Reply #58: Election night scenario...could timing be a smoking gun?

[1democracy]

So Bush&co were going along on election day hoping for a Bush win with the voter suppression of specific Kerry supporters (e.g. blacks, poor) and with the help of voting machines where things such as the default setting for Bush along with other abnormalities were already operating.

(Recall: Exit polls ask voters how they voted as they exited the voting booth. Counts, which continue on much later, reflect the reports of the actual ballot counts).

The exit polls were going to be sticky. If the exit polls were virtually even for Bush and Kerry, there would be no problem, since a small (10%?)but sufficient proportion of the Kerry votes were already destined to be counted for Bush. But if the Kerry votes (determined by exit polls) were too large, then when the actual vote counts came in and Bush won, there was a possibility that the vote count would be questioned instead of the polling method.

Kerry was in the lead all night. It could be a problem. It all hinged on whether the media was prepared to believe there was a huge 'miscount' (we would say fraud) or would they rather believe their own polls were wrong. Faced with a call from Rove, supposedly telling them their exit polls were wrong and his were correct and that Bush was taking Ohio etc, they caved in and corrected their final exit polls to agree with the "actual" counts being reported.

As other DU posters here have suggested, the "last minute" Bush voter rush that was hypothesized actually never happened; it was an explanation for the the excess Bush votes that showed up after the last exit poll had been conducted. This is why the final exit poll data (unaltered/ uncorrected)is so crucial for this analysis. This exit poll info should prove whether or not these voters exist!!!If exit polls at 8 p.m. still showed the Kerry lead, one must conclude either the actual vote tabulation was altered for a Bush win or, as other DU posts have warned me, the exit polling model was flawed. I am not sure how to distinguish between these two. Perhaps it can be shown that these same exit poll data were accurate for some other (non manipulated) races or that the same method employed in another year's election was accurate.

The computer blackout/ power outage sounds suspicious, like an excuse to reformulate/rework the data. It might also be an excuse for the pollsters to ignore the final exit poll data as "lost" or corrupted, (as long as someone hasn't saved it on their computers) and sufficient time for them to import new (whose?)numbers to recalculate the results.

Question; would a decision have been made and transmitted to ??? to institute the plan to more drastically alter the vote late on election day, or would the entire plan have been put in place much earlier? When would the phantom votes have appeared? Were the "phantom votes/over votes (more than 100% of registered voter turnout)activated at the end of the day on Nov 2, corresponding with the last minute Republican rush to the polls?

It seems like what would be a crucial part of the investigation of into the whole Nov 2 scenario, would be to check the timing and pattern of the appearance of the mysterious votes. Did they all happen at once or were they being counted at same rate all day? When did the over votes occur? All at the end? In several bursts? Did this coordinate in all precincts at the same time, or start in one and branch out into others as if connected? What would the pattern look like if it all took place at the level of the tabulators?I believe the timing of the appearance of these votes might be a chance for a real smoking gun...Since voting machines record the time of votes, some type of analysis of these questions should be possible to investigate.