Stuffed Ballot Boxes, Empty Head
September 27th, 2004 - 10:28 am
Jimmy Carter – friend to democracy:
Voting arrangements in Florida do not meet “basic international requirements” and could undermine the US election, former US President Jimmy Carter says.
He said a repeat of the irregularities of the much-disputed 2000 election – which gave President George W Bush the narrowest of wins – “seems likely”.Mr Carter, a veteran observer of polls worldwide, also accused Florida’s top election official of “bias”.
You know, if Carter had been half as tough on Iran’s mullahs 25 years ago as he is on Florida today. . .
. . . then Western Civilization might not be, once again, in a global war against a fascist ideology.
Some friend.
What “irregularities” would that be, the one where the Florida Supreme court tried to rewrite election law after the ballots had been cast?
The one where hundreds if not thousands of military absentee ballots were thrown out because of petty technicalities, while ballots in pro-Gore counties were to be scrutinized with all divining methods short of the magic 8-ball and Miss Cleo?
He certainly shouldn’t be talking about African American voters…since there were about three complaints filed against Florida election officials on that front.
Or maybe the “butterfly ballot”, which resulted in virtually no statistical variation (error) in ballot spoilage or voting irregularity compared to other ballots?
Carter is practicing the most vile, base tactics imaginable. He’s striking at the very foundation of America with absolutely no proof or even a legitimate argument to back it up. I hope for his sake that he’s just a senile pawn and itsn’t actually stupid enough to pull crap like this.
Ann Coulter once wrote that we couldn’t be sure that Gary Condit was guilty because Alan Dershowitz hadn’t signed on as his defense attorney yet. In a similar vein, I wasn’t sure that Florida’s election procedures were fair until Jimmy Carter decided that they weren’t.
The thought that he had a job involving designing nuclear-powered naval vessels is terrifying.
If Carter were competent to stand trial, he should be tried for treason. Shriller by the day, he’s easily the weakest president of the 20th Century. He’s done more harm out of office than he did in office.
Heck, if Carter was as tough on Venezula’s recent election of Chavez as he is now on Florida, his comments might be meaningful.
As it is however, one only gets a pass from Carter in matters electoral if you’re a left wing thug.
Just an idiot.
The old saw used to be, “Carter was a terrible president but he’s a great ex-president.” The truth was Carter never changed. He is as disgraceful now as when his very presence polluted the White House. This despicable, lying lover of dictators not only was the worst president, he is the worst ex-president.
So why Carter’s sudden interest in Florida? Simply put, the polls. Bush will take that state comfortably this time out, and Carter wants to make it appear in advance the election was stolen. It is high time that Carter’s good buddy, the very honorable Gerald Ford, denounce his pal as the corrupt shill and embittered fraud he is. I don’t throw around the word “evil” much, but it certainly applies to this fossilized fool who diminished the country he led.
Excuse the rant.
Y’know, back during his troubled presidency, I felt the guy got a bit of a raw deal from the economic situation left by Nixon’s ill-fated price freeze and the oil embargo. And it was nice that he got involved with Habitat for Humanity and all afterwards. But after his snarly letter to Zell and the Venezuelan election fiasco, and his coddling of Central American communists, I think the guy just plain sucks. The Venezuelan kiss-off was the worst, and one that I won’t readily forgive the Bush administration for not hollering over (though I understand the political reasons for it). And for him to start beating the drums for another lawyerization of Florida is downright nauseating–but most particularly because of the likely fraud that he sanctioned in Venezuela. If I were more paranoid, I’d think that his organization permitted the Venezuelan election to be stolen, so that when the Bush administration cried foul they could spin it as another attempt to dictate the politics of a sovereign state, and besides, they stole the election in Florida the last time around, and . . . . It’s too much, though. I don’t think Carter is evil. I just think he’s a moron.
It’s official. You and the readers of this site have officially lost all credibility. Carter isn’t tough on Mullahs 25 years ago. Carter wasn’t tough enough on Chavez. Anyone care to talk about the actual florida recount sham or the purging of almost 100,000 legitimate voters? I thought not. You f-in hypocrites are all rah-rah America and freedom until those same steadfast principles might cost your boy the election. It’s disgusting that you f-in hypocrites know even one person was outright denied a vote in Florida and you’re not up in arms. The ballot box is the absolute cornerstone of democracy, it is the foundation on which the rest of our union sits, and if even one person is incorrectly denied that freedom, our democracy is weaker for it. You lying, partisan hypocrites know almost 100,000 people were denied that right and it’s about to happen again, and what do you have to say? Jimmy Carter was a bad president. Jimmy Carter is a phony. Jimmy Carter is a wimp. You’re the most disgusting bunch of hypocritical partisan hacks I’ve ever come across. If you gave a shit about America you’d be outraged at the impending election disaster. But you are a collection of fakes. You want your boy elected even if Americans are robbed of the absolute most basic freedom our system provides. You should be ashamed to support a website that preachees ignoring the impending disaster, you should have your f-in citizenship revoked. You and the politicians who practice this kind of hypocrisy are worse for America than the f-in terrorists. America will never be destroyed by outside forces. If it falls apart it will fall apart from Americans giving up their freedoms thanks to pressure and the hypocritical actions of lying, two-faced fakes like you people. You wrap yourself in the flag and whatever other red, white and blue articles you can find but I see right through it. You fucking hypocrites.
Care to provide any *proof* of your election allegations, jp?
Go ahead…we’ll wait for the link…
(crickets)
Anytime…
(clock ticking)
Come on, you should have us dead to rights here, incontrivertible evidence…
(snoring)
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now sit down and shut up.
It was nice of him to let us know at the end what f-ing means, though.
So jp is actually Jimmy Carter. Mr. Prez, get a thicker skin.
Yes, as the nation prepares to hand Kerry his ass, the lunatic Left proclaims in advance it is a theft, a fraud, a sham. Bush is the luckiest man on Earth. JP isn’t an anomaly; he represents the insanity that underpins the Kerry campaign.
Wow. I think jp might have had a full-blown seizure! Someone call the ambulance!
What’s up JP’s butt?
I found the article about absentee ballots in today’s WSJ far more frightening. People are personally collecting them, sometimes “helping” people fill them out. What’s up with that? What’s wrong with giving it to the postman? Talk about your opportunities for fraud. (Sorry, no link – I still read the paper version.)
I also had a encounter with a voter registration drive, at a bar of all places. The registrars were wearing Kerry/Edwards pins. Registering people to vote at a bar during a $6 for all the beer you can drink fundraiser! Hello! This is one of the most vitriolic campaigns I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t registered to vote by this point, you don’t deserve it. Hopefully they were all too drunk to fill out the forms correctly.
In all seriousness, if this election goes as it appears it will, some of these loons will be jumping out of buildings. We have all the elements of a left-wing Heaven’s Gate here.
jp: One hint: PARAGRAPHS. Use them, and people will be better able to read what you say.
(Which recount “sham”, by the way? Didn’t all the media recounts find that Bush Still Won, even if you used Gore’s preferred recount strategy? You know, the “recount only counties I might gain in” one. Selective recounts.
Oh, right. That’s the sham.)
jp, you do know there were over 20K black pubbies in FLA, didn’t you?
Did you also know that their ballots were 3x as likely to be spoiled if they voted in a precinct if the election poll head was black?
Black turnout wasn’t greater than average because turnout was up overall.
Mason-Dixon called it correctly.
What about the Panhandle which was disenfranchised because they’re in the Central time zone and the state was already called?
W would have won, they’re more conservative there.
The contract was negotiated and signed under Chiles (D). All Harris did was follow-thru.
Spare us the outrage, there’s more than enough on this side.
If they were so hot to vote, maybe they should have taken it upon themselves to make sure they were legal?
And I’ll even go farther back than Carter, if Nixon would have taken on Arafish after he approved the hit on our ambassador…..
I realize he was elected president in the 70′s but shouldn’t you have to had accomplished something in the way of foreign policy to comment on the elections? I’m sure it would be better in his world if only Kerry were on the ballot.
Maybe Floridians should vote from Venezuela to keep things honest.
“What’s up JP’s butt?”
His head.
“What’s up JP’s butt?”
‘His head.’
I was all set to go off on ol’ JP and then I read this, laughed out loud, and realized, there’s no point.
On the bright side, maybe all us partisan hypocrites finally pissed him off enough that he’ll go the fuck away.
you hippos would love for jp to go away so you can spend your time bitchin to each other about the left with out any disagreement. This proves his point about you f**in right siders, democracy is great as long as it agrees with your own warped logic. Spend time pissin on an x president who had something to say. Blame him for the state of affairs. Ronald duck, oops Reagan was as much at fault as Carter. You don’t hear me pissin on his grave.
Oh my, they’re multiplying. (Or “jp” decided to post as “pete” to make it look like he has friends.)
First of all, Ashcroft’s Justice Department is suing Florida for purging black voters via an incorrect felon list in 2000, so the notion that crazy left-wingers are the only people who see the illegal purge is dead wrong. Unless you people can make the case that Ashcroft is in Carter’s pocket. Now you may all be hypocrites, fakes, and partisan hacks, but to pull off that connection you’d have to be fucking magicians. And only Mike M is a magician, and he just uses that to get into kids’ parties for free.
Second, I didn’t mention Al Gore or John Kerry a sinlge time in my diatribe. I didn’t make my stance political. It’s revealing that most of your repsonses immediately painted me as a crazy left winger, yet failed to address the only assertion I actually made: You are all hypocrites and self-appointed arbiters of who and what is truly American and why, when in reality, you don’t give a shit about people being able to practice the absolute most fundamental act of freedom- voting. You are phony. You are two-faced. You have no claim on what is good or bad for America because you reveal that it’s not America you care about, it’s George Bush and the Republican party.
Third, Mike M, If you gave a shit about America, American democracy, Democratic process, Civil rights, Constitutional rights, etc, etc, etc you could go to a search engine and type in, “florida voting purged” and do a little research on your own. Remember, just because Sean Hannity says everything’s fine in Florida don’t necessarily make it so. But because you’re a hypocrite and fraud, I took the time to do it for you. Here are some interesting links:
http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/articles_2004/florida_voterrolls_2004_purge.html
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2002/05/15/2002051523481.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/news2001/0412-02.htm
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0%2C2645%2C64071%2C00.html?tw=wn_2polihead
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/imp0602.htm
http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-2001/Report%20blasts%20presidential%20vote%20in%20Florida.htm
and finally, the nail in the coffin: The U.S. Civil Rights Commission:
http://www.usccr.org
Type in Florida in their search engine, grab a cup of coffee, and prepare for a long afternoon.
Wow:
“the only assertion I actually made: You are all hypocrites and self-appointed arbiters of who and what is truly American and why, when in reality, you don’t give a shit about people being able to practice the absolute most fundamental act of freedom- voting. You are phony. You are two-faced. You have no claim on what is good or bad for America because you reveal that it’s not America you care about, it’s George Bush and the Republican party.”
Prove your assertion, jp.
Prove that we’re two-face, etc. And use facts, not petty insults. Bonus points if you can refrain from swearing.
I do think it is hypocritical of Jimmy Carter to engage in scare tactics about Florida’s voting while ignoring the human rights abuses in Cuba and elsewhere. How does that make me a phony?
Well, I read this article in Slate, and here’s what I learned. In certain counties in Florida, a database of felons compiled by an outside company from Georgia was used to purge voter rolls. In other counties, it was not. By certain estimates, the rate of inaccuracy in the database may have been 15 percent. The original impetus for the intended reform was evidence of widespread vote fraud in a Miami mayoral election. None of the details of that debacle are included in the analysis.
In other counties, the list was deemed by the elections commissioners that it was ignored. This despite the fact state law mandated that voter rolls be vetted with respect to the information in the database, and verified where that seemed to be prudent. The party affiliations of the elections officials who distrusted the list were not mentioned in the article.
Thus, in some counties in which the lists were utilized, there is a possibility that 15% of the people on the list were disenfranchised, though others made reasonable attempts to contact people in advance and let them challenge the accuracy of the list. In counties where the list was not used at all, that 15% of folks on the list were obviously not disenfranchised, but the other 85% presumably constituted felons who were ineligible to vote who nevertheless were permitted to do so.
Whatever portion of those felons who were ineligible to vote who did vote also presumably either neutralized or diluted votes of folks who were eligible to do so. Our interlocutor seems to think that this is unimportant. Further, the article makes the rather startling point that the veracity of the felon rolls would have been much easier to verify had voters’ names been cross-referenced with social security numbers.
Which party, do you think, would find the suggestion that people’s identities be verified more troubling, or proof of a scheme to depress voter participation.
I don’t have time at the moment to look into the other articles, but I imagine that they may be about as illuminating. And while we’re at it, I recommend that JP or sweetyams or whoever this is go to http://www.vcrisis.com and check it out.
Lets see:
salon article: a whole lot of “may haves” and “maybes” there. Legitimate examples of disenfranchisement? Zero.
raclaimdemocracy.org: same deal. maybe maybe maybe. no proof.
greenvilleonline: no one denied the right to vote. even “inactive” voters could vote by showing ID and prrof of address. zippo there
commondreams: a blatantly partisan hatchet job with absolutely no supporting evidence. big surprise considering the site content…
wired: not much there except evidence that Katherine Harris took steps to follow Florida election law
usccr.org: gee, this kind of stood out… “Of these 37,000 complaints, Justice approved 14 investigations and only three of these were approved for possible litigation” Three? ok, moving on…
pww.org? another virulently partisan smear piece heavy on invective and light on fact. Relys heavily on 1950′s nostalgia to set the tone of racial discrimination while offering virtually no concrete fact.
There you go jp…do you even read your own sources? Because they would all seem to support *my* position.
I’ll close with the “nail in the coffin” from usccr.org. THREE complaints worthy of litigation in all of Florida. Last time I checked, Bush won by more than three votes.
Never dare to call me uninformed, although I thank you for providing so much evidence for me to make my argument with.
Carter is merely helping to lay the groundwork for the inevitable lawsuits. That is, if the EV count is under 300 for President Bush. I figure that’s the “magic” number above which even the Dems wouldn’t dare sue.
If there’s any chance of Kerry pulling off an upset in the courts, I’m betting that his battalion of lawyers will try it. Jimmy’s ravings about the unfairness of American Elections (funny how all of a sudden the election system sucks, huh?) is just part of the PR campaign.
Well, JP, by your standards most of the elections in US history are illegetimate. Thanks for giving me precedent for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society.
The idea that Carter, a Democrat bigwig who gave a polarized speech at the DNC convention, has comments on elections in THIS country is ridiculous.
Much does need to be done to increase the accuracy of voting/registration. I just wish Microsoft & Diebold weren’t so involved with lobbying for election procurrment devices.
You really must try hard to make election accuracy a partisian issue. Has any progress been made tracking down all those people who voted in both New York & Florida in 2000? I think voting records are public.
Someone should mention to jp/pete that writing ‘f’ing’ doesn’t make what you have to say make any more sense, more likely the opposite. Being from Boston, having Dems complain about fixing elections is too funny to contemplate.
Sorry, coffee coming out the nose isn’t my idea of a relaxing day.