Mabe the modern era of electoral fraud began in 1988.

[Jackpine Radical]

Dukakis was 'WAY ahead in the polls in August. Then the pollsters said his lead vanished, and then he lost. The loss was attributed to things like the Willie Horton ad and a pic of him in a tanker's helmet, etc. But what if that wasn't it? What if those stories were only to give plausible cover to a massive elecoral theft by Bush I? We've seen that format since, as when Max Cleland's large lead over Saxby Shameless suddenly disappeared in 2002. In that instance, they trotted Bush in to make some last-minute appearances, and Saxby did everything but call Max a traitor, but I really don't think those factors were sufficient to account for the sudden shift in voter sentiment. They did, however, give at least some surface plausibility to the event. But remember "Rob Georgia!"

I don't know about the mechanisms by which a Dukakis defeat might have been engineered, but I think maybe we ought to have a look & see if that whole business stands up to the light of inquiry from the perspective of 2008 and all we now know about what they have done to us and how they did it.

[niyad]

1. and don't forget the tx gubenatorial "election" that gave us der chimpenfuhrer.

ann richards was at 60% popularity going into the election that day, and the exit polls indicated she had won. . .

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I think you are into something

and historians will have to look into this, closely

[Zynx]

3. Ummm....No. Every pollster had Dukakis losing.

If you go by the standard of early leads, Nixon nearly had 1968 stolen from him and Dewey had 1948 stolen from him.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Maybe Nixon DID have IL stolen from him.

That theory's been around.

I won't but the Truman thing, though. That was just about the first major use of polling in a national election. The technology was too new an inaccurate at that point.

[Zynx]

6. In 1968? I was referring to when he won.

He saw a huge lead disappear.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. I realized my error after I posted.

Didn't get back to do anything about it, though. Ya know, I kinda missed that election. I was on a hiking & camping tour of Indochina at the time.

[Zynx]

7. Also, if you look back at it, Bush had a huge lead following his convention in 2000, but

Gore wiped it out in his convention a few weeks later. These things happen.

[DumpDavisHogg]

9. Kennedy had some Southern states stolen from him

I think Alabama didn't even put JFK on the ballot. And didn't Mississippi cast some of its electoral votes for some segregationist dinosaur (even though JFK actually carried the state)? (I wasn't born yet in 1960, so I'm not absolutely sure of this.) Besides that, most Southern blacks were probably kept from voting (as this was still 1960), so there's some vote suppression right there.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. The word, "pollsters" in your post, unfortunately, renders your credibility less than your

subsequent point might otherwise have merited. That they are commonly a widely inaccurate and hence deeply dishonest, party-political tool has been a truism since Noah was a lad. They are designed to appeal to the paymasters. Indeed, they are commonly used these days for damage-limitation purposes.

[Zynx]

14. All pollseters? Find Democratic pollsters from back then. No one thought Duakakis had a chance.

[jimshoes]

4. Doing my best Spock raised eyebrow impression...

It seems logical. And I wouldn't put it past them. Then or now.

[DumpDavisHogg]

10. Illinois was definitely stolen

I remember they called Illinois for Dukakis and then retracted it when DuPage County "found" a bunch of votes.

Also, in Santa Barbara (California) some election workers later admitted they committed vote fraud to help Bush. (I seem to recall hearing something about them throwing away ballots.)

In '92 or '96, they called Indiana for the GOP before the polls were closed in the Central Time Zone portion of the state (which may have cost Clinton that state).

[bemildred]

11. Election fraud is as American as apple pie, and has been there right from the start.

Whatever they thought they could get away with ...

[GOPBasher]

13. I think that Georgia Senate race was stolen, but the '88 presidential race

was legitimite. Bush was leading in every poll from August on.