How Bad Is It?
An email from the Dennis Kucinich campaign today mentioned an interesting thing: there are some who think the New Hampshire upset for Hillary was something less than an expression of the will of the voters.
I hadn’t really thought about it, and I’ll bet you hadn’t either, but the fact that the polls that said Obama was pulling away from Hillary just prior to the primary turned out to be way wrong. Then all the pollsters were covering their butts and saying people changed their minds. Suddenly, I was reminded of the “election” of 2000, when Gore beat Bush. There was all the dimpled chad stuff in Florida, the dumping of black voters from the rolls in Ohio, etc etc, but there was also the BIG difference between the exit polls and the final tallies.
Because of the unexplained disparities between hand-counted and machine-counted ballots in New Hampshire, Dennis has asked for a recount. “I am not making this request with the expectation that a recount will significantly affect the number of votes that were cast on my behalf,” Dennis said in his letter to the Secretary of State of New Hampshire. But he cited “serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors” that question the integrity of the machine-controlled process.
And here again is an example of one set of figures not agreeing with another.
So who do you believe? If you watch Faux News, you believe one thing, and if watch DepressMe Now, you believe another.
And if, like me, you tend to believe Amy and Michael and Dennis, what does that say about elections in America? Is the voting rigged AND they blew up the World Trade Center AND they killed Paul Wellstone? Or just A and B, but not C?
And will we ever know, or will it always be a question of Who do you believe?
Comments
I don't know if the voting is rigged, but I know it could be and that is scary. The machine controls the machines.
Posted by: Hayduke | January 12, 2008 06:15 PM
Also, while we don't know for sure, "all of the above" is a perfectly plausible answer, that too is a little scary. We can hope for the truth, but that might scare us to death.
Posted by: Hayduke | January 12, 2008 06:18 PM
Why are we going to allow the voting system to continue when it can't be trusted? In fact the entire system of government is broken and can't be trusted. What are we to do?
If electing people to make the changes needed for the US to be healthy is hampered by a corrupted democratic voting system then where are the possibilities for change? How can we honestly encourage our young people to vote when the votes are rigged? What do we do?
Posted by: kateascot | January 28, 2008 06:16 PM