Because it is almost certain that Christine Gregoire's 130 vote lead in Washington state's governor's race comes from what I have begun to call "distributed vote fraud", I thought I should review the concept. The ideas behind distributed vote fraud are not new, nor are they something that I discovered. I can think of examples that are literally hundreds of years old. What I have contributed is extensive coverage of the problem and, as far as I know, the phrase "distributed vote fraud".
What I mean by the phrase is vote fraud committed by individuals, acting by themselves, not the more traditional vote fraud committed by candidates, party officials, or election workers. I do not know of any good estimates of its extent, but I believe, from a variety of indirect evidence, that distributed vote fraud has made the difference in a number of close elections. I also believe, as I explain below, that it is a growing problem.
Because some find this argument distasteful, I am going to present it in an outline form and ask those who disagree to respond specifically to the points in the outline. In other words, if you think the argument is incorrect, I would appreciate it if you would explain where you think it is incorrect. And I will try to respond to those who make specific arguments.
The first point is, I hope, uncontroversial. The second should be, but you can find a few criminologists who argue that deterrence does not work, that the fear of getting caught and penalized does not deter some from crimes. I have never taken their arguments seriously, but will listen to anyone who has new thoughts on that question.
The third point should also be uncontroversial — at least for anyone who has followed the changes in our election laws. It is simply a fact that, in many jurisdictions, prospective voters are not required to prove their citizenship at registration, or their identity at voting.
The fourth point follows from the same kind of argument that the second does; A cheater, I think, is more likely to cheat if the rewards (as the cheater measures them) are large. The fifth point is supported by a variety of evidence, including the surge in voting, polls showing that voters thought this last election extremely important, and the growth in groups such as MoveOn.
The sixth point is undoubtedly the most controversial, and deserves a post of its own, which I will provide in the next day or so. For the moment, let me simply note that Democratic leaders act as if it is true. Both nationally, and in most states, most Republicans want stronger controls against cheating than most Democrats do. In 1993, nearly all of the opposition to the "Motor Voter" Act came from Republicans. President George H. W. Bush had vetoed it earlier; President Bill Clinton signed it.
From those six points above, I draw several conclusions. Distributed vote fraud has increased in the last decade, and was higher in 2004 than in 2000. In most cases, distributed vote fraud benefits Democratic candidates. (Often against other Democratic candidates in primaries, by the way.)
How much distributed vote fraud is there? That's the great question, and one for which I do not have an answer. Neither does anyone else, as far as I know. On the basis of very general arguments, I think that somewhere between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000 ballots cast in Washington's last election were fraudulent. That isn't a very high rate, but is enough so that distributed vote fraud may have provided Senator Maria Cantwell's margin in 2000, and almost certainly provided Christine Gregoire's current margin. It may well have provided the margin in some recent Washington legislative races, too.
One of the biggest sources of distributed vote fraud is voting by non-citizens. Those who disagree that it is a major problem often argue that non-citizens would not risk their green cards, if they are here legally, or deportation, if they are not. That risk is minuscule, and most non-citizens would know that. They are unlikely to be detected and very unlikely to be prosecuted if they vote.
A few months ago, I ran across an article in a Florida newspaper describing the experience of a Florida prosecutor who had prosecuted a number of cases of distributed vote fraud. I was struck by two points in the article. First, according to the prosecutor, he was unusual among prosecutors in being willing to bring any of these cases to trial. Most prosecutors did not see vote fraud cases as important, and did not want to get in trouble with one of the two major parties. Second, even this prosecutor ignored the cases in which an immigrant had voted after getting registered at the driver's license office. He accepted the immigrants' claims that they thought they were supposed to vote, and just told them to go and sin no more.
His experience shows why distributed vote fraud is such a difficult problem. Prosecutors are unlikely to see the few cases that come to their attention as deserving much of their time. But those cases, and the many that do not come to their attention, add up, and in close races, can change the result.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(I plan to write an extensive post on the extent of distributed vote fraud some time in the next month or so. If you have any data showing either that it is extensive — or that it is almost nonexistent — I would appreciate seeing it.
Finally, as always, when I write on this subject, I refer you to my disclaimer. Please read it carefully if you disagree with the argument above.)
Posted by Jim Miller at December 28, 2004 07:56 AM | Email ThisYou say Republicans want to make it harder to vote. YES. We want to make it harder to cheat when voting!
If I make your front door more secure, I am making it harder for you to get in to your house.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 28, 2004 08:58 AMBy the logic presented, if I advocated a policy that would require people to document that they, indeed, spent a plurality of days in the state of Washington last year, and to provide this both at registration and at voting, proof of citizenship by coming to a central voting registration center with documentation, conclusive evidence that anyone with the same name who is a felon is distinct from me (preferably fingerprints from both them and you), and someone opposed it, they would be "pro-cheating". This is of course stupid, and just that they were willing to accept a certain degree of openess to increase voter participation. We all agree there should be balance, but the fact we disagree on where that balance should be had hardly makes democrats "pro-cheating."
I should also point out that it is a logical fallacy to say that because a group favors rules that allow something means that they actually favor the content. I assume you are not so ignorant of Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Posted by: Anonymous on December 28, 2004 09:00 AM"Reed's office said outgoing Gov. Gary Locke offered to send a state airplane to McMinnville, Ore., to fetch Reed so he could certify the election on Monday.
"We said `Thanks, but no thanks,"' said Reed spokeswoman Trova Hutchins. "We'll certify on Thursday.""
(From KIRO-TV website)
Posted by: Dan on December 28, 2004 09:03 AMYou're a Democrat and a racist. No suprise there!
You said:
"as poor, urban voters tend to be less prone to knowing the system
You used the phrase "poor urban voters" as a code for minorities.
You're a Democrat and a racist. And that's the way it is these days. Everyone has heard what Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had to say recently about Clarence Thomas, too.
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 28, 2004 09:50 AMIt would be less entertaining, and more transparent to say: "Democrats are cheaters, therefore all close elections are stolen by Democrats" - which is precisely what you said, you just broke it down in little pieces to make it sound objective. It just sounds dumb when you state the thesis plainly, because it IS dumb.
Posted by: Christine G on December 28, 2004 09:51 AMWe happen to know that a "syllogism" is one of those big words that freshpersons at Evergreen State eventually learn during their five or six years there, but Stefan isn't using one. Democrats cheat, and when elections are stolen, they are necessarily close. And when close elections are stolen, they are stolen by Democrats--like Lyndon Johnson's Senate primary in 1948, which was an 87-vote victory for LBJ. In that case, a Democrat stole from another Democrat.
By the way, your nose-ring is loose.
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 28, 2004 09:59 AMIt's this simple, either you are for strengthening the security and accuracy of our elections, or you are not.
To imply that poor people are not able to vote if we make the process more secure is ridiculous. Like your front door, just because I add an extra lock, doesn't mean that it's too hard for you to figure out how to open it up.
We have a system that is easy to cheat. Worse, we don't even have very good ways of knowing to what extent cheating or just plain neglect and incompetence have influenced an extremely close election.
To the extent that cleaning this up makes it harder to vote, you Democrats are going to be hard pressed to find anyone but a small minority of far to the left totalitarians (like many of you trolls who comment here) that are going to have any problem with making our elections something we can trust.
That's the real reason why the Democrats are waning politically, they are so out of touch with the mainstream. Even in a very Blue state like WA, the mainstream Democrats and Republicans want election reform and as the polls show, are distrustful of the results of this election.
Comment all you want, you are outnumbered.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 28, 2004 10:24 AMIt's a shame the poster couldn't see the irony in the post...first the strong denial, followed by the rationale for cheating. I guess libs have another word for it...isn't that called verbicide?
Yet, they know not the meaning of the word, "is."
Posted by: South County on December 28, 2004 10:27 AMRepublicans can still win, they just have to go above the margin of error. If they don't people like Gregoire gain an office they did not win.
Posted by: Robin Fairchild on December 28, 2004 10:35 AMI did not say that more security makes it impossible to vote, I made the simple point that the more levels of security the more difficult it is for people to vote, and this will cause fewer people to vote. I did not suggest it was impossible as you say.
I didn't even suggest that improvements couldn't be made, merely that openess has a value, too.
I am not Goldy. I do not know who Goldy is. I am merely a person who wanted to contribute to a discussion where I knew I would be outnumbered, but felt my perspective was lacking.
In return, I'm called a racist and otherwise insulted. I understand now that the comments of a random reader are not wanted. My apologies for attempting to interrupt the uniformity of discussion with my thoughts. As you wish, I'll stay out of your forum in the future.
Posted by: Anonymous on December 28, 2004 10:44 AMWhat increased security does is make it harder for illegal voters to vote, which is what we want to accomplish.
Posted by: Susu on December 28, 2004 11:06 AMAfter that we need to have an initiative that will require SSN and driver licenses to be filled out for voter registration.
1. Hard to argue. Not every person is honest, so the subset of voters undoubtedly includes dishonest people.
2. Not sure that weakened controls makes people more likely to cheat. If they are dishonest, won't they cheat anyway? Maybe weakened controls make more people dishonest. OK, I agree with you.
3. Not sure that I agree that the increase in absentee voting has weakened controls. They are basically the same as if you went to a polling place. They don't check ID there. You just give a name that's on the precinct list and they give you a ballot. Not really much control.
4. This is your opinion and really can't be proved one way or the other. If this is true, you would think that more people would cheat in local elections where the consequences are more immediate and the ability to influence the outcome greater than in national or statewide elections.
5. I assume you mean the 2004 election. If so, I think you're point is completely misplaced, since the Rs did a much better job of getting their voters out.
6. Ah, the point of it all. You're entitled to your view, but I disagree, not because I necessarily think the Rs cheat more than the Ds, since you can't know how the cheaters voted, there is no way to provide any proof of your point. If I had to guess, I would say it's probably equally distributed. Therefore, each person can take it for what it is...your view.
I will agree that in every election there are people who vote in the wrong state and the wrong precinct, may not be properly registered or may not be eligible to vote. Maybe it's worse now than in the past, although frankly I doubt it. Our main point of disagreement (other than who the likely cheaters are) is the degree that we view this as a major problem. I don't think it matters that much. After all, in the 22 years that I've lived in Washington, we've all survived John Spellman, Mike Lowry and Gary Locke as governor. We've survived Slade Gorton and Maria Cantwell as senators. We've even survived Jim McDermott and George Nethercutt in the House.
So to whomever ultimately is the governor, good luck and may you do a really good job.
Posted by: Steven on December 28, 2004 11:53 AMdemocrats have been at the leading edge of pushing "Fraud Centric" practices for decades and will continue to do so until they are made to stop because they rarely win without them.
"Voter Disenfranchisement" is a code word for "Voter Identification” Whenever you hear "We should not ‘disenfranchise’ voters" translate that to "We should not ‘Identify’ any ‘illegal’ voter" and you will understand why they are so passionate with this phrase. Properly identifying voters would disenfranchise a lot of people, of course those ‘people’ just happen to be democratic candidates.
Can anyone (other than a party hack) deny that democrats under the guise of “Fairness” continue to make it easier and easier to falsify identity, residency, and nationality when you "Register" to vote no matter how many times you choose to do it?
What they are apparently saying is that “It’s better to let 200,000 invalid votes be cast then to ask people to take 5 minutes to properly register” apparently they realize that even two years (the average time between significant elections) isn’t enough time for non-residents to cheat the system. What they don’t say is “So long as they are votes for us” but it’s pretty apparent that they think those illegal votes will benefit them, all you have to do is look at how many hoops King County Circus (other wise known as the canvassing board) jumped through to get every ballot, cast for a democrat or not, to register as a vote for their candidate of choice.
The republican side of the spectrum isn’t apparently interested in illegal votes, if your cynical its only because those votes don’t benefit them, but the fact remains that the majority of voter reform to “Prevent” fraud is proposed by the republican party.
democrat’s claim that anything that would make the system actually represent the will of the people, vs. people that don’t in all likelihood exist, is racist, repressive and unreasonable. “You cant expect poor dumb people to properly identify themselves with only a few years between each election” once having established that they are then free to say “You cant hope to verify their identity at the polls, its too hard and it disenfranchises the poor”
Why the poor are any less capable of getting a few pieces of paper together to vote is beyond me, none the less this catch 22 argument is disingenuous at best.
Of course if all voters registered a small set of pertinent information (that already exists in multiple databases unless you made it up) could be x-referenced against their voter registration card or driver’s license then the argument falls apart. Republicans really need to attack the idea that is just too burdensome to actually ask US citizens to take 5 minutes of their life to significantly reduce the real disenfranchisement that makes everyone’s vote count less than it should, namely fraud.
As to the actual voting on Election Day democrats decry any anti-fraud technologies based mostly on their previously stupid arguments that voter pre-verification via registration is just too hard. Hey we put a man on the moon in the 60’s, created the information superhighway, and are on the verge of multiple technological breakthroughs, I think we can figure out a way to make the process relatively easy and hard to thwart, not impossible, but at least harder than buying a case of cheap liquor for a bunch of homeless people.
What they really "mean" and what should be clearly explained to the majority of honest citizens is that it's very difficult to buy or manufacture registrations and votes if reliable and traceable systems were put into place.
The fact is that democrats benefit most from a corrupt system since they are moral relativists. “The means justify the ends” should be the democratic party’s slogan in regards to voter fraud. If they are elected fraud was impossible, if they lost there just wasn’t enough of it, time to pass new laws like “Motor Voter’. If a system were derived where illegal immigrants could not vote, and residents vote only once then the democrats numbers would drop substantially and they would have lost all of the close elections of the past 10 years, this point is not lost on them.
Of course they can still play dirty when the vote is close, that is very apparent from King County’s "Sticky Ballots" that seem to morph magically into Dem votes once the canvassing board puts there ink stained hands all over them and that also needs to be dealt with, but the opportunity for such narrow margins would be reduced significantly since most of those races would probably go to there opponents if fraud were eliminated.
One of the problems in this state is that the judiciary think changing the rules when it benefits them is ok. These people just need to be unelected in the next race, and the republicans should go on a major campaign to make sure that happens by branding any Judge that does so as "Pro-Fraud" and helping judges that want reform. The party proper cant do that, but we the people can and should.
If the Republicans push this to the wall, expose how easy it is to cheat and can prove even one person cheated using those methods then the democrats will be in a PR war they shouldn’t be able to win unless the Republicans bungle it terribly. If the courts “cover it up” which I don’t think they have the cajones to do, then they will have to be dealt with as laid out previously.
Even if we can’t get the legally elected Governor into office (Rossi in my opinion) we can possibly shame the democrats into passing laws that will keep them from doing it again, though shame is something that you will rarely see from someone that thinks cheating is a valid form of the electoral process.
Be warned that like all criminals if they get away with it they will be emboldened to do it again, and again, and again....
Re your points:
2. Here I guess your point is "the converse is not true"? Just like locks deter theft does not mean lack of locks encourage theft. In theory yes. But I think in the case of elections, just like say a jewelry store, there is much to gain and they are high profile, resulting in many people wanting to cheat. Example: In my house, lack of a lock might not encourage theft, since why would a theif bother coming in the first place. In a jewelry store, lack of locks would encourage theft, since you can bet it is a target to begin with. The same might be said of elections.
3. A person who would cheat would be more likely to or find it easier to cheat via absentee rather than regular voting, because they don't have to show up and have people see their face, thus giving them some measure of protection and anonymity.
4. I don't know, one could argue that because in a local election there are fewer people and thus cheating may be more likely to be noticed, one would be less likely to cheat since there would conceivably be less of a chance of getting away with it.
5. Yes I agree. The main point should be people saw this election as important.
6. If you read Stealing Elections by John Fund, you'd find the majority of 1. organized and 2. known voter fraud was done by Democrats. But that is organized cheating (that we have caught.) In this case, since the article is about individuals cheating, then it may not be true that individual democrats are more likely to cheat than individual republicans, even if it may be true that organizations are more likely to.
He (Fund) also just talks about the divide in the way of thinking about elections between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans want strict controls to control fraud. Democrats want open voting so everyone gets a chance to vote. The two are not mutually exclusive and we should be able to find a way to satisfy both, but with current technology in the near future that would be hard, and thus the two groups appear to be on opposite sides, with Republicans interpreting "openness" as "easy to cheat" or even encouraging cheating, and Democrats interpreting "strict" with "oppression" and racism.
If there is one thing that Democrats do not have, it is shame.
You are absolutely right, it is always that "the ends justify the means." That's why Dan Rather said that while the documents might have been fake, what they were implying was true.
All that matters is that these totalitarians have their way. They will accept no system that offers balance between security and voter access. They must have total control because to them, their ideas are perfect and unquestionable. In their minds, they must be allowed to implement their will, even if that means a system that is flawed in the eyes of observers from all sides.
Nevermind the facts or arguments. Gregoire is ahead, it is no longer a tie. Nevermind the innacuracy and insecurity of the election process, King County said it was fair.
I wish all of you could have been at the manual recount facility in Tukwila. You should have seen the look on Bill Huennekens face. He constantly looked up at all of us observers as he went about his work of making sure there were enough ballots to recanvass in favor of Gregoire. His face told the story. This was a man in a vise. A man who is intelligent enough to know the implications of his actions, committing an indecent act in broad daylight, and under the watchful eyes of many who knew exactly what he was doing and were not allowed to say it. It was a great view of a truly pathetic man.
1) Neither Rossi nor Slade could have possibly lost the election due to, um, lack of votes.
2) No evidence has turned up of deliberate malfeasance on the part of the Democrats.
3) Therefore, they must be cheating through other means, but we can't show how or where.
During the lead up to the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong said publicly that 5% of the members of all organizations were "counter-revolutionaries". Nobody knows exactly where Mao got this number. All signs show that he pulled it out of his hat. Of course, the result was that everyone went nuts for ten years looking for that 5% of the population that was counter-revolutionary. I am seeing a similar pattern here. Not that I would confuse you with Mao of course. He was the emperor of China, while you are the editor of a blog.
As for Motor Voter being a path to fraud, have you tried getting a driver's license under an assumed name? I'm not saying you couldn't, but I can assure you that neither you nor I can't walk into the DOL with a stack of mail and random documents asserting you are person X and walk out with a license (and registration) as person X. There is, of course, such a thing as identity theft. The methods for stealing someone's name is well-enough known. It's not trivial, but not too difficult either. If I am in the identity theft business, I have a few choices as to what to do with my felonious identity-creating powers:
1) Commit fraud to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars against hapless householders, buying expensive goods and services in their name.
2) Register myself to vote as a previously unregistered householder, and get one additional vote. If (using my powers of prediction) I decide that an upcoming election is going to be really close, I will cast an extra vote for the candidate of my choice. I do this knowing well that political candidates and party bosses hang out with and assist common felons all the time.
If, say 500 identity thieves in Washington State all put down their regular, and generally apolitical lives of fraud and decide to pool together to help the Democratic Party, voilá!, we have an explanation as to how Rossi could lose a very close election.
On the subject of non-citizens voting, I have some very sad news. I live on Beacon Hill. My neighbors are immigrants. The parents I meet when I pick up my daughter from daycare are immigrants. My wife is an immigrant. While it's hard to generalize about a large, diverse group of people, first-generation immigrants tend to be more conservative in almost every respect than the native-born population. Bush's immigration reform proposals come in no small part from a very astute realization that if the GOP stops actively associating with segregationists and other unsavory types, more immigrants now means more legitimate Republican votes 10 years from now.
Jim, please, please. Use your considerable intelligence to think up something real.
Posted by: Jeremy on December 28, 2004 12:56 PMWhile I think the thing for Dino to do is to let Gregoire take the governor's office, still, the thing that makes a political party change its actions are (a) the actions of its members and (b) the law.
If the Democrats don't work to fix the election process (and why should they; it guarantees them control of Washington's government), then the thing to do is change the laws. And as it looks like we can't do it through the now-Democrat legislature or executive, and the courts are siding with the Democrats to count every ballot, then we'll have to use the initiative, referendum, and recall process to make changes.
just a couple of euros.
Posted by: steve miller on December 28, 2004 01:42 PMYou seem to have me confused with someone else you know. I don't have any piercings. Glad to clear this up for you.
Posted by: Christine G on December 28, 2004 04:31 PMCome up with better candidates next time - like a republican willing to represent the entire population instead of just wealthy businessmen.
Oh wait. There are NO republicans willing to disobey Bush's Neo-conservative EXTREMIST Right wing marching orders to STOMP on democracy.
We won in 2004. We're winning right now. And we'll continue to win in 2006 and 2008.
What did we win, you ask? The Presidency, more seats in the House and Senate, the majority of Governor's Mansions (including WA state), and the Attorney General of this state!
That makes 8 of 11 Presidential elections in my lifetime, and we'll win the next one too.
Seattle and San Francisco are the last outposts of bass-ackwardness in this country that is turning more red than white and blue.
I know you have to revel in slight, temporary victories such as this. You're kinda like the Mariners winning in extra innings this year. Celebrate all you want - you still have a losing record, with first place completely out of sight.
If your candidates are so good, why did they get trounced this year? Even Gregoire - if WA state is so Democratic and she's such a great candidate, why didn't she win by 130,000?
The irony is both that Gregoire and her ilk are the ones stomping on democracy; and that your spewing rant is yet another reason voters continue to migrate to our side.
Enjoy your dinosaur walk of death. The comet has hit, you just don't know it yet.
Posted by: Larry on December 28, 2004 07:11 PMYes....We all know the Liberal *fringers* were out in force on November 2nd - feverishly filling out bogus Provisional ballots in precincts where they did not belong.... Their look may be common in Belltown, Seattle...but they really stuck out in my Kent community precinct!
The young liberals did indeed add to this insane fiasco - but it's the older, organized Dems in positions of power in King County who stole the election. The Dems in this state have too much to lose if Rossi becomes Governor. With the Dems now having the majority in the State House and Senate.....there is this little thing the Governor has at his/her disposal that can literally stop the Liberal machine.....It's called the *Line Item Veto*...The Democrats cannot allow this powerful tool to fall into the hands of a Republican!
When one considers the number of ballots added to the count in KC from November 2nd.....one has to wonder what Rossi's win margin would have been if no ballots were added at all? Beginning with the 10,000 + ballots found just prior to KC's initial certification.......Rossi may have actually won this election by thousands!
With that in mind....how can Rossi simply concede now? He has to follow this through for the sake of the voters of Washington state.
Posted by: Deborah on December 28, 2004 07:19 PMThere are litany of other charges that can be leveled about the ineptness of this recount - Keep in mind, corruption doesn't have to be proven to get this election thrown out - ineptness and impropriety would qualify and there's plenty of fopa's to go around to warrant a revote. Actually if there are additional votes allowed to be counted to give Rossi the victory, I would still prefer to see a new election so that the playing field will be leveled again and to promote healing for the state as well as the loser. New ground rules for counting would be helpful also - and an unwritten rule that certain other counties not report results (such as in the original count) until after King (Ukraine) County has done so. Keep up the number crunching, Shark and think positive !
Posted by: KS on December 28, 2004 09:24 PMLets break this down some.
"...
1. Not every person who wants to vote is honest.
... a premise which is hard to refute, and is probably true.
2. Dishonest people are more likely to cheat if controls on cheating are weakened.
... tenuous, but plausible. It *does* stink slightly of the Natural Law fallacy, which would imply that it is a natural consequence for cheating to increase if there were fewer controls. I think would be more correct to say cheating is more likely if it is perceived that it will be rewarded.
3. Controls on vote fraud have been weakened in recent decades, notably by the passage of the 1993 "Motor Voter" Act and by the increase in absentee voting.
... Sweeping generalization / Non causa pro causa flaws
(sidebar: I will note that absentee voting historically has favored conservative causes and candidates. We can fact-check this.)
You *cannot* show me that these two acts are prime causes of voter fraud. You want to see voter fraud, go back to Tammany Hall, Lyndon Johnson's Texas, Mayor Dailey's(elder) Chicago, etc. I'm sure someone can give us some examples from the Republican side of the house as well. Lack of oversight is the cause, as it was *then*.
4. Dishonest people are more likely to cheat if they view an election as important.
... This suffers from logical flaws both of composition and circularity. For one thing, if you cheat, you are dishonest. Secondly, dishonesty and the importance you impart to an election, are not connected.
To put my comments on item (2) above it in perspective, I *also* have to wonder *what* the cheater's payoff would be for voter fraud. I can see them cheating for Money, yes, toys, yes, but Gregiore as govenor?! I really don't see it. I *also* don't rule it out, but it seems non-sequitor here.
5. Voters, especially on the left, viewed the 2000 election as more important than most.
... This is anecdotal, and a popular fallacy. I expect you would find the right views the importance of this election *just* as highly as the left. It is irrelevant.
6. Cheaters are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.
... Where does *this* come from? Boy, this is just plain *nasty*.
Fallacy of the undistributed middle:
Most voters who cheat are Democrats. Democrats voted against stronger controls. Therefore, Democrats want to cheat.
We also have the problem of the initial, unsupportable assertion: Cheaters are more likely to be Democrats. Firstly, how is this relevant, whether true or not?! Secondly, you will have a long, hard, bumpy road trying to prove *this*, and I expect anything posted seriously attempting to support this supposition will impact the ground, in flames, at high velocity.
You may not like Dems, but that does not make them lawbreakers.
Dammit, folks, if we're going to straighten this mess out, we need more light and less heat. That very much includes *not* inciting partisanship, by insulting the people we want to join us in *fixing* it. Stuff like this is worse than stupid, whatever the relevance of it's content. It *interferes* with a solution. Calling or implying that Democrats cheat, with out specific, actionable events, is a major "Guilt by association" slander and fallacy. Don't encourage this stuff. You have problems with Dems, pick out the *specific* Dem(s), and rip them a new one, chapter and verse, with objective, verifiable fact. The same applies to Republican political figures. Please! It might make them think more.
Stuff attacking the current election results has to be *tight*, in argument and in tone. This article has the appearance of self-indulgent partisanship, and very wrongfully characterizes as flawed a whole class of people, most of whom are as smart, principled, law abiding, and generous as you and I are. It is also lazy, as there are manifold ways the point could have been brought across(and have been) without implied insults that will no doubt alienate at least half of the audience. IMHO it is *Almost* as bad as the "Lobotomy's for Republicans, its the Law" and "Friends don't let friends vote Republican" crap that came out years ago.
To wrap this up: The last election was seriously flawed, so much so that it calls in to question the results of the Govenors race. I voted for Gregiore. I am not confident that she won the election. I want 2 million dollars spent on a re-vote, to make *certain* the People's Will is heard. To me the *process* is paramount, we must guarantee it. To do less is to invite chaos, as without that process, at it's logical end, people will turn to other means to make their desires known.
Rgds, from someone who with his friend Peter, is confusing the neighbors with opposing presidential, and matching "Revote Washington" bumper stickers....