Ya' know...If all voters requested Absentee Ballots, there would be no controversy about mis-counting (or hacked) Diebold machines...Absentee Ballots are always countable paper ballots.

Did the Republican happen to win? I read the artilce and they left that part out.

Is this the real reason for the revote?

I've been noticing this pattern for years. If the Republican wins there must be fraud, and it must be a stolen election.

Does anyone know if this is the case in this election?

The BEST part about this case is that it was for a vote on Medical Marijuana dispensaries that lost by only 200 or so votes, Americans for Safe Access sued for the results of the machine tallies and when they found out that Diebold had erased 94% of the info, they sued. it was impossible to count the votes or track the process without that info.

The judge ruled correctly and should be applauded. the City tried to get rid of it, saying that it did not matter, but elections DO matter, it is the will of the People!! The People WANT the cop's and crooked politicians OUT of the medicine business and the voters have overwhelmingly approved compassionate measures and to establish a way for dispensaries to provide the medicine that so many hundreds of thousands of Californians ( and of cousre all other Americna s) need to treat their illnesses.

Hopefully the Federal law that is so stupid will be changed soon, maybe when the disgusting Bush cabal is no longer in the position of total power in this nation. There is a bill in the House right now that would deny the DEA funds to raid and bother medical cannabis patients in states where it has been approved. Please call your congressman or woman NOW and urge them to defund the DEA and leave sick and dying people the hell alone for a change!!

Unless you like the sight of a masked, machine gun toting thug handcuffing and abusing a frail and dying patient for trying to live with dignity and less suffering , then please tell your politicians to stop the disgusting Nazi madness and get the stinking DEA bastards off of the backs of the sick in this nation. the DEA is the new Gestapo, for sure, and they MUST be stopped or they will keep on ruining lives for absolutley no good reason. No person of consceince could support such idiocy and so it is clear that we must prevail or admit that we are gone as a free country.

Well there is two basic companies that are providing the electronic ballot machines currently. Those two are Diebold and ES&S, both are owned by one family, two brothers I believe from Texas. They have ties to Cheney and the Neo-Cons. Congressional hearings were held as to the Diebold Machines and the code and the code writer testified to the house that the program was rigged to the republican side. Now if you have inside information that differs fromthe man who wrote the code would be interested in seeing or hearing it. If not, until other corporations write their code to the Dems I think it's safe to assume that currently the ballot is being thrown to the Republicans.

I am against any election that doesn't either give the voter a receipt for his votes and a copy for the election committee, or be a paper and pencil ballot to start with. In fact I would prefer a paper and pencil election, this would stop much of the shenannigans. And I don't want ot hear some tripe about the number of voters and counting them before January of the next year, we did it for at least 19 decades before this recent push to puter ballots.

Thanks eyewitness86!

So it was a conservative ideal that won, instead of candidate, that is causing this controversy. If this vote had won by 200 votes, no one would have batted an eye. If opponents would have challenged this, they would not have got the time of day from any judge.

I definately see the pattern.

Originally posted by RRconservativeSo it was a conservative ideal that won

two things RR,

1. No nothing won, that is what the judge found based on the evidence, didn't you read the article? There was a recount called since less than 200 votes seperated them. But before the recount the data was lost, this simply MEANS NO ONE WON. I hope that helps you understand...

2. NO it is not a conservative Ideal that Marijuana be outlawed, or that the Government should tell doctors waht to do for their patients. Those are Trotskyite ideals, a trotskyite is the Neo-Cons we have today. True Conservatives love Freedom, Liberty, Small Government, Personal Responsibility, Real Money, Local control of Schools, local control of Abortion Laws, Local control of Marriage laws etc etc.

Abraham Lincoln the first Republican ever said that any attempt at wash d.c. to control mans appetite or a substance is doomed to failure. The alcohol prohibition proved this point rather well.

Hope that helps you understand better what happened, this case was not about FIXING the vote but rather counting it again.

Well, I used to live in Berkely, which is in Alameda County.
If you believe that the majority of citizens there are against
legalizing pot, you've got another thought coming. And anyone who
knows anything at all about Alameda County would know that
legalizing MJ would pass there. There's simply too many people
who smoke it, many for medical reasons.

When I first heard that the measure had been shot down, I absolutely KNEW that it had to be fixed. Kind of like if a Communist won an election in the Midwest, it just wouldn't happen.

This is not a partisan issue. There are alot of Conservatives, especially in Alameda County that are for legalizing MJ, as they have had friends and/or relatives that are terminally ill and they see that MJ helps a whole lot. Takes away nausea, pain and gives you an appetite.

IndependentJournal, very good and valid points that you brought up.

It is possible tht it was defeated, I won't argue that point, it may have lost by 200 votes. I am in agreement with forestlady though, that in a real election it would have passed. I have an Idea on why it failed or passed barely let me lay that out if you want...

We herein Colorado had a constitutional amendment on the last ballot that would make 3 ounces or less a non crime, police couldnt search for it, take it when found or charge you with it. this amendment was shown in all state polls to pass with 70% of the vote but it lost in the general election here is why and possibly why the Berkley bill was so close.

There were many amendments on the ballot and you know most people don't read them through or they feel they know the issue and vote. So in this last election an amendment on Gay Marriage was on the ballot above the pot initiative. The Gay Marriage amendment was worded so that if you were for Banning Gay Marriage you had to answer YES. The pot initiative under it was worded in a way that to vote for the pot initiative you had to VOTE NO, many people didn't read the ballot amendment but knew it was the pot initiative and they were FOR IT so they voted YES, but as I said they worded it so that YES was a NO vote.

This is probably what happened in Berkley that caused the confusion. The only way to combat this trickery is to make sure to READ every ballot initiative thouroughly and no what way you are suppossed to answer it.

I don't understand how you're talking about Trotskyites. I thought Trotsky was a Communist, though a liberal one, and would therefore be best compared to the Democratic party?

JohnMike, the neocons took their views directly from Trotsky. Those views are mostly fascist. Hope this helps.

IJ, once again, you've hit the nail on the head.I had forgotten about that, but your post reminded me. Yes, you are very right about that. We were still living in Berkeley (in Alameda Co.) at the time of that election. I remember my husband and I discussing our confusion over whether to vote yes or no, because it was written in such a way as to confuse people. I am sure that was a huge contributor. We read the entire initiative but still couldn't figure it out. Theonly way we were finally able to tell was to vote in accordance with what our favorite newspaper said.
THe other thing that went on in that election is that "volunteers" trying to get petitions signed, would stand out in front of places of business, grocery stores, etc. and get people to sign their petitions. For example, one time we came out of the store, saw the guy with a petition on the issue of teacher's salaries. His sign talked about making teacher's pay secure or some such. My husband, being a teacher, thought that sounded good. I don't remember exactly what the issue was but it was about teacher's pay. But when you actually read the petition, it was a measure to LOWER teacher pay, which was already barely a living wage. It was out and out lying. He did the same thing with other issues, too. We were furious. We told the guy what we thought of him and his tactics and left, very upset. That measure was on the ballot the same time as the MJ initiative. There were alot of people doing the exact same thing for the MJ measure and many other measures that were on the ballot that election were handled the same way, as well.
It's a despicable tactic, but it works.

This action is totally reasonable in my opinion. It turns, to me, on the fact that the votes were lost, and so we have no way of knowing what had happened. It's not even as if we could do "forensic vote counts" and try to figure out what the actual vote count is. Hold the vote again; makes sense to me.

JohnMike:
My apologies to the readers, I didn't explain my views very well on Trotsky and the neocons. What I meant was that the neocons are fascists. They took their ideas from Trotsky, who was against fascism. But for some reason, neocons embrace a fascist agenda, i.e. restriction of rights and liberties, the police state, and the emphasis of the state over an individual's rights. They may not come out and say it, but their actions speak louder than words.
As to your insulting remarks, I would say that you really had no reason to be so insulting and rude to me. I didn't do anything to you, why the heated response??

It was an honest mistake, I just didn't make my thoughts clear enough. I wasn't spreading propaganda and I do one helluva lot of research on all kinds of topics. Character assasinations and ad hominem attacks are prohibited on ATS.
Besides that, you're off topic.
Insults instead of facts do nothing to persuade anyone and only serve. Are you the one who's trying to seem intelligent by insulting me?

[edit on 16/7/07 by forestlady]

The Australian ballot was a scam when it was introduced and it's a scam today. Privacy in the ballot box is a relatively recent creation and it was invented not to protect the rights of the voters but to eliminate independents and transient third parties from elections.

It used to be that anyone could print up "the party ticket" with no other names on it but the names of the candidates his party was putting forward. There could be "The Vagabond Party Ticket" with just me on it, and I could print it out myself, and distribute it to voters, and if they took it in and signed it and put it in the ballot box, that was that.

But once secrecy was introduced, it was no longer acceptable to carry in "the party ticket". You had to have pre-approved candidate lists to go on the "official" ballot. The standards for getting onto that ballot were set in such a way that the two major parties could almost never lose their place on it, and it was virtually impossible for a new party to get onto it. This is a big part of why the Republican Party has been more stable than its predecessors.

The Depression should have killed the Republican Party. After the election of '36 the Republicans held about 17% of the Senate, less than 25% of the House of Representatives, and suffered a landslide defeat in the presidential election. The only reason they still existed to make a comeback after the court packing attempt was because it wasn't possible for a new party to edge in on them because of ballot restrictions.


If we would just realize this, admit that it's not good for us, and submit to publication of voter ID numbers and votes so that voters could verify the count themselves (actually it would be possible to have anonymous voter IDs even as long as they were given reciepts bearing the random number that they could use as evidence if they had to make a complaint) it wouldn't be possible for them to do this to us. But it's a foregone conclusion, drilled into our heads beginning in elementary school, that the sanctity of the ballot box must be tantamount to that of a confessional.


I'd like to see all ballots become write-in, even if they are computerized and typed, i'd like to see them write in, so you can't vote if you don't know the name of the guy you want, and the parties don't have a natural advantage over independents, and I'd like to see each voter issued an ID number at random when he votes, which is printed on a reciept with his selection, so that he can look through a database and see for himself that his vote was counted accurately- and that same database that we could check would be the official source of the count.