NBC - Kerry really won



D

dgk

Guest
Ok, look. I just want to let everyone here to know how much I
appreciate your aid in my struggle to become a full time bike
commuter. You are all now officially my friends. My best friend (a
flesh and blood one) is actually a far right winger and one of the
nicest people I know, if just wrong about life. We try not to talk
politics because we end up angry.

That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
because nothing is more important.



-------------------------------------------

Kerry Won
By Greg Palast
TomPaine.com

Thursday 04 November 2004

Kerry won. Here's the facts.

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung
chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy
sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the
most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it
was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit
poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47
percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent
to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the
state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask
the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio
punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply
not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]

Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm
sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other
ballot tricks old and new.

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by
something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3
percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When
the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won
by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never
happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat
100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled
vote.

And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every
official report, come from African American and minority precincts.
(To learn more, click here.)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a
plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count.
That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these
votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched
through completely-leaving a 'hanging chad,'-or was punched extra
times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating
spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots
thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report
from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here.)

And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of
ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from
Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other
minority citizens.

So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike
last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with
the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz).

Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the
vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio,
J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, the possibility of a
close election with punch cards as the states primary voting device
invites a Florida-like calamity.

But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has
warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of
eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's
Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her
a seat in Congress.

Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time?
Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be
reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes
discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines
produced their typical loss-that's 110,000 votes-overwhelmingly
Democratic.

The Impact of Challenges

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat
wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the
'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's
use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands
of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the
GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane
laws-almost never used-allowing party-designated poll watchers to
finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio
courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters
where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was
prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were
there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky
"provisional" ballots-a kind of voting placebo-which may or may not be
counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say
250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities,
no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them
up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye
in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and,
golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by
136,483 votes in Ohio.

Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote

Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality-if all votes are
counted-is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I
wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico,
though not one ballot has yet been counted."

How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the
provisional ballots.

CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the
network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100
percent' of ballots cast.

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68
percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and
poor precincts-Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same
ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage
bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters
in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are
five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter.
Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush
'plurality.'

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up
in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily
Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves
County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent
Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet
George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election,
and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply
indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the
choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive
across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of
provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist
Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given
out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the
Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor
Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed
the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional
ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said,
at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's
identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Your Kerry Victory Party

So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry-if we count all
the votes.

But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the
leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again.
Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the
spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's
Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled
and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into
Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to
a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media
would punish the party for demanding a full count.

What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the
shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count
under PATRIOT Act III.

I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in London.
Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In
light of the failure-a second time-to count all the votes, that won't
be necessary. My country has left me.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine,
investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's
Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New
York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been
released this month on DVD.
 
"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Ok, look. I just want to let everyone here to know how much I
> appreciate your aid in my struggle to become a full time bike
> commuter. You are all now officially my friends. My best friend (a


(huge snip)

No. He didn't.

This is nothing but speculation, rumor and innuendo. And why are you
invoking NBC in the subject line? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see
anything attributed to NBC. If you're trying to borrow legitimacy by
invoking them, that's a real hoot. I thought little Katie was gonna cry
when she had to announce that ... BUSH WON!

Please ... get over it.

Bob C.
 
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 13:53:08 -0500, "psycholist" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> Ok, look. I just want to let everyone here to know how much I
>> appreciate your aid in my struggle to become a full time bike
>> commuter. You are all now officially my friends. My best friend (a

>
>(huge snip)
>
>No. He didn't.
>
>This is nothing but speculation, rumor and innuendo. And why are you
>invoking NBC in the subject line? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see
>anything attributed to NBC. If you're trying to borrow legitimacy by
>invoking them, that's a real hoot. I thought little Katie was gonna cry
>when she had to announce that ... BUSH WON!
>
>Please ... get over it.
>
>Bob C.
>

NxC is a convention in several newsgroups that stands for NO x
CONTENT. As in No Bike Content. It enables folks to skip non-topic
posts should they choose. Not that a statement like KERRY WON could be
mistaken for bike content, but it is considered polite. Any
resemblence to NBC the Network is unintentional. They would never run
something harmful to their corporate masters.

Is it innuendo that black voters were six times more likely to have
their vote discarded than white voters? That was last time, I bet it
is the same this time.
 
"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 13:53:08 -0500, "psycholist" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>news:[email protected]...
>>> Ok, look. I just want to let everyone here to know how much I
>>> appreciate your aid in my struggle to become a full time bike
>>> commuter. You are all now officially my friends. My best friend (a

>>
>>(huge snip)
>>
>>No. He didn't.
>>
>>This is nothing but speculation, rumor and innuendo. And why are you
>>invoking NBC in the subject line? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see
>>anything attributed to NBC. If you're trying to borrow legitimacy by
>>invoking them, that's a real hoot. I thought little Katie was gonna cry
>>when she had to announce that ... BUSH WON!
>>
>>Please ... get over it.
>>
>>Bob C.
>>

> NxC is a convention in several newsgroups that stands for NO x
> CONTENT. As in No Bike Content. It enables folks to skip non-topic
> posts should they choose. Not that a statement like KERRY WON could be
> mistaken for bike content, but it is considered polite. Any
> resemblence to NBC the Network is unintentional. They would never run
> something harmful to their corporate masters.
>
> Is it innuendo that black voters were six times more likely to have
> their vote discarded than white voters? That was last time, I bet it
> is the same this time.
>
>


I've been participating in this newsgroup and several other cycling-related
ones for a decade. I've never seen NBC used as you describe. I rather
suspect a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader into thinking NBC was
making the claim that Kerry really won.

And you continue to spew innuendo.

Bob C.
 
"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Ok, look. I just want to let everyone here to know how much I
> appreciate your aid in my struggle to become a full time bike
> commuter. You are all now officially my friends. My best friend (a
> flesh and blood one) is actually a far right winger and one of the
> nicest people I know, if just wrong about life. We try not to talk
> politics because we end up angry.
>
> That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
> because nothing is more important.
>

This kind of stuff is prime example of how little the liberal radicals
respect our form of government, they don't care how irresponsible they are
or sound if it would help their cause. To bad their cause is going down
deeper in the cesspool every year.
 
"di" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:9IRjd.75171$%x.16005@okepread04...

> This kind of stuff is prime example of how little the liberal radicals
> respect our form of government, they don't care how irresponsible they are
> or sound if it would help their cause. To bad their cause is going down
> deeper in the cesspool every year.


Even though I didn't vote for Bush, I'm glad he won now, if for no other
reason, just to ******** nitwits like "dgk".

Cheto
 
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 13:53:19 -0800, Cheto <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
> "di" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:9IRjd.75171$%x.16005@okepread04...
>
>> This kind of stuff is prime example of how little the liberal radicals
>> respect our form of government, they don't care how irresponsible they
>> are
>> or sound if it would help their cause. To bad their cause is going
>> down
>> deeper in the cesspool every year.

>
> Even though I didn't vote for Bush, I'm glad he won now, if for no other
> reason, just to ******** nitwits like "dgk".
>
> Cheto
>
>

Should we say that we have just elected the lesser of 2 idiots?
Kerry just wan't that impressive. Bush will do so much damage
that the next guy in the white house will spend his time on
damage control.
Bill Baka
 
"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote
>
> That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
> because nothing is more important.


The first incorrecct assumption
"the exit polls are accurate."

Everything falls apart from there.

Pete
 
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 14:28:59 -0800, Bill Baka <[email protected]> wrote
in message <[email protected]>:

>Should we say that we have just elected the lesser of 2 idiots?


But possibly the greater of two evils. Time will tell. Oh, look, it
already has! Still, the survivalists and nuclear shelter industries
will be glad of the boost :)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
 
dgk wrote:
>
> ... Kerry really won. I think people really should read

this
> because nothing is more important.


We lost. Feel sad, plot next time, but get on with your
life. A bike ride might help.
 
"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
> because nothing is more important.
>

Damn, that was funny. Can you find another humorous story to post?
 
Pete wrote:

> "dgk" <[email protected]> wrote
> >
> > That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
> > because nothing is more important.

>
> The first incorrecct assumption
> "the exit polls are accurate."


Interesting, as so far, the only place the exit polls appear
to have been wrong were precincts that had paperless
voting, and were accurate is precincts that had paper
ballots..

Just a coincidence, I'm sure.


--

-TTFN

-Steven
 
<[email protected]> wrote
> Pete wrote:
>
>> "dgk" <[email protected]> wrote
>> >
>> > That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
>> > because nothing is more important.

>>
>> The first incorrecct assumption
>> "the exit polls are accurate."

>
> Interesting, as so far, the only place the exit polls appear
> to have been wrong were precincts that had paperless
> voting, and were accurate is precincts that had paper
> ballots..
>
> Just a coincidence, I'm sure.


So you really think, with thousands of lawyers from both sides waiting to
pounce, several different kinds of electronic voting machines, many more
types of non-electronic machines, Republican and Democratic poll workers,
inspectors from the UN...with all that...the Republicans managed to inject
enough ghost votes into the system to change the outcome of the election?
And do this completely (so far) undetected.

Really...

Pete
 
"Pete" <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>"dgk" <[email protected]> wrote
>>
>> That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
>> because nothing is more important.

>
>The first incorrecct assumption
>"the exit polls are accurate."
>
>Everything falls apart from there.


Like tens of thousands of Democrat-sponsored lawyers were gonna miss
something like "dgk" claimed. Heh.

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame
 
>dgk [email protected]

wrote:

>NxC is a convention in several newsgroups that stands for NO x
>CONTENT. As in No Bike Content. It enables folks to skip non-topic
>posts should they choose. Not that a statement like KERRY WON could be
>mistaken for bike content, but it is considered polite. Any
>resemblence to NBC the Network is unintentional. They would never run
>something harmful to their corporate masters.


---snip---

An "unintentional resemblance", huh? I'll tell you what I sometimes tell
soon-to-be defendants- "I see. You were man enough to commit the crime but
you're not man enough to admit it, you want to try to lie your way out of
trouble. Okay, I can deal with that. Do me a favor though. If you are going to
lie at least make it a *good* lie and not the weakass **** you're talking now."

>Is it innuendo that black voters were six times more likely to have
>their vote discarded than white voters? That was last time, I bet it
>is the same this time.


No, that's not innuendo. It's an assertion, one you've made without offering a
shred of evidence.

Regards,
Bob Hunt
 
>[email protected]

wrote:

>So you really think, with thousands of lawyers from both sides waiting to
>pounce, several different kinds of electronic voting machines, many more
>types of non-electronic machines, Republican and Democratic poll workers,
>inspectors from the UN...with all that...the Republicans managed to inject
>enough ghost votes into the system to change the outcome of the election?
>And do this completely (so far) undetected.


Let's accept as fact for a moment that this really *did* happen. The massive
undetected and unprovable vote fraud being alleged leads to the inescapable
conclusion that the Republicans were able to outsmart the best people the
Democrats could find to ferret out vote fraud. Leaving aside differences in
political philosophies for a moment, do we really want to be governed by people
too dumb to detect vote fraud on the widepread and massive scale necessary to
account for Bush's clear win? If they can't even manage to make sure the vote
isn't cooked, what chance at all do they have of making smart decisions on the
much more complex matters of day-to-day governance?

Regards,
Bob Hunt
 
In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] (Hunrobe) wrote:

> Let's accept as fact for a moment that this really *did* happen. The massive
> undetected and unprovable vote fraud being alleged leads to the inescapable
> conclusion that the Republicans were able to outsmart the best people the
> Democrats could find to ferret out vote fraud. Leaving aside differences in
> political philosophies for a moment, do we really want to be governed by
> people
> too dumb to detect vote fraud on the widepread and massive scale necessary to
> account for Bush's clear win? If they can't even manage to make sure the vote
> isn't cooked, what chance at all do they have of making smart decisions on
> the
> much more complex matters of day-to-day governance?


I'm not saying that fraud has happened, but consider what some experts
have discussed as a possibility. With electronic voting machines that
have NO paper record (some do print a copy so there is a hard-copy
back-up), it is possible for the vote to be changed and NOBODY would be
able to detect it. It doesn't matter how many pollwatchers or attorneys
you have, it is not the type of fraud that is visible.

This fraud could theoretically happen one of two ways. First, it can be
written into the code that operates the machines. This can be done by a
rogue employee of the company who manufactures the equipment or, of
course, it could be done as part of a wider conspiracy. Second, it can
be done by hacking into the computers that tabulate the votes. This had
been done quite easily in early testing. It's not clear whether the
machines used in the 2004 election had updated software to help protect
against this problem or not.

Again, I'm not making the argument that fraud occurred. I'm just
pointing out that it could happen and if it did, it would happen in a
manner that would likely never be detected. The real problem here is
that even if fraud NEVER occurs, people will question the credibility if
such a system. There is no longer a method to verify the vote. We have
to trust the government and its contractors, and that's not a good thing.

Todd Kuzma
 
Pete wrote:

> <[email protected]> wrote
> > Pete wrote:
> >
> >> "dgk" <[email protected]> wrote
> >> >
> >> > That said, Kerry really won. I think people really should read this
> >> > because nothing is more important.
> >>
> >> The first incorrecct assumption
> >> "the exit polls are accurate."

> >
> > Interesting, as so far, the only place the exit polls appear
> > to have been wrong were precincts that had paperless
> > voting, and were accurate is precincts that had paper
> > ballots..
> >
> > Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

>
> So you really think, with thousands of lawyers from both sides waiting to
> pounce, several different kinds of electronic voting machines, many more
> types of non-electronic machines, Republican and Democratic poll workers,
> inspectors from the UN...with all that...the Republicans managed to inject
> enough ghost votes into the system to change the outcome of the election?
> And do this completely (so far) undetected.
>
> Really...


Hmmm... So tell me, why won't they allow independent review of the source
code for the voting machines? They have a truckload of lawyers crying
"proprietary" software, trade secret. What the hell could possibly be
a trade secret about software to register votes? It should be a simple
counting program, if it's honest.

And as far as having to "inject" ghost votes, they don't need to have
a physical presence to do that, nobody but the company that supplied
the computers has seen the software, so who knows what it does?


--

-TTFN

-Steven
 
Hunrobe wrote:

> >[email protected]

>
> wrote:
>
> >So you really think, with thousands of lawyers from both sides waiting to
> >pounce, several different kinds of electronic voting machines, many more
> >types of non-electronic machines, Republican and Democratic poll workers,
> >inspectors from the UN...with all that...the Republicans managed to inject
> >enough ghost votes into the system to change the outcome of the election?
> >And do this completely (so far) undetected.

>
> Let's accept as fact for a moment that this really *did* happen. The massive
> undetected and unprovable vote fraud being alleged leads to the inescapable
> conclusion that the Republicans were able to outsmart the best people the
> Democrats could find to ferret out vote fraud. Leaving aside differences in
> political philosophies for a moment, do we really want to be governed by people
> too dumb to detect vote fraud on the widepread and massive scale necessary to
> account for Bush's clear win? If they can't even manage to make sure the vote
> isn't cooked, what chance at all do they have of making smart decisions on the
> much more complex matters of day-to-day governance?


Here's a question for you, why are the companies that own the non paper
ballot voting machines refusing to allow an audit of the source code? Do
you think making a program that counts things is such a national security
secret that no one should be allowed to look at the source code?

Or do you prefer to be ruled, oh, sorry, governed by people who
obstruct vote verification?

--

-TTFN

-Steven
 
In article <[email protected]>, sonicechoes-
[email protected] says...
> So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
> Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask
> the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.



Two thoughts on this.

1. Like some 2/3 of voters in my state, I'm ineligible for exit polls --
I vote by mail. Until exit pollsters find a way to harass and annoy
people like me, their polls will not be accurate or reliable.

2. When I was prey for exit pollsters, I lied to them. I still do lie to
pollsters who call me at home.

Why?

Because an election isn't a horse race, it's a political decision, and
every second of news coverage devoted to daily fluctuations in poll
numbers is worse than useless -- it detracts from time spent discussing
the issues, and it encourages undecideds to vote based on herd momentum
rather than either taking the time to understand the issues or doing the
responsible democratic thing and not voting.

--
[email protected] is Joshua Putnam
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/>
Books for Bicycle Mechanics and Tinkerers:
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/bike/bikebooks.html>
 

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