Votes in next Tuesday’s Republican caucuses in Iowa will be cast on paper ballots and hand counted publicly at each and every caucus site, according to a report late this week from Politico’s Jonathan Martin. In other words, Republicans will be relying on “Democracy’s Gold Standard” when it comes to casting and counting ballots in their own election, in which they set all of the rules, even if they will not allow the same standards to be applied to elections in which Democrats will take part.
Martin’s story should come as great news for Election Integrity advocates and, in particular, Ron Paul supporters who have very good reason to be concerned about the process after witnessing — first-hand and on video-tape — blatant voter fraud carried out by Mitt Romney supporters in years past. The news is also welcome in light of a recent report suggesting the GOP would be counting votes in secret to avoid a purported “threat” by the hacktivist group Anonymous to disrupt next week’s caucuses.
Though the article, if accurate, is wonderful news, it underscores, yet again, the Republican Party’s almost indescribable hypocrisy when it comes to elections. Over the years, as we have detailed on hundreds (if not thousands) of pages at The BRAD BLOG, Republicans have eschewed both paper ballots and their public hand-counting at the polling place, insisting that computer cast and counted “ballots” are far more reliable than anything human beings, with their own hands and eyeballs, are able to do themselves with everyone in the public watching. (That is, except in cases where they are challenging the computer-tabulated results of an election, in which case they insist, appropriately, on publicly hand-counted paper ballots.)
Moreover, as we reported on Wednesday, even though the GOP has worked overtime, since coming to absolute power in many states around the nation during the 2010 elections, to institute polling place Photo ID restriction laws for elections in which Democrats will take part (and be disproportionately disenfranchised by they), when Republicans are able to create all of their very own rules for their very own elections — as is the case with the Iowa Caucuses — they require absolutely no Photo ID for any voter, even those registering as Republican for the first time and voting on the very same day (something they also have long fought against allowing everywhere else!)…
The blatant good-for-me-but-not-for-thee hypocrisy, even for this jaded independent journalist, after this many years of covering such issues, is remarkable..
Martin detailed the supposedly completely public vote-casting and vote-counting procedures, as offered to him by GOP’s Election Director Chad Olsen, as it is scheduled to occur at each of the Hawkeye State’s 1,774 GOP caucus sites next Tuesday…
One person is designated to report the results to the Party, again in the presence of campaign representatives for verification, so that results can be aggregated and shared with the media in a timely manner. A high-level campaign representative is also present at the Party office where precinct results are being aggregated.
Those same campaign representatives on the ground in all 1774 precincts are able to “check” the results being reported in the media against their own observations in that precinct. If a discrepancy were to appear, the can alert both their respective campaign as well as the Party.
Every vote is counted. Every vote is reported. The vote-counting process is carried out in public.
So, to review: Voters in the GOP-run (not state-run) Iowa Caucuses next Tuesday will be able to register to vote right then and there, and then cast their vote on a paper ballot without having to show any form of Photo ID. Those paper ballots will then be counted publicly, at the “precinct”, with the results of the voting at each site announced to everyone right then and there, before they are sent to a central clearing house to be compiled and announced to the media.
Those are all among the best, most transparent, and most reliable election practices we’re aware of, even while they are all things that Republicans have fought virulently against — for years — when it comes to elections in which Democratic voters may be allowed to participate.
Despite that great news for voters in Iowa (at least voters in the Republican caucuses, if not in their general elections), we are still left to conclude: Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
Truly hilarious (in a resigned and disgusted sort of way)…Republicans concerned about fraud to the point of making paper ballots come back. The hypocrisy is so thick you could make jello with it. I hate to Democrat-bash, but with the mountains of evidence against voting machines, Democrats couldn’t/wouldn’t work towards going back to the hand-counted ballot. Might it be related to campaign contributions from these same companies?
Let’s think about it…
Henri V
It could be campaign contributions, or it could be that the Democrats are betting that their silence will be rewarded with e-vote vendors rigging the vote in their favor.
For a Libertarian like Paul, you would think he’d be very concerned about the sanctity and legitimacy of voting and elections. If the vote’s fair, I think he’ll win.
Growing up, a few times I believed in my own disagreeable definition of justice which involved falsehood and caused woe. I was thrashed a couple few times to the extent I never dared venture into the realm of punishable arts again. The key to successful behavior modification in curing bad habits is to disable the act’s power to positively reinforce. such as 15 years minimum in federal prison with forfeiture of all assets for a conviction for any first offense for vote fraud.
We put a man on the moon, but we can’t figure how to elect a person to public office that can’t be rigged? Yes, we’ll have to return to Hand Counted Paper Ballots in order to restore trust in our elections. But, speaking as an professional engineer, systems can be built that are open sourced, meaning that every person would be able to independently verify their vote and the count.
The one thing that i remember the most clearly over the past 39-40 years of my school days at Brandeis University in1970’s are my student adviser’s words that when he was growing up that his grand parents and parents used the term “‘goyishe kup,’” meaning that the “Non-Jews are Stupid”
Later in life I learned that the exact translation of “GOYISHE KUP” means that the “Cattle are STUPID”..
I remember him recalling whatt his father told him when he was growing up in Eastern Europe. One of them being that when his father was in high school he and a group of friends would skip school early on Fridays and go over to his friend’s father’s butcher shop. That they would buy at cost any cows , that had not been butchered by the end of the day on Friday before the begining of shabat . They would take the cow home and wash it and then the boys would procede to “beat the udders of the cows so that they would swell up and turn pink” so as to sell them to the “GOYISHE KUP” as milk producing cows.
The part that I remember him asking me if the East Europeans are so naive, so gullible and so stupid to buy old “non milk producing cows” from a bunch of young Jewish Boys.
So thinking of it now I agree with the Jewish saying that the “GOYISHE KUP” are indeed” Stupid” as they believe that a Bunch of Arab Muslim Kids who were not able to Fly a Cessna Airplane took it upon themselves to FLY a Boing Jumbo Jet outwitting the US Military and Civilian authorities. The “Jewish Lightning Insurance Scam” of the 1960’s is still alive and well has been put to good use by Larry Silverstein with the help of his sayanim jews made a financial killing in imploding wtc by putting 15 million down and comming out with 7 billion dollars for buidings that no one wanted to buy because it would have cost a billion dollars to remove the asbestos from. Then on top of that the people in America actually believe that they actually decide who is elected President or for that that actual VOTE is really counted and makes a difference in deciding who represents them in the White House and congress. http://www.bollyn.com/index.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTXbARGXso http://www.911missinglinks.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxnpujfanUM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeggPSL3gQs
Yeh I agree that the AmericanNon-Jews are indeed American “GOYISHE KUP” or “STUPID CATTLE”!
The Israeli Defense Firm That Tallies The Iowa Caucus
By Christopher Bollyn
1-1-8
The Iowa caucus is only a few days away and the nation’s attention will be directed to the results, which signify the beginning of the U.S. presidential race. But does anyone watch who tallies the results of the Iowa caucus?
The Iowa caucus results were tallied in 2004 by a company that is headed by a man whose company was bought by Elron Electronics, the Israeli defense firm. I suspect that it will be the same this year. Don’t expect to see any grassroots political activists doing the tally in Iowa. The Israeli defense establishment takes care of that part of the American “democratic” election process.
VOXEO
In the summer of 2004, I first learned that a foreign and out-of-state company using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology tallied the Iowa caucus results.
The system used to tally the 2004 Iowa caucus results was provided by a company called Voxeo, which was apparently based in Orlando, Florida. (Yellow flag goes up in the mind of those familiar with Orlando and electronic vote fraud history