Youngest voters sat out MA special election.

[BurtWorm]

If you want to win in 2010, you have to give young voters, women, gays, latinos and African-Americans a reason to go to the polls and support you.

That is the lesson of 2008 and last Tuesday.

http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/D0xoYcYkWGw/-Young-Voters-Were-No-Shows-in-Massachusetts

[cali]

1. The Coakley campaign had NO outreach to those communites until

the last few days before the election.

[BurtWorm]

2. Maybe this is a local error. Maybe it won't spread.

The only way to be sure it doesn't is for the Dems to move the fuck left.

[KittyWampus]

5. you can say your opinion about whether Dems need to move here there or whereever BUT

using Coakley to prove your point is absurd.

She did. not. campaign.

Maybe if she'd actually been marginally competent, you'd have a case.

[BurtWorm]

7. How does what you're saying contradict what I'm saying?

:wtf:

[dkf]

12. I guess creigh deeds and corzine didn't campaign either.

[AspenRose]

31. Actually, Deeds didn't do much outreach at all.

He was too busy being ConservaDem, rejecting HCR and bashing McConnell about that stupid college essay.

The same groups Burtworm mentions above didn't really turn out for him, either.

You have to give voters a reason to vote for you besides "I'm not the other candidate."

[OHdem10]

3. Kos ran their own polls of Obama voters and found that even

Obama voters who went with Brown had wanted the PO and
the HIR did not go far enough.

[cali]

16. right, but that's not WHY they voted for him.

[slampoet]

4. Considering that Coakley supported prosecuting the ATHF "Lite-brite" pranksters as Terrorists, ....

why are you surprised that they younger set sat out the election?

[JVS]

10. LOL. That shit was funny!

[BeFree]

6. Know what?

Brown got 64,000 more votes than McCain got just last year.

Explain that.

And Coakley got 800,000 less than Obama.

I don't get it. Maybe one of you smart people can explain it to me?

[BurtWorm]

8. 64,000 tea baggers sat out in 2008. 800,000 progressives sat out in 2010.

[BeFree]

9. Progressives sat out?

And they f'n lost Ted's seat to a teabagger?

I doubt that true progressives could be so f'n stupid.

So no, that doesn't make sense. Try again.

[BurtWorm]

11. How about a coalition of progressives and unmoved indies sat out?

[BeFree]

13. Well

Make up your mind. What was it?

Some progressives are idiots and some independents are idiots and the teabaggers took advantage of all that idiocy and took Ted's seat?
So the teabaggers are the smart ones?

[BurtWorm]

15. Why do you blame the voters? It's the fucking candidates and their organizations who are to blame.

:wtf:

[BeFree]

17. Actually

I don't blame the voters.

I blame the fact that no one gives a shit that a corporation counts the votes.

But you say progressives (and some indies?) let the teabggers take Ted's seat.

Why get so defensive? It's not your fault, is it? You're just trying to analyze the situation, right? So analyze.

What about diebold? Have you ever considered?

[H2O Man]

18. Clearly,

that is not what he said. He assigns responsibility to the candidate and her campaign; you assign that responsibility to the voters.

[BeFree]

22. Just asking

How the lopsided count- close to 900,000 votes from one year to the next - occurred.

It makes no sense to me. He says the progs slacked off. And that the kids slacked off. And then some indies slacked off. But the teabaggers rallied.

And I say: diebold. Not the voters, but the counters. I assign responsibility to the counters, not the voters. I have more faith in the voters than I do the counters of the vote.

How is that not clear?

[H2O Man]

24. No, he didn't.

He did not say "progs slacked off." You appear to be missing the distinction of what he actually said, and what you think he said. I'm not saying this in a negative or hostile way. It's important to understand exactly what he is saying.

[BeFree]

28. Got me

The explanation was that the "sat out". My bad for saying slacked. They sat out.

800,000 progressives sat out. I disagree.

[BurtWorm]

20. I see. So you're saying it's totally out of anyone's hands but Diebold's.

You're going to have to prove that one. You think a million who voted for Obama in 2008 voted for Coakley this year and just didn't have their votes registered?

[BeFree]

23. It's rather easy

Say there are 10 votes for Coakley. The counter makes that into 8 votes for Coakley and two for Brown.

I can prove it if they let me audit the count. But guess what? They won't let anyone audit the count.

[BurtWorm]

25. How did they sneak this theft past the Dems in the statehouse and AG's office?

Not to mention the Kennedy machine?

[BeFree]

26. Good question

Its all in the computers. Do you know all the ways your computer works? Of course not. So all of them are at a disadvantage when it comes to how the computer counts the votes.

The only way to determine the accuracy of the computers is to do an audit of at least 10% of all the votes. That's not me, that is computer experts that say that.

Here's the thing. They all bought into the computers. So if they show any doubt, then they bring the whole voting system and the whole idea of a 'free' vote down. They will never admit that there is a chance of corruption.

However, many states have QUIETLY reformed the vote counting systems.
And that happened ONLY because a bunch of educated and informed citizens demanded reform, and we still want more. We want audits.

Are they auditing the machines in Mass.? Do you know? Do you care?

[BurtWorm]

27. If you get something more substantial than a hunch, please don't keep it to yourself.

[BeFree]

29. I just told you

And you don't give a shit? Your vote may be stolen and you don't care?

This country is screwn when good people do nothing. And that is where we are. the teabaggers win.

[BurtWorm]

30. You haven't told me anything except there will be no audit.

How many elections are audited? Is every election audited? Is it really unusual that this one will not be?

[BeFree]

32. I asked

Will they audit the votes in Mass.?

I don't know, but I doubt they will. They don't want audits. But the educated and informed reformers do. Unfortunately we are a small minority of people.

As far as I know, where I vote, they audited one precinct and found 4 votes screwed up. 4 votes out of 120. And they all went to the republican side.

Instead of 70 votes for the dem, it was officially 66. And instead of 50 for the pubbie, officially it was 54.

66 to 54 officially, but actually 70 to 50. Quite the difference, eh? Fro 20 down to 12. This was on opscans.

What did they do about it? Nothing. The recorded vote stands at 66 -54.

[BurtWorm]

33. You're in Mass?

Have you done anything about this? Shared it with an official? With the media?

[BeFree]

36. Not in Mass

If I were I wouldn't be on DU, I'd be down at election central demanding an audit. Like I did where I vote.

Along with others, we convinced our state to have audits and so they did.
They kicked and screamed, but they did a measly audit and in my locale, I told you what they found.

I don't know what they do in Mass.

But I would be willing to bet that if they did a real audit they'd find the machines had big "glitches".

It makes no sense to me that 800,000 democrats sat out this election. This was Ted's seat. Diebold stealing votes makes much more sense.

[BurtWorm]

37. Well, see, there you are giving me a hunch as proof

I'd like to have every election audited. I'm sure there were inaccuracies and glitches in the counting. The states at the very least should do exit polls to test the accuracy. I totally agree with you. But as neither you nor I are actually from Massachusetts, we're just left with your hunch. Which is why I can't get all that excited over it. It sure looks to me like a weak Democrat got steamrolled by a tea-bagging opportunists.

[Raineyb]

35. That actually is easily enough done.

The Democratic party is rather uncomfortable with even discussing the possibility of election fraud using the privately owned machines with code that no one can look at. They aren't at all interested in bringing it up. So I would doubt that it sneaked past the Dems. More than likely they just ignored it. (With the assumption that it happened at all which I'm making no claim to one way or the other.)

[H2O Man]

14. Recommended.

[eShirl]

19. Well kids, look what you get when you don't vote. n/t

[BurtWorm]

21. And politicians, look what you get when you don't campaign.

[LeftyMom]

34. Not much different than what they get when they do.

We're going to see more of this before it gets better. Obama got young people excited and then completely abandoned any issues they cared about, and one thing about this current generation is that they're pretty skeptical and media savvy- getting them amped up once is a feat. Twice? Damn near fucking impossible. Obama blew it big time, and that's created a mess at the polls it'll take probably a decade of hard work to clean up.