The OTHER Election Night Story in Georgia (Savannah Daily News)

[DemoTex]

The OTHER Election Night Story in Georgia: No Early Votes Included in Reported Results

As the nation watched election returns come in state by state, and national, state and regional television stations began to report the numbers, every major news outlet reported that Georgia had voted heavily for McCain -- all except for the Associated Press Atlanta office, the news organization that is rooted in the print, newspaper business. They held back.

At 10:35 p.m., The Savannah Daily News appears to be the first news organization in Georgia to begin to report that the results made no sense - how could all of the political polls that had Georgia as a McCain/Obama toss up be so wrong? And how could the Secretary of State be reporting that the majority of the votes were in, but the total was just over 2.8 million, when there are more than 4.8 million registered voters in Georgia? (Snip ..)

There are 4,978,704 registered voters in Georgia, up more than 500,000 since December 2007 as interest in this year's presidential race grew. At 2 a.m., only 3,339,278 votes were counted, a turnout of only 67.07 percent, appearing that at least another 10 percent was still not uploaded by a number of counties. (Snip ..)

One of the first counties in Georgia to get the early voting numbers reported was Chatham County. At about 10:40 p.m., Russell Bridges said he'd get them up in five minutes, and he delivered. At that point, only 55,000 votes were in, but it looked like 89 of 92 precincts had reported. David Locke was winning the District Attorney's race in Chatham County, in that scenario, and other candidates looked like they were well on the way to victory. And then Bridges uploaded the 47,000 early voting results, and the total votes cast jumped to 102,000 - and results changed dramatically. Now Obama was carrying Chatham County handily. Larry Chisolm (D) was the new district attorney-elect, and Al St. Lawrence (R), running for sheriff, was only ahead by a mere 1,100 votes with 7,450 true absentee ballots still not in. (More ..)

http://savdailynews.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=19&ArticleID=20488

The fat lady has yet to sing in Georgia. Does this bear out Greg Palast's fears of GOP voting shenanigans in Georgia?

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. Thanks for posting this!

I definitely don't trust our process in Georgia, but I hadn't seen any actual articles calling this election into question...

[justiceischeap]

2. Kick 'cause this is important. (eom)

[Greybnk48]

3. Jut got off the phone with my daughter in Savannah

She and her girlfriend went out today to buy newspapers as keepsakes and found the racks empty. Her girlfriend, who is black, lives in Richmond Hill, GA just out of Savannah, and decided she would at least like a copy of the local paper. When they went to pick one up, there was absolutely nothing about Obama winning the Presidency---nothing!!! Not one word!! Needless to say, her friend went batshit as did my daughter.

http://www.bryancountynews.net/ The link is for the electronic version, which doesn't mention Obama either.

[Selatius]

4. I wonder why they omitted the biggest story in the nation.

I can't help but be nagged by the idea that the press has a conservative bias when hearing that.

[Greybnk48]

7. LOL! This is over the top even for some right wing rag.

I can't believe it. They reported the local sheriff race AND they reported that McCain won the high school mock election. But Obama--nada. What a bunch of stooges.

[ColbertWatcher]

5. I innocently asked about this the other day ...

...http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=7740816&mesg_id=7740816

...not realizing how horrifying the answer turned out to be!

Thank you for posting this!

[CitizenPatriot]

6. I posted this earlier today

here's the link to that thread -- some interesting thoughts added by other posters.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7793897

[orleans]

8. the vote totals on cnn:

2,022,409 R
1,811,198 D

so..."more than 4.8 million registered voters in Georgia'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7793897

so...over a million people didn't vote?

or--the votes weren't counted?

on edit:
With 96 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday, Chambliss led Martin, a former state legislator, 49.9 percent to 46.7 percent, just short of the state's 50 percent-plus-one-vote threshold for victory. Libertarian Allen Buckley pulled roughly 3 percent. That small margin, coupled with thousands of as-yet-uncounted absentee, military, provisional ballots and votes from several crucial precincts in the metro Atlanta area, could be decisive.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/758689.html

[Papa Boule]

9. AJC: More Georgians voted, but not as many as projected

Link.

66.9 percent cast ballots, up from 66.3 percent in 2004...

While falling far short of some projections, the percentage of Georgia voters who turned out during Tuesday’s historic presidential election was slightly higher than it was in the last election in 2004.

So far — and there are still absentee ballots outstanding — about 66.9 percent of the registered voters in Georgia cast ballots in the presidential election, according to figures from the Secretary of State’s office. That is more than the 66.3 percent of total voters who cast ballots during the last presidential election in 2004.

Turnout went up 0.6 percentage points.

It may not seem like much, but considering the large increase in voter registration this year, the percentage increase in turnout shows that voters really went to the polls. Almost 567,000, or 17.3 percent more Georgians cast ballots Tuesday than did in 2004, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office.

Georgia added about half a million new voters to the rolls this year, compared to 2004.

About 2 million, or 53 percent of those who voted this year, did so before Election Day, officials said.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University estimated that nationally, turnout would reach 64.1 percent, the highest since 65.7 percent in 1908.

Election officials in some Georgia counties had predicted turnout of 80 percent or more. Mark Henderson, spokesman for Fulton County’s election office, expressed surprise at Fulton’s total turnout early Wednesday, which appeared to be about 60 percent. “We had 77 percent of registered voters vote four years ago,” he said.

He thinks many people who were going to vote did so early and others may have stayed away, fearing long Election Day lines. Instead, lines were often nonexistent Tuesday.

[Stevepol]

10. Come on people. GA counts the vote in cyberspace. No paper at all

unless I'm misinformed.

GA doesn't even have the slightest justification to be called a democracy, so any announced result is just as valid as any other.

Why do people even bother to report the alleged results? They haven't made any sense at all since 2002.

Why go to the trouble and expense of an "election" when it would be just as easy to ask Premier Systems (Diebold) to print out the results ahead of time. GA could be the first in the nation to post their results and gain at least a measure of notoriety.