Reply #4: Better Late Than Never! Ted Koppel Covering Ohio Election Fraud Tonight! [View All]

[MelissaB]

Nightline <[e-mail] > wrote:
From: Nightline
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Nightline Tonight Wed., January 19, 2005
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:37:46 -0800

VOTE 2004: FAIR OR FRAUD?

Jan. 19, 2005

In this very partisan atmosphere, it may not surprise you to hear that there are some people out there who believe the winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential race was John Kerry -- that he should be the focus of the extravagant inaugural parade that will make its way up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House tomorrow. These very vocal critics believe that because of voting irregularities in Ohio on Election Day, George Bush actually lost the election. Some go even further to say that the Republicans conspired to steal it. Washington has been dressed up once again for the festivities, so it seems a little late, but tonight we'll listen to the arguments and see if they have any merit.

If there had been more voting machines and less partisan oversight of the voting in Ohio, John Kerry would have carried the state, and had the electoral votes to carry the election. That's what some people think. Many of these arguments need to be looked at in the context of the vote in 2000, which also had serious problems and where partisan politics did play a role. It ended up in the Supreme Court and there are still people who believe Al Gore won it fair and square. But do the irregularities in Ohio rise to the same level? Or are we being subjected to much more concentrated criticism because of that anonymous engine of information called the Internet?

Part of the problem surrounding the various arguments about what happened in Ohio (and other states) is that those exit polls threw people off once again. By early afternoon on Election Day the poll results were being leaked very early on, showing that John Kerry was in the winner's column. Those results were turned upside down later by the actual results. But those early results had a lot of people convinced. "Nightline" correspondent Chris Bury, who was in Ohio on Election Day, sorts through all of this to see if any of the arguments that George Bush lost have any merit.

And what about some of the political shenanigans in past presidential elections? There are many great stories about the way political machines used to operate and who got paid to make them run. Ted Koppel will chat with two entertaining Washington watchers who will gingerly remove those political skeletons from the closet, just for some perspective.

We hope you'll join us.

Gerry Holmes & The Nightline Staff
Senior Producer
Washington Bureau

Thanks to JoMama49 here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x292973