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

Re:Yes/No/Maybe

[NoOneInParticular]

What keeps on surprising me however, is that the US is the only Western country I know that has a problem with organizing the vote. It's not an issue of scale, as voting really distributes well. Given my knowledge of the US voting system and the system in place in countries where it does work, two main differences jump out that are true in other countries, but not in the US. Maybe fix these.

Everyone registered as a citizen gets a voting ticket by regular mail well before the election. This ticket you need to bring to the voting office and can be checked against ID. No differences between states here

There's one single voting system for the entire nation.

Of course, this goes against the 'States' part of the 'United States', but then again, the reputation of the fairness of the US elections is currently seen as a bit lower than that of Uganda.

Re:Washington State

[Noksagt]

THAT'S a stolen election.

As a Washington state voter (an East sider at that!), I can tell you it wasn't a stolen election. It was a close election. There is a big difference.

Wikipedia has a nice summary.

But, in short: The dems lost both the first count and the machine recount (which they were legally entitled to). They did, however win the hand recount (which they were also legally entitled to).

The GOP's lawsuit contesting the election was dismissed by the Chelan County (a republican county) Court.

What was really disgusting is the GOP made personal attacks against the democrats for asking for a recount when the GOP was winning by a narrow margin, but then immediately started acting like the dems when they lost. I think that the WA vote was handled as well as could be expected other than this hypocrisy.

Re:Moo

[sholden]

In Australia they issue you a small fine if you didn't get your named marked off at polling booth. You don't actually need to vote for anyone - you can put the blank ballot in the box and go home. And it's really easy to dispute the fine (speaking from experience) - if you have anything vaguely reasonable as an excuse you tell them and they drop it with no need to go to court or anything like with parking fines... There is no receipt and no way to prove you voted (other than the electoral commission checking their lists I guess).

The informal voting rate isn't that large - about 5% of the votes cast are informal (there's a great tradition of Donkey voting though - being first on the ballot can give you an extra 1.4% or so, unless you're a woman strangely enough when it gives you nada - Robson rotation would fix that but they don't bother). And the turn out rate is 95%. So 90% of the registered voters (which is essentially everyone 18+ with a few slipping through the cracks - made up for by the dead people who manage to vote somehow) cast a valid vote.

Compulsary voting gets rid of the "get out and vote" idiocy that clearly favours candidates with the resources to round people into buses... It also removes the ability to influence the outcome by preventing people from voting - or at least makes it very noticable if you try.

Are you also going to fight against those who try and make people do other "civic duties" like jury duty?

I suspect compulsary voting would interact badly with first past the post voting, and hence would be a bad thing for America - not that that's an issue - it goes completely against the concept of liberty the US has (though the last few years seem to have shown that liberty isn't so important to most americans but that's an unrelated issue).

Where's the beef? (or is this merely infowar?)

[Dr. Zowie]

I've heard this meme (that "the Democrats also steal a lot of elections") a lot lately but I have not seen anyone substantiate it. I don't recall anyone getting up in arms about the process of the Clinton elections, though certainly there were people upset that he won.

Does anyone have anything other than innuendo on this talking point? It sounds a little too much like a Rove snowjob to me -- I hear the talking point a lot from different sources but never any deeply resourced, specific complaints such as RFK aired.