We Have No Standing to Complain About Election Fraud

Who are we to gripe about Iran's arguably rigged election? We most likely elected the wrong guy in 2000.

If the Supreme Court had not hastily short-circuited the Florida recount, we might know for sure whether another tally could have confirmed what we now know to be true -- that most of the state's voters really intended to elect Al Gore. Or we might have seen some meaningful scrutiny of suspiciously late-arriving military overseas ballots that actually delivered George W. Bush's last-minute margin of victory.

Under the circumstances we probably ought to leave the outrage about Iran's questionable balloting to nations with a better established record of putting the real winners in office.

Craig blogs daily at craigcrawford.com on CQ Politics

Comments

[Ryan Lobo]

Hey who know! Without the last 8 years there may never have been the opportunity to have a transformational leader!!

[jsgaetano]

2000 wasn't the only rigged election. Once again in 2004, the elections in Florida and Ohio were heavily tainted.

It's amusing how, by 2008, ALL voting machines were found to be far too unreliable for something as vitally important as an election, and too prone to tampering. But the far right wants us to think those same machines were somehow perfect in 2000 and 2004.

Let he who has not had the SCOTUS appoint the president cast the first stone.

[TexasDem0]

Let's get some of the stimulus money dedicated to providing all verifiable voting machines that process paper ballots.

Mark Crispin Miller has an online bibliography that documents how elections have been stolen at the Washington Spectator website.

http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015bibliography.cfm

WEB EXCLUSIVE
Electoral Fraud: A Reading List
By Mark Crispin Miller

[naturesway]

As a witness to the fraud and corruption in the 2008 Dem primaries,
I say the Democrats are just as evil as the republicans.
]
2000 was a fraud and so was the 2008 Dem Convention.

[clevelandchick]

Please show the evidence of fraud and corruption. There have been books written about the 2000 2004 elections, paper trails, investigation etc.

You say the Dems are just as evil....I say 'sore loser'. And grow up. She's the freaking Sec of State for pete's sake.

[research]

The blue dog DLC democrats are conservative corporatists, true. They shut out the progressives, wouldn't even let Kucinich debate though by the rules, he should have.

The Progressive Democrats in teh House are the only real democrats we have.

Help them.

[traveler501]

the convention ??? even if it were true, what's your point? the Dem party is a club, not an arm of government­...they can run anyone, anyway they want. even an Independent like me knows that.

[TerrapinCB]

and Sen. Franken is still not seated.

The world might be much better off with a more moderate leadership in Iran, but the US has NO leg to stand on talking about other countries' elections. Didn't we already put one U.S. puppet in Iran? How'd that work for us?

[DemoGoddes]

"We most likely elected the wrong guy in 2000."

Most likely? An unelected candidate was seated by the Supreme Court in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States.

But I see your point.

[ECJLA]

http://www.censurethefive.org/

Five Supreme Court justices took leave of their senses in December 2000. It still boggles the mind 8 1/2 years later. Justice Kennedy told a Congressional committee in 2001 that the Court had decided to spend its political capital, an indirect admission that he and fellow Republican justices intentionally fixed the result for (then) Governor Bush. The Court's 5-4 ruling falsely attributed to Florida an intent to treat December 12th, 2000 as a "drop dead" date for completing a contest recount. That locked in the result while 175,000 ballots containing decipherable votes remained uncounted. The Five said, in effect, that Florida preferred to insulate an inaccurate result from Congressional challenge (by completing the process by December 12th) rather than take extra time (until December 18th, 2000 or January 6th, 2001) to achieve an accurate result. This makes no sense whatsoever, has no support in Florida law (as Florida Supreme Court justice Leander Shaw pointed out in an overlooked heroic opinion shortly after the Five's Bush v. Gore fait accompli), and could only have been arrived-at by justices intentionally wishing to fix the result for their fellow Republican, GW Bush. Otherwise the Five would have remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court for a continuation of the recount in line with the equal protection principles set forth in the Bush v. Gore opinion.

I still have a dream.

Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
Founder, Supreme Court Five Censure Project

[traveler501]

well said....pu­nctuality trumps accuracy in an election, yeah right. and then, of course, there is Norm Coleman.

[S1m0n]

Let's not forget that we're accusing Ahmadinejad of doing in Iran is exactly what we were only too glad to see Mahmoud Abbas do in Palestine. In fact, not only did we applaud, we have also colluded.

Both lost an election, and both appear to have opted to launch a coup against the party that won the election.

Even now, Obama is talking to Abbas, the 'president' with no mandate, rather than talking to Hamas, the party which was actually able to prove that it had the support of the people.

[offred]

Isn't there an independent investigative journalist who could write the definitive book on what really happened during the 2000 and 2004 elections?

[Budokan]

That's for darn sure. But the fact remains the American people did NOT rise up and therefore they sentenced this country to eight years of failure and destruction and a man who said out loud the U.S. Constitution was a "gd piece of paper."

You get the government you deserve. Especially when you decide to sit at home and let RepubliKans steal an election.

[Zanti]

"Under the circumstances we probably ought to leave the outrage about Iran's questionable balloting to nations with a better established record of putting the real winners in office."

Sad but true!

[liecatcher]

Thanks !!!!!!!

Sometimes even the obvious needs to be told.

[Marnie1]

How true. Unfortunately.

[wonketteRAWKS]

Don't forget the 2008 primaries,either!

[Zanti]

What about them?

[Zanti]

Oops. Gotcha.

My bad. My sinus meds are putting me to sleep....

[naturesway]

I will never forget the 2008 primaries.
May31, 2008 is the day I left the dem party and the day it left me.

[clevelandchick]

The 2008 Primaries on the Democratic side were completely fair, I don't know about the Republican primary though. Was there something wrong with their's?

[clevelandchick]

No doubt Mr. Crawford..­..and how about the election irregularities and blatant voter suppression of the 2004 election in Ohio.

I live in a mostly white neighborhood of Cleveland, it took me 10 minutes to vote in 2004. We had more machines than we needed and they all worked. Across town in the east Cleveland neighborhoods with predominantly black voting districts people waited 6 hours in the rain to vote on 1/4 the number of machines allotted to white suburbs and half of them were broken.

The same thing happened at all of the colleges in our state. Students in central Ohio waited 11 hours in the rain to vote only to be turned away or given 'provisional ballots' that didn't count.

Our Secretary of State (the official in charge of elections) at the time was a chairman for Bush's reelection campaign. He purged voter rolls without sending out notices. Rejected voter registrations for not being on the 'right thickness of paper'....­again voters that contested were given provisional ballots that weren't counted.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Bush and the GOP stole Florida in 200 and Ohio in 2004. Both Bush Administrations were huge frauds. He never should have been president.

[Zanti]

Yes, Ken Blackwell is one of the lowest of the low--I'm still astonished by what he got away with. Meanwhile, his infinitely more capable and honest replacement is catching regular grief from our local joke of a newspaper (rhymes with Doll-Rum-Kiss Bliss-patch)--and, as you know, Ohio Repubs turned up the volume on attempted voter disenfranchisement in the wake of our successful, exceedingly well-run 2008 election.

Luckily for tyrants, Ohio's voters, as a group, have no problem with record-setting abuses of power and low-life bullying as a political tactic. I often wonder whether the problem is lack or awareness or lack of concern. It's like living in a day nursery.

[offred]

In a just world, Blackwell would be shunned. Instead he's a Republican party elder.