Evidence mounts that the vote was hacked

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.

"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me. And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.

The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

"A statistical analysis has been done that shows on several swing states, and in every state that has e-voting but no paper trails that the state totals have an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results of voting. In every state that has paper audit trails on their e-voting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error. So we have matching results for exit polls vs. voting with audits vs. A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without audits." (Gleaned from the internet, but worth considering)

Rigged? You bet it was rigged.

Only three days have passed and already the results of election 2004 are beginning to stink like Fido's business on the front lawn.



The Associated Press's admission yesterday that nearly 4,000 extra votes were delivered to George Bush in Franklin County, Ohio when only 638 voters cast ballots, is just the tip of the iceberg. That is, of course, unless you believe that the Bush Administration has suddenly diverged from its well documented pattern of lying, cheating and obfuscating at every opportunity?

I suppose that is a possibility, although not a very likely one.

And, please, spare me that crackpot notion that 8 million more fundamentalist Christians descended from their mountain hideaways to file a vote from Bush the younger. That absurd notion smacks of Karl Rove and his "smoke-and-mirrors" public relations team in the media. Of course, they've got an excuse. They always have an excuse? This one, however, is particularly lame with the suggestion that more of the new registrations (8 of the 15 million) were filed for the war-mongering, deficit-generating, torture-inducing Bush, rather than his opponent. How likely is that? Sounds more like a well prepared narrative to rationalize voter fraud.

But don't take my word for it, let's just allow the experts access to the voting machines, then we'll find out whose really telling the truth. (Black Box Voting, Bev Harris claims she has "hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems." Legal action is forthcoming.) Franklin County is just the beginning. Franklin's results simply indicate that the programmers got sloppy because they were under greater pressure from the surge in new registrations. Many of the other counties will undoubtedly expose the same "conspicuous" discrepancies.

Let's take a look.

And forget about this rubbish that the exit polling was incorrect. Yeah, the polls were incorrect in the states Bush needed to win; otherwise they were dead on. (Look at the graphs of the exit polls compared to the actual votes counted on Randi Rhodes web page) Why else would the media be scrabbling to change the polls they provided earlier on election night? Why would they care, its all history?

They care because they don't want the average American to draw the same conclusions that any reasonable person will by looking at the numbers and trends. It's a massive cover up and, again, sloppily executed. The significance of Franklin County is this; it is just one of perhaps 60 precincts in a district that is perhaps one of 50 districts in a county that is perhaps one of 50 counties in a state. Get it? Just a superficial investigation could very easily evaporate Mr. Bush's meager "136,000 vote mandate" to wage war on the world and continue dismantling the last 100 years of progressive legislation.

Karl Rove's genius was to anticipate that he had to manufacture a win in the popular vote to fend off investigations in the individual states. Accordingly, those states turned out to be the very ones where the exit polls and vote totals don't match up. Very clever, but how well did he hide his tracks? Not very well in Franklin County.

We shouldn't expect this to be like Florida in 2000; even a cursory investigation will show real discrepancies between traditional voting patterns and the actual votes cast. I guarantee it.

That's why the Republican strategy is entirely predictable; stonewall the investigation and discredit the campaign to investigate. Regrettably, that is what Republican's do best.

-- Mike Whitney

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/art/lil_chimpy.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County [Ohio] officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html

[Hotrod]

Well atleast these stories give LABF something to do for the next 4 years. rofl

[Rascal]

From three outstanding news organizations.

Do you honestly think Kerry would have conceeded if this were even a possibility?

And exit polling is a load of crap. Do the poll everyone who leaves at every polling station? No. It is an estimate nothing more then that.

"Forget the rubbish that the exit polling was incorrect" I love this sentence. Rather then analyze the exit polling to see if it was correct (or why it was wrong) they would rather make ludicrious statements that the election was rigged.

Prove to me that the exit polling was not incorrect? I have proof. It's called the actual votes cast and the final results.

[Exile_In_SJ]

when you see LABs'er just imagine the charlie brown cartoon and the teachers voice.. waaaa waa waaa waaa waa waaa.. waa waaa waaa waaa waaaa.

This thread should be called...

Evidence that LABF is whacked...

but this is a good one, it goes to show bartcopper is still as looney and out of it as ever.

Say with me, George W Bush, President of the United States.

[bendog]

Exit polling can be valid. In this election it may have been. But, the exit polling this time had a computer breakdown that caused the polling to stop counting for like four hours in the afternoon. It may well have been that people who had the time to vote in the early am split for Kerry, and when the working guy vote came in late, it didn't break the way Kerry had figured.

I think that unless we went back to the old lever machines, which are less accurate than the little computer and popsicle stick thingees, the exit polls are the only protection we have from a stolen election. I missed my old lever machine. It made feel "safe."

[Exile_In_SJ]

I think we need to go back to all 5 major networks having exit polls. Competition is better. That way if one network oversamples democrats, another one can be more even handed.

Anyway, LABs'er lost and America won....life is good.

George W Bush, President of the United States

[bendog]

Well, in truth, the exit polling in Fla in 00 did more accurately reflect how voters THOUGHT they'd voted than the ballots. But that really was a crazy election. But the exits can have bad samples too. From what I've read and heard about this election is that when all was said and done, the exits don't show fraud. But the Diebold machines still scare me. And, no, dems aren't less dishonest that gopers.

[watermock]

A statistical analysis has been done that shows on several swing states, and in every state that has e-voting but no paper trails that the state totals have an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results of voting. In every state that has paper audit trails on their e-voting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

First, I allready explained that the machine that failed was an older type, and the votes were adjusted. It wouldn't of made a bit of difference.

Second, I find it amusing that +5% somehow not in the margin of error. Of course the article doesn't mention that generally, a margin error of 4% is considered standard. It's just a bunch of ludicrous bunk.

Unfortunately for LABS, it turned out that America didn't hate Bush as much they couldn't figure out WTF Kerry even stood for, and were ambivalent. There was no groundswell for Kerry. Nada. Zero. That is what happened.

And I will say something else. People may not always behave personally with law and order, but it doesn't mean they don't want law and order. I'm sure this goes right over the Anarchist LABS's head.

[Arkie]

http://images.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/elections2004/_images/2004countymap3.gif

Look at all those cheatin' red counties. It's a massive conspiracy I tell ya!
Hilarious!

[Rascal]

Nice to see that Oklahoma is the only state that had every county decisively Bush.

[bendog]

Thank God for Jackson Hole , LOL

[Exile_In_SJ]

I thought all the wild hacker types would gravitate to te democrats? rofl

personally, I prefer the punch card method of voting. It's tangible and you can see the vote. we used touch screen here in the SF Bay area and it was eerie once you reviewed the vote and sent it on it's way. How could they ever prove you voted?

[BroncoMatt]

LABF, I love your enthusiasm bro but it's over. We lost. Time to focus on the future, firstly getting rid of that talking head in Sacramento.

[Hotrod]

LOL wtf is wrong with my county. Damn idiots are moving into the mountains.

[Kaylore]

The fraudulant Bronco fan rears his ugly head. Surprise: more of the same. It's not even cute any more. Its pathetic.

[Samiwindr]

Voter fraud? Nah... the guy just flat out won this time around. We voted over-whelmingly to keep a retarded cowboy on as the face of America. Sure I think the Bush admin are a bunch of tools, but the dems should be blamed for not bringing a candidate to the table capable of defending himself from the inevitable character attacks. Yes, let's convince the reality-television- watching, power-thinking Americans to remove the stupid silver-spooned cowboy by giving them the alternative of a wind-surfing yacht owner that can't make up his mind. Democrats and Republicans both failed the country by sticking to their party guns.

How far has this country fallen when we actually have to choose between brains and conviction instead of getting a candidate with both? If I were the Dean of Yale, I would be fairly embarrassed by this whole situation. Wealthy parents pay very good money for that education.

Calry Fiorina for 2008 - she's been a great uniter and she's way tougher than Bush. If we privatize SS, make Warren Buffet the Secretary appointed to oversee it. Cheney can come run HP - I trust him much more to run a business than a country.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

George, John, and Warren

by Keith Olbermann

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6368819/

"This is mentioned because there is a small but blood-curdling set of news stories that right now exists somewhere between the world of investigative journalism, and the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat. And while the group’s ultimate home remains unclear - so might our election of just a week ago. Stories like these have filled the web
since the tide turned against John Kerry late Tuesday night. But not until Friday did they begin to spill into the more conventional news media. That’s when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had “locked down” its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.

Suspicious enough on the face of it, the decision got more dubious still when County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security."

http://www.bartcop.com/devine-count.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Proof of vote tampering

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000906.htm

Isn't it interesting that the right wing whackos use exit polling to determine that this election was all about "morality," but when that same exit polling shows Kerry was the real winner, they talk about how flawed exit poling is?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

http://www.bartcop.com/w_nazi-move-flag.gif

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

"George Bush’s version of Christianity is virtually antithetical to the ideas put forth by the man whose religion bears his name. Bush has lied about almost everything. He has killed 100,000 Iraqis. He disrespected his father. He has smeared opponents and insisted that those who question him were themselves unChristian. But if you read the news stories about the election, it seems that tens of millions of Americans share that hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty and moral degeneracy. To claim to be Christian while lying, cheating, stealing and killing...there’s something wrong with this picture."

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/

[TexanBob]

Democrats and Republicans both failed the country by sticking to their party guns.



Personally, I think Ronald Reagan was the last great American president but the Left talked about Reagan then the way they talk about Bush now.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

http://images.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/elections2004/_images/2004countymap3.gif


http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_Map_Slavery.gif

Anyone see a pattern here?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

F*ck the south (http://www.****thesouth.com)

[errand]

Proof of vote tampering

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00000906.htm

Isn't it interesting that the right wing whackos use exit polling to determine that this election was all about "morality," but when that same exit polling shows Kerry was the real winner, they talk about how flawed exit poling is?

Amazingly, during the months prior to this election, when the polls showed GW ahead, the nutcases on Air america kept claiming that the polls were wrong because people are private and perhaps they didn't want to reveal who they were voting for....and that perhaps people lied and told them they were voting for Bush when in actually they were voting for Kerry....and yet these very same reasons couldn't be why the exit polls in most states were wrong?

The libs also kept claiming all those poor Ohioans who had no jobs all of a sudden when confronted with long lines at the polls decided to give up and go back to work because they didn't have the time to wait.

I mean really...if you were going to rig an election....would you have risked it being so close as the Dems claim it was? And if the machines were rigged then how is it Kerry got any votes at all if they were to change every Kerry vote to a Bush vote?

[Kaylore]

http://www.bartcop.com/w_nazi-move-flag.gif
LABF should be the spokesman for the Republican party. This guy will get us more votes than any issue! ROFL!

[Raider Bill]

The exit polls had too many women in their sampling, up to 58 per cent even though women made up only 54 per cent of the eventual vote, skewing the early figures towards Kerry.

The exit polls also under-represented Republicans and missed a late surge of votes for Mr Bush, perhaps because they failed to take into account business people voting on their way home from work who would tend to the Republicans.

They probably also got poor results from people who voted early. Just because someone says they voted in a telephone survey doesn't mean they did. Some reports state that 20% of people voted early.

I think a better case could be made that a biased news media manipulated the exit polling data to try and dampen the turnout for Bush.


A lot of conventional wisdom went out the window this election, especially the one about turnout favoring democrats.

[Kaylore]

The exit polls had too many women in their sampling, up to 58 per cent even though women made up only 54 per cent of the eventual vote, skewing the early figures towards Kerry.

The exit polls also under-represented Republicans and missed a late surge of votes for Mr Bush, perhaps because they failed to take into account business people voting on their way home from work who would tend to the Republicans.

They probably also got poor results from people who voted early. Just because someone says they voted in a telephone survey doesn't mean they did. Some reports state that 20% of people voted early.

I think a better case could be made that a biased news media manipulated the exit polling data to try and dampen the turnout for Bush.


A lot of conventional wisdom went out the window this election, especially the one about turnout favoring democrats.

Don't forget the 72 hour task force. Most of the Republican vote came after 5:00 because people were getting off work and that's when people who were called off the vote-lists showed up. I saw it with my own eyes, which is more than LABF can say about 99% of his dog**** theories.

[Hercules Rockefeller]

also there's the claim that there's voter fraud simply because some Ohio counties with Dem registration advantages went for Bush. Only problem with that claim is that some of those counties went for Bush in 2000 also.

[Raider Bill]

Another theory I propose is that Democrat, having nothing better to do or a job to go to, sought out pollworkers in key states to try and bias the polls giving the illusion of a Kerry landslide.

This election is similar to 94 IMO. Republicans learned JUST running against the other guy and not running FOR something is a recipe for disaster.

[Taco John]

http://images.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/elections2004/_images/2004countymap3.gif

Look at all those cheatin' red counties. It's a massive conspiracy I tell ya!
Hilarious!



Wow. There's a blue county in Idaho? :kiddingme

[watermock]

LABS:

Isn't it interesting that the right wing whackos use exit polling to determine that this election was all about "morality," but when that same exit polling shows Kerry was the real winner, they talk about how flawed exit poling is?

LABS has become so delusional he insists that exit polling is the real election and god forbid, morality might be an issue?, and I quote: ...when that same exit polling shows Kerry was the real winner...

It's incredible. Didn't you understand what I wrote? The article said Bush was 5 percent over the exit polling on electronic ballots. Then it said other polls were within "normal margins of error".

Isn't that around 4 percent there dimwit? Of course, the piece never said which way this "normal amount of error in exit polling" swayed. It simply said IT WAS WITHIN THE NORMAL AMOUNT. The article didn't say exit polls came out ahead for Kerry, it just said it was within normal limits. It didn't even bother to give a figure.

[TexanBob]

Isn't it interesting that the right wing whackos use exit polling to determine that this election was all about "morality," but when that same exit polling shows Kerry was the real winner, they talk about how flawed exit poling is?


You're absolutely right although I would say it's the media that hopped on the "moral values" bandwagon, not either political stripe. Sure, some folks are trying to make hay with it but they are non-sequitors to me.

If you accept that the exit polling was seriously flawed (as I do), then the results of the poll must also be discredited too. On the other hand, if the exit polling is accurate, then how can you ignore the 22% who said "moral values" was their biggest concern? The Dems talk as if moral values to them is all about murdering babies and coddling dictators. No wonder they are so tone deaf on issues like gay marriage.

[watermock]

Neither are the issues. The issue is Muslim extremism and the war on terror, and Kerry telling us to get a Global Opinion.

If you walk among the liberals, the dollar is going to crash, the manufacturing is evaporating and we have billions of dollars of dollars in foreign currency.

I get tired, and noone will listen to me. The plan is to replace the US currency, it always has been. What amuses me is how the US has done more than every country combined on several issues. AIDs, trying to help others in humanitarian aid, and trying to run 6 battle group aircraft carriers.

Can you imagine the chaos if our battle groups were not in place?

It's not facist, but the US has never attacked but once, and that was when Saddam attacked Iraq. So the question is clouded. What are we asking for? Just for them to settle down. That's all. We are not on a mission of conquest.

This is a huge national security issue. I hope Bush is able to start some nuclear plants. Jesus Christ. Let's get some new power. This is heading too fast to armegeddon way too fast. GET OFF THE TEAT. I keep crying in the wilderness.

[errand]

And let's not forget that memo from the Kerry campaign that instructed Dems to claim voter fraud and disenfanchisement regardless if it happened on not.

[WaffleBoy]

Get over it. Bush won fair and square. Hell, I voted for the bastard.

The Boy Wonder ;)

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

The exit polls were only "flawed" when eVoting w/ no paper trail was used (and always "flawed" in Smirk's favor.) The exit polls were all accurate in precincts w/ paper trails.

http://www.bartcop.com/scare-brain.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used.

Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

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

Lipstick on a pig...
http://www.bartcop.com/lipstick-w.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

...the most perplexing fact is that exit polls into the evening of Nov. 2 showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio, whose totals would have ensured Kerry’s victory in the Electoral College.

Significantly, polls also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. However, when the official results were tallied, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls proved right.

Explanations from the architects of the exit-poll sampling system also sound specious. Their report said Kerry voters were simply more willing than Bush voters to answer the exit pollsters’ questions. But this “chattiness thesis” seems more like a post-facto excuse than a serious argument.

Another explanation from some pundits was that the exit polls were adjusted by late in the day to rectify pro-Kerry exaggerations from the earlier samples. But that is not what happened. As the New York Times reported, “The presumption of a Kerry victory built a head of steam late in the day, when the national survey showed the senator with a statistically significant lead, one falling outside the survey’s margin of error.”

http://consortiumnews.com/2004/110604.html

[Arkie]

F*ck the south (http://www.****thesouth.com)

At first, I wanted to respond with an insult just for you. However, I'm realizing more and more as I read your posts that you are just ignorant. You are living a L.A. egocentrical lifestyle. You compound this by selectively choosing what sources to believe. You basically accept all extreme liberal websites or stories as the truth, and throw out ANYTHING that is positive about conservatives.

[TexanBob]

Well, ol' Neil Young should remember
A Southern Man don't need him around anyhow...

[RaiderH8r]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_Map_Slavery.gif

Anyone see a pattern here?
Yes I do. Too bad you don't. Your back has to hurt carrying that enormous chip on your shoulder.

[mosca]

Of course, they've got an excuse. They always have an excuse?

the only one making excuses (for your defeat in the election) seems to be you and your fellow spambots, LABF.

[Raider Bill]

Who cares about voter registration.. My parents are both registered Dems (in their 60's) and both told me they haven't voted for a Democrat (for Pres) since JFK.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

At first, I wanted to respond with an insult just for you. However, I'm realizing more and more as I read your posts that you are just ignorant. You are living a L.A. egocentrical lifestyle. You compound this by selectively choosing what sources to believe. You basically accept all extreme liberal websites or stories as the truth, and throw out ANYTHING that is positive about conservatives.

The piece was about the south--not conservatives in general.

I should have included a bad language alert (gratuitous by almost any standard.)

However, if you sift through the profanity and vitriol, you'll find a lot of indisputable facts.

Truth hurts, I guess.

BTW, your claim that I "throw out" anything positive about conservatives is utter horsesh!t.

I have given more-than-ample props to those traditional conservatives who have chosen to place country before party in condemning the disaster that is the Smirk & Sneer misadministration, and will continue to do so.

[Kaylore]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735&page=1

Conspiracy Theories Abound After Bush Victory
Web Sites, E-mails Conjure Phantom Voters, Invented Malfeasance
By JAKE TAPPER and AVERY MILLER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2004 -- There were minor voting irregularities on Election Day — long lines, voting machine breakdowns, shortages of provisional ballots — but some people are now leveling charges of voter fraud.

Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said.

Top Stories

* Yasser Arafat Dies at 75
* Bush Picks Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft
* Person of the Week: Karl Rove

"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this time."

Nevertheless, many people have devised various theories, including stories of voters in largely Democratic counties in Florida whose votes were changed for Bush, phantom voters in Ohio and exit polls showing John Kerry in the lead that were truer than the final tally. Off the record, many Democratic strategists dismiss such allegations, but they also know such resentment can be channeled for political use in the future.

Those Florida Democrats Who Mysteriously Voted for Bush

Based at least in part on these conspiracy theories, three Democratic congressmen have written a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

"We are requesting an investigation into all the allegations, of irregularities with respect to the electronic and other voting machines so that people can have confidence in the result of this election, and so that any weaknesses are changed before the next election," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

The congressmen's letter mentions the Web site ustogether.org, which questions why so many counties in Florida that have more registered Democrats than Republicans ended up voting for Bush. The Web site implies someone fixed the results.

In regard to Lafayette County, one of the counties in question, it is true that there are far more registered Democrats in that county than Republicans (3,570 to 570, respectively), and that the county elected Bush in this year's election, but the county elected Bush in the last election, too.

[patteeu]

The piece was about the south--not conservatives in general.

I should have included a bad language alert (gratuitous by almost any standard.)

However, if you sift through the profanity and vitriol, you'll find a lot of indisputable facts.

Truth hurts, I guess.

BTW, your claim that I "throw out" anything positive about conservatives is utter horsesh!t.

I have given more-than-ample props to those traditional conservatives who have chosen to place country before party in condemning the disaster that is the Smirk & Sneer misadministration, and will continue to do so.

You'll also find plenty of inaccuracies/misconceptions. For example, the author seems to think that the North didn't need the South at the time of the Civil War. My take is that the North needed the agricultural South a whole lot more than the South needed the industrial North.

Even more clearly, the author takes credit for the philosophies of the Founding Fathers simply because most of them were from states that are now known as blue states. But the truth is that the South was the standard bearer for the principles on which our country was founded. Lincoln and the Union effectively fought the second American revolution and changed the nature of our country from a federation of sovereign states to a union with a strong central government.

But I'm being nit picky. It was a high quality rant, performed with lots of emotion (even if wasn't always rooted in reality).

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

You'll also find plenty of inaccuracies/misconceptions. For example, the author seems to think that the North didn't need the South at the time of the Civil War. My take is that the North needed the agricultural South a whole lot more than the South needed the industrial North.


Well, at least you acknowledge the foregoing as "my take" (a take w/o any supporting evidence.)


Even more clearly, the author takes credit for the philosophies of the Founding Fathers simply because most of them were from states that are now known as blue states.

Exactly. Why would you have us believe that this is somehow merely a minor point?


But the truth is that the South was the standard bearer for the principles on which our country was founded.

Surely you jest. (Unless you define "the principles on which our country was founded" as slavery, Jim Crow, etc.)

How ironic is it that these southern, pro-bush states are full of people who claim to espouse the "pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps" philosophy when, in reality, these same states receive more $$$ from federal aid than they produce in revenues?

How funny is it that these states are full of evangelicals who claim some sort of high ground with respect to the "sanctity of marriage"--yet their divorce rates far outstrip those of the blue states?

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/brofo63/dumbfistan.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Suspicions stir belief that presidential election was hijacked

http://www.vermontguardian.com/national/0904/votingfraud.shtml

BURLINGTON-- Could sophisticated CIA-style "cyber-warfare" have helped George W. Bush change a three percent defeat, as measured by exit polls, into a victory of about the same margin? Yes, at least in theory. But it would require hacking into multiple local computer systems, presumably from a remote location.

There is as yet no solid proof that such a cyber-attack occurred on Nov. 2. But suspicions are mounting that the U.S. presidential election results were manipulated to some extent. Voting analyses of selected precincts in Florida and Ohio have found surprisingly high percentages for Bush, and critics say that spoiled ballots and provisional votes, both disproportionally affecting minorities, made the difference in at least two states.

Into the evening of Election Day, exit polls showed Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio. Winning either would have ensured his victory in the Electoral College.

Polls also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. When the official results were tallied, however, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls were correct.

As suspicions about the integrity of the election grew, Sen. John McCain tried to quell talk of mischief in the Florida and Ohio with a Nov, 4 appearance on the Tonight Show.
Exit polling showed Kerry with a 3 percent lead over Bush in Florida and 4 percent edge in Ohio. He ended up losing Florida by 5.2 percent and 2.5 percent in Ohio. That makes the spread between the Florida poll and results 8.2 percent, more than double the standard error rate. In Ohio, the difference is 6.5 percent, also beyond the usual variation.

In Florida's Baker County, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3 percent of them Democrats and 24.3 percent of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry, Hartmann reports.

In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5 percent of them Democrats and a mere 15 percent registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeated elsewhere, but only in the smaller counties. On Nov. 5, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann took note of the obvious: all the voting machine irregularities being uncovered seemed to favor Bush. But that was the exception. Most media focused instead on why the exit polling system failed.

Skeptics have dismissed the exit polls as flawed, and said that they may have influenced the narrative of election coverage, but couldn’t affect the outcome.

To explain the difference, architects of the exit poll sampling system said Kerry voters were simply more willing to answer the questions. Called the "chattiness thesis," this answer has been ridiculed as a post-facto excuse.

In an article for Tom Paine.com called “Kerry Won,” journalist Greg Palast claims, “Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded.” But Palast thinks the election was decided not by hackers but by "spoilage," the small part of the vote that is voided and thrown away.

In Ohio, as in Florida four years ago, most “spoiled” votes were cast on punch cards. Whose cards were they? Palast writes, “Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks.”

Other factors that may have affected the outcome include the legal challenges brought by Republicans in several states and the large number of provisional ballots. Taken together, they could bring the full count more into line with the exit poll results. Palast has identified similar voting irregularities in New Mexico.

Writing for Common Dreams. Thom Hartmann reports that Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District claimed to have solid evidence that the Florida election was manipulated through information warfare.

Since the mid-1990s, "information warfare" has been a hot topic within the U.S. military. The Pentagon has even produced a 13-page booklet, "Information Warfare for Dummies."

Indirectly, the booklet acknowledges secret U.S. capabilities in these areas. It also recognized the sensitivity of the topic. "Due to the moral, ethical and legal questions raised by hacking, the military likes to keep a low profile on this issue," the primer explains.

The booklet says the cyber-war tactics do have advantages over other military operations. "The intrusions can be carried out remotely, transcending the boundaries of time and space," the manual says. "They also offer the prospect of 'plausible deniability' or repudiation.

The CIA has reportedly succeeded in pursuing some aspects of cyber-warfare, including targeting specific bank accounts and shutting down computer systems. But stealing an election is considerably more difficult, requiring the alteration of data in many computers.

According to Robert Parry, writing for Consortium News, ”a preprogrammed ‘kernel of brain’ would have to be inserted into election computers beforehand, or teams of hackers would be needed to penetrate the lightly protected systems, targeting touch-screen systems without a paper backup for verifying the numbers.

[RaiderH8r]

Do you also know who shot Kennedy? It was G.W. wasn't it? We've got a pool going.

[patteeu]

Well, at least you acknowledge the foregoing as "my take" (a take w/o any supporting evidence.)



Exactly. Why would you have us believe that this is somehow merely a minor point?

It's only "my take" because I know that opinions vary and there is really no way to prove my position without extensive research and argument (which I'm unwilling to do in this case).

But just to lay out a prima facia case, I'll say that the South was willing to secede from the Union (indicating that they were comfortable with the idea of going it alone) and the North decided to fight a war to prevent that secession (indicating that they were unwilling to let them go). Whether the North wanted to keep the South because they "needed" them or because they just didn't want to have to reprint all their maps, I'll leave up to the rest of you to decide on your own.

Surely you jest. (Unless you define "the principles on which our country was founded" as slavery, Jim Crow, etc.)

No jest at all. The primary principle I'm talking about was the primacy of the state over the federal government. The founders and the southern seperatists shared this POV, while Lincoln's North decided to abandon that arrangement in favor of a strong central government.

As for slavery, the founders accepted it even if they didn't all endorse it. You can't fairly say that either slavery or abolition was a principle on which the country was founded. Your emotion-based argument is beside the point.

[watermock]

50 years from now, they will engrave LABS's Ash Vase with the words. "Exit Polls showed Kerry won"

62 year old minister goes out of the polling booth...pass....pink haired heroin addict goes out...oh look, another Kerry supporter...let's do a poll....And they could still only get a 3 point bump?

Does this clown literally enjoy getting beaten down? It's 10 days after the election, noone is even discussing it anymore, and he's still talking about exit polling? Listen dimwit, exit polling is used to give an early indication of voting BEFORE THE ACTUAL VOTES. They are like your rediculous Zog polls which proved to be trash. Dan Blather was once again proved an absolute moron.

Oh, and BTW, the MIB threw the election, and there isn't anything you can do about it is there. Ha!

Bartcop away my little comic. There are bigger fish to fry in Fallujah.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Keith Olbermann: 'Recounts and retractions'

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6368819/#0411010c

NEW YORK-- John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire-- courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.

David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is "quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio," with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day

The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression.

[mosca]

nader and the green party demanding a recount? they couldn't even get on the ballot in all states. hahaha, fat chance of this happening.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

"The men American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

—H. L. Mencken

http://www.bartcop.com/face_elect.jpg

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

I Smell a Rat

http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10398

I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.

The first sign of the rat was on election night. The jubilation of early exit polling had given way to rising anxiety as states fell one by one to the Red Tide. It was getting late in the smoky cellar of a Prague sports bar where a crowd of expats had gathered. We had been hoping to go home to bed early, confident of victory. Those hopes had evaporated in a flurry of early precinct reports from Florida and Ohio.

By 3 AM, conversation had died and we were grimly sipping beers and watching as those two key states seemed to be slipping further and further to crimson. Suddenly, a friend who had left two hours earlier rushed in and handed us a printout.

"Zogby's calling it for Kerry." He smacked the sheet decisively. "Definitely. He's got both Florida and Ohio in the Kerry column. Kerry only needs one." Satisfied, we went to bed, confident we would wake with the world a better place. Victory was at hand.

The morning told a different story, of course. No Florida victory for Kerry--Bush had a decisive margin of nearly 400,000 votes. Ohio was not even close enough for Kerry to demand that all the votes be counted. The pollsters had been dead wrong, Bush had four more years and a powerful mandate. Onward Christian soldiers--next stop, Tehran.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida--all wrong. CNN's results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry.

Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust.

The first signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.

Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations in that county. They key phrase is "certain counties"--there is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations, but some differ wildly.

How to explain this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning.

The intimation, clearly, is fraud. Ballots are scanned; results are fed into precinct computers; these are sent to a county-wide database, whose results are fed into the statewide electoral totals. At any point after physical ballots become databases, the system is vulnerable to external hackers.

It seemed too easy, and Dopp's method seemed simplistic. I re-ran the results using CNN's exit polling data. In each county, I took the number of registrations and assigned correctional factors based on the CNN poll to predict turnout among Republicans, Democrats, and independents. I then used the vote shares from the polls to predict a likely number of Republican votes per county. I compared this 'expected' Republican vote to the actual Republican vote.

The results are shocking. Overall, Bush received 2% fewer votes in counties with electronic touch-screen voting than expected. In counties with optical scanning, he received 16% more. This 16% would not be strange if it were spread across counties more or less evenly. It is not. In 11 different counties, the 'actual' Bush vote was at least twice higher than the expected vote. 13 counties had Bush vote tallies 50--100% higher than expected. In one county where 88% of voters are registered Democrats, Bush got nearly two thirds of the vote--three times more than predicted by my model.

Again, polling can be wrong. It is difficult to believe it can be that wrong. Fortunately, however, we can test how wrong it would have to be to give the 'actual' result.

I tested two alternative scenarios to see how wrong CNN would have to have been to explain the election result. In the first, I assumed they had been wildly off the mark in the turnout figures--i.e. far more Republicans and independents had come out than Democrats. In the second I assumed the voting shares were completely wrong, and that the Republicans had been able to massively poach voters from the Democrat base.

In the first scenario, I assumed 90% of Republicans and independents voted, and the remaining ballots were cast by Democrats. This explains the result in counties with optical scanning to within 5%. However, in this scenario Democratic turnout would have been only 51% in the optical scanning counties--barely exceeding half of Republican turnout. It also does not solve the enormous problems in individual counties. 7 counties in this scenario still have actual vote tallies for Bush that are at least 100% higher than predicted by the model--an extremely unlikely result.

In the second scenario I assumed that Bush had actually got 100% of the vote from Republicans and 50% from independents (versus CNN polling results which were 93% and 41% respectively). If this gave enough votes for Bush to explain the county's results, I left the amount of Democratic registered voters ballots cast for Bush as they were predicted by CNN (14% voted for Bush). If this did not explain the result, I calculated how many Democrats would have to vote for Bush.

In 41 of 52 counties, this did not explain the result and Bush must have gotten more than CNN's predicted 14% of Democratic ballots--not an unreasonable assumption by itself. However, in 21 counties more than 50% of Democratic votes would have to have defected to Bush to account for the county result--in four counties, at least 70% would have been required. These results are absurdly unlikely.

The second rat

A previously undiscovered species of rat, Republicanus cuyahogus, has been found in Ohio. Before the election, I wrote snide letters to a state legislator for Cuyahoga county who, according to media reports, was preparing an army of enforcers to keep 'suspect' (read: minority) voters away from the polls. One of his assistants wrote me back very pleasant mails to the effect that they had no intention of trying to suppress voter turnout, and in fact only wanted to encourage people to vote.

They did their job too well. According to the official statistics for Cuyahoga county, a number of precincts had voter turnout well above the national average: in fact, turnout was well over 100% of registered voters, and in several cases well above the total number of people who have lived in the precinct in the last century or so.

In 30 precincts, more ballots were cast than voters were registered in the county. According to county regulations, voters must cast their ballot in the precinct in which they are registered. Yet in these thirty precincts, nearly 100.000 more people voted than are registered to vote -- this out of a total of 251.946 registrations. These are not marginal differences--this is a 39% over-vote. In some precincts the over-vote was well over 100%. One precinct with 558 registered voters cast nearly 9,000 ballots. As one astute observer noted, it's the ballot-box equivalent of Jesus' miracle of the fishes. Bush being such a man of God, perhaps we should not be surprised.

What to do?

This is not an idle statistical exercise. Either the raw data from two critical battleground states is completely erroneous, or something has gone horribly awry in our electoral system--again. Like many Americans, I was dissatisfied with and suspicious of the way the Florida recount was resolved in 2000. But at the same time, I was convinced of one thing: we must let the system work, and accept its result, no matter how unjust it might appear.

With this acceptance, we placed our implicit faith in the Bush Administration that it would not abuse its position: that it would recognize its fragile mandate for what it was, respect the will of the majority of people who voted against them, and move to build consensus wherever possible and effect change cautiously when needed. Above all, we believed that both Democrats and Republicans would recognize the over-riding importance of revitalizing the integrity of the electoral system and healing the bruised faith of both constituencies.

This faith has been shattered. Bush has not led the nation to unity, but ruled through fear and division. Dishonesty and deceit in areas critical to the public interest have been the hallmark of his Administration. I state this not to throw gratuitous insults, but to place the Florida and Ohio electoral results in their proper context. For the GOP to claim now that we must take anything on faith, let alone astonishingly suspicious results in a hard-fought and extraordinarily bitter election, is pure fantasy. It does not even merit discussion.

The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one--massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004 presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George Bush is still, and will remain, the 'Accidental President' of 2000. One of his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother's watch, and engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.

Reprinted from Zogby International:
http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10398

[mosca]

I Smell a Rat

http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10398

I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent.

finally LABF comes out and shows his true colors. hurrah, LABF, keep on bashing them evil rethugs! *snicker*

[patteeu]

I Smell a Rat

http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=10398

I smell a rat. It has that distinctive and all-too-familiar odor of the species Republicanus floridius. We got a nasty bite from this pest four years ago and never quite recovered. Symptoms of a long-term infection are becoming distressingly apparent....

This guy must have written his piece before each of his criticisms was debunked thoroughly. From the misleading voter registration versus historical voter behavior in some Florida counties to the unusual way in which Cleveland area voting tallies are reported making it look like more votes were cast than there are voters, all have been explained.

I'm scratching my head as to why LABF is posting it now. Surely he knows he will look ridiculous by doing so. Doesn't he?

The dead horse is still dead.

[Raider Bill]

When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), [/url]


Shouldn't he be worried about the Titans gameplan ? :P