Comments on: Elections, election…

By: jimminycricket

jimminycricket — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:57:40 +0000

“the sort of thing we’ve seen here is nothing new and nothing incredibly worrisome” (Third post from top, thread above.) Please elaborate on this statement. Is there a possibility that there are new things you haven’t seen? If so, how credible and worrying a possibility in your view?

By: jimminycricket

jimminycricket — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:56:15 +0000

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:45:56 +0000

http://www.gregpalast.com/ http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112804I.shtml

By: yoy

yoy — Sat, 27 Nov 2004 11:05:53 +0000

Robbo ‘’It’s Thanksgiving, so I don’t have time to dig up links to this evidence’’ It isn’t Thanksgiving now so perhaps you can dig those links up for us…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 16:08:16 +0000

Well it seems from the public hearings and sworn testimony in Ohio (see also here) that 'democracy' is not yet coming to the U.S.A., as least not uncontaminated by class warfare, racism and other such wild and savage conspiracies. CommonDreams.org has some more outrageous coverage.

By: Chairm

Chairm — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 07:40:33 +0000

>>> I know that having working people standing out in bad weather for hours on end did nothing to harm Bush’s chances. – Yep. Those unemployed people voted for Bush in droves, right? Heh. – Is your beef about the lack of seats at the polls? Do you think good weather would have NOT aided Bush voter turnout? But maybe you have more than a hunch that not many working people voted for Bush and, if there were long waits in que, only those who’d vote Dem were effected. I really don’t think that the lack of seats, less than ideal weather, and long waits actually tipped the election fraudulently, if at all, toward one candidate or the other.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 03:58:33 +0000

Whatever the story in 2000 (when Gore was certainly robbed by fraud and chicanery, not least by SCOTUS), you’re fooling yourself if you think Bush didn’t win the vote in 2004. If electronic voting machines were manipulated to the extent needed to change the overall result then even cursory statistical studies would show it beyond doubt (eg just compare the relative differences between exit polls and final results in precincts with different tallying methods). Nope, 2004 only demonstrated that there are a lot of really dumb voters out there.

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 03:57:27 +0000

By: p

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 03:01:48 +0000

I must say that I think that there was fraud during the past election … There have been numerous allegations made that the Democrats attempted to steal the election from Bush.

By: Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 02:41:48 +0000

Everyone who knows anything about election fraud and its history knows that we’ve been tending to get better on that over time, and this election was no exception. The move to computer voting created some problems, and we’ve gotten better at detecting problems due to better technology and more attention to finding them, but the sort of thing we’ve seen here is nothing new and nothing incredibly worrisome. After nearly 230 years as a republic, it’s a bit late for this “evolutionary” approach to battling electoral fraud. Some of us (such as those in Australia and Canada) take it for granted that tabulation errors in our elections are as close to zero as possible. These are elections conducted with paper and pen. Since both these countries share the same language (and one is next door to the US), thre seems no good reason why the US shouldn’t have learnt from them by now. No good reasons, but plenty of excuses: parochialism and donations from electoral voting firms among them.

By: Scott McArthur

Scott McArthur — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:38:19 +0000

What is so disappointing in the 2000 and 2004 American Presidential election is that even if actual fraud did not occur there is the possibility that fraud could have occurred. This is dangerous and it has been a grave error on the part of the policy and political elite in America on both sides of the spectrum not to have worked tirelessly to place the very possibility of fraud out of the public mind, both domestic and international. For in not attacking it with zeal there is de facto a tacit acceptance of ‘as good as possible’ which anti democratic forces in emerging domocracies all accross the world are going to take as a signal that perhaps the system can be gamed systematically. In particular the two Bush elections, ragardless of their degree of cleanliness, have shown how you pull off a successful electoral fraud. By this I do not mean the actual process of the fraud be it ballot box stuffing or ledger manipulation at the electoral commission. What I mean is that the process of certifying electoral fraud has been demonstrated. First, you must have an existing executive or other authority that can certify your results quickly. The United States demonstrated the method through the Supreme Court, an example which I am not sure was understood at the time. Under unrelenting appeals to order an authority can be tempted to certify a result as “good enough” The second element is to insure that the result is close. You can’t win by fraud by overwhelming majority, in fact the closer the better because it ligitimates the idea of “a close hard one contest”. I haven’t flushed this idea out completely but I think something very serious is happening and we had better take steps to stamp it out or the idea of Democracy could rapidly deligitimate. I can just see Putin seeing the 2004 presidential results as a green light to fiddle the Ukraine out of its choice. Legitimacy and transparancy should become our new political obsessions.

By: nic

nic — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:30:40 +0000

In the Ukraine you have a very different situation. You have a candidate who contested the the election rather than conceding. Now that’s a good point. Shame on Kerry (and Gore).

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:20:05 +0000

The WaPo is reporting that Yanukovych went so far as to fund a group of election monitors. The members of this group, described by the Post as “Democratic former congressmen,” were each paid $500 per day (plus expenses), and they returned a highly positive assessment of the first round of the Ukrainian elections. The Post notes that this view “ran counter to those of most other observers.”

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 20:13:46 +0000

abb1: the BHHRG are a pretty dodgy outfit and one of their most prominent members is one John Laughland who has a history “unusual” opinions. See one of my previous posts href=”http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002269.html” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002269.html for more info. Bottom line: this group has nothing much to do with a human rights agenda in the usual sense.

By: Jeremy Pierce

Jeremy Pierce — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 19:42:34 +0000

Since we stand to lose lots of Ukrainian troops in Iraq if the opposition wins, and because it probably angered Putin, to whom Bush is trying to get closer, I can’t see how we’d be considered biased in saying the opposition’s loss in this election was fraudulent. As for Florida in 2000, the clearest case of fraud I know about had to do with Republican-heavy mail-in ballots. I don’t know how much genuine fraud there was, but most of the complaints I heard were about incompetence in Democratic-controlled polling spots, which isn’t fraud favoring Republicans. It’s incompetence from Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. It’s also been pretty established that whatever shady activity there was on the part of Republicans, the ridiculous numbers being bandied about by prominent figures are just impossible, which leads me to doubt the veracity of most of it. Fabricating numbers and fabricating the phenomenon itself aren’t the same thing, but I wouldn’t put it past someone who fabricates numbers also to be the kind of person who will fabricate the whole phenomenon.