March 31, 2004
Air America: Day One
The O'Franken Factor just wrapped, and I thought it was fine. I know Wonkette and others are more or less 'meh,' but I think us bloggers/blogreaders are going to be generally underimpressed no matter what they do. But let's keep it in perspective: it's a totally different target audience -- with healthy overlap, of course. I doubt right-wing bloggers send much time listening to Rush, Hannity, Savage, et al. We all have good reason to be skeptical because of Mario Cuomo's and Phil Donahue's failures, for example, but it's hard to see this new network as anything other than a good thing for liberal voices.
The O'Franken Factor just wrapped, and I thought it was fine. I know Wonkette and others are more or less 'meh,' but I think us bloggers/blogreaders are going to be generally underimpressed no matter what they do. But let's keep it in perspective: it's a totally different target audience -- with healthy overlap, of course. I doubt right-wing bloggers send much time listening to Rush, Hannity, Savage, et al. We all have good reason to be skeptical because of Mario Cuomo's and Phil Donahue's failures, for example, but it's hard to see this new network as anything other than a good thing for liberal voices.
March 28, 2004
Chicago's own
The Knight-Ridder papers are confirming earlier reports that the Air Force tanker contract really was a sweetheart deal for Boeing:
Nothing from the hometown twosome on the story as yet, but it really is a KR scoop. Is it me, or is the Trib awfully cosy with Boeing? The only news today from them on the company is this piece of sunshine in the Business section.
The Knight-Ridder papers are confirming earlier reports that the Air Force tanker contract really was a sweetheart deal for Boeing:
Sacrifice features and safety but at a higher cost and screw the French! That's the American way!The Air Force gave the Boeing Co. five months to rewrite the official specifications for 100 aerial refueling tankers so that the company's 767 aircraft would win a $23.5 billion deal, according to e-mails and documents obtained by Knight Ridder.
In the process, Boeing eliminated 19 of the 26 capabilities the Air Force originally wanted, and the Air Force acquiesced in order to keep the price down.
The Air Force then gave Boeing competitor Airbus 12 days to bid on the project and awarded the contract to Boeing even though Airbus met more than 20 of the original 26 specifications and offered a price that was $10 billion less than Boeing's.
Nothing from the hometown twosome on the story as yet, but it really is a KR scoop. Is it me, or is the Trib awfully cosy with Boeing? The only news today from them on the company is this piece of sunshine in the Business section.
March 22, 2004
Post-primary thoughts: 26th Ward
After the massive voter registration fraud that occurred in the 26th ward, the Board of Elections promised an increased presence on election day in the precincts watching the polls, supplemented by outside inspectors.
I spent election day mainly in six precincts of the 26th ward, and had friends in at least 12 others. As near as I can tell, the sum total of this heightened attention was a single media event at the Norwegian-American Hospital in the 12th precinct with Board of Elections officials, state attorneys general, and federal election observers parading in front of TV crews proclaiming their success at cleaning up the mess and restoring faith in the system.
I should say that I personally did not witness any attempt at overt voter fraud, nor was any such thing reported to me by my co-pollwatchers. But if you spent any time in the ward that day, it was clear that protecting the public from a faulty electoral process was not high on the priorities of the Board of Elections.
Granted, this was not the kind of election that produces funny business at the polls: there weren't patronage jobs at stake -- as evidenced by the lackluster Machine effort -- like there are in aldermanic and mayoral contests. But problems at the polls went beyond malicious intent to simple competence in the basic procedures, enough so that the system could easily have been manipulated for nefarious purposes.
In the 5th precinct, the team of six election judges were so confused and incompetent at their task that I witnessed five violations of the rules (judges are not allowed to handle ballots once issued to the voter, judges may not accompany the voter into the voting area (unless joined by a judge of the opposing party - which they were not), judges may not feed the ballots into the ballot counter - only the voter can do that, etc.) in the first two minutes I was in the polling place. As a credentialled pollwatcher, I was entitled to point out mistakes and raise objections, which I did, but egos and tempers soon got in the way, and I placed a call to the Board of Elections hotline. Two inspectors were dispatched rather promptly, but it was clear that in the absence of overt, malicious fraud, they were pretty much not interested. "These folks aren't really the best and brightest" I was told, and it was true: the judges in the 5th precinct were mostly either homeless or poor, in any case had little education and had attended the minimum amount of judges' training. I don't mean to come off as a scold or prejudicing these people who were working hard from early in the morning for 13, 14 hours, but as the last line of defense in our most immediate democratic process, they weren't exactly instilling a lot of confidence. Luckily, I had access to an attorney that day who was doing pollwatching pro bono on behalf of the Obama campaign; he was able to come to the polling place and bring a little order for the last few hours until polls closed. I asked him towards the end, was it really as bad as I thought it was? Maybe I was just being overeager and not cutting these people enough slack. His eyes widened and that said it all.
The most troubling thing to me was not the handling of ballots, which was in most cases a matter of helping the voter fit the ballot into the punch slot, an admittedly tight fit, but was the issuing of provisional ballots, or rather the non-issuing, I should say. Provisional balloting is an innovation designed to protect voters from being turned away at the polling place for possibly bogus or technical reasons, even when they are legally registered to vote. This means that a provisional ballot must be issued instead of a standard one in cases where the status of the voter is challenged for whatever reason. Provisional balloting should therefore also defend a little bit against aggressive voter registration fraud; however, in the precincts I watched, I saw very little issuing of provisional ballots in cases where it was called for: many times a voter would come and present an affidavit from a neighbor stating they were a resident of the area, and judges would issue a standard ballot. Isn't this precisely the kind of situation the Board of Elections claimed to be bringing more scrutiny to? Where were the lists of suspicious registrations they claimed would be provided? I never saw such lists, let alone them being checked against the names of voters who came in.
It turned out to be such a blow-out for Obama that almost no amount of vote tampering would have made a difference in the outcome (and again, I'm not at all claiming any such thing took place this time), but because of that, it may be harder to raise concerns about the process for future elections where things will likely be considerably closer. Part of the problem is finding qualified judges; there has to be a better way than the promise of a few dollars and free coffee in the morning. Unfortunately, getting people to pay attention to vote fraud takes a Floridian-style catastrophe these days.
After the massive voter registration fraud that occurred in the 26th ward, the Board of Elections promised an increased presence on election day in the precincts watching the polls, supplemented by outside inspectors.
I spent election day mainly in six precincts of the 26th ward, and had friends in at least 12 others. As near as I can tell, the sum total of this heightened attention was a single media event at the Norwegian-American Hospital in the 12th precinct with Board of Elections officials, state attorneys general, and federal election observers parading in front of TV crews proclaiming their success at cleaning up the mess and restoring faith in the system.
I should say that I personally did not witness any attempt at overt voter fraud, nor was any such thing reported to me by my co-pollwatchers. But if you spent any time in the ward that day, it was clear that protecting the public from a faulty electoral process was not high on the priorities of the Board of Elections.
Granted, this was not the kind of election that produces funny business at the polls: there weren't patronage jobs at stake -- as evidenced by the lackluster Machine effort -- like there are in aldermanic and mayoral contests. But problems at the polls went beyond malicious intent to simple competence in the basic procedures, enough so that the system could easily have been manipulated for nefarious purposes.
In the 5th precinct, the team of six election judges were so confused and incompetent at their task that I witnessed five violations of the rules (judges are not allowed to handle ballots once issued to the voter, judges may not accompany the voter into the voting area (unless joined by a judge of the opposing party - which they were not), judges may not feed the ballots into the ballot counter - only the voter can do that, etc.) in the first two minutes I was in the polling place. As a credentialled pollwatcher, I was entitled to point out mistakes and raise objections, which I did, but egos and tempers soon got in the way, and I placed a call to the Board of Elections hotline. Two inspectors were dispatched rather promptly, but it was clear that in the absence of overt, malicious fraud, they were pretty much not interested. "These folks aren't really the best and brightest" I was told, and it was true: the judges in the 5th precinct were mostly either homeless or poor, in any case had little education and had attended the minimum amount of judges' training. I don't mean to come off as a scold or prejudicing these people who were working hard from early in the morning for 13, 14 hours, but as the last line of defense in our most immediate democratic process, they weren't exactly instilling a lot of confidence. Luckily, I had access to an attorney that day who was doing pollwatching pro bono on behalf of the Obama campaign; he was able to come to the polling place and bring a little order for the last few hours until polls closed. I asked him towards the end, was it really as bad as I thought it was? Maybe I was just being overeager and not cutting these people enough slack. His eyes widened and that said it all.
The most troubling thing to me was not the handling of ballots, which was in most cases a matter of helping the voter fit the ballot into the punch slot, an admittedly tight fit, but was the issuing of provisional ballots, or rather the non-issuing, I should say. Provisional balloting is an innovation designed to protect voters from being turned away at the polling place for possibly bogus or technical reasons, even when they are legally registered to vote. This means that a provisional ballot must be issued instead of a standard one in cases where the status of the voter is challenged for whatever reason. Provisional balloting should therefore also defend a little bit against aggressive voter registration fraud; however, in the precincts I watched, I saw very little issuing of provisional ballots in cases where it was called for: many times a voter would come and present an affidavit from a neighbor stating they were a resident of the area, and judges would issue a standard ballot. Isn't this precisely the kind of situation the Board of Elections claimed to be bringing more scrutiny to? Where were the lists of suspicious registrations they claimed would be provided? I never saw such lists, let alone them being checked against the names of voters who came in.
It turned out to be such a blow-out for Obama that almost no amount of vote tampering would have made a difference in the outcome (and again, I'm not at all claiming any such thing took place this time), but because of that, it may be harder to raise concerns about the process for future elections where things will likely be considerably closer. Part of the problem is finding qualified judges; there has to be a better way than the promise of a few dollars and free coffee in the morning. Unfortunately, getting people to pay attention to vote fraud takes a Floridian-style catastrophe these days.
The fantastic new Gadflyer has a nice piece on what to expect in terms of race in the Illinois Senate general election, by Charlton McIlwain:
Barack Obama's Race for the Senate
Most salient graf:
(via Larry Lessig's blog)
Barack Obama's Race for the Senate
Most salient graf:
Obama and Kerry's election hopes will rise together or fall together. Kerry needs Illinois – and without the thousands of black voters turning out to support Obama, he won't get it. And Obama could definitely use what that necessity will afford him in endorsements, hundreds of DSCC foot soldiers, free airtime, and the morphing of Ryan into George W. – who will no doubt be right there in the Illinois mix with all of them.
(via Larry Lessig's blog)
March 18, 2004
Veep pool
A friend last night mentioned that it's high time we had a pool for John Kerry's VP pick: who will it be, and when will it be announced. He was thinking of the same person I was, though I don't remember what his choice was for when. I'll kickstart it:
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, May 31
Any takers?
A friend last night mentioned that it's high time we had a pool for John Kerry's VP pick: who will it be, and when will it be announced. He was thinking of the same person I was, though I don't remember what his choice was for when. I'll kickstart it:
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, May 31
Any takers?
Howdy
Thanks to SJ for inviting me to join his polis. I'm happy to be onboard, and I'll spare you the seemingly requisite self-deprecating modesty of a new blogger.
I'll start slow and easy: Barack Obama is the Dems new superstar (annoying free registration required blah blah blah). Speaking of, I've found this site useful for bypassing free registration tar pits.
Also, a fascinating tool that lets you see who's giving how much to which presidential candidate, by name, address, or ZIP Code (via kottke.org). The one I tried first after checking for myself: Aaron Sorkin. There's also a map of donors for Chicago.
Thanks to SJ for inviting me to join his polis. I'm happy to be onboard, and I'll spare you the seemingly requisite self-deprecating modesty of a new blogger.
I'll start slow and easy: Barack Obama is the Dems new superstar (annoying free registration required blah blah blah). Speaking of, I've found this site useful for bypassing free registration tar pits.
Also, a fascinating tool that lets you see who's giving how much to which presidential candidate, by name, address, or ZIP Code (via kottke.org). The one I tried first after checking for myself: Aaron Sorkin. There's also a map of donors for Chicago.
