International Law

Clinton Machine

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Apparently, Clinton received a much larger percentage in machine-counted than in hand-counted votes in the recent primary that surprised everybody with a result much more favorable for her than expected.

I don’t care much about which Democrat becomes the next American president. The largest achievement of the present one (what was his name again?) is to make sure that no Republican will be elected to that office for the next fifty years.

However, there is still a small chance that the Republicans get away with stealing three presidential elections in a row. The natural countermeasure is to have a candidate on the Democrat side that will be able to steal at least as much as the opposition. Right in the tradition of Lyndon Johnson, who “won” a primary in 1948 by a 87 vote margin, 494,191 to 494,104.

It would really be nice to see the machines come out for the Democrats every once in a while. If so, the peculiar results cited above would be far from disqualifying Clinton. On the contrary. I for one would be quite pleased to read about some battleground state that mysteriously went for the Democrats against all polls in the general election. I am looking ahead to the wonders the Clinton machine can do.
Or, alternatively, a countermeasure would be to have a candidate that is absolutely committed to let the opposition get away with nothing whatsoever. It will be interesting to see if Obama just looks the other way. That will be an important test for the Republican cheating operation to see how far they can go against him in the general election.
Manipulating the machines is the easy part. The hard part is to find the exactly right number that stays just inside what you can get away with, but delivers just barely the result you want. If you have a candidate hell-bent on inclusion and bipartisanship and friendship and trust, you can play him more for a sucker and steal more votes than if your opponent is actually watching the machines. Knowing your opponent is important for deciding how far you can go.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).