crossposted at
Preemptive Karma:
It occurs to me as I wade through the various articles and posts on the 2004 election that there is a recurrent theme: Republicans claim "fraud" when they lose. Further, these claims mask legitimate election problems that need to be addressed.
I've blogged extensively about this issue when it comes to Washington State. But it's readily apparent that it happens throughout the nation.
Take Wisconsin for example, where Republican shrieks of fraud bellow aimlessly throughout the landscape. Not so consequently, Republicans lost in Wisconsin. And to what do they base these cries of fraud? Voter/ballot variances and absentee voters not getting their ballots. Yet when it's time to pony up the proof, evidence is startlingly tough to come by. Ring familiar?
(more after the jump)
And then there's Ohio, where evidence of
of genuine malfeasance on the part of election officials is being
drowned out by Republicans.
I'm sure a lot of Republicans really do believe that Democrats go out of their way to find as many felons as possible to vote. They also likely believe that Democrats are stacking the ballot boxes with deceased voters or stuffing ballots boxes like the old days in Chicago. Their paranoia is keeping officials and the electorate alike from seeing and addressing fundamental problems in our elections.
For example, in the November 2004 election we have documented evidence that individuals waited in line for hours to vote. There's also places all over the country where people are using voting machines that have no paper trail and no way to validate for the voter that their vote is properly tabulated. We also have attempts in some quarters to purge voters from voter roles who are legally within their right to vote.
Republicans in Washington State have focused on King County in their attempts to get Dino Rossi the Governor's job through the courts. Yet King County had a verifiable 99.8% accuracy rate despite having one of the largest numbers of polling places/precincts in the country. Why the focus? It's a Democrat leaning county...and Republicans lost.
The focus on voter/ballot variances has nothing to do with accurate vote counts. In King County especially, it's a red herring.
Convicted felons voting when they're not legally allowed is certainly an issue. But it's miniscule compared to the massive numbers of people disenfranchised by having to stand in long lines or not having their vote properly counted/checked by voting machines.
It seems highly irresponsible to the electorate for Republicans to focus on issues that will only serve to get their side into office while disenfranchising scores of voters.