AUTORANK Kennedy’s Challenge - Salon, Mother Jones & the Tortured Dialogue

[althecat]

Kennedy’s Challenge:
Salon, Mother Jones & the Tortured Dialogue
On Election Fraud 2004

Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, DC
Co-Published at

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0606/S00193.htm & www.electionfraudnews.com
June 14, 2006

The prevailing silence on election fraud 2004 was interrupted June 1 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his article Was the 2004 Election Stolen? He argues clearly and forcefully that the 2004 election was stolen, basing his analysis and evidence on events and outcomes in the state of Ohio. Had Kerry won the Ohio race, he would be president today. Hence, the theft of Ohio was the theft of the election.

Kennedy relied on far more than his own record of activism and a name representing decades of political prominence. The well written and thoroughly documented article in Rolling Stone Magazine makes a number of assertions, each backed up with references to evidence linked within the body the article. Kennedy is unambiguous in his claim that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans.

This is a remarkable political event. The legitimacy of a sitting president is being challenged by a socially and politically active member of America’s best known political family. In addition, the challenger, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is a consistent advocate for a wide variety of liberal causes. From promoting greater economic justice to protection of the global environment, Kennedy has been there for liberals. Just eleven days after the article appeared, Associated Press ran a major story with an even handed discussion of the 2004 election in Ohio and New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert ran a strongly worded column supporting Kennedy. How odd it is that Kennedy’s bold assertion and well documented case met with a carping attack from Salon Magazine, a self styled journal for open minded progressives.

My article examines the editorial stance of two national media outlets on the left that bothered to take a public position on the charge that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. Salon published a major attack on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s charges in their June 3, 2006 edition. Prior to Kennedy’s article Mother Jones, an unambiguously leftist publication, ran an article by liberal journalist Mark Hertsgaard which seemed an attempt to quell the emerging controversy and support the legitimacy of the Bush election around the time of their November-December 2005 edition.

The following material will demonstrate the weak, poorly reasoned, and utterly illogical approach these publications present and circulat in their names. There is no Rovian conspiracy implied, no financial bonus or reward suspected, and no personal vendettas imagined. The quality of the arguments and internal logic of evidence by these journals are the main concern.

The status of election 2004 is an extremely serious issue. The outcome shaped a world descending into chaos and an administration so extreme it stands accused by Al Gore and former Reagan officials of embracing tyranny. When a tightly reasoned and serious piece emerges from someone of Kennedy’s status, the quality of criticism must meet a certain standard of reason and logic. When that criticism comes from the left, the quality of arguments and support is even more important. Kennedy wrote a serious article based upon a compelling set of logical arguments. The article was supported with ample documentation. What did he get in response? It’s a sad story..

Stolen Election 2004: A Third Rail in American Politics.

Scarcely few public figures have spoken out making claims of a stolen election scenario for 2004. Some of the fiercest critics of the 2004 election refuse to utter the “s” word, as in stolen election as though it were outside the realm of possibility. Rep. John Conyers produced an early report, What Went Wrong in Ohio, with the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee. He has not committed fully to a 2004 stolen election scenario. Senator Barbara Boxer was the lone vote against certifying the Ohio electors on January 6, 2005. This created a notable furor. She voted nay on certifying the Ohio presidential electors as a result of the state’s sorry record of voter suppression in 2004 but stopped short of calling the election illegitimate.

Journalist Greg Palast, NYU professor and author Mark Crispin Miller, Steven Freeman, PhD, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Free Press, plus internet researchers like TruthIsAll have commented frequently with substantial evidence and great passion. In effect, they have been forced into a corporate media burka. Even the supposedly liberal Daily KOS eschews any reference to claims of a stolen election in 2004.

Despite the recent AP story and Bob Herbert column previously referenced, this was a mostly repressed media environment that Kennedy entered when he published his article in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Counter Attack from the left

Salon Magazine, a struggling online publication, sought a broad audience after its launch around the time of the de facto coup attempt against President Clinton. While it featured a few figures from the right like David Horowitz and Camille Paglia, the thrust of the editorial content was clearly to the left of center. Salon broke the story of Henry Hyde’s affair with a married woman just as Hyde was beginning his ponderous march from the House to the Senate for the impeachment trial. Salon’s Eric Boehlert, a consistent producer of probing analysis, has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration.

Given this, it is surprising to find that since before the 2004 election, Salon has published articles that have the back handed effect of legitimizing the Bush election and presidency by dismissing substantive arguments concerning election fraud. Motives are not the issue here. The net result is the main concern. When questions are raised about the election, Salon’s initial article attacking Kennedy provides the Republicans and those accused of theft with an ideal cover. After all, even Salon Magazine says the election was legitimate, is the putative response from the media savvy of the right when challenged with the facts of massive voter disenfranchisement and the unbelievable statistical anomalies surrounding the exit polls and vote count.

Although Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s Technology and Business staff writer has produced several articles on problems with voting machines in the past, lately he is best known for challenging those who claim election fraud in 2004. In fact, Manjoo went so far as to dismiss a Greg Palast-BBC expose of Florida Republican voter suppression efforts before the 2004 election. This is a writer who the right hates to love.

Before Manjoo there was Mother Jones

Mother Jones positions itself as representing the left wing of the American left. The magazine's “roots lie in a commitment to social justice” and it has a consistent record of probing analysis on Bush administration disasters, economic disparities, and serious environmental problems. Recounting Ohio, Was Ohio stolen? You might not like the answer, by Mark Hertsgaard is the precursor for Manjoo’s recent epistle against the Kennedy article. The article appeared in the November/December 2005 issue.

The article is a review of three early books claiming a stolen election: Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? : Essential Documents By Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman, and Steve Rosenfeld; What Went Wrong in Ohio: The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election; and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) By Mark Crispin Miller.

Hertsgaard begins with a stunning assertion to <u] anyone</u] who chooses to read or is familiar with the three publications or the authors: “The source for much of the skeptics' case is The Free Press, an online news service based in Columbus.” In the article he comments on his low regard for the general quality of evidence among those who claim fraud. Yet he fails to provide one single shred of evidence, even of the Fox News kind (“some say”), to support this claim. Think about it. Congressman John Conyers, D, MI, is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. He is a veteran of the Nixon impeachment hearings, the Civil rights movement, and countless other political battles over his 40 plus year political career. Why and how would he fall under he spell of The Free Press editor Bob Fitrakis and company?

Miller, a NYU professor, shows no signs of such vulnerability either, having pursued an independent career as an academic and writer in his professional life. Did Miller and Conyers accept Fitrakis as their guru; a veritable sole source of information? They do not indicate that happened nor has Fitrakis ever made such a claim. Evidence shows that the Conyers Ohio hearings actually influenced Fitrakis. We are left with only Hertsgaard’s dangling, unsupported assertion. It is upon this unfounded assertion that his entire argument rests.

He goes on to characterize Fitrakis, and by association Conyers and Miller, as “unabashedly left-wing and happy to meld journalism with activism.” To simplify, he implies that they will mislead in order to make their point. Before he ever considers the evidence offered in any of the three books, Hertsgaard engages in the cheapest argument of all, guilt by false association. This journalistic drive by attack on the credibility of Conyers, Miller and Fitrakis results in an unintended but clear consequence for Hertsgaard; the complete demolition of his credibility as a reviewer of the books or arguments therein.

Given the surrender of any degree of objectivity or even intellectual honesty by this rhetorical sleight of hand at the outset, the rest of his article loses credibility. There are three points that warrant quick review.

Hertsgaard indicates little, if any knowledge of the considerable amount of work done on exit polls by Steven Freeman, PhD, Ron Baiman, PhD and the team at the Election Archive.Org, (formerly USCountsVotes) and the internet poster TruthIsAll He also brings forward the “reluctant Bush responder” argument to explain why the exit polls showing Kerry a winner were wrong. This had been largely discredited at the time and pollster John Zogby calls this reasoning “preposterous” (see footnote 36 ). Hertsgaard then reasons backwards and implies that a partial recount in New Hampshire, which failed to find fraud, somehow shows that all the work regarding exit polls is invalid without any support other than his assertion.

The apogee of Hertsgaard’s illogic is achieved in his citation of a lawyer for the Ohio Democratic Party. This is his kill shot, his moment of Zen when he offers us the dilemma that will cause us to fall down and worship in his temple of superior understanding:

As for the larger argument that Ohio was stolen, O'Grady says, "That point of view relies on the assumption that the entire Republican Party is conspiratorial and the entire Democratic Party is as dumb as rocks. And I don't buy that."

There is so much obviously wrong with this type of false choice, it is stretches the mind to uncomfortable limits. The “entire Republican” party does not have to be “conspiratorial” to advance a tenable fraud hypothesis regarding Ohio. Nor does the “entire Democratic Party” need to be “dumb as rocks.” The use of this type of over generalization says much more about Mr. O’Grady’s state of mind at the time he uttered this and the author’s weak sense of logic and argumentation than it does about election fraud. It is a disappointing display of ignorance to even include this in the discussion of a topic as serious as this.

Manjoo to the Rescue: More Guilt by False Association

Farhad Manjoo shows his hand very early in the response to the Kennedy article. In the forth paragraph, the twin smoking guns appear:

I scoured his Rolling Stone article for some novel story or statistic or theory that would prove, finally, that George W. Bush was not the true victor. But nothing here is new. If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's "Fooled Again," you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.

Manjoo’s scouring is a fool’s errand. Proof is the first smoking gun. This is a transparent ploy that would be apparent to the tens of thousands of high school debaters who hold each other to higher standards of reasoning and evidence than the editor of Salon applies. You cannot prove a claim like Kennedy’s without a thorough investigation. There has been no thorough investigation and beyond any doubt whatsoever, the author knows that. Therefore, the author is arguing from a false premise that he knows is false. In the scouring exercise, it must have been apparent that Kennedy did not claim to prove that the election was stolen. Kennedy amassed impressive arguments and evidence and made a judgment, his right and obligation as an involved citizen and political figure. Yet he is faulted by one of Salon’s favorites as claiming to have done something he never claimed to do.

If Manjoo’s scouring had been a little more thorough he would have found the following pertinent history. Conyers went to Ohio to investigate the election. He had a limited staff under very difficult circumstances and received no cooperation; either from the Republicans who run the state of Ohio or major media concerns who sponsored the exit polls yet refuse to widely release the raw data. While he was doing this, his counterpart, Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio, was with fellow Republicans in Washington, DC, readying a veritable Soviet show trial to demonstrate that the election was legitimate. The results of the Conyers efforts are published and available. The results of Ney’s efforts are an embarrassment Ney’s key witness was the head of a supposedly non partisan voting rights group created just days before the hearings. The group was headed by the “National Election Counsel to Bush-Cheney '04.” Apparently Manjoo was too involved scouring Rolling Stone to notice the larger picture.

The second smoking gun in paragraph four of the Salon article is Hertsgaardian in its presentation: “If you've spent time on Democratic Underground or have read Mark Crispin Miller's Fooled Again, you're already familiar with everything Kennedy has to say.” In another replica of Hertsgaard’s rhetoric, the author performs guilt by association with unsupported assertion maneuver. This equals, perhaps surpasses Mark Hertsgaard’s claim that Fitrakis and Miller were the sole source for the Conyers committee report on Ohio.

This is truly breath taking. Manjoo has cast aside the all-powerful Fitrakis and provided new culprits, the users of DemocraticUnderground.Com and the ubiquitous Mark Crispin Miller. We have no room but to conclude that either (a) Kennedy independently concluded what the axis of the blogosphere, DU and Miller discovered, or worse; (b) he has fallen under the spell of a powerful [i> mind control unit represented by the professor and political forum.

What is www.DemocraticUnderground.Com? The author has already told us in paragraph two:

Then there are the legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who've devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged; their theories, factoids, and mountains of purportedly conclusive data likely take up several buildings' worth of hard-drive space in Google's server farms.

Here is the predicate for the association of Kennedy’s ideas with those of the internet forum. Legions are not defined. Does the author mean 100, 500, 1000? There is no estimate on the number of election fraud researchers and activists on Democratic Underground (DU) but 100 would certainly be pushing the number. There are certainly thousands of internet users who review the material on election fraud at DU and elsewhere (and produce such information elsewhere) but Manjoo is talking about DUers “who’ve devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives” to this work; you know - internet addicts who have no life – his implication.

Like Hertsgaard, Manjoo begins by implying severe intellectual limitations on the part of the leading figure, Kennedy, by claiming that Kennedy is controlled by those on the margins. There is no support for this offered at all and certainly no correlation of evidence cited with either DU or Miller. But then again, Manjoo might need to be the type of professional who devoted his life to his craft in order to substantiate his damning but entirely unsupported claim; then again, he might just be a reluctant research responder.

On the Evidence, More Sorrows for Salon

This article analyzes argumentation and rhetorical styles not specific factual arguments. That has been handled elsewhere. When Salon’s approach to factual evidence breaches the walls of reason, then it becomes pertinent. There are two such breaches.

Warren Mitofsky had egg on his face after his exit polls showing a clear Kerry victory were unintentionally released at critical points throughout Election Day. He went so far as to issue a final poll the day after the election which incorporated the actual vote count. Not surprisingly, Bush won that heat.

Manjoo tries to counter the significant evidence of election fraud presented by Steven Freeman, PhD, US Counts Votes, and others who claim the exit poll victory for Kerry was more reliable than the obviously tainted vote count in Ohio and elsewhere. He resurrects the “reluctant Bush responder” hypothesis. Bush voters were somehow ashamed of their votes and didn’t reveal them to exit poll workers. This argument was characterized by polling exert John Zogby as “preposterous” (see footnote 36). In addition, it has been dismissed by academics and spreadsheet wielding internet bloggers. Nevertheless, he persists.

In one of the saddest displays of feeble argumentation, Manjoo offers the following as an explanation of the exit polls showing a Kerry victory.

…a political scientist at Bard College, explained to me, the numbers Kennedy cites fit the theory that Kerry voters were more likely to respond to pollsters than Bush voters. For instance, in the Bush strongholds -- where the average completion rate (of exit poll surveys) was 56 percent -- it's possible that only 53 percent of those who voted for Bush were willing to be polled, while people who voted for Kerry participated at a higher 59 percent rate. Meanwhile, in the Kerry strongholds, where Mitofsky found a 53 percent average completion rate, it's possible that Bush voters participated 50 percent of the time, while Kerry voters were willing to be interviewed 56 percent of the time. In this scenario, the averages work out to the same ones Kennedy cited: a 56 percent average response rate in Bush strongholds, and a 53 percent average response rate in Kerry strongholds. But in both Bush strongholds and Kerry strongholds, Kerry voters would have been responding at a higher rate, skewing the poll toward Kerry.

This critical paragraph consists of simple verbal calculations, plus or minus three. There is nothing else there except Manjoo’s words surrounding numbers which conveniently counter the statistical and mathematical analyses Kennedy cites. This is simply amazing. Meaningless words and numbers are produced to refute Kennedy’s sources without any basis whatsoever. None. The run on sentences above are based entirely on the phrase “it’s possible.” In that case, it’s also possible that the sentence was generated by a trance medium working for Salon who generated exactly what was needed to discredit Kennedy at the moment of inquiry. This is the critic who would have us believe that Kennedy bases his arguments on nothing more than hyperbole. The author succeeds in performing a stunning feat of ratiocination, ex nihilo.

There are other problems with sloppy reasoning due to ignoring the readily available facts. Manjoo relies significantly on former Hoover Institution and now MIT political scientist Charles Stewart who thinks Florida and Georgia touch screen voting systems are just terrific. Florida is so confident in its voting system that the state is restricting local boards of elections from testing any voting machines. Georgia, another Stewart favorite, is in election technology free-fall as a result of a series of problematic elections and investigations.

Then there is Manjoo’s dismissal of the significance of an obscure 2004 Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court outpolling Kerry in key areas. He argues that a similar candidate in 2000 (Democrat running for Supreme Court) outpolled Gore in a similar manner. The author failed to note that Gore’s 2000 campaign abandoned Ohio in the last weeks of the campaign and that Resnick outpolling Gore was no surprise given her two term incumbency, popularity, funding level, and, of course, the fact that Gore gave up on the state. Sad but true, there is no hope for Salon. Mighty Manjoo has struck out…again.

Argumentation 101 from Election Fraud Deniers of the Left

What can we anticipate from election fraud deniers of the left and others based on the arguments from Salon and Mother Jones?

1) Characterize those who claim 2004 was a stolen as being under the influence of “loose with the truth” fanatics. Hertsgaard did it in Mother Jones when he claimed that Congressman Conyers and the other Democrats who investigated Ohio and Miller were under the influence of the powerful Bob Fitrakis and The Free Press organization. Manjoo did the same when he varied the theme and claimed that Kennedy is now under the influence of DemocraticUnderground and Mark Crispin Miller, If we view Mother Jones and Salon as a composite work, we now have Kennedy under the sole influence Democratic Underground and Bob Fitrakis since Hertsgaard established Fitrakis’ dominance over Miller. This is simply beyond the pale.

2) Diminish the value of the exit polls at all costs. (a) Invoke exit poll leader Warren Mitofsky’s self deprecation strategy. Have you ever heard of a major researcher suddenly diminishing his own work at the end of a long career? (b) Also resuscitate discredited explanations for the exit polls like “reluctant Bush responders” and offer those up as proof by simply saying “it’s possible” that Bush supporters were reluctant. (c) By all means, do not evaluate or interview those who have done extensive analysis on the exit polls. Simply dismiss them as “legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who've devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged…” without bothering to evaluate or mention their evidence.

3) Offer up your own evidence that ranges from questionable to incredible. Claim that the popular Ohio Supreme Court incumbent Judge Resnick’s performance in the 2000 election compared to Gore is a valid comparison to the obscure Judge Connelly’s performance compared to Kerry. Also use soundbites like that from Democratic counsel O’Grady that simply make no sense at all.

4) And finally, always demand that those making a serious case “prove” that the election was stolen by simply ignoring that proof is established through an in depth investigation. Ignore the fact that there has been no official investigation. But don’t demand an investigation yourself. That would not be prudent.

With friends like Salon and Mother Jones on the left, who needs Republicans?

*** END ***


© Copyright notice: Please copy this article and distribute it freely with attribution to Michael Collins and “Scoop” Independent News to anyone wishing to understand the reality we must confront to restore fair and open elections and democracy in the United States.
Editorial support provided Stella Black. Special thanks to the scholar.

[fasttense]

1. I am disappointed in Mother Jones

Mother Jones use to be a stalwart left supporter. Seems even they have come under the influence of the bushes.

I had no idea we here at DU had such influence. Never mind that it is evil influence to tempt RFK but also we have no lives and only live to prove the election was rigged. Though we dedicate our worthless lives to this, we seem to produce only useless and unintelligent information. Wow, that's some good spin. Did the bushes provide it? Maybe a burning bush?

[ThomCat]

14. I often really like Mother Jones

but I was disgusted with their shoddy work covering the election.

[autorank]

34. I didn't go into motives but WTF...and the editor placed the article by

Hertsgaard. I simply don't understand how their standards could be so low on such a high level
subject?

These magazine, both of them, got a ration from their readers and were fairly snippy about it.

For goodness sakes, Salon is on the ropes and they're defending this author to readers, the latest
wave, who are furious. I know they lost plenty of subscribers the last time the same author
wrote an article like this, "No Exit," a hatchet job on the exit poll analysis--totally biased.

If they were just even handed that would be fine but they can't bring themselves to do that, either of
the publications.

They must have O8)'s who make sure they're not accountable to the market place.

[autorank]

2. Wow! Thank you so much althecat!!! I wrote this for three reasons.

First, I'm sick and tired of people being attacked from the 'so called' left for speaking the truth as they see it, research it, experience it on the issue of election fraud. This goes for Kennedy and any other public figure but especially for those of us here and elsewhere who have to take the snarks of wise guy/gal CM wanna-be's.

Second, I wrote it for everybody here who works hard to serve their country, party, state, and most importantly family and friends by being good citizens and doing the right thing...trying to make a difference. The critics who mock us (from the article)

"What is www.DemocraticUnderground.Com ? The author has already told us in paragraph two:

Then there are the legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who've devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged; their theories, factoids, and mountains of purportedly conclusive data likely take up several buildings' worth of hard-drive space in Google's server farms.

Talk to your friends and neighbors, or someone really bright who is a quick study, as we all have. It doesn't take much to make a case and then they get really unrested.

77% of the Democrats in Pennsylvania according to Zogby's poll think 2004 was stolen!!!

It is we, the DUers of the world, whatever the forum might be, who are the mainstream.

No more mocking...not now, not in the future. It's called respect.

The third reason I wrote is is for TruthIsAll first and foremost as a get well card...and a close second, for all the people here who sacrifice their time to fight for democracy, while (yes Manjoo, listen up) they work at their jobs, professions, family responsibilities as well. It's a privilege to work for free and fair elections but those who work so hard, as you do (and you know who you are) deserve some recognition.


These "Scoop" people are tough publishers. I finished this, send it off and it was polished shortly thereafter...no rest for the weary;) It's only sleep:evilgrin:

Get this around. It's not the typical response. I deal with the argumentation and rhetoric of the election fraud deniers. I think that's important. The last section is "loaded for bear" and it's hunting season.

Thank you again althecat and
for making our struggle your struggle.

[DemReadingDU]

86. and thank you autorank!

appreciate all you do in your articles

[OnTheOtherHand]

3. peddling faster, still going nowhere

Kennedy wrote an article titled, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?", and now his defenders complain that that is the wrong question. Go figure.

Even the people who claim to believe that the exit polls are accurate, cherry-pick them like mad. As one example among many, I am still waiting for someone to build the case that Kerry really won New York by 30 points. If they don't take their own data and arguments seriously, why should anyone else?

Kennedy quoted Dennis Kucinich: "'Down-ticket candidates shouldn't outperform presidential candidates like that,' he says. 'That just doesn't happen.'" Well, it does happen. In fact, Kennedy didn't present a single example in which a down-ticket candidate didn't outperform a presidential candidate in some counties. No one claims that Resnick (who outdrew Gore in 81 counties) is just like Connally (who outdrew Kerry in only 12). That's just blowing smoke.

(Here, again, is what Mark Chu-Carroll had to say about the response rate argument: "Again, nonsense. There are two distinct questions in that paragraph, which are being deliberately conflated.... The fact that a smaller percentage of people in places that tended to vote for the democratic candidate were willing to participate in exit polls is entirely independent of whether or not in a specific polling place a larger percentage of democratic voters than republican voters were willing to participate in the exit polls. This is a deliberate attempt to mislead readers about the meanings of the results - aka, a lie." http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/election_fraud_or_just_bad_mat.php I actually think that Chu-Carroll was too harsh, although I am beginning to wear out on nuance.)

[papau]

46. Kennedy's "proof" is much more than exit polls - thank Goodness - :-)

and of course Kennedy does not say he has a proof, there being no real investigation to date on either 00 or 04. But Kennedy in his Rolling Stone article does have reasons for his opinion beyond exit polls - as do we all.

Meanwhile, I do not believe Chu-Carroll's comment about the response rate discussion http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/election_fraud_or_just_bad_mat.php was too harsh -he was/is flat out wrong - or if one likes "chose the wrong words". He dumps on Kennedy because Kennedy draws a conclusion about an item when the item is independent of the facts he is noting. When did a data point in a set ever get called "entirely independent" of the characteristics of the set, when the data point and the set are defined, obviously, by the same characteristic, and the set result uses the result for the data point? Perhaps I am not up to speed on current language in this area. What is an independent variable these days?

I agree that the exit poll red shift does not imply theft variation can be tied to type of machine used - it also does not disprove it given our lack of detailed data- but it is consistent with the idea of many different methods of vote stealing, not just type of machine based, that were used by GOP nationwide at just about the same rate in every location as measured by size of the effect on the vote totals (or at least that is one interpretation of the data).

Kennedy's only errors were (1) buying the idea that the exit polls were large enough to give good state data, and (2) thinking the Ohio was unique in terms of amount of GOP vote stealing/dem vote suppression. He does not seem to realize that GOP techniques for prevention of voter fraud are also techniques that enable election fraud, at least as done by the GOP and as supported by our media.

[OnTheOtherHand]

55. in context, I think Chu-Carroll is correct

If he had said that the completion rate in Bush strongholds is independent of the Democratic completion rate in those precincts, of course that would be wrong. But what he said was that there are two independent questions of fact -- whether the completion rate is higher in Bush strongholds than elsewhere, and whether the Democratic completion rate in Bush strongholds is higher than the Republican completion rate in Bush strongholds. These are not variables. Each is either true or false, although the truth values cannot be known with certainty.

Until someone explains how Kerry won New York by 30 points despite all the polls to the contrary -- and then Bush stole those votes back without anyone noticing -- I think the inference that red shift implies any method of vote stealing is quite presumptuous.

Kennedy's errors are many. One more having to do with exit poll evidence is that he doesn't seem to realize that vote suppression shouldn't show up in exit polls unless people at least think they have voted. The Connally argument for vote-switching, as it stands, is absolutely awful. Kennedy portrays misprocessed registrations in Cuyahoga County as somehow a consequence of Blackwell's rulings, a completely unsupported inference. He exaggerates a very thoughtfully constructed estimate of the impact of those misprocessed (or unprocessed) registrations. I could go on.

Bottom line: Rolling Stone should have gotten Andrew Gumbel to ghostwrite the article. Gumbel could have marshalled a factually defensible and downright embarrassing account of everything that went wrong in Ohio (to borrow Conyers' phrase), as well as everything that could go wrong with DREs.

[papau]

57. Well - I guess I am presumptuous - the research only tells me the shape

of the plan used to steal elections, not that there was no plan carried out - at least in my opinion.

I agree that there are two independent questions of fact -- whether the completion rate is higher in Bush strongholds than elsewhere, and whether the Democratic completion rate in Bush strongholds is higher than the Republican completion rate in Bush strongholds - but that was not how I read the passage or the tone. While those FACTS can not ever be known, they are certainly independent in terms of the math. But judgments of "Independence" outside of math involved relationships noted that seem to exit year after year - even when logic does not show us a reason for the relationship.

But we are on the same page as to the bottom line:

"Bottom line: Rolling Stone should have gotten Andrew Gumbel to ghostwrite the article. Gumbel could have marshalled a factually defensible and downright embarrassing account of everything that went wrong in Ohio (to borrow Conyers' phrase), as well as everything that could go wrong with DREs."

We can start with vote suppression via registration and lack of voting machines.

[OnTheOtherHand]

61. oh, we don't have to widen the disagreement

I think that Republicans are very happy to suppress Democratic votes. (I don't know whether they 'plan' this, but we needn't quibble.) Most vote suppression won't show up in exit polls. So, I can pound the table that the exit polls don't evince vote miscount, and still not necessarily disagree with you at all.

(By the way, I had written "that the exit polls are useless as a fraud measure," but then I realized that I really didn't mean that. If there were massive miscount, I think it would probably show up in the exits, but differently than what we actually see there.)

If you see massive vote miscount, then we have a disagreement there.

When you are reading Chu-Carroll's tone, bear in mind that he thinks the election was stolen. If I'm not mistaken, he foregrounds vote suppression. So he is probably much more in agreement with you than you may have realized.

[papau]

66. Amazing how we can quibble when we are 95% in agreement! - being a Dem

means never lacking for a slew of topics to scream out the fact that we do not totally agree on them.

In contrast being a Republican means leaving all differences at the door because you know that NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL YOU GET POWER.

So can we now get back to how Hillary (or insert name....)is just not liberal enough/anti-war enough/get out of Iraq by deadline enough to vote for in the general election?

:toast:

:-)

Now why do you not see the obvious massive, uniform across the nation, GOP vote /election theft that I see?

:-)

[Febble]

70. Well, let's pause, and agree

that the democratic process in America is broken, and needs fixing, urgently. I'd say that the two most important tasks are to put an end to the differential disenfranchisement of Democratic voters, and to ensure that whatever voting method you use is transparent, secure, and auditable.

I'd also like to see a civil rights case against what happened in Ohio in 2004.

And actually, I'd really like to see President Gore.

[papau]

78. I agree :-) n/t

n/t

[OnTheOtherHand]

73. smile

I don't, and can't, and wouldn't insist that everyone agree with my perceptions about the magnitude of 'election theft' in 2004. I don't think it's a "quibble" whether millions of votes were stolen or not, but there is plenty of room for uncertainty and disagreement.

What I oppose is (1) false certainty (I don't mean gut feelings, I mean misguided dogma), and (2) stigmatization of legitimate disagreement. The dilemma on DU is that a lot of people see legitimate disagreement shading into deliberate obfuscation, and so they have made it their business to unmask me as an obfuscator. It's pretty boring, I have to admit. But this is not an issue between me and you.

[Swamp Rat]

4. "There has been no thorough investigation"

Say it.

Repeat it.

Live it.

It is a singular fact that negates all of their so-called arguments.

Make it your mantra.

[kster]

20. The fact that they won't have this debate ON TV

because they know if the majority of people in this country knew just SOME of the FACTS about the secret vote counting machines, their vote rigging gig would be up, and the real investigations would begin.

[oldtime dfl_er]

28. That is the important thing I take away

both from Michael Collins' article and RFK's. Unfortunately unless we take back Congress in November, there never -- NEVER -- will be an investigation.

please sign our guestbook: www.ThankYouRFK.com

[autorank]

35. Thanks for the thanks URL. I'll do it right away. We need Congress..

very badly. This article by Kennedy will start a process of chilling the election shenanigans.

Even so, the equipment is so lousy that there will be huge problems...guess where, in the urban
areas. What a shock.

[mod mom]

5. THANKS Althecat & Auto, will get out on the ER list servs!

[katinmn]

6. In many cases the deniers of fraud and theft are trying to cash in

on easy publicity by offering up opinions they know will be covered.

And then, of course, there are those who pretend to be progressive realists but they are DLCers at heart and enjoy muddying the waters.

WE don't have to prove anything (although enough facts exist to send many people to jail). It's up to our government to prove to us, the people they work for, that our elections are honest.

[autorank]

7. Prove legitimate rule or as GuvWorld says: "We do not consent"

:hi:

[kster]

22. Great job Autorank

:toast:

[autorank]

36. Thanks Mr. "Top 10" --;)

:toast:

[kpete]

8. We are NOT a democracy

Without Honest Elections.

Thanks for putting the truth out there for all to see!

[autorank]

10. Thank you...for putting everythign else out!

We have a chance to become a real democracy,i.e., a system where people actually know that the elections are free and fair. Most, half at least by now, think the 2004 presidential election was stolen...amazing. I've never heard that in my life except some griping about Kennedy-Nixon (where Southern Il cancelled out Chicago, by lore).

Let's hope and also fix that SD deal.

:hi:

[mod mom]

11. "WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY W/O HONEST ELECTION" love the phrase!

[autorank]

9. GREAT DAY!!! Harris Miller, Diebold Lobbyist loses VA Senate Bid!!!

Yep, that's the Harris miller who was going to make it all fine for the machine makers and make it miserable for election fraud/integrity activists!

53-47% Webb over Harris. Of course Webb won in Northern Virginia (my general 'hood). Miller carried the southern part of the state, which of course makes no sense, but no reason to spoil the party.

In addition to HAVA, DRE's, etc. Miller also was the architect of "out sourcing" high paying jobs and liberal benefits to mega corporations to toss aside the talent...

Oops, people remembered.

Miller had a 3-1 advantage in funding, using his own (Diebold, ESS, etc.) earned money. Nobody would give him much ... oh, guess whose machines are predominately down state...;)

Great day! Thank you Jim Webb. If you'd had equal dollars, it wouldn't have been close.

Now on to George Allen!

[katinmn]

12. Thank goodness for that!

[autorank]

37. Really, there's hope for Webb...and he's good on civil rights.

That comes through and is in sharp counter point to George Allen who tried to revive Confederate Month when he was Governor. People just ignored him, as they did with many other protocols.

He's bad juju...Webb will beat him.

[katinmn]

63. Well, our Gov. Pawlenty is apparently proclaiming today "Army Day"

http://www.sos.state.mn.us/home/index.asp?page=9&recordid=611

Gubernatorial Proclamation: Army Day

Date/Time: 6/14/2006
Location:
Address: Minnesota

It's on our theocratic SOS's website but no announcement from the gov's office yet!
(I say theocratic because she thinks separation of church and state is unconstitutional.)

[Virginian]

107. Webb carried my precinct

130 to 55.
Not a large turnout, but bigger than I expected.

One voter came in who was in a huff over the touch screens. He didn't realize we were NOT in favor of vaporware voting either. He was firing off questions left and right. He was bound and determined to trip us up as he KNEW we MUST be the ones responsible for selecting these Black Box Voting machines. (We aren't the "deciders," we just do our best to follow procedures and run honest elections.)

One of the election officers started to get a little upset with him. That officer had formally opposed the paperless touch screens, and was working with us because he had been invited by an upper level member of our local electoral board. I got a little flustered with the voter's style of questioning, but thought he was entertaining because none of us was going to defend the choice of these machines other than to say, "At least they aren't Diebold." The funny part is, the only machine failure we had all day was when the machine froze when we tried to activate it for HIM to vote. It was back to normal after a reboot. No votes were lost. We let him watch the process.

We gave him an application and told him to come join us. We need more workers who are passionate about honest elections. He was asking some good questions. In a future election, when a voter comes in with his attitude, HE will have the answers for them.

edited to ask: Autorank, were you that voter?

[Febble]

13. Sigh.

There is hard evidence in favour of the theory that Bush voters were less willing to participate in the polls than Kerry voters.

Saying there isn't doesn't make it go away.

• Yes, there is evidence that Kerry lost vote to lax and possibly corrupt practice in Ohio.


• Yes, it is possible that this may have cost him the election.


• Yes there is reason to investigate corruption and disenfranchisment in 2004, throughout the nation.


• Yes there is reason to campaign vociferously for an end to the systematic disenfranchisement of voters who are predominantly Democratic.


• Yes there is reason to campaign for transparent, auditable, secure voting systems.

But no, the argument the Bush voters participated at a lower rate than Kerry voters in the exit polls is not "discredited" and actually supported by data.

[mod mom]

17. Dr. Baiman: "Clearly a crime was committed in Ohio"

"I would take this evidence to a trial. Clearly a crime was committed in Ohio. There is simply no other explanation for these patterns other than vote shifting. The only thing we don’t know is who did it and how. And exactly this kind of information is necessary to get serious electoral reform - that you claim to support."

RON BAIMAN

The second page of this statement sets 95% confidence intervals for these polls (for a “characteristic” held by roughly 50% of those polled, for example a Presidential candidate preference for which there is a close to even split) squarely at 4% for sample sizes of 951-2350 – the range of reported sample sizes for these states. However, as Blumenthal knows, the reported sample sizes (also in the methods statements) are about half of what they really are (see Mitofsky correspondence in Baiman June 5 Free Press AAPOR report). For these true doubled sample sizes of 2351-5250, NEP’s own estimated confidence interval falls to 3%. This clearly puts the Ohio discrepancy of about 4% outside of the margin of error - even using NEP's inflated margins of error.

My margin of error calculations (and I believe Freeman’s) find a 2% margin of error with a 30% cluster adjustment factor. As I have stated in my earlier response to Manjoo, this puts Ohio well outside the margin of sampling error with odds of less than 1,900 that Kerry’s reported result is true given the exit poll result. This is not “slight” evidence but rather highly statistically significant, especially one considered with the inexplicable pro-Bush exit poll discrepancies in the two other key battle ground states of Florida and Pennsylvania. As Freeman and I have stated, the odds that these “sampling errors” (in the same direction and of these magnitudes) would occur for these three states simultaneously in less than one in 182,000,000 (i.e virtually impossible - this number is based on doubled sample sizes). Moreover, when one looks at precinct level exit poll data , and not just aggregate state polls, the evidence in even more striking and inexplicable. A fact that Manjoo has not addressed at all.

<snip>
http://www.Baiman.blogspot.com

[Febble]

21. Yes, there was clearly

a statistically significant discrepancy between the poll and the count in Ohio.

However, Baiman is wrong when he says: "There is simply no other explanation for these patterns other than vote shifting".

There are certainly other explanations - not least of which is chance. Unlike the discrepancy itself, Baiman's "patterns" are not statistically significant.



edited to clarify: Chance cannot account for the discrepancy; it can, however, account for Baiman's "patterns". Differential participation rate could have accounted for the discrepancy, but not chance.

[Jim Sagle]

75. Hogwash!

[Febble]

77. Explain.

[Febble]

76. self-deleted

[mod mom]

18. Dr. Steven Freeman: YES exit polls indicated a Kerry Victory in OH, NM& NV

Do the exit polls indicate a Kerry electoral victory?

Yes, as Kennedy reported, they do. Manjoo references a report I had written shortly after the election to refute Kennedy's claim that exit poll data indicated a Kerry victory in Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio.

At that time, the only data available (and these were hard to come by!) were screen shots preserved from the CNN Web site on Election Night (before the data were "corrected" so as to conform to the count). Whether these data indicate a Kerry victory was a matter of debate, but as any of Manjoo's experts should have known, these data have been superseded by the more detailed data released later by the National Election Pool exit pollsters. The detailed 77-page report was released on Jan. 19, 2005, Bush's Inauguration Eve. Reporters who filed stories on it that night had no time to review it properly; they could only summarize the report's conclusion. Their stories appeared under misleading headlines such as MSNBC's "Exit Polls Prove That Bush Won." In fact, the report makes no such claim.

Manjoo -- though not his triumvirate of expert sources -- may be partly excused for his ignorance on this matter. The National Exit Pool unnecessarily complicates the data through secretive processes and misleading terminology. Despite requests from U.S. Congress members and faculty at leading research universities, the National Exit Pool has refused to release or even permit independent inspection of these data that would allow an investigation of suspected fraud. We only had access to "uncorrected" "early" exit poll data because of blogger leaks and a computer glitch. The National Exit Pool intended to, and eventually did, replace these CNN.com numbers with data "corrected" so as to conform to the official count, and implied that the Election Night CNN numbers were merely "early" results, rather than what they really were: end-of-day data reflecting the entire surveyed population



http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/12/freeman/

[Febble]

23. Yes, the exit polls

indicated that Kerry was ahead of Bush in the polls. No, they did not indicate a Kerry victory.

Yes, there was a significant discrepancy between Kerry's exit poll share and his vote share.

Yes, this could have been due millions of stolen votes.

It could also have been due to a biased poll.

Subsequent analysis supports the case that the poll was biased

Subsequent analysis does not support the case that millions of votes were stolen.

The exit polls can tell you nothing about voter suppression

Voter suppression could have cost Kerry the election.

[OnTheOtherHand]

24. short Febble: Freeman is wrong

Since Freeman knows all about the 77-page report, he knows that page 22 indicates that the exit poll estimates in Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio all were within the margins of error -- too close to call. (So was the result in Florida, but the pollsters' best estimate put Bush ahead there, notwithstanding Kennedy's claim that Kerry had "commanding leads" in both FL and Ohio. Freeman ignores Florida, presumably hoping we won't notice.)

So, Freeman throws out the pollsters' estimates and error margins and makes up his own -- and then accuses Manjoo of being ignorant of the 77-page report. That takes chutzpah.

[mojowork_n]

56. Sir or Madam: You're mixing apples, oranges, and cowpies

"The 3 states at issue were Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio, or..."

so goes the 1st sentence of your comment.

But then -- switcheroo, don't pay any attention to what the right hand is doing -- as you conclude your prefatory paragraph with sentence 2, the yardstick for evaluating the exit poll analysis suddenly becomes Florida, where Bush was ahead.

And then in a mad rush to jump to a conclusion as quickly as possible, you simply accuse Freeman of "making up his own" numbers. What's that, if not an outrageous display of chutzpah, itself?

I think we should let Freeman speak for himself, without this attempt to "clarify" the question.

[OnTheOtherHand]

59. did you read Kennedy's article??

Kennedy wrote that "pollsters" informed "reporters" at 7:54 pm that "Kerry... had an insurmountable lead and woould win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call." The reference is to Freeman's book. (That 309 figure seems to be based on the same analysis that Freeman put in a handout last October, which put Florida in the Kerry column.) Then the next paragraph says, "As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally." The reference is to Freeman's book.

So if Freeman is suddenly bobbing and weaving about Florida, I think I'm more than entitled to point that out. (As for the 7:54 pm business, I have no clue what that is about. I won't blame that on Freeman, at least at this time, although Kennedy does cite him as the source.)

For that matter, did you read my post?

Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio were all too close to call in the exit poll. Freeman can say that the exit polls "indicated" that Kerry would win them, but that's not what the exit pollsters thought.

I did not say that Freeman made up his numbers; I said that he "throws out the pollsters' estimates and error margins and makes up his own," which is true. He describes how he concocts his estimates in his Salon article; he doesn't explain the error margins. Regardless, they aren't the estimates and error margins in the evaluation report.

I think it's amazing that Freeman hangs his hat on exit poll accuracy but doesn't even use the exit poll estimates.

[Febble]

62. Not at all

The yardstick for establishing whether the exit polls "predicted a Kerry victory" at close of poll is the table of standard errors given for the close of poll estimates ("Call 3" estimates) in the Edison Mitofsky report, and by that yardstick they didn't. What they did is show Kerry ahead of Bush - but within the MoE, as OnTheOtherHand correctly states.

However, for Florida, the close of poll estimates did not even put Kerry ahead - Bush was leading in the exit poll estimates at that time.

And yes, Freeman has devised his own way of calculating the standard errors of the polls. But as he doesn't have access to the data on which the pollsters' computed those standard errors (which would include variance due both sampling and "non-sampling" error, he presumably made up his own, as OTOH again, correctly states.

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf

Check out pages 21 and 22.

[Name removed]

79. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Joe Chi Minh]

67. Why would the polls be biased, Febble, when their author,

Mitofsky, disowned them afterwards? Was he overcome with embarrassment/shame?

[Febble]

69. Your question makes no sense.

Bias is a huge problem for all polls. At the recent meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Researcher (AAPOR) I attended in Montreal, a large number of panels were devoted to the subject. Large text books are devoted to the subject.

If you want to know why polls might be biased, I suggest you read one.

And if you want to assert that Mitofsky "disowned" the polls, then please will you provide a citation.

[Joe Chi Minh]

81. Are you questioning that Mitofsky considered his polling flawed,

this time, and consequently thought it served some kind of purpose - goodness knows what - to cause them to match the 'official' returns?

[Febble]

83. Read:

http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html#a10

[Joe Chi Minh]

95. Why don't you summarize the point you want to make for me,

Prebble? My response to your question, rephrasing my point about Mitofsky's new-found ambivalence concerning his polling, was not rocket science. It shouldn't tax your intelligence to respond in a few words.

[Febble]

96. As it seems to tax your energy too much

to click the link and read the paragraph, here it is:

How are projections made?
Projections are based on models that use votes from three (3) different sources -- exit poll interviews with voters, vote returns as reported by election officials from the sample precincts, and tabulations of votes by county. The models make estimates from all these vote reports. The models also indicate the likely error in the estimates. The best model estimate may be used to make a projection if it passes a series of tests.

I have put the important parts in bold, in case you miss them.

[Joe Chi Minh]

99. So they didn't pass the series of tests? And he thought it much

more rigorously scientific to make his polling figures match the actual returns? Excellent!

You people are so rigorously scientific, how is it you don't find this kind of self-inflicted nullification, nay, abasement, of his polling, infantile? Did he think the two sets of identifical figures would lend credibility to each other - the integrity of the election and his polling? If only life were that simple.

[Febble]

111. Clearly not.

It seems that you don't want to read the FAQ.

OK, here is a summary of their summary:

The polls are designed to do two things:

1. Produce "tabulations" of who voted for whom and why.
   
2. Make "projections" of the result.

Note that providing an independent check on the integrity of the election does not appear in that short list.

So how do they achieve these two purposes? They conduct a survey of voters leaving the precincts, and telephone surveys of absentee and early voters, during which they ask voters to complete a detailed questionnaire. From these answers they produce tabulations of who voted for whom and why. However, the accuracy of those tabulations will depend on getting an unbiased sample, which is very difficult, and a problem for all surveys. However, because Edison-Mitofsky, possibly foolishly, assume that America is a civilised democracy and not a banana republic, they have an additional tool at their disposal, which is a cross-check on the validity of their sample - the presidential count itself. Assuming this to be correct, they weight the cross-tabulations to their the presidential vote-count, giving them not only an extremely rich set of survey data on what issues influenced the election, but, assuming the vote count is correct, an unusually accurate one.

As for their second purpose - again, their assumption is that the vote-count is correct. Their purpose is to "project" it, in advance of the final numbers. They make their projections initially from their survey data (exit polls, absentee/early voter polls) cross-checked against pre-election polls (which, inter-alia, give them early warning of unusual bias in their sample), and then, as the vote-returns come in, this data-stream is incorporated into the projections. Essentially, as each precinct returns its vote, the estimate of the vote count in that precinct is replaced by the counted vote for that precinct; and as county tabulations begin to complete the picture for each state, these too contribute to the projections. The projections thus converge on the count (surely you've watched Peter Snow's "swingometer" in the UK? - it's exactly the same principle). If confidence in the "projection" reaches a critical level (determined by a statistical test) the networks may decide to "call" the state on the basis of the projection, even if the vote-count is not yet complete. For close run states this is unlikely to happen until the vast majority of the vote-returns are in.

So, you say, (or should say, because this is the right question), but what if we can't assume the vote count is correct? Indeed, which is why, if we have reason to suspect that the vote count is NOT correct, the estimates made by the pollsters at close of polls ("Call 3") are useful, as is the pollster's analysis as to which part of their process (selection of precincts; selection of voters; weighting of samples) might have led to the discrepancy, and, as they nailed the discrepancy to "within precinct error" (WPE) then we have evidence that while it could have been a voter selection problem (and they had good reason to think that it was), it could also have been fraud.

This is why so much of the debate over the exit poll discrepancy has centred on "within precinct error" data.

So there you have it. US Exit polls are not designed to check on "the integrity of the election" - the polls are a survey of voters, designed to incorporate the vote-count as a check on the poll. This is because all surveys are prone to bias, and exit polls, uniquely amongst surveys, come with a built in check on the bias. Provided you can rely on the count.

If you want, post hoc, to use the exit poll as a check on the count, you have to reverse-engineer it to do so, and retro-fits are never easy. However, analysis of the discrepancies at precinct level indicates that discrepancy in the poll was not correlated with benefit to Bush, suggesting that indeed the count was more accurate than the poll, not the other way round.

But no amount of analysis of exit poll data will tell you anything about voter suppression, which could, conceivably, have cost Kerry Ohio, and is, in any case, unjust.


edited for typo

[Joe Chi Minh]

112. Was that why Mitofsky used that astonishingly puerile subterfuge

of "reconciling" his poll count with the official count - without acknowledging it, still less offering any rationale for it, however farcical?

[OnTheOtherHand]

113. what's with the invincible ignorance?

Look, you are talking nonsense. Febble has rather graciously attempted to explain to you how the election night projections and tabulations actually work, and you pretty much ignore everything she writes. Which would be appropriate, were Febble some lying liar who lies. But actually, she is sourcing her assertions so that -- if you cared -- you could see that she isn't.

It's creepy to attempt to communicate with someone who will spend hours attacking a colleague, but won't take minutes to check his facts.

[Name removed]

116. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Febble]

117. You have not asked

"a simple untechnical question".

You have asked a series of loaded, rhetorical questions.

When you ask a "simple untechnical question" I shall attempt to answer it if I can.

(Edited to for consistency the poster's edit.)

[Joe Chi Minh]

118. Sorry. I don't buy that. What is rhetorical about my question in

capitals? It may have been satirically expressed - who could blame me? - but there's no getting away from the simple question posed. Unless of course you can't answer it.

[Febble]

119. Suit yourself

[Joe Chi Minh]

120. You got it. I've also got you two by the sound of it, too! Two for the

price of one.

[Febble]

121. When you edit your posts

substantially immediately after posting, how am I supposed to reply?

OK: you ask, in caps:

"WHAT EXPLANATION CAN THERE BE FOR HIS FAILURE TO COME CLEAN, AND SIMPLY SAY, "SORRY, FOLKS, MY FIGURES IN THIS ELECTION ARE ALL HAYWIRE. THEY WON'T BE ANY USE AS A CHECK ON THE ACTUAL COUNT, WHICH, I'M AFRAID YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO TAKE, AS IS. OR NOT, AS THE CASE MAY BE. IT WAS ALL SO MUCH SIMPLER IN THE UKRAINE"."

You don't even bother with a question mark, so I had no idea you actually regarded it as a simple question, and as it is technically a "loaded" question there can be no simple answer.

You imply Mitofsky (and presumably Edison) did not "come clean" that the projections would include the vote returns. In response I directed you to a FAQ published on their website before the election explaining exactly how they make their projections, and that they include the vote returns. Which is exactly what they did, and what they do every election. Therefore your question is meaningless.

However, in good faith, I additionally explained to you the meaning of the FAQ, as you did not seem inclined to read it yourself, and, in particular, the fact that the poll is not designed as a check on the actual count, which is perfectly obvious from the FAQ.

Please read my sodding post.

[Joe Chi Minh]

124. Did they just "include the vote returns" or were they replaced by

them? The impression I gained was that the latter occurred and it was anything but rational even on the most unprofessional level imaginable, but some sort of sleight of hand.

[Febble]

125. Well, read the post

I have made it really clear.

It's a dynamic process. Eventually, they are replaced.

[Joe Chi Minh]

126. Thank you. They were replaced, not modified. How useful. The

life of a mayfly, and not much smarter.

[Febble]

115. And have you stopped

beating your wife?

BTW the FAQ page I linked to was available before the election.

[Name removed]

122. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Febble]

123. Please read the post where I answered your question. n/t

[Jim Sagle]

74. Hogwash.

There is hard evidence in favour of the theory that Bush voters were less willing to participate in the polls than Kerry voters.

Hogwash. The only place you'll find such evidence is pulleditoutofthinair.com.

Saying there isn't doesn't make it go away.

How can it go away when it never existed to begin with?

[Febble]

85. Do you actually want to know?

or are you happier just thinking it doesn't exist?

[Jim Sagle]

92. I know it doesn't and so do you.

[Febble]

93. Whatever.

[Patsy Stone]

15. Woo Hoo!

Look who made the front page!!! Excellent article.

:toast:

[MelissaB]

26. How about that?

:toast: :woohoo: :woohoo: :toast:

This is a fantastic article!

[autorank]

38. Thanks !!!! MelissaB

:hi:

[DUBYASCREWEDUS]

16. Currently

in Ohio (and I live in Cleveland), Strickland and Brown are leading Blackwell and DeWine by double digit margins. What will the country say on the morning after this November's elections when Blackwell and DeWine celebrate their "miraculous" 51-49% victories?

[mod mom]

19. Look for an Oct Surprise incident that they we attempt to use to defend

their theft: ? terror, Scandal, etc

[autorank]

39. The country is one thing, what will Ohio folks say?

From what they did with the special measures, I think they're emboldened. After that 'stunner' and
the Dispiatch wimping out they must feel like they can get away with anything.

We're pulling for you!!! and we'll gripe very loudly but you guys hold the key...

Poll Shock, Bob Koehler

http://commonwonders.com/archives/col321.htm

[mod mom]

87. Yes, us Ohio folks are definitely a thorn in their side. Next time they

better steal elections in somebody else's back yard (JUST KIDDING...WE ALL MUST HEED THE WARNING AND PAY ATTENTION!) Blackwell went down to FL after the 2000 debacle for training. I'm sure he wasn't alone. They have too much to lose to allow them to play fairly. They don't want to turn over subpoena power to the other side. We also have to pay attention to the chance of having DINOS elected and who might fall prey to the almighty dollar in return for favors. WE the People means all of us, though not just Ohioans and election reformers.

[madrchsod]

25. for what it is worth

the govenor of ohio sat on the coingate scandal for several months before the election...would this have changed the votes in the ohio?

[texpatriot2004]

27. Kennedy's article is great; very thorough. Glad to see it in black

and white...FINALLY!

Thank you Althecat and thank you Autorank.

[autorank]

41. It is a fine piece of argumentation and well documented.

Salon's response is simply ridiculous. I don't know how they can even call what they did a response.

High school debaters would clean their clock and that's not even mentioning Mother Jones (my God, what a lousy article...and MJ published it).

It does keep subscriptions costs contained;)

[Bob3]

29. Why do they fear the idea of Ohio voter fraud?

The response of those critical of Kennedy's article and indeed the whole notion that the election was stolen has been interesting. It has not been a well, that's in interesting idea, however let's examine the evidence and see what we get. No - the response has been "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP I CAN"T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA!" or a variation of the dismissive snort and talks of tin foil hats. I have to think that if the evidence was as flimsy as the debunkers claim than this would have faded away but that hasn't happened. No matter how much we have all tried to ignore it, something stinks in Ohio.

I suspect that the reason there is this, let's call it what it is, fear of fraud in Ohio is what that means. To state that the 2004 election was stolen by the GOP is to cross the Rubicon. It's not a debating society topic, it's not something to discuss for intellectual amusement, it is a terrible thing. You are saying is that they system is completely broken done finished, that an american political party was willing to break the core of our system, election by popular vote, simply to stay in power. You are accusing the Ohio GOP and the by extension the leaders of the GOP as a whole of treason in the most profound sense, You are saying that for their own gain they destroyed the system American's fought and died to protect for over 200 years. Compared to that, what Benedict Arnold did was a traffic offense.

That is pretty damn heavy. I can understand why almost everybody inside the beltway wouldn't touch that topic with a cattle prod. Better to pretend there is nothing wrong, move along here. Whistle loudly and move along. Hope it doesn't happen again.

The idea is a large bitter pill with fishhooks very hard to swallow. It makes normal political activism useless, what's the point of rallies and get out the vote if the other side is just going to cheat? what's the point of anything? Better not to think about that. It's the dead elephant in the living room nobody will talk about, and anybody that does talk about it, gets smacked down - How dare you say that!

However knowing that we've been lied into a war, that the OHIO Gop is so crooked that they would steal the coins from dead men's eyes, is it so hard to think that they did steal this election? Why assume that was a line they wouldn't cross? That doesn't make sense.

The question is now what?




on edit - I'm a tad dislexic.

[glitch]

30. That's what keeps people in denial "The question is now what?"

Too fearsome to contemplate. Great article K & R

Edit to add: Salon I expected, Mother Jones I was shocked at.

[autorank]

100. Mother Jones...you know what's amazing...

Mark Hertsgaard didn't strong arm his way into MJ, he didn't cajole his way in, and he didn't get in, I strongly suspect, by being a relative of someone. THEY CHOSE TO INCLUDE THIS DRIVEL. I remember when it first came out, I could barely stand to look at it. What, I thought, IS their major malfunction?

As it turns out, the ability to apply simple rules of logic and evidence evaluation are what's missing.

You're right, Salon is a strange bird. MJ, though, what a sad story...

[mod mom]

40. excellent Bob3. It is amazing when you have newspaper editors, journalists

and even college professors (Prof Dan Tokaji among others) who have gone public to dismiss this evidence but have not bothered to contact Fitrakis and the Freepress who have a mountain of evidence in the form of affidavits,, video, and copied ballots etc. It's much easier to sweep this under the rug than address the seriousness of this issue. Without the Democrats (except of course the brave CBC) the media dismiss it as conspiracy.

Are the NM voting machine tapes that appear in Greg Palast's "Armed Madhouse" that do not have John Kerry's name on them "conspiracy"? Is it ok to the nation that a level 10 homeland security alert occurred in Warren County that resulted in a lockdown, which was later given no legs to stand on by the FBI, and was nver fully investigated? Do we have no problem with the fact that African Americans were systematically disenfranchised at a rate obscenely different from white voters?

As you say, there are those who just want us to "move along, nothing to see here". Ain't gonna happen from the people I work with.

[Joe Chi Minh]

71. And one of their main weapons on here is to agree with the most

damning points, as it were, in passing, but immediately skimming over them, as though they're scarcely merited attention. Just more data in that warehouse!

Since when has the meticulous storage of evidentiary data been risible conduct? Another example of Manjoo's intellectual deficiencies. Without the larger context of his diatribes, you would think them just the meretricious burblings of a media courtesan.

However, when you see more of it, you realize it's the burblings of a character in whom a fierce battle for supremacy is being waged between puerile presumption and a mind simply inapt for analytical thought. Hence his blithe positing of gratuitous conjectures as devastating arguments, and the bizarre blethering he evidently considers to be excoriating diatribes.

[autorank]

42. "what Benedict Arnold did was a traffic offense." Where were you when

I needed that line;) Sweet!

The public is very open on this issue. With NO, ZERO, ZILCH publicity on this, 77% of PA Democrats said 2004 was stolen in a Zogby poll. About 40% of the total polled group said it was stolen. That's before Kennedy and AP's article, which has legs. It was uncharacteristically neutral for this issue.

I'm sure that some people feels stuck in a quickly shrinking middle ground of immunity. Those at the
top, all of them who count, know by now that it was a sucker punch and done deal in Ohio. The people are at 40-50% depending on where you poll (try CA and NY, whoa!). So if you have something to lose on
this issue, you're very worried.

What do we do? Form alliances across the spectrum - labor, blacks, latinos, asians - all those people who will get screwed and then turn out the crowds if there's any nonsense. Look at the Latino response
to being tagged as felons for just knowing an undocumented and not reporting it. Wait and see if their
votes are stolen. Those were the most amazing demonstrations I've seen since the Civil Rights movement.

There are other things and we'll have something for you soon on that.

Excellent points!

[Febble]

54. Well, we are clearly reading different commentaries

The ones I've read can be reasonably summarised as:

"that's in interesting idea, however let's examine the evidence and see what we get."

And I don't think I've read a single reference to a tin foil hat except from the odd troll.

The trouble is that examining the evidence and seeing what we get, IMO, gets you a strong voter suppression case, and a strong DREs-are-crap-case, and a strong digital-voting-systems-can-be-hacked case. What they don't get you is a strong millions-of-votes-were-digitally-shifted-in-2004 case.

And it strikes me that all the critical commentaries I've read on Kennedy's piece have been making precisely that point, plus an even stronger point, namely that insisting on hyperbolic and unsupported claims about millions of stolen votes using bad statistical arguments sabotages what is an absolutely clear case for investigation and reform.

Which doesn't look much like denial to me, whereas refusing to accept good evidence that the millions-of-votes-were-digitally-shifted-in-2004 case doesn't hold water - well, that, to me, looks like denial.

[Bob3]

58. Something smells in Ohio.

If they did it by electronic fraud or by the good old fashioned way of having the graveyards vote for Bush it really doesn't matter - that they did it is the point.

I'm going to reserve judgment on the exit polls I haven't read enough to convince me either way. Personally I'm leaning to the exit polls showing evidence of vote tampering cause it's the simpler explanation. (the shy bush voter hypothesis to explain the variance the feel of reasoning along the line of "well it can't be fraud what can it be then?" but I could be wrong, it could be a one in a million event that con incidentally occurred along with the voter purges, the suppression and shenanigans like the terrorist alert when counting the ballots. I mean you could lose you keys when you get mugged but it's more likely the thief took them too. But I've been wrong before so I'll just leave it at that.

[Febble]

64. Yes, something certainly smells in Ohio

And ultimately what it was makes no difference to its outrageousness.

But the exit poll discrepancy had little to do with coincidence. Fraud may, on first glance look like the "simpler" explanation, but when you actually try to fit it to the data - it is very hard to fit. Whereas the differential participation rate hypothesis fits the data rather well - it makes testable predictions which turn out to be supported.

I am in the camp that says that coupling claims about millions of stolen votes, which can be fairly readily be shown to be unsupported, to calls for investigation into the abuses that occurred in Ohio, is at best, misdirection, and at worst, brings an excellent case into disrepute. Frankly, I don't care at this stage whether Kerry won Ohio or not, or whether those who had to wait in absurdly long lines were Bush voters or Kerry voters. But they tended to be poor and they tended to be black, and that is a civil rights issue that has nothing to do with who actually won.

Add to that the fact that the way elections are conducted leave voters in doubt as to whether their vote was even fairly counted, let alone in doubt as to whether it was stolen, you have a cast iron case for investigation and reform.

Unless people sabotage it by using transparently bad statistics to make extravagant claims about multi-million vote theft that run counter to a large amount of evidence.

[autorank]

101. America was mugged Bob3. If there's too much "coincidence"

then you become a "coincidence theorist" ...

[Joe Chi Minh]

80. You seem hung up on investigation and reform, Prebble, as

though they necessarily precludes holding the perpetrators of those serious felonies to account. Why is that? Don't you think that doing so will make it much easier to bring about the necessary reforms?

[Joe Chi Minh]

82. Well?

[Febble]

84. Well what?

[Joe Chi Minh]

91. Don't you think that doing so will make it much easier to bring

about the necessary reforms? That was the question I asked you at the end of my initial post of this this sub-thread.

[Febble]

94. Yes, I think prosecutions would help.

As I've said elsewhere, I think there's a civil rights case in Franklin county.

But I don't think making hyperbolic and unsupported allegations will make it any easier, in fact I think it runs the risk of allowing those who oppose reform to dismiss the whole case.

Clearly you disagree. We will have to agree to differ.

[Joe Chi Minh]

97. Off on a tangent again! I took you to task for glossing over the

importance of proving widespread fraud, (with which you didn't cavil, but, on the contrary, kept conceding the ugly look of, in the most reasonable of tones), in favour of looking to the future and possible reforms - as though the former were footling and futile in comparison. As though, indeed, it were precluded by the former.

Choosing to ignore serious crimes with enormous nationwide, indeed, worldwide effects, is not responsible behavior, you know. Nor is wriggling out of answering my question with "asymmetric" scolding too impressive, either.

I'm just registering my disapproval, so you're not left under any misapprehension about my view concerning your desire to break off our little colloquy.

[Febble]

98. OK, I think I have made this clear

I am not glossing over anything.

If I thought there was serious evidence of widespread fraud in the order of millions of votes, of course I would advocate trying to prove it. But I have heard no evidence apart from the exit poll evidence to support the order of magnitude, and I consider for a large number of reasons that the exit poll evidence is actually contra-indicative of fraud on the scale of millions of votes.

And while, in an ideal world one might think it was worth mining the moon in the hope of a source of green cheese, all other things being equal, there are nonetheless better things to do, and, all things being unequal, there are reasons to think that were you to do such a thing people would question your grip on reality.

Same applies to the multi-million vote theft story. The tragedy in this case being that there is a rather desperate and all-too-real story that is likely to get spiked in the process.

Gotta go to bed.

[liam_laddie]

88. Febble, you've some good posts in this thread...

I'm not sure there're claims of millions of votes stolen. But enough suppression, and just a bit
of tampering with the chips and cards (e.g.,Warren County one example) would be enough to win
a state and the EC. An average vote shift of just six votes per precinct (~11K) in Ohio would have
given us a Kerry presidency and who knows how much better off the Treasury might be?

Are there any world-wide studies of elections where the exit polls did *not* predict a winner and/or
accurately reflect the vote total? Or...where one race was not accurately predicted while all others were
on-the-mark? Is it in any way suspicious that many election results are just inside a margin-of-error?
(Does this reduce public confidence in the polls?) Or just enough to not trigger a recount? Just askin'...

[Febble]

90. Thanks

Well, Freeman is making that claim and I think that not only is he doing it on the basis of bad statistics, but the data contra-indicate his claim. Because of this, I dearly wish Kennedy hadn't front-loaded his piece with Freeman's claims. I also think that Baiman's claims that the exit polls are "virtually irrefutable" evidence of fraud in Ohio, also cited in that prominent section of Kennedy's article is completely unsupported by his own analyses.

I quite agree with you that enough suppression (and ultimately it is impossible to quantify) might have won Ohio for Bush, especially with a bit of fraud thrown in. I don't have strong views on the the quantitative evidence, although I'm not persuaded (yet) that it is likely to add up to a Kerry win. But as I said, evidence as to whether it overturned the result in the end is less important than the evidence that it happened at all.

I don't know of any world-wide studies of elections and exit polls, although OTOH I know has looked into the accuracy of exit polls in Germany, Ukraine, and Italy. One problem is that exit polls come in very different styles. In 1992, the UK exit polls predicted a hung parliament, and the pre-election polls predicted a narrow Labour win (or at least Labour with the largest number of seats). In the event, John Major's conservatives won a small but workable majority. No-one suspected fraud, because our elections are pretty hard to rig. But our exit polls are just designed to predict the parliamentary majority, so are targetted in "swing" seats.

Your question about margin of error is a good one. One of the things that will increase the standard error, and thus the margin of error, in an exit poll is the amount of between-precinct variance - it may tell the pollsters that there is more variance than they'd expect simply from random sampling error. Before the vote totals come in, they don't know whether the net effect of the non-sampling error is in one direction, or whether it cancels out. If in 2004 some of that between-precinct variance was due to fraud, then it would also increase the standard error. But until the vote-count comes in, they don't know the direction of error, only whether the margin between the candidates is within or outside the MoE. Once the vote-count comes in, they can see that whether the error tended to be more in one direction or another.

This in itself is not (as I've said before!) indicative of fraud, as there is no particular reason to suppose that sources of non-sampling error should cancel out, though one hopes they will. Historically, the US polls have had a significant over-statement of the Democratic vote relative to the count - in other words overall discrepancy has a net sign - a net direction. While it is possible that this has been due to historical fraud, that destroys the argument that the exit polls are historically accurate, and in fact at least one recent study of the 1996 exit poll identified a number of factors associated with greater "redshift" that seem unlikely to overlap with fraud. And in 1996 the net "redshift" was considerably less than in 1992, when it was almost as large as in 2004.

I think one source of confusion (indeed, I think it is where Freeman is confused) is that it is perfectly possible for polls to be within their margin of error, even within a conservative margin of error that assumes only random sampling error, and yet for us to be able to conclude bias simply because signficantly more of those errors were in one direction than the other. All the close-of-poll projections in 2004 were within the margin of error computed by the pollsters, but because overall redshift predominated over blueshift we know that the discrepancies were not even-handed.

As for triggering a recount - in the UK what triggers a recount is a close result - and what we get is a full hand-recount - sometimes several - until all candidates are happy. I think all your elections should be subject to random audit anyway. Certainly if I was going to rig an election, I'd try to do it by salami-slicing a bit off the vote everywhere, rather than targetting particular places, so mandatory random audit would tend to foil that ploy. I don't know, Liam_Laddie. It seems to me that in so many places, especially Ohio, the standards of conduct of the your elections are so lax and so casual that a huge effort is required to restore trust in the process, and until that effort is made, fraud will be a huge temptation, and therefore highly like to occur.

You have Augean stables to clear out there, and I think that's what ought to be making the headlines, not million-vote-theft stories, which I happen to think seriously get in the way.

Cheers

Lizzie

[OnTheOtherHand]

114. it's really hard to address the worldwide question

In U.S. and Western Europe, the initial exit poll estimates are assumed to be ephemeral, so there isn't much handwringing over how closely they match the official counts. In the countries where 'exit polls are used to check the validity of election outcomes' (I'm not quoting anyone in particular), they are almost least suited to do that, because there is generally no solid historical base to draw on when designing the sample, and because there's generally at least an undertone of someone or other being scared silly. These presumably are among the reasons that Carter Center folks have recommended against using exit polls to validate vote counts.

I think exit polls in the U.S. can be helpful in forensic analysis, at least at the margins. (For instance, if there had been massive vote fraud on DREs, that likely would have shown up as an anomaly both in election returns and in the exit polls.) Just eyeballing the amount of red shift (or whatever) isn't likely to be very useful in itself, as you've said. You made another subtle point: it is possible for the exit poll results to be highly suspicious even if the overall results are within the margin of error. The exit polls are much more interesting and useful as data than they are as oracles.

[MsMagnificent]

31. Truth & Passion

gets K & R

[Einsteinia]

32. SUPERB X 1000, (but. . .

the last link doesn't work. . .

Does anyone have that link?

I just want to know because I want to distribute it far and wide as the author/publisher says we may as long as we keep the copyright notice on it.

[autorank]

43. I do, be right back;) It's fine at "Scoop" GREAT Link for Distribution

Good traveling companions:

Link1: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/print.html?path=HL0606/S00193.htm - great for emailing article

Link2: http://electionfraudnews.com

Link 1 is the "Scoop" print copy. It's terrific. The links light up and the one you want is just
fine. Link2 is a web site with beau coup election fraud/integrity resources.

:hi:

[fooj]

48. Words to live by...

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.-A. Einstein

Thanks for all of the work you do to fight evil and injustice. I am proud to call you "friend"...:yourock:

[autorank]

51. Hi there fellow citizen of Raider Nation ...

I'm surprised Salon didn't blame the Raiders too! Wild!

:hi:

[Harry Monroe]

33. Move along now, nothing to see here....

Nothing, repeat nothing will be done about this as long as the Republicans hold the reins of power in Washington. Bitch, whine and moan all you want, but the time to bring this up and keep hammering on it was right after the election; ditto the 2000 election. As long as we have wimpy, namby pamby Democrat leaders such as Gore and Kerry who fold like cheap lawn chairs, instead of growing a set of cojones and challenging these fradulent elections and never letting up, we'll keep wringing our hands about this, wishing that we had united right after the elections of 2000 and 2004 and seriously challenged these travesties with everything in our power. Keeping in front of the American populace, drugged by the latest "reality series" and addled by short attention spans was the way to go, but that ship has sailed. Ya think our brain dead populace will pay attention now?? I am pessimistic about the future of democracy in our country; apathy and lack of political intelligence is our doom. "Nothing to see here, move along...its past history anyway. Oh, and here's another "Fear Factor" for you to watch and while you're at it, how about Angelina and Brad!!"

It keeps me awake nights wondering what kind of a country my teenager will inherit...

[autorank]

47. I agree with everything you say except...

...the pessimism on the populace. Yes, there is no action and the lack of action is the inability
of leaders to stand up and fight.

For goodness sakes, I shouldn't be writing this, the DNC should. Kennedy is one of our best people.
Do we just let him get slammed by a bunch of deniers or do we stand with him. Or since i've written
it the DNC should grab, given the documentation, and blast it. I'm not getting any calls (but they
don't have my number;)

The public gets it...they despise and reject * on the basis of their own research, no help from CM.
They think 2004 was stolen at about 40% total population. Sweet!

But there is no leadership, no fire breathing populist...Gore was there but we're going to end up
with something much less, j'espere.

Lets keep hoeing while we pray for rain.

I'm sleepless too. I sent this to althecat at about 5:30 a.m. or so but he's in NZ and it's tomorrow.

Keep the faith! until you can't bear it. Then :wtf: keep it some more. We need your passion.

[bleever]

44. Tremendous article, autorank.

Although, now it's no longer secret that DU's Project X was our mind-control over Bobby Jr.

Thank you for all the time and effort you put into writing this, and for examining the topic of how Salon and MJ approached this story.

:yourock:

[autorank]

49. Muchos Gracias...they've both been very bad, no desert, straight to

bed!

Amazing what passes for passable these days...ON THE FRIGGING LEFT!!!

I'm so sorry you used those "unmentionable" terms...but whatever, I'll get off some cyber
questions for you and do a quick article for "Scoop" -

:nuke: "Project X - Global Domination by DU: An Insiders Perspective" :nuke:


Since none of us has to work and we have all day every day to devote to filling "server farms at
Google", we should be able to roll out X.1-X.25 in no time.

Cheers!!!

[mod mom]

52. I wonder if RFK Jr had to sit and watch the dangling pocket watch like us

on the Free Press board, or is Fitrakis and Wasserman simply inserted one of their microchips.

:rofl:

[peacetalksforall]

45. A thought or two -

It is becoming easier to understand (or feel) the ridicule that Al Gore and John Kerry went through while running because there seems to be an effort to target Dems lower down the ranks - to citizen groups and citzen voices. That includes us.

While George tells us how great it is that we have a voice, that we are a democratic society, and that we are free to speak - ridicule is the tool that is used to silence voices.

It worked to silence Gore and Kerry. Though Gore gave a magnificent concession speech and Kerry gave an excellent one, they then (seemed to) step away and the dirty work of figuring it out was done by citizen groups and indivudual and that is probably the way it should be, lacking a majority of Congress standing behind the victims and refusing to look at it.

A good word to borrow from leaders and poets of old is stalwart.

[autorank]

50. "Don't tread on me!" "I have just begun to fight" "Surrender, nuts!"

Not Byronic but good enough for us.

This is a very insightful point. Ridicule is the name of the game. That's one reason why
their rhetoric is so shoddy. It's not there for the sake of a real argument, it's there for
quick effect.

I don't normally pester people to read the article but here's a great link. Might give you
some more ideas you'll share (if you haven't read it already).

Good reading/sending copy (the links are very clear

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/print.html?path=HL0606/S00193.htm

Nice source of comprehensive information

www.electionfraudnews.com

Thank you for your very thoughtful thread on unity.

[McCamy Taylor]

53. Nice job, but does not go into the motive for this denial. "The Horror"

as decribed by Conrad in "Heart of Darkness" is the key to understanding it. More in the post im gonna go write.

[autorank]

102. PM me the link when you're done. No motives here, just illogic laid bare;

That's one of the 4-5 books I'm glad I've read...motive...

But here are the players...perhaps their motive is boredom.

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot (1925)

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[secular humanoid]

60. thanks

Thanks very much althecat and Autorank
for a fine example of clear thinking and writing.

Logical presentation of the facts is essential.


peace

[Helga Scow Stern]

65. Bravo autorank and Althecat! Was just on my way here to post

This other excellent article by Katherine Yurica:

A Vast Political Misfortune



Or Why Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Correct in His Assessment
of the Late 2004 Election (which was sadly murdered by the G.O.P.,
may it rest in peace). And Why Salon.com’s Article Attacking Kennedy is Wrong.



By Katherine Yurica
June 11, 2006





It has been reported that Lysenko, the Soviet biologist, made
the following demonstration during a lecture: he put a flea on his desk and
said, "Jump!" Presently the flea jumped. He then removed the flea's hind legs
and said, "Jump!" again. This time the flea did not jump. "Observe,
gentlemen," said Lysenko: "This proves that when you remove the flea's hind
legs, its hearing is impaired.

Monroe Beardsley





If one is an old Ent, one does not like to be hasty. However, circumstances have a way of forcing themselves upon us and occasionally we are called upon to analyze something minutely, which nowadays goes against the grain, in as much as thinking, itself, is out of style. This latter fact is lamentable, but let us not tarry on it. Instead, let us go forward, analytically speaking.



On June 3, 2006 Farhad Manjoo, a 27 year old writer for Salon.com, penned a denunciation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” published by Rolling Stone. Mr. Manjoo mentioned that many major studies and analyses of the 2004 election existed, and then lamented that those studies were followed by “legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who’ve devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged.”



You can easily note that Mr. Manjoo and Salon.com are not in a generous mood in their essay. The very best of his ungracious statements is this one: “If you do read Kennedy’s article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data.” Oh dear, Mr. Manjoo’s words are so, so violent—so uncharitable to the innocent sentences as well as to the guilty ones, if there are in fact any guilty ones at all. For starting with Mr. Manjoo’s very first assertion, which I admit was so convincing on the surface that the Yurica Report posted a warning to its readers to drive by with caution when reading and slow down to a crawl when passing Mr. Kennedy’s powerful imagery.



Alas, Mr. Manjoo and Salon.com make the mistake of holding Mr. Kennedy to the literal meaning of words and quotes, much like critics of the Bible do, but just as metaphors are not meant to be taken literally by the poets who penned them, statistics are not meant to be taken literally either. Numbers are metaphors that need interpretation (a fact Mr. Manjoo admits, but transgresses when he asks us to anoint him: “the Grand Interpreter!”)

More:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Campaign2004/AVastPoliticalMisfortune.html

[autorank]

108. salon.com "not in a generous mood in their essay" - but I was;)

Hi Ojai Person!

I don't consider Salon a serious publication. They have a very serious and gifted journalist, Eric Boehlert who should have been hired away by someone else by now. Other than that, "there's no there there." What they put out was simply awful. There is a certain strategy to making ridiculous arguments which then have the benefit of confounding the recipient - "What the heck are they talking about?"

I was most interested in the fact that both Salon and Mother Jones (and I hold the publications responsible) used the sleazy tactic of 1)picking a "bad guy" - Fitrakis for MJ and "the professor and the political forum" for Salon (Miller,DU) - implying there is something off about the villain; then linking the others in the movement to that person. Fitrakis is a PhD, has received awards for journalism from his colleagues in Ohio and is an attorney. What's wrong with any of that. DU - Miller, seriously. These are their "bad guys." I should have pointed out that this looks a lot like the rhetoric of bigotry and defamation. But then they would have responded, "rank was seen cavorting with a user showing a pitcher of Cool Aid as an avatar, and we know what that means."

It all has a 1984 ring when you just look at the dirty tricks involved in these straw man bad guys and ridiculous implications.

Everyone subscribing to Salon, be generous to yourself and save your money next time around.

[organik]

68. don't believe 2004 was stolen?

Why don't you yell and scream and debate about the numbers, exit polls, margin of error, etc....and watch '06 and '08 get stolen right from under you, AGAIN, just like '00, '02, and '04.

There is mountainous evidence that if the republicans did not outright steal the last two presidential elections, they were at least trying to! Does anybody debate that point? Seriously?

[Raster]

103. No debate from me. '00, '02 and '04 will go down in history as the

dirtiest elections in American history IF WE ACT NOW TO PREVENT '06 FROM TAKING THAT DISHONOR.

And I am completely amazed at the lengths persons on our side of the aisle will go to disavow and discredit anyone who seeks to uncover the election dirt.

[Kurovski]

72. K&R for "quality...arguments and internal logic of evidence."

Kick for truth.

Kick for paper ballots, hand counted.

[althecat]

89. Crossposted to GD Here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1428773

[Peggy Day]

104. I emailed Farhad Manjoo and got a response-I only edited my name and email

address. I was kinda pissed, but here it is:
Response from Manjoo first, then my email that I sent to him.


"I thought Salong was liberal" -- what do you mean by that? Does that mean we should always side with anything that hurts the Republicans? Liberal doesn't equal Democrat, you know. Liberals are interested in truth, not bias. I'm just saying.

--FM

On 6/3/06, Peggy wrote:

Was the 2004 election stolen? Not.
I thought Salon was liberal. Obviously not. Still, I'm after the truth, and what you said about exit polls right away let me know that you don't know about what you are talking about, and are willing to continue the fraud. Everyone knew it was coming. It hasn't stopped yet. Are you going to be diligent at the next election? You are perfectly willing to tear apart an attempt to discuss the truth, but are you willing to research and do what is needed to find out the truth? The elections have been stolen since 2000. Remember Max Cleland? Oh, what a surprising upset!! NOT. Get real and wise up.
Why are you working at Salon, or has it sold out too?
Peggy

[Kip Humphrey]

105. SUPERLATIVE!!!

[kster]

106. KICK.NT

[Nothing Without Hope]

109. Thank you!!!! K & R all the way! n/t

[BrklynLiberal]

110. Kicked and rec'd