Let the Election Fraud Begin!
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...301178_pf.html

Nice. So no big deal: the Democrat and one Independant only look practically identical on the confirmation screen... Oh, and they promise to have this all sorted out by next year's elections.

Your thoughts on this? Is this the Palm Beach Butterfly Ballot all over again? Or is this no big deal? Do you expect voting difficulties like those seen in the past? Or were those seen in the past no big deal either?

You mean the ballot designed by a democrat in a democrat controlled county that was somehow rigged to be bad for the democrats?

Its human error, when I want to see voter fraud I'll look in one of the Chicago voting locations after the polls close. This is just odd hysteria.

Isn't this how Robin Williams was elected in Man of the Year?

If you can't build a voting machine that works, then go with the normal way of voting. I see no sense in putting a machine that doesn't work into play.

Fraud?
Probably not. Although a suspicious eye should certainly be raised.

It is, however, a little inexcusable that the error was not noticed until absentee voters brought it to the attention of election officials. Did no one bother to check beforehand? Somebody's napping.

You mean there in incompetence in government?

I'm surprised the votes get counted period.

No, that was Eddie Murphy in the movie where he played a congressman. Good stuff :lol:

Amen. Assemble a counting committee with representatives from each party to oversee it. The only technology that would be useful is the satellite that will feed the monitoring of the count that should be televised to any American wanting to watch.

I believe that we need to incorporate technology into our voting system. We can do that and have a verifiable paper trail. That said, liberals will continue to kick themselves in the balls and lose if they think they have lost elections because of those Wascally Wepublicans.

huh.
i would have thought that even republicans would be concerned about voter fraud. i dont understand the cavalier attitude toward it on the part of the usual far right suspects above...o wait, i do: voter fraud is a problem when and only when it affects republican candidates. otherwise, its all paranoia and such.
well, i am sure glad i worked that one out.
and here i thought the rules of a democracy were different from that: you know, that all votes mattered.
i was obviously misinformed: the rule is that only republican votes really matter.
it's that "all animals are equal: but some are more equal than others" logic....

well thanks lads: if i hadn't figured out the real rules from reading your posts, i could easily have confused them with glib horseshit.
good thing that didn't happen.

Well holy fuck, if you can't figure out that the machine ask you to confirm your vote and you dont know who the hell "Maria Cantw[cut off]" is after you voted for "Maria Cantwell ", then by gods, you shouldn't be voting.

I think youre being too cavalier about this. Dead people often have a hard time distinguishing between two closely spelled words.

Machines are made by people; peple have agendas. IMO this is one area that old fashioned paper (not chads) under total public monitoring (not counted by private companies) which also has potentional for agendas to be set forth.
No assumptions made until all votes are in and counted.

I work every day building user interfaces. To be perfectly blunt, it's not that hard. This sort of blunder is either gross incompetence, or highly suspicious voter manipulation.

Voting machines are made by? Companies. Usually big-business style companies. Who's the big business buddy? Republicans. Who continually gets the short-end of "accidents" with voting machines? Democrats. Can you really ignore the coincidences here?

Of this rampant election fraud you seem to be so well versed about, have any of these "accidents" ever negatively affected a Republican?

I dont know, good question. Probably. It definately had positive effects in 2000.

One of the outcomes of the 2000 controversies was the enactment of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 with strong bi-partisan support.

Among its provisions are requirements that states must have a centralized voter registraiton database and Voting systems that produce a permanent paper record with an audit capacity that can be manually audited.

The effective date was 1/1/06 so this will be the first election where these new standards are tested. I suspect we will see more challenges then ever before from whatever candidate(s) loses close elections.

http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm

an addendum for NCB :)
In this current session of Congress, a Repub senator introduced a bill to amend HAVA called the Voter Protection Act of 2005. Among its provisions was the "removal of registrants from voting rolls for failure to vote"

One of those wacky bills that had only 4 other Repub co-sponsors and died a quiet death.....even other Repubs didnt want to take away a fundamental right, even if you chose not to exercise that right (for whatever reason).

I thought the Diebold excuse was for the 2004 election and that daddy and brother convinced the supreme court for GWB to win in 2000. Hard to keep up with all these excuses......

Hey, Diebold's chief executive has stated he's "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Shouldn't the CEO of a company that is supposed to hold honor, ethics, and integrity highly, not support the campaign's of political parties? Why can't a company who has ATM machines that run perfectly not get voting machines to work perfectly?

Not that I know of. Of the reports I've heard, every single one has hurt the Democrat. Actually, now that I think of it, this post of yours I've quoted here is the first time I've heard anyone even suggest that it might be negative for Republican candidates too. It seems to be common knowledge that the Dems are the ones most badly affected by it.

Naturally :lol:

Okay, look, I know it's not your default mode, but do try to add something to the discussion.

Have YOU heard of any electoral gitches that harmed Republicans? I'm actually interested in this.

Frankly, I dont buy into conspiracy theories, which probably correlates with my lack of black helicopter sightings around my house. I think the problem your side is having is not Kathy Harris, The Supreme Court, Diebold, or Halliburton, its your message. At some point you have to claim responsibility for your own failures and not blame them on this, that, or the other. Its a fairly simple concept, but its one that your people need to understand.

That said, have there been polling station issues? Of course there have been and its nothing new. There have always been sheenanigans at the polling booth pulled by both parties. But to point to this as the sole reason for your partys defeats is myopic

But who's doing that? You're putting words in the mouth of the liberals on this thread and elsewhere. I never said that electoral fraud was the only reason the republicans won in 2000 and 2004. I wish Kerry could have pulled the stick out of his ass for just a minute and started talking and behaving even slightly telegenically, for instance. And the Republicans definitely whomped the Dems at staying on message. But there's no denying that electoral "accidents" were a contributing factor, and, given how close the actual voting was, may well have been the final straw that tipped the result.

I ask again: can you point to an instance of electoral screwup since (and including) the 2000 election that didn't favor the Republican? I can't, but maybe you can.

If not, then black helicopters or no, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to connect the dots.

How to catch and stop some election fraud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaEECHjWptU

Video the vote. Bring cameras. Record what happens. Find out how to complain about problems, and do it ASAP.

How to hack the vote:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ars

A description of how to change the results of the next US election nearly untraceably.

Yes, the John Thune vs. Tim Johnson race. The viilage of Pine Ridge on a SD Indian reservation indicated that there were changed ballots. That county was the last to report and ultimately put Johnson over the top by about 500 votes. Thune, being the anti-liberal, decided not to put the state through a bitter recount and conceded the race. Two years later, he defeated Daschle

Ah, here is some details how someone using the most popular Electronic Submission voting machine in the USA can hack it:
Now, naively, that only gives you the ability to swing a single machine. And if you recorded 10,000 votes on that machine, someone might notice.

Really, why think small scale? Get a copy of the Princeston virus:

Install a Princeton virus, and you can easily turn an entire voting location's machines into voting for whatever candidate you want.

Every smart card that is used gets infected with the Princeton virus, which infects every machine at the location.

If that seems like too much work (I mean, you only get to swing the election by a few thousand votes!), you could try hacking the vote counting machine:

But why hasn't this happened?

I did explain that this is nearly impossible to detect. Here is a less credible report on some evidence if it actually happening -- not proof, because there is no way to provably detect this kind of intrusion:

Anyone want to make the state of Ohio have a huge happy face in the election results?

Interesting. I did some googling on this, not having heard of it before. Googling '"John thune" "tim johnson" election fraud' didn't turn up a whole lot, but there were a few articles--some that were during the allegations and several on the aftermath of them.

It appears that the claims were dismissed. There was another article that indicated that the fraud allegations were from a canned fraud complaint template distributed by the RNC.

I'm glad to have disproven this, but it's not really the partisan in me. I'd actually be very happy if somebody came along and dispelled other allegations of electoral fraud, including the ones that allegedly helped Republicans. If other fraud claims are as ersatz as this one appears to be, it would suggest that there may actually be a foundation of integrity underlying our government after all. I'd vastly prefer to lose honestly than to have the election stolen at the last minute by either party.

Here's the clearest piece I found about the Thune case, btw:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200411010001

Sorry if I dont find this site anything more than a smear site dedicated to advancing liberal causes

... Was it the word "progressive"?

That wasn't the only article stating that the SD incident was a non-event. If you run that same google query, you'll see that.

There are a number of other issues of potential concern being reported:

Link

Dont assume because someone disagrees they are automatically a liberal or "your side" which you seem to be saying alot.

Going off of your black heliocopter statement; I'm curious to what source of information (outside of being present at the place of any occurance) do you use to gather the data that formulates what you interpret as being real and factual?

ratbastid considering you think that the Flroida ballot was somehow fraud despite it being a democrat designed ballot in a democrat county, I don't know how anyone could convince you that this wasn't just a mistake either.

Want to hire consultants to do the grunt work for you?

http://fixavote.com/

They even have a 1-800 number.

Actually, I do think the Florida ballot was a mistake. It was a harmful mistake that quite possibly gave the presidency to the wrong candidate. (Either that or Palm Beach County has a HELL of a lot of Pat Buchanan fans!) But a mistake.

I'm not so generous in my view of Diebold and their "built-to-be-hacked" voting machines. Nobody has successfully demonstrated to me why a voting machine can't be secure, or why it can't include a voter-verifiable paper trail. Nobody has successfully demonstrated why a corporation whose CEO declared his commitment to "deliver Ohio for the President" should be trusted with our voting infrastructure.

If the 2004 election had taken place in a third world country under the eye of international observers, it would have been thrown out. How can this not be a major concern? Here's how: the errors almost universally benefit the (current) majority party.

The other issue that came out of Florida in 2000 was the sloppy way in which the state attempted to purge the voting registration records to ensure that person with criminal records were removed from the list as eligible voters. The problem was they purged people with the same name, people with misdomeanor convictions, and others. No one really knows how many eligible voters lost their voting rights, but the evidence suggested that most were in the minority communities in Florida.

Hopefully, the new law that mandates provisional ballots when a person's voting rights are questioned when they attempt to vote will make this less likely this time around.

It would be better if a write in candidate won, who didn't even know they were running. Let's say if Jim Tressel (OSU football coach) wins the governorship in Ohio.

What the government should have done, was in 2000 or so, make a X-prize type competition that colleges, companies, and individuals could have entered to make a perfect, hacker safe, easy, cheap and reliable voting system for 300 million people. And then offer a prize for who ever could figured out a way to hack it.

I know that electronic voting has problems now, but it could work.

Well, this isn't an "electoral glitch," but it sure smells bad. No doubt it won't be a problem for the same people who consider a Democrat-designed ballot to be a Republican plot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us...gewanted=print

If cutting off the last few letters of the candidate's name is a plot, you should have nothing but contempt for the people behind this despicable tactic.

If a group of Dem computer nerds are manipulating Google, absolutely it should be investigated, althought it is hardly a violation of election laws.

But at worst, it is moving stories up in Google, and not creating false stories. I dont find it nearly as despicable as directly trying to influence voters with false information like the letter to hispanic immigrants in Calif...and not nearly as serious as flaws in the actual ballots or equipment.

Edit: (the next day)
I changed my mind....forget the investigation.

Let this "despicable" :eek: battle of Google Bombs rage on!
Hopefully, this silliness will keep these passionate partisans on both sides from doing real harm in the last week before the election.

Okay! Here's the first wave of early-evoting machine "glitches":

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...s/15869924.htm

http://www.kfdm.com/engine.pl?statio...ortvideo.shtml

So in Florida and Texas counties' early voting, votes for Democrats are being turned into votes for Republicans. Surprise, surprise.

Stay tuned to this thread, kids. I'll keep you posted of every voting irregularity I can--especially those related to electronic voting. I promise to be non-partisan about this; I'll put it here no matter whose vote turns into whose.

Thank you, rb. So far, the "irregularities" are getting little national coverage that I have seen.

Ars Technica: "Primary and early e-voting problems point to gathering storm."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html

--

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/for...954/44823.html

Easy instructions on how to vote as many times as you like on Sequoia Voting Systems machines. Sequoia is the third largest voting machine vendor in the world--and you can earn free bonus votes by pressing a yellow button on the back of the machine!

That Karl Rove is EVERYWHERE, isn't he?

Very likely, so far as the National strategies for keeping Republicans' in power. Certainly, you don't doubt that?

You point is what, exactly?

More information coming In:



Hosted by TO

I suspect 2000 and 2004 won't compare to what we are about to see in 2006.

http://jamesbabb.blogspot.com/2006/1...elections.html

News release on the website of the Libertarian congressional candidate in PA-157. Even after reading it, I'm not clear on the details--it presumes facts not yet in record. But it appears that some Pennsylvanian election officials are resigning over illegal (or at least unfair) ballot requirements that are keeping third parties off the ticket.

Fraud indeed.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110009189

D'oh--I was headed here to post that very story, but you beat me by 20 whole minutes. Good work!

--

Woo hoo! The anti-smoking league is in on it now!

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjourna...e/15922328.htm

The place: Belfontaine, OH. The time: now.

An anti-smoking group attempts to put a "no smoking in public places" issue on the state ballot by submitting a petition with fraudulent signatures. 10 petition workers are accused of fraud.

I hate the anti-smoking nazis. :mad:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/5/191647/511

I know it's from DailyKOS, but the blog post cites sources that will hopefully be more credible to right-leaning readers.

Evidently Republicans in some states are making computer-dialed calls claiming to be their Democrat opponent. If the voter hangs up on the call, the computer calls them right back, making it look like the Democrat is auto-harrassing the voter. If they stay on the line, they get rhetoric bashing the Democrat.

Federal law requires commercial and political callers to honestly state who they are and what organization they're calling with, so these calls are illegal.

This isn't quite what I meant by election fraud (I had my eye more on vote suppression and tampering), but it's worth knowing about anyway.

EDIT: Here's a better source on that:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/con...the_campaigns/

Also this, at Metafilter:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/56076

rat, the phone calls aren't just illegal.

They are 500$+ fine per offence (1500$ if it was done "knowingly").

200,000 phone calls * 500$ each = 100 million $.

Hundreds of links to news reports of www.nrcc.org "robo-calls" to fool voters into blaming democrats for repeated, harrassing calls:
http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8...nG=Search+News

<img src="http://www.brazosriver.com/andymeyers1.jpg">
http://www.brazosriver.com/#nov5pow
<b>repubs: if you have similar reports from sources OTHER than your own outlets (LGF, NRO, mrc.org, newsbusters....etc....in other words....from the "real" press....please post them on these threads!</b>

amazing photo, host.
and it's monday still.

commentary section:

when the notion of the "fjnords" were developed in the context of the illuminatus trilogy, you might have thought that robert anton wilson was joking. but no. there they are.
funny, isn't it?

and so it is that we see the underbelly of conservativeland--fraud and repetition.

i am sure that you will get a version of the "a few bad apples" line to explain the phonecalls....and as for the repetition of the organizing signifiers--vote democrat and vote for terrorism--well, what is there really to be said? it is obvious, it has been obvious for 5 years--and now there we are, explicit.

conservativeland is the giant themepark that fear built.
from which it follows that the most efficient and envied of terrorists run the conservative media apparatus.
they are like the alarm salesmen whose market share presupposes the fear that their systems are meant to counteract, whose systems generate the fear they are supposed to allay. the obsession with security generates anxieties symmetrical with it.
of course this is a "soft" terrorism in that it destroys no buildings and leaves no bruises.
but if the notion of terrorism is built around the use of fear inflicted on a population for political ends--and it is--then i dont know what else to call this kind of vote democrat-vote terrorist kinda thing.

in conservativeland, it appears that the demographic is understood as cattle to be directed through the appropriate chutes via little electrical charges.
i would think the folk on the right would be offended by this--not by the observation of it, but by the assumption that this kind of herding is being applied to them.
but maybe not. maybe they like it. who knows?

the real problem for the right this kind of thing raises is of a different order:
you reveal the device too often and it ceases to function.

I think it is time to change one of the most famous sayings ever

"All's fair in love and war"

should now be

"All's fair in love, war, and elections"

Greg Palast documents efforts to disenfranchise Black and Hispanic voters that has been in the works for some time:


GregPalast

So if the Dems win tommorrow, will that be proof of a clean election with no election fraud?

Damn host, crazy photo. Is that legal (somewhat rhetorical)? Seems libelous to me. I mean, can someone put up a sign that says, "a Vote for Democrat is a Vote for baby Killers" or "Vote Republican the New Nazi Party"?

BTW...if the Dems do win tommorrow, how many videos will there be of Muslims dancing in the streets celebrating their victory? Over/Under- 4

It's everywhere, isn't it?


http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/bf8a1...e-2ad9680287cb

Bullshit Squirt. The deceased have as much right to vote as you do

:lol:

Do you vote for....or against....two more years of this?

Olbermann comments on Santorum's "Stalin moment", and on the robo-calling
psy-op and the democratic response to it. Watch it:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/1...ugh-is-enough/

<b>.....the corruption....the deceit....apparently knows no bounds:</b>

http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/005546.html

I know it's the Democratic Committee website. It doesn't cite any other source, so take it for what you will. It claims that Republicans are now using illegal and deceptive robocalls in 46 races. Evidently voters have been getting some of these "harrassing calls from Democrats" calls at 2:00 or 3:00am.

---

http://www.americanchronicle.com/art...rticleID=16105

Evidently people have been getting calls telling them that the polling place has changed, black residents got a flier with the head line "SKIP THE ELECTION!"... Basic turnout suppression stuff.


---

<img src="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/Steele_Democrat_Sign.jpg">

Michael Steele... is the Republican Senate candidate from Maryland.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/election..._a_dirty_trick

--

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.ph...1967&Itemid=26

In early voting, all four major makes of voting machines have been seen flipping votes. This article (which I suspect is Democrat-biased) specifies which direction the vote flipped in some, but not all, cases, and in the cases it specifies it, all the votes flipped from Dem to Rep.

Touch-screen calibration is evidently a major factor (and what touch-screen device manufacturer requires a 15-step recalibration procedure!?), but one device that uses dials and buttons evidently checked all the Republican boxes when the voter entered a straight-ticket Democrat selection.

Wow. The asshattery around here amuses me so.

Guess what?

The Democrats

use them

too.

Don't act like it's all one-sided.


http://www.farrellforcongress.com/ne...jul26-robo.htm

The complaint isn't about robocalls per se. The complaint is that--in 46 races, now--Republicans are calling with recorded messages that purport to be from the Democrat, and when the person hangs up on the recording it calls them right back maybe six or seven times, giving the impression that the Democrat robo-call is harassing them.

People who hang on long enough to hear the message hear an attack on the Democrat who the call claims to be from.

Any kind of commercial or political phone call must, by law, state accurately the nature and identity of the caller.

That's what makes these different from the robo-calls the Democrats have been engaged in.

If the voters are too ignorant to know who theyre voting for, then they shouldnt be voting in the first place. But then again, if the Dems lose their sheep, just who would vote for them? Oh dear....

Guess what? It's not the Democrats that are using the harrassment tactics. Take the partisan blinders off and look at the difference between your links and the ones you are ignoring.

Well my vote went just fine.

But doesn't it tell you something if Republicans are claiming to be Democrats? Like maybe they KNOW their party is dead meat?

No offense, but are you really having a hard time figuring out whats going on in that picture. This is your attempt to spin the obvious. Right? Right? Hello? Bueller? Anyone? Is this thing working???

I swear, a lot of these threads belong in Tilted Paranoia.

Are you seriously saying the people who vote for the Democrats are blindly following them like sheep? You can't be saying this right? I mean seems funny considering the way conservatives blindly follow dubya from one cluster fuck to another.

I love how you turn it on the voters, not like it's the candidates have a responsibility to represent themselves truthfully or anything:rolleyes:

Dems vote straight party at a higher clip than republicans. So yes, they do follow Dems blindly. Sorry

What's going on in that picture is, Steele is aligning himself with the Democratic party in an attempt to gain votes from casual Democrat voters who may not be following politics. He's particularly targeting the black voters in Maryland with this advertising. He's deliberately blurring and confusing party lines. He's so desperate not to be a Republican, he's actually jumping ship on the day before the election.

Is that really harder to swallow than his official line? He claims those signs are meant to be carried by the Democrats who support him. You know... both of them. If that were ALL those signs were meant for, they'd start with the phrase "I'm a".

Some Republicans appear to be resorting to outright deception in their campaigns. And you're defending them.

That's an interesting assertion. I've never heard that before. Got a source on that?

Dude, its the people holding the signs who are Democrats that consider themselves to be "Steele Democrats", kinda like when we had "Reagan Democrats". I cant believe I actually had to sit here and explain it to you.

Well if you say that's the way it is, I guess it must be then.
Doesn't change the fact repubs follow blindly as well, sorry

I like how the GOP is already setting the stage for overwelming exit polling errors.
BEWARE OF EXIT POLLS
Compare the Ohio exit polls to this statement I think the GOP is setting the stage for some more magical party-line vote flips from the infamous Diebold machines.

I find it very telling that the same people who were screaming about the republicans wanting to rape the environment, are now screaming about the move away from paper ballots.

wow...I don't know what to say.

Got a source for that, Sport, or did the guy who came up with the WMD in Iraq yarn tell it to you?

Some things (like, say, preserving our democracy) are worth using a few trees.

I find it very telling that the people screaming about the values our troops are fighting for are willing to ignore the integrity of the electoral process--the very foundation of our whole democratic system and the very thing at the CORE of what our troops are fighting for.

(See, cj? Two can play the straw-man game! :thumbsup:)

----

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/po...y-in-utah.html

It is amusing to watch your spirited, "sheeple like" defense of a "fellow republican", NCB. Would Steele do the same to defend you and your ideology, or is he simply an ambitious politician out to harness the blind, reflexive, political sentiments of his fellow republicans?
....and....if you still doubt that Milbank was quoting Steele, there is this:

I've already explained it to you twice, actually. But if you choose to believe that a Republican candidate can't possibly be deceptive in his advertising and his campaign, more power to you. If, God forbid, he wins, it'll be the blind leading the blind.

Are you really telling me that you think a person who sees a blue sign reading:

STEELE
Democrat

... what they'll say to themselves is, "Hey! That sign must be held or put there by a Democrat... who likes Republican Senate Candidate Michael Steele! Heavens! How clever! I simply MUST vote for him!"

Or would they think, "Another campaign sign. Steele, Democrat. Ok."

They guy has been DOCUMENTED running away from the Republicans. He's embarrassed of his party. He knows he can't win as a Repub. so he's trying to run as a Dem.

I can't believe I had to sit here and explain this to you. As if there's any chance you won't just dismiss this.

The difference is that I haven't heard any of the republicans say that they don't value the integrity of the elections. I personally am disgusted w/ both sides and find it increasingly difficult to find a candidate that I think would actually do the job he was elected to do.

from very early on in looking into conservativeland, i ran across an astute elist that was called red rock eater--i dont know if it is still around, nor do i remember the guy who put it together--but it was very good. one of the main features of the new conservativeland that he pointed out was the role of projection. if the right does something--like shift very far to the right---you will find that the discourse will project this shift onto its construction of its opposite. the right does the same thing on the question of voter fraud, on the relation between the democratic party and the constituency that will in this election vote for it---and there seems to be no reocognition amongst the inhabitants of conservativeland that this is a structured response, part of the discourse they inhabit, and that by engaging in it, they simply repeat the official line.

now remember: vote for the democrats=vote for terrorism.

this is the kind of thing that always works to keep an autonomous polity convinced of the power of the arguments advanced. nothing to do with herding. nothing at all.

Par for the course....repubs recruiting and bussing homeless men from Philly to Maryland to distribute, today, bogus pamphlet at polling place:

<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/46431747/electronic_voting_ir.html">Here's</a> a pretty thorough run-down of electronic voting machine glitches, courtesy of boingboing.com.

You got that right! I'm thinking if there were only ten people in the entire country casting a vote and five are known to have voted for Democrats the results would still show seven votes for the Bush cronies.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...6votefraud.htm

The woman featured in the HBO movie Hacking Democracy is making claims of widespread vote suppression, voter intimidation, vote-machine tampering and other mischief.

But you guys won. How could there be election fraud? :confused:

Show me one place in this thread where it's been claimed that the Republicans have a monopoly on shady behavior.

As I said umpteen posts ago, I have a serious problem with election tampering no matter which side is behind it, and I promised to post any electoral hijinx that showed up on the news/blogosphere radar no matter who's alleged to be behind it. I've posted several articles that accuse Democrats of fraud.

You said it, in this very thread in fact:

Hunh. Well, fair enough. I can't deny I said that.

This thread has actually opened my mind about that, since I posted that comment. I'm now willing to accept and believe that both parties have blood on their hands, and that this is something we all need to be perpetually vigilant about no matter what color your shirt is.

I still believe that it's largely Republicans who use this tactic--and I still believe the voting machine companies are in bed with the GOP. But when you include things like vote suppression and casting of illegitimate votes, in particular, there are Democrats who have been just as shady.

--

Case in point: a local news channel in New Mexico reports on how a voting place in a largely GOP precinct ran out of ballots two hours into voting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XIGmIOq_NE&eurl=

--

Meanwhile, in Virginia, long-time VA-registered Democrat Tim Daly received this voicemail message yesterday:

<a href="http://www.webbforsenate.com/media/phone_message.wav">Listen to the message</a>

So now that the Dems won...

....

... what was that about Diebold?

Seaver...does it seem that far out of the realm of possibility that the reported results are in spite of attempts to suppress the expected backlash in reaction to the situations in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the dismantling of the US agreement with N. Korea/UN inspection program that accelerated the bomb grade uranium enrichment by at least a decade, a $3000 billion new treasury debt burden, in just five years, an assault on constitutional rights, due process, habeus corpus, domestic right to privacy, SCOTUS appointments of extreme right justices, the Colbert emcee performance at the annual white house press corp dinner, Helen Thomas's peristant and courageous press gaggle/conference questions, the renewed white house "agenda to "reform" SSI, the Abramoff related congressional arrests and resignations, the indictment of VP COS Libby, 800+ signing statements, the unrelenting terrorizing of the country by the POTUS and the VP....the failure to capture bin Laden, admission that there were no Iraqi WMD or active WMD development programs, Cindy Sheehan's activities next to Bush's ranch and his reaction to her......that's a brief and incomplete recap...of just some of the negatives, since Nov., 2004.....did I mention Foleygate....or the division of Phase II of Pat Robert's senate select intel committee report related to the administration's treatment of pre-Iraq war intelligence....now divided into five smaller "phases".....with the four most damaging phases delayed since July, 2004......

.....and you think that a vote result this close....is convincing "proof" that there was no problem, after all....with the integrity, reliability, and security of electronic voting software, and equipment.....do you.....really?

I don't get it, Host. Are you saying that the election should have been a Democratic landslide, but since it was a Democratic victory by such a small margin, that it was because of voting machine tampering? "Cause, seriously...if you meant anything else, it went right the hell over my head.

to clarify....I simply meant that it is absurd, IMO, to conclude that the background story of the HBO docu, "Hacking Democracy", the spectacle of former Diebold CEO being a Bush "pioneer", and publicly committing to deliver the 2004, Ohio vote "to president Bush", the spectacle of brothers
....and of Chuck Hagel not disclosing, for the first ten weeks of his '96 senate campaign, that he was still CEO of a major electronic voting vendor, and later, that he was a principle in the private holding company that still owned that e-voting vendor.....is "move along now, folks....nothing to see here".! Just watch the google video that I linked to "Hacking Democracy", and then explain why Cuyahoga county in Ohio, would choose to spend $22 million on Diebold scanning e-voting systems, after the hearing excerpts shown in that documentary.....how could they reach a decision like that, with what they were told in advance about the deficiencies in what Diebold was offering?

....absurd that a slim margin victory in a mid-term election for senate in just a few states, would lead to Seaver asking his question, in the serious way that he asked it.....especially with all of the reasons that voters had to vote more defninitively.

I think the close results mirror the partisan split in many states and districts and the country as a whole, and not a vast conspiracy to hold down Dem votes.

There were obviously voting irregularities. My bias tends to think they had a negative impact more on Dems than Repubs but there is no evidence to support that as yet.

While it wont be a top priority in the early days of the new House, I expect the Dems to conduct a much more serious and in-depth overisght investigation of voting irregularities than the cosmetic effort initiated by the Repubs in the last 6 years.

Oh right, if Republicans win in this country it is because they are holding down the minority vote... or flat out fraud.

If Democrats win, but not by a blowout, it's because the Republicans are guilty of flat out Fraud.

Come on host, did it ever occur to you that MAYBE the people who were in charge of the voting machines had political leanings but were as easily as reliable as say... the people who made the machines who read the scantron voting sheets?

Seaver, I admit that I am long overdue for some sleep, but I can't make sense of the position you are trying to make in your above post. Would you clarify, please?

I've obviously quit posting everything that shows up on google about election fraud, but the sense now is that there was relatively small volume of irregularities. The hotline that that was set up to receive electoral fraud complaints at the federal level didn't receive a single complaint. Some states reported some irregularities, but generally it seems to have been a much cleaner election than some in the past seem to have been.

Far as I'm concerned, that's great news--and not just because I'm generally happy with the results. It means that the foundation that our nation stands on has integrity. It means that, no matter what our government does, we can look at them and say, well, we unquestionably voted them into office.

There is a company who makes the Scan-Tron scanners, which have been used by MANY states in the past including my own. These scanners read the pencil marks and count the votes mechanically. It would be easy to set these up for fraud, even easier than it would be for the voting computers. However no one questions those, could it be because they voted in a Democratic president before? I dont know, I think the whole freak out was unwarranted in the first place.

I think the key difference between a Scantron and a Diebold model is that there's physical evidence of the vote with Scantron. A human being could come back and manually recount, if needed. Most Diebold models don't even cough up a receipt--your vote goes off into the ether and you sort of have to hope and pray that it gets counted accurately.