


Greens and Libertarians Team Up to Demand Recount 359
cyberformer writes "The Ohio election rules state that any losing candidate can demand a manual recount. Today, David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the predidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, announced that they are joining forces to do just that. A manual recount is important because it will include every ballot cast, whereas the first count only includes ballots that can be read by machine. It could even tip the state (and thus the election) from Bush to Kerry."
Filing fee (Score:4, Interesting)
They want $110,000 in donations [greens.org] to pay the required fees. Looks like $10 per precinct.
Re:Filing fee (Score:4, Informative)
What if Kerry won? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not officially over until they have voted. The results of that vote aren't unsealed and counted until January 6th.
Conceding elections is just a nice way of saying, I won't personally oppose you any more.
If the outcome changes thru some other process and the electoral college votes Kerry into the Presidency, that's it, Bush wouldn't have to concede anything.
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone else have any more info on this?
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:4, Funny)
--
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What if Kerry won? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kerry felt that it was not worth for him pursuing his victory (because of the odds), so he conceded. That doesn't prevent him winning through others' efforts.
It would be hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
What would happen if it turned out Kerry won?
Suddenly, the Democratic support for abolishing the electoral college, which, in the 2000 election permitted Bush to win despite Gore carrying a majority of the popular vote, would vanish in a puff of smoke.
And it would be the Republicans complaining because a mere 60,000 vote switch in Ohio gave Kerry the presidency through the electoral college system despite Bush having won the popular vote by over 3 million.
It would be hilarious to watch as strident principled Democrats fell silent while the vocal Republicans would begin attacking positions that they themselves previously held onto with great fervor.
As if the whole thing weren't farcical enough already.
Re:It would be hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
If there are enough votes in error to cause the election to shift, then much of the rest of the country would have to be recounted for this popular vote tally to be considered valid. The unadjusted final exit polls were also showing the popular vote in the other direction.
Re:It would be hilarious (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I think people are probably getting worked up over nothing. Bush won Ohio before all the absentee ballots were counted. I suspect that a recount will probably show an even wider margin of victory for Bush in that state.
Now, call for a recount in a few other close st
Re: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And I am thankful.
You may not like it
but I do.
changing ohio STILL won't win it for Kerry.
Good.
I however would like to know that the votes were counted right. I like Bush being in office, but fair voting is more important than which politician holds the office.
It's not just rabid Kerryists that want the recounts, and acting like a rabid Bushist doesn't help your argument any. The point here is not who won, but how fairly.
Re:Bush? BUSH? (Score:3, Insightful)
When has Bush ever been held responsible? When has he ever admitted to a mistake? Was he held responsible for ignoring warnings about Osama bin Laden being determined to strike inside the United States? Was he held accountable for not planning the occupation of Iraq? Has he been held accountable for the massive deficit caused by his tax cuts? Has he been held accountable for the
Re:Bush? BUSH? (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, no, they didn't declare war. They gave the President the authority to use force, but stopped short of a true Declaration of War- the likes of which we have not seen since WWII [constitutionparty.org]
If Congress had declared war, by international treaty our soldiers would be facing international war crimes tribunals rather than simple court martials for Abu Gharib and the like- and such international tribunals would not stop with low-ranking soldiers, but travel up the chain of command to Bush
Re:Bush? BUSH? (Score:3, Interesting)
If Congress had declared war, by international treaty our soldiers would be facing international war crimes tribunals rather than simple court martials for Abu Gharib and the like- and such international tribunals would not stop with low-ranking soldiers, but travel up the chain of command to Bush himself. Do your really want that?
If soldiers and commanders committed war crimes, why wouldn't we want that? Would we not want it to happen just because it's "our guys"?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:but... (Score:2)
Frankly it is not going to happen. So scream away.
Re:but... (Score:2)
May I ask where you have been for the past four years? A President who lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote ring any bells?
Re:but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the recount goes kerry's way (and I doubt they'll find 130K votes) he will be the president, Ill have no complaints about it (I voted 3rd Party). What I will love to see is the left embrace their guy and ignore th
Re: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
According to the final tallies at http://www.electoral-vote.com/ [electoral-vote.com], Kerry currently has 252 EVs, Bush 286. Flip Ohio's 20 votes- and Kerry has 272 Evs to Bush's 266. Thus Kerry will win. So sorry- you're wrong- changing Ohio WOULD win it for Kerry. Of course, the FIRST count in Ohio isn't done yet (absentee and provisional ballots legally will be able to be counted tomorrow), so we'll have more data then.
Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limit! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what happens if the FIRST recount doesn't make Mr. Kerry President? Do we ask for ANOTHER recount ala 2000? 100K votes ain't that close folks!
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what, kids: sometimes in a democracy, other people win. This is what most of the American voters wanted, and that's the way it works.
Disclaimer: Kerry voter.
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:2)
I am saddened to see the LP making fools of themselves, because I agree with a lot of libertarian ideas and vote Libertarian sometimes.
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless, neither party is doing this to help Kerry. They're doing it because many of us don't have a lot of faith in the election "system" in the United States. If this helps improve the process, it's worth a thousand times what they're spending to do it.
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:5, Insightful)
Libritarians hate anything that has to do with making the government bigger. Well lets look, the largest deficit(number not % of GDP, but still huge) in history.
Libritarians are generally about liberty and human(negitive) rights. Bush and his new appointment to Attorny General think human rights are up for discussion(ala Gitmo, Abu Grab). The Patiot Act certianly doesn't make us libritarians happy campers.
Lets see, faith based inititives, i.e funding churches do create social programs, which is no better then when the government does it.
Heck in his 2003 budget, he proposed and increase in NEA funding, which is a hot button issue for palocons and libritarians.
Libritarians see the purpose of the Military for defence, not nation building or premtive/preventive war. Even Bush said in 2000 that he didn't believe in nation building.
Ultimately the only thing that Bush has done right by libritarians is cutting taxes, but all the other stuff he has done soooo out weighs that.
I have been a libritarian for as long as I have been interested in politics. I supported and worked for campains in 1994 to put the conservatives in control of the house and senate. Heck I even voted for Bush the first time around. The fact of the matter for me is, Bush's performance has been anything but remotely close to "libritarian" ideals. This year I voted for Kerry, because at least with Kerry we would have dead lock, and if 1994-2000 is any measure, it was the only chance to stall the growth of government.
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:2)
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:3, Informative)
Bush may have neoconservatives on his staff, but he is not a neoconservative. He's a social conservative who spends like a Democrat (a Democrat in Republican's clothing?).
Bush was never a neoconservative. It's my belief that after September 11th, he pulled a Kennedy and said (something along the lines of) no idea should be left off the table, and the worst thing that we can do here is nothing. (I suppose that he also took a page from Jimmy Carter's fai
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:2)
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:2)
Ever raised a kid?
From where I sit, not saying no, firmly, the first time, is a Top 5 parental mistake. Make that mistake a couple of times and suddenly the kid is effectively in charge.
While the logic may or may not apply in this case, it is not always useless, as you imply, and more work is needed to establish the invalidity of the argument. I think you're probably right in ge
Re:Conspiracy theories taken to their natural limi (Score:5, Insightful)
WHERE CAN I DONATE?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where can i donate?
Kerry got ~45,000 vites on our Slashdot poll. If i can PayPal $5 or do a $5 credit card donation, how many other people would?
Re:WHERE CAN I DONATE?? (Score:5, Funny)
Drunken Jackass indeed.
Re:WHERE CAN I DONATE?? (Score:2)
Or it could be the Guinness talking.
WHERE YOU CAN DONATE (Score:5, Informative)
Put your money where your mouths are! (Score:2)
Let's do our civic duty
I donated 20 (Score:2)
Nader is also asking for a recount (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod Parent up: New Hampshire Recount (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nader is also asking for a recount (Score:5, Informative)
Jeremy
Ironies abound (Score:2)
Nader was actually one of the first to demand a recount. On Tuesday, November 9, 2004, Jay Leno got his witless jab in at Nader's recount call. But, ironically, this recount will end up being little more than an academic excercise if Kerry doesn't recant his premature concession.
Also ironic that the man (and, now, a party) who the Democrats spent so much time and money on in order to prevent appearance on the ballot are now those who ask for democracy in the form of counting all the ballots (and account
Clarification (Score:2)
Re:Nader is also asking for a recount (Score:2)
I've also heard exit poll people even admit the polls are only 'accurate' after being reconcilled with actual count.
Plus the fact that exit polls only measure the claims of voters who are willing to take the polls, wich may or may not be a representative subset of all voters.
Votergate the movie (Score:2)
Re:Nader is also asking for a recount (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, I voted for Kerry.
Nationwide Recount (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nationwide Recount (Score:2)
Kerry? pshaw! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't give up hope yet. Go Libertarians!!
Re:Kerry? pshaw! (Score:2)
If not, I really can't see where a Libertarian party that would waste Ohio taxpayers' money on this silliness has any value at all.
Good reason for a recount (Score:5, Insightful)
Should the votes be recounted because Kerry may have won, and not Bush? Er, I doubt it, but maybe.
Should the votes be recounted as a check on how well the new computerized systems tallied the votes? Definitely.
Re:Good reason for a recount (Score:2)
Parent post writes:
Should the votes be recounted because the Libertarians or Greens think they may win? No.
Should the votes be recounted because Kerry may have won, and not Bush? Er, I doubt it, but maybe.
Should the votes be recounted as a check on how well the new computerized systems tallied the votes? Definitely.
Damned straight!
Re:Good reason for a recount (Score:2)
At first when I read the /. story I thought "Give it up, already. Can't we get past this?". But then I read:
Someone noted (I think in a comment about the blackboxvoting.org story) that since the election is settled it's a good time to examine the process, to improve it for the future.
I just wish there wasn't so much grandstanding about fraud when any irregularity shows up..
Re:Good reason for a recount (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
The Ohio election rules state that any losing candidate can demand a manual recount.
They can demand it all they want, it's an impossibility. There is no physical record of the votes in many places, they are just a number in a database somewhere. Good luck trying to determine whether the number is correct or not.
No doubt this will be lampooned by the media as them being sore losers or something. I think that it's important to highlight the fact that the election is unverifiable.
Re:Good reason for a recount (Score:5, Informative)
I find the percentage of negative comments here somewhat surprising given the number of "please ask for a recount" messages that I've alread gotten. However, I'd like to clear up a serious misconception that many of you apparently have.
This demand for a recount is not expected to change the outcome. I may be "Quixotic", but I'm not crazy. David Cobb and I have no expectation that the results of the election will be changed in the slightest. What we ARE hoping to do is to find out just how corrupt the system really is. Why bother voting for anyone if the electronic machines are going to report a pre-determined outcome.
I saw a bumper sticker that expressed the idea very well. It said: DIEBOLD - MAKING MACHINES THAT VOTE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO.
Comment by Michael Badnarik -- 11/11/2004 @ 6:23 pm
Re:Good reason for a recount (Score:3, Informative)
Power of a third party! (Score:2)
Not newsworthy? (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, I agree with the many who said this is a worthwhile endeavor to see how well elections proceeded this time around.
But I almost have this conciliatory poem down! (Score:5, Funny)
From here. [slashdot.org]
ANN COULTER! (Score:3, Funny)
Non sequiteur... (Score:4, Insightful)
Statistically, no, it couldn't. In fantasy fiction, it could, but in real life,
with Bush leading by over a hundred thousand votes, it ain't gonna happen. For
Gore in Florida in 2000, trailing by about a thousand votes, the recount was a
bit of a longshot, although it was not beyond the realm of possibility that it
could, against the odds, pan out -- but here, the margin is plainly way too
large. (Kerry knew this, presumably, which is why he conceded.) Do all the
recounts you want. Recount from now till inauguration day if you like -- but
don't hold your breath waiting for any big announcements reversing the outcome.
130 thousand votes is close, yes, but it's not so razor thin that a recount
has any realistic chance to alter the outcome. The counting process just
isn't as sloppy as that. (Yes, there are ballots that weren't counted, but
statistically they aren't going to deviate as wildly as all that from the
rest. Even if 100% of them are valid and countable, and even if there are
250 thousand of them outstanding (the highest, most optimistic estimates for
the Dems; the Blackwell figure of 175 thousand is probably much closer), and,
indeed, even if Kerry gets a wildly unlikely 70% of those 250 thousand (in
Ohio, where it is very unlikely for either party to top 60%), Bush would
still have a comfortable enough margin of victory to be confident of the
outcome of any recount (at least, any recount observed by representatives
from both parties).)
I'm all for the hand recounts. They will verify what we already know.
(What we do not know is what would have happened if it hadn't rained all day
statewide. There are always unknowns in life.)
Re:Non sequiteur... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, the recount this time is being called for because of potential tampering with voting machines. Such tampering statewide could easily produce the 100,000 vote difference, because although it's outside the margin of error, it's certainly not ouside the margin of (ALL VOTES) which is potentially (mathematically speaking) the number of votes changed.
It is highly unlikely that 100,000 votes were changed by voting machines, but not as unlikely as you make it sound.
What IS unlikely, however, is that a hand recount will turn out differently, because the ones changed (if any) would probably be those with no paper trail and no verifiability.
Just thought something funny (tinfoil hat on) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm bored, and that site is a fascinating read. It's like watching a trainwreck, you know you're not supposed to enjoy it but just can't look away.
Cobb's votes 10k down to 0 (Score:3, Interesting)
At a bit less than 40% of the precincts reporting in Ohio, I saw David Cobb's votes go from around 10,000 down to ZERO. After that, I started taking screenshots of the Ohio state departments website.
you can see a few of them here: http://64.71.168.78/ [64.71.168.78]
Was Cobb a write-in in Ohio? Maybe that explains it. The ohio state department's website still only shows Cobb with 24 votes [state.oh.us]
-metric
Re:Cobb's votes 10k down to 0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's reassuring!
It's funny how often people say such things, and seem to expect that it will calm the discussion. But such things should tell you something about how many problems there are in the voting system.
All the "machine error" and "user error" reports coming from Ohio just tell me that their voting system (using the term lightly) is so screwed up that no thoughtful person would expect that the results are accurate
Okay, fine. Let's recount all the close states. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, that's right. We only want to recount states that may cause Kerry to win.
Is it really every vote that we want counted, or is it just every vote in certain states?
Ohio [yahoo.com]: Bush by 136,483 votes, 2.5%
Pennsylvania [yahoo.com]: Kerry by 128,869 votes, 2.3%
Wisconsin [yahoo.com]: Kerry by 11,813 votes, 0.4%
fuck the recount (Score:3, Funny)
Join me in the hills, democratic brothers! Any freedom fighter who dies in the glorious fight to liberate our country goes straight to Democratic Heaven, where nubile, liberal virgins await!
Re:fuck the recount (Score:3, Funny)
FlyingSquid, we hardly knew ye...
There's a reason Kerry et al aren't pursuing this (Score:4, Interesting)
But the man who headed the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys, spread across the country to address irregularities, says, "that ain't the case." Kerry adviser Jack Corrigan, quoted by the Boston Globe, says, "No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won
Other Kerry campaign officials agree.
--------
You can find that quote in a number of news sources now. That blurb is from FoxNews.com but you can also find it here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/11/news/ele
He Lost, MoveOn.
Ben
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? I would never have voted for Kerry. I might have voted for Badnarik (too young to be eligible). The Democratic philosophy is as different from the Libertarian one as it is from the Republican -- so much so that I find myself more or less half-libertarian and half-Republican, but nowhere near Democratic.
You may as well say they should help the Republican campaign; the two seem to me ideologically closer, Bush himself notwithstanding.
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:2)
Have you seen the political compass [politicalcompass.org]? It's great - they plot ideologies on two dimensions rather than one. If you've ever been confused about what's a left vs. right poi
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:3, Informative)
Democrats and Libertarians are very very different when it comes to economic policy.
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why there are separate parties: so D-like libertarians like a lot of Slashdot and R-like libertarians like myself can have a party that's a lot closer to our common beliefs instead of being shuffled off into the Democratic and Republican parties. The libertarian philosophy is not part of the linear left/right spectrum (that incidentally dates from the French Revolution, where there were about 3 major ideological factions, and the third was ce
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:2)
Linear Independence? (Score:4, Interesting)
I watched an interview of a British MP the other night, whose was a 'left-libertarian'. This was considered to be somewhat of a contradiction apparently. However, the world's smallest political quiz [self-gov.org] puts libertarianism diametrically opposite statism, on a different axis from conservatism-liberalism.
I always thought that libertarianism was about individual freedoms, and not so much economic policy? Couldn't a libertarian quite legitimately have left- OR right- leanings in terms of economic policy, without compromising their libertarianism? (Note that I'm talking about what they believe in, not who would be more prudent to vote for given both those beliefs and present circumstance)
Re:Linear Independence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Those individual freedoms are generally considered to extend to business practice, and hence, Libertarianism in principle endorses free market capitalism, enterprise bargaining, etc etc. There are however, "compassionate libertarians", "social libertarians" or a variety of other banners ( "Liberalatarians" is my favourite ) who espouse the Libertarian view of personal freedom, while still maintaining some leftist economic and social ideas.
I myself am in this group, and I'm the first to admit it entails so
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:3, Informative)
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], the free encyclopedia: Libertarianism is a political philosophy which advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free
Libertarian Idealist Philosophy... (Score:3, Informative)
...in the form of a flash animation may be found on newgrounds.com here [newgrounds.com]...
Obviously in the real world, practical matters soften the idealistic concepts in the animation, but it gives you a good idea of the direction that Libertarian political philosophy takes.
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:5, Interesting)
Greens, yes. Libertarians, no. Libertarians until recently always seemed to lean mildly "Republican" (if you must compare them with "The Two Parties"). Being for less government influence, political authority being devolved down towards State (and smaller) levels from the Federal level, non-interference in free commerce, and so on.
The only reason they may seem more Democrat this time around is that Bush, quite frankly, seems to be pushing the aspects of Republicanism that Libertarians disagree with (speech-restricting "Campaign Finance Reform", "Foreign Entanglements", attempts to amend the constitution for things like allowing congress to criminalize "desecration of the flag" and "banning gay marriage", restricting civil liberties (e.g. the "PATRIOT" act) in the name of "security" and "patriotism"...) while slacking badly on most of the issues Libertarians tend to agree with (reducing the size and power of the Federal government, fiscally responsible government policies, etc.).
Typically, on social freedoms, Libertarians lean slightly "Democrat" - except that Democrats are more likely to want to use government force to "require" social freedoms (i.e. through legislation -as an example, perhaps a hypothetical federal law requiring all states to recognize any other state's legal marriage contracts, including "gay" ones if the state where it was issued allows it), where Libertarians tend to prefer non-coercive approaches (i.e. it's none of the Federal government's business at all WHAT kind of social arrangement adults give informed consent to enter into...). . Any power not explicitly granted to the Federal government by the Constitution belongs to the states or the people...
Or at least that's my (simplistically-stated) understanding of the political philosophy, anyway.
Re:What they oughtta do (Score:3, Insightful)
(Please note I didn't call all Republican voters idiots, just ones who voted for them because they promised to (and did) lower taxes. Lowering taxes and raising spending is worse than raising taxes and raising spending.)
You are correct, the Republican party has managed to get as far away as poss
Re:Makes no difference (Score:3, Informative)
The only regions that use the electronic voting machines are the wealthy republican suburban areas. Therefore any recount will help Kerry. Whether it will help enough is anyone's guess.
Re:Makes no difference (Score:2)
We used electronic voting in Columbus (democratic - franklin county). The real travesty for us was that it took 2-3 hours of standing in line to vote, and there's no way to recount that.
All the while standing in line, I kept wondering if there was some way a person could just bring a prefilled out ballot and simply drop it off instead of spending two minutes in one of three booths with a line of 200
early voting not absentee (Score:2)
Re:Makes no difference (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Makes no difference (Score:2, Interesting)
Areas that still vote with the old machines lose something around two percent of the votes to the machine not understanding "hanging chads" and other problems. A manual recount generally counts many of the machine rejected votes.
So, assuming the e-voting districts were bush districts, and the machine voting districts are Kerry districts, Kerry has more to gain from a recount.
Re:Makes no difference (Score:2)
Re:Makes no difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and let's all be good little Neo-Con ditto-heads and only believe what they tell us instead of using our Constitutionally granted rights to question everything the Government does.
"Mandate My Ass" will be a great rally-cry for the next four years. The 'Pubs are already hot to inform everyone, ad nasuem, that Bush had the largest number of ballots cast for him in any Presidential election. But, you know who the person with the second largest number of ballots cast for h
Re:Makes no difference (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A quest to expose elections fraud? (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently they aren't very good at PR or maybe they'd have a better showing in the elections.
Re:A quest to expose elections fraud? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A quest to expose elections fraud? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a wild-assed guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why are the Libs and Greens footing this? (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not paying for it yet - they're "raising funds" to pay the large fee for it.
Personally - I can only think that we've got two political parties still "unencumbered" by incumbent political games and still able to actually act out of principle (egad, that's a FAR less cynical statement than usually comes from me on political matters...). It's all I can figure - there's obviously no chance that the recount will show the Greens or Libertarians winning the election, and in fact I honestly suspect the vote recount won't change the final result, but I do think it's important to get an accurate accounting of the votes. In so doing, we'll also get a good picture of how innacurate the initial count was. If it's way off, even assuming the recount still shows Bush winning, we'll have proof that there is something wrong with the voting procedures, and probably some idea of WHAT is wrong. And then, next time around, there's a chance there'll be fewer problems...
Besides, bear in mind that while the Democrats can't reasonably make this demand or formally donate money to the effort without being accused of being big babies and spreading political FUD about the vote in Ohio...but INDIVIDUAL Democrats ought to be able to easily donate to the cause. Maybe somebody should call that rich Soros guy.
And, yes, I DID vote for Michael Badnarik in this election...
Re:Why are the Libs and Greens footing this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why are the Libs and Greens footing this? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way in hell I'm contributing to this. Badnarik was my candidate, but any donations now do absolutely NOTHING to help any Libertarian candidate or cause. I don't even care if they're right or wrong in their suspicion, because even if hell did freeze over and the
Re:Why are the Libs and Greens footing this? (Score:2)