Blogswarm - Online Political News Magazine

DNC Chairs
by kos

Sat Nov 6th, 2004 at 11:13:26 PST

Some early names being floated around:

Bill Clinton (No joke)

Donna Brazille (Gore campaign manager)

Simon Rosenberg (NDN president)

Leon Panetta (former Clinton Chief of Staff)

Howard Dean

Harold Ickes (Clinton deputy chief of staff)

Now before anyone asks, I still don't know how a DNC chair is elected, but we'll be pushing hard for grassroots input. BlogPAC will likely seek to make an endorsement.

I'll share everything I learn about this process.

Brazille - 5%

Clinton - 24%

Dean - 27%

Ickles - 16%

Rosenberg - 23%

Other - 1%

• Bill Clinton. Extremely popular former president who had a higher average approval rating than Ronald Reagan. The great Democratic communicator, but certainly did not help us much on down ticket races. Then again, the primary goal of the DNC chair is to help win the Presidency and present a good face that helps improve national party ID.
• Howard Dean. Excellent Fundraiser. Very good at firing up the activist base, even if it isn't always in the most organized fashion. Is obsessed with the need for a new message and better framing, even if he himself frequently strays from the message. Liked, if not loved, by many allied organizations. Nationally, associated with "the scream," and as a bit of a loose cannon.

• Harold Ickles. Former Josh Lyman in the Clinton administration (deputy chief of staff). Praising Ickles, diarist misheim writes:

  I've loved Harold Ickes since I saw him make Republican Senators quiver and shake during his Whitewater (I think it was Whitewater) testimony. I remember Sen. Nickles looking simply terrified when he realized that Ickes was not going to be easy prey. In fact, Brit Hume recommended that Ickes not be called back because he was too quick-witted for them. The DNC needs someone with his skills.

• Leon Panetta. Former Leo MacGary in the Clinton White House (Chief of Staff, 1994-1996. Here is his biography:

  PANETTA, Leon Edward, a Representative from California; born in Monterey, Monterey County, Calif., June 28, 1938; educated in the public schools of Monterey; graduated from Monterey Union High School, 1956; B.A., University of Santa Clara (Calif.), 1960; LL.B., Santa Clara Law School, 1963; admitted to the California bar in 1965 and commenced practice in Monterey; served in United States Army, 1963-1965; served as legislative assistant to United States Senator Thomas Henry Kuchel, 1966-1969; director, Office of Civil Rights, United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1969-1970; executive assistant to mayor of New York City, 1970-1971; engaged in private practice of law, 1971-1976; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-fifth and to the eight succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1977, until his resignation January 22, 1993; chairman, Committee on the Budget (One Hundred First and One Hundred Second Congresses); director, Office of Management and Budget, January 1993 to July 1994; chief of staff, The White House, 1994-1996.

• Simon Rosenberg. Chair of the New Democrat Network. Praising Rosenberg, Jerome quoted yesterday:

  [T]he party as institution must change. It must become more entrepreneurial. It must adopt, embrace and devise new tools. It must recognize the power of the Dean/netroots phenomenon while understanding its limitations. I see one individual who is both vested in the Democratic Party and who understands the ways in which it has atrophied. Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network has the strong establishment credentials still required to run the party. But he also recognizes that more than a little fine-tuning is needed. He understands the imperative of building a new message infrastructure to rival the Murdoch/Scaife/Drudge axis of evil on the right." Baer continues: "Rosenberg also gets the importance of the Latino vote. He has been willing to challenge his New Democrat brethren at the DLC, whose jihad against Howard Dean was not only nasty and counterproductive, but also suggested their own flirtation with irrelevance." More: "I do not know Simon, though I do -- full disclosure -- have friends in his employ (who, it should be noted, have not pitched this idea to me). Simon Rosenberg strikes me as the one person who can toss out the bathwater while saving the baby. More than saving the baby, he can help nurture it to vigorous adulthood".

Map Day is now officially Map Weekend!

We know the Red State/Blue State dichotomy is really misleading -- it doesn't accurately reflect the US.

So I gathered up, in all their cartographic glory, a series of election map post-mortems. (They were just lying around the internet gathering dust anyway).

These graphic representations of the election's outcome are thought provoking and even humorous.

Proportional Electoral Map
this one is my favorite -- because land doesn't vote, people do

Red States Feed at Federal Trough, Blue States Supply the Feed
So much for self-reliance

Popular Vote, Population Density
similar idea

Red & Blue World
You know how the States voted; Here's how the World did

Purple America
a sentimental favorite

The Kids Are Alright
How the Youth of America voted . . .

2000 vs 2004 County by County Election Results

Where did their votes come from?
an interesting 3D comparison

Electoral College Over Represents Rural Areas
no kidding?

which leads to the very sad
Voting: Free versus Slave States
Look how far we’ve come as a country

Demographics versus Geography
For when you finally get sick of maps

New America redistricted
DeLay loves redistricting, so . . .

and just for laughs, Jesusland
guaranteed to offend someone

Cartographic political analytics -- fun for the whole family!

Ohio Whitewash

Basic report from Columbus

From a lawyer who was in there in Ohio.  A database of voter irregularities is reportedly being assembled, and hopefully there will be web sites devoted to documenting what really happened.

I worked for 3 days, including Election Day, on the statewide voter protection hotline run by the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio.   I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what  happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable.  Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio.

People waited on line for as long as 10 hours. It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges. I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm. When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer. In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am. The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184. Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections. The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly Republican, area, while the one with long  lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.

Lines of 4 and 5 hours were the order of the day in many African-American neighborhoods.

Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

Countless other frauds occurred, such as postcards advising people of incorrect polling places, registered Democrats not receiving absentee ballots, duly registered young voters being forced to file provisional ballots even though their names and signatures appeared in the voting rolls, longtime active voting registered voters being told they weren't registered, bad faith challenges by Republican "challengers" in Democratic precincts, and on and on and on.

I was very proud of the way so many Ohioans fought so valiantly for their right to vote, and would not be turned away. Many, however, could not spend the entire day and were afraid of losing their jobs, due to the severe economic depression hitting Ohio.

I do not understand why Kerry conceded and did not fight to ensure that all Ohioans would have a chance to vote, and for their vote to be counted.   

Ray

Ray Beckerman
Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP
99 Park Ave (Ste 1600)
New York, NY 10016

By Erica Solvig
Enquirer staff writer

LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.

County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.

"The media should have been permitted into the area where there was counting," Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner said. "This is a process that should be done in complete transparency and it wasn't."

 Dems win at AAA level
by kos
Sat Nov 6th, 2004 at 11:02:47 PST

For those of you who are baseball ignorant, AAA is the professional baseball league one step down from the Major Leagues. It's where all major league baseball players finish their development before they hit the Big Show.

We lost narrowly in the majors last Tuesday, but at the AAA, we actually gained seats. from John Fund in the subscription-only Wall Street Journal:

The general GOP euphoria over Tuesday's election results should not obscure the fact that the election was close and that Republican victories become scarcer as you go further down the ballot. Republicans did win governorships in Indiana and Missouri and are tied in Washington State. But they lost the New Hampshire and Montana governorships and wound up losing seats in state legislatures overall.

Of the country's 99 state legislative chambers, the GOP lost control of six and won only four from the Democrats. Republicans have apparently gone from having complete control of both chambers in 21 states to only dominating 17 states. Most of the GOP pickups involve the slow dissolution of Democratic dominance in the South. In Georgia, Tennessee and Oklahoma the Republicans will now control the state House for the first time in decades, or in the case of Georgia since Sherman's march to the sea in 1864.

But Republicans also lost ground in some traditional strongholds. Democrats now control both houses of the Colorado legislature for the first time since the 1950s. They also failed to win any seats at all in California, despite the campaigning and fundraising prowess of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In Hawaii, that state's popular GOP governor, Linda Lingle, saw the voters ignore her appeals for a more cooperative legislature as unions picked off several Republican incumbents. Even in the South, Democrats made some gains, winning back complete control of North Carolina's state House.

The lesson here is that while Republican grassroots efforts may have improved, the quality of many of their state legislative candidates and campaigns remains poor. Democrats may be the opposition party in Congress, but they are alive and kicking at the state level.

The current score:

Republicans now control 20 state Legislatures. Democrats have 19, and 10 are split, with Democrats holding one chamber and Republicans the other.

Before Tuesday's vote, the GOP held 21 and the Democrats 17, with 11 split. The Nebraska Legislature, which has only one chamber, is nonpartisan.

It's not the White House or Congress, but we are making gains on the ground. We likely have a great deal to learn from gains in Colorado and even Minnesota, were we can probably learn some lessons:

But Democrats, performing better at the local level than statewide or nationally, took both chambers in Colorado, as well as the Vermont House and the Senates in Oregon and Washington. In hard-fought Iowa they earned a Senate tie with Republicans, and in Minnesota they used an aggressive voter-turnout operation to make dramatic gains.

Minnesota's 77 percent turnout, the highest since 1960, helped the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party narrow a 28-seat Republican majority in the House to just two seats. A recount is scheduled in a race where Republican Judy Soderstrom finished 94 votes ahead of DFL opponent Tim Faust among 20,000 votes cast.

The national party may be on life support, as well as Democratic parties across the South. But we are making gains at the local level where the future stars of our party are learning their trade.

Fri Nov 5th, 2004 at 15:46:06 PST

Now, quite a bit of work is being done around these parts regarding Ohio numbers, and I'm thankful for that.  But, hey, let's take a look at Florida numbers, just for fun.

The Florida Department of State has posted its first set of unofficial returns from every county.  Every one has included counts of absentee ballots, and every one is marked as a final report, according to the data on the site.  Now, I'm not sure about that, but let's accept it for now.

Turnout is reported for every county except Hernando (which inexplicably reports 0 turnout).  Now, let's assume that every registered voter in Hernando county (all 109,656 of them) voted.  That gives us total voter turnout of 7,460,556.  Let's compare that with the reported total numbers of votes for Senate, President, and Amendment 5, the amendment receiving the most total votes of the 8 offered (number of votes in excess of maximum turnout in parentheses):

for Senate: 7,409,542 (-51,014)
for Amendment 5: 7,277,832 (-182,724)
for President: 7,586,995 (126,439)

Something is wrong here.  A bit more below the fold...

Now, this turnout estimate is high.  Let's assume that turnout in Hernando County is actually at the same rate as elsewhere in the state (excluding Hernando County), 72.1%.  This gives us 79,062 votes from Hernando, and a total state turnout of 7,429,962.  So, we could estimate that 20,420 people didn't vote for any of the seven Senate candidates, 0.27% of those who turned out.  But we also then estimate that the number of votes for President exceeds turnout by 157,033.

Granted, the number of votes for Bush exceeds the number of votes for Kerry by 381,210, more than double this margin.  But regardless of that, what is going on here?  Are provisional votes to blame?  If so, why aren't they reflected in votes for the equally hard-fought Senate race?  The state is claiming that the turnout counts include absentee ballots--perhaps this isn't really true?  

I would love to see a reasonable explanation, but I can't come up with anything.

UPDATE:
I have broken down the data by county. Several observations:

• The Florida data aren't even internally consistent--vote totals from the "First Set of Unofficial General Election Returns" (.pdf file) don't exactly match the vote totals elsewhere on the site, though they're close. Above and elsewhere, I used vote totals from the .pdf, and turnout figures from the website, since turnout isn't in the .pdf.
• There are 12 counties where currently recorded votes for Presidential candidates exceed reported turnout (not including Hernando county, which didn't provide a nonzero turnout figure), by a total of 192,397 votes. I'll provide a chart of these counties here in just a moment.

ALSO: many are confused by what I'm pointing out here. It's relatively unobjectionable for there to be significant numbers of voters who vote for some items on the ballot and not others (though some states make this as confusing as possible; e.g., my home state of NC counts votes for President separate from a straight-ticket vote, meaning voters must vote for both separately). The problem here is that Florida is reporting more votes for president than voters. Other ballot items were provided for reference.

My analysis shows that 12 counties have reported votes for Presidential candidates in excess of reported turnout. Six have discrepancies of less than 1% of turnout (though still more than 0, obviously, and worrisome), and I'll focus for now on the other six:

• Glades: 2443 Bush/1718 Kerry/27 Other; Turnout 3446; 742 Discrepancy = 21.53% over turnout
• Highlands: 25874 Bush/15346 Kerry/271 Other; Turnout 33996; 7495 Discrepancy = 22.05% over turnout
• Miami-Dade: 358613 Bush/406099 Kerry/3841 Other; Turnout 716574; 51979 Discrepancy = 7.25% over turnout
• Osceola: 43108 Bush/38617 Kerry/453 Other; Turnout 63589; 18589 Discrepancy = 29.23% over turnout
• Palm Beach: 211894 Bush/327698 Kerry/3243 Other; 452061 Turnout; 90774 Discrepancy = 20.08% over turnout
• Volusia: 111544 Bush/115319 Kerry/1495 Other; 209052 Turnout; 19306 Discrepancy = 9.24% over turnout

FURTHER UPDATE:
Anyone interested can now take a peek at my spreadsheet. It's certainly not pretty, but it has all the numbers referenced herein.

Sat Nov 6th, 2004 at 10:02:44 PST

Here's some crystal clear evidence of voter fraud in Florida. This site categorizes voter turnout by the type of voting machine used:

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

Diebold Op-Scan voting machines increased Republican turnout by an average of 135%, while decreasing Democratic turnout by an average of 22%.

From blogd.com

Op-Scan voting machines almost universally recorded unbelievable turnout for Republicans--as high as 433% increases--while at the same time had Democratic turnout fall by large amounts--as much as 70%.

The Op-Scan machines made by Diebold and ES&S--both corporations with strong Bush connections--had voter turnout for Republicans increase an average of 135%, while Democratic turnout averaged a 22% decrease. The E-Touch machines recorded a turnout increase of 27% for Republicans, 23% for Democrats.

Sorry, but you can't tell me that's a coincidence. While the numbers I am looking at have not been confirmed, this is exactly the kind of thing I mentioned before about evaluating the voting machine results. If these numbers bear out, then this is virtual proof of vote-rigging on the part of Republicans.