EvilMonkey

Tommy Harris is a bum. Wasting talent.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 28, 2010 -> 11:50 AM) You don't think that there are more than a couple hundred Santa Barbara size districts in the country? Just do the math here. 100,000 votes per election for $1.3 million. Last presidential race, the turnout was somewhat around 100 million. Carry those numbers through...and that's $13 billion using that ratio. And remember...if you're solving this problem...you need to buy enough voting machines to handle the largest turnouts. And really, stop pretending that there is "waste" that can be trimmed. If we're talking about finding more money for schools, using your old voting machines longer or having fewer voting machines is counted as trimming waste. That'd be heroic if it we were discussing school funding, and most districts are going to think so. Just do the math. Not every town needs to buy all new machines. They DO last longer than one election, you know. You are also talking about BILLIONS as if Santa Barbara itself has to come up with that. It doesn't, just it's own small slice of the pie. Santa Barbara can't come up with a million bucks? Really? There is always waste that can be trimmed.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 28, 2010 -> 11:34 AM) Here's the counter-point though...if it's an unfunded mandate to do it...where does that money come from? The problem is concentrated in areas that can't afford it anyway. So...if you need a couple billion dollars to be spent...are you happy with it coming out of schools? I know the right answer is to have the Federal Government take charge and just pay for the bloody things...but you know what the reaction would be to that. Even with voting machines runing 100k, how do you get billions? It's not like there are NO machines out there at all. And if they are funded locally, no one locality will need billions. A million, perhaps, or few million for larger places, but not billions. Each town fire a few overpaid government workers and you have your voting machnes paid for. Here is a much lower cost example. Santa Barbara, CA example: $1,300,000 spent on a 200 machine system to count 100,000 votes per election. I think Santa Barbara can find $1.3 million in waste they can trim for at least one year to get new machines if needed. That is only about $6500 per machine.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 04:42 PM) The "conservative" student government at IU when I was there submitted something like 25,000 registrations in 2002, most of them fraudulent. Out of all those applications...and all the hundreds of people in the same dorm as me...2 people turned out to vote. You didn't "hear" about it, because it only is useful publicly to smear particular groups that are disliked. Hahahaha, I am sure that the campus Republican group was so well loved on your campus. On almost ANy campus for that matter. I can probably find more stories about campus conservative groups being discriminated against, denied equal access,etc than I can voter frauds.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 02:46 PM) I quote movies and TV shows all of the time. No matter what conversation I'm in, I can always think of a quote that applies to the situation. Therefore, I'm not even going to start listing off the shows and movies I quote constantly. I'm with you. Mine go all over the spectrum. From Arnold "it is not a tuuumah" to Robocop "I'ld buy THAT for a dollar!" to Better off Dead "I want my two DOLLARS!" and beyond!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 05:12 PM) Just posting this as reporting. Knowing how the Justice department works these days, they probably threatened him with some sort of investigation himself if he didn't.

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 03:25 PM) While I generally agree with what you said, I find it troubling when we start limiting the public's rights. To organize, protest, etc are bedrock, cornerstone priciples of our country. I wish there was an easy way to do both, protect our rights *and* get people to go vote on their own. I am not sure where I said anythgn about restricting people's rights, I was just stressing that I (as in me, my opinion) don't want you to vote if you can't even muster up enough energy to go register yourself and eductae yourself on at least one issue. Regardless of party.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 03:37 PM) The same can be said by the left about the right on the voting machines issues - lack of receipts, lack of oversight, lack of machines in poor wards. That tends to come mostly from the right, just as these voter fraud issues seem to come from the left. These things can all be fixed, if we want to. You can require ID to vote, but make sure its not a poll tax - there are ways to do that. You can make ALL voting machines produce a paper receipt, and allow people to fix their votes if their receipt shows something wrong. You can make sure the allocation of voting machines to polling places is a standing, obvious ration to voting population in all locations. I agree that ID's should be made available for free if need be, but that there needs to be a way to verify that you are who you say you are. I also think the voting machines should have a receipt so that you, the evoter, can verify that it recorded your vote correctly. We are on the same page there. As for the lack of machines in poor wards, aren't they usually run by the Democrats? Why can't they get the machines there? Seriously, if there is a poor ward in Chicago that doesn't have enough voting machines, when the whole state is run by the Democrats, whose fault is that?

Interesting, if true. Since he was acquitted of somethign similar years before, I wonder what evidence the state has to proceed forward with this one. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/t...eal_in_all.html

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 02:25 PM) I find it hilarious that people keep casting this as the evil left or the evil right. Both sides will have people who, if given the opportunity, will game the system. The key is making the system stronger. That means voter registration AND better oversight of the voting machines. Actually, if people don't have enough interest to get up off their a$$es and register and vote on thier own, I don't want them voting. For either side. i want people to know enough about at least ONE thing in the election that they can talk about more than just spouting off Fox or CNN talking points. Although with the saturation of 'facts' from both sides, that is sometimes hard to happen. But if you need a third party to have to come to your door to get you to register, you should just stay home. if you are not interested enough to register, you are not interested enough to vote. And I don't cast it either way, but you can't deny that a majority of the stories about this sort of stuff happen going one way only. You don't hear about Wal-Mart organizing busses to take their employees to vote, but you hear of ACORN and UNIONS rounding up old people and members to go vote enmass. You don't hear about College Young Republicans registering Alex Keaton to vote, but there is alwasy some progressive-leaning group that seems to register Mickey Mouse. And why do Democrats scream the loudest when you try to remove dead people from voter rolls, but not seem to care about getting overseas military ballots on time?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 10:14 AM) Either that...or because it rarely happens. I enjoyed this Brennan Center bit for the actual numbers. THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE Our Mission The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law is a non-partisan public policy and law institute that focuses on the fundamental issues of democracy and justice. Our work ranges from voting rights to campaign finance reform, from racial justice in criminal law to presidential power in the fight against terrorism. A singular institution – part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group – the Brennan Center combines scholarship, legislative and legal advocacy, and communications to win meaningful, measurable change in the public sector This the same Brennan Center that takes after its namesake who essentially founded Judicial Activism? That bills itself as non-partisian but is headed by an ex-Clintonite? The one that gets major funding from the Soros funded Open Society Institute? yeah, we can believe them. Afterall, they are a non-partisian group ONLY dedicated to righting wrongs, whatever they may be. Funding Individual Contributors The heaviest funding for the Brennan Center for Justice comes from George Soros of the Open Society Institute.[17] Between 1999 and 2004, the Open Society Institute gave grants to the Brennan Center totaling $3,291,218. Gail Furman, a child psychologist, wealthy Democratic party activist, and donor and board member for the Brennan Center, has collaborated on progressive efforts with George Soros, and at one meeting of the progressive Democracy Alliance, gave $25,000 to "remake Democratic politics." At the second meeting of Soros' Democracy Alliance in October 2005, Furman "demanded to know why the alliance wasn't creating a 'nerve center' that could book progressives on TV news shows".[18] http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Brennan_Center_for_Justice

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 02:13 PM) And if charges are brought...it will be proof that voter fraud is commonplace and we need to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands more voters to make sure it never happens again. OTOH, if no charges are ever brought, it will be proof that the Obama Administration doesn't want to enforce it's laws regarding voter fraud. And how can they even be brought when the Justice department seems to not want to enforce those laws enough to even try? Maybe if they were white ZRepublicans, they might.

It is an easy way to inflate post counts, if you care about those things.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 12:35 PM) Very out of context. Why?

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 12:06 PM) Sure did. Touche'!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 09:34 AM) I'm willing to brush aside voter intimidations? I'm willing to brush aside issues with voting machines? I think that my side has had issues with those for decades now. You just happen to not be concerned about the same ones I am. For example...well funded and organized scare tactics trying to convince people not to vote even if they're legally allowed to might be considered to be problematic, since they actually have a habit of convincing people to not actually vote. For example, these are running right now in Wisconsin, run by a Tea Party affiliated group. Rigged voting machines have been a worry of mine for years. But of course...you need to take a moment and think about who has the actual access to do the rigging. The only people with legitimate access to the software are the companies that write the software and produce the machines. This, for example, is why crying about Diebold machines is a cause-celebre in the far, far reaches of the left, to the point that a few people think Diebold stole Ohio for Bush in 2004. The right solution for this is voting machines that provide a printout of your vote that can be double-checked afterwards in the event of a recount. For some reason though, that has never happened. On top of that...you express concern about a few hundred people voting illegally, when it's quite well known that hundreds of thousands of people are prevented from voting yearly because of a lack of accessible machines in poor or minority rich counties. I'm willing to brush aside 1 case of voter intimidation because it's not a coherent plan/conspiracy, there were zero complaints of actual voter intimidation, and the evil conspiracy is nonsesnse when given a bit of thought. I'm willing to brush aside issues of people setting fire to voting machines to bring in their own machines...because I think it's just silly to imagine that could actually happen; you'd need dozens of people to plan and keep silent something like that, because you'd have to control the code and the results the whole way through. And most importantly...I'm willing to ignore these claims of massive potential voter fraud on the grounds that it doesn't happen. There are, as far as I can tell, only a handful of schemes that even get to court, and frankly, they're typically easy to catch these days thanks to the details of electronic records that are kept. But if you wanted to propose getting rid of absentee ballots to avoid your plan...well, you might have a problem on that one because Absentee ballots typically skew Republican, so that's a worry that actually hurts your side. But even as supposedly easy as it might be to do that...it's remarkable that hundreds of millions of votes can be cast every couple years and we wind up talking about legitimate fraud in the numbers of a few hundred votes. There are at best a handful of cases every decade of legitimate fraud, and they're remarkably easy to catch so far. It's clearly against the law, and there's nothing suggesting to me that we need more stringent laws to prevent something that you can't even prove is more than an incredibly rare problem that gets caught most times it gets tried. I really have to ask, just what is so wrong about that billboard?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2010 -> 07:48 AM) Yes, it sounds a little crazy. Frankly, more than a little. If nothing else...you just illustrated the extent at which one would have to go to actually successfully commit voter fraud. You'd have to not only file those applications, make an organized group of people show up knowing that they're putting themselves at risk to go to jail for no obvious benefit to themselves, somehow guarantee that those people actually vote for the right person once they're in the voting booth, and then make sure that they're not caught at any of the redundant steps. You not only need to bypass the voting machines, you need to convince hundreds of people to commit a crime that they could go to jail for without having them benefit at all. Do you see how difficult "vote fraud" actually is based solely on your own example? NO, you only need to do one of those things after the applications were filed. Get people to go vote under someone else's name, OR have the machined rigged to register votes for the people who are registered but dont exist. With a fire conveniently happening just beforehand, not so far fetched. And the rigging doesn't have to be for the Senate races or the biggies, but maybe a governor, or county president. Positions like that matter even more on the local levels. WHile I am taking this to the extreme for a point, I cannot understand your utter willingness to just brush aside all the false registrations, voter intimidations, dead people on voter rolls.etc. Something is goig on, yet you put your head in the sand. The sky may not be falling, but you can't tell from under the ground. I edited because I forgot about the other way this works. Mai-in ballots. No need to have tons of people, justget all these fake 'people' to request an absentee ballot and you can have but one person filling them all out. Not too hard to find one or two people willing to do that crap, as there are stories every election about it being done. Get 25,000 non-people voting, if 10% get thru, it could swing an election.

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 26, 2010 -> 07:10 PM) I'm sorry, I missed where they actually voted? No, but you missed that they were actually registered to vote. They were not caught until an outside group reviewed registrations. Whoever certified them failed. Whoever submitted them failed. So at that point, the system failed. perhaps you also missed this lilttle tidbit at the end. gee, massive voter registration of questionable people, vote machines destroyed, what could happen? A new batch of machines rushed in with 'bugs' in them to record some extra votes for all these extra registered people? A manual system of checking people since you have no ID requirement there? Sounds a little crazy, but desperate people (and stupid people) do desperate things.

QUOTE (Tex @ Sep 26, 2010 -> 06:48 PM) First off the system worked and the illegal registrations were thrown out. Secondly, people work for more than just money. Volunteers are sometimes "good feeling" whores. The attention they get from everyone when they bring in 500 names or whatever can be addicting. They may be trying to impress Jodie Foster, or the hot guy in the next cubical. The manager may be trying to pad his resume and get a paying gig with a major donor, or just use it to say he managed a voter registration drive that brought in 25,000 voters. There are so many reasons I'd get tired typing. Do you guys ever read the article? The SYSTEM didn't work, they were registered, it was an outside group looking at registrations that caught them all. The system failed. Just like the system has failed to remove dead people or people who have moved. Somehow there had to be an advantage, either real or perceived, to have all these extra people registered, andf to be in no hurry to remove the names that don't belong.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 26, 2010 -> 02:02 PM) Link So they saw photos, not the real thing, and decided it was a hoax. OK.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Sep 26, 2010 -> 03:17 PM) Voter registration fraud ≠ voter fraud. I could register my penis to vote but if I pulled it out at the school I vote on election day and try to make it vote I'd still get arrested and probably have to register as a sex offender. But register 'Mary Jones', and have anyone show up saying they are 'Mary Jones' and vote (since we can't ask for ID because somehow that would be racist) and you have a vote that should not be. Or have nobody show up and vote but yet rig the voting machines for a few hundred extra votes, or a few thousand, and as long as you have less votes than registered voters, it usually gets ignored. Sometimes the reason people register these non-existent people is that they get paid per registration. With this group that wasn't the case, so can one of you who denies that this means anything tell me why the hell they do it? There has to be a reason, even if it is a stupid one.

So here is one to start. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/23...ethevote-texas/

ONly time I would even consider rooting for the Twins is if they were playing the Yankmees. And then I would only consider it. I hate the Twins. I hate how Thome is having the best clutch hitting of his career with them. I hate all the people in the Sox organization that just suck the Twins c**ks all year long about how good they are. I don't care, quit telling me, just go beat them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 24, 2010 -> 02:46 PM) There's a couple big problems with that. First and foremost...not a single voter from that site has filed a complaint about intimidation. Therefore...there's limited standing with which to bring the case. This is of course not surprising, because the polling place they were at was a largely African American polling place. Furthermore, the part of the law that they'd have to have been charged under without actual intimidation complaints was written in a way so as to allow for prosecution of large scale voter intimidation efforts. There's actually a precedent issue here; the last time it was used to prosecute anyone was decades ago, and it was used to prosecute a large scale, state-wide voter caging effort. Without actual evidence of a conspiracy and without actual complaints of intimidation, it'd have been a nearly impossible case for the DOJ to bring and win. The actual reality is that the armed black panthers at the site were probably doing what they actually said they were doing, trying to in some misguided fashion "protect the black voters at this site from the White man!" to paraphrase a quote. Had anything actually happened involving any of the voters at the site, prosecution probably would have happened. It didn't. Balta, prosecution DID happen, and a default judgement was entered, then Holder droppped it because he didn't want to deal with the case.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 24, 2010 -> 12:45 PM) I honestly hadn't heard about that - what's the deal? The guy talked about how he was ordered NOT to testify inthe hearings that were against the NBPP in the voter intimidation case, and how one of the bosses outright said that they were not going to bring any case up that was against minorities because minorities could only be intimidated, not the other way around. Also about how he was transferred because he wanted to testify and kept asking why he wasn't allowed to. Essentially shows how racially politicized the Justice Dept has become.