Can someone explain something to me about stolen elections?

[Singular73]

Now, let me preface this -- I have no doubt that the GOP uses voter supression tactics. That is well documented.

But when it comes to "stealing elections" via vote-tampering, software-hacking, corrupt election boards, (fill in here)...

IF Republicans are stealing elections, why do they pull the obvious political crap they pull during the buildup towards the midterms? Why do they talk about flag-burning, stem-cell research, "Under God", etc.. Why campaign at all? Why not just let this apparently huge, vast, and super-organized conspiracy just run its course, and steal elections for them? I mean for Gods sakes, they can't even plug severly damaging leaks from their own administration(s).

It just doesn't make sense. You can't accuse them of politicking for midterms during one news-cycle, and vote-tampering during the next.

If elected democrats REALLY thought they were getting screwed via voting machines, why wouldn't there be 1000 lawsuits happening concurrently as we speak?

Also, it seems to me, all this does is discourage democrats from voting. Why should they?

[EST]

1. Too big a hack becomes too obvious, so the usual shit

has to go on to bring the numbers close enough to apply the coup-de-grace. They don't steal elections with just one technique, but by lots and lots of small to large local frauds.

[don954]

2. yes you can

the republicans have to keep the vote close, if the vote is wide, say 20/80, then polling will show up so severely that it will be like what happened in the Ukraine. When its 49/49, its easy to chock up an "incorrect" poll to statistical error.

This is why they put up such a huge fight over paper tails.

And there are lawsuits going on as we speak, the wheels of justice turn VERY slowly.

Democrats must keep voting in order to take back local, state, then national governments. The same way republicans infiltrated govt, we must in order to put people in positions of power that can oversee the process to make sure its fair. They cant rig them all, after all, if it was that prevalent, then too many leaks would start.

what makes it harder for lawsuits, is that leaks are silenced in very severe ways. We had a guy here in Florida that was paid by a republican to make a software package that was designed to change an election result, and had hard evidence. He tried to bring it to the courts, but, he wound up dead, rulled "suicide" by 2 bullets to the back of the head....

[pooja]

3. In this area we had a group running around registering

people to vote.. if they were independant or democrat than they conveniently lost the registration. People were pissed.

[dragonlady]

4. They need a reason why they got enough votes

They can point to the issues they campaigned on so we'll understand why they got the votes they did. A variation: on the weekend before the 2002 elections, Bush made a whirlwind tour of Georgia, Minnesota, and a couple other states I can't remember right now. Because of his visit the voters saw the light and elected Saxbe Chambliss, Norm Coleman, and the others, in spite of previous polling to the contrary. At least nobody is going to believe that scenario any more.

[nashville_brook]

5. cruise on over to the Election Reform forum and edumacate

thyself

[Monkeyman]

6. One thing I can say

How did a town in Ohio with 800 people cast 3500 votes for Dubba.

[Stevepol]

7. I don't know what you're talking about. The Repubs aren't all in on the

rigging. They're as much in the dark as the Dems in most cases, so they go about their business as usual. What do you expect them to do? They can only do what they've always done and always do: speechify about wedge issues and ignore the gradual rotting away of our country from endless war, loss of jobs, loss of industry, environmental degradation, etc. etc. etc.

As for the voting machines, there's no way to know anything for sure since the voting machines either don't have a paper trail or where there is one, there are no laws and certainly there's no willingness to have an audit. So whatever the machines say goes.

Our votes go on being counted in total secrecy by private companies which tilt precipitously Republican using trade secret proprietary software without any verification process whatever to check as to whether the vote is being recorded accurately. In other words, we have lost our democracy. When you have partisans of one side counting the votes in total secrecy without verification, you have a tyranny or a banana republic, a video game democracy.

If you are asking about circumstantial evidence of fraud, you've got a veritable library of books and sources to go to. Check them out and come to your own conclusion. If you decide that a paper trail and required audits are indeed essential to democracy, then spread the word.

[fuzzyball]

13. Have you ever thought about how much money the FIRST squealer

involved in electronic fraud ( a programmer, a technician, a local
election supervisor) stands to make by going public and writing a
book or making a movie? It will become the best seller of all time.
yet they all conspire in total silence, 100% compliance, WOW. The
repugs are more ruthless than the mafia in keeping the operators in
total silence.

[Prophet 451]

8. Too obvious

Shifting around 1 or 2 percent of votes isn't anything like as noticeable as shifting around 20-30 percent. If the gap was too huge, it would become too obvious so they need to keep the "real" results relatively close. Besides, if they can turn out teh base and win the election fairly, it means they don't have to take the risk of fiddling the results. Easier all around to campaign as usual, try as hard as you can and then fiddle in tiny ways if necessary.

They can't plug leaks in their own administration because there's simply too many people involved in policy-forming and administration. Conversely, you could steal an election with a dozen or so individuals in the right places and a team of another couple of dozen doing the legwork who don't know what the full picture is. Since everyone who does know the full picture would be indicted and possibly jailed if it ever came out, that's a big reason to keep their mouths shut. Conspiracies became more liable to be exposed the more people are involved. Iran-Contra or the Gunpowder Plot (both real conspiracies) were exposed because too many people knew the full truth. Ditto the MKULTRA experiments (although whether that could be described as a "conspiracy" is debateable). In contrast, the assassination of JFK (for example) could have been pulled off with half-a-dozen individuals, the assassination of RFK could be pulled off with three. In conspiracies, as in much else, the more moving parts, the more chance something will go wrong.

Why teh Democrats haven't filed a million and one suits is the open question. The evidence is out there and for all the statistical anomolies to be coincidence is a literally millions to one chance so why suits haven't been filed is anyone's guess. My theory is American Exceptionalism, the belief "it couldn't happen here" (which is of course, a virtually guarenteed way to make sure it does).

[Warpy]

9. Actually, the lawsuits are out there.

There is a particularly nasty one grinding through the courts in NM, although you'd never know it by the local media. The only place that has had much news on it is BradBlog.

What happened in NM is that 17,000+ of us simply got our votes subtracted from the national race. We know the number because that is the difference between the total votes cast in local races for judges and the total votes cast for the national candidates. Now, either you have to be gullible enough to think 17,000 people in NM left their nice, warm houses to go stand in line to vote for a judge but not for a president, or you know the voting machines were diddled, and badly so.

We were using ES&S voting machines for the first and last time.

The fraud was egregious. ES&S is fighting the lawsuit every step of the way, citing intellectual property, corporate privacy, trade secrets, and every other buzzword for "we got caught and we don't want to pay" that you can think of. Richardson had initially refused a recount. He got shamed into signing a bill for 100% paper, optical scan ballots statewide, so those ES&S machines will have to go elsewhere, heaven help the poor slobs who get them.

That is what I know about my own state's election fraud. We were also hit with Sproul's get out the vote but throw applications from Democrats away and other instances of voter suppression, but they were small compared to the massive fraud via those machines.

On Edit: Democrats swept the judge races. The conclusion is inescapable.

[roseBudd]

10. They pull that crap because they need to keep their base happy &

they need to have some votes.

For a lawsuit to be filed with any chance of being successful, they need evidence. But the evidence is locked up in 87 different county BoEs in Ohio alone.

[blm]

11. Because if they DIDN'T pull that crap, their base wouldn't even turn out

in large enough numbers for them to cover up the stealing and they get to "claim" that their base turned out based on "values" - why you can't see how one NEEDS the other is odder to me.

[fuzzyball]

12. Electronic vote stealing conspiracy is the most successful operation

in the history of elections. Beginning in 2000 when Georgie stole it
from Gore, and every mid-term election since then, and Georgie stealing
it again from Kerry, they have managed to stay in majority and power. How
the fxxk do they do it? Not a single person has cracked, not a single lawsuit
has been successful in exposing this vast RW conspiracy, no prominent democrat
has come out and accused the fricking repugs of stealing. Like I said, it is
the most successful conspiracy ever.