Comments on: Ohio Vote Challenges: 10/29/04

By: Zed

Zed — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 07:01:29 +0000

Congrats for your brand new president, lads!

By: Zed

Zed — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 07:00:45 +0000

Congrats for your brand new president, lads!

By: jet

jet — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:42:40 +0000

I vote the folks at Crooked Timber for President. I’ve never seen a place online with more rational thought an analytical skill applied to the world’s problems. Only thing that would make it better is if Sebastian was added to the line up of bloggers ;)

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:47:36 +0000

“If the letter was returned to the sender, the Republicans took that as evidence of possible voter fraud, and filed a challenge. This gambit was clever. It’s likely, however, that this method of finding fraud has a high rate of false negative errors (that is, it would miss cases of true but sophisticated voter fraud) and a high rate of false positive errors (it identifies valid voters as frauds, e.g., because of Post Office delivery errors, moves that lack forwarding addresses, or errors in recording voter addresses). If you have done mail survey research, you know that the cumulative rate of these false positive errors is significant.” There may or may not be a high rate of false positives, we can’t know until we investigate. Which is the entire point of the challenge process. Which is the process you want to circumvent, correct? As for “…After all, the individual Republicans were filing challenges about complete strangers based on what headquarters told them about a returned piece of mail.” this is a direct analogy of what Democrats are doing in Wisconsin with the ‘same-day’ registration rules. The rules require that a same-day voter be personally vouched for as eligible by someone who personally knows them. Democrats have compiled a list of people who are to be contacted to vouch for voters in each precinct. Having someone meet an ‘eligible voter’ at or near the polls so that you can ‘vouch’ for them is almost certainly outside the meaning of the statute, and very amenable to voter fraud wouldn’t you say?

By: Marcus Stanley

Marcus Stanley — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 05:49:56 +0000

What I am hearing here is that the challenges are unlikely to be upheld in any case. Ohio law requires specific knowledge to support a challenge You must actually personally know the person not to be a resident, not have been informed by a party that they didn’t receive a piece of mail—it’s totally different. Furthermore, even if you are NOT resident at the address you registered at, you are STILL eligible to vote so long as you are still an Ohio resident. In other words, if you moved after you registered you can still vote. This further lowers the evidentiary value of the Republican method. Based on my canvassing/calling experience, though, this particular dirty trick certainly has gotten the minority community pretty riled up here in Cuyahoga county. I think we are going to see pretty massive turnout.

By: jet

jet — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 04:53:59 +0000

Kind of off topic, but did Kerry ever mention what he would do different in the future with Iraq? Or was it just limited to general assurances that he wouldn’t screw up as much as Bush? Because I’ll trade stupid economic damaging tax hikes for not screwing up in Iraq, but did he mention what “not screwing up” entailed. Or was that more fairy dust :P

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 21:43:35 +0000

Aphrael is referring to this story. Doesn’t seem to be that big a deal; electors have been substituted before and there’s going to be no challenge this time. (In Wisconsin, the Democrats’ challenge to Nader was based in part on the fact that he hadn’t named an elector from every Congressional District, as required. I think it was the right thing to deny that challenge, though I wish Nader were not on the ballot.)

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 18:45:09 +0000

I did indeed have it wrong. That’s what I get for trying to do things from memory when I’m sleep deprived. I thank everyone for the corrections. MKK

By: aphrael

aphrael — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 16:59:19 +0000

The most interesting – and bizarre – election story out of Ohio in the last couple of days has actually been the bit about the Kerry elector who is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office. :)

By: tony

tony — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:43:04 +0000

There is no bothermenot.com. Mary had the name wrong, that’s all. Also, the description of the service somewhat undersells it: Danny should know that it doesn’t just give you registrations and passwords, but the program will automatically enter the form data for you. This is for any site requiring free registration, so it doesn’t give you access to anything you would otherwise have to pay for.

By: DavevH

DavevH — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:10:40 +0000

Should that be http://www.bugmenot.com or is bothermenot an anglo version of the same thing?

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 11:10:18 +0000

Mary Kay: I think you mean bugmenot.com.

By: Mary Kay

Mary Kay — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 04:31:03 +0000

If you want to access a site which requires registration, got to http://www.bothermenot.com, enter the site and it will give you longon names and passwords to use. MKK

By: Danny Yee

Danny Yee — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 04:07:45 +0000

“But why follow links?” In this case the link requires registration – and if anyone thinks I’m going to register for local newspapers all over the US, they can think again. I haven’t even registered for my local Sydney paper.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 02:10:59 +0000

Out of the 976 in Summit county, 976 were dismissed. But why follow links?