Linkmeister

Hey Link, I was trying to find an article that you linked to earlier in DT. Anyway came to your blog and found this. I had read this earlier today. The premise of the argument, I've always agreed with. I was up celebrating the Kerry win (because of the exit polls), when as the night went on, the impossible happened. ( And not like Gibby's home run in '88).

Now, I've always thought I might be perceived as a little crazy for believing the election was stolen, but the volume of Kennedy's citations makes me think that's exactly what happened. If not out and out vote switching through Diebold, pletnty of other methods to keep the Democrats away from the polls.

Anyway, the article is a long read, but well worth it. I'm forwarding it to several of my friends and acquaintances

Anyone who doesn't believe or realize that the current administration was never elected -- in fact, lost twice -- is willfully blind, guilty of cognitive dissonance, and is guilty by association in the highjacking of democracy.

I think the argument boils down to the fact that the results did not exactly match the exit polls.

Ummm

I wonder what the author has to say about a certain election in 1960.

A correspondent for "liberal" NPR attended a conference where the issue was discussed, and came to the same conclusion:

One last thing: There also was a session called, "Who Really Won the Election 2004?" This was an opportunity for the cyber-active bloggers who think the Ohio vote was somehow fraudulent to present their best case. They didn't. Their presentations were confusing, if not incoherent to this listener, and they all seemed to boil down to one complaint: namely, that the vote totals didn't match the exit polls. The problem with that argument is that if you can give good reasons why the exit polls were wrong in Ohio (and there are many), their entire complaint disappears.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5422642

So, pixelshim, are you arguing that two wrongs (or three, in this case) make a right? Do I read you correctly that because Kennedy's 1960 win was suspicious (no argument from me, btw, because objectively it was highly suspect in Chicago), Bush and the R's had the right to steal both 2000 and 2004?

The entire complaint doesn't disappear, by the way. Not only was Diebold owned by one of Bush's biggest backers and contributors, but the man actually went out and said publicly that he was going to ensure/"do everything I can" to see to it that Bush won the election. Had a Kerry backer owned the voting machines and made such public proclamations about seeing to it that Kerry won... and then there irregularities and inconsistencies between exit polls and results?

Conservatives would have been screaming bloody murder, calling for investigations galore, and sending thugs from DeLay's office in DC to Ohio to intimidate and shout down opposition (like they did in Florida in 2000).

But when the left reacts angrily to having had two elections stolen by the worst "president" in American history (one who's actually a Constitutional criminal), we're conspiracy buffs with no case. Yeah, there's consistency.

Pix, did you at least read the article and the evidence presented before reacting? It's not quite so easily dismissed when you read about the voter suppression tactics used by the Republicans to keep voters away from the polls.

someone at Daily Kos (a Democrat-site) suggested buying the Kennedy issue of the Rolling Stones magazine to demonstrate support. Being it's a weekend, I'm planning to pick up an issue myself.

Link, yes I did the read the article, as well as a skeptical analysis in Salon:

The money quote: "If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data."

Election hijinks abound on all sides, and I am unwilling to concede that either the 2000 or 2004 Presidential elections were "stolen". These are memes, mostly chanted in echo chambers, that have been discredited by neutral investigations.

Remember the "consortium" of news organizations that investigated Florida? Where most of the controversy occured in precincts managed by Demcocrats?

As Wikipedia recounts, "A larger consortium of news organizations, including the USA Today, the Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, the Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. According to their results, under stricter standards for vote counting, Bush won, and under looser standards, Gore won. [10] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request."

Stolen?

Link, I am certainly no fan of the President. After voting for him in 2000, I voted for his opponent in 2004. I look forward to a new ( and competent) chief Executive to be elected in 2008, and will gladly see Bush off to his retirement in Texas.

But, I will challenge myths wherever I encounter them, and the "stolen" elections are certainly fair game.

I think the Gore people made a mistake by not demanding statewide recounts in Florida rather than picking Democratic counties alone, but that one I left a long time ago. Ohio demonstrates to me that there should be state laws prohibiting election supervisors holding campaign offices for candidates, as we should have learned from Katherine Harris in Florida but didn't, thus allowing a man like Blackwell the opportunity to sway/swing an election towards his candidate. I don't think there's been enough critical reporting by major press outlets on what happened in Ohio, and I think it's because the "MSM" made a conscious decision that it didn't want to get into all that again, for multiple reasons.

I never put much stock in the exit polls business, but the incompetence (or worse) on the part of election officials who knowingly shorted precincts of a proper number of machines, who denied provisional ballots to people, and who put a lot of obstacles in the way of inner-city residents who wanted to vote deserved more coverage.

Link

I agree with you that Al Gore was ill-advised over what to do in Florida. They gambled that a recount in only certain precincts (where they not so coincidentally controlled the polling apparatus) would yield a narrow victory.

I also agree that the separation of office holders and election officials is a prudent reform in those states that allow partisan organizations to oversee the polls.

Ditto on the exit-polling . . . it is problematic to correct for those who allow themselves to be interviewed . . since they are over-represented by activists.

For the record, I am in favor of paper-trails in the case of where electronic polls are deployed.

BTW ... whatcha think of what happened in Milwaukee in November 2004?

and .. do you think your voting rights will be infringed in Hawaii, given the massive changes being contemplated for the state?

I haven't a clue about Milwaukee in 2004; in fact, I don't know what you're talking about there. Pointer, please?

If you mean the Akaka bill, no bets. We keep being reassured that if it passes it's only a preliminary step towards something, but who knows what? I'd prefer a plebiscite immediately upon its passage, in order to have those results in the politicians' hands before they do anything else, but...

Interesting rebuttal to the Salon article here from someone who was on the ground in Ohio in Nov. 2004.

In the 2004 election: "The number of votes cast in Milwaukee “far exceeds the total number of recorded voters.” At least 4,609 more votes were cast than people identified as voting and “multiple wards had discrepancies in excess of 100 votes.

Check it out at The American Center for Voting Rights.

Perhaps it is time for a national ID card to be necessary for both registering and for voting unless, of course, one believes that "you don't need papers for voting".