"Voter fraud??" Hey Karl, here's "THE math": Analytical explanation of 2004/2006 Election Fraud.

[bleever]

http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm

Dec.12, 2000 is a day that will live in infamy. Bush needed the help of five right-wing Republicans on the Supreme Court to stop the recount in Florida and enable him to steal the election. There has been an ongoing controversy regarding the 2004 election. State and national pre-election and exit polls pointed to a Kerry victory. Those who claim that Bush won fair and square are relentless in their attempts to thrash polling analyses which suggest that fraud occurred. Since the media will not release tell-tale precinct-level data, analysts must rely on publicly available polling data. And they have determined that the polls provide powerful statistical evidence of fraud. So-called ”voter fraud” has been shown to be non-existent. It’s a distraction from the evidence of massive “election fraud”. Voters don’t fix elections, politicians do. A few days after the 2004 election, naysayers were quick to dismiss statistical analyses of “spreadsheet-wielding Internet bloggers” as another left-wing “conspiracy theory”.

They continue to maintain that pre-election and exit polls which indicated a Kerry win were biased, but have not provided plausible statistical evidence to back up their claim. Instead, they have resorted to tortured explanations: Kerry voters were more likely to respond to exit pollsters; exit poll interviewers sought out Kerry voters; Gore 2000 voters must have lied or forgot when they told the exit pollsters that they voted for Bush 2000 ; exit polls are not true random samples; U.S. exit polls are not designed to detect fraud; preliminary exit poll data was inaccurate because women voted early and Republicans voted late; Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush at twice the rate that Bush voters defected to Kerry; Bush was an incumbent war president; a powerful Republican GOTV campaign headed by Karl Rove mobilized millions of Christian fundamentalists for Bush, etc. All of these explanations are not supported by factual data and have been thoroughly debunked.

They cite a post-election retrospective NES 600-sample survey as evidence that 7% of former Gore voters lied or forgot they voted for him when they told the exit pollsters they voted for Bush in 2000. One explanation for this is the long-term Bush “bandwagon effect”: former Gore voters wanted to associate with the “winner” of the prior election. But Bush had a 48.5% approval rating on Election Day and Gore won by 540,000 votes. Why would Gore voters lie or forget more than Bush voters? Why would they claim to have voted for Bush when they knew he stole the election? Why would they forgive Bush? Was it because of his job performance?

They note a built-in Democratic bias in the exit polls but dismiss the fact that in every election, approximately 3% of total votes cast are never counted and the majority are in heavily Democratic minority districts. Bush “won” Florida in 2000 by an “official” 537 votes, but there were 180,000 spoiled ballots (3% of the total) and thousands of other provisional and absentees which were never counted. Since more than 65% of the spoiled ballots were intended for Gore, he clearly won the state by at least 60,000 votes. Gore’s nationwide margin must have exceeded two million votes, much higher than the 540,000 recorded. In addition, an unknown number were switched to Bush. In 2004, over 90% of reported electronic vote switching incidents were from Kerry to Bush. And an exhaustive study indicated that 6.15% of Kerry votes were switched to Bush in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County.

They claim that the vaunted 2004 Republican GOTV campaign brought Bush millions of new Christian fundamentalist votes. But they fail to note that according to the National Exit Poll, since 1992 the Democrats have won first-time voters in every election by an average 14% margin. Ruy Teixeira wrote about it in The Emerging Democratic Majority.

They ignore the experience of world-class pollsters Zogby and Harris who claimed that late undecided voters broke 3-1 for Kerry. But this was not unexpected; historical evidence indicates that undecided voters break for the challenger over 80% of the time, especially when the incumbent is unpopular. Bush had a 48.5% 11-poll average approval rating on Election Day.

They dismiss Bush’s 48.5% rating as immaterial, yet every presidential incumbent (Ford, Carter, Bush I) with approval below 50% lost re-election. Every incumbent above 50% (Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton) won. There was a near perfect 0.87 monthly correlation between Bush’s approval rating and his 18 pre-election national poll average. The correlation was confirmed when Kerry won the 12:22am National Exit Poll by 51-48%.

They fail to distinguish between unweighted and weighted averages, so do not understand why the evidence shows that Kerry led in the state and national pre-election polls. Bush led in the unweighted state poll average, but Kerry led the weighted average weekly trend in all but the first two weeks in September. The final pre-election weighted average state poll (Kerry 47.88-46.89%) closely matched the final 18-poll national average (Kerry 47.17- Bush 46.89%).

They refuse to recognize the significance of the fact that both state and national projections in the Nov.1, 2004 Election Model had Kerry winning the popular vote by 51-48%. The projections were confirmed by the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry also won by 51-48%. A Monte Carlo Simulation (5000 election trials) forecast that Kerry would win 320-337 electoral votes with 60-75% of the undecided vote - which he did if you believe the National Exit Poll and pollsters Zogby and Harris. The pre-election projections were confirmed in the Interactive Election Simulation Model by the state and national exit polls.

They cite “false recall” and non-response bias to account for the exit poll discrepancies, but how do they account for the deviations between final pre-election state and national polls and the recorded votes? Exit poll non-response and false recall are not applicable to the pre-election polls – and yet the pre-election polls matched the exits. The best evidence indicates that the “pristine” state and national exit polls were close to the true vote, unlike the final exit polls which were forced to match a corrupt vote count. All they can say is that the polls were wrong.

They proclaim that faulty polling explains why Kerry’s solid 50.2-44.8% lead in nine Zogby battleground states declined to 50.1-49.4% in the recorded vote while four states flipped to Bush. Assuming he would win 75% of the undecided vote, Kerry was projected to win all 9 states by an average 53.7-45.9% - a whopping 7% discrepancy from the recorded vote. The pre-election state poll margin of error was exceeded in 6 of the 9 states - all in favor of Bush. The probability that this would occur by chance is 1.92E-08, or 1 in 52 million. They reject the reasonable assumption that 75% of late undecided voters would break for Kerry. But Zogby and Harris, with a combined 60 years of polling experience between them, indicated just that.

They maintain that exit polls are not accurate indicators and aren’t random samples. But pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the National Exit Poll notes that respondents were randomly-selected and the margin of error was 1%. And they confirm the margin of error for various exit poll samples in their NEP Methods Statement. Mitofsky only had 30 years of experience as a world-class exit pollster.

They dismiss exit polls prior to the final, but do not question the fact that the final was forced to match the recorded vote through the use of impossible weights and implausible vote shares. This assumes that the recorded vote is fraud-free – not exactly a reality-based assumption.

They do not question why six of the eight states which deviated to Kerry from the exit polls were strong Bush states: TN (1.63), TX (1.65), SD (1.67), ND (2.51), KS (2.37) and MT (0.22). Or that the exit poll discrepancies (shown in parenthesis) were all within the exit poll margin of error. Only two competitive states deviated to Kerry: OR (0.75) and HI (1.25). Is it just a coincidence that Oregon is the only state which votes exclusively by mail (100% paper ballots), and that any discrepancy in that state would be small and could favor either Bush or Kerry? And is it just a coincidence that Hawaii was not exactly a critical state?

They must realize that vote-rich battleground/blue states were keys to the election. Was it just a coincidence that six deep-red states deviated to Kerry but not a single blue state? Was it because Bushco needed to avoid the appearance of a complete 50-state red-shift, so they disregarded these states knowing that Kerry would not come close to winning any of them? Was a nationwide blue-shift thwarted in competitive states? Yes, the East was the Beast, the rest were in the West.

They try to refute the high probability of a Kerry popular vote victory, claiming that the exit poll “cluster effect” invalidated the theoretical 1.0% margin of error. But a probability sensitivity analysis showed that even assuming a 50% increase in the MoE due to the cluster effect, Kerry still had a 98% probability of winning a majority of the popular vote.

They hypothesize that the Final 2004 NEP 43 Bush / 37 Gore weights were due to “false recall” on the part of Gore 2000 voters who claimed to have voted for Bush 4 years earlier. But the weights were irrelevant and misleading since they were mathematically impossible. What is relevant is who the 2004 exit poll respondents said they voted for just minutes before.

They dismiss the 12:22am NEP timeline (13047 respondents) which indicates that 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush in 2004 while 10% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry. Instead, they claim that twice as many Gore voters (14.6%) defected to Bush than Bush voters (7.2%) to Kerry. Is this plausible? Not if you believe that the Bush 48.5% Election Day approval rating means anything. Is this a last-ditch explanation of how Bush won? Yes. And it means that they have no case.

They did not agree that the Final Exit Poll “Voted in 2000” weights were mathematically impossible. But the proof is a trivial arithmetic exercise. It’s not possible that 43% of the 122.3 million who voted in 2004 could have been Bush 2000 voters, since 43% of 122.3mm is 52.6mm and Bush only had 50.5mm votes in 2000. Furthermore, approximately 1.8 million Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election (based on the annual 0.87% U.S. mortality rate). Therefore, the maximum number of Bush 2000 voters who could have voted in 2004 was just 48.7 million. That’s a physical, incontrovertible fact which they initially tried to refute. But the longer they tried, the sillier they looked.

They finally had to accept an inconvenient truth: the Final National Exit Poll inflated the Bush vote by at least 4 million. The weights were contrived to force the exit poll to match the corrupted recorded vote. Even though the weights were mathematically impossible, the exit-pollsters had no choice but to use them. They hoped no one would notice.

They claim that exit poll non-responders were Bush voters and therefore the exit polls did not reflect the true vote. Yet they cannot logically explain why a linear regression analysis showed that exit poll non-response increased going from the strongest Bush states to the strongest Kerry states, indicating that non-responders were most likely Kerry voters.

How do they explain these implausible changes in the Final NEP 2-party Bush vote shares from 2000 to 2004?

-The Bush share of male voters decreased by 0.2% while his female share increased by 4.2%

-His share of white females increased by 5.0% while his share of white males decreased by 0.9%

-His share of non-white females increased by 4.0%

-His share of female independents increased by 1.8% while his share of male independents decreased by 5.6%

Didn’t females vote 54-45% for Kerry? Didn’t blacks vote for him by over 90%? Didn’t independents split 52-44 for Kerry? Why would independent males defect to Kerry at three times the rate that independent females defected to Bush? Didn’t Nader voters break 3-1 for Kerry?

They ignore the astounding fact that all 22 Eastern Time Zone states red-shifted from the exit poll to Bush and that 12 deviated beyond the exit poll margin of error! The probability of this occurrence is 1 in 32 trillion. The East is a vote-rich Democratic region and the most fertile ground for fraud. Of the 28 states outside the Eastern Time Zone, “only” 20 deviated to Bush while the margin of error was exceeded in “just” 4 states.

They overlook the fact that 41 states favored Bush from the final pre-election polls to the recorded vote; not one of the 10 states which favored Kerry was a battleground state. Forty-three state red-shifted to Bush from the 12:22am exit polls. Oregon was the only battleground state which blue-shifted to Kerry – by less than one percent. It was also the only state in which all voting is done by mail. Was this all just a coincidence, a case of bad polling or a powerful indication that fraud occurred? You decide.

They claim that exit poll data from 1250 voting precincts indicates that there was no tendency for Bush to do better in 2004 relative to 2000 (“swing”) than he did in the exit poll (“red-shift”). They presented their evidence in a swing vs. red-shift scatter chart. They concluded from the best-fit near-zero slope that the exit poll discrepancies didn't have much effect on the Bush vote and therefore fraud was unlikely. But they were comparing apples to oranges. They failed to normalize the 2000 recorded vote in their analysis by not accounting for the Nader effect, uncounted votes and vote-switching on Red Shift vs Swing.

They focused on raw precinct data without considering the following: According to the 2004 National Exit Poll, Kerry won 71% of returning Nader voters compared to 21% for Bush. A similar split would have increased Gore’s margin by 1.4mm. But if 75% of approximately 3 million uncounted votes were for Gore, his margin increases by another 1.5mm. When added to his recorded 540,000 vote majority, Gore’s adjusted margin becomes 3.4mmm. And that does not consider the effects of vote-switching. Thanks to Ohio, we know a lot more about vote-switching than we did in 2000. It’s very likely that Gore votes were switched to Bush. If 3% (1.5 million) were switched, then his final adjusted margin is 6.4 million: 3mm switched + 1.5mm uncounted + 1.4mm Nader + 0.54mm recorded.

They never compared the 1.51% recorded state vote “swing” from Gore in 2000 to Bush in 2004 and the corresponding exit poll 1.75% red-shift. Nor did they bother to calculate the adjusted state-weighted 4.39% vote swing and the weight-adjusted 12:22am National Exit Poll 4.33% red-shift. The adjusted vote swing exceeded the exit poll red-shift in 43 states, 16 in the battleground. A linear regression analysis of red-shift vs. adjusted swing shows that for every 1% increase in adjusted swing, red-shift rose by 0.6%. The naysayer scatter chart shows no such relationship.

They cite as an example the final NY State 2004 pre-election poll which Kerry won 59-40 (matching the recorded vote) to support their argument that the pre-election polls did not match the exits (the NY exit poll was 64-35). Notwithstanding the fact that they cherry-picking polls, they were once again incomplete in their analysis.

They failed to mention that the typical pre-election state poll has a 4% margin of error (600 respondents) while the corresponding exit poll has a 2-3% MoE, depending on the number of respondents. Therefore, a 5% discrepancy between a given state pre-election and the corresponding exit poll is not unusual. In fact, the weighted average vote share of 51 state pre-election polls, adjusted for undecided voters, matched the weighted average exit poll vote share to within 1%.

They expect us to believe that the recorded 59-40 NY State vote was correct. But it’s not plausible: The 12:22am NEP reported that 10% of Bush voters defected to Kerry while just 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush. The NY 2000 vote was Gore 60-Bush 35-Nader 5. Assuming conservatively that in 2004 the defection rates were equal and cancelled each other, the 59-40 recorded vote implies that ALL returning Nader 2000 voters must have defected to Bush- an absolute impossibility. According to the NEP, Kerry won Nader voters by 71-21. If we apply this split to the NY 2000 recorded vote, the vote split would be 63-36. If we consider that uncounted ballots are 70-80% Democratic, the split changes to 64-35, matching the exit poll. The True Vote Model determined that 7% of Kerry’s national votes were switched to Bush. A comprehensive analysis of ballots cast in Cuyahoga County (Ohio) showed that 6.15% of Kerry’s votes were switched. If 4% of Kerry’s NY votes were switched, he won the state by 66-33%.

They claim that the various margins of error used in calculating the probabilities of the exit poll discrepancies were too low. But even assuming a 50% “cluster effect”, the probabilities are still close to zero. The exit poll discrepancy exceeded the margin of error in 16 states - all in favor of Bush. The probability: 1 in 19 trillion. Not a single state deviated beyond the MoE for Kerry.

They fail to appreciate the Law of Large Numbers and find nothing unusual about the fact that Kerry led the National Exit Poll by 51-48% at 4pm (8649 respondents), 7:30pm (11027) and 12:22am (13047). But Bush won the 2pm Final NEP (13660) by 51-48%. Of course, demographic weights and vote shares were adjusted in the Final to match the recorded vote.

They finally agreed, after months of denial, that the Final 2pm NEP “How Voted in 2000” weights were impossible and had to replaced by feasible weights. But they had to compensate for the weights by inflating the Final NEP Bush vote shares in order to match the recorded count. This was necessary in spite of the fact that the Final NEP Bush vote shares were already inflated in order to match the recorded vote. With feasible weights applied to the “pristine” 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry won by 52.6-46.4% – a 7.7 million vote margin! Using feasible weights and the Final NEP vote shares, Kerry still won by 51.2-48.4%. The 3.4 million vote margin more than reversed the Bush 3mm “mandate”!

They were forced to suggest this implausible Bush win scenario in the Democratic Underground Game thread:

1) 14.6% of Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush. But the 12:22am NEP reported 8%; it was increased to 10% in the Final in order match the vote.
2) Kerry won 52.9% of voters who did not vote in 2000. But the 12:22am NEP reported he won by 57-41%; it was reduced to 54-45% in the Final.
3) 7.2% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry. But the 12:22am NEP reported 10%; it was reduced to 9% in the Final.

They belittle an extensive sensitivity analysis which indicates that Kerry won all plausible scenarios of voter turnout and new voter splits. For example, assuming 12:22am NEP vote shares and 100% Bush 2000 voter turnout, Gore voter turnout had to be less than 73% for Bush to tie Kerry. Turnout had to be less than 64% for Bush to win by the recorded 62-59 million.

They do not explain how Bush could have added 16 million new voters from 2000. He had 50.5 million votes in 2000; an estimated 46.3 returned to vote in 2004. The decrease was due to two factors: 1) approximately 1.7mm Bush voters died (0.87% annual mortality rate) and 2) an estimated 2.5mm did not vote (assuming a 95% turnout). According to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, Bush won 41% or 10.8 million of 26.3 million new voters. But he needed 15.8 million (60%) to reach 62 million in 2004. The 19% discrepancy is 11 times the 1.72% margin of error (3200 respondents were asked how they voted in 2000). The probability of the discrepancy occurring by chance is ZERO. A solid majority of new voters were Democrats and Independents who together gave Bush an approval rating much lower than his full 48.5% on Election Day, a 1% monthly decline from Sept. 11, 2001. The downward trend continues to this day.

They are hard-pressed to explain this anomaly: In 2000 Bush lost the recorded popular vote by 540,000. But according to the Final 2000 National Exit Poll, he won DNV96 voters (first-timers and others who did not vote in 1996) by 52-44%. Gore won first-timers by 52-43% and Bush won others by 71-26%. In 2004 Bush won the recorded vote by 3 million. But according to the 12:22am NEP, Kerry won DNV2k voters by 57-41%, capturing both first-timers (55-43%) and others (61-37%).

They dismiss the best-case True Vote Model scenario that Kerry actually received 66.1mm votes, 7 million more than the 59.0mm recorded. Assuming that Kerry won 2.6mm (75%) of 3.4mm uncounted votes (based on the Census total of 125.7mm cast), then 4.5mm votes (6.8% of the total cast for Kerry) must have been switched to Bush. After allocating uncounted votes to each state based on its racial mix and assuming the 6.8% switched-vote rate, the model determined that Kerry won 336 electoral votes. This matched the 337 electoral votes forecast in the Election Model Monte Carlo Simulation based on the final pre-election state polls. The base-case estimate was that Kerry would win 75% of late undecided voters.

They don't consider that the evidence of massive fraud in the 2006 midterm elections is hardly mentioned in the corporate media, except for the notorious FL-13 congressional race in which 18,000 mostly Democratic votes were mysteriously missing. But a Pew 2006 Election Analysis describes voting “anomalies” and computer “glitches” that occurred in virtually every state. The fraudulent vote count probably cost the Democrats 10-20 congressional seats.

They ignore the 2006 National Exit Poll in which the 7pm NEP “How Voted in 2004” weights were changed from 47 Bush / 45 Kerry at 7pm on Election Day to 49/43 in the 1pm Final the following day in order to match the vote count! This had a major effect in cutting the Democratic margin in half - from 55-43% to 52-46%. When plausible< 49 Kerry/ 46 Bush weights based on the 2004 NEP are used in the 7pm 2006 NEP, the Democratic margin becomes 56.7-42.1%, exactly matching the 120 pre-election Generic Poll trend line.



It was a classic case of déjà vu. As noted earlier, the 2004 NEP “How Voted in 2000” 41 Bush/ 39 Gore weights at 12:22am were changed to 43/37 in the 2pm Final – the next day! This also had the major effect of reversing the 51-48% Kerry victory to a 51-48% loss. Was 2006 a coincidence or another confirmation that the pre-election polls matched the 7pm National Exit Poll? You decide.


Much more at the link...

This is an updated version of work referenced in an earlier Election Reform post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=466081&mesg_id=466081

[MissWaverly]

1. thank you, I still believe

I believe that the truth on this will come out and I will be able to vote and have it counted once again, still in Maryland, still have no confidence in electronic voting.


Miss Waverly
lost in the land of Diebold

:-)

[ClassWarrior]

2. Hey kid, you're smart...

Or are you just tryin' to impress Miss Landers?

:hi:

NNNGU.

[bleever]

5. Not. Giving. Up.

:hi: bro!

[Kurovski]

3. Thank you bleever,

and TruthIsAll.

Rove is the nation's number one purveyor of foofery and toad slippers.

Did I see something around here about the Administration actually using the proper term "election fraud" in some capacity?

K&R.

[bleever]

4. I saw that somewhere, and think it was a slip. They are intent

on reframing the election fraud issue, and somebody just forgot that the official talking points call it "voter fraud".

[Old and In the Way]

6. Thanks for this great summary.

I've never accepted the results of the 2004 election.

Given the recent revelations about the RNC hosting the Ohio election results, I'm wondering how many other states outsourced their poll results to the RNC. I'm beginning to think that this would be a much easier way to rig the results rather than trying to do it at the local level with flawed machines and corrupted B0E people. Just too much uncertainty. Having the results managed at the macro-level...that's much easier.

[bleever]

7. It might have looked like this:

Election night, 2004. Rove and his assistant Susan Ralston (previously Abramoff's secretary) at their computers. Karl is talking on a phone that's been labeled with a piece of white tape.

[Sanity Claws]

29. Phone has the same marking as a skunk

Both smell the same too.

[OnTheOtherHand]

8. should be posted on Mythopedia

Frankly, it's disgraceful that TIA serves up the same mistakes and spin repeatedly. People can read the pre-election polls for themselves, or they can accept the fantasy version.

By the way, is TIA asserting that it has "been thoroughly debunked" that Bush was an incumbent war president? Hey, whatever.

[bleever]

9. Not much of a war, and not much of a president either.

Appointed by the Supreme Court, with approval under 50%.

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. but enough of a war and enough of a president

-- and enough approval, for that matter. Some folks might like to look at the scatterplot that sank TIA's approval argument (scroll down a bit).

There really are reasons -- good reasons -- why so few people agree with TIA.

[bleever]

11. People who agree with TIA include

Steve Freeman, Ron Baiman, Richard Hayes Phillips, Mark Crispin Miller, Greg Palast, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Josh Mitteldorf.

People who wish to consider the scatterplot argument will find that addressed at the link in the OP.

[OnTheOtherHand]

12. evidence, please?

I'm not certain that most of those people are aware of TIA's existence. But I guess they agree with him about something, so that's something, whatever it is.

OK, so you've got a business scholar, an economist, a geologist, a communications professor, a journalist, a lawyer, and a mathematician. That's an impressively interdisciplinary bunch, but why is it so hard to find political scientists who are willing to go along with this stuff? and so easy to find political scientists who push back? (For instance, the folks who signed off on this report: "Discrepancies between early exit poll results and popular vote tallies in several states may be due to a variety of factors and do not constitute prima facie evidence for fraud in the current election.")

If you agree with TIA's arguments, perhaps you can state them here. Otherwise, it's an appeal to authority, but a pretty vacuous one, since TIA has no authority.

EDIT TO ADD: Well, I might as well respond to that "response," since it is still short and dismally weak.

Carter and Bush both LOST and had approval ratings below 50%. You can have your own theories, but not your own facts. And the FACT is that ALL incumbents with final approval ratings under 50% LOST the election – and that includes Bush. Your attempt to twist this FACT is patently obvious. Your scatter plot is just a diversion. Why don’t you just accept this FACT and move on?

Actually, I already responded to this response, and TIA knows it. My response is: the FACT is that ALL incumbents with final approval ratings over 46% WON the election -- and that includes Bush. So, he really doesn't have an argument here. His attempt to keep people from thinking about the scatterplot is just a diversion: he doesn't want to look at all the data in context, and/or doesn't want anyone else to. That's a shame.

[bleever]

14. I was just responding to the statement that very few people agree with him.

I think most people can read and comprehend the OP for themselves, and come to their own conclusions about it.

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. well, you underscored my point

It sort of reminds me of "Project Steve". One can indeed find some PhDs who believe, or appear to believe, or possibly believe that the exit polls were accurate, just as one can find some PhDs who believe, or appear to believe, or possibly believe that evolutionary theory is wrong.

I think it's open to argument whether anyone can truly claim to "comprehend" the OP. But if no one is prepared to defend the substance, I guess that tells a tale. As for TIA's arguments about 2006, I'm sort of surprised he would broach the topic after this reception on GD.

[tritsofme]

19. I'm pretty sure that at least 99.989454% of those listed

are aware of his existence.

[bleever]

21. I know firsthand

that three of them do.

Two more of them I can safely surmise about.

The other two come to the same conclusions as TIA, whether or not they have firsthand knowledge of his work.

[OnTheOtherHand]

23. great, so maybe some of them will defend their views

In the meantime, I call it junk science, and I'm pushing back.

[BeFree]

27. Science

Tells us that the electronic voting machines were capable of altering millions of votes.

It also tells us that the election numbers as arrived at are questionable.

It also tells us that the main suspects are quite willing and able to use the machines to steal an election.

So, all in all, science informs us that the possibility of the election being stolen was probably in the range of 95% it was stolen.

Since no one, or nothing, really refutes this science: The Election Was Stolen!

[foo_bar]

38. the difference between science and hoaxes has to do with peer review and transparency

Ironically the very qualities sought in fair elections, and yet we're told to accept bromides on faith. In science, claims like "probably in the range of 95%" are accompanied by supporting evidence, unless the goal is simply guerrilla marketing of the idea itself regardless of its veracity, in which case I refer you to OTOH's sig line.

This is a simple method to determine the probability that 4 out of 10 critical states, in which the Dems were far ahead (beyond the margin of polling error), would all go for the Repub.

One can apply the Cum. Normal Distribution or Poission function (or both to confirm) to determine the probability of rare events occuring by chance only.. There are other models which may be applicable. I found these two perfect and easy to use. All you need is Excel; the functions are built-in.

I have also used this method to calculate the probability that
1- at least 15 JFK witnesses would meet unnatural deaths in the year following the assasination.
2- at least 16 world-class microbiologists would meet unnatural deaths in a 4 month period following 9/11.
3- The probability that at least a certain number of people would suffer from mad cows disease in a specific geographic area in a given year.

In each case, the probabilities were close to zero.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1777401#1777492

Black Box Analysis: actual scientists are ignored (or tombstoned from the Marxist-Stalinist-whatever board that shall not be named from which these TIA posts emanate) unless they agree 100% (which is 'virtually impossible' under the circumstances) (much like our present executive branch), while TIA's beliefs about forensic numerology are reciprocally ignored by science. So that leaves an impasse between belief and reason, per usual, but it'd be nice if TIA picked stocks using his secret spice (evidently, knowing what data points to throw out based on intuition), so we could at least judge his "work" empirically (for instance, in a way it could be falsified).

[OnTheOtherHand]

40. ah, some classic TIA cherry-picking

I drilled down to this (referring to 2002) :

"3-Texas: The Democrats were trailing by 48-49% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 55-43%, an 11 point switch."

The final SurveyUSA poll put the Republican (Cornyn) ahead 53 to 45. Remarkably, TIA cites as his source an article that contains this quotation:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1646980
Sunday, The Dallas Morning News had Cornyn with a 9-point lead in a poll that had a 3-point margin of error. The Houston Chronicle had Cornyn up by 6 points with nearly a 4-point margin of error.

and this summary: "HOW ACCURATE? Polls gave Cornyn 1, 6 and 9 points, he won by 12"

Facially, one is certainly entitled to entertain the inference that TIA knowingly, willfully threw out two polls that didn't support his point (he probably didn't know about the SurveyUSA survey) in order to cite a single poll (which he dubs "polls") that did.

But I suspect that TIA is so sure how all his analyses are going to turn out that he doesn't even notice the reckless irrationality with which he conducts them. If he were deliberately misrepresenting his source, he presumably wouldn't have linked to it. It makes him too easy to refute. And yet, and yet, look at all the recs these posts get. Bother.

Oh, wow, I almost missed this one:

"4-New Hampshire: The Democrats were leading by 46-40% in the final polls; the Republicans won by 51-47%, a 10 point switch."

The Scoop article he links to has Sununu (the Republican) +2 and +4. A zero-to-two point "switch." (TIA says in his response #12 in the thread that the Scoop article originally had different numbers, which may be true -- but he doesn't really have a rationale for all the other numbers he chose to ignore.)

EDIT TO ADD link to the 'classic' TIA post I reference here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=85732&mesg_id=85732 -- along with the reference to response #12.

[OnTheOtherHand]

62. I might as well clarify the referent

The "it" is the misinformation in TIA's OP, not other people's views (as I was trying to distinguish with the plural versus the singular). I still don't accept the premise that these people agree with TIA about the content of the OP. I am happy to react to the merits of what they themselves actually say. But just lumping together a lot of people who 'believe in fraud' isn't taking the arguments seriously. If any of them wants to endorse some of TIA's arguments, I will respond to their specific arguments (if any) for doing so. In the case of Steve Freeman, I've done so at length. But I'm not trying to tar them with TIA's brush -- on the contrary, I am trying to untar them.

I realize that lots of people don't care whether TIA's arguments make sense -- literally don't care whether they can understand him -- as long as his conclusions 'ring true' to them. That is their privilege. I think bad arguments lead to bad decisions. Beyond that, I think that in the long run, we are much better off getting things right than getting them wrong.

[OnTheOtherHand]

25. nice genre post! n/t

[mod mom]

50. NOW THAT THE MACHINES ARE BEING EXAMINED IN OH, GUESS WHAT WE'RE FINDING?

VOTE FLIPPING...Surprise, surprise! ( at least to some)

Now that we have a Dem SOS we can examine the machines, and guess what:

Dayton Daily News: NEARLY HALF OF VOTING MACHINES TESTED FAIL

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.


By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.


On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip

http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story /... ^UbUZU]UbUcTYWYWZV

[OnTheOtherHand]

51. seems off topic for this thread

The OP is about exit poll discrepancies. The exit poll discrepancies weren't correlated with DRE use. Moreover, even if the DREs weren't massively hacked in 2004, there is ample evidence that they are insecure, unreliable, and unverifiable.

[Peace Patriot]

13. Awesome compilation, Bleever! Until we get this through our heads--

that the 2004 election was stolen--and how it was stolen, and that that capability remains in place--we will continue to run around like chickens with our heads cut off (as my grandmother used to say), frantically wondering why, with 75% of the American people now opposed to the war, we can't stop the war, and all the other fascist crap that is going on.

I maintain that pretty much all you need to know is who "counted" the votes (rightwing Bushite corporations), and how (with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by those corporations, and with virtually no audit/recount controls), to know that they stole the 2004 election, and tried their damnedest to stem the antiwar tide in the 2006 elections. I mean, it's a no brainer. Give a Bushite secret code, what do you expect?

But, of course, I got to this fundamentalist and rather simple view via many a detailed TIA post--and posts of others--on the stats and facts of these elections. Beginners on this issue probably need to plow through it, and evaluate it for themselves--because it's really, really, really hard to take in the utter betrayal of all of us, of We the People, and of our democracy, that this information reveals.

And now our benighted Democratic Party leaders want to give Diebold and ES&S some more billions of our hard-earned tax dollars to fix it all up with a pretty bow (a 2% audit*).

I'm afraid that petty corruption is the problem (the $3.9 billion of the initial electronic voting coup, and more to come). To get around that--a formidable obstacle--I think we need to mobilize the Absentee Ballot voters (a big constituency for transparent vote counting), at the state/local level, to demand hand counting of the AB votes, and posting of the results BEFORE any electronics are involved, and encourage it to snowball (everyone will want their ballot counted), and let all these corrupt election officials keep their shiny new hackable machines but use them only for data storage and reporting. There was a big AB vote in '06--it got up to 50% in some places--evidence of a voter revolt against the machines. But they're not getting what they want. The AB votes are just "scanned" right into the rigged electronics. No human eyes count them. If people could bring the pressure of 50% of the voters to bear on a local registrar, I think we might get somewhere--especially if we don't insist on the career-ruiner of their admission that they wasted all those millions of dollars. Just count the votes!

The only thing Congress might be good for is getting a ballot in states that have none at all (no "paper trail," no ability to count anything; nada). Also, I think only about 30 of the states have AB voting as an option. But if the handcounting of AB votes gets rolling, you can be sure that voters in the other states will start demanding that option. A handcount of the AB votes would also be an excellent check against machine fraud.

Despite all the "smoking guns" being found in FL-13--and the plain fraudulent nature of the vote counting system itself--I think this is going to take a long time to repair. Maybe I'm wrong, and a sudden paradigm shift will occur. It could happen. There are, indeed, some signs of it. But I also feel that Diebold/ES&S and the powerful fascists behind them have their teeth and claws into a lot of people, and a whole lot at stake. Trillions of dollars in war profiteering. And many a global corporate predator plan in the works, for the final looting of the American people, and the final rape and plunder of the earth. They know that American voters can stop them. We have a lot of theoretical sovereignty in the matter. That's why they took away our right to vote. And they are not going give it back easily.

--------

*(In Venezuela, they handcount FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the ballots, as a check against machine fraud--and they have an open source code system. 55%! Now THAT is an AUDIT!)

[bleever]

24. "Trillions of dollars in war profiteering."

The scale is almost incomprehensible.

The OP is an excerpt from TIA's website, updated March 24, 2007.

[Melissa G]

16. Kickin' for Bleever!

Shrub stole two presidential elections. Kickin' for Truth!:kick:

[Febble]

17. ahem....

All of these explanations are not supported by factual data and have been thoroughly debunked.

In your dreams, TIA....

[mod mom]

41. VOTE FLIPPING:

Now that we have a Dem SOS we can examine the machines, and guess what:

Dayton Daily News: NEARLY HALF OF VOTING MACHINES TESTED FAIL

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.


By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.


On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip

http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story/... ^UbUZU]UbUcTYWYWZV

[Febble]

54. And your point is?

Because mine is, and has always been, that we need good arguments (like the above) for election reform, not bad ones. TIA's arguments do not hold water for reasons I have given elsewhere. They run the risk of damaging the cause because they are so easily rebutted by those who would like to see it sidelined.

Finding good arguments for reform does not make the bad arguments any better. In fact it is an excellent reason for dropping the bad arguments.

[mod mom]

56. If I were planning to steal an election, I would manipulate the exit polls to

reflect my theft. Why not release the precinct level results?

[Febble]

58. Well, what would that tell you?

If the exit polls had been manipulated, how would it help to have the "precinct level results"? Especially as they weren't manipulated - that's why people have all these arguments about them. The data (including the released precinct level data) show more exit poll responses for Kerry than Bush.

The question that has occupied so many of us is why that might have been the case, given that Bush won the official count. TIA's claim is that the count was manipulated. I wondered about that myself at one time, but closer study indicates that an overwhelmingly more likely explanation is that the poll sample had a pro-Democratic bias.

But if you think that the polls were "manipulated", how will it help you to get at the "manipulated" data?

[GreenTea]

18. It's all so very obvious, but the Dem's think there is no problem, they are doing nothing...

because they won congress even through more republicans should of gone down, as the republicans stole races all over the country last November...this is fact....Now watch as the Dems do little or nothing and 2008 elections will be history.

Only paper ballots...not some programmable machines can minimize the manipulation & fraud.

[understandinglife]

20. "I believe ... " & "Not One Line Of Software Between A Voter & A Valid Election"

:hi:

Recommended, of course!


Peace.

[bleever]

22. "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

And besides, it only gets clearer every day that this cabal, given the means and the opportunity, never passes up an opportunity to illegally obtain and consolidate power.

People who say Sure, our elections aren't at all secure or verifiable, but there's no indication that the Bushies actually exploited that vulnerability (which they in large part designed into the system) are hunting zebras at the racetrack.

"Not One Line Of Software Between A Voter & A Valid Election"!

:hi:

[Labors of Hercules]

26. Toto reco mendo

Where else have you sent this? This should be encapsulated and sent to every news venue in the country!

kck!

[Duppers]

30. True that, Hercules.

R & K

[Stevepol]

28. You speak for me, Bleever. Keep it up! K&R!!

[mod mom]

31. From an Ohio point of view:

Central Ohio-so called ground zero. I was very active in the campaign. One of my duties (as a volunteer) was establishing election day staging sites. I organized my inner ring suburb (12 precincts) on the near east side of Cols. The house next door was empty, so I got my neighbor to allow field organizers to move in. (being a good Dem he did). Election day, I worked near eastside at a labor union hall. I had voted before I dropped my kids off at school, in the same precinct that the governor votes, and many titans of business. 15 minutes in a light rain. Shortly later it started pouring on that cold November day. I had just gotten over Whooping Cough (can you believe it-must have picked it up while canvassing) so I remained indoors with field crew monitoring activities. Brian, who was the head Kerry Field Organizer, called 3pm to ask where our precinct was (had moved in next door. After voting he came by the union hall. He said there was no lines, he just walked right in and voted. He said the numbers looked good and everyone was expecting a big win. Shortly afterward we stated getting calls of huge lines in many near east neighborhood, predominately low income African American, many in precincts that I had canvassed weeks before. We couldn't get through to the BOE. One of the women who was working the phones was a former tv news reporter. She made several calls and soon were told news stations were going out to cover it in hopes of getting machines fixed, replaced or have new machines added. Teams of volunteers were sent out with extra umbrellas, rain ponchos,( and when we couldn't get anymore ponchos-garbage bags to protect against the pouring rain. Volunteers pooled $ to buy food and drinks and urged voters to stay in line. An elderly man who lives next door, whose son worked at network NBC told me they were expecting a big win for Kerry. Despite the long lines, we were givien very optimistic reports.

Later that evening at the downtown hotel there were throngs of jubliant volunteers. I went into an upstairs smaller reception, and despite hearing some disturbing numbers, the Kerry staffers all said not to worry, that the "boiler room" (never figured that one out) was still repeating that it was going to be a big win. I left at ~1:30 am with my heart sunk into my chest, and in total disbelief.

I started organizing with fellow volunteers on Nov 3. I remember the Dispatch had a map with machine allocation(saved it) that was very different from what we experienced. It was then I knew they were trying to cover up. The rest is history, but not to us in Ohio, who witnessed first hand a crime. Rove et al picked the wrong state if they thought we would swallow the bs that everyone, including our own party (unfortunately), was saying. Many of us have experienced much ridicule over our stance, but if you witnessed the blatant lies first hand, you too would not give up until the truth prevailed.

There were times I was so disappointed in members of my own party, I thought about leaving but it was the determination of John Conyers, the CBC and Barbara Boxer, who stood with us in demanding the truth. I never understood why Kerry conceded, and many of us believed he was working behind the scenes for a long time. It wasn't until Woodward's account of the concession and James Carville's role that made it clear to me. Traitors in our own party.

One last thing: 5.7 million votes cast in OH in '04 and only 4 documentated cases of VOTER fraud, yet the Ohio legislature passed the draconian HB 3 OH's Voter Suppression Law. It was never about voter fraud, the real issue was the GOP suppression of Dem votes. They just used more of their lying to attempt to turn the table on the truth, as they have on everything.

Thanks, bleever. It won't be over until the truth is known by all.

[bleever]

32. This deserves its own post, and more.

It's the story of the people who cared and worked and trusted and were betrayed by a crime.

Maybe the "crime" was successfully delegated, just as we're asked to believe that Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales delegated the firing of specific US attorneys without specifically naming them by name.

But however they delegate away culpability, or create cutouts or plausible deniability, their ability to transfer liability for misdeeds can't stand, over time, against the efforts of people who took responsibility for the individual points of action that make up American democracy.

mod mom: :toast:

Ohio may be the rebirth place of American democracy.

[mod mom]

44. US Attorney Interference and the '04 OH Election

We know the GOP went to all lengths to suppress the Dem vote in Ohio. How far were they willing to go? Were they willing to use justice appointees to postpone a major story on GOP corruption? We are hearing stories of USAs who were fired for NOT using their powers to help win elections, but not the reports to those USAs who were willing. I believe their needs to be some subpoenas issues regarding the postponement of the Noe (Coingate) GOP Scandal.

Seems like Rep Conyers and Rep Kaptur had concerns about a Ohio US Attorney. In a letter in August of 2005 (link at bottom) to AG Gonzales, they write this regarding the Noe investigation:

OF SPECIAL INTEREST NOTE THESE PARAGRAPHS:

"As a matter of fact, the numerous delays in the investigation have already raised the specter of political favoritism. From documents that have been made public, we know that the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, Gregory White, who is leading the federal investigation, had prior knowledge of the losses before the 2004 presidential election, as did the Governor of Ohio and other officials.16 At the same time, no investigation was initiated on these matters until spring of this year.17

The fact pattern present in this case, particularly with the new disclosure that the lead federal prosecutor may well have gotten his job as a result of a political appeal by Governor Taft's office to Karl Rove, make it abundantly clear that a special counsel is necessitated. We urge you to make such a designation immediately to help restore public trust in this very important investigation. "

That letter came after a early July 2005 letter from Rep Conyers to OH US Attorney Gregory White:

Dear Mr. White,

I write to you because of my very serious concerns regarding the manner in which your office has handled the investigation into alleged federal campaign finance violations involving the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and other Republican candidates. In particular, I am concerned that your office delayed investigating this very serious matter until after the 2004 presidential election and as a result prejudiced the government's ability to pursue justice in the case.

It is my understanding that on October 13, 2004, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio was provided evidence from Lucas County grand jury proceedings suggesting extensive federal campaign finance violations took place involving Tom Noe, the leading Bush-Cheney campaign official in the region for the 2004 campaign. On the same day, it was reported that your office shared this information with the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, and that later that day, the Section e-mailed to the U.S. Attorney's Office authorization to investigate the matter. Two days later, on October 15, it was reported that the local prosecutor's office gave their evidence to the FBI.

It has been further reported by the Toledo Blade that you began your investigation into the case around early March 2005. Subsequent news reports stated that federal grand jury proceedings occurred on June 1, 2005, well after the presidential election and approximately seven-and-one half months after the Department was notified of the potential violations.

If this series of events is accurate, the delay may have violated federal guidelines as well as bar rules of professional conduct requiring impartiality and promptness in criminal investigations. First, federal law directs that each United States Attorney "shall prosecute for all offenses against the United States." The U.S. Attorneys' Manual reiterates this requirement and further explains that "their professional abilities and the need for their impartiality in administering justice directly affect the public's perception of federal law enforcement." While I am well aware that the principle of prosecutorial discretion grants your office latitude in determining which cases warrant prosecution, that doctrine in no way permits political considerations—including the fact of a high profile and closely contested election—to intrude on the prosecutorial process....

-snip
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/govt_docs/2005/3228conyers_ohio_ltr.html


Lucas County, OH Prosecutor Julia Bates presented US Attorney Gregory White with evidence on Tom Noe on October 13, 2004 (22 days before the November 2, 2004 Presidential Election). Ms Bates, who is a Democrat, was up for re-election (although un-opposed in 2004). Is it coincidental that the Lucas County Democratic Headquarters was burglarized on October 11, 2004?


Article published Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Lucas County Democratic headquarters burglarized

BLADE STAFF

The Lucas County Democratic Headquarters was burglarized overnight, and three computers, including the party’s main system, were stolen.

The computers contained highly sensitive information, including the party’s financial information, names and personal phone numbers of hundreds of party members, candidates, and volunteers.

The computers also stored e-mails from candidates that included discussion about campaign strategy.

A second computer, belonging to an attorney-volunteer working to ensure voters’ rights, also was taken, officials said. The headquarters on 1817 Madison Avenue does have an alarm system that volunteers believed they set late Monday when they left.

However, it apparently wasn’t tripped during the night. Workers arriving about 7:30 a.m. yesterday noticed the back window had been shattered and called police.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041012/NEWS03/41012016



Finally, is there a connection with this interference and the fact that Tom Noe's wife Bernadette Noe was Chair of the Lucas County BOE, (Lucas County is a Democratic stronghold) a county that incurred so many issues that OH SOS was forced to issue this report on the county after the '04 election:


OH SOS Investigation of the Lucas County BOE after 2004 Election

includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.


-One-half of the ballots printed and used in the 2004 general election in Lucas county were stored in an open space on the fhird floor of the county warehouse with no security measures in place.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation on Lucas County BOE page 4



-Live ballots were delivered to polling locations a week in advance of the election. Although the ballots were retrieved, one board employee who was assigned to the warehouse informed the SOS staff that he did not believe all the ballots were successfully retrieved.
SOURCE; SOS Investigation, page 5



-Lucas County BOE failed to record or retrieve ballot stub numbers of absentee voters’ ballots as required by statute OH Revised Code 3505.23. It was reported by an elector that her mother had received not one, but three absentee voter ballots. there was no way to determine if similar incidents occurred and if so how many.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, page 7




-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.



-In late September or early October an employee of the Ohio Republican Party contacted Sam Thurber (*involved with politician wife Maggie Thurber in Noe scandal.) wanting to inspect and have copies made of all recently returned voter registrations, Ohio Republican Party offered to furnish volunteers to assist with copying postcards. No one at the Lucas County BOE can confirm that anyone was assigned to supervise Republican volunteers. On their second day of copying, a BOE employee, Jennifer Bernath, Democratic Booth Official) saw republican party volunteers peeling off the yellow return stickers applied by the post office. (Violation of RC 149.43 (B) (I) , and agruably a violation of 149.351.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, pgs 18-19



-The Swanton 3 poll book turned up missing and has never been recovered.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 16





Conyers-Kaptur seek special counsel for Noe probe
by John Conyers, Jr. and Marcy Kaptur
August 4, 2005

The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530


Dear Mr. Attorney General:

We write to request that the U.S. Department of Justice immediately appoint an outside special counsel to assume the Department's investigation into alleged illegal contributions by Mr. Thomas Noe to federal and state political campaigns. In light of recent disclosures that Governor Taft's office, which is a subject of the investigation, made a direct political appeal to Karl Rove for Gregory White, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio to receive his job, there is little doubt that this is a textbook case for the appointment of a special counsel.

We understand and appreciate that it is not unusual for local and state politicians to use their influence to obtain presidential appointments for their friends and political allies; however, it is unusual, and indeed inappropriate and violative of your regulations, for prosecutors who obtain such appointments to review the conduct of those same individuals and their friends. Regardless of the actual or perceived sincerity or motives of any particular prosecutor, to ask an individual who owes his job to certain politicians to pursue legal actions against those same politicians places the prosecutor in an untenable situation. Whatever actions he or she takes will inevitably be subject to questions of favoritism and bias, calling the entire prosecution into question. This is why the special counsel regulations were promulgated to begin with.

At the outset, we should note that Mr. Noe, who chaired the 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign for northwest Ohio and managed the State of Ohio's Bureau of Workers Compensation Fund, appears to have been involved in the diversion of millions of dollars from the Fund to unsecured investments in coins and other collectibles.1 Over $12 million in coins purportedly owned by the State of Ohio, and perhaps other collectibles, are missing, including two coins valued at $300,000.2 Further, the State of Ohio now has claimed losses of $215 million dollars as a result of unsecured hedge fund transactions involving MDL Enterprises of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.3 It appears very likely that political contributions to both federal and state officeholders and candidates were channeled from these state funds.4 Mr. Noe himself was a Bush Pioneer who raise over $100,000 for the Bush campaign.5 Many political officials have recognized the impropriety of these contributions and thus have returned them, including Ohio Governor Bob Taft and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.6

As you are no doubt aware, under the Department's regulations, you are required to appoint a special counsel when (1) a "criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted," (2) the investigation "by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department," and (3) "it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter."7 There is little doubt that all three factors are met in the Noe case.

In this situation, a criminal investigation is clearly warranted and, as a matter of fact, the Department has initiated one. A grand jury has been seated in the Northern District of Ohio and has been deposing dozens of individuals who may have been involved in these illegal activities. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been seizing computers, files, and assets of some of the individuals involved.

Second, there are myriad conflicts of interest for Department prosecutors to continue the investigation on their own. To begin with, the United States Attorneys investigating the case, those for the Northern and Southern Districts for Ohio, both of whom were appointed by President Bush, would be in the untenable position of investigating a leading official of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. We now know that Mr. White has very close connections with the Governor's office and the White House. In fact, recently released records show that Mr. White sought Governor Taft's help in obtaining the U.S. Attorney position.8 The Governor's Chief of Staff, Brian Hicks, apparently communicated with Karl Rove, then a counselor to the President, about Mr. White's interest in the post.9 In an e-mail to Mr. Hicks, Mr. White wrote, "'I believe that my record speaks for itself, and I doubt there are too many county chairs for the Bush campaign that worked harder.'"10 This is the same Brian Hicks who was convicted along with his executive assistant, Cherie Carroll for accepting gifts from Mr. Noe in violation of state law (both are now lobbyists).11 In assessing this prong of the regulations, the test for appointment of a special counsel does not rest on the prosecutor in question's perceived reputation or the characterization of his reputation by others, regardless of their political stripe; it is based on whether the conflict of interest exists at all, which is clearly the case in the present instance.

In addition, on October 1, 2004, one month before the election, the Bush administration appointed Mr. Noe as Chair of the U.S. Mint's Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee.12 Federal legislation was passed for the specific purpose of allowing Mr. Noe's appointment.13 That legislation moved through the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, before which Mr. Noe had testified14 and to whose Members Mr. Noe had contributed financially. Mr. Noe resigned the U.S. Mint position on May 26, 2005,15 after the circumstances of the appointment were publicized in the media.

Finally, the appointment of a special counsel for this matter would undoubtedly serve the public interest. The allegations of improper conduct reach to the highest-possible levels of federal and state government and pertain to a serious corruption of our democratic system of government. The appointment of a special counsel would demonstrate to the American public the Department's understanding of the importance of and need for impartiality in this case. Also, an investigation by a single special counsel would not be subject to any jurisdictional issues that may be present under the current scenario of two prosecutors. There is little question that high-ranking political officials nationally and at the state level were knowledgeable and involved in these activities. Many questions must be addressed involving the link between alleged illegal campaign contributions, diversion of State funds, their relation to 2005 elections, as well as the federal appointment of Mr. Noe to a federal advisory committee.

As a matter of fact, the numerous delays in the investigation have already raised the specter of political favoritism. From documents that have been made public, we know that the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, Gregory White, who is leading the federal investigation, had prior knowledge of the losses before the 2004 presidential election, as did the Governor of Ohio and other officials.16 At the same time, no investigation was initiated on these matters until spring of this year.17

The fact pattern present in this case, particularly with the new disclosure that the lead federal prosecutor may well have gotten his job as a result of a political appeal by Governor Taft's office to Karl Rove, make it abundantly clear that a special counsel is necessitated. We urge you to make such a designation immediately to help restore public trust in this very important investigation.

We look forward to promptly hearing whether you will appoint a special counsel and, if not, the reason for your decision. Please reply through the House Judiciary Committee Minority Office, 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 (tel [phone]; fax: [phone]).

Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
Marcy Kaptur

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1400

[nashville_brook]

35. this post brings back all the bile of that night and the next few weeks

not to mention 2000.

this issue isn't about stats and calculations -- it's about being robbed. i'm so f'n tired of people with their magical math trying to tell me i wasn't robbed. go tell it to another message board -- you know the one i'm talking about.

[texpatriot2004]

33. Yes, Bleever, those are my calculations too. I still wonder what

was KKKarl doing with that laptop in the dining room on "election" night?

[bleever]

34. And if I were dictator, and could choose a cartooner to make a cartoon,

It'd look something like this, back in those crazy early days of wondering whose votes oughta count:

http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/shockwave/recountdown.htm

[diane in sf]

36. Thank you Bleever--the elections were obviously stolen

by a combination of vote suppression and machine chicanery. You've made a great compilation.

And just to add about Greg Palast--he has a background in accounting and uncovering business fraud and knows his stats--if he states there is a vote fraud his past history makes me tend to trust him.

[OnTheOtherHand]

39. I don't think that is the point

First of all, the issue on this thread isn't whether "there is a vote fraud." All sorts of things happened in 2004, and all sorts of things are alleged, and a lot of us are interested in sorting out the facts. I don't know what Palast has said about exit polls, so I don't even know whether I disagree with him. But no matter how good his stats chops are, if he starts from the premise that exit polls are accurate, then the argument is Garbage In, Garbage Out.

If "vote suppression" means things that prevent people from voting, then it mostly shouldn't show up in the exit polls at all (unless one includes uncounted provisional ballots, which were a small percentage of all votes). One of the reasons I derogate TIA's very poor exit poll arguments is that they tend to distract people from vote suppression. Of course, my biggest problem is that the arguments are dead wrong, and I don't think dead wrong arguments should go uncriticized on a progressive board.

[BeFree]

43. Hehhhe

Exit polls are not accurate? Tell that to the people who paid $10 million dollars for that set of numbers on election day. $10 million. Gosh, OTOH, you could have saved them all that money had you been able to tell them the $10 million was gonna be wasted since the numbers aren't accurate. You'd have been famous!

Of course, however, they would have dismissed you. Probly kicked you out of their offices. But just imagine if anyone believed you? Can you imagine that? I can't.

Again, the accumulated science on the election of 2004, makes a strong case for the presidential election being stolen. The only evidence otherwise comes from the privately owned voting machines which are being done away with as we speak. And why? Why are those machines being unplugged and trashed?

[OnTheOtherHand]

45. I think you already know why this is wrong

Unfortunately, you don't care. And that is your right. But I'm happy to make clear that you don't speak for the reality-based community.

(There are phrases here that I mostly agree with, but it would be a waste of time to sort them out, since you aren't trying to find out what actually happened in 2004. Again, that is your right.)

[Kurovski]

37. Kick.(nt)

[Peggy Day]

42. every time I call my senator or representative, I also mention the voting situation

because it is still current. I'm sure it can happen again, and probably will. I would not be surprised if Jeb Bush were our next president. This stealing of elections needs to go to the front burner until we all think it is run fairly.

[kpete]

46. Wow!

and another WOW!

[PATRICK]

47. The math helps

despite the controversy. I think TIA may have stretched things with a bias and some oversimplification. Our sad experience in our district where we had been predicted to win handily and any loss should be challenged(and the infrequent polls were vary inadequate in the small race to really guide anyone too far) was that glowing window began to close shut. Last minute dirty tricks on the phone did lose votes.
How to poll people already phone badgered to a white rage? Gerrymandering- THE scandalous problem- got the help needed. But to exactly pin numbers to what last minute dirt or stubborn GOP loyalty reasserting itself after the page scandal? Those are as concrete as moldering ballot boxes in Okefenokee or digitally erased electronic ballots. You can surmise, you can believe, but you cannot prove. At least, as far as we know, the actual ballot count was fair enough. The trouble is there are no local polls to help much and though TIA attempted the best with what he had he could not possibly keep the pulse of each complex race.

Much argument has been given on both sides whether the exit polls and other data can be actual proof one way or the other- and still no one will have proof one way or another who won because so much of the nationwide system is unaccountable now. You can believe Bush won in the MSM contest sense but for me the math that is adding up daily has to do with the inevitable gangland activities and patterns of the Bush mob. The gaming of the DOJ attorneys- moreso for the NEXT election!- is getting pretty obvious. It is apparent they fell short in giving props to the GOP in 2006 when this last ditch was needed. It only amazes me how they didn't frontload the DOJ with stooges from the getgo, but as 2000 losers they were very vulnerable. The patterns of determined fraud and cheating and suppression are there. Suppressed votes are easier to guesstimate and not so controversial as the exit poll agonies. Palast doesn't even bother with election day. Kerry's certain victory was stolen long before and fairly openly even without his Palast's lone voice crying foul to the three monkey media. They cheat. They lie. They accuse the other guy. They use the whole book of methods to hide each individual one. They take no risks. They wanted a mandate not a fair chance to win. They wanted to coattail in some more Congressional critters.

So forget the exit polls or the tallies or anything else. You expect to tell me that Bush played fair- or didn't have to cheat but did, that anything is trustworthy that can possibly argue for a fair election and certain victory? And this is without the MSM doing its slanted usual yeomanship job for the Emperor blocking the fogged in masses from uniting or waking up. Nixon had his big mandate with only a fraction of the chicanery. No argument there except for the dirty campaign itself.

Yet somehow, the advantage that TIA enjoys in the truth of the proposition(Bush cheated and would have lost otherwise) when going for exit poll interpretation must rankle when others legitimately desire to critique the method. So much so they end up trying to legitimize the impossible- Bush's election by the numbers and the voters AFTER accounting for suppression and fraud.

People who are not number nerds exult with another sure arrow in the quiver(while we are still locked out from auditing accountability and full evidence) or sorrow at yet another circumstantial quagmire though logical suspicion is absurdly obvious and cover-up is all.

TIA provided hope that spurred attacking the obvious crime. Frustrated that nothing comes of that shall we turn upon one another with the express goal of destroying hope when there are walls to tear down or scale? meanwhile Ohio is unraveling as are other states. Methods, crimes and numbers are becoming more visible. It is still questionable(as intended) whether any actual numbers can be recovered to challenge the bottom line results(as in the past Mexican election) but in essence a more complex web of circumstance is meshing numbers on a far wider scale than all the analysis based on selected statistics.

In the end I would bet money- at long odds- that all the retrieved historical data and evidence will mesh more accurately with TIA's estimate simply because he started out with a correct prejudice- that Bush cheated and still didn't get the size win he desired because Kerry was winning otherwise. An exit poll might be enough for a bully fraud like a Republican to whine about "robbery" but to gnash teeth, fighting and tangled in our high standards against impure math seems an evasion of energy better used in getting at the crooks and exposing and reforming all.

I would guess, depending if one wants to factor in people prevented from voting or having their ballots tossed, that all the methods created a shift of about 6% to 4%. This is an old fashioned guess, mostly unverifiable in hard paper evidence but based on the variety and locations of fraud and its convenience. Bush was going to "win" no matter what and the Dems- even if they came closer or overwhelmed it slightly would have a fight for which they were not fully prepared- like 2000. I suspect that the astrologists who came to the same murky conclusion are fortuitously on the right side of truth. None of us are what is needed- strong prosecutors armed with tough laws subpoenas.

When the clouds part AND the left is not the sole guardian of the truth as by chance it is now by simple abdication of the Bushes of any decency or legality, then it will be interesting to see how rigorous debate on exit polls go and if they have any use to a fully reformed voting system.

On edit, nothing is better than the last minute scramble. Under a dramatic wave of something any shift could upset polls, could mask fraud- the "November" surprise of the last minute GOP bag of tricks.
A French example of this is when the Socialists were leading in the polls the French president Pompidou- who constitutionally is supposed to be neutral- went on national TV warning about the Communists- and the bedrock Gaullists won again while the echoes of left outrage were still reverberating. Until we unseat this monstrosity completely- and the MSM horse's behind it rode in on- a thin margin of shallow support with strong anti-Dem prejudice lurking in the brainwashed hearts of the ill-informed- will need more than number gazing and caution.

[OnTheOtherHand]

49. thanks for a thoughtful post

I wish I thought TIA's errors were harmless or helpful -- and I don't discount that they may have done some good. But when progressives start thinking in terms of useful errors, it's time to be worried, and I sure am.

It's not just a matter of integrity, although I value that. It's not just a matter of credibility, although I value that, too. It's a matter of strategy. If we actually go out of our way to confuse ourselves about whether millions of votes were miscounted in 2004, I think it's bound to wreak havoc with our priorities. I saw an example just the other day, when someone offered as an argument for 100% hand counts that there were high exit poll discrepancies for every other voting technology in 2004. Well, I can think of worse ideas than 100% hand counts, but all in all that is a very poor argument. Looking at what we actually know about 2004, it's hard to see why we should be working harder to implement 100% hand counts than to make sure that eligible voters can vote, and yet, I detect far more passion about the former than the latter.

On some level, we can proceed without knowing whether millions of votes were miscounted in 2004 or not. Unverifiable, insecure, unreliable technology is obviously a bad idea. But irrational certainty that millions of votes were miscounted is bound to color all our judgments. Actually, the balance of evidence suggests that when people got to cast their votes, the votes generally were counted correctly (not to speak of provisional ballots that weren't counted at all). I think we should weigh that reality, and set aside the canard that it somehow offers aid and comfort to the Republican party or the DRE manufacturers.

[ejbr]

48. Excuse me Bleever, but I think you missed the boat

The mainstream media only cares about voter fraud in the Ukraine, as they have shown quite shamelessly (the United States does not accept the results of Ukraine's presidential elections ). Voter fraud here in the U.S. has no relevance to our way of living and therefore deserves no scrutiny. K?:sarcasm:

On a more serious note, AWESOME analysis. Would you consider going on Fox to explain this to their viewers? My heart still sinks upon reflection of the day after the 2004 election. A co-worker was gloating about how Bush beat Kerry. I remember right after the final results were announced how a completely confused Al Franken tried to figure out how exit polls could be so wrong. I KNEW Bush stole the election, but could not do or say anything about it. I have to leave this page now because I am about to explode. :grr:

[bleever]

52. 90% of reported electronic vote switching incidents were from Kerry to Bush.

Remember, vote flipping creates a two vote difference: not only does one candidate lose a vote, the other one gains one.

Rove even slipped up at one point in defending the 2006 election results to a loyal audience by talking about how many more races they would have won with the "switching" of a small number of votes in certain races.

[TellTheTruth82]

53. Problem

Wow, what a recitation of statistical probabilities, yet you failed to mention the one key point. What these numbers show is that it is still possible that it happened. Apparently you majored in this stuff, yet you failed to recognize that because an event is improbable, doesn't make it impossible. To be honest, you must mention that possibility (though the odds are against it - it could have happened).

[OnTheOtherHand]

55. that isn't the biggest problem

The probabilities are all based on faulty assumptions. There is no basis for all those Monte Carlo analyses of bogus poll numbers. There is no basis for assuming that the exit polls are perfect random samples.

In fact, the argument has a lot in common with creationist arguments that purport to prove that evolution is statistically impossible. And it is riddled with all sorts of other errors -- some of which have to be considered deliberate, since they have been corrected many, many times. It's really a shame that some DUers kick this stuff.

[Nothing Without Hope]

57. K & R for Bleever!

His one big blue eye sees clearly.

[epppie]

59. I'm not a statistician.

I can't pretend to analyse the arguments of TIA and Freeman and Febbie and OTOH. What I can say is that the 2004 exit polls look very suspicious and seem to fit in with other patterns indicating intent and capability on the part of the GOP towards election stealing.

Put another way: the GOP seems willing and ready and eager to use any and all methods to steal elections. They seem to have the tools available to them that would allow electronic election stealing. I'm gonna have to see proof that they didn't do it before I believe they didn't, that electronic manipulation wasn't at least in their bag of tricks, one way or another (even if it was just as simple as sending the more unreliable machines to Dem areas).

What HAVE I seen? Overstatements from TIA and ridicule from Febbie and OTOH. I'm not impressed with either side and I don't think anything I've seen dispells the nasty smell from the 2004 election.

[Febble]

60. I don't dispute

that I have occasionally stooped to ridicule. I don't think I have done it very often, certainly not as often as I have been ridiculed by TIA, and only when at the end of my tether. I DO wish people would actually evaluate arguments before using them. The case for election reform is irrefutable, but the arguments made in favor of it all too often aren't.

I think this is a problem.

[epppie]

61. Sorry I mispoke your name again, Febble.

Hopefully I'll get it right the next time.

The way I see it, people think something has been going wrong and they are eager to find THE smoking gun.
I think that's the wrong way to look at some of the election problems we have had. I think there have been innumerable smoking guns.

[OnTheOtherHand]

63. machine allocation probably wouldn't affect the exit polls -- in fact...

Most forms of voter intimidation and suppression would not affect the exit polls. That doesn't mean they didn't happen. It's not just that TIA is looking for one smoking gun when there are several, it's that he is screaming and waving for everyone to look in the wrong places. Some people think this may actually be a good thing on balance, and for all I know, they may be right. But I would just as soon let the Bush administration corner the market on bad arguments.

The question of tone is really tough. Why not ridicule the ridiculous? Isn't it sometimes an ethical obligation to ridicule the ridiculous? If people are offended when I ridicule the ridiculous, maybe I'm being too provocative, but I think the board can handle -- and deserves -- a few people who try to draw a bright line between fact and fever dream. I don't think that fever dreams inform wise action.