This is find-outable, if not actionable, and well worth the effort even if nothing turns up, because we SHOULD ALL have a skeptical attitude to government and authority in all contexts. This is what this country is supposedly based upon.
And vote fraud always leaves a trail.
My point in the above essay is about the overall context: regardless of whether Americans really gave Bush a majority overall and in Ohio in particular, there is NO DOUBT the Bush crew would have wanted to guarantee this election, by whatever means, and especially in a context of a close vote, preparing to steal it would have been consistent with both, their criminal track record, and with all the other things they were doing to win at all costs.
If they didn't plan to steal this one, it would be very much against their grain.
The exit polling discrepancies are dramatic: states with e-voting have huge variances to Bush's favor, those without have none.
If there is any real press left, there should at least be a wave of stories about ALL irregularities, regardless of whether significant fraud is established.
We'll see.
Here are some interesting signs that things are stirring...
Currently on Yahoo news, AP wire (Friday, Nov 5, 2004 @ 14:21 EDT)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041105/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problems&cid=694&ncid=2043Presidential Elections - AP
Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes
11 minutes ago
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush (news - web sites) 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites)'s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.
Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after saying that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result.
Deducting the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election's outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio's electronic machines, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.
(snip)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041105/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problems&cid=694&ncid=2043--------------
Greg Palast: Kerry Won
http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0-----------------
Here's a more conventional approach, in the heavily Republican Warren County:
http://www.michigancityin.com/articles/2004/11/04/news/news02.txt Friday, November 5, 2004
Warren's vote tally walled off
Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security
By Erica Solvig
Enquirer staff writer
LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.
County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.
"The media should have been permitted into the area where there was counting," Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner said. "This is a process that should be done in complete transparency and it wasn't."
Warren County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said he had recommended increased security based on information received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent weeks.
(snip)
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From Indiana: sorry, lost the URL
Computer glitch still baffles county clerk
By Kristin Miller, The News-Dispatch
LaPORTE - The day after a two-and-a-half-hour delay in counting ballots due to a glitch in a computer program, LaPorte County election officials are still trying to figure out what happened.
"Maybe there was a power surge," LaPorte County Clerk Lynne Spevak said. "Something zapped it."
At about 7 p.m. Tuesday, it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters.
That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters.
Vote counting resumed at about 9:30 p.m.
....
There are also the North Carolina stories...