[Solatar]

If Nader would stop running, the Democrats might actually win one. 

A vote for Nader is a vote for McCain.

[karajorma]

I agree with Nader's point that if the democrats can't win this one after 8 years of Bush they should go away and reinvent themselves.

But at the same time, I see no inherent value in dredging up details of one of the most polarized elections in modern American history, particularly when any discoveries would be completely discredited by those they fell against and wouldn't have any effect on the eight ensuing years anyway.

I dredged up the Bush election in response to your claim that the previous cases of voter fraud had been on a small scale and hadn't had any effect on the overall result.

I think we can both agree that this wasn't the case for the 2000 election and although you can claim that it would have no effect to dredge it all up now, that doesn't change the fact that it should have been investigated properly back then. 

Furthermore the fact that even after the regime responsible is ousted (as happens at least every 8 years) no one still wants to investigate gives further credence to my point that there is no disincentive to trying to rig the vote.
 Dictators rig the vote in 3rd world countries cause they figure they can rule for life. In America they do it cause they figure that although they won't no one will care.

[Mongoose]

What you dredged up, albeit a bit one-sided by its nature, certainly raises questions, though I might also point out that said questions seem to have already been pursued legally by certain activist groups, leading to at least some level of reform.  And from what I could garner from that rather-disjointed article (seriously, Wiki, sectional overkill much?), at least a few (though by no means all) aspects of it could have been attributed to good ol' fashioned human incompetence (which one should never underestimate the power of).  Reforms and intentions aside, this particular issue was just one aspect of the very large mess that was that entire Florida election, a mess in which neither side was blameless.  And, as I pointed out before, this election was decided by an historically slim margin, so what may have sadly contributed to its notoriety here would have had no lasting impact in almost any other situation.

Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear earlier, but as someone who wasn't living here at the time, it may be somewhat difficult for you to envision the general atmosphere of this country at the time that this whole 2000 debacle was going on.  It was about as partisan a time as I've seen in my lifetime, even more so than Bush's most divisive moments over the eight ensuing years.  There were accusations of election-fixing and double agendas flying around everywhere, and in the end, I think just about everyone not directly involved with the process just wanted the damned thing to end and give us a new president.  It's not a period in our history that anyone particularly wants to revisit, other than a few lingering hanging chad jokes.  Eight years and one generally very unpopular presidency later, there's no real incentive to re-open past wounds.

Oh, and it seems as though your own system is hardly immune to the same problem.  (And that's just what a 30-second search turned up.)  Perhaps you might not be so hasty to cast aspersions on one particular system when the underlying issue is really more of the long-standing tradition of those in power getting too accustomed to said power and giving into their basic human infallibilities.  I'm sure that every democracy on this green Earth could drudge up similar stories...not that that makes it any more inherently acceptable for any one of us.

[Rick James]

[karajorma]

Oh, and it seems as though your own system is hardly immune to the same problem.  (And that's just what a 30-second search turned up.)  Perhaps you might not be so hasty to cast aspersions on one particular system when the underlying issue is really more of the long-standing tradition of those in power getting too accustomed to said power and giving into their basic human infallibilities.  I'm sure that every democracy on this green Earth could drudge up similar stories...not that that makes it any more inherently acceptable for any one of us.

I never said the UK was fault free. But that case was investigated, new elections were called, the laws on postal voting were changed, and IIRC two people went to jail. That's my entire point.

It's as if the US never prosecuted criminals and then pointed at the UK when someone complained about it and said "They have crime too!"  I'm not having a go at the US for having electoral fraud. I'm having a go at them for doing very little about it. When you have a country where people are quite happy to trust electronic voting machines made by a company whose head programmer has convictions for installing software back doors then something is very badly wrong.

I'm not going to hold up my country as a paragon of virtue cause it isn't. If I was going to hold up a country for caring about democracy it wouldn't be the UK. It would be one of the countries in Eastern Europe where democracy is new. As I mentioned before in Ukraine when that **** happens people demonstrate. They care about it far more than the West does, since we take it for granted even when it is quite obviously being inched out from under our noses. I'm not going to say you should take a lesson from the UK, you should take a lesson from the Eastern Europe or parts of the 3rd world where people care enough about democracy to risk being beaten up, blown up or shot at in order to vote. Quite frankly I wish citizens in the UK cared half as much about it as they do.


As for saying "It's a bad time, it should be forgotten about", that's such a weak argument I don't why you even bothered. Again you prove my point that the American public don't care. Can you imagine if the ANC had said "Apartheid was a bad time, let's not bother with that whole Truth and Reconciliation stuff!" 
 There are people who have been through far worse than a bit of partisan name calling who considered the truth being important enough that it deserved to come out. By claiming that the 2000 election was a bad time for the country, we want to forget about it you simply strengthen my argument that Americans by and large don't care about fraud in the electoral system. Again I'll point at Eastern Europe. There are several cases of people there not taking that **** lying down. In America it took only a couple of months for people to get tired of arguing in order to roll over. In Zimbabwe they still push for democracy after years of bullets!

[Mongoose]

All right...you want it straight?  We don't care.  I don't care.  I could give a damn less what did or didn't happen back in 2000.  Bush became president that year, he served for eight years...it's over.  It's all well and good for people still fighting with every ounce of passion to be able to enjoy the great gift of democracy, but when you've been living in it uninterrupted for more than 200 years, you're not exactly enthused about the whole process, particularly when something that's probably happened in every single one of those 200 years rears its ugly head again.  I personally find politics as a whole to be about the most distasteful thing out there, and the only time when I'm not doing my best to completely ignore it is when I'm figuring out who to vote for...and since I figured that out a few months back, I've been blissfully ignoring every single debate, pundit, gaffe, or what have you.  The dirty dealings on either side probably do a damn fine job of balancing themselves out as-is; so long as we keep electing people from office, I don't really give a damn about who's doing what.

If some other group wants to get all up in arms about what happened and make a big fuss over it, good for them.  But count me out.

[karajorma]

That's your choice. I just didn't want you arguing that Americans, in general, did care when they so obviously don't.

[General Battuta]

Well, um, I care. And I've spent months raising money for election-protection programs.

So perhaps I'm not a typical American, but there's hope yet.

[Mongoose]

And I never said that I was representative of all Americans, or indeed of any Americans.  Generalizations are the bane of critical thinking.

[karajorma]

I gave plenty of examples of how in general other Americans don't care either.

[Spicious]

Surely, if Americans in general cared, something meaningful would have been done.

Remember, if you're going to continue to call yourselves the greatest democracy, you have to either have the least corruption or the most corruption. Lots of corruption isn't quite enough.

[Mongoose]

I gave plenty of examples of how in general other Americans don't care either.

Until you've done some door-to-door legwork yourself, I'm not putting a massive amount of stock in your opinion. Obviously, though, certain people cared enough to take the case of that voter list to court, which is good on them.

[spartan_0214]

Surely, if Americans in general cared, something meaningful would have been done.

I'm not sure if it's a matter of caring so much as it's a matter of them not knowing what's going on. Though I confess I am the former, I think it's hard to get so many independently-minded people to work together to achieve some goal without having some of them cheating. Unlike the military, the civilian population does not have a hierarchy from which orders are given.

[Mefustae]

I'm not sure if it's a matter of caring so much as it's a matter of them not knowing what's going on. Though I confess I am the former, I think it's hard to get so many independently-minded people to work together to achieve some goal without having some of them cheating. Unlike the military, the civilian population does not have a hierarchy from which orders are given.

Truly, there's no power in the verse greater than the apathy of the American people. This goes back decades, if not centuries. There have been apathetic groups of people in the past, but those living in the US? Never have so many cared so little about so few.

[General Battuta]

There are those who care, but not enough. Three months of daily canvassing was enough to demonstrate that!

[karajorma]

Ironic considering that the US would still be a British colony had the people been similarly apathetic a couple of hundred years back.

[Colonol Dekker]

There's a thought. . . Regarding the election, I'm just gonna watch the John Stewart show on wednesday.

[Mongoose]

It's so nice to see all manner of people who have never spent more than a month in a particular country make all sorts of overarching generalizations about the inhabitants of said country.  Please, don't let me keep you.  Do go on.  Hell, maybe you can even pass out a few pointers, so that the rest of us can join in on the fun.

[General Battuta]

There's a definite difference of perspective. I don't think things are as bad as Kara suggests, but we've got two different views on the country -- one from the inside, one from the outside. Hard to say who's more valid.

[karajorma]

It's so nice to see all manner of people who have never spent more than a month in a particular country make all sorts of overarching generalizations about the inhabitants of said country.  Please, don't let me keep you.  Do go on.  Hell, maybe you can even pass out a few pointers, so that the rest of us can join in on the fun.

Ah, the "You're not here so you can't know what it's like" argument . Always a firm favourite. Always so wonderfully flawed for so many reasons.