Overwhelming evidence of Republican election stealing, 2004

I'm neither a conspiracy theorist nor (normally) a very political person, but the newly-published (and meticulously researched) article in Rolling Stone magazine makes my blood boil.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...ction_stolen/1

The worst part is that nobody did anything, the media largely ignored it, and we're set for much of the same thing to happen in 2008 (and 2006.)

I would like to suggest that we, as a community of webmasters who are significantly impacted by the actions of our loser Republican neo-Nazis, might want to actively try to spread the word about this outrage. I would like to believe that if enough people read and understand what is happening, that they will force action to bring about change.

i read about some of that stuff on cnn and no one i talked to seemed to believe me - even though they believe everything else on cnn.

have sent the article url to some friends and relatives. thanks for the url.

I read all four pages of that article, and the supplementary articles it referenced.

The good news is that there were a number of indictments, prosecutions, and people stepping down from their positions. Unfortunately, as the article mentions quite a few times "the damage was already done"

This not only happened once, it happened twice, and as the article mentions, there are no safeguards to stop it from happening again. So what do you do?

America is a country where you're free to register to vote, and ultimately vote, and the people in power are free to invalidate your voter registration, or your vote, for any number of trumped up reasons. Why don't people care? Why aren't they shouting from the rooftops?

In Australia all citizens over the age of 18 are mandated to vote each election. If you don't vote, you are fined, no questions asked! Imagine that!

Taking action is most important. When I get back to the states I'll be more political then ever. Living overseas has taught me a lot. If you want to make a change contact your local party chapter. If you don't know how to contact them you can search this page and find your local chapter http://pdamerica.org/orgs/chapters.php .

Here are just a few things you can do to make a difference, the site lists a lot more:

Yard signs for candidates
Walking door-to-door with candidates
Hosting coffees and neighborhood meetings for candidates
Preparing mailings
Walking in parades with candidates
Phoning people to remind them to vote for candidates
Working as an election board member - and you get paid for this one!
Making a financial contribution to your party

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Originally Posted by Squirt

Here are just a few things you can do to make a difference, the site lists a lot more:

Yard signs for candidates
Walking door-to-door with candidates
Hosting coffees and neighborhood meetings for candidates
Preparing mailings
Walking in parades with candidates
Phoning people to remind them to vote for candidates
Working as an election board member - and you get paid for this one!
Making a financial contribution to your party

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All of those are excellent suggestions.

My frustration is that a LOT of people did all that and much more -- Michael Moore released Fahrenheit 9-11, and was set to have it air 2 days before the election on a large syndicated network... but the Republicans made some under-the-counter threats, and the airing was pulled. Likewise, there was an incredible get-out-the-vote drive like has never happened before... and the republicans corrupted the process so badly in Ohio that the polling organizations said it was as worse a case of it as they had ever seen.

Somehow -- and I do not know how -- Americans have to take back the system from the corrupt power brokers that are able to get away with the crap like the attorneys general in Ohio and Florida got away with.

Not only should those sleazebags go to jail for about 50 years, there should be incredible reparations. I mean, how do you compensate the people of the US for fraudulently putting somebody in office that was not elected by the vote of the people, and doing that in two consecutive elections?

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

Somehow -- and I do not know how -- Americans have to take back the system from the corrupt power brokers that are able to get away with the crap like the attorneys general in Ohio and Florida got away with.

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People as individuals need to get involved and keep moving forward, that's the only way things will happen.

I highly suggest you goto this site http://pdamerica.org/orgs/chapters.php and see what you can do.

Posting on boards is a great start and needs to be followed up by actions. Actions bring about change. Get personally involved and face to face, person to person, with others that have the same goals.

It was great marching for AB101 back in the day. A community of people expressing themselves, marching, protesting, and being noticed. Even if you lose, you still did your best.

You are subscribing to the same kind of hysteria which, say, other people honestly feel about the misinformation they hear about gays.

One of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory is that they cannot ever be disproven. The Rolling Stone article's case contains this in spades.

For example, the writer's troubling indication "(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote." Now I have worked in the Travis County Elections division and served on the ballot board. The honest answer is that smart, college degreed people often do not follow directions. Lots of people put off calling the voter's office to request a mail-in ballot. There is no conspiracy. People just wait too long. Also, the deadline to request a mail-in ballot may be three weeks before the election.... but if you are in Sri Lanka, you may receive your ballot in four weeks, so its ultimately delivered late.

People just screw it up. Have any of you found yourselves waiting too long to book your room or airfare? Same thing. Anyone can design that into a conspiracy.

And of course I can try to debate one of this guys's points, but then 24 more suspicious problems will pop right up like mushrooms after a rainfall.

There is nothing sinister with any Secretary of State's office, and it's a far stretch to argue that they can manipulate the outcome of elections. Rolling Stone even notes how piecemeal elections are conducted across the country, and that alone makes a case for how difficult it would be to conduct widespread fraud.

Operating elections is a very routine, boring, fill in the blanks business. You can have a close election in Ohio.... or Mexico.... and people refuse to acceept the results.

It's a great shame that Al Gore's legacy is his destruction in the faith people have about voting.

Steve

Here is another example of how this is pure hysteria.

You guys who run pay websites know that it takes a lot of knowledge about your industry to set your prices. And you never can have perfect knowledge of everybody's prices. And you cannot predict the future - what will porn sites be charging next month? What is your competitor charging? How low will they go?

So, let's say you are the Bush/Cheney Election campaign. Where do you get your knowledge about future actions? It would take a lot of amazing knowledge to orchestrate the specific states and counties that would determine the desired outcome.

Are you saying that Republicans knew they would lose Ohio, so their officers took steps beforehand to alter the outcome?

If they knew they would lose Ohio, did they know they would lose Wisconsin? The GOP spent a huge chunk of money in Wisconsin, and sent Bush there a million times. He still lost. Why wasn't the Republican governor of Wisconsin fixing the votes like the Ohio Republicans allegedly were doing? Why even bother, if they knew the outcome?

Fixing a Presidential election would require an impossible amount of knowledge regarding voter actions.

Oh but wait, I can't disprove any of this because its a conspiracy theory.

Maybe these fantastically gifted Republican operatives who have perfect knowledge on outcomes should go spend next year waving their magic wands at Dell and Intel's stock prices. It looks so easy.....

Steve

Steve you were just lazy in those last two posts

People aren't indicted, prosecuted, and don't step down if they're innocent :D

Minimally the Rolling Stone article is a call to arms for Democrats to take notice, do their part, and kick some ass the next couple years :bunny:

Anyone with a brain knows the election was rigged. I never heard so many people say they were going to vote Democrat as I did in 2004, but it amazingly still turned out that Bush "won." Didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that something very fishy was up. I hope this article causes some outrage.

I thought long and hard before posting because one of the most basic rules of discussion boards is avoid discussion of religion and politics if you don't want war breaking out :)

Steve, I have tremendous respect for you, but respecfully disagree with your position. It's not hysteria, and I don't generally buy into that sort of thing. It's the combination of the blatant, over-the-top, documented abuses, for which people were punished and the courts admonished those who were doing wrong, and the fact that this sort of thing has happened now in two different states that's causing the problem here.

If one person in power has the ability to rig the outcome of a vote in a swing state for election, that is a corruption and subversion of our democratic process, and one that must be dealt with swiftly and severely.

I believe there is substantial evidence, from numerous bipartisan and/or independent sources to indicate there was severe and illegal vote tampering, fraud, and an organized campaign to ensure that democratic voters were denied the right to vote, denied registrations, forced to wait 10 times as long as voters in predominantly Republican precincts, and other egregious violations to call it something much more than just hysteria.

However, I also respect your right to a differing opinion. If you've done the research and read the same materials I have and come to an entirely different conclusion, then I respectfully agree to disagree with you :)

I think if you take everything else with a grain of salt, the 160k vote swing is awefully compelling. i agree with the article how in the world can a black bleeding heart liberal woman win more votes for the highest court in ohio than kerry did. I just don't see it.

Secondly, the fact that exit polls are less than 1% point off and we used them to cry foul in other countries elections...but somehow they just don't work for the US. I mean c'mon.

The good thing about all of this, people are being 'dumbed' by the Republicans more and more over the past few months so, at least we know how they will win the next general election. After all, they did it once and it worked :)

Regards,

Lee

First of all, no one has mentioned that your Rolling Stone article is written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If you were presented with an essay by Jerry Brown entitled "Why Oakland has become a better and more wonderful place to live recently" , would you think that is an unbiased analysis? Come on.

But I'm not the type to villify the messenger and not the message.... unlike how Mr. Kennedy does in his own article. I'll tell you what, here is another example of his article's mischaracterizations.

His section "V. ''The Wrong Pew'' talks extensively about voters being denied provisional ballots by the Ohio Sec of State, thus manipulating the outcome. What Kennedy doesn't tell you is that provisional ballots are not counted in elections.

Provisional ballots are for people who are ineligible to cast a real ballot. It is a result of the HAVA bill Congress passed after the 2000 election to make a uniform nationwide process of rejecting voters who for whatever reason cannot vote. Once again, this guy is mischaracterizing something into something sinister. I repeat provisional ballots are not counted
so even if they issued thousands of them, they would not have been counted.

(Interestingly, Kennedy upholds the HAVA bill here, but I wonder if he feels the same way about it's requirement that all voting to be conducted on electronic voting machines)

This is a precise example of mischaracterizing what happened and twisting it.
Just like how people twist and mischaracterize our businesses for their own purposes.

I've now specifically rebutted two points of why there was not enough voter fraud in Ohio to change the outcome. But remember, this is a conspiracy theory, so no amount of intellectual ammunition will take down this article of faith.

Steve

I guess I should have taken my own advice about posting political issues on a message board.

Never mind.

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Originally Posted by desslock

His section "V. ''The Wrong Pew'' talks extensively about voters being denied provisional ballots by the Ohio Sec of State, thus manipulating the outcome. What Kennedy doesn't tell you is that provisional ballots are not counted in elections.

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Huh? WRONG!

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The voter’s name is not on the official roster of voters and the election officer cannot verify the voter’s voting eligibility on Election Day. The Elections Official’s Office will check the registration records. If further research determines that the voter is eligible to vote in the election, the provisional ballot will be counted.

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Pennsylvania

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You will be told whether your Provisional Ballot was counted, partially counted or not counted. If your Provisional Ballot was not counted, you will be told why your Provisional Ballot was not counted.

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Ohio

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Every voter must provide proof of identity at the time of voting. A person who casts a provisional ballot and does not provide acceptable proof of identity at the time of voting is allowed to provide such proof within 10 days after the election, in accordance with law.

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Etc, etc.

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While provisional ballots have been used in some states in the past, HAVA is the first federal law to require their use nationwide. Section 302 of HAVA requires that people who declare that they are registered voters in a jurisdiction, but whose names do not appear on the list of eligible voters, be permitted to cast a provisional ballot. These votes must then be counted, if the voter is later determined eligible. HAVA requires officials to follow these procedures:

Notification - An individual whose name does not appear on the list must be notified that he or she is entitled to cast a provisional ballot.
Affirmation - In order to cast a provisional ballot, the voter must affirm that he or she is a) registered in the jurisdiction and b) eligible to vote in that election.
Transmittal - Poll workers must transmit the provisional ballot or the information contained in the affirmation to the appropriate state or local election official.
Counting - If the election official determines that the individual is eligible to vote under state law, then the provisional ballot should be counted.
Confirmation - Election officials must establish a free access system (such as a toll-free number or web site), allowing provisional voters to ascertain whether or not their provisional ballots were counted and, if not, why not.

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http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw...s_rules01.html

Hey Chip:

Actually I have no problems at all with posts like these. Of course you honestly feel the way you do, and I respect that too. Remember, I live in a town where bumper stickers like "Some village in Texas has lost its idiot" are extremely common, and the town shut down on Saturday for Ann Richards' funeral.

Squirt earlier suggested to do something constructive. I'd suggest to all of you to call your local county and work an election as a judge. I do it because I feel like I am performing a civic duty for my local community, and I enjoy the opportunity to meet my neighbors. (you do not do it because of the hours required or the financial compensation)

You will also get an inside view of the democratic process, and how things work. It does hit close to home for me, not so much because the attacks are on Republicans. I am more sensitive to what I perceive as attacks on the institution of the voting process, which I believe are untrue and simply scare people.

But our perceptions are our realities.

Steve

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Originally Posted by desslock

I'd suggest to all of you to call your local county and work an election as a judge. I do it because I feel like I am performing a civic duty for my local community, and I enjoy the opportunity to meet my neighbors.

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CHEAP SHOT ALERT!

I know I feel better knowing that rightwing zealot Steve is taking part in deciding who will be elected to represent me in the state of Texas. NOT!

I'm sorry Steve. I couldn't help it.

But seriously, I can not understand how a gay man can be republican. I know, I know... you say you are a libertarian or some other such nonsence. I can understand being fiscally conservative. But socially, you HAVE to be liberal. Don't you? Btw, this republican party hasn't been fiscally conservative for 2 seconds during this adminstration.

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Originally Posted by Xstr8guy

Huh? WRONG!

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Xstr8guy:

I am correct on this.

I can drive to Dallas and go to your polling place on election day. I can request and will be issued a provisional ballot because I do not appear on the voting list.

I will then go and fill it out the provisional ballot with my choices.

But it will not be counted with the ballots.

After Election Day, the elections division takes the provisonal ballots (unopened) and determine the elligibity of the voter. They would determine that Desslock is not registered in Dallas County, so the process stops right there. It's not counted. Which makes perfect sense as I do not live in Dallas, so why should I be elligible to vote for your mayor or state senator anyway?

The provisional ballot law frankly just confuses people, and effectively is a "bait and switch." There are rare examples where someone does not appear on the voter rolls, but should. It's very rare. Most of the provisional ballots I have issued are to college students who want to vote, but never bothered registering here in Austin. But there are other cases.... but it's a tiny number of cases.

But then how do you feel about the same HAVA law's requirement for electronic voting machines?

Steve