"This is not the end, this is merely the end of one state action," said Cliff Arnebeck, the challenge's lead counsel. "More importantly, it signals the emergence of a much broader effort where we plan to investigate and litigate county by county, ward by ward, precinct by precinct."I hope that's true, but it sounds a bit like Saddam Hussein's declaration of "victory" at the end of the first Gulf War.
Newsweek tells us that if exit polls conflict with final results, then the polls must be wrong. Except in other countries, of course.
Writer Brad Stone blames the exit poll disparity on an oversampling of women. Of course, investigators had established by November 5 that the results were weighted for sex as they were taken. Remember how Mickey Kaus used the term "weighting" as though it were a bad thing? Now Brad Stone pretends that no weighting occurred!
Such is the nature of our new culture of deceit: If a lie is exposed, one need merely wait a couple of months. The false proposition will be repeated, and the exposure will remain in some dusty, forgotten internet archive.
"Exit polls are full of holes," says Joan Konner of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, who co-wrote an internal report for CNN about the 2000 debacle. "Nobody should ever take these things seriously."Uh huh. Yes. Right. A few questions, Joan: Why are we to take "these things" so seriously in the Ukraine? Why were we so often told to trust exit polls before the advent of audit-free voting? And why do the errors always favor the Republicans, year after year?
Conyers versus Blackwell. Ken Blackwell, fingered by the Conyers report as being a violator of both the law and his oath of office, has fired back at the congressman. "I think Rep. Conyers' inquiry and motivation speaks for itself." A man who once expressed admiration for the way Katherine Harris made out like a bandit -- forgive the grammar: I should have said as a bandit -- has now questioned the motivations of John Conyers. Incredible!
Two views. Anthony Wade presents a fine piece on the "Boxer" rebellion and the Republican audacities which led up to it. He offers a rebuttal to all the robotic Republican talking points.
What do you think is going to happen over the next four years? Do you honestly think that the GOP will enact any significant reform of an electoral process which they completely control? If they were so put off on January 6th to have to discuss the rampant disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in Ohio, for two measly hours, the only answer about their sincerity to reform has to be no. The Help America Vote Act has about as much credibility as the Healthy Forests Initiatives or the Clear Skies Act. The forests are not healthy, the skies are not clear, and America was NOT helped to vote, period.By contrast, those looking for a prime example of left-wing antipathy for this cause -- and there was plenty -- should check out this wrongheaded piece on the Tom Paine website. The article bends over backwards to be "fair" to the Bush forces. For example:
Also, although incoming voter registration figures showed surges in certain areas, that didn't mean the newly registered would necessarily vote. And certainly not in greater numbers than in many established precincts where a high percentage of registered voters typically went to the polls.Does this explanation even begin to cover the many areas in which voting machines were fewer than in previous elections? The areas in which the general election saw fewer voting machines than in the primaries?
As for Diebold and other vilified companies, in all probability, they didn't, and wouldn't, risk the ignominy and consequences of fixing an election. The primary reason so many people are suspicious of Diebold in the first place is because of the CEO's ill-advised promise, in a GOP fundraising letter, to do everything he could to see Ohio's electors awarded to Bush. That was an outrageous thing to say, but even on its face more likely a sign of cluelessness than of hidden plans to alter the outcome.Diebold and the other vilified companies have a proven history of hiring convicted criminals. (Felons cannot vote in some states, but they can count the votes.)
Tom Eschenberger, vice president of ES&S, was fingered by charges of bribery and kickbacks. Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci of Sequoia were indicted for paying a large bribe to the Louisiana Commissioner of Elections. (Many believe that this is the method by which the major vote-counting companies got their contracts from the various states.) The owner of this same company once tried to bribe a sitting Supreme Court justice. Sequoia has even been linked to one member of the Gambino crime family. As for Diebold: Jeff Dean, the senior programmer and VP at this controversial firm has been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft. Five senior figures have rap sheets.
Are we really supposed to believe that such men would balk at vote-rigging for fear of "ignominy"? Must we presume that such men would be unwilling to take a risk?
What risk?
If we toss out the concept of computerized vote fraud, how else do we explain the solid reports of computers which would "count backward" once the Democrat reached a certain amount? How else do we explain the fact that so many e-vote machines would register a vote for Bush on the confirmation screen, even though the voter had pressed the Kerry button? (This scenario was reported frequently; the reverse scenario remains but the rarest of rumors.)
Indeed, the false explanations as to why computerized voting cannot offer paper receipts (e.g., "the technology is not there yet") should be regarded as strong evidence of intention to commit fraud. Why would anyone but a vote-rigger bother to tell such a lie?
Tom Paine refers to the conspiracy theories as "half-baked." But this attempt to reassure the progressive community is worse than half-baked -- it has barely been thawed.
The revolution WILL be digitized: Brad Friedman has given birth to (or linked up with?) the Velvet Revolution, dedicated to sparking the kind of "street power" that we saw in the Ukraine.
5 comments:
Best news of the day: Cannonfire's back.
You're missing Paine's point. It's not that Diebold is concerned about ethics per se. It's that if Diebold were to get burned in an vote fraud scandal, they'd be screwed. No state would give them new contracts. Diebold, like any corporation, is concerned about money and, like any corporation, averse to risks that would cause them to lose money. The CEO may love Bush and lack morals, but he'd have to be crazy to put a company as big as Diebold at risk for an election. That would be one hell of a donation.
(Obviously, some companies take stupid risks, e.g. Enron, but Enron executives took risks for direct financial gain, personal and corporate. They reasoned that the money they would make justified the risk of getting caught. But it's hard to see how any financial benefits Diebold gains by returning Bush to office could be even close to what it would lose if vote fraud were exposed.)
I'll repeat what I said: WHAT risk?
If Diebold couldn't take the risk of being caught, then no large company could have backed the Nazi regime. In that case, the Allies must have been fighting an army equipped with phantom hardware. On the other hand, a company that builds honest and good voting machines is not likely to grow close to our corrupt, sadistic regime and reap the "benefits" of doing so.
-- inane chemoelectric.org Schwartz
Joe, you need to update this blog because at this point its quite innaccurate. All that accumulated evidence is getting read into the public record. :-) Also people might want to come this Saturday to hear it in person!
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