2008 US presidential election

And two little black girls are going to go into the White House. And they will not be there to do the laundry or clean up the mess. – unknown America just leveled. – Rob Balder

Overview

Barack Obama was elected president in a major landslide, after emerging from largely unknown status.

This particular election was a watershed event in the history of the United States:

• came on the heels of two rigged presidential elections (2000 and 2004) and close to 8 years of erosion of the democratic foundations of the American government, resulting in an extremely pissed-off citizenry
• first African-American to be president or even to be the candidate of either major party

Because of the anti-democratic trend of the past 8 years, many people feared that the democratic process would in some way be subverted with regard to this election; the following possibilities have been raised:

• The election would be rigged, as were the 2000 and 2004 elections, and another neoconservative kleptocrat supported (perhaps covertly) by the current administration will officially win even though an accurate vote would have elected a different candidate. (This possibility now clearly points to John McCain, who has pledged to continue Bush's policies and has already become associated with some of Bush's handlers, most notably the unprosecuted criminal Karl Rove). Fortunately, this does not seem to have happened.
• Bush will declare martial law, or otherwise use the enhanced presidential powers he has been allowed to claim – possibly in the wake of some kind of national emergency like the one which allowed him to gain those powers.
  • Possible scenarios include:
    • there will either be no election (completing the next step in the Nehemiah Scudder scenario eight years ahead of schedule) or one that is severely curtailed and inaccurate
    • Obama will be assassinated before he can take office, causing riots (provoked if necessary) and thus providing an excuse for martial law
    • There will be another domestic terrorist attack, providing the excuse for martial law
  • McCain loyalists have already begun making the claim that Obama will be the one to do this: 2008-11-02 Freedoms Will Be At Risk Under President Obama
  • Realistically, if Bush were looking for an excuse for martial law, the demonstrations outside the White House after Obama's victory should have been enough (unless he has something really good planned).

Related Pages

This page looks at the details and concerns about the actual voting process which we hope will take place as usual in 2008; for details about the issues and candidates, see 2008 US presidential race.

Links

Projects

• The Kick Them All Out Project: should be moved to eventual 2008 US elections page

Filed Links

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• 2008-11-07 [Talk|Index] Observers sense 'something fishy' in Alaska vote § “Even though the polls this year have generally been pretty accurate, they were way off in Alaska. Stevens was running between 7% and 22% behind his Democratic challenger in the polls, but now he is narrowly ahead in the vote count.” – and it doesn't stop there.
• 2008-11-04 [Talk|Index] Covering ACORN with a hatchet § A Catholic organization (CCHD) withdraws its support of ACORN; correspondent Drew Griffin apparently sees this as further proof of ACORN's corruption and Obama-bias, but doesn't get into details.
• 2008-11-03 [Talk|Index] How McCain Could Win § An examination of recent voter purges and new voter "verification" practices enacted since 2004 paints a depressing scenario tomorrow for supporters of Obama and American democracy.
• 2008-10-26 [Talk|Index] Republican fears of historic Obama landslide unleash civil war for the future of the party § “Senior Republicans believe that John McCain is doomed to a landslide defeat which will hand Barack Obama more political power than any president in a generation.”
• 2008-10-26 [Talk|Index] McCain guarantees victory § “Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he can “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night.”
• 2008-10-24 [Talk|Index] Campaign Volunteer Faces Charges In Attack Hoax §
• 2008-10-22 [Talk|Index] Warning over US election problems §
• 2008-10-19 [Talk|Index] Action Alert: Votes for Obama not being counted in NC! § In NC, if you circle in the choice for a straight ticket you are not casting a vote for president – the reverse of the situation in Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina. Anyone confused?
• 2008-10-19 [Talk|Index] Push Poll Sez "Obama's a Muslim!!1!11!!!" § Americans in Contact PAC, a religious right organization, is delivering false information about Barack Obama in the guise of a voter poll.
• 2008-10-18 [Talk|Index] SCARY: Voting machine didn't want me to vote for Obama § “THE PROBLEM was that my touch-screen voting machine inaccurately put a green check mark in the McCain/Palin box when I touched my guy's name. ... That wasn't the end of my frustration, though. Three times the touch screen mistakenly assigned my preference to the wrong candidate.”
• 2008-10-17 [Talk|Index] Some early W.Va. voters angry over switched votes § “At least three early voters in Jackson County had a hard time voting for candidates they want to win. .. Virginia Matheney and Calvin Thomas said touch-screen machines in the county clerk's office in Ripley kept switching their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.”
• 2008-10-15 [Talk|Index] Dear Republicons: You Are Most Assuredly Fucked §
• 2008-10-11 [Talk|Index] Big ballot boo-boo: Osama for president? §
• 2008-10-11 [Talk|Index] A Historic Ticket § “The McCain/Palin ticket is the first in American history in which both candidates were found to have violated ethics standards before a national election.”
• 2008-10-08 [Talk|Index] States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal § “Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law ... The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other...”
• 2008-06-07 [Talk|Index] News from the Votemaster § [2]“there is another move afoot to de facto abolish the electoral college without amending the constitution. Each state is free to cast its electoral votes as dictated by state law. Most states use winner-take-all, but Maine and Nebraska cast them by congressional district, with two extra votes for the statewide winner. Nothing prevents a state from using a different formula. There is a movement for a National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which states would agree to cast all their electoral votes for the national popular vote winner, irrespective of how the state voted. If states with 270 electoral votes agree to this compact, the electoral college will be effectively abolished.”
• 2008-05-21 [Talk|Index] McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will § [2]“John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.”
• 2008-03-21 [Talk|Index] Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud? § [2]“While this all makes for great talk radio and sounds like fun, there is one catch: What Limbaugh encouraged Republican voters to do in Ohio was a fifth-degree felony in that state, punishable with a $2,500 fine and six to 12 months in jail. That is because in order to change party affiliation in Ohio, voters have to fill out a form swearing allegiance to that party's principles "under penalty of election falsification."” Limbaugh urged Republicans to re-register as Democrats so they could vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, apparently in the belief that Clinton would be an easier opponent for John McCain to beat – in effect, deliberately weakening the Democratic Party.
• 2008-02-07 [Talk|Index] FNC Puts McCain In the Democratic Party § [2]image from the start of "Your World with Neil Cavuto" labeling John McCain as a Democrat. A Fox News "insider" reportedly says this was merely gross incompetence on the part of a producer.
• 2007-07-05 [Talk|Index] Congressman John Olver Believes Bush Will Cancel 2008 Elections, Still Refuses to Support Impeaching Him or Cheney § “Cong. Olver asked us to spare him a review of what he already knew and believed about the crimes of the Bush administration, and of the overwhelming majority of his district in favor of impeachment. When he aggrandized himself on his voting record, I took exception to {{date|2007-04-24|24 April 2007
• 2007-02-21 [Talk|Index] FOX ATTACKS OBAMA §

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News & Views

• 2008-01-16 Analysis: Clinton, Obama, and New Hampshire by the numbers: an apparent "flipping" of results from machine-based voting in the New Hampshire primary is debunked -- but there are still suspicious correlations between who won and whether the votes were hand-counted. Also points out how vote-fraud blogging is both helping the cause of integrity and muddying the water at the same time; the actual election is now expected to be a madhouse.
• 2007-08-06 (found 2007-08-01) Votescam by Hendrik Hertzberg: California initiative 07-0032 (the Presidential Election Reform Act) would level the playing field, but only for California -- essentially giving Republicans an unfair advantage nationwide, given the many Republican-held states which do not plan to implement any such reform. This is a move in the right direction, but needs to be done in a way that doesn't hand either party a notable advantage, e.g. by California and Texas both agreeing to implement such changes simultaneously.
  • Under the current circumstances, however, it would clearly favor the Republicans by handing them a roughly Ohio-sized set of electoral votes.
• 2007-07-28 Voting systems hacked in test: it's not clear who initiated the tests; in the comment where this link was originally posted, the poster was spinning it as outside hackers breaking in to prove the vulnerability of machines actually being used for voting -- which is not the case; the article makes it sound more like this was a government test to assess the reliability of machines they are planning on using, which is a good thing. The article, however, still does not make it clear whether the state initiated the tests or was merely accepting the results as significant.