America last night took the next step on the slippery slide to a police-state. From any international perspective the election was a bit of a farce.

For a start, the choice was between two millionaires who supported the war on Iraq and the Patriot Act (the police state legislation).

Then, over US$4bn of bribes campaign contributions were made, that's around US$35 per vote cast. That dwarfs the corruption in any other country.

Then the campaign is of course running mostly through media owned and run by the same people who own the government, its not surprising that many people fall for the lies (just as they do in Australia). After all a Washington Post poll last year showed 69% of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11!

The election itself is fixed at a two-party (not multi-party) system, because if you vote for your first choice (e.g. Nader or the Greens) then the vote is ignored and effectively wasted (compare this to votes in democracys where the vote will be transferred to your second choice). See Paul Ray's work on the Political compass, for how neither of these parties represent majority opinions.

Then - in a strange system called the Electoral College, however the vote in the each state was split, its counted as if they all voted the same way, i.e. the few thousand votes difference in Ohio, make the difference between ALL of Ohio's 20 electoral college votes being counted as Bush, or as Kerry.

Of course, given the lack of choice, its not surprising how few people turn out to vote. This is called a high turnout election at only 39% of the population (114m out of 294m population) compared to 59% in Australia (11.7m of 19.9m). In Australia that is a 90% turnout of registered voters, but the US puts higher barriers in the way of registering.

And finally everything possible was done to rig the election. With Kelly conceeding the election, without really putting up a fight, we will never know the full details, but some highlights.

• The voting machines are mostly made by companies with strong ties to the republican party. The CEO of one of these manufacturers said I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year
• These machines are insecure and keep no paper trail, and have been shown to be innaccurate in a number of cases. Loosing thousands of votes;
• There were lines of up to 7 hours long to vote, deterring many people from voting, causes of the lines apart from the unusually high (for the US) turnout included extensive challenges of new registered voters by republican poll watchers.
• Large quantities of absentee ballots got lost, especially of course those going to minority communities
• Lots of ballots weren't counted, again especially in minority neighborhoods - see Greg Palast's article.
• There is a short list of other irregularities on Indymedia

What surprises me is how many intelligent, progressive, Americans still think they live in a democracy.

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From: Alan Patti
Date: November 4, 2004 3:32:17 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Ohio Not Official for 10 Days?
Reply-To: Alan Patti

For IP:

What are people's thoughts on this?

A friend of mine got off the phone with the office of the Ohio
Secretary of State and was told the following:

- Kerry's concession has no legal bearing on who wins the election.

- Ohio has been using and counting provisional ballots the exact same
way for the past 10 elections.

- Ohio and Federal law dictate that the state will wait 10 days and
then begin counting the provisional
ballots.

- All valid provisional ballots will be counted.

- The winner of the state of Ohio shall not be considered official
until such time as all provisional ballots have been counted.

- If Kerry is found to win Ohio, regardless of his public concession,
he will win the election.

The woman she spoke with asked that people post this information far
and wide because, for whatever reason, the media aren't reporting it.

There remain a couple of questions though. As of yesterday, Secretary
of State Blackwell said there were about 175,000 provisional ballots,
but that didn't include about 10 counties that hadn't turned theirs in
yet. Did those counties include huge democratic stronghold and highly
populated Cuyahuga county, that contains Cleveland?

J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 E. Broad St. 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215

General Telephone Number (Toll Free): 1-877-767-6446
General Telephone Number (Local): 1-614- 466-2655

Elections questions or comments:
email: election@sos.state.oh.us
call: 614-466-2585

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There is an interesting article which looks at the New Hampshire statistics, while its early days and a quick analysis there are some disturbing statistical anomalies that make this article an interesting read.

New Hampshire analysis

Some other interesting articles on this include:

• Madsen's piece, mostly on the difference between early voting and oddities around reporting


• An odd piece that I don't quite understand, on Florida optical scanning anomalies


• And more analysis on Florida, and where some suprising numbers of extra bush votes turned up


• There is a collection - including some of the pieces above on www.Stolenelection2004.com

I probably won't post much more on this, since its not the central theme of this blog, best way to stay in touch could be to watch www.Stolenelection2004.com

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I listened to Greg Palast yesterday at the Green Festival. He gave a pretty convincing argument that Kerry won.

Here are a few more items that came my way...

An example of a specific voting machine muck-up (the muck-up, being that they got caught), it awarded 3,893 extra votes to Bush

A graphic from the washington post showing how Kerry's votes came from the cities, and bush rural

Here's a good analysis from Thom Hartmann on CommonDreams with some links to other resources.

Here's an update on the statistical analysis of the Florida optical-scanning anomalies

This set of maps are an interesting variation on the purple one doing the rounds, adjusting for the size of the population in each county

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Everyone! Please forward to all who have specifics on vote fraud. The send-to address below is John Kerry's brother at his law firm. Kerry will unconcede if there is solid evidence of fraud. We need first hand sufferers so please get this info to them!!

FORWARD TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW
EMAIL FROM DC LAWYER CYNTHIA BUTLER

I am angry and getting emails and recrimination from people wondering why
KERRY just caved and is not fighting this before the final count in Ohio,
before any of the fraud was challenged, before New Mexico and Iowa even came in.

There is widespread feeling that he did not lose the election and that it
was taken from him.

There is enough here to warrant investigation and enough to challenge the
results. It's coming from all corners.

I understand that he has until the official count certification in Ohio to
Un Concede which is several days from now.

Anyone who thinks that he should unconcede should give reasons why -
whatever they noticed, particularly in Red Republican Governed States using
electronic machines- and send them directly to Cameron KERRY, John Kerry's
brother at his law firm at the address CKerry@Mintz.com

They should inform us if they were not allowed to vote provisionally (for
whatever reason- they lost forms, ran out of forms, etc.) I personally
witnessed a number of things as I reported in Texas with the DCCC.
(Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee)

If you know anyone in particular in Ohio who tried to vote and was turned
away at the polls please get their information and notify the campaign.

They should be notified if they experienced lines longer than four
hours -particularly elderly or infirm people (we call that torture when they
do it to political prisoners) . They should be notified if people were told
as has been reported that due to too many people showing up in African
American precincts, particularly in Ohio where there were too few booths
(some only had two or three for the entire precinct) and told because of
heavy turn out they could vote on Wednesday. If the n umbers of these sorts
of incidents creates a percentage margin that exceeds the margin of victory- Un Concession has to be made to challenge the count.

If people wanted to and tried to vote and were prevented or actively
discouraged from doing so, that is a Civil Rights matter and must be dealt
with in terms of the ultimate count.

This is the last email that I am writing on this subject in this venue. I am
taking it up in other venues.

Please pass along this to your listservs so that we may make Democracy Work in America. We are not a country where he who cheats best wins.

Cynthia L. Butler
BUTLER LAW FIRM, P.C.
1717 K St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

http://www.johnkerry.com/index.html

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If any of you think an election really occured, check this from Volusia County. And for every fraud they catch, how many went uncaught?

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Professor Steven Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a disturbing answer. Looking at the exit polls and announced results in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, he concludes that the odds against such an accidental discrepancy in all three states together was 250 million to one.

"As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

Read Dr. Freeman's well-reasoned, well-written argument, and make up your own mind.
PDF file

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