Voter Caging - Tilted Forum Project - TFP - Sexuality, Philosophy and Political Discussion

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 10:18 AM

Voter caging has been a common tactic in past elections to suppress certain voters. Recently it has come to light that the GOP is planning on using forecloser lists to prevent people from voting. The logic is if they don't have that house anymore then there registration isn't valid and thus can't vote. Another method of caging is to send out a mass priority mailing to a certain demographic with the instructions "Do not forward". If the person is not there to get the mail (say they are at work and can't sign for it or are on vacation) then there name is placed on a list of people who will be caged. If you happen to be on a caging list when you go to vote you will be met with someone saying you are not eligible to vote and you will have to vote on a provisional ballot and then prove you are eligible to vote in the next couple days. The idea is that many people won't challenge it either because they don't care or don't have time and their vote will not be counted.

Recently the McCain campaign sent out a letter "verifying people were registered as a Republican" in Florida. This letter had do not forward instructions on it and it was sent to registered democrats. It looks like letter will likely end up creating caging lists. This is a tactic that has been primary used by the GOP and there have been cases where the GOP has accidentally leaked some of its caging plans. For more information see the wikipedia entry on caging lists.

What do you think of this practice? Personally I think it should be illegal. I have no problem with stopping fraudulent voters but I feel this practice prevents more legal voters than illegal voters. The big problem is that this is only done in certain demographics. If the GOP thinks voter caging is fine then they should be forced to do it to every person and not just the ones that fit in a demographic that is not favorable to them.

Baraka_Guru · 09-17-2008, 10:32 AM

So this, in a way, is like gerrymandering?

I don't know if you can make this illegal, but you can surely try to get something in place to ensure legal voters can cast their votes regardless of others' tactics to prevent it otherwise.

The_Jazz · 09-17-2008, 10:43 AM

I don't think it qualifies as gerrymandering, but it certainly qualifies as a dirty trick, regardless of who's pulling it.

dc_dux · 09-17-2008, 10:56 AM

There have been several court imposed consent decress since the 80s as a result of Republican voter caging:

Quote:

In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent mailings to New Jersey voters in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. The 45,000 letters that could not be delivered were used to compile a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. As a result of a lawsuit filed against the effort, the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee entered into a consent decree with their Democratic party counterparts, prohibiting most racially targeted voter caging. In the decree, they agreed, in relevant part, to:

refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .

In 1986.... A Louisiana state court judge enjoined the program, finding that the clear intent was to remove blacks from the voting rolls. The national party organizations also returned to federal court in New Jersey, in litigation filed under the 1981 consent decree described above. In the short term, the RNC stipulated that it would not compile voter challenge lists or challenge voters on the basis of direct mail returned as undelivered. Ultimately, the case again settled, with a modification of the 1981 decree prohibiting the RNC from undertaking any ballot security program without the courts consent.

Brennan Center for Justice... Reported Instances of Voter Caging

I believe there was another recent consent degree in OH after the 04 election. The loophole is that these decrees only apply to the national parties...leaving the state republican parties to do what they want.

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

The loophole is that these decrees only apply to the national parties...leaving the state republican parties to do what they want.

There is also a loophole that the law doesn't matter anymore. We can now just break the law and then ignore subpoenas and refuse to testify.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 11:03 AM

It's similar to how Obama won his first couple of races, by getting adversaries off ballots.

dc_dux · 09-17-2008, 11:04 AM

A Federal law, The Caging Prohibition Act, was introduced in the Senate last year and the House earlier this year.

Of course, it was with the full knowledge that it would never reach the desk of Bush, where it would certainly have been vetoed.

Depending on this election, it may or may not move quickly towards enactment....particularly with a larger Democratic majority in both the House and Senate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

It's similar to how Obama won his first couple of races, by getting adversaries off ballots.

I would be interested in seeing the details of this.

asaris · 09-17-2008, 11:23 AM

Isn't preventing people from voting different from getting people off the ballot?

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asaris

Isn't preventing people from voting different from getting people off the ballot?

Just ignore him, he is trying to derail the thread. Instead of actually providing any discussion on topic he wants to point his fingers elsewhere.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 11:50 AM

no, my point was that using legal techniques to advance your election prospects is used pretty frequently and routinely by both parties, and in urban areas it's something of an art form. Here in NY we have ballot access lawsuits all the time, where each side tries to get the other's nominating petitions tossed. Challenging voter rolls is done too, and is conceptually no different, so long as the techniques used are above board and legal. You might not like it but they are in concept the same: the idea is molding the electoral battlefield to your advantage. Obama did it in his early races, it was done in WA by Repubs during the last Gov race, it was done by Dems with military ballots in FL during the 2000 race, it was done by Republicans with ex-felons............ the list goes on and on and on, in both parties. People are getting agitated here over something that is neither new nor illegal. If there is illegality involved that is something else, but it appears from what was described is that this is just legal maneuvering that is very little different from most of the legal maneuvering that happens. It's not like theyr'e trolling cemeteries looking for voters or anything.

Yeah, Rekna, you didn't understand (and didn't like) my point so you say ignore him. Nice. Love the intellectual honesty. You don't like it when I unspike the Kool-Aid, but someone's gotta do it around here. Life just isn't that simple, and this silly cartoonish fantasy world about good guys and bad guys following party identification is just that: a silly fantasy. The sooner you understand that human beings are human and have human foibles no matter what political party they belong to, the sooner the discourse around here will begin to look like anything resembling logic. Until then it's just "hooray for my team, the other guy is a poopy-head."

asaris · 09-17-2008, 11:57 AM

Two points, loquitur. First, it's not clear that getting rid of voters based on foreclosure is legal. But second, it seems *really* sleazy. Here are these people who have just lost their house, and you're trying to deprive them of their right to vote! Regardless of whether it is legal, it doesn't look good.

dc_dux · 09-17-2008, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

People are getting agitated here over something that is neither new nor illegal. If there is illegality involved that is something else, but it appears from what was described is that this is just legal maneuvering that is very little different from most of the legal maneuvering that happens.

loquitor....correct me if I'm wrong, but doesnt a consent decree from a federal circut court have some legal standing:

from my first post

...refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .

or a later modification of the decree prohibiting the RNC from undertaking any ballot security program without the courts consent.

I understand that it has loopholes that allow the practice by state political parties which is why I believe we need federal legislation.

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 12:04 PM

Just because something is legal doesn't make it right. In this case caging is illegal in some cases and I believe it should be made illegal in all cases. If I ever get caged you will be I will sue the people doing the caging for violating my constitutional rights.

And my comment to you was because you posted 1 line which was a finger pointing and didn't provide any commentary whatsoever.
-----Added 17/9/2008 at 02 : 31 : 19-----
On a side note I found this funny

Quote:

Libertarian presidential candidate wants to remove both John McCain and Barack Obama from the ballot in Texas and has filed suit to eliminate the major-party candidates from consideration by Texas voters.

His argument is that the Democratic and Republican parties technically violated state election law by failing to deliver written certification of their nominations by 5 p.m. 70 days before the Nov. 4 election.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 12:33 PM

yes, asaris, it might be sleazy. Welcome to politics.

dc_dux, this is the "default to racism" thing I alluded to elsewhere. You're presuming it has to be racial; why? Because the Brennan Center says so? There is something called standard of proof, and evidence, that is needed before assuming someone broke the law. See, my working assumption in most situations is that people will do anything they can, sleazy or not, to benefit themselves and the groups they care about, including political candidates and parties, within the law. I usually withhold judgment on illegality. The reason is that I have seen too many mushy factual situations in my life and too much legal uncertainty to be able to "know" someone broke the law unless I have actually seen the underlying documentation and factual development. (That's what comes from litigating cases for 25 years; you become skeptical of most argumentative claims.) I'm especially skeptical of advocacy organizations - they have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they address, and will find problems in order to continue their existence and increase their funding. That applies to orgs on both the left and the right, btw.

dc_dux · 09-17-2008, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

yes, asaris, it might be sleazy. Welcome to politics.

dc_dux, this is the "default to racism" thing I alluded to elsewhere. You're presuming it has to be racial; why? Because the Brennan Center says so?

loquitor...it is not what the Brennen Center said..it was what the Circuit Court in NJ said in its consent decree agreed to by the political parties:

....refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .

so....if I am wrong about it being a court consent decree (not the Brennan Center), correct me....If I am not, please stop with the "default to racism" charges.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 12:52 PM

dc_dux, read your own source document. It describes a 1981 consent decree that prohibits racially driven vote suppression. Unless what is going on now is demonstrably racial, and you have provided no evidence that it is, then the NJ decree is irrelevant even in NJ, much less in FL, which is what the OP is talking about.

Just as an aside: a consent decree is an agreed termination of a lawsuit, ordered by a court, usually at the litigants' request. It typically provides some kind of focused relief based on the allegations of the lawsuit and the particular misconduct alleged in the lawsuit. It's not a universal finding that one or the other side, and any of its affiliates, is bad and is prohibited from doing bad things anywhere in the country in the future. It usually binds only the entities in that lawsuit. If you want to see who the NJ consent decree binds, you have to see who the litigants were. And if you want to see what it prohibits, you have to look at the underlying order. I think you might be ascribing to it a broader effect than it has.

dc_dux · 09-17-2008, 12:59 PM

Here is more info from a challenge in OH in 2004:

Quote:

n response to Ohio caging operations immediately before the 2004 election, Ebony Malone, an African American Ohio voter, and Irving Agosto, a Hispanic Ohio voter, filed a motion to intervene in the DNC v. RNC case, charging that the RNC had violated the consent decree. The factual grounds for the complaint were that the Ohio Republican Party sent out non-forwardable letters to all newly registered voters and compiled a caging list from those that were returned. The state GOP proposed to use to challenge the eligibility of all 35,000 voters. The intervenors charged, and provided evidence that, the RNC coordinated and assisted in the caging operation.

The Ohio voters claimed standing to intervene in the case on the grounds that, as minority voters, they were among the intended beneficiaries of the New Jersey consent decrees. Judge Dickinson. R. Debevoise of the New Jersey District Court granted their motion to intervene, found that the RNC was involved in the Ohio caging operation in violation of the consent decrees, and issued an order enjoining the RNC from using the Ohio caging list to challenge Ohio voters. This order was entered on November 1, 2004, one day before the presidential election.

The RNC appealed the district court order to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit Court and moved for a stay of the injunction. On November 1, 2004, a three judge panel of the circuit court, denied the RNC’s request for a stay. In issuing their opinion denying the stay, the three judge panel held that it was likely that the proposed caging operation would “take effect in precinct where minorities predominate, interfering with and discouraging voters from voting in those districts.” The three-judge panel, also found ample support for the finding that the RNC collaborated and cooperated in the Ohio caging, citing emails between the organizations. Judge Fisher dissented from this opinion.

The RNC filed a motion for rehearing by the full court, which was granted along with a reversal of the decision by the three judge panel. The Third Circuit Court, sitting en banc, granted a stay of the district court’s injunction against the RNC caging operation.

DNC v RNC

So in the end, the full Circuit Court allowed the RNC to target certain neighborhoods for caging.

IMO, all the more reason for a federal anti-caging law....but I understand why Republicans might not support it.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 01:26 PM

do you have a citation for the opinion? That thing you linked to was written up by an advocacy group. I'd like to see the full 3d circuit opinion before giving any views about it. I did notice that it looks like the effort to go after the RNC failed in Ohio as well. So it's a two-circuit loss. I can think of oodles of different reasons those lawsuits might have failed, most of them fairly technical and neutral. But basically, all that story you linked to says is that a lawsuit was filed and ultimately lost. Lots of lawsuits get filed. So? It doesn't prove anything.

guyy · 09-17-2008, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

It's similar to how Obama won his first couple of races, by getting adversaries off ballots.

Sorry, that's wrong.

Candidates and voters are different entities.

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 01:48 PM

guy, go back and read my next post. I was up one level of abstraction. It's about molding the electoral battlefield in your favor using the legal/bureaucratic system. And yes, in that respect it's exactly the same. Obviously candidates aren't voters. But petitioners are, and by striking their signatures you're "disenfranchising" them from participating in the democratic process, too, right? It's not all that different. In concept it's exactly the same, it's just an issue of which effort you want to make: going after voter rolls takes more work than going after candidate petitions, so it's less efficient. But depriving voters of the chance to vote for someone they want to vote for, which is what striking a candidate does, is not very different from what you're complaining about.

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 02:17 PM

Legal issues aside do you feel that this tactic hurts or helps the American people?

loquitur · 09-17-2008, 02:26 PM

What I think is good or bad is not the issue. Political parties play a high-stakes game and are in it to win, period. They don't care about the American people in any but the abstractest sense. They want to win, they want power. And they'll do anything within the rules to get it.

My preferences are for clean races, but I'm very realistic. In this country, 'clean' = 'passes legal muster' and maybe that's the best we can hope for.

asaris · 09-17-2008, 02:43 PM

I still think there's a difference between sleazy and really sleazy. I mean, Republicans looking into allegations of voter fraud more seriously when they involve likely democratic voters? Sleazy, but in the larger scheme of things, probably acceptable. But trying to kick people off the voter rolls when they've just been foreclosed, two months before the election? I think that's a whole nother level of sleaze.

Rekna · 09-17-2008, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

What I think is good or bad is not the issue.

This is exactly the issue. This is supposed to be a government for the people by the people. If the government is not serving our needs then it is our duty to overthrow the current government and start a new one. Thus the question comes back to this. "Is this type of tactic good or bad for the American people and our country?"

I'll leave you with this quote i'm sure you have seen before.

Quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

09-17-2008, 10:18 AM	#1 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie Join Date: Nov 2003	Voter Caging Voter caging has been a common tactic in past elections to suppress certain voters. Recently it has come to light that the GOP is planning on using forecloser lists to prevent people from voting. The logic is if they don't have that house anymore then there registration isn't valid and thus can't vote. Another method of caging is to send out a mass priority mailing to a certain demographic with the instructions "Do not forward". If the person is not there to get the mail (say they are at work and can't sign for it or are on vacation) then there name is placed on a list of people who will be caged. If you happen to be on a caging list when you go to vote you will be met with someone saying you are not eligible to vote and you will have to vote on a provisional ballot and then prove you are eligible to vote in the next couple days. The idea is that many people won't challenge it either because they don't care or don't have time and their vote will not be counted. Recently the McCain campaign sent out a letter "verifying people were registered as a Republican" in Florida. This letter had do not forward instructions on it and it was sent to registered democrats. It looks like letter will likely end up creating caging lists. This is a tactic that has been primary used by the GOP and there have been cases where the GOP has accidentally leaked some of its caging plans. For more information see the wikipedia entry on caging lists. What do you think of this practice? Personally I think it should be illegal. I have no problem with stopping fraudulent voters but I feel this practice prevents more legal voters than illegal voters. The big problem is that this is only done in certain demographics. If the GOP thinks voter caging is fine then they should be forced to do it to every person and not just the ones that fit in a demographic that is not favorable to them.

09-17-2008, 10:32 AM	#2 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru In the 6th percentile Moderator Join Date: May 2006 Location: Toronto	So this, in a way, is like gerrymandering? I don't know if you can make this illegal, but you can surely try to get something in place to ensure legal voters can cast their votes regardless of others' tactics to prevent it otherwise. __________________ "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. [...] In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer." —"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." —"Burnt Norton," Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

09-17-2008, 10:43 AM	#3 (permalink)
The_Jazz Attacking at dawn Administrator Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Chicago	I don't think it qualifies as gerrymandering, but it certainly qualifies as a dirty trick, regardless of who's pulling it. __________________ The proud dad of Max since 2/15/06 and Andrew since 1/9/08! "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

09-17-2008, 11:23 AM	#8 (permalink)
asaris Mad Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Washington, DC	Isn't preventing people from voting different from getting people off the ballot? __________________ "Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht." "The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

09-17-2008, 11:57 AM	#11 (permalink)
asaris Mad Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Washington, DC	Two points, loquitur. First, it's not clear that getting rid of voters based on foreclosure is legal. But second, it seems really sleazy. Here are these people who have just lost their house, and you're trying to deprive them of their right to vote! Regardless of whether it is legal, it doesn't look good. __________________ "Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht." "The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

09-17-2008, 11:03 AM	#6 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	It's similar to how Obama won his first couple of races, by getting adversaries off ballots.

09-17-2008, 11:50 AM	#10 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	no, my point was that using legal techniques to advance your election prospects is used pretty frequently and routinely by both parties, and in urban areas it's something of an art form. Here in NY we have ballot access lawsuits all the time, where each side tries to get the other's nominating petitions tossed. Challenging voter rolls is done too, and is conceptually no different, so long as the techniques used are above board and legal. You might not like it but they are in concept the same: the idea is molding the electoral battlefield to your advantage. Obama did it in his early races, it was done in WA by Repubs during the last Gov race, it was done by Dems with military ballots in FL during the 2000 race, it was done by Republicans with ex-felons............ the list goes on and on and on, in both parties. People are getting agitated here over something that is neither new nor illegal. If there is illegality involved that is something else, but it appears from what was described is that this is just legal maneuvering that is very little different from most of the legal maneuvering that happens. It's not like theyr'e trolling cemeteries looking for voters or anything. Yeah, Rekna, you didn't understand (and didn't like) my point so you say ignore him. Nice. Love the intellectual honesty. You don't like it when I unspike the Kool-Aid, but someone's gotta do it around here. Life just isn't that simple, and this silly cartoonish fantasy world about good guys and bad guys following party identification is just that: a silly fantasy. The sooner you understand that human beings are human and have human foibles no matter what political party they belong to, the sooner the discourse around here will begin to look like anything resembling logic. Until then it's just "hooray for my team, the other guy is a poopy-head."

09-17-2008, 12:33 PM	#14 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	yes, asaris, it might be sleazy. Welcome to politics. dc_dux, this is the "default to racism" thing I alluded to elsewhere. You're presuming it has to be racial; why? Because the Brennan Center says so? There is something called standard of proof, and evidence, that is needed before assuming someone broke the law. See, my working assumption in most situations is that people will do anything they can, sleazy or not, to benefit themselves and the groups they care about, including political candidates and parties, within the law. I usually withhold judgment on illegality. The reason is that I have seen too many mushy factual situations in my life and too much legal uncertainty to be able to "know" someone broke the law unless I have actually seen the underlying documentation and factual development. (That's what comes from litigating cases for 25 years; you become skeptical of most argumentative claims.) I'm especially skeptical of advocacy organizations - they have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they address, and will find problems in order to continue their existence and increase their funding. That applies to orgs on both the left and the right, btw.

09-17-2008, 12:52 PM	#16 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	dc_dux, read your own source document. It describes a 1981 consent decree that prohibits racially driven vote suppression. Unless what is going on now is demonstrably racial, and you have provided no evidence that it is, then the NJ decree is irrelevant even in NJ, much less in FL, which is what the OP is talking about. Just as an aside: a consent decree is an agreed termination of a lawsuit, ordered by a court, usually at the litigants' request. It typically provides some kind of focused relief based on the allegations of the lawsuit and the particular misconduct alleged in the lawsuit. It's not a universal finding that one or the other side, and any of its affiliates, is bad and is prohibited from doing bad things anywhere in the country in the future. It usually binds only the entities in that lawsuit. If you want to see who the NJ consent decree binds, you have to see who the litigants were. And if you want to see what it prohibits, you have to look at the underlying order. I think you might be ascribing to it a broader effect than it has.

09-17-2008, 01:26 PM	#18 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	do you have a citation for the opinion? That thing you linked to was written up by an advocacy group. I'd like to see the full 3d circuit opinion before giving any views about it. I did notice that it looks like the effort to go after the RNC failed in Ohio as well. So it's a two-circuit loss. I can think of oodles of different reasons those lawsuits might have failed, most of them fairly technical and neutral. But basically, all that story you linked to says is that a lawsuit was filed and ultimately lost. Lots of lawsuits get filed. So? It doesn't prove anything.

09-17-2008, 01:48 PM	#20 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	guy, go back and read my next post. I was up one level of abstraction. It's about molding the electoral battlefield in your favor using the legal/bureaucratic system. And yes, in that respect it's exactly the same. Obviously candidates aren't voters. But petitioners are, and by striking their signatures you're "disenfranchising" them from participating in the democratic process, too, right? It's not all that different. In concept it's exactly the same, it's just an issue of which effort you want to make: going after voter rolls takes more work than going after candidate petitions, so it's less efficient. But depriving voters of the chance to vote for someone they want to vote for, which is what striking a candidate does, is not very different from what you're complaining about.

09-17-2008, 02:17 PM	#21 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie Join Date: Nov 2003	Legal issues aside do you feel that this tactic hurts or helps the American people?

09-17-2008, 02:26 PM	#22 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NYC	What I think is good or bad is not the issue. Political parties play a high-stakes game and are in it to win, period. They don't care about the American people in any but the abstractest sense. They want to win, they want power. And they'll do anything within the rules to get it. My preferences are for clean races, but I'm very realistic. In this country, 'clean' = 'passes legal muster' and maybe that's the best we can hope for.

09-17-2008, 02:43 PM	#23 (permalink)
asaris Mad Philosopher Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Washington, DC	I still think there's a difference between sleazy and really sleazy. I mean, Republicans looking into allegations of voter fraud more seriously when they involve likely democratic voters? Sleazy, but in the larger scheme of things, probably acceptable. But trying to kick people off the voter rolls when they've just been foreclosed, two months before the election? I think that's a whole nother level of sleaze. __________________ "Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht." "The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm." -- Friedrich Nietzsche