I'm honestly beginning to fear for the Republic, Robin. I remember the 60's reasonably well and, aside from the Weathermen, I don't recall the kind of violence we're starting to see. I don't mean stealing and vandalizing signs, that's just hooliganism. No big deal.

I mean shots fired into political offices. Thugs storming political offices. The harassment you note above. This is just wrong.

It's like Communism vs. Fascism all over again!

Bush and Kerry are both useless ^&*%$, but violence and harassment of this type sure isn't going to make things better.

If you want a disturbing look from both sides, see my recent Voting Fraud and Intimidation Roundup on Oct. 15th.

One can usually expect scattered acts of harassment orintimidation in any political contest, but I do sense that we're seeing a "mainstreaming" of this phenomenon this election.

I expect it to increase over the next decade - if for no other reason than the revival of the 60s left means the revival of its brownshirts as well. For a wider view, however, Glenn Reynolds has a very interesting Guardian column that looks at the religious/generational tensions running beneath phenomena like this.

Intimidation and harassment CAN be stopped dead in its tracks.

What is required is for decent people on all sides of the politcal spectrum to make it very clear that such behavior will not be tolerated.

That means: letters to newspapers and phone calls to elected officials. It means groups of citizens taking turns guarding political campaign headquarters and polling places. It means speaking up and speaking out.

If that does NOT happen, we're in for a very bad time, I fear. But if it does happen, I think we can maintain order and move forward.

Robin

I agree the intimidation and violence should stop. What is evident in a lot of cases is that the perpetrators rely on being anonymous. Allegations can be made as to the identity of the perpetrators but proving it is entirely a different matter. Unfortunately the proof will be in capturing the perpetrators in the act. Until then lets hope saner minds will prevail.

As Joe pointed out, this topic came up before here.

But since then, Republican efforts to erect roadblocks to voting have continued apace.

Instead of asking for examples of vandalism being perpetrated by both sides, how about anyone giving us some examples of systematic, party-driven disenfranchisement or vote tampering from Democrats that even approximates the level being seen coming from Republicans now???

Umm, VT, your case might be stronger if you didn't cite a state in which there has been an influx of thousands of very questionable new voter registrations ....

Thanks, Robin, right on cue with the Right Wing talking point.

This is why this retort is clearly partisan:

"The largest numbers of new registrations have come from the state's urban counties, which have traditionally favored Democratic candidates. "

The article you cite lists about 3700 "questionable" registrations out of about 344,000 total. The large number of applications itelf predicts some measurable error rate, and I would think most or all of the 3700 could just as easily be classified as such.

Given that, I can't really see how this justifies such a large-scale effort by Republicans to want to monitor voter identity across the state. Sounds like they're preparing to mount a sustained and widespread challenge to force voters to prove their right to vote, probably concentrating on urban minority communities.

This could of course erect an unreasonable barrier to voting for most registered voters, all in the alleged name of keeping a small number of possible fraudulent voters away.

You would have to really think us all very stupid to believe that such a small number of questionable applications justifies such Republican scrutiny efforts in Ohio. Let's see how it goes on election day. We all know that supressing turnout will help Bush and Republicans. But I can say that at least any Republican shenanigans will be dealt with aggressively there.

> It's like Communism vs. Fascism all over again!

Mousolini vs Stalin ?

Ahem
Mousulini was a Socialist, his parents where
hard core leftist, so was he, he came up in
politics thru the italian Socialist party

Benito Mussolini imagined himself to be imitating
the ancients when he first used the term "fascism"
to describe theories he'd borrowed not from the
ancients, but from French philosopher George Sorel
as well as others. It is neither conservative nor
ancient.

Confusion results from the Roman symbol of
authority from which the word derives. The fasces
was a bundle of sticks, often with an axe blade
wrapped inside, which was used by Roman
magistrates to denote their authority.

When Mussolini coined Facism, after the very
symbol of authority from Rome Itally, it was
simply an historic, very italian moniker on his version of third way Socialism. it gave
his socialism an italian flavor.

Marx said a country needed a capitalist phase
of industrialsation before it adopted pure
communism and Benito critisized both Hitler and
Stalin for not properly following the doctrines
of Marx.

Hitler invented his own version of "Third Way"
Socialism called national socialism.
His big indoctriare dispute with the Bolshivics
was the soviets sunscribed to one world Socialism,
that national borders would disappear once
the idology that murdered their people by quota
had taken over the world.
--------------------------------------------------
"We are socialists because we see in socialism
the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance
and to regain our political freedom and renew our
German state."

"We are a workers' party because we are on the side
of labor and against finance."

"As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because
we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism,
of the misuse of the nation's goods."
Joseph Goebbels, 1932
-------------------------------

Jews demonized, among other things, as
"evil capitalists"

Its the wealth of the hard working Jewish
that was used to demonize them first.
and with race relations in europe easy
to inflame, it provided a scapegoat
of many, He mudered 20 million people,
the 6 million Jews was only a portion of
them.

His every policy was Socialist, with the exception
that Hitler was a fervent nationalist, he opposed
communism because it was internationalist, a
concept he rejected.

Like Mousulini he adopted a (many say temporary)
Third Way form of leftism of the same type
"Discovered" by Clinton ("my fellow americans
we have found a third way") in that the economy
would be left in private hands to run it, but
with almost total state regulation and control.

None of this is even in the same galaxy with
anything in the American conservtives of our
original republican constitutional democracy,
and to be a conservative, thats exactly what
that means.

In fact, to those of us with a liberatarian
streak, the Libertarians are even more
conservative on most issues, and the
libertarian-ish republicans like me are a growing
force in our party.

To even equate conservtives as anything close
to one leftist faction or the other is a slander
and a smear, Communism, Socialism, Benito's
Socialism he named after the roman fasces, are all
left wing movments, and all grouped on the
opposite end of any scale you can apply

And to a freedom advocate, they are all,
distinctions, without a difference.

To add to the confusion, the "right" outside
the USA, in europe, is exactly what the revolution
for independence threw off.

In other words, "Right Wing" in Europe has NOTHING
in common with the right in america.

Not so if your a marxist thug wanting to impose
your utopian religion of Gulags Purges and mass
death on the planet, to them, anyone that stand
in the way of the next stalinist bloodbath
and mass graves of "enemies of the people"
is instantly labeled "Right Wing"

This includes the "Usefull Idiots" that help them
get into power by falling for their promise of
utopia without any poor and free health care,
once the hard core gets the all powerfull
goverment they seek, and the liberty of the indvidual is exterminated for " the good of society" any that stand in tha way of totalitarianism soon follow the rest in the purge.
------------

"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the
individual decisively, once and for all."
-Nikita Khrushchev, February 25, 1956
20th Congress of the Communist Party

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start
thinking about what is best for society."
-Hillary Clinton, 1993

"We cant be so fixated on our desire to preserve
the rights of ordinary Americans."
-President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11,
1993, Page 2A
----------------------------------

American freedom has at its core that the
individual, the single person, is the entity
with rights. Rights than no majority can vote
away.

The fact that these rights are off limits
to a mob led by a leftist tyrant is why the
dreamers of the Purge and the Gulag say
america isnt properly "democratic"

--------------
"The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a
declaration of the right of the people
at large or considered as individuals, It
establishes some rights of the individual as
unalienable and which consequently,
no majority has a right to deprive them of."
-- Albert Gallatin, Oct 7 1789
--------------

Its also why the left, like Hitler are against
gun ownership.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of
arms. The strongest reason for the people to
retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as
a last resort, to protect themselves against
tyranny in government" -- Thomas Jefferson,
1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

Once Hitler had regulated away the peoples
ability to defend themselves, his brownshirts
could wroght terror on the population with
inpunity.

The marxist agitprops are very retrained these
days by our armed population, marxist thugs
are at the core, cowards, the armed population
stands in the way of their dream when the blood
of "the evil bourgoies" will flow.

The best article that describes the commie
agitprop attack on the foundation of trust
in our elections is here

http://vodkapundit.com/archives/006909.php
"But maybe there won't be another election,
if you cause the people to lose faith that
elections work."

I was certain that it was the blind foamy mouth
bush hatred that was frothing the democrats into
CommuNazi brownshirts, the same way they threw
all claim to any sense of morality and decency
away by the blind indefensable defense of clinton.

Now im not so sure, perhaps the aim is to destroy
it utterly, perhaps its a calculated monkey wrench
tossed into the clockwork because of the slow but
sure rightward trend, and they would rather destroy
the country if they cannot rule it.

Well all didnt turn out so bad, if Clintons
impeacment had followed thru with removal
we would have had a president Gore.

An incumbent president gore would have won the
following election im certain, the edge that gives
would have been enough.

And now we have seen that he is a raving nutbar
maniac deranged frothing berzerker that makes
M Moore look patrotic.

The blind, amoral, integrity destroying
indefensable defense of the rapist in chief,
did us a double favor.

How ironic.

President Gore ? .. man now thats scary.

Well, VT, I don't know this: We all know that supressing turnout will help Bush and Republicans. Some of the stories I've posted here suggest that elderly Republicans and women are having their votes suppressed pretty overtly.

Moreover, I think it's important to clarify what is meant by "turnout". I'm interested in promoting the turnout of people who are truly eligible to vote and preventing attempts at fraudulent voting.

I do have a problem with paying people to solicit registrations. It provides an incentive to fraud even if the sponsoring group (primarily ACORN in most of the swing states) doesn't intend fraud. In this case, however, given ACORN's association with other questionable behavior in the past, I'm particularly concerned.

I want every legitimately eligible voter to be able to vote. Legitimately eligible -- not fraudulent absentee ballots, not people entered multiple times on the registry in exchange for money or crack cocaine, not people voting in multiple states or multiple districts.

And I want election day procedures that are designed to create an orderly process, not one in which fraud is easy to commit and the status of the election is difficult to determine.

Oh, c'mon, now Robin, everybody knows "legitimately eligible voter" is just code for Republican... er, waittaminute, that's not right... or is it?

Here in Colorado (which is where this article began, if people didn't know), ACORN has tried to get some 3700 fraudulent voter registrations into the system. These are the ones that were caught, and made public. There are several hundred others outside the Denver area that have been caught as well, and ALL were being pushed by groups aligned - and frequently financed - by the Democratic Party and their "independent" 527 groups.

George Soros said he'd spend "as much as it takes" to defeat President Bush. One man has decided he has the right to choose the next president. The weapon of choice appears to be gross voter fraud. When 99% of those caught are from the same side, you'd be stupid to believe that "both do it equally".

It doesn't matter if you're a Republican, a Democrat, a Naderite, or a Sirian Mowhousaei, if there's no control on the legitimacy of the ballot, there's no legitimacy of the elected government. Anyone who can't understand that is too stupid to be allowed to vote in the first place.

V.T. - " I can't really see how this justifies such a large-scale effort by Republicans to want to monitor voter identity across the state. "

Oh, you don't? Why, because you have no faith in the ability of Democrats to get elected without registering felons and illegals, and having them all vote multiple times?

If both parties are doing it, then it is obviously in everyone's interest to see it stopped. This is a democratic country, which can't survive as such if everyone loses faith in the integrity of elections.

I don't believe that both parties are equally guilty, though, nor do both parties have an equal interest at stake. It doesn't matter how much anecdotal evidence (x number of Dem incidents and y number of GOP incidents) is trotted out. The fact is that the Democrats are flatly opposed to any anti-fraud measures and to any increased security. And they're ready to beat their one-note "racism!" drum every time somebody proposes it.

Who's in favoring of firing the watchman, the guy who's getting robbed or the guy who's doing the stealing?

The thing that baffles me the most is - why don't we require some form of positive ID to vote? From the reading I've done, the biggest thing that makes voter fraud so easy is that there isn't any uniform requirement that people show ID when they vote. In a lot of states, all it takes is having someone vouch for you. Is there actually some percentage of people within the US that have no form of ID but are legally registered to vote?

So far only one political party's operatives have been criminally charged with voting irregularities—and it is the Republicans in South Dakota. What's more, some of the perpetrators now charged were transferred to the Bush campaign in Ohio. Funny how strange phone calls leading Democrats to the wrong polling places started in Ohio, just as the Republican Secretary of State announced that voters who showed up at the wrong precinct wouldn't be allowed to vote, even a provisional ballot. And the Ohio voter challenge campaign sounds more like a plan to challenge every single voter in Democratic precincts, to lengthen the queue and gum up the works, in the hope discouraged citizens will leave. All the pieces are coming together.

For the record, I do suspect pro-Democratic 527 canvassers who are paid by the registrant (a really stupid, and in some places illegal, idea) filled out cards for Mickey Mouse. After all, that's how pro-Nader petitioners paid for by Republicans tried to get Ralph on the ballot. But Mickey Mouse isn't going to show up at the polling place. The Great Voter Fraud is just another example of pro-Bush "projection".

I'll put this out on the table... I have no sympathy for people whose votes are not counted due to a failure to vote properly. Voting is not that complicated a process, the instructions are readily available, and I'd like to think that there's SOME standard to being able to vote, even if it's not a legal standard.

If the ballot was as complicated as a 1040, well, perhaps then we could worry about things being intentionally obfuscated. But ballots aren't that complicated, and let's be honest... if somebody can't follow basic instructions to reach their polling place and properly vote, that may say something on the value of their opinion on who should run the country, no?

I fear that some attempted act of intimidation is eventually going to get some Democrats killed. Goodness knows that a mob breaking into private property here in Texas would be taking their lives into their hands, and it's not as if Republicans are the anti-gun party. I'd hate to see "Fifteen Democratic protestors shot dead, video at 11" on the news, even if they did deserve it.

But I would advise Republicans who are worried about political violence to go armed for self-defense. If nothing else, few people of any political persuasion are stupid enough to continue to argue with a gun that is pointing at them.

Interesting that anyone would say this:

Intimidation and harassment CAN be stopped dead in its tracks.

I have been on the receiving end of intimidation, harassment and vandalism for political purposes, and it was obviously by people who would now be sympathizers (if not outright members) of the Bush campaign.  (Democrats and libertarians don't break windows of cars with pro-choice bumper stickers.  Especially not twice.)

If the Republicans and its various allies were serious about stopping this, they would have started at home.  They created violence against people (people who only wanted to be left alone by the government) with their harsh rhetoric and "yes, but..." language whenever they deigned to acknowledge that their own partisans had done something wrong.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and my reserves of sympathy are tapped out.

Yes, the left has a lot to answer for.  So does the right.  A pox on both their houses, and until I can cast a ballot for "None of the above is acceptable" I will attempt to throw out whichever one got into office in the previous election until they get a clue and get it right.

why don't we require some form of positive ID to vote?

And it's not just ID, Celeste. With the provisional balloting that's in place now, we're not allowed to reject any application to vote regardless of whether the applicant is willing or able to produce identification. I canvass the precinct I'm a judge of election in and I know every one of the four hundred-odd voters in the precinct by sight. And I stay up-to-date. I understand the principle of a government of laws and not of men but there's got to be some room for common sense as well.

My objectives as a judge of election (for eighteen years) have always been to see to it that every legitimate voter gets a decent opportunity to vote for all of the candidates of his or her choice, that it's a pleasant experience for them, that all of the legally prescribed procedures are maintained, and that the paperwork is done completely and accurately. The notion that's being posited about an adversarial relationship between judges of election and voters is clearly the exception rather than the rule. I've got to admit that I don't look forward to being viewed with suspicion by my neighbors for dumb stuff being done in a few locations by a few bad apples that are being trumpeted by the press.

Eng. Poet, I understand the frustration. I've protected women's health clinics from the sorts of people you're describing. And the refusal of third parties to allow the intimidation, plus the decency of some opinion-makers who themselves are not pro-abortion, did indeed put an end to the regular violence and intimidation at clinics.

But if we want a litany of grievances, we can go back another decade+ and see the vandalism and worse from the anti-war crowd during Vietnam. And I would respectfully submit that intimidation surrounding voting is particularly destructive, because it corrodes one of the basic pillars of our society.

But whether you would agree with that last statement or not, clearly steps were taken (including arrests and prosecutions) to end the clinic intimidations. And I know for a fact that some of those who intervened do not approve of abortion at all -- but disapproved of the intimidation and violence as well, and acted on that.

Dave Schuler - Good luck with the election!

Thanks, Celeste. As I said above I'm not looking forward to election day. 15-16 hours of extremely dull, tedious work and a lot of grumpy people. If we're lucky. Possibly a lot of angry people. But if I won't do it who will? I'm the youngest in my team by at least 20 years and I'm no spring chicken.

I don't think the nonsense will stop until most (if not all) of the following are in place in states where the margins of victory are under 10%.

a) All registrants to vote must prove their citizenship and residence to get on the list.

b) All voters must present government issued photo-ID to vote.

c) All voters have their hand stamped with indelible ultra-violet ink

d) Voter registration lists are computerized and cross-checked to avoid duplicate registrations.

e) Pre-voting and absentee voting are greatly restricted.

You have to present photo ID and proof of address before you can sleep in a roach-infested Motel 6. Requirements for voting ought to be at least as stringent.

If you can't prove you're a citizen, if you can't prove where you live, if you can't prove you are who you say you are ... too bad. I don't want you to vote.

Rights do not come without some responsibilities, and proving you actually have the right to vote before you do vote is not an unreasonable responsibility.

Intimidation was popular in Germany before Hitler could come to power.