Election Fraud??
There are Real Discrepancies
...And other misgivings

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Hate to already spring this on people, but some serious allegations are already being made regarding the potential for voter fraud and mischief in Ohio and Florida.
The differences in the exit polls and the machines are striking in those states, whereas most other exit polls almost perfectly match the outcome in other states.

This is just beginning to build but it's striking that it's already emerging two days after this election.
Here's an email i received this morning:
>>>>
I'm passing along some information related to the possibility that this election was rigged. Although I haven't seen enough of the evidence--and am not sufficiently confident in my statistical analysis abilities--to be able to verify this for you, I do think that fraud may have occurred, perhaps on a massive scale, and that this warrants serious further investigation. Perhaps some of you math types can take
a closer look and tell me what you think.

Do not forget that the Walden O'Dell, hard-core Republican fundraiser and chief executive of Diebold Inc (the company that makes most of the voting machines), said in a letter dated Aug. 14, 2003, that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its
electoral votes to the president next year." (see http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm).

I also find it fishy that Rove said that they would get 4 million more votes than they got in 2000 and, apparently, they did. Almost exactly.

I'm sure that you're all aware of the very serious problems with the electronic voting machines. If not, check out this site: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/.
Wired has an article out on e-voting in this election at Watchdogs Spot E-Vote Glitches.

Okay, so the info about fraud in this election is below. Much of it comes from
Exit polls analysis versus reported vote count.

I want everyone to see this and at least have a choice as to whether they want to be depressed because Bush won this election, or because Bush stole this election.

Black Box Voting and Greg Palast's report of a million votes thrown out in Florida before the election even began aside, basic numbers show that this election was a fraud, it was stolen just like the 2000 election was stolen.

Look at a site which lists the exit polls before they were "corrected." Correction is the procedure by which the exit polls are retrofitted to match the figures provided by the vote counting machines. It is easily done by changing the exit poll results, such as the 2.00 a.m. re-assignment of the Nevada exit poll scores which was done without varying the sample size.

Results can be also changed by other methods like screwing with the weighting (weighting in statistics is a coefficient assigned to elements of a frequency distribution in order to represent their relative importance).

So let's check out raw exit polls vs. announced results

Here is one list as an example of raw exit poll data: All exit polls predict Kerry victory, though early polls not considered reliable

Then look at the results by state, such as here:
Elections

The GOP says that the exit polls are not large enough samples and so there is a large random error in the results. If this were true, then the exit polls would scatter on either side of the actual result, ESP. if the final result is so close to 50/50.

When we compare exit polls with actual results we see a skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had previously stated to be target states in play. The skew favors Bush every time.

The exit poll results are not scattered about the mean, they are all on the Kerry side of the vote counts as issued by the states except for a few of states where the final figures are very close to poll figures.

Here are the figures. They list the four contemporaneous and uncorrected exit polls. Kerry is listed first and Bush second in each pair of figures. Published = the figure presented as the vote count as of 10.00 a.m. EST on 11/3/04

AZ Poll one 45-55 Final 45-55 Published 44-55
CO Poll one 48-51 2nd 48-50 3rd 46-53 Published 46-53
LA Poll one 42-57 Final 43-56 Published 42-57
MI Poll one 51-48 Published 51-48 Published 51-48
IOWA Poll one 49-49 3rd 50-48 Final 49-49 Published 49-50
NM Poll one 50-48 2nd 50-48 3rd 50-48 Final 50-49 Published 49-50
ME 3rd 55-44 Published 53-45
NV: 3rd 48-49 Published 48-51
AR: 3rd 45-54 Published 45-54
MO Final 46-54 Published 46-53

These tracking polls are as expected and within the margin of error. But in othe states that is not the case. Either the exit polls were wrong or the vote count is wrong:
WI Poll one 52-48 3rd 51-46 Final 52-47 Published 50-49
PA Poll one 60-40 3rd 54-45 Final 53-46 Published 51-49
OH Poll one 52-48 2nd 50-49 3rd 50-49 Final 51-49 Published 49-51
FL Poll one 51-48 2nd 50-49 3rd 50-49 Final 51-49 Published 47-52
MINN Poll one 58-40 3rd 58-40 Final 54-44 Published 51-48
NH Poll one 57-41 3rd 58-41 Published 50-49
NC Poll one 3rd 49-51 Final 48-52 Published 43-56

Taking the figures and measuring the size and direction of the poll to supposed vote count discrepancy, you will see:
OH Bush + 4%
FL Bush + 7%
NH Bush + 15%
NC Bush + 9%
etc.

Also:
...in several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has E-Voting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results.

In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error.

So we have MATCHING RESULTS for exit polls vs. voting with audits vs.
A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without audits.

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Here's what what one mainstream paper says:
>Exit Polls: Early Numbers Misread and Misused
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Fruit has returned to being deposited in my chair. a mysterious person has been putting various fruit in my chair at work off and on for the last few weeks.
today, the fruit returns. an apple. oh wait!
after reading the little tag, it's an Asian pear. it certainly looks like an apple. it's round.
also, i found a very tiny chocolate chip on my keyboard.
this can only mean apocalypse is upon us.
in the past, there has been a banana, pear, orange and persimmon -- DEF: the usually orange several-seeded globular berry of a persimmon that is edible when fully ripe but usually extremely astringent when unripe -- and...am i missing one? can't recall.

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it must be true that stress does in fact cause memory lapse. how else to explain that the unbelievable amount of stress upon my shoulders has enabled me to not only forget the specific paper i needed for my appointment with the DMV this morning to renew my license (despite the fact i have two copies, i can now only find one and i left that one at work - idiot), but also i pulled my salad for lunch out on to my kitchen table, only to then forget it there.
i am officially dumb sometimes
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guilt is good.
when we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sunday afternoon (gorgeous down there, btw), i noticed in all the bathrooms, there was quite a thought-provoking sign.

next to the paper towels near the sinks was this:
TOWELS = TREES

it made me take less.
see, guilt is good.

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i guess i won't be smoking my post-election day celebratory cigar i got in Monterey at Cool Cat Cigars. that was a cool place though. the dude working the counter had the best facial hair. mostly white, except for right around the mouth, which was tobacco-stained.
but his moustache was one of those long ones that went over his mouth entirely so you can't see his lips. and his handlebar part of his moustache was super long and in twisty curly Qs pointed out thanks to some fine wax.
He was a fine gentleman.
Fare thee well, gentle man.

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ok, i'm not getting ahead of myself here.
i'm kind of shaking after reading this government document regarding the Selective Service, which is the draft.
but apparently, same old financial aid/register tie-in. Ooooold law.
http://cryptome.org/sss110404.txt

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update: 4 p.m. PST

got some more stuff on the e-voting controversy that is continuing to swirl around on the web.

E-Vote Goes Smoothly, but Experts Skeptical

this next one's much more emphatic.
Kerry Won

here's a story from Salon, which is subscription only (here's a tip - sit through the 60-second or so commercial to get a free day pass each day, well worth it) that sort of discounts what some blogs are saying, so it's a good wake-up call, if nothing else.

Did e-voting fraud help Bush steal the election?
The Internets are abuzz with rumors that Bush won with the help of rigged electronic voting machines.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo
Nov. 4, 2004 | Lefty Web sites are buzzing with a supposed "statistical analysis" that they say proves that Republicans stole the election by rigging paperless touch screen machines. According to the analysis performed by a Democratic Underground regular who goes by the handle SoCalDemocrat, states that use electronic machines were all showing strong Kerry support in exit polls, but when the results came in, the states went to Bush. The polls (which are based on interviews with voters as they leave the polls) indicate that voters in the state really voted for Kerry, the lefties say; the machines distorted or changed their votes. "Maybe Dubayah believes God will see him through this, but it's going to take more than blind faith to pull the wool over the data and the facts," SoCalDemocrat writes.

But as we see it, SoCalDemocrat's evidence is quite thin. For one thing, he appears to be wrong on the facts. While he's correct that exit polls showed a Kerry victory in many states that actually went to Bush, this didn't only happen in states that use paperless touch screen machines.

The most obvious example is Nevada, the only state in the nation to use what many computer scientists consider to be the safest touch-screen machines -- machines that print a paper ballot that is reviewed by the voter as each vote is cast, a so-called voter-verified paper trail. In Nevada, the last exit polls showed Kerry leading Bush by 49 to 48 percent, with 1 percent for Ralph Nader. The actual result was a win for Bush by 51 to 48 percent.

And even in states that did use paperless touch-screen machines, it's not clear that Bush made his gains in the areas of the states that used them, rather than regions that use other machines. For instance, in Florida, it's the state's large South Florida counties that use paperless touch screens. But Bush did worse in these regions in 2004 than in 2000. In the 2000 race in Miami-Dade, Bush got about 47 percent of the two-party share of the vote, while Al Gore received 53 percent; this year, Bush only got 46 percent of the two-party vote there, while Kerry got 54 percent. What this means is that in the move from punch-card machines (which, as everyone remembers, Miami-Dade used in 2000) to paperless touch-screens, Bush actually did worse, not better. At the same time, the president gained in Orange County, Florida. In 2000, Gore beat Bush in Orange County, whose largest city is Orlando; this year, Kerry lost to Bush there. And Bush didn't need rigged machines to do it: Orlando uses paper-based optical-scan voting machines -- which computer scientists consider more reliable than the touch screen systems.

Even if unfounded, the Democratic Underground set's suspicion is understandable. The exit polls were odd. And who can forget the infamous pledge of Wally O'Dell, CEO of touch-screen machine vendor Diebold, to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush this year? (Ohio, however, used few paperless touch-screens.) It's certainly worthwhile to scrutinize how the technology functioned in this year's election, but to date there simply isn't the evidence to conclude that the election was "stolen" using it. One way to make sure future presidential races are above such suspicion would be to add paper trails to all the paperless machines.

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I have some good news today.
Long absent, absinthe to become legal in its native Switzerland

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even better news. People want to fight Bush supporters.
Straight male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight
Let the games begin!
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a quote from my good friend in the State That Would Be Florida:
"What gets me is the fact i'll never know the satisfaction of having defeated that smug bastard in a election and have to watch him admit defeat.
I wanted to see him stunned and angry."
Agreed on that sentiment.
though somehow i feel like Bush's just due is still coming. Karma's a real bitch.
then again, where the hell was karma during this election? out to play?

I was listening to npr last night, Terry Gross was interviewing one of the editors at New Yorker. He was clearly devastated and filled with grief.
One thing he said that was most striking concerned violent extremism and that we're likely to see some of that, in-country terrorism, and potentially violent actions against the U.S. government in protest, which i think will likely, in turn, bring about a bigger and much scarier police state.
Man...this is going to only harden people's attitudes.

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maybe this is why Florida voted the way it did.
Liquefied Heroin Discovered In Fruit Juice Boxes in Florida
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and a sign there's still humanity in the world, despite the re-election of the evil one.
this morning on 880-S, in a super busy area of the freeway, there were several cars stopped in the middle of the road.
Then i see a middle-aged executive looking woman get out of her car in the middle of the road because there was a damn KITTEN in the middle of the freeway.
then another guy gets out of his car and tries helping the woman get the kitty.
all of a sudden this big semi truck comes rolling up and i think it's over for the kitty and she darts in front of it and the truck stops in time. i was watching all of this as i slowly drove by, then out of my rearview mirror.
it looked like the kitty made it to the side of the road but i can't be sure. at least they got the kitty out of the road.
i can't imagine how a tiny kitten got on the freeway other than by some asshole dumping it out of the window or something. so sad.
so i am hoping the kitten made it safe and sound.
people are good, aren't they?
not everybody is an asshole.
Like, say, Republicans/Bush.

have a nice today and tomorrow! (but screw you on Saturday)