US/president/elec/2008

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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

Related

• 2008/11/03 [L..T] 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.

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.