Reply #28: there was a lot of criticism of the result from various quarters

[TheBaldyMan]

and if I remmber correctly the chairman of Diebold said the result was in the bag for republicans months if not years before the '04 election. That is a matter of record.

Election monitors, exit polls and independant reporters all have small parts of the puzzle. Compared to the methods for electronic voting in other countries (e.g. Australia) the American system is wide open to fraud by various means and almost completely closed to independent scrutiny.