Sincere question here because I'm waffling

[Pacifist Patriot]

My heart does not want to believe that so many people could possibly think four more years of the Bush administration is a good thing. I've seen the "If you believe Bush won" thread and it is extremely compelling. Mathematically his win does not make sense.

But this is what I'm grappling with.

I really can't figure out how widespread tampering can be accomplished on such a grand scale. Because of the county system of voting, too many people would have to be involved. I can't imagine thousands of people being able to contain a criminal conspiracy of that magnitude. Source code has to be kept in escrow and optical scanning machines leave a paper trail that could conceivably be audited if so desired. Tampering leaves evidence no matter how good you are. Getting caught would absolutely bring down the Republican party. I have confidence that enough "moderate" Republicans would be outraged if they knew an election had been outright rigged.

Are the Republicans so arrogant as to think they could pull something like a rigged election off in the communication age? I don't know.

Given what I'm seeing here, this should be a huge huge story but even Jon Stewart who loves to poke fun at voting irregularities didn't touch the possibility on his show Wednesday night.

Don't get me wrong. I think shining a spotlight and a microscope on the election process is absolutely the right thing to do. It needs to be done whether the purpose is to prove Kerry won or assure Americans that we have a reliable system. Can someone assure me that this is being investigated in a cohesive powerful manner? Why is the DNC staying so quiet? Surely they have the same data as that being culled and crunched on the internet.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. "too many people would have to be involved." BS.

They took Florida in 2000, with disenfranchisement and other tricks. Thats a big state to get control of. They left PLENTY of evidence and what happened? Nothing. No one fired, no criminal prosecutions.

They know all the tricks, have a huge machine, and some KEY operatives (the Katherine Harrises of 2004) and they only needed to win in a few key swing states. Hey, they could still have lost.... they just made it REALLY UNLIKELY.

[PunkinPi]

2. could somebody post the link to "If you believe Bush won"

here? i saw it yesterday and forgot to bookmark. (I would search myself, but the search feature is off). Thanks in advance.

[DemExpat]

4. Here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1316010

DemEx

[PunkinPi]

5. thank you!!! :)

[Ready4Change]

3. My opinion.

I suspect this election was won fraudulently. HOWEVER! That was only possible because the election was close. Except for a few locations, this election was won on a few percentage points. When that's the case, all you need is to apply a "fix" to a couple of key locations and the election is yours. That's the smart way of doing it. It lessens your exposure, raises fewer questions.

Looking over the post election figures, it's clear Kerry won the major population centers. Places where information flows freely, where lots of people interact with and learn from a variety of other people. IQ ratings are high in those areas. Education levels are high. Travel to foriegn lands and exposure to foreign peoples and ideas is also high.

The places where Bush won were generally very rural, isolated from opposing points of view, spoon fed corporate journalism by the news bite, and strongly influenced by community churches. Those locations tend to mistrust any outside news source, viewing it as illegitimate and not connected with their own "real world." IQ's are lower, advanced degrees rare, exposure to non-white and/or non-americans is nearly non-existant.

They are owned by a media that feeds them a message that THEY are the smart ones, and those city liberals are stupid. The jokes on us all.

[johnnie]

6. It didn't have to be a Rove thing.

The election could have been tampered with by different individuals on an individual basis. I don't think it was so much of a plan set forth by the bush higher ups, as much as it was the repubs at different places who will do anything to win. They treated this election like a football game. I have heard "We won..in your face" so many friggin times already, I am about ready to put something in their face.

[artv28]

7. I don't believe it would take that many people

to alter the electronic voting results but I agree that the cover-up would be difficult and not worth the risk. If a couple of people on the inside provided source code and access to hard drives to a small group of hackers the results could be effected by very large numbers. Changing a couple lines of code to award Bush a vote for every 10 - 15 Kerry votes is not rocket science. I don't believe it happened but I realize the possibility exist. I think it would be difficult to cover-up and certainly it should be investigated.

[FlaGranny]

9. It IS difficult to cover up totally.

But, who will look at the evidence? No one will say it is even a possibility. No one will say we have criminals in the white house either. How could anyone make Americans go through the statistical evidence. Most of them are like me and statistics make their brains hurt.

[artv28]

10. Agree that it would be hard to totally cover up

I would love to see some opinions from Systems Engineers, Network Security Specialist, and Hackers on this subject. Unless I missed something, I haven't seen any opinions posted from experts in these fields on the subject of electronic fraud. How easy is it to hack into these systems? Would you need assistance from an insider such as source code access. Do even the most secure systems have security holes that hackers can access without insider assistance? If code or data was altered, how easy is it to cover all your tracks?

[FlaGranny]

11. It's real easy when

NO ONE will look into it.

[drunkdriver-in-chief]

8. Same thing could be said about 9-11

You might say they couldn't possibly get away with it - that there would be evidence somewhere of govt involvement. Well- the evidence is there but the media blacks it out and the democrats won't say anything for fear of being called a "conspiracy theorist". When there is no opposition, you can do anything.

[jobycom]

12. Keep the stakes in mind

We aren't talking about trying to cheat a parking meter. We are talking about, literally, trying to take over the world. There are no higher stakes. It is certainly worth cheating over, especially for a group with so much money riding on the outcome.

WIth that in mind, realize that the best and brightest minds in the world can put nearly unlimited resources and time into finding a way to do it, and will have access to technology that we can't even imagine. WIth four to six years to prepare, they could be creating new technologies the same way we are always developing new weapons. They would focus on two fronts: One, fixing the numbers. Two, hiding the evidence.

Starting with the assumption that it is possible, look at the facts. They are all over DU, I won't go into them. Does the outcome look like someone cheated?

For not getting caught, they rely on their complete control of government, including the courts, and their tight control over the mainstream media. No one in the media wants to cry "Fowl" when they aren't sure. As I've heard it said, if you shoot at the king, you better not miss.

So they have the technology, the people, the time, the resources, the money and the technology, and the prize is the greatest on Earth. It is the Earth. The question isn't "Can they do it?" it is only "Did they do it?" That's what we are trying to figure out. Though some have moved on to "How did they do it?"

Start with the results and work backwards. I don't understand how a magician made the Statue of Liberty disappear, but I know he did it. That's the case here. We figure out how once we prove that it happened.

As for how many people would have to be involved, how many would have to keep quiet, not that many. The rigging can occur a little in each precinct, or it can happen at the counting stations of each county, using machines that can be hacked, maybe, somehow. A couple of people here and there to run the right software, or to sit outside somewhere with a device to control the machines from outside. Or something more simple-- someone to intercept ballots and tamper with them on sight. Replace an entire ballot box, for instance, and throw out the old one.

Humans are clever. They can always find ways to cheat.