Bush Did Not Win the Election?

[Jovial_Kitten]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

Hardly in denial. Oh wait. Am I supposed to blindly accept the results and not ask any questions? Let me find my sheep suit. Does anyone else have a spare one?

 

[Alyxavior]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

hmm...actually...I think I just sheared it. You want a sheer suit?

 

[Judge Bean]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

The concession is not binding. Kerry is capable of resigning the honor, of course, though in that case the victory does not fall automatically to Bush.

As I have said, nobody seems to know what would happen if the winner fell or resigned before the inauguration. It doesn't go to Edwards automatically, either.

The accusations of fraud would have to reach the level of millions of votes, nationwide, before the inauguration; and would require substantial evidence. At that point, Bush would be called upon to concede defeat.

And I think that he would not, and that we would be in for the real ride of our lifetimes.

I hope for the sake of the country that the election is over, and I did not vote for Bush.

 

[Unintentional]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

Didn't mean to make you ruffle your fur, kitty kat. @);-

Most of those links in your and Sue's post, other than the one story where Bush got an accidental 5000 votes in one Ohio county that has been corrected already in the totals, are either neutral (meaning voting machine malfuncted and spoiled ballots in a totally non partisin way) OR pro-Kerry (meaning Kerry supporters flooded polling places with provisional ballots in an attempt to get Kerry elected).

Seriouisly, I went to every link you gave in your post. Other than the one Ohio story about Bush and the machine malfunctions, most of the stories seem to indicate a wide spread attempt by Kerry supporters to steal the election.

I know Kerry supporters are mad because they think their guy really won in 2000 and feel justified in doing whatever it takes to make sure Bush loses this time. FYI, New York Times, CNN, and many other super liberal news agencies did a hand recount and announced by any count, Bush won Florida.

FYI, I did not vote for Bush either.

Still friends?

 

[CaryP]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

Uni,

All I can say is, I like the cat with the Confederate Battle flag behind it. Let's leave well enough alone.

Cary

 

[TimeWizardCosmo]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

Alright, but how many OTHER machines malfunctioned that we don't know about? It would only have taken 40 machines in the State of Ohio with that kind of error to tip the election.

 

[sosuemetoo]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

It seems that the GAO has now been asked to look into the voting irregularities:

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ny08_...OJud110504.html

For Immediate Release ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Contact: John Doty ?
November 05, 2004 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 202-225-5635 ?

Senior Judiciary Committee Democrats seek
GAO investigation of voting irregularities

November 5, 2004



The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States
U.S. General Accountability Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Walker:

We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.

In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:

In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. \"Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes,\" Associated Press, November 5.

An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. \"South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal,\" Id.

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. \"Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes,\" Id.

In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. Id.

In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms. http://ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_patt.htm



The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. \"Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported,\" Associated Press, November 5.

Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. \"All Eyes on Ohio,\" Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/blog/1....blog/index.htm..

We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry.

Sincerely,




John Conyers, Jr. ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Jerrold Nadler ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Robert Wexler
Ranking Member ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Ranking Member Member of Congress
House Judiciary Committee ? ? ?Subcommittee on the Constitution

 

[sosuemetoo]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

This is from a Russian news outlet. Notice in particular the last paragraph that I have bolded the print:

http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/39...56_ballots.html

Did Bush fix the elections? - 11/09/2004 10:54

Why did Kerry throw in the towel so soon?

? The appearance of Osama bin Laden bang on cue was suspicious, to say the least, as is now the increasing evidence pointing toward election fraud in the United States of America on November 2nd. Exit polls in sensitive districts just don't add up to the official figures. Did Bush fix it?

? In Ohio, for instance, the sensitive state which gave Bush the 20 electoral college votes he needed, CNN exit polls among women awarded Kerry the vote by 53 to 47% and among men by 51 to 49%. The question was ?Who did you vote for? but the point is were the votes counted?

Let us examine the various complaints against the official result on November 2nd and let us see in how many ways the Bush regime could have influenced the vote, through ballot tricks.

Absence of Control

Russian observer Aleksei Ostrovsky declared that he was shocked by what he saw. ?It is enough to say 'I am Mr. Smith' and (the person) is allowed to vote. The same person can exit one polling station and vote again using the same procedure?.

Spoilage

These votes belong principally to African Americans, Hispanics or ethnic minorities, who have not been properly instructed how to vote and more interestingly, would be more inclined to vote for the Democratic Party. On average, these votes account for 3% of the total and can be excluded from the count arbitrarily, or included, depending on the whim of the Secretary of State in the State concerned.

For example, in 2000, Secretary of State Kate Harris in Florida decided to arbitrarily exclude the counting of 179,855 votes, the so-called hanging chads. It was worthwhile: Ms. Harris got a seat in Congress and Bush won the state.

In Ohio, 2000 the spoiled vote accounted for 1,96% of the total, 110.000 votes. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell stated shortly before the 2004 election, ?the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state's primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity?. The Ultra-right Blackwell would therefore have been well prepared for what was going to ensue.

In New Mexico, uncounted spoiled votes in 2000 accounted for 2,68% of the total, translated into 18.000 votes. Bush won the state by 11.620.

The Challenge

In some states, including Ohio, the Republicans adopted the Challenge, in which Republican watchdogs manned the doors of the polling stations and challenged those they thought might be ineligible to vote v mostly African Americans and Hispanics, who would be more likely to vote Democrat. The idea is to block the line, forcing people to lose patience and go away.

Provisional votes

Provisional ballots are often handed to African Americans and Hispanics, rather than the type of vote that will be counted. Provisional and absentee ballots are not always counted and it is the decision of the Secretary of State of the State concerned to decide whether to count them or not. Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. There were between 175,000 and 250,000 uncounted votes.

Turning away voters

Santiago Juarez, of the ?Faithful Citizens' Program? in New Mexico, stated that voters were turned away from some polling stations. In Ohio, at the Glenwood Elementary station in Toledo, over 200 people left the station because it opened late and then ran out of pencils v this being in a primarily Democratic district.

Voter Suppression

Before the election, the Baltimore Chronicle reported, ?Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling, ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that 'spoil' votes, John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily reach one million votes?.

In Ohio, Ken Blackwell tried to force through legislation requiring that registration applications not posted on the correct weight of paper should be discounted, then he sought to suppress the provisional ballots, challenging the validity of 35.000 new voter applications.

Manipulation of votes and results

In Florida, 13 counties reported more votes than voters, these accounting for 39.4% of the vote. In Ohio, at the Gahana 1 Precinct, Bush received 6,253 votes, Kerry 1,916 votes, and the others, 23. This totals 8,192 votes, which is strange, since only 4,346 people voted.

At another Precinct in Gahana, Ohio, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush and only 260 for Kerry, while only 638 people were registered as having voted.

Electronic vote and rigged machines

Hernando Country recorded 0 votes. In Ohio, 14,6% of votes cast were by e-voting machines, which are susceptible to hacking and fraudulent manipulation and the Republicans had worked hard to exclude the possibility of there being a paper trail to provide any proof.

In Florida, electronic scan machines registered a gain of 128.45% for Bush and a decrease of 21% for Kerry, whereas in some places a gain of 400% was recorded for the Republicans and in Liverty County, 700%. Strange.

Ohio purchased e-voting machines from the Diebold Corporation, whose CEO Wally O'Dell is a Bush fundraiser, who promised ?to help Ohio deliver its votes to the President?. What a good professional he appears to have been.

Fewer machines were placed in Democrat areas in many Precincts, causing long queues to form and people to turn away, frustrated. In Ohio, Blackwell held back the distribution of 2000 machines.

Electoral fraud

In Franklin County, Ohio, Ron O-Brien, County prosecutor declared to 10TV that ?people are being paid to register new voters?. One man who died in February was registered to vote and in another case, 25 applications belonged to the same person.

In Chaves County, New Mexico, which has an enormous Hispanic, African American and Native American population (who traditionally vote Democrat), Bush won by 68% to 31%. ??

Lost votes

In a county in North Carolina, 4.500 votes went missing due to software problems v the computer had run out of memory.

Not very impressive, especially for a country that likes to stick its unwanted nose into the electoral affairs of other nations and then to make snide remarks. On the basis of this evidence, the USA had better not ever again make any statement whatsoever about fair voting procedures, anywhere.

In conclusion, does this surprise anyone? Not really, since Bush and his regime have spent four long years telling lies and cooking up tall stories. The question remains, why did John Kerry throw in the towel so soon, since all this was taking place. Didn't he know? Wasn't he informed? Or did something more sinister happen?

Or, could something else be behind both Messrs. Bush and Kerry, such as the neo-conservative clique orchestrated by Cheney, a form of supra-political party eminence grise which really pulls the strings in the USA and dictates Washington's foreign and domestic policy?

 

[sosuemetoo]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

An interesting "conspiracy theory" to throw into the mix:

Basically he's saying that if these machines were hacked, think of the kind of people that would have hacked it and the way they would have voted. I have bolded his conclusion.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/...mm/10137159.htm

Posted on Tue, Nov. 09, 2004

Hackers rigging voting machines a real possibility


It's not my conspiracy theory.

But I've been scalded, via e-mail, just for noting that there has been a bothersome outbreak of rigged-voting rumors in the last week. I've been called a sore loser, a ''paranoid conspiracy theoriest'' and a liberal lunkhead. I've been accused of trying to help Democrats steal the election from President Bush. I've been called a Michael Moore flunky.

But, hey, it's not my conspiracy theory.

Since last Tuesday evening, the Internet has been jammed with untoward explanations of a Bush victory that occurred despite exit polls indicating things would go swimmingly for the challenger. I never suggested that I believed that Republic computer hackers had altered the true outcome of the election. I don't. But our nifty new touch-screen voting systems do nothing to discourage such paranoia.

Electronic voting machines have two unsettling flaws. They generate no paper records that can be used to check the actual results against the totals offered by the computer.

Worse, the operating systems that run the machines are the privately-held property of the manufacturers. The computer source codes are not open to public inspection. Yet computer scientists from Stanford, MIT, Rice and Johns Hopkins universities have warned that the secret operating systems are rife with vulnerabilities.

Anyone with a Microsoft Windows operating system on their home computer -- locked in a constant, losing battle to fend off viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and spyware -- ought to shudder with fear when they cast votes on machines manufactured by Diebold, Sequoia or ES&S (used in Broward and Miami-Dade counties). Without public inspections of the operating systems, without the paper records, election officials have no evidence to quiet talk that an election was rigged.

That doesn't mean I believe the conspiracy theories.

A number of voters claimed that when they voted on the ES&S system, they pushed a button for Kerry and a vote for Bush popped up in their ballot summary. But this is more likely an indication of a machine malfunction than fraud.

If a talented computer geek really wanted to alter an election outcome, voters would never know. Avi Rubin, who heads the computer security program at Johns Hopkins University, told me that tampering by a skilled hacker would be virtually ``undetectable.''

David Dill, the Stanford computer science professor who founded the Verified Voting Foundation, told National Public Radio last week that he was worried because, ''We don't know what's happening inside the machine.'' Dill said that, without independent checks or a backup system, ``We don't know what the invisible errors are.''

The computer scientists are bothered by widespread reports of breakdowns and errors in the voting systems.

But they are more bothered by what they don't know. Because state and local election officials have allowed the basic voting mechanism to remain a private company secret -- off limits to the public.

Angry Republicans, at least those firing off e-mails, seem to suspect that I'm conspiring with the computer science departments of several major universities to undermine the election of their candidate. But they ought to consider a vote-chilling reality.

Hackers (at least the few that authorities manage to nab) tend to be youngish, anti-establishment, anti-status quo, anti-corporate, anti-social. They're not likely to join the country club. They're not singing in the choir at an evangelical church. They're not security moms. They're not anxious to join the Marines and rush gung-ho into the battle for Fallujah. They're not likely to spend much time humming along with country music's Brooks & Dunn, who performed at the Republican National Convention.

Dear Republican critics: Which way do you suppose hackers will tip an election, when they decide, just for the heck of it, to have a little fun with the computer programs that now determine American elections?

 

[sosuemetoo]

Bush Did Not Win the Election?

Sorry to keep posting articles, but this subject is facinating and many have differing opinions on what might have happened.

I'll just give some interesting excerpts from this article from Rense:
http://www.rense.com/general59/rig.htm

Could there be a possible problem here? Let's see...

* In states where there were paper ballots the results exactly matched the exit polls.

* In states where there were only electronic 'touch-screen' paperless voting machines Bush showed an inexplicable 5-8 point or more difference from the polls, contradicting otherwise accurate exit polls.

* The software used in these voting machines is so sophisticated that you can't even check out the programming because it disappears leaving nothing to verify, no source code, no nothing.

Highlight:

* SoCalDem has done a statistical analysis... ...on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results.

* In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

* Analysis of the polling data vs actual data and voting systems supports the hypothesis that evoting may be to blame in the discrepancies.

* The media was a bit taken aback that the results didn't match the exit polls AT ALL. Most of the commentators were scratching their head in disbelief at the results. The media has gracefully claimed they \"just got it wrong.\"

Some examples?

WISCONSIN:

Kerry leads Female voters by 7%, Bush leads male voters by 7%. Male vs. Female voter turnout is 47% M, 53% F. That means Kerry statistically has a 7% edge in exit polling in Wisconsin.

Actual results however show Bush ahead by 1%, an unexplained difference of 8%.

NEVADA:

Kerry leads in the exit polls by a clear margin, but is still behind in the reported results. This state is even closer.

Actual is just 1% favor of Bush. Exit polls show Kerry with a wider margin. Women favored Kerry by 8% here out of 52% of total voters. Men favored Bush by just 6% out of 48% of total voters. Actual reported results don't match exit polling AT ALL in Nevada.

Easy Programming?

According to the programmer cited above here is how easy it is to \"make magic\" ...

We need COUNTERS - (B) = Bush; (K) = Kerry; (V) = Vote; (T) =Tally

1. If V = B, add 1 to B
2. If T = 8, add 1 to B; Clear T; Skip 3
3. If V = K, add 1 to K; Add 1 to T

This extremely simple bit of programming would shift 12% of the vote from Kerry to Bush, it would defy exit polls, and it would make it look like Bush had a huge popular win.