Beware of guys who want to talk you out of the voter fraud

[Woody Box]

and present a "natural" explanation like radical anty-gay-marriage Christians storming the voting booths.

Many of them are here. Some of them are surely honest and believe in what they're saying.

But others just want to prevent you from fighting and digging.

[TheKingfish]

1. where is your evidence the election was stolen? n/t

[Woody Box]

7. Just one example

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/what_happened_in_ohio.php

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.

And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African American and minority precincts.


There are more to come...just stay here on DU...

[mongo]

22. So what are we going to do about it?

I can't believe that Kerry conceded.

[jdj]

28. thanks so much for posting the Palast article. I needed that! n/t

[BayStateBoy]

21. Not Stolen...Tainted...Can't Be Verified

The history of democratic voting is a history of ballot recounts and the ability to conduct same.

The legitimacy of democratic elections is inexorably predicated upon the electorate's ability to verify the results which is only possible with a tangible ballot giving a permenent record.

A ballot that cannot be physically verified or interrogated is no different than a vote by someone with no verifiable name or residence. It is like making a bank deposit with no receipt and the institution retains no hard copy of the transaction. If it's not good enough for our financial transactions, it's certainly not good enough for our elections.

Any voting method without permanent record that can be verified by recount is UnAmerican and an open invitation to fraud by those of either party who control the state's electoral machinery.

Although George W. Bush rode the moral value issue into the ground and it surely benefited him, he was propelled him to "victory" by the "black box" votes that cannot be verified.

[TexasSissy]

27. How exactly do we start getting this system changed? To get

a national system, or a unified system, with paper trails?

[jdj]

31. the first thing we have to do is talk it up as much as we can

because the truth is most reasonable people will want a VVPB and anyone who doesn't will garner suspicion.

this is something the whole public will eventually support.

[jdj]

29. more-oil value people are blind to the war in Iraq.

that is their blindness, their sickness, and W. cannot be credited with this for the victory.

[MercutioATC]

2. Dig. Fight. I still don't think it's an issue.

I don't think it was an accident that 11 states (Ohio included) had a "no gay marriage" issue on the ballot. It did what it was supposed to do - get conservative christians to the polls.

That's not fraud, but knock your socks off "digging".

[Township75]

12. I agree..

this conspiracy theory is really getting old.

Does anyone really believe that the Dem leadership would have given up already if they thought there were fraud?

Serioudly, after 2k, they would just let it happen again?

I think some people want there to be fraud, because the idea that the US choose Bush over Kerry is unthinkable to us. But we are left wing partisans, so it shouldn't be thinkable to us.

We didn't have a great campaign, and once again the Repubs did a better job getting out the vote than we did, just like in 2k2. That is why we lost

[sadiesworld]

19. Why do we have paperless voting?

[jdj]

33. the hell they did.

give me a break. did you even read about the Florida purge list, with the percentages of blacks (alot) and latinos (very few) that were removed being incredibly out of sync with their percent of population?

there are hundreds of ways to commit vote fraud, and this was the pre-election fraud, and Florida is one of the only states that we know about.

Do you REALLY, REALLY believe that there is EVER an election held ANYWHERE in this country that doesn't have at least a smidgeon of fraud in it? If so, then I've got some trade towers on Manhattan to sell you.

[sandnsea]

23. FL- teen abortion issue

So that was there too. I don't know what was in other states that didn't have gay marriage. Oregon managed to vote Kerry and vote down gay marriage, which I'm not saying I agree with but at least people were able to separate the two. Not sure what's different about Ohio & Oregon or Florida & Oregon. I think they both have more minorities too.

[Upfront]

32. Michigan Also.

[jdj]

30. yes, hon, but these folks are smart enough to know they

are pissing in the wind because it needs a 2/3 majority.

"conservative christians" are a minority in this country. they aren't even a legitimate wing, ideologically, of the "small gov't" party, you can't get a much larger gov't than having the pres. in your bed and in your womb.

You don't have to think it's an issue.

[Philostopher]

3. It may have been a contributing factor in Ohio,

but as we've discussed on other threads, there were plenty of Kerry voters who also voted for the "gay marriage" issue, if you look at the numbers.

Ohio was, quite simply, a matter of voter discouragement and suppression. Minority/inner city districts had inadequate machinery and insufficient staffing. There were people in Toledo who had to wait in line nine hours to vote! Anybody want to bet how many people drove or walked past these polling places and said, 'shit, I'm not getting into that mess!'

If they'd been working right, of course, the outcome might (I say might -- it might not) have been different. We'll never know, because you can't count votes that were never cast.

That's the beauty of voter discouragement and suppression. If you keep 'em from casting the vote, it never gets counted against 'your guy,' and nobody can ever prove you did it.

[tngledwebb]

13. I am wary of those who declare how simple it all was.

Nothing is simple, these days.

[tngledwebb]

4. Right woody.

You are getting the parallax view too, I see. The ones that only come up for air to use the CT word are a little uppity today.

[glitch]

5. The place is crawling with them - a lot with names I don't recognize and

high post counts. But I actually consider that validation, otherwise why try so hard to quell the queries?

[tngledwebb]

10. follow the flights

the flew between 00 and o4.

[jdj]

35. yes, alot of post counts in the hundreds and then some with

1000 that I can't remember ever having seen before.

I can just see a bunch of these butt-ugly fundies sitting in a room somewhere drooling and wheezing over the cleverness of their posts in between cheneying themselves in the bathroom. Thanks for posting this to summon them all to one thread, very clever idea.

I lay money to it that they are getting paid, too.

[tngledwebb]

6. Speak of the debils! Hobgoblins

have the consistency of little minds.

[wurzel]

8. It isn't that we don't believe there was not fraud in Ohio.

Kerry has already conceded and blocked off any real investigation into Ohio. I have no idea why he did that. But I think it was a betrayal of all that supported him. Perhaps it has to do with Scull and Crossbones. We know for certain there was fraud in Florida in 2000 and what difference did that make in 2004? I don't know why most people don't care about fraud, but they don't. Only winning counts. It seems just to be part of our society.

[George_S]

36. Not true. Concession does not legally end it.

[wurzel]

41. It may not "legally" end it. But it ends it just the same!

Kerry totally lost me when he conceded without an investigation of the Florida and Ohio voting machines.

[blurp]

9. The gay marriage issue WAS a factor

I live in Florida. I can tell you absolutely that Mel Marinez's comment about "fighting the gay agenda" went over very well with Hispanic men.

There is a very strong strain of "macho" attitude among these men.

Just because people might be from a poor background doesn't mean they're socially enlightened.

[tngledwebb]

11. That was not the question really.

In some my state bear hunting was an issue.

[CAcyclist]

15. I am sure you are right BUT

9 million more votes than last time? This is already a group with a high percent of voting (white evangelicals) and the gays have always been with us - I don't see how even an increase in voting by Hispanics could add enough to get these high numbers.

[blurp]

17. Hispanic share of the U.S. electorate swelled by 20 percent over 4 yeas

Combine that with the fact that the share of Hispanics voting Democrat actually dropped.

"While Bush lost the Latino vote -- winning 44 percent to Kerry's 53 percent (other candidates split the remainder) -- he gained 9 points from four years ago, which proved significant in states like Florida and New Mexico with large Latino or Hispanic populations." -- CNN

So, a 20% increase in Hispanic voters and a 9 point increase in for Bush is a lot of votes.

I don't know what answer is, but I suspect a Dean-like candidate would have gotten many more people to come to the polls to cancel these increases.

[nolabels]

34. Yea, 8 million more people came out to vote to stop gay marriage

I also got a bridge I want to sell you

[ciaobox]

14. That is EXACTLY what Bush WANTS

And it kills me. The Dems themselves are buying it AGAIN. This could shift the Dems insincerely to the right -- losing them EVEN more votes in 2006 as Poseur Repukes. Very dangerous.

[smirkymonkey]

16. Yeah, and some of them even have pretty high post numbers.

But as we have learned, even those with high post numbers can be potential freepers as well.

Never give up, never give in.

[sadiesworld]

18. Thanks for posting this.

They're everywhere today.

I certainly understand looking at other issues, but I find the posts attempting to chill discussion of BBV and voter fraud to be very suspect.

[Individualist]

20. I also find them suspect

Anyone who is falling for the distractions should educate themselves by doing a google search for BBV, also see the following posts here today: www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=10950&mesg_id=10950


www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=11874&mesg_id=11874

[Generator]

24. Yeah I say beware of any shiny happy people

[BillZBubb]

25. Dude, I'm not trying to talk anyone out of anything.

What I would like to see though is some REAL evidence that the vote was stolen. There is a lot of speculation that it was. There is certainly grounds to be suspicious. But, there isn't any evidence.

We need solid, indesputable evidence to take to the public. Then we will have a winning hand. Right now we've got nada and it just looks like sour grapes.

So fight and dig, but don't make accusations we cannot back up yet.

[JPZenger]

26. Repeat: We Must Trust George, We Must Trust George

Keep Repeating: We must trust George W. He has a mandate. Don't look inside those voting results. Be united. Let yourself become part of the mandate. Don't think. Believe. Come over to the moral people. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

[jdj]

37. "there isn't any evidence" . Duh, that's the point. How dense can

you be??

the Palast article at the top is a good start. We know what the purge list was like in Florida, and we know that in computer voting (with no paper ballot) states, the exit polls are way out of wack with the final results, while in states that vote with paper, the exit polls line up alot better.

I'm making accusations right and left, to anyone that will listen. I don't know about this election, if in ten days when they count the pb's if anything will change. Bush's team made sure he had a significant lead so that he would have a battle if the pb's change the result, but to that I say "live by the electoral college (2000), die by the electoral college."

Your view is myopic. This is an issue that will not go away, regardless of what the outcome of this election is. It needs to be dealt with, it needed to be dealt with in 2000, but it wasn't. And it won't go away ever, our America is dead, gone, buried. Every election will have to fought for tooth and nail from now on, because the fundies that have gotten control have a mandate from God (they believe) that pr-empts any respect for our constitution or our democracy that they may have.

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. It was fraud. No doubt about it!

-----------------------------------------------------------
FIGHT! Take this country back one town and state at a time!
http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[shelley806]

39. Everyone should read this DU thread.....

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

[NewYorkerfromMass]

40. I agree. Leave no stone unturned

ask every question necessary