Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 83 Editor's Choice: 1
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Manjoo wins one
[Read the article: Was the New Hampshire vote stolen?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been among the critics of Farhad Manjoo's inexplicable sanguinity about the Ohio results in '04. Over time, I think the accumulated evidence is that no one has so far managed to wrest control over the vile DRE machines. My main remaining issue is simply that, given how vulnerable both DREs and GEMS are, and how utterly lacking are their inner workings in any kind of transparency, they will inevitably be used to steal elections somewhere down the line. The stakes and the corresponding temptations are simply too high.
So the mandatory audit Farhad recommends is absolutely necessary. (And the fact that Ohio had such an audit law on the books, and people nevertheless really *did* conspire to circumvent it by cherry-picking the recounted precincts, shows how vigilant we'll have to be even when those audit laws become universal.)
One thing that may not be clear from this article is why, given the fact that central tabulators are known to be vulnerable to hacking, it would really take a widespread cadre of conspirators to pull off an election theft. Because I was an observer of the actual counting process in one urban precinct in New Hampshire in '04, I can add some detail.
The votes themselves were counted by an optical scanning machine, which took only a few minutes. But the whole process took hours, because poll workers from each party sat and counted ballots - those tallied by the machine, those rejected by the machine, spoiled ones, and unused ballots - as a cross check against the totals. Each class of ballot, after counting, was boxed up and sealed with evidence tape, with the count marked on it. It looked to me like a pretty solid system for preventing ballot stuffing as well as ballot dumping.
Most important, we monitors from the press, the campaigns, and the NGOs observed the whole thing from a nearby roped-off area. And each number, from both the hand counts of ballot types, and from the verdict of the optical scanner for particular races, was read out to us loud and clear as it emerged. We all phoned in those precinct level numbers to our principals (though none of them became official until all the hand cross-checking was done.) So I don't see how anyone at the central GEMs tabulators could alter those figures without being caught by the cross checking against precinct level numbers by the campaigns.
It left me feeling a lot better about the process, at least in NH. There should still be hand-counted cross checks in random precincts. Nothing short of full assurance is excusable.
Also of note: NH was the state with the single widest discrepancy between exit polls and final tally in the Kerry/Bush showdown. If such discrepancies indicate that the Borg have taken control of the process, then whoever won NH would be the Borg. The state went to Kerry.
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Jim White called it
[Read the article: Will the Democratic presidential candidates adhere to their rhetoric?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I too would cheerfully bet my own next paycheck that Calabresi is referring to the telecoms' refusal to continue terrorist wiretaps unless the FBI ponies up their paycheck, and was too lazy to re-read the stories that came out about it.
I'd bet half the following paycheck that this was a bit of pre-emptive poison poured directly into his ear by GOP sources who know full well how completely that story blew apart the weepy pleading of the noble patriotism the telecoms showed by their eagerness to break the law. That Calabresi not only didn't "re-read" the stories, but never read them in the first place, just took the word of some right winger who had bestowed on him the blessing of access.
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Hooray and damn and blast
[Read the article: A farewell note]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This has been one of my four must-read blogs for years.
Should I rejoice that Tim will get the wider readership amongst the Villagers that he deserves? Or curse the fate that has decreed I actually have to log in to Politico sometimes now?
Whichever. Thanks for all the pith and pertinence, and best of luck.
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@openmouthedfoot
[Read the article: Today's FISA vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Republicans submitted a motion to bypass the amendments and go directly to the (no good rotten lousy very bad) Intelligence Committee version of the FISA bill.
This was essentially a call for cloture on the original bill. If it had passed, we'd have gone directly to a vote on the original bill - but only after the thirty-hour period for debate that always results from a call for cloture.
If they hadn't done this, Reid would have pushed through rapid up or down votes on all the amendments, held sessions through the weekend to get through the obligatory thirty hour period for Dodd's filibuster of the IC bill itself, and we'd now be seeing the cloture vote on the bill itself, followed by passage and the giveaway to Bush.
The Republicans didn't want to allow Reid to capitulate on everything. This was either because they wanted to have a "Dems have left us defenseless against Obama" club to swing, or because they didn't want to take the miniscule chance that DiFi's amendment would pass, and the further miniscule chance that the FISA court would actually secretly rule against the telecoms.
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Open my mouth, insert foot
[Read the article: Today's FISA vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Apologies to openmouthedfool for reading the nom wrong.
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Thanks for the correction, Kitt
[Read the article: Today's FISA vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Return from a long days' work to find my comment quoted by Glenn; head naturally swells to watermelon size; proceed through rest of comments; note Kitt's catch of my appalling Obama/Osama switch; head shrinks back to proper petite pois diameter.
Thanks, K, for saving me embarrassment on the front page.
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Why I love this blog and its comments
[Read the article: Is Michael Mukasey prioritizing the harassment and imprisonment of journalists?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn's poetry clears out the head.
Good celery's poetry clears out the heart.
Shouter242's peotry clears out the colon.
It's all good.