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Although I believe optical scanners can be tampered with, the use of paper ballots is better than touchscreens. Unfortunately, if we don't stop it, we will have Diebold touchscreens in November. I agree that the election reform movement is diminished if we throw the allegation around carelessly.
We did really well here in CA-50. I was very disappointed, but not surprised, particularly when I saw the absentee ballot results coming in immediately after the 8 pm close. At that point, based on absentee ballots, it was 50% to about 42%. Here, the absentee ballots always skew heavily Republican, so this was an improvement over prior races, but not quite enough. Enough hard-core Repubs were still voting Republican (although far fewer than before). Also, I knew that the Busby campaign had encouraged its core supporters to vote by absentee ballot. But I was hoping that the absentee ballot spread would have been a bit tighter. In fact, when I saw that result, I got a bit discouraged and didn't really want to have a nail-biter of a night, so I closed down my computer and switched over to BBC America for the rest of the evening, then went to bed, without knowing.
There's a lot more to say about the post-mortem, including some good news about what to do for the November election. The final results are not yet in, but it was about a 4 point spread. However, judging from the hard numbers, it was only about 5,000 votes' difference. It was a low turnout, so we have a lot of room to gain more voters for November.
Apparently, a key element here was the immigration issue, which of course is not necessarily going to be the hot button issue in other districts around the U.S. that it is here. We are a border town, so immigration is a BIG deal. Particularly in the last week or so, the Republican National Committee ads have hit hard against Busby, accusing her of supporting a plan that "some call amnesty" and that would probably eventually legalize some 11 million immigrants.
The issue of corruption was raised by Busby, and the DNCC -- I mean what kind of moron votes for a former lobbyist to Congress in this political climate: apparently many hard core Repubs care more about excluding aliens than they are disgusted by corruption.
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