Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I'm calling BS on that Skinner. Wahoo said nothing of the sort. He's a good guy and it is unfair to try and paint him as an extremist who would ever say anything like that.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Okay, but IMO there's a difference between saying "your argument is blaming the victim; akin to blaming a rape victim for being attacked..." and "I'm waiting for him to next claim that women who are raped should share in some of the responsibility because of the way they were dressed." The first is an attempt to say "your thinking is faulty because..." and draw a parallel, while the second makes it sound like you think he actually believes the thing about rape - see what I'm saying?
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Two guys telling me I crossed the line by comparing wahoo's thought processes on obvious voter suppression, with the thought processes of conservative judges who blame rape victims for being raped. Sorry, but I don't see a difference. The analogy in my mind stands. It is the same type of thinking, especially since the vast overwhelming majority of those in Florida being disenfranchised are in his opposition party. wahoo is a conservative Republican who doesn't want to see Democrats win. So why should I accept his excuses for how voters are not being disenfranchised because of the absentee ballot, since his candidates have better chances of winning when a significant chunk of Democrats who are constantly fighting the system to simply cast their ballot, finally give up? If conservatives were being forced to stand in five-hour lines to vote, would wahoo feel the way he does now? I highly doubt it.
Originally Posted By hopemax > Two guys telling me I crossed the line < Well, I'm a woman and I think it crossed the line. Just like the pre-election nonsense about fearing a Mormon in the White House. It's unnecessary and you've successfully driven the conversation to something other than voter suppression.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox But I really don't feel like apologizing in the wake of wahoo's lame excuses for the voter suppression in Florida.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan This is why it's so difficult to have political conversations. A person says one thing and someone else paints it to mean some whole other thing. Wahoo has been a longtime contributor to these boards and often a voice of reason and moderation. I agree with him a lot of the time, but I don't happen to agree with him on this topic. However, the analogy you are trying hard to use here is offensive, hurtful and wrong.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Well, what I'm saying is that the way you worded it sounded beyond analogy and into "Wahoo really thinks women who were raped share responsibility because of how they were dressed." Maybe you didn't really mean that, but that's how it read to me.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Skinner, I haven't identified myself as a conservative in quite some time, let alone a Republican. Tuesday I voted for more Democrats than Republicans. Many of my conservative friends despise that I would vote for Debbie Wasserman Scultz but she has done good things for my community and I vote with my head and heart, not party affiliation. As an independent I don't even have a party. I didn't blame the voter for not using the absentee ballot alone. There were 8 days of early voting and on all but the last couple of days you could get in and out with no problem. In Broward you could have gone to any of a number of early polling sites, regardless of where you live and I'm pretty sure it was the save in Miami Dade. Do I think voting should be easier? Of course I do. It is the year 2012 and I'm still filling out bubbles like I did when I was in Junior High. Do I think that South Florida should be called to the carpet in this case? No, for any of the myriad of the reasons I just explained. Skinner, you don't actually believe that all of these precincts down here are 100% one party or the other...do you? With that said, isn't it realistic to believe that people intending to vote for Romney had to wait in those same long lines as those intending to vote for Obama? I think those conservatives are idiots too. And, to suggest I might be of the mindset that a woman deserves to be raped just makes me believe, skinner, that you are sad and unstable and not someone I care to argue with anymore. Why is World Events full of like minded people who tend to agree with each other? Because of crap like this.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <With that said, isn't it realistic to believe that people intending to vote for Romney had to wait in those same long lines as those intending to vote for Obama?> Well, that's exactly the thing. The anecdotal evidence, at least so far, is that they didn't. That's the info I'm really interested in; were right-leaning precincts given more machines per capita than left-leaning ones? The anecdotal evidence so far is that left-leaning and especially minority districts had by far the longest waits. What many of us are saying (and you seem to be missing) is that long waits are one thing - not ideal, obviously, but if the waits were uniform, at least not sleazy. But if the waits were anything but uniform and that was intentional - that is sleazy at a minimum, and possibly worse.
Originally Posted By barboy ///Fine. skinner is a b*tch. I own it./// ..... Dave Hester would say; YUUUUUP!!!
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 <<That's the info I'm really interested in; were right-leaning precincts given more machines per capita than left-leaning ones? >> I live in a pretty Democrat leaning area and by that I mean Milwaukee. My neighborhood a pretty good mix of blue collar, teacher, fire, policy, strong union supporters, black, white, hispanic, gay, straight etc. And the school where I voted had ten booths. On the north side of the city in a predominantly black voting district one school had only one booth. Why is that? Were they expecting more voters in my neighborhood than there?
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 Also wahoo is now who I look at on how to carry on a civil conversation with those I disagree with. I wish I had followed that path in the past.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Responding to 51: But does the Governor of Florida control that or does the local Supervisor of Elections control that? The Supervisor in Palm Beach is a Democrat. It took some searching because the Broward Supervisor downplays her party affiliation but she is also Democrat. The Supervisor in Miami Dade County is a black woman who works for a Republican strong mayor, a Cuban American Latino who was elected by an overwhelmingly Demcoratic population. Down there I haven't read any stories that are claiming this is anything more than mismanagement and the logistics of dealing with a surge of absentee ballots that came in very late. In Miami they are also suggesting to a lesser extent that reducing the early voting days from 14 to 8 may have played a role, and I on that I am willing to entertain the idea. But, if all of those people skip the early voting anyway and decide to show up at the polls at 5pm then it doesn't matter how many days of early voting there are. If they didn't show up to the polls within the 8 days what makes anyone think they would show up in 14 days? Maybe there was voter supression in some areas of the country. I never said there wasn't. But in South Florida nobody down here is claiming that publicly. Down here it is an issue of bad logistics trumping any bad politics.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Responding to 51: But does the Governor of Florida control that or does the local Supervisor of Elections control that? > I don't know. That's why I asked. It does seem awfully strange that the longest lines seemed to be in minority areas; even within the SAME county. And that that was true in various states.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper In some places down in Dade County the ballot was ten pages long. The Republican controlled Florida Legislature can be blamed for some of that with regards to the Constitutional Amendments (though just about anyone can get a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Florida which is a whole other matter) but that accounted for about 3 pages, not the other 7. Imagine if you were presented with a ten page ballot, front and back, and you had never read any of it prior to showing up at the precinct. How long would that take? To futher complicate things, it appears that the scanners used to tabulate the votes had to be coded by precinct. So, if you were at a location where there were three precincts and one of the scanners went down (which apparently happened as people tried to jam all 10 pages into the machine at once) then you couldn't go to one of the other scanners as they weren't programmed for every precinct.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I just find it strange that there's always a problem with Florida. And every time they promise to do better, and then they never do. Even creating new problems (like the too-long ballot) that didn't exist before. It also seems to me that none of this is rocket science. Other states handle elections much better, including very populated states. It's not like election day is a mystery, or there isn't time to prepare. But who wants to bet that 2014 and 2016 offer an eerie sense of deja vu?
Originally Posted By wahooskipper You should see who the people are volunteering to work the polls. I've had the same people in my building for 10 years. Some still don't know how to set up the equipment, fall asleep on the lobby chairs. Am I surprised when Florida has issues? On the contrary, I'm surprised it isn't worse. Every time we have an election I breathe a sigh of relief that we got through it without a newscrew at my front door. Going back to the purging of the rolls for a minute. Dr Snipes in Broward County resisted Governor Scott's call to do it. That said, she did the work required and, to her credit, did it slow and methodically. (Again, she is a Democrat.) She reported that since 2009 she has striken nearly 15,000 ineligible voters from the rolls...most of them convicted felons not lawfully permitted to vote. I've got no problem with those 15,000 being shown the door and I trust Dr. Snipes to be professional...even though she is a bleeding heart liberal. ;-)
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I have no problem with following the law. There's no question, though, that in 2000, then-current election officials purged too zealously and purged many perfectly eligible voters, sometimes just for having the same names as felons, or even just similar names. When one state continues to have the same issues, it says to me it's time to address them, or they're doomed to repeat them.
