Bush has now passed 60,000,000 votes!
 

Bush has now passed 60,000,000 votes as the provisional ballots continue to roll in. I'm continually astounded by how many people voted this time and even more astounded that Bush got so many votes. They were way off to suggest that high turnout would benefit Kerry.

Check here for the latest results:

http://news.yahoo.com/electionresults

as Adam Sandler said in "The Wedding Singer" "WHOOPIDDY-DOO!!"

Thats a lot of votes;)

Did he win?

Go over to Democratic Underground and I'm sure you can find several someones who will tell you that he "stole" this election too...

So? Bush got roughly 3.5% more of the popular vote than kerry. Go to any conservative source on the web and you'll see that this somehow amounts to near unanimity by the american voter. Embellishment knows party line.

I went over to Democratic Underground and wasn't able to find anyone asserting this.

But that was my first visit over there, maybe they were buried?

If you saw something, I'd like to see it because the only people I've seen make this claim are conservatives (as usual, making assertions about democrats that aren't panning out to be true and building hysteria on it).

i'm seriously missing the big deal here... he's still got about 3.5 million more votes than kerry, which is no different than at the end of the election night. unless he were to have really pulled away in doing it, there really doesn't seem to be much reason to make a big deal out of it.

Is that 60,000,000 with or without the phantom votes?

You obviously weren't looking.

At all.

I have personally met plenty of people on my college campus who also hold the misguided belief that this election was "stolen."

http://www.democraticunderground.com...esg_id=2682466
http://www.democraticunderground.com...ress=203x45003
Too long to quote, but the links are sfw and safe for your computer (however much of the website is not safe for rational thought.)
If you want a more lighthearted bit from their site, try this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com...esg_id=2676361
A nice jab at the fact that more Yahoo News captions are incorrect than correct.

I may not be happy about the results, but ya know the man won fair and square. And this proves the system works, more people wanted him to be president again, and he is. At least i can be happy about that.

Yes, as a the General Secretary of the VRWC, I admit that we stold the election. Don't ask. I will never tell you how we did it.

I'll second the opinion that even though I didn't like the results, atleast they were a bit less ambigous that in 2000. That would have been far, far worse.

jeez, you'd think someone would quote the piece they link to...unless, of course, it undermines their point:

(Orginal post in the thread linked)
It's obvious who wasn't looking "at all." :rolleyes:

Not safe for rational thought?

Interesting...the first two links (for those who aren't going to look at them) are actually sophisticated statistical analyses of the vote data. They compare pre-vote polling, absentee ballots, election day ballots, and exit-polling data to uncover what the author believes to be inconsistencies.

Neither come remotely close to Lebell's (and Mr. SelfDestruct's) insinuation that people are irrationally claiming the president stole the election.

I recommend anyone statistically inclined or just plain curious what the argument is to actually read through the data presented and have at it. Applying intellect (from any political perspective) to data, rather than speculation, is the basis I use to judge whether something is "rational," BTW.

just remember 9 out of 10 dead people vote democratic. 10 out of 10 terrorists vote democratic. just kidding about the last one... no, nvm i was serious.

the repubs gained in black hispanic asian wemon mens votes as well as people making over 40k a year... the dems gained in only one place... people making under 30k. sounds like they are on a roll.

If the people the republicans picked up are anything like this post represents, I'm not too worried...

He has won the most votes in history.

I have seen sophisticated analyses of why we really didn't land on the moon, of why there had to be another shooter in Dallas that November day, of why the Government actually burned out the Branch Davidians and of why an airplane didn't really hit the Pentagon.

Show me some real proof, from a respected source, then perhaps I'll begin to listen.

Didn't we have all sorts of foreign observers watching the election?

Didn't the Democrats have a couple of thousand lawyers looking for trouble?

If Bush stole the election, why aren't saying so??

Sorry, but you'll have to do better than the crazies at DU.

Well, I haven't personally seen any sophisticated analyses of the phenomena you mentioned, so I can't speak to the studies you may or may not have seen.

However, I do have this analysis at hand, so perhaps you would point out the errors you detected (please apply intellect to data versus pejorative name-callining):

Silly Democrats

Its a mandate because he has the House, the Senate AND presidency. Thats what its a mandate - And while no post specifically brought this up- the embellishment" got me thinkin - how is it not clear?

Its one of the few times a party has controleld the House, Senate and WhiteHouse all at once- atleast as far back as I can AND care to remember.

Sure thing.

It starts with, "BeFree asked me a few days ago to look over the North Carolina election returns."

Who is this person? Who is BeFree? What proof do we have that his numbers are right? Where are his references? Why did he choose to post them on DU? Has he reported them to someone else?

And from there we go to speculation that because some polls and other races were out of sync with the final product that there MUST be fraud.

Again, show me proof, with a trail that can be audited, not speculation and innuendo.

As an aside, my old home state, Colorado, up until Bill Owens, regularly elected a Democratic governer and a Republican Legistlature. They also elected a Democrat (Ken Salazar) to take the place of a the retiring Republican Senator, Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Fishy, isn't it? ;)

OK, so you went from the introduction to the conclusion, skipping all the numbers in between, and called it (un)good?

You have issues.

I can't answer all the questions you posed, but the only one I think relevant to the analysis is whether the numbers are correct.

Since they are available in the public domain, it seems to be a question of willingness to conduct research versus calling someone crazy, & etc. I find it more likely that you don't want to consider the data, aren't well versed in statistical analysis, and feel justified in concluding the source isn't worthy of consideration in order to ignore the statistical results he came up with rather than disputing them with numbers.

Whether the evidence provided speaks to fraud, I'm not drawing conclusions myself. But that doesn't prevent me from engaging with the data myself and wondering where the anomalies are coming from (or considering that the data presented even indicate anomalies occurred).

I'm not a member of DU, nor had I been there before you mentioned it. But presumably you have an account there (or lurk there for whatever reasons), so why not ask all those questions you find so damning to the poster himself?


Edit: Lebell, I also would like to point out that the author is in no way stating that the presidential election would have been reversed in this case. He points out that Bush won, but by a larger margin than the data suggests should have occurred. He does seem to question the Senate race, however, but his main thrust, at least according to my reading of it, is to demonstrate statistically that errors occurred via the electronic voting machines.

I don't know, show me the numbers.

Then we can go through them and see if anything appears to be remiss.

That is a classic ad hominem. If you have evidence to demonstrate that the information being presented is incorrect, you should convey it instead of simply implying it. If you do not have evidence that the information is incorrect, you should argue the information and not who or why the information is being presented.

The article does not claim it "must" be fraud. It states the information presented is a "strong case". There is a clear difference.

I would hardly consider that article to be written by a "crazy".

Nonsense and nonsense.

It is more than reasonable to ask who this person is and what their relationship is to the issue.

And the burden of proof is NOT on me, it is on him to prove his allegations, which he does not do. He instead presents numbers and draws his own conclusion that something is fishy.

And if you don't think DU is inhabited by the loony fringe of the Democrats*, then you haven't read enough posts there.

Heck, it embarasses them sometimes.



*Fully conceded that Dems are not as a rule "loony" and that there are "loony" Repubs as well as Libertarians, etc.

Look, Lebell, I'm not trying to go rounds with numbers this or numbers that, yada, yada, etc.

My concern is allowing private corporations to control the source code of electronic voting machines without a paper trail. Paper trail or not, the source needs to be open and secure (under the hood and physically).


I certainly hope we agree that it doesn't make sense to have private corporations to control our public election results--regardless of which party makes the machines or has a vested interest in the outcome.


That's what I think this article is trying to articulate. I find evidence in the fact that the author doesn't dispute the overall results of the election--that Bush won.

Bush got a clear majority. I'm somewhat surprised.

:rolleyes:

Again you lack an argument.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar..._is_dismissed/

Hey SecretMethod, aren't you supposed to add some of your thoughts to that post? ;)

As a former auditor, I completely agree that the system needs to be fully transparent and that an audit trail needs to be present.

Edit to add:

But Smooth, my statement was that that people over at DU are arguing for fraud and your reply was that you didn't see such arguments. As an example, you pulled ONE post.

First, it seems clear to me what the author is trying to say; that the numbers are inconsistant and indicate fraud. You say different. So be it.

But as for DU'ers NOT alleging fraud, I point out these threads:

http://www.democraticunderground.com...esg_id=1349610

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1351409

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1351218

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1343460 (buried as responses)

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1346797

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1349377

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1349803

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1350646

http://www.democraticunderground.com...topic_id=1984#

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=132x1350563

And on and on...

What I can't figure out is why didn't you see these. They are all on the first few pages. Did you even look?

Not when you quote my entire post and not just the first three words.

Apart form the fact that most of your post is barely in English, you're entirely wrong. A mandate is simply the authorization to carry out a program or policy given by the electorate to its representative to carry out, nothing more. Every president has a mandate technically. It has absolutely nothing to do with uniting the Congress and the Presidency under one party. Silly Republican.

You argued that democrats were claiming the election was stolen (again). I didn't pull that article, Mr.SelfDestruct posted it--I just pasted the text of the link he provided (it's a few posts above mine). I agree that the author says his research indicates fraud--but that isn't the same as claiming the election was stolen, especially when the researcher allows that the data for Bush is still that he won the election albeit by a smaller margin.

Yes, I did look. I don't know the site, didn't care that much, don't have any particular reason to defend democrats (especially those part of a self-identified underground group), and didn't spend much time searching around. That's why I asked you to post the ones you were talking about.


Of course, I did check your first two links and the first one doesn't say anything about fraud in the opening post and the second one is a compilation of other sites alleging fraud. You are exasperating. Why do you bother reading a site so opposed to your beliefs--is it so you can feel justified in thinking democrats are loony?

i don't understandy why we are waisting our time talking about exit polling, it isn't standardized and means absolutly nothing. the only way i think it could have any bearing is if every person was asked the question at every place. what does that sound like, it sounds like the ballots maybe they can tell us who really won.

The problem is that we do not know if this election was stolen or not, and we can't ever know unless someone came forward and confessed that they helped steal it. It'd be the same thing if Kerry had won too - - with 30+ states using computerized voting that leaves NO paper trail and therefore NO way to check and see if the votes they recorded are actually the votes that were cast, it is NOT possible to know what really happened on November 2.

Perhaps you do not make a connection between alleging fraud and stealing the election, but what else can it be? One does not engage in fraud to throw an election.

Not to pick nits, but it was you that said,

This in response to a post of mine where I specifically asked for proof from a respect source, alleging that Bush stole the election, and this,

when I said that there were folks over at DU asserting that Bush stole the election.

So forgive me if I have misunderstood what you have been trying to say, because I certainly feel that what I have said has been misunderstood, if not twisted into something I have not said.

Perhaps I got the wrong idea here when you said, While we may disagree that the particular post you used as an example claims that Bush stole the election, I believe the posts that I added show that there are many members of DU that believe just that.

It also occurs to me that you might believe that I was labeling all Dems as "crazies" or even just all members of DU as crazies. This is not the case. I recognize that there are many intelligent and sane individuals to be found in all political groupings. I still maintain however that DU attracts the Dem fringe element like ants to sugar.


I don't see the connection between the first part of the paragraph and the second, but I am assuming that even you will acknowledge that several posters are claiming Bush stole the election (or do you want me to post the quotes?)

As to being exaperating, please be assured it is mutual. And for what ever record you care to refer to, I do not regularly read DU, as it is too taxing, nor do I (as you allege elsewhere) have an account there.

I do however remain aware of it and look at it occasionally for one reason: Know thy enemy.

As to the statistical analysis that I have been "ignoring", let me make it clear: a statistical analysis is fine and good (I have certainly done my share), it is the conclusion that I find is erroneous.

When Clinton and the Dems won it all in 1992, I remember the GOP claiming it wasn't a mandate and that Clinton would lose the congress because the Dems would go to far. And he did. There was the press and radio talk hosts and all this hype over "term limits" and "Republican Revolution" and how these Republicans signed the charter saying they would only run so many terms and seek to make term limits law and not have "government as usual". Blah, blah, blah blah and so on and so on.....

Yet, these same Republicans, who ran and signed all that term limit crapola and such are still in office.

So, like some GOP in '92, I'm willing to sit back and give the other party a chance to either put up or shut up. I guarantee the Dems in 2 and 4 years will comeback much much stronger, just as the GOP did. And people will be reminded of how 10 years ago (12 and 14 in '06 and '08) how these GOP talked of term limits and that great Charter they signed that they never have brought up since.

So if you want to call what is happening a mandate then so be it. In '92 Clinton had a mandate and the Dem party fell apart I see the gGOP doing the same with this.... but we'll see. Just like those term limits and the what was it 40 points that the GOP were going to fight for that they to this day haven't....... hmmmmm.

Put up or shut up time guys let your actions do the talking now... hell, you control enough of congress with GOP "friendly" Dems that there won't even be any filibusters or reasons to blame the Dems for holding up any of these great laws you are going to pass.

As for Bush's overwheling support by the people....

1) Kerry was not a great candidate, his demeanor and attitude din't win many over

2) 3% is the LEAST any poll ever uses as their margin of Error, it's usually 3-5% soooo Bush's win falls into every polls margin of error.... not saying he didn't win, just saying if this were just one of the many many polls we were subjected to this past year it would be considered a dead heat.

3) You still have 57 million that voted against Bush, and in all honesty probably at the very least 75% of those votes were against Bush and not for Kerry because he never was clear on his issues,he had a lot of talk about what to do and what needed done BUT he never truly said how it would be done. Soooo I think the election shows the disappointment in Bush more than anything. Had a man who had talked of how things would get done and what he truly stood for ran I think the election results would have been a lot different... Kerry turned off too many voters, almost like he wanted to lose.