Is it possible that the 1994 election was stolen?

[grasswire]

Apparently the results were a surprise to Democrats. Was the election close enough to steal? Were exit polls in contradiction to results?

Maybe it's time to go back and look, just to see how long these freaks have been tweaking the vote.

[leftofthedial]

1. yup

[Daylin Byak]

2. This is a joke thread right?

Enough with the conspiracy theories on voting.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. Are you confident our elections are clean?

Do you think the computerized voting is a step forward for better run elections?

[Daylin Byak]

12. If they have a paper trail, maybe

But i'm not talking about the present day, i'm talking about the '94 election. Remember we were corrupt as much as the repukes and Newt Gingrich offered a alternative to the people(i.e the contract with america)america liked it and that's how we were voted out of power not by faulty voting machines

[ret5hd]

15. We were??? Link please.

[Dick Diver]

36. Here's some for starters...

Check Kiting Scandal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Post_Office_Scandal

Dan Rostenkowski - http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0842480.html

Mary Rose Oakar - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose_Oakar

See also...
Lawrence Jack Smith
Albert G. Bustamonte
and others...

Simply because a Democrat has lost an election in the last 50 years does not mean the election was rigged. All polls showed a Republican takeover in 1994.

Edit to correct link.

[John Q. Citizen]

23. I doubt as corrupt, but there were some indictments against some

prominent congressional Democrats close to that time. So yeah, I think people were a bit disillusioned and I don't think election fraud played a significant role in the outcome.

[Hippo_Tron]

29. We weren't nearly as corrupt as the GOP

Yes, we were corrupt but the Republicans are much worse. Also, we had powre for fourty years. They've had it for 12 and they've already surpassed us.

[Parche]

56. paper trail

A paper trail does not mean anything,

I dont want electronic voting machines........period

You could vote for your candidate, they machine could spit out that name on the paper
trail, and could still be hacked afterwards...........

[leftofthedial]

38. head

meet sand

[dchill]

57. It would seem that you take it for granted...

that any and all conspiracy theories are automatically false, lunatic, and laughably inconceivable. This is GOP pundit party line, and something they throw up EVERY time something they don't want to talk about comes up. A conspiracy theory is not defined by the GOP. A conspiracy theory can be right or wrong.

I personally don't know whether the 1994 elections were rigged or not, but I have seen plenty of justification to at least suspect it. If you haven't, then perhaps you should look into it, before toeing the GOP party line and attempting to redefine "conspiracy theory" as some kind of left-wing lunatic fringe fantasy.

It just isn't.

Merriam-Webster: conspiracy theory
Function: noun
: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators

Do you think that couldn't happen? Really? Or maybe you know conspiracies can be more than just theories, but just don't like to think about it. If that's the case, you're probably in the wrong thread.

[happydreams]

24. The whole election system is rotten!!

The CIA has been tampering with elections for decades. How could these elections NOT be stolen?

The real question is will there ever be an investigation into this vast Right-Wing conspiracy that subverted democracy eons ago?

[TheDebbieDee]

3. I hadn't thought of that!

I did however come to the conclusion a couple of years ago that the * gang stole the Texas gubernatorial race from Ms. Richards in....'96 was it?

Al Gore was not the first Democrat robbed by these sons of bitches!

[some guy]

4. I've no idea about 1994

but if you want to "go back and look" you can go back at least as far as 1876.

Vote tampering on any side of an election has a long history. :)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rh19.html

[tritsofme]

5. Without a doubt YES

Every single election in the history of this country that a Democrat lost a race was stolen by Karl Rove.

From Dog Catcher on up, that's how good they are.

The only way we will know if it was a clean election next week is if the Democrats end up with a minimum of 415 members in the House, and run the table and win every seat up for grabs in the Senate.

[MrModerate]

11. So any doubts about the authenticity of elections . . .

Are to be discarded, because the idea is too wild to consider?

[John Q. Citizen]

31. Not in my opinion. I know we had 2000, 2002 and 2004 stolen. The

exit polls all indicate that and they had the technology to facilitate it, as well as the disenfranchisement of legal registered voters through fraudulent means and the suppression of votes through fraudulent means.

Then there is also the basic structural problems with out system. Historically, the candidate who spends the most money in the campaign wins almost 90% of the time in US elections.

I don't think election fraud played a significant role in the 94 elections though.

[happydreams]

26. I agree.

[enough already]

42. I don't see anything funny about this topic

The pukes are stealing elections in broad daylight and nobody is stopping them. And Rove clearly is playing a role in it.

[bullimiami]

6. im sure the repubs worked every angle and got many advantages

but there is old fashioned electioneering and dirty tricks and outright banditry which we have now.

[John Q. Citizen]

7. The '94 polls predicted a big win for the Repos, as I recall.

The Dems had held both houses of congress since the 50's and nothing lasts forever.

You may recall that Clinton won in '92 partly because Independent Ross Perot won nearly 20% of the vote, mostly at the expense of George H W bush.

Also, networked computerized voting was rare in those days.

Election rigging is as old as elections (remember what Stalin said back in the first half of the century?) so it's possible that both the Dems and the Repos did some hanky panky. However, the ability to do widespread and largely undetectable election fraud is relatively new. It's much easier to do it and get away with it now, and it's much more refined in where and how many fraud/flipped votes will get you power.

Stuff like suppression of turnout has a long history, though.

[tritsofme]

10. Perot taking votes away from Poppy is a myth

The 1992 exit polls showed that if Perot was not on the ballot his supporters would have voted for Clinton or Bush in mostly equal numbers.

[John Q. Citizen]

21. I guess it's a myth i prefer, given what a whack job Perot was. (he was right on

health care, though. "We are paying for front row seats and were stuck in the back of the balcony" or something close to that I remember from the debates.)

Well, I trust exit polls so thanks for the info. I stand corrected. (ain't the first or the las6t time, I'm betting)

The Perot vote still indicated a discontent with the status quo, which carried over to '94. My bet is if Clinton and congress had moved on health care instead of studying it until the insurance industry could rally and sabotage it, the results would have been better for both the country and Democrats.

There were also issues and indictments over corruption against some prominent congressional Democrats occurring near the 94 mid terms as I remember, which only added to the difficulties for Dems.

[Poppyseedman]

9. No,.

Karl Rove was in Alabama in 1994 honing his skills for later use

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200411/green

In 1994 as a party we were fat, lazy, very corrupt and not listening to the voters.

Sort of like the rethugs are today

[tkmorris]

13. True enough but.....

Karl Rove didn't invent election stealing/influence ya know.

[Poppyseedman]

16. No, Karl Rove didn't invent election thief

But, in bygone years some of the best election stealing/influence was done by the democratic party.

Doesn't justify anybody stealing votes. But in 1994, we lost for some damn good reasons. I'm old enough to remember.

We had power for 40 years and let it slip away. We won't get it back just by asking for it or blaming others that they stole it.

[tkmorris]

20. I remember as well

I didn't mean to imply that you were mistaken. I fully agree that the Democratic Party in 1994 was far too complacent, and not very effective in power. We NEEDED to get a wake up call. I hated losing at the time of course, but in the end it may have been for the best.

[FloridaPat]

14. We could go back the the 1960 election. A lot of dead Dems voted in

Chicago, carrying Illinois for Kennedy. There was also a lot of talk about election ill regularities in Texas - Johnson's state.

Had Nixon won, he would have died in Dallas. Kennedy would still be alive. There would have been no Watergate. The repubs would not that gotten even for the Nixon resignation, and we would not have had Regan, Bush, and Bush. Maybe we'd have Kennedy!

But alas, that's life.

[Poppyseedman]

17. Wow, those that believe in Karma are having nightmares right after reading your post

[iamtechus]

19. 1960?

Kennedy didn't need Illinois to win in 1960.

[Hippo_Tron]

30. I'm sure plenty of dead people voted in California as well

You can't tell me with a straight face that Nixon's camp wasn't stealing votes.

[Catchawave]

18. Then the '96 Presidential Election was stolen too ?

:shrug:

[beaconess]

25. Yes - it was part of the evil but brilliant Rove's master plan to lull

you into a false sense of security so you wouldn't be suspicious when four years later, he started up again making Republicans win.

What a sucker you are!

:sarcasm:

[Hippo_Tron]

32. Rove knew that if Clinton got re-elected they'd discover he had relations with an intern

So naturally it makes sense. The Clenis strikes once again.

[beaconess]

43. You're joking, right?

If he knew this, why didn't he bring it up BEFORE the election rather than wait until afterward and hope that two years later, after the mid-term elections, they could muster the political support to impeach him and remove him from office?

[Hippo_Tron]

46. You are correct, I was joking...

[dchill]

58. Who says they didn't try? [n/t]

[cobaindrain]

I wouldn't put it past them

Perhaps we were too naive to notice back in 1994. 1996 was too much of a blowout for them to steal it.

[cobaindrain]

22. I wouldn't put it past them

Perhaps we were too naive to notice back in 1994. 1996 was too much of a blowout for them to steal it.

[ISUGRADIA]

45. How was 96 a blowout? Clinton only had 49% of the vote

to Dole's 41% It was an electoral college blowout, but not a popular vote one.

[beaconess]

27. Yeah - that's right. If we blame every loss on theft, we won't EVER have

to take responsibility for actually coming up with a message that will make a majority of voters vote for us. And if we blame even past losses on theft, we won't even have to bother learning from past mistakes!

Yeah, that's the ticket!

:sarcasm:

[John Q. Citizen]

33. If there is good evidence of theft (as there has been for the last three

cycles 2000-2002-2004) then why pretend it doesn't exist?

If you can steal an election you don't need a good message either. And if you have a great message but the other side can flip the votes electronically, it doesn't matter how good your message is.

I don't think 94 was significantly impacted by fraud though.

[beaconess]

44. Right - we're doomed, no matter what we do

Oh, lawdy, help us!

[John Q. Citizen]

50. I feel sorry for you if you feel that way. I'm more the type to work to correct

a problem than to feel doomed.

Some folks aren't though I realize. They tend to either:

A. Stick their head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist

or

B. Become so dispondant about a problem that they become paralyzed and can't act to respond to the problem.

Good luck with your depression. I read that it is much more treatable these days than it used to be. The first step is getting some help!

[beaconess]

51. I was being sarcastic

I fully agree with you and am sick and tired of hearing folks on my side bitch and moan about how the other side is so nefarious and brilliant and unstoppable that they're going to beat us, no matter what we do. That kind of self-defeatism is not only unrelated to reality, it is completely counter-productive and self-fulfilling.

[John Q. Citizen]

53. Right on! I agree with you, too. The other side are just a bunch of venal

assholes for the most part. I buy into neither extreme, that they are incompetent nor that they are invincible. They are just a bunch of crooks liars and thieves.

Taking action instead of sitting around wringing the hands is the only course that makes a bit of sense.

I think the OP in this thread just had a thought and asked about it. The question indicates the person asking it too young to remember the 1994 mid-terms. Those of us old fogies who were there seem to pretty much agree it was a combination of factors that didn't include significant election fraud.

As Democrats we need to work to get both a good message out and to insure elections are much harder to rig and that rigging is much easier to detect and mitigate.

I'm scheduled to do knock and talks in precincts next Saturday, Monday, (1/2 days) and to work all day Tuesday in GOTV.

Then I hope to meet up with my fellow Democrats at the Union Club after the polls close and watch Montana elect Jon Tester to the US Senate over a few beers! Fortunately, most of the state has paper scan machines which at least means the original paper ballots are there to examine if need be. A few small counties still use and hand count paper ballots. I can't wait to see Conrad Burns give his concession speech! I'm also quite hopeful we will extend our majorities in the state house and senate.

Have a good one.

[Penndems]

28. No.

The Clinton-Gore ticket was running about 20-25 points ahead of the Bush-Quayle ticket right up until one week before the election. They picked up steam after the '92 Democratic Convention. Approval ratings for Poppy were in the mid-to-high 20s.

It wasn't stolen. It was the will of the majority of this country's voters to elect Bill Clinton as our President.







(edited for typo)

[John Q. Citizen]

34. That was 1992, not 1994. n/t

[Penndems]

35. Thanks - my bad :(

I don't think the '94 election was stolen, either.

The GOP did a more than satisfactory job of misconstruing the Clinton record, and painting Mrs. Clinton as a socialized medicine demon.

[John Q. Citizen]

39. I agree with you on '94 and '92. Neither had significant election fraud.

I do think Clinton made a big mistake in not pushing a single payer fee for service health care plan immediately after Jan 1993. He was mostly elected on health care reform (as were some Dem Senators) and Bill's mistake was studying it to death via Mrs Clinton and by the time the overly complex insurance company friendly Clinton plan was unveiled the Repos already controlled the house, and the insurance industry had time to organize and squash the whole idea of any changes at all.

Bill made another mistake in pushing for gays in the military as his first agenda item after taking office, and here's why. He should have either just issued an executive order and told the military that like it or not, it was the right thing to do and that was what was happening, or he should have left it alone until after he had passed major health care reform. "Don't ask don't" tell pissed off both gays and the military. It pissed off gays because it was a campaign promise, and yet they were still essentially being told they had to settle for second class citizen status, and it pissed off the military because they are afraid of change. It also made Clinton look weak and vacillating. It was a lose/lose for Clinton, and it set the stage for the later wedge issue against the Democrats. Bill would have been better off doing it right or not doing it at all.

[Penndems]

41. Totally agree with you on both points, John Q.

The GOP, lead by Newt Gingrich, had their playbook in order, and they used every code word they could think of to inflame and energize their base. They made a huge issue of Mrs. Clinton's task force meeting behind closed doors at the Old Executive Office Building, and succeeded in convincing voters that there was something nefarious going on.

Just to elaborate a bit on your second point: Bill Clinton made excellent Cabinet choices who knew the missions of their respective departments backwards and forwards. IMHO, however, the worst possible candidate for SecDef was the late Les Aspen. The guy was thoroughly knowledgeable regarding the military and defense spending from his Congressional days, but he was just way too eccentric for DoD. He sat around his suite wearing silk pajamas and robe, and was rumored to be gay. That's not the type of personality that flies too well at Defense.

Dr. Perry and Senator Cohen were infinitely better selections.

[John Q. Citizen]

55. Yes, Clinton did get a lot of good people into the Fed Depts. And he

probably would have done better to put Aspen in a #2 or #3 slot at the DOD. That way he could have made use of Aspen's knowledge and still not riled the career military in terms of image.

Image is often overated, yet it certainly can't be ignored.

[bemildred]

37. Corrupt elections are old as the hills in the USA.

Computers have added a gee-whiz element, but that is just some new paint on an old vehicle.

[Smarmie Doofus]

40. What's different is that the exit polls were reliable....

'til 2000.

[ZombieGak]

47. midterm elections in US are a joke

According to http://www.idea.int/vt/country_view.cfm?CountryCode=US
a mere 38.8% of the voting age population (VAP) voted.

That means that the GOP's "big win" represented about 19-20% of the VAP.

[Robbins]

48. Elections

They can be stolen.Yes In 1960 the vote In Chicago was likely fixed for Kennedy but kennedy still would have won the elctoral vote without Illinois because of his carrying Texas however can we finally agree that we can't be sure Nixon didn't steal any votes because of what we know now.Nixon likely won In 68 because of Goerge Wallace's 3 party run(If he didn't get shot and ran as a 3 party candiate again he might have thrown the 1972 Election to the House to decide) and Carter might have been able to pull an electoral victory In 1980 If John ANderson had not run as a Independt.And the big myth if Clinton didn't win Perot simply cut Into Bush and Dole's votes. Fact In 1992 40 percent of Perot votes wouldn't have voted.The rest were equaly taken from both Clinton and Bush(It Is possibly according to some survery Clinton was actully hurt a little more by Perot) now Montana,
Georgia,and Colorado which Clinton won In 92 and Dole won In 96 were possibly thrown to him because of Perot but at the smae time Arizona,and FLorida which Bush won in 1992 but CLinton won In 96 were
possibly thrown to Bush because of Perot.Perot was much less a factor In 96 but In all likelyhood
It was similar to 92 that many of his votes were people who would not have voted otherwise and others he took from both CLinton and Dole.Another thing to remember Clinton did better than Bush at beating his opponents.In 92 Clinton won 43 to 38 for Bush where Bush Jr narrowly lost the popular vote 49 to 48 In 2000 while Clinton beat Dole 49 to 41 Bush won over Kerry 50 to 48.

[ZombieGak]

52. we'll never have fair elections under the current system

Democracy is supposed to measure the consent of the governed... yet our federal system is so anti- and undemocratic that it can never accomplish that.

In the anti-democratic category the federal government is a system of vote weighting schemes illegal on all other levels of government. 17% of the US population gets over 50% of the seats in the Senate. The EC defies the will of the people and installs as president candidates rejected by the people. A mere 3.7% of the population can thwart any amendment.

In the un-democratic category we lack modern reforms like proportional representation and instant run-off voting. Districts are Gerrymandered to the point that 50% of the votes can get 70% of the seats. Ex-felons are deprived the vote. Without meaningful choice, some elections have less than 50% of the voting age population (VAP) even voting. Newt's so-called revolution in 94 represented about 19% of the VAP. Reagan’s “landslide” represented about 26% of the VAP.

Yet the party from which we might expect democratic reforms to come from has deluded itself into thinking that all we need are tweaks like motor voter, etc… not any structural reforms.

[John Q. Citizen]

60. Yep, and about 85% of all elections in the US are won by the candidate

who spends the most money.

Then on top of all that we have Diebold.....

[Quantess]

49. Maybe....

But, are you better off now, or were you better off in 1994?
:evilgrin:

[mod mom]

54. '88 was stolen in Repug Primaries in NH. Dole should have won but H.W.

did in a surprise. Sununu got rewarded.

[NaturalHigh]

59. I remember the general mood of the country...

in 1994, and I don't think the elections were stolen. A lot of people were pissed off about the Democrats supporting gun control and about the "HillaryCare" debacle. Even Bill Clinton said the day after the election "I got the message." I honestly don't think the American public wanted to move as far left as the Democratic Congress was hoping to take it.

This time, though, I think it's just the opposite. I don't think Americans want to move as far right as the Republican Congress is trying to take us.

[John Q. Citizen]

62. I don't believe there was significant fraud, but 1994 had nothing to do with

the Democratic congress hoping to take the country too far to the left.

It had much more to do with 40 years of Democratic control and with corruption scandals involving some high profile Dems in congress. Also, the Repos used their contract on America very effectively.

[NaturalHigh]

64. I agree the scandals had a lot to do with it...

but I think the Democratic stance on gun control also had a lot to do with it. Also, the "HillaryCare" mess and the debate on gays in the military portrayed the Democratic leadership as being farther left than the average American, which I believe was true at the time.

You're right on the Republicans' Contract With America. They pounded it home at every opportunity, then didn't deliver once they were in office.

[Zynx]

61. I was young, but I remember that year. It was clear what was going to happen.

[smalll]

63. STOP THE MADNESS! /nt