83% reporting and our vote totals haven't equalled the amount of recall signatures.

[Ed Suspicious]

I don't know what to make of that. Did we fail to sway anyone beyond those who signed petitions?

[Lifelong Protester]

1. I hate to go all 'tin foil hat' on you

But I really think there is something fishy here...

[Indydem]

2. Fewer people signed the petition than voted for Barrett the first time.

So I say, yes.

Only those who were personally injured or felt they were next, were motivated to participate in the recall.

[SoutherDem]

3. Could some have believed the robo-calls?

Just wondering.

[snappyturtle]

4. Yeah, I wonder about that too! nt

[Speck Tater]

5. As I walk out of the supermarket...

somebody with a clipboard stops me and asks me to sign a petition. Sure. Why not? It sounds like a good cause, and it takes no effort at all.

By the time I get home I've forgotten the petition and what it was about.

Come election day you expect me to turn off the TV and go to the polls? Get real! I did my part. I signed some petition about something a couple months back. But going to the polls? That's just too damn much effort! And what they're voting on doesn't really effect me personally, so who cares?

[RonWF]

6. It's easy to sign a petition when someone shoves it in front of you ...

it takes more effort to actually go and vote.

It's also a lot easier to sign 3 or 4 petitions than it is to vote 3 or 4 times.

[mojowork_n]

7. But the HUGE difference is

Last edited Wed Jun 6, 2012, 11:09 AM - Edit history (1)

all of the signatures on all of the petitions were *thoroughly* checked.

Multiple iterations of the same name and address (there were very, very
few) were simply deleted. (And as far as I know, it wasn't a crime to sign
more than once.)

But we can't say the same thing about the vote count. You shove your
paper into the slot at the front of the optical scanner, and after that,
what happens and how the one's and zero's get turned in to "vote
totals" is a mystery. The voting machine companies are private businesses
and the software (and any hope that there might be some system or
official procedure for verifying the totals) are solely the property and
purview of the management of those companies.

Edit to add postscript :

That's the difference between allegations of "voter fraud" (which I'd compare
to bigfoot or sasquatch sightings, in that they tend to be personal and anecdotal) and
the separate issue of "election fraud." That's all related to the process and procedures
by which votes are tabulated. The first "take place" right there in plain sight, at the
polling place, where people are often looking at one other semi-suspiciously, anyway.
The second category is so completely out of sight no one really has a mental picture
of what's going on.