You can bet your Blackwell the 2004 election was stolen — by the Republican Party — right from under the nose of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who, election scholars who studied massive irregularities in the election say, would have won the election if not for massive fraud committed by the GOP in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and elsewhere, according to a report in Rolling Stone magazine.
The article is far too long to excerpt, and perhaps even to summarize, but it says much of what I documented here in the weeks and months after the election:
The exit polls were not flawed, as was reported after the election results showed wide disparities in the vote totals versus the exit poll results. Instead, the exit poll was one of the most accurate ever performed, except in areas where irregularities have surfaced, such as most of Ohio and Florida.
The Republican Party paid operatives to intimidate and harass thousands of likely Democratic voters to prevent them from voting, illegally wiped thousands of Democratic voter registrations off the rolls, and in Ohio, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who once boasted of “delivering” the election to Bush, was running the statewide elections while doing everything he could to disenfranchise Democrats.
In fact, much of the article centers on Blackwell’s illegal activities such as denying provisional ballots to Democratic voters.
Republicans orchestrated the hours-long lines at polling places in predominantly Democratic precincts, causing many voters to give up and go home without ever voting, by reducing the number of precincts in historically Democratic areas and reducing the number of voting machines provided to those areas and providing broken machines to those areas.
In many rural counties, Republicans tampered with ballots by obscuring the vote for Kerry on the ballots and filling in a vote for Bush, and may have tampered with voting machines and tabulators. In one county, they even made up a fake terrorist threat to prevent anyone from seeing what they were doing to the ballots.
And after the Libertarian and Green Party candidates forced a recount of Ohio, election officials rigged the recount. Not that it would have mattered anyway; Blackwell fought the recount so that it was delayed far beyond the point where electors were chosen.
The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one. For the second election in a row, the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks. Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office — which means, in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself.
American history is littered with vote fraud — but rather than learning from our shameful past and cleaning up the system, we have allowed the problem to grow even worse. If the last two elections have taught us anything, it is this: The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system. If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded, they will abandon the ballot box. Nothing less is at stake here than the entire idea of a government by the people.
Voting, as Thomas Paine said, “is the right upon which all other rights depend.” Unless we ensure that right, everything else we hold dear is in jeopardy. — Rolling Stone
See the entire Rolling Stone article (Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4) and sources.
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Gardner Goldsmith teams up with Brett Veinotte, of the excellent School Sucks Project and the School Sucks podcast. Gard and Brett discuss the impetus of the series and project, and why public education must be stopped.
The end of a war, to most people, means all the troops come home, out of harm's way. It means we stop killing people and getting killed. It means we stop sending troops and armed personnel over and draining our treasury for military operations in that foreign land. But much like the infamous "mission accomplished" moment of the last administration, this "end" of the war also means none of those things.
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Fleeb
Jun 01, 2006
So, what does one do to counter such fraud?
Why does this fraud not seem to have any consequences (such as the jailing of those who committed it)?
I do not mean for these questions to be rhetorical. What system do we have in place for dealing with this.
Jun 01, 2006
Hammer of Truth » Rolling Stone: America Secretly Overthrown in 2004
Thorley Winston
Jun 02, 2006
The article’s bogus; RFK Jr’s central claims were debunked last December in Mother Jones magazine. Armed Liberal goes through some of more egregious details over at Winds of Change. Suffice to say RFK Jr is lying (again) just as he did when he wrote his piece on the environment before the 2004 election and it was demolished by Professor Jonathan Adler.
Michael Hampton
Jun 02, 2006
(I’ve tried to repair your comment; you mangled it pretty badly.)
And exactly how does that constitute debunking? It looks more like disagreement in a lot of cases. And they don’t touch quite a few of the allegations in this article, or just admit they were true.
Not to mention the Demoncrats have a vested interest in not contesting the election: the longer-term goal of getting rid of the Electoral College and trying to remake America into a democracy. Pray that never happens.
Nathan Burba
Jun 02, 2006
Wow, at first I thought this was a hoax or a joke. This is 10 times worse than 2000 and I haven’t heard ANYthing about this on the news. Something is seriously wrong here. Where are all the watchdog groups? Where is the public outcry? Are we all too afraid to admit that our voting system is a joke?
Jun 02, 2006
Moonage Political Webdream
Michael Hampton
Jun 02, 2006
Aside from Black Box Voting, who have been great at helping investigate the machines, few people actually care. The Republicans aren’t going to undermine their “victory” by helping prove it didn’t happen, and the Democrats have a much more sinister agenda.
I just realized I wrote something “more sinister” than massive election fraud.
seattle blue
Jun 02, 2006
Well being in seattle, I haven’t seen any fraud but democrat fraud. The govenors election was stolen hear even after it was won.
There was so much documented vote fraud, and no way to stop it because of the way we vote.
ID needs to be shown to vote, period.
Phredd
Jun 03, 2006
This is funny stuff.
100% of these arguments have been proven FALSE by democratic friendly investigations in FL and OH. No matter how you counted the votes in FL Bush won. I suggest you guys focus on 2008 instead of whining about the past; 2008 is yours to lose.
Phredd
KC
Jun 04, 2006
Do you really believe this stuff? Would the mainstream press not be all over it if true? And, do you think the boobs running NM could manage something so clever? Haha!
Michael Hampton
Jun 04, 2006
The mainstream press frequently screws up or completely misses the most important stories of our time. Consider the two Presidential candidates who were arrested in October 2004 at the Presidential debates. You didn’t hear a word about that from your precious mainstream media! And yet it still happened.
Jun 05, 2006
MacManX.com » Blogroll Dive: 6/5/06
Jun 06, 2006
The Golden Gate » Department of Homeland Stupidity
Jason McClain
Jun 06, 2006
Here is a fairly thorough debunking of this tripe.
Michael Hampton
Jun 06, 2006
Thanks for the interesting clarification on the exit polls. Now how about the rest of it?
Steven Yanis
Jun 07, 2006
Discussing alleged fraud in the 2004 elections might help us prevent such incidents in the future, but it still won’t change the fact that no amount of debate could undo the crap that Americans all over the world have to deal with because of America’s “War on Terrorism” or whatever excuse this administration comes up with to invade other countries.
Jason McClain
Jun 07, 2006
The rest?
:
http://tinyurl.com/fejbj
Michael Hampton
Jun 07, 2006
That’s much better, but please don’t waste TinyURLs like that. :)
Q
Jun 12, 2006
abolish the electoral college. it’s useless, and it we had done away wit hit and simply counted the votes of the people, bush would not have won either election. its should be considered unconstitutional that the votes of cirtain people be more important than that of the citizens they “represent”. they aren’t even obligated to vote in the same direction as the people of the state they represent, as proven by the past 2 elections.
it’s alot easier to pay off 270 people than it is 20,000,000.
electoral college was needed in a time when it would have taken a year to go from city to city to collect and count all the votes, now that inforation is almost real time the electoral college needs to go.
as for the person who says stop whining abou the past, if i broke into your house and stole something that important from you wouldn’t you want me brought to justice?
this is essentially what happened. and the criminal are not only not being prosecuted, but they keep comming back and stealing more. they think they’re elite, with thisspying, and cutting medical and educational funds to pay for war, secret prisons, managed by people who sell chldren as sex slaves, with a good ol’ boy thumbs up, this shit is getting worse and worse and you say get over it? what’s wrong with you?
Homeland security has not met a single quota for any of the goals they were created to do, instead they have been spening thier money hunting file sharers, and mexicans, “securing” the mexican border, even though the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 came in through canada. mroe terrorist were arrreste in canada with plans to come here, but since canadians are white, i guess it’s okay. they keep killing al lthe terror suspects instead of getting information from them. but they want the authority to crush the balls of children to make them talk. they executed timithy mcveigh knowing he had ties to al qaida, when they could have made him talk, they are so proud of killing the latest one, when they could have caputed him, loaded him up with Sodium Pentothal and made him talk, the family members of bin laden ,should have all been questioned, but they let them, go to protect them, and they continue to take away our freedoms, they want to add a constituional amendment that takes away rights the only other time this was done was when the one that called negros 2/3rds of a man so they couldn’t be considered born free.
this is slowly becoming a dictatorship, an empire, and like rome, it will fall. bush started WW3 and he did it on purpose. they could have had bin laden so many times. they puposely let him go. they don’t want to catch him cause then they know it’s over. they imprisioned a man who was trying to find him in iraq on his own as a bounty hunter!
they take away our rights and give them to the people who bombed us!!! why becasue like judas they were given the ok to do wha they did by our own people so the new world order could finally take effect,
rfid chips, detention camps, ww3, illegal spying, patriot act, it just keeps getting worse!
i love my country and its time to take it back before these barbarians destroy everything.
http://www.barefootsworld.net/admiralty.html
rolf
Jun 19, 2006
How a Few People Could Manipulate an Exit Poll
And why we need an Ohio Recount
by Libertarian Rolf Lindgren (November, 2004)
Let’s say an anti-FOX News employee of the Exit Poll company obtains a list of the precincts selected for Ohio’s Exit Poll. The Ohio Exit Poll was based on about 2000 interviewed voters, with a margin of error of about 2% (note – this article will use round numbers for ease of mathematics).
The Ohio Exit Poll said that Kerry won Ohio by 4%, so Kerry’s margin in the Exit Poll was 4% of 2000, which is about 80. 80 more people said they voted for Kerry than said they voted for Bush.
According to immediate post-election reports, Bush actually won Ohio by 2%. So Bush should have won the Exit Poll by 40, rather than losing it by 80, a swing of 120.
Let’s say the anti-FOX News employee leaked the precint list to a very small group of pro-Kerry democrats. If this small group of people could travel the state and get 120 Exit Poll interviews done, that would be enough to swing the Exit Poll by 6%.
The 120 planted interviewees who said they voted for Kerry would replace about 60 real Kerry voters and about 60 Bush voters. This would give Kerry 60 more votes and reduce Bush by 60, providing the 120 vote swing in the data.
If one pro-Kerry democrat could hit 6 precints during the day, only 20 people would be needed to produce this result. The fake voters do not have to actually vote. All they need to do is go into the polling area and then come out of the polling exit. They could go into the polling area and pretend to be in the wrong precinct or use the restroom or whatever ruse they needed.
This pattern could have been repeated in other states as well, including Pennsylvania.
At 7 P.M. central time, the polls were closed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and most of Florida. According to the Exit Poll data, Kerry won Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Florida was too close to call. Before 7 P.M. central, rumors were rampant that Kerry was winning. Had all the networks called Ohio and Pennsylvania at 7 P.M. central for Kerry, that would have about clinched victory for Kerry. Bush voters after 7 P.M. in the central time zone, after 6 P.M. in the mountain time zone, and after 5 P.M. in the pacific time zone would have been deterred to vote, which could have swung a close election.
It is much easier to rig a few Exit Polls, than to rig the entire election in thousands of precincts.
The Badnarik campaign was hurt all year by polling bias, just as the Ed Thompson campaign was defeated by rigged polls in 2002 (http://www.edthompson.com/display.php?which=282&sid=46). Polls were conducted which excluded Badnarik, and besides the Rasmussen Polls, the polls that did include Badnarik, contained anti-libertarian bias.
Republicrats have been using polls for decades to discriminate against Libertarians.
We need an Ohio recount to find out what really happened. A Badnarik campaign poll found that 19% of voters think that the Libertarian Party can win the presidency by the year 2016. We need to root out Exit Poll bias by then so we have a fair chance to win.