Chrominance,

I agree that it all looks straightforward, but the simplicity of it was throws up the roadblocks and provides easy opportunities for fraud.

It would have been easy to produce a fake bill with her name and address on it, but why couldn't her spouse who shares her last name vouch for her while some random neighbor could. It's a silly hoop to jump through when you have id that supports your identity on hand.

I was admonished by the overly nosy election worker for my sloppy filling of the ballot (which is what raised the whole point about the ballot)

No, I don't long for the electronic system, it's too easily corrupted, the Canadian ballot is fine, but they shouldn't worry about how the circle is filled, other than "it is filled in some appreciable manner"
posted by NiteMayr at 12:56 PM on October 22, 2008


"Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up, as the voting populous goes down"

Actually that quote gets less sinister the more I think about it. It's simply a mathematical fact. You vote means more with 10 voters than with 100. The trick is to only encourage those who think like you to vote.
posted by FuManchu at 12:57 PM on October 22, 2008


I'm still one to attribute the whole thing to idiocy rather than conspiracy, though. I think just like terrorism or the drug war, most people see a wrong that must be righted at any cost.

But Al-Qaida exists, and has done verifiable damage. Drug cartels exists, and continue to do verifiable damage. Voter fraud is statistically nearly non-existant, and has done no verifiably damage.

And that cost is so minimal to them anyhow, they just don't understand the relative importance. .... clearly's link notwithstanding.

clearly's link makes probably the most important point of all, and is reflected in the article:
Shortly before the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Paul Weyrich — a principal architect of today's Republican Party — scolded evangelicals who believed in democracy. "Many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo goo' syndrome — good government," said Weyrich, who co-founded Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. "They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. . . . As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." [Emphasis added]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 12:58 PM on October 22, 2008


Easy solution to this problem. Register Republican after the primaries are over and vote democratic. Spread the suggestion.....
posted by dibblda at 12:59 PM on October 22, 2008


The trick is to only encourage those who think like you to vote.

Or block those who don't think like you from doing so - as HAVA is aimed at new registrants most of all, and most new registrants are Democrats, well, you do the math.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:01 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


"Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up, as the voting populous goes down"

Actually that quote gets less sinister the more I think about it.


The quote gets quite a bit more sinister when prefaced by a stern "I don't want everybody to vote!" I am not going to argue the math with you, because you are right. I will take exception however in the use of that math to undermine the basis of our Democracy with fabricated voter fraud allegations.
posted by clearly at 1:16 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


"But when YOU vote, we get OUR arms twisted, dictatorships imposed, puppet governments, policies dictated, globalisations rammed down our throats, civil wars up our arses, etc etc."

Gee, when you phrase it like that, it almost makes me want to vote for McCain. Down your throats and up your asses? How scandalous!

Also:

Dear Rest of the World,

You know that, like, 95 percent of American registered voters who post on Metafilter are going to vote for Obama, right? Also, didn't you all just vote for Harper, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Merkel and Medvedev/Putin? I mean, I realize they're not as bad as Bush (just like Bush isn't as bad as Hitler was), but is your justification for voting for conservatives just that you don't matter enough to have it really affect people outside your borders? Oh, what's that? You didn't vote for those guys, personally?

So, you comin' to the party on November 4? I think we have a shot at a pretty good blow-out.

Love,

US
posted by klangklangston at 1:19 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


ps. to Australia: Rudd's OK. Kinda has a shrunken-apple head though.
posted by klangklangston at 1:20 PM on October 22, 2008


thee seems a good deal of confusion her in these comments about who is doing what and how it is done and who might benefit from what is seemingly being done. For a clear explanation of all these things, see

http://motherjones.com/news/outfront/2008/11/outfront-10-ways-to-steal-an-election.html
posted by Postroad at 1:21 PM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


My god! I just read the comment about Joe Biden having cheated in (plagerized) in law school! I was all set to vote for the Democrats. Now I will support Gov Palin and Raging Bull: they never cheated in law school.
posted by Postroad at 1:25 PM on October 22, 2008


And consider this article by RFK Jr. Why should I believe that Republicans are involved in a massive vote stealing conspiracy when that same guy has also taken to the pages of RS arguing that there's a government cover-up over the fact vaccines cause autism, all legitimate scientific evidence to the contrary? He seems awfully paranoid to me.

Thank you Heminator. You're right. That DEADLY IMMUNITY article destroys any credibility RFK Jr. has with me as well. And I say this as a father of a child with autism. Millions of research dollars are being diverted because of people like RFK Jr.

One clarification: RFK Jr. did not write deadly immunity because he was paranoid. He was in the pocket of big money personal injury lawyers who thought that Big Pharma was their next big catch. Anyone who's interested can check out Autism's False Prophets for more details.

Sorry for the derail, but I'd have to look outside if RFK Jr. told me the sky was blue. And I'm an Obama supporter who believes that the right is doing everything they can to steal the election.
posted by cjets at 1:41 PM on October 22, 2008


The first time I voted in the small Ontarian town of my current residence, the sweet, very old retiree who took my voting card couldn't find me on the list. She checked the list several times, and then examined my driver's licence. "You see", said she, "you're at the wrong polling station since your address is 110 Piccadilly, an odd number". "Actually", said I with a gracious smile, "it's an even number since it ends in a zero." "But is starts with a 1", she explained, handing me back my card. Several other helpful people at the table interceded on my behalf and after a couple of minutes she relented, unconvinced, and checked the list again (finally finding me).

I'm not much of a fan of the current canadian election system, which makes vote splitting so deadly (klangklangston -- mores the tragedy, most of us voted against Harper), but I have a growing appreciation of the value of a simple system resistant to intentional and unintentional abuse.
posted by ~ at 1:42 PM on October 22, 2008


Question for ROU_Xenophobe:

What is the current status of all our base? To whom do they belong at this time?

/cats
posted by Mister_A at 2:09 PM on October 22, 2008




Homunculus...

In reading that, I came to a realization. The experiment that is The United States of America is almost complete. No matter who wins, this republic is going to fail...

So much was done so quickly. I need not recap... most of the events have been documented. Those that have not... will come as no surprise to me.

There is not enough time for all the damage to be undone.

Fascist Dictatorship? Balkanization? Civil War?

Where do we go from here?
posted by PROD_TPSL at 2:54 PM on October 22, 2008


Other night on tv news, reporter noting that there were some problems in some county with early voting. Mostly, in black section of the county. Not to help GOP but "only" because the voting machines put there were the older ones that were not in good shape. See. All is fair.
posted by Postroad at 3:01 PM on October 22, 2008


Dear Rest of the World:

Thanks for your concern. We appreciate it. But, honestly, we're not sure about your judgment when it comes to politics. Weren't you the same folks who brought the world colonial imperialism, communism and fascism? You were. And didn't we help bail you out when those "enlightened" projects went south, really far south? We did. Don't worry, you don't have to pay us back or anything.

So again, thanks for the note, but we'll take care of things round here and pray that you do the same over there.

Warmest, U.S.A.


Troll troll is troll.
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:10 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


...And didn't we help bail you out when those "enlightened" projects went south...

Though I admit you Yanks are pretty good at BAILOUTS, LOL!
posted by turgid dahlia at 3:12 PM on October 22, 2008


There is not enough time for all the damage to be undone.

Why not? Have you made other plans?

We've got time. We're short on the will to change, and numbers, but time we've got, time's on our side. That's the beauty of radicalism.
posted by penduluum at 3:15 PM on October 22, 2008


Waiting for Obama, from today's Globe and Mail.
Has there ever been a U.S. political race in which the world seems so emotionally invested?
Take this comment on the BBC website, in which the writer extols Mr. Obama's virtues before worrying that his very success "may well sink him in the last minute."
It's amazing how many people I know here are carrying on the same conversation. "You think he's safe now?" one worried friend asks. She doesn't say Mr. Obama's name. She doesn't have to.
posted by jokeefe at 3:30 PM on October 22, 2008


So, in the extremely DO NOT WANT and hypothetical world where hundreds of thousands of people are prevented from voting on election day and the election is disputed and McCain claims another comeback underdog victory... what happens? Can the Supreme Court take a look and say that the voters shoud have been allowed... but it's too late to let them all vote again, so we'll just try to fix it next time. Or do they just call the election for one party or the other? What actually happens if these tactics work for the Republicans?
posted by twirlypen at 3:31 PM on October 22, 2008




> Or do they just call the election for one party or the other? What actually happens if these tactics work for the Republicans?

Then you're we're fucked.
posted by Stonewall Jackson at 3:38 PM on October 22, 2008


Homunculus...

Where do we go from here?


Lord Humungus Homunculus rules the Waste Land! To me my Dogs of War!
posted by homunculus at 3:44 PM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


I may be naive on this, but is there a downside to mandatory voting? They have this in Australia, and it seems to work pretty well there. Except for the potential of a strong Republican oppostion, is there any reason this shouldn't be happening here?
As far as civil duties go, it's not as onerous as jury duty or mandatory registration for the draft (or currently slective service if you're a male between 18 and 25).
posted by newpotato at 4:05 PM on October 22, 2008


I was admonished by the overly nosy election worker for my sloppy filling of the ballot (which is what raised the whole point about the ballot)

The election workers looked at your filled-in ballot? WTF!? Isn't that supposed to be, you know, your secret?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:11 PM on October 22, 2008


Mental Wimp -- come on, "varying degrees" does not equal "no".

Actually, in this case, that's exactly what it means. If the p-value had been less than 0.05 two-sided, or equivalently, the 95% confidence interval had excluded a difference of zero, they would have just said it was statistically significant. When they hedge with phrases like "varying degrees", it means it didn't quite make it, but was close. How close? Well, you'd have to dig out the original paper to find out and I don't have time for that exercise. If you're pumped you might try it yourself.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:16 PM on October 22, 2008


There's no such thing up here as registering your party affiliation

Do you guys have primaries up there? (I was under the impression Canada and the UK don't have anything analogous to the American primary contests.)

Though I can see the arguments against it; and some states have no party registration; I think it's fair to make sure only Republicans are voting in Republican primaries and only Democrats are voting in their contests.

I was of the wrong party affiliation to vote for Obama in the primary which kind of sucked. (I was registered GOP only because I was working for a very awesome and socially liberal Republican and I really wanted to vote for him in the primary.) I get to vote for him the 4th though!
posted by spaltavian at 4:19 PM on October 22, 2008


I may be naive on this, but is there a downside to mandatory voting?

None that I can think of.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:19 PM on October 22, 2008


The downside to mandatory voting, as I see it (as an Australian) is that there will be people who just don't care about either party (think of the huge amount of non-voters in the US), and mandatory voting means a huge amount of votes are based on... what? Some impression, a general preference for some guy's eyebrows? Also, I've spoken to electoral workers who have stories of going into nursing homes and having people with dementia and alzheimers pick either a red circle or a blue one as their 'vote', and of travelling into the red centre to remote Aboriginal tribes and having each adult pick a name, knowing full well that they've never heard of either of them.

But on the whole, I think it's better. It means politicians have to consider the whole population and, ideally, that parliament actually does represent the entire country instead of just some politically active portion of it.
posted by twirlypen at 4:35 PM on October 22, 2008


None that I can think of.

I'm trying to think of the arguments that the far right could possibly use against mandatory voting. They surely couldn't say it's anti-american, or unpatriotic, or any of the other tags they like to hurl at anyone who doesn't agree with their POV.
Anyone?
posted by newpotato at 4:37 PM on October 22, 2008


Thanks for the insight, Twirlypen.
I see your point, and I agree with you in that I think it would be better than what we have now.
I also like to think (a bit too optimistically, perhaps) that at least a portion of the population might pay a bit more attention to the candidates and their campaigns, and to what the government is doing in general, than they do if they aren't planning to vote.
posted by newpotato at 4:43 PM on October 22, 2008


Apropos bailing to NZ: in the last couple of years, we've been mostly accepting refugees from Burma and Afghanistan. In the event that you reach that level of fuckupitude, we'll consider you too. In the meanwhile, you'll have to get in line with everyone else.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 4:51 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I know most of you don't give a shit, but I just thought I'd let you know; if John McCain and Sarah Palin win the next presidential election, or manage to steal it without a fight, the rest of the world is WRITING. YOU. THE. FUCK. OFF.
You realize you just convinced a dozen readers to vote for McCain, right?


Cut their nose off despite their faces, eh? If they're really that stupid, they deserve what they get.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:08 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I wonder what would happen if Americans boycotted the "voting" system. What message would it send if only a tiny fraction of America voted?

"Let's all say no to this bullshit. I will not participate in a broken system. Suck out my ass republicans and democrats. I want real democracy! I want real freedom!"

Don't worry, I'm not optimistic and I've prepared a snarky letter for y'all's entertainment:

Dear American people,

Suck out my ass.

Love, the government.
(Signature is an unholy amalgam of McCain and Obama's signature the I's dotted with sculls, written in the blood of our future children)
posted by fuq at 6:13 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


Do you guys have primaries up there?

Sort of. Not in the sense you're thinking of really. We have nomination meetings for our riding candidates. You have to join a party to vote at one. Most people don't bother. You can join multiple parties if you feel like fibbing on the papers; I don't think anyone checks.

Remember, in the Westminister systems (CA, AU, NZ, UK), the PM is simply the party leader with the most seats, the equivalent to the leader of the House, in your system. There's nothing equivalent to your presidential primaries.
posted by bonehead at 6:18 PM on October 22, 2008


I've said this before, but I'm honestly afraid that if there is the perception of impropriety or election fraud, that people might seriously take to the streets and we may have riots the likes of which haven't been seen for a couple of decades.

If there is fraud again, all y'all sure as hell had better be taking to the streets in riot.

There is nothing more important to fight for in the USA, than the right to have your vote properly counted.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:19 PM on October 22, 2008


As an American living overseas, I occasionally get attitude about just being American pretty consistently, if I'm consistently meeting new people. One type are people who noticeably avoid talking politics, presumably because they don't want to get into an argument with an American (me) who loves Bush and the Iraq war and hates the Kyoto Protocol, et. al. The other type is the directly confrontational, and attempt to teach me about my own country's politics. To both types, it doesn't matter (at least at first) that I don't like Bush, or his administration, nor that I strongly condemn his actions, cringe at the sight of him. Nope.
What matters is that I’m an American, and therefore an easy target.

Back in 2005 or so, I was talking with this British guy at a party. He was convinced that the Republican party would win again in 2008. And this was a time, remember, in which no one knew who would be running. I said “Well, Hillary Clinton will probably run, but nobody knows, and we have no idea who will run on the Republican side” “
“Yeah, but,” he said, “America will elect whoever the Republican candidate is.”
“It’s possible. But it’s far too early to tell. It’s totally up in the air.”
“Yeah, but, really, it’s gonna be the Republicans again.” Repeat conversation five plus times. Funny thing was, at the end of that inane dialogue, I got the impression that he felt he had really taught me something about my own country.
posted by zardoz at 6:30 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I was admonished by the overly nosy election worker for my sloppy filling of the ballot

WTF? I'd have raised holy hell if the election volunteer had sneaked a peek at my vote. There are overseers in the facility, and I think the volunteer would be booted out for that.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:37 PM on October 22, 2008


As an American living overseas, I occasionally get attitude about just being American pretty consistently, if I'm consistently meeting new people.

That does suck, but this happens everywhere to every expatriate. You are the temporary ambassador for your homeland, and you get to be harangued, patronised or complimented irrespective of your personal responsibility for the local misconceptions about your country. It's just part of the magic of travel. Americans are not particularly victimized in this respect.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:30 PM on October 22, 2008


With the bulk of the army otherwise engaged, now would be a pretty good time to secede.
posted by oddman at 7:45 PM on October 22, 2008


I wonder what would happen if Americans boycotted the "voting" system. What message would it send if only a tiny fraction of America voted?

It would send the message "The elections are easier than ever to fix and Americans are too busy on bullshit symbolic gestures to do anything real."
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:53 PM on October 22, 2008 [5 favorites]


@five fresh fish

Cut their nose off despite their faces, eh? If they're really that stupid, they deserve what they get.

Cut their nose off to spite their face, eh?

As for the article at hand. It's true but it being RFK Jr., and it leaving out historic vote-related naughtiness on the part of Democrats means it will only be preaching to the choir--which is OK, they're the ones who read RS anyway.

That said, I think the Republicans are going to fight this one dirtier than any other in recent memory.
posted by brandonjadams at 7:53 PM on October 22, 2008


gack.

[slaps wrist]
posted by five fresh fish at 8:06 PM on October 22, 2008


That said, I think the Republicans are going to fight this one dirtier than any other in recent memory.

Or maybe not. I think the Republican Party management has decided the party needs to be destroyed so it can be rebuilt from scratch. The next four years are going to be hell: they don't want to be associated with the fallout of the Bush fuck-ups.

So they're throwing the election, and will do so in a way that throws out the batshitinsane component of the Republican Party. There's a poison that made it possible for Bush to win. Real Republicans do a ground-up rebuild of the Party.

At least, this is my hope. I think it's impossible for the country to survive the current and upcoming emergencies under a McCain/Palin leadership.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:15 PM on October 22, 2008


But, honestly, we're not sure about your judgment when it comes to politics. Weren't you the same folks who brought the world colonial imperialism...

Ahem! All the United States (and Canadians, Australians and Kiwis, too) are the direct beneficiaries of colonial imperialism - our countries were founded by the colonists, and our wealth is based on the expropriation of land and resources from the aboriginal peoples. So no moral high ground here.

As for communism and fascism - well, since the white colonies were all part of the same intellectual circles, we were as much part of the intellectual development as Europeans. That neither took route in the colonies says more about the stability of our governments, and the fact that our nations were not defeated by WWI / ignored in the Versailles Treaty right after one of the most brutal wars in history, with a follow up of economic instability for a decade before the United States' depression began. (NB: I totally recognise that the Commonwealth were in that war, and it was horrific, but we did at least come away victors and had more stable governments partly because of that).
posted by jb at 8:28 PM on October 22, 2008 [2 favorites]


A Day in the Life of Joe Republican
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
Anonymous or Lois Carneiro, depending which Tacomagal you ask, I suppose.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:34 PM on October 22, 2008 [15 favorites]


From homonuculus' link:

In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama.


Guess which North Carolinian ex-MeFi alum was standing in that group.

But she was just attending a 'McCain rally'.

Good Lord, we weren't picketing VOTERS.

Yeah, sure.
posted by marsha56 at 8:40 PM on October 22, 2008


posted by bunnyfire 21 October | 14:02

Oh, snap.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:33 PM on October 22, 2008


I am just too damned old for a revolution. If we were going to have one, the early seventies would have worked for me. I would just as soon we bumble on with this sham of a democracy we have now for awhile longer, if it's all the same to you.

Having said that, I would be forced to participate in whatever comes along if this election is stolen. But I want you to know that I am simply not happy about the timing.

I'm too old for this shit.
posted by leftcoastbob at 10:02 PM on October 22, 2008


Excellent piece from that arugula-muching, pot-smoking, tax-and-spend pinko commie rag, Forbes Magazine:
Judging from the disturbing developments of the last two months, the verdict seems clear. Forget the self-reckoning and self-repairing--the Republicans seem intent on self-immolation.

McCain and his allies are now openly calling Obama a socialist because he wants to raise the top tax brackets back to their Clinton-era levels (when the country enjoyed the greatest peacetime expansion in our history) and provide a cut in the payroll tax to middle class workers.

These digs about a Democrat who has raised more money from Wall Street than his Republican opponent and been endorsed by notable red diaper babies like Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman and Reagan appointee Paul Volcker, Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl and Google CEO Erik Schmidt? These attacks from a Republican Party whose president just called for nationalizing much of our banking system and whose nominee endorsed that same extreme government intervention in the marketplace?
Pfft. Whatever, comrade. Since when does Forbes know anything about business?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:16 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]


I want you to know that I am simply not happy about the timing.

Which goes to show, the right time for a civic uprising is the first time an election is stolen, not the third.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:01 PM on October 22, 2008


If the p-value had been less than 0.05 two-sided, or equivalently, the 95% confidence interval had excluded a difference of zero, they would have just said it was statistically significant.

Mental Wimp, you actually don't know any of what you just said. You haven't read the paper and are speculating. Furthermore, you're taking a extremely pedantic view of statistical significance anyhow. A p less than .05 is not magically different than a p less than .07, it serves as a guide to your understanding.

The unpublished paper is on Tim Groeling's site. The charts make for interesting perusal. It turns out that for the FOX results, there's only mild significance (p less than .10), after making adjustments. The base numbers, before adjustments, actually show only CBS and NBC with significant (p less than .05) Democratic skew, while FOX has insignificant (p greater than .10) Republican skew. Whatever importance you want to lay on statistical significance, the Figures 3, 4, and 5 let you eyeball quite a bit. But if you want to go on pretending that only FOX is skewed in any way, go ahead.
posted by FuManchu at 11:59 PM on October 22, 2008


"A p less than .05 is not magically different than a p less than .07"

The stats faeries beg to differ.
posted by oddman at 4:45 AM on October 23, 2008


No they don't. The only people that treat 0.05 significance as a bright line separating "worthy results" from "crap" on a knife-edge are:

(1) Old farts from back in the day when generating p-values was hard
(2) Youngsters who haven't gotten all the way through their first real methods course and haven't yet been chewed out by a reviewer on this issue.

Otherwise, people understand that the difference between something with a p-value of 0.049 and one of 0.056 is... 0.007. Minor. Not infinity.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:15 AM on October 23, 2008


If there is fraud again, all y'all sure as hell had better be taking to the streets in riot.

I am really uncomfortable with these incitements to violence. If a stolen election is such an affront to democracy, I don't see how a violent uprising will solve the problem. It might be unavoidable, but I don't see any reason to encourage it.
posted by effwerd at 9:54 AM on October 23, 2008


What It's All About
posted by homunculus at 10:49 AM on October 23, 2008


If a stolen election is such an affront to democracy...

If?
posted by stinkycheese at 12:42 PM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]


The unpublished paper is on Tim Groeling's site. The charts make for interesting perusal. It turns out that for the FOX results, there's only mild significance (p less than .10), after making adjustments.

Well, Fu, I gotta hand it to you, you're really dancing hard here. First, thanks for findning Groeling's site. You linked to the wrong paper, though. Here's the right link. Now, if you read that paper, in the fully specified model (Table 2, which deals with the polling data mentioned in the news article we're reacting to), both parameters show statistically significant bias (against Clinton and for Bush; that's what the carets indicate). ABC shows bias against Bush, very statistically signficant, and none for or against Clinton. NBC shows significant bias toward Clinton, none against or for Bush. CBS, no bias at all. So the only one with consistent, clearly significant bias is Fox News. This is what the author of the news item that started this contretemps: Fox, clearly biased, broadcast nightly news, maybe.
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:11 PM on October 23, 2008


If a stolen election is such an affront to democracy, I don't see how a violent uprising will solve the problem.

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,..."
posted by Mental Wimp at 4:24 PM on October 23, 2008


Mental Wimp,

Sorry for the erroneous link -- I had to try that post a couple times due to bad HTML.

I don't understand your complete denial of this. You've otherwise seemed like a reasonable guy. Your strident partisanship on this is a bit ridiculous, and frankly only sets you up for a partisan on the other side to poke holes, and subsequently cry censorship or bias or whatever.

The author's final summary: The results shown here provide substantial evidence for the validity of politicians’ protests regarding bias in the media. Across the different model specifications, only ABC’s coverage of Bill Clinton failed to register at least marginal significance in any model specification. Further, in every case, the differences found were consistent with the partisan’s stereotypes: ABC, CBS, and NBC all appeared to favor “good” news for Clinton and “bad” news for Bush, while Fox appeared to favor the reverse (even in the aggressively-controlled fully specified model). ABC is also the only network that appeared to favor positive outside polls for both presidents (Fox favored mildly positive polls, but only for Bush).

Does that line up more with:
(1) My initial summary that you called me out on: Funny enough, those results seem to line up with most complaints from both sides -- the other three major networks tilt slightly left, and FOX tilts solidly right, or
(2) Your summaryabove: Fox, clearly biased, broadcast nightly news, maybe.


I could use your own tactics against you claim that in the fully specified model, the only significant result is that ABC is anti-Bush (with a p-value below .01). All other results have p-values above the "significant" .05 level (which you said was oh-so-important a few posts up). Or I could try to take issue with the fully-specified model, which is the only one that shows FOX has Republican bias with mild significance (p above .05 below .10), while all of the other models have scattered Democratic bias among the remaining three with strong significance (p below .05) and no significant FOX bias (none with p below .10). The author included all three models to help us understand, not to provide glib soundbites against our enemies.

None of my claims were unreasonable. You called me out on something that you were wrong about, to your previously stated standard. What is wrong with you that you have to deny that (a) you assumed too much, (b) that the author sees some bias among the three other broadcasts?
posted by FuManchu at 6:21 PM on October 23, 2008


You called me out on something that you were wrong about, to your previously stated standard.

You're right. I assumed that the waffling about statistical significance was because none of them reached 0.05, based on my extensive experience with the medical and biological literature. Reading this example of the poli sci lit shows me they use a less stringent, 0.10 standard. Based on this I changed my mind and concluded that what the article was trying to say was what I paraphrased in my last summary. And, based on the standard the paper used, I still think it is a fair summary. I think this is also what the news article author took away from his discussion with the manuscript's author.

But I don't understand your dismissal of the fully specified model, i.e., the model controlling for all the factors the author believed he needed to control. This is his final, definitive model and the one he should draw his conclusions from. (NB: I think his modelling approach is a little hinky and that's not the way I would model the outcome of mentioning poll changes, but then, I'm a statistician and he's not so much.) I certainly assumed he felt it was his best model. In that one, using his standard of p<0.10 for minimal statistical significance, only Fox showed both bias in regard to both Presidents (as well as sizable observed differences; this indicates his analysis ain't real powerful). I think this was the reason in the original news article that the conclusions were stated somewhat weakly in regard to broadcast news shows and much more strongly for Fox news. We can quibble about what that means, but I think we both see this in the unpublished manuscript.

But what I mainly wanted to point out is that the bias is not left wing vs. right wing. Pretty much anyone who studies political science would assure you that Bush governed from the right, Clinton from the center. Even ceding that Fox is no more biased for Bush than the broadcase stations were either a) biased toward Clinton or b) biased against Bush, this cannot be interpreted as "Fox is biased right, and the mainstream left" by any reasonable criterion. This is why I said it only looked like leaning left from waaaayyy over there on the right.

I really don't have a huge ax to grind here. I don't really want to defend broadcast news shows, I was just concerned about the accuracy of interpreting this one finding to show parity in right/left bias in the news.

Anyway, this feels a little too much like work. Can we kiss and make up now?
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:11 PM on October 23, 2008


Anyway, this feels a little too much like work. Can we kiss and make up now?
Agreed and pucker up.

But I don't understand your dismissal of the fully specified model. I don't dismiss it... that paragraph was supposed to be examples of what a Republican doppleganger would reply with. But I, myself, also wouldn't ignore the results of the other models (though yes, that gets more credence). This analysis is still nascent, and you'd regret your current conviction it if some future method gives results similar to only the base method.

I'm not going to argue against your left-right issue re: Clinton, you may have a point. But I get easily worked up by glib dismissals and spin. I wasn't aware the media research had been done, let alone found a way to quantify it -- most attempts have been incredibly subjective. That paper still seems pretty sketchy by any hard-science standard, and I wouldn't attribute much to it yet, but it's interesting.
posted by FuManchu at 10:54 AM on October 24, 2008


There are an assload of studies purporting to show or disprove the idea of media bias, and the basic problem is that you're more likely to see bias based on what your biases are than based on any repeatable metric, and all of the proxies regarding how bias is measured are pretty flawed on their own.
posted by klangklangston at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2008








Another tale from North Carolina: Vandalising the Obamamobile
posted by homunculus at 1:00 PM on October 26, 2008








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