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.
posted by Tom Cleland @ 11/11/2004 05:42:00 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Good to hear a more hopeful view from the ground in Ohio.
This one is particularly pessimistic:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110804_stolen_election.shtml
So the claim is that the exit polls don’t match the results. How about an independent, scientific, follow-up poll, asking the simple question, “Who did you vote for?” If the discrepancy persists, a “Stand Up and Be Counted” effort may be called for. Usually, our right to a secret ballot is sacred, but in this day and age and in this case I believe most citizens of Ohio would grant this exception and waive that right in the interest of democracy. A web site would display every last voter’s name and survey response, all 5,481,756 of them. If the “Bush” total plus the “Won’t Say” and “Not Known” totals adds up to more than the “Kerry” total, then fine, case closed, accept the outcome, let the glory out. But if the “Kerry” total is greater, then perhaps there would be sufficient public outcry to destroy the electronic voting machines once and for all.
I just found out from my Secretary of State's office today that the $4000 per qualifying precinct allocation from the Help America Vote Act has not been distributed to the counties in Texas yet. Wasn't HAVA created so that the 2004 election would not be a fucked up mess like the 2000 one was?
Tom, this time I'm with Nader!!! This whole thing needs to be dissected by every citizen in this country who has any doubts and cares about this country/planet's future. Show 'em what we're made of!!! Or as Paul Jones said in the Revolutionary War when asked to surrender: "I have not yet begun to fight!"
HAVA Pages:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/index.html - Ohiohttp://www.sos.state.mn.us/HAVA/HAVA.html - Minnesota
All I want is to "HAVA" fair election. I don't have the resources to set up an Ohio voter database, but maybe you know some groups who would be interested.
Hi Tom,
Actually, the Minnesota link was for you and the Ohio link was for Ted. If everyone concerned were looking at the data for their own state, then we might just figure out what went wrong. By comparing the election returns from 2000 to 2004 and looking for strange anomolies. OK, never mind--I'm too optimistic sometimes.
According to your HAVA link, Hennepin County uses a precinct count for all 422 precincts.
2459 people voted in my precinct, and according to the counter on the vote reading machine, I was the 1100th voter at about 10:45 am. The numbers were Kerry 1468, Bush 966, Nader 13, Cobb 7, Harens 2, Badnarek 2, Peroutka 1.
Not sure if the Golden Valley Precinct 7 boundaries were affected as a result of the 2002 redistricting, but in 2000, 1138 people voted and the numbers were Gore 620, Bush 465, Nader 42, Buchanan 3, and Browne 3.
From the Nader campaign:
The Nader-Camejo hand recount in New Hampshire will begin this Thursday Nader-Camejo requested recounts in 11 wards where the results seemed anomalous in their support for President Bush and where the votes were counted on optical scan machines – primarily the Diebold AccuVote Machine. This Thursday five wards in Manchester and Litchfield will be recounted. The remaining six wards will be recounted soon. The Nader-Camejo campaign received more than 2,000 faxes from citizens concerned about the vote count who urged the campaign to request a hand recount in New Hampshire. (Review the request for a hand recount in New Hampshire.)
Are they gonna recount the votes by hand this time? If the computer is gerryrigged to alter the numbers, then it would give the same results as last time, wouldn't it?
And by the way, that's pretty funky that you can see how your precinct has been voting preior to you. Might that not affect how people vote?
The counter doesn’t show who people voted for, just how many people voted.
I emailed my local Nader contact about the paper trail in New Hampshire, but haven't heard back. Nader’s site has links to a number of articles. One claim is that some precincts in Ohio didn’t have enough equipment and waiting voters gave up.
I still don’t have a direct answer on the New Hampshire audit trail, but this USA Today article mentions optical scanning machines, which I imagine are similar to what we have in Minnesota. You darken the ovals on your ballot and then feed the ballot into the machine. If that’s the case, then the original ballots can be used for the recount.
"Briggs' analysis showed about three quarters of precincts with severe changes from 2000 were using Diebold's Accuvote optical scanning machines. Nader campaign representatives said they wanted to ensure the machines were accurate."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/evoting/2004-11-19-nh-recount_x.htm.
As for the touch-screen machines, where no paper trail exists, a UC Berkeley study shows that Florida counties using it showed a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1118-14.htm.
In the face of numerous reported voting anomalies, the Libertarian and Green parties are funding the recount in Ohio, and the Nader team is attempting to continue funding the recount in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign has been all too eager to throw in the towel in this 2004 boxing match. Just think, if by some miracle the results are overturned, Kerry will have to make it look like he was serious about winning!
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."
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