Do You Believe the 02 Elections Were Fair?

[ursacorwin]

i've not sent DU a check this year yet, so i can't initiate poll. but i'm wondering: how many of you believe that the 02 elections were fair, and representative of the will of the voters? if you don't believe they were (and I don't) how widespread was the tampering?

i ask because as we get closer to primary season for real, i think it will be VERY important to decide the answer to some questions which are rooted in the 02 election results. case in point: over on the 'does kerry get it?' thread someone said that in 02, the war trumped the lousy economy, and the voters responded to rovian propaganda over their own interests. i don't believe this, and i believe that any candidate who falls for this trap will play right into rove's hands. IMHO, it's still very much "the economy, stupid" and our candidates need to hit bush from every angle INCLUDING THE WAR from this perspective.

there are other examples, but what do you all think?

[dawg]

1. I'm uncomfortable with the voting machines in Georgia ...

Polls leading up to the 2002 elections showed close races, but they all seemed to break for the Republicans. With no paper trail, it is possible that the results were somehow hacked.

I'm not saying that I think that's what happened, but I'm not willing to 100% disregard the possibility either.

[goobergunch]

2. No

GA-Black Box Voting...not sure how that came out in RL, but even if Chambliss :puke: did win, he probably only won by 1%. As for the governor's race, Barnes has to have won, as nobody predicted that he would lose or even thought it was a toss-up.

MN-Although I think the Wellstone crash was an accident, that was still a very irregular election. I hold the media responsible for that.

[nannygoat]

4. Wasn't the governor's race in Alabama messed up, too?

Then there was Paul Wellstone...

[Skittles]

3. NO, ABSOLUTELY F***ING NOT

NO F***ING WAY.

[Clete]

5. No.

There were too many "wins" that didn't make sense. Also, I blame the media coverage. Many local stations carried the message that a certain candidate was winning and ahead in the votes early in the day. It turns out that this wasn't the case in many places, but I think it had the effect of keeping people from going to the polls because they felt it wasn't worth the time since their candidate had lost anyway.

[otohara]

6. Fuck NO

After what they did to Max Cleland, Al Gore, Gray Davis and the irreplaceable Paul Wellstone, no way.

[Ediacara]

7. some states yes, some states no

Here in Montana for instance, I think that the voting was fair. Other states though.....

Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Missouri, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Florida top my list of massively suspect elections. I think that McBride would still have lost... but perhaps by less than 5,000 votes, rather than the very large official margin.