Why Hillary wins the big states (Dr. Bob Fitrakis)

[babsbunny]

Why Hillary wins the big states

by Bob Fitrakis
Election Protection Observer

Many people have asked me my thoughts about the battle between Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama. Here's my brief analysis of why Hillary
appears to be "winning" many large states.

Obama actually won in Texas, he barely lost the primary but won the
caucus later that night and got more delegates than Hillary.

As for Ohio and Pennsylvania -- and the other "must-win" state, New
Hampshire -- these are more problematic. For example, Obama was
predicted to win in the tracking polls in New Hampshire. and the exit
polls showed him winning. Bizarre election irregularities involving
touchscreen machines seem to have played a role in Hillary's
statistically improbable win.

Both the exit polls in Ohio, which were barely within the margin of
error (see the Free Press article Did Republicans give Hillary her
victory in Ohio? by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman,
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3041) and
Pennsylvania, where it looks like Obama should have lost by less than 4
points but Hillary won by 10 points -- suggest problems with the
electronic voting. The key factor in Ohio and Pennsylvania are the
Republican crossover votes. Hillary is winning not because she's
winning Democratic primary voters, but because Republicans are
deliberately crossing over to vote for her in order to prolong the
Democratic primary process. As long as Obama and Hillary continue to
fight each other, then McCain gets a free pass and the Republicans will
urge the defeated candidate supporters to crossover to the Republican
side in November.

The Republicans want to run against Hillary. Their playbook is ready. I
suspect there have been some electronic irregularities in her favor in
NH and PA by Republican vendors of voting machines. But mainly, it's
the Republican crossover vote.

As long as our election system remains nontransparent and in the hands
of private for-profit voting machine companies, we'll never know the
real vote count in these states

[HockeyMom]

1. I've been saying this

having trolled the Freepers. They want Hillary to run against McCain. Some have even admitting crossing over and voting for her. They won't be in the GE. They want nothing better than to see her lose to a REPUBLICAN, any Republican. They hate her with a passion.

[jsamuel]

2. republicans were voting for Obama in the past in most states before TX/OH

in fact, I think Obama won Repubs in OH

[rinsd]

5. They tied in OH. He won Republicans in Texas.

I guess the argument is that he would have had a larger Republican victory :eyes:

[sonias]

11. Texas republicans voting for Hillary

And you can't tell me that in this reddest state in the South, all of a sudden TX republicans jumped over to the Democratic primary to vote for a Clinton because they really, really support her. :eyes:

Boston Globe 3/17/08
Many voting for Clinton to boost GOP
For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

Sonia

[rinsd]

14. Pssstt 100,000 GOP Loyalists voted for Obama in OH, 137,000 in TX.

Exit polls show them tied in OH and and Obama winning the Texas GOP vote by 1 pt.

The author of that article is being dishonest by not stating that Obama actually won the Texas GOP vote 53 to 46.

OH (see page 3) - http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#OHDEM

MSNBC' exit poll - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21226001/

TX (see page 4)- http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#TXDEM

MSNBC's exit poll http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21226009

Mississippi is the only state Hillary has taken the GOP vote by convincing margin.

Before Operation Chaos there was Sean Hannity's Stop Hillary Express.

[Andy823]

6. I know republicans that will

Vote for Obama in the primary and will also vote for him in the GE. They want change, and they are just as tired of Bush as we are. I can't say that with Hillary. I know of republicans crossing over to vote for her in the primary, but I don't know of one who will vote for her in the GE, not one.

[NashVegas]

12. Those Are the *Good* Republicans. The *Bad* Republicans Are Voting for Hillary

It's kind of like the good Kurds / bad Kurds in 2002.

[FrenchieCat]

3. Duh......Ye-AH.....

Which is why the Dems will go down in defeat if we allow Hillary to get close to the nomination.

[PATRICK]

10. Forget Hillary

just for once and ask yourself what the Obama campaign is doing. Are they learning from this? Can they do anything? Will they confront the fraud problem?

The main thing I heard is very reminiscent of Kerry. Expect the landslide to swamp the 5% shift of fraud
and just win somehow. Under that general neglect NONE of the fraud methodologies were prevented. Not voter suppression, not the vote tally bag of tricks, not the media fraud, polling abuses, none of it. AFTER the election, only the GOP had prepared to prevent challenges a la 2000. Then Kerry went impatiently to various election fraud small fry for the magic weapon to pry open the lid. With justifiable skepticism by that point that anything would work. Now it was not a question whether to make a mighty effort like Gore but whether to even try in a more hopeless situation(despair apparently is more easily learned than methods of fighting).

2008? Dean has made efforts to forestall some of the 2004 fraud but it runs up against INCREASED fraud by the GOP under the untouched unholy auspices of a rigged DOJ. We aren't landing a punch. We are respecting a bought and rigged referee. We step into the ring hoping for a incontrovertible knockout.

No Dem makes me confident we will get the vote count we deserve or even the one that is marginally fair.
None, not a one, after openly stolen elections and a raft of exposed methodologies.

Forget Hillary. This concerns everyone. Making it only a case because it boosts a candidate's personal campaign argument is much too little and being too little plays right into the GOP divisive strategy. There is no argument in the world that can convince me that the GOP is NOT working for Hillary and is keeping its fingers off the fraud machine, though I would like to see some hard evidence that is not the case. So, can we get to the point and reform what we can and salvage some future votes, not lost yet but already in the GOP secret vault?

[stillcool]

13. No one cares about their votes counting..

until AFTER the election. There are now 13 States that have enacted mandatory standard recounts following every election. No candidate did this for them. No federal law did this. People lobbied their state to demand that their voted be counted accurately. We can all do this. 22 States use DRE's with no paper, so there are no votes to be recounted. I'm not sure why anyone should expect things to be different...this time...or next time.

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/index.php
Verified Voting: Mandatory Manual Audits of Voter-Verified Paper Records

The map below shows progress to date in our campaign for verifiable elections. Step 1 of our strategy has been to make sure that there is a paper record of every vote and that voters are able to verify the accuracy of that record before the ballot is cast (that paper record is called a "Voter-Verified Paper Record" or VVPR).

VerifiedVoting.org, our partners, and voters across the country have successfully persuaded the majority of state governments to pass legislation or establish regulations to require VVPR. 28 states, with more than half the U.S. population, now have such a requirement. We need your help to make sure the voters in the remaining 22 states are protected, through Federal or state legislation.

But we need to do even more to ensure that the results of elections are verifiable. Voter-verified paper records are most effective when used as the basis for mandatory manual audits in randomly selected precincts. Step 2 of our strategy is to encourage states to adopt laws or regulations requiring such mandatory manual audits of the VVPRs. As the map below shows, 13 states have such a requirement now. We need your help to pass laws in the remaining 37 states to require such audits.

[rinsd]

4. Except Obama won amongst TX GOP voters, tied in OH & in PA they made up 3% of the voters so no data

TX (page 4) - http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#TXDEM

OH (page 3) - http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#OHDEM

PA (page 4) - http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#PADEM

She won conservatives in PA 53-47 (10% of voters)

Tied in OH. (14% of voters)

In TX she won conservatives 52-48 (22% of the voters)

It funny how Sean Hannity for month does his Stop Hillary Express schtick and Obama campaign workers encourage Repbulicans to register as Democrats to vote against Hillary and that was fine.

[Window]

7. Yep.

[AnnieBW]

8. I've also been saying this

since she announced her candidacy. Nothing will get them to the polls like voting against the "Hildebeast". (Their name, not mine.)

[HooptieWagon]

9. All true

Election touch screen irregularities, repuke crossover... and I might add that the DLC has targeted the big states for years, that was their strategy. The machine has operating there for years. Its to Obama's credit that he's keeping them close, and denying her any meaningful delegate gains there. Where Obama has been trouncing Clinton is in the states that "don't count", that the DLC has ignored for decades. So much of Clinton's success has been in the states targeted in McAwful's "18 state strategy"... and Obama is demonstrating the viability of Dean's 50-state strategy.

[PATRICK]

15. To help solidify this issue

for the constant nitpickers, even the astute ones with good sense arguments, focus on the Whopper.
The Whopper is that the methods, the intent, and the smoke behind GOP fraud is obvious, unimpeded, rarely taken headon by the Party or (naturally) the corporate media.

They have the means to cheat. Limbaugh publicly uses the airways to advocate "mischief" fraud. Many other means are simply institutionalized and secret and totally unverifiable. Given the intent of the GOp to divide our party and benefit Hillary(at the least to keep our party divided and undecided), the opportunity(primary chaos) and the means, prove instead to me that it HASN'T happened. I would be astounded because it is utterly against human nature and GOP behavior for there NOT to be fraud. We are inhibited from gathering evidence when the crimes are protected so much that the media will not dwell on them, the law will or cannot prosecute.

I am not in law enforcement, but I know with a certainty I would bet my life on that if I compiled a team to dig into the fraud I could scoop up the evidence, enough perps to settle this thing once and for all, exit polls be damned. Palast, Brad and many investigators pointing the way for the FBI teams and the prosecutors. Putting the screws to the underlings and moving quickly up the food chain(regardless of party affiliation), you would find- even under laws designed to thwart accountability, enough to hang them all in weeks.

So tell me what percentage of Hillary's vote is genuine, protected, certified and dependably free from interference- or anyone else's for that matter. We have a sense that the majority of votes are genuine and that large enough trends survive fraud. That unfortunately what the various Dem campaigns seem to lean upon much as they USED to throw up their hands about the GOP money advantage and our inability to fund raise among the plebes.

People who prop the system when it suits their candidate or ignore it on the road to glory are classic examples of victimology on the grand scale- only dumber than the blacks who grimly march through the worst of the system every year without their inner Tinkerbell spreading flying dust on the tally computers. They are ignored and repressed more in this than the Iraq war casualties that least get some unavoidable reporting. We are amazed when their anger bubbles up after a particularly bad day waiting in long lines for the few broken machines deliberately arranged to greet them and the gauntlet of vote suppression in other forms. Jim Crow IS America.

Of course fraud was committed on behalf of Hillary. the sun rises in the morning and sets in the west still. Bush and Cheney will do harm again today and tomorrow. They don't intend to lose, quit or be held accountable. How much cheating then, by and for whose cause? It is NOT just a concern because it irks and upsets the Obama campaign because HRC is still walking around and damaging the nomination. We are not allowed to know much and allowed to discuss it even less. We are all cheated every day by this system. Any presumption that this will be a fair, common, democratic election is the same as thinking that arguing between creationism and Evolution is a rational argument. This is war against a lie. Pretending that the primary game has some pristine merit with awardable points and stars in itself is nauseating.

[mikekohr]

16. Bottom Line In This Argument Is Senator Obama Will Carry Up To 7% of the Republican

vote in the general election. Senator Clinton will carry exactly 0% of this demographic in November.

mike kohr

-Victory in '08-

[AllentownJake]

17. I can't speak for OH or NH

Hillary won PA fairly. I live hear and campaigned for him here. PA to Hillary is what Mississippi was to Obama. Demographically made for her.

[TragedyandHope]

18. I heard an interview with a local Indiana pollster this week

and he said the Indiana race would be decided by Republicans. He said the Democrats are nearly evenly split and both sides are firm in their support for their candidate of choice, so they are unlikely to switch their votes.

As for the Republicans who will decide the vote, it will be a contest between "Obamacans" and Limbaugh's clones trying to draw out the Democratic race.

If you add in these voting "irregularities" at their disposal, it looks like the Rethugs would not have much trouble getting the result they're looking for.