NY-23

Image via Wikipedia

Who could have imagined something like this?

The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus - tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines.

I believe these type of problems are things the left has warned about for years, and when we yelled and screamed about them the right decided to paint us as some conspiracy theorists. Well guess who is joining the chorus now? Yup – the right. You got wingnuts here and here talking about the “stolen election”.

If a virus did alter the outcome of this election then a new one should be held immediately. I think anyone who cares about our democracy would agree, but it should also set off a bipartisan effort to finally go after these machines. We can’t just take NY-23 as an example, but need to look back at elections over the past decade, when electronic voting machines started becoming a big player. Both sides of the aisle must be willing to accept whatever outcome the investigation shows. If it does show that John Kerry won in 2004, then the Republicans can’t start whining about “conspiracies”, just the same as if Doug Hoffman won in NY-23 the left can’t complain.

What is at stake here is our democracy. If people don’t trust the machines they vote on and rather their vote will be counted or not, then our democracy can’t survive. So will the right wing bloggers, who have suddenly opened their eyes to the problems of electronic voting machines, join the left in getting these machines standardized and put under greater security?

Just reading Eric Erickson’s post on RedState trying to spin NY-23 into a great victory, I can’t help but notice his closing:

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

In other words they are going to teabag Charlie Crist next.

But that isn’t the only interesting thing in his post. For example:

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.

So if they didn’t vote for John McCain, what about the primaries? John McCain was chosen by the Republican electorate to be their nominee.

(Source: Wikipedia)

That’s an awful lot of green, which represents states voting for McCain. How did he pull it out over the conservatives when they have such a “strong base”, or did the conservatives decide not to even vote in the primaries?

Why the conservatives are championing around NY-23 is because they did have an impact. Of course this was in an off year, and that was the only congressional race. What will they do next year with hundreds of races to worry about?

Another thing to consider is what we will never know. What would have happened if Scozzafava didn’t drop out? Perhaps she would have siphoned off enough votes from Owens that Hoffman could have ended up winning. Then perhaps people like Erick could really celebrate today.

When there is a ton of finger pointing at the Democrats going on, it can only mean one thing – ELECTION DAY!

Earlier today, the Hoffman campaign and conservative bloggers threw a fit over a very nefarious accusation: That somebody had slashed the tire of a Hoffman poll-watcher's pickup truck.

"Hoffman Poll Watcher Has Tires Slashed," blared Red State, with photos of the truck and its flat tire. And Hoffman himself chimed in.

"We just had a report that one of our pollsters in Clinton County just had their tires slashed," Hoffman said. "So I think the Democrats are doing everything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd District."

However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the local police captain said there's another explanation: "This was not a tire slashing--this was some guy who drove over a bottle and cut his tire."

Does this remind anyone of Ashley Todd?

Again from NY-23:

We crunched the FEC contribution numbers this afternoon to discover that 95 percent of Hoffman’s donations came from individuals and PACs based outside of the district. (Hoffman himself doesn’t even live in NY-23.) Only $12,360 of the $265,341 he’s raised came from potential constituents. Hoffman collected money from donors in 35 states. Of the total 146 donors, only 22 were actually from within the district he hopes to represent. The campaign’s biggest backer is the Washington-based Club for Growth, accounting for more than one-third of all fundraising ($83,260).

So only 5% of the money he raised was actually from people he would represent. Like I always said – it’s not a democracy, it’s an auction. This just cements that notion in stone.

I believe this news is a perfect example of my “sliding scale” of political parties I discussed in my previous post. A lot will try and claim that Scozzafava made this decision out of malice against people like Palin, but I believe it isn’t that simple.

Scozzafava was more to the right on fiscal issues, while being more to the left on social issues. For example, Scozzafava supported the Bush tax cuts, yet supported gay marriage and reproductive rights. By having two other candidates from opposite sides of the political spectrum, she was able to chose which candidate best represented her views. In this case that pushed her to the left with Bill Owens.

Now this doesn’t make the race a certainty for Owens – its still anyone's game. What it does do is give him a little boost, but this close to Election Day makes it really hard to capitalize off of it.

And even if you don’t agree with my political theory here, one thing is for certain – this is like cocaine to political junkies. We generally don’t see this kind of action in normal elections, but these special elections always open us up to bigger side shows.

I have used this quote before, but it bares repeating:

The validity of this quote by our first President came to mind while reading the reactions from the news that Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate for NY-23, has suspended her campaign. The most interesting and pertinent reaction came from Newt Gingrich:

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

What Gingrich is describing there is something becoming far to common in politics today. Instead of letting the people who would be represented by that candidate make the decision, you now got people exerting pressure from all over the country – even people who never been to a district like NY-23.

This is a major problem for the right. The far right is pushing out the moderates, effectively shrinking the size of their tent. Instead of embracing the ideals of the people, they are trying to force the people to embrace the ideals of the few. This is no recipe for success if the GOP wants to regain control.

As long as we are stuck with having parties we need more than one to maintain checks and balances within the halls of Congress. To insure that we need to break away from a two-party system. Perhaps there is a silver lining to what is happening in NY-23. Maybe we will see the start of a split that will give us a Conservative Party and a Republican Party, then that momentum could move to the left and give us a Democratic Party and a Liberal Party. While the Conservative and Liberals would not likely come up with anything together, we could quiet possibly see legislation supported by Republicans and Liberals or Democrats and Conservatives.

Having a system like this would be a big win for America. The two party monopoly we have in politics today would cease to exist and the need to try and garner support from the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum would be no more. We would have a sliding scale instead of teeter-totter when it comes to legislation. It would also keep pressure on each party to keep with their base ideals. Having equally powerful parties on each side of the more common Republican and Democratic parties would force those members to stay more within the confines of their party.

For this too work though it would have to be a consensus amongst both our current parties. If just one party splits up then their chances of ever regaining control would become extinct. Both parties would have to decide to split at the same time. Sadly that is something we won’t see without a national initiative to start it. Big donors withholding money and the grassroots joining forces to push the issue. That would choke off the current two parties and force them to listen to ‘we the people’.

Dede Scozzafava is a Republican candidate for NY-23. Last night she held a dinner and afterwards someone from her campaign called the police on John McCormack from the Weekly Standard. Here’s what he says about it:

I spotted Scozzafava later as she was walking to the parking lot, and asked her: " Assemblywoman, do you believe that the health-care bill should exclude coverage for abortion?" She didn't reply. I asked her twice more. Silence.

After she got into her car, I went to my car and fired up my laptop to report the evening's events.

Minutes later a police car drove into the parking lot with its lights flashing. Officer Grolman informed me that she was called because "there was a little bit of an uncomfortable situation" and then took down my name, date of birth, and address.

"Maybe we do things a little differently here, but you know, persistence in that area, you scared the candidate a little bit," Officer Grolman told me.

This sounds like a misunderstanding is all, but let’s look at how Malkin responds to this:

Radical leftist Dede Scozzafava can’t stand the heat

I just read through Scozzafava’s issues page on her campaign site, and nothing strikes me as her being a “radical leftist”. As matter of fact items like these speak the speak the opposite:

Those are two cornerstone conservative points. Yet since Scozzafava is apparently pro-choice that’s enough for Malkin to label her a “radical leftist” and is why people like Malkin are a cancer for the Republican Party. They can’t be honest about the reasons they disagree with the people they like. Instead they believe that if you disagree with them on any one issue then you must be from the other side. If the Republican Party wants to become the party of Steppford, where everyone is the same, then so be it, but they must also plan to remain a diminishing minority until such time that they change this position.

America is a bunch of clones. It’s a country full of unique individuals with different ideas. That’s why the Republican Party is in such dire straits right now. They fail to recognize that and the constant actions by them or their supporters reaffirms this position. Given the lack of choice we have when it comes to parties in this country that leaves those actual Republicans and Conservatives who might disagree on a single issue or two to either give up their voices really being heard or become Democrats.

If the Republicans want to regain power then they need to denounce people like Malkin, Beck, Limbaugh and the rest of the others who are intolerable of any ideal that might not coincide with their own.