In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Election Fraud? - Update (mainstream media only)
A bunch of cats across the parking lotNEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally.
The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one’s confidence in the whole result from Ohio.
The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (“Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000).
No reason to worry about the integrity of the outcome in Ohio, is there?
...
On the show last night there was also confirmation of something I speculated about here 24 hours ago. Craig Crawford, one of our MSNBC political contributors and also a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, admitted that the concession did trigger a kind of ‘we can all go home now!’ exultation in the media. “Since John Kerry conceded,” Craig said, “there wasn’t that great desire to run out to Columbus and try to figure this out. And the concession is the key because we’re often wimps in the media and we wait for other people to make charges, one political party or the other, and then we investigate.”
Bless Craig Crawford for saying that.
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He didn’t, however, endorse any conspiracy theories. “My experience with Election Supervisors is that they’re very independent, often real characters, hard people to actually organize into a conspiracy. I think it’d be easier to herd a bunch of cats across a parking lot.”
But - as I pointed out to him after he crafted that colorful bit of imagery - when one voting machine can add 4,000 votes for one presidential candidate in a 650-vote precinct, and another one in the same state can turn a day’s balloting into a net result of negative 25 million, it may also be true that altering those machines may be easy enough that it could be pulled off not only by conspiratorial Election Supervisors, but also, just by a bunch of cats from across the parking lot.
BZZZZZZ Hear that buzzing noise? Its just us... and lots of other sites folks actually visit: Internet buzz on vote fraud is dismissedA week after Kerry conceded and Bush declared victory, those assertions and scores of others from New Mexico to North Carolina have kept alive fierce speculation that Bush's victory either wasn't real or wasn't as decisive as it seemed. With memories fresh from the 2000 irregularities, e-mails and Web postings accuse Republicans of stealing an election.Here Here
Much of the traffic is little more than Internet-fueled conspiracy theories, and none of the vote-counting problems and anomalies that have emerged are sufficiently widespread to have affected the election's ultimate result.
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Another site suggests Kerry is refusing to contest the election because fellow members of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones forbade him to do so. [hey, I really wanted to say that... but of course I didn't want to sully TCS's standard of excellence]
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Heather Gerken, a professor at Harvard Law School, said the fact that this year's election went smoothly compared to 2000 shouldn't blind policy makers to problems still inherent in the system. Many jurisdictions continue to use outdated equipment, states are behind in compiling reliable voter lists, and elections are still run by partisan officials, she said.
''I have not yet seen anything that convinces me that the election was stolen, but I certainly think that we should treat these allegations seriously and do them justice," she said. ''There's clearly problems with the elections system. It's crucial to the health of this country that we have an election system that we can trust."
- rob 3:10 PM - [PermaLink] -
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