How much fraud is needed to change an election ?

[Jersey Devil]

I think people do not realize how small an adjustment was needed to change the vote, not only in Ohio, Fla and other battleground states, but also nationwide where touchscreens and optical scanning are used.

In my small town in NJ of 18,000 population we have about 9,000 registered voters and 11 election districts with 2 machines each for a total of 22 machines. Kerry won in my town by about 50 votes although every other Dem on the ticket won by about 200, a difference of 150 votes less for Kerry than for all other Democrats. All it would take is approximately 7 votes per machine, or 14 per election district, added to Bush's real vote to achieve that.

Who would notice 14 votes out of about 900 cast in each district? You certainly would not see any pattern.

In Ohio there are 88 counties and a difference of 136,000 votes or 1,545 per county (using equal population for the sake of discussion). I don't know how many machines there are but I would be willing to bet that the final numbers aren't all that different from my example. Let's say there are 20 towns in each county - that would be 77 votes per town. Not a big deal, sure to get lost in the huge, overall picture.

No, it wouldn't be hard at all, given the right software.

[billyoc]

1. One line of code, buried in millions.

if( R_COUNT <= D_COUNT)
R_COUNT += (D_COUNT + (.02 * D_COUNT));

fprintf(stderr, "Thank you for registering for the draft."\n");

on edit: untested code. :)

[restorefreedom]

2. it isn't just about the numbers...

unfortunately. Jonathan Turley (law prof at GWU) said that once * is sworn in, he can only be removed by impeachment. And for that to stick, there would have to be irrefutable proof that he knew about the fraud and had a hand in it (or at least knew I'm not sure).

So basically, if * gets sworn in in January, and this all gets put together after, if there is no proof that * was involved then the rethugs get away with it.

There is no way the rethugs will risk the theft by getting * directly involved. I'm sure KKKarl researched this well.

pretty scary that they might actually get away with it.

[Jersey Devil]

3. Alexander Butterfield

I remember that Congressional hearings were taking place regarding Watergate and John Dean dropped his bombs. He was immediately denounced as a liar and it appeared that while we all knew Nixon knew it could never be proven that he was directly involved.

Then people went to jail, they flipped for reduced sentences and little bits of information brought it closer and closer to the Oval Office.

Then one bright morning when no one expected it this relatively unknown White House staff member testified before Congress and when Alexander Butterfield revealed in public that there were tapes of virtually every conversation in the WH the whole world changed.

People who commit crimes make mistakes. No matter how intelligent or clever they are there is almost always some crumb they forget to clean up, some window they leave slightly open, some door they forget to bolt securely.

If it should begin to unravel I believe the same thing will happen. You'd be surprised how cooperative people can be when facing the choice of the next 20 years behind bars.

[grace0418]

4. Well, my theory is based on turnout...

And I believe Elad brought this up immediately following the election, so I took it a step further and did some math (something I am loathe to do)...

Approximately 11 million more votes were tallied in 2004 over 2000 (last time I checked the vote totals). I was having trouble finding the exact number of polling places there are in the U.S., but I did find one report that said there were 540,000 in 2000. So let's say there are 500,000 polling places in 2004. That comes out to an additional 22 people per polling place in 2004. Over the course of the entire election day that's not even 2 additional people per hour!

Does that sound like it would cause the long lines we were hearing about all day on Nov. 2? Would 22 additional voters cause some people to wait in line 2, 4, 6, even 8 hours? Even allowing for delays due to GOP challenges and provisional balloting, this doesn't add up. In Chicago, where were knew Kerry was a lock in our state, some polling places RAN OUT OF BALLOTS because they had so many people show up. Some estimates on election day said we could expect the total number of voters to be well over 120 million. I read at least two that guessed upwards of 130 million. Given that the vote "total" stood at 115 million when I checked the other day, I believe that at least 10-15 million votes are just gone. Perhaps more, based on the anecdotal evidence of the number of people waiting in line.

So, yes, let's recount the votes that were tallied because I believe that many went to Bush that should've gone to Kerry. But let's not forget to ask where the hell 10-15 million votes went.

[robbedvoter]

5. It's not how much, it's for whose benefit. Had Kerry sueaked by

the whole thing would be called off by now - reasons or not. The ruling party would have seen to it.