Romney's Cotton Candy Acceptance Speech

Reading through Romney's acceptance speech again, a few days later, it's cotton candy.  It's soft, sugary, fluffy, and full of air.  There's absolutely no substance.  When you try to sink your teeth into it, it simply evaporates.

It has the signs of being designed by the marketing department - based on focus group feedback about what words and phrases push people's emotional buttons and then written to push them.  Neither reality nor honesty is a factor.  Tell them what they want to hear.  But since there are almost no facts, it's safe from the fact checkers.   It's the same stuff as glossy magazine ads - empty promises that Americans, individually and collective, can be an impossibly and perfectly beautiful people.

It's guys in the back room poring through the data and coming up with a formula to grab the audience.   But unfortunately for Romney, it's based on data, not on a caring or even intuitive sense of the people behind the data.


Note:  When I got to the end of this post, without having covered that much of Romney's acceptance speech, I asked myself why I was doing this?  Who cares?  Does it matter?

It only matters if people think this is more than just marketing, if people actually believe that there is something here.  So for that reason alone, it makes sense to go through the speech.  My approach is to try to pull out of it the key parts and to try to get at what the speech is about.   And to show there isn't any meat.  It's basically empty words.

Going through the speech, these are the themes that I see.  They aren't necessarily in order in the speech, but rather are scattered about and sometimes they overlap:  

• Trying to show different constituencies that the Romney's presidency would care about them.
• To outline what Romney believes the USA is all about.
• To outline why Obama should be replaced by Romney. (And why people who had hoped that Obama would do great things, should now abandon him for Romney.)
• To show that Romney has both the personal and professional skills necessary to fix the problems Obama hasn't fixed.

In this post I'm just going to focus on the first theme, showing the different constituencies Romney tries to touch.  Or more realistically, those marketing guys in the back room saying, "We need to get various demographics."

Romney's a product and this is an attempt to interest consumers into buying the product.  [Mind you I don't expect much different at the Democratic convention, but I suspect the marketing team will do a better job of connecting with the prospective consumers.]

My quotes come from NPR's transcript of the speech.

The Independent Voters and maybe some Democrats:

"Four years ago, I know that many Americans felt a fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president. That president was not the choice of our party but Americans always come together after elections. We are a good and generous people who are united by so much more than what divides us. . .

But today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future.

It is not what we were promised."

Parents, Small Business Owners, Students:

"Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who's living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity.

Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team.

Every new college graduate thought they'd have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future."

Norman Rockwell miniatures of the perfect America.

And those struggling to get by:

"You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you're an American and you don't quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you'd have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn't right."

Immigrants:

"When every new wave of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty, or knelt down and kissed the shores of freedom just ninety miles from Castro's tyranny, these new Americans surely had many questions. But none doubted that here in America they could build a better life, that in America their children would be more blessed than they."

Well, at least the white European immigrants coming through Ellis Island and those escaping communism in Cuba.  Those coming from non-communist Central or South America or from Asia aren't as directly recognized.

Even astronauts:

"God bless Neil Armstrong."

Will this blessing be backed with cuts to NASA's budget?  Maybe a fire sale of NASA assets to private companies?

And women.  Oh yes, he didn't forget women:

"Those days were toughest on Ann, of course. She was heroic. . . I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine. . . Ann would have succeeded at anything she wanted to.  . .

When my mom ran for the Senate [she lost by a huge margin], my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, "Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?"

I wish she could have been here at the convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As Governor of Massachusetts, I chose a woman Lt. Governor, a woman chief of staff, half of my cabinet and senior officials were women, and in business, I mentored and supported great women leaders who went on to run great companies.  [But he didn't choose a woman as his running mate.]

Of course, the PR guys writing this don't seem to realize that this next quote could just wipe out all their other attempts to win women voters:

"He [Dad, George Romney] convinced my mom, a beautiful young actress, to give up Hollywood to marry him. He moved to Detroit, led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan."

 Maybe the guys will be impressed that Papa Romney got a beautiful young actress, but women aren't going to be excited about him talking her out of her Hollywood career to move to, yeah, Detroit.

And, of course, a coded wink to the religious conservatives:

"As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion."

Even though he didn't say it explicitly, they knew he meant - fight abortions, fight gay marriage, and support such evangelical goals as getting prayer back into public spaces.



How much time should I actually spend going through this speech?  Did anyone actually expect him to say anything?  It's really a pretty cynical speech.  To me, these mentions of the various constituencies are just that - mentions.  They don't reflect a deep understanding of who these constituencies are.  They don't hone in on the issues that might resonate with them - except the religious conservatives.  Rather they are a marketer's attempt to convert focus group data into some votes.

More telling is that there is no substance.  It's simply various ways of saying "Obama failed, but I'll deliver" with nothing that offers how he's going to do it.  Well, yes, his 5 point plan is going to create 12 million new jobs by cutting regulations and taxes and giving parents school choice, and cutting the deficit.  How he's going to cut taxes and the deficit without pretty much shutting down the government he didn't explain.

It's a speech that needed to cover certain things, and I guess it did, but without grace or wit or, as I've said already, substance.

Elephant Beggars Follow Up

Elephant and mahout coming to beg at Chiang Mai restaurant 2008

Four years ago, I posted about elephant beggars in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Today I got this email:

"I typed a response to your post about elephants begging in Chiang Mai, but when I clicked the preview button the post disappeared. That is why I am emailing you now."

[I get complaints now and then about how hard it is to leave comments.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but enough spam messages get through with the Blogspot obstacles, that I'm not ready to turn them off.  I trust my readers to be persistent enough to stick with it until their comment gets through, or, as Tim did, just send me an email.]

"In late 2010, a mahout, using as a weapon his metal-tipped wooden mahout stick, severely beat a couple of Australian tourists, who'd attempted to lecture the mahouts on the ethical treatment of animals. The mahout, and several others who'd been with him at the time of the beating, were arrested. The mahout was charged with some minor offense. All were released the following morning and were back with their elephants on the street within twenty-four hours of the attack. The Australians required hospitalization. The fallout of this awful event was such that the local Thai authorities decided it was time to rid Chiang Mai of the mahouts and their elephants. To that end, the police and the mahouts had a little meeting, which resulted in the mahouts and their elephants being shipped back from whence they came, a province along the Cambodia border. The mahouts, having successfully argued that they must beg in order to feed their elephants, are now subsidized. Or so the story goes. I was living in Chiang Mai at the time, and still am, but was away from Thailand when all this transpired. I've read the seder guest's comment about the elephants being owned by wealthy Thais. That makes this story even more interesting. Living in Alaska is a life-long fantasy of mine. Someday I'll get there. Best wishes, Tim"

I emailed back to Tim to get permission to post his email and found out he's a musician living in Chiang Mai but working in other Asian countries.  He also sent a Bangkok Post article on the attack.

I did some check up on this, including contacting Josh Plotnik who'd we met in Chiang Mai when he was doing his doctoral dissertation studying elephant behavior at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang.  Josh is now doing post-doctoral studies at Cambridge University, though he's spending most of his time in Northern Thailand where he's set up an organization called Think Elephant International.  The website explains the reasons behind of Think Elephant:

Why We Think Elephants

The loss of natural habitat, poaching for ivory, and human-elephant conflict are serious threats to the sustainability of elephants in the wild. Put simply, we will be without elephants, and many other species in the wild, in less than 50 years. Although conservation and wildlife management are not new ideas, clearly new approaches are needed. Think Elephants International is a non-profit focused on practicing science in the field, and teaching it in classrooms. Through research on elephant (and other animal) intelligence, we hope to better inform conservation practice in the wild by helping to formulate action plans that along with focusing on the needs of local human populations, take advantage of what we know about the animal's needs as well. Our research focuses on how elephants "see" their natural world – through smell and sound – and how they navigate this world – through problem solving and cooperation. Equipped with a better understanding of how these animals live, we hope to better help protect them in the wild.

Think Elephants is something else as well – an organization focused on conservation through education. But we don't just teach kids about the conservation battle, we bring the battle to them by bringing the elephants into their classrooms.

Josh confirmed Tim's report:

"The begging elephants situation is extremely complex -- yes, most of the eles were removed from the streets of Bangkok, and went home to Surin. In Surin, the government does subsidize the elephants and thus the mahouts get to stay home for 7,500THB [$240] a month (approximately). Unfortunately, I hear the eles are slowly making their way back to the streets in outlying provinces."

He also sent me to John Roberts' blog for the Golden Asian Triangle Elephant Foundation
(GTEAF*).  Their website describes (in part) their work:

"Yet, despite the strong bond between Thai people and their nation’s most genteel species, there are still a worrying number of elephants forced to walk the city streets to make their mahout a miserly living by begging from tourists.

In an ideal world all elephants would live in the wild and there would be no need to discuss elephants' work.  But until that point is reached, the GTAEF also aims to create and promote ethical work for the elephants and mahouts that are capable, whilst providing care for those that are unable."

Roberts, who is the Director of Elephants at Anantara Golden Triangle’s on-site Elephant Camp, wrote in a blog post just over a year ago (again, in part):

. . .You see, I believe (& I do have some idea which elephants are out there and what their history is) that there exists a perfectly reasonable (and improving) alternative back in the home town of these mahouts, an alternative provided by the Government (& improved for as many as possible by The Surin Project).
Not only is a viable alternative provided it has been very strongly explained to the mahouts that the penalties for being on the streets will be enforced.  “Go back home”, the authorities say, “we may not be able to make you rich there but we’ll keep you & your elephant there in the bosom of your family and, what’s more, if you come back out it’s ‘no more mister nice guy’, powerful people have noticed you, we’ll have to make your life a misery”
To me, that the message has hit home and so many elephants are still in Ban Ta Klang (in previous times when this approach was tried the elephants would stay until their existence became untenable: the food ran out or the money ran dry) means that this time, this IS a viable alternative.
So, I believe that the mahouts out there on the streets now, at least the ones I know about, have few excuses left (...a tendency toward an itinerant lifestyle?  ...a nagging wife?) - it is my belief that they are there for financial gain.  Believe it or not, the natural graze out on the streets may, at times, be better than can be found back at home but I believe the decision to go back out (most came home then went out again) was a purely financial one and has very little justification in ‘traditional lifestyle’ or ‘elephant welfare’ terms and none at all in the ‘no alternative’ terms. . .

You can follow Roberts' blog, Elephant Tails , here.  The most recent post is about selling coffee beans that have been processed by having elephants eat them before they are roasted.  Come on now, it's not that strange.  After all earlier this year I did a post about acacia trees whose seeds had to go through a giraffe's digestive system before they could germinate. 

Clearly there is a lively 'elephant world' out there that I've only glimpsed into. 

This post is long and convoluted enough.  I'll try to do another one on elephants soon though.

*GTAEF, from what I can tell, is a project of Anantara, a luxury hotel chain, that caters to the wealthy (I checked on a room in their hotel by the elephant camp and it started at over $1000 per night.  We stayed a night once in nearby Chiang Rai, in what we thought was a pretty fancy hotel for $35 per night.  That was an internet discount, but they weren't losing money on that price.)  This could be a great example of what's known as social entrepreneurship - using the market to support important non-profit causes.  Or it could be using green issues as a marketing ploy.  I just don't know enough about the organization to evaluate. 

Louv: "The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”

Turnagain Arm Mud Flats - Near Hope

My daughter's roommate in college was from NYCity and needed to regularly escape to the concrete from their very green, wooded campus.  So maybe it's just what you're used to.

But I still believe that getting out into natural settings is good for the soul.  And I seem to be supported by Richard Louv who's speaking in Anchorage Sept. 6 (free) at Wendy Williamson at UAA at 7pm.  And Fairbanks Sept. 5.  Louv Alaska visit details here.

"[Louv's] Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions and simple ways to heal the broken bond—and many are right in our own backyard."

[I haven't read the books so I have to rely others for now.]

wet grass seed

Louv's seven reasons we need a New Nature Movement:

1. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need. 
2. As of 2008, more than half of the world’s population now lives in towns and cities. Adults have nature-deficit disorder, too. 
3. Environmentalism needs to hit reset. 
4. Sustainability alone is not sustainable. 
5. Conservation is not enough. Now we need to “create” nature.  
6. We'll need the true greening of America and the rest of the world. 
7. We have a choice. There is elaboration of each at the link above.

 This is fall skunk cabbage.  Go here for early spring skunk cabbage.

Six Mile Creek

These are left over from last week's trip to Hope.

“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.”

—Richard Louv

The Hitchhiker

I was riding home along 36th and was waiting for the light to change on the median between the north and south bound lanes of the New Seward Highway when I saw the hitch hiker with his thumb out and his skateboard in his other hand waiting for a ride south.

I was thinking about my days hitchhiking Europe as a student and the time I hitched to northern Wisconsin from Chicago.  Would I pick this guy up? 

Cars were whizzing by.  And then a car braked and pulled over.  A yellow cab.  The hitch hiker ran to the window and they talked.  The cabbie got out and opened the trunk.  The skateboard and a small day pack went in.  At that point I finally pulled out my camera and got this shot just after the hitchhiker got into the cab.   My light changed and I pedaled on home wondering if the cab put on the meter or not. 

"I love the way he lights up around his kids" and other Republican speech thoughts

First, let me take something totally out of context, the way the Republicans are running with Obama's inept comment about entrepreneurs. 

Here's Romney's comment about his running mate Paul Ryan:

"I love the way he lights up around his kids . . ."

Wow, I thought when I heard this.  But it makes sense from a man whose religion forbids smoking.  It must be thrilling to see someone have the freedom to light up around his kids.  Of course, I'm assuming it meant tobacco and not that medicinal herb, cause then we'd need to know about Ryan's health issues. 

Fortunately for the Democrats, they don't have to take an out of context comment like this and run ads riffing on it, because Romney and his colleagues like Rep. Akin say enough real stuff to give them serious political ammunition.

I heard Marco Rubio and part of Romney's speech.  A few quotes from Rubio I thought worth commenting on:

"Our national motto is "In God we Trust," reminding us that faith in our Creator is the most important American value of all."

It's interesting that Romney, a little later would say:

"And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion."

Let's remember exactly what the First Amendment to the Constitution says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Given the first Amendment's prohibition on the establishment of religion by Congress, it seems strange to claim 'faith in our Creator' as the most important American value of all. I understand the First Amendment was to get government out of the religion business and letting people practice as they please.  I would think justice and freedom would be higher on the list.

 Wikipedia reminds us "In God we Trust" was not the motto of our founding fathers. 

Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States^{[citation needed]} until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto.^[4]

And reports tell us that the convention protestors were not allowed to assemble any closer than 10 blocks from the convention.


Rubio spoke movingly about his dad.

My dad was a bartender. . . A few years ago during a speech, I noticed a bartender behind a portable bar at the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who had worked for many years as a banquet bartender.

But I couldn't help think that if everyone in the US shared Mitt Romney's values about drinking alcohol, Rubio's dad wouldn't have had a job.

And then there was the homage to the convention theme of American exceptionalism:

"For those of us who were born and raised in this country, it's easy to forget how special America is. But my grandfather understood how different America is from the rest of the world, because he knew what life was like outside America."

Rubio's granddad, as I understand it, before coming to the US only knew Cuba - the country the US has been boycotting since Castro came to power over 50 years ago.    I have no doubt that Rubio's grandfather loved his life in the US, and his gratitude for living here is appropriate.  But I'm not buying his expertise on how things are in all the rest of the world 'outside America."  There are a lot more options than Cuba. 

The US is an amazing country and has been an inspiration to people around the world.   But so was Germany before WW I. After the humiliating Treaty of Versailles,  Hitler promised Germans he'd regain their former greatness.  Rubio suggests Romney, too, will restore the US to its former greatness and beyond:

Mitt Romney believes that if we succeed in changing the direction of our country, our children and grandchildren will be the most prosperous generation ever, and their achievements will astonish the world.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins.  Given that Rubio had already ranked faith in the creator as his number one value, you'd think he would remember this line from Proverbs:

Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling.

I hope you realize this has not been a review of Rubio's (and certainly not Romney's) speech.  I've just taken a few lines.  Some of my comments are more serious than others.

I hope enough Americans realize, when they hear speeches like this analyzed by the media, that they too are taking what they see as the most interesting lines or the lines most likely to gain hits for their online articles.  Listen to or read the speeches yourself.

Rubio's speech.
Romney's speech.

Suffering Nature-Deficit Disorder? Try A Dose of Alaskan Mountains and Clouds

Never heard of Nature-Deficit Disorder?* I hadn't either until this morning, but I have known that being out in the woods, even in the mini-woods of our back yard, makes me feel better.

Saturday going to Hope was sunny and I stopped a couple of times to be near natural water.  Sunday, coming back, when it was cloudy, I had more time to stop here and there and walk around in natural settings, places where the human impact was almost invisible.  (Though the sound of traffic sometimes invaded those spaces since I wasn't far off the road.)

So I'll post some pictures of those moments over the next few days so you can take a break.  And maybe find some local natural spot.  The coolth of the air, the fresh smell of rain, the sounds of water and wind, are all more than pictures can convey.

And then I learned today:

*Richard Louv, the award-winning author of Last Child in the Woods, will be at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium on September 6th at 7:00 pm. He will talk about his recent book, the Nature Principle, Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder, as well as the research from his earlier work on the connection between youth and nature.  More info at Chugach Children's Forest.

FAIRBANKS folks - you get him the day before, Wednesday, Sept. 5. More here.

Both events are billed as FREE.  (Someone's paying, but you won't have to pay at the door.  But you might consider donating to the organizations that are sponsoring Mr. Louv.)

Now go outside and stick your finger or toes in the water, smell the tree bark, taste an herb or berry or something else growing wild. 
 

Wasn't There Room In The Cab For The Last Kid?

 

Seen waiting for a light on Tudor near the Seward Highway.

Hope Last Saturday Night

My book club met in Hope Saturday.  One of the members has a cabin there.  After the discussion (John McPhee's The Control of Nature) and dinner, we walked into downtown Hope.  Note, the 2010 Census says there are 192 residents.  Not sure if that counts the summer residents, and it certainly doesn't count the campers on the beach.

We walked down to the muddy banks of Resurrection Creek.  This is where it flows into Turnagain Arm.

The Super Saturated Sugar Strings was playing at the Seaview Bar.  I'd met some of the band at the Out North fundraiser earlier this year.

Early Anchorage Election Report Shows Higher Republican, But Overall Low, Turnout

As I glance through the early returns (8:59pm)  it appears that Republicans were out voting more than Democrats and others.  Race after race shows more votes cast in the Republican ballots than the Democratic ballots, with just a few exceptions.

This led me to believe that Prop. 2 would be doing poorly and that was the case.  It's losing - 62. % NO to 37. % YES.

Prop. 1 is a tossup at this point with Yes slightly ahead.

Turnout appears low in the precincts reporting - under 10% if I read it right.

I was number 93 at my polling place voting machine around 3pm.  They said they had 1200 registered. (But those numbers are always very high because they are so slow at getting rid of people who have moved out of state or died.)


Here's a link to the latest results HTML  or  PDF.  (The 9:15pm posting is now up)

How Many Ways Are There To Steal An Election? And Why Doesn't Anyone Care?

Americans have long taken pride in their free elections and think of voter fraud in the US as something part of history (Such as Chicago's slogan "Vote early and vote often" and stories of people voting using the names of dead voters.)

We are even proud to send observers to countries where democracy is new and governments untrustworthy.  But we have plenty of stories of problems in the US.

Alaska has a primary election today.  Given Anchorage's municipal election fiasco in April, voting machine expert and blogger Brad Friedman has posted about our voting machines and the elections practices that make them vulnerable to fraud in today's election:

Of course, there are "tamper-evident" security seals placed over some of the most vulnerable parts of the optical-scan systems, and those could never be defeated without leaving visual clues behind, right?

Well, funny thing. In Alaska, when a security seal is discovered broken on their tabulation computers --- if they are discovered broken --- poll workers are instructed to simply replace it with another one and start the voting, as both several poll workers, as well as an Alaska election official (who has now been fired) confirmed with The BRAD BLOG. Several seals, the now former Alaska election official told us when she still had a job, are provided to poll workers to make replacing broken seals very simple, as seen in this next photo...

So why would Election Officials in the Last Frontier instruct poll workers to simply replace broken seals before the election, which would seem to defeat the entire point of using "tamper-evident" seals in the first place? It's a good question, especially when these machines --- which will be used once again in more than 1,000 jurisdictions in all or parts of 24 different states during this November's Presidential Election --- have been shown by many many official studies over the last decade to be incredibly vulnerable to nearly undetectable manipulation.

I would note that this is not a case of local bloggers being asleep, they have helped Friedman get information for this post.



 The Economist has an article about stealing elections that lists several ways to steal an election.   First a few based on a study by a University of Essex researcher.

1.  blatant ballot stuffing (is declining)
2. alter election laws (increasing)
   [Republicans have used 'voter fraud' as an excuse to require photo id's to vote in a number of critical states.  We know that a large proportion of people without photo id's are likely to vote Democratic (and student id's with photos are not allowed in some states).  Documented cases of voter fraud are almost non-existent in these states.  Critics are calling this 'election-fraud' NOT voter fraud. See NY Times "The Myth of Voter Fraud.]
   
3. gerrymandering unlosable constituencies
   [The Alaska Redistricting Board, while more careful than past boards, has managed to endanger seats of members of the Senate coalition and Fairbanks Democratic Senators and representatives by how they drew the lines.]
4. vote-buying, using state resources in campaigning, and exploiting partisan media.
   [More common outside the US, however the Citizens United Supreme Court decision appears to have had a similar effect by unleashing unlimited private money, in some case undisclosed, that can be spent influencing voters.  And Fox News was already doing this without contributions.]
5. Some fraud masquerades as incompetence.  From a Duke study by Judith Kelly (also in the Economist article)
1. "Too few voting slips, patchy voter lists, and long queues at polling stations distort elections as surely as burnt ballot boxes and bribes. Yet election observers are likely to withhold their worst scoldings if the line between cock-up and corruption is unclear."
   [This is a large part of the problem we had in Anchorage in April] 
6. "intimidation, sabotage (doors being glued shut, for example, in Russia) or manipulation" of poll watchers.
7.  "Another dodge is to invite more than one mission" of poll watchers (external groups coming to verify elections.) 
   
   Then there's a whole new way to steal elections in the last 20 years:
8.  Tampering with Voting Machines
   Here is a video from Princeton University showing how to steal an election by messing with the software.
   
   
   

We use Diebold machines in Anchorage.  Our last election showed a number of irregularities, including seals that can easily be tampered with.  Our election officials allow voting machines to overnight with election workers and election workers are told not to worry about broken seals.  [SEE, I CAN JUST WRITE THAT WITHOUT BOLD PRINT OR EXCLAMATION POINTS, BECAUSE I TOO NOW TAKE IT FOR GRANTED.  We're like the slowly boiling frogs.  Wow, finding a boiling frog link even explodes that myth.]

If I were going to steal an election by tampering with the machines, I'd try out some things in elections before I wanted to strike.  Maybe someplace remote, like Alaska.  Test things out, lull the public into believing that, "well there are problems, but no one actually fixed the election."  That happened in Anchorage in April.  Few seemed to care about all the well documented problems, "because none of the races was close."  Then I would try it out on a specific race.  There's a perfect one to try this on today.

In today's election, international mining interests and other resource developers like Shell ($150,000 contribution)  had raised, by the end of July, over $700,000 to defeat proposition 2.  (Those supporting proposition 2 had only raised $150,000.)  The resource exploitation industry has an obvious interest in preventing the reactivation of the Coastal Zone Management program that existed for over 25 years in Alaska until the governor and the legislature could not agree on legislation to extend it.  The video shows how little it would take to manipulate the voting machines.

We do have the advantage of having back up hard copies of ballots.  But the Anchorage election in April showed how those hard copies could be mishandled.  There were many, many questions  about what happened to the hundreds and hundreds of questioned ballots.  If any of the races had been decided by less than several hundred votes, there would have been no way to verify who was really elected.

Alaskans,   elections are the foundation of democracy.  Are we going to hold state election officials and legislators accountable for making our elections incorruptible?

And what happens here is happening in different scenarios around the country.  So all you non-Alaskans have work to do as well.  And if anyone thinks that last sentence ignored my international readers, you're included.  The Irish threw out €54 million in voting machines because they weren't safe from tampering.   [Mac users, you can get the Euro symbol (€) by typing Option+Shift+2]

Do we need to call the UN to send election observers to the US in November? 



Other sources on stealing elections:

Foreign Policy has an article on how to steal elections that's quite similar, though it is focused on  countries with few checks and balances.

The vulnerablility of voting machines from ars technica.

A long Alternet piece on stealing elections has this subtitle:

Americans cling to an idealized image of our political integrity, but a look at how we run our elections tells a very different tale.

Gallup Poll senior editor David Moore has written a couple of books on this topic as specifically relates to polling and public opinion.  


I realize the title promises something on why we don't care about this.  I could change the title, but I think it's probably as important as the part on stealing elections.  Let me start a list of things that make sense to me.

1. People commiting election fraud have gotten the media to focus on VOTER fraud.
1. OK, I'm guessing about who is doing this, but googling the question comes up with stories about VOTER fraud, not election fraud. 
2. Those making money off voting machines have a vested interest in people believing they are safe.  
2. People don't know there's a problem because we don't change our basic beliefs easily.  Americans have been taught that American democracy is untouchable.  That's in part what the Republican platform title "American Exceptionalism" is all about.
3. Some people don't care as long as it benefits their side.
4. Americans are overwhelmed by things they should be worried about and so they do nothing about any of them.  (Or pick an issue and work on just that one.) 
   
   
   Readers, you have to supply the rest.