Was the 2004 Election stolen?

[OrangeEmpire]

Stolen Election

I don't know if it's true or not. I've read a some articles and theories about this before. He does a good job of throwing out the evidence for it happening. There's probably evidence arguing other wise so feel free to present it. It's a long article so click the link. Before anybody accuses me of wearing a tin foil hat, I'm not claiming fraud happened and if it did I don't know if it was on some massive organized scale. Like the 2000 election before it, I can't decide if the problems have more to do with human error and technological glitiches, or some kind of organized effort to steal the elections. But it does seem odd that the two key swing states(Florida, Ohio) of the last two presidential elections have had such glaring aberrations.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........................

Furthermore, there's a guy running for Congress in Florida, Clint Curtis, a former Republican turned Democrat, who claims that "a sitting US Republican Representative, Tom Feeney, asked me to build a prototype computer program that could, without detection, flip the votes on an electronic voting machines". He's based his whole campaign on that claim. He makes a pretty good case for it too. But he's obviously vunerable to a biased charge as well.

Claims

 

[OrangeEmpire]

This was supposed to be in the pub................

 

[orange+white=heaven]

Must have been some birthday party...

 

[OrangeEmpire]

Getting up at 5 does not help...........

 

[GAVol]

After 1960, the Kennedy family ought to be experts on election year anomolies.

 

[OrangeEmpire]

After 1960, the Kennedy family ought to be experts on election year anomolies.

The same old, same old, Democrats are in such disarray, or the Republicans for that matter, they are using the Republican playbook from 20-30 years ago.

 

[vader]

Very interesting reads. Thanks for the links.

 

[OWB]

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning
about a new virulent strain of sexually transmitted
disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous
and high-risk behavior. The disease is called
Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect
him." Many victims contracted it in 2004, after
having been screwed for the past four years.

Cognitive characteristics of the individuals
infected include: anti-social personality disorders,
delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones,
extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to
incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia
and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for
own actions, cowardice masked by bravado,
uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography
and history, tendencies towards evangelical
theocracy, and categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

Naturalist and epidemiologists are amazed at how
this destructive disease originated only a few years
ago from a bush found in Texas.

 

[GAVol]

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of sexually transmitted
disease.

Doesn't this fact alone make Democrats a lot more susceptible to the disease?

 

[OWB]

Doesn't this fact alone make Democrats a lot more susceptible to the disease?

I don't think so Annie

 

[KYVolFan]

After 1960, the Kennedy family ought to be experts on election year anomolies.

Yep! They are also good at Driving Across Bridges!

Forgetting about their companion passengers after an auto accident!

Chasing Women!

Drinking Scotch Whiskey!

Etc., etc., etc.

 

[volinbham]

Here's a discussion of the Kennedy article from the Wikipedia staff charged with writing the section on 2004 election fraud:

It's interesting in several ways: It basically shows the selective and misleading use of information in the article and it also shows the biases of the Wikipedia staff. This comes at the end of a very long debate about Wikipedia's coverage which is under dispute.

It's a very good read. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 20:53, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't get too far in front of Kennedy until you read his cites and confirm his citations. He is very aggressive in his characterization of his evidence. For example, Kennedy's citation for that bolded section is amazingly bad - he would be laughed off Wikipedia in a minute. Kennedy cites a DNC survey analysis that states that according to the survey, 25% of newly registered voters cast provisional ballots, which is what I assume Kennedy bases his statement on. However, the survey doesn't say that this high rate of provisional balloting was due to "GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots." In fact, the survey reports that the two most common reasons respondents had to cast provisional ballots was (1) they changed residence within 30 days of the election or (2) they registered to vote after the deadline. (As I recall, the voter outreach efforts at the time specifically advised people who hadn't registered by the deadline to file a late registation and ask for a provisional ballot). The other sources I checked are similar. TheronJ 21:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

'Get too far out in front of' - deliciously Rovian language, my dear friend. Agreed. The veracity of Kennedy's claims should be looked at very carefully. It's not looking at these kinds of claims at all for fear that they are 'too extreme' that I'm hoping this piece will further help to discourage. You and I are agreed. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 21:36, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I hope you're not accusing me of being a Rove sock puppet. ;-P. ITA that Kennedy provides additional evidence of notability. TheronJ 21:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm highly curious as to how he got the "evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush." Also, one thing to remember when accusing the Republican party, be it the state or national party, of intentionally misallocating voting machines to democratic-leaning precincts: each board consists of 5 members, 2 of each party and a director. From this you may argue that these people are selected by Blackwell to be loyal to him, but even then, Matt Damschroeder, head of Franklin County, one of the counties with the most severe shortages, was no bitch of Blackwell's: he blatently disregarded his rule about registration paper requirements (see "Some election boards ignore new order about registration paper", Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press, September 30, 2004), not to mention provisional ballot requirements as well, causing Blackwell to threaten to remove him from his post (see "OFFICIALS WARNED NOT TO DEFY BALLOT ORDER", Mark Niquette, The Columbus Dispatch, October 6, 2004). --kizzle 21:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

That's the thing, say what you want about low-level boards, Blackwell can fire any of them whenever he wants and he doesn't have to give a reason. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that his reason would sooner be for disobeying orders than for breaking the law. Kevin Baastalk 21:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ya but that's a stretch, because if he could fire them on a whim, why didn't he take them out when they explicitly disobeyed his directives regarding provisional ballots and paper weight requirements? Provisional ballots to Blackwell were like his very own Moby Dick. --kizzle 22:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, I don't mean to say that disenfranchisement didn't happen, I believe it happened on a massive scale and almost always impacting Democrats rather than Republicans, but from what I have found so far it was due to incompetence rather than intention. With the exception of Blackwell of course, he's a piece of ****. --kizzle 22:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of Kennedy's alleged "evidence of outright fraud," it's kind of funny that he quotes the DNC study elsewhere, but omits its finding that a statistical analysis of the precinct data actually "is, in the opinion of the team’s political science experts, strong evidence against the claim that widespread fraud systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush." Kennedy is fantastically selective -- not only does he cherry pick which sources to cite, he actually cherry picks which facts to cite, and which to omit, from each source. TheronJ 00:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Though I do believe that a legitimate case can be made against Republicans securing unfair advantages, and a rock-solid case can be made for paper trails, cherry-picking is unfortunately a common feature of many of the arguments of people who believe that the election was stolen. --kizzle 02:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

So then, we are agreed: RFK, Jr's article is an inferior grade hack job. Frankly when I read it, I got the feeling he was trying to copy this article without plagerizing it. → Wombdpsw - @ ← 22:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I think Kennedy's article is very well written. That it uses some of the same sources as this article doesn't mean it was trying to copy this article. There have been plenty of articles covering the 2004 election, and many of them use the same sources, and cover the same issues, like the exit polls. What Kennedy's article does is confirm much of what was written here, and add new information, such as the results of an interview with Blackwell, where he claimed Ohio set a "gold standard" for elections. What a joke. Anyway, you're welcome to your own opinion on the article, but it should be clear that it's far from the only way the article can be seen. -- noosphere 20:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)