Yesterday I had a few words to say about the damaging effect the false claims of voter suppression and election fraud were having on the country, and today I would like to provie you with several examples of how liberals keep the myth alive to support their own personal political agenda. You see- there is nothing to be gained from admitting that they simply lost the election. That would be tantamount to admitting failure, and would require introspection and self-examination. Hubris, villainization, and name-calling are much easier. The examples, from the last 24 hours:
1.) Kevin Drum in the Washington Monthly:
CONSPIRACY MONGERING….A close election? But one marred by voting irregularities? Mostly centered on Democratic precincts? And now a subject of conspiracy theories and demands for a recount?
Ah, it’s just a bunch of whiny Democrats. They should suck it up and accept the will of the people.
Unless, of course, they’re Republicans.
If Kevin was not a skilled political operative capable of much mischief, I would simply refer him to this website devoted to discussing the fallacy of false analogy. However, he understands the importance of disinformation campaigns, and that is the only reason he would throw something as absurd as this out in to the public sphere. For everyone, though, we will take this step by step:
False Analogy: In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether they both have property P.
Kevin links to this story, which details an election that was determined by a mere 32 votes, but which also contained up to 248 documented instances of voter irregularities:
State Rep. Talmadge Heflin asked the state House of Representatives today to overturn the results of his failed re-election bid and either order him returned to the Legislature or call for a new election.
Heflin’s attorney, Andy Taylor, said the election results in state House District 149 in southwest Harris County were fraught with voting irregularities and potential fraud, most of which occurred in predominantly Democratic precincts.
“The true outcome of this election was stolen from the voters in House District 149,” Taylor said Tuesday. “We will prove that Representative Talmadge Heflin was re-elected.”
Heflin, a Republican member of the House since 1983 and chairman of its Appropriations Committee, lost to Democratic businessman Hubert Vo by 32 votes earlier this month. But Heflin’s campaign alleges that those election results include at least 248 irregularities that could have altered the outcome…
Taylor said a review of county voting records from the Nov. 2 election shows that 101 voters were allowed to vote in the district illegally despite having moved out of Harris County. Twenty-seven voters were allowed to cast their ballots twice, he said
Dean Esmay
I don’t know if I find this any more corrosive than other things in our politics I’ve seen though. In retrospect some of the constant claims of criminal activity by the Clinton white house was just as bad as this wouldn’t you say/
John cole
Yes and no. First, the Clintons no longer mater, second, with the Clintons- it was all about the Clintons. Here, it is the system that is under attack.
ape
“the myth that Florida was stolen rests upon relying on supra-legal methods of counting specific ballots in specific counties”
does it? i thought it rested on the fact that the company with highest tender won the contract to purge Florida’s voter roles and did so with staggering incompetence at best.
good summary from the journalist who uncovered it here: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row=2
extracts:
Five months before the election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 57,700 names from Florida’s voter rolls on grounds that they were felons. Voter rolls contain the names of all eligible, registered voters. If you’re not on the list, you don’t get to vote.
If you commit a felony in Florida, you lose your right to vote there, and you‘re “scrubbed” from the rolls. You become a non-citizen, like in the old Soviet Union. This is not the case in most other states; it’s an uncivilized vestige of the Deep South.
My office carefully went through the scrub list and discovered that at minimum, 90.2 percent of the people were completely innocent of any crime – except for being African American. We didn’t have to guess about that, because next to each voter’s name was their race.
When I questioned Harris’ office about the high percentage of African Americans on the scrub list, they responded, “Well, you know how many black people commit crimes.”
But these people weren’t felons, so why were they scrubbed?
The Florida Republicans wanted to block African Americans, who largely vote as Democrats, from voting. In 1999 they fired the company they were paying $5,700 to compile their felony “scrub” lists and replaced them with Database Technologies [DBT], who they paid $2.3 million to do the same job. [DBT is the Florida division of Choicepoint, a massive database company that does extensive work for the FBI.]
There are a lot of Joe Smiths in the Florida phonebook. DBT was hired to verify which Joe Smith was a felon and which was not. They were supposed to use their extensive databases to check credit cards, bank information, addresses and phone numbers, in addition to names, ages, and social security numbers. But they didn’t. They didn’t use one of their 1,200 databases to verify personal information, nor did they make a single phone call to verify the identity of scrubbed names..
..Although DBT didn’t get names, birthdays or social security numbers right, they were very careful to match for race. A black felon named Mr. Green would only knock off a black Mr. Green, but not a single white Mr. Green. That’s how DBT earned its $2.3 million.
the rest is at the link above.
Max M
Dean questions whether this stuff is more corrosive than other stuff we’ve seen in politics, citing the last Democratic president, and your reply is:
First, the Clintons no longer mater
Absolutely priceless! [I’m agreeing with The Censor though, ye gads!]
Gary Farber
“…I would like to provie you with several examples of how liberals keep the myth alive….”
John, I’d like to introduce you to the word “some.”
Some, this is my friend, John Cole.
John, this is my friend, the word “some.”
Without it, we wind up saying things like “supporters of President Bush are fascists!,” supporters of Kerry are KGB spies!,” and “anyone who voted for Bush is a fundamentalist who believes the Rapture will come next month!”
It’s a very useful word. I urge you to make “some” a word you are more comfortable using.
It would turn a lot of your sentences into reasonable observations, and remove them from the category of offensive nonsense.
Happy Thanksgiving, though.
Gary Farber
I should have been clear that the examples I submitted are not quotes of your prose, but, rather, examples of the pitfalls of absenting “some” from one’s vocabulary by, you know, some.
SDN
Ape, got any cites that aren’t the liberal trying to make a living crying vote fraud?
Kimmitt
When it comes right down to it, none of this controversy from the left is about counting every vote, and all people getting an equal chance to ahve a say.
Er, no. Most of it is due to a large set of people who see too many consistent irregularities to consider most US elections fully legitimate. Your point appears to be that because the Right tolerates election fraud in the big cities, the Left should tolerate election fraud elsewhere. What about the position that both election fraud and the process of creating a massive invasion of privacy in order to prevent theoretical election fraud are bad?
I’ve had it with this “count every vote” bullshit,
Most Republicans have. But just because you’ve obviously given up on the concept of democratic elections doesn’t mean that we haven’t.
John Cole
Bullshit, Kimmitt. Since when is showing a picture id and proving residence an “invasion of privacy.”
Predictable twaddle. Count every vote should also imply we are counting every LEGAL vote.
ape
SDN – the point is already made -that the basis for concern about the election in Florida is far deeper than JC says.
You’re probably right that not many other media sources have mentioned this scandal (although I’ve not checked). That’s the “liberal media” for you. Still not bombing abortion clinics or demanding creationism in schools. Eush probably didn’t mention it either.
Palast is an investigative journalist.. he looks at original documents and stuff like that, rather than re-evaluating material that is already available. It is interesting that you think this makes him untrustworthy.
In blogworld, the link is all.
ape
ape
Eush? Sorry for typo. I referred to the illustrious Rush.
Kimmitt
Bullshit, Kimmitt. Since when is showing a picture id and proving residence an “invasion of privacy.”
This has nothing to do with the post you quoted approvingly, which was about creating a national ID card with biometric information.
Predictable twaddle. Count every vote should also imply we are counting every LEGAL vote.
Except for military votes without postmarks. We should make exceptions for those.*
*What we should do is change the damn law so members of the military who send in their absentee ballots from overseas are compliant, for the record. It’s not like we haven’t had adequate notice of the problem. But that doesn’t change the rank hypocrisy of your argument.