Reply #4: Sure. Every screwed up election we let go by gets us more screwed up

[autorank]

elections. The Ohio election in 2004 was an unmitigated disaster and it had to be challenged. That was difficult because the Democratic Party was silent. In this case, Dean came out to San Diego and and slammed the lousy policies of the local officials, which endorses the criticism. The suit is brought by citizens, you and me, people who are the ultimate guardians of democracy.

As for efforts - not everybody works on the same thing so the folks here are doing something very important, making a point that we're not taking any more garbage. It's not like they'd be working for Francine Busby's 11/06 contest if they were not doing this.

As far as polling goes, I have not seen any recent polling. Two things, one of the polls prior to this most recent election was all over the place on demographics and it was a well known one so I'd not worry too much about that. 600-700 people sampled can sometimes produce misleading results.

Whatever poll there was didn't pick up on Bilbray supporting off shore drilling. Even Cunningham opposed this, lead a coalition to stop it.

Ultimately, we have a right to know that those declared the winner of elections actually won. With secret vote taking and counting, we have no way of knowing because the touch screens/optical scans are computers which either (a) don't keep the ballots (touch screens) and (b) do their little work in secret (election officials, etc. are not allowed to peak inside the machines period, by contract).

That's the issue - show us the results, how you arrived at them, the ballots because WE HAVE QUESTIONS and we're the citizens. It has to be more than "trust me" to prove election.

Without the ability to do this, there is no reason to think that ANY of these folks were actually elected and no reason to provide CONSENT to their rule.

Here is how we got here http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00233.htm

It's a struggle just to get those in power to grasp the simple concept that the public is really irritated and doubtful of their motives and legitimacy. Elections that end up close and involve electing workers taking machines home for "overnights" do not inspire confidence.

Hope this helped.