The 2004 Presidential Election - was it rigged?

[laura888]

[GetTheRightVote]

1. First to vote, it was stolen for sure, I saw it happen with my own eyes

Horrible WH and Admin.

:kick:

[Enquiringkitty]

2. Kerry's wife was on TV giving them hell about this today. I don't

think anyone should let this issue drop. If it gets dropped, the Repugs will think it has been forgotten about. This needs to be kept alive so people will remember it in 2008.

[dave123williams]

3. If you're even asking, there's a major problem...

[laura888]

4. half the people I encounter on a day to day basis would say "no."

And yeah, that IS a problem.

[rzemanfl]

5. Just remember that 51% is a "mandate" and try to sway one

person.

[laura888]

6. LOL. Excellent! n/t

[mongo]

7. They used every dirty trick in the book in Ohio.

And drained off just enough votes to ensure a Bush win.

I was in Columbus Oh. Two precincts in one polling place. One was for the rich suburb of Bexley, where no one waited for more than 10 mins.

The other was a predominately black area of apartment complexes. They didn't start the day with all their machines - at 10am there was an 1 1/2 wait. Got it "all fixed" later - before the media showed up.

Similar tactics were used throughout the city.

Other counties used other tactics, but the result was guaranteed.

[Awsi Dooger]

20. That's the type of influence I believe in

Not the high tech machine rigging so many DUers are obsessed with. I don't buy that.

But the low profile tactics like you described were definitely carried out in key states, especially the ones under GOP local election control. Ohio was the obvious target and it looks like we spent too much time campaigning there and lining up post-election lawyers, and not enough emphasis on basic opportunity to vote.

That's why these seemingly irrelevant positions like Katherine Harris or Ken Blackwell have held in recent cycles are much more potentially vital than all our registration and GOTV efforts combined. We need to target those offices beforehand and win them in the swing states. Revenge after the fact is garbage. Who gives a damn that Theresa LePore was defeated? She won when it counted.

[slay]

8. Was definitely rigged - so badly that it was never even investigated...

...by anyone in power that is.

[mongo]

9. One more thing

And I have to be careful what I say because I don't want to get sued for liabel.

In the county where I live, the head of the dem party (who is also head of the election board), is such a boob that I believe that he is a repub in disguise.

I've heard many stories, and I've seen where he commits to things and doesn't follow through, like having no Kerry materials for the county fair because he volunteered to get them and didn't, etc.

He leaked a news story about an oposing candidate that the dem candidate didn't want to release without proof, that blew up in the dems face - because there was no proof.

In short, the guy practically works against the party and yet he is in charge. It makes me wonder - I wonder if the dem party has been infiltrated in many areas of the country, and the person responsible for a fair vote for your party in your county is a repub plant.

[Generator]

10. Rigged?

Well I don't know about that word exactly.

But I knew in my gut that the majority of this country didn't stand in line for hours or five minutes or hand deliver their ballot or work phone banks or go door to door or even have a phrase "Anybody but Bush" (when was that phrase used in our lifetime-anybody but him-that's passion) get FANATICAL about voting for the first time in their know lives to elect that piece of worthless trash that is sitting in the White House.

I still see the Kerry signs. We were the fanatics-and the fanatics win the elections-not the tepid ones.

I never felt something so wrong as that election. It smelled like bad fish left out while the "media" told me it was ROSES.

My gut is smarter than that.

Stinking rotten.

[FreedomAngel82]

18. Most definietly

Even here in the south in Tennessee I see Kerry signs here and there. I even saw two "Elect Kerry/Edwards" bumper stickers. Plus NOTHING is going Bush's way and he still has very low ratings.

[laura888]

21. Also, each of us probably know people...

...who either:

- previously voted republican, but said they'd vote for Kerry this time.
- never voted in their lives, but were doing it for the first time to vote against Bush.

I can't think of any instance in which a dem said they'd vote for Bush this time.

[BlueEyedSon]

11. Yes, and not in the way you think. Here is the study that proves it:

Thursday, October 21, 2004
Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program,
Supported al Qaeda

Agree with Kerry Supporters Bush Administration Still Saying This is the Case

Agree US Should Not Have Gone to War if No WMD or Support for al Qaeda

Bush Supporters Misperceive World Public as Not Opposed to Iraq War,
Favoring Bush Reelection

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.

These are some of the findings of a new study of the differing perceptions of Bush and Kerry supporters, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, based on polls conducted in September and October.

Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, "One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them. Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree." Eighty-two percent of Bush supporters perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%) or that Iraq had a major WMD program (19%). Likewise, 75% say that the Bush administration is saying Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda. Equally large majorities of Kerry supporters hear the Bush administration expressing these views--73% say the Bush administration is saying Iraq had WMD (11% a major program) and 74% that Iraq was substantially supporting al Qaeda.

More: http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html

[rzemanfl]

15. I keep pointing this out as a source of hope that people may

still come to their senses. Still think the election was stolen though, but enough people stuck by Dubyah that he was ABLE to steal it. If he had only gotten 30 or 40% of the vote the theft would have been too blatant to get away with. That's why there were all those biased polls that showed him still "in the hunt" despite falling on his face in the debates even with a bug in his ear. Kerry should have taken off his coat at the second debate and hung it on the podium.

[BlueEyedSon]

17. Source of hope? That Americans can be manipulated so easily?

Americans are dumb and getting dumber (or at least misinformed and getting misinformed-er).

[rzemanfl]

22. What I'm referring to is the part of the PIPA poll that said that

Bush supporters had more liberal views than Bush and thought * agreed with them. I suppose it is a question of dumb vs. hopelessly dumb. I am depressed enough as it is and grasping at straws, so humor me.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. About the same as most elections.

[EVDebs]

13. Christopher Hitchens' Vanity Fair article would lead you to believe it !

And the exit poll work by Univ of PA's Steven Freeman can't be discounted either.

And from the stories about long lines in OH, well, that's disenfranchisement. Period.

[Ms. Clio]

23. I saw some of those long lines on "the tee-vee"

and I noticed this really peculiar thing about them--almost all those people who were waiting for hours and hours to vote were African-American.

Disfranchising black people--it's not just for the 19th century anymore.

[SmokingJacket]

14. Yes, but even if it wasn't --

Election theft is absolutely possible. We've allowed voting machine software to be made by private companies with political interests, and we can't audit the machines!!! HOW CRAZY IS THAT??????

That it's so eminently possible is a real, devastating, democracy-imperiling idea.

[laura888]

16. Good point! n/t

[FreedomAngel82]

19. Very true

And all the people who were in control of the election machine's are connected in some way to the GOP or even to Bush/Cheney.

[Jose Diablo]

24. Does a duck walk barefoot? n/t

[BuyingThyme]

25. These poll results are comforting.

(I'm not alone.)

[clem_c_rock]

26. Most definitely. 20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html