Reply #9: No, I disagree. The difference is that it was an endemic, grassroots [View All]

[politicat]

problem everywhere for much of a century starting in 1850, but it was not organized.

Now, the system is topdown, and the corruption of the system comes not from the local organizations, but from the national machine.

But - the level of corruption seems to be equivalent in a per capita ratio, and we're more aware of it and more vocal about it. If this was 1904 instead of 2004, we'd know the fraud happened, but we would have neither the organization as a community to go after it, nor the media picking up on it at all. In 1904, it was common knowledge that votes were bought, that the polls were manipulated, and that one man, one vote was said with more sarcasm than reverence. In Chicago, it was get a free drink for a straight ticket, in New England cakes were given away for the same. In the South, if you were black and got to vote, you stood a better than even chance of having the vote destroyed, and in parts of the west, groups of men would ride from town to town voting repeatedly and claiming to be just in off the range. Now: same concept, better technology; same rules, but the policy comes from the head office, not middle management.

So stop patronizing me and check your history. D.W. Rogers' Voting and the Spirit of Democracy and Robert J. Dinkin's Campaigning in America: A History of Election Practices are very good starter sources.

Pcat