Could Bush have "legally" hacked the '04 election?

[smoogatz]

If he can do whatever he likes in the name of "national security," what with the GWOT and all, and no statute or article of the constitution can trump his CINC status, then why couldn't he, according to his logic, legally steal an election? What CAN'T he do, if you don't mind my asking?

[applegrove]

1. No - but telling your organizers to never drop of people at the polls -

unless it is right at the door and not 100 feet away - where the exit pollsters were... that would be legal.

I'm just saying..

Keep an eye on those exit polls. How many Dems stayed home because when they rushed home from work - saw Kerry had won?

[Old and In the Way]

3. "How many Dems stayed home"

Prove 1 Democrat, who has lived for the day that GWB is dismissed from office, after stealing 2000, drained the Treasury, and lied to start an illegal war, stayed home based on exit polls.

Prove to us that there were millions more Republicans who really voted for Bush. That's the Big Lie. Bush did such a bang up job that millions more Republicans voted for him in 2004? I know a bunch of registered Republicans that I did an informal poll...less than 50% (5/12) voted for Bush.

Keep covering for the Election Fraudsters, AG.

[applegrove]

4. Oh - I think there are a few within the 35% of people who don't vote

and need to have a fire lit under them under normal circumstances.

[papau]

5. LOL-Rove's you've lost so why try game is changed to get them overconfiden

Get real.

[applegrove]

7. It is the faulty exit polls that follow Rove in elections. I don't want

people to be over-confident - that is exactly what I am talking about. Get out and vote. No matter what..and don't listen to any exit polls. And don't loose faith and think your vote will be stolen automatically by machine.

How many do you think will use "awe it doesn't matter" as an excuse?

[papau]

9. I also do not want over-confident folks - but Rove always sells "we've won

so go home - so it amused me to see the reverse suggested as the Rove plan.

We are on the same page wanting Dems to come out and vote. I just found the idea of Rove doing anything different - like running a campaign that did not depend on smear rather than respond - to be something that brought me a smile!

[applegrove]

14. I'm with you. I don't think he will not mess with the intention of laws.

Of course he will do tricks. We just don't know them all. Look at how much has been revealed so far we mostly didn't suspect. They'll steal a vote using one of 50 tools. I just don't think we can say exactly what happened with diebold. It is still speculation. I hope Repukes do not use it to stir up us dems & divide us during the election.

[papau]

16. I agree it was a case of 50 methods of election theft - and that we need

not get lost in that fact as we get out our vote.

[applegrove]

8. You may want to reread that sentence. I think I got the gest but the

more I read it - the less I get what you were trying to say.

[papau]

11. Rove tries to suppress the vote of the other side - we seem to agree on

that.

But all previous Rove moves were to try to suppress the opposition vote by discouraging the other side - telling the other side "we've already won- so don't bother to vote"

As to exit polls - as long as we have 2 GOP RW folks controlling the recording of 80% of the vote via machines that are easy to tamper with, and which may leave the factory set up for tampering, with the GOP screaming when you ask to see the code by which they count the vote, and the GOP screaming when you ask to see the "maintenance" procedures and security including the before maintenance audit compared to after maintenance audit - well the exit poll is the only way to tell who won -

not that the exit poll matters in a world where the GOP seem to have the right to steal elections from Democrats on the basis of the national security requires a GOP win.

[applegrove]

13. But that is just it. The exit polls were off in other places. So - what

happened in those places to make the polls off. And let us hope it doesn't happen again. But we all need to be ready to just ignore whatever game is being played (to divide us, to make us feel apathy, or whatever it is they go for in the 2006 election). Anything that makes you think not to vote (Kerry already won) should be an alarm bell.

All of it. Exit polls should assume to be off at this point. So if they are leaked again - on election day all of us will say "fooey - that is nothing to me".

[papau]

15. Exit polls are assumed to be correct- not off - the vote is assumed rigged

in the EU and the US when exit polls are "off".

And that assumption has been proven correct too many times to dismiss it.

But as to getting out the vote - I agree - exit polls are not of interest on election day.

[foo_bar]

18. they are?

And that assumption has been proven correct too many times to dismiss it.

Not only hasn't it (ever) been proven correct, but it can't be: there's no way to "prove" anything about 110 million voters by waving a magic wand over a clustered sample of a few thousand.

"What about the Ukraine?", as the urban legend goes:

A key part of the media game has been the claim that Yushchenko won according to "exit polls". What is not said is that the people doing these "exit polls" as voters left voting places were US-trained and paid by an entity known as Freedom House, a neo-conservative operation in Washington. Freedom House trained some 1,000 poll observers, who loudly declared an 11-point lead for Yushchenko. Those claims triggered the mass marches claiming fraud. The current head of Freedom House is former CIA director and outspoken neo-conservative, Admiral James Woolsey, who calls the Bush administration's "war on terror" "World War IV". On the Freedom House board sits none other than Brzezinski. This would hardly seem to be an impartial human-rights organization.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GA20Ag01.html

Western-funded exit polls showed Yuschenko was gonna win, Russia-funded that Yanukovych was gonna win. We only heard about the former tho.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2004/12/302679.html

But not all observers of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" are so elated. Instead of democracy's advance, some see a U.S.-funded, White House-orchestrated conspiracy to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, weaken Russia's sphere of influence and expand Washington's imperial reach. These skeptics range from presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, columnist Patrick Buchanan, and left-wingers in the Nation and the Guardian.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15131-2004Dec20

Meanwhile, in the UK:

Shy Tory Factor is a name given by British Opinion polling companies to a phenomenon observed in the 1990s whereby the share of the vote won by the Conservative Party in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party. The Conservative Party is often referred to by its previous name 'Tory'.

In the 1992 general election, the final opinion polls gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of the vote, about 1% behind Labour. In the final results, the Conservatives had a lead of 7.6% over Labour. As a result of this failure to 'predict' the result, the Market Research Society held an inquiry into the reasons why the polls had been so much at variance with actual public opinion. The report found that 2% of the 8.5% error in the party lead could be explained by differential refusals to be interviewed by Conservative voters; it cited as evidence for this factor the fact that exit polls on election day also underestimated the Conservative lead, when they could not be affected by sampling error.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

But since the exit poll hoax isn't particularly logical, the argument necessarily skips to the next magical belief. Take your pick:

1) "But Bush did better in Diebold precincts!" (except that he didn't, and it belies the circular assumption that machines=fraud ergo fraud=machines, putting aside the Florida 2000 chad fiasco)
2) "But all the pre-election polls said Kerry landslide!" (except that they didn't, in fact * led the majority of them, unless you cherry-pick only Kerry leaning polls)
3) "But exit polls are always correct!" (back to square one)

I understand the appeal of the "theory" (never having to get off your butt or apologize for ~51% of your brethren), but the hoax is a self-fulfilling prophecy: once you believe you're a hapless victim of fate, that's exactly what you become. If you "know" fraud occurred but can't be bothered to find out why, when, or where ("the exit polls got the answer I like, that's all that matters"), then you merely contribute to apathy and the suppression of Dem turnout (not to mention the fact that disenfranchised/purged voters don't even appear on exit polls, so the "exit poll=right answer" hypothesis assumes that institutional racism is a valid selection criteria).

[applegrove]

20. No. Exit polls were off in places that had no diebold - no "secret" way

to steal votes. They have been off in more than one Rove election.

Why do you think there are gag rules and private ballots? Because in the last 200 years - slimy politicos have found it easy to influence votes unless they are shut down. But the internet breaks that gag. So we should watch closely and see what the pattern is in close races in the future. Sit and observe the people doing the polls - and observer the organization of the conservative voters at suspect sites.

To say exit polls have been proven right is simply not true. They are assumed to be exactly on by people who choose to think a small percentage of the vote was stolen by machine. Just as likely a small percentage of the vote was stolen by releasing favourable polls for Keryy - all day long - until the polls closed.

[DELUSIONAL]

2. In his own mind he can do no wrong -- so

even stealing another election wouldn't be illegal in his mind.

After all "he" didn't do the stealing -- he just orders and people jump.

[1620rock]

6. This criminal doesn't even try to hide his crimes anymore...

...it wouldn't surprise me to hear him come out on national television and boast that he did indeed steal the election-s, 9/11 9/11 9/11 ...and will continue to do so in the future! :mad:

[neoblues]

10. He Believes God Authorized It...

God made him do it. (nevermind that it may just be Satan in disguise)
Besides, from watching his Daddy lose, he concluded that Politics is War and everybody knows that all things are fair in love and war (though he feels there are exceptions with respect to love, especially since he's not sure what love is). Yessiree, he concluded long ago that he wouldn't follow his father's example and mostly play by the rules, so with Rovers help, he found ways to play 'hardball'. "Cheating" is just how losers explain their defeats to themselves... and anyway, George probably has plausible "deniability" as provided for him by Rove not telling George that he was arranging for the falsified computer votes (and explaining away the voter disenfranchisement by saying 'both sides do it'). Make no mistake, Bush IS as dumb as he looks.

[cindyw]

12. No, but I bet he would try to say it was for National Security reasons.

And then there would be a poll saying 50% of the US was okay with it.

[Toots]

17. If Alito sails through the answer is yes

If alito become a Justice then Bush* can do anything he wishes and the Supreme Court will rule it legal..If the Democrats don't realize that at this stage of the game then they have not been doing their job or paying attention and need to be replaced by people who actually care about America.

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

19. If you can crush a child's bawls, you can steal the election...

... if the stakes really were SO HIGH you needed to torture a child, then surely things could be so dire ensuring your ability to continue the defense against the evil dewers ...