How The Bush Gang Stole Its Third National Election in a Row&Footprints of Elect

[Guest guest]

T

Sun, 5 Dec 2004 11:44:02 -0800 (PST)

Subject:How The Bush Gang Stole Its Third National Election in a

Row & Footprints of Electoral Fraud:

 

This one set the looney's off big time.

 

The thread attached to this article is hillarious.

 

T

 

 

 

How The Bush Gang Stole Its Third National Election in a Row

 

By William Hare

 

11/29/04

 

The 2004 election theft marks the third in a row for the Bush Gang.

While much has been written about 2000, unfortunately the pivotal 2002

mid-term elections came and went in a torrent, which was the way that

Republican strategists wanted it. The one thing they fear is sober

reflection followed by solid investigation. Fortunately they have the

complaisant mainstream corporate media looking the other way.

 

The 2002 mid-term elections were viewed as a grand triumph for George

W. Bush since he ostensibly " defied " the tradition that incumbent

chief executives suffer losses in such contests. While the corporate

media saluted him for his efforts and he received congratulations from

" liberal " pundit Paul Begala on CNN's Crossfire, disturbing trends

were observed by those detached enough from mainstream media ozone to

investigate.

 

In Minnesota Democrats were united behind Walter Mondale as a

replacement for the recently deceased Senator Paul Wellstone, who had

perished in a plane crash, against Democrat turned Republican Norm

Coleman. After some tough moments Wellstone had weathered

well-financed Republican onslaughts to secure a lead in the polls

before his tragic demise. Those same polls found Mondale maintaining a

lead going into Election Day, upon which a big surprise was recorded

and Coleman emerged the winner.

 

Republican Senator Wayne Allard was running behind in Colorado with

the momentum going in the other direction. When the results were

revealed he, like Coleman, had won in a final surge that the pollsters

failed to detect. The identical phenomenon occurred in New Hampshire,

where popular Governor Jean Shaheen, who had been on Al Gore's short

list for the vice presidency in 2000, appeared on her way to the U.S.

Senate. The pollsters were once more revealed to be dramatically wrong

as John Sununu Jr. pulled through with another one of those 2002

Republican final surges to nip his opponent at the wire.

 

The most widely observed case of Republicans seemingly clutching

victory from the jaws of defeat occurred in Georgia. This is the state

where Karl Rove enticed lackluster Congressman Saxby Chambliss to run

against Vietnam War hero and incumbent Senator Max Cleland. Despite

shameful television ads showing Cleland alongside Saddam Hussein and

Osama bin Laden the incumbent appeared to have weathered the storm and

was ahead in the polls, as was Democratic Governor Roy Barnes. On

Election Day the Republicans had scored two more of those amazing come

from behind victories in the face of negative poll forecasts as

Chambliss and Republican gubernatorial candidate Sonny Perdue both won.

 

A few perceptive analysts observed the strong showings made by

Chambliss and Perdue in polling areas when the widely heralded new

Diebold voting machines were in use. They dovetailed this information

alongside the fact that similar machines were being used in the other

races in which Republicans had scored dramatic triumphs.

 

John Zogby had proven himself to be one of the nation's most reliable

pollsters in 2000, when he correctly analyzed Gore's final surge and

ultimate victory in the popular vote category, as well as in the

Electoral College but for the fraudulent efforts of Jeb Bush and

Katherine Harris in Florida and the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court

majority in Bush vs. Gore, in which Federalist Society partisans

Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas refused to recuse themselves

despite conflicts of interest.

 

It is interesting to note that the usually reliable Zogby along with

some of his professional colleagues, who had followed the

aforementioned senate races closely, were mysteriously off by margins

as high as 10 to 13 percent. These key races made the difference as

Republicans took control of the United States Senate and Bush was

saluted for his successful barnstorming on behalf of Republican

candidates.

 

Despite all kinds of promises to fix things so that the 2004

presidential election could go off without major hitches, what

occurred was a malicious mix combining the worst of the 2000 and 2002

scenarios. When the exit polls proved to be highly errant in key

battleground states such as Ohio and Florida the mainstream media

simplistically explained that Bush voters had demonstrated a greater

reluctance to talk to pollsters than did Kerry supporters.

 

This argument sounds as convincing as the one Republicans made in 2000

that the reason why so many chads were spat out in Florida did not

relate to the age and unreliability of the machines, but because large

numbers of voters decided at the last second to not vote for

president, resulting in half-hearted stabs at the paper before them.

The same media that recited this nonsense repeatedly, as long as James

Baker could say it with a straight face, is now attacking Internet

critics citing corruption in the 2004 vote as " spreadsheet conspiracy

theorists. "

 

The latest effort in the feeble mainstream media assault occurred

today when the Miami Herald published an article contending that Bush

really did carry Florida by securing Democratic votes in the

traditionally conservative northern tier of the state. CNN Online

immediately picked up the story and ran it. The information was meant

to refute the contention that Bush's total was inflated by the new

touch screen voting machines used in the Sunshine State. The story

covered three small counties with four digit figures as part of a

smokescreen dodge to avoid the harsh reality that something was truly

amiss in the 2004 Florida presidential count.

 

When Robert Parry of the ConsortiumNews.com site recently noted that

Bush had what appeared to be highly inflated vote totals in the

heavily Democratic southern counties of Palm Beach, Broward, and

Miami-Dade, the Washington Post criticized him and fuzzed up the

process by using the same argument posed today in the Miami Herald.

Bush had won because of his strength among conservative Democratic

elements in the state's northern tier.

 

Parry immediately rebutted the article by pointing out that his survey

had deliberately avoided the state's notably conservative north with

its smaller population and concentrated on the traditionally vote rich

Democratic counties concentrated near Miami. In this connection it has

been reported that Bush may have received some 130,000 to 260,000

unaccounted for votes in the state's southern region. Where did these

votes come from?

 

The reason why the media seeks to shift the focus to the state's

northern section is that it is far easier to bootstrap the Bush

victory alongside Karl Rove's frequently repeated goal of adding some

four million votes from the 2000 total from conservative Christian

evangelicals. From the clumsy manner in which the mainstream media

seeks to take Robert Parry and others to task for pointing out voting

discrepancies it is obvious that no solid foundation exists supporting

the alleged Bush-voting surge.

 

On Election Night Ken Mehlman significantly crowed not about

Republican gains in the north but in the south, especially along the

Interstate 4 tier known as the I-4 Corridor. His effusiveness was

sought to spin optimism for a Florida victory, but in focusing on this

area the question once more surfaces: Where did this sudden surge of

Bush votes come from? Meanwhile in Democratic stronghold Broward

County the new Bush-appointed Supervisor of Elections, Brenda Snipes,

announced shortly before the November 2 election that over 90,000

absentee ballots had not been sent out. This discovery came after her

office had been flooded with calls from concerned voters who had not

received their absentee ballots.

 

Snipes eventually appealed to Secretary of State Glenda Hood in

Tallahassee to resolve the problem. What happened? We do know,

however, that Hood is wearing Katherine Harris's old mantle well. She

helped Jeb Bush prepare another " felon list " to disqualify African

American voters, just as her predecessor had infamously done four

years ago. There was another sea of " spoiled votes " tossed into

receptacles. Guess where they predominantly came from? If you said

African American precincts you are one hundred percent correct.

 

Greg Palast uncovered the Florida fraud involving Jeb Bush and

Katherine Harris four years ago. Significantly, his reporting came

from the BBC and not an American outpost, since the mainstream media

turned deaf when he came calling. After investigating the 2004

election he announced that Kerry had won both Ohio and New Mexico.

Palast noted that the " spoiled vote " discard piles were awesome in

both states, with African American precincts singled out in Ohio and

Hispanics from predominantly Democratic voting stations debited in New

Mexico.

 

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell lived up to his anticipated

billing by progressives of being the " new Katherine Harris. " An

African American, Blackwell followed orders from the Rove machine

obediently. In African American precincts Blackwell threw up

significant roadblocks. African American areas were provided with

woefully small numbers of voting stations.

 

This tactic insured long lines. The media reported the lines within

the context of a huge and unanticipated turnout. That was wrong.

Instead, as Ralph Nader noted, what occurred was a pre-designed effort

to force African American voters to stand in seemingly interminably

long lines to vote. " Due to the long lines many voters became

disgusted and left, not voting at all, " Nader explained.

 

Oh yes, and about those voting machines! There were numerous

discrepancies, particularly in Cuyahoga County, bastion of Democratic

vote rich Cleveland. That same phenomenon occurring in Democratic

South Florida of Bush votes popping up unexpectedly occurred in

Cuyahoga County as well. In fact, there were many precincts where

there were more Bush votes than registered voters.

 

Too little has been written thus far about what had to be a major

element of Karl Rove's current theft, not allowing a repeat of 2000,

when, through the Supreme Court stopping the Florida vote recount,

Bush " won " in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to

Al Gore. Rove set the stage for the vote theft by announcing his

target of four million new voters from the Christian evangelical ranks.

 

The complaisant mainstream media has embraced a stated objective as

accomplished fact by reporting endlessly that Bush won by turning out

committed voters responding to the urgency of such " social issues " as

gay marriage, stem cell research, and trimester abortion. Again, where

are the supporting figures? Those " spreadsheet conspiracy theorists "

keep unleashing more figures to support their view with regularity.

 

On Election Night, when a potential Ohio vote recount was discussed,

CNN's Jeff Greenfield noted that Bush held a 3-point edge over Kerry

in the popular vote. He cited this lead as a reason why such recounts

would be unlikely to succeed.

 

Greenfield's conclusion rests on a highly controversial figure. With

as many voting machine discrepancies as have already appeared, and

with Bush boasting top heavy margins in southern states, the distinct

possibility exists that votes were added to his total in " friendly "

states. Some of you will recall the so-called " Thanksgiving stuffing "

of four years ago when Florida Republicans padded Bush's figures with

late arriving veterans' votes after the Democrats were once more being

accused of being unpatriotic in allegedly turning their backs on the

men and women who serve America.

 

On the subject of machine discrepancies, Ralph Nader lent his support

to a recount in New Hampshire after a computer specialist observed

that Bush was achieving disproportionately high vote figures in

counties Al Gore had won substantially four years ago. While Kerry won

New Hampshire by a close margin, Nader was correct in observing that

if large numbers of bogus Bush votes are uncovered following a recount

this could serve as a warning bell concerning a national pattern.

 

Nader's comment prompted me to think back to Election Night, when I

observed that John Zogby was reporting that the presidential race in

Virginia was too close to call. In Zogby's subsequent Electoral

College forecasts he ceded the Old Dominion to Bush, but the fact that

the pollster found the race that competitive at the end indicated that

perhaps Kerry would receive more southern votes than anticipated. A

thorough analysis of polling figures near the end of the race

indicated that in such states as Arkansas and North Carolina, the home

state of Kerry running mate Senator John Edwards, the Democrats were

running respectably.

 

The fact that Bush not only swept the south, but did so in such

devastating fashion, is contrary to many poll findings, including

normally reliable state polling organizations. Adding votes to the

Bush total from his strongest region, where such figures were not as

likely to be challenged as in other regions, would be a way of padding

the Republican candidate's total.

 

As for John Zogby's reaction, he has indicated on his website that,

based on his findings, the reported election results appear

suspicious. An article on his site written by Colin Shea was called

appropriately, " I Smell a Rat. "

 

Even Bush apologist Dick Morris appears squeamish about events. The

veteran political consultant conceded that exit polling has become

advanced almost to the point of established science and is scarcely

wrong. To justify what happened in the November 2 election he has

accused the Kerry campaign of rigging the exit polling results. What a

pathetic response. If Rove had any kind of information, or even a

suspicion, he would pounce.

 

What is needed is a comprehensive national recount and analysis. Greg

Palast has committed himself to such an effort. So has Bev Harris of

the Black Box Voting site. The Green and Libertarian parties are to be

commended for their efforts in seeking an Ohio recount, as is Nader

for supporting such an effort in New Hampshire.

 

Veteran historian and political journalist Ronnie Dugger wrote an

article entitled " How They (the Republicans) Could Steal The Election

This Time " . It was published in the August 16-23 issue of The Nation.

I reread it before preparing this article. The only changes Dugger

would need to make if he wanted to run it again would be to change his

tenses from future prospective to current perspective.

 

http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/000869.php

Footprints of Electoral Fraud:

The November 2 Exit Poll Scam

by Michael Keefer

 

www.globalresearch.ca 5 November 2004

 

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html

 

Republican electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election was

widely anticipated by informed observers--whose warnings about the

opportunities for fraud offered by " black box " voting machines

supplied and serviced by corporations closely aligned with Republican

interests (and used to tally nearly a third of the votes cast on

November 2) have been amply borne out by the results.1

 

One of the clear indicators of massive electoral fraud was the wide

divergence, both nationally and in swing states, between exit poll

results and the reported vote tallies. The major villains, it would

seem, were the suppliers of touch-screen voting machines. There

appears to be evidence, however, that the corporations responsible for

assembling vote-counting and exit poll information may also have been

complicit in the fraud.

 

Until recently, the major American corporate infomedia networks (ABC,

CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and AP) relied on a consortium known as the Voter

News Service for vote-counting and exit poll information. But

following the scandals and consequent embarrassments of the 2000 and

2002 elections, this consortium was disbanded. It was replaced in 2004

by a partnership of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International

known as the National Election Pool.

 

The National Election Pool's own data—as transmitted by CNN on the

evening of November 2 and the early morning of November 3—suggest very

strongly that the results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled

late on November 2 in order to make their numbers conform with the

tabulated vote tallies.

 

It is important to remember how large the discrepancy was between the

early vote tallies and the early exit poll figures. By the time polls

were closing in the eastern states, the vote-count figures published

by CNN showed Bush leading Kerry by a massive 11 percent margin. At

8:50 p.m. EST, Bush was credited with 6,590,476 votes, and Kerry with

5,239,414. This margin gradually shrank. By 9:00 p.m., Bush

purportedly had 8,284,599 votes, and Kerry 6,703,874; by 9:06 p.m.,

Bush had 9,257,135, and Kerry had 7,652,510, giving the incumbent a 9

percent lead, with 54 percent of the vote to Kerry's 45 percent.

 

At the same time, embarrassingly enough, the national exit poll

figures reported by CNN showed Kerry as holding a narrow but

potentially decisive lead over Bush. At 9:06 p.m. EST, the exit polls

indicated that women's votes (54 percent of the total) were going 54

percent to Kerry, 45 percent to Bush, and 1 percent to Nader; men's

votes (46 percent of the total) were breaking 51 percent to Bush, 47

percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader. Kerry, in other words, was

leading Bush by nearly 3 percent.

 

The early exit polls appear to have caused some concern to the good

people at the National Election Pool: a gap of 12 or 14 percent

between tallied results and exit polls can hardly inspire confidence

in the legitimacy of an election.

 

One can surmise that instructions of two sorts were issued. The

election-massagers working for Diebold, ES & S (Election Systems &

Software) and the other suppliers of black-box voting machines may

have been told to go easy on their manipulations of back-door

`Democrat-Delete' software: mere victory was what the Bush campaign

wanted, not an implausible landslide. And the number crunchers at the

National Election Pool may have been asked to fix up those awkward

exit polls.

 

Fix them they did. When the national exit polls were last updated, at

1:36 a.m. EST on November 3, men's votes (still 46 percent of the

total) had gone 54 percent to Bush, 45 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent

to Nader; women's votes (54 percent of the total) had gone 47 percent

to Bush, 52 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader.

 

But how do we know the fix was in? Because the exit poll data also

included the total number of respondents. At 9:00 p.m. EST, this

number was well over 13,000; by 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3 it had

risen by less than 3 percent, to a final total of 13, 531

respondents—but with a corresponding swing of 5 percent from Kerry to

Bush in voters' reports of their choices. Given the increase in

respondents, a swing of this size is a mathematical impossibility.

 

The same pattern is evident in the exit polls of two key swing states,

Ohio and Florida.

 

At 7:32 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting the following exit poll data for

Ohio. Women voters (53 percent of the total) favoured Kerry over Bush

by 53 percent to 47 percent; male voters (47 percent of the total)

preferred Kerry over Bush by 51 percent to 49 percent. Kerry was thus

leading Bush by a little more than 4 percent. But by 1:41 a.m. EST on

November 3, when the exit poll was last updated, a dramatic shift had

occurred: women voters had split 50-50 in their preferences for Kerry

and Bush, while men had swung to supporting Bush over Kerry by 52

percent to 47 percent. The final exit polls showed Bush leading in

Ohio by 2.5 percent.

 

At 7:32 p.m., there were 1,963 respondents; at 1:41 a.m. on November

3, there was a final total of 2,020 respondents. These fifty-seven

additional respondents must all have voted very powerfully for

Bush—for while representing only a 2.8 percent increase in the number

of respondents, they managed to produce a swing from Kerry to Bush of

fully 6.5 percent.

 

In Florida, the exit polls appear to have been tampered with in a

similar manner. At 8:40 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting exit polls that

showed Kerry and Bush in a near dead heat. Women voters (54 percent of

the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 52 percent to 48 percent,

while men (46 percent of the total) preferred Bush over Kerry by 52

percent to 47 percent, with 1 percent of their votes going to Nader.

But the final update of the exit poll, made at 1:01 a.m. EST on

November 3, showed a different pattern: women voters now narrowly

preferred Bush over Kerry, by 50 percent to 49 percent, while the men

preferred Bush by 53 percent to 46 percent, with 1 percent of the vote

still going to Nader. These figures gave Bush a 4 percent lead over Kerry.

 

The number of exit poll respondents in Florida had risen only from

2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a powerful numerical magic was at

work. A mere sixteen respondents—0.55 percent of the total

number—produced a four percent swing to Bush.

 

What we are witnessing, the evidence would suggest, is a late-night

contribution by the National Elections Pool to the rewriting of history.

 

It is possible that at some future moment questions about electoral

fraud in the 2004 presidential election might become insistent enough

to be embarrassing. The pundits, at that point, will be able to point

to the NEP's final exit poll figures in the decisive swing states of

Florida and Ohio—and to marvel at how closely they reflect the NEP's

vote tallies.

 

The Ohio Fifty-Seven (is there a Heinz-Kerry joke embedded in the

number?) and the Florida Sixteen will have done their bit in ensuring

the democratic legitimacy of the one-party imperial state.

 

 

 

Michael Keefer, an Associate Professor of English at the University of

Guelph, is a former president of the Association of Canadian College

and University Teachers of English. His writings include Lunar

Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars (Anansi) and the

edited collection War Against Iraq: Critical Resources

(http://www.uoguelph.ca/~mkeefer

 

Note

 

1. Among the warnings, see Bev Harris, Black Box Voting: Ballot

Tampering in the 21st Century (Talion Publishing/Black Box Voting;

free internet version available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org); Infernal

Press, " How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election "

(Infernal Press, 25 June 2003); Steve Moore, " E-Democracy: Stealing

the Election in 2004 " (Global Outlook, No. 8, Summer 2004); and Greg

Palast, " An Election Spolied Rotten " (www.TomPaine.com, 1 November

2004). Early assessments of the election include Greg Palast, " Kerry

Won… Here are the Facts " (www.TomPaine.com, 4 November 2004); and

Wayne Madsen, " Grand Theft Election " (www.globalresearch.ca, 5

November 2004).

 

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE411A.html