Rolling Stone asks “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”
A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 — more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes. In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn’t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
conspiracy theory.
I have always kind of doubted that there were enough electronic shenanigans in Ohio to swing the election.
The real problem, though, is the way in which numerous minority precincts had too few machines or machines in disrepair, leading to incredibly long lines.
So, if you work 9-5, chances are you had little or no wait to vote. If you work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet, you probably had a much longer wait… sometimes 8-10 hours.
I wonder how many people simply couldn’t wait that long, and never even attempted to vote.
This is just bunk. Even Mother Jones has trashed these claims.
http://www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2005/11/recounting_ohio-3.html
The real scandal is in Detroit where there was huge fraudalent voting and it probably stole the state. But Waldo only cares about voter fraud when it hurts his candidate, not helps.
Vote fraud in St Louis too, but that also was for the dems.
Waldo only cares about voter fraud when it hurts his candidate…
How do you come to that conclusion? Waldo only asked the question: Conspiracy theory, or 2000 repeating itself? Maybe he’s reached a conclusion, but, if so, he hasn’t revealed it here.
I too think it is most likely just another CT. The factors that lead to Bush’s win are easy to point out:
Kerry was not the strongest candidate in terms of relating to voters and getting his message out there;
the cheast beating war time president theme was hard to over come;
the tone of the election centered on social issues, namely gay rights and abortion, which Americans are generally conservative on. Had it been focused on “meat and potatoe” or “bread and butter” issues aka things that really affect the average voter (education, economy, health care) I believe the Democrats would have had a strong chance of winning. The religious appeal even allowed Bush to pick off a few more Black voters from the election of 2000 then again Bush could only go up among Blacks after registering a dismal 8% of the Black vote (lowest since Goldwater) in 2000.;
The “your not a patriot if you oppose the war” slogan resonated with people at the time and many people felt like supporting our troops = supporting the war = supporting the president = dont speak out against the president
The gay marriage back lash was perhaps the most important element of the election. That is what it came down to. Not the war in Iraq, no education, not health care, not social security, but gay marriage. That’s ultimately why Bush won legitamitely this time.
Finally, the catch lines! Bush’s catch lines were, well, catchy. There is “flip floper” “the world is safer today without Saddam Hussein”(while beating on the podium) “he’s the most liberal Senator in Congress” “protect the sanctity of marriage” How many Kerry lines can you remember? Honestly? “I have a plan” boooorrrriiiinnnnngggggg…. What is your favorite catch line of 2004?
I think everyone should read the article carefully. Some of the claims sound like dirty tricks, which while I personally find disgusting, you can argue that they don’t really rise to the level of stealing the election.
What I do think everyone needs to read carefully, though, are the statistical arguments given near the end of the very lengthy article. Statistics show that votes appear to have been shifted from Kerry to Bush. The quote that I think everyone needs to read (UVA08…) is:
If you don’t trust the subjective opinions of partisans that are throughout the article, I highly recommend reading the statistical arguments, for example how Kerry was outpolled by an underfunded and extremely liberal downticket candidate, how one polling place with a higher than expected Bush vote count reported 98.55% voter turnout, and as the quote above shows, Bush appears to have gotten larger numbers of votes from pro-gay marriage voters in rural Ohio than Kerry did.
If you think that any kind of vote suppression or fraud is ok (I love the arguments that go that Rs should be allowed to suppress votes because Ds inflate votes in other areas), then I suppose that for 2006 & 2008 what Ds really need to do to get our candidates elected is to create voting machine companies, get the technology sold to districts in R strongholds, and hold our own secret vote counts behind locked doors after fake terrorist threats. If the rules have changed, it’s time to play by the new rules.
Sorry — I just wanted to add one more thing. Maybe it is because I’m a scientist that I find statistical arguments like this one and the ones I quoted above so convincing, but I find it quite disturbing that there is a correlation between machine type used and vote differentials favoring Republican candidates from the 2004 election.
Like Chirs, I too am persuaded by the statistical analysis. Something doesn’t add up, and in all fairness the article points out a few oddities in Kerry’s favor. It just happens that the overwhelming majority of outlier conditions favored Bush.
From this point forward what really matters is what we do to reform the election process. We’ll hear plenty of rebuttal which amount to little more than character attacks and resignation that Democrats rig elections too, but that won’t help anyone in 2008. That said, between one group that wants to puff up the voter count (dead voters? dogs voting?) and another that wants to suppress the vote, I’ll call them both crooks.
We did away with poll taxes. Now we need to do away with manipulative efforts to intimidate and disrupt voters in urban and poor precincts.
UVA08,
Why not actually address the points and the evidence being offered? If they are wrong, then rebut them based on the facts and explain it to us. Putting forth a bunch of political theories on why you think that Bush’s message was better is totally irrelevant. If the official election results had been 1% in the other direction with all other factors the same, then everyone would construct totally different truisms about the race and point to them as if there was way things could have been different.
Try this: ‘Bush lost because his divisive politics failed to enlarge his already narrow constituency that had been barely enough to squeak through in 2000. With an electorate so closely divided as it was following 2000, Bush had absolutely no room to move and the loss of even a handful of black voters, coupled with the anti-war backlash among a record turn-out of young voters was all that it took to relegate him to the status of a single-term lame duck. Proof that the President had lied about imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq coupled with his administration’s attempts to conceal the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib cost Bush enough votes among independants and conservative women to irrevocably bury him.’
At the end of the day, I think that such tidy, simplistic explanations like either yours or mine are essentially useless and self-indulgent. In no case should these nice little stories that we construct substitute for an adequate explanation for or rebuttal to allegations of election fraud.
Read the article and decide for yourself. The word conspiracy exists because sometimes there really are conspriacies.
Chris, read the Mother Jones article and do some research. There were no “secret vote countings” in Ohio. That is just more urban myth. The media wants to focus on Ohio and ignore Washington, Michigan and Missouri where there was plenty of evidence of vote fraud.
When you’ve got the CIA and NSA running you as a candidate jointly with big oil, then anythings possible.
I was in Ohio on Election Day, 2004, and personally witnessed what appeared to be ballot stuffing in an overwhelmingly Democrat precinct. Promoting reliance upon this article seems to be an effort for entry into the Moonbat Blog Carnival.
Hey, it’s in the Rolling Stone — it’s GOT to be true.
Farhad Manjoo writes in Salon today:
Hey, it’s in th’ Mother Jones – it’s GOT to be true.
Okay, what publication could any article appear in and be immune from such statement be made by somebody who wanted to cast doubt on the veracity of the article?
Nice mandate.
In Florida in 2004, there were also large numbers of registered voters whose names were not on the rosters on election day. Not shenanigans on the scale of 2000, but still.
Harry, this article is nothing more than Sore-Loserman, part deux. The Rolling Stone regularly serves up quasi-news such as this, in its attempt to be more than it is. This piece in particular smacks of leftist kooks like Michael Moore & Moveon.org.
You’d never, ever see laughable crap like this in the WaPo or NYT.
I. Publius:
That’s because the Washington Post and the New York Times are in the bag already. They have sucked at viable news coverage for some time now. I am surprised you didn’t mention the National Review and the Wall Street Journal as pillars of serious and factual journalism. Just like a clock, everybody is usually right sometimes.
And the kooks? They are the ones in charge currently in Washington, DC. Last time I checked, King George didn’t take the right of free speech away from everybody quite yet. So they have just as much right to spout ‘kooky’ stuff as do Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly.
Jack and Chris… I’ll just say the evidence is convincing but how does this help us win the next election? My whole thing is that I think its worthless to keep dweling on the past election instead of focusing on how to win the next one. Lets say that there were some strange things going on in Ohio, how does that explain Bush gaining ground in FL, VA, WV, NM, NY, MO, AR, GA, TN, KY etc? The fact is we have a message problem and the way to solve it is not by using critical energy on conspiracy theories but on how to win the next election.
The fact is we have a message problem and the way to solve it is not by using critical energy on conspiracy theories but on how to win the next election.
But, if one believes that the election system is rigged, no amount of message leads to victory.
The commission led by Jimmy Carter and James Baker did serious study on election reform following the 2000 election. They issued a report making recommendations for reform. Republicans on the commission agreed to restoration of voting rights for felons who have completed their sentences. Democrats on the commission agreed to more stringent identification procedures for voters. This commission came to bipartisan agreement for improvements to the system.
And Congress has ignored the work of that commission.
It wasn’t rigged. It’s just a bunch of Dem partisans who are ticked off because they couldn’t steal the election in Detroit, Michigan. Lots of fraud and no one complains of that.
Try Salon for a take on this – not exactly a neo-con web site and they too say that RFK Jr is just repeating tin-foil hat theories. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/index_np.html
“In Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that new evidence proves that Bush stole the election. But the evidence he cites isn’t new and his argument is filled with distortions and blatant omissions.”, Farhad Manjoo in Slate.
or how about a Democrat pollster, Mark Blumenthall http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/06/is_rfk_jr_right.html
one quote is “according to the Edison-Mitofsky report, they have shown a consistent discrepancy favoring the Democrats in every presidential election since 1988”, and this is coming from a Dem pollster.
“When you’ve got the CIA and NSA running you as a candidate jointly with big oil, then anythings possible.”
Let me guess, you believe the Da Vinci Code is 100% accurate, that the Trilateral Commission rules the world and that Elvis is still alive working at a gas station in Arkansas.