Okay, tin foil hat theory time

[tavalon]

If there was a last minute infusion of energy as evidenced by various Massachusetts activist folk who also post here and if there was a higher turnout than expected, could we have been Diebolded? Yeah, I know MA uses paper ballots but they aren't hand counted, they are scanned................on Diebold machines.

[peace frog]

1. Doubtful

Brown took a strong lead right from the get-go and never lost it. The election was called less than two hours after th polls closed.
No need to manipulate Diebold, the voters had spoken.

[Junkdrawer]

2. Until...

We get meaningful audits...

and

The media is wrested from Corporate hands...

I'm not buying the clearly scripted results of the media events we call elections.

[endless october]

3. sometimes voters just do dumb shit. nt

[tavalon]

5. Having seen plenty of that in my life, I'm not discounting it, In fact, I think that is it

I just don't like proprietary software from Diebold doing the "counting".

[madokie]

8. Me either

around here we never have a :puke: even run for any of our local offices, on the local level and we used to send good democrats to washington then something happened and it wasn't we dumbed down it was we started counting our votes by electronic vote counting machines. I suspect we got diebolded big time on this one here.

Its time we people get off our asses and demand the code to those machines that supposedly helps to keep this a democracy.

[endless october]

28. i'm not big on electronic voting period.

especially with the vulnerability to hacking.

i just don't think it was the case this time. i think the people made a really boneheaded choice.

but i'm pretty jaded when it comes to politics lately. we're about to get the Senate health insurance company bailout act of 2010 forced on us without any reconciliation just so congress and the president can claim that health care is "reformed" during the state of the union. meanwhile, this bill is the biggest piece of shit to come out of Washington in some time, and now there's no way to fix it before it passes. fuck.

[secondwind]

4. my "theory" was that she was told to concede, and not contest. They (the Pres., etc.)

must have moved on and have other plans.

Didn't you think she conceded too early, or was it just too overwhelming?

Who knows.

But 59-seat majority is not a bad majority.

[still_one]

6. We never had a 60 seat majority, that is a misrepresentation. Democrats very rarely stand eye to ey

together on issues

[tavalon]

9. As Will Rogers famously said:

"I belong to no organized party, I'm a Democrat"

Besides, people keep counting Lieberputz and he just isn't countable in the caucus and should be kicked out on his ass and his chairmanships stripped from him.

[still_one]

30. They won't, but he definitely should be stripped of his chairmanships /nt

[AndyA]

12. The Dems couldn't do anything with 60 seats. They'll do even less with 59.

Honestly, I wonder what the hell they'd do if they had 80 seats. Or 100. They'd probably still allow the GOP to control the chambers. :(

[tavalon]

14. Well, it will be easier for them to throw up their hands and say, we just don't have the numbers

It worked for years and in the last year, an awful lot of us have gotten wise. I think they want the minority position back because it's easier to defend that they don't/won't do anything for the average guy.

[tavalon]

7. Hee, hee, hey unrec brigade..............

I'm not in the least bit interested in this getting on the greatest page. It was a 4:30 am musing, nothing more. You can get your panties untwisted. You guys really should relax, pissyness doesn't lead to a long or happy life.

[KharmaTrain]

10. Nope...Not By That Large A Margin...

Kinda hard to steal an election that isn't close. It's a nice excuse for those who refuse to admit party or organizational failures. It's almost become a knee-jerk reaction that when your side loses, the first thing to blame is the machines. I guess that helps some sleep at night.

[tavalon]

13. That is something I've never understood

Is it harder to change the count by 1 million rather than 1 hundred? Computers don't find one number intrinsically harder than another. Getting a cover story, seems like all that would take. I'll admit I'm not a computer programmer, I just hang with a lot of them and I ask this question a lot. And the only answer I get is that there would be more doubt if it were more blatant, but there was plenty of doubt already. The seed was spread, the die cast, etc.

I'm actually one of the people who believes this was a fucked up way to send a message to the Beltway Dems who are too insulated and surrounded by yes men to figure it out. Still, I think this needs to be discussed every single time a Diebold, or any other proprietary voting system is used. This is something that should never ever by private, or privatized and it is both.

[KharmaTrain]

17. It's Who Counts The Votes...

In 2004, one could argue that since Blackwell and his ilk were in charge of the vote, it was rife for stealing. But in Massetchusetts, you have a Democratic Secretary of State who is in charge of the count. Be assured, if there were any irregularities...especially where thousands of votes end up switched or results didn't match internal poling, you'd be hearing a lot more about this.

Voter fraud is nothing new...being in Chicago, I saw many ways to tamper with the old hand-pull machines as well as suburban GOOP controlled precinicts where Democratic ballots were lost. The machines are only as good as the people who operate them...be it a scanner or even a paper ballot. Those hellbent on rigging an election will find a way.

Again, this only works when the election is close...where a handful of votes per precinct can make a difference. That wasn't the case last night.

[tavalon]

20. I think the answer to my question is contained in your post

I have a question about terminology and really, my understanding of this will hinge on this. When you say internal polling, do you mean exit polling (actual people saying who they voted for) or a polling function within the optical scanners?

[KharmaTrain]

25. Party Polling...

I've never had much faith in exit polls as those who respond generally have an agenda in doing so. Many people are too busy...just want to vote and get out.

I'm refering to internal party polling that goes on all throughout a campaign (or should)...and is what the parties use to determine where to put resources and where their candidates are strong. In Coakley's case, the pollster was Celinda Lake. Thus if their polling, which is done daily during the final days shows a big discrepency that's when you'll hear about "irrgularities". Ironically we heard some of that early in the day yesterday, but vanished as it became apparent that Coakley was going to lose.

[tavalon]

27. Okay, that answers my question - you do need a tight race to avoid internal polling problems

And this one polled bad early and went just as badly.

[KharmaTrain]

29. Makes Stealing A Lot Easier...

As they say, robbery works best under darkeness and clouds of confusion. We saw this in the Minnesota recount where Coleman's people tried to contest balots in predominately Democratic areas where they knew they were in trouble and to try to keep the count in their favor. It didn't work.

Had the polling on this race been close yesterday, we would have heard about it...but, as you say, the numbers went south quickly and you didn't hear Democrats, other than those with rose-colored glasses, denying things were going bad. The ugly truth is the Democrats got skunked...blaming machines is a good way for those responsible for the loss to avoid taking responsibility.

[Orsino]

11. The tinfoil hat theory...

...would be the blithe assumption that Diebold machine results do not in any way reflect the wishes of the designers of the proprietary software and hackable interface.

The sad thing is that an election not being close, and therefore even less likely to have been hacked, reinforces our complacency about letting private corporations tell us how they think we voted.

[tekisui]

15. Nah, the American electorate are just fucking idiots.

[tavalon]

21. And that certainly is the occam's razor most likely explanation

Well, at least highly uninformed and voting on who had the flashier campaign.

[TankLV]

24. I think it was "Nakid Boy" - afterall, who can resist good cheezecake?

But what the hell do I know...

[pipi_k]

34. And if he hadn't used his hand to strategically cover up the naughty bits...

He might have gotten 100% of the vote here.



:+

[TZ]

16. Funny how that evil Diebold has constantly elected

Democrats in Maryland in the last 10 years. I guess the Dems are rigging it to their advantage? I nominate this as most idiotic thread of the week so far.

[Rebubula]

18. Shhh...

No need for logic and reason when you can make wild and spurious accusations.

[tavalon]

19. So it's stupid because I posted it. What harm does it do to discuss this.

Is it on Rahm's list of things New Democrats never mention?

Fascinating. If I believed this theory to exclusion of all other likely reasons, then I would deserve this nomination. Alas, my post just isn't worthy of such accolades. You didn't bother to read the whole thread before you spouted off, did you?

But hey, if I'm getting nominated for the most idiotic thread of the week, I expect to be entered in the contest for the most idiotic thread of the year. It's only fair, you know!

[live love laugh]

22. Nice rec. Name calling always brings others around to your point of view.

:sarcasm:

[lynne]

23. Uh, NO. How about they won and we lost?

Far better to admit the truth and learn how to change things than to waste time and energy on tin foil hat theories.

[robcon]

26. Great post, Lynne.

Wearing the tin-foil is sometimes more comfortable than admitting we lost.

But it's destructive, and more importantly, there's not an iota of evidence, except for tin-foilers "wishes" there were evidence.

[BeFree]

31. Right

There is never any bad stuff that happens in elections. No siree, its all straight arrow stuff. Nobody would ever do anything to thwart the people's votes.

Gawd!

Hey, if internal polling is so great, then why even have an election?

Maybe Brown actually won, maybe he didn't. But what some of you are willing to accept is what internal polling reports (where is that report, or are you just taking their word for it) or what a private corporation tells you. They love it when you just accept what you are told.

I will have doubts about any results until there is some kind of double-check of the numbers. And since there is good reason to have doubts about diebold, and there has been no audit, those doubts remain.

[robcon]

35. You've made the logical fallacy of the excluded middle, BeFree.

There's a huge middle ground between "no evidence of fraud in this election" (my point) and "There is never any bad stuff that happens in elections." (your invalid conclusion)

That's called the fallacy of the excluded middle, where you act as if I believe there NEVER has been electoral fraud, if I believe there is no evidence at all of electoral fraud IN THIS CASE.

Tighten up your logic, BeFree.

edit: typo and clarity.

[BeFree]

37. Oh

You believe there is no evidence of fraud?
That is illogical. You haven't even had time to look for it, yet you believe?

While my logic says: there is the means, the motive and the opportunity.
That, coupled with history, makes me believe enough to want to look for it.

Unlike you who believes there is none to look for.

[robcon]

39. Yes, there is NO evidence of fraud.

Unless you can show it to me.

Again you are illogical, BeFree. I didn't claim there would NEVER be any evidence of fraud... who knows??

I only claimed that your accusation was totally evidence-free.

[demodonkey]

36. There were NO EXIT POLLS. None. That's starting to worry me.

Also, the MSM was handing this to Brown for days based on internal and biased pre-election polls.

I think every vote should be counted AND AUDITS conducted before a final winner is declared. That's just prudent.

People wake up about possibilities of election fraud and the danger of these crappy machines just plain breaking down.

These things CAN happen in ANY election. We ignore these possibilities at our peril.

[pipi_k]

32. No. I think he won fair and square, even though I'm not happy about it...

He appealed to a whole lot of Independent voters, apparently, and even some Democrats.

[BeFree]

38. You THINK??

Thinking is not good enough.

The evidence has not even been examined, yet you already think it was fair and square?

What's the opposite, I wonder of a tin-foil hat? Maybe a dunce cap?

[ddeclue]

33. NO.