But what REALLY helps is if the winner is, in fact, legitimate. That’s the problem we’re having here.
And that’s the story of the Clinton Administration investigations.
Conversely, *refusing * to look for malfeasance where’s there is reason to believe there is some to be found raises suspicion and mistrust of its own, doesn’t it?
Which ones haven’t been already?
You would need foreknowledge that Ohio was going to be THE decisive swing state…otherwise you’d need to hedge your bets and go for other states too. That WOULD take millions of potentially altered votes. Your whole house of cards rests on retrospective looking at how the election went, then attempting to fit your theory into it. Looked at BEFORE the election, no one knew precisely which were going to be the swing states…and which were going to be easily won/lost by Bush/Kerry. Certainly Ohio was on the list…but so were many other states.
I’ve seen no evidence that the votes changes…‘caught and corrected’ as you put it…were on a scale that could have come close to effecting the election. More like a few hundred votes here, a few hundred there. The mere fact that they WERE ‘caught and corrected’ seems to mitigate any real substantial numbers of altered votes making it through the system unchecked. You are, however, positing tens or even hundreds of thousands of votes (in multiple states) that some how slipped through without anyone noticing…including those actually in power or striving for said power (and of course who had a huge stake in the results) lifting a finger. I find that very difficult to believe…and with no actual evidence except dark mutterings, its not hard for me to see why its dismissed so easily.
I disagree. If there has been nothing solid yet I have serious doubts there ever will be at this point. Even assuming for a moment that your theory is correct and there is a massive conspiricy out there that rigged the election for Bush, if no one has squeeled yet I doubt they ever will…Bush and his henchmen will see to keeping them silent. 
The only think I predict is that, like the 2000 election, the die hards will continue to gnash their teeth over this for long years to come…and GW will still be president. The real question is…if the Dems lose again in '08 will we have to go through all this again?
-XT
Don’t be silly. No potential crime comes with a guarantee. Everyone was aware that Ohio would be key. Calculated risks as opposed to your hedging of bets…
More like thousands, but I don’t feel like re-educating you to the facts right now. I know you know better, because you were present in the earlier threads as well.
You forgot to include your reasoning here. Why is 6 months the cut-off?
I posited no theory in particular.
There are numerous possibilities, but I’ll say yet again that it’s too soon to argue any one of the particulars. Perhaps you will answer my question about Watergate, and why there is a set time frame for exposure?
That’s not the real question, but I envy your optimism (or is it your ability to maintain a state of denial?).
If we don’t go through all this now, the '08 results will lack credibility no matter who wins. Isn’t that corrosive to democracy itself?
Second item first. If someone deliberately altered the vote to throw a state to Bush, and was caught, were they arrested and charged with a crime? Or, were these discrepancies just typical errors you will have in a huge election like this one. There will always be errors in elections, always. The existance of errors is not proof of criminal activity.
On the first point, I agree with you 100%, you did not have to change the vote nationwide to push the election one way or the other. If I were organizing an attempt to steal the election, I’d focus on Ohio, Florida and Penn. Close races, big Electoral Vote. However, look at Appendix C of the article. Nationwide, there was a 2.7% “red shift”. Nationwide. Our critical states had red shifts barely any higher than the national average. Ohio, 3.1%, Florida 2.5%, Penn 3.4%.
Where did the 2.7% national red shift come from if there was no national effort to alter the tally, and why don’t the critical states have significantly higher red shift if there was an attempt to steal the vote specifically in those states? If there was an effort to steal the vote in those states, and not others, why do 7 non critical states have a red shift of 3.4%+? VT, NH, DE, SC, AL, RI, and CT all had high red shifts, but of them, only NH was a close race and who gives a crap about NH anyway?
You don’t get to pick and choose which pieces of data you get to look at. If the red shift in Ohio has you concerned, you MUST examine the red shifts in all these other places as well, and your explanation must cover them as well. Pretending that red shifts didn’t occur in unlikely states, and leaving them unexplained is crap.
What is really pissing me off about this article is that they claim it is a 1/300,000 chance that big discrepencies occur in the 3 most critical states, as if there was no national red shift. With a big national shift, it’s no big surprise that 3 important states got caught up in it too.
No, but evidence is necessary before you can claim a crime has been committed.
Cite?
It has already been mentioned that the exit polls did not agree with the final tallies even in states where Kerry won. For your insinuations to be credible, the fix would have to have been in in many, many states - even ones where Bush stood no chance of winning, and there were ravening herds of liberals eager to expose some kind of scandal. And yet, nothing.
Oh, are we playing this game again? Too bad, it has an unfortunate effect on your credibility.
Well, the Watergate burglars were caught in the act of trying to bug the Watergate hotel. So if things were going to play out that way, the election fixers would be in jail already. And the newspapers reported the cashier’s check from the Nixon re-election campaign in the bank account of one of the burglars within six weeks.
The Washington Post reported on the slush fund a month or so after that.Cite.
If you folks are on the same schedule as you were for Nixon, you better get cracking. Six months since the elections and what you suggest is one of the largest conspiracies in American electoral history, and you still got bupkiss.
Regards,
Shodan
I didn’t think we were arguing proof of a crime - just discrepancies that exceeded the MOE expected, which would warrant suspicion, and the need for further investigation. Is that wrong?
That was the point I was trying to convey to xtisme.
I haven’t read the pdf cited in the OP, if that’s what you’re referring to. As I’ve said, the exit poll studies can only be inconclusive because the raw data is still unavailable. I really don’t see the point of arguing with anyone on that basis.
I agree, and that’s why I’m not concerning myself with the exit poll studies at this time. But Ohio is still a concern because it was a known key state with other known irregularities apart from the exit poll studies.
<aside>BTW, the application of Benford’s Law to the actual results seems more promising as hard evidence (AFAIK indictments and convictions of fraud were procured on the weight of this type of evidence). I was surprised that there was nothing on SDMB about Benford’s Law in general and was thinking about asking in GQ. Are you familiar with it, and its application? Anyone?</aside>
If you’re focusing on Ohio alone, I think it is wrong. There was a big unexplained discrepancy nationwide. Ohio had a slightly higher discrepancy. That alone does not suggest that anything unusual happened in Ohio, they could have been following along with a nationwide trend.
We can discuss those irregularities, but the OP and most everyone is focusing on the polls as proof that something fishy happened. That is where I think the arguments fall flat.
Benford’s Law is neat, basically it shows that random data will result in a fairly consistent pattern of first digits. People who commit fraud, and don’t account for the law, have a tendency to pick first digits randomly, which will not follow Benford’s pattern. It is a positive test though, it can’t prove that data is good, only that it is bad.
I’m too young to remember first-hand, but according to your very own cite, preliminary evidence was available months before the election and yet Nixon was reelected (in a “landslide”, no less).
How long before Haldeman and Erlichman were compelled to resign?
When did the hearings begin?
How long before congress considered steps to impeach?
And what does this say about the “reasonable” citizens of the US, re their predictive value of something being amiss?
I leave these semi-rhetorical questions as an exercise for the “big boys” at the SDMB.
I basically agree with you on this. But yet again, I am not focusing on Ohio alone, nor am I basing my concern on the exit polls. Unlike the OP (and some others), I wouldn’t base my primary argument on the exit polls at this time, and more and more, I think of it as a red herring when this topic comes up. We simply don’t have enough data to prove anything on that basis.
Neat is an understatement.
AFAIK, the problem with applying it to the US elections is establishing the correct parameters for analysis. I wrote to the Profs who developed the software for the IRS, but he apparently had no time for a maths feeb/neophyte such as myself. 
Still, I look forward to the results should they ever agree on the appropriate formula for application.
Yes, it was. Evidence was available.
Got any of that? Here it is, months after the election and, as I mentioned, you got bupkiss.
I notice you have produced nothing to back up your assertion that “everyone knew Ohio would be key”. Or, come to think of it, anything else you stated or implied.
That’s probably wise. They require rational debate, so you can run along now.
Regards,
Big Boy Shodan
I do not think that there was a big conspiracy. I do not think there was a nationwide conspiracy. I think that whatever fraud occured, occured in the battleground states only, and was carried out by individuals and small groups, each acting independently, none having any knowledge of anything but their own activites.
Also, I do not think that anyone in the White House, or in the Republican Party leadership, issued any orders to anyone. I think they just hoped that their supporters in the battleground states would do whatever it took to win.
“None to be found”? In your opinion. I side with the group of experts now calling for an investigation.
But that (the bolded part) would be a perfectly legitimate political goal, Moto!
Har har har de, indeed, har. Nevertheless . . . it is almost inconceivable that, in the 2002 election in Georgia, Saxby Chambliss really and honestly defeated Max Cleland for the Senate seat, nor that Sonny Perdue really and honestly defeated Roy Barnes for the governorship. From http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&c=7&s=dugger:
What are you basing this on? Because, if it’s the poll data, it contradicts the available information.
This is ridiculous, even for you. It was and is common knowledge that Ohio was key. If you google “Ohio and Bush and key” there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cites - usually the title of the news article alone makes that clear. Is this topic that troubling to you, that you feel the need to distract from it with this nonsense?
I knew you were an extreme partisan, but this is bordering on mental health scary. Let go of whatever petty gripe you’ve got against me personally, and try to contribute something to a thread that a rational person can reply to. Not for my sake, but for your own.
I almost feel sorry for you. Perhaps someday, when or if the current political nightmare is in the past, I will be generous enough to muster the pity necessary for you.
Well let’s see…from the first page:
Chicago Tribune: “Race tight in key midwest states.” In other words, not just key states, but key midwestern states. And they identified four. If there are four key states just in the midwest, how many were there in the whole country?
Newsday: “Bush leads Kerry in three key states.” This article says (bolding mine) “President Bush has moved past Sen. John F. Kerry in three of the most hotly contested Midwestern battleground states. . .” Three of the most means there were more than three, and again we see the “Midwestern” qualifier. I’m sensing a pattern.
CNN at least breaks the Midwest pattern, but identifies SIX states. That’s more than one-tenth of the entire country.
For you to say that “everyone knew Ohio would be key” is incorrect. Everyone knew Ohio was one of the states that MIGHT be key, along with five or six or seven others, dppending on whichever media outlet you happened to be listening to at the time.
After all, “Everyone knew that Wisconsin would be key,” “Everyone knew that Missouri would be key,” “Everyone knew that Minnesota would be key,” “Everyone knew that Iowa would be key,” “Everyone knew that Pennsylvania would be key” and “Everyone knew that Florida would be key.”
Right?
Karl Rove has a long history of using political dirty tricks against opponents by using third parties he can’t be connected to. The man in pure scum. If he knew of a way to fix the vote, I am sure he’d use it, because on the evidence he doesn’t respect the democratic process at all. If there were votes fixed in battleground states in favor of Republicans, I’d be looking rather hard at Rove as the mastermind behind it all.