It’s behavior familiar to graduate assistants, who know or know of professors turn that into an art form. My favorite was an Australian who so frequently quoted his earlier masterpieces (as if retelling the story of the Penge Bungalow murders), that titters quickly gave way to boredom. But then he was also given to correcting his students’ English. Enough said.

I guess I’ll go see what some anonymous poster at DKos has to say.

Frontpagers there typically have pseudonyms, not anonyms: see

http://www.dailykos.com/special/about2

I assume that, whatever happens, Michigan (and Florida) will eventually be allowed a full delegation with full voting privileges at the Dem convention.

If the Dems don’t have a contested convention, those votes won’t mean much, but the winner of the nomination, who will at that point control the party, will insist on giving the delegation full voting rights so as not to offend Michiganders (and Floridians!) who will be voting on Election Day.

If the Dems do have a contested convention, the cry will go up to treat the January 15 event as a “beauty pagent”, and allow MI to put on real primary/caucus/convention at a later date to elect their delegates. And that cry will surely be heeded, because this arrangement would be in everyone’s interests. Michiganders would get delegates who could vote. The candidates would get a chance to increase their delegate totals. The party insiders would welcome any opportunity to get some candidate enough pledged delegates to avoid, or at least shorten, any floor fight over the nomination.

I’m not a proponent of crossing over to vote for anyone. I was just suggesting to Michigan Democrats that if they do cross over, it might not be wise to pull the lever for Romney as suggested by Attaturk. But I don’t think that worry over the results in terms of Michigan’s participation at the Dem convention should be a big factor for anyone considering a tactical vote in this primary. The party was stupid to try to punish Michigan for going early. Not only did delegitimizing MI and FL have the effect of increasing our own chances for a contested convention (by weakening the influence of votes that could push our side to an early decision), but, as I reason above, the punishments aren’t going to stick anyway. Nothing demonstrates lack of control more clearly than punishment that you can’t make stick.

The screwing of this primary by HRC’s supporters when we get to the convention, assuming a lot of Dems cross over and fail to keep her under 50% in Michigan.

I don’t think that Michigan Dems should be tempted into this gambit of crossing over to vote for Mitt in hopes of sabotaging the Republicans. No, it’s not that I imagine that cross-voting is immoral. I’m worried about blowback and unintended consequences.

Until and unless we get the powers of the presdiency back into reasonable bounds, I think that the very worst, most dangerous, sort of president to have in office, is someone as talented, smart and industrious as Romney, who is also as ideologically flexible, and owes his presidency to the Republican coalition. Romney is also the most likely of their field to emerge as a compromise candidate if they have a contested convention. I seriously doubt the wisdom of strengthening his position, in any way whatsoever, and certainly not now, when what is intended as a small boost to keep him viable, instead might well give him the momentum to surge ahead on the back of the highly volatile momentum of a nomination campaign. Ditto for voting for Huckabee, or McCain.

If you’re a Michigan Dem feeling the need to cross-dress and take a walk on the wild side in tomorrow’s primary, please vote for Fred. No, not that that choice is entirely immune from the potential for blow-back. But at least Fred really has no chance of winning, but could be kept in until Mega Tuesday by a win in MI. And every contender of theirs that stays in until Mega Tuesday increases the odds that they will have a contested convention. This year, such a contested convention is likely to turn into the Minneapolis Mauling. Bring it!

However, the incentive for hacking them is not very great, because unlike with the paperless voting, again, there’s the paper trail. So if there were ever a recount—and there was after the 2004 election, when a survey of New Hampshire voting districts chosen by the Nader campaign showed there was virtually no difference between the scanned tabulation and the hand recount—the malfeasance would be easily discovered.

The whole optical scanner paper trail argument was shown to be meaningless by BlackBoxVoting.org about three years ago. Tons of info there about about this. Funny DH brought up the the Nader recount. BBV has been all over this for quite some time as well:

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-b…..71260.html

Isn’t it quite obvious that there’s plenty of “incentive” to rig an election if you feel you won’t be caught? We have BigMoney interests spending hundreds of billions, if not trillions on invading countries and killing hundreds of thousands of their people in the process, along with thousands of our own soldiers. You don’t think they’d be up for a little vote manipulation?!?!

I don’t understand such vitriol against those looking into this issue. Perhaps people like DH are frustrated with people with knee-jerk reactions claiming conspiracies around every corner, but places like BBV are much more thorough that anyone else I’ve seen covering this issue, and they think elections have been stolen in America.

Yes, the demographics of NH most certainly could explain those results. That’s why BBV is analyzing that exact issue right now, and so far the numbers don’t seem to back up the demographics argument. I trust them to come to a reasoned and well-researched conclusion about this issue soon.

Knowledge is power. I wish the Netroots would gain more knowledge about voting integrity in America. Otherwise, much energy and money will be wasted if elections continue to be manipulated.

I’ll look for what you’re referencing since BBV is reporting just the opposite. Diebold machines, and the most easily manipulated ones no less, were used in the overwhelming majority of NH counties according to BBV. I’ve been reading BBV since the 2004 Selections, and they admit when they’re wrong, which is very rarely. So far, they seem to be suggesting that there’s a lot wrong in NH.

BBV is almost single-handedly taking down the electronic voting industry. They have won lawsuits in court, and have won a settlement from Diebold that helped fund their activities. BBV is non-partisan and includes people from all political persuasions.

Hardly a “count-conspiracy” organization.

I guess I’ll go see what some anonymous poster at DKos has to say.