Here’s a link to RFK JR.’s article in Rolling Stone about the 2004 election. Kennedy makes a compelling case that the Republicans won by way of cheating. What a…shock. Just about every major election is won by way of cheating. In fact, the winner is the side that can cheat better than the other side (like Henry Gondorff out-cheating Doyle Lonnegan in the poker game from The Sting. Lonnegan: "Four 9s"; Gondorff: "Four Jacks").
For example, the supreme example of cheating to win is the 1960 US presidential election. No one knows exactly how much money the Kennedy machine spent on that race, but it ran into the millions. Relative to present day, it’s most likely 5 to 10 times what is spent on a modern presidential election. People remember RFK (SR.) walking around with a notepad on whose pages were written the names of county sheriffs and mayors like Chicago’s Daley. Beside each name was a monetary figure, typically $10k plus or minus $5k. The sheriffs and mayors "delivered" their counties and cities to JFK through…much the same tactics RFK JR. describes in the article linked to above. Of course, the Nixonians cheated their brains out too, just not quite as well.
The real question in any election is not "who’s running?", or "what do they stand for?", it’s who can cheat so well that they’ve made "a work of Machiavellian art" out of the business of voter fraud, to quote Sideshow Bob; the real question is who has the four jacks?
There is an article from Slate here that discusses 1960 from a more pro-JFK slant. This article from the WSJ argues that the real JFK electoral shenanigans were in Alabama. Of course, plurality of votes is not what it all about.
One of the best comments I have seen online is this, from here:
“The point I would like to make about the national popular vote, is that it does not matter. The “game” isn’t played that way. As for an analogy, I haven’t seen anybody up in arms and complaining that the Yankees rightfully won the World Series in 2003 because they scored more runs (21 – 17). The Marlins won the most games… and are therefore the winners. The US Presidential Election is about winning electoral votes (which, today, translates to winning the popular vote within each state – with exception of Maine and Nebraska where a candidate’s electors are chosen by a plurality of the popular vote within each congressional district). The players understand this and execute their game plans accordingly. If the national popular vote was the actual metric by which they would win, then the campaigns would execute their plans very differently than they do today – leading to a different outcome.”
I suspect that “arguing the toss” (a cricketing term) about who stole which election is not going to get us very far.
Of course, even a fair, legal, squeaky clean election is in the end bought and paid for. As David Friedman said:
“Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. That process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy.”
Well, when I attend a reverse slave auction, I expect my impossible to recount, electronic vote to be counted! How else can I help choose who rules my neighbors? And as far as stolen reverse slave auctions, 2004 was pretty hard to beat.
The only thing I have ever read that was convincing to me about an election system that would be far better than the one we have was written by the old country lawyer from Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Gerry Spence in his book “Give me Liberty”
I was reading Spence while I was a Dem, and that has been about 7 years ago, as Libertarians where do you guys stand on Spence?
“I want me that lawyer from TV what wears the cowboy hat.” -Cletus The Simpsons
He was Karen Silkwood’s family’s lawyer back in the day. Also got Weaver aquitted without even calling a witness. That’s about all I know.
Here’s his site: http://www.gerryspence.com/index2.html
That RFK jr accuses Bush Jr’s goons (probably correctly) of stealing the election is intereting and amusing. The troubles between the Bush’s and Kennedy’s probably go way back. It reminds me of how RFK sr helped steal 1960, and then, of Nixon getting upset about “that whole Bay of Pigs thing.”
In a somewhat tangential, uh, tangent, let me point out how odd it would be if the recent NSA spying operations were turned on the government, itself. Apparently, what they do is a networking kind of thing, where a giant map of “who calls who” is drawn up. Callers comprise the nodes on the map. The weights between the nodes are assigned via frequency and legnth of call. The persons who have links to the known terror suspects are deemed to be of interest and subject to further surveillance.
The Bush family, over the years, surely has made interesting and compelling connections–with not too many degrees of separation–with some of the world’s biggest thugs, crime bosses, and mass murderers.
I suspect that their business has been more than merely the childs’ play of rigging elections.
But let’s not just single out Bush. Why not single out all the Yalies who have been in the top spots over the years….HW Bush, Clinton, etc….
The NSA, I’m sure, has serious dirt on all the Presidents and their men. Whoever has access to their information can surely bribe or extort whatever they wish to from the Executive or the powerful people in Congress….
Of course, complaining that your vote got stolen is like complaining about the car you stole getting chopped. Read “Why I Would Not Vote” http://www.zetetics.com/mac/hitler.htm by Wendy McElroy.
Scott, you are going to have to show me how to create internal links again b/c neither of the links on my post work.
Sure they do.
All you gotta do is highlight it, click the little chain and paste it in there.