Does R-Neb Hagel getting 83% of vote (inc black vote) mean he cheated?

[papau]

DU'er Eloriel posted a great find that needs rereading.

Seems all you need do to get a majority of the black vote is install some of Senator Hagel's voting machine company's electronic touch screen voting machines, while you note how lousy exit polling has become (-and get rid of exit polling VNS in the future).

If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"
Thom Hartmann, February 26, 2003
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc1126.html

Maybe Nebraska Republican Chuck Hagel honestly won two U.S. Senate elections. Maybe it's true that the citizens of Georgia simply decided that incumbent Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a wildly popular war veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was, as his successful Republican challenger suggested in his campaign ads, too unpatriotic to remain in the Senate. Maybe George W. Bush, Alabama's new Republican governor Bob Riley, and a small but congressionally decisive handful of other long-shot Republican candidates really did win those states where conventional wisdom and straw polls showed them losing in the last few election cycles.

Perhaps, after a half-century of fine-tuning exit polling to such a science that it's now sometimes used to verify how clean elections are in Third World countries, it really did suddenly become inaccurate in the United States in the past six years and just won't work here anymore. Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

But if any of this is true, there's not much of a paper trail from the voters' hand to prove it.
You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. You'd think the computers that handle our cherished ballots would be open and their software and programming available for public scrutiny. You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts.

You'd be wrong.

The respected Washington, DC publication The Hill has confirmed that former conservative radio talk-show host and now Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska.

Back when Hagel first ran there for the U.S. Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.com, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely Black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska.

Six years later Hagel ran again, this time against Democrat Charlie Matulka in 2002, and won in a landslide. As his hagel.senate.gov website says, Hagel "was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska."

What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

(more)

AND, here's the article in The Hill discussing the RESIGNATION of the Director of the Senate Ethics Committee: http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

Hagel’s ethics filings pose disclosure issue
By Alexander Bolton

On May 23, 1997, Victor Baird, who resigned Monday as director of the Senate Ethics Committee, sent a letter to Sen. Charles Hagel requesting “additional, clarifying information” for the personal financial disclosure report that all lawmakers are required to file annually.

Among other matters, Baird asked the Nebraska Republican to identify and estimate the value of the assets of the McCarthy Group Inc., a private merchant banking company based in Omaha, with which Hagel had a special relationship.

Hagel had reported a financial stake worth $1 million to $5 million in the privately held firm. But he did not report the company’s underlying assets, choosing instead to cite his holdings as an “excepted investment fund,” and therefore exempt from detailed disclosure rules.

Questioned by The Hill, several disclosure law experts said financial institutions set up in the same fashion as the McCarthy Group Inc. do not appear to meet the definition of an “excepted investment fund,” — at least as the committee had defined the category until Monday.


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[Trajan]

1. BRING BACK ...

The VNS .....

The mere FACT that the media conglomerates were so facile in killing VNS should inform us of their complicity ....

WHY would they stifle this independent tool so readily ? ...

I swear: ... this really STINKS ....

[dusty64]

2. It stinks alright.

The fact that the corporate media owned VNS says enough, they can no longer be trusted. I wish someone would start a truly independent exit polling apparatus, and soon. They refused to release their data for 2002 which I think proves vote rigging, we NEED one for 2004! Chuck Hagel won the black vote, yeah and I'm Santa Claus.

[PATRICK]

7. again the prone Democrats

Each party has long had its own polling. Even if the VNS is suspect the Dems must have an inkling when something is up. Even traditionally though, little is done about vote fraud except in close elections and the most egregious and carefully definable cases. I can make some guesses why, some which are not flattering at all to either party, but DO the Democrats know? Do we have a professional party or a bunch of browbeaten Boy Scouts?

When someone knocks on their door and explains blackbox voting it's as if many do not even read the paltry discussions in the newspapers that gravely adffect their careers and this country's welfare.

And applying vote observation as in third world countries would be a start except that our high tech variety circus is too much to be affected by people deliverately sidelined by authorities and the media- as happened in Florida in 2002- a pathetic test case that must encourage the Bush cheat machine to go all out for 2004.

We MUST instate a real, transparent non-partisan VNS at least in suspect precincts- whose number grows with the arrival of computers.

And internet voting threatens to unleash a new wave of ghost voters under the drumbeat assertion that most of these votes will trend GOP.

[shanti]

12. exactly!

why hasn't someone picked up the ball that was dropped re exit polling? i'm sure many of us would volunteer for this job.

[DrBB]

3. 83% results are strictly 3rd-world, banana republic stuff

I've always regarded any result that one-sided as de facto evidence of a rigged election. Kinda thing you see in a banana republic or post-colonial kleptocracy. "You see? My people LOVE me," says Idi Amin, pointing to his latest election results. Maybe things are different in senatorial elections in Nebraska. I'd like to see a statistical comparison going back over the last century. How common is it to see that lopsided a result? I vaguely remember some reporting at the time about his extraordinary margin of victory, but nothing at all about how far out of the norm it actually was

[Junkdrawer]

8. "The bigger the theft, the harder it is to get a recount"...

I've got a bad feeling that this little truism is going to haunt us for quite a while to come. Unless things change, I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of getting our voter-verified paper trail and a 100/1 chance of getting spot check audits.

[ISUGRADIA]

13. An 83% victory in A GOP state is not too surprising

I'm skeptical of electronic touch screen voting and Hagel's connection to Diebold but 83% is not too surprising given that NE is a very Republican state and Hagel has a rep as an "independent" Republican a la John McCain. Plus the Dem was unknown and spent basically nothing.

This goes the other way too, Dems such as Reed in RI 78% and Kennedy in MA 81% won by huge margains because they are in very Democratic states (Exception their Governors).

[jiacinto]

4. This is wishful thinking

Just because Hagel owns shares in Diebold does not mean that he cheated. It is suspicious, but it does not meet the burden of proof the voting machine conspiracists need to show that the elections were not clean.

Hagel's victory against Ben Nelson in 1996 was a real suprise. Nelson was supposed to win in 1996 against him and the election was a shocker. I remember that race a lot, as Nelson let it get away from him.

In 2002 I don't think Hagel had a top tier opponent. His opponent was a paper candidate and thus didn't have a chance of winning.

Now I do think there is an issue of conflict of interest when Hagel has connections to the company that makes the machines. But merely showing his ownership doesn't prove fraud or intentional malfeasance.

[BevHarris]

5. He doesn't have shares in Diebold (that I know of)

His ties are ES&S

[BeFree]

15. jiacinto

You are the same persom who thinks the detainees in Gitmo are there for good reason, right? If so....I'd like to know how you can twist so much that you do a flip-flop when it comes to this issue.

Hagel has the motive, opportunity, and the weapon. We know the computers are rigged, we have seen the code that rigs them. We know something screwy is going down, the way they're counting....and you, jiacinto, get up up your little soap box and try to tell us that everything's OK, nothing to see, just move along.....ROFLMAO at you, son. ROLFLMAO

[mndemocrat_29]

6. All right,

I'm not going to say that those people necessarily cheated to become elected (upsets do happen), but we do need to have paper ballots to check this. Both of those races were complete shocks, and people should've been allowed to recount the votes.

Ben Nelson's race in particular bothers me. He lost by nearly 95,000 votes. That race was supposed to be dead even, or even leaning toward the governor.

Max Cleland was a popular incumbent who shouldn't have had any trouble being elected. I didn't even consider that Saxby Chambliss would beat him.

Finally, Gore had been leading in Florida by a considerable amount. I know it was still a swing state, but polling had shown him ahead in that state (I believe fairly close to the election it was outside the margin of error).

We need to have paper ballots to check these things.

[depakid]

9. 83% is statistically a very improbable figure

especially in today's divided electorate. In fact, as Hagel bragged on his website (at least up and until The Hill reported on possible ethics violations)- that figure represents THE largest margin of victory in the history of Nebraska.

[jiacinto]

10. Hagel had a paper candidate run against him in 2002

So that's why his margin was lopsided.

[linazelle]

11. Very good information....

this is the most clear presentation of the issue I've seen so far. I'll be sharing it in other forums.

I'm bookmarking it too, for future reference.

[goobergunch]

14. I personally find the GA Governor's race most damning...

because every poll showed Barnes ahead by a significant margin and every pundit predicted a Barnes victory.