hey, mark, what’s going on today?

Do you really want to know?

Are you sure?

Well, first of all, things are really fucked up in Ohio:

Republicans have already filed 35,000 challenges to voters’ eligibility and are preparing to send recruits into 8,000 polling places next Tuesday to challenge other voters they suspect are not eligible, particularly hundreds of thousands of the newly registered. Democrats are alarmed at the effort, saying it could tie up voting and keep many away from the polls.

On the positive side, however, The New Yorker has endorsed a presidential candidate, something it has not felt obliged to do before in its 80-year history:

While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America’s mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century. That insistence is a measure of his character. He is plainly the better choice. As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold him to the highest standards of honesty and performance. For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory.

Then there’s the fact that the CIA is holding out on us until after the election:

The Central Intelligence Agency has blocked, at least temporarily, the distribution of a draft internal report that identifies individual officers by name in discussing whether anyone should be held accountable for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of Congress from both parties said.

And Democratic voter registrations are being shredded:

Arizona-based Sproul & Associates is under investigation in Oregon and Nevada over claims that canvassers hired by the company were instructed to register only Republicans and to get rid of registration forms completed by Democrats.

And Florida is being stolen right under our noses:

Lines have moved so slowly at new touch-screen voting machines that only six votes per hour are being cast in parts of South Florida, a troubling ratio for next week’s expected crush of voters. Gov. Jeb Bush ordered election supervisors to “preserve order at the polls” after episodes of voter harassment arose and some workers threatened to abandon their posts when an aide was nearly choked by an angry partisan who grabbed the identification badge around her neck. And as many as 60,000 absentee ballots here in Broward County have gone unaccounted for.

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6 Comments

  1. Posted October 27, 2004 at 7:47 pm | Permalink

    From Republican “Caging List”:A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan — possibly in violation of US law — to disrupt voting in the state’s African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

    Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign’s national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called “caging list.”

    It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

    An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: “The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.”

    Racist rat bastards!

  2. Posted October 28, 2004 at 5:14 am | Permalink

    I’m appalled at the lengths to which the Republicans are willing to go to win this. And if the Democrats were doing anything similar, the GOP would be making a huge stink about it!!!

    I just hate all the negativity. It’s making my heart hurt once again. I can’t wait for this bloody election to be over. I think the Canadians have the right idea. Announce an election and six weeks later it’s over.

  3. Tony Buttons
    Posted October 28, 2004 at 5:55 am | Permalink

    You might also be interested in the ACLU report on Voter’s Rights. It’s available for download at the following site:

    http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRights.cfm?ID=16845&c=167

    What I find really, really amazing is that in all of these stories of registration shredding and election tampering I haven’t seen one instance of it being done in the favor of the Democrats. Ballots aren’t missing from predominantly Republican precincts, and Republican registrations aren

  4. Steve
    Posted October 28, 2004 at 1:39 pm | Permalink

    So, if I’m understanding this correctly, the Republicans now have the names of tens of thousands of people they’re hoping to keep from voting in primarily Democratic areas of Florida on Tuesday. (These could be people that simply juxtaposed two letters in a street address on their voter registration form, or something equally minor.) They have these names now, but they’re not challenging the voters until election day, when they show up at the polls. Their hope clearly is not only to keep these individuals from voting, but to tie up the system and discourage others from entering and waiting hours on line only to be harassed. It is insidious.

    Here is a section of the article

    “Republicans said they have not found a way to legally file pre-election day challenges in Florida. That’s why they are considering the provision allowing Election Day challenges, a statute that appears more suited to isolated issues than coordinated sweeps of the voter rolls.

    Tucker Fletcher would not identify which voters the Republicans believe have fraudulently registered to vote, but in comments this week she specifically complained of felons and voters with false addresses on the voting rolls.

    The Republicans have compiled a list of voters that likely provided faulty addresses.

    Tucker Fletcher said they party conducted widespread mailings to newly registered voters of all parties and created a database of the name and address on mailings that were returned by the post office. She would not say whether that list would be used in any potential challenges at the polls of voting rights.

    The British Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday that it had obtained a portion of that database, which lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville.”

  5. mark
    Posted October 28, 2004 at 6:39 pm | Permalink

    So, how are we all going to kill ourselves on Novenber 3rd?

  6. Tony Buttons
    Posted October 29, 2004 at 11:30 am | Permalink

    Pickaxe to the right temple.

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