Thursday, January 10, 2008

Cheating is for Winners

Via The BRAD BLOG but picked up by a lot of different places. Here's the short form.

Pre-primary polling data and exit polling on the day of the New Hampshire primary predicted dead-on all of the results except the Clinton-Obama race. That one was wildly off by 8 points.
All of them twisted and turned and contorted and grappled and speculated, coming up with every possible unverifiable, backwards-engineered explanation, save for the one that must not be named. The 600 lb. canary in the virtual living room...the fact that no human being has bothered to check what was actually on NH's vast majority of ballots (80%) which were 'counted' by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan machines, all controlled by one bad, horribly irresponsible private company, who has no business being anywhere near a public election.
This should not surprise anyone. If you can break the law and know that there is a real good chance that you will get away with it, there are people who will.

Almost everyone I know drives an average of 5 mph over the posted speed limits. Why? Because we all know that while it is technically against the law, we will almost certainly get away with it. The evidence thus far shows that you can rig an election, or even a primary, and you will get away with it.

So why is it so necessary for candidates to raise so much money, run so much advertising and seem to try and get real people to actually support them? Couldn't they just buy an election? This is WWE World Title stuff. People have to believe that you could actually win to even half-heartedly accept the validity of a supposed win. If big businesses gave you loads of money and you didn't spend it on advertising and campaigning and you still won, it might look a bit like a bribe. In the WWE, you don't bribe your way to the top. You do what your managers tell you to do and entertain the slack jawed masses while doing it.

2 comments:

rbbergstrom said...

Here's the way I see it.

If we don't vote, then they don't have to break the law to have things their way.

If we do vote, they have to break the law to nullify us. Every time they do that, there's a chance someone will spill the beans, or there will be an inconvenient paper trail, etc.

By not voting, we let them win without effort or risk. By voting, we force the potential of a "Watergate" style screw-up growing out of their efforts to rig the elections and cover it up afterwards.

Saying "I give up" because "they're just going to ignore me and rig the election anyway" is self-fulfilling prophecy.

Unknown said...

That's all fine. It assumes that people stop voting because they figure their vote won't get counted. Perhaps some do. That isn't my reason.