As I commented yesterday, given the way the Democrats have treated their defeats
over the past 6 years the Republicans would be completely justified in dragging
every single race through recounts and courts and whatever else they could think
of since, as was pointed out in that thread, turn about is fair play.
More below the fold ...
As everyone here knows, for the past six years many (if not most) people on
this site have been a crying about how:
- Bush was selected, not elected in 2000.
- Bush stole the election in 2004 by disenfranchising everyone.
- It was all the fault of Ken Blackwell who manipulated the election
process.
- Diebold and others programmed the voting machines to flip votes.
- Anything else some tin foil hat could dream up.
Coming into this election cycle these same people were were crying foul
before the elections even started.
Everyone was just so sure that the Republicans were cheating, to the point that
some people felt it was pointless to even show up at the polls because the
machines were going to just flip enough votes to let the Republicans win anyway.
Remember that? We all do.
Well, here we are after election day and gee how the scene looks different,
eh? Who on this site would have believed it? A Democratic sweep.
But the silence on this site, especially from you Kos, is very telling about how
everyone here has been acting for 6 years. Where are the outraged calls of
how the voters have been disenfranchised now? What happened to all of
those electronic voting machines that were going to swing the election for the
Republicans?
Everyone knows how this site crowed when
it was demonstrated that at
least one type of machine could be manipulated, but no one ever seemed to think
it was odd that this was produced by a
liberal professor from Princeton
University. (A quick perusal of the verbiage and positions found on
his blog will suffice to
establish his liberal bona fides, at least for me. If that is insufficient
for you personally, a quick
Google news search demonstrates a sufficient lack of liberal
character assassination stories against him in the media to act as corroborating evidence.)
Why should his liberal views matter in the case? Well, if the
Republicans had decided to go on an all out assault on the election results you
can bet that it would not escape them that the only people to actually
demonstrate an ability to manipulate the voting machines were the liberals.
Sort of ironic, eh? Not only was this election a landslide for the
Democrats but they had publicly demonstrated beforehand that they possessed the capability to fix
it and leave no trace. This could probably have been pushed pretty heavily
in the
Virginia Senate race where the margin of victory was razor thin, that is if the
Republicans wanted to sow discontent and throw the legitimacy of the election
into question as has been going on for the past 6 years. Fortunately for
us and the entire nation the Republicans are, once again, demonstrating the type
of respect for the integrity of the electoral process that we should expect from
everyone, not just from those on the right side of the aisle.
Everyone wants the election process be fair,
impartial, and above all else honest. But in the end it all comes down to
vesting our collective trust in the bi-partisan groups who gather every
year to volunteer their time to run the polling places. These people are
all Americans First, and partisans second in my book. When we have the
type of spectacles that we have seen the past six years it is a slap in the face
to those very people because fundamentally, when you question the integrity of
the process, you are inherently questioning the integrity of the people who run
that process. Not a bunch of partisan hacks but every ordinary John
and Jane Doe who just wants to serve. So I, for one, am not going to advocate
crapping on those
people who serve us by volunteering to oversee the fair and impartial
implementation of our elections. In the end Republicans trust those people
who make the process work, but as we have seen for the past six years the Democrats
seem to have hard
time doing so.
In a way I should actually thank all of the tin foil hats that were so sure
the Republicans were cheating. I think that this year's results
clearly show that the Republicans did not possess the capability to steal any national election given the bloodbath that occurred this time around.
At the very least, now Republicans can hold their heads high, do the right
thing, and demonstrate just
which party trusts the ordinary people who make this country work and which does not.
In the end this
result clearly demonstrates just how vacuous the claims of vast right wing election stealing
have been. It is, in fact, a vindication of the process just as I knew it
would be. Can nefarious people manipulate that process? As you all
have so amply demonstrated this is certainly true with the current generation of
voting machines, but in so doing you have likewise demonstrated just who possesses
the determination and know how to actually do so. But even this demonstration
requires the the complicity, or at the very least the complacency, of the people
running the polling places. I, for one, choose to trust those people to be
vigilant, fair and impartial in their duties which renders the whole issue moot,
IMHO. Should we continue to improve the technologies to avoid fraud?
Certainly. Is that required to have fair elections? Only if you
don't believe that you can trust the ordinary American citizen that is the poll
worker.
So, give the Republicans some FUCKING credit, Kos, for listening to the will
of the people on Tuesday and not dragging the elections process and the country through the gutter
yet again.