REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Voter fraud - American election vastly corrupted

POSTED BY: GHOULMAN
UPDATED: Friday, June 2, 2006 09:12
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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 3:39 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by Hardware:
I'd prefer paper and pencils deposited in a locked ballot box. Keep it simple and stupid.




But then we couldn't have instant results!! What would the networks do on election night? Just kidding.

IMHO, the method of voting isn't the issue, as any system can be gamed. People were stuffing ballot boxes and voting the dead long before computers were invented. It's the people who control the process you have to look out for. If you can get an election commission/board/agency that most people think is above corruption, it won't matter how folks vote; paper, potsherds, pebbles or pixels.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 4:01 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


"Its' not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes"

- Joseph Stalin (aka Karl Rove)

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 4:03 AM

HARDWARE


Quote:

Originally posted by Geezer:



But then we couldn't have instant results!! What would the networks do on election night? Just kidding.

IMHO, the method of voting isn't the issue, as any system can be gamed. People were stuffing ballot boxes and voting the dead long before computers were invented. It's the people who control the process you have to look out for. If you can get an election commission/board/agency that most people think is above corruption, it won't matter how folks vote; paper, potsherds, pebbles or pixels.

"Keep the Shiny side up"



True, living near Philly where the unofficial voting motto is "Vote early and often", yes, paper ballots can be rigged. What concerns me currently is that with the level of automation and lack of security in the few systems in use. Diebold voting machines can be hacked with a 10 line Visual Basic script. A script kiddie can control the election!

Automation minimizes the number of people in collusion to control an election. Stuffing ballot boxes takes a wider degree of corruption and the more people you have involved, the more likely there is going to be a leak.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 5:17 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:

Originally posted by Bojesphob:
Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
^^^ ? It's not some old ladies responsibility to make sure American voter laws aren't corrupted. Really. Sheesh, you are ignorant. Shut up!




So I'm ignorant because I expect her to be responsible and make sure that her vote counts?? How is that ignorant? It's called taking responsibility for the things that one can control. If you cannot place your vote, then it IS your responsibility to bring it up when you are voting, NOT AFTERWARDS. Plain and simple. Basically, because she (and others) did not make a scene when it happened, it allowed other people to vote on that faulty (tampered with) machine, and essentially allowed it to misinterpret their votes. If it was a paper ballot and that ballot was "lost", then of course it would not be her fault that she couldn't do anything about it. This is like if it only said "Bush" on a paper ballot and you couldn't even vote for Kerry on it. If you know you cannot vote for a person that you know you should be able to vote for, there is an expectation that you bring it up immediately to the officials, then if they don't do anything, you call the voting hotline, or your local representative. Voting is a right AND a responsibility, not JUST a right. We were not given the right to vote, we had to fight for it. We have that right because people stood up and fought against oppression to get it. They didn't just say "Oh well, it doesn't count, so I guess I'll just complain about it" and get it. It wasn't the laws that caused the problems with the election, it was people. The law didn't force her to not say anything when that machine didn't work, she decided it wasn't worthwhile to do so, or she was afraid to. Every person here in the US, if they are eligible, have the right to vote and the responsibility to make sure that they did everything they could to make sure it counted, old or no, minority or no, blind or no, deaf or no, low-IQ or no, and if they cannot themselves, find someone who can for them. The people who are willing to bend election laws and corrupt an otherwise good election system count on these people, because they know that they will not cause a fuss when they actually try to vote. Who is easier to fool, a person who knows their rights and will stand up for them, or someone who will let anything happen and just bitch about it afterwards? If there was corruption in this election (which I am not convinced of, even though I didn't vote for Bush nor Kerry, I voted for someone else) then they need to stand trial for it and be thrown in prison. But, that still doesn't take that lady off of the hook for not doing anything about it.

If it is ignorant to expect people to do their part, then I guess I am. I'd rather be ignorant and know 100% that I did everything to make sure my vote counted that I could than to be pissing and moaning because I was too lazy to do anything about it when I did vote. I guess it's too much to expect people to actually know their rights and stand up for them. And people wonder why we have so many problems in this country......



Yikes. You really need to justify your opinion eh. All I ment was that blaming a little old lady for voter fraud, which you did in your post previous to this one, is ignorant of the reality, law, and responsibilities of the election officials.

Next, you prolly will post something about how I interpreted your post incorrectly.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 5:19 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
"Its' not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes"

- Joseph Stalin (aka Karl Rove)


lol!!! Funniest post so far... even funnier than Geezers posts.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 6:13 AM

BOJESPHOB


And you'd be right. I don't like to be misunderstood. I had no intention of making it sound like it was her fault that there was voter fraud. I was just trying to make the point that it was her fault for not pressing the issue. She could have saved a lot of people from having their votes not count if she would have done something. I agree that it would be wrong to blame her for the problems that happened. The officials/designers of the machine should be held accountable for the votes not being taken correctly on a large scale, and to prevent voter fraud, but that lady is responsible for her own vote not counting. I'm not trying to be difficult on this.... I have issues sometimes trying to explain things when I type, and can be misunderstood easily (this wasn't the first time)......

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 6:39 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
"Its' not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes"

- Joseph Stalin (aka Karl Rove)



I expected better of you, SignyM. Everyone knows that the correct allusion is Karl Rove as Joseph Goebbels to Bush's Hitler. No wonder you lost the election.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 10:08 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Quote:

because she (and others) did not make a scene when it happened

Actually, she did. After she tried over a dozen times to vote for Kerry, she called the election officials in. (so much for secret ballot) They also tried to vote for Kerry on that machine. It took about 7 of their tries before it went in. They noted in their records that they could not get that machine to accept a Kerry vote until a number of tries later. This was officially verified and documented EARLY ON ELECTION DAY. But it wasn't enough (apparently) for that machine to be taken out of service. Nor did anyone think to question how the other machines might be functioning.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 10:18 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Oh, but Rove is so much more than a Goebbels. While Cheney runs the country, Rove runs the political machine.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 12:32 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


"No wonder you lost the election." - Geezer

Tsk! Now WHERE did I put that thing? rummmages tabletop It MUST be here somewhere! Last I saw it, it was November 2... in a black box I think. Yeah that was it... in a black box. looks through desk drawers, finds a black box Now see, I KNOW I didn't lose that thing! If it was anyhwere, it would be here opens black box... long, shocked silence followed by stunned comment It's been... stolen...

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 1:09 PM

BOJESPHOB


Quote:

Originally posted by rue:
Quote:

because she (and others) did not make a scene when it happened

Actually, she did. After she tried over a dozen times to vote for Kerry, she called the election officials in. (so much for secret ballot) They also tried to vote for Kerry on that machine. It took about 7 of their tries before it went in. They noted in their records that they could not get that machine to accept a Kerry vote until a number of tries later. This was officially verified and documented EARLY ON ELECTION DAY. But it wasn't enough (apparently) for that machine to be taken out of service. Nor did anyone think to question how the other machines might be functioning.




Ok, then that means that since it took her vote, that it was a programming glitch? If she made a fuss about it and got her vote to count, I'm proud of her. This illustrates the need for more information, with how it was stated earlier, it sounded like she complained about it and left. Anyhow, a new question about this for all of you that might know: How does the voting machine thing work? Does it show you who you voted for before you submit it? Is that how she knew that it wasn't accepting it? Since we still use paper ballots (thank God), I haven't even seen the voting machines in action.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2004 7:53 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


I haven't seen them in action either. (We too still use paper.) Apparently you select who you intend to vote for and it reformats it back on the screen, with a selection 'cast ballot' to actually input your selection. I saw her being interviewed afterward, she said she kept selecting Kerry and it kept showing Bush on the screen. After a dozen tries to get it to show 'Kerry' she called in the officials who pow-wowed together in front of the machine. They would select Kerry, Bush would show up, they'd try again etc. until finally it showed 'Kerry', at which point they pressed 'cast ballot'. But there was not paper trail or any way to check what actually went into the count inside the machine. It failed at the very first, obvious, selection step and that's what they were addressing.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 3:41 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


The Canadians may now investigate voter fraud in their own country. While researching this topic, I found this: 'Author of “Black Box Voting,” investigator Bev Harris also wondered why source code for Diebold voting machines, used in over 30 states and 5 Canadian provinces, was publicly available on the Internet.'

Apparently, the fraud in Canada is more severe than here in the United States. While the United States citizenry was at least aware of the presence of Diebold voting machines, Canadian citizens were completely unaware that they were voting on the machines in five provinces. This bespeaks of a media suppression campaign on a wide scale.

No doubt this is due to a new conspiracy theory which will shortly be described where the US is corrupting Canadian voting and their media.

--Anthony




"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 4:10 AM

GHOULMAN


^^^ I'm not aware of that. Could you provide a link to a story where Diebold machines are in Canada? I'd be interested. As far as I know, Bev Harris has been writing more articles about the fraud of this 2004 US election than most people but I can't find one about Canada using Diebold machines, as you state AnthonyT. I voted not but a few short months ago and it was the still highly effective pen and paper technology that allowed me to encrypt my vote with the universal script code - X.

Found this article but I don't have time to read it. Let me know if it's crap.
Voting errors tallied nationwide
By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | December 1, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/
2004/12/01/voting_errors_tallied_nationwide/
?rss_id=Boston.com%20/%20News%20/%20Politics%20/%20Recent%20Globe%20coverage
More than 4,000 votes vanished without a trace into a computer's overloaded memory in one North Carolina county, and about a hundred paper ballots were thrown out by mistake in another. In Texas, a county needed help from a laboratory in Canada to unlock the memory of a touch-screen machine and unearth five dozen votes.


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Thursday, December 2, 2004 4:59 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


From Diebold's website. They're selling some sort of voting machine to Canada. Don't know where exactly it is being used. But clearly, the vile stain of injustice is spreading North.

< http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm>

Voting Solutions
Diebold, through our wholly owned subsidiaries Diebold Election Systems and Diebold Procomp, is one of largest electronic voting system providers in the world. We've enjoyed years of success in the United States, Canada and Brazil. Our qualifications are unmatched.

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 6:14 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
"No wonder you lost the election." - Geezer

Tsk! Now WHERE did I put that thing? rummmages tabletop It MUST be here somewhere! Last I saw it, it was November 2... in a black box I think. Yeah that was it... in a black box. looks through desk drawers, finds a black box Now see, I KNOW I didn't lose that thing! If it was anyhwere, it would be here opens black box... long, shocked silence followed by stunned comment It's been... stolen...


Nice1. Great way to point out the difference between those who mistakenly believe they won something and those of us that believe all Americans had something stolen from them... thier country.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 6:43 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
"No wonder you lost the election." - Geezer

Tsk! Now WHERE did I put that thing? rummmages tabletop It MUST be here somewhere! Last I saw it, it was November 2... in a black box I think. Yeah that was it... in a black box. looks through desk drawers, finds a black box Now see, I KNOW I didn't lose that thing! If it was anyhwere, it would be here opens black box... long, shocked silence followed by stunned comment It's been... stolen...


Nice1. Great way to point out the difference between those who mistakenly believe they won something and those of us that believe all Americans had something stolen from them... thier country.


Nice1. Great way to point out the difference between those who irrationally believe they had something stolen from them and those of us who are not psycho BushHaters stuck in a fantasy world where AlGore is President and Osama bin Ladden is a humanitarian.

H

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 7:06 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Erm... there might be some middle ground being missed here...

--Anthony


"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 9:43 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
"No wonder you lost the election." - Geezer

Tsk! Now WHERE did I put that thing? rummmages tabletop It MUST be here somewhere! Last I saw it, it was November 2... in a black box I think. Yeah that was it... in a black box. looks through desk drawers, finds a black box Now see, I KNOW I didn't lose that thing! If it was anyhwere, it would be here opens black box... long, shocked silence followed by stunned comment It's been... stolen...


Nice1. Great way to point out the difference between those who mistakenly believe they won something and those of us that believe all Americans had something stolen from them... thier country.


Nice1. Great way to point out the difference between those who irrationally believe they had something stolen from them and those of us who are not psycho BushHaters stuck in a fantasy world where AlGore is President and Osama bin Ladden is a humanitarian.

H



Nice1. Great way to take some gentle joshing between sides and twist it into another insult fest. Please consider yourselves the recipients of non-partisan virtual dope-slaps.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 9:44 AM

UNICORN


Not everybody who believes the election could have been stolen is irrational.

Holding a belief despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary is irrational.

There is no such thing as a weed.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 9:49 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by Unicorn:
Not everybody who believes the election could have been stolen is irrational.

Holding a belief despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary is irrational.

There is no such thing as a weed.



...and you too. Let's see...Cntl/Alt/D...Virtual dope-slap delivered.

Y'all are gonna be nice today, even if I have to VDS you into virtual unconsciousness.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 10:19 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I think the VDS belongs to Hero, who first introduced the genteel phrase "psycho BushHaters stuck in a fantasy world where AlGore is President and Osama bin Ladden is a humanitarian."

And so my award goes to HERO, for taking this line of discussion to a new low. And I'm retroactively removing the VDS from Ghoulman and Unicorn, who really didn't deserve them.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 2:24 PM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
And I'm retroactively removing the VDS from Ghoulman and Unicorn, who really didn't deserve them.



Wow, you guys are big on rewriting history.

And you wanted a draft. And you wanted the courts to step in and change the election results, and you don't want free speech, and you are against heterosexual marriage, and you want to raise everbody's taxes, deny health coverage to the rich, kill puppies in the name of cats, eat snails, ban beer in football stadiums, deny ketchup to millions of school kids, hug trees, deny hugs to SUV's, turn off Fox News, turn on Bill Clinton, turn in George Bush, turn over American soveriegnty, turn up the number of abortions, and turn down the chance to spread liberty to the Muslim world.

I've heard some Democrats say y'all need a new message, truth is y'all need new values. There's millions of Red state Democrats, like myself (being a Republican don't mean I aint a Democrat), who'd fight hard for a Democratic candidate that shared our values. Aint seen one since...maybe Truman, since I aint claiming Carter. He had all the right values, but knew peanuts about runnin a country. Now Reagan, there was a President the Red Democrats could love.

Me, I just live and let live, fight for what's right, work hard, play rough, and don't settle for second best. Thats why I almost always win and never really lose.

So take your pansy blue helemted, French licking, Starbucks coffee drinking, Vermont Teddy Bear ordering, luxery towncar driving, blue blooded, ivy league, liberal close minded elitisist VDS and stick right next to your virtual desktop stripper. I prefer the real thing. May be Bush League, but we gets the job done

H

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 2:36 PM

DIETCOKE


Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
It's been a few days and George W. Bush has been declared the winner of the 2004 Presidential election... by the media.

Now the media is commited to "healing" instead of doing thier job - checking for fraud.

In an election that has brought out more Americans to punch thier vote since 1968 it is the shame of America that each and every vote wasn't counted, worse, many votes were simply destroyed in a cruel and fascistic campaign by many Republicans to steal an election they feared would go very badly for them.

This is really silly nonsense. Please stop making the Democratic party look bad.

It's plain the election is a fraud.

The line-ups for voting were a joke.
The Diebold voting machines are a joke.
The police prevented hundreds from voting.
Voters were prevented from voting at the booths.
Fake lists of people were created to prevent voting.
Poor areas were closed to voting.
Minority areas were closed to voting.
University voting booths were "stolen".

The list of stories about fraud go on and on. You might think these are the usual incidents... but voting isn't difficult, it shouldn't have any problems. If there are problems... THAT'S A PROBLEM! But this logic fails American media who are ordered to support thier man George W. Bush.

Worse... there is no controling election body to officially count votes and insure the count, rather like every other democratic government on the planet. Three Republican dominated corporations control over 80% of the vote count in the United States: Sequoia Voting Systems Inc; Electronic Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S); and Diebold" Inc.

... and the stories keep coming out. The number one issue Americans will not see on thier TVs, but the rest of the world will see, is the incredible corruption of the 2004 US Election.

Your vote didn't count.


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Thursday, December 2, 2004 3:36 PM

UNICORN


Geezer,
You miss my meaning, Friend.

There is a huge amount of evidence that the vote was hacked in counties and other areas where e-voting took place without any paper trail or other means of verifying the numbers. The numbers in only those places are completely mismatched between the polling data and the actual results; nowhere else were the results as skewed as in those particular places.

The consistent polling data showed Kerry up by a large margin in those areas where discrepencies were noted, while the vote as counted consistently showed higher numbers for Bush.

In my statement which was deliberately open-ended, I said that it is irrational to believe something when there is a preponderance of evidence to the contrary. By that measure it would be irrational for me to trust my government to accurately represent me at all. By that measure, I have heard a great many facts spun until they were unrecognizeable, splashing, fountain-like, from the froth at the top of this administration, so I have a fairly strong idea that they care less about the truth or the voters than they care about winning and expanding their power. I mean come on, "The environment has never been cleaner"? Did anybody believe Bush when he said that?

As I have posted previously,

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

this is a good site to read more about all that.

Before I accept your dope slap, you should understand that those of us who wanted change for our country read this information from multiple non-crazed sources and feel cheated, because the evidence here supports the notion that the Bushies were willing to cheat in order to win, if not at a national level, then at least repeatedly on a more local scale, and there _were_ documented cases of organized disenfranchising in (I think it was 11) numerous states by a supposedly reputable group with strong ties to the Republicans.

It's very disheartening to all of us that nobody higher up seems to care about the appearence of fraud; if they really won fair and square, they should be willing to make sure every vote is counted and counted correctly when there are so many of us calling for it. They should be bending over backwards at a national level to find any sort of cheating and put an immediate and very public stop to it. They're calling for our unity, but they refuse to represent us to the best of their abilities. In fact they've made repeated attempts to bury any evidence that doesn't make them look good.

Those of us in the Kerry camp fear for our inalienable rights. This election saw nationwide attacks on sexual freedom across the board; when did Senators and Presidents become a fixture in the bedroom? This freedom, this privacy, this representation, _has_ been stolen from us if there is no one in the winners' circle who will fight for us, who will bother to make sure it's all kosher, who will look at credible sources and take them seriously instead of trying to discredit them with spun half-truths.

Mr. Bush is completely surrounded by people who agree with everything he says, or everything Cheney says. He never hears from the other _half_ of his constituents, and as far as we can tell, he never even tries.

So you can send me the dope slap, but honestly I didn't feel it, because I think you missed.

(I've done enough stupid things to recognize that particular sensation, after all.)

There is no such thing as a weed.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 4:43 PM

BOJESPHOB


Actually, I have a question for all of you. This is a little off topic, and a little on. Ok, here goes: The 2000 election was close. Too close. Ok, fine enough. Bush kinda won, kinda didn't. Let's not get into that. Ok, he won the 2004 election. Ok, some people think that it was rigged, others don't. Here's the question: Why, if you are really "in control" of the way votes are counted and can control the outcome of an election, would you allow somebody like Bill Clinton to win office, two successive terms??? I can assure you that both times he won, there were problems with the voting, there were issues with fraud. Do you know why it wasn't news? It's because the race wasn't close. He won. Just as Bush won this time around. If the people "in control" were really "in control" then Bush the first would have had two terms. The people got sick of him, and wanted Clinton. How much did you hear people complaining that Clinton won when he did? Some, not much, but some.

I will admit that there were people (on both political sides) that tried to make votes disappear, disenfranchise voters, rig the vote. It wasn't only Republicans doing it.

Also, the media is a liberal medium (except for Fox, which is weird cause they used to be the worst).

They want Americans to have as much unprotected sex with multiple partners that have differant diseases while smoking cigarettes and dope so that they can make us a country of "victims" so that they can gain votes and power. They gain power and say to themselves "Look what I've done for myself. Screw everybody else, this is about ME!!" (Ted Kennedy is a wonderful example of that attitude!)

On the other side, the Republican party tries to believe that they are the "compassionate" party that tries to help others help themselves. While that is an admirable goal, they fail miserably when they only do things that fuel their self-interest. They gain the power and say to themselves "Wow, look at me, I am making descisions that will affect BILLIONS of peoples lives!! I'm going to start a war!!"

Hopefully, soon, people will wake up and realize that neither group is the one that is going to help this country. It's kinda like being in a country where the Nazi's are running against the Marxists....... Whomever wins, we all lose!!

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 5:15 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The religious right and the non-religious right have been working towards this ascendancy for the past two decades (or more) and the political balance of power doesn't remain static. Something seriously changed during Clinton's terms in office- the right wing took over the Republican Party and tipped that balance. I can give several indicators of the change:

The religious right claimed, openly and proudly, to have taken over the entire Republican Party in Texas at all levels: county, state, and national.

The Republicans and Ken Star pursued Clinton with a vicious single-mindedness that hadn't been seen in Presidential politics for over 60 years.

Dole's candidacy revealed the split between the "moderate" Republicans and the more right-wing kind, and his failure to win office gave the right-wing the green light to play out their scenario. (The same thing might happen as a result of Kerry's failure.)

Just because someone's in power now doesn't mean they were always in power, or that they will remain in power ad infinitum. After all, even The Nazis started w/o power and (thankfully) ended w/o power.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 5:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh, BTW

"They {liberals} want Americans to have as much unprotected sex with multiple partners that have differant diseases while smoking cigarettes and dope so that they can make us a country of "victims" so that they can gain votes and power."

"They"- the coporations- want us to smoke because it makes a huge profit, and the sexual focus of our society comes from advertising because the industry is pushing the button that works on just about everyone- sex. After all, sex sells, doesn't it? If you were to look at how people actually behave, you would find that godless liberals are actually more moral- they lie, cheat, steal, and fornicate less often and generally profess (and act on) selfless values more often than the supposedly religious. So, in sum, I think you've got the wrong "they" in your crosshairs.

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Thursday, December 2, 2004 6:37 PM

UNICORN


Kind of trollish here, but...

Isn't the unprotected sex thing much more of a Republican thing, because (according to certain of them) BIRTH CONTROL IS BAD?

After all, we Godless Sodomite Family-Hating Tree-Hugging Liberals are pro-condoms, pro-sex-ed, pro-abstinance-plus, and pro-social-programs-that-support-unwed-mothers. Also, we think that people who provide birth control prescriptions, counseling or referrals for abortion/adoption services, and educational materials about such things should be able to (gasp!) talk about those issues without losing funding.

(We are not, by the way, pro-trading horrible diseases. That's an icky fallacy and not much fun at a party. :b)

Sorry guys. I'm not playing with much sense of humor tonight. It's nothing personal (or even political)-- I had dental work done today.

Evil Republican Dental Work. (Ow.)

There is no such thing as a weed.

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Friday, December 3, 2004 3:16 AM

GHOULMAN


Quote:

Wow, you guys are big on rewriting history.

And you wanted a draft. And you wanted the courts to step in and change the election results, and you don't want free speech, and you are against heterosexual marriage, and you want to raise everbody's taxes, deny health coverage to the rich, kill puppies in the name of cats, eat snails, ban beer in football stadiums, deny ketchup to millions of school kids, hug trees, deny hugs to SUV's, turn off Fox News, turn on Bill Clinton, turn in George Bush, turn over American soveriegnty, turn up the number of abortions, and turn down the chance to spread liberty to the Muslim world.

I've heard some Democrats say y'all need a new message, truth is y'all need new values. There's millions of Red state Democrats, like myself (being a Republican don't mean I aint a Democrat), who'd fight hard for a Democratic candidate that shared our values. Aint seen one since...maybe Truman, since I aint claiming Carter. He had all the right values, but knew peanuts about runnin a country. Now Reagan, there was a President the Red Democrats could love.

Me, I just live and let live, fight for what's right, work hard, play rough, and don't settle for second best. Thats why I almost always win and never really lose.

So take your pansy blue helemted, French licking, Starbucks coffee drinking, Vermont Teddy Bear ordering, luxery towncar driving, blue blooded, ivy league, liberal close minded elitisist VDS and stick right next to your virtual desktop stripper. I prefer the real thing. May be Bush League, but we gets the job done



Typical neofascist rebuttal - an attack on the person and never the issue.

Notice how this is a responce to Signym quoteing HERO? Instead of quantifiying his own words... he attacks Signym with "state of the art" right wing name calling.

Reading this it breaks down into: "you, you people, me, we who are rightious, and take your...

*sigh* ... good gracious, I'm morderating.

Having said that it's well written. Nice flow. Oh, and HERO, you can eat me.

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Friday, December 3, 2004 4:47 AM

CONNORFLYNN


Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Quote:

Wow, you guys are big on rewriting history.

And you wanted a draft. And you wanted the courts to step in and change the election results, and you don't want free speech, and you are against heterosexual marriage, and you want to raise everbody's taxes, deny health coverage to the rich, kill puppies in the name of cats, eat snails, ban beer in football stadiums, deny ketchup to millions of school kids, hug trees, deny hugs to SUV's, turn off Fox News, turn on Bill Clinton, turn in George Bush, turn over American soveriegnty, turn up the number of abortions, and turn down the chance to spread liberty to the Muslim world.

I've heard some Democrats say y'all need a new message, truth is y'all need new values. There's millions of Red state Democrats, like myself (being a Republican don't mean I aint a Democrat), who'd fight hard for a Democratic candidate that shared our values. Aint seen one since...maybe Truman, since I aint claiming Carter. He had all the right values, but knew peanuts about runnin a country. Now Reagan, there was a President the Red Democrats could love.

Me, I just live and let live, fight for what's right, work hard, play rough, and don't settle for second best. Thats why I almost always win and never really lose.

So take your pansy blue helemted, French licking, Starbucks coffee drinking, Vermont Teddy Bear ordering, luxery towncar driving, blue blooded, ivy league, liberal close minded elitisist VDS and stick right next to your virtual desktop stripper. I prefer the real thing. May be Bush League, but we gets the job done



Typical neofascist rebuttal - an attack on the person and never the issue.

Notice how this is a responce to Signym quoteing HERO? Instead of quantifiying his own words... he attacks Signym with "state of the art" right wing name calling.

Reading this it breaks down into: "you, you people, me, we who are rightious, and take your...

*sigh* ... good gracious, I'm morderating.

Having said that it's well written. Nice flow. Oh, and HERO, you can eat me.



Unfortunately Ghoulman you are the consummate Hypocrite. You accuse everyone of attacking other folks, when every single one of your posts does the exact same thing, and in many cases crosses a line between civillity and discordance. You label and insult those who don't agree with your "Opinion". "Neo-Fascist" being a good example of such an attack. Your rebuttals could be considered "State of the Art Left Wing name calling"

Everyone gets their gander up occasionally. I'm a guilty member of that as well.

It is difficult to remain civil when you are constantly attacked for being an American and lumped in with anyone who has fringe beliefs in either direction.

As for moderator.. this board desperately needs one, to keep the topics civil, as well as the titles of the topics. I could compile a list of the Anti-American Hatemongering you have initiated on this board, changing the landscape from civil discourse to defensive antagonizing discourse.

I have a few friends who won't even visit this Firefly site, because when they first did the first thing they saw was an Anti-American statement in the forum topics on the main page.

It's tough to get folks to share their love of the BDS, when they feel they will be attacked if they join the ranks.

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Friday, December 3, 2004 6:51 AM

HERO


Quote:

Originally posted by Ghoulman:
Typical neofascist rebuttal - an attack on the person and never the issue.



Aint nothing "neo" or "fascist" about it. I'm Conservative. Same Conservative who sailed to a new world looking for new ideas. Same conservative who blazed trails, fought indians, and tamed a continent. Same Conservative who dumped tea in the harbor, said no to King George, and yes to the soveriegnty of my friends and neighbors. Same Conservative who stood the walls under the rocket's red glare, charged the field at Fredricksburg, stormed the beaches of Normandy. Same Conservative who freed America from Kings, freed slaves from bondage, freed Europe from Nazis, gave hope to millions, gave the boot to Saddam, and our vote to George Bush.

Quote:


he attacks Signym with "state of the art" right wing name calling.


It aint "state of the art". I tell it like it is, no bullshit, thats as old as time. Liberals hate it because it aint to their liking. They invent "political correctness" to civilize the truth out of us Red staters and reserve speech to themselves or at least their approved topics, language, and viewpoints.
Quote:


Reading this it breaks down into: "you, you people, me, we who are rightious, and take your...


Its always been "you people" and "we, us". Thats the American way. Two sides, or more, discussing, arguning, and ultimately voting. The problem is you prefer the other way. When only your side gets to talk, gets to have power, gets to have an opinion. Thats why you and France, and Saddam, and Koffi "I don't know nothin bout no oil money" UN Guy and John Kerry can't stand it. Not only are you losing, you can't stand that anyone dares question you.
Quote:


Oh, and HERO, you can eat me.


Sorry, I don't approve of that particular life choice. I leave you free to practice it in the privacy of your own world, but don't include me in your fantasies. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just choose not to particiapte. Sure, I'm a sexy man. But thats not an invitation to hold hands and take long showers.

Unless your a hot, liberal chick...then send me your number and I'll show you my concealed weapon...

For the record, I'm a moderate on the whole gay issue. I support civil unions (makes sense to the lawyer in me), but not gay marriage (thats the Christian conservative side). I also am against sex between men (thats the homophobic side) but am in favor of sex between hot women (thats the heterosexual side). So I think that makes me a moderate leaning hippocrite...but its my opinion, MINE, ALL MINE, GO AWAY, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!

H

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Friday, December 3, 2004 7:25 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Um Hero, I follow your drift starting at "Aint nothing "neo" or "fascist" about it. I'm Conservative. Same Conservative who sailed to a new world looking for new ideas. Same conservative who blazed trails, fought indians, and tamed a continent. Same Conservative who dumped tea in the harbor, said no to King George, and yes to the soveriegnty of my friends and neighbors. Same Conservative who stood the walls under the rocket's red glare, charged the field at Fredricksburg, stormed the beaches of Normandy. Same Conservative who freed America from Kings, freed slaves from bondage, freed Europe from Nazis, gave hope to millions, gave the boot to Saddam, and our vote to George Bush."

But you lost me at a couple of points... Calling yourself "conservative" kinds of obscures the fact that in Colonial times you would have been called a traitor by the then-existing government (which couldn't tolerate dissent), fighting (and enslaving) Indians just isn't consistent with freeing slaves, and "giving hope to millions" doesn't square with supporting dicatorship abroad.

So I believe in the same ideals you do but I'm more consistent about it, and I might possibly have a more balanced view of my role in history- Other than those two caveats I think we're on the same page.


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Friday, December 3, 2004 7:22 PM

HARDWARE


http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary%5C14736.html

A verifiable-voting insurgency


Colleen Redman


Redman, of Floyd, is a writer and poet.

Just as the U.S. invasion of Iraq seemed over with the fall of Baghdad, so did the 2004 presidential election seem to end when John Kerry conceded. But the war was hardly over when Bush prematurely claimed victory, and the election isn't over, either.

In fact, a new Harris Poll indicates that one in five Americans doesn't believe the election was legitimate. The number of skeptics would probably be higher if more people were aware of the scope of voting irregularities that occurred. Unfortunately, the corporate-owned media have mostly fallen in line with the "powers that be," just as they did in the run-up to the war (something a few major newspapers later apologized for).

In the days following the election, I got my election news from the Internet because the mainstream media weren't covering it thoroughly. Bloggers and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states, wrote Thom Hartmann, author and nationally syndicated talk show host, in a Nov. 4 article that really piqued my interest.

With a story here ("Vote count glitches haunt Bush's supposed mandate") and a story there ("Palm Beach County logs 88,000 more votes than voters"), I pieced together news from across the country in an effort to inform myself.

On Nov. 14, I came across a compelling paper by University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman, titled "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy." After comparing exit polls, which had Kerry in the lead, with the announced results for Bush in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, Freedman, a statistician, calculated that the odds against such an accidental discrepancy in all three states together are 250 million to 1.

Exit polls generally match official voting counts and have been used around the world as a way to verify voter accuracy and guard against vote tampering. Even Dick Morris, a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, said in an article for The Hill, "Exit polls are almost never wrong. ... [They] cannot be wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."

In an ironic twist, the media have recently been in high gear covering the suspected vote fraud in Ukraine. Just weeks after our own election, in which exit polls didn't match the computerized tallies, The Associated Press, while reporting the story, included Ukraine's exit poll discrepancies as evidence of alleged vote fraud there.

Not only have the media been neglectful of investigating the validity of the U.S. election, they have occasionally discredited those who have questioned it, referring to them as "conspiracy theorists." Given the high numbers of vote "purges," "spoiled" ballots, voter intimidation incidents and other reported irregularities that disenfranchised mostly Democratic voters, coupled with the knowledge that the largest voting machine companies are owned by known Republicans, or that a John Hopkins study determined that electronic voting machines are wide open for fraud, isn't some oversight in order? Isn't it suspicious that voting anomalies have overwhelmingly come down in favor of Bush?

While tens of thousands of Ukrainians are in the streets defending the principles of democracy, most Americans probably aren't even aware of the University of California-Berkeley statistical study that found that irregularities with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush in Florida. For the sake of all future elections involving electronic voting, someone must explain the statistical anomalies in Florida, the professor who headed up the study said.

If Americans knew that a reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the Berkeley analysis, would they take to the streets like the Ukrainians, or at least get on the phone to their congressmen?

Contrary to what you might believe if you're following the mainstream news, there is a substantial uprising of activism taking place by those who want our voting systems to be more accountable. Bev Harris, author and founder of www.blackboxvoting.org, has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for vote records for more than 3,000 counties as part of her investigation into possible electronic voting fraud.

The General Accounting Office has agreed to investigate 2004 voting irregularities, at the request of several Democratic leaders. Green and Libertarian presidential candidates have announced that they will file for a recount in Ohio and have raised the money to do it.

While the post-election self-analysis the Democratic Party is currently engaged in may be constructive, I hate to see Kerry supporters lambaste him for losing or beat themselves up for not doing enough, because, due to a lack of confidence in our voting systems, it's not clear that he didn't win.

Kerry supporters should feel some solace in knowing that the latest Zogby poll (Nov. 13) has Bush's approval rating at only 48 percent, with those disapproving at 51 percent (about the same percentages that the exit polls had Kerry winning by). A Gallup poll gives Bush a modest post-election bounce with an approval rating of 53 percent. While that is a higher rating than the Zogby poll, it reflects the lowest post-election approval rating of any of the last seven presidents who won a second term, which is hardly a mandate for Bush.

On the surface, the election night coverage seemed as dramatic and believable as Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations when he reasoned to the world why we were justified to invade Iraq. But in reality, Powell's case was empty of substance, and eventually even he conceded that his evidence against Iraq was wrong.

It's not hard to conclude that election results could have been created by those in power and are not a fact-based reality, considering what the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist David Suskind says a top White House official said to him: "You're part of the reality-based community, one who believes that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. ... That's not the way the world works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too."

Voting fraud is nothing new. It's part of our history and something both parties have been guilty of. If it's easy enough to do, you can be assured someone will do it. And never has it been so easy. Our voting system has been privatized by Republican-owned companies that have no meaningful federal or state regulations. It was Republicans who blocked legislation requiring that electronic voting machines produce a backup paper trail, and some are now calling for an end to exit polls.

I don't want to raise false hopes that the election results will be changed by upcoming recounts and investigations, but I don't want those of us who find Bush's fundamentalist agenda frightening to lose all hope, either. To those Americans, I say, stay informed and be outspoken. And remember: Richard Nixon was re-elected, too, only later to resign.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

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Saturday, December 4, 2004 3:32 PM

EVILMIKE


Quote:

Originally posted by Hardware:
While tens of thousands of Ukrainians are in the streets defending the principles of democracy, most Americans probably aren't even aware of the University of California-Berkeley statistical study that found that irregularities with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to Bush in Florida. For the sake of all future elections involving electronic voting, someone must explain the statistical anomalies in Florida, the professor who headed up the study said.



I just posed this link in another threat, but I figured I should post it here too since it specifically addresses this point.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/01/opinion/main658540.shtml

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Saturday, December 4, 2004 5:00 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


I read the article in the other thread, but I thought I'd respond here.

The first 'voting anomaly' instance in Florida is not taken seriously by anyone, so far as I know.

There is another statistical analysis aside from Berkley's, which examines exit polls (not approval ratings) v counts, which is not specifically adressed in the article.

The story behind the 'extra tapes' through Black Box Voting is MUCH more interesting than indicated here. Part of that story is that the 'tally tapes' they were supposed to see (and which were presented as original poll tapes) did NOT match the original signed and dated poll tapes found in the trash.

Whatever became of those 60,000 mail-in ballots that disappeared in Florida? They were going to re-send about 20,000, but not only did that not cover the full amount that went AWOL, it was thought that they could not be filled in and returned on time to count.

The 90,000 mostly Democrats who were dropped off the voter registration list for 2000 were never returned to it.

There were voting machines witheld in Democratic precincts in Ohio.

Etc etc etc.

Even the 'reasoned' article concludes that these irregularities have to be looked into. But that's a switch from the automatic dismissiveness in the first few weeks.

I don't think anyone wants anything more than that ALL the problems be looked into thoroughly and carefully. The question is: will it happen?

I dunno. What's your prognostication? The forces of the status quo are doing their best to bury the questions. Will they whitewash the answers as well? Or will the push to examine the facts prevail?

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Sunday, December 5, 2004 4:24 PM

UNICORN


So um...
How does a gay marriage do ANYTHING to heterosexual marriage?

And how does being liberal mean we're against heterosexual marriage? Maybe you're joking to say it, but this is a charge that's been made seriously over and over again, and frankly those of us on the open, accepting side of this issue are really confused by y'all on the other side of it. We're not forcing conservative churches to do anything they don't want to do; we just want to make certain that legally speaking, as well as spiritually speaking in the case of, say, Unitarian churches, all people are protected equally under the law.

After all, I'm a happily married heterosexual who takes great pains to make sure my marriage is strong and communicative and all that, and as we've been together for a scant 5 years, I expect we'll have a very long time of being happily married to each other for galloping aeons to come. So how does my stance on gay marriage hurt heterosexual marriage at all?

Sign me really confused...


There is no such thing as a weed.

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Monday, December 6, 2004 3:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Unicorn- How're the teeth??

I think HERO is still stuck on the "fighting Indians and freeing the slaves" conundrum. If he's not, he should be! That's one of the things I find so very interesting about right-wingers: the deep deep chasms in their minds between one thought and another. I don't think I could live with that level of internal self-contradiction. It would drive me craz ... oh wait, nevermind!


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Thursday, December 16, 2004 10:36 PM

LITTLEMANLOVESFIRE


Quote:

Originally posted by JenDandy:

If you're in Canada why do you care so much about what's going on in the U.S.?



I'm not in Canada I'm from the UK and I'll damn well tell you why we care.

You are the biggest, most powerful nation in the world, but right now, in the world's playground, you are a hateful, immature, nasty little boy running around pushing everyone over.

I have nothing against AMERICANS. You are people, exactly the same as us. However, right now, I hate AMERICA and everything it stands for. As does just about everyone in the world. Europeans don't even like you anymore, nor Canadians. You may be powerful but you're carving out a future where you have no friends you can rely on.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as us saying "it's somewhere else, we shouldn't get involved, it's not my country."

Bollocks. It's not my country, but it is my f*cking planet - it belongs to all of us. The other reason we care is because a retarded maniac like Bush has the kind of reach which could end MY life, and he has no right to do that. He could end not just my life, but yours, my five year old daughter's life, the lives of everyone I know - the lives of almost everyone on the planet.

So yeah, we f*cking care.

Your constitution has been pissed on, and whether you voted for him or not everyone in that once-great country of yours has been made a monkey of. And people who go "Snigger, let's point and laugh at the conspiracy theorist!" are letting it happen.

In what kind of world wouldn't the people with all the power and money in the world sink to unethical means to keep hold of that?

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Friday, December 17, 2004 3:16 AM

CONNORFLYNN


Quote:

Originally posted by Littlemanlovesfire:
In what kind of world wouldn't the people with all the power and money in the world sink to unethical means to keep hold of that?



well.. I think everyone needs to take a look at their own governments. The US isn't teh only one being shifty behind the closed doors. France, Germany, Russia..the majority of the UN etc..etc.. are using unethical means to retain power and improve upon it.

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Friday, April 8, 2005 4:32 PM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Recent news (that won't get covered):
Quote:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/Exit_Polls_2004_Edison-Mitof
sky.pdf


Authors and Endorsers:
Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. Temple University Statistics Department
Kathy Dopp, MS mathematics, USCountVotes, President
Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D. Visiting Scholar & Affiliated Faculty, Center for Organizational Dynamics, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Joiner, Ph.D. Professor of Statistics and Director of Statistical Consulting (ret), University of Wisconsin
Frank Stenger, Ph.D. Professor of Numerical Analysis, School of Computing, University of Utah
Richard G. Sheehan, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Finance, University of Notre Dame
Paul F. Velleman, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Statistical Sciences, Cornell University
Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D. Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Campbell B. Read, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University
Jonathan Simon, J.D. Alliance for Democracy
Ron Baiman, Ph.D. Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago
Bruce O'Dell, USCountVotes, Vice President

The exit pollster of record for the 2004 election was the Edison/Mitofsky1 consortium. Their national poll results projected a Kerry victory by 3.0%, whereas the official count had Bush winning by 2.5%.2 Several methods have been used to estimate the probability that the national exit poll results would be as different as they were from the national popular vote by random chance. These estimates range from 1 in 959,000 to 1 in 1,2403. No matter how one calculates it, the discrepancy cannot be attributed to chance.
Edison/Mitofsky disavowed the results of their own poll, saying that the data cannot be construed as evidence that the official vote count was corrupted, and hypothesized that Kerry voters were more amenable to completing the poll questionnaire than Bush voters.
However, Edison/Mitofsky's own exit poll data does not support their theory that a higher exit poll response rate by Kerry voters accounted for the discrepancies between the exit polls and the presidential election results.
Using Edison/Mitofsky’s data tables we demonstrate that the “reluctant Bush responder” hypothesis is implausible because it is inconsistent with the combination of high response rates and high discrepancy rates among the precincts with the highest percentage for Bush.

............
The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry.


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Friday, April 8, 2005 5:14 PM

DEUTSCHMANNECROS


I agree with ghoulman. As an american I believe the paper ballot where, the voter writes, the name of his canidate, (prerabliy, a third party, not a corrupt republican or democratic party).How simply is this folks?

YES!, PAPER BALLOTS ARE BETTER THAN HACKABLE COMPUTERS!!!!

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Friday, April 8, 2005 8:51 PM

SOUPCATCHER


Quote:

Originally posted by rue [excerpt from report]:
The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry.


Thanks for the link, Rue. I look forward to reading it over my morning coffee tomorrow. This paragraph, however, sums up my feelings on the reported voting irregularities of the past election in a nutshell. I expect error in anything we as humans do. But I also expect that error to be randomly distributed (and I'm probably getting myself into trouble using statistical terminology in a non precise way). Any time discrepencies are weighted overwhelmingly in one direction I sit up and pay attention.

---------------------
Next up: Early "Nutcrusher" Jubal and the Firebuggers

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Saturday, April 9, 2005 6:32 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up


Quote:

Originally posted by rue:
Recent news (that won't get covered):
............
The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry.



I especially like the summary.

Quote:


Summary
There is already a strong case that there were significant irregularities in the presidential vote count from the 2004 election. Nevertheless, critics are asking for firmer proof before going
forward with a thorough investigation24. We feel strongly that this is the wrong standard. One
cannot have proof before an investigation.

In fact, the burden of proof should be to show that the election process is accurate and fair.
The integrity of the American electoral system can and should be beyond reproach. Citizens in
the world’s oldest and greatest democracy should be provided every assurance that the
mechanisms they have put in place to count our votes are fair and accurate. The legitimacy of
our elected leaders depends upon it.



Yep. Guilty until proven innocent. USVoteCount's site is interesting, if carefully crafted to look non-partisan. Hope they do an analysis of JFK's 1960 win.

BTW, the USVoteCount site already notes an ongoing GAO investigation, and offical requests for FBI, Dept. of Justice, and Congressional Research Service investigations. When these come up with something, let me know.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Saturday, April 9, 2005 9:58 PM

SOUPCATCHER


Quote:

Originally posted by Geezer:
Hope they do an analysis of JFK's 1960 win.


Off topic attempt at humor...

I'm guessing that if you asked JFK, he'd probably say that winning the election might not have been the best thing to happen to him. I'm thinking he'd rather have stayed alive than been President. But I could be wrong.

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Friday, April 29, 2005 8:08 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Quote:

Originally posted by Deutschmannecros:
I agree with ghoulman. As an american I believe the paper ballot where, the voter writes, the name of his canidate, (prerabliy, a third party, not a corrupt republican or democratic party).How simply is this folks?

YES!, PAPER BALLOTS ARE BETTER THAN HACKABLE COMPUTERS!!!!



Prerabliy, we will develop a system that can't be confounded by poor handwriting or bad spelling.

And in this day and age, in our instant gratification society, are we willing to wait for three people to agree that scribble X means President Y?

Electronic voting is definitely the way of the future. We just need a better electronic system. (And a 'gaming commission' to oversee it.)

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, b]one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

''It was terrible,'' says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ''People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened.''

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.''

I. The Exit Polls
The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16)

Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)

But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21)

''The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed,'' says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. ''They were really screwed up -- the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again.''

In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27)

On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)

As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)

But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33)

According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See The Tale of the Exit Polls)

Puzzled by the discrepancies, Freeman laboriously examined the raw polling data released by Edison/Mitofsky in January 2005. ''I'm not even political -- I despise the Democrats,'' he says. ''I'm a survey expert. I got into this because I was mystified about how the exit polls could have been so wrong.'' In his forthcoming book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count, Freeman lays out a statistical analysis of the polls that is deeply troubling.

In its official postmortem report issued two months after the election, Edison/Mitofsky was unable to identify any flaw in its methodology -- so the pollsters, in essence, invented one for the electorate. According to Mitofsky, Bush partisans were simply disinclined to talk to exit pollsters on November 2nd(34) -- displaying a heretofore unknown and undocumented aversion that skewed the polls in Kerry's favor by a margin of 6.5 percent nationwide.(35)

Industry peers didn't buy it. John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters, told me that Mitofsky's ''reluctant responder'' hypothesis is ''preposterous.''(36) Even Mitofsky, in his official report, underscored the hollowness of his theory: ''It is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.''(37)

Now, thanks to careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers, we can say conclusively that the theory is dead wrong. In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters' questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey -- compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ''The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,'' observes Freeman, ''but actually contradicts it.''

What's more, Freeman found,the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent -- a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.(39)

''When you look at the numbers, there is a tremendous amount of data that supports the supposition of election fraud,'' concludes Freeman. ''The discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater proportions of African-American communities and higher in states where there were the most Election Day complaints. All these are strong indicators of fraud -- and yet this supposition has been utterly ignored by the press and, oddly, by the Democratic Party.''

The evidence is especially strong in Ohio. In January, a team of mathematicians from the National Election Data Archive, a nonpartisan watchdog group, compared the state's exit polls against the certified vote count in each of the forty-nine precincts polled by Edison/Mitofsky. In twenty-two of those precincts -- nearly half of those polled -- they discovered results that differed widely from the official tally. Once again -- against all odds -- the widespread discrepancies were stacked massively in Bush's favor: In only two of the suspect twenty-two precincts did the disparity benefit Kerry. The wildest discrepancy came from the precinct Mitofsky numbered ''27,'' in order to protect the anonymity of those surveyed. According to the exit poll, Kerry should have received sixty-seven percent of the vote in this precinct. Yet the certified tally gave him only thirty-eight percent. The statistical odds against such a variance are just shy of one in 3 billion.(40)

Such results, according to the archive, provide ''virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount.'' The discrepancies, the experts add, ''are consistent with the hypothesis that Kerry would have won Ohio's electoral votes if Ohio's official vote counts had accurately reflected voter intent.''(41) According to Ron Baiman, vice president of the archive and a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago, ''No rigorous statistical explanation'' can explain the ''completely nonrandom'' disparities that almost uniformly benefited Bush. The final results, he adds, are ''completely consistent with election fraud -- specifically vote shifting.''

II. The Partisan Official
No state was more important in the 2004 election than Ohio. The state has been key to every Republican presidential victory since Abraham Lincoln's, and both parties overwhelmed the state with television ads, field organizers and volunteers in an effort to register new voters and energize old ones. Bush and Kerry traveled to Ohio a total of forty-nine times during the campaign -- more than to any other state.(42)

But in the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee.(43) As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell had broad powers to interpret and implement state and federal election laws -- setting standards for everything from the processing of voter registration to the conduct of official recounts.(44) And as Bush's re-election chair in Ohio, he had a powerful motivation to rig the rules for his candidate. Blackwell, in fact, served as the ''principal electoral system adviser'' for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida,(45) where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.(46)

Blackwell -- now the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio(47) -- is well-known in the state as a fierce partisan eager to rise in the GOP. An outspoken leader of Ohio's right-wing fundamentalists, he opposes abortion even in cases of rape(48) and was the chief cheerleader for the anti-gay-marriage amendment that Republicans employed to spark turnout in rural counties(49). He has openly denounced Kerry as ''an unapologetic liberal Democrat,''(50) and during the 2004 election he used his official powers to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens in Democratic strongholds. In a ruling issued two weeks before the election, a federal judge rebuked Blackwell for seeking to ''accomplish the same result in Ohio in 2004 that occurred in Florida in 2000.''(51)

''The secretary of state is supposed to administer elections -- not throw them,'' says Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Cleveland who has dealt with Blackwell for years. ''The election in Ohio in 2004 stands out as an example of how, under color of law, a state election official can frustrate the exercise of the right to vote.''

The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.(52) Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters.(53) In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined ''massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.'' The problems, the report concludes, were ''caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.''(54)

''Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake,'' Conyers told me. ''He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before.''

When ROLLING STONE confronted Blackwell about his overtly partisan attempts to subvert the election, he dismissed any such claim as ''silly on its face.'' Ohio, he insisted in a telephone interview, set a ''gold standard'' for electoral fairness. In fact, his campaign to subvert the will of the voters had begun long before Election Day. Instead of welcoming the avalanche of citizen involvement sparked by the campaign, Blackwell permitted election officials in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo to conduct a massive purge of their voter rolls, summarily expunging the names of more than 300,000 voters who had failed to cast ballots in the previous two national elections.(55) In Cleveland, which went five-to-one for Kerry, nearly one in four voters were wiped from the rolls between 2000 and 2004.(56)

There were legitimate reasons to clean up voting lists: Many of the names undoubtedly belonged to people who had moved or died. But thousands more were duly registered voters who were deprived of their constitutional right to vote -- often without any notification -- simply because they had decided not to go to the polls in prior elections.(57) In Cleveland's precinct 6C, where more than half the voters on the rolls were deleted,(58) turnout was only 7.1 percent(59) -- the lowest in the state.

According to the Conyers report, improper purging ''likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.''(60) If only one in ten of the 300,000 purged voters showed up on Election Day -- a conservative estimate, according to election scholars -- that is 30,000 citizens who were unfairly denied the opportunity to cast ballots.

III. The Strike Force
In the months leading up to the election, Ohio was in the midst of the biggest registration drive in its history. Tens of thousands of volunteers and paid political operatives from both parties canvassed the state, racing to register new voters in advance of the October 4th deadline. To those on the ground, it was clear that Democrats were outpacing their Republican counterparts: A New York Times analysis before the election found that new registrations in traditional Democratic strongholds were up 250 percent, compared to only twenty-five percent in Republican-leaning counties.(61) ''The Democrats have been beating the pants off us in the air and on the ground,'' a GOP county official in Columbus confessed to The Washington Times.(62)

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ''caging.'' During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett -- who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County -- sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn't sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell's direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) -- a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ''inquisition.''(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff's detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP's claims of fraud.(74)


Next page

--
1) Manual Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating, ''Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether,'' The Washington Post, November 11, 2004.
2) The New York Times Editorial Desk, ''About Those Election Results,'' The New York Times, November 14, 2004.

3) United States Department of Defense, August 6, 2004.

4) Overseas Vote Foundation, ''2004 Post Election Survey Results,'' June 2005, page 11.

5) Jennifer Joan Lee, ''Pentagon Blocks Site for Voters Outside U.S.,'' International Herald Tribune, September 20, 2004.

6) Meg Landers, ''Librarian Bares Possible Voter Registration Dodge,'' Mail Tribune (Jackson County, OR), September 21, 2004.

7) Mark Brunswick and Pat Doyle, ''Voter Registration; 3 former workers: Firm paid pro-Bush bonuses; One said he was told his job was to bring back cards for GOP voters,'' Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), October 27, 2004.

8) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President.

9) Ellen Theisen and Warren Stewart, Summary Report on New Mexico State Election Data, January 4, 2005, pg. 2

James W. Bronsan, ''In 2004, New Mexico Worst at Counting Votes,'' Scripps Howard News Service, December 22, 2004. 10) ''A Summary of the 2004 Election Day Survey; How We Voted: People, Ballots & Polling Places; A Report to the American People by the United States Election Assistance Commission'', September 2005, pg. 10.

11) Facts mentioned in this paragraph are subsequently cited throughout the story.

12) See ''Ohio's Missing Votes''

13) Federal Election Commission, Federal Elections 2004: Election Results for the U.S. President.

14) Democratic National Committee, Voting Rights Institute, ''Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio'', June 22, 2005. Page 5

15) See ''VIII. Rural Counties.''

16) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004'' prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofksy International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 3

17) This refers to data for German national elections in 1994, 1998 and 2002, previously cited by Steven F. Freeman.

18) Dick Morris, ''Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage,'' The Hill, November 4, 2004.

19) Martin Plissner, ''Exit Polls to Protect the Vote,'' The New York Times, October 17, 2004.

20) Matt Kelley, ''U.S. Money has Helped Opposition in Ukraine,'' Associated Press, December 11, 2004.

Daniel Williams, ''Court Rejects Ukraine Vote; Justices Cite Massive Fraud in Runoff, Set New Election,'' The Washington Post, December 4, 2004.

21) Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, ''Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count,'' Seven Stories Press, July 2006, Page 102.

22) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 3.

23) Mitofsky International

24) Tim Golden, ''Election Near, Mexicans Question the Questioners,'' The New York Times, August 10, 1994.

25) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 59.

26) Jonathan D. Simon, J.D., and Ron P. Baiman, Ph.D., ''The 2004 Presidential Election: Who Won the Popular Vote? An Examination of the Comparative Validity of Exit Poll and Vote Count Data.'' FreePress.org, December 29, 2004, P. 9

27) Analysis by Steven F. Freeman.

28) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 134

29) Jim Rutenberg, ''Report Says Problems Led to Skewing Survey Data,'' The New York Times, November 5, 2004.

30) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 134

31) Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies. U.S. Count Votes. Baiman R, et al. March 31, 2005. Page 3.

32) Notes From Campaign Trail, Fox News Network, Live Event, 8:00 p.m. EST, November 2, 2004.

33) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 101-102

34) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 4.

35) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 120.

36) Interview with John Zogby

37) Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004; prepared by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (NEP), January 19, 2005, Page 4.

38) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 128.

39) Freeman and Bleifuss, pg. 130.

40) ''The Gun is Smoking: 2004 Ohio Precinct-level Exit Poll Data Show Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount,'' U.S. Count Votes, National Election Data Archive, January 23, 2006.

41) ''The Gun is Smoking,'' pg. 16.

42) The Washington Post, ''Charting the Campaign: Top Five Most Visited States,'' November 2, 2004.

43) John McCarthy, ''Nearly a Month Later, Ohio Fight Goes On,'' Associated Press Online, November 30, 2004.

44) Ohio Revised Code, 3501.04, Chief Election Officer''

45) Joe Hallett, ''Blackwell Joins GOP's Spin Team,'' The Columbus Dispatch, November 30, 2004.

46) Gary Fineout, ''Records Indicate Harris on Defense,'' Ledger (Lakeland, Florida), November 18, 2000.

47) http://www.kenblackwell.com/

48) Joe Hallett, ''Governor; Aggressive First Round Culminates Tuesday,'' Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2006.

49) Sandy Theis, ''Blackwell Accused of Breaking Law by Pushing Same-Sex Marriage Ban,'' Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), October 29, 2004.

50) Raw Story, ''Republican Ohio Secretary of State Boasts About Delivering Ohio to Bush.''

51) In the United States District Court For the Northern District of Ohio Northern Division, The Sandusky County Democratic Party et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case No. 3:04CV7582, Page 8.

52) Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio, Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Rep. John Conyers, Jr.), January 5, 2005.

53) Preserving Democracy, pg. 8.

54) Preserving Democracy, pg. 4.

55) The board of elections in Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties.

56) Analysis by Richard Hayes Phillips, a voting rights advocate.

57) Fritz Wenzel, ''Purging of Rolls, Confusion Anger Voters; 41% of Nov. 2 Provisional Ballots Axed in Lucas County,'' Toledo Blade, January 9, 2005.

58) Analysis by Hayes Phillips.

59) Cuyahoga County Board of Elections

60) Preserving Democracy, pg. 6.

61) Ford Fessenden, ''A Big Increase of New Voters in Swing States,'' The New York Times, September 26, 2004.

62) Ralph Z. Hallow, ''Republicans Go 'Under the Radar' in Rural Ohio,'' The Washington Times, October 28, 2004.

63) Jo Becker, ''GOP Challenging Voter Registrations,'' The Washington Post, October 29, 2004.

64) Janet Babin, ''Voter Registrations Challenged in Ohio,'' NPR, All Things Considered, October 28, 2004.

65) In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, Amy Miller et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case no. C-1-04-735, Page 2.

66) Sandy Theis, ''Fraud-Busters Busted; GOP's Blanket Challenge Backfires in a Big Way,'' Plain Dealer, October 31, 2004.

67) Daniel Tokaji, ''Early Returns on Election Reform,'' George Washington Law Review, Vol. 74, 2005, page 1235

68) Sandy Theis, ''Fraud-Busters Busted; GOP's Blanket Challenge Backfires in a Big Way,'' Plain Dealer, October 31, 2004.

69) Andrew Welsh-Huggins, ''Out of Country, Off Beaten Path; Reason for Voting Challenges Vary,'' Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), October 27, 2004.

70) Ohio Revised Code; 3505.19

71) Directive No. 2004-44 from J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Sec'y of State, to All County Boards of Elections Members, Directors, and Deputy Directors 1 (Oct. 26, 2004).

72) Fritz Wenzel, ''Challenges Filed Against 931 Lucas County Voters,'' Toledo Blade, October 27, 2004.

73) In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division, Amy Miller et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, Case no. C-1-04-735, Page 4.

74) LaRaye Brown, ''Elections Board Plans Hearing For Challenges,'' The News Messenger, October 26, 2004.


ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Posted Jun 01, 2006 5:02 PM


Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

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