Posted by matthews at 10/10/08 3:31 p.m.

If three people were proofing these ballots and no one caught this, especially with all of the controversy going on, they need to be fired. It takes more concetration to flip burgers than proof reading a ballot and you can't even do that right. Ha ha funny, we got the joke. Has this country really come to this type of disrespect and insult? Im embarassed that other countries are going to hear about this, they probably think everyone in the US is crazy!

Posted by Alex A. HAWKS RULE at 10/10/08 3:34 p.m.

I have a really hard time believing this was just a typo

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 4:03 p.m.

The B and S are kind of far from each other. Sounds like BS to me.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 4:21 p.m.

Unbelievable. Error? Yeah, right.

Posted by Denny P at 10/10/08 4:30 p.m.

I think it's time for our side to take the gloves off. Who is Palin to go around asking who Barack Obama is? Obama has been vetted for almost two years now, we know exactly who he is. Who the hell is Sarah Palin?

And yeah, a typo, ha!

Posted by jazna1 at 10/10/08 4:44 p.m.

Uh Huh, a typo. Was Palin one of the proof readers? Not to worry, when Mr. Obama is president, we will all laugh about this. I had a thought yesterday after reading that Palin is working up her fanbase with accusations of terrorism etc. against Mr. Obama. If it's illegal to pester a job applicant about race, religion and creed, why is it legal for McPalin to be harrassing Mr. Obama? Seriously. It's so insulting and unfair to the voters. What losers.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 4:46 p.m.

Why would you guys care? Osama, Obama it doesn't matter...you are all brainwashed. It might as well be Osama because as long as it's not a republican you're going to vote for it regardless of the danger signs. And your only excuse is that it can't be any worse than it is now.

News flash...Yes it can!

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 4:47 p.m.

osmama? sounds about right to me.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 4:50 p.m.

I always knew he was a terrorist.

Posted by Seattle_Music at 10/10/08 5:18 p.m.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Mistake my left foot!!!

What are they planning to do to fix this "mistake" and how soon will ALL THREE of tho so-called proofreaders AND the printers AND the people putting together the mailers be FIRED?!?

I worked in printing and publishing for nine years. I don't believe for one second that this was a "mistake".

People all along the production chain--from the type-setter to the proofreaders to the people running the machines that print and collate the ballots into envelopes SAW this "mistake" and let it slide.

Fire them all.

Posted by 65yoh at 10/10/08 6:20 p.m.

no mistake.

just typical torture party chiseling.

gotv!

peas!

Posted by Organization Man at 10/10/08 6:34 p.m.

Lessee...who's the senator from New York again?

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 6:36 p.m.

For those of you who think this was an intentional GOP plot: You have appearently NEVER interacted with any government agency at any level.

Why would you possibly think that government employees could pull off something like printing a ballot without a mistake?

And for those who think that everyone should be fired: HAHAHAHA!!! Good luck getting past the Union protections...

Posted by Organization Man at 10/10/08 7:10 p.m.

So Dean Logan surfaces in upstate New York. Who woulda figured?

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 7:50 p.m.

Everyone should call them at the phone number listed on the form - 518-270-2990 to get an explanation. If the person who answers the phone can't explain it, ask for the person in charge.

"We have three different staff members who proof these things and somehow the typo got by us."

Posted by Organization Man at 10/10/08 7:59 p.m.

Could have been worse: could have read "Osama Biden Laden."

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 9:23 p.m.

I've been an editor for 14 years, and I've seen just about every kind of typo. Many typos happen when the typist accidentally strikes a key right next to the intended key. If Barack's last name were Odama, I could buy the explanation. But, since the S key is nowhere near the B key, it seems less likely.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 9:42 p.m.

Disgusting.
Simply disgusting that people would so carelessly insult our election process.

We are supposed to be the model of decency and fairness in the world, ESPECIALLY in voting.

This is disgusting.

Posted by islanders at 10/10/08 9:44 p.m.

Remember the educational level of people that work in these offices, and the level of their intelligence.....this is a stereotype and a generalization, but when the shoe fits, wear it.

Posted by Erasmus at 10/10/08 10:12 p.m.

Thanks to Bush and McCain, we are beginning to see a new equation in American politics:

Republicans = Neo-Nazis

- E

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 10:14 p.m.

The list of Republican dirty tricks seems bottomless. They are all either incompetent or lying. It doesn't matter because they have no shame. The Republicans are so afraid of any change, even indisputable change for the better, they will sabotage the system at every step. It is disgusting and sad. It used to be that the Republicans were just folks with a little different take but were still just folks. Ever since Reagan and Gingrich and Bushes and Neocons they have turned into a dishonorable an greedy cabal of jingoistic, vicious, troglodytic, inbred (Hi, Sarah!) fools.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/10/08 11:35 p.m.

How disgusting, the infantile ways that the Republicans connive to undermine any semblance of democracy. They take such pleasure in being nasty in ways like this (and that's supposed to convince us that they should lead anything).

I guess it's a distraction from their ongoing efforts to trying to hurt the less fortunate, and rip off the unwary.

Republican = Truth problems.

Posted by Slugman at 10/11/08 1:36 a.m.

You'd have to be an idiot to believe this was an accident. A typo would transpose a random letter with another letter. How likely is it that the exact letter changed would result in an insult long tossed about by neocons? This is just another example of what filthy swine all neocons are. The "people" yelling crazy threats and slander at Palon's rallies are even more evidence. These liars will stop at nothing and stoop to anything.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 3:39 a.m.

Big Blog's token minority republican, Mónica Guzmán would certainly approve of this "typo"

Posted by Peachinski at 10/11/08 5:40 a.m.

That's PRESIDENT Osama to you son.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 7:08 a.m.

It's subliminal, Fruedian slip, or a warning from the alien beings from above....

Obama Biden or Osama Biden....just need a Laden on his cabinet....

Posted by Organization Man at 10/11/08 7:18 a.m.

Guzman's a republican and a Betty?

There is still hope for the PI.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 7:29 a.m.

What's insulting to our election process is left-wing Democrat supported organizations like ACORN fraudulently registering bogus voters.

This is karma paying back Obama for his Chicago-style political tactics. If the ballots required each candidate's full middle name, Obama would probably argue against that, too.

Posted by OneOleMan at 10/11/08 8:31 a.m.

Note to the unregistered user who asked if we could get any worse:

Yes, it can get worse and definitely would get worse should John McCain and Sarah Palin when this election. Sarah Palin's closest adviser and friend Todd Palin was, for seven years, a member of Alaska's AIP party, the party that advocates secession from the United States of America, and earlier this year Sarah Palin gave a "shot out" to the party

Oh and let us not forget that both John McCain and Sarah Palin are doing their best to create an atmosphere of hate during their rallies. You hear some of their out of control supporters yelling things such as "kill him", "bomb Obama" and "terrorist", and let us not forget they had a sheriff, in uniform, introduce Sarah Palin with a reference to Barack Hussein Obama.

And now a bipartisan committee in the Alaska State Legislature has found that Sarah Palin DID abuse her power as governor of the state, (sounds quite a bit like Dick Cheney to me).

To borrow a quote from you, News flash...Yes it can!

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 9:31 a.m.

maybe the p-i can hire osama as its editorial page editor

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 10:07 a.m.

That was no typo. The "B" and "S" keys are not even close to eachother on a keyboard.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 10:12 a.m.

Wake up, fellow republicans!! We are dooming our chances in the coming elections by resorting to character assassination. The more we abandon the critical issues of our day to engage in mudslinging, the more we can expect voters to turn away from us! When it is our presidential candidate and running mate LEADING this folly, the greater our partywide losses will be. The days of Karl Rove are over! The nation is on to his political tricks. In these serious times, we desperately need to present OUR solutions to today's crises!! Let's put aside this childishness of whose name is what, whose friends were who and all those dirty tricks and show enough dignity and honesty to win this fall's elections...... Please!

Posted by yreesolu at 10/11/08 10:15 a.m.

someone should go to jail for this

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 10:26 a.m.

I doubt Guzman is a republican. Candace Heckman sure as hell isn't. Its much more likely for hot reporters to be part of the "liberal' media.

And yeah, this "typo" was inexcusable.

Posted by Moron Democrat at 10/11/08 10:27 a.m.

I love it, all you Obama supporters, seems like an honest mistake to me, just as the "newly found votes for Gregoire" were found in last election. I love it that Obama will be getting "on the job training" for the most important job in the world. We will get what we pay for.

Posted by shorelineguy at 10/11/08 11:08 a.m.

Puleeze. it was totally on purpose and now they're just trying to cover their hiney!

Posted by carbunicle at 10/11/08 11:12 a.m.

You don't have to support Obama to loathe the Republican party's tactics, leaders and recent history. I blame Reagan for closing all the mental hospitals and inflating the GOP membership.

Posted by allthewayright at 10/11/08 11:28 a.m.

its about time the truth came out too bad it wasnt on all ballots maybe you libs would finally wake UP

Posted by TravisB at 10/11/08 12:02 p.m.

The rhetoric, lies and distortions from the right wing noise machine regarding ACORN have obviously gone into overdrive now that McSame is cratering. What started as a ploy to justify political prosecutions aimed at altering election outcomes in favor of Republican candidates is now being leveraged to stir the anger of the violent extreme right ala Timothy McVeigh.

Here's some perspective on ACORN from Josh Marshal, the journalist who originally exposed the political corruption at the heart of the U.S. Attorney's office and how that corruption directly related to the refusal of conscientious professional Republican U.S. Attorney's like David Iglesias and John McKay to engage in illegal political prosecutions ordered by Karl Rove:

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

I've always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here's the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won't count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there's very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud.

Remember, the breathless scandal mongering by partisan pseudo-journalists is intended to result in two things:
increased viewership/readership/listenership;
and disenfranchisement of legitimate voters.
It can happen to anybody. It happened to me and my County Council member in 2004. Overzealous, poorly trained, and over worked county employees under tremendous pressure from politically motivated legal probes and nuisance law suits are routinely tossing the registrations of legit voters without any process and without good cause. When the pressure is applied selectively in counties and districts where voting trends favor Democrats, the effect is to swing elections. Don't let them toss your registration. Don't let them toss your ballot. Contact your local county elected officials if they try. Lean on local Democrats to support your right to vote. Every single adult citizen has the right to vote. It is wrong and illegal to take away a citizen's right to vote "just to be safe". County election workers who do so should be fired and prosecuted.

Posted by geon at 10/11/08 12:16 p.m.

I've got to admit, I some times, mistakingly call him Barack Osama Hussein.

Posted by coderlu at 10/11/08 12:22 p.m.

The only separation Republicans know between "B" and "S" is on a keyboard.

Mistake, my butt.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 2:02 p.m.

fascism n.
1. A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.
2. Capital F. The governmental system of Italy under Benito Mussolini from 1922 to 1943.

(Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, New College Edition, William Morris, Ed.; 1981, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.)

There are too many gullible people in this nation. The Republican party has become the official 'Party' of those people.

gullible
adj.
Easily deceived or duped.

gullibility n.
gullibly adv.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright© 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Isn't it a bit scarry when the Republican party leaders openly admit that elections (ie, a Bush recently) are no longer about 'issues' but are about 'charisma.' Hitler also had charisma.

Wow... how did I miss that McCain had 'charisma?'

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 2:16 p.m.

Look at the charisma of Rossi... a good Republican, as they go. He was even clever enough to change his label to one many people would be fooled by... the gullibles will probably fall for it.

GOP
abbr.
Grand Old Party (Republican Party)

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright© 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 3:01 p.m.

When the razor-thin-sliced "red meat" of Ayers and ACORN are all that even your most radical supporters have to hang their hats on, you know you're about to lose bigtime.

Maybe if McCain was an empty suit like Bush it would wash with the American public - but this one chose to run on a platform of "honor" and "country first."

You can already see it in McCain's defense of Obama the man at campaign events - he's starting to feel embarrassed by his own party.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/11/08 3:35 p.m.

I can buy that this was originally I typo, at least in a Freudian Slip kind of way. It is common for people to slip up and call him Osama, so I do not see why someone could not type it by mistake.

That being said, if there was THREE proofreaders and non of them caught this mistake, then there is something going on. Either that, or they hired illiterate proofreaders.

If it had been something like 'democrap' instead of 'democrat' then I MIGHT be able to see the proofreaders missing it, but in this case it is inexcusable. Shouldn't the first thing the proofreaders do, be to check the names of the candidates for President?

And for all of the bible thumping republicans out their that want to talk about Barak's middle name being Hussein, or how his last name is similar to Osama, and then try and make him out to be a radical muslin, think about this for a second:

What does the name McCain mean?

It means Son of Cain, as in Cain and Abel. Which by logic no more convoluted than that used to make Barak out as a terrorist, means that John McCain is a descendant of Cain and therefore cursed with the Mark of Cain.

So I leave you all with this:

Should we elect a radical muslim terrorist or a descendant of the progenitor of evil?

Posted by coderlu at 10/11/08 4:36 p.m.

"Typos" occur when someone hits the wrong key, located next to the right key, or in close proximity.

Even if this were a keystroke malfunction, the original typist was thinking "Osama" when s/he made the entry.

The proofreading gaffes are inexplicable.

Posted by Organization Man at 10/11/08 9:09 p.m.

Two words: Special prosecutor. We must get to the bottom of this.

Posted by summersfall at 10/12/08 5:10 a.m.

You know, I make typos. Sometimes I'll even write the wrong "their." But I never hit the s button when I'm aiming for b. I belong to a forum where one user calls Obama Osama every single post. I'll have to ask them if they type up ballots in real life.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/13/08 6:03 a.m.

This was no typo. This was a deliberate attempt to appeal to the baser instincts of certain voters. McCain/Palin have been doing this in several of their speeches. Then after inciting hate speech they stand back and claim they can't be held accountable for others' actions. It is pitiful, and whoever prepared, reviewed, approved, printed these ballots should be investigated.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/13/08 6:39 a.m.

This was clearly done on purpose. Interfering with the election process is a felony. A special prosecutor is definitely called for, and indictments and prosecution of the perpetrators should follow.

Posted by trekker at 10/13/08 8:10 a.m.

just what do those proof readers do? Make sure that the information stays inside the lines like you do with a coloring book? And all three of them missed it. Maybe the editor needs to get the axe for hiring these well educated people.

Posted by RahRahReplica at 10/13/08 11:01 a.m.

Typo my arse.
The B and S keys are nowhere near each other...
Even if it *was* a typo, how did it get past three people? that seems a little bit unlikely.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/13/08 12:16 p.m.

I am a long-time Republican voter, but I'm embarrassed by the GOP's recent tactics. I will vote Democratic this year, since it's obvious an Obama administration would help the majority of Americans.

And I have to say it's ridiculous to think that was a typo.

Posted by equalibrium at 10/13/08 12:36 p.m.

Let's use some forward thinking here for just a second. Has anyone stopped to think that the word, "Osama" may have been in the computer dictionary (as it has been a common US word for the past 7 years now) and "Obama" was not? All it would take is one lazy goverment worker to keep clicking the "change all" button during spell check and three more lazy ones to not even do their job.

Posted by unregistered user at 10/13/08 1:53 p.m.

According to the article I read neither the Democrat Commissioner, Edward McDonough(he is quoted saying this) nor Republican Commissioner, Larry Bugbee, looks at any of the absentee ballots; they leave it up to staff members to proofread; he said of staff of 10, at least 5 had proofread; another article says 3 proofread. No matter. They are getting the biggest salaries. And they are the two people responsible for correctness of everything sent from Board of Elections. Don't fire the staff; fire the Commissioners!