Tinfoil Hat Time

Great Debates
1

Okay guys, you know the deal. Lots of liberals out there are spewing rhetoric about how the election was stolen. I’ll go ahead and state my thoughts before donning the shiny new hat I just made from Reynolds Aluminium Foil. I am a Democrat and a liberal, and I voted for Kerry. I wanted him to win. After election night, I just thought we got our clock cleaned. It was even worse in the Senate, so I resigned to looking at the positive side of things. I had planned on studying in Europe next semester anyway, so most of the stuff that goes on in the USA won’t really affect me. I don’t think that Bush has the political capital to expand his war anywhere else. Sure he’s got political capital, but I doubt anyone will go for another preemtive war. People aren’t happy about Iraq, no matter how optimistic they are that things will get better. If things continue to worsen, I believe that it will hurt the Repubicans. If things get better, which I truely hope they do, then I say, in all honesty, good for Bush. I am not against the idea of a preemtive war, and I am not even against the idea of cleaning house in the middle east if it could be done properly.

However, I never thought, and still don’t think its possible. I really don’t, and if it works, I’ll gladly give Bush props, if the situation is better off than it was before he invaded when he left. Anyways, I still have lots of other reasons not to like Bush.

But Keith Olberman is reportedly working on a story about possibilities of fraud. He writes about the story here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

So I guess its time to don the hat

[tinfoil hat on]

Here’s a juicy tidbit.

So we defenitely have some questions that need to be answered, and I certainly would like to know for sure. I have also read rumors on various lefty sites that MSNBC was trying to put pressure on him to relent and no go through with the story. We’ll see, as it should air at 8PM EST tonight.

These stories are out there and they aren’t going away. I honestly only want a fair account of what happened. I am not sure that fraud even took place. And even if fraud did take place, would it be enough to actually overturn the results? Would the results come in fast enough to actually make a difference? I don’t know, and if Bush won the election fair and squre, then that’s all I want to know. But if fraud did happen, then we need to root it out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Whatever the result, the Democratic party has some serious thinking to do. We need to change, and a legitmiate election would only speed up this process, but there really can’t be any doubt as to who won, and the results are less than rock-solid.

But if bush did try to steal the election, then I wouldn’t care if he stayed or not, but rather that he be held accountable. But honestly, I doubt Bush would have been informed of all of the dirty stuff anyway.

[/tinfoil hat]

okay that was fun. But what do you folks think about this election stealing accusation? I don’t know much about Olberman, but I would tend to label him as a skeptic before liberal or conservative. I say, good on him, if he breaks a story that tells the whole truth. You can say that it is my suspicion that leads me to think that there is some fraud, but again, I honestly think that the election was won fair and square, but we’ll have to see what happens.

One of the most telling things are the discrepancies. Firstly the exit-polls don’t match up. Are exit polls unreliable? The Bush team took them as word, and Karen Huges even had to break the news to Bush that he’d probably lose. Then we had the surprise.

I’ll be watching Olberman later to see what he brings up. There is another man in Florida who also aleges that he knows who stole the election, and how.

So what do you think? Sour grapes? I don’t think I’m guilty of that, but I know that some people probably are. I am mainly doubtful because of my distrust for Bush (actually Rove, mainly). But if I were a conservative who thought that Bush truely didn’t cheat, then I would want an honest investigation too, because any doubt would be lessen the victory.

2

There are plenty of e-voting irregularities documented already. Perhaps not enough to affect the outcome, but who knows how much hasn’t been discovered yet, or will never be discovered.

But I’m not only concerned about the e-voting problems. Think of it as the “death of a thousand cuts”: Lost registrations, voter suppression, spoiled ballots, uncounted provisional ballots, roll purges, pre-punched ballots, challenged votes, fraudulent votes, double voting…

How many hours in line before it’s a Voting Rights Act violation? Last I heard, some people waited as long as 22 hours. 22 hours???

Add up those spoiled ballots and tell me they weren’t enough to affect the outcome in certain States (and hence, the EC total).

As for the e-vote problem - if the “experts” who have weighed in so far are correct - almost anyone could have hacked the system. Maybe the “mandate” was conferred by a 15 year old computer geek in Malaysia.

Wouldn’t that be funny? Who’s laughing?

3

Utter garbage, but I do hope you guys keep up with it for the next two years.

4

Whether the story is garbage or not, one thing I do think everyone should be able to agree about is we need real, substantive electoral reform that restores confidence in the process.

I’m all for the tinfoil hat set at this point because, while they may indeed really need those hats, they keep attention on some of the less fantastical issues that would be to everyone’s benefit to address.

5

I think this accusation deserves nothing less than the constant attention by the Democrats at all levels. I think accusations should be made, and the Democratic Party should throw its full weight behind a promise to get to the bottom of this.

6

I think the thing that worries me about the accusations of fraud is that I find them all too credible. And I’m a person who genuinely believes (deep down, under all the cynicism) that our elected officials are there because they want to serve the public.

The foundation of our entire government is built on the principle that every man’s vote counts and that our public officials are accountable to the public at the ballot box. So if people lose faith in the accuracy and fairness of the electoral process, then trust in the government goes down the toilet as well.

Nothing I’ve heard about the voting process in the this election – voter intimidation, miscounts, and electronic voting machines with no hard copy – gives me any reason to trust the process.

7

The early exit polls didn’t match up. The final exit polls, here, matched up quite nicely.

Now think about this. Karen Hughes apparently told the President he’d probably lose, you said. If that’s true and the outcome was rigged, there was a nationwide conspiracy to game the outcome of the election but the President and his advisors were wholly unaware of the plot and thought they were going to lose halfway through the day.

Reynolds Wrap is a product of Alcoa, the former employer of former Treasury Secretary and noted non-Yankee outfielder Paul O’Neill. Are we sure he sold all his stock? I smell a plot.

8

Sure, I can imagine that, but if you were going to try to rig an election, wouldn’t you simply tell as few people as possible? As far as I know, Karen Huges had been out of the Bush camp for a while, and she may not have been privy to uncle Karl’s plans.

Yeah, I know. I actually don’t know. I just am going to watch Olberman tonight to see what he says. He sent an email to someone on the blogs and he seems to think it will be a big story. We’ll see.

Thanks for the constructive input Brutus.

Oh, and Bricker. I can’t tell if he is being sarcastic or not…
Honestly, I don’t put to much stock in it, but honestly, if there was some minor stuff going on, I think there should be serious changes in our election system. I am sick of this crap going on, and will we ever trust an election again?

Who decided that a computer would be a good idea to tally votes? Bring back the old lever-style machines. There is much less error and almost impervious to rigging. Nope we gotta go with new technology. Whatever the case, this crap shouldn’t be going on. There are some serious weird things going on.

9

If the Democrats can convince themselves that the election was stolen, then it becomes their rational excuse to avoid looking within, and examining why they lost, while also substantiating the evil manipulative Republican notion. Blaming someone else is always easier than blaming the man in the mirror.

10

That’s what I was thinking. I figured that it was all the people still in denail. That was until a real “journalist” picked it up. Again, I don’t know much about Olberman, but he hasn’t really had any controversial stuff before, so maybe he knows something? He makes some pretty big assumptions saying that Kerry shouldn’t leave the country, etc. It is part of his wit, as well, and maybe he’ll wear a tinfoil hat during the segment just to show how seriously he takes it? That’s doubful though.

Or maybe this is just an example of how much power the blogosphere has in the news nowadays. I didn’t think that it had much at all, at least from the liberal point of view. Everyone talks about the right-wing blogs uncovering Dan Rather’s memos, but I can’t really think when the liberal blogs affected national news. That’s the only reason why I withhold doubt.

In any case, I don’t think it will affect the popular vote too much even if it affects the election. The final exit polls seem pretty close, to tell the truth, but there was someone out there saying that they were fixed in an attempt to get the western states from voting. The scale of fraud that is being alleged is pretty massive (many irregularities across many counties), so it seems like it would be hard to cover that up. I find it hard to believe that there would be no whistleblowers.

However, IMO, florida was much more shady last election than this time. I mean, with a vot margin like it was, it was basically a given that any action taken that affected votes would have an effect.

11

Is it so impossible to have fraud in US elections that some people will dismiss it outright with smarty comments no matter what ? I think the OP was pretty polite and moderate about not making it sound silly or otherwise conspiratorial… or democratic denial.

The way I see it... its either democrats clinging to hope or elections are a joke for Karl Rove to mess around with.
12

Keep your eye on Olbermann. The Warren County irregularities are bad enough, but tonight he floated some new information out of Florida regarding the heavily Democratic counties that used optical scanned ballots. Counties which were overwhelmingly Democratic turned in tallies 3 to1 in Bush’s favor. It is one thing to chock this up to Dixiecrats who just couldn’t support Kerry, but this amazing turn of Democrats to the dark side only occured in those counties that used the optical scanners; apparently, while the focus was on the touch screen machines, the fix went into the optical scanners. U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan annouced on Olbermann’s show that he and two other Congressmen, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida, have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate. This story hasn’t yet been posted on MSNBC, but I will supply a link as soon as it is available.

13

Fixing elections is an art, not a science. It is clear that Hughes thought their best efforts to throw the election had failed, hence the unfavorable report to the President. I don’t see why such a report negates the likelyhood that the Pubs did everything they could to steal this election. That they weren’t sure it would be successful until late in the day is hardly evidence that they were unwitting innocents.

14

It was stolen. We had it in the bag until all those Republicans showed up and voted.

What you partisan Pubbies fail to realize is that the concern is not over the “election was stolen” as much as “there are flaws in the system”… while you’re more than happy to ride on forward as long as your guy wins, just wait until one of these little minor flaws screws up in the Dem’s favor… The ink won’t be dry before you’re crying about a corrupt voting system.

15

That stuff was floating around the net a couple of days ago. The “theory” is that people obviously should vote the same way as they are registered, and since didn’t in a bunch of smaller Florida counties, there must be a scam somewhere.

The flaw in this theory is that Democrat registered voters in these areas are actually very conservative. The terms have just been redefined at the local level over the years. So these “Democrats” vote much more Republican than you would think in national elections.

16

Please, the Democrats wrote the book on voter fraud. I would think that whatever Republican voter fraud may be unearthed it will be equalled on the Democratic side. And I won’t includ the NAACP in the Democratic calculation either. God knows what those despots were up to.

17

You missed the fact that someone posted earlier that this irregularity only happened in counties with optical scan ballots. I don’t know if there were many “dixiecrat” counties with electronic voting or not, but that seems to be what Olbermann was implying.

They also do not conicide with highly liberal ballot measures like raising the minimum wage, which DID follow party lines, IIRC.

CNN doesn’t have minimum wage on the website, but… here is an interesting facter. Dixie conty. Couldn’t be more stereotypical, right?
voted:
71.2% in favor and 28.8 against an increase in the minimum wage.
Olbermann mentioned this.

This isn’t to say that there is conclusive evidence.

What is this about? We don’t trust the Bush administration when there is any evidence of fraud. We trusted them once and they got us into a war without WMD. So what are we to expect?

Also, I don’t understand how people would think that politicians are above this. You would certainly accuse Kerry if you had the chance.

I have various levels of trust for Politicians. I have trust in Kerry, but shady business during an election wouldn’t surprise me. If he were capable of it, which I don’t think he would be, considering the relative strength of the Democrats these days. But I don’t know if Bush could do it either, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Actually I think if it were true, Bush wouldn’t know. Why would Karl need to tell him? Bush delegated the task of winning the election to Karl and he would do it through any means possible.

But massive voter fraud would be difficult to pull off.

18

O_o

People in Illinois are weird.

19

How so? The one election (in modern times at least) that conventional wisdom says was fixed was done so by the Democrats…oddly in enough in Chicago and Texas. Explain how we are weird?

20

When come back, bring cite.

So far all we’ve seen are signs of fraud that benefits the Republicans… wonder why?