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  1. #1
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    the 2008 election and voting machines in Ohio and Florida

    It looks like the Republicans just lost their biggest ally in the 2008 election; hackable voting machines in Ohio and Florida.

    Ohio's Democrat Secretary of State recently announced the results of a study finding that Ohio's voting machines were easily hackable and that hand-held devices could plant false vote counts and malignant software in them. (The Bush administration, with their utmost respect for the rule of law wouldn't hack a few voting machines to win an election now would they?)

    Florida has already chosen to go back to optical scan paper ballots and Ohio is looking to do the same. Since these two states are the key to any presidential election, the Democrats might actually have a chance this time. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the Ohio vote, and therefore the election, was stolen by electronic means in 2004. It doesn't look like this will happen again:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html

  2. #2
    Thailand Expat Texpat's Avatar
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    I repeatedly hear people of all stripes say the 2004 election was stolen. I acknowledge there were some pretty bizarre stories coming out and those fires were fanned by a very close race.

    I personally would have liked to see Dubya lose the election. But I don't buy the line that it was stolen. Hundreds of inspectors and a like number of lawyers, even the supreme court, declared the outcome.

    Most pointedly, the Democrats stopped griping after about a week.
    If the evidence of a democtatic victory was so overwhelming, do you really think the Dems would concede like they did?

    Fcuk no.

    Two final points:

    1. There's almost a year remaining to get the shit sorted. Stories like the OP give me confidence they working issues, not ignoring them.

    2. I guarantee Dubya ain't winning this time.

  3. #3
    Thailand Expat raycarey's Avatar
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    ^^the final nail in the republican coffin for '08.

    look for larger dem majorities in both the house and senate....and of course, a dem in the white house.

    and now with the economy tanking (stagflation anyone?), the quagmire in iraq, vetoing health care for poor kids, the upcoming corruption trials, etc... it's conceivable that the dems could have a 'super majority of 60 in the senate.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Texpat View Post
    I repeatedly hear people of all stripes say the 2004 election was stolen. I acknowledge there were some pretty bizarre stories coming out and those fires were fanned by a very close race. I personally would have liked to see Dubya lose the election. But I don't buy the line that it was stolen. Hundreds of inspectors and a like number of lawyers, even the supreme court, declared the outcome.
    Texpat, Your opinion is quite reasonable as usual. But check out this article written by a neo-conservative, often pro-Bush writer Chris Hitchens. He's an eccentric character, but "Ohio's Odd Numbers" in Vanity Fair is well-written and raised serious doubts in my mind. The exit polls all pointed to a 3% win nation-wide by Kerry and presidential exit polls are accurate within .5% because they involve thousands of respondents who were on site. If you have time, give it read and see what you think:

    http://makethemaccountable.com/artic...dd_Numbers.htm

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    Thailand Expat Texpat's Avatar
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    Very interesting story. But like much political journalism, it suggests the extraordinary is mainstream.

    The piece evidenced several instances of potential fraud, but could neither prove or disprove any of them.

    Hitchens raises several good points. He convinced me that there's still a lot of room to improve the system. Exposing limitations like these are a great credit to political journos.

    You're right, exit polls are historically accurate down to a gnat's pube. They're also used as a comparitive tool for election fraud. But we can't elect people based on what people say they voted, we have to devise a fool-proof, tamper-proof, 100% reliable method to retrieve and store that data. And as you know, any machine is only as smart as the guy making it.

    Still, his anonymous sources, discovered anomolies (subsequently corrected) and revelation that machines are fallible do little to convince me the election was deliberately stolen.

    Sadly, the days of locating and training an army of unbiased, non-partisan election officials that are above reproach are running out quickly. Seems there's only two flavors left.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Texpat View Post
    ...Still, his anonymous sources, discovered anomolies (subsequently corrected) and revelation that machines are fallible do little to convince me the election was deliberately stolen.
    What bothers me about Ohio is that all of the discovered anomalies favored the Republicans. Given the large number of anomalies, this is statistically impossible. They weren't all corrected because there was no paper trail and thus no evidence that a given anomaly was an error (except when the vote total exceed the number of registered voters). One method was to create an 'undervote' at the top of the Democratic ticket, the other was to siphon off votes to lesser known candidates. This prevented Bush from getting suspiciously high vote totals in Democratic precincts. Here's one example from the Hitchens article that's almost impossible to explain away:

    "In Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this. In Precinct 4F: Kerry, 290; Bush, 21; Peroutka, 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry, 318; Bush, 11; Badnarik, 163. Mr. Peroutka and Mr. Badnarik are, respectively, the presidential candidates of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. In addition to this eminence, they also possess distinctive (but not particularly African-American-sounding) names. In 2000, Ralph Nader’s best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4F by all third-party candidates combined was eight."
    Last edited by GooMaiRoo; 16-12-2007 at 03:16 AM.

  7. #7
    Thailand Expat Boon Mee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by raycarey View Post
    ^^the final nail in the republican coffin for '08.

    look for larger dem majorities in both the house and senate....and of course, a dem in the white house.

    and now with the economy tanking (stagflation anyone?), the quagmire in iraq, vetoing health care for poor kids, the upcoming corruption trials, etc... it's conceivable that the dems could have a 'super majority of 60 in the senate.
    Living in that world of make believe again ray?
    Quagmire/stagflation...this is like the funnies page reading your posts on how you'd like it to be rather than actual fact, eh?

  8. #8
    Thailand Expat Texpat's Avatar
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    ^^ So why weren't the perpetrators of this fraud caught and imprisoned? Did the Democrats just let the investigation wither on the vine?

    I wonder if all the absentee ballots every made it to wherever they're sent...

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Texpat View Post
    ^^ So why weren't the perpetrators of this fraud caught and imprisoned? Did the Democrats just let the investigation wither on the vine? I wonder if all the absentee ballots every made it to wherever they're sent...
    The lack of a Democratic response is a mystery. Perhaps part of it is that this sort of computer hacking leaves no trace. Some malicious code is sent to the voting machines and then removed. Perhaps the Dems had the foresight to realize that 4 more years of Bush's incompetence would ruin the Republicans for decades to come. But there is also a history in US politics of politicians wanting to avoiding being labeled 'sore losers'. It was fairly certain that Mayor Daley of Chicago stole the 1960 presidential election through vote fraud for John Kennedy and the Republicans were very silent then as well.

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