I am now FINALLY convinced the election was fraudulant!

[fujiyama]

After reading Hitchen's column, "Ohio's Odd Numbers" from Vanity Fair from a while ago, I am convinced that the election was fraudulent.

It was perhaps reading an article on the subject written by someone that was not very supportive of Kerry, that probably had an effect more than anything.

But that wasn't quite it either. What astounded me were the number of glaring inconsistancies almost exclusively holding an advantage for Bush.

I've read threads on exit polls and it was not enough to convince of and by themself. Exit polls aren't foolproof, but taken together with the number of computer "errors" and "bugs", it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that this election likely was stolen.

Some facts truly amazed me such that two brothers are at the heads of both ES&S and Diebold, together controlling half or more of the votes in the US.

I also wanted to express my admiration for everyone here for doing so much work on such an important issue - for almost a year a now. I always knew there were problems with Ohio and have been suspicious of Diebold since I heard about Walden's statement that he would "deliver Ohio's electoral votes for Bush" , but after reading the sheer number of them - and how they almost all resulted in lost votes for Kerry and/or gained votes for Bush, it just didn't click. Until the situation is cleared up meaning an easily and instantly verified paper trail or preferably paper ballots in the first place, I will be unable to trust the system in proving fair results. Until that day, Democracy will be on hold. Let's hope this will be a short hold, and rather not death.

[rosesaylavee]

1. Check out this link from yesterday on the 2004 election

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x391223

See what one person can do?

There were too many inconsistencies for it to be true and too much like the 2000 election. We need to take our elections back from these criminals.

[RC]

2. Paper ballots, not paper trail.

Get the machines out of the voting system.

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. I think that we need to consider as reality those things previously...

unthinkable in this country. The current criminal leaders are counting that Merkins won't believe in the evil they are doing, from the lies to the election fixing to the smearing. We've seen these tactics in history before...and sheeple similarly naieve. Sad situation, but we have to face it...wish more would.

[Fly by night]

4. Welcome to the reality-based world that is the 2004 ERD forum.

[bleever]

5. ...where faith-based elections are shown for what they really are:

inherently, criminally, disastrously bogus.

[FogerRox]

17. ERD kicks ass & takes names

[Bill Bored]

6. But according to the Election "Science" Institute:

http://electionscience.org/articles/aapor_2005_statement

"...even though we have found errors in the Ohio vote, we did not find systematic fraud and, in any case, the errors were not enough to change the declared winner. They were enough, though, to warn us to be prepared for next time with better election processes."

I am still waiting for some evidence to back up this rather extravagant claim made last June. So far all I've seen are some scatter plots that assume Ohio 2000 was fair and square. Not very scientific is it?

(When I asked them about it, the answer was basically that they were right because they were scientists. Maybe someone else will have better luck.)

[Time for change]

8. Of cours it's rather difficult to evaluate an abstract

My understanding is that the ESI study was much like Walter Mebane's study which was included in Section VI of the DNC report. Several strong correlations were shown between the Kerry vote and various other variables (such as Fingerhut vote, Issue 1, Gore 2000 vote) by precinct, and from that it was concluded that the amount of fraud could not have been great enough to switch the election results.

I have two problems with that:

1. This is the least of the two problems that I have. Whereas it is true that strong corellations of the Kerry vote with other variables does suggest a limit to the amount of fraud that could have occurred by electronic vote switching within precincts, it is not clear to me how much fraud could of that sort could have occurred, while still maintaining those correlations. Maybe the researchers have a handle on this, and they just weren't able to explain it to us very well.

2. But the more serious concern is that, even if they were correct in their above conclusion, that does not rule out by any means fraud committed by electronically adding votes to Bush precincts or subtracting them from Kerry precincts (by means of central tabulators), in proportion to the votes of those precincts that were legally counted. Therefore, I see no basis for such a sweeping conclusion on their part.

[Bill Bored]

11. ESI had no such correlations.

Here's a link to their unexplained slide show:

<http://www.votewatch.us/Members/stevenhertzberg/report.2005-07-19.7420722886/view?searchterm=None>

and their incorrect explanation of it almost 3 months later! (Whoever wrote this obviously didn't know what he was looking at):

<http://www.votewatch.us/Members/stevenhertzberg/report.2005-07-19.2452304843/view?searchterm=None>

And here's Fritz Scheuren's unsubstantiated statement about the Ohio vote:
http://www.votewatch.us/articles/aapor_2005_statement
which concludes:

"On last observation, even though we have found errors in the Ohio vote, we did not find systematic fraud and, in any case, the errors were not enough to change the declared winner. They were enough, though, to warn us to be prepared for next time with better election processes."

Say what you will abut the DNC report, but at least they put some effort into it, came out strongly against DREs, and proposed some needed reforms. So far all I've seen from ESI is lip service with nothing whatsoever to back it up.

I was willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, because after all, they are "scientists" but as it stands now, it would be a tough choice between donating to ESI, Bev Harris or my local chapter of the Flat Earth Society.

[Time for change]

44. I would choose the Flat Earth Society

At least your money wouldn't come to any harm there.

But seriously, I have heard from Febble that those correlations were done. But I haven't actually seen the study. It does seem odd that they would discuss it in public without making their results public.

[Bill Bored]

47. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Rumor has it they've signed non-disclosure agreements with e-votin' machine companies whose machines they're supposed to be testing. If these rumors are true, it might be a bit difficult to peer review that sort of analysis, might it not?

Re Ohio, the only correlations they've published so far are the ones comparing exit polls and vote counts from 2004 to 2000 for the Presidential race. If there are others, they must be on someone else's website or undergoing peer review.

Personally I'm more concerned with voting machine issues than exit polls and I'm also concerned with Mr. Scheuren's as yet unsubstantiated statement that there was no fraud in Ohio, which had nothing to do with exit polls, yet was released at AAPOR with no explanation whatsoever.

Tell you something else that seems odd:
They have stated June 6, 2005 release dates on both of their (incorrect) explanations of the AAPOR slide show on this page:

http://www.votewatch.us/reports/view_reports

But the file names say "2005-07-19", indicating a much later date.
All the other file names on this page are within 2 weeks of their stated release dates, but not these two.

What's more, I know for a fact that these documents were not on the website as of June 6, 2005. Anyone know approximately when they appeared? It seems odd for ESI to state an incorrect release date and I certainly hope they wouldn't do so intentionally.

In any case, we still have no explanation of Mr. Scheuren's statement at AAPOR that:

"...even though we have found errors in the Ohio vote, we did not find systematic fraud and, in any case, the errors were not enough to change the declared winner."

[Febble]

48. What they did

and it is on the slide show and on the reports on the website, is to correlate voteshare in 2000 with voteshare in 2004 - that is what the scatterplot in the slide show or the figures and tables (figure 2) gives you.

Each datapoint represents a precinct polled in the exit poll. You can see there is a strong correlation between Bush's voteshare in a precinct in 2004 (vertical axis) and in 2000 (horizontal axis). However, that is not the important part, you'd expect that. The important part is that the precincts have been coloured to distinguish precincts in which the exit poll "overstated" Kerry's vote (or "under-counted" it) and those in which the poll "overstated Bush's vote (or "under-counted" it). The important point is that the two kinds of precincts are apparently randomly scattered either side of the best fit regression line (unfortunately not drawn) through the data points. To demonstrate this, Figure 3 shows what happens when you compute Bush's change in vote share between the two elections, and plot it (vertical axis) against the discrepancy in the exit poll. And the point is that there is NO correlation (again it would have been helpful to have had the flat regression line shown).

So what this tells us is that where the exit poll discrepancy was greatest (i.e. in precincts, a priori, one would most expect to find fraud), Bush did not necessarily increase his vote share any more than in precincts in which the exit poll discrepancy was less.

And the great thing about scatterplots is that they tell you a heck of a lot that is quite independent of the interpretation put on the data by the authors - they ARE the data. Here are two plausible interpretations:

1. That the exit poll discrepancies were not due to fraud.

2. That the exit poll discrepancies were due to fraud that occurred in the same precincts as in 2004.

Against the latter interpretation is the fact that the mean precinct level discrepancy (WPE) was only -3.1 in 2000, whereas it was -10.9 in 2004 (E-M report pp 32-33). However, it might still be possible to envisage some scenario consistent with the data - proportional fraud in the same precincts in both years for instance.

An alternative interpretation in which fraud would be consistent with the ESI data, is that proposed by TimeForChange, i.e. that in mainly Democratic precincts ALL votes were "under-counted" and in mainly Republican ALL votes were "over-counted" - and thus not affecting the exit polls, but potentially swinging the election. "Under-counting" clearly occurred by the simple mechanism of rejected provisional ballots, and old-fashioned differential vote spoilage might have done that same thing. "Over-counting" in Republican precincts would seem to me to be necessarily more hi-tech.

So what the ESI study tells us, whether it is how the authors interpret the data or not, is that there are two patterns of fraud to look for:

Precincts that are suspicious in both elections (but the 2000 WPE argues against this);

Fraud that involves vote destruction/multiplication, rather than vote-switching.

But the point is that while fraud of the second type could have swung the election, and may well have occurred, the exit poll discrepancy is not evidence of it.

Whatever you think of ESI, and however badly they've presented their plots, the data is interesting and informative - and puts important parameters on what to look for, IMO. Plenty of poorly reported scientific papers have good data. Look at the data.

(edited for typos)

[Bill Bored]

50. I'm not an exit poll true believer as you know...

But you can't say on the one hand that the 2004 poll was junk, and on the other hand say that there was no fraud in 2000 because the 2000 poll had a lower WPE, can you?

IMO, there is no justification for the assumption that the 2000 vote count in OH was any more or less corrupt than 2004. You had Blackwell at the helm in 2000 and you had most of the same machinery and the same procedures that allowed vote switching based on ballot order rotations. The focus was on another state in 2000, so it's possible that things were going on in OH that nobody paid attention to.

Bush's margin was only slightly higher in 2000 than in 2004 (3.5% vs. 2.5%) so why would it make sense to assume that the scatter plots comparing the vote counts would not be correlated? And do you really think a statewide 59,301-vote swing, which could have changed the outcome of the 2004 election would be detected by such means as exit polls and scatter plots? That's an average of only 5 votes per precinct!

So again, we have a statement from Scheuren that has not been substantiated. If he had confined his remarks at AAPOR to the exit polls, I would not have had a problem with it. But by saying "...in any case, the errors were not enough to change the declared winner." referring to the VOTE COUNT, he is drawing an unscientific conclusion based on the evidence he presented at the time, and I think we agree on that.

To have any credibility at all, ESI should either present evidence to prove that Bush won the state or retract that statement. That's just for starters.

[Febble]

53. Look, forget Scheuren

and let's look at the actual data. I'm not saying there was no fraud in 2000. I'm not saying there was no fraud in 2004. What I'm saying is that if there was fraud in 2000 it was of a kind not to show up in exit polls (e.g. the kind suggested by TfC), because the exit polls weren't bad. But in 2004 there was a big red shift.

So the question is raised: if the red shift in 2004 was due to fraud (i.e. there was vote switching) then how come the shift wasn't greatest where Bush's increase in the vote was greatest?

Well one answer is that in 2000 there was vote-switching fraud in those same precincts. But we have just argued that there can't have been, much anyway, because the mean WPE was smaller.

But look, none of this argues against fraud. It just argues against fraud as an explanation for the exit poll discrepancy. We know Ohio stinks. And it has always stunk of voter and vote suppression (long lines in Dem precincts; more provisional ballots in African American precincts, none of which would show up in the exit polls. Maybe there was electronic fraud too - as TfC has argued, and dumping/stuffing of votes wholesale, keeping the proportions right at precinct level, wouldn't show up in the exit polls either.

Of course there is every reason to expect Bush's vote-share in 2000 to be highly correlated with his vote share in 2004. I am sure nobody assumed they wouldn't be. In fact I assume that the whole point of doing that regression is to find out what's left - the residuals - when you've "accounted" for the the "prediction" made by Bush's vote share in 2000 (talking stats-speak here). The 64 thousand dollar question is: are the residuals (the increase in Bush's vote share NOT accounted for by his vote share in 2000) correlated with redshift in the exit polls? And the answer appears to be no. Not even a hint.

I absolutely agree with you - the exit polls are far too coarse grain to detect a small amount of fraud. The are also completely incapable of detecting some types of massive fraud. I have been saying this for months! But what I am saying, on the basis of the ESI finding (not necessarily what ESI is saying, is that fraud does not seem to account for the the exit poll discrepancy in Ohio.

In other words: I agree with you that there is plenty of room in the exit poll data for fraud. But the exit poll discrepancy is not an indication of its magnitude - one way or the other. Something else must have caused the exit poll discrepancy.

[Bill Bored]

54. I know you have a lot invested in explaining the exit poll discrepancy

and so do some others here, but I do not. I find it interesting, but to me it's not the best evidence for fraud or even lack of confidence in the system. I think it could help point the way, but that's about it. Worst case, it can be a distraction from the other stuff.

So it doesn't bother me that ESI think they have shown that the exit polls don't prove fraud, although there is the matter of the 2 precincts out of 49 whose exit poll discrepancies do NOT seem to be explained by poll bias, so this may still be an open research question.

What bothers me though is that they haven't explained their report very well and at the same time, with no explanation at all, they have intimated that they have found no fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of the election.

Well, an ostrich with its head in the sand somewhere in the Australian Outback probably wouldn't find fraud sufficient to affect the outcome of a US Presidential Election either, so why even bother making such a statement without further explanation -- a LOT more explanation in fact.

Suppose ESI were to say that they found no errors in e-voting machine software that could affect the outcome of an election? Are we to take that at face value as well?

Maybe they will find something deliberate instead of an error. But if they don't disclose what they find, it means nothing.

[Febble]

55. You misunderstand, I think

I don't have anything invested in explaining the exit poll discrepancy - or nothing that matters. If fraud could have explained it, that would have been interesting. If it can't, it stops being very interesting - or is only of interest to people who design surveys.

I agree completely with you that the exit poll evidence is not the best evidence for fraud - or even lack of confidence in the system.

As for those two precincts: ESI appear to have assumed that the only mechanism for polling bias was differential non-response - they have not considered sampling bias. Sampling bias (i.e. non-random selection of voters, as opposed to non-random refusals) is strong contender as a source of bias. E-M found that the exit poll discrepancy was greater when interviewing rate was low. This strongly suggests that sampling bias was a contributory factor.

Look, I'm no apologist for ESI as an organisation or as scientists. You know more about them than I do. I am just looking at their data. It's mildly interesting in a negative way, in that it appears to rule out fraud as an explanation for the red shift. And argues against vote-switching as a mechanism for the fraud, at least on a massive scale. And it argues against the exit poll discrepancy as an estimate of the magnitude of the fraud.

But it could well be that vote-switching fraud did occur in some precincts, and was a factor in producing red shift in some precincts. As you say, the grain is too coarse to tell, but also too course to rule it out.

[Bill Bored]

57. Invested

I just meant that you have spent a lot of time on it.

You wrote:

"As for those two precincts: ESI appear to have assumed that the only mechanism for polling bias was differential non-response - they have not considered sampling bias. Sampling bias (i.e. non-random selection of voters, as opposed to non-random refusals) is strong contender as a source of bias. E-M found that the exit poll discrepancy was greater when interviewing rate was low. This strongly suggests that sampling bias was a contributory factor."

Well, if you rule out differential non-response as the entire reason for the discrepancy, which in these two precincts the data shows was clearly impossible, this still leaves both fraud and sampling bias as possible explanations. And if it happened there, it probably happened in other precincts too.

So we are left with three possibilities for the overall discrepancy: fraud, differential non-response and sampling bias, each of which could have contributed to a portion thereof.

As long as fraud cannot be ruled out by exit polls, ESI needs to come up with a lot more evidence to support the notion that Kerry lost Ohio, and for that matter, that the exits were wrong.

My sense is they won't even bother trying to sort this out, but it's clear even from this shoddy report that there was more than reluctant Bush responder at work in at least 4% of precincts, and that could be enough to swing a close election.

[autorank]

15. ESI is not serious. Ohio was stolen. Fraud crossed the country.

With regard to Ohio, the ESI and DNC versions, they need a dose of reality.

Reality number one is the Conyers Report. He was on the ground within days of the election. Nobody bothered to refute his points about hundreds of thousands of votes lost due to the various forms of suppression. These were not estimates made casually, he had a full staff there. We don't need ESI or DNC after the fact analysis to confirm that hundreds of thousands of votes were lost due to the various forms or election fraud that occurred.

Reality number two is that there was a parallel election in Ohio on election day, the State Exit Polls. They showed Kerry winning, they have a paper trail (hidden from the public and available only in increments to "chosen individuals" like ESI who toe the party line). This is far superior to measuring parallel events. Why didn't EIS and the DNC statistician address this? Who knows and it doesn't matter, the reality is clear. Exit polls are good enough all around the world for true voting rights advocates like Pres. Carter. They were good enough for the Republicans in the Ukraine. they are an excellent tool to validate Conyers primary evidence of suppression.

Massive voter suppression costing several hundred thousand votes PLUS the validation of that claim through the electing day polls with paper trail EQUALS a stolen election in Ohio.

I think it's time we think of election fraud deniers and debunkers as anti intellectual. We can't prove fraud without an investigation but we do have enough evidence to raise very serious questions. To deny those questions is to either ignore the research or fail to understand it's significance, hence the charge of "anti intellectualism."

Election fraud debunkers are the new know nothings.

[Usrename]

21. Hip Hip

you've got a really realistic handle on this

[autorank]

23. Welcome to DU "username" -- best "username" I've seen.

:hi:

[Usrename]

29. Thanks - It's good to be here

haven't been here long, keep posting responses to the wrong people and such, adding to my general confusion as much as possible.

Always try to follow your threads when I see em, though.

[Usrename]

30. "autorank" sorry to do that to you, I guess yours "was the best..

LOL

[autorank]

32. Well better to be a "has been" than a "never was"

"paralysis by analysis is everywhere" maybe this will be my new sig line.

Welcome again to the hot bed of intellectual inquiry and tolerance.

[Usrename]

34. A guy I went to high school with came up with mine

Think I should give him credit? Can't remember who's dope we were smoking, if that even figures into it. I remember we determined it to be a 'profound revelation', and I swore to to him I would remember it. Next day it wasn't as profound. Succinct maybe. lol

[sans-culotte]

45. Exactly!

Voting machines will never be made to ensure fair elections. Even if we get paper machines, there are no recounts unless the spread is close. They'll just fix them so that don't happen.

What has happened to our country?

[Usrename]

20. Without doing the math (not a statistician) it sure seems to me

like 2000 and 2004 both follow the "don't ever cheat any harder than you have to" rule.

Solution: If there's not a paper trail, smash the damn machine and get a paper balot. I'm serious, I'm sick of this. So what if a few go to jail in oder to get a fair election. Many have done so in the past.

<typos> needed to cool off for a minute - wphew

[electropop]

41. Wouldn't a fraudster with 1/2 a brain cook the whole ballot,

not just a single item? Just switch the whole slate from Dem to Puke. Anything else would be foolish. This argument that "Apparently there were as many votes for Kerry as for other Dems" carries zero water with me.

[Time for change]

43. Perhaps that's what a fraudster might do

But he couldn't change the votes from previous elections. My understanding is that the Kerry vote was correlated with the Gore 2000 vote in this analysis. And in the Mebane analysis the Kerry vote was correlated with the 2002 Governor's race, among other things.

Anyhow, I'm not certainly not saying that I think Bush won Ohio without fraud. I'm just saying that I believe that the great bulk of the fraud was not accomplished by switching votes within precincts.

[electropop]

49. Hard to say what the proportions are

But definitely voter suppression was a very substantial part of the scam.

[Time for change]

52. In my mind there is no question about that.

But I don't think that voter suppression alone would have won Bush the election. I think that there was a lot more on top of that.

[fujiyama]

9. Even if the errors weren't enough to change the outcome

it still wouldn't matter. The election results would still be in doubt and that's the real problem. How many vote "jumps" were there - where a voter chose one candidate but the other was actually chosen on screen? What about incidents where the numbers never added up - showing Bush getting more votes than there were voters? What about the disproportionate number of undervotes among Democrats?

[Bill Bored]

14. Those 93,000 undervotes have never been examined.

And thousands of votes were probably switched by reading punch cards on which ballot order rotations lined up Kerry and Bush's names on the wrong card readers, giving the votes to Bush. Even if this were done completely at random, in Kerry strongholds it would favor Bush. The cards do not have precinct identifier codes on them, so they can easily be read by the wrong machines without anyone knowing. Even a hand count would not detect this unfortunately because there are no names printed on the punch cards either.

Ohio was set up for fraud from Day 1 and probably in prior years too. In 2004 it just happened to be enough to determine the outcome in the electoral college.

[autorank]

25. That's right! Ohio is ground zero.

The DLC and the DNC can pretend that Ohio results would have been the same despite massive fraud, but these ballots plus the numerous problems, logistics, machines, irregularities at BoE's...these all add up to a great big fat question...who really won Ohio.

btw, let me remind people of Warren County. Yes, the county that helped Hackett lose the Ohio 2nd Special election:

Warren's vote tally walled off
Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security

By Erica Solvig
Enquirer staff writer
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html
LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.

County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the publics rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.

-----------

Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Solvig followed up by calling the FBI which categorically DENIED any security alert was ever issued to Warren County, EVER.

[Usrename]

31. Just read the link. Now how to stop the blood coming out of my ears?

<snip>
Commissioner Pat South said Thursday. "... Hindsight is 20-20. "
<snip>


Yeah, well in hindsight it was probably illegal to rob that bank. You know, hindsight being 20-20 and all.

Do not pass Go, Go directly to Jail!!!

[garybeck]

56. ESI can not be trusted

If anyone conducts a study into the Ohio 2004 election and does not look at any BALLOTS, does not do any random sampling of any BALLOTS, and IGNORES sworn testimony by 7 people who saw illegal white stickers on ballots, and comes to a conclusion that there was not widespread fraud is basically an ostrich with their head in the sand.

sorry for the run on sentence.

but, I would think that if someone wanted to find out if an election was done properly, the FIRST place they would look is at the ballots. All paper ballots are preserved for 22 months from the election. ESI did not think it was an issue, to look at or count any of them.

In other words, if there was any fraud in the ballot counting, ESI would not have discovered it.

So how can they say there was not any systematic fraud? Beats me.

And I have to say, that I personally brought this up with Steve Hertzberg. I asked him before the study if they were going to do any sampling of the ballots and make sure the ballots were counted properly. He got all defensive and said that the people calling for that type of study were just conspiracy theorists who were bummed that Kerry lost. To me, that was HUGE red flag that this study can not be trusted.

Anyone who calls himself a "scientist" should know, that a scientific study requires an open mind and not preconcieved notions. All possible outcomes should be on the table. You can't go into a study like this thinking that everyone who thinks the election was stolen is a Kerry sympathizer / conspiracy theorist.

I also know that he chose to ignore any evidence that had been painstakingly put together by an array of lawyers and PHD statistians, simply because he considered them to be conspiracy theorists. In other words, while people had done months of extensive research on the long lines and other related issues that showed conclusive evidence, he made an illogical decision to igonre all the evidence and conduct his own "study."

My conclusion is that the Election Science Institute is anything but "science." Hertzberg himself does not have scientific credentials, at least none that I could find, and I did search quite extensively. He is from the military, not that it necessarily means anything. But all I can say is if you want to find the truth, you are best off ignoring ESI and their study that concludes Ohio was not stolen.

[autorank]

7. What a great post!

Here is a reasonabe person who cares about his party and country evaluating the flow of evidence and coming to a sad but profound conclusion -- election 2004 stunk to high heavens.

For those of us deep intothe research and evidence, this should serve as reiforement for continued efforts. With enough effort and diesemination of information, there will be an awakening and it starts with Democrats. Afterall, we're the agrieved party.

Great post!

[fujiyama]

10. Thank you

I was always suspicious of the outcome but until actually reading the description of the specific incidents and the sheer number of them - almost exclusively helping Bush, I didn't realize how problamatic it really was.

You and the others researching this subject and warning others are doing an immeasurable service. Keep it up.

[autorank]

26. Damn, it's on greatest! What a welcome to ERD 2004

Hope it doesn't disappear too soon. I'm just sayin';).

Lets keep rating it up.

[fujiyama]

37. I'm not going to let this go just yet

What are some other articles or resources you would recommend? I was going to read the Conyer's OH report. I figured that would be a good start.

Of course, I'm looking for credible sources, but this is a difficult issue to find mainstream sources, considering it has been so poorly covered by the corporate media establishment.

[bleever]

12. You convinced me to nominate this. It is great. Seeing the light bulb

go off over people's heads when they finally get it.

And thanks, fujiyama.

[meganmonkey]

13. Excellent! One more added to our club

We're not exclusive! All are welcome!

Nominated so others can see this.

Never Give Up.

:hi:

[FogerRox]

16. fujiyama--- welcome home

[Lori Price CLG]

18. CLG's 'Coup 2004' page has a lot of articles, etc.. Here is the link:

Coup 2004
http://www.legitgov.org/coup_2004.html

Lori Price

[autorank]

27. Great resource Lori Price CLG

[Usrename]

19. Exit polls are nothing but numbers and numbers are innocent.

Believe the exit polls. Hitchens on the other hand is a different animal altogether. If anything, reading him should sway you in the opposite direction. In my opinion, he is the anti-truth. My guess is that he working you with an issue you are somewhat passionate about in order to gain your trust. I mean at this point, what possible difference could it make in his agenda if he were lying or not.

[fujiyama]

35. Very true

Hitchens is not someone I place particular credibility or trust in. He has engaged in bizarre conspiracy theories about the Clintons (claims Bill Clinton is a rapist), smeared liberals that were against the Iraq war as being cowards and worse, and in general has taken a turn for the right - and has wholeheartedly endorsed the neo con agenda.

I think the specific incidents were however relatively well laid out in his article. Sure, I was already predisposed to believing the election was stolen considering I've been on this forum for so long - so I wasn't completely ignorant of the incidents (I was aware that there were problems). At the same time howeve, when you see someone whose beliefs are completely different from those your, admit something that doesn't necessarily support his or her cause or agenda, you know the truth is too obvious to deny.

[MadisonProgressive]

22. Better late than never.. BRAVO!

[snot]

24. Glad you're joining us! --

More precisely, I and I think some others who have followed this issue closely have remained open to the possibility that fraud did not occur on a scale that would have changed the election outcome--but we felt that that certainly could not be ruled out. There were so many strong indications that fraud DID occur on an unprecedented scale . . . and especially given the complete resistance to investigation that we've encountered . . . I've certainly felt we should presume the worst, at least to the extent of acknowledging the very real potential for such fraud and doing everything possible to prevent it from happening in the future.

[FogerRox]

28. hmmm

1)93k undervotes
2) 235k Elen connely votes -- mor evotes than Kerry
3) Absentee ballots- was it 60k or 90k or 160k?
4) how many more votes than registered voters---- 94k?

Maybe Kerry won Ohio by 300 to 400k votes-- ?

[autorank]

33. I like that estimate...reminds me of somebody elses...hmmm...

...I think you're in excellent company.

[FogerRox]

46. hmmm names on the tip of my tongue--- its ahhhhhh

ummmmm ahhhhh
BOb



no,

its ahhhhhhhh

[fujiyama]

36. Another interesting point about the undervotes

"n Butler County, for example, a Democrat running for the State Supreme Court chief justice received 61,559 votes. The Kerry-Edwards ticket drew about 5,000 fewer votes, at 56,243. This contrasts rather markedly with the behavior of the Republican electorate in that county, who cast about 40,000 fewer votes for their judicial nominee than they did for Bush and Cheney. (The latter pattern, with vote totals tapering down from the top of the ticket, is by far the more general—and probable—one nationwide and statewide.)"

And more weirdness (disproportionate number of third and fourth party votes):

"n Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this. In Precinct 4F: Kerry, 290; Bush, 21; Peroutka, 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry, 318; Bush, 11; Badnarik, 163. Mr. Peroutka and Mr. Badnarik are, respectively, the presidential candidates of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. In addition to this eminence, they also possess distinctive (but not particularly African-American-sounding) names. In 2000, Ralph Nader’s best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4F by all third-party candidates combined was eight."

[Montauk6]

38. Here's a link to the article, btw...

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm

[tommcintyre]

39. You're right fujiyama, and we will win this battle one person at a time nt

[In Truth We Trust]

40. Paper ballots NOW!!! Hand counts NOW!!! Impeachment NOW!!! nt

[Peace Patriot]

42. Two far rightwing, Bush partisan electronic voting companies tabulated

80% of the nation's vote, using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and...

AND!

Kerry won the exit polls--the only independent gage of the election returns.

----------

I think it's very important not to isolate bits of evidence apart from their context, and apart from their place in time.

First, these Bushite companies answered the call of Bush's "pod people" in Congress that something MUST be done about that awful election mess in Florida in '00--oh, yes, the debacle that put Jesus Bush into office mustn't happen again, no, no! We need to modernize our election system--with $4 billion into the pockets of Bush-donating election machine companies; and, paper trail? We don't need no stinkin' paper trail...etc., etc., then...THEN...then and only then did Kerry win the exit polls.

We had a fraudulent election SYSTEM going in. The fraud occurred long BEFORE the election, in the utter non-transparency and unverifiability of the election system that was installed in the 2001-2003 period. "Trade secret" tabulation of our votes? Come on!

And in reviewing Kerry's concession on the morning of Nov. 3, we also need to see the context and the time-frame. How could Dem Party leaders have been SILENT about Bushites owning and controlling the tabulation of our votes, PRIOR to the election, when these EGREGIOUSLY non-transparent voting systems and tabulators were put in place?

That question needs to be asked and answered BEFORE you look at Diebold's and ES&S's "result" vs. the exit poll's real result--and before you can begin to understand Kerry's concession.

I think the answer to why the Dem leaders were silent about Bushites gaining control over the vote tabulation is a combo of just plain venal corruption among both Dem and Repub election officials in the billion dollar boondoggle of electronic voting, plus some of the Dem leaders supporting Bush's war and not giving a crap who got "selected" by Bushite voting machines.

I don't know how much Kerry knew about the election system, and I can't and won't judge him personally--but it seems pretty clear to me that the Bush war supporters around him, in the Dem leadership, refused to support an election fight, and that he could not proceed (if he had been of a mind to) without their support (especially with the Bushites and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies ready to pounce on him, in the middle of the assault on Falluja, the week after the election).

These DLC/DNC people who were surrounding Kerry were the same ones who were guilty of gross malfeasance on the election SYSTEM. They wanted the war. They did NOT want a president that was beholden in any way to the grass roots, antiwar constituency--who were working their tails off, and, not incidentally, achieving a 60/40 blowout success for the Dem party in new voter registration in 2004. People were flocking to the Dem Party, in a highly inspired grass roots movement to oust the Bush Cartel--little knowing that their votes were going to be "counted" by Bushites with secret, proprietary programming code. The failure of the Dem party leaders to apprise them of this was catastrophic--and likely deliberate. And their failure to challenge the election comes into much sharper perspective when you realize how complicit they had to have been, all along, in the electronic voting setup.

Similarly, when studying the exit poll evidence, we must not ignore the first and foremost fact about the exit polls--that the TV networks, acting in concert, FALSIFIED the exit poll data on everybody's TV screens on election night, "adjusting" the exit polls (Kerry won) to fit the "official results" derived by Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won).

They claim that they "always" do this ("adjust" the exit polls to fit the "official results"), but we do not ALWAYS have a brand new and controversial election system being tested out nationwide for the first time, as the result of widespread suspicions--and, indeed, solid evidence as to the popular vote--that the previous presidential election was stolen. These conditions CRIED OUT FOR verification of the 2004 election. And the one tool we had to verify it was....changed, falsified, "adjusted"? Come on! And...

AND!

...that verification tool--the real exit polls--contradicted a Bush win. And...

AND!

...there was widespread, blatant, visible election fraud, in open violation of the Voting Rights Act, in the battleground state of Ohio, indicating--to me, anyway--that Kerry in fact won the election by such a big margin that "Plan B" (blatant vote suppression in Ohio) had to be implemented, at the risk of public disgrace, and a huge outcry by civil rights groups and others. They figured they could "spin" THAT, and--given the lapdogism of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who were willing enough to falsify their own exit polls--they were right.

They "spun" THAT--"not enough fraud in Ohio" to change the "result." (--and guess who ELSE has "spun" THAT--the very same Dem Party leaders who FAILED TO WARN VOTERS of the highly fraud-prone election system).

Plan A: A pre-programmed 3% to 4% shift of Kerry votes to Bush (or to third parties) that appears as a wave, from east coast to west, locking in the popular vote early on, in the east, and slightly tweaking a couple of very close states from "blue" to "red," to keep Bush competitive in the Electoral vote...but this was not quite enough, so...

Plan B: ...unleash the snarling election dogs in Ohio, where Bush Cartel operative Blackwell will keep a lid on things long enough for the Cartel to invade Iran...

(Plan C was a phony "terrorist alert" lockdown of major Dem voting in west coast urban areas--well-prepared in "the news" prior to the election--but the "terrorist alert" tactic wasn't needed (except in Warren County, Ohio). My guess: Kerry's mealy-mouthed statements about the war and other matters cut his margin from 15% or higher, to 10% or somewhat less, and Diebold, ES&S, and Ohio were sufficient to cover it.)

--------

This is my thinking on the fraudulent election of 2004: Review the evidence IN CONTEXT, with an outline before you of "means," "motive," "opportunity" and "malice aforethought," filling in each of those categories of criminal prosecution as you go, and, instead of presuming that Diebold and ES&S are honest, that Bushites are not criminals, that the war profiteering new monopolies tell the truth, and that Dem and Repub election officials are not corrupt, use some common sense, and presume the opposite of these things, and then...the 2004 election, as presented on TV--and Bush's dismal approval ratings (before and after the election), and the overwhelming evidence of great American opposition to Bush in the opinion polls on specific issues (60% to 70% opposed to every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, for over a year now), and all sorts of other things--begin to make sense.

Here's something, in the "all sorts of other things" category, that didn't make sense to me until I began making the above assumptions, particularly re: Dem and Repub election officials being corrupt (many of them)--and started seeking more information:

Democrat Connie McCormack, head of Los Angeles County elections, supporting Diebold and paperless voting--and leading the nasty coup that took down Dem CA Sec of State Kevin Shelly, who had sued Diebold and decertified the worst of their election theft machines just prior to the 2004 election. How could a Democrat--McCormack--be doing these things?

Come to find out: McCormack's best friend--the one she wines and dines and goes on vacations with--is Deborah Siler, formerly Diebold's chief salesperson in California.

Beverly Hilton, August 2005: A week of fun, sun and high-end shopping for election officials from around the country, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia. Featured speaker: Connie McCormack.

Former Repub CA Sec of State Bill Jones, and his chief aide Alfie Charles, after authorizing electronic voting in California including the purchase of Sequoia machines, now works for... Sequoia.

One of Kevin Shelley's first actions in office had been to ban "revolving door" employment. He was beginning to crack down on corrupt local election officials, and, in his suit against Diebold, had demanded to see their source code.

Venal corruption, among Democrats like McCormack. And criminal intent on the part of Bushites (more on this in a moment), and...

AND!

...Kerry won the exit polls, and...

AND!

...analysis of the exit polls shows an impossible shift to Bush in the final, falsified numbers, and...

AND!

...in 86 of 88 reported incidents, touchscreens CHANGED Kerry votes to Bush votes, which some Kerry voters, with considerable difficulty (they checked back over their "ballot") just happened to notice, and happened to know a phone number where they could report it--and...

-------

But you get my meaning. CONTEXT. Numbers, facts and evidence must be seen in context. If we divorce them from their context, then we will never understand what has happened to our country, or how to fix it.

What I am saying is that, in a sense, it DOESN'T MATTER how much evidence you have of election fraud in 2004. The election was invalid on its face. Major Bushites controlled the vote tabulation with SECRET, PROPRIETARY software. That's all you really need to know about the 2004 election. It was non-transparent and non-verifiable.

And, we have NO WAY OF KNOWING who really won the election, except by exterior verification tools--such as the exit polls--and THEY were falsified to create the PERCEPTION of a Bush win.

Another exterior indicator--one that speaks to intent--was the blatant fraud in Ohio, news of which has been severely curtailed. And a third exterior indicator that also points to a Bush loss, but which has not received intelligent and perceptive comment in the controlled news: opinion polls, with Bush having miserable approval ratings throughout the year leading up to the election (so low Zogby said he couldn't win), with an unprecedented (for a recently "elected," 2nd term president) 49% on the very day of his inauguration, and going into freefall afterward (down to 35% or so today), AND the issue polls throughout the last year, showing huge disapproval of Bush, way up in the 60% to 70% range, on all major issues.

Those "trade secret" contracts between Bushite companies and the states--an utterly amazing outrage against democracy--came about as the result of both venal corruption (mostly Democrats) and criminal intent (mostly Republicans). That's something we need to know--on the remedy side of things. As to criminal intent, why did Tom Delay blockade a paper trail provision in Congress? Why did the electronic voting companies who were giving big contributions to Bush, and running his campaign and so on, FIGHT a paper trail and INSIST ON "trade secret" vote tabulation? Why DIDN'T Congress correct these no-brainer election integrity requirements? And why didn't the Democratic leadership burn the Capitol down to get this changed?

If they had wanted a transparent, verifiable election, why didn't we have one? It's not that difficult.

The answer is that it was PREVENTED--deliberately--and our election system was deliberately and methodically corrupted, with the $4 billion boondoggle from Bush's Congress, and lavish lobbying by Bushite companies, of both Dem and Repub election officials. And that's not even to get into items like the Curtis testimony (a Repub Congressman in Florida SOLICITING an electronic election fraud PROGRAM!). It's obvious just on the surface of things that there was intent to commit election fraud, on the part of Bushites.

-------

Remedy (simple--except for all the corruption and crime):

Paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level (--Canada does it in one day, although speed should not even be a consideration, just accuracy and verifiability)

or, at the least

Paper ballot (not "paper trail") backup of all electronic voting, a 10% audit (automatic recount), strict security, and NO SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code! (...jeez!).

-------

That's all it would have taken. So why didn't we have it?

It's not so much that the election was stolen. (I mean, that's what the Bush Cartel does, right? It's to be expected from them.) It's HOW the election was stolen--with the complicity of corrupt and/or war mongering Democrats, and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies.

And, until we see the whole picture, in context, we will continue to be sidetracked by trying to get rid of lowlings like Blackwelll, and trying to get the Voting Rights Act re-authorized in a Bush "pod people" Congress--a law that this fascist junta has already openly violated and will never enforce--and, as some are doing, trying to get the war profiteering corporate news monopolies (the people who falsified the exit polls and completely blackholed the story of who owns our election system) to provide real news and opinion. Or trying to get Bush to pull out of Iraq.

It's not that I don't support all of these efforts. I do! With all my heart--especially the latter. Cindy Sheehan and others are putting their bodies on the line to stop this insane war, to stop the killing NOW. It is a matter of conscience and heart--and lives!

But it won't and can't change the war policy or anything else, until we address the MECHANISM of power--our vote--and achieve transparent, verifiable elections.

The power over election systems still resides at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. That is where we must act, if we want our democracy back, and if we want to stop the war that is the result of LACK OF democracy.

We can have the biggest protest the world has ever seen, in DC on Sept. 24--or the most powerful protest of our era, Cindy Sheehan's arrival at the Bush ranch--and all we are likely to get for our trouble is the "selection" of a War Democrat, who--whatever promises he/she makes--will merely be "doing a better Mideast war" over the next four years, with probably a Draft thrown in (because the Bushites can't get that done).

The great majority of Americans have opposed this war FROM THE BEGINNING (58%, across the board in all polls--Feb. '03). The problem is not that Americans don't see how wrong it is. The problem is that the majority has been DISENFRANCHISED--not just by the criminal Bushites, but also by corrupt Democrats. The mechanism of disenfranchisement is as plain as it can be, and that is the first thing that we must change, before any other change can occur.

An antiwar movement may spark a civic uprising that highlights election theft, and attends to these election theft machines. (Into 'Boston Harbor' with them, I say!) That's what I hope it does. But we can't stop the war--a war that our Democratic Party leaders LET HAPPEN--until we have recovered our right to vote, which our Democratic Party leaders PERMITTED Bushite companies to take away from us. With Diebold and ES&S "counting" the votes, the Dem leaders have no more reason to listen to us than Bushites do. That's what we MUST CHANGE--while we still have the power to do so.

-------

Thanks for your post, Fujiyama! I appreciate how difficult it is to take in the immensity of the fraud that occurred on November 2, 2004--its trail back to HAVA and electronic voting, its path through the unjust war that most Americans opposed then and even more oppose now (over 70%!), on through the falsified exit polls on election night, and everything else. It has been "the perfect storm" of fraud, with every element of our broken democracy conspiring to force us into unjust war, and to keep us at war until the purposes of the war profiteers and the rightwing fascist think-tanks are accomplished.

It is mind-boggling. And I do greatly understand the "denial" that many have suffered, and the sheer power of the brainwashing that has occurred, and is still at work (--so powerful that it has convinced many Americans that THEY are in the minority in opposing Bush's war and other policies). It is a great act of intellect and heart to overcome all that, and to just be able to look at the facts with open eyes and a clear head. I have highly intelligent siblings and friends who still can't look at it, and who remain "plugged in" to the insidious delusions of the corporate news monopolies. As Bush's phony "mandate" falls to pieces, I trust that they will soon be looking at the same facts you have looked at, seeking answers. I applaud you for doing so!

[mod mom]

51. Here are some election fun facts from just one OHIO county that I like to

share with newbies:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm


This report includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.


-One-half of the ballots printed and used in the 2004 general election in Lucas county were stored in an open space on the fhird floor of the county warehouse with no security measures in place.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation on Lucas County BOE page 4



-Live ballots were delivered to polling locations a week in advance of the election. Although the ballots were retrieved, one board employee who was assigned to the warehouse informed the SOS staff that he did not believe all the ballots were successfully retrieved.
SOURCE; SOS Investigation, page 5



-Lucas County BOE failed to record or retrieve ballot stub numbers of absentee voters’ ballots as required by statute OH Revised Code 3505.23. It was reported by an elector that her mother had received not one, but three absentee voter ballots. there was no way to determine if similar incidents occurred and if so how many.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, page 7




-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.



-In late September or early October an employee of the Ohio Republican Party contacted Sam Thurber (*involved with politician wife Maggie Thurber in Noe scandal.) wanting to inspect and have copies made of all recently returned voter registrations, Ohio Republican Party offered to furnish volunteers to assist with copying postcards. No one at the Lucas County BOE can confirm that anyone was assigned to supervise Republican volunteers. On their second day of copying, a BOE employee, Jennifer Bernath, Democratic Booth Official) saw republican party volunteers peeling off the yellow return stickers applied by the post office. (Violation of RC 149.43 (B) (I) , and agruably a violation of 149.351.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, pgs 18-19

*Among those whose donations have caught the attention of investigators are:

"City Councilman Betty Shultz; former state representative Sally Perz, her husband, Joe, and her daughter, Allison; former county elections director Joe Kidd; county Auditor Larry Kaczala and his wife, Gina; County Commissioner Maggie Thurber and her husband, Sam; and two of Mr. Noe’s co-workers at Vintage Coins and Collectibles, partner Tim Lapointe and executive assistant Susan Metzger. Mr. Lapointe’s wife, Linda, also donated.

All of the above gave the campaign $2,000 except the Thurbers; each of them gave $1,950 to the campaign. The $23,900 in donations were made between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5, 2003.

Path of donations At issue is whether Mr. Noe gave people money in order for them to give to the Bush campaign, allowing Mr. Noe to exceed federal spending limits, law-enforcement sources said."
Source:
Toledo Blade - FBI Raids GOP Donor Noe's Condo
Friday, April 29, 2005




-The Swanton 3 poll book turned up missing and has never been recovered.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 16


-The number of precincts in Lucas County for the November 2003 election was 530 precincts, at the time of the November 2, 2004 election there were 495 precincts.