The plot to rig the 2008 US election

The plot to rig the 2008 US election

Johann Hari

In the long, hot autumn of 2000, the world was shocked by the contempt for democracy shown by the Republican Party. They knew their man had lost the popular vote to Al Gore by half a million votes. They knew the majority of voters in Florida itself had pulled a lever for Gore. But they fought – amid the confetti of hanging chads – to stop the state's votes being counted, and to ensure that the Supreme Court imposed George W Bush.

Today, that contempt for democracy is on display again. In California right now, there is a naked, out-in-the-open ploy to rig the 2008 presidential election – and it may succeed.

...

Today, the Republicans are trying to exploit the discontent with the electoral college among Americans in a way that would rig the system in their favour. At the moment, every state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out its electoral college votes according to a winner-takes-all system. This means that if 51 per cent of people in California vote Democrat, the Democrats get 100 per cent of California's electoral votes; if 51 per cent of people in Texas vote Republican, the Republicans get 100 per cent of Texas' electoral votes.

The Republicans want to change this – but in only one Democrat-leaning state. California has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1988, and winning the sunny state is essential if the Democrats are going to retake the White House. So the Republicans have now begun a plan to break up California's electoral college votes – and award a huge chunk of them to their side.

...
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/johann_hari/article3204034.ece

If it weren't for that stolen election we'd have a Democratic Congress right now...

:think:

But we don't, do we?

The criminals are still getting their way. The war is still ongoing, impeachment is still off the table, no war crime trials on the horizon, the rich still skate on taxes, etc.

Maybe we can do a little caging of our own.
A large percentage of any group of their signatures was gotten deceitfully.
And we know the republicans prefer criminal methods, so the grave yard will be well represented.
So any random sample of signatures will probably contain enough fraudulent and deceitfully obtained signatures to void their petition.

He provides a clear explanation of what is at stake in California.

this isn't rigging the vote, is it? It's simply dividing up the electoral college more evenly, the problem is that democrat groups aren't doing this in red states.

It's another case of rich republican supporters getting their act together, and rich democrat supporters prefering to stay in the background.

It would be much fairer if every State divided their electoral votes according to the share of the popular vote received by each candidate.

But doing it in California only makes it much easier for the Republican ticket to win the Whitehouse even if it loses the nationwide popular vote - as happened in 2000.

(A few of us also doubt whether Bush-Cheney really won the popular vote in 2004. Or if they just got better at manipulating the voting and vote-counting processes.)

If the GOP succeeds in splitting the California delegation, we will have to take up this fight in all of the so-called "Red" States - starting with Texas and Florida.

Unfortunately it will be too late to do anything in time for November 4th, 2008.

where the state is Democratic and the voting machines are Republican.