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I agree with the recent post by planetc, which praised Senator Kerry, and in fact I wrote a very similar post a couple weeks ago. However, I feel that it is not inconsistent to admire someone greatly and yet strongly disagree with them.
I am posting this letter that I wrote yesterday to Senator Kerry, in response to a form letter from him about the importance of "election reform", expressing my disagreement with the way he has chosen not to be highly visible in his objections to this election. The reason I am posting this is that I thought that it might contain some ideas that some of you might wish to use in writing similar letters to Congress, or for use in arguments with your friends about why our efforts on this issue are so important. Here is my letter:
Dear Senator Kerry,
Your services to our country have earned you the ever-lasting gratitude of your fellow citizens, and I mean that with all my heart. As someone who vigorously supported your efforts to be elected President, I and millions of other Americans were bitterly disappointed by your "defeat."
However, I strongly believe that you made a grievous mistake by your decision to concede the 2004 election and not publicly fight to "have all the votes counted", as your running mate said shortly before you conceded. I say this now, because it is possible that it may yet not be too late for you to correct this mistake. Here is why I say this:
In my opinion, the evidence is very strong that you won this election, by carrying Ohio, and the popular nation-wide vote too, and that the election was stolen from you by a vast election fraud conspiracy. If I and hundreds of thousands of others are correct in this belief, then the failure to correct this problem will constitute the end of our democracy.
Your decision to not publicly fight this (regardless of what you may have done behind the scenes) has resulted in a virtually complete lack of news media coverage of this issue. Consequently, the good majority of Americans do not understand the problem. Therefore, there is little public pressure on Congress to fix the problem. And as you well know, without a tremendous amount of public pressure, this President and this Congress are not going to be interested in fixing this problem. Therefore, the Democrats will lose more seats in Congress in 2006 and 2008, and again fail to win the Presidency. With an even further right wing Congress, there will be even less interest in fixing the problem, etc., etc., etc., and we have a vicious cycle, with no evident means of breaking it -- at least not in our or our children's life time.
I understand that you believe that massive fraud was not required to defeat your bid for the Presidency. Here is why you should not believe that:
As I think you are aware, exit polls showed you winning both the electoral and the popular vote by comfortable margins, and there was a large discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count. It is very important to consider this issue carefully, among other reasons because in some countries (such as the Ukraine) exit polls serve the very important purpose of assuring a fair election.
There are only three possible reasons for a discrepancy between an election exit poll and an official vote count:
A. Random error, or chance.
B. Exit poll inaccuracy, or bias.
C. Faulty integrity of the election.
Let's consider the likelihood of each of these three possibilities:
Random error:
1. You won the Ohio exit poll by 4.2%, a difference of 6.7% from the official results. The odds against this happening by chance are 1,000 to one.
2. You won the national exit poll by 2.6%, a difference of 5.4% from official tally. The odds against this happening by chance are nearly a million to 1. (See Jonathon Simon’s report).
3. In 18 states, the discrepancy between the official vote and the exit poll was outside of the margin of error. All were in favor of Bush.
4. In 6 of the 11 major swing states, the discrepancy was outside of the margin of error, all in favor of Bush. The odds against the total discrepancy in these states alone exceeds 25 million to 1.
Conclusion: Random error is effectively ruled out as a cause of the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote tally.
Exit poll inaccuracy, or bias:
I highly recommend Dr. Steven Freeman’s excellent discussion of this issue. He brings up numerous reasons why exit polls, especially as conducted by experienced pollsters, are likely to be more accurate than official vote tallies. I will just mention a couple of salient points here:
1. Exit polls conducted by experienced pollsters are rarely or never off by the 5.4% margin noted above, except when massive fraud takes place.
2. Although numerous theories have been put forth to explain why the exit polls were not accurate in this election, most have been disproved, and those that haven’t been disproved are supported by no evidence other than the fact that the exit polls disagree with the official vote tally.
Faulty election integrity:
Having indicated why the first two possibilities are unlikely, let’s consider the likelihood that massive election fraud could have accounted for your defeat:
1. Numerous reports of compromised election integrity noted in Rep. Conyers’ report, including a computer programmer who testified that he was asked to (and did) write a computer program in Florida to switch votes from Kerry to Bush.
2. Secret computer software, under the control of Republican operatives, to count our votes.
3. Every effort made by Secretary of State Blackwell to obstruct a complete recount of the Ohio vote.
4. You yourself were several months ago caught on tape saying something like “These are the crookedest bunch of …” I for one was glad to hear you say that. But if that’s what you think, why would you think that stealing an election is beneath their honor?
To me and numerous others, the logic is inescapable, and we hope that you will agree with it. Now that the election has been formally challenged in the House and the Senate, maybe there is a second chance to reverse the problems that your silence up to this point has caused. I hope and pray that you will reconsider your position on this matter and join with us in an effort to save our democracy.
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