"Did Dubbya rig the election?" by Michael Meacher

[ailsagirl]

Monday 29th November 2004

Michael Meacher smells something fishy in Bush's return to office. The evidence of fraud is not yet conclusive but, given the Republicans' record, it is all too plausible

The great mystery of the US presidential election was that the exit polls, which had been reliable guides in all previous elections, did not tally with the final results. Tony Blair, it is said, went to sleep on 2 November thinking John Kerry had won, but woke in the morning to find that George W Bush was the victor. Many Britons and Americans had the same experience. Nobody has advanced a satisfactory explanation. Now allegations are surfacing that the use of electronic voting systems and optical scanning devices may have had a significant influence on the result. Computer security experts insist that such systems are not secure and not tamper-proof, yet they were used to count a third of the votes across 37 states. Though the Democrats remain strangely coy about the whole subject, academics and political analysts are now drawing comparisons between areas that used paper ballots and areas that used electronic systems. Is it possible that results in the latter were rigged?

An analysis of the poll by different states points up inconsistencies that cannot be explained by random variation. In Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico, Maine, Nevada, Arkansas and Missouri, where a variety of different voting systems were used, including paper ballots in many cases, the four companies carrying out exit polls were almost exactly right and their results were certainly within the margin of error. In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire and North Carolina, however, where electronic or optical scanning machines were used (though not exclusively), the tracking polls were seriously discrepant from the published result.

Two aspects of this are immediately striking. One is the large size of the variance, and the other is that in every case it favoured Bush. In Wisconsin and Ohio, the discrepancy favoured Bush by 4 per cent, in Pennsylvania by 5 per cent, in Florida and Minnesota by 7 per cent, in North Carolina by 9 per cent and in New Hampshire by an astonishing 15 per cent.

For rest of the article:
http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_NS&newDisplayURN=200411290018

[Bread and Circus]

1. That's the best non DU article I've read to date on this matter.

It is a must-read.

BTW, it does a great job of summarizing GOP lawlessness for the
past 25 years.

[ailsagirl]

2. I figure the more articles we find of this ilk, the better

We MUST keep this story alive.

Here is a great site for voter fraud updates (it's where I found the Meacher article):

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=980

[Bread and Circus]

3. I agree and this is a great one. Seems like a good site as well.

[whistle]

4. Bush gave the directive that loosing was not an option . . .

. . . then KKKarl Rove and the rest of the republican power elite made sure that the election would be rigged to turn out with a Bush win. Evidence is surfacing by the day pointing to the fact that this is what likely happened on November 2, 2004. Now, the task is to find the smoking gun to put these bastards away for life.

[ailsagirl]

6. Remember the second debate when someone asked Dub

something like, "If you lose in November..." and he said, "We're not gonna lose..."

May be nothing but I also recall that after each of those debates, MSNBC (among many other media outlets) had a "Who won the debate?" poll and overwhelmingly (like 65%) people said Kerry won. Now I know those aren't scientific but I think it's interesting nonetheless that the exit polls were way up there too-- then, when it came to the actual tallies, W. wins.

Just doesn't ring true.

[darthdemocrat]

8. Don't forget the remarks about a dictatorship. n/t

[darthdemocrat]

5. Michael Meacher kicks it

This guy has been ripping into the neocons since 9/11.

What he's said has been flogged quite a bit by the Ann Coulter types of the world. Don't be surprised to hear tons of BS about this guy and things he has said in the past.

[ailsagirl]

7. Of course, anyone who isn't pro-Dub will get shredded but

for me, at least, I have to go by what the article says, and this article is clear and concise. He smells a rat and so do I.

[darthdemocrat]

10. This guy has been shredded and asked for more

He was on the outs even within his own party for a while but more recently Blair appointed him to a ministry. I've heard him on television before and he's not a bad speaker.

Check out his commentary in the Guardian from last year, where he kind of gets into peak oil, 9/11, etc. :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html

I not only smell the rat but I can see the droppings. Hopefully it won't take a plague outbreak before enough people notice...

[progressoid]

9. I likes it. Clear, straightforward, and not too conspiracyish