Thursday, 30 November 2006

Grayson's Push for Election Changes

The Secretary of State, Trey Grayson is pushing for two changes to the election system. The first is a no brainer: a paper audit trail for all votes. It seems a good idea to me to have the ability to count the votes by hand if necessary.

Secondly, Grayson wants to allow for early voting up to a month before the election. While on the surface this may seem a feel good method to get more people to vote, it is a horrible idea for two reasons.

First off, ballots can change in the last month before an election. Allowing more people to vote before hand would mean their is greater number of votes that would be cast improperly if ballots changed. Which would obviously nullify those people's votes.

Secondly, while this seems like a wonderful chance to get more people to vote, it really opens the door to voter fraud. This would give people 30 days to find creative means to tip a close election.

What I don't understand is why do we need extended voting anyway? Is it too much to ask people to show up on election day to vote? It is not like we don't give people notice that the second Tuesday in November is always election day. If you aren't going to be in town you should know in advanced and be able to get an absentee ballot. Otherwise show up to vote. It isn't that hard and heaven forbid you might be inconvenienced 30+ minutes while doing your civic duty.

Posted by elendil at 12:22 AM in Kentucky Politics
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Tuesday, 28 November 2006

Back From Hiatus

I have spent the last month since the election working on a web based RSS aggregator to be able to pull various blogger feeds together into one site.

In the process I came up with a product called onodrim. Onodrim is a web based RSS aggregator written in entirely in Java. It is currently being used to aggregate Kentucky news at http://network.kyconservativeblogs.com/, Kentucky Conservative Blogs is a site that brings together all of Kentucky's best conservative talent in one location. In addition the site provides feeds from Kentucky news sources such as the Courier Journal, Lexington Herald, and various other state newspapers,

Check it out today!

Posted by elendil at 11:53 PM in Kentucky Politics
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Tuesday, 7 November 2006

Handicapping Kentucky Congressional Races

First off, I want to say that I don't see today as a "major tide" day. The main reason is because the price of gas has fallen to a more reasonable level. The anger from high gas prices could have created a wave that would have rivaled 94. I don't see the war in Iraq as an issue most people are praticuarly angry. Most don't like our current status in Iraq, but I don't see a ground swell of anger over it.

Without a popular movement this race is going to come down to get out the vote efforts and the personalities of the candidates. So what to expect tonight.

First the easy stuff. Hal Rogers, Ben Chandler, and Ed Whitfield will win easily. No suprises there. Now let's move to the more difficult races.

People have called the second district race between Lewis and Weaver competitive, but I think that is more "wishful" thinking by the main stream media. In this race competitive will mean Weaver getting around 40% of the vote.

It appears that Davis has recently pushed ahead of Lucas. The engery level and money advantage held by Davis has caused him to take a slight lead on Lucas. Even though Lucas is a conservative Democrat, the thought of Speaker Pelosi will probably win the balance for Davis in this race. I like Davis to win with 52% of the vote.

The last race is the enigma race for me. I have no idea how Yarmuth has been able to make the race close with Northup. He is an ultra-liberal candidate who only represents the views of the Bardstown Rd cooridor. For him to make enough inroads into the moderately conservative 3rd district to actually win the race is astonishing to me. Northup is the perfect representative for the 3rd. Her politics lines up nicely for those she represents.

The latest Bluegrass Poll show Northup with a six point lead in the race. And when you look at the internals of the poll you see an interesting number, Republicans polled.

Of the people they interviewed for the survey, only 30.4% were Republicans. But the actual registration is greater that 33%. Once again Republicans are undersampled even though they have a tendency to turn out in greater numbers than Democrats. For this reason, I don't think this race is that close. If you add on the fact that Northup's team is the better disciplined team, I think Northup wins handily with around 55% of the vote.

Of course we will find out in a couple of hours once the polls close!

Posted by elendil at 5:03 PM in Kentucky Politics
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Tough Night for Republicans, But the Sun Will Come Up

It appears that the Republicans have lost control of the House, and possibly the Senate. But you know that is they way it goes. You win some and you lose some. In Kentucky we almost held on to all of the seats. Both Lewis and Davis won by significant margins while Northup lost a squeaker to Yarmuth.

The problem is the Republicans came up on the wrong side of about every close race this time around. The funny thing is there was no defining "issue" like the war that drove people to the polls. It was just a dissatisfaction with the way things are. That is the biggest mystery of this election. Where did the dissatisfaction come from? It can't be the economy? It is going along at a healthy rate. But wait we never heard that from the main stream media.

And we hit upon the primary reason Democrats won this election. The main stream media's partisan drum beat of how bad things are finally paid its toll. They were able to penetrate the psyche of the average voter and sour their mood on the party in power. The Republicans did little to counter this attack and paid the price. So I chalk this round up as a victory for the main stream media. They carried the water where the Democratic leaders failed miserably.

The results of this election also show us that the outreach of the "new media" is not where it needs to be to fully counteract the liberal propaganda machine which is the MSM. We have two years to change it.

So what does this mean for the next two years until the 2008 election cycle?

  • First and foremost my taxes will go up. In fact everyone who pays taxes will see an increase in their taxes once the previous tax cuts expire. This is probably the only thing that really frosts me about losing to the Democrats. Whenever my personal finances are impacted directly, I get angry. When you are on a tight budget you don't want to have to shovel out money pointlessly for no good reason (like giving to the Government).

  • Secondly, we will lose respect in the world. Remember back in high school when you had the teachers that everyone "loved" to have. They were easy classes. What was your opinion of those teachers? You may have liked them, but you didn't respect them. What about the teachers that were hard? The ones that made you work. You didn't like them, but you respected and appreciated what they did for your development.

    Since 9/11, the U.S. has been the difficult teacher. We have done the hard work of standing up to terrorism. Our allies and enemies "hated" us for it. But you know what? They respected us. And they appreciate the job we are doing to stabilize the world. Now as we head towards appeasement we will once again be "loved" but we will not be respected. Our status in the world has diminished. That saddens me.

  • Terrorists will rejoice at the Democrats victory and take it as a sign of our weakness. They will redouble their efforts to kill us. It won't help that those in charge of the purse strings don't take the war seriously. We will fritter away the next two years while our enemy continues to gather strength.
  • The judicial nomination process will come to a grinding halt. Any chance to seat strict constitutionalists will be over for the next two years.
  • The Democratic party has been seized by the extreme left wing of the party. It will be fun to see what loony stuff comes from them over the next two years. Will we see impeachment proceedings? Will we see another attempt to socialize medicine? Will we see an huge increase in the minimum wage? Will we see a tax on "big oil"? Will we see a national tax on Walmart? Will we see higher corporate taxes? At least Bush will have his veto pen to stop most of this lunacy.

At a moment like this I am reminded of a quote from the movie Batman Begins.

Why do we fall down?

To learn to pick ourselves back up.

Now it is time to pick ourselves back up and prepare for the rematch in two more years when conditions will be more favorable. In the mean time I will continue to work to improve new media. I will work to help candidates to utilize technology to run more effective campaigns. And most importantly I will have fun. I have no desire to let the results of elections dictate how I will live my life. That is what separates me as a conservative from my liberal rivals.

Posted by elendil at 2:30 PM in Political Issues
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Monday, 6 November 2006

Yarmuth's Campaign Ends on New Low Point

Two seventeen year old Yarmuth supporters have been arrested on felony charges for stealing Anne Northup's yard signs. The two had stolen over 70 yard signs early Monday morning.

This is the perfect end to Yarmuth's juvenile campaign. First it started with attempts to infiltrate Northup's campaign. Next they ran ads that lied about his opponents record and said it was "mistake". Then they broke the campaign finance laws and again said it was a "mistake". Afterwards they create a mean spirited site with cartoonish caricatures of Northup. Finally to top it all off, he has supporters that are stealing yard signs. There is an undeniable pattern of sophomoric tricks perpetrated by Yarmuth's campaign. The type of childishness you might find in a student council campaign, but not one you would expect for a U.S. Congressional seat.

Thankfully, tomorrow will be the end of his sorry campaign as the voters in the third district should send the adult in this race, Northup, back to Washington.

Posted by elendil at 11:54 PM in Kentucky Politics
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