Election follies

By scribe, Section Diaries
Posted on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 12:04:56 PM EST
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I'm just posting here a few of the really stupid events of the day, and invite quick updates in the comments. Feel free to contribute.

A quick digression, first:

FWIW, German radio is doing a long piece on the elections - they're paying a lot of attention to WY ID and OH as exemplars of the state of the House races.

OK, back.

First, the list of the prominent turned away (or hassled) at the polls for bad ID

U.S. Rep. Chabot, Ohio

S.C. Governor Sanford

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, (in charge of voting!) given the benefit of (i.e., hassled by) poll workers with bad advice/understanding on the ID law, and implementing it with a vengeance.

Mean Jean Schmidt can't get the scanner to take her ballot. (with YouTube of the escapade!)

Shenanigans

CO-05 Fawcett headquarters hit with "Skunk" smell vandalism and an e-mailed death threat on Fawcett sent.

Now, that really falls into the "Smuckin' fart" category - like an emailed death threat isn't, uh, traceable.

If that happened to a Repug, you can be sure there'd be allegations of terrism, fer sherr.

Indiana U.S. Rep. Souder tries to get stopped telemarketing calls in his favor. Indiana forbids robocalls, so they had live callers. The cheap bast*rds running the "independent" campaign outsourced the calling offshore, with the result that calls attacking Souder's opponent on immigration policy were presented by people with such thick South Asian accents they were unintelligible (Save for the candidate's name).

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Election follies | 10 comments (10 topical)

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given the choice of paper or electronic (none / 0) (#1)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 12:12:28 PM EST

Ken Mehlman chooses paper.

Hmmmmmm.

: given the choice (none / 0) (#7)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 02:39:51 PM EST

Novakula chooses paper, too.
Hmmmmmm.

Kentucky smackdown (none / 0) (#2)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 12:44:10 PM EST

A poll worker assaulted a voter.

TX-22 - a few machines misdelivered (none / 0) (#3)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 01:58:04 PM EST

In TX-22, several machines were misdelivered, but it appears that will have no effect on the Congressional race to succeed DeLay. Turns out, the misdeliveries only affected very local school or water board referenda, and perhaps 64 people were not able to vote on appropriate referenda.

No word on turnout, nor on how the electronic spell-in of the write-in Repug Secula-Gibbs. is going.

There appear to have been the normal quota of machine deficiencies, missing tech support, etc.

A voter put it best:

Third ward resident Derek McNeil said that he finds the electronic voting machines untrustworthy.
"I wish they would just bring the paper ballots back," said the 39-year-old real estate agent. "Machines can be hacked."

Yup.

NJ--SEN Kean accuses Menendez of locking office (none / 0) (#4)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 02:08:03 PM EST

CNN devoted way too much time to a story from Kean's camp, in which they allege (without proof) that the Menendez camp had their offices padlocked and chained overnight.

Implausible - the worker found she was locked and chained in at 4:45 am, then called police. But police didn't show up until 7:45, after a second call?

Dubious; Mountainside is about 5 miles west of Newark Airport, in the heart of Kean country and it's a quiet suburb, to boot. The police there have not too much to do at 4:45 am and could have easily responded in, oh, 10 minutes. If it actually happened.

You can watch the video here; it just seems silly.

Frankly, it seems entirely too fourth-grade for me to believe. And contrived to allow reiteration of Kean themes....

: this has (none / 0) (#5)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 02:08:55 PM EST

the smell of Rove planting a bug in his own offices in a way that implies his opponent did it....

man with gun hassles Latinos in AZ (none / 0) (#6)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 02:20:46 PM EST

while his buddies videotape and interview/check ID

The proof of gerrymandering's effectiveness (none / 0) (#8)
by scribe on Tue Nov 07, 2006 at 03:16:43 PM EST

Here's a very simple display of net House changes since 1970, per Hotline. One glance at this, and all I saw was the clear proof that partisan gerrymanders (particularly the computer-driven kind) work.

+12D
+12R
+49D
+1D
+15R
+34R
+26D
+14R
+5D
+2D
+9D
+10R
+52R
+3D
+4D
+2D
+5R
+6R

Before 84, every election save one (1976, when Dems were at the height of their House control) had more than a net of 12 seats change hands. After 84, there's been only one election with more than a net of 12 seats changing hands.

I'd suspect that, by 1985 or so, the last of the redistricting fights over the 1980 census had finally played themselves out into the partisan gerrymanders we have today. An upshot of this was, of course, DeLay's taking the opportunity to redistrict again after 2002 - otherwise there likely would have been fewer changes in 2004 (or even a net Dem gain); I'd have to check but I'd suspect most of the net change in 2004 is made up of the Rep gains in Texas from DeLay's project.

I'm sure there's at least one law review article or dissertation in that simple chart (not that I'll be writing it).

Next on the list after getting rid of electronic machines (kos is really pounding today on vote by mail like in Oregon - it's timely to do that), is getting rid of the partisan gerrymander. It'll have to be statutory, because the S.Ct. repeatedly refuses to address partisan gerrymanders (at least as long as Repubs benefit). Homogenize the districts state by state and then we get pulled more toward the middle.

: It's so easy ... (none / 0) (#9)
by Sailor on Wed Nov 08, 2006 at 06:28:48 AM EST

... to have a (non-partisan) computer program calculate the changes in the census and redraw the map w/o regard to political advantages. And this crap about re-drawing between census has to stop.
The party in charge of the state shouldn't get do-overs.
IRT 'voting machines': voting machines seem to usually work fine, it's the computer voting that has been blatantly abused. Computer voting programs are realtively easy to write and should be open source and bullet proof with a paper trail that is as open as a paper ballot.

a follow up on the bogus Steele voter guides in MD (none / 0) (#10)
by scribe on Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 09:22:41 AM EST

The Repugs in MD shipped in homeless from Philly to hand out bogus voter guides. Once the homeless guys found out, they tossed the guides in the trash, but they still never got to vote in their own elections, in Philly.
Nice work, by the Philadelphia Daily News.