Mark Crispin Miller: "First of all, this election was definitely rigged"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor of communications at New York University, and author, most recently, of "Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/04/election_reactions/index1.html

First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it. It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians, and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy to get Bush elected.

But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that Bush got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do with the electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely untrustworthy, and that's why the Republicans use them. Then there's the fact that the immediate claim of Ohio was not contested by the news media -- when Andrew Card came out and claimed the state, not only were the votes in Ohio not counted, they weren't even all cast. I would have to hear a much stronger argument for the authenticity, or I should say the veracity, of this popular vote for Bush before I'm willing to believe it. If someone can prove to me that it happened, that Bush somehow pulled 8 million magic votes out of a hat, OK, I'll accept it. I'm an independent, not a Democrat, and I'm not living in denial.

And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as Democratic a state as Guatemala used to be. The news media is obliged to make the Republicans account for all these votes, and account for the way they were counted. Simply to embrace this result as definitive is irrational. But there is every reason to question it ... I find it beyond belief that the press in this formerly democratic country would not have made the integrity of the electoral system a front page, top-of-the-line story for the last three years. I worked and worked and worked to get that story into the media, and no one touched it until your guy did.

I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him about it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa was really indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down at me -- he's about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't register. It set off all his conspiracy-theory alarms and he just wasn't listening.

[central scrutinizer]

1. it does seem hard to believe

that 58% felt the country was going in the wrong direction but then a majority of the country voted to "floor it".

[aquart]

2. We didn't. This election was stolen in the machines.

And none of the media is questioning it.

[LiberalAndProud]

21. We need to question it.

It is time to begin a letter-writing campaign to demand that this issue be addressed. It is a matter of national security. If a party can hijack our elections, so can terrorist factions.

[radiofreesrini]

74. early ballots simply not counted

my guess is that every single early vote was simply thrown out by the local masons in charge of the polling places. democrats were attracted to early voting like bees to honey!

my guess is that within two weeks it will become clear that Kerry won OH, FL and maybe even NC handily after all votes are counted.

what kind of constitutional crisis would that precipitate? imagine!

another thing i noticed is that pro-Bush states closed the polls and entered their final tallies very early, giving Bush the appearance of momentum over the course of voting (even while polls were still open)... rural america takes its cues from the South!

the papers are fawning over Karl Rove and his "brilliant strategy". i agree that rove deserves an honorary degree in database marketing from your local community college. but at a certain point any admiration for their mental technologies dissolves in disgust at their aims. i see how they cloddishly use memes and database driven direct mail to fuck with people's heads.

it renews my determination to wield MY memes to vaccinate people against their memes before it's too late. the battle of Armageddon is going on in our heads. meme versus countermeme, it all spreads throughout the mass mind and gives humanity a headache.

one of the memes they spread was eagerly swallowed by the bulk of hardcore Democrats. "vote early" - everyone rallied to vote early, and the Deaniacs congratulated themselves smugly on their righteous indignation and their energy in casting early ballots. But this nicely separated them out for the fraudsters. Picture the Republican election mafia cackling "we know who you are, democrats, you're going to vote early because you hate us, so we're going to throw your vote away or count it two weeks late"...

i mean, that's one clever memetic strategy, i admit it, but we know more about how they are programmed to behave than vice versa. they're the robots, even if we (or at least some of us) are the dupes. if the key to victory is messing with the minds of the enemies of mental freedom in the G.O.P. and elsewhere, then victory is as simple as reworking the Ramones.

i don't want to interfere with their happy camp - i just want our side to be happy too. i mean the internet DID play a part in some of this, and young people did get out and vote (even if vote fraud was especially prevalent in precincts where students would be voting).

when the full count is finally tallied and kerry winds up with a majority in ohio, florida, and/or other states, what then?

[Sterling]

84. So why the fuck did Kerry concede?

Seriously, is he in on it or what?

[brainshrub]

85. I would love to know that.

I am madder at Kerry right now than I am at Bush.

[moosedog]

100. My thoughts right along...

I think us average citizens are being had.

[Carolina]

106. oops, self delete

because of duplication

[Carolina]

107. I think he conceded

because even if he won OH, NC, FL he had no backup in the House, the Senate or the media. He likely would not have be able to implement his plans, would be blamed for the continued mess created by Bush and that would have damaged the Party more for the future.

This way, the repukes have it all. If they fail, as they surely will, it's all on them; they have only themselves to blame. They have no where to go but down.

[glitch]

119. Hmm - that is interesting. But it would mean he put party over country

Do you think he's capable of that? Even if Congress and the Executive Branch washed each other for four years, wouldn't that be better than a total one-party state? Including the Supreme Court? For perhaps generations?
The repukes don't have a problem with failure, or rock bottom. They profit no matter what. And if they own the media and the vote count, and they do, they don't need to worry about public opinion. Any more than they had to this time.
But it's an interesting thought.

[nolabels]

138. The 1% rich party?

Think about who is really on who's side and why. The overtly rich don't play on the party B.S., they play on bank. I holding my judgment for now, but seeing them first few minutes of F911 with Gore doing the gavel thing I have little trust left for most of these folks

[Carolina]

140. no I don't mean he put party over country

but rather think how impotent he would have been with Congress and the media allied against him. He'd get little done, he'd be blamed for EVERYTHING including the mess inherited from Bush, he'd be vilified like/possibly worse than Clinton (remember repukes don't suffer defeat magnanimously) and next time likely go down to defeat like Jimmy Carter against Reagan after 4 years of repuke obstructionism which would be attributed to an ineffectual Kerry and which would possibly throw the progressive half of the nation in same executive wilderness for we suffered under 12 years of Reagan-Bush I.

[demjomr313]

141. i agree -

he conceded b/c he knows that a victory for him would be a tough one -

[WildClarySage]

152. Well, if he didn't want the job

why run for the office? I mean, shouldn't he have considered that before accepting the nomination?

I don't know why he gave in, but my guess is that he knew the fix was in, and that there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Dems, if we want to win in '06, and retake the majorities we must get to stop the worst excesses of *, we have to work hard to push BBV into the national spotlight, and phrase it carefully- otherwise, we will be setting ourselves up like bowling pins, once again.

[man4allcats]

137. I don't understand it either.

Kerry had to know the rethuglicans would stoop to anything to win. Fraud is their m.o. Reference the Greg Palast analysis posted by dweller < http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x82557 >. I still have the greatest respect for Kerry, but I think he should have fought it out. It is true that Bush and co. will fall on their collective ass in the coming four years, and then it will undeniably be all on them. Still, if we were in that election at all we should have been in it to win - not to throw in the towel by lunch time on the 3rd.

[Zhade]

161. Of course Kerry knew that.

This is the guy who investigated IranContra and BCCI, and he doesn't know who he's dealing with?

If anybody tried to sell me that one, I could sell THEM some a nice bridge.

[American liberal]

104. that's my belief, as well

I listened or watched NPR and the networks all day Monday and Tuesday, and I did not hear a PEEP about those Diebold machines affecting the outcome, but on Monday night I read a thread here on DU claiming that unknowns have been trying to hack into electronic voting machines and the only way to defeat it was to turn off the modems.

Not a PEEP out of the press. and we're just supposed to roll over?

It stinks. The whole thing stinks of something really foul.

For the record, I'm finally starting to catch up with some of you pissed off lefties. I survived the past four years by pinning my hopes on sanity prevailing Nov. 2. That we would finally get our country back.

The bastards just rolled over!!! Spineless MFers! My stomach has been in knots since Wed. morning. Something's gotta give!

What can we do?!

[KCS72000]

149. NPR

NPR was the first to tell us on Wednesday morning how well the electromic machines worked.:puke:

reported by Dan Gretch. around 7:00 am on WHYY Phila. station.

[glitch]

4. Excellent analogy. nt

[Kierkegaard]

10. Well, there is corroboration here.

The fundies want Armageddon. If they are convinced it is coming and Shrub is going to hasten its arrival, they would certainly think the country is heading in the wrong direction AND would vote for him to make it even worse.

Am I even making any sense? I'm so tired and beaten, I can't think straight...

[springhill]

59. I can't find it..........

When I click on the link it goes to Arianna Huffington and I can't find it anywhere on Salon.

[michaelwb]

63. Series of articles

It's a series of different people writing, if you keep going down you'll get to his piece.

There are a number of pieces by different people within that article.

[brainshrub]

78. Same here

:shrug:

[Kolesar]

3. Mark Crispin Miller is a bright man

Does he understand that Ohio was largely not using electronic voting machines?

[chimpy the poopthrower]

6. But they did in Franklin County...

...which is the second largest Democratic-leaning county in Ohio. It contains Ohio State University and Columbus, the state capital.

EDIT:
Just as the US has large areas of red with the population concentrated in a few blue areas, so too does Ohio have large red areas that are not heavily populated and small blue urban areas that are heavily populated. So to say that "most counties" didn't use electronic machines isn't saying much.

[ladjf]

7. The gay initiative did it inOhio but everywhere the EV's were

used without paper backups Bush was 5% ahead of the tracking poll.s

[UCLA Dem]

34. I agree. They would have been more likely to stay home had that not been..

on the ballet. It was the same-sex marriage initiative that did us in.

[glitch]

9. He understands quite well the problems in Ohio

He probably reads http://www.gregpalast.com/ and bothered to check out http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?&topic_string=5std&state=Ohio

[Radio-Active]

14. you can still fix an election with paper ballots..

once they count them with their machines(which can be rigged), the ballots are never counted again.

THIS IS WHY WE NEED A HAND RECOUNT IN OHIO!

[chimpy the poopthrower]

22. True. Paperless electronic machines aren't the ONLY way to steal votes...

...although they make it pretty easy. Punch card with their hanging chads haven't suddenly become an effective way to vote just because DREs came along. And, as qcsoapbox says, ANY system which uses computers to COUNT the votes is susceptible to the same problems as paperless. The only benefit is they can be verified with a hand recount.

[lazarus]

16. it's not just the voting machines

it's the vote counting machines.

[Kolesar]

19. Yes, errors in the card reader

The provisional ballots should be read. If the result brings Kerry within the .25% margin, then there must be a recount. A hand recount would be fairest, because we cannot presume the ballots are being machine-read correctly.

[Dancing_Dave]

23. There were other dirty tricks

Dropping thousands of Democrats from the rolls, deliberately assinging far to few voting booths in Democratic areas, so that people would have to wait in lines for many hours, which not everyone can get enough time off to do....

Some people were informed enough to notice that the election would be stolen:

http://liberty.hypermart.net/index.html

So what are we going to do about it?

[Cha]

53. What can we do about

It? I want to be a part of that!

[Vincardog]

62. Here is the plan it is just the core a little rough but a start

Rejoice the people did not choose this evil course. Diebold did. We are going to start now to get organized and put petitions on the ballot to ensure the crooked evoting machines are replaced. Voting machines should be
1) Open Source code.
2) Independintaly tested and verified for reliability and accuracy.
3) Secure in source and physically.

Do you want to join us?

pretty picture

[loudsue]

96. DUH????? Did you just see what you WROTE???

"get organized and put petitions on the ballot to ensure the crooked evoting machines are replaced."

And, pray tell, just WHICH machine is going to count the votes from that ballot??? I hope it does better than your Kerry ballot!!

:kick:

[Zorra]

98. I believe 7 counties in Ohio use electronic voting.

(Disclaimer: This info may not be accurate, I am just going by what I researched in a short period of time, and someone better at math may want to check my info, stats, and figures. The websites below might give someone a start on more in depth research.)

The counties below are listed on the verified voting Ohio map as counties that use electronic voting machines. I do not know if these counties also use other types of voting methods. Assuming that all voting in these counties is done on electronic voting machines, I calculate (I am not a math wiz) that if less than 10% of the votes cast on these machines were switched from Kerry to Bush, they would equal the Bush margin of "victory" in Ohio. It is also possible that some of Kerry's votes were given to other candidates such as Badnarik and Peroutka. On the surface it looks like switching this number of votes would be a piece of cake on an inauditable system, but

I don't know exactly what type of evoting machines are used in these counties, so I can't figure out exactly how easily the votes could be stolen. And there are probably other variables that I am not aware of.

Lake: Bush: 60,615 Kerry: 57,471
Mahoning: Bush: 47,968 Kerry: 81,500
Franklin: Bush:234,196 Kerry: 275,573
Knox: Bush:16,677 Kerry: 9,613
Pickaway: Bush: 13,864 Kerry:8,388
Ross: Bush: 16,940 Kerry:13,701
Auglaize: Bush: 16,437 Kerry: 5,729

858,672 votes total I believe. (Combined population of these counties is about 1,800,000 I think.)

Figures and info were taken from these websites, and I googled the populations of the counties and made a rough calculation:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004//pages/results/states/OH/P/00/county.000.html

http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?&topic_string=5estd&state=Ohio

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004//pages/results/states/OH/

http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/index.php?topic_string=5estd

[ladjf]

5. Without the slightest doubt! Keep on hammering the bastards.

[highplainsdem]

8. The GOP stealing the election "just didn't register" with Kerry? OMG.

I realize Miller's talking about a conversation with Kerry during the campaign, not in the last couple of days -- but after Florida in 2000, how could Kerry NOT be concerned about theft?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

15. What I get from the article is that the premise sounded too "tinfoil hat"

...and apparently (at least at the time of the exchange), "tinfoil hat theories" don't register with Kerry.

That's Miller's take on it...who knows what Kerry was actually thinking.

[GreenArrow]

43. uh, what about kerry and BCCI, Iran Contra

tin foil hat stuff?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

45. I'm speaking strictly within the context of the article...

...so I couldn't comment on other times and other issues. I don't know...maybe the author could have been more direct with that statement but that wasn't the case.

[GreenArrow]

54. no, the article, as written, makes sense

I just find it hard to believe that Kerry would scoff at something because it sounds "tinfoil", particularly in light of his experience with Iran Contra and after the 2000 election. Of course, there's always the possibilty that JK is a very good poker player, and Miller just misread his response.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

82. That could be it, easily.

Maybe it triggered something that Kerry knew, inside stuff, that he couldn't share with Miller.

[wrate]

90. Or JK had heard this story before and knew a lot more he was willing to

say. I mean, being in his position I can bet you anything he was on this already and knew it to be true.

[shuffnew]

154. Could Iowa hold the key to "hope" to open pandoras box?

HE (BUSH) STEALS 3 MORE... very very suspicious.

"Bush Wins Iowa to Claim Last Three States"

By MIKE GLOVER
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20041105%2F1116849829.htm&sc=1131&floc=NW_1-T

Of special interest is the below quote from above article:

"In Iowa, absentee ballots had to be postmarked by Nov. 1, and those received by county auditors up until noon Monday can be counted. Special precinct boards also have been reviewing provisional ballots that were cast.
The state will not certify its results until Nov. 29. Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver had asked the public for patience while the state pursued its vote-counting process, which has been in place for 30 years."

Will Iowa be the last state to certify? ummmm.

[Cha]

55. We can always try to ask

Mark Crispin Miller what he thought.

Email: [e-mail].

[Stephanie]

57. I just asked him to come post here

If he's not busy he'll do it.

He's on Air America tomorrow - the morning show - Mark Maron.

[Cha]

60. Thank you, Stephanie!

I can't listen tomorrow morning but will read any reports on DU tomorrow when I come home from work.

I've heard Mark on the radio before on The Guy James Show and he is wonderful!

Mark is our Friend!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

79. Thanks Stephanie

Wouldn't it be a better world if the only thing we needed to do to get the answer was to ask the question?

:toast:

[Sterling]

87. That makes sense. I introduced the BBV people to Move On

And as far as I know Move On thinks the whole idea is foolish or at least not credible enough to care about.

Most mainstream left leaning groups just don't want to consider what we are truly up against.

[KoKo]

38. Democratic Kerry Operative "Pete, NYC" just posted this in a thread.

Kerry didn't seem to register that there could be vote fraud.

And, to tell you the truth the Democrats don't want to talk about it that I worked with at our headquarters.

Why? I wish I knew. We activists knew and that's how we got the "Poll Monitors." But, no one here is investigating some of the disparities between exit polls and vote tally. We got our "Monitors" but there's no follow through. :shrug:

[JohnyCanuck]

42. Why?

Maybe its just too hard to admit that their country is just another banana republic and the whole political system is rotten and corrupt to the core.

[Tangledog]

49. Kerry can't be caught tinfoiling

...and neither can his closest operatives. Without more hard evidence, or a statistical abstract that cannot yet be done, it does stand a chance of sounding like sour grapes or -- worse yet -- being old hat before the evidence shows up or the final tallies are done.

Don't expect a word out of Kerry until a big red flag flies over Lake Erie. I've never seen a bit of evidence that John Kerry is cowardly. And I've seen a lot of evidence that John Kerry is not stupid.

[InvisibleTouch]

61. Kerry is an honorable and honest guy....

... Maybe he just couldn't conceive that, if he plays the game by the rules, his enemies wouldn't do the same. Or had faith that the integrity on our side would swamp out the cheating on their side. He surely had advisors to crunch those numbers for him. Everyone underestimated the underhandedness of the rethugs.

Note for future elections: if they can lie, they will. If they can cheat, they will. If they can steal, they will. Think Murphy's Law. Anything that can be stolen, will be stolen. The big question is, how do we counter it? As others have pointed out, it's possible to cheat with paper ballots too. Must we count everything twice, by a team of vote counters from each party, and then compare the totals? I'm starting to think that's the only way to go. Even if that means the results aren't known for a few days after election eve....

[Geek_Girl]

80. I think Kerry's been down the tinfoil hat road before

With the Iran Contra affair and it almost killed him politically. It's the presses job to do the investigative work but there too corupt or lazy or both. So the rumors go round and round on the internets in the hope that America listens.

[KoKo]

105. I think Gore was the same way. They are honest folks and expect others

to be that way. However, how in this day and this time seeing what the Bushies have done, can they go on believing this? We here don't believe it. We KNOW the Repugs will lie, cheat, steal on all levels.

Are WE Wrong? I would like to think that somehow we are all too cynical..but with our experience seeing all this and reading what we read here on DU how is it WE KNOW and THEY DON'T.

Jaysus Christ...must be the "Bubble" is over all of DC and not just the "WH!" :shrug:

[Eloriel]

108. The really big problem here

is that this is NOT tinfoil -- not in the least. There are numerous prominent computer scientists from all around the country who have attested to the myriad problems with computerized voting. NO TINFOIL REQUIRED. SOME of them have examined the code and were horrified. Some of computer professionals right here at DU have nearly fainted upon hearing just a few of the simplest and most basic of FACTS, such as the fact that the database is Access, and obviously the whole thing uses Windows platform, about the last thing you want where security via modem is essential.

I could go on and on about the irrefutable FACTS which make these voting machines the WORST possible solution for a democracy. If you need some convincing, there are plenty of very mainstream, very upstanding, very professional, very irrefutable resources out there.

[CAcyclist]

113. What would be "tinfoil"

would be to assume that despite the clear evidence of tampering in the last election and the clear evidence of the Bush people lying to get us into Iraq, that the republicans would just sit back and win this election by fair means.

If anyone knows how this was done, it's Kevin Shelley. He investigated the 2002 vote tampering in California.

[shuffnew]

136. Come on "BIg Red Flag" over Lake Erie....

A fully agree with you on Kerry. He has certainly proven he is extremely intelligent and brave (certainly not a coward).

The question I have though... wouldn't it take a public action such as filing to demand an audit? Would that be held private if done? There are no indicators that anything is in the works. And how long would Kerry have to retract a concession? To my knowledge, the concession speech is not legally binding. But, just how long would Kerry have to retract it if "election fraud" proof was verified? Anyone know?

[K-W]

83. Think of it this way.

Kerry is a politician. The question to him isnt so much whether he believes it but how would he be percieved if he let on to believing it.

He has to make both judgements and only let the outside know the answer to the second question.

[Gut Check]

11. how come the "liberal" media doesn't pick up on this? n/t

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

28. It picks up on it, put after a day or so puts it back on the shelf

One of the BIGGEST challenges the Democratic Party will face...or alternatively, ignore...as we move forward is the CRITICAL need for:

1). Follow-through

2). SUSTAINED intensity

3). Not allowing themselves to be "defined by their opponent."

Karl Rove (DESPITE his lack of a conscience and cut-throat skills) scores an A+ on all of the above. NO one is rattling his cage and going "Come ON, Karl, you need to pay attention and GET INVOLVED here." He's involved. That's how we lost. WE need to become "INVOLVED." He's running the race well before the starting gun is fired.

He's a carnivore. The Democratic Party needs a carnivore. All of the talk about "getting through to the redmecks in the red states?" A carnivore will get through. More than anything, Rove savors the defeat of his opponent...it's what drives him. A DEMOCRAT needs to sit down with a copy of Machiavelli's "The Prince"...just like Rove did...and walk away with a lesson in life.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/m/machiave.htm

"Machiavelli opens The Prince describing the two principal types of governments: monarchies and republics. His focus in The Prince is on monarchies. The most controversial aspects of Machiavelli's analysis emerge in the middle chapters of his work. In Chapter 15 he proposes to describe the truth about surviving as a monarch, rather than recommending lofty moral ideals. He describes those virtues which, on face value, we think a prince should possess. He concludes that some "virtues" will lead to a prince's destruction, whereas some "vices" allow him to survive. Indeed, the virtues which we commonly praise in people might lead to his downfall. In chapter 16 he notes that we commonly think that it is best for a prince to have a reputation of being generous. However, if his generosity is done in secret, no one will know about it and he will be thought to be greedy. If it is done openly, then he risks going broke to maintain his reputation. He will then extort more money from his subjects and thus be hated. For Machiavelli, it is best for a prince to have a reputation for being stingy. Machiavelli anticipates examples one might give of generous monarchs who have been successful. He concludes that generosity should only be shown to soldiers with goods taken from a pillaged enemy city. In Chapter 17 he argues that it is better for a prince to be severe when punishing people rather than merciful. Severity through death sentences affects only a few, but it deters crimes which affects many. Further, he argues, it is better to be feared than to be loved. However, the prince should avoid being hated, which he can easily accomplish by not confiscating the property of his subjects: "people more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance." In Chapter 18, perhaps the most controversial section of The Prince, Machiavelli argues that the prince should know how to be deceitful when it suits his purpose. When the prince needs to be deceitful, though, he must not appear that way. Indeed he must always exhibit five virtues in particular: mercy, honesty, humaneness, uprightness, and religiousness. In Chapter 19 Machiavelli argues that the prince must avoid doing things which will cause him to be hated. This is accomplished by not confiscating property, and not appearing greedy or wishy-washy. In fact, the best way to avoid being overthrown is to avoid being hated."

Remember the TERRIBLE "rebuttal" Tom Daschle gave at the end of Bush's last State of the Union address? People on DU were going CRAZY: "What the hell is WRONG with him? Why doesn't he SPEAK OUT, get PISSED OFF?"

A loss is a loss, but given what I've seen, the loss of Tom Daschle simply makes way for someone better. It's the epitome of the cloud with the silver lining.

That link I provided is worth a Salon day pass...it features responses from about a dozen folks like Arianna Huffington, Moby, and Camille Paglia, in addition to Miller.

[Jane Austin]

12. Fascinating. I sure thought it was odd that all those black people were

standing in line for hours outside in Florida to vote for Bush.

(sarcasm)

[michaelwb]

66. Like in 2000

All those error prone exit polls showed Jewish communities voting for Kerry, but the ballots showed their love for the anti-semitic Pat Buchanon...

[sui generis]

13. well then.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. If Bush consistently outperformed Kerry by five percent in all the districts that use BBV in contrast to the MOE on the exit polls in the same districts, then it's clear that there was election fraud.

Now the REAL question is whether it was orchestrated from the top, or just "volunteered" by diebold. Either way, would even irrefutable firm proof of it "undo" the election?

Where are our überhackers? They need to be scraping some people's hard drives for more memos . . .

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[highplainsdem]

25. Aren't you in the wrong forum? (trying to be polite, though you weren't)

[Monist]

29. Maybe I am in the wrong forum

I am new to DU, but I thought this was a forum for people who want to end one-party control of our government by Republicans.

Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe this is the forum for people who wanna whine and cry, celebrate victimhood, sit around recycling stupid 1960s-style protest tactics, develop all kinds of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, and never look in the mirror to see what our party has become -- which, in case you forgot, is OUT OF POWER FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS.

[Cha]

56. You have your thoughts on this and

we have ours..WE want to get the bottom of what happened. We will not play dead like you want us to.

This is NOT about "whining"..no matter how many times you jump on a thread and spout that it is.

[sui generis]

68. "whine, cry, celebrate victimhood"

that's kind of shitty to put it bluntly.

If you want to fight, take it out on the enemy. If you want to call people names and mock them, get lost.

There are many points of view here, it shouldn't be necessary to attack someone just because you disagree with them (on this board).

Oh, and you will find many people here for whom whining and crying and victimhood is the last thing you could accuse them of, so be civil or we won't.

Okay, Welcome to DU!

[ballcap1776]

145. if we don't examine what has happened

then we can't protect ourselves in 2006 and 2008. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. I don't think anything can happen to change what happened Tuesday/Wednesday, but I do think that by educating ourselves we can help make the future better.

[blurp]

70. I agree

Maybe this is the forum for people who wanna whine and cry, celebrate victimhood, sit around recycling stupid 1960s-style protest tactics, develop all kinds of tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, and never look in the mirror to see what our party has become -- which, in case you forgot, is OUT OF POWER FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS.

Exactly. This is the way Republicans describe liberals.

DON'T REINFORCE THE STEREOTYPE!

[Kipepeo]

151. Bullshit

It is not 'celebrating Victimhood' (nice use of Rush-Limbaugh-esque Right-wing terminology there) to try to get to the bottom of what happened.

If the election was rigged then it DOESN'T MATTER WHAT WE DO NEXT TIME, we can never win. Therefore, we have to find out what happened and if it was rigged, jeezus wouldn't you WANT TO KNOW so we can prevent it from happening next time?

The rest of the world seems convinced that something foul happened. I can't believe Americans are so complacent. Did you think they would let us take it back so easily?

[ElementaryPenguin]

89. Your dismissing the electronic voting issue as tin-foil hat proves you

KNOW NOTHING!!!! Perhaps you ARE in the wrong forum, bub!

:argh:
:mad:

[Is It Fascism Yet]

134. Yep, wrong forum

In the immortal words of Big Dick Cheney, Go fuck yourself. Thanks.

[Kolesar]

26. ummm

welcome to the democratic underground!

[Monist]

30. Thank you

I look forward to making a meaningful contribution.

[Eloriel]

110. Starting when? n/t

[trotsky]

31. A "better message"?

The message being, Democrats will take away your guns, let gays marry in your church, ban the bible, gut military and intelligence programs, and allow evil terrorists to kill your kids.

Yeah, that's a LOT better than what the Democrats were peddling.

Everyone - even the red staters - enjoys a safe work environment with benefits, a reasonably safe food supply, and many more things BECAUSE of us whacked out liberals living in the past.

[Angrillori]

76. And you know what, people believe this, and will

think that any effort to deny it is just lies to get them to let us "take their guns, ban their bible, and force them to marry a gay person."

It's very frustrating.

No matter how much evidence is set in front of people, the message that democrats want to steal guns, god and force them to marry gays is so strongly entrenched. How do you break it down, when people refuse to believe anything you say anyways?

I'm actually asking here, it's not just rhetorical.

[Borgnine]

18. I've felt this since the returns started coming in.

There was no way Bush could win this one, even with all the fundie homophobe support, without rigging it.

I'm dissapointed that Kerry didn't give this much thought. We NEED people in the party who are willing to give a damn about this, or else they'll never win again and we all lose.

[SmokingJacket]

37. Me too.

As soon as I turned the radio on to listen to the returns it was like a cold wind blew through the house.

I knew something was wrong.

Damn, CARLSON called it for Kerry!!!

[barb162]

51. ME TOO! Exit polls and other polls were showing Kerry much

stronger and then all of a sudden the returns are coming in for Bush bigtime. All of them couldn't be that far off.

[punpirate]

20. And what's truly baffling about this is...

... that Kerry himself, as a prosecutor and a Senator running an investigation into Contra drug-running, ought to know the nature of a conspiracy.

Even more baffling is that, after 2000, Kerry (or his people) should have known that the fix was in, at least in Florida. Since when do you trust any election where a brother of a candidate owns the Secretary of State's office?

Notice how Florida has just fallen right out of the news? There were 27 electoral votes there, seven more than Ohio. The Kerry campaign challenged results in neither state, presumably because they weren't close (less than 1/2%).

I don't think they were close for a reason, and it damned sure wasn't that the fundies came out to vote.

[LiberalAndProud]

24. We need to launch a letter-writing campaign. Ensure the integrity of

our elections.

[T Bone]

126. oh yeah write letters

that has been working so well...

[byronm]

27. Quite BLAMING THE MACHINE

We need to blame ourselves for letting partisan companies develop these machines.

We need to blame ourselves for ignoring the process of creating, standardizing and testing these machines. Why was the house/senate and democratic leadership sitting on there asses while known hard right republican companies ran with the ball?

We CAN create a non partisan - NON profit and "Open Source" voting solution and its not just the democrats that need this - lets get the libertarians, the congressionals, the greens and other parties on board to develop a fair and AUDITABLE ELECTION SYSTEM.

Get rid of diebold and commercial voting business ONCE AND FOR ALL.

We have to adapt technology - we can't ignore it or blame it!

[progressivebydesign]

36. Our election system IS broken.

It needs to be standardized.. NOT left to each county to run in their own fashion. Poorer counties don't put the resources where they need to be.. the election organizations are often run so sloppily, and unprofessionally, you'd die if you saw how cavalier they are with something as precious as our vote.

The election process should be funded EQUALLY by the federal and state governments. But.. if you look at our schools in the nation, you'll see the same type of disparity. ALL voting methods should be standardized.. AND companies that are partisan, should NOT be allowed to do election business with the government. A bi-partisan organization, under the government umbrella, should be put in place to ANALYZE and design our NEW voting structure. IT HAS TO BE STANDARDIZED. If Polk County is using punch cards, then EVERYONE uses punchcards. The media should be bound by new rules that disallow the "calling" of states, until all votes are counted. Sorry.. to the media, and the advertisers, but this election was an even BIGGER fucking fiasco! They were calling states at 4pm WEst coast time, with less than 1% of returns for that state.

ALSO, criminal penalties for screwing with an election need to be SEVERE and agressively investigated. The numerous fliers distributed to suppress the black vote, the "caging" attempts by the GOP in Florida and Ohio, should ALL be prosecuted. We need ELECTION LAW that matches the new democracy.

An investigation needs to be initiated immediately of DIEBOLD, and the other companies supplying those machines. Michael Moore? The new Michael Moore's of the world? Can you do a film about our fucked up election system??

I am convinced this election was stolen in technological ways, beyond the documented FILTHY tactics to discourage and disenfranchise voters. It'll be a hard fight, as the people who have waged war on on our election system NOW control everything.. it's a bitch but that's how that works. You steal, lie, cheat, and intimidate your way into office.. then YOU set all the rules.

[byronm]

77. Oh, i don't disagree with you at all..

But we can't blaim the system when we ignored its creation. We shouldn't have let it be created as the blackbox it is in the first place and being more pro-active on these fronts will help us solidify our base and our issues and our stance.

I just don't want people laying blame for something that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. Which obviously is difficult to do and maybe it couldn't have been done because dem's were pacifists in nature and didn't think much of it.

[KoKo]

41. They kept the hearings secret and only activists or folks here on DU

knew about the problem with Diebold. After Bev Harris and others here discovered it. Georgia DU'ers tried everything to get Cathy Cox to acknowledge something was wrong. Georgia still has the machines without paper trails, I believe, even though it was demonstrated that they can be manipulated.

My husband and another DU were here in NC for a meeting with the Elections Officials over a years ago to try to stop NC from purchasing more of them.

We here can only do so much. If our legislators and Election officials don't listen to us. We've tried everything. Without a media to alert everyday folks who don't understand the machines could be corrupted we can't get a groundswell to fight it publicly.

[spooked911]

112. Agree-- any suggestions

for exactly what to do?

[rniel]

32. As soon as someone raises doubt

they will be shot down by the media as just sore losers. There would have to be a mountain of evidence or a whistleblower to make a difference.

[highplainsdem]

33. Bev Harris is trying to get that evidence. See

http://blackboxvoting.org/ .

[yardwork]

35. I'm with you.

Why is this so difficult for people to believe? They believe their eyes when they see the evidence from Abu Ghraib. They know that somebody in the White House outed Valerie Plame via Novak. Why is it so difficult to believe that this particular group would stop at stealing an election?

I'm getting cross with the people who keep telling us to ignore this. My own family in Ohio experienced hours of voter intimidation and suppression! It's on the national news!

[BlueInRed]

39. Did you see the nationwide map of all the e-voting machines

It was on either 60 minutes or ABC a few days before the election. It showed a map where all the DREs were located and it appears to me (based on my recollection) that this is also where all the exit polls didn't match up.

All the traditionally "red" states were saturated with DREs and there were hot spots of DREs in all the important swing states, mainly in the urban areas likely to go Democratic. The traditionally blue states didn't have DREs or they had a paper trail.

I currently am in Tx and saw Kerry signs in places I haven't seen Democratic signs in years. Yet our county "voted" more Republican than it ever has in the past few years. And our county is in the process of switching from optical scanners to Diebold DREs and all early voting was on Diebolds. I don't think it was a coincidence.

[shuffnew]

132. Tx Early Voting - Nationwide Map?

I did not see the Nationwide map. There should be one somewhere online though to view. If anyone finds it, please post it.

I live in Williamson County Tx and my early voting was on paper ballot. But, I am not sure if that was county-wide or not.

I think Travis County had the e-voting machines.

I agree with you that I have seen more Kerry signs and stickers than I have seen any Democrat exhibition in any election since Texas turned red.

[tej]

40. Part of the issue, maybe?

You point is well made & I agree there are poor checks and balances with electronic voting. The same argument could be made regarding computer tabulation too. Basically the "honesty" is by the poll workers, tabulators, city, county & state officials who certify the vote. I live in Nevada with electronic voting with a paper trail system attached (state law) and am very comfortable with our new system. Even so, we are a red state this year too with about 70% voter turnout.

Another very strong possibility was that rural areas are mostly conservative & Christian, while urban areas are more liberal. How do you suppress or affect urban votes? Since most non-voters simply do not wish to take the time, you could limit voting booths to create long lines hoping to loose some folks who simply do not want to wait? Even with with 6-8 hours wait, you are going to loose some of the vote period. Another possibility is that tabulation of absentee ballots are not counted until after Voting Tuesday; Make a big push for absentee voting in urban areas hoping the challenger will concede first before all votes are counted? Veil voter intimidation by poll watching & so on. You really only need to effect about less than 1% of the urban vote really?

In any case, we cannot start a civil war while we are are at war with Terrorist - we simply need to examine what is wrong & fix it for next time... DU rules!!!! :)

[brettdale]

44. There is No doubt

There is no doubt, that this election has to be rigged, the maths just doesnt add up. Something has to come out soon, I dont think America can survive another four years of Bush, Im only hoping that there are people working behind the scenes to uncover this and uncover it quickly.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

46. Miller will be on AAR's "Morning Sedition" tomorrow

6 to 9 a.m. eastern time

They have been running promos for his appearance all day. I'm going to assume one of the reasons he'll be on is to discuss this issue.

[Cha]

58. Are you going to listen?

I won't be able to..but would greatly appreciate any report on it!

Thanks!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

81. I will try to catch it and post, but if I miss it...

...hopefully enough people here have been made aware of it.

:-)

[glitch]

121. You can always listen later to the mp3

download from http://www.airamericaplace.com/archive.php

[robbedvoter]

47. Make believe campaign (W) for a make believe election

Famous last words:
"I have no time for those crying in your teacups for stolen elections"
John Kerry, campaign trail 2003

[nebula]

48. It's no coincidence

you always see these chronic voting problems in the democratic counties, yet they are virtually unheard of in the Republican ones.

[barb162]

50. the election was stolen, I firmly believe this. I am SO angry, so

distraught, so disgusted. TOO MANY THINGS JUST AREN'T ADDING UP.

[Cha]

52. Thank you, Mark Crispin Miller!

ANd you, too, BEB!

Mark was on The Guy James Show one Saturday..not too long ago and he's the most intelligent, articulate, speaker as well as writer!

I'm sick of People calling us "tinfoil hatters" because we believe the bushits could hack voting machines!!

[progressivehere]

65. Could someone take a sec to define

"tinfoil hatter" for my edification?

Thanks.

[Stephanie]

67. You put one on to ward off dangerous alien death rays

and CIA mind control laser beams. You can make your own. If you are extra-paranoid, use foil to seal your windows and doors.

[AZCat]

73. I lost mine

It blew off my head and out the window of my car as I was driving down the road at night.


I haven't felt the same since.

[CAcyclist]

117. The rest of the US

called us Californians conspiracy theorists when we complained about Enron, but we were right, weren't we? The truth will out.

[InvisibleTouch]

64. Update, please: Uncounted votes in FL, OH?

Apologies if it's already been answered elsewhere; I'm just recently checking in here again....

Weren't the absentee ballots supposed to be counted today in Florida? Did they even bother?

And, any news on what happened to that whole truckload of paper ballots that was loaded up in Ohio, into a vehicle with a Bush/Cheney sticker?

As of last night, there were still a couple of states where the count was still going on, and the result could potentially change.

Are they even bothering to count all the votes? If it ends up winnable for Kerry, we CANNOT just roll over and die. Concessions aren't legally binding, as has been pointed out here many times. And the uproar it would cause to contest the result now, is a small price to pay to save us from 4 more years of horror.

[BlueInRed]

69. 2004 e-voting US map

http://www.electiondataservices.com/EDSInc_DREoverview.pdf (on page 7)

It's a pdf, so I can't post the image. Perhaps someone can scan it and post it.

What's interesting is the DREs (e-voting machines) are concentrated in "red" states and swing states, particularly south Florida and large Democratic voting areas in swing states.

[Amy6627]

71. A Patriot Act

I watch your dvd over and over. You said the choir is big enough it's just not angry enough. But I think you can tell we are angry. But what can you do? They control everyting, media, government (all branches) I think it is too late to do anything. They stole 2000 and now they stole 2004. We will never have a free election again. The Christian Reconstructionist have been planning this since 1974. They are in power and they will never leave. They will run our country on fear and hate forever. The exit polls and all the pollsters all predicted a victory for Kerry. They were not wrong. People do not register in record numbers, stand in the pouring rain to keep business as usual. No one's vote was counted, it was decided in advance what the outcome would be. We do not live in a democracy and we have not since 2000. Greg Palast wrote a very good article about this: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/what_happened_in_ohio.php

What do you think we could do?

[Starlight]

92. A good start: Donate to blackboxvoting.com so they can proceed

with their investigation

[GregD]

114. Correction! blackboxvoting.org

and while you are at it, support www.votersunite.org and www.votewatch.us, as they are also still chasing this beast.

[Starlight]

118. thx for the website address correction

apparently I'm turning into cheney :scared:

[Amy6627]

159. There is nothing we can DO!

You are all fooling yourselves. There has never been a bigger effort ever like the one we just had for Kerry. Of course he won! I'm sure he won by a landslide! The fix is in. Donate to blackbox!?! Oh yeah that'll do it! The people in power will have their own experts saying nothing is wrong with the voting machines and all the republicans will say we are sore losers and nothing will happen! The people in power will never let go of this country again. They are going to drive it like they stole it! By the time the numb nuts who didn't vote for Kerry figure it out (if they ever do) what has happened in the name of God, there will be nothing left to save. American democracy is no more!

[Laelth]

99. Nicely said.

I fear that you are right.

:(

-Laelth

[Stew225]

72. So hwo the F do we get through to the only

avenue by which we can expose this fraud, namely, the media? WTF to the nth degree!

[progressivehere]

75. Thank you Stephanie

I'm glad I asked -- the context(s) in which it's used (tinfoil hatter) would never reveal what that picture does!

[Ellen Forradalom]

86. The results don't pass the smell test, that's for sure.

I do not believe that the voting process has the least integrity any more.

[Ardee]

88. The land of the free...my my

1.58,000 missing absentee ballots in Brower County, Fla.

2.Many attempting to vote found their names missing from the rolls and were denied provisional ballots in defiance of federal election laws. This happened in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

3. A firm hired to administer absentee ballots in Nevada and Oregon forwarded those who voted for Republicans but not those who voted for Democrats.

4.American Indians attempting to vote in Colorado and New Mexico had their license plates photographed.

5. Folks living in predominately African American neighborhoods were told there would be roadblocks and police checks en route to the polls.

6. Military and provisional ballots are NOT being counted in many places, including Ohio and Florida.

Now it is fine for Kerry to take a moral position and refuse to enter into a scorched earth election investigation but this could be done independently of the Party but at its behest. Why is this not being considered?

[wrate]

95. I am certain that at least OH and FL were stolen from Kerry. You need

irrefutable proof of this to get attention from the media. They won't take the chance of making this public and end up like Dan Rather/CBS with the CYA memos.

[V Lee]

91. We need to have a paper trail for EVERY vote!

[ngant17]

93. vote rigging is a form of (electronic) assassination

40 years ago, if "the powers that be" didn't like a Presidential candidate or a populist leader, they would find their patsy (Oswald, Sirhan, JE Ray, ect.) finance a 'secret team', take out the person and keep their story straight and repeat it enough so that the naive and gullible population would accept it.

I don't think "they" can get away with political assassinations as easily as they could do it in the 1960's, although so now it's gotten more sophisticated and there are convenient 'plane accidents' (Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minn.) But thanks to the computer technology and the e-vote machines, they can just manipulate votes and no one gets hurt this way. We are living in a system that is throughly corrupt and rotten.

Although I am disappointed that Kerry didn't try to prolong the contest, it was rigged IMHO, but at least a "lone nut" didn't decide to knock off Kerry. There are groups allied to Bush who would have be willing to arrange a political murder, Bush is not above the idea of political assassinations, just look at what he did in Iraq so far. Kerry lives to fight for another day. He still remains a valuable asset to the progressive movement here.

The most important part of the electroral process now, it has to be exit-polling. Look how quickly the mainstream press was demolishing those exit-polling results which showed Kerry in the lead every time.
It's a form of statistical quality control and we need to start organizing this in the immediate future.

[Cha]

101. Welcome to DU and

thanks for your astute analysis!

[Eurobabe]

94. why oh why is NO ONE screaming to rescind the non-taxable status

from these FVCKING fundy churches?? Maybe ALL Churches for that matter??

This is a true disgrace. They are instruments of divisiveness. A new form of "corporate" welfare if you ask me.

[Patiod]

156. The IRS is too busy going after the NAACP. nt

[montana_hazeleyes]

97. From now on

I'm using two**'s when referring to bush**. In my heart I know the fix was in for this "election" a long time ago, so that's a double**.

[Cha]

102. Word!

** is a fucking asshole!

[Tab]

103. We have a way out

Please see this DU link
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x11880

I'm a software architect by profession. I'm also secondarily a writer, thirdly an activist. I've been appalled by the "acceptance" of non-audited eVote machines. I don't have a problem with eVoting itself, but the idea that you do not have an audit trail flies in the face of everything I was ever taught.

Think of it this way: without an audit trail, you're doing the equivalent of writing your vote on a postcard, mailing it in to Diebold, and later they'll announce the results but won't give you the specifics on how they arrived at them, and you have to take their word for it.

This is bullshit.

The federal government doesn't usually involve itself in election mechanisms because that's usually a state issue. States are free to fend for themselves. When they use voting machines with audit trails, they at least get to verify and backtrack the results. When they buy machines that don't produce audit trails, they put the results in the hands of the corporation that makes the machines, and they just have to trust that it's correct. Even if you thought the corporations are honest now, there's no way to prove it one way or another if it were to change in the future.

That is why I'm starting Project eVote, to bring a national focus to how we handle eVoting. eVoting should be auditable, and we need to provide affordable evoting solutions from a non-profit organization.

It's more than just providing software - it's effecting change on a national level, creating demand for accountable systems, needing lawyers to help legislate requirements and standards, politicians to work to get them adopted - in some ways, the software is the least of it.

I just got the site physically connected, am looking to have initial quasi-official content up this weekend, and need volunteers from all stripes of vocations - lawyers, statisticians, marketing people, techies, engineers, those with funding ability, those with "connections", the whole shebang.

I came to this realization because for all the commentary and enlightenment we do, for all the education and exposure of wrongs that we do, none of it means crap if someone votes on our behalf and the vote is thrown away.

If the nation wants to elect Bush by a majority, then so be it. But I'll be damned if I'm going to have the nation vote, and have votes potentially be lost.

Help me on this; or even if you can't help yourself but know someone who would, email me at [e-mail]

Again, the DU thread is http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x11880

Talk it up there, if interested.

Thanks

Tab Julius
One pissed-off American

[bigmonkey]

109. The vote-stealing situation on the ground should be in all our minds.

We can't have a clear idea of what to do unless we are clear-minded about the facts. The exit polls and the vote counts are out-of-synch. That means either the exit poll methodology has some problem, or the voting mechanism has some problem. When you look at the two systems, the e-voting mechanism with no paper trail (or "Black Box Voting: BBV) is obviously, thoroughgoingly unreliable and easily manipulated, especially by the purveyor of the system, e.g. Diebold. The connections between the management of these companies and Christian Dominionists who want to abolish democracy have been demonstrated. In a criminal murder case, you look for motive, opportunity, and the availability of a weapon. Here we have motive (Dominionism), opportunity (involvement in the election process as seller/maintainer of the systems), and the weapon (management's control of the mechanism with no oversight by the public).
Given this, when looking at whether it's the exit poll methods or the voting methods, there should be no doubt that the voting mechanism is the better place to look for leads.
I've had problems getting people to register this danger too. Now is the time to bring it up, because people are focused. Kerry should have left the vote question open to focus more energy on this. He may have a hard time believing it, but maybe this criminal case metaphor might help.
We also need to be clear that this should inform how we think of how to respond to this election. If we lost because our message didn't resonate, that's one thing. If we lost because the vote was literally stolen, that's entirely another. We have to be clear - it's very likely the presidency was stolen.

[teryang]

111. the implications of Republican electronic warfare

Crispin is right. Tab Julius is right also. The other commentaries about how stupid people are and the cultural fundie bullshit are true but the main issue, the lack of legitimacy in rigged elections is what this is all about.

Why people would accept electronic voting, voting with electrons is beyond me. Electronic warfare has matured into a very sophisticated form of warfare. Its been around for over 60 years. Recording votes by electron and reporting vote tabulations by modem is insane! There is a fundamental paradox in electronic voting that is insurmountable. It was published on theBell.com for months before the electronic voting remedy (sic) to the Florida debacle in 2000 was proposed. There is a fundamental conflict between voter identity and vote secrecy and the ability to audit or recount. These two constitutional parameters cannot and will not be satisfied by BBV. Current legislators, party leadership, and judges ignore the paradox. This means that democracy is lost because the voting franchise is now owned by the corporate masters of the electronic spectrum. The meaningless and totally illegal recount rules put out by the Florida secretary state are symptomatic of the unconstitutionality of these past two election cycles.

The last sickening operational indicator of electronic warfare being used on American voting processes is that the so called Republican evoting corporations are actually controlled by defense contractors. Although not one of those defense contractors, Battelle Memorial Inc., a biowarfare defense contractor sabotaged the media consortium VNS exit polling organization in election 2002. It barely received a comment in the mainstream media when it was announced the night of the election. No exit polling! What a coinkidink! ( BMI also makes, organizes and maintains mobile units suitable for distributing and containing anthrax at any location. )

Remember that there is a litigation and judicial strategy to ban inauditable electronic voting. I proposed it right after the 2000 debacle when evoting was wrongly proposed as a remedy for Florida 2000. It will cost tens of millions and take years to implement. One has to conclude that the Democratic Party leadership just doesn't give a shit.

[glitch]

120. That is the most astounding feature of this whole millenium. So far.

"One has to conclude that the Democratic Party leadership just doesn't give a shit."

They can't not get it. They are not morons. So what is it? Apathy, or fear of being a target maybe. Until they all say something together, no one will stand out from the herd.
The McKinney treatment.

[Kimber Scott]

115. What's wrong with the Democrats? Why didn't they fight these machines

tooth and nail? I'm getting so frustrated with this roll over and take it in the behind attitude. This morning on the news they said the Democrats were going to be much more conciliatroy towards the Republicans now they have been slapped down - they've learned their lesson. How can they be any more conciliatory? They bend over and take everything Bush gives them. I'm tired of this shit. They either stand up and fight for us, or I'm done fighting for them.

[West Coast Democrat]

116. Can someone give me a working link to this article?

I'd like to read the rest of it. Thanks!

[Nederland]

122. First of all, Crispin is an idiot

There are far far more than 19 million right wing Christians in the country.

http://www.adherents.com/adh_dem.html

[shuffnew]

135. #of Right-Wing Christians?

I assume you are referring to the 125,312,000 at 44% as being described as "born again" or "evangelical", right?
******************
Ref #9: August 2000 Gallup Poll; Question about being "born-again" or "evangelical" based on self-identification, and includes all who identify themselves as such, including Protestants, Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Orthodox, etc. (the gallop poll link to this says page not found, so could not view it)
******************
That is assuming all are far-right in this category... a huge number if so. That is no indicator how many voted.

The exit poll discrepancies versus the totals that tablulars spit out is still a high margin of error and indicates potential "Election Fraud". Another poster in this thread gave a link to a pdf file showing the % of voters using various voting machines. In 2004, the highest number reported is optical and electronic. Others have noted those were used in predominantly democratic areas. So, if there is "Election Fraud" in 2004 it seems most likely the discrepancies come from e-voting and/or optical.

[Nederland]

147. The exit polls were crap

For example, early results had sample sizes comprised of 59% women. That's just bullshit. The reality is that the poll takers, who are mostly men, were more likely to be approached by single women, who are huge Kerry voters, thus skewing the results.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6408569/site/newsweek/

[Cat Atomic]

146. Those figures are even higher than I remembered.

I thought it was 40% or so, but they've got evangelicals and born agains at 44% of the population. I think alot of people underestimate the numbers of fundamentalists in this country.

[shuffnew]

153. Born Again % Count of 44% (not correct)

Firstly, we must realize that every person claming to be "Born Again" is not of the far-right cult. So, the 44% reference we were given gives no insight to the reality of 1) How many of those "born again" belong to the far-right cult; 2) How many voted which cannot be validated from the one link we were provided showing 44%.

"born again" is part of a number of religions. Not all those professing to be "born again" are members or associated with the far-right cult we are dealing with.

[PATRICK]

123. There is something that can be done

This is what the Democrats and the ACLU and the LWV and others like them are actually afraid of.

Destroy people's confidence in the vote. A good chunk of people get it already, any of whom demand paper ballots. Using paper ballots more of course, optically scanned and inhibited from recounts by the stolen victory margins themselves(neat) of course slows down elections while crooked states like Georgia rack up the bytes in comfort and confidence and speed. Bush was racking up a lead Kerry never once recovered all night and look at those leading the way.

Start ground circulating a national petition to get rid of the touch screens. This pussyfooting with paper trails is a complex issue bandage that itself can be compromised and not quite a sure thing.

The Democrats fear destroying the myth, the confidence of the conned that brings out the vote we need. Their fear is kind of irrelevant if we show people interested in voting but voting without the machine. It's only a machine!!! Canada may be falling under the spell, but its paper ballot system over a large geographic area was done in less than a day. Time is of no rational consideration and it is enabling fraud that privacy still is. And we still have intimidation anyway but not as much as when the vote was public.

To circulate a petition we need to establish a coalition of bit net organizations like those happy greenhorns at MoveON. Maybe Dean who seemed opening up to the idea can be approached now. Other real integrity groups as well. Some value voter confidence so much this issue is radioactive besides personally embarrassing for their support of the Trojan Voting Miracle.

A recall petition to be voted upon by paper ballots? Sounds silly, but the confidence game can be broken by reverse Ponzi. Destroy the base of legitimacy(already gone in fact) and eat the way to the top> Like a reverse, the way up will be tougher than Ponzi flowing down. it is obvious the normal system of law and election will be great barrier of reality here. And you run out of people who will support this.

Libertarians. Real Conservatives. Greens. Democracy Now stuff(LOL)type web groups. John Stewart if we want not to be so serious we look nutty.

Bev and Eloriel have had trouble communicating the concepts for some time. Besides the mysterious mindset of the self-suiciding DNC types they have made things very easy. The basics are the easiest. Vaporized votes reassembled and recorded through the secret codes of a private company can be pretty clear. People are dumb so much as misdirected. Identify the problem. Tell them what they can do. Get a large group and do it. Include as many large and legitimate groups as possible over a broad political spectrum. Man, if it isn't obvious the Democrat hierarchy are part of the problem by now this should be easier.

How to oppose bad law. HAVA-ing anything to do with touchscreen voting should be petitioned for removal from law. If you want to see what doing nothing gets you see the simplistic sorry picture on electionline.org it is a summary of electoral extinction for morons. At the end of this horrifying site come the brief praise for the future of ONLINE VOTING, the worst of the worst. You will never even see the voters again! A side effect of safe online voting would be the coincidental control of the Internet itself.

Just DU or any one group doing it is very inadequate at this stage. We need to start with a power base. Even here it is amazing that all the data Bev graced us with just sort of lay there with just some word of mouth while jerky but fantastic efforts were made in states to modify the monster not kill it. If it can't get traction here as a concept for easy fighting, better than our favorite tinfoil stuff and flame wars, there is your problem in the American nutshell.

WE can try to do something. There is no other logical institution left to slam against the idea. Grassroots was slammed by Bush. Grassroots can push through the cracks. The machines are fast. Well, we are fast here too in cyberspace and waiting- we will lose this bastion. You know it or if you need more instigation, consider who is really suffering out there because of these criminals. In fact now our lives depend on it.

Stop making the conundrum into a win/win for Bush. Swallow the dangers of destroying voter confidence and turn it against fraud directly. Confidence does not matter anymore. It does not matter at all except as a threat.

[shuffnew]

124. Yes, "Stolen Election 2004"!!! Kerry-Edwards HELP!

I received this today from trustthepeople-austin which is exactly what you are referring to.

Stolen Election 2004

In Election 2000, the Bush regime stole the election
and got away with it. Now, in Election 2004, there is
new evidence that Bush and the Republicans have stolen
the 2004 election by scrubbing the voter rolls of
Democratic voters, electronic voting fraud in states
with evoting without paper trails, and destruction of
paper ballots in heavily Democratic areas.

See:
http://StolenElection2004.com for articles
and more information.

I don't know why Kerry-Edwards do not at this moment demand a manual audit of the "black box voting" electronic machines. Hey, even Bush said he wanted to get to the bottom of the 'exit poll' discrepancy and blamed the media for it (on CNN during the election). It would only take an audit of some key precincts in two or three states to likely prove "Election Fraud". Hurry before they illegally purge the data. Most likely one will find (if they audit a few precincts) that the fix is in the tabulator versus each individual machine.

So, start with audit of each individual machine(in states such as Ohio, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico)and then audit the central tabulator. I think this could be done with haste with even a few precincts and move in for a broader investigation -- "Election Fraud" -- If an individual via the "Freedom of Information Act" can file to demand an audit with a filing fee of reportedly about $2,000 (and likely get put off until January 20th or the 12th of never) - I would think that Kerry-Edwards could make this happen NOW by retracting the concession until such an audit is completed. A concession speech has NO LEGAL BIND. It can be retracted. The sooner the better.

Also, noted in Florida especially - the democratic precincts had most of the diebold and electronic voting v republican precincts. It likely would not take much to make this happen it seems. So, I think most of the fraud would be found in the e-voting.

We were promised that everything possible would be done to ensure all votes counted. I truly think this should be done! NOW!

MY OPINION: The "exit polls" were on target w/ leads in these key states. The "fix" is likely a known formula limit. When the exit polls started reflecting the truth (above the known fix)... Bush is in Florida, gets Jeb to help with the "fix limits" there... then he made the quick stop in Ohio before landing in D.C. Why the stop in Ohio on election eve? hmmmmm

[PROGRESSIVE1]

125. They stole this election again!

[justgamma]

127. If even 1/4 of us doubt this election,

it deserves investigation. In this day and age, in the United States nobody should have to doubt that this is a fair election. How many democrats truly think that Shrub won? Not many, I'll bet.

[EnfantTerrible]

128. MCM I love ya!

I get about 20 to 30 e-mails a day from him by being on his mailing list. I wonder when the man sleeps! He's been non-stop working for the removal of Bush... I highly recommend checking out his new DVD "Patriot Act" from the theatre piece he did here in NYC. I was lucky enough to see it live and it changed my life. It's actually what brought me to DU. He handed out a list of blogs to visit... i haven't left DU for months.


THANK YOU MCM!!!!

:yourock:

[Kindigger]

129. I know you're probably not going to like what I think but....

...here it is anyway, with a brief synopsis of things I read in this thread. This is the first time I've ever been involved in an election. After working so hard for JK this past year, I would really like to hold on to the idea that he really is a "stand up guy", with the best interests of what's left of our country in mind.

I ignored the foil hat theory that Kerry was never supposed to win anyway, paving the way for Hillary 08.

What I can't ignore is my 70 year old Dad. My parents were at my sister's in Ohio, and I talked to Mom for the first time since last Friday. Its beyond my understanding how my Mom, with no internet...only TV news, has been so informed, and has so easily seen through every lie that's been told for the past year.

I told her, "you know they stole the election, right?" She replied, "of course they did, that's all they talked about at the beauty shop today." She told me my Dad was standing nearby, shaking his head no. She said, "he still won't believe it."I asked Mom, "what in the h*ll is wrong with him?"

My Dad is actually quite intelligent, and reads a lot of books on the Mossad, CIA, etc. We've had lots of great discussions about things he's come to know. He's told me some pretty disturbing stuff. He's also told me there is nothing we can do about ANY of it, and we should just try to live our lives with as much dignity, compassion, and joy as possible. I always told him we had to fight, but he always shook his head.

As I surfed around tonight, I found a couple of articles, the dim bulb in my head went off, and I realized that he shook his head in hopeless apathy for the illusion that is the democratic process.

One of the more profound statements I remember reading in the past few months is "We ARE al Qaeda", and I realize that's what Dad has been trying to tell me all along.

www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/11-01-04_Chin/11-01-04_chin.html

www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/110204Hasty/110204hasty.html

[teryang]

139. well said

I think most astute observers are quite aware of it, regardless of party affiliation or preference. The truth is many republicans voted for Kerry. If you really believe in freedom, you know this election like the one in 2000 and 2002 was a fraud.

Electronic voting is a fraud. Were Lenin, Stalin, or Hitler around today, they would be electronic voting advocates.

[merliecurlie]

130. michael

what is your take on Michael Moore's latest email? why is this happening with Move On as well? why has everyone gone to sleep? did somebody show up with horses heads?

[shuffnew]

131. Michael Moore's Email?

I have not seen Michael Moore's email. Is it posted in this thread? If so, please give the post#. If not, can you post it please?

Below is what I received from moveon today (is this the email you are referring to from them? I truly did not understand this note. Not like them to abandon the mission so quickly either):

Dear MoveOn member,

We'll admit to being heartbroken by the outcome of yesterday's election. It's a dark day.

But this afternoon, we received this email:

Subject: Running for Congress

Eli,

In light of what happened yesterday, my friend and I have decided to get personally involved. He wants to run for Congress in 2006, and I'm his campaign manager at this point. Do you know of a good information source for how we handle the legalities of forming a campaign, opening bank accounts, registering with the FEC, etc?

Thanks,
Chris

We have suffered a defeat, but we are not defeated.

And our heartache does not diminish our pride in what you've done. We're proud about Wisconsin, where MoveOn volunteers turned out over 27,000 voters and Kerry won by only 11,813 votes. And New Hampshire, a former Bush state where we turned out 9,820 of the people on our list and Kerry won by 9,171 votes. Other groups were working with us in both states, but it's clear volunteers were at least partly responsible for the margin of victory.

We're proud about Ken Salazar, the newest Senator from Colorado, whose campaign was fueled by the donations of thousands of MoveOn members. We're proud that before he conceded this morning, John Kerry called to thank all of you for what we did to help his campaign.

Most of all, we are so proud of all of you, the MoveOn members who worked so hard and gave so much to take back America.

Yesterday, over 70,000 of us worked from before 5am Eastern to 8pm Pacific, getting voters to the polls. At 4:50am in Florida, we heard from our lead organizers that hundreds of precinct leaders had checked in and were on their way to the polls. In Columbus, with three hours to go, we sent out a final message saying "It's not too late! Help volunteer." Within minutes, two dozen people came running up the stairs in the rain, wanting to know, "What can we do? Put us to work!" One volunteer whose car broke down ran home, grabbed her bike, and biked from house to house in the thunderstorm, knocking on doors and reminding people to vote.

That you put so much into this effort makes the loss more painful in some ways. But the fact that so many of us were involved offers true hope for the future of democracy. In the campaign to defeat George Bush, you have proven that real Americans can have a voice in American politics. In the months and years to come, that revelation will change everything.

Although George Bush won by 3% nationally, we must remember that 55.4 million Americans stood with you and with John Kerry. You are certainly not alone. And a healthy environment, a strong and fair economy, good schools, domestic safety and the end of the war in Iraq are goals we all share -- red states and blue states alike.

Our journey toward a progressive America has always been bigger than George Bush. The current leg is just beginning -- we're still learning how to build a citizen-based politics together. But it's a journey our nation has been on for a long time. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

Today, we'll take a breath. Tomorrow, we'll keep moving toward the America we know is possible.

Sincerely,
--Adam, Ben, Carrie, Diane, Eli, Hannah, James, Joan, Justin, Laura, Lee, Marika, Mat, Meighan, Micayla, Nepunnee, Noah H., Noah W., Paul, Peter, Rosalyn, Wes, the team at We Also Walk Dogs, the team at Fenton Communications, and all 500 members of the Leave No Voter Behind staff.
November 3rd, 2004

[grasswire]

133. 322, Mark

That's all you need to know about why Kerry didn't listen to you.

[Stephanie]

142. What does that mean?

322?

[Minstrel Boy]

144. 322

is the Bonesman's code of bond.

[grasswire]

148. it's the secret sign of Bonesmen

There's a letter in Bush archives from Kerry, signed with the 322 sign. It dates back for generations of Bonesmen as their "code" of cooperation.

[grasswire]

150. It's Skull and Bones code.

There's a letter in Bush archives from Kerry, signed with the 322 sign. It dates back for generations of Bonesmen as their "code" of cooperation.

[shuffnew]

155. 322 is the S&B Lodge Number

http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/world/awaken/skullandbones.htm

[shuffnew]

157. More on S&B & Lodge 322

http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/world/awaken/skullandbones.htm

Update Comments I forgot to add to first post of above link:

There was a presentation on tv about the S&B quite some time ago stating that there are two ways to get into the S&B: 1) Family Money & Clout (which they said was Bush's entrance); or 2) Highest ranking in intelligence (which they said was Kerry's entrance). It is intended (according to the progarm I watched) the heritage elite or the overwhelming intelligent. Kerry they said was asked into this group due to his scholastic honors and high intelligence. Bush was apparently just an automatic to invite in due to his family's long time history and membership.

The S&B has changed composite over the years, but still only takes in up to 15 members per year (so,reportedly 800 living at any time).

I found the reference to the program I saw on tv on this subject. This article give more insight to the current S&B. It is similar, but different than a fraternity, and is an integral part of Yale and many leaders in our country. In prior history (earlier years of S&B) even Adolph Hitler was a S&B.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/02/60minutes/main576332.shtml

[shuffnew]

158. S&B Lodge 322 - Bush Presidential Speech 2004 & Hitlers Speech 1933

What two leaders have sent similar messages?

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty
to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will
preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national
morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

1) Exact quote from Adolph Hitler, My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933
1) Well, George W. Bush (Presidential Election 2004) said these same things yesterday and today in his speech and his press conference, but the above quote is from Adolph Hitler...

Now, figure that one???? Anyone see other similarities between the 2?

Fits right in line with the "Pledge to Bush" in Port St. Lucy, huh? Stand, everyone raise your hand/arm and repeat after me "The Bush Pledge".

Bush scares me deeply... I pray that "Election Fraud" is determined and something can be done to stop the process before January 20, 2005!

1) ONE NATION UNDER BUSH (At a campaign rally, Republicans recite the "Bush Pledge."), By Chris Suellentrop, Updated Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, at 10:44 PM PT
http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2108852&MSID=6FA37...

2) "Without A Doubt"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101704A.shtml

3) When God becomes a campaign ploy (Oct. 27, 2004)...
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=740

4) Clueless people love Bush (Oct. 26, 2004)...
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=1796...

5) The White House was not always God's House (Oct. 26, 2004)...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-sc...

6)Battle Cry of Faithful Pits Believers Against the Rest (NY Times October 31, 2004):
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/politics/campaign/31f...

7) Another McCarthy era (there's many references to this theory, below is just one of many):
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9514

[NicRic]

143. Kerry's wife ,hire the best investigators ?

With all of the $ she has access to ,and the idea that the man she loves ,had something he worked hard all of his life towards ,stolen from him by a corrupt gang of theives. You would think ,she could find former CIA agents and other best of the best , private detectives. She dont even have to go it alone ,Iam sure many Dems and thrid party loyalist would contribute. Imagine getting some kind of undeniable evedence that both 2000 & 2004 where stolen by the bush team. Would this take away his "high morals" false impression ,when its proven without a doubt he is no better then a common theif and in fact much worst ! If this does nothing else except save us from a President Jeb bush ,it would be worth every penny. I also believe Kerry still being a Senator ,would put him in a position to help he investagation. The only way we can open the eyes of our fellow Americans under the bush spell ,is to show them undeniable evedence that bush and those around him are corrupt to the core !

[Skinner]

160. kick (nt)