Kerry won. Here are the facts

[Nordic]

Everybody needs to read this. We need to get this to the international media. Perhaps the UN.

Somebody needs to intervene and get our democracy back from the thieves who stole it.




http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent.  Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

(snip)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes.  In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely—leaving a 'hanging chad,'—or was punched extra times.  Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here.)

And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.

So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz). Nor are they demanding we look at the "overvotes" where voter intent may be discerned.

Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, “the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity.”

But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.

Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.

[GoBlue]

1. Palast needs current data

Historical data won't convince anyone including me. JEEESH

[Mz Pip]

2. Interesting speculation

but not facts. We need facts.

MzPip
:dem:

[KittyWampus]

3. Facts Need To Be Compiled. That Takes Time. The Polls Close Only

24 hours ago.

[Mz Pip]

4. There is nothing more

than I would love to see it proven that Bush stole the election. I put nothing past these fiends.

I believe they stole Max Cleland's seat with the BBV and that was two years ago. We know they did dirty tricks in Florida for all the good it did.

Something has to happen to get enough people in the right places doing something about it. From where I sit, no one but us seem to care.

MzPip
:dem:

[Nordic]

5. kick