Inside the 2004 Campaign Tool Chest: Blogs and Online Voting

LA Times ^ | Jan 05, 2004 | Ronald Brownstein

[kingu]

-- snip --

Consider the effort that the Service Employees International Union is mounting for Dean with its 40,000 members in the state. The SEIU is pitching Dean to its members through phone calls and the mail, as unions usually do. But starting today it will dispatch 35 organizers with laptops to nursing homes, hospitals and other job sites to encourage its workers to request primary ballots on the spot; then it will send the organizers back so that workers without Internet access at home can actually cast their votes over the laptops.

-- snip --

[kingu]

This was buried in the story, and it really struck me as the highlight. Democrats going out and sitting there while people use the Internet to vote. This strikes me as total electioneering. What's next, they'll fill out the ballot and have some elderly person just push the mouse button to submit?

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[Cicero]

That's not next. That's already happening. In the last election they also sent organizers out to prisons and lunatic asylums.

[billorites]

You can vote in the Iowa caucus via internet?

[kingu]

I'm sure that if Republicans did something like this, they'd ensure that the ballots would be thrown out.

I liked the idea of online voting, but seeing this type of abuse just makes me sick.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

'sbeen done in nursing homes before by the Libs. They gave packs of Marlboros to street people who filled in absentee votes in Minneapolis and Milwaukee in 2000.

[kingu]

Making absentee ballot requests - sure, I can see a party being allowed to do that. But bringing the voting mechanism to the voter and overseeing the vote? There is where I think the line should be drawn.

And whatever happened to the laws that say that you're forbidden from paying someone to vote - or is that only in California? I remember one year when we tried to offer a discount to those who displayed the 'I Voted' sticker and got a hell of a stink from people who objected.

[Ff--150]

But starting today it will dispatch 35 organizers with laptops to nursing homes, hospitals and other job sites to encourage its workers to request primary ballots on the spot; then it will send the organizers back so that workers without Internet access at home can actually cast their votes over the laptops.

SEE! Told everyone they learned from their messups with algore; therefore, 4 conservative justices will not be needed to decide this election. I told you so.........