Was it hacked? Best article I've read yet. Bush won? Prove it.

[helderheid]

"Alan Waldman has put together the most complete overview of the
phenomena pertaining to the question of the integrity of this
election that I've seen, presents it all in a remarkably even
tone, and his concluding statement is compelling.

By this approach, his article illustrates that the question about
this election is not addressed by assessing the worth of an
investigation on the basis of whether a changed outcome is
possible, and it is not about whether the evidence proves, or can
prove, fraud. It is about the fact that the election has failed
in the manner of its conduct. A clear-eyed focus on that fact
presents all the cause for an investigation that anyone needs.


Seth"



http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/Story.asp?ID=4688


"WAS IT HACKED?


By Alan Waldman
Published 11/18/04


Despite mainstream media attempts to kill the story, talk radio
and the Internet are abuzz with suggestions that John Kerry was
elected president on Nov. 2 – but Republican election officials
made it difficult for millions of Democrats to vote while
employees of four secretive, GOP-bankrolled corporations rigged
electronic voting machines and then hacked central tabulating
computers to steal the election for George W. Bush.

The Bush administration's "fix" of the 2000 election debacle (the
Help America Vote Act) made crooked elections considerably
easier, by foisting paperless electronic voting on states before
the bugs had been worked out or meaningful safeguards could be
installed.

Crying foul this time around isn't just the province of whiny
Democrats. Consider that The Wall Street Journal recently
revealed that "Verified Voting, a group formed by a Stanford
University professor to assess electronic voting, has collected
31,000 reports of election fraud and other problems."

University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Steven Freeman, in his
November 2004 paper "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," says
that the odds that the discrepancies between predicted poll] results and actual vote counts in Ohio, Florida and
Pennsylvania could have been due to chance or random error are
250 million to 1. "Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a
premature conclusion," writes Freeman, "but the election's
unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable
hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media,
academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate."
Unlike Europe, where citizens count the ballots, in the United
States employees of a highly secretive Republican-leaning
company, ES&S, managed every aspect of the 2004 election. That
included everything from registering voters, printing ballots and
programming voting machines to tabulating votes (often with armed
guards keeping the media and members of the public who wished to
witness the count at bay) and reporting the results, for 60
million voters in 47 states, according to Christopher Bollyn,
writing in American Free Press. Most other votes were counted by
three other firms that are snugly in bed with the GOP. "



The rest of the article is here - A MUST READ
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/Story.asp?ID=4688

"Kerry's victory was predicted by previously extremely accurate
Harris and Zogby exit polls, by the formerly infallible 50
percent rule (an incumbent with less than 50 percent in the exit
polls always loses; Bush had 47 percent – requiring him to
capture an improbable 80 percent of the undecideds to win) and by
the Incumbent Rule (undecideds break for the challenger, as exit
polls showed they did by a large margin this time).

Nor is it credible that the surge in new young voters (who were
witnessed standing in lines for hours, on campuses nationwide)
miraculously didn't appear in the final totals; that Kerry did
worse than Gore against an opponent who lost support; and that
exit polls were highly accurate wherever there was a paper trail
and grossly underestimated Bush's appeal wherever there was no
such guarantee of accurate recounts. Statisticians point out that
Bush beat 99 to 1 mathematical odds in winning the election.

Election results are not final until electors vote on Dec. 12.
There is still time to find the truth.

Alan Waldman is an award-winning journalist who lives in Los
Angeles. He voted for John Kerry and Barbara Boxer."

[wurzel]

1. Even if it were proven I doubt it would change anything.

The fact is we don't live in a democracy and that is just fine with the majority of Americans. Democracy is a burden and a responsibility. Something most Americans are being schooled to avoid. Particularly in the "red" states. We are moving toward a quasi theocracy. Let's leave it to God is the mind set of all to many.

[aquart]

2. Well, let's all just lie down in the road and die, shall we?

Thanks for your support.

[wurzel]

3. It is a matter of facing reality.

We have no means of changing these people who voted for Bush. They are not open to what you and I would consider "rational persuasion" any more than "Moonies" are. If you don't beleive that just watch those "Religious" TV channels. We have just got one on our local airways. One of the most frightening things I have seen in a long time. How can we reach people who profess the values they do, and at the same time reject a man like Kerry, and choose a man like Bush, with his resume and past policies? It is a damning indictment of where we are as a country in political terms. This was not a "mistake" or "aberration".

My real belief is that the so called blue states should seriously think about seceding from the so called red states. How this can be done I haven't a clue. But we are not going to change them. They are far more likely to impose their world view on us. In fact if you look at the response of many Dem leaders it has been "how can we be more like them?". Well, I don't want to be more like them. I will continue to vote for progressive candidates. But I now fully recognize that is a permanent and ever shrinking minority in the United States for the foreseeable future.

[helderheid]

4. oh please don't

Please don't secede. I live in Utah for chrissakes.

[jhgatiss]

5. I agree with that sentiment.

Its somewhat artificial to have red states and blue states when about 40% of people in California and New York voted for Bush and 40% or greater voted for Kerry in places like North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia. Someone else said it on here in another post but the reality is that it isn't red states versus blue states so much as its urban versus rural with the suburbs caught in the middle. If you look at the county by county maps of the election, you can almost pick out where the cities are by the blots of blue.

[wurzel]

8. If Kerry could not beat Bush I am very pessimistic.

I cannot remember when Dems had a better candidate than Kerry. That includes Clinton. I have never known the Republicans to have a worse candidate than Bush. That includes Nixon. Yet Bush was elected. With his known record and policies? I just cannot get over it. It is even worse than 2000.

[Emillereid]

6. I posted this same article a few days ago and agree that it's the

best summary out there. Maybe this time it will get the attention it deserves (unfortunately I find that what I post usually gets ignored).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=67235

[goclark]

7. Let's kick cause it is great!