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Who won?
doom writes "I think they call them "exit polls" because people
bolt for the exits when you mention them, but I'm still
fascinated by the subject myself, and this book is one of the
reasons why. In Was the 2004 Presidential Election
Stolen?, the central focus is, of course, on the infamous
exit-poll discrepancies of the 2004 US Presidential election;
but the authors also put it into context: they discuss the
2000 election, the irregularities in Ohio in 2004, the electronic
voting machines issues, and the media's strange reluctance to
report on any of these problems. Further, in the chapter "How
did America really vote?", they compare the indications of the
raw exit-poll data to other available polling data. Throughout,
Freeman and Bleifuss do an excellent job of presenting arguments
based on statistical analysis in a clear, concise way." Read the rest of doom's review
Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?
author
Steve Freeman & Joel Bleifuss
pages
265
publisher
Seven Stories Press
rating
9
reviewer
doom
ISBN
1583226877
summary
Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count
The heart of the book in my opinion, is Chapter 5, "The inauguration eve exit-poll report": The Edison and Mitofsky firms that conducted the NEP exit polls later released a report trying to explain how they could have gotten it so far wrong. Freeman and Bleifuss, of course, take issue with the presumption that the discrepancies must be "errors", and argue in a different direction. This section makes an exciting read (in a nerdy sort of way) it's an impressive piece of statistical judo: Freeman and Bleifuss take on Edison/Mitofsky with their own data, and totally shred their conclusions. The authors show: That the exit-poll discrepancies had a statistically significant correlation with the use of electronic voting machines, with races in battleground states, and in almost all cases favored the Republicans. The "Reluctant Bush Respondant" theory looks extremely unlikely: response rates actually look slightly better in Bush strongholds than in Kerry strongholds; and while media skepticism remains strong among conservatives, it has been on the rise among Democrats, and yet the data shows no shift in relative avoidance of pollsters. They also deal with the various other excuses that were floated shortly after the election: The discrepancies can't be shrugged off with an "exit polls are not reliable" — theory shows that they should be better than any other survey data, and history shows that they always have been pretty reliable. There was no upswing of support for Bush throughout election day — that impression was entirely an artifact of the media "correcting" the exit-poll figures to match the official results. One of the book's authors, Steven Freeman, was one of the first to examine the exit-poll discrepancies, and as a professor at University of Pennsylvania with a background in survey design, he was well equipped to begin delving into the peculiarities he had noticed.
Overall, this is an excellent book for people interested in evaluating the data; with lots of graphs that make it easy to do informal estimates of the strength of their conclusions (just eye-balling the scatter, the correlations they point to look real, albeit a little loose, as you might expect). There's also an appendix with a very clear exposition of the the concept of statistical significance, and how it applies to this polling data. There are of course, limits to what one can conclude just from the exit-poll discrepancies: "We reiterate that this does not prove the official vote count was fraudulent. What it does say is that the discrepancy between the official count and the exit polls can't be just a statistical fluke, but commands some kind of systematic explanation: Either the exit poll was deeply flawed or else the vote count was corrupted. "
This is a remarkably restrained book: unlike many authors addressing this controversial subject, Freeman and Bleifuss have resisted the temptation to rant or speculate or even to editorialize very much. Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats"); possibly this has helped him to maintain his neutrality and focus on the facts of the case.
Personally, I found this book to be something of a revelation: in the confusion immediately after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legitimate at least had some wiggle room. There was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found significant problems, 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 got it wrong: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never covered that development, and I missed it myself...
On the subject of electronic voting machines, They include a chapter discussing electronic voting in general which covers ground that is by now familiar with most readers here: the strange case of Wally O'Dell and Diebold; and also the lesser known problems with ES&S. Have you heard this one? "In 1992, Hagel, then an investment banker and president of the holding company McCarthy & Co., became chairman of American Information Systems, which was to become ES&S in 1999. [...] In the 1996 elections, Hagel launched his political career with two stunning upsets. He won a primary victory in Nebraska [...] despite the fact that he was not well known. Then, in the general election, Hagel was elected to the Senate in what Business Week described as 'an unexpected 1996 landslide victory over Ben Nelson, Nebraska's popular Democratic governor.'"
My experience is that a lot of people need to hear this point: "The voting machine company Datamark, which became American Information Systems and is now known as ES&S, was founded in 1980 by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Today, Todd is a vice president at ES&S and Bob is CEO of Diebold Election Systems."
It's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system: even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be? A paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? But only a start. As the author's point out: "We devoted a chapter to the ills of electronic voting, but a critical lesson of the 2004 election is that not only DREs, but all kinds of voting machine systems are suspect. Edison/Mitofsky data showed that while hand counted ballots accurately reflected exit-poll survey results, counts from all the major categories of voting machines did not."
In one short passage, the authors list a few "grounds for hope", but following up on these points is not encouraging: The Diebold-injunction law suit in California brought by VoterAction has since been denied and one attempt at a paper trail amendment, HR 550 has stalled out.
If you're looking for an answer to the question posed by the book's title, the authors conclude: "So how did America really vote? Every independent measure points to a Kerry victory of about 5 percentage points in the popular vote nationwide, a swing of 8 to 10 million votes from the official count."
Of the many and various potentially depressing books out there about the state of the United States, I recommend this one highly: it addresses a critical set of issues that everything else depends on.
You can purchase Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
The heart of the book in my opinion, is Chapter 5, "The inauguration eve exit-poll report": The Edison and Mitofsky firms that conducted the NEP exit polls later released a report trying to explain how they could have gotten it so far wrong. Freeman and Bleifuss, of course, take issue with the presumption that the discrepancies must be "errors", and argue in a different direction. This section makes an exciting read (in a nerdy sort of way) it's an impressive piece of statistical judo: Freeman and Bleifuss take on Edison/Mitofsky with their own data, and totally shred their conclusions. The authors show: That the exit-poll discrepancies had a statistically significant correlation with the use of electronic voting machines, with races in battleground states, and in almost all cases favored the Republicans. The "Reluctant Bush Respondant" theory looks extremely unlikely: response rates actually look slightly better in Bush strongholds than in Kerry strongholds; and while media skepticism remains strong among conservatives, it has been on the rise among Democrats, and yet the data shows no shift in relative avoidance of pollsters. They also deal with the various other excuses that were floated shortly after the election: The discrepancies can't be shrugged off with an "exit polls are not reliable" — theory shows that they should be better than any other survey data, and history shows that they always have been pretty reliable. There was no upswing of support for Bush throughout election day — that impression was entirely an artifact of the media "correcting" the exit-poll figures to match the official results. One of the book's authors, Steven Freeman, was one of the first to examine the exit-poll discrepancies, and as a professor at University of Pennsylvania with a background in survey design, he was well equipped to begin delving into the peculiarities he had noticed.
Overall, this is an excellent book for people interested in evaluating the data; with lots of graphs that make it easy to do informal estimates of the strength of their conclusions (just eye-balling the scatter, the correlations they point to look real, albeit a little loose, as you might expect). There's also an appendix with a very clear exposition of the the concept of statistical significance, and how it applies to this polling data. There are of course, limits to what one can conclude just from the exit-poll discrepancies: "We reiterate that this does not prove the official vote count was fraudulent. What it does say is that the discrepancy between the official count and the exit polls can't be just a statistical fluke, but commands some kind of systematic explanation: Either the exit poll was deeply flawed or else the vote count was corrupted. "
This is a remarkably restrained book: unlike many authors addressing this controversial subject, Freeman and Bleifuss have resisted the temptation to rant or speculate or even to editorialize very much. Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats"); possibly this has helped him to maintain his neutrality and focus on the facts of the case.
Personally, I found this book to be something of a revelation: in the confusion immediately after the 2004 election, I had the impression that the people who wanted to believe that it was legitimate at least had some wiggle room. There was some disagreement about the meaning of the exit polls: there was that study at Berkeley that found significant problems, 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 got it wrong: they used the "corrected" data, not the originally reported exit poll results. The media never covered that development, and I missed it myself...
On the subject of electronic voting machines, They include a chapter discussing electronic voting in general which covers ground that is by now familiar with most readers here: the strange case of Wally O'Dell and Diebold; and also the lesser known problems with ES&S. Have you heard this one? "In 1992, Hagel, then an investment banker and president of the holding company McCarthy & Co., became chairman of American Information Systems, which was to become ES&S in 1999. [...] In the 1996 elections, Hagel launched his political career with two stunning upsets. He won a primary victory in Nebraska [...] despite the fact that he was not well known. Then, in the general election, Hagel was elected to the Senate in what Business Week described as 'an unexpected 1996 landslide victory over Ben Nelson, Nebraska's popular Democratic governor.'"
My experience is that a lot of people need to hear this point: "The voting machine company Datamark, which became American Information Systems and is now known as ES&S, was founded in 1980 by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Today, Todd is a vice president at ES&S and Bob is CEO of Diebold Election Systems."
It's impossible to see how you can come away from this situation without seeing that we badly need reform of the electoral system: even if you don't believe the 2004 election was "stolen", how do you know the next one isn't going to be? A paper trail that can actually be recounted would be a nice start, eh? But only a start. As the author's point out: "We devoted a chapter to the ills of electronic voting, but a critical lesson of the 2004 election is that not only DREs, but all kinds of voting machine systems are suspect. Edison/Mitofsky data showed that while hand counted ballots accurately reflected exit-poll survey results, counts from all the major categories of voting machines did not."
In one short passage, the authors list a few "grounds for hope", but following up on these points is not encouraging: The Diebold-injunction law suit in California brought by VoterAction has since been denied and one attempt at a paper trail amendment, HR 550 has stalled out.
If you're looking for an answer to the question posed by the book's title, the authors conclude: "So how did America really vote? Every independent measure points to a Kerry victory of about 5 percentage points in the popular vote nationwide, a swing of 8 to 10 million votes from the official count."
Of the many and various potentially depressing books out there about the state of the United States, I recommend this one highly: it addresses a critical set of issues that everything else depends on.
You can purchase Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
'Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats")'
So hating one of the major political parties involved in that election makes him neutral?
Exit polls? I intentionally give the opposite answer whenever anyone asks me anything at the polls because it's absolutely on one's business but mine. Dick move or not I'm sure I'm not the only "dick" that does this. Exit polls be damned.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
All this talk about how he engineers fake elections and terrorist attacks -- all from a guy who everyone ridicules as been a moron ... I think people need a reality check.
America voted Bush in. The first time because he was a friendly likable guy and the Lewinsky scandal scoured them on Clinton/Gore. He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war. Bush won. Both times. Get over it.
In 2008 you'll have a shot at the White House again, and it'll be be your election to lose.
boxlight
Why didn't Kerry win? Because he was a weak candidate with little going for him other than not being Bush. His entire campaign was essentially "I'm not Bush! I may have voted for everything he did, but I'm not him!"
Bush won because many voters, myself included, thought Bush was responsible for cleaning up his own mess, and that Kerry had absolutely no ability to do so.
The simple truth is that, while it may be statistically unlikely, the final voting tally gives us the truth: Bush won. They may be 95% confident that he didn't, but that doesn't mean that the final 5% can't happen. It did.
Bush won the election because Kerry was a wishy-washy asshole. It's that simple.
Did "THEY" forget how to cheat in 2006? Or did "THEY" want Bush to win in 2000 and 2004 knowing he would destroy the Republican majority in Congress? Or did "THEY" ?
Mod me offtopic, but I believe this issue is important enough to burn a little karma. There are all kind of problems with current voting system. The only solution, as far as I see, is to put the power of counting the vote in the hands of the voter. Voting is basically allowing voters to affect the outcome of the election by exactly one vote for each office or issue. There is no kind of verified ballot system that lets the voter know that their ballot is counted in the official tally.
Here's what I wrote [slashdot.org] the last time this discussion came up on slashdot:
"What I'm envisioning is some kind of method where votes can be tallied, and the running tally can be periodically published during the count. I imagine it would have some kind of hashing technology, like PGP, where tallies are perhaps encoded in a string, and the string is published. The hashing token, or whatever mechanism allowed a vote to be legitimately added to the tally, would be passed from one voter to another, after they voted. This puts the power to count votes into the hand of the voters, rather than a poorly-trained election volunteer, a partisan, or a hackable machine. Because of the constraints of the token and hashing, a voter can only vote as they are allowed, without destroying the tally hash string."
One problem with secure tallying is that you want to make sure that your vote is counted in the official tally, but you don't want others to deduce how you voted from the official tally. At this point, I imagine one voter passing the official tally to the next voter. That way you can be certain you have affected the tally, and the design of the system constrains you to only one vote. Periodically, perhaps every hour, the official tally is publicly released. Nobody can then figure out how you voted; they only know how the crowd voted in the past hour.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It was all part of the evil Karl Rove trifecta of evil. First we stole the election, then we steered hurricane Katrina right into New Orleans (with the patented Karl Rove Neocon Magic Weather Machine), and to complete the hat trick we blew up the levies to flood the black parts of town. It was a great success, just like the time we went back in time with Microsoft Word 1972 edition to make a fool out of Dan Rather.
... what happened in November? Did they forget to press the "cheat" button, or did they maybe lose on purpose in a conspiracy to discredit all the people who showed how they cheated before? (How fiendish of them!)
The Democrats lost in 2004 because they had a crappy candidate, and let the republicans control the debate. Get over it already.
This just about sums up my sentiments for voting for either of the two major political parties.
He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war.
Some people voted for him for that reason, agreed. The issue is whether enough people actually voted for him, for whatever reason, to have fairly elected him for this second term. A thoughtful and complete analysis of whether that happened is most welcome, I think. The fact that you're tired of thinking about it ("get over it") isn't really relevant, and I suspect that your own evident bias is a strong influence on your willingness to hear about it.
I actually have conducted them for media outlets. I was pretty young at the time though the way they get these exit pollers is pretty much the same: low paying, single-day temp employees.
They are often wildly innacurate because many folks choose not to participate - mostly people who are Republican - and because they miss absentee voters - also mostly Republicans as in Ohio and in other states the Rs did a huge absentee vote program where Ds mostly focus on the 48-hour GOTV effort of driving indigents to polling places.
Anyway, it's easy to be part of the slashherd hivemind and believe a couple of clowns that have a few letters after their names doing, what I think Breshnev referred to as, 'using statistics to turn excriment into bullets.'
... already reported on all these incidents in his two great books:
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.
Excellent Reads if you feel like having your mind blown.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I hate people that are hanging outside the polling stations asking me questions... guess what: I LIE
The numbers have NO meaning.
Granted, something needs explaining and voting machines are vulnerable. But what are the chances that a conspiracy of this magnitude has remained secret? Not to say that an election can't be rigged, but wouldn't there be so many people with direct involvement that it would be impossible to keep everyone silent? Until someone steps forward and says "I did X & Y at the direction of Mr Z," I'm going to lump it along side of "The CIA killed Kennedy." Possible, but lacking solid evidence.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
People are too eager to believe that the election was rigged, but they're simply outraged at the possibility that the exit polls could have been botched or rigged themselves.
I'm not saying they cheated in '04, but the '06 results don't disprove it. They can only cheat so much without getting caught. With the huge backlash in '06, it would have been much more difficult to pull off.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Seems to me it is a solution without a problem. Couldn't you avoid vote-counting concerns entirely by casting paper ballots, then allowing anyone with an interest in the counting process to witness the tally. Count the votes publicly, perhaps in a gymnasium or library, with a camera to record the counting process as well as to transmit a feed to an internet site. I believe they do something similar in Canada now. I would gladly exchange the additional time necessary to conduct the count manually with witnesses for a repeat of the Florida fiasco during the Presidential election in 2000.
Anyone who lives in or near Chicago know that poll workers and authorities have ways to adjust the totals. Nationally, I wouldn't be surprised if local polling place authorities tip it one way or another by 1-3% every two years. (Remember the Kennedy election supposedly tipped by an unlikely surge of Chicago Democrats?) However, I'd just rack it up to real democracy in action.
In 2004 I'm perfectly willing to believe (and accept) that the average pollworker (usually someone who likes stable government, whatever theit political leaning) was more willing to give W the benefit of the doubt and helped him win a squeaker. In 2006 it was hard to find people (even fans of stable government) who wouldn't have liked the current president to hit the road, so I'm not surprised the mystery surge of 2004 disappeared in 2006; even W's former fans were sick of his s*** by then.
From Wikipedia:
"Joel Bleifuss is an American journalist. He is the editor of In These Times, a progressive news magazine based in Chicago. Bleifuss has worked as an investigative reporter and columnist for In These Times since 1986.
Bleifuss writes frequently on US politics and foreign policy, and environmental affairs. His articles have been featured on Project Censored's list of suppressed news stories more than any other American journalist."
I'll get the whip you bring the horse.
See Sig! See Sig Zig! Zig Sig Zig!!!!!
The article presents information. Refute it if you will by presenting superior information or insight. I personally find the specter of official corruption deeply disturbing. I will not get over it. Nor should you.
Seriously, I wish there'd been some exit polls where I voted. I was highly insulted that only the large cities get them. I know why, but it's still frustrating. On the topic of stealing elections. It would have been pathetically easy to do. And it may very well be that there was election fraud. But at this point, I'm tired of hearing about it. We've got a better Congress in (though I'm not happy with our particular congressmen who were elected this time, Sen. Ensign and Rep. Heller) and hopefully we're looking at a good future.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
exit polls are the most accurate kind of poll.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To those pooh-poohing this sort of investigation: with a voting system as untrustworthy as DRE, this is the inevitable outcome. Poring over exit polls looking for voting pattern discrepancies is the only way to have any idea if the machines are accurately reporting the vote. If you don't like it, join the campaign for a voting system that can be seen to be fair on its own merits.
Xenu loves you!
Am I the only one sick of all these election analysis books and articles? Whats done is done already. Even if a smoking gun was exposed saying that blatant fraud was discovered in one or both elections, what would it accomplish? As much as I'd love to press reset and go back to 2000, that ain't gonna happen. We can't suddenly say all policy created in the last 7 years is invalid, that would cause as much of a mess as the last 7 years created.
Lets just say, yes there was questionable events of the last 2 elections. These are the issues in question, now that we know what to look for lets make sure it doesn't happen again. I still think there is lots of work that needs to be done, and even if we go to an all computerized system, there should be a possibly 2 form receipt form that prints out. First so the voter has in their sweaty little palms who they voted for so there is no doubt. Second, a paper record in the event of a recount is required there is a paper copy that the voter submitted as an endorsed copy of their vote, (not signed endorsed, anonymity is still protected, just turning it in is the final step of the process), and thirdly, some people just aren't comfortable with computerized voting, this way if there is any question before they walk out of the poll, they know who they voted for, and maybe even have a "receipt" for themselves just to be sure.
At this point, we are far too close to these events and their repercussions to even begin to hope of the slightest possibility of imagining how history looking back impartially on this fiasco.
For a real, insightful, bias-free look at the 2000/2004 election controversy, wait for one of our great-grandchildren to write it. Until then, either accept or reject the various biased accounts, parsing them accordingly as your owm bias permits.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
...why the fuck do people care if someone knows how they vote? I mean, two minutes of a conversation with someone politically usually tells you 1. Where they position themselves on the left/right/middle spectrum
2. Whether they support the president currently in power
3. If they do not support that president, the person they WOULD support
(For the record, I always vote "write-in" and leave it blank, or just simply vote for whomever the independent is...the current two-party system makes me really hate this fucking country sometimes.)
People are so quick to say "it's none of your damned buisness who I voted for" and yet allow their political (or anti-political) views to hang out there, and in some people's cases get pissed and pushy about it.
Christ people. Learn some fucking consistency.
Living With a Nerd
My copy physically fell apart 2 weeks after buying it. (Hardcopy). I think the binding just disintegrated.
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify" about the Soviet Union's disarmament. That applies here, too.
US elections should not be open to question. We should be able to audit to confirm elections, and vigorously pursue anyone who attempts to illegally influence elections.
Let's fix the system so that we can TRUST the process. That begins by being able to audit the results.
In California, we had the option to fill out a largish sheet of paper, filled on both sides with the elections and propositions. This single piece of paper contained the same information as the Electronic Voting machines. We filled in bubbles, could check our work, and then submitted them into a Diebold scanning machine.
I cringed when I saw the maker, but realized that my paper ballot was there for counting at the precinct, district or randomly selected audit. Anyone who tried to cheat, would have to change or steal my ballot.
Electronic screen voting should be reserved for special needs people, and should PRINT out the same ballot that the rest of us fill in.
That would be less expensive, faster, less prone to abuse, and absolutely verifiable.
What's wrong with that?
You know whether or not an ATM screws up your account but you have no way of knowing if it added up everybody's account correctly.
Somewhere out there on the intarweb tube is a story about how the Cleveland Plain Dealer had conducted pre-election polling for years and been impressively close to how the elections turned out each time and then along came the 2004 elections and they were wildly off in certain precincts, all of whom went for Bush. It's worth looking for.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
techniques to prevent fraud, like requiring IDs, purging voter rolls of people who've died or moved, or using ballots that can be actually recounted (like punch cards) are actually attempts by the Republicans to suppress Democratic voters.
Because, just because you need ID to buy a booze or cigs doesn't mean it's reasonable to require ID to vote.
Clear, Dark Skies
what shall we replace it with? the exit polls?
The point of the electoral college is similar to the point of the senate. They are both there to ensure the STATES have a voice in government. This is the United STATES of America, but people have come to believe it is the Federal Republic of America. If you believe that you personally were disenfranchised by the last 2 elections because you didn't vote for Bush (I didn't vote for Bush the last 3 times, btw) then maybe it is not so much a sign that the elecoral college is at fault, it is that the central government has grown way too powerful and has swept the individual states into irrelevancy. The best government is at the local level, where you are better aware of your governing needs than some beltway insider 1000 miles away. Next best is state government, only 100 miles away.
I do agree voting machines need a papertrail, though I am vehemently opposed to the idea of giving the voter a receipt--anything that a voter can carry out to indicate how he voted will inevitably lead to coercive voting. If the local political machine can make sure you voted "correctly," (or else!) that is no better than non-audited electronic boxes manufactured by supporters of that political machine.
More music, fewer hits
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
So the exit poll results are more accurate than the actual counted ballots. That's the premise of this book. Call me crazy but I'd go with the opposite. I'm zany like that.
Sounds like a Truther to me. We need to believe that there was a conspiracy of a magnitude that spanned numerous people who were able to coordinate illegal and treasonous actions. People who planned and coordinated a coup of 10 million votes....secretly. Pass the cool aid.
The first time because he was a friendly likable guy
Umm the first time he won on a technicality. in all reality, he lost, but our system is fucked up so he ended up president.
Electoral Votes
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
I'm a bit confused as to why this is still an issue. Did they or didn't they cheat in 2000/2004!?!? I hate to say it, but the damage is done. Sure, a few people belong in prison, but I have little doubt that they belong in prison for plenty of other reasons as well (and they've dodged those bullets easily enough).
Fact is, we already know that they COULD have cheated. Voter registration, dead people voting, and Diebold machines hacked with VB code; these are obvious and proven methods for cheating. We've proven the methods...now instead of wasting time speculating if they were used, let's spend time taking those tools away from the people who might use them in the next election!
The only benefit to showing the methods were probably used (since it's almost impossible to prove) is to put people behind bars. We all know that nobody would go to jail for this, so let's spend the energy on finding the holes and plugging them up.
Oh yeah, and let's fix half of the fundamental problems with voting and switch over to Instant Runoff Voting
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
Bush won the election because Kerry was a wishy-washy asshole. It's that simple.
Go ahead just invalidate some of the most important policies and procedures that are supposed to make this government/society work by reducing the issue to a simple matter of personal opinion.
Nevermind the rule of law. Nevermind procedures that are the outcome of the rule of law. "I say it, therefore it is!"
The casual attitude the parent and moderators take is the rule of Despots not a Democracy.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Oh wait no, I mean LInux! Oh wait no I mean Firefly, oh wait no, what competition was this again?
Monstar L
Trolling doesn't change the outcome either. There is no question Bush won in 2004. Let us not forget the fact that Bush is the first president not elected by the people, but chosen by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said when to stop the recount, thus deciding the presidency (and NOT the voters). I'm not saying they chose Bush on purpose, I am saying they should not have intervined in the will of the American people. The "get over it" crowd is the crowd that needs to read this book the most but is the least likely to read it. This book is important so that this kind of crap never happens again. Those ignorant of their history are doomed to repeat it. Do we really want another 2000 election in 2008?
Such a shame that even where there are suppose to be "nerds" (Some word that is suppose to be relivant to one who is "smart"), you can still see lots of ignorance, and bitching about something that is so irrelivant on a large scale.
-=Aubrey=-
Speaking as one of the Bush voters... We sleep great at night. It's the bedwetting liberals who have problems. By looking at your past postings it is clear you are quite bitter about losing the elections.
At least in my area, I am aware that every single polling area is full of people who have been running it for 40 years on average. They really have stopped caring about issues of the future, and more about more discounts for them now before they die, because hey, they'll be dead when issue "blah" becomes relevent!
To increase accuracy and quality, I bet using citizens of US military draft age (18-21 primarily) would help, because they will give more of a damn about future issues.
that the way the exit polling was conducted was flawed, and can be easily misread. This is based on comparing 2006 results to 2004 results...
2 /483
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/23/9122
Ok, I shouldn't say kos... as it was DemFromCT, but it did get promoted to the front page.
As others have pointed out, it wouldn't take many people. But even so, were you aware that people have already come forward?
--MarkusQ
Hey, conspiracies are fun - I'll be the first to admit that. However, look at some of the changes in the past decade that could effect polling: 1. More people vote absentee. I would bet there is a selection bias between those who vote absentee and those who don't. (Oregon excluded.) 2. More people use cell phones. These are not (I believe) targeted for phone polls. If you polled people with cell phones and those without, I bet there is a significant difference in the two samples. 3. If you look at the districts who adopt the electronic voting machines, they are not randomly drawn. Another selection bias. Also, A. If you look at the districts where the exit polls were most "wrong", they were almost all performed by college-aged girls. B. Given the rabid, public criticism of Bush, I would wager there were some people who would vote for Bush and not admit it to even their spouses because they didn't want to listen to hours of "Bush is responsible for global warming, world hunger, and the wide use of Windows." Just my $2. (Inflation)
See here's the problem: if exit polls reveal a higher number of Kerry votes than the actual precinct results, that means that either (a) the exit polls were systematically faulty (in some other way), (b) the elections were systematically faulty (although not necessarily rigged), or (c) some Republicans were lying. However, since we know that Republicans don't lie, that leaves us with (a) or (b), which is exactly what was claimed in the review.
Now, sure, you might point out that some people on /. are claiming to have said they voted for Kerry to exit pollsters when in fact they voted for Bush, but obviously they are lying and therefore are not Republicans.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Pretty simple...you compare the paper printouts from a polling station with the numbers reported by the voting machine. Since the voters could actually see the print outs you can assume they're accurate. If the numbers reported by the machine don't match the paper tally...you've been hacked!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
If you want a completely unrelated example of this power look at John McCain. He has been an incredibly 'Independant' republican throught his career, and the RNC torpedoed him in favor of Bush in 99'. Now, however, it looks like he is the one Republican independant enough to have a shot at holding the presidency for the republicans in '08. So, what does the RNC do?... If youlook at McCain's recent public statements, he had a major shift about 9-12 months ago where suddenly everything he says supports the president. Why is he still supporting GW when almost no-one else outside the whitehouse is?.... Because the RNC sat him down and gave him a talking to. Basically, they want John to tow the party line for a while in exchange for throwing party support behind him for '08. If he doesn't, he can expect the same kind of support he got in '99-'00.
Sounds crazy I'm sure, but really it makes perfect sense. Reing in the moderate loose cannon in exchange for the best shot at holding the presidency.
Anyway, George couldn't steal an election on his best day, but the RNC can and did. Read the other research on the elections!
Keep passing the open windows...
Because nobody ever lies on their exit poll...
this story has black helicopters written all over it, un-news worthy, if thats a word.
I remember the weeks preceding the election, reading poll after poll, from any number of sources, which showed the President tied with, or narrowly beating Kerry. Almost all of the polls I read had just about the same result, with a very few aberrations. Then came election eve. The exit polls started looking dramatically different from the polls during the run-up. They showed Kerry ahead, sometimes significantly. Then the official results came, and looked pretty much exactly like the polls from the preceding weeks.
It was clear then, as now. The exit polls were screwy.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
If only Republicans didn't continually try to redefine reality we wouldn't be in this mess we're in.
Exit polls? I intentionally give the opposite answer whenever anyone asks me anything at the polls because it's absolutely on one's business but mine. Dick move or not I'm sure I'm not the only "dick" that does this. Exit polls be damned
Not to mention, the bloggers were reporting exit polls at like 11AM EST saying Kerry was going to win in a landslide because of exit poll results. Never mind how this influences an election (and it does..) but it's easy to figure that the demographic voting before 5PM EST on the east coast is going to be biased democrat (ie, more female, more unemployed, more students). All demographics that tend to vote for democrats more often. This is basic stuff.
Also despite the authors claims, exit polls HAVE been inaccurate historically. In 2000 exit polls declared Gore the clear winner of Florida. The exit pollsters were so sure of it that they called Flordia early for Gore, before the conservative voters in the panhandle even got out to vote!
In 2002, exit poll data came with the disclaimer that is 'might not be reliable!'.
And then in 2004, there was the whole mess with Kerry, AND exit polling incorrectly predicted the Republicans would hold only 1 seat in the senate.
So why do they fail? Some think that women were oversampled in the 2004 election exit polls (the ones twards the end of the night, that the networks actually released rather than leaking to bloggers). Others say that Republicans are less likely to answer exit polls. I can believe that with the political climate as it is today.
Republicans are often called harsh names for positions they hold dear. Among these are racist, xenophobe, fascist, fundie, hate monger, etc. This is irrisponsible, and never happened in the media 20 years ago, but it happens today. I think this is mostly done to avoid having to state a position. If Ralph calls for border security, and Fred says in response you are a xenophobic racist, the debate is no longer over border security, but usually turns into Ralph defending himself against the slander. Fred feels vindicated, like he's fighting Hitler rather than Ralph, while Ralph is left intimdated about voicing his beliefs.
So tell me, why would a Republican answer pollsters, who are assumed to be media types (they aren't) when the media is openly hostile twards your political beliefs?
I want to make it very clear that voting systems that don't allow a paper trail to confirm their validity are BAD NEWS. But looking at a discrepancy between polls and the results of secret ballots as a fault of the latter is not good either.
So the people in the Kerry strongholds who voted in the (local) minority were reluctant to say so, lest they suffer some negative consequences, whilst their opposite numbers in Bush neighborhoods had no such fear? How many people just lied about who they voted for?[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
"There was no upswing of support for Bush throughout election day -- that impression was entirely an artifact of the media "correcting" the exit-poll figures to match the official results." Not so. It's a fact that a lot of Democrat voters don't work and fill polls during the day. Then the people who work vote at night and Republican votes go up. Add to this that the media and other groups "tinker" with exit polls to influence election results (just like CBS manufatured forged documents). We all know an "October Suprprise" will come from Democrats each year.
except for patenting the Karl Rove Neocon Magic Weather Machine. They publish those things, you know?
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The amount of political moonbattery on /. these days has really influenced me to visit the site less.. and less.. and less.
Yes, I was aware. Here's more info:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis
Kind of hard to figure what to make of this guy. It is odd that he claims to have written fraud software long before the machines were in use.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Normality is now: overrated.
These are actually very good points, and I don't want anyone to think that my flippant response to A beautiful mind was meant to suggest otherwise. I'm definitely not one of those who thinks anything has been proven (with respect to ballot corruption), but, like you, I'd like to see our voting system changed to a verifiable one to remove (or at least lessen) the doubts of its validity.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Just because Rove didn't cause the hurricane doesn't mean he didn't have a hand in the manipulation of the election! How is your arguement relevent?
Keep passing the open windows...
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you clearly don't understand the situation.
Never has/will be more true from 2000 to 2008.
And I could not help but laugh at/with the intro I think they call them "exit polls" because people bolt for the exits when you mention them".
{jaded} True in the sense that the guilty will try to flee the scene of the crime when called out.{/jaded}
But, IMO, the '04 election wasn't about picking "The lesser of two evils" but about picking the "less evil
of two lessers".
What makes me even more bitter and amused: I was talking with the manager of a local tobacco shop, just the
usual bs'ing and a guy goes off about Bush and the whole fales premise of the war, loss of freedom and
stolen elections and so forth. The manager askes "Who'd you vote for" and the guy says "Bush, both times,
but that's not the point...". I missed most of the debate from laughing so hard.
My reasons for voting against BJr was the cluelessness and privelage of a spoiled brat who joined the Coke^H^Hast Guard
and didn't get busted down and kicked the hell out for being a dirtbag, when your average military person
would have reamed a new one for less severe infractions.
IMO (based on what I'm aware of), BSr and Kerry both served in times of war and even if they were desk jockys at least had some clue as to the danger your average military person faces, especially during war.
BJr doesn't know or doesn't care via the equipment abscense/shortage that's getting way too many vets killed,
and insult to injury is the extensions of service beyond survivability in a warzone.
But the unmitigated gall to speak out against what he's doing, and vote for him TWICE?
To be stupid once w/o info/exp is normal, but to be stupid again with info/exp should be fatal/punishable.
BJr said it best and it applies to his supporters: "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
Apparently they can...I think.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Forget it. You'll NEVER know. The only thing you can do is prepare for future elections so we DO know.
charge about the same. You don't need a conspiracy for something this obvious. Insurance companies publish rates and check their competitor's published rates, it's obvious. Corrupt election officials take advantage of paper-free electronic polling machines to get Republicans elected, also obvious. Hell, what would be silly is if they even bothered with conspiring together.
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OK, so the forces of evil agreed in advance to steal the election. Where was the meeting held? Did they rent out a conference room? What was the cover story? How about the meeting to agree on the cover story for the meeting? How many phone calls, secretaries, coffee gofers, etc. were involved? Did the meeting run long? Did they get lunch catered in?
So at a minimum, how many people were involved in a conspiracy to steal democracy? 200? 500?
And NOBODY ratted them out?
Lay off the bong hits kids.
Funny, I've always felt that an intelligent person doesn't buy into any particular political philosophy, but rather builds his/her own. That way, there never is an "other side". ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Comparing Bush to a crap throwing monkey = "+5 Insightful".
Comparing Kerry to a crap throwing monkey = "-1 Troll".
Moderators, at least try to hide your moderation abuses a little bit better. I will email the editors to revoke your mod privileges for this blatant abuse of power.
Because this place gradually evolving into SlashTruth. The people who use to contribute have moved on and been replaced with basement activist types.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
A simple, safe, completely OSS voting system can be made with only say tens or hundreds of hours of work. The key is to make it completely secure by only requiring trust in the ballot box, which is not electronic -- everything else is directly observable by the poll workers, observers, or voter. This lets you leverage any technology out there.
Voting machine:
1. Setup linux distro with apache, tomcat, whatever
2. Install ballot web app
3. Setup CUPS printer
4. Setup firefox for kiosk mode, home page is voting app
Ballots print like this, one measure per line:
PRESIDENT: AL GORE
SENATE: JAMES WEBB
STEM-CELL: YES
During the election, voters take their printout and drop it into the ballot box. After the election these are counted individually at each polling place using a counting machine.
Counting machine:
1. Setup linux distro
2. Install ballot counter program
3. Run ballots through OCR software
4. Update counters (in realtime as scanned)
For the counting program, all it needs to do is keep a count of unique lines on the ballots as returned by the OCR. It should include a simple display showing the most frequent lines and their count (sorted by count) along with the last vote scanned. This way it doesn't need to know anything about the election in order to count it.
For the voting machine you can add fancy CSS styles, javascript to prevent accidental undervoting, screen readers, on-screen keyboard, etc. To polish the system you will want to have some specific printer hardware so the votes print on something smaller than a sheet per vote.
we have to first ask about the 2000 election.
bush never won legally. in Volusia County, FL one precinct tallied -16000 votes for Gore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error
that's right, negative votes. which logically and legally is impossible. but technically possible.
since they say bush won by 500 votes, this proves that bush never won the presidency legally.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Printing paper ballots and reading them with an optical reader is cheaper than creating many, many more 'screen voting' machines.
But there are lots of hidden costs in collecting and storing large quantities of paper.
The alternative is to be able to fully audit the MACHINES, as you have done in New York for years. But none of us trust the machine or the audit if the maker is partisan, or if the device is 'secret' or 'mutable'.
It's much harder to secure the PROCESS of electronic voting to be reliable and fair. Since we only vote once or twice a year, I think a paper ballot (with electronic counting) is much cheaper.
Notice that mass printing of ballots is very cheap. So is mass optical 'scanning'. It's only expensive if you have to have humans inspect each one, which really only happens in very, very close races. Who cares about the cost of the handful of elections that are that close?
Actually, I think the premise is more that the exit poll results are more accurate than the actual counted ballots, because there were problems in how ballots were counted. As I think Stalin once famously said, it's not the votes that count, but who it is that counts the votes. And given that the divergence between exit polls and official results was apparently statistically significantly greater in those precincts that used no-paper-trail, highly-fudgeable, touch-screen voting machines, it looks pretty apparent that *something* dodgy was happening.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It wasn't an argument, it was a joke. You'd realize that if you hadn't drunk so much purple kool-ade.
Surely that humor is intentional, right?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $17.95, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $12.74!
Save yourself $5.21 by buying the book here: Who won?. That's a total savings of 29.03%!
Because it's no longer humor-- it's the sad unvarnished truth.
That's how it's done in the UK. Not with an internet camera but the press and television can be present and frequently are for close or controversial constituencys. Independent observers too.
Watch a British election and you'll see live coverage of the counts.
Since exit polls are supposedly more accurate than the actual count, do away with actually counting the votes. That will save a lot of time and effort, and still give people the feeling that they're participating, and worst case the votes could be used to clarify any exit polling issues.
Just like how we don't need a real "count every nose" census, just count a lot then correct via statistics.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I suppose a link to a wikipedia article with a "disputed neutrality" tag might be better than a link to a video of the event in question under some circumstances, but I'm not sure what those circumstances would be.
Not really. I have been involved in quite a few development projects of various sorts, and in every one of them the software was written before the machines were put in use. With the possible exception of some Bricklin demos I would venture to guess that it is always done that way. I would find it hard to believe that the machines were put into use before the software (crooked or not) was written, but I see nothing odd about writing the software first.
--MarkusQ
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exit polls are excellent if you want to gauge the young-pretty-girl vote. You may even get a few fatties, too, if the pollsters can't find any young pretty girls to talk to.
There has been endless debate about this, but a good primer can be found here: http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit_p olls_what.html
"Why, if this was happening, there would be a great big smoking gun lying on the table in front of me!"
CLUNK
"I'm not looking down, I'm not looking down, I'm not looking down! There's no smoking gun on this table!"
... but some how he keeps outsmarting the Democrats (...stealing elections, whatnot). What does that say about Democrats?
...who cares? The fact is that neither candidate has the interest of "the people" in mind when they run. We do our best to choose the lesser of two evils and the gap seems to be narrowing with time. If you really want to affect change then run for office yourself and maintain your ideals through your term (if you get elected).
But to continue to cry over past elections, especially when the it's with a lame duck presidency; well, what is the point. Had the election gone the other way do you really believe we, or the world, will be any better off? Please tell me that no one that visits slashdot is that naive?!?
I'll make a book. First I'll start with the "facts" I want to prove, then I'll make up statistics to proove my point.
Lets go with the title "Algore is a worthless waste of skin". This is obviously going to be a well rounded, fair, and bipartison piece of investigative work. Ok, now lets make up, oops meant to say collect, facts that proove my point. If any of these "collected" facts don't support our case, we can simply drop them.
Then we do a typical "liberal" interview. This is where you take seleced quotes out of context, where you change the question asked, and maybe chop sections off the quotes. Say we ask him "What's your favorite TV reality show", and he replies "I really don't like any of them that I have seen". Now we change the question to "What do you think of Blacks", and attach this part of his response, "I really don't like any of them". This works really great for liberals.
Now, we insert copious adjatives wherever we mention him, like "stupid", "idiot", "racist", whenever we mention his name. Like "the stupic racist algore". If you repeat it frequently enough, like the liberals do, it will obviously be proof that it is true, like "GW Bush is such a stupid racist idiot, that he planned a complete takeover of the US election system leaving no proof beyond a stitistical analomony, and faked a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center with all the blaim pointing at Islamic Terrorists. What a complete moron".
Such "grand conspiracies" you're talking about would have required ONE PERSON according to the non-partisan government agency that looked into it. ONE PERSON... wee there is a "GRAND CONSPIRACY" for you
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
"Even if a smoking gun was exposed saying that blatant fraud was discovered in one or both elections, what would it accomplish?"
If you find a smoking gun it is best to take it away so that it won't be used again.
Just saying "Get over it" isn't a solution to what happened. Looking at the facts, investigation and if the investigation leads to the discovery that the election was stolen then jail time or worse is warranted.
Now what is the penalty for trying to take over the government by illegal mea? Wouldn't that be treason?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
(ready the "Offtopic" mod points now, fellas. I got it coming for this, and I know it...)
How did this get past my "No political stories at all on the front page" settings ? The flamewars these type of stories always set off makes Windows v. Linux look like a tempest in a teapot. If I wanted ignorant political blathering, I'd surf Kos or the Freepers. Bad form, editors, bad form.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." - P.J. O'Rourke.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
How interesting that the book discusses "the media's strange reluctance to report on any of these problems" This is what bothers me most -- because a true democracy is automatically kept in check by the free press. However, I am convinced that that big media is afraid of *someone* and thus not reporting on the likely stolen election.
If this sounds like a "conspiracy theory" someone please explain "the media's strange reluctance to report on any of these problems"
The Swift Boat ads cost Kerry the election. Allegations don't have to be true, or even credible, or even make sense. The media just spends more time talking about "the controversy" rather than using critical analysis on the claims themselves, and this perpetuates the story rather than revealing it as a silly smear campaign. When the story isn't "are these claims true or false," but instead, "People are talking about the Swift Boat ads!" then the notoriety of the story, rather than the veracity of story, becomes the point, and our penchant for bread and circuses hamstrings our ability to intelligently discuss anything. The news media has stopped being news and started being just entertainment that is based on the news.
And the Democrats won the mid-terms. Get over it.
The entire argument here is "ZOMG the exit polls are different to the votes!"
They have no actual evidence of anything whatsoever.
Having said that, I agree with everyone on the problems with voting machines - just not that they have been systematically rigged. Ditch them and go with paper ballots. Ditch all the voting machines, not just the Diebold ones. A piece of paper and a pencil. That's all you need.
That most people are so disgusted with the press and their reporting that they lie to a pollster, just to make the press look dumber than normal? I started voting in 1976 and have been hit by reporters when exiting the polls 3 times. 1. How I voted is nobodys business but mine. 2. The questions were slanted to a certain viewpoint, not a simple who did you vote for. I lied every time. Yes they have the "right" to ask the question, but I have the "right" to answer it any way I want. Deal with it!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Okay, exit polls done by the lying media, or vote counts by Diebold?
I'll take Diebold every time.
Perhaps there has been rampant voter fraud on the part of the left for decades, and it doesn't work with electronic voting machines so for the first time we got "legitimate", though unexpected, results.
Evidence, you say? We've known of the Democratic shenanigans in Chicago, IL for decades. In Washington, we had polling locations run almost entirely by Democrats (including a democratic board of elections and director of elections in King County), and when a Republican won the governor's race, we were subjected to weeks of watching them "find" more votes, which over-represented the democratic candidate. The board of elections allowed these ballots (which in some cases had been in unsecured areas and therefore weren't trustworthy anymore, some were even taken home) and gave the election to the democrat after "finding" enough.
No, of course I don't believe that the voting machines are actually reducing systemic fraud, but any fool can come up with a theory and make it sound plausible. Yes, I am calling the authors of the book fools.
I'm sick and tired of the left whining and screaming that every election they lose was "stolen". When your own house is clean, then come clean everyone else's. At a certain point you have to wonder if there are so many "experts" on the left in voter fraud because of their own personal experience as perpetrators?
I'm not defending Bush or the saintliness of the Republicans. Politics is a dirty business and both parties suck. But you are undermining our nation in the very effort to clean up our elections, by de-legitimizing them all.
Instead of whining for the better part of a decade that the election was "stolen" (news flash: it wasn't, any more than any other election), why don't you spend the same amount of energy getting the new democratic legislature to fix what's really broken: absentee ballots, not being required to show ID, provisional ballots, not being required to prove citizenship at registration, hampering efforts to clear felons and the dead from voter rolls, etc., and the new one, closed source voting machines without audit trails!
If 10% of the effort spent whining, was spent seeking reform, we'd have the cleanest election system ever.
This was about 2004 election (Kerry), not 2000 (Gore).
I can repeat on this one, because the book is a repeat of many historical events for US.
... FUS, FEU, FUN them always
6 573566 27894
As always
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=217392&cid=17
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=217076&cid=17
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
What next for slashdot? 9/11 conspiracy theories? Sheesh. I guess as long as it drives traffic the owners will be happy.
"This is the United STATES of America, but people have come to believe it is the Federal Republic of America. "
Erm, it *IS* a Federal Republic, you twit.
If it was a joke, it would have been funny.
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Don't know about anyone else, but I'm not willing to stipulate the Rove didn't cause the hurricane.
He puts on that dopey comic book guy facade when he's out in public, but I'm pretty sure he has a persian cat and a monocle at home.
The "notion" did say Fox News has bias (obvious to anyone honest who watches it, a nonneglibigle fraction of its audience). But it didn't say only Fox News has a bias.
You are the peddler of the strawman. You are likely a satisfied Fox News viewer.
--
make install -not war
Except no one's talking about the complete post about Fox News' bias. "GP AC", wrt that point in the thread, was challenging the notion of poster Hassman's that only Fox News has bias (by affirming that and denying the truth that the rest of the mainstream media has bias). So the "notion" did say that only Fox News has a bias. Way to follow along there Doc. Not surprising, with you.
That's like saying, "Why bother investigating that murder? Let's just make sure it never happens again." If someone tampered with the last election (or three), they need to be caught and arrested. Obviously we need to prevent future wrongdoing, but that doesn't mean past wrongdoers (especially at this magnitude) should be let off the hook (not that I'm convinced there was any foul play to begin with). Nobody is above the law.
Why is it that discussion, networking and learning with regard to how we are attacked and fed upon by psychopaths is always characterized by the attackers and their supporters as, "whining"?
--Ridicule is simply an attempt to make people feel too embarrassed to speak out against their attackers, and as such, reduce their ability to find support and strength in numbers. Strength in numbers is exactly what evil fears, and as such I find the intent behind ridicule despicable, as are most of the tools used by those dedicated to Self-Service.
I am thankful, however, that as learning about such tactics continues, (through precisely the discussion, networking you characterize as whining), such low-brow tactics become increasingly futile.
For Ridicule to work, Fear is required, and this is why the dark siders use it; self-service proceeds from a fundamental framework built on Fear. Those who work on the other polarity, however, are learning that fear is something which limits, and as such, are ever-less controlled by it. And so the Service-to-Self contingent will continue to punch the fear button through the use of ridicule and similar tactics, and will not be able to understand why it doesn't work. They cannot comprehend a world view which does not include fear, and this will be their downfall.
At to your other point; that politics is by its nature a dirty game and that Left and Right are both corrupt. This is true. It's "Good Cop, Bad Cop". But, -and this is the important point-, our job in this reality is to become aware. Just because we are not necessarily able to fix such systems, collecting knowledge remains vital. And believe it or not, knowing does indeed change the shape of our world in ways which are not immediately obvious. Knowing how we are manipulated offers the possibility of choice, without which there is not hope.
Knowledge protects. Ignorance endangers.
-FL
Only because the number of people voting against the Republicans was under-estimated. (It's always a tricky thing when your fake election needs to be land close to 50% in order to look believable.) And so there were an estimated 3 million votes given falsely through machine 'error' to the Republicans. The reason the Democrats won was that despite this, more people than expected went out to vote against the Republicans that day. I guess all the work done to suppress the truth about how America feels about the Bush regime confused the minds of those planning the false election. Evil often tends to shoot itself in the foot by falling for its own illusions.
As for there being no evidence. . . Silly. Use your eyes and ears. How do you think people learned about voting corruption thus far? There is a great deal of evidence for anybody who chooses to dig. So dig. Dig!
-FL
The Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum contest between the good cop/bad cop political forum in the U.S. is totally broken, and indeed, is largely designed to divide and conquer the public. If you spend all your time angry at those who see reality differently and vote for the other group of criminals, then you will have wasted your energy. Liberals of good conscience have many valid points. So do Conservatives of good conscience. Good people don't want to rape the world, and there are plenty of good people on both sides of the divide; they just work from different behavioral sets. Putting them at war with one another leads to perpetual bickering while the real villainy goes down untouched.
Secondly, Bush Jr. may be self-deluded and foolish, but the administration and his puppeteers are more intelligent than he is. Bush Sr., for instance was cagey enough to remain the head of the CIA for a significant portion of his professional life. He and others like him are both smart enough and well connected enough to control Bush Jr. effectively. A lot of people were involved in the 9-11 corruption; Christian Apocalypse Occultism is linked to a significant portion of the shadow government, among other things. It's not about Liberals v.s. Conservatives. Not at all.
-FL
Massively broad-stroke, sound-bitten explanations of this nature may feel smart when you don't stop long enough to think about them, but other than providing an ego-boost to the person speaking them, they really serve no purpose other than to mislead.
There's a reason why guys like Noam Chompsky refuse to give fifteen-second comments to the news. He knows that global politics are very complex.
Your statement assumes that Democrats vote in the morning and Republicans vote in the evening because of employment demographs. It also assumes that polling only happens in the morning. And it also assumes that the proven and accepted long history of the accuracy of exit polls is irrelevant.
As it happens, ALL of these assumptions are erroneous. It would be helpful if you did more research and thinking before taking the luxury of resting easy in deceptively simple theories.
-FL
OOOoooo, you liberal!
very effective.
There will always be a problem with electronic voting as long as it remains a for-profit venture. If politicians wanted a truly trustworthy system of counting votes, it could happen - open-source software, standardized hardware, paper trail, auditible etc. But accurate voting - something at the heart of a true Democracy - will never exist in this nation. Why, because Capitalism is more important than Democracy.
www.itjerk.com
I'm sure a few hundred other people agree, but this is one case where redundancy is good. Thanks for giving this the time and space it needs. There is, as doom says, no more important issue facing the US.
About statistical significance: Exit polls are used to test the fairness of elections in developing countries. This level of significance in the discrepancy between exit polls and vote counts would have thrown a Third World election into doubt. In the US, we seem to have spent six crucial years hoping the problem would vanish if we squeezed our eyes shut.
I never claimed the election was stolen. In fact, in other posts, I've expressed my skepticism to that effect. I was just pointing out that the *obvious* explanations were actually discussed.
Go cry over "your" lost Congress somewhere else. (I'm not a Democrat, either. I do, however, favor moderation in government, so I wasn't upset to see the Republicans lose control. One party in charge of everything never leads to moderation.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The problem isn't "that if you watch Fox News [...] you're politically unsophisticated or [...] you have a personal agenda that flies in the face of common sense".
The problem is precisely the reverse. If you're politically unsophisticated, or you have a personal agenda that flies in the face of common sense, you're more likely to watch Fox News. And then, since Fox News produces mainly rightwing/Republican propaganda, those viewers have their political unsophistication and common nonsensical personal agendas reinforced. And watch Fox News more.
If you think Fox News has "liberal" content, you must be referring to allen colmes, the sacrificial liberal milquetoast Sean Hannity wears as a fig leaf. Or maybe the various tabloid features appealing to hypocritical "Conservatives", like the excuses of moral outrage used to broadcast video of scantily clad young girls and other salacious content. Or maybe you're just so rightwing yourself that Fox's merely authoritarian content looks "left" from your extreme right position. Fox offers all kinds of ways to pretend it's "fair and balanced" (though mainly depending on chanting that propaganda tagline like hypnosis).
Your belief in "liberal bias" comes from where? Fox News? Your minister? God told you? Nearly all mass media, especially counted by viewership, is corporate. Corporations are "conservative", because they worked and spent hard to create the status quo that feeds their bottom line. Because "Conservatism" is authoritarian in its political effects, and corporations are not democratic, they're authoritarian. No one who analyzes actual media content and activity believes it's "liberal", except people with an antiliberal agenda who work to push everthing steadily further to the right.
You even admit Fox News is "Conservative" when you say "I am a conservative, so Fox News naturally appeals to me". Come on, if you just read your own posts honestly, I wouldn't have to reply with anything.
Many Christians have a persecution complex. To avoid getting trapped in inverted logic about political sophistication/agendas and Fox News viewership, I'll clarify how it works. Some people have a persecution complex, for various reasons. Christianity's central beliefs are tied up in a sacrificed god, persecuted by the public and government in its holiest episodes. People with a persecution complex are attracted to this acting out of their own fantasies, and are more likely to join. Current American pop Christianity has many people promoting the persecution complex. Ignoring that nearly all government power in America has always been controlled by Christians, even despite explicit setups to prevent Christianity (or any religion) from controlling government power. And ignoring the destruction of many of those protections from religious control of society - because that would reveal how Christianity is far from persecuted, but rather privileged in government concessions to Christian interests at the expense of nonbelievers and their interests. The persecution complex perpetuates itself despite reality, because it works to get more power (at least for the leaders who promote it all), and because that power, and the Christianity itself, does little to solve the personality problems from which the actual persecution complex comes.
Man, I could go on for days with you. You claim you're not a "straw man", but what you're supposed to be claiming (or denying) by that is totally unknowable. Because you threw out several straw man arguments, like your introduction of the idea that "if you watch Fox News that you're politically unsophisticated / have an agenda", as if someone had said that, so you could argue against it. Or your introduction of "conservatives are uneducated", so you can argue against it, though no one said so to begin with. Or even your introduction of the (incomprehensible) idea that "you are a straw man", which no one said you were (what would they mean if they d
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make install -not war
Is this slashdot or rolling stone?
nothing
Well this is a golden oldie... a book review that I wrote months ago. Thankfully (per my request) they deleted my election predictions that I closed the article with (I was only half-right, if you care).
This morning, the Senator from Maryland spent her entire seven minutes at the Judiciary Committee Hearing talking about the "Voting Rights Act" and recent election irregularities in Maryland.
And I see this is a subject she's talked about for some time now: Mikulski Says Voting Rights Act Needed Now More than Ever That's a press release from July 20, 2006.
The "Free Press" guys out in Ohio are of the opinion that the great Democratic landslide of 2006 would've been even larger without corrupt elections: Missing votes in Ohio call races into question, January 3, 2007
Why on Earth is that odd? Although the machines hadn't been mandated yet, they were certainly developing them for use in elections (why else would a company develop voting machines in the first place?) and if anyone was intending to rig them the time to do it would be before they were purchased by the state.
You're confusing expert testimony with a first hand witness. No, I don't consider tobacco company executive competent to give expert medical testimony, but their sworn first-hand accounts of events they participated in ("on such and such a date I did so and so") are as admissible as anyone else's. You are right, he might be lying under oath (anyone could) but despite what you seem to be implying there's nothing about the circumstance that would indicate that. He demonstrably was working as a computer programmer for a company that makes voting machines, and was involved in the development of the software for those machines at the time in question.
--MarkusQ
In going to look for the story I recall reading about him, it appears I may have been crossing him with William Singer of Hart InterCivic, or perhaps someone else. At the very least, I can not locate the story I am remembering, which stated or implied that YEI was doing the software for a company which manufactures voting machines. So yes, if it turns out he wasn't actually involved in the software development in some way it does become harder to know what to make of him.
--MarkusQ