JCC [Reactions] U.S. Presidential Election Day 2012

More Judeo- than Christian, since that was once of the charges the Jews leveled at Jesus to drum up support for his crucifiction.

"Healing a man on the Sabbath" and all such.

 

I post these mostly for the headlines:

http://www.redstate.com/congressworksforus/2012/11/05/obama-campaign-in-full-fledged-panic-mode/

http://www.redstate.com/jamesmpratt...ines-will-read-romney-ryan-landslide-victory/

http://www.redstate.com/the_rebel/2012/11/05/final-rasmussen-party-id-means-doom-for-dems/

I feel like there are some genuine similarities between the absolute certainty many of the posters there feel about a Republican victory and certain religious beliefs. Not all religion, to be sure, but the kind found among fundamentalists, where no ambiguity is tolerated. With religion, people are free to believe as they want, and there are generally no reckonings until after you die, if there are at all. People can be as misguided as they want to be, at least in the eyes of other people, and there's no "proof" one way or the other.

In this case, though, their belief is likely about to meet the immovable rock of reality. Seeing how people react will be highly interesting to say the least.

 

Polls are open for states on EST!

 

Someone needs to tell conservatives that they're real god... the market... gives Obama a 71% chance of winning.


http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474

 

Voted. Obama +1.

EDIT:

Of course, I live in Louisiana, so my democracy doesn't count.

 

The green party made the presidential ballot in Illinois back in July, and I've been thinking about voting for them ever since, even though they only had a stand-in on the IL ballot for the vice presidential slot.

So, I did it, first in protest against the war crimes perpetrated by the Obama administration in Pakistan, and second because I love the platform, and it has a reasonable presence in my local politics. I like the state organization, and I think it has a future. Knowing that either main party candidate would support the continuation of illegal drone attacks, I could not vote for either, despite my concern about the future of progressive taxation and health care reform. Some things are more important than the viability of the U.S. middle class, and our crimes against humanity abroad are among them.

 

Good article by David Frum on how ridiculous and downright disgracefull america's voting infrastructure is.

 

I voted before work this morning. Short line in my precinct, so it was a quick and painless process.

 

So, Karl Rove's SuperPAC has ads out in RHODE ISLAND on Election Day... do they really have so much money that they don't know what to do with it??

 

As I see it, it's all about Pennsylvania. If it goes for Obama, the show's over for Romney. If we're waiting well into the night for Pennsylvania, then Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado become tremendously important to Obama. Not that they're unimportant now, but he would need them to make up for losing Pennsylvania.

I don't have any doubts about Ohio. It's going blue.

 

I looked at the video description - selecting Jill Stein did not register Obama. The guy said he checked the registration area on the screen and Romney's was larger than Obama's.

 

It's also proof positive that we as a society are overindulged with fancy electronic doohickeys. The voting machines here in Louisiana actually have toggle switches that you pull for each candidate. None of this stupid video game ****.

 

I've no doubt that various Republicans are attempting to steal votes. I just don't think it is or could be an organized effort (at a high enough level to matter, that is), because if it ever came out that an organized effort was put into place, the responsible people and organization(s) would be destroyed. I'm sure that various individual efforts are taking place, but you need a real conspiracy to have enough of an impact to alter enough votes to matter (unless an election is within less than a percentage point or so). Conspiracies unravel because people talk.

The individuals responsible for frauds like the one shown above are probably doing it because they think they're performing a patriotic service to the country, and that they can't in good conscience help to allow the Muslim/atheist/foreign/weak/tyrant/etc. back into office.

 

Aytee - I had an electronic machine at my polling place. The ballot and referendum items were superimposed over a screen and electronic check marks appeared corresponding to the choices I made.

 

George Takei posted that YouTube video, too, and as of this post it has been shared over 4000 times from him alone, so the word is definitely out.

 

I always think back to BSG's Lie Down Your Burdens when it comes to voting fraud, particularly the kind that the perpetrators believe is well-intentioned.

 

Illinois has a great electronic ballot, backed up with two different paper ballot options. The electronic ballot has very large print type, and large selector buttons on the touch screen, nothing like the YouTube video. It prints a paper ballot that can be reviewed and rejected, with easy back and next screens and clear labels of the choices, and fool-proof methods to prevent overvoting. Obviously, I don't know anything about the security of the data transfer and tabulating process, but it seems transparent on its face.

 

I'm familiar with those. It's actually a rubber button that acts like a momentary switch underneath the printed overlay. You press it once and it lights up, you press it a second time and it deselects it and turns the light off.

Still not as nutty or as inherently corruptible as the full fledged electronic touchscreens as shown in the video. (unless the state knowingly prints the overlay backwards... )

I have enough trouble with my smartphone's touchscreen as is. I can touch the Yahoo Messenger button and it will open YouTube instead. I have to clean it at least once a day to keep it working properly.

 

If Democrats keep the White House and Senate, will the GOP Senators revolt against McConnell, maybe kick him out of his leadership role?

This will be the 2nd election day where Republicans were supposed to win, but didn't. McConnell also said his first priority is to make Obama a one-term president. And if he fails at that, then what was the point of his endless filisbustering? I hope we see a revolt.

 

If Obama wins today and Ohio was his key to victory, there's an argument to be made that Mitt Romney lost the election purely over his Nov 18, 2008 "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" editorial in the NYT. And people say newspapers don't matter anymore.

 

This is why I love how we vote in my county. You sign in with someone on a computer who prints you out a scantron ballot (you can vote anywhere in the county). You sign his little PIN pad. You mark your ballot with a pen. It goes into the machine. At the end of the day, the machine prints out a receipt with the total number of votes received and the ballots are kept in case of a recount.

Yeah, there COULD be fraud - but there are triple checks on everything. You'd have to have two registered Republicans and two registered Democrats as well as the people who operate the computer system. I feel really confident about voter fraud in my state. The only way people can do that is by going in and giving a false name, and in all my years of running the polls (three elections - not doing the regular election this cycle), I feel pretty confident that I've never seen that happen.

 

Hopefully for Obama it won't come down to OH, since he is favored to win VA.

 

I voted for the first time today, Didn't take part in the 2008 Election because...i was 20 and didnt care.

Lady behind me gave me a good laugh, "Forget these candidates, I'm writing in Eisenhower."

It has occurred to me that the giant boxes they put ballots in look a lot like my office's monster sized shredder though.