I had this idea years ago. I think it should be implemented immediatly.

I guess, assuming it's utterly impossible for either party to come up with a candidate that anyone would actually want to vote for, this idea is as good as any.

If state governments can implement this proposal in an honest fashion, how the fuck hard is it to have a paper trail that records the candidates people vote for?

Or maybe Diebold shouldn't be in on this - we run the risk that the winner will always be a Repube.

Makes me happy to live in Arizona!

Considering the voter fraud we already have, it is more than likely the winner will be either a dead person or an illegal immigrant.

Another stupid gimmick.

Democrats have tried all sorts of schemes to try and pad their votes: motor voter, register on election day, prison voting, felon voting, suppress military votes. Etc.

And none have worked as well as the Repube's cozy relationship with Diebold, have they, Verm?

And none have worked as well as the Repube's cozy relationship with Diebold, have they, Verm?

And none have worked as well as the Repube's cozy relationship with Diebold, have they, Verm?

But I repeat myself...

We had millions of our military men die in past wars to guarantee us the freedom to cast our votes in a free country. This cheap gimmick disgraces their memory.

wow, so the Bushites will have even more incentive to rig elections.

In JustSomeGuy's world, voting for the candidate of your choice is considered to be rigged if the candidate that wins is a Republican. Go figure.

How utterly disdainful and Utterly Shameful. To entice Voters to Vote simply because they might win a Prize cheapens the Right to Vote itself. I find it utterly appalling Myself.

Larry

No, Republifundie4evar. However, your party is the one with the history of rigging elections and suppressing people who actually know how things work in the "reality-based community".

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

October 17, 2004, New York Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush.

So, how is that reality creating going, Republifundie?

Pathetic idea. This will go nowhere, thank goodness.

Voting is its own reward.

It will also encourage people to vote more than once.

Utter nonsense. Bribe the voter, this amounts to the same thing, good grief.

This must be a good idea. Look who is opposing it.

It will never happen because the Repubs are shit scared of huge turnouts. Get anything over a 66% turnout and the Republicans wouldn't win another election until they changed their ways to fit in with their ideas. Same goes for the Democrats, of course, but they'd certainly be the immediate beneficiaries of any expanded voter turnout.

People should vote for the right reason. If there is low voter turn out, who cares.

In many ways low voter turn out is a message that should be examined. I am betting that people don't vote because they believe their individual vote doesn't matter, rather than simple apathy. In regard to national elections there is some truth to this, especially in the way the electoral college is set up.

However, state and especially local offices and referenda can be influenced greatly by single votes. Voting on that level is extremely important, and I have a proposal that I think is fair and may motivate people to get more involved. (And it is not a lottery.)

Instead, I think citizens who vote do so because they believe in participating in government. They take a bit of their time and effort to consider their choices and go to the voting station.

As such people who vote should be "paid" for their time and effort that they have put into making the government work. To this end, I would like to see an automatic deduction (in whatever amount seems reasonable) from either state or federal income tax be granted to everyone who votes during an election year.

Likewise there should be some kind of substantial income tax deduction for those who served on juries.

Democrats have tried all sorts of schemes to try and pad their votes: motor voter, register on election day, prison voting, felon voting, suppress military votes. Etc.

Posted by vernon at 2006-04-09 11:20 PM | Reply

Here's one the dems' haven't tried:

All the dems need to do is somehow find a company that contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dem party so we can give them the contract to build machines that will have no paper trail and therefore no way of verifying results. They can put friends in charge of seeing to it that these machines are used everywhere that the race might be close.

VERNON, wanna play "guess who's doing that right now?" Didn't think so. Simmer down now and enough of that lunatic right-tighty ranting.

every person who votes in his state will automatically have his or her name entered in a in draw to win $1 million

Stupid idea. Mostly, it is idiots that buy lottery tickets. We already have enough idiots that vote, we don't need more.

Cheers,
Walt

It's a shame that people would care more about a virtually nonexistent chance at winning money than a chance to have a say in their country's electoral process. Although I don't think providing refreshments at the polls while you wait in line is a bad idea.

Joe,

Although I don't think providing refreshments at the polls while you wait in line is a bad idea.


In some precincts that were almost evenly split between Republican and Democrat voters, refreshments WERE served. Kool-aid laced with the 'vote Republican' drug was served. THAT is how Bush won Ohio; Diebold had nothing to do with it. Just further proof of Republican theft and Democrat voter disenfranchisement!

Jeff, how could I forget.

And the packs of cigarettes that the Gore Campaign gave out to homeless people in Milwaukee in 2000 were probably laced with something too.

All the dems need to do is somehow find a company that contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dem party so we can give them the contract to build machines that will have no paper trail and therefore no way of verifying results.

* * * * *

What a great idea!! Problem, though, is how are you going to convince people that voting machines are a good idea?

Hmmmm. I GOT IT!!! Maybe you could have a whole bunch of Democratic voters, I dunno--some old retired West Palm Beach liberals, for example, who don't live in Florida but stay down there just long enough to avoid paying taxes in Massachusetts and New Jersey, just thinking out loud here. Anyway, have them claim to have been disenfranchised because they had to read across a row and punch a pin through a card!! And then they can say they were too stupid/weak/lazy to do it!! And that we need voting machines to help them!!!

We're on our way now. Now all the Dems have to do is (1) win an election, so they can get their guys in, then (2) program the machines, so that whatever the liberal geezer from WPB does, the machine figures out what he SHOULD have done!!

This is a stupid idea. People who don't want to vote, SHOULDN'T vote because THEY DONT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.

All the dems need to do is somehow find a company that contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dem party so we can give them the contract to build machines that will have no paper trail and therefore no way of verifying results.

* * * * *

What a great idea!! Problem, though, is how are you going to convince people that voting machines are a good idea?

Hmmmm. I GOT IT!!! Maybe you could have a whole bunch of Democratic voters, I dunno--some old retired West Palm Beach liberals, for example, who don't live in Florida but stay down there just long enough to avoid paying taxes in Massachusetts and New Jersey, just thinking out loud here. Anyway, have them claim to have been disenfranchised because they had to read across a row and punch a pin through a card!! And then they can say they were too stupid/weak/lazy to do it!! And that we need voting machines to help them!!!

We're on our way now. Now all the Dems have to do is (1) win an election, so they can get their guys in, then (2) program the machines, so that whatever the liberal geezer from WPB does, the machine figures out what he SHOULD have done!!

Posted by rightisright at 2006-04-10 03:22 PM | Reply

So what you're saying is that the reason we have PAPERLESS voting machines is becuase of people from Massachusetts??
Interesting...especially the part where they're all democrats. As far as where they're from, if FL is getting the Tax benefit of them being there, then that's were they vote.

I realize you tried to parody my post (poorly done BTW). You see, my post used facts and was virtually free of specualtion and insults. It pointed out the straight truth. If you can, please refute any part of my post.....WITHOUT projecting and putting words in my mouth.

Umm, no.

I'm saying that the whole trend to paperless voting was a result of West Palm Beach County's debacle in 2000. Which was caused by tens of thousands of people who were residents of Florida for tax reasons, but who spent as much of the year as possible (that is, as much as they could spend without getting taxed in-state income tax rates) in the Northeast. So, they were given guides to tell them how to vote, by their retirement centers, because they were assumed to be ignorant on local ballot issues and races.

Happens every year. Except in 2000, there was a misprint in the voting guide: by punching their recommendation, you were voting for Pat Buchanan. Which is why Pat Buchanan got more votes in ultraliberal West Palm Beach County (with a high number of Jews besides) than in the rest of the state of Florida combined. Which is why they were able to say that people were disenfranchised by the Florida vote, even though the polls were still open!!

Thus, the move away from "butterfly ballots", and to companies like Diebold. And why it became a fedeal issue, in all states, to ensure that stupid Democrats can always have . . . well, I almost said have their votes counted--they WERE counted. Just not the ones they had meant to have counted.

Mesays that if you're too dumb to read the ballot before punching your vote in, you don't deserve the franchise anyway. But that's just more evidence of my rightwing smallmindedness. Diebold is building election machines, because Democratic operatives in West Palm Beach can't print a voting guide, and the Democratic voters in West Palm Beach are too stupid to read the ballot before punching a hole in their ballot, just in case the guide was wrong.

And BTW: Florida has no state income tax. Many of the "snowbirds", as we call them, spend only as much time outside their "home" states so they can avoid paying NY, NJ, MASS, MICH income taxes.

I grew up in Venice, which is solidly Republican. But we had a couple hundred thousand of those people there, too.

Great Fucking Idea!!!

But i do live in Chicago and could have issues