Elections matter too much to be left to amatures

[dsc]

Let me be perfectly clear here. I am not alledging fraud against Kerry or anyone else. And for the most part, I am not criticising the amatures who did the grunt work for the caucuses.. But that said, we have a major problem on our hands.

In three states, WA, MI, and ME, we look like the keystone cops. First, and by far the most serious, Michigan mistakenly disinfranchised thousands of minority voters in Detroit, Ypsilanti, and Flint. Unless you believe that landlords in three different cities all decided at the last minute to not hold these events and lie about why, the Michigan Democratic party rented a bunch of places without telling the owners why. This is utter incompetence. Remember the major sources of litigation in Florida were, to begin with, matters of incompetence not venality.

In WA, we have at least one report of the wrong numbers being entered into the system and no attempt to fix it. We also, still have, 65 precincts that haven't reported yet.

In ME, we have partial results released to the media and then a cessation of counting apparently to go to sleep.

The excuse that these are volunteers doesn't cut it. Democracy matters. Elections matter. The party needs to find the money to pay for real elections. Just how are we supposed to complain about incompetence in FL or anywhere else, if we can't run elections better than this. Michigan was a disgrace, and Washington State and Maine are at least disgrace lites. Was there fraud? Most probably not. Do I totally trust the results of these elections? In Michigan, no way. In the other two, I have no idea. Kerry certainly won in all three places but there are other things at stake. Kucinich was close to double digits in Washington, Sharpton may have lost a delegate or two, Dean may have as well. For those delegates it mattered.

But most at stake, is our right to be taken seriously when we discuss flaws in other elections. We can't run Haitian style elections when we are in charge and then be taken seriously when we demand first world ones in the general election. This matters. We should have spent the money. I am appalled we didn't.

[HFishbine]

1. Not only did Maine

suspend counting last night to go to sleep, but it looks as if they've now taken an afternoon siesta.

[dsc]

2. I didn't even want to go there

as I had hoped my computer had frozen up or something. I didn't want to believe they are still stuck on 80% reporting.

[creativelcro]

13. Excuse me, but HOW can they assign th delegates if counting is not

even over ???? Am I missing something here ??? Same in WA...

[aldian159]

3. Very good post

Thanks for shedding light on this matter.

[creativelcro]

19. .

[MaineDem]

4. My last comment on this whole issue...

You don't know why the results are late.

Do you think maybe the press has stopped caring? Maybe the results have been done for hours and the media hasn't posted them? Just speculating.

If you're so concerned why don't you call the Maine Democratic Party HQ and ask them. But they're probably a tad busy.

Want the number?

[dsc]

6. The press has stopped caring?

Look you can get pissy with me until the cows come home and give birth to aliens. But the simple fact remains. Maine screwed this up and made the whole party look like fools. And the fact it was to save money burns me up. There is no excuse for this. Especially in a state in which caucuses have been held for years.

[Anwen]

5. Thanks dsc

You summed up exactly how I feel.

I am appalled that anybody would take this lightly, and I'm tired of hearing about "sour grapes" whenever someone raises valid questions about election fraud. We should ALL be concerned about this, no matter who we support.

[redqueen]

7. "We should ALL be concerned about this"

I would have thought that would be a no-brainer.

Boy was I wrong. :(

[dsc]

8. again

your candidate may have gotten the worst of the Washington mess. You could have actually been in double digits if, as many think, those precincts are in Seatle.

[creativelcro]

14. The other thing that pisses me off is that the people at blackboxvoting

who seem so concerned about Diebold and touchscreens, don't seem very interested in caucus fraud. For them, if it's done by hand then it is OK. Look at this message from a WA person, in response to my question about WA problems... How can people be so paranoid about one thing and be so oblivious to another ??? It makes me like electronic voting more...

>>
Yes, it makes perfect sense to me that Kerry won. Our caucus system is completely open, I don't see how anyone could cheat on it. There may be ways but not enough to sway the delegate count enough to change the outcome much.
I was Precinct Caucus Officer (PCO) for my precinct. 11 voters, 9 Kerry, one Dean and one Kucinich. In order to be able to send a delegate to the county caucus, any candidate has to have 15% of the total number of voters in each precinct. In this case Kerry got 3 of the 4 delegates and the Dean and Kucinich voters sat down and decided that the Dean voter would switch his vote to Kucinich. That got Kucinich a delegate. This happened in every precinct in the state.

On April 24, all of the delegates meet in their counties and do the same thing over again, naming delegates to the state meeting.

No machines, no ballots, transparent
>>

[dsc]

9. kick

[dsc]

12. kick

[joshcryer]

10. You rock dsc. :)

Your words are so true. I can't believe there aren't many people addressing this issue.

[dsc]

11. kick

[creativelcro]

15. kabim!

[AP]

16. State parties have no money. Bush created this problem by ruining the

economy.

Funny how it might work to his advantage.

[dsc]

17. then the national party needs to kick in

or we need to do primaries.

[Jerseycoa]

18. kick

:kick:

[Mass_Liberal]

20. kick

for an issue of great importance. Whenever I try to talk about this, people call me a crazy moron who dreams up conspiracy theories whenever Dean loses. Hell, even Washington isn't fully reported. Days after the fact. WTF?