Did Scott Brown really win in Massachusetts? (MUST-READ)

[HomerRamone]

http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground/browse_thread/thread/700b60dffc7a7e1a

<...>

"Where votes were observably counted by hand, the Democrat Martha Coakley defeated the
Republican Scott Brown by a margin of 2.8%; where votes were counted unobservably and
secretly by machine, Brown defeated Coakley by a margin of 5.2%."


The study goes on to refute the various rationalizations that are always used to explain
such bald anomalies away. And it also notes, correctly, that the media all but universally
proclaimed Brown's "upset victory" a "sign" of the Tea-Baggers' electoral prowess--
even though there was no evidence that Brown had won, beyond the say-so of those
private companies.


So what we have here--and not just in Massachusetts--is a wholly faith-based voting
system, and a political establishment (both parties and the media) inclined to swallow anything,
as long as it advantages the right.


If you do care about this issue, and the integrity of our elections this November, please
send this report to everyone you know, and agitate for its discussion by the press. And
if you have a couple bucks to spare, or know someone who does, please do what you
can do to help fund EDA, without whose work there is no hope of salvaging, or realizing,
our democracy.

http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/BelieveIt_OrNot_Final8-30-10_1.pdf

[Joanne98]

1. We need our Democrats to STOP CONCEDING UNTIL THE VOTES ARE COUNTED!

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

75. +1

[tritsofme]

2. This is always an easy one for me. In any race in the country, if the GOP wins, it was voter fraud.

If the Democratic candidate wins, well it was still voter fraud, but they just didn't steal enough votes. If every election in the country, including top down Democratic controlled Massachusetts, wasn't rigged at every turn, Democrats would at minimum get 80% of the vote in every single election. That's just how popular we are, nobody ever disagrees with me.

[HomerRamone]

4. We have NO WAY of knowing.

That's the point!

[fascisthunter]

14. One Aspect Here to Not Ignore is the Fact We Don't Really Know

we the people are not in control of our election process. That is a FACT!

[TransitJohn]

17. NOT VOTER FRAUD. ELECTION FRAUD.

:hi:

[Dawson Leery]

3. k/r

[Tesha]

5. Oh bullshit!

Anyone, I mean *ANYONE* on the ground in Massachusetts
before the election knew Brown was going to win. You
could tell by *ANY* of the conventional measures such
as:

o Polls
o Bumper Sticker counts*
o Lawn Sign counts*
o Asking people on the street
o Listening in on conversations

Coakley tried to phone it in. Brown actually worked
for it. And he kicked her non-campaigning ass fair
and square.

Tesha


* The *ONLY* Coakley bumper sticker I *EVER* saw
was on a car in New Hampshire with New Hampshire
plates. And I don't remember *EVER* seeing a
Coakley lawn sign.

[Canuckistanian]

12. That's true, Coakley ran a pathetic campaign

I seem to remember that she went on vacation A DAY before the vote.

[TheCowsCameHome]

13. She didn't deserve to win.

She seemed to think the job was hers, just for showing up.

[JAbuchan08]

36. Oh really?

I thought we measured election victories in votes. The passion on the Brown side may have been enough to convince you that the election was on the up and up, but we don't measure electoral victories in bumper stickers.

[Tesha]

51. Fine. Believe your fairy tales if it make you feel better. (NT)

[Yeshuah Ben Joseph]

74. Coakley was a pathetic weak candidate

but that doesn't exclude the fact that any election where the votes are "counted" by electronic machines is suspect.

[Tesha]

76. Save your fire for an election that is really and truly stolen.

The Presidential Selection of 2000, for example.
Between Choicepoint Systems disenfranchising 90,000
valid voters, the dubious recounts, the "Republican
Riot" to stop the count, and, most eggregiously,
Bush v Gore, *THAT* election was stolen.

Tesha

[Yeshuah Ben Joseph]

78. Have you ever lost a rigged vote?

Believe me, I have. Does the phrase "Give Us Barrabas" ring a bell?

The right wingers of the day (the Pharisee Leadership Council) rigged that one, and Pilate didn't bother with a recount.

And we all know what happened then. :(

[onethatcares]

6. all you have to remember is this.

if the USSC would have selected Al Gore over * in 2000, the diebold/ess/sequoia machines would have been tossed into the nearest scrap heap in a heart beat.

since then, aside from the landslide for President Obama, I don't trust those too close elections.

You called it right. "faith based voting". But when was the last time a true progressive that speaks out was elected. (kudos to you Alan Grayson)

[SoxFan]

7. Get a grip

Coakley ran a terrible campaign. It was a top-heavy, unenergetic mess.

I have dozens of friends and family members in Massachusetts, and most of them voted for Brown. He ran a better campaign, plain and simple.

[ThomWV]

9. OK, he may have won fair and square, but that does not mean we don't have a voting problem

[Recursion]

34. Delete

Replied to the wrong post, sorry

[BzaDem]

8. Why does ANYONE claim that is even evidence of fraud?

I mean, if Mississippi uses e-voting machines, and Rhode Island uses hand counting, would you say the results were rigged if Mississippi voted more Republican than Rhode Island?

:rofl:

I would be more surprised if there WASN'T a divergence.

To assume that divergences between e-voting and hand-counting always imply fraud, you also have to assume that each country randomly and independently decided whether or not to use e-voting or hand-counting (as opposed to other factors such as ideology, rich/poor counties, etc).

This is not to say that e-voting is a good thing; e-voting should be banned by law nationwide. But the idea that divergence between e-voting and hand counting results alone implies fraud is such a silly idea that it isn't worth much time to discuss it.

[SoxFan]

10. Thank you

A few years ago, some conspiracy types were pointing to the differential between certain New Hampshire towns as evidence of malfeasance. I tried to point out the demographic and socioeconomic reasons for the results, but they would have none of it.

[tomp]

41. you think results like these are within the realm of coincidence?

in every place there was a hand count coakley won and in every place there was a machine count brown won.

you can live with that statistically, enough to arrogantly dismiss other posters, no question in your minds?

[Recursion]

42. Look at which counties use e-voting and which use physical ballots

The mystery disappears.

[tomp]

44. is that historically the pattern?

hand counts go to dems, machine counts go to repubs?

[Recursion]

46. Poorer urban districts don't get electronic voting machines

Richer suburban districts do.

You're mixing up the causality. E-voting doesn't make you Republican, being Republican makes you use e-voting.

[tomp]

47. i'm not mixing up anything.

has an e-voting district ever gone democratic?

[Recursion]

48. Yes NT

[tomp]

63. and has a paper district ever gone repub?

should have asked that last time.

sorry for the delayed response. i'll be going to sleep now but would be happy to see your response tomorrow.

[Tesha]

67. Happens in NH all the time. (NT)

[pipi_k]

80. Yes...my town did. Lots of the little rural towns in my area

have paper votes, and a surprising number of them also went Republican.

And we're not even talking about 'hanging chads' here...

#2 pencil, mark the box with an "x"


I suppose the vote conspiracy crowd would like to make something of that, too...

:7

[Stevepol]

11. Nobody knows what the real result of the election was.

My tendency is to trust the election defense alliance. They have some figtures from the election, comparisons between the paper and the machine.

As far as I know, these comparisons are the closest anybody can come to actually verifying the election one way or the other.

The believers in the election results as reported by the machines and nobody and nothing else probably believe that Green won the Dem primary in SC as well. The only evidence there is that in every case and in every precinct where a comparison could be made, Pawl (the real Dem candidate who actually won the election) won by about 60-40, while in the same place, Greene won by 60-40 on the machines.

It's interesting that Carter, when asked if he wouldn't use his organization to monitor the election in the US as he had done in Venezuela when Chavez won his sweeping victory. Carter said he couldn't do it here because there's no way to verify the results. In Venezuela, 50% of the machine counted paper ballots were recounted by hand as a way of verifying the election. That's what a real democracy is like. What we have in this country is some form of democracy I suppose, but it has nothing to do w/ a real democracy, a cyber-democracy perhaps or a faith-based democracy.

If the vote is counted in secrecy without verification, it's impossible to have a democracy.

[friendly_iconoclast]

21. Brown won. Coakley couldn't have run a worse campaign if you'd paid her.

You're not helping fight the very real problem of election e-fraud by claiming that it's just unpossible for a Republican to

win a fair election.

[valerief]

15. All of our voting is friggin' faith-based. Well, crook-based. nt

[pipi_k]

16. There were plenty of places

out in my area that are so small the votes are counted manually.

Scott Brown still won in some of those areas.

[BlueCheese]

18. Yes, he really won.

Didn't polls show him to be ahead going into Election Day?

It's getting a little tiresome for us to always complain about election fraud when our side loses an election. Where was all the election fraud when we swept all the races in 2006 and 2008?

[EFerrari]

19. We did have a problem in the 2006 midterms

in Southern California. The Republicans swore the member in before the case could go to trial, iirc In 2008, there were problems in the Los Angeles Country Dem primary and also in the election.

Just because these stories aren't in the corporate media doesn't mean they're not there, unfortunately.

[BeFree]

20. Mass Special Election Numbers

In the 2008 general election the numbers were:
1,104,284 McCain
1,891,083 Obama

Total votes: 2,995,367

In the special election for the senate seat one year and 2 months later:
1,168,107 Brown + 63,823 more than McCain
1,058,682 Coakley - -832,401 less than Obama

Total votes: 2,226,789

Totals difference: 768,578 less votes than 2008.

So not only did every McCain voter turn out -100%, but in addition, 63,823 Obama voters voted for the R?

And nearly 40% of Obama voters stayed home?

I don't think so, but those are the numbers.

[pipi_k]

24. No, actually...

a lot of Obama voters didn't stay home. A lot of them voted for Scott Brown, who ran with an "Independent" platform.

Yes, he was the Republican candidate, but his campaign ads very craftily kept mentioning the word "Independent" in them.

Whether people were aware of it or not, that word had a lot to do with guiding their choice.

A whole lot of Republicans voted for Scott Brown.

But so did a whole lot of Democrats and registered Independents.

Mass might be a "blue" state, but we're quite accustomed to electing Republicans without batting an eye.

And, before the election itself some of the local channels did some "man on the street" questions regarding their likely choice...

Scott Brown replies outnumbered Martha Coakley replies by a surprising margin. Or maybe not so surprising, considering that Coakley really DID run a rather shitty campaign.

[BeFree]

25. You're joking, right?

You believed the medias' man on the streets infomercials?

[Tesha]

26. If you didn't choose to believe the media, you could have done it yourself.

Any reasonable poll of folks you ran into would
have shown you Brown winning in a walk.

Someday, Democratic big-wigs will learn that they
*CAN'T TAKE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS FOR GRANTED*. Unfor-
tunately, 2010 is obviously not that year.

Tesha

[BeFree]

29. 109,435 votes Brown won by

That means if 55,000 voters switched, Coakley would be Senator.

That is too close to call, but you called it a 'walk' which shows you are just making it up.

[Recursion]

33. 110,000 is "too close to call"?

Remind me not to hire you as an accountant.

[gophates]

37. Actually, yeah, it is.

This is the size of the problem and every time we let it stand, they become more and more brazen. The NY TImes has an article today that says Republicans could wind up with 30 governorships. There is just no way that happens without massive fraud, abetted by the CONservative lapdog media. The last time the Thugs won a Presidential race fairly was in 1968. So I'll buy anything.

[Recursion]

38. So it's impossible that our message and candidates do not appeal to voters?

That can simply not be the case?

[gophates]

39. It could be the case, but not this time.

Not with that 8% disparity. Not with a long-standing record of Republicans stealing elections.

[pipi_k]

53. they weren't infomercials

these were actual news anchors going out talking to ordinary people.

Local news channels, you know?

[oberliner]

73. Polls before and after the election showed about 1 in 5 Obama voters voting for Brown

The majority of them identified themselves as "independents" rather than Democrats.

[Kip Humphrey]

22. Hmmm 2.8 + 5.2 = 8% change = 4% vote flip... Oh, that's soooo 2004.

[Junkdrawer]

23. I'm afraid this is a preview of the fall....

The media inflation of the obviously paid-for "grass roots" Tea Party together with the Gibbs/Rahm attacks on the Democratic base provides the necessary cover for election theft.

It is no longer necessary to convince people to vote one way or another. It is now only necessary to convince you that your neighbors were persuaded to vote one way or another.

[Truth2Tell]

62. Exactly. The name Alvin Greene sounds black. Case closed. nt

[Hawkowl]

27. THIS is why the Rethuglicans will retake Congress

THIS is why the MSM is constantly blathering on about Obama's plummeting poll numbers. THIS is why the MSM is constantly trumpeting how the Dems are going to lose power.

And the Democrats deserve it! Obama deserves it because of his steadfast refusal to focus on voter fraud and his insistence on not holding any Rethuglicans accountable for anything.

But what do I know. I'm a fucking retarded drug user. NOT!

[Arkana]

28. Not everything is a massive conspiracy.

Brown campaigned effectively, Coakley flailed about in the last three weeks like a drunk homeless man when she realized that the 30-point lead she pissed away coming out of the primaries wasn't coming back.

He won, fair and square--even if he did lie to people to fool them into voting for an "independent Republican".

[Recursion]

30. Do non-Massholes have *any* idea the horrid state of the Democratic party in MA right now?

We have the former speaker, the former state senate president, and another former state senator (all D's) about to go to jail for a long time for corruption (and the former speaker is going to court to keep getting his pension until his trial). We have the man who is literally FBI public enemy #1, Whitey Bulger, brother of a former state speaker, living pretty openly in the Boston area and the only response is for the local FBI field agent to warn video stores that he likes Irish movies and might try to rent them. We have a governor who has so alienated elements of the party (for good and bad reasons) that his treasurer is running as an independent against him for governor, and is polling at 16%. Meanwhile the Republican guy Baker, a health insurance executive, is within 5% of the governor and closing fast. His entire advertising campaign is "Had enough?". That's all he has to say, we all know what he's talking about, and even we Patrick supporters are muttering "yes, we have". Baker really isn't running against Patrick, he's running against the fact that the state Democratic party is an utter wreck, an absolute shambles, an embarrassment. Coakley's non-campaign was just another symptom (she went on a 3-week vacation to the Caribbean after getting the nomination, when unemployment in the state was hovering around 10%, then went on the radio and called Curt Schilling a Yankee's fan and said disparaging things about Fenway park, didn't buy any ads until the last week of the race, and during the debate literally talked about the Senate seat like it was some personal fiefdom of the Kennedy family).

Remember, guys, MA has historically been one of the most important states in the GOP's arsenal; "New England Republicans" haven't stopped existing, and the "west a' woostah" crowd has a lot of votes.

[BeFree]

32. That's awful

And your votes are counted on paperless secret machines....

Hmmmm, do I see a correlation here? You have politicians that may have never really been elected. Are they mostly crooks that Diebold helped put in office?

Man, that's messed up.

[tomp]

43. another reason not to trust democrats.

more corrupt than the repubs up your way, eh?

[Recursion]

49. Power corrupts

And the Democrats have been in power at the state level for quite a while.

[adoraz]

31. Wasn't Brown leading all the polls in the days before the election?

How do you explain that? Obviously those weren't faked.

It seems EVERY election a Republican wins was stolen. Stop being paranoid guys.

[BzaDem]

45. Of course. But that is a fact that doesn't conform to the OP's conspiracy theory bullshit

so the OP dismisses it out of hand. All the polling companies (including those run by Democrats and Coakley's own internal poll) are really just right wing Diebold subsidiaries, don'tcha know?

:rofl:

[pipi_k]

57. Yep...Polls....people on the street being asked which one they preferred...

Just about everything pointed toward a Scott Brown win.

But the Reynolds Wrap Crew just don't want to believe it.


Not even the Democrats here in Mass put up a stink about it because we all knew what the deal was.

Brown won fair and square.

[gophates]

58. Nothing fair when the Pukes control the media and voting machines.

I can't believe everyone just accepts it.

[pipi_k]

64. Why can't you believe it?

I personally don't think Republicans were so invested in him winning that they would bother to rig the election.

He clearly wasn't RW enough for most of the more extreme Republicans, some of whom may only have voted for him out of Party loyalty.

The fact that lots of Independents AND Democrats voted for him bears that out. We simply do NOT elect RW nutballs here in Mass. Scott Brown had the overall appearance of an Independent.

If there's one thing a lot of people don't realize about the people in this state it's that a great many of us come from pretty ornery stock.

If Brown fucks us over, you can bet he'll be gone in a heartbeat next election.

[gophates]

65. I don't believe it because I don't remember the last time a Puke won without cheating or dirty trick

I look at their record. They aren't trustworthy.

[pipi_k]

68. Um, not to be picky or anything, but...

there are lots of Democrats who aren't exactly trustworthy either.

You think one particular political party has the monopoly on honesty?


And put yourself on the other side for a minute. If voting machines were controlled by Democrats across the board, and Democrats happened to win some elections that looked close, complaints by Republicans would be taken seriously all the time?


Please!


I live in Mass. I voted for Martha Coakley. I was NOT happy when Scott Brown won.

But he did win. Fair and square.


People need to get hobbies and think of other things to occupy their time rather than raising a ruckus about a non-issue.

geez...

:eyes:

[gophates]

35. I believe the 2.8% number

I don't care how bad a campaign Coakley ran, there's no way in hell that Brown won. That's an 8% swing, and if you add 8% to the Republican number, of course they're going to win.

The problem is, people aren't being told the truth. Where is the MSM reporting this? Nowhere. That's why it's past time for a Fairness Doctrine. Maybe we need a truth doctrine and some sort of oversight of the media on OUR airwaves to make sure the truth is reported.

[Recursion]

40. How would a restored Fairness Doctrine increase the reporting of this "story"? NT

[gophates]

54. We would at least get someone on who *might* go against the right wing talking points.

I mean, imagine if Captain Oxycontin had to follow Ed Schultz and came before Randi Rhodes? As it is, he's on after Beck and before Hannity. No one gets a chance to hear anything different. If there were balance, we'd at least get someone who might treat this like the story it is.

[Recursion]

59. That's not how the fairness doctrine worked

It didn't mandate anything about a channel's lineup. It said if a licensee presented something about an "issue of controversy" the licensee had to do so in a manner that a government commission considered "fair" (people sometimes confuse it with an "Equal Time" rule, which is a different animal). I'll also add that neither the fairness doctrine nor the equal time rule were laws; they were administrative regulations made by the FCC.

[gophates]

61. We need something stronger than the Fairness Doctrine

Which was my original point.

[tritsofme]

50. Who gets to be the arbiter of what is and is not "true"?

You? Maybe the next Republican president could appoint Rush Limbaugh to the position? Sounds like a great well thought out idea.

[gophates]

55. It should be a panel of citizens not a politician.

After all, it's our airwaves. A civilian review board or something, like some communities have with cops. Only the board hears complaints about lies and makes a determination.

[tritsofme]

66. That pesky First Amendment is always a roadblock to authoritarians.

I don't think the government should be in the censorship game.

[gophates]

77. Supressing lies masquerading as news isn't the first amendment.

Supressing hate masquerading as news isn't the first amendment. Would you defend the Nazi News Network, because that's notfar from what Faux is.

[Recursion]

79. Yes, that's exactly what the first amendment is

Look at the partisan press they had back when they wrote the first amendment. They made Fox News look actually fair and balanced.

[RedCloud]

52. My embarrassing suggestion: Contact the Massachusetts AG!

Oh that would be Coakley. :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush: :blush:

[Matariki]

56. Very good reminder that we never DID fix the voting machine problem

and perhaps even got complacent about it with a Democratic victory last election.

[SpiralHawk]

60. Republicons ripping off Americans

...and American democracy.

As usual. Torturous.

The RepuubliBaggers got some crappy karma coming their way for all their pervo skankery.

[Kalun D]

69. Bingo (K and R)

""a political establishment (both parties and the media)""

It's very telling when there's a corrupt voting system recently put in place, the dems gain power, and then do nothing about it.

Because the corporate dems benefit from the system, just look at Blanche Lincoln as an example.

[Imajika]

70. Oh God, the voting conspiracies are back...

If the outcome in November is anywhere near as bad as many believe, DU is going to be literally full of these silly threads for months on end. Hell, maybe we will see the return of Bev Harris, the Black Box Voting people, TIA, etc, etc.

General Discussion will become a wasteland of these "we didn't really lose, the Republican's cheated" threads.

Despite the overwhelming polling evidence that the Democrats are in deep trouble, endless amounts of time will be wasted trying to explain how none of it it is real and everything is the fault of electronic voting machines.

[Junkdrawer]

71. I'm starting to take a Chomskyite view of all this...

Something like "Yeah, vote counting may be compromised, but the game is rigged WELL before a voter enters the voting booth."

[Junkdrawer]

72. And it looks like I'm not alone....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9080072#9080263