Steyn (in the textbook Sharpshooter citation) needs a followup claim to nail the deed (i.e. 37 of his districts lined up ‘canny’ rather than unnatural.) NP.

I suspect that Sh*t Steyn knows his readers well, and that they elide “immigrant” to “illegal” without a second thought.

On the other side-note, which actually heads back to the main thread: the US does not, for the most part, have a tradition of free and fair elections, and it’s a fair argument that its electoral traditions are based upon exclusion and suppression. The voting machine and the political machine emerged together in northern cities to underpin the white-ethnic Democratic base of the early 20th century, while the south took a different approach with its poll taxes and literacy tests.

There was a piece in the Graun suggesting that US elections have precisely nothing to teach the UK because their political system retains a superstructure that Britain began shrugging off in the 1830s (the Blackadder the Third election episode comes to mind); Steyn certainly couldn’t write that piece, projection and all, about his native Canada.

The difference is the US has an entrenched political system that believes they benefit from long lines, lack of ID (easy or not), up to date electorcal rolls, etc. Just because it works elsewhere doesn’t mean it will be well executed here …

maybe the Romney voters didn’t want to head to the polls on election day due to voter intimidation, or perhaps they had to work (alternatively, perhaps they are virulently racists and didn’t want to leave their homes to interact with people of color)?

Now there’s an argument offered in good faith if ever I saw one.

I disagree only to the point that yes, it does take rocket science — to keep people from voting. We’re experts at it in the US, and the proof is in the results, your list of bad things, plus the most important result, the purpose of the whole design — low turnout.

Our voting was designed to be difficult, and to produce low turnout, to allow state-level political machines to control the outcome as much as possible within the context of a democracy. Then we had a period that people think of as an era of bipartisanship and good government, when the machines went away, but was actually a merely temporary anomaly caused by the Rs imploding after 1932. We didn’t bother to reform at that point, we didn’t federalize and regularize and simplify elections when it was possible, during this period when Ds dominated and Rs only won office by being D-lite/RINOs, because we thought the good government battle was won because the machines had withered away.

Now it’s too late. The era of fake bipartisanship, whch was really one party rule, is over. We’re probably not going to get old-style political machines back, but we are going to see at least attempts at ideologically based juntas at the state level, whereby once the Rs get control of the state lege and governor’s mansion, they try to to get even better control over election results than the legacy rules, which merely create an undifferentiated difficulty to voting, allow. Even an undifferentiated difficulty hlpe shte Rs, because more of their voters are higher SES, more able to overcome difficulties, and more attuned to the impoortance of voting. They will try to heighten the difficulties, and create differentials, whereby it’s harder to vote for disfavored groups of voters.

I believe that this will happen because the Rs have no choice but make it happen, or face destruction. For one thing, there’s the demographic tide, but then there’s the prospect that the Ds, energized by their attempts at voter suppression, will federalize and simplify voting, should they ever get control at the federal level. The Rs can’t let the Ds do that, and they can’t let the demographic tide come in.

To an immigrant such as myself (not the undocumented kind, but documented up to the hilt, alas)

which is right up there with Romney’s “if only I was a Mexican” gaffe. Really, Steyn, do you think you’d be a staff writer at NRO if you were an illegal immigrant? If being an undocumented immigrant is better, why did you come to the USA legally? Don’t rational market actors like you respond to incentives? Or did you actually look at your options and decide that being an undocumented immigrant is not as good as you pretend in your posts?

He then drops this pearler in the middle:

The short history of the Western Hemisphere is as follows: North America was colonized by Anglo-Celts, Central and South America by “Hispanics.” Up north, two centuries of constitutional evolution and economic growth; down south, coups, corruption, generalissimos, and presidents-for-life.

Really? American history is only two centuries long? And it has consisted only of constitutional evolution? No words that start with “s” and rhyme with “bravery”? And all those coups down south had nothing to do with the folks up North?

If ever there was an example of being ashamed of the history of your own country, that’s it right there. I’ve got a soft spot for Steyn since he (unselfconsciously) quoted Flashman in favour of the war in Afghanistan, but I do have to say: he’s a bit of a cock, isn’t he?

No they are not. Most other advanced countries manage to run elections with no significant fraud, no waiting hours in line, comprehensive up to date electoral rolls, easy ID requirements and so on. It’s not rocket science.

Availability of results varies by state.

Here in VA, the only state I’m familiar with, they put up the unoffical results on the internet as soon as they are called in to the county election boards from the polling places. One of the most important things a partisan observer does at closing of the polling place is to make sure the election judge phones in an accurate tally, because that result gets on the internet within minutes, and we don’t want the election wrongly called for the other guy by the media. Polls close at 7PM, you start seeing results by 730, and by 830 over 90% of precincts are available online. If a precinct doesn’t have results online by 930, that means that precinct had serious mechanical problems with the voting machines. The canvass (the election board’s double-check of the paperwork generated by the polling places) happens over the next 3-4 days, and ends with the official results handed over to the district court by Friday noon.

On the other hand, we have states like AZ and OR, that apparently don’t have to count everything and report official results for weeks. I’m not sure where IL is on that spectrum, and not clear how many states put up by-precinct results on the internet on what schedule.

Similarly, arguing with these people “Fraud did not Occur” will merely leave them with the memory of Fraud.

And, if MA state politics is any guide, there might well have b een fraud; certainly, people here would not be surprised to hear that (say) H Barbour got re elected with fraud; why should we be surprised, that out of the 1,000s of precints, there wasn’t some fraud.
Indeed, I will go further: it would be very strange if there were no fraud in the election; that would suggest mis reporting of hte results.
I’m not sure what the proper affirmative counter response is – Maybe something like “Obama won the election fairly” or “Obama won the election”

“And we did find precincts where Romney won unanimously. We weren’t able to examine the entire state, because most rural county clerks are, understandably, less well-staffed and well-organized than the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.”

How widely are precinct-level results available, even with a lag? Any poli-sci quant people out there?