Does Romney Own Your Vote?

[peristaltor]

I don't ask this as a hypothetical. You see, a company owned by the Romney family may own the machine on which you cast your ballot:

Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of

Comments

[underlankers]

Would he really be stupid enough to use this to win the election? If he does, you're talking the seeds of the Romney-era version of Birtherism right here. No evidence in the world to prove it, but a powerful core of belief on the part of people who would accept it.

[dwer]

it doesn't work for Democrats. The Republicans simply dismiss them, and walk away. It only works in the other direction.

[ddstory]

Democrats need to step up their assholery.

[htpcl]

And? So what. That didn't get Bush impeached, did it.

[underlankers]

No, and your point is? Trutherism was rather heavily Democratic when Bush was in office, nowadays it's bipartisan like belief in little green men assraping rednecks or Sumerian Space Lizardmen possessing the rich and the powerful. ;)

[htpcl]

> you're talking the seeds of the Romney-era version of Birtherism right here. No evidence in the world to prove it, but a powerful core of belief on the part of people who would accept it

You're speaking of confirmation bias. People who've already decided they hate president X, have found yet another excuse to hate president X. That won't change the way they vote, so they're irrelevant. That's my point.

[allhatnocattle]

further entrenching the already entrenched? Sounds like so much effort with so little to gain. Why would they even waste their time?

Follow the money. How do you extract more money out of your base of loyal supporters? As they've already given $X to their campaign. How do you stop opponent from receiving more $$$ from their base?

It's a matter of flinging dirt. Doesn't matter if it sticks or not. It's more about the shear amount of it landing in the general direction of opponent.

Even in this community T_P a bunch of supposedly otherwise politically savvy junkies will occasionally pick up and pass some of this dirt. Some of us will get all wide-eyed and go "ohhh" or "aahhhh" Somebody else will be persuaded not to write a cheque to their favourite campaign, and maybe somebody else will.

[htpcl]

> Why would they even waste their time?

Because some people might think "my voice doesn't matter, candidate X will win anyway", so parties tend to do tremendous efforts to rile up their base and make them actually vote, not just support them.

[underlankers]

That's self-evident. When Bush was POTUS there was no end of conspiracy theories about what he would or would not do as a tyrannical individual, usually involving Iran in some fashion, and inevitably more common on the Internet than in real life. This would be similarly distributed and likewise grotesquely exaggerated by the GOP to create a false similarity that never exists but validates the persecution complex of the most affluent people on the planet. The vote in itself isn't worth much between Obama, who is Bush up to 11 on most things, and Romney, whose actual policies if elected are as unknown as the expanse of the Oort Cloud and similarly detached.

[rimpala]

Doesn't have enough inherent racism to work tho

[mikeyxw]

If it played on people's annoyance at having their TV programming interrupted by a year's worth of crap for an election that was a foregone conclusion, it might stick.