Wonder what would happen
What do you think would happen if, after the votes were counted, the numbers said McCain won with 85% of the vote?
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What do you think would happen if, after the votes were counted, the numbers said McCain won with 85% of the vote?
October 29th, 2008 09:52
We would finally know what millions of heads exploding all at once sounds like.
Honestly, I try to imagine it and the feeling of helplessness, hopelessness and frustration just makes me want to curl up into a ball under my desk. And this is from an outsider looking in and somewhat enjoying the spectacle of it all. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.
October 29th, 2008 10:36
Don’t even. It’d be like the feeling we had in 2004, only 85,000% worse.
October 29th, 2008 11:12
I’d probably reset my general political ideology to exclude gun control.
October 29th, 2008 13:18
Well, no, you’re missing my point. My question is not, what will you do if McCain wins. (Last night, Debb and I actually half-seriously discussed the possibility of finding a nicer country to live in, if so.)
My point is more: liberals are concerned about vote fixing. Let’s imagine that their concerns are well-founded. Let’s also imagine that it’s much more successful than intended. If McCain wins 85% of the vote, it’s clearly not accurate. So if that’s how the vote came back, what do you think would happen?
I ask because A) this does not seem like a take-to-the-streets-and-riot populace, and B) the 2000 election suggests that people would want to push it under the rug as soon as possible, but I can’t see how that would happen. Nor could I imagine calling for another vote.
October 29th, 2008 13:34
Oddly, before I read any of these replies my response was going to be “That would make fixed voting obvious”. What’ll be more likely is Obama winning the popular vote and McCain somehow slinking by with a narrow victory through the electoral vote. It’s worked before.
If McCain wins, make way for president Palin… the minute Johnny Boy hears about being elected his heart will seize. And I’ve been reading about skinheads and KKK-ites that already have a price of Senator Obama’s head… sooo, could also be president Biden.
Frightening thoughts. I’ve been ranting about society’s gradual end for years now, more notably as “K-Man”. I think everyone’s finally seeing it too. Revolution doesn’t seem far off, does it?
October 29th, 2008 14:42
Well, there’s no need to “imagine” vote fixing. People are finally realizing the extent to which it happened in ‘00, and Rep. John Conyers’ report — http://www.amazon.com/dp/089733535X/ — detailed what happened in ’04’s pivotal state. And, of course, TPM has new stories almost every day about how it’s already shaping the results of this election. But, as hard as the GOP is pressing through legislative and judicial means, it looks like it’s still going to have to press for the ad hoc basis that worked so well in those last two presidential elections. I don’t think that disappoints them terribly, but I think (and I think they think) it won’t be enough this time.
Past that, I guess it depends on how that comes back. The number isn’t unveiled at some ceremony; info dribbles in state by state in these situations. To hit 85% nationally, which is what I assume you’re positing, it would have to be suspiciously high right as East Coast polls start closing around 8 local time. Realistically, I think they’d start checking machines for evidence of physical tampering. But given the precedent of ‘00 and ‘04, barring a visible, blatant, immediate, and outright scandal, I think the results would be the same. If the machines say it happened, it happened. I do expect that Obama would fight harder than that pussy Al Gore. But… precedent.
I bought this book — http://www.amazon.com/dp/0976082276/ — when it came out a couple of years ago. Executive summary: Other countries really do suck more. Even Western European countries involve compromises that we haven’t yet felt here. (Which is not to say life is bad, just different, often in the same ways one would trying to be avoiding by leaving.) I’ll probably choose either Argentina or Brazil.
(If nothing else, that book details the requirements for moving to another country from each country’s perspective. In general, you have to own land or start a business, with fairly high minimum levels of investment to keep out the casual lookyloos and wannabes. Countries with laxer immigration requirements tend to be a little lower on the list of places we’d want to emigrate to. There are exceptions, of course — Mexico seems relatively easy, although quite corrupt. As long as you’re willing to engage personally in the behavior you detest enough to leave behind, in other words, it isn’t hard to move there.)
October 29th, 2008 14:57
Nothing would happen. The media would talk about it briefly and then they’d go back to being fat and complacent. Republicans would declare that any investigation would be biased and only shows that dems are sore losers and dems wouldn’t be able to muster the support to really look into it. So we’d have 4 years of McCain/Palin reign of terror. Stock up on fuel and food, Mad Max won’t be far behind.
October 29th, 2008 15:02
Oh yes, and if you don’t think it’s possible I refer you to 3 posts below this one.
Reasonableness has left this country and good people find themselves impotent through apathy or circumstance.
October 29th, 2008 15:14
Well, the head-exploding comment still stands, but I see what you’re getting at now.
Honestly, I don’t know. If the American people didn’t stand up en masse and march on the White House over “free speech zones”, wiretapping, suspension of writ of habeus corpus, torture, not to mention the farce that was the 2000 election, all in direct opposition to the very tenets and beliefs that are supposed to be what makes America great in the first place, I find it hard to imagine what would.
October 29th, 2008 15:15
…er, what would get them to do so, that is. That sentence was so long I got lost and couldn’t find my way out again.
October 29th, 2008 16:28
Sorry for the off-topic post, but spinnoff.com has been turned into an ad page. Did Spinn forget to renew that domain?
October 29th, 2008 19:47
HEY WHAT’S A GUY GOTTA DO TO GET HIS COMMENT AWAITING MODERATION APPROVED AROUND HERE HUH sorry it’s the meds
October 30th, 2008 06:14
I think there’ll be some riots. Seriously. If McCain wins after several weeks of polls projecting a clear Obama lead, there will be riots, protests, recounts, court decisions and then the dust will settle and the government will get back to work fucking the country up.
October 30th, 2008 09:17
Fivethirtyeight.com only shows the current day’s poll figures, unfortunately, but McCain has been making fairly substantial increases in his electoral vote totals the last few days. Their model still projects a win for Obama, but without any explanation for this increase, it’s beginning to look like even without vote suppression it’s going to be pretty close. The best that editor Nate Silver can say to console Democrats is “McCain isn’t catching up as fast as it looks.”
October 30th, 2008 15:26
Gawain — I can’t speak for my fellow Americans, seeing that many of them are still in a state of media-propelled hypnosis… but I’ve been on my feet, ranting and raving since W’s first inauguration. Every item on your list has been gradually adding fuel to my fire, and this economical mess is starting to ignite more people than I thought it would.
I’ve been singing in a local rock band for the past few months (which is odd, because I’m a bassist, but anyway..) and this is the first group I’ve ever worked with that actually /encourages/ ‘political’ lyrics. Although I don’t name names, I blatantly state before a crowd that their government is lying to them, and it’s time we stop taking this shit. Matterafact, you can hear an example of me yelling my guts out about it here:
http://www.thereddesert.com/mp3/insidethemindlive.mp3
Listen/skip to about 5-6 minutes into the song, I go off on this rant that gets the greatest reactions out of people’s faces. Usually looks like they’re thinking “Wow, this guy is actually pissed.” It also sparks a lot of great conversation afterwards.
I’m not posting this for any sort of critique… but let it be known, even if I’m just one man with 3 compatriots – I’m out there trying to inform the public through the most effective medium I have. And I’m not the only one out there. If the government finds me and kills me, so be it. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
October 30th, 2008 17:02
If the numbers said McCain won with 85% of the vote, then we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the voting process is rigged. Approximately 20-25% of the population would think this was just fine — the same bunch of dullards that still claim George Bush has done a good job.
There would be a small exodus of intelligent people — the government may even choose to permit it under the rubric of, “America: Love it or leave it.” But I don’t think there would be a mass exodus, and certainly such a large migration would be nigh impossible what with the crashing world economy exacerbating already complex immigration laws.
The remaining populace would slowly but inexorably stop taking the government seriously, since everyone would know it was illegitimate and, short of armed revolt, there was no way to replace it. Not just Federal agencies, but State and local agencies as well — police, emergency services, social services — all would lose their legitimacy and respect, and society within the US would decay. Without the economy to build new infrastructure and services, and without the “social captial” of legitimacy and respect for established institutions, the US would revert to a form of tribalism, and you’d end up living in David Brin’s The Postman, only without Kevin Costner to fix things up…
October 30th, 2008 22:27
I’m in no way a cynic. But if I were….
I’d say McCain would make sure he was front and center on this scandal and try to position himself as leading the investigation..and thus would begin the “leadership” media narrative.. If the vote riggers were truly smart, they’d make the investigation’s results be that McCain won by a now more palatable amount like 2% nationally.
In all likelihood, I don’t forsee vote-rigging as being a large problem in this election. From what I’ve been able to tell, Obama has amassed a very large group of volunteer lawyers to observe polls in swing states to prevent this very issue. I think Obama would fight back. Hard.
October 31st, 2008 01:57
For me? Assembling my own private military to overthrow the U.S. government.
October 31st, 2008 08:38
Well, I hope you’ve already got it underway because they’re probably already on their way to your house after that comment.
October 31st, 2008 22:07
Woo hoo?
November 1st, 2008 03:20
Gawain: Eh, conservatives were going to try the same thing with Smedley Butler because they abhorred the idea of the New Deal. I think it would be more than excusable for one to do it when it was clear the government had become abjectly derelict and that people were committing such gross acts of voter fraud and getting away with it.
After all, that’s why the Founding Fathers gave us the Second Amendment.
November 1st, 2008 10:37
Although it’s true Big Brother has the capability to watch over all of us, truth is – can He afford to watch ALL of us? Quite frankly, no. We’re little fish in this murky pond. Typing that I would love to organize an underground, armed movement against D.C. with millions enlisted will not get me in trouble. They have neither the time nor interest, and the resources to really watch every citizen would be incredibly expensive.
With that said, Mr. Crowley, let’s get this insurrection on the road. Rumor has it that said organization is already taking place… and congress is already passing measures against ‘Resistance and Revolution’.
This election will be quite a catalyst in the upcoming (potential) civil war. Either McCain will win and the better part of the population will raise hell, or Obama will win and bring NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER. Either way, by 2012 this country will be so unsettled we just might end up killing one another.
November 1st, 2008 13:54
I get the initial question, and I still stand by my earlier statement. But if you want more of a global idea, try this:
It’s nice living in California, a state large enough to supply Obama’s hypothetical 15% all by itself. While polls aren’t legally reliable, I would expect our fair-minded Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, to refuse to certify the election, and she likely wouldn’t be alone in doing so, leaving plenty of time before the mid-December Electoral College vote to really make a mess of things.
November 4th, 2008 15:04
This is only indirectly related, but I thought you’d enjoy this video.