CommonDreams.org publishes a remarkable story by Thom Hartmann on vote fraud in that troubled state:
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.This is the key news.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
Hartmann's piece goes on to discuss the optical vote/e-vote controversy that we've discussed previously. As we've noted, that situation is rather more complex than many believe (and I was among the "many" at first), since the optical scan system tends to be used in smaller counties. We've already taken a close look at the seemingly-egregious case of Jackson county, where the voters went heavily for Bush even though the vast majority registered as Democrats. On closer inspection, I found that this county has a historical pattern of leaning Republican at the top of the ticket. I don't know yet if this pattern extends into all or most of the optical scan counties.
Hartmann's piece tends to be exonerative of the e-vote (as I was when I first saw the numbers). But those counties are large. A 20,000 vote switch would not much affect the "percent changed" category, and thus might escape notice.
A reader has convinced me that the best way to approach Florida is not on a county-by-county basis, and not in terms of voting methodology. Cast your first, hardest glance at the central tabulator, which uses the GEMS system. Some say a bright 14-year-old could hack it.
That doesn't mean we should ignore the small counties. As mentioned earlier, one positive first step might include a very late "exit poll" which would help establish anomalies between the actual vote and how people say they voted.
In that light, one correspondent draws my attention to the situation in Union County, Florida. In the primaries, 2888 votes went to a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives. In the general, Kerry got 1251 votes and Bush 3396. This situation does seem out-of-whack -- however, as we've noted before, voting patterns in some of these tiny Florida counties can be very unusual.
3 comments:
Good--then Bev Harris will uncover nothing at all, and all that will happen is a restoration of trust in the electoral process. Everybody wins! Too bad she has to go begging for funding, though--if Kerry had won, I'm sure we could have gotten another $70mil from the Republican congress to investigate any potential unethical blowjobs he may have received.
Here's the thing, pomeroo, I agree with you more than you probably might think. In my opinion the left has been busy alienating all of these people that it wants to win over. With all of this defeatist talk of leaving for Canada, and "fly-over" states, the left is playing right into the elitist intelligensia myth that the mouthpieces have been laying on us for years. Truth is, the Bush camp did the most brilliant ground campaign of all, and Rove understands that politics is greased at the highest level by corporate donors, but is run at the lowest level of grassroots campaigning. They energized the churches, and that, to me, explains their win.
However, that does not exclude the fact that some strange things are going on with electronic voting that need to be looked at. This is something all Americans should agree on, and I would feel the exact same way if Kerry had won and it looked a little odd. The fact is, if these claims are investigated and dismissed, there is a benefit to the electorate in restoring confidence. If these claims are investigated and found to be something, there is benefit to the electorate in uncovering fraud.
Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying that Bush did this--all signs that I've seen point to the fact that the Bush camp believed that they were loosing early on based on the exit poles, but Rove has a history of dirty pool, as do certain members of his party who have shown, through action not words, that they are interested in retaining power through unethical means.
All that said, we may have lost fair and square and so be it. I say it's a blessing in disguise because now Bush, not Kerry, will have to account for his actions in Iraq and with the economy.
So - - here I am, just a small, anyonymous voice who hasn't the time to debate the inner working of our world, but I have a question. Based on what I've just read in the Richard Clark book and House of Bush, House of Saud :
Why wouldn't a hacker on the other side of the world hack into our election mechanisms to either (a) keep the House of Saud buddies in power here or (b) stir us up in the US to the extent that we are at each toerh in a constant dog fight and thus too busy to notice what the US neocons and Suaidis or Al Queda operatives are really up to?
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