Election Fraud? Part Two

My cousin sent me a good link:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm.

This link has tabulated results from Florida by county:
http://uscountvotes.org/.

According to their site, of the 7+ million votes cast in Florida, Bush had a reported margin of victory of less than 400,000 votes. However, in counties using optical scan machines, he received about 600,000 votes more than the expected results based on party registration, after you subtract Kerry’s increase. Ironically, the e-touch screen counties did not show the same difference. This could be because those counties received more scrutiny from poll watchers.

I also watched and enjoyed the Votergate movie on http://www.votergate.tv/, a documentary in the style of "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Awesome West Wing episode

Tonight’s episode of West Wing had all of my favorite things – hybrids, wind power, bloggers, even chess! If only Jed Bartlet were President. At least we have them as a sort of shadow government!

Changing horses in midstream

Not sure what to make of Bush’s shakeup of a third to a half of his cabinet. The worst case scenario is that new members come in to do the dirty work, while the best case is that the old members testify at his impeachment proceedings!

Poor English with the English

In his joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the President uttered what sounded like another Bushism:

"I think it is fair to say that I believe we've got a great chance to establish a Palestinian state," Bush said. "And I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United States on such a state."

Is he sure he doesn’t mean the "capitol" of the United States, Washington, D.C.? The U.S. debt is already approaching $7.5 trillion, and this could be one way to pay it down. Then again, I thought the capitol was already bought and paid for.

Election fraud?

A lot of people have been discussing possible fraud in the 2004 presidential election. I’m waiting to see more evidence, but in the meantime, here’s a sampling of what I’ve heard:

My cousin emailed me a message from the group stoplfas. Part of it reads, "To put the focus where it belongs, there seems to be a definite pattern that in the states using paper ballots, i.e. a hard copy that can be recounted, the differences between the exit polls and the vote tallies are within the margin of error that might be expected. In the states using machine voting without a paper trail, the differences between the exit polls and the vote tally are outside the margin of error and the machines consistently deliver a higher percentage of the vote to Bush than the exit polls, some times by as much as 7%."

Here’s a quote from Common Cause, forwarded from the Minnesota Nader campaign: "In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system reported that Bush received 4,258 votes while Kerry received 260 votes in a precinct where records show only 638 voters cast ballots."

The Nader national campaign recently released a statement with included the following: "In our view, election 2004 is not over because of concession speeches. Rather, elections are over when every vote is counted and certified. In the last few days voting rights activists around the country have sent more than 1500 faxes urging this campaign to challenge electronic voting results because they have identified trouble spots in several states requiring further investigation. On Friday, we were the only presidential campaign to file a request for a hand recount in New Hampshire, the state with the first recount deadline. We are now looking at Ohio and Florida, whose deadlines are coming up this week. We have also written to all the states where write-in votes are still being counted to make sure that no votes are discarded. And today Ralph Nader challenged John Kerry and John Edwards to follow through on their promises before and after the election to make sure every vote counts, starting in Ohio."

Here are some additional links:
http://www.indyvoter.org/
http://www.nov3.us/
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml

See also my "2008" post which has some comments from Sheryl and Ted. Ted lives in Ohio.

2008

Just a heads up: I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton or John Edwards in 2008. Even Dean and Kucinich are ruled out now. I’m not sure about Russ Feingold. Maybe I would vote for Cynthia McKinney. Not sure of course if Nader will run again. Camejo and Cobb are other possibilities. There were fewer of us this time, but you never know when you might need us!

Silver Lining

Most Democrats are taking comfort in the election of Barack Obama as Senator from Illinois. For me, the biggest silver lining is the election of Cynthia McKinney to the U.S. House in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District. She lost her seat in the 2002 primary due to a Republican-orchestrated crossover vote, after she had spoken out against the Iraq war and 9/11. She recently co-authored an article on 9/11 for Ruppert’s site:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110204_mckinney_fitts.shtml
http://www.cynthiaforcongress.com/media/victory2004.html