Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

jZnat writes, "In June Rolling Stone ran an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delving into the statistical improbability that Bush won the 2004 election based on massive amounts of evidence that support a Republican-sponsored election fraud across the country, particularly in Ohio. The GOP used a number of tactics in its fraudulent campaign including ballot-stuffing, denying newly registered voters (particularly in urban and minority precincts) their voting privileges via illegal mailings known as caging lists, inane voter registration requirements, preventing thousands of voters from receiving provisional ballots, under-providing Democrat-majority precincts with voting machines thus creating enormous queues of voters, faulty machines (particularly from Diebold) that skewed results in the GOP's favor, mostly unnoticed ballot-stuffing and fraud in rural areas, and a fixed recount that was paid for by the Green and Libertarian parties that essentially supported the initial fraudulent numbers." From the article: "'Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me."

Comments

Slow news day indeed...

[TopShelf]

Rehashing a Rolling Stone article from June, that was already covered on /. at the time? Running a dupe a few days or a week later is one thing, but it's been 3 months!

Re:Slow news day indeed...

[Keebler71]

Not to mention the fact that the story has been pretty much debunked already. The number one claim of "proof" that the election was stolen was the dicrepancy between the exit polls and the final polls. The company that did the exit polling did their own investigation (as seen in their 77-page report) and found that

• They screwed up.
• The early numbers released were inaccurate due to bad gender participation weighting factors. (the end-of-day results were actually much closer to the actuals than most people realize)
• There was no difference in exit poll errors between touch screen and other methods."Some have suggested that the exit poll data could be used as evidence of voter fraud in the 2004 Election by showing error rates were higher in precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting equipment. Our evaluation does not support this hypothesis. In our exit poll sample overall, precincts with touch screen and optical scan voting have essentially the same error rates as those using punch card systems. In the larger urban areas these systems had lower WPEs than punch card precincts."
• Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll
• strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate

I haven't given any credence to the notion that the election was stolen since I read this piece in the NYtimes. It follows Dem operatives in Ohio on election day in 2004. It documents their intial happiness and as they spend the day trying to get the vote out (for the Dems) and increasing nervousness as they see more and more indications that the Republicans simply had a stronger get-out-the-vote campaign. (Read it all - whatever your political leanings, it is very educational as to the lengths the parties will go to try to swing the vote up to the last second).

Plagiarism

[amliebsch]

Slashdot is now blatantly ripping off Salon.com, which also had an article headline about Kennedy's Rolling Stone piece staring with Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Too bad Slashdot, in its ridiculous slanting, removed the final word of Salon's headline: "No." Even Mother Jones and NPR repudiated Kennedy's claims. Mother Jones, fer Christ's sake! What's next, Slashdot? How about some articles about World Trade Center demolition conspiracies! And Was Paul Wellstone's Plane Shot Down?

Re:Plagiarism

[Scudsucker]

Too bad Slashdot, in its ridiculous slanting, removed the final word of Salon's headline: "No." Even Mother Jones and NPR repudiated Kennedy's claims.

Too bad you missed the rebuttal supporting Kennedy and showing that the naysayers are the ones who are full of it.

Re:Ooh, a political flame war

[couchslug]

*grabs some of your popcorn*

I'm far more frightened by voter stupidity than election fraud, but would like to see widespread cracking of Diebold machines because that is the only way the public will exert pressure for change.
Theoretical exploitation of teh mysterious boxes is one thing, but grossly hacking an election would get the attention of the average tard on the street.

Re:Cry Cry Cry

[Stalyn]

George W. Bush was born in Connecticut and went to college in Massachusetts (Yale and Harvard). The whole North vs. South or West-East Coast vs. Mid-West is all cooked up by the political party machines to make you afraid of their opponent. In reality the majority of America is pretty close on a lot of issues. The only really divisive issues are abortion and gay-rights which are of course inflated to appear more important than they really are. Not to say these issues aren't important but they aren't more important than say education and self-defense.

American politics has become based on fear. Not so much the policies because in the end politicians will only use fear to manipulate the public in order to get (re)elected. But after they get elected they go back to the normal business of corruption and cronyism. In the end it's our fault, we let it happen resulting from our own ignorance and apathy.

Re:Washington State

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>They kept recounting until they got the result they desired, and then told everyone to stop.

They went through precisely the recounts allowed and required by law, under the supervision of a Republican secretary of state. I remember when conservatives were in favor of the rule of law.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[spun]

Hey, "master of spin" is a complement. Sort of :-P. You are very good at responding to questions in such a way that it looks as though you have answered them, when in fact you have sidestepped them. Just my opinion, nut I have personally asked you questions before where you have done that. Are you perhaps a lawyer or a politician yourself? Again, it's just my opinion, it sometimes seems as if you care more about appearing to be right than finding out if you are or not.

As for why this story has been trotted out, perhaps it's important that people do something about vote fraud? Your position seems to be "Everyone does it, there's nothing you can do about it, so don't even bother talking about it." That position seems to be designed to encourage feelings of disenfranchisement, which generally swings the vote to the right. Is that what you are trying to do?

You acknowledge that a CEO of the major e-voting machine maufacturer made a comment that could easily be taken to mean "I'm going to help the republicans cheat on elections," but you deny that this is what he meant, based on nothing more than your opinion. But you state it as if it were a fact. Even given this, and no counterexamples on the democratic side, you seem to imply that the cheating cancels out. But you don't actually say that, so that if someone calls you on it, you can deny having said that and claim they misinterpreted you. But of coure, that will be so far down the thread that no one will read it, while everyone reads where you first makes the claim. Then they all walk away thinking you have proved something you not only haven't but would probably deny ever saying. At least, that's the way I've seen you operate in the past.

You may not be a Republican, but you have espoused some very neo-con positions here. Maybe you didn't vote for Bush, maybe you did. I wouldn't put it past you to lie about that to create a more sympathetic climate for yourself. Again, this is all based on your past posts here. Anyone can look them up and see for themselves.

My Governor stole the election.

[riversky]

It is far clearer that the Democrats steal elections in my home State of Washington....It is not statistics but actual votes that were fraudent. Dead people, people voting twice etc...The more people counted and recounted the more the Democrats "found" new votes in Democratic districts won by Democrats. This wasn't the opposition finding new votes or uncounted ones to over turn things for the real winner ( ie Gore) after the winner was declared ( Bush in Flordia and Ohio) but it is a clearly a manufactered election by one party. Ohio, maybe tactics were used, but this was a stolen election in WA in black and white .

This is like the Democrats of the Chicago era.

Re:This is a stupid story

[raddan]

On top of it, they never mention how US military overseas from Florida specifically (that overwhelmingly vote republican) didn't get their absentee ballots

You did notice that the whole point of this article was the 2004 election, right? All of your linked articles are about the one in 2000. Fuck, we're like barely literate here.

Re:Moo

[niktemadur]

I did a little digging on Wikipedia, and came up with this:

Election Day in the United States is the day when polls most often open for the election of certain public officials. Election Day occurs on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November every year, which is always the Tuesday between November 2 and November 8, inclusively.

This rule was instituted by the U.S. Congress in 1845, and the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November was chosen to keep the election day from falling on November 1, All Saints' Day, a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics. Tuesday was chosen to allow voters one day to travel to their polling place, as most residents at the time could not travel on Sunday because of church. The month of November was chosen because it was after the crops were harvested.

I think it's fair to say that all the reasons stated above for holding elections on a Tuesday, while stellar in their reasoning for the nineteenth century, are now obsolete. Read on...

Many social activists oppose this date, believing that it decreases voter turnout, since it is part of the workweek. Many advocate making election day a national holiday or allowing voters to cast their ballots over two or more days.

In response to this, many states have implemented early voting, which allows the voters to cast ballots, in many cases up to two weeks early. Also, all states have some kind of absentee ballot system. The state of Oregon, for example, performs all major elections through mail-in ballots that are sent to voters several weeks before Election Day.

Although measures have been taken in some places, clearly it's too little at this late stage of the game. If the american public wants to scare the pants off the Washington lobbyists, a good place to start would be to campaign for Election Saturdays. Ironically, it's something that will probably be decided on a Tuesday.

Here in Illinois

[slyborg]

We had Republican gubernatorial administrations for a quarter century until the most recent. So if, as you claim, there are no legitimate elections here, the Democrats apparently have been cheating for the purpose of bringing in Republican administrations for decades. So you have to admit that they at least are evenhanded in cheating on behalf of everyone.

As to Democratic corruption, the last Republican governor, George Ryan, was just sentenced to six years in Federal prison for...corruption. The point is not that both sides engage in this type of behavior, but that it can't be condoned or excused because "everybody does it". It needs to be exposed wherever it occurs by whoever engages in it.

(If you replace "Illinois" with "Chicago" in your post, I think i might be inclined to agree with you, though).

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[Lord Kano]

Six years of Republican rule, and we still have gun control. If this is such an extreme left-wing issue, how come they haven't done something about it?

Were you in the US two years ago? The Clinton gun ban's sunset clause removed the largest gun control act of a generation.

In case you don't get what happened, let me sum it up.

In 1994, when the Clinton administration wanted to pass their gun ban, a congressional majority was not certain. As a compromise measure, they included a clause to make the law only last 10 years. Their thinking was that they'd have control of the congress and white house then so it would be little more than a rubber stamp to make the existing, but temporary, law permanent. Well, in the 1994 election gun rights voters were quite upset with the Democrats so they turned out in droves to vote against them. The Democrats lost the House and the Senate. In his 1995 State of The Union Address, Clinton even admitted that this loss was because of his gun ban.

Bush winning the 2000 election gave us two of the three branches of government. When the law was about to expire, President Bush (in a brilliant example of politicking) said that if congress passed the extension of the ban, he would sign it. President Bush KNEW that the ban had no chance. But saying that he'd sign it if passed took a huge campaign issue out of Kerry's pocket.

LK

Re:Gotta love a good conspiracy theory!

[internic]

Another other issue that everyone conveniently ignores, of course, is counting error. Simply put, the likely error in any given count of N random items (as long as N is sufficiently large) is 1/sqrt(N). With a really close election, you simply can't know who the true winner is.

While in many instances you can think of counting as having a poissonian distributed "counting error" (the uncertainty of which goes like sqrt(N), not 1/sqrt(N)), one actually has to justify whether such a model applies before using. It doesn't seem clear that it does apply in this case. If what were concerned with is the number of recorded votes for a particular candidate (arising from a number of actual votes for a candidate), then what we'd be interested in is the number of errors. If there's a constant error rate (meaning voting errors are a poissonian stochastic process), then the mean number of errors would be proportional to N rather than sqrt(N), but the important point is that the proportionality constant could be arbitrarily small, depending on the reliability of the voting method. Now it's true that the standard deviation of the number of errors would be equal to sqrt(N), but that really isn't relevant to the question at hand. In short, there's no a priori estimate of the number of voting errors without some model for how those errors occur, and there's no reason to think it should go as sqrt(N).

Now, if you were viewing voting totals as a poll of populous at large, then assuming the sample was large but still small compared to the total population, you might image that the vote total would approximate the will of the populous with a sqrt(N) counting error; however, this reasoning is invalid for two reasons: the proportional of the population is not that small (though still, perhaps, smaller than we'd like), and the sample of people that turnout to vote is not random, and therefore not represenative. In any case, the vote is not a poll but is supposed to reflect the will of the people who actually votes, so again this sqrt(N) counter error is not relevent.

I think there is some sense in determining what the error rates are on voting systems (perhaps this is already done) and what things are, statistically, too close to call, but you simply can't say that was the case in Washington or anywhere else without more evidence.

Re:Moo

[JoGlo]

I think that the treatment of the Australian voting system has been a little simplistic, as there are other factors at work, as well as compulsory voting.

1. To win, a candidate must muster at least 50% + 1 of the number on his or her electoral role to secure the seat.

2. The vote is a SINGLE, TRANSFERRABLE VOTE, which means that for a ovte to be valind (and ocunted) it must list the voter's preferences from 1 to the last person on the ballot paper. Any missed candidates will render the vote invalid.

3. After the initial count, if no silgle candidate hass the magic 50% +1, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated, and the vote preferences are allocated to the other candidates, based on that person's voter's second preferences. This process, eliminating the bottom candidate, and allocating those votes based on next highets preference, goes on until one candidate has the mandatory 50% +1 vote.

4. Voting rolls are not within the control of any political party - the voting rolls are maintained by a federal department, which does not include political appointees (well, not officially), and there is open scrutiny of the rolls at all times.

5. The candidates in the election are all able to provide scrutineers to the count(so apart from so-called "drover's dog" electorates ("If it wore the right political colors, even a drover's dog could get elected in this constituency, there are scrutineers at all counting ststions).

6. Party advertising is not allowed inside the polling stations - party people can distribute their stuff outside, but not inside. 7. In federal and stae elections, people don't directly vote for the Prime Minister or state Premier, but that office is held by the leader of the majority party in the state or federal parliament. so, voting tends to be on party lines, and the chances of a good candidate of the "wrong" political persuasion getting up against a bad candidate of the "right" political persuasion is always very poor.

8. As a corrollory to 7., if you live in a marginal seat (one that changes election to election, or which may change with a smallish swing), your vote is worth commensurately more than if you live in a "safe" seat.

Hope that clears it up a bit.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[DavidTC]

I shouldn't do that, but let's dissect this troll.

Like making 100,000 on a 1,000 cattle futures investment (where can I get a deal like that!);

Stupidest. Conspiracy. Ever. First of all, the cattles future market was insane at that time. Hillary did, indeed, make that much money. In fact, she had to have made that money, you can't just magically get money out of a futures market. What she shouldn't have been able to do is trade on margin like she did. But a) she didn't break that rule, her broker did, and b) that rule is to keep problem from happening when people can't cover losses, which Hillary Clinton certanly could have done. Of course, all this was in 1979.

egregiously firing the WH travel office staff w/o any justification whatever;

Um, you mean the White House Travel staff that is the personal staff of the president, and traditionally gets replaced at each new administration? The travel staff that was already under investigation for misdeed done under a previous administration?

supposedly lost law firm billing records miraculously showing up in the WH living quarters year later;

You mean the billing records that...um...revealed nothing? (Why you think it's amazing that personal records of the president would be in the presidental living quarters is a bit beyond me.)

Webster Hubble in jail;

Okay, now I'm confused. You think he shouldn't be? He defrauded people and evaded taxes! I understand, though if you're saying it sucked that the Clintons misjudged him as trustworthy. (OTOH, don't start 'Clinton was friends with criminals'. You know the expression about what people in glass houses shouldn't do.)

Craig Livingstone(!);

Yup. Filegate sucked, and the Clintons might have been involved. And now I must point out 'glass houses' again with the fact the current president is wiretapping whoever he wants to.

a president lying in front of a grand jury about a stupid affair w/ an intern during the same timeframe as our embassies and barracks are bombed in the ME and Africa by the folks who would eventually take down the WTC;

Yes, because logically if he'd been telling the truth, that...no, wait, he'd still been questioned. Well, surely if he hadn't been doing anything illegal he wouldn't have been questioned...no, wait, he wasn't doing anything illegal before testifying. What was the claim again? The president was distracted by people making random and eventually disproven accusations against him? Well, that's hardly his fault, is it? You can complaing about The Lie, but The Lie is not a cause of the distraction.

illegally obtaining FBI records of the majority of republican lawmakers to dig up embarrasing dirt (unreal, and you guys piss and moan about wiretapping a few arabs with terrorist ties. the fucking gall!).

Yes, because we know for a fact that's all Bush is doing, because the process is so open.

Maybe if your buddy Bill had been more concerned about national security as opposed to getting his cock sucked 3000 people wouldn't have died.

Are we talking about the same Bill here? Because the Bill I know did do something about national security...he arrested the WTC bombers, for one thing. He repeatedly went after bin Laden, although at the time that was called 'wagging the dog' to try to distract everyone from his multiple murders or whatever. He warned the next president, he even made a plan for the invasion of Afganistan.

And interesting universe you live in where a blowjob is too time consuming, especially when you consider that Bush has now put in more vacation time than any two term president in history, and still has two years to go.

Maybe if Al Fucking Gore hadn't contested the election the GWB administration would have been put together in the normal timeframe, and we'd have been a couple of months up on the disaster of a National Security policy that w

Read the Freeman and Bleifuss book

[doom]

Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:26 PM I've been reading the Freeman and Bleifuss book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?

I have to say that I think the situation is even worse than I thought it was... after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legit at least had some wiggle room, because it seemed like there was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found a discrepancy, but then the MIT study chimed in saying there wasn't, so who do you believe?

The thing is, the MIT guys later admitted that they screwed up: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never reported that development, and I missed it myself...

Freeman and Bleifuss do a very thorough analysis of the various theories that have been presented to cover the discrepancy, and none of them seem to hold up. It's difficult to see how anyone could read this book and not conclude that phrasing the title as a question was excessively polite...

And it's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system -- a paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? Even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be?

And anyone who speaks out against that point, is speaking out against Democracy itself, and needs to take a good long look in the mirror to think about what kind of world they want to live in.

(The "corrected" data by the way, is by definition "corrected" so that the discrepancy goes away. So what good is it? Why do people call it "corrected" and not, oh, say, "fudged"?)

Bzzt!

[Scudsucker]

Sorry, but your "debunking" was counter-debunked, on Salon as well. Turns out Manjoo was just using the right-wing's classic tricks of distraction and red herrings.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[FredThompson]

Yes, Italy most certainly is a very socialist, left-wing country.

They have a crushingly burdomesome social welfare system which rewards people to STOP working. They also have a very active Communist party. Yup, Commie, hammer and sickle on a red flag. Take a look at who holds the highest political offices in Italy. Income and business taxes in Italy are about twice that of the United States.

I've been in Italy for 3-4 months every year for the past 10 years, seen this with my own eyes. Every manufacturer I represent from Italy is trying to move to the U.S. because Europe is so stagnant and the welfare systems crush all incentives. Never mind their fears of the Muslim invasion (8x the birth rate of the "native" population) and the EU regulating virtually everything. Great Britain isn't that much better, actually.

Sorry, bud, those most certainly ARE very socialist, left-wing, countries who have crippled their economies. Granted, they're not all as bad as the French who decided it's illegal to fire unproductive workers or the Germans who have all but destroyed their industry with welfare programs and now farm out huge amounts of manufacturing to Czech and Polish factories. They've chosen to be socialist and destroy incentive to produce.

Do those countries have jack-booted secret police in the Stalinist model? No.

How your post got modded to 5 is beyond me, unless whoever modded you up has as little familiarity with economics as you do.

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[ceejayoz]

the Germans who have all but destroyed their industry with welfare programs and now farm out huge amounts of manufacturing to Czech and Polish factories

Um, it's called outsourcing, the US is a world leader at it, and it's hardly a socialist practice - quite the opposite, really.

Democrats still sore losers after all this time?

[paranode]

Yeah he 'stole' it... I mean, this map right here just proves that Bush had no support!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vot e2004/countymap.htm

Doesn't really help the Dems that they cry that the election was stolen every election year now. Especially given that there's at least as much conspiracy surrounding the Dems actively registering illegal immigrants to sway the vote in their direction.

I'm no fan of Bush, but this election stealing conspiracy is getting almost as tired as the 9/11 'inside job' stuff. Oops I probably sturred up the Slashdot believers.

"Loss of sovereignty?"

[Medievalist]

It amazes me how the Bush administration can spout rhetoric in total opposition to its actions, and people will still buy in.

In case you haven't noticed, there have been several "State's Rights" issues during the Bush Interregnum. In all these cases, the Bush administration has come down solidly in favor of increased federal authority.

In one of the more egregious cases, the Federal Government is in favor of redrawing the boundaries of the state of Delaware so that a large foreign-owned oil company can construct a LNG pier serving the state of New Jersey. In that case, the Bush administration is actually championing the "rights" of British Petroleum, with collusion from corrupt New Jersey authorities, to override the demonstrated will of the citizenry of the US state of Delaware.

When will US conservatives realize they've been betrayed by a pack of radical facists, who favor any corporation from any nation over the rights of any individual anywhere?