Did they get away with it?

[Nightjock]

I stayed away from posting on DU for a few days because I was an incoherant mess.

But now that my rage at Kerry for conceding has subsided a bit... I want to know if bush got away with stealing another one.

Does anyone here truly believe that the exit polling across the country was wrong?

Do you really believe all of the long lines of people were for keeping things the same?

Is there any way to prove that george bush once again took away our right to freely elect our leaders?

Or do I have to wait until we impeach his ass on a half a dozen scandals that will soon be breaking?

I am heartbroken my children are going to have to grow up in a world like this! And you know it won't change in 2008!

These redneck, racist, sheepfuckers will not vote go away. They will only get worst.

Can we prove they cheated? Or is it over like John (I got your back) kerry said?

[LongTomH]

1. No, NO, NO, A Thousand Times NO!

Your opinion is the majority opinion around here! Check the other threads!

[mcg]

2. I don't believe the exit polling was wrong.

not considering what the head of Diebold said.

[KansDem]

20. You mean Walden O'Dell, CEO, who works at corporate HQ in...

...NORTH CANTON, OHIO ???!!!

And who said last year he is committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year?

You mean THAT head of Diebold?

Published on Thursday, August 28, 2003 by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Voting Machine Controversy
by Julie Carr Smyth

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm

[berner59]

3. Aren't votes still being counted??

What's the final FL vote count?? Aren't groups headed to OH to check out the E-voting?? They have to pay to get it checked out but I'm sure some of these 527 groups would contribute... These exit polls WERE right and it's not too late to get this checked out - the election hasn't been certified...

[Free2BMe]

4. From yesterday's sampling of other areas..just guess which state

is highly suspected of being decided before the voting...(rigged touch screens.)

[CrispyQ]

5. Hmmmmmm, begins with an 'o' and ends with an 'o'????

I foresee paperless Diebolds in a majority of precincts in 2008 & a landslide victory for brother Jeb.

I fear our democracy has taken a bullet in the heart this election.

[barb162]

16. yes, bullet in the heart and right between the eyes (brain) n/t

[Bjornsdotter]

6. I got your back....

...Bush has lied and cheated his whole life....why would this election be any different?

Hugs,
Kim :hug:

[liberal N proud]

7. I know they stole it and got away with it!!

Kerry had Cincinati, Ohio by a good percentage, That is Repub territory then all of a sudden it turned?
No Fucking Way!

[emulatorloo]

8. Exit Polling was only "wrong" in Ohio and Florida

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=11874

[Tippy]

9. We saw the 5 PM central time exit polls

Early on the numbers did not match up...Where was all of these lawyers....???? Why did Kerry conceed before the count was over...?

[teh636]

10. because...

He knew a legal battle over the election will only place his party in a worse position come 2006 and 2008. His chances were slim at best for winning Ohio and to further reduce the party's chances at winning in the future just because he had a slim chance in Ohio was not worth it. Remember, Gore was down by only 547 votes in Florida and he still ultimately lost.

[library_max]

17. There isn't a worse position than we're going to be in in 2006 and 2008.

We had only four years of Bush bungling and mendacity separating us from eight years of Clinton peace and prosperity. We didn't have a better candidate than Kerry. Sure, they vilified him as a liberal and an elitist and a traitor - they could and would have done exactly the same to anyone we'd nominated. I'm not saying the campaign was perfect, but we won't have anything better to offer in 2006 or 2008.

They stole the election and they got away with it. What's going to turn that around in 2006 or 2008? Are Democrats going to be more passionate and more optimistic than they were this time? Are they going to try harder to get out the vote? Is there going to be a clearer case to be made that the Republicans are liars and frauds who are destroying the country?

Our only chance was to make highly publicized legal challenges and pull the veneer off the results in Ohio and Florida and elsewhere and reveal the rot within. Maybe enough Americans would still have given a damn about democracy to set things right. But Kerry conceded. I don't profess to know anything about his motives. Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing. But he threw away our very last chance, not only for the White House in 2004 but for democracy in America (on the national level, at least) in my lifetime.

[AndyTiedye]

11. Yes. Just as they did in 2000 and 2002.

By 2008, the Repubs will probably just call themselves "the party"
as was done in the former Soviet Union, etc.

[library_max]

15. Yes, we are now a One Party State.

The Republicans are the institutional party, like the PRI was in Mexico.

[sadiesworld]

12. Fraid so.

And nobody had "our back".

[Generator]

13. I've went over and over this in my mind

Here I am, not exactly a leftie type on many things.

I'm a married woman with children who pays her taxes and likes shopping. I initially supported the Iraq war. I'm not big on believing evertyhing is rigged, I hate that mentality. BUT...

But this has changed me forever. I'm shocked at how I feel. I feel like my fucking REALITY was stolen. It's not a small thing.

I don't trust any media now. My news is coming from the internet and independent sources from now on. I will not watch Bush on TV, I even turned off the Daily Show last night, (funny how he mentioned it being fraud is better than this sham of Democracy)

I too am broken-hearted. I feel like someone died. I feel betrayed and if it's over, Democracy is over.

If I, WE are in denial, then here again there are only two choices:

1)This country is not the country we believe in. It really is that stupid and mean.. if you believe that then you believe this election..you don't believe your eyes and what you saw, the passion, the effort, all the Republicans you personally knew that were voting for Kerry this time, all the Far left that you knew weren't voting for Nader this time, and somehow like MAGIC there are many more of them than us.

2)OR it was stolen.


That's what my gut tells me. My logic. My heart. My mind. I guess my reality is wrong. But it's all I have.

[barb162]

19. I feel the same way. I think it is very easy to steal elections

depending on the machines being used as Howard Dean and a few others have demonstrated on TV. I also believe ballots can be shoved in boxes and rooms somewhere and later destroyed. I believe there wasn't a TRUE and TOTAL count, just like 2000.

[library_max]

14. Oh, we'll prove they cheated, eventually.

Remember that they counted the 2000 votes in Florida, eventually. Didn't have much of an impact, as I recall. Hey, whaddya know. Gore really did win Florida. Oh well. Bush is still President.

[monroncrief]

18. One ray of light

An analysis of the original AP exit polling, which showed Kerry with a tighter margin and leading in myriad states, raises serious questions about the authenticity of the popular vote in several key states, RAW STORY has learned.

Since the actual outcome of the votes have been called, AP has changed nearly all of their exit polling to tighten the margin. A reason has not been given.

The analysis, first conducted by a poster at the popular Democratic Underground, suggests possible voter fraud in states that do not have electronic voting receipts, and those that limit the media’s access to polls.

Two inquiries placed by RAW STORY with the media contact for the six-network exit polling consortium at NBC News has received no response.

The curious result comes after the head of Diebold, which produces much of the nation’s electronic voting machines, told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

An exit poll involves asking someone after they walk out of the election booth who they voted for. While not a guide for proving results, it can be a mechanism for ensuring voting accuracy and flagging potential fraud. Exit polls were recently used in Venezuela to ensure the vote was accurate and legitimate.

Perhaps more importantly, while exit polling is unreliable, the odds of President Bush having gaining an advantage from every exit poll in swing states is an extremely improbable coincidence.

In Florida, Bush led exit polling by CNN of more than 3 million voters by just 5355 votes. Yet he led by 326,000 in the end result. This morning, CNN changed their exit polling to favor Bush, saying that had overweighted African American voters.

In Wisconsin, where exit polls put Kerry up seven percent, Bush has a lead of one percent, an unexplained difference of eight percent.

In New Mexico, Kerry led Bush by 3.8 percent, yet Bush leads Kerry by 3 percent in actual reported voting.

In Minnesota, where a new law sharply restricts reporters’ access to polls, Kerry led 9.6 percent in exit polling. Actual voting counts found that Bush trailed by 5 percent, with a 5 percent discrepancy favoring Bush.

Ohio, which does have paper trail capability but does not mandate receipts, had exits showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat; in the near-final results, Bush led by three percent.

Exit polls put Kerry up by 8 percent in Michigan; actual results show Bush trailing by just 3 percent.

Nevada, which also has electronic voting – though should have mandated paper trails, had a variance of 4.2 percent. Kerry led the exit polls by 1.2 percent, while Bush led reported votes by 3 percent.

Two states with paper trails for voting were within 0.5 percent margin of error.

New Hampshire, which has electronic voting but provides verified receipts, exit polling is within 0.1 percent of the actual vote. Kerry led by 3 percent in exit polling, and 2.9 percent in the actual vote.

Maine, the final state for which analysis of exit polling was conducted before the AP “resampled” their data, was in the Kerry column by 7.5 percent; the end result put Kerry up 8 percent, a variance of 0.5 percent. Maine has no electronic voting.

Kerry does not gain by any significant margin in actual voting in any state for which analysis has been conducted, RAW STORY found.

Exit polling accurately predicted the results in most states with very little error. Where there were discrepancies, they were significant in the +5 percent range, and always favored Bush.

Allegations of voter fraud is not new to President Bush. On November 12, 2000, the Washington Post ran an article suggesting anomalies in the hotly constested state of Florida.

Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official of Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and found that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000 votes. But when she checked the county’s Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore’s count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000 … all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters.

Early returns from Florida showed the Green Party candidate leading President Bush and Sen. Kerry in two Ohio counties. They later appeared corrected, but raised eyebrows among liberal bloggers.

Developing…

[monroncrief]

21. 2nd Ray Of Light

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit.

America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our right.

Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips.

An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We will notify you as soon as we can go public with it.

Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; “trouble slips” revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections. You may view the first volley of public records requests here: Freedom of Information requests here

Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting.

We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our voting system works.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org