Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Florida Bound

[previous post in series here]

I just got the call--I'm deployed to Ft. Myers Florida. I leave tomorrow, late afternoon. The RNC staffer who called says they need more lawyers. Haven't heard that sentiment in ages.

I was hoping to go to Tampa, because I've got friends there. Still, I'm excited. Only been to Ft. Myers once--spring training visit years ago. I've no idea whether the region is highly contested this year. Bush won the county (Lee county) comfortably in 2000, with a total of 106,123 votes to Gore's 73,530.

I've volunteered in prior elections. But I don't remember being so concerned that the Dems might hijack the outcome. And I surely don't remember being this alarmed about the consequences of failure.

More:

Will Wilkinson examines the effect of vote fraud:
If somebody's dog manages to vote for John Kerry, then, in effect, Velma Thompson (or whomever) failed to vote for that nice man, George W. Bush, even though she tried. Whiskers cancels out Velma. Here's another way to make the same point. Each Bush vote is paired with a Kerry vote and they're both thrown away. The winner is the one who has votes left on the table after all the other guy's votes have been chucked. Pairing legitimate voters with voting felons, dogs, corpses, and Frenchmen has precisely the same effect on the outcome as shooting legitimate voters before they can get in the door of the high school gym.

Republican vigilance about keeping illegal voters from voting is democratically equivalent to Democratic vigilance against Republican attempts to suppress the legal vote. Republican vigilance has the semi-intended side-effect of suppressing likely Democratic votes. And huge Democratic registration and GOTV drives have the semi-intended side-effect of canceling out a large number of Republican votes with illegal ballots. I bet I can tell from your party affiliation which you think is worse.

The press, as far as I can tell, seems to think Republican vigilance is worse.
(via the hydra-headed Instapundit)

[Series continues here.]

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