5 ms·

There are reports of people voting 4 times, and of people from another region voting after presenting an id from another region. There were no election observer

by lz400 9y ago

There are reports of people voting 4 times, and of people from another region voting after presenting an id from another region. There were no election observers from neutral or "no" political forces. The "international" observers were secessionists from other regions of Spain. I don't believe the 40%. I don't believe anything. This vote was a joke from its inception. As much as it was horrible from the national government to beat people, it's as horrible to push people to go out and fight riot police for a sham of a referendum.

centimeter 9y ago
> There are reports of people voting 4 times Who is making this report, why should I trust them, and do they have evidence this is a statistically meaningful problem?
- lz400 9y ago
  Several people and they provided pictures and testimony. There are more facts, like that the organization changed the methods 15m before starting and lost internet access and had to resort to writing people's names manually without checks are not even disputed by the Catalan authorities. They breached ~50% of their own electoral law, that they made up for this event alone. You are not going to find a statistical study of the elections, obviously. But nobody who was watching impartially has any doubts as to the fraud guarantees.
  - gonvaled 9y ago
    All thanks to the spanish government.
  - mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
    I hate to tell ya but you are making the mjnority argument here. Nobody in their right mind would support what the Spanish police are doing to people casting votes - legal or not.
    - jwhitlark 9y ago
      The national government being wrong does not mean that the regional government is right.
    - lz400 9y ago
      I'm not justifying the police actions, just saying the referendum was a farce. In fact without the police action, it would have been a farce too, which makes you wonder why they needed to stir the pot with so many police but anyway.
    - marcoperaza 9y ago
      Among other measures, Abraham Lincoln had state legislators arrested to prevent them from voting for secession. He ended up waging the deadliest war in US history to force the seceding states to remain in the Union. Today, Abraham Lincoln is a hero. And before you bring in slavery, I think it's very clear from Lincoln's writings that he would have done the same no matter what the basis for secession was (and before the war, he was also in favor of continuing slavery if it would have kept the Union together).
Retric 9y ago
That may be true, or even possibly a significant issue. However, the exact same thing would be reported if it did not happen making it somewhat meaningless observation. PS: I really don't trust the 90% yes either. But, vote suppression IMO is a sign the people in power expect the vote to go counter to their desires.
- lz400 9y ago
  The 90% is plausible, since only the people voting yes were mobilized. What is doubtful is the 40% participation. What there's no doubt about is that it's not representative of the general population and there weren't enough guarantees to take the result seriously.
  - gonvaled 9y ago
    The chance to make it more representative was yesterday, and the spanish government chose not to.
    - lz400 9y ago
      No, yesterday was a process born dead. If there's no representation of all the factions and a legally binding agreement to vote on, it's useless. The Spanish government could have done nothing yesterday, maybe they should have, and we'd be in the same place now, a illegitimate result with pretty much the same numbers.
      - gonvaled 9y ago
        The Spanish government has had years, if not decades, to accommodate the aspirations of the Catalan population, but it has chosen to either ignore them or to actively work against them. This process is a consequence of a flowing society crashing against inflexible institutions.
        lz400 9y ago
        This is going off topic a little bit but it's interesting. Do you actually know what those aspirations are? Are you able to read original sources in Spanish? it might come as a surprise to you but this whole thing is built on extreme in-solidarity and those aspirations amount to "we want to contribute less tax to poorer regions" or "we didn't like that our unconstitutional law was declared unconstitutional". The central government actually ceded to those aspirations for 25 years and it was when they got too unjust for the rest of the country when they said no more.

by lz400 9y ago

centimeter 9y ago

> There are reports of people voting 4 times Who is making this report, why should I trust them, and do they have evidence this is a statistically meaningful problem?

lz400 9y ago
Several people and they provided pictures and testimony. There are more facts, like that the organization changed the methods 15m before starting and lost internet access and had to resort to writing people's names manually without checks are not even disputed by the Catalan authorities. They breached ~50% of their own electoral law, that they made up for this event alone. You are not going to find a statistical study of the elections, obviously. But nobody who was watching impartially has any doubts as to the fraud guarantees.
- gonvaled 9y ago
  All thanks to the spanish government.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  I hate to tell ya but you are making the mjnority argument here. Nobody in their right mind would support what the Spanish police are doing to people casting votes - legal or not.
  - jwhitlark 9y ago
    The national government being wrong does not mean that the regional government is right.
  - lz400 9y ago
    I'm not justifying the police actions, just saying the referendum was a farce. In fact without the police action, it would have been a farce too, which makes you wonder why they needed to stir the pot with so many police but anyway.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    Among other measures, Abraham Lincoln had state legislators arrested to prevent them from voting for secession. He ended up waging the deadliest war in US history to force the seceding states to remain in the Union. Today, Abraham Lincoln is a hero. And before you bring in slavery, I think it's very clear from Lincoln's writings that he would have done the same no matter what the basis for secession was (and before the war, he was also in favor of continuing slavery if it would have kept the Union together).

Retric 9y ago

That may be true, or even possibly a significant issue. However, the exact same thing would be reported if it did not happen making it somewhat meaningless observation. PS: I really don't trust the 90% yes either. But, vote suppression IMO is a sign the people in power expect the vote to go counter to their desires.

lz400 9y ago
The 90% is plausible, since only the people voting yes were mobilized. What is doubtful is the 40% participation. What there's no doubt about is that it's not representative of the general population and there weren't enough guarantees to take the result seriously.
- gonvaled 9y ago
  The chance to make it more representative was yesterday, and the spanish government chose not to.
  - lz400 9y ago
    No, yesterday was a process born dead. If there's no representation of all the factions and a legally binding agreement to vote on, it's useless. The Spanish government could have done nothing yesterday, maybe they should have, and we'd be in the same place now, a illegitimate result with pretty much the same numbers.
    - gonvaled 9y ago
      The Spanish government has had years, if not decades, to accommodate the aspirations of the Catalan population, but it has chosen to either ignore them or to actively work against them. This process is a consequence of a flowing society crashing against inflexible institutions.
      - lz400 9y ago
        This is going off topic a little bit but it's interesting. Do you actually know what those aspirations are? Are you able to read original sources in Spanish? it might come as a surprise to you but this whole thing is built on extreme in-solidarity and those aspirations amount to "we want to contribute less tax to poorer regions" or "we didn't like that our unconstitutional law was declared unconstitutional". The central government actually ceded to those aspirations for 25 years and it was when they got too unjust for the rest of the country when they said no more.