It just doesn't seem reasonable to run an election on the Honor System. Of course you want to try to assure the integrity of the process. People have little enough faith in the process as it is. If they were asking us to jump through impossible hoops to avoid a dubious problem, I'd agree with you, but providing an ID just do

I've heard several stories about voter fraud, with and without convictions. Obamacare itself might owe itself to illegal votes. At least, Al Franken's margin of victory was smaller than the number of illegal felons known to have voted. They might not all have voted for Al, of course, but I don't want to even have to wonder about such questions. As long as we still have a tendency for multi-million vote elections to be decided by impossibly small margins, I don't see any reason not to at least go through the motions of trying to keep it honest.

I hate to tell you this, but voting machines are pretty inadequate. Elections are at best approximations. If an election comes down to say one tenth of one percent of the vote the margin of error is exceeded.

On top of that you've got the poll workers. Most of them are elderly retirees. Some of them aren't up to the demands of running a voting booth.

There are also lots of ways to skew election that are technically legal, for example providing too few voting machines in areas where you might want to suppress the vote.

None of this is entirely relevant. The voter ID thing is being put forward to solve a problem that flat-out doesn't exist. That is unjustified.

Besides, how hard is it to get a fake ID? Ask any college student.

It seems that Republican secretary of state in PA and Ohio extended voting hours in areas that vote mostly Republican, and reduced voting hours in areas that vote mostly Democrat. A Republican legislator even said the new hours would allow Romney to win PA.

In Florida, the people who would be unable to vote based on new measures, including voting hours, are mainly the group that would vote for Obama. There is enough of them that not allowing them to vote would allow Republican to win.

So now I see what the controversy is about---it wasn't about tightening up the process per se (which probably should be done). Instead, it appears to be a systematic attempt to undermine the democratic process and win states for Romney. Whichever group came up with this set of ideas should be barred from anything political. Not sure how this compares in relation to our robocall scandal in the last election. Both are despicable practices.

Well, in MY opinion, the "bottom line" concerning the 2012 United States of America's Presidential election is this:

Indeed, when the highest and most powerful elected position in the United States of America is between **the utterly horrendous and pitiful choice** of the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, or of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, that tells you all that you need to know about just how close to **complete and utter ruin** that the United States of America **really and truly is**!!


Chess Fan

"It seems"? What does that mean? Is it like Harry Greid's "the word is out"?

"It seems" doesn't refer to the voting hours. Those are the factual parts. The "seems" is in reference to the idea that this was being done to make it easier for Repubs to vote and harder for Democrats to vote. I should have been clearer there. Sorry.

Of course, now that this outcome has been pointed out to them, they'll remedy the situation promptly.

Now that's optimism.

Ann Romney and Christie both gave pretty good speeches tonight. But Santorum got up and gave a typically poor one.

As usual, it was all about himself, his personal experiences, and things that have nothing to do with what he would or wouldn't have done as President. During the campaign his excuse for talking about these things were that people were asking him, but that doesn't apply here. He might have been a decent motivational speaker, but you get the feeling that he only wanted to be President so that more people would listen to him talk about this other stuff.

But you know, it finally struck me tonight. It might have been a good speech if Santorum had been running for First Lady instead of President. First Ladies can talk about personal experiences and tell motivational stories because they aren't supposed to be making policy anyway. Santorum was just running for the wrong job.

If Santorum's Speech had a title, it would have been "In Case You've Forgotten, This Is Why I Am Not The Nominee".

Didn't see it, but did see politifact rated his budget claim as false on the truthometer. There bottom like is as follows.

The governor said "we had to cut state spending by 13 billion dollars over two years."

That’s not true. Christie decreased state spending, but the total doesn’t near $13 billion.

Christie’s claim hinges largely on a $10.7 billion structural deficit. He used the measurement from his first year in office to his advantage. But the next year, he dismissed the structural deficit as the "old way of budgeting."


Can't copy the link as it is on twitter and I'm on a tablet, but shouldn't be hard to google. He cut 475 mill in school aid among other things to cut 2.2 billion eventually, so not anywhere near the 13 bill. But how many governors have actually cut their budget at all. Good for him, unless he did it at the expense of the vulnerable....which seems to be the norm the party has swung towards now.