St. Petersburg Times: 3.9-million votes, 63 challenges

[ryban]

Before the election, headlines warned about impending gridlock:

Thousands of voters would be challenged at the polls by an army of Republican and Democratic lawyers.

But on Election Day, it didn't happen.

Indeed, officials for Florida's election supervisors say they have records of only 63 challenges in the state.

That's out of about 3.9-million votes cast for president.

<snip>

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/24/State/39_million_votes__63_.shtml

[The Judged]

1. Electronic voting and tabulating machines negate the need for challenges!

[VegasWolf]

2. Gotta trust Diebold and their "voting machines" n/t

[chomskysright]

3. they don't what the fuck they are talking about...go here

OK: another letter to write to a stupid newspaper: back in a minute with details.....do the research yourself: voteprotect and another organization...

[VegasWolf]

4. The St. Pete Times is a very liberal paper, it's the only bay area

paper that I can stand to read.

[TahitiNut]

5. All is well. (The machines tell us so.)

Ignorance is such bliss that we invest in machines incapable of being audited. It's the same story throughout human history - those in positions of power and privilege have always wanted others kept ignorant. Remember: it's against the law to educate a slave! So it was in Rome, as it will always be.

[chomskysright]

6. here is letter I wrote and place to submit letters to editor

http://www.sptimes.com/letters/

here is letter I wrote:


Your reporter stated: "....officials for Florida's election supervisors say they have records of only 63 challenges in the state. That's out of about 3.9-million votes cast for president."

I thought reporters were supposed to research their subject matter prior to printing it.

If the reporter is alluding to 'election protests', that is whereby a citizen goes before an evidenciary Board of Elections hearing: evidence is presented.

Few citizens do this; most do not know about their ability to protest in this fashion. I did such in NC.

Contrary to what your reporter 'turned up', there is a bipartisan website, VoteProtect.org, which lists over 4500 incidents related to voting irregularities; specifically, they list 4653 incidents.

This is only ONE of the sites that citizens could call into when they voted , as they noted voting irregularities. These irregularities could be things such as trying to vote for one candidate and the machine will not allow you to; extremely long lines; being misguided as associated with being sent around from precinct to precinct; inability to cast a provisional ballot; frank denial of being able to vote.

Your readers deserve better coverage than this.

[chomskysright]

7. and then I took it to their national desk...

[e-mail]

[chomskysright]

8. and then I took it to their online forum...

[e-mail]

[chomskysright]

9. AND THEN I took it to the web publisher...

[e-mail]

[Lostnote03]

10. LMAO.....Good Job Friend!!!...n/t

[ZR2]

11. Too bad the story was about challenges made by the lawyers

and NOT about supposed irregularities that occured during the voting. Next time I suggest you read the story before making a fool out of yourself.

[SoCalDem]

12. Big Hoo-Hoo.. The plan worked perfectly

Touch the screen...Yay !! You Voted !!! Woo-Hoo!! No need to challenge anything..

Of course, you have no way of knowing that the "touch" did anything more than give you a video glimpse of what you wanted.. You have ZERO proof that the "vote" was cast, or counted..

They knew how many signed in, and how many total votes would be "safe" to register..

The grand totals might have been already determined well before anyone touched a screen :grr:

Prove it was NOT :shrug:

[imenja]

13. Not true

The supervisor of elections office in Palm Beach County routinely denied requests for provisional ballots and I seriously doubt she kept records of her own violation of state and federal law.
Looking at the numbers of provisional ballots across the state, I tend to think this was widespread practice in Florida