Conspiracy to steal the vote again in 2008

[Skeptic Ginger]

Palast's article, SG links, seems to show contradicting versions of what happened, and why. My cynical side says "this helps him hawk his book" while my more skeptical side says "I wanna see those emails."There is no doubt hawking books is motivating Palast. That or basking in the limelight. Which link or which part of which link of mine contradicts Palast?

Quote: Conyers indicated to the BBC that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive ‘caging’ operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove.
Hmm. Argument through incredulity? Sometimes such inductive reasoning is reasonable.
Quote: Griffin has not responded to requests by BBC to explain this ‘caging’ operation. However, in emails subpoenaed by Conyers’ committee, Griffin complains to Monica Goodling, an assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, about the BBC reporter’s reproduction of caging lists in Palast’s book, “Armed Madhouse.”
Given Palast makes some not substantially supported/backed up assertions, is this a surprise?I'm not clear given the published caging lists, Goodling's testimony, and the fact Griffin has resigned that you are making the assertion, Palast's claims are not substantiated.
Quote: In the email dated February 5 of this year, Griffin stated that the purpose of ‘caging’ was to identify “fraudulent” voters. This contradicts one explanation of the Bush campaign to BBC that the lists were of potential donors and not in any way created to challenge voters.
Like a good Truther, the conclusion derived from this contradiction means, to Palast, "steal the 2008 vote."From this source, the Republicans claimed the lists were for campaign fund raising purposes.

The e-mail as released on 10-26-04 and an investigation of the addresses (http://riffle.blogspot.com/2004/10/caging.html)All the addresses I tried out seemed to correlate. I find the "fundraising" explanation in the BBC story to be implausible, unless the GOP has suddenly decided to target African American households.

I didn't replicate Sven's test but it wouldn't surprise me. And the fundraising explanation the Republicans are giving has got to be bogus. So I don't read Palast's statements as you are here, as a conclusion derived from anything other than the Republicans' own excuse when caught.

-

Apparently Griffin has explained himself now that he has resigned.

Brad blog, 6/14; Tim Griffin Cries, Denies 'Vote Caging' Charges, in Arkansas Speech (http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4690)The audio of Griffin's full speech (bring kleenex) is below...

-

Here is the email again from a 2004 web page entry (http://www.bismarcktribune.com/forum/printthread.php?tid=62). The misaddressed tag is to a bdoster@georgewbush.org.

Plausibility increases.

[JimBenArm]

Don't suppose there's any chance you all can take this to politics? Not like there's anything political being discussed or anything...:rolleyes:

[WildCat]

Don't suppose there's any chance you all can take this to politics? Not like there's anything political being discussed or anything...:rolleyes:
No, this is definitely loony enough to belong in Conspiracy Theories.

[pomeroo]

Permit me to quote a passage from John Fund's Stealing Elections (Encounter Books 2004):

"Some of the sloppiness that makes fraud and foul-ups in election counts possible seems to be built into the system by design. The National Voter Registration Act ('Motor Voter Law'), the first law signed into law by President Clinton upon entering office, imposed fraud-friendly rules on the states by requiring driver's license bureaus to register anyone applying for licenses, to offer mail-in registration with no identification needed, and to forbid government workers to challenge new registrants, while making it difficult to purge 'deadwood' voters (those who have died or moved away). In 2001, the voter rolls in many American cities included more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of residents over age eighteen. Philadelphia's voter rolls, for instance, have jumped 24 percent since 1995 at the same time that the city's population has declined by 13 percent. CBS's 60 Minutes created a stir in 1999 when it found people in California using mail-in forms to register fictitious people, or pets, and then obtaining absentee ballots in their names. By this means, for example, the illegal alien who assassinated the Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was registered to vote in San Pedro, California--twice."

Greg Palast is a loony-leftist whose conspiracy-mongering is a travesty of investigative journalism. No one in the Democratic Party, the party of trial lawyers, has ever found anything produced by him worthy of taking to court. Please pause and let that sink in: people who will litigate almost anything won't litigate his rubbish.

A debate on the issue of vote fraud with someone who refuses to read Fund's indispensable book is comparable to those all-too familiar and utterly pointless arguments with Twoofers who refuse to read the NIST Report, the Popular Mechanics book, the 911 Commission Report, or any of the articles on 911myths.com. Skeptigirl, who I assume is very young, should realize that refusing to engage opposing views, dismissing them all with ad hominem attacks, is not the way of the skeptic.

[ConspiRaider]

By the way, here is the putrid, disgusting, lying and smiling jerk John Fund that Ron is championing, on the issue of voter fraud during the Bill Maher show:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4578

I guess Fund is still with the Wall Street Journal? Reminder to normal people: The Wall Street Journal is the prize that megalomaniacal right-winger Rupert Murdoch is trying to get his greasy hands on. You know Rupie, don't you? The turd-capitalist who owns MySpace, and Fox, and New York Post and lots of other stuff. The Rupester has next got his eye on the Asteroid Belt and the Jovian system.

[pomeroo]

Does it ever dawn on you that your sources of information are lacking? No link to this BS claim whatsoever. I have to conclude it is a BS claim since when I looked for information on the specific reasons for the voting machine shortages in heavily Democratic areas in Ohio, I found plenty of discussion how Blackwell was responsible and not one thing about any Democrats who failed to order machines.

First there is this information about Blackwell on Wiki: Ken Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State; Involvement in the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Blackwell#Involvement_in_the_2004_U.S._pre sidential_election_controversy)

And on this well referenced website (http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/007103.php) there is a detailed account of how the voting machine shortage came about and who it affected. You can go to the link to read the rest and what the reference to the bribe was all about. So where's the evidence for your BS claim, pomey? Where's the evidence some Democratic precinct chair or whoever failed to order enough voting machines? You sound like those Creation believers repeating some woo they heard from their local pastor after liking what they heard so they make no effort whatsoever to see if the information was the least bit credible.



Ho hum. You're such a zealous partisan that it just never occurs to you that the reason those ten thousand Democratic lawyers didn't bring any sort of case in Ohio was that there was no case to be made.
May 12, 2005

Ohio: Conyers' Questions & Lampley's Ignorance

Over at HuffPo, Rep John Conyers (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/featuredposts.html#a000756) challenges National Review's Byron York to answer five stupid questions that have been asked and answered repeatedly regarding the moonbat's Ohio conspiracy theories. Yes, it's a waste of time -- because a good and reasonable answer never stops the Out-Of-Idea-Democrats from hurling the charge -- but what the heck:
1. Why was there a scarcity of voting machines in Democratic leaning areas, and an abundance in Republican areas, leading to lines as long as ten hours for Democrats and little or no wait for Republicans? How many votes were affected? In Franklin County alone, according to the Washington Post, “27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry.”
Answer: Voting machine allocation wasn't done by Karl Rove. Allocation decisons are made by an equal number of Republicans and Democrats assigned to each County. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64737-2004Dec14_2.html) No conspiracy here.
I'm also relieved to hear you report that "six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry.” Sounds like his voters got out. Every analysis of turnout and voting trends in Ohio showed nothing substantially different from the 2000 election. And it was the 2000 election that was the model for 2004 voting machine allocation. What else would you have had them do?
If there was suppression in Ohio, why 900,000 more votes than in 2000? Why did Kerry get 550,000 more votes than Gore? (http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/index.html)
2. Why did Blackwell change longstanding rules with respect to provisional ballots to disallow a voter from casting a provisional ballot who was in the correct jurisdiction but wrong precinct? Such a voter would be voting on the right ballot, but the wrong place (in some instances the wrong line in the right building)? Was Ohio’s Republican Governor wrong when he said this was likely to result in the loss of as many as 100,000 votes?
Answer: Uhm, because that's the law in Ohio. In Washington DC provisional ballots cast in the wrong ward are rejected. Why is that suppression in Ohio but the law in DC? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64737-2004Dec14_3.html)
Regardless, all provisional ballots not counted for Kerry, for whatever reason, wouldn't have overcome his loss. Not even close. Bush also had ballots rejected. Both lost provisional votes in keeping with their final percentages and the overall provisional rejection rate was in keeping with the 2000 rate -- which raised no eyebrows.
It's also striking that you believe Democrats are less capable of voting correctly than Republicans. Why else would you think a requirement of knowing your correct ward discriminates against Democrats?
3. Why did Blackwell order that voter registration forms, printed on the incorrect weight of paper, but otherwise valid, should be discarded? How many such registrations were discarded before Blackwell was forced, amid public outcry, to rescind the order?
Answer: These were not Democrat voter registration forms, they were for all voters, Bush voters included. So, Democrats were not singled out in Blackwell's ill-considered decision (that I agree should've been rescinded). To raise this question about Blackwell's judgement is fair. To raise it as though it somehow discriminated against only Democrats and therefore hurt Kerry is utterly absurd.
4. Why did the Republican Party employ so-called caging tactics and partisan challengers in primarily minority voting areas when such tactics has previously been held to be a violation of the Voting Rights Act? If these tactics were to uncover fraudulent voters, how many such voters were found?
Answer: Kerry's lawyers and a number of gadfly liberal groups searched and searched to substantiate disenfranchisement, and not a single case could be found. If I were looking for a place to put challengers, it would be in the heaviest Democrat areas, which are minority ones. Challenging is legal. It was done. It should've been done. That is not a violation of the Voting Rights Act. In fact, it's keeping faith with the VRA. It's not just Democrats who are protected by it. The richest whitest racist in America is also protected by it, and has a right not to have his vote cancelled out by fraud.
5. According to the Washington Post, voting machines in Ohio flipped an unknown number of votes from Kerry to Bush? How and why did this happen? Did it happen anywhere else? How many votes were affected?
Answer: A. These vote flips were reported by WaPo because they were found, disclosed, and corrected.
B. 73% of machine's in Ohio are punch card and have a paper trail. All electronic machines have have a paper trail. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64737-2004Dec14_3.html) There was a recount in Ohio, remember? That recount compared the paper trail to the machine and found no discrepencies. And again, this recount was handled by an equal number of Republicans and Democrats in each ward. No single party runs any ward or precinct in Ohio.
C. The type of machine that flipped was only used in that precinct. Not anywhere else in the state.
D. Nader made a jackass of himself challenging votes throughout the country looking for machine errors. Handcounts were compared to machine counts. No discrepencies were found. (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041206&s=baker)
Conyers, why do I have to answer these questions for you? What did you investigate, anyway? You ran a hearing and talked to voters. Not one. Not one(!) was able to convince a judge they were disenfranchised. Kerry's lawyers were all over Ohio and walked away knowing they had nothing. But at least you have questions....
Jim Lampley (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/jim-lampley/to-byron-york-and-other-ostriches.html) wants to investigate everything but the actual vote count and recount. He mentions "massive vote fraud carried out through the programing of Diebold voting machines." Really, Jim? Because the Ohio Democratic Party's website will inform you that no Diebold machines (http://ohiodems.org/index.php?display=ReleaseDetails&id=191201) were used in Ohio in 2004. So, stop throwing sucker punches.
UPDATE: This post has been edited for clarity.

[pomeroo]

[
quote=ConspiRaider;2702483]By the way, here is the putrid, disgusting, lying and smiling jerk John Fund that Ron is championing, on the issue of voter fraud during the Bill Maher show:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4578

I guess Fund is still with the Wall Street Journal? Reminder to normal people: The Wall Street Journal is the prize that megalomaniacal right-winger Rupert Murdoch is trying to get his greasy hands on. You know Rupie, don't you? The turd-capitalist who owns MySpace, and Fox, and New York Post and lots of other stuff. The Rupester has next got his eye on the Asteroid Belt and the Jovian system.
[/QUOTE]


Calm down, Conspi: have a drink. John Fund is not a liar. No one thinks he is. Greg Palast is a liar.

[ConspiRaider]

Calm down, Conspi: have a drink. John Fund is not a liar. No one thinks he is. Greg Palast is a liar.
Let me clarify your ambiguities, Ron.

YOU don't think Fund is a liar. YOU think Palast is a liar. Those are just your opinions. Many folks do not share them. Me, for example. And that is just MY opinion. I think Fund is lying his ass off.

[pomeroo]

Let me clarify your ambiguities, Ron.

YOU don't think Fund is a liar. YOU think Palast is a liar. Those are just your opinions. Many folks do not share them. Me, for example. And that is just MY opinion. I think Fund is lying his ass off.


I'm all for clarity, but you're mistaken about my "ambiguities": there aren't any.

Nobody thinks John Fund is a liar. He is a diligent journalist who researches his subjects comprehensively. His book on vote fraud is indispensable reading for anyone interested in this ongoing scandal. Much material is covered in it, but it is impossible to discuss a book with someone who hasn't read it.

Lots of people think Greg Palast is a liar. Every two years, he trots out a wild allegation about Republican schemes to disenfranchise black voters. We can waste each other's time pretending to argue the merits of his claims, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the Democratic National Committee doesn't take him seriously.

The Dems have a good scam going. They resist the most fundamental reforms to ensure honest voting, and label anyone who objects a racist. A Rasmussen Research poll found that 82% of all Americans, including 75% of Democrats, believe that "people should be required to show a driver's license or some other form of photo ID before they are allowed to vote." Unprincipled Democratic pols oppose such common-sense measures because they benefit hugely from the chaos. Unprincipled Republican pols complain because they get hurt by it.

A fair and honest system of elections should not be a partisan matter. Responsible citizens should demand nothing less.

[AZCat]

Nobody thinks John Fund is a liar.

This statement is false. ConspiRaider stated in post #258 of this thread, "I think Fund is lying his ass off." Clearly at least one person thinks John Fund is a liar, so your statement cannot be true.

[pomeroo]

This statement is false. ConspiRaider stated in post #258 of this thread, "I think Fund is lying his ass off." Clearly at least one person thinks John Fund is a liar, so your statement cannot be true.



I suppose you're right. I could say that nobody who calls John Fund a liar can hope to make a case for that false and irresponsible charge. But without being able to read minds, I can't actually know to what extent Fund's slanderers believe what they say.

[AZCat]

I suppose you're right. I could say that nobody who calls John Fund a liar can hope to make a case for that false and irresponsible charge. But without being able to read minds, I can't actually know to what extent Fund's slanderers believe what they say. (emphasis mine)

Based on the scorching LashL gave in that other thread, I think it is in your best interest to use the correct term here. If you are referring to posters such as ConspiRaider, the term would be "libel" not "slander". It's your choice though - I'd rather not be on the receiving end of a LashL tongue-lashing. :)

[pomeroo]

(emphasis mine)

Based on the scorching LashL gave in that other thread, I think it is in your best interest to use the correct term here. If you are referring to posters such as ConspiRaider, the term would be "libel" not "slander". It's your choice though - I'd rather not be on the receiving end of a LashL tongue-lashing. :)



I hear you. But, that's the point: I don't actually hear you; I'm reading what you wrote. I tend to regard exchanges on this forum as conversations. Sure, anything we post is printed matter, so hurling insults is technically libel, not slander. I think you understand what I'm saying, er, writing.

[AZCat]

I hear you. But, that's the point: I don't actually hear you; I'm reading what you wrote. I tend to regard exchanges on this forum as conversations. Sure, anything we post is printed matter, so hurling insults is technically libel, not slander. I think you understand what I'm saying, er, writing.

If you're anything like me, when I read what someone has written there's a little voice in my head saying the words as I read through them.

Or maybe I'm just bats***-crazy?

But yeah, I get your point.

[pomeroo]

If you're anything like me, when I read what someone has written there's a little voice in my head saying the words as I read through them.

Or maybe I'm just bats***-crazy?

But yeah, I get your point.



Well, if you're nuts, so am I. Maybe we should take this act on the road?

[AZCat]

Well, if you're nuts, so am I. Maybe we should take this act on the road?

Maybe we could get Ace to write us a theme song?

[Kevin_Lowe]

I suppose you're right. I could say that nobody who calls John Fund a liar can hope to make a case for that false and irresponsible charge. But without being able to read minds, I can't actually know to what extent Fund's slanderers believe what they say.

I'm not familiar with Fund or his work. The weaknesses of argument from authority aside, however, the unavoidable fact is that anyone pushing the line that "zombie voting" is a real phenomenon is either gullible or carrying Republican party water, because there is absolutely no evidence it goes on to any significant extent. The noise about the issue is made almost exclusively by Republican party political hacks or dodgy front groups like the ACVR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Center_for_Voting_Rights

If you haven't been following the curent scandal regarding the firing of prosecutors, it's turned out some or perhaps all of them were fired for not finding some zombie voters to cermonially burn at the stake.

If you notice, even the material you quoted from Fund's books says nothing about whether voter fraud ever actually happened, anywhere. It concerns itself with whether it's possible, which is a very different question. Once Fund has established possibility, he also has to establish practicality and actual existence, which I'm prepared to bet he doesn't do anywhere in the book you love so much.

[pomeroo]

I'm not familiar with Fund or his work. The weaknesses of argument from authority aside, however, the unavoidable fact is that anyone pushing the line that "zombie voting" is a real phenomenon is either gullible or carrying Republican party water, because there is absolutely no evidence it goes on to any significant extent. The noise about the issue is made almost exclusively by Republican party political hacks or dodgy front groups like the ACVR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Center_for_Voting_Rights

If you haven't been following the curent scandal regarding the firing of prosecutors, it's turned out some or perhaps all of them were fired for not finding some zombie voters to cermonially burn at the stake.

If you notice, even the material you quoted from Fund's books says nothing about whether voter fraud ever actually happened, anywhere. It concerns itself with whether it's possible, which is a very different question. Once Fund has established possibility, he also has to establish practicality and actual existence, which I'm prepared to bet he doesn't do anywhere in the book you love so much.



Now you're talking!

HOW MUCH are you prepared to bet? Considering that I have read the book and you are merely talking through your hat, I will give good odds.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Now you're talking!

HOW MUCH are you prepared to bet? Considering that I have read the book and you are merely talking through your hat, I will give good odds.

I intended the bet remark metaphorically rather than literally, but in any case rereading what I wrote it's ambiguous enough to give you some wriggle room. Allow me to rephrase myself.

I think it is highly likely Fund fails to establish that zombie voting is a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

I think it is highly likely Fund fails to establish that zombie voting has ever been used as a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

I also think it is highly likely you and Fund will attempt to pass off evidence that a single person attempted to vote twice, or evidence that people attempted to pass fraudulent voter registrations for other reasons, as evidence that zombie voting has been used as a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

How's that?

[Skeptic Ginger]

(emphasis mine)

Based on the scorching LashL gave in that other thread, I think it is in your best interest to use the correct term here. If you are referring to posters such as ConspiRaider, the term would be "libel" not "slander". It's your choice though - I'd rather not be on the receiving end of a LashL tongue-lashing. :)I posted a citation showing Fund at least has the training of a good Republican propagandist. See post #221 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2690748&postcount=221) where I cited evidence questioning Fund's credibility and the credibility of his book. Pomey just ignores the facts which don't support his pre-established conclusions.

As to the sources Fund cites in his book, pomey has yet to post any of them and the Amazon book review conspicuously failed to mention the book was well sourced.

[WildCat]

I guess Fund is still with the Wall Street Journal? Reminder to normal people: The Wall Street Journal is the prize that megalomaniacal right-winger Rupert Murdoch is trying to get his greasy hands on. You know Rupie, don't you? The turd-capitalist who owns MySpace, and Fox, and New York Post and lots of other stuff. The Rupester has next got his eye on the Asteroid Belt and the Jovian system.
So Fund is a liar because he works for a paper that Rupert Murdoch may own some day?

Oooookaaaaaaay... (backs away slowly)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ho hum. You're such a zealous partisan that it just never occurs to you that the reason those ten thousand Democratic lawyers didn't bring any sort of case in Ohio was that there was no case to be made.You continue to address me and my conclusions while ignoring the evidence. It doesn't look good when you do that, pomey.

With Palast, I looked for corroborating evidence. You are still ignoring the fact Griffin resigned, the caging lists were made public in 2004, and little Miss Goodling from Bible Law School testified under oath that the caging activity by Griffin occurred.

Without addressing the above, you want to switch to another voter fraud 'conspiracy'. And not only that, I talk about Blackwell and you say, "Voting machine allocation wasn't done by Karl Rove." Hey, we agree! :rolleyes:

Voter disenfranchisement doesn't necessarily involve breaking laws, some laws need to be written, some need to be re-written."There isn't enough to prove fraud, but there have been very significant problems in running elections in Ohio this year that demand reform," said Edward B. Foley, who is director of the election law program at the Ohio State University law school and a former Ohio state solicitor. "We clearly ended up disenfranchising people, and I don't want to minimize that." In addition, one has to consider many factors when deciding to prosecute or sue. So your argument, decisive legal action didn't follow the 04 election has little weight.

As to the shortage of voting machines, I found a lot of discrepancies and unanswered questions. Yes, supposedly there were 3 Dems and 3 Reps on the Franklin County electoral board. That doesn't preclude Backwell manipulating the process as was discussed in the citation I posted in post #249 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2701372&postcount=249):Could we have purchased or leased more machines? No. With the passage of HAVA [PDF] by Congress and Ohio’s House Bill 262 requiring a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, all previously discussed plans to purchase additional machines were cancelled for implementation in 2004.Would a 'good cause' include 'cancelling plans to purchase additional machines' by the GOP dominated Ohio State legislature? Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is known to have been aware of this well in advance of the election....

...Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell helped draft a 2002 federal law giving states millions for more accurate voting machines.

So he knew well what the law would allow - and what he could get away with. You can read the law for yourself, just like Blackwell did...

...This is how the Ohio GOP made sure that HAVA wasn't going to benefit Franklin County voters:

(B) WAIVER If a State certifies to the Administrator not later than January 1, 2004, that the State will not meet the deadline described in subparagraph (A) for good cause and includes in the certification the reasons for the failure to meet such deadline, the State shall ensure that all of the punch card voting systems or lever voting systems in the qualifying precincts within that State will be replaced in time for the first election for Federal office held after January 1, 2006....

....Using plans made in "mid-summer" meant that Franklin county officials ignored information during the late summer and fall that should have showed them that the November electorate would be substantially larger.

Between April [when Ken Blackwell 'certified' Diebold as the only authorized vendor] and November, the active voter population in the county increased by more than 15 percent. If nothing else, the surge of new registrants should have indicated that their plans made in mid-summer would prove woefully insufficient.

There are many testimonials on the record about these delays in voting. This lack of sufficient numbers of voting machines led to this observation:
Ohio's new poll tax: if you can't afford to wait four hours in line, you don't vote.

There were Franklin County officials allocating the machines. They denied any bias and the Department of Justice supposedly found no racial bias in machine allocation. From the County's post election review of the problems, "When determining voting machine allocation, the Franklin County Board of Elections (http://centralohiovoters.home.att.net/elect2004.htm) considers the number of active voters per precinct as the primary measure, and supplements this data with precinct registration change, past turnout, and the relative political interest in candidates and issues on the ballot for the Election in question within any given precinct. These are both objective and subjective measures making allocation decisions a little bit of math and a little bit of art.

For Election 2004, Board staff began its voting machine assignment process in July in order to prepare for the programming, printing, and set-up processes that began in late August. To begin with, the Board allocates a minimum of two machines to each precinct, regardless of any indicator.

Starting with two machines per precinct as the baseline, or 1,576 machines, staff began allocating the remaining 1,165 initially available machines based upon active voters and the other indicators.

Because the number of voting machines available for use was fixed, staff had to continually increase the threshold of active registered voters required for adding a machine, until all of the 2,741 initially available machines were allocated.

Accusations have been made that partisanship or bigotry played a role in voting machine allocation. This is untrue and baseless. However, the Board recognizes that with the partially subjective nature of the allocation decision it opens itself to potential criticism and skepticism.

But it seems like a poor explanation of how the misallocation of machines occurred.Jeff Graessle, Franklin County Election Operations Division Manager, (http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/990) told the Citizen’s Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) Ohio voting rights activists that Franklin County does not use a simple 100 votes per machine guideline.

Rather, they allocated their machines in the 2004 election based on a new criteria determined by ACTIVE registered voters. Hence, an affluent area like Upper Arlington which has shown a consistent pattern of voters is rewarded with more machines and fewer losses. A less affluent area of Columbus where voters miss voting at more elections and may only come out in a hotly tested election, like Bush-Kerry, are punished with fewer machines.

Of course, there’s a direct correlation between affluence and votes for Bush and below medium income areas and votes for Kerry. Franklin County, Ohio’s formula served to disenfranchise disproportionately poor, minority and Democratic voters under the guise of rewarding the “likely” voter or active registered voters.

Then there is the US DOJ (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/misc/franklin_oh.pdf) which found no discrimination in how the machines were allocated. But just who provided this oversight ruling?

Criticism of Justice Dept.'s Rights Division Grows (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901894.html)Disclosure of the change comes amid growing public criticism of Justice Department decisions to approve Republican-engineered plans in Texas and Georgia that were found to hurt minority voters by career staff attorneys who analyzed the plans. Political appointees overruled staff findings in both cases....

...Tensions within the voting section have been rising dramatically, culminating in an emotionally charged meeting last week in which Tanner criticized the quality of work done by staff members analyzing voting rights cases, numerous sources inside and outside the section said. Many employees were so angered that they boycotted the staff holiday party later in the week, the sources said.

Moving on to the other means of voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, since machine allocation was only one of many problems.Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Ohio, decided to strictly interpret a state law governing provisional ballots. He ruled that voters must cast provisional ballots not merely in the county but in the precise precinct where they reside. For cities such as Cleveland and Cincinnati, where officials long accepted provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, the ruling promised to disqualify many voters. "It is a headache to take those ballots, but the alternative is disenfranchisement," said Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which includes Cleveland....

...Some regular voters filed affidavits stating that their registrations had been expunged. "I'm 52, and I've voted in every single election," Kathy Janoski of Columbus said. "They kept telling me, 'You must be mistaken about your precinct.' I told them this is where I've always voted. I felt like I'd been scrubbed off the rolls."...

...As expected, there were more provisional ballots, and officials disqualified about 23 percent. In Hamilton County, which encompasses Cincinnati and its Ohio suburbs, 1,110 provisional ballots got tossed out because people voted in the wrong precinct. In about 40 percent of those cases, voters found the right polling place -- which contained multiple precincts -- but workers directed them to the wrong table.Legal but still using one's position of power and poorly written law to DISENFRANCHISE Democratic voters.

Was a law broken, no. Were voters cheated out of their vote because a partisan S of S was in charge, yes. So if your position is our leaders are elected by the democratic process, then Blackwell was wrong. If your position is our leaders are elected by whomever manipultates the system to their advantage wins, then Blackwell was justified.

Sounds like the Republican hypocrisy meter just shattered into bits.

You cite this Still, state officials saw little to apologize for, particularly in the case of provisional ballots. A recent count of provisional ballots sliced 18,000 votes off Bush's margin in Ohio. "In Washington, D.C., a voter who casts a ballot in the wrong precinct cannot have that ballot counted," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell. "Yet in Ohio, it was 'voter suppression' and 'voter disenfranchisement.' " as supporting your position. It ignores the fact that Blackwell changed the rule interpretation which had been followed for decades. More cherry picking on your part. Again, you are predictable, pomey.

In Cleveland, poorly trained poll workers apparently gave faulty instructions to voters that led to the disqualification of thousands of provisional ballots and misdirected several hundred votes to third-party candidates. In Youngstown, 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of votes for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to the Bush column.

In Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo, and on college campuses, election officials allocated far too few voting machines to busy precincts, with the result that voters stood on line as long as 10 hours -- many leaving without voting. Some longtime voters discovered their registrations had been purged.There were a lot of things here that add up to a lot more votes lost to disenfranchisement than votes supposedly gained via individual fraudulent voting.

[pomeroo]

I intended the bet remark metaphorically rather than literally, but in any case rereading what I wrote it's ambiguous enough to give you some wriggle room. Allow me to rephrase myself.

I think it is highly likely Fund fails to establish that zombie voting is a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

I think it is highly likely Fund fails to establish that zombie voting has ever been used as a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

I also think it is highly likely you and Fund will attempt to pass off evidence that a single person attempted to vote twice, or evidence that people attempted to pass fraudulent voter registrations for other reasons, as evidence that zombie voting has been used as a practical way to attempt to rig a modern election.

How's that?



Look, I'm not interested in taking your money. Bets that I can't possibly lose don't appeal much to my competitive nature (naturally if the price is right...). But, if the subject interests you, why not read the book? Of course Fund presents detailed coverage of some of the Dems' most brazen and infamous heists. If you don't know what happened in St. Louis in 2000, you owe it to yourself to find out.

[pomeroo]

You continue to address me and my conclusions while ignoring the evidence. It doesn't look good when you do that, pomey.

With Palast, I looked for corroborating evidence. You are still ignoring the fact Griffin resigned, the caging lists were made public in 2004, and little Miss Goodling from Bible Law School testified under oath that the caging activity by Griffin occurred.

Without addressing the above, you want to switch to another voter fraud 'conspiracy'. And not only that, I talk about Blackwell and you say, "Voting machine allocation wasn't done by Karl Rove." Hey, we agree! :rolleyes:

Voter disenfranchisement doesn't necessarily involve breaking laws, some laws need to be written, some need to be re-written. In addition, one has to consider many factors when deciding to prosecute or sue. So your argument, decisive legal action didn't follow the 04 election has little weight.

As to the shortage of voting machines, I found a lot of discrepancies and unanswered questions. Yes, supposedly there were 3 Dems and 3 Reps on the Franklin County electoral board. That doesn't preclude Backwell manipulating the process as was discussed in the citation I posted in post #249 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2701372&postcount=249):

There were Franklin County officials allocating the machines. They denied any bias and the Department of Justice supposedly found no racial bias in machine allocation. From the County's post election review of the problems,

But it seems like a poor explanation of how the misallocation of machines occurred.

Then there is the US DOJ (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/misc/franklin_oh.pdf) which found no discrimination in how the machines were allocated. But just who provided this oversight ruling?

Criticism of Justice Dept.'s Rights Division Grows (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901894.html)

Moving on to the other means of voter disenfranchisement in Ohio, since machine allocation was only one of many problems.Legal but still using one's position of power and poorly written law to DISENFRANCHISE Democratic voters.

Was a law broken, no. Were voters cheated out of their vote because a partisan S of S was in charge, yes. So if your position is our leaders are elected by the democratic process, then Blackwell was wrong. If your position is our leaders are elected by whomever manipultates the system to their advantage wins, then Blackwell was justified.

Sounds like the Republican hypocrisy meter just shattered into bits.

You cite this as supporting your position. It ignores the fact that Blackwell changed the rule interpretation which had been followed for decades. More cherry picking on your part. Again, you are predictable, pomey.

There were a lot of things here that add up to a lot more votes lost to disenfranchisement than votes supposedly gained via individual fraudulent voting.



Show me that you're serious: How many counties in Ohio used Diebold machines in 2004?

[Skeptic Ginger]

The Fraudulent Fraud Squad (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052207E.shtml)[American Center for Voting Rights,]'s method of argument followed a familiar line, first set out by Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. First, ACVR argued extensively by anecdote, pointing to instances of illegal conduct, such as someone, somewhere registering Mary Poppins to vote. Anecdote would then be coupled with statistics showing problems with voter rolls not being purged to remove voters who had died or moved, leaving open the potential for fraudulent voting at the polls. Finally, the group would claim that the amount of such voter fraud is hard to quantify, because it is after all illegal conduct, hidden from the public. Given this great potential for mischief, and without evidence of actual mischief, allegedly reasonable initiatives such as purging voter rolls and requiring ID seemed the natural solution.


The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030602/alterman) in an article actually defending Fund against a charge of beating a girlfriend had this reference, [John Fund's] record vis-à-vis the late Vince Foster and the entire nefarious "Arkansas Project" while working as a Wall Street Journal editorial writer brings him no honor, either as a journalist or a citizen. I'm sure a careful study of his work would fill a "how not to" book for journalism schools across the land.

John Fund's book on voter fraud is a fraud (http://mediamatters.org/items/200411010001)Following are some of the false or unfounded claims in their order of appearance in Stealing Elections.

CLAIM: "[E]very single recount of the votes in Florida determined that George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and therefore the presidency." (p. 28)

FACT: A post-election study revealed several plausible scenarios in which then-Vice President Al Gore would have won Florida....

...CLAIM: The Palm Beach Post found "no more than 108 'law-abiding' citizens of all races who 'were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election." (p. 32)

FACT: The Palm Bach Post reported that "at least 1,100 eligible voters [were] wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election."...

...CLAIM: Overvotes were fraudulent and helped Gore: "It appears that as many as 15,000 votes may have been altered and subtracted from the Bush total in Palm Beach County." (p. 35)

FACT: Overvotes hurt Gore more than Bush....

...CLAIM: Democratic campaign workers in Wisconsin were caught on film in 2002 "handing out food and small sums of money to residents of a home for the mentally ill in Kenosha, after which the patients were shepherded into a separate room and given absentee ballots." (p. 47)

FACT: News reports directly contradict Fund's account....

...CLAIM: Democrats engaged in fraudulent activities in South Dakota during the 2002 election that led to Democrat Tim Johnson's win. (Chapter 6, pp. 77-94)

FACT: South Dakota's Republican attorney general dismissed the allegations, called affidavits supporting Republican charges "flat false."...The article elaborates on each "fact" to support their case.

And from someone who knows Fund quite well, it appears: (http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8903)Fund has been on a jihad against Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, a former Taliban supporter and Mullah Omar's roving international ambassador, who has since been admitted to Yale as a student. In a series of columns, Fund avers that Hashemi is "unrepentant," or perhaps not repentant enough, and in any case somehow still serves as an apologist for the fallen regime. For his past crimes – thought crimes, not actual crimes – Fund would have him barred from Yale and maybe even put behind bars.

As one Yale professor, who chose anonymity rather than be subjected to a campaign of organized harassment, pointed out, "half the U.S.-approved Afghan government, including President Hamid Karzai, are former members of the Taliban. 'If that standard is good enough for the U.S. government,'" he averred, "'why should it be any different for Yale?'"

Why, indeed.

The absurdity of the Fund-amentalist hate campaign against Hashemi ought to be apparent to anyone who keeps up with events on the ground in Afghanistan, where President Karzai recently

"Urged Taliban leader Mullah Omar to 'get in touch' if he wants to talk peace. … Karzai spokesman Khaleeq Ahmed said Friday that the Afghan government has a reconciliation commission that has encouraged more than 1,000 ex-Taliban members to embrace the new constitution and government and reject violence. ...

...Since 9/11, the 26-year-old Hashemi, who hopes to become a full-time student in a degree-oriented course of studies, has disavowed the Taliban. Admitted to Yale in 2005, he participated in a dialogue group that sought to reconcile Jews and Muslims, and said he wanted to educate himself in an effort to support his family.

He didn't burn any schools. He didn't kill a single doctor, or so much as lay a hand on a nurse. As to what measure of responsibility for the slaughter of Afghanistan's innocents is his to bear, I can't imagine it's more than Donald Rumsfeld's. Yet now he has become the victim of a hate campaign, a convenient target for ideological vultures in search of fresh carrion. The uniquely personal circumstances of Hashemi's life have been erased, and he has become a symbol, grist for their endless mill of demagoguery and high dudgeon.

The neocon propaganda machine, in which Fund is a rather small but squeaky cog, is a perpetual motion machine of hate. Constantly in search of new victims, Fund and his kind function as talent scouts in search of fresh hate-objects: the Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore, Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer – anyone who commits any number of impermissible heresies, such as, in the case of the latter two gentlemen, challenging our Israel-centric foreign policy in the Middle East....

...In his new career path as Yale's very own Torquemada, Fund can hardly content himself with a single victim. And luckily there is a fresh supply on the way in the person of Professor Juan Cole, currently of the University of Michigan and a prospective member of the Yale faculty, where he will fill a newly created academic niche of professor of Middle East studies. Cole is a distinguished scholar, conversant in Arabic and Farsi, with a truckload of academic credentials and a growing visibility on the more serious talking-heads circuit as a knowledgeable and reasonable critic of our interventionist foreign policy. This makes him a perfect target for the Fund-amentalists, who, in the person of Fund himself, proclaim their displeasure...

...Ah yes, good old Michael Rubin, who, when last heard from, was touting the virtues of the Lincoln Group to the New York Times – without revealing that he had been the beneficiary of that Pentagon contractor's largess. (This is the same Lincoln Group, you'll recall, who paid Iraqi clerics to deliver the "right" sort of sermons and bought "news" articles in the Iraqi media, where payola journalism is the norm.) ...

...But lying comes easy to the Smear Brigade, and to John Fund in particular. And therein lies a tale…

Back in the late 1970s, before he became the high-and-mighty journalistic fountainhead of neocon orthodoxy, Fund was active in the Libertarian Party, or was at least enough of a fellow traveler to make a 45-minute presentation at a party meeting announcing his decision to run for a school board seat in Sacramento, Calif., where he lived at the time. Libertarians were treated to subsequent reports of his campaign's fantastic progress, which was touted by Fund as a model for all libertarians to follow. It was a two-way race, and we were all told how it was even possible that Fund could win – which, for a tiny, albeit enormously ambitious political movement such as the LP at that time, was a Very Big Deal.

At any rate, Election Day came 'round, and my good friend Eric Garris – now the webmaster of Antiwar.com – was writing an article about the LP's political fortunes and was eager to know the results of Fund's much-hyped campaign. So he was somewhat puzzled when the registrar of voters in Sacramento told him that, no, he was positive there was no John Fund on the ballot for school board. Yes, it was explained, Fund had taken out papers – but had never actually turned them in.

Eric called Fund and asked him how his campaign had done. Fund's reply: Oh, fantastic, we got 46 percent of the vote!

Oh really? replied Eric. Then how come the registrar says you weren't even a candidate?

Confronted with his lie, Fund tearfully confessed to fabricating the entire story: not that there wasn't a campaign, but, you see, it was somebody else's campaign. Fund had merely projected himself onto another person's candidacy and reported developments as if he had filed his papers and carried through with his intent to run.

Definitely weird, in a creepy sort of way, and perfectly illustrative of the rich fantasy life that leads, in the fully formed adult, into an expert lying propagandist of the sleazier sort. One gets the definite impression that these types believe their own lies, at least to some extent, which is why they are often so convincing. Fund, who projects himself as a serious, even sober human being, had all of us fooled about his mythical candidacy. We took him seriously – a mistake, and one that ought not to be repeated by readers of his "On the Trail" column in the WSJ. Anyone who has been on the trail of Fund knows that he's not above outright fabrication if he thinks it will serve his ends, whatever those might be.

Yes, there are political axes to grind in these citations. Yes, the authors are left of the right wing Fund. But there are clear facts which are supported, and some that can certainly be verified, like Fund's public fraud claiming to be running for the school board when he wasn't.

Fund's book on election fraud is sourced with anecdotes, a common ploy which can be used knowing the average person (and pomey, apparently)is not going to notice how weak such evidence really is.

So let's not be claiming here this guy has a reputation of truthfulness and reliability when not a shred of evidence has been posted supporting that claim. And, pomey, this is the last word on Fund from me unless you have more than those anecdotes in his book to share with us. I have presented a case and my opinion, you have presented only an opinion.

[Pardalis]

Sorry to barge in on your discussion, Skeptigirl, but do you know if the emails and Excel files Palast has in his possession have been released to the media?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sorry to barge in on your discussion, Skeptigirl, but do you know if the emails and Excel files Palast has in his possession have been released to the media?I posted the links (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=2701410&postcount=251) to the 2004 news article where the first news report was made. It included the email, voter lists and a demographic map of the racial make up of the people in the neighborhoods targeted.

[Pardalis]

I'm confused, are we talking about the 500 missing Rove emails?

[ConspiRaider]

I suppose you're right. I could say that nobody who calls John Fund a liar can hope to make a case for that false and irresponsible charge. But without being able to read minds, I can't actually know to what extent Fund's slanderers believe what they say.
Wait a minute!!!

You called Greg Palast a liar! Oh no! Look everyone, a Palast slanderer! Or is it libeler? Is that with 2 L's in libeler? What the hell am I saying?!?

Oh yeah. NOBODY WHO CALLS GREG PALAST A LIAR CAN HOPE TO MAKE A CASE FOR THAT FALSE AND IRRESPONSIBLE CHARGE.

Where's Sylvia Browne? I need to read your mind, Ron!:)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Bingo! (http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/) You may need to buy the book to see all 500, Pard.

..css.gmu.edu/rovebots/files/page1_blog_entry... (http://www.css.gmu.edu/rovebots/files/page1_blog_entry1_6.net)lists these similar addresses: 30 "bdoster@georgewbush.com" 0.3371 0.1489

31 "bdoster@georgewbush.org" 0.5083 0.1582

53 "jbennick@georgewbush.com" 0.3273 0.1450

54 "jbennick@georgewbush.org" 0.4092 0.1386

75 "mazel@georgewbush.com" 0.6678 0.1800

76 "mazel@georgewbush.org" 0.4367 0.1258

77 "mfletcher@georgewbush.com" 0.5193 0.1069

78 "mfletcher@georgewbush.org" 0.4367 0.1607

Interesting discussion looking into the emails. (http://www.haloscan.com/comments/missinglink/rw_unique_entry_id_4_page1/?src=hsrs)

Reading other people's mail (http://simplyappalling.blogspot.com/2004/10/reading-other-peoples-mail.html)


RNC Response to BBC Reports: (http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/06/dnc_bush_admini.php)“First, caging is a commonly used term in the political process by which someone opens a large amount of mail and logs it into a database. This is routinely done when an organization receives a great deal of mail from a fundraising appeal or returned mail from a mailing to a large number of people. The reporter was not familiar with this term or this process and did not seem to understand it even after it was explained to him. Second, the list was a listing of returned mail that came from a mailing that the Republican National Committee sent to new registrants in Duval County in Florida, encouraging newly registered Republicans, Democrats and Independents to vote Republican. Voter registration has been a heavy concentration of both parties this year and both national and state Republican parties have been reaching out to new registrants for the upcoming election. The Duval County list was created to collect the returned mail information from the Republican National Committee mailing and was intended and has been used for no purpose other than that.”
-- Mindy Tucker Fletcher, Senior Advisor to the RNCMs Tucker was a bit betrayed by Goodling's testimony and Griffin's resignation now wasn't she?

And from the same DNC web page:RNC HISTORY OF USING CHALLENGE LISTS TO DISENFRANCHISE VOTERS

RNC Used Similar Tactics in 1981. “In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to predominantly black neighborhoods in New Jersey, and when 45,000 letters were returned as undeliverable, the committee compiled a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls. The RNC sent off-duty law enforcement officials to the polls and hung posters in heavily black neighborhoods warning that violating election laws is a crime.” [Washington Post, 10/29/04]

1986 Challenge List Targeted Blacks in Louisiana. “In 1986, the RNC tried to have 31,000 voters, most of them black, removed from the rolls in Louisiana when a party mailer was returned. The consent decrees that resulted prohibited the party from engaging in anti-fraud initiatives that target minorities or conduct mail campaigns to "compile voter challenge lists."” [Washington Post, 10/29/04]

More emails posted on Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/25/233813/03)

I think Palast may be coming off here as a lot more credible that John Fund. At least as far as the topics in this thread.

[Pardalis]

Is it me or have you repeated your post within your post?

[ConspiRaider]

The Fraudulent Fraud Squad (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052207E.shtml)


The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030602/alterman) in an article actually defending Fund against a charge of beating a girlfriend had this reference,

John Fund's book on voter fraud is a fraud (http://mediamatters.org/items/200411010001)The article elaborates on each "fact" to support their case.

And from someone who knows Fund quite well, it appears: (http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8903)

Yes, there are political axes to grind in these citations. Yes, the authors are left of the right wing Fund. But there are clear facts which are supported, and some that can certainly be verified, like Fund's public fraud claiming to be running for the school board when he wasn't.

Fund's book on election fraud is sourced with anecdotes, a common ploy which can be used knowing the average person (and pomey, apparently)is not going to notice how weak such evidence really is.

So let's not be claiming here this guy has a reputation of truthfulness and reliability when not a shred of evidence has been posted supporting that claim. And, pomey, this is the last word on Fund from me unless you have more than those anecdotes in his book to share with us. I have presented a case and my opinion, you have presented only an opinion.
Very good stuff, SG. I learned a few things here.

Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Fund is a libertarian, or is still very close to that ideology, apparently. As is pomey. So, it's really just partisan support, and rather blind support at that.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Look, I'm not interested in taking your money. Bets that I can't possibly lose don't appeal much to my competitive nature (naturally if the price is right...). But, if the subject interests you, why not read the book? Of course Fund presents detailed coverage of some of the Dems' most brazen and infamous heists. If you don't know what happened in St. Louis in 2000, you owe it to yourself to find out.

Have you read the links Skeptigirl posted? It looks like a substantial number of Fund's claims have been proven to be mendacious, and that he's fabricated at least one news story in the past.

Under the circumstances your second-hand claim that Fund proves there was substantial zombie voter fraud somewhere, some time has to be approached with considerable skepticism.

But please, regale us with the tale of St. Louis in 2000 and link us to his sources. We're mostly good skeptics here, if you have a compelling case we'll acknowledge it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

...

But please, regale us with the tale of St. Louis in 2000 and link us to his sources. We're mostly good skeptics here, if you have a compelling case we'll acknowledge it.Including me. I'm always being accused by those who don't hold my political conclusions of only having those conclusions because I am some blind ideologist. I think by now it should be clear, I have drawn the conclusions I have because I am a fanatical seeker of information. And I look to validate that information and the sources. I don't just suck up what I already agree with.

Provide convincing evidence. I have the usual human fault of needing a bit more to counter what I have already been exposed to, but I am, over everything else, a skeptic. If the evidence is there, it's time to shift one's position. But if someone doesn't have anything to counter what I have, they shouldn't expect to convince me with insults to my skeptic nature and critical thinking skills.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Is it me or have you repeated your post within your post?
It was a bizarre event, I cannot explain other than to say it had something to do with something I unknowingly must have done in the copy and paste mode. ;)

So what about those emails?

[WildCat]

...CLAIM: The Palm Beach Post found "no more than 108 'law-abiding' citizens of all races who 'were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election." (p. 32)

FACT: The Palm Bach Post reported that "at least 1,100 eligible voters [were] wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election."...

How does this refute Fund's claim? The PBP is clearly talking about voters purged for all reasons (death, no longer live in county, etc) while Fund specifically was talking about criminal purges.

[WildCat]

...CLAIM: Democratic campaign workers in Wisconsin were caught on film in 2002 "handing out food and small sums of money to residents of a home for the mentally ill in Kenosha, after which the patients were shepherded into a separate room and given absentee ballots." (p. 47)

FACT: News reports directly contradict Fund's account....
Fact: I personally know a Kerry supporter who, along with other Kerry supporters, drove up to Wisconsin to "help" residents of a senior citizens home too frail to do it themselves fill out their absentee ballots. Guess who those seniors all voted for? :rolleyes:

Call me a liar if you want, but I know it to be true.

[Kevin_Lowe]

How does this refute Fund's claim? The PBP is clearly talking about voters purged for all reasons (death, no longer live in county, etc) while Fund specifically was talking about criminal purges.

If you read the article, the PBP is talking about people who had committed crimes but who were nonetheless legally eligible to vote, who were purged on the false basis that they had committed crimes that rendered them ineligible.

[Darth Rotor]

There is no doubt hawking books is motivating Palast. That or basking in the limelight.
True enough.
I'm not clear given the published caging lists, Goodling's testimony, and the fact Griffin has resigned that you are making the assertion, Palast's claims are not substantiated. From this source, the Republicans claimed the lists were for campaign fund raising purposes.
Given that your links are often to partisan blogs, it is difficult to take your protestations of objectivity seriously. The Brad Blog is yet another emotionally charged foaming at the mouth, for all that Griffin surely deserves a basket of overripe fruit tossed at him. I am trying to discern what felony Griffin has been convicted of, for example.
From what I gather, "caging" is standard practice in building mailing lists. But I'll be a monkey's uncle if the Florida GOP didn't already know EXACTLY who lives in the 32209 zip code, and wasn't planning on mailing them campaign literature
That's not evidence of much more than Sven's bias, however, his root cynicism regarding motive of mailing for contributions I'll share.
Apparently Griffin has explained himself now that he has resigned.
Brad blog, 6/14; Tim Griffin Cries, Denies 'Vote Caging' Charges, in Arkansas Speech (http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4690)

The audio link didn't load, blah.

The Arkansas Business link was semi neutral, and raised a point that goes in my next letter to DC (Rep and Sens).
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed Bud Cummins in December to make way for Griffin. The appointment was made under a provision of the U.S. Patriot Act, which permitted Griffin to serve without Senate confirmation.
That crap needs to get corrected. :mad: Advise and consent was put into the Constitution for a good reason.

Maybe I'll just wait for Palast's book to come out. Without the support for his conclusions in front of me, wading through the dross of partisan blogs is not worth my time.

Sven may be right, where there is smoke there may be fire.

I'll reserve judgment.

DR

[pomeroo]

[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2704503]Have you read the links Skeptigirl posted? It looks like a substantial number of Fund's claims have been proven to be mendacious, and that he's fabricated at least one news story in the past.




Looks can be deceiving. The biggest whopper was the Washington Post's "debunking" of the claim that overvotes hurt Bush. Let's examine this particularly disingenuous argument made by Gore apologists.

Fund documents instances of Democratic vote fraud in Palm Beach County. Specifically, Democratic poll workers were observed inserting a metal device through stacks of paper ballots. Now, when you punch the hole next to Gore's name, you do no damage to a ballot already marked for Gore. When you punch Gore's hole on a ballot cast for another candidate, you invalidate the ballot and create an overvote. Get it? Of course, there were more overvotes with Gore's hole punched--that was the nature of the fraud being committed.

Byron York published an eight-page analysis of Democratic vote fraud on Indian reservations in South Dakota in the 2002 Senatorial election. John Thune decided not to contest the result because the fraud, although blatant, would probably have survived the court's extremely rigid standards of proof that allowed, for example, the Democrats to steal a governor's race in the state of Washington in 2004.



Under the circumstances your second-hand claim that Fund proves there was substantial zombie voter fraud somewhere, some time has to be approached with considerable skepticism.




Your "skepticism" is very far from being real skepticism. It is agenda-driven willful blindness.



But please, regale us with the tale of St. Louis in 2000 and link us to his sources. We're mostly good skeptics here, if you have a compelling case we'll acknowledge it.


Read the book.

[pomeroo]

Very good stuff, SG. I learned a few things here.

Another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Fund is a libertarian, or is still very close to that ideology, apparently. As is pomey. So, it's really just partisan support, and rather blind support at that.



I think you meant to write, the puzzle becomes more puzzling. Libertarians--here's a newsflash--really dislike George Bush. I'm not a true libertarian: I'm a conservative with libertarian views on several issues. Fund is no fan of the current administration.

[Skeptic Ginger]

True enough.

Given that your links are often to partisan blogs, it is difficult to take your protestations of objectivity seriously. The Brad Blog is yet another emotionally charged foaming at the mouth, for all that Griffin surely deserves a basket of overripe fruit tossed at him. I am trying to discern what felony Griffin has been convicted of, for example. I don't believe I asserted everything posted in the blogs was relevant, nor factual. I don't write off everything in a right wing blogs on that basis alone. It is reason to be a tad more skeptical, as I am of information in some left wing blogs. There are, however, sources which are very partisan yet have a high degree of reliability and information in a radical blog can still be looked into.

The Arkansas Business link was semi neutral, and raised a point that goes in my next letter to DC (Rep and Sens).

That crap needs to get corrected. :mad: Advise and consent was put into the Constitution for a good reason. I appreciate your position here.

That's not evidence of much more than Sven's bias, however, his root cynicism regarding motive of mailing for contributions I'll share.

Brad blog, 6/14; Tim Griffin Cries, Denies 'Vote Caging' Charges, in Arkansas Speech (http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4690)

The audio link didn't load, blah.

Maybe I'll just wait for Palast's book to come out. Without the support for his conclusions in front of me, wading through the dross of partisan blogs is not worth my time.

Sven may be right, where there is smoke there may be fire.

I'll reserve judgment.

DRWhile I share your skepticism principles, there is still plenty of material here which is irrefutable. No need to slog through the blogs, I'll summarize it for you. Taken in its entirety there is evidence that Republicans, with direct involvement at the top levels, using the power of state and local positions in the polling system, took specific actions intended to eliminate large numbers of voters in heavily Democratic precincts.

Here are the 'facts' which I don't think are deniable:
Goodling testified under oath that the Griffin caging incident was true.Griffin resigned.The list existed, the RNC's reply confirmed it.The RNC put out an explanation for the list which, given the circumstances, was not credible.*The list is of addresses in areas which the demographics show to be heavily Democratic.The Dead Letter office web page exists, as well as a credible explanation of how mis-addressed emails could have indeed been collected.

*You'd have to be an idiot to believe the RNC official explanation for the list, so I think concluding they had something to hide is reasonable regardless of partisan blog discussions.

Then you have the evidence which is reasonable to expect corroborating evidence before concluding it is valid:
Some of the emails are posted on the net, in which incriminating statements are made, some by top Republican Party officials and party members.Some of the emails were sent to addresses which only differed by .org and .com providing a credible story about Palast getting the emails.Other addresses on the emails' headers included a mix of .orgs and .coms, also adding to the credibility of emails being easily mis-addressed.Some of the sources discuss the existence of the people to whom the emails were intended. You don't have the RNC claiming those people do not exist and/or that those are not their correct email addresses.

Perhaps it is time to take that 'reservation' out and make a judgment.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pomey, can't you posts some links for those claims of yours? Why should we even believe what you are claiming happened?

Your story about the witnessing of after the fact ballot punching is not sourced for anyone to verify your version, and on its face it isn't credible. Ballot counting in Florida in particular was done in full view of witnesses. So provide a link that can be looked at first hand. Same with the Indian Reservation incident.

Those of us following the Federal Attorney firing scandal are well aware of the handful of incidents of voter fraud, and, of the insignificance of those incidents. Except for the van tire slashing, you got nothin'. And that did not involve a single top Democratic Party official as opposed to the Griffin caging affair which clearly involved not just people at the top, but Bush appointees within the Department of Justice. That's worse than Nixon using the FBI to spy on his political enemies.

I think I posted enough about Fund's book to discredit it. What have you specifically cited from the evidence in the book refuting what I've posted?

[Brainster]

Your story about the witnessing of after the fact ballot punching is not sourced for anyone to verify your version, and on its face it isn't credible. Ballot counting in Florida in particular was done in full view of witnesses. So provide a link that can be looked at first hand. Same with the Indian Reservation incident.

Indian Reservation incident from Byron York (http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york110702.asp).

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think I posted enough about Fund's book to discredit it. What have you specifically cited from the evidence in the book refuting what I've posted?

I don't think Pomeroo does specific cites. He just tells you to read his little book, or makes totally unverifiable claims about fraud.

ETA regarding the Byron York article: It's an oddity significant enough to merit some investigation, but there's no evidence of wrongdoing and if it turns out that there is a reasonable explanation for those polling stations reporting in last then there's not much meat to the story. It should not be too hard to establish whether the systems in use and the presence of bipartisan observers made it possible or impossible to generate a few hundred extra votes at the last minute. It shouldn't be possible of course, but nothing would surprise me about US electoral systems.

[Brainster]

I don't think Pomeroo does specific cites. He just tells you to read his little book, or makes totally unverifiable claims about fraud.

ETA regarding the Byron York article: It's an oddity significant enough to merit some investigation, but there's no evidence of wrongdoing and if it turns out that there is a reasonable explanation for those polling stations reporting in last then there's not much meat to the story. It should not be too hard to establish whether the systems in use and the presence of bipartisan observers made it possible or impossible to generate a few hundred extra votes at the last minute. It shouldn't be possible of course, but nothing would surprise me about US electoral systems.

In a lot of ways this stuff doesn't really bother me. Why? Because it only matters when the election is a tossup anyway, and the American people (or the local voters) have not really made up their minds either way. And Thune ended up coming back the next election and edging Tom Daschle, a huge win for the Republicans in 2004, so it's hard to say the will of the people of South Dakota was really thwarted; they ended up with a Senate delegation split evenly between Tim Johnson and John Thune, just as that 2002 vote was split evenly.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Indian Reservation incident from Byron York (http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york110702.asp).

Well let's see. There was an active successful drive to register more voters by the Democrats......

1 in 10 of the registrations had some irregularities, but we don't know what those consisted of. They could have been as simple as signing an X by an illiterate voter to voters with no birth certificates or SSNs. Pine Ridge is a poverty stricken Indian reservation which did have one of the highest rates of alcoholism and suicide in the country not too long ago. But poverty, depression and alcoholism doesn't mean you lose your right to vote, if that is the case.

79% voted Democratic in the previous election. 92% voted Democratic the year of the incident. Well, d'uh! Democrats recruited the new voters.

The counts came in late. Again, d'uh. They had a substantially greater number of voters.
The county has been the target of intensive get-out-the-vote efforts by Democrats and has reported the largest gain in registrations, 17 percent, of any county in the state. In recent weeks, federal and local authorities have been investigating allegations of fraudulent voting practices related to some of those new voters (along with some in other counties around the state).

In mid-October, the Shannon County auditor said one in ten of the county's new registrations was under investigation for possible irregularities. On October 20, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that, "Auditors in 10 counties, all but one adjoining a reservation, have forwarded questionable registration forms or absentee ballot requests to the sheriff or state's attorney for investigation. Of the nearly 400 questionable documents discovered by the auditors, 338 came from Shannon and Pennington counties, where the two investigations into possible voter fraud are under way."

Shannon County went heavily for Johnson — out of 3,118 votes cast, 2,856, or about 92 percent, went to Johnson,

Daschle, who won in a landslide statewide, won just 79 percent of the votes in Shannon County and newly registered voters this year raised the % voting Democratic.

The situation might be completely attributable to get-out-the-vote efforts; 17,000 new voters were signed up statewide in recent months, and Democrats were particularly aggressive in Shannon County and on the state's other Indian reservations. But Republicans signed up new voters, too, and now they want to have a look at the county's voting patterns.

That was 2002, surely the case has gotten further along since then....hmmmm, let's see.

CNN Reports: (http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-79.htm)Saturday, November 2, 2002, Pierre, South Dakota (CNN) — A South Dakota election worker will be arrested on charges of forging absentee ballot applications, the state's attorney general announced Friday.

Many voters will continue with older voting technology, while newer methods are being tested around the country. CNN's Kate Snow reports.

Becky Red Earth-Villeda, also known as Maka Duta, is expected to be charged on multiple counts of forgery in Minnehaha County, where Sioux Falls is located, according to a statement from Attorney General Mark Barnett.

"Maka Duta will be arrested in the ordinary course of events," said Barnett. "No evidence has been obtained that shows she has cast or made an attempt to cast actual ballots."

A local Sioux Falls newspaper, the Argus Leader, reported that the woman apparently tried to burn the original applications, but then decided to retrieve them, according to Barnett.

The woman told the attorney general she copied the applicants' names from the original documents because they had been filled out wrong, then she apparently tried to replicate the voter's signature on the corrected form, the newspaper reported.

County auditors alerted the state's Division of Criminal Investigation about allegations of bogus ballot applications, according to Barnett's office. At least 30 DCI agents are working on the case and have interviewed over 400 people in 25 South Dakota counties.

DCI agents also conducted a lengthy interview with Maka Duta Tuesday.

The information obtained is still being processed.

"Voters should proceed as normal and go to the polls on the 5th," said Barnett.

It is not clear how many absentee ballot applications are believed to have been forged, but Barnett told the Argus Leader between 80 and 100 are suspected in one county alone.

Could be bad, the right wing blog, Free Republic, seems to be chiming in to repeat the CNN story and confab add to it.

Arrest Expected in Voter Fraud Investigation (South Dakota) (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/783963/posts)(Pierre) – Attorney General Mark Barnett announced today that Becky Red Earth-Villeda, also known as Maka Duta, will be arrested in the ordinary course of events for alleged forgery of absentee ballot applications. “Maka Duta will be arrested in the ordinary course of events,” said Barnett. “No evidence has been obtained that shows she has cast or made an attempt to cast actual ballots.”

Maka Duta will be charged in Minnehaha County on multiple counts of forgery.

The Division of Criminal Investigation has interviewed over 400 people in 25 counties. DCI agents also conducted a lengthy interview with Maka Duta on Tuesday. The information obtained is still being processed.

“Voters should proceed as normal and go to the polls on the 5th,” said Barnett.

The Division of Criminal Investigation began investigating allegations of bogus absentee ballot applications after being alerted by county auditors. There are currently 30 DCI agents working on the case.

BUT WAIT, LATE BREAKING NEWS!!! ;)

(It's archived so I had to use the cached, text only, link from the Google search.)
Voter fraud charges in South Dakota prove fraudulent (http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:z4nZJ7hPcaAJ:www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm%3Fid%3D1041004948+south+dakota+2002+el ection+fraud&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=us&strip=1)PIERRE, S.D. - What started out as an attempt to catch the Democrats at voter fraud on South Dakota Indian reservations has backfired on the Republican National Committee.

Republican attorneys fanned out across the state on Election Day Nov. 6 to gather affidavits to show voting irregularities. Now the most serious of those affidavits have been found to be fraudulent themselves.

State Attorney General Mark Barnett, himself a Republican, said of the 50 affidavits the Republican operatives collected, only three alleged criminal activity, and two of those proved to be false. One person is still being sought for questioning.

He said some of the rest of the affidavits were signed with false signatures and others were based on routine questions that come up every election cycle.

Barnett said two of the affidavits were either forgery or perjury because they contained the same wording. "They are just flat false," he said.

In the latest development, David Norcross, a former general counsel for the Republican National Committee and director of the Republican effort, admitted that his group had drawn up stock affidavits with blanks for the signature and then went looking for people to sign them.

According to a Dec. 23 Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus-Leader story, "Kim Vanneman, the chairwoman of the Tripp County Republicans and a notary public, went door to door in Mission and secured the three signatures of people who said they were offered money in that situation."

The trouble is that two of those three now deny the story, and the third cannot be located.

The revelation is highly embarrassing, both for the Republican National Committee and the "old-right" opinion magazine National Review, which devoted its Dec. 23 cover story to an expose based entirely on the Republican collection of affidavits.

Barnett denounced the National Review story by Byron York as "shoddy, irresponsible, sensationalistic and garbage."....

:dl:

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sorry, couldn't help myself. :dl:

There's no way I would ever claim the Democrats haven't done anything bad. And I already pointed out the pendulum swings both ways. It just so happens the corruption is at the top of the Republican Party currently.

Time to weed it out. Democracies don't last without diligence.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Forgot to mention, hooray for the Republican AG, Mark Barnett. There are still plenty of decent Republicans out there. (And a few bad Democrats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Jefferson), of course.) :)

[Brainster]

Sorry, couldn't help myself. :dl:

There's no way I would ever claim the Democrats haven't done anything bad. And I already pointed out the pendulum swings both ways. It just so happens the corruption is at the top of the Republican Party currently.

I don't buy the argument, but may I point out that the top of the Republican party is going to be completely replaced in 2008? Whereas the Democrats appear set to nominate that noted reformist candidate, "What are these billing records doing in my sewing room?" Hillary Clinton.

Yes, yes, tu quoque and all that.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Which argument do you not buy, that the Dems are not currently as corrupt as the Republicans?

I am not advocating excusing any financial shenanigans. Sweetheart deals on real estate are not right. And they should be exposed. I refer to the $100,000 profit (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E2DB1F3DF93BA25750C0A9629582 60&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all) on the Whitewater real estate by Ms Clinton, not the rest of the accusations of which I find the evidence equivocal. Could she have advised McDougal how to get past regulators? Sure. Did she? Who knows? Was there obstruction of justice trying to cover up the crime? You tell me. Eight years of Republican hack, Ken Starr, trying to find any dirt he could possibly get the Clinton's on and all he ended up with was Bill's entrapped perjury about a blow job.

Frontline on the billing records incident. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/arkansas/docs/recs.html)Of particular interest to investigators has been Ms. Clinton's work on an option agreement drafted to provide Seth Ward with some $300,000 in commissions on the re-sale of his holdings at Castle Grande. Regulators determined that the option agreement was principally designed to further obfuscate and hide the fraudulent nature of the underlying Castle Grande transactions....According to their conversation, Denton believes that Ms.Clinton was familiar with the nature of the transaction -- again, a transaction that investigators believe was intended to deceive financial regulators....failure to divulge or turn over the records could be the basis for criminal charges -- the obstruction of justice.

The billing records found in Hillary Clinton's book room were a copy of an original version printed out from the Rose Firm computer in 1992, when the computer file itself was deleted. Webb Hubbell has testified that he recalls reviewing a copy of the billing records in response to press inquiries during the 1992 Presidential campaign. Hubbell says that he then passed the records on to Vince Foster who was, as far as Hubbell knows, the last person to have the records.

Investigators believe the book room copy was indeed Vince Foster's. The copy contains notations, in red ink, that are Vince Foster's handwriting. These notations appear to be directed toward Hillary Clinton, including questions about some of the individual billings. Investigators believe this suggests that, at some point, this copy was passed from Vince Foster to Hillary Clinton for her review.

In addition, investigators had the FBI conduct fingerprint analysis of the billing records. Of significance, the prints of Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton were found. ... The Independent Counsel continues to investigate Ms. Clinton's involvement in handling the records.

For her part, Hillary Clinton has said that she has no idea how the billing records came to be in her book room....Shortly after Vince Foster's death on July 20, 1993, a group of files were moved from his office to a closet near Hillary's office in the Clintons' personal quarters on the third floor of the White House.

One item which may have been among those files were the billing records from the Rose Law Firm which documented Hillary Clinton's legal work on Jim McDougal's Castle Grande real estate deal. These records had been the subject of various investigative subpoenas but had been missing for over two years. They mysteriously resurfaced in January 1996 when Carolyn Huber, a White House aide, came upon them in her office and recognized them as the missing files. She later testified that she had moved them to her office from Hillary's book room six months earlier while straightening up, but had not realized their significance at the time....

Nightline on the incident. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/etc/01301996.html)CHRIS BURY: The first lady has conceded her answers have often been too lawyerly, but Mrs Clinton has not acknowledged how her own instinct for evasiveness may have contributed to a pattern of stonewalling and possible perjury among her loyal allies at the White House.

...CHRIS BURY (VO): The suicide of Vince Foster - White House lawyer, long time Clinton friend, Rose Law Firm partner - is a pivotal event. The Travel Office and Whitewater paths intersect in his office, in his files, on his mind. A note written the week before he died has a confessional quality. 'I made mistakes from ignorance, inexperience and overwork. I did not knowingly violate any law or standard of conduct.'

Another entry in a personal notebook says, 'Defend Hillary Clinton role, whatever is, was, in fact, or might have been misperceived to be.' We don't know exactly what that means, but we do know Foster served as Hillary Clinton's confidante and protector, going back to the 1992 presidential campaign.

In March of '92, a potentially damaging story breaks about Hillary Clinton's legal work for a failing savings and loan.

...CHRIS BURY (VO): We know, from the dates stamped on them, that the billing records were printed out February 12, 1992. They are covered with Foster's handwriting in red ink. Most are bookkeeping notations. Hillary Clinton's work is circled. The messages are cryptic, such as 'HRC - this suggests 1st matter.' We also know that Webb Hubbell, the former associate attorney general and Rose partner imprisoned for cheating his clients, talked about the billing records February 24th with Susan Thomases, another Hillary Clinton friend and campaign adviser. (December 18, 1995)

...CHRIS BURY: What ever happened to those records is a mystery investigators have been trying to unravel for more than two years. They were not among the documents Hubbell took to Washington and later turned over to investigators. The only other person known to have the billing records is Vince Foster, and that gives rise to a Republican theory that Foster had custody of the records until his suicide.

...CHRIS BURY (VO): Senator D'Amato has asked the independent counsel to take another look at the harried actions of Hillary Clinton's aides following Foster's suicide, including Margaret Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff.

...CHRIS BURY: Nightline has learned that a preliminary check of the Secret Service and White House usher logs has turned up as many as 100 names of people admitted to the White House residence in a 20 day period last August. On that list are visiting dignitaries and insiders, including Hillary Clinton's top aides, and perhaps the very name of the person who can solve Washington's biggest mystery.

...CHRIS BURY: Absolutely. I mean, it's hard to believe that 116 pages of documents, five or six inches thick, is going to fall out of a construction worker's pocket up there. And I think it's interesting to note whom Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, has called in to investigate these records. He's called in the head usher, who might know. He's called in Mrs Clinton's personal attorney. He's called in the White House lawyer in charge of producing these documents. So those indications are that Kenneth Starr is already narrowing the search, and I doubt if he's going to be calling many of the visiting dignitaries who showed up at the White House in August

TED KOPPEL: We should make the point, I guess, Chris, that- that there is no suggestion at this point that Mrs Clinton herself is facing any criminal investigation.

CHRIS BURY: Absolutely. She was called before the grand jury for about three and a half hours. She has not been notified that she's the target. But we do know that she testified during that time primarily about what happened to these mysterious, you know, missing and reappearing records.

TED KOPPEL: And when all is said and done now, we're not really talking about Whitewater anymore, we're not really talking about Travelgate anymore, now it's something that has happened within a very discrete period of time, within the past two years.

CHRIS BURY: This is a tangible thing that- that people can get. This is about a coverup inside the White House in one select room populated by the first family, their immediate staffs, perhaps some close friends. It's a very select circle.

TED KOPPEL: Chris Bury, thank you.

Another view (http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/071599a2.html)This pattern of never apologizing for innuendo that is never proven has been one consistency throughout the Whitewater affair. The dark clouds of guilt never lift. One ominous rumble of suspicions follows the next, with no one noticing that the expected storm never breaks.

The Whitewater storm clouds looked especially threatening during the 1996 presidential race. Then, the press anticipated the unprecedented moment when the first lady would be indicted, possibly for obstruction of justice. Many of these stories appeared to be leaks from Starr's office. But no indictment of Mrs. Clinton followed.

The reason was simple: the case against Hillary Clinton never held water.

Item One -- often cited against the first lady -- is the mystery of the Rose billing records whose discovery touched off the speculation about her impending indictment.

The billing records were discovered in the White House living quarters in January 1996, two years after they were among documents that had been subpoenaed. With great fanfare, Starr hauled Mrs. Clinton before the federal grand jury in Washington.

Most famously, New York Times columnist William Safire seized on the occasion to denounce Mrs. Clinton as a "congenital liar." Safire asserted that “the records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S&L.” [NYT, Jan. 9, 1996]

Largely ignored by the media, however, was the fact that the billing records substantiated Mrs. Clinton's public and sworn statements about her limited work on the Madison Guaranty account. The records showed that Mrs. Clinton billed Madison Guaranty for 60 hours of work over a 15-month period.

There wasn't much to the mystery of the reappearing records either. After their discovery, White House special counsel Jane Sherburne interviewed Carolyn Huber, the White House secretary who discovered them, and pieced together the likely story.

The records were removed from the Rose files in March 1992 to answer questions from New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth. After the election, Huber, a former Rose Law Firm secretary, apparently "packed them up in the governor's mansion in Little Rock before the Clintons moved to Washington," Sherburne said.

All the Clintons' boxes were stored elsewhere, said Sherburne, and then brought, a few at a time, to the "book room" in the East Wing of the White House. There, Huber unpacked them and determined what should be done with the contents.

"But in the rush to clear out the book room in 1995 to make office space for the people who were going to help Mrs. Clinton write her book [It Takes a Village], Carolyn probably threw the billing records she had unpacked into a box along with the old shoes and empty hangers that were also in the box, and moved it to her office to deal with later," Sherburne explained.

Starr has developed no known evidence to contradict this innocent explanation.

...On June 30, the air finally went out of the seven-year-old Whitewater balloon. In announcing the conclusion of the Whitewater phase of his investigation, Starr acknowledged that he had no prosecutable case against Mrs. Clinton.

Despite the stunning development, no major media outlet offered a self-critical assessment of the breathless -- and often mindless -- handling of the story. The major news outlets, often led by The New York Times and The Washington Post, had dug themselves so deeply into trying to prove the Whitewater case that they saw no way out.

Instead, the newspapers and networks quickly moved on. What commentary there was focused on the nation's "scandal fatigue" and Starr's political clumsiness. Somehow, those clever Clintons -- like a political Bonnie-and-Clyde team -- had slipped away from the authorities one more time.

Attention turned, too, to Starr’s expected scathing final report, its likely effect on the New York Senate race and what it finally would show about Hillary Clinton's presumption of guilt.

Mollie Dickenson is a specialist on the savings-and-loan scandal.


My district Congressman has his elderly mother on his payroll. It doesn't matter what his party is, he is a Republican, but I have no doubt this is a common practice and a way to get bribes, pad pockets and and the whole lot of them should be swept out of office.

On the other side we have reality and we have a Republican Party leadership that is working just a little too hard to make their position on top permanent. There is a concerted effort, in addition to the financial shenanigans to manipulate the democratic process.

What is it I see as different? It is the concerted effort to manipulate the democratic process. Bush has used his position to use the D o J to further the power of the Republican Party. The actions discussed in this thread that are beyond the financial corruption activities which have become the norm are those by top Republican Party officials to cheat in the elections. Financial corruption should be exposed and we really need to quit re-electing those people. And we need to decrease the influence money has on the electoral process. But when you start getting actual election fraud, that threatens our democracy. That is just not on the same level as financial corruption.

[pomeroo]

I don't think Pomeroo does specific cites. He just tells you to read his little book, or makes totally unverifiable claims about fraud.


ETA regarding the Byron York article: It's an oddity significant enough to merit some investigation, but there's no evidence of wrongdoing and if it turns out that there is a reasonable explanation for those polling stations reporting in last then there's not much meat to the story. It should not be too hard to establish whether the systems in use and the presence of bipartisan observers made it possible or impossible to generate a few hundred extra votes at the last minute. It shouldn't be possible of course, but nothing would surprise me about US electoral systems.



It is tiresome to keep presenting evidence that is waved away. I am no expert in Tasmanian politics, so I shouldn't expect you to follow American politics too closely.

[Kevin_Lowe]

It is tiresome to keep presenting evidence that is waved away. I am no expert in Tasmanian politics, so I shouldn't expect you to follow American politics too closely.

There are plenty of US posters in the thread who I'm sure would be interested in any actual evidence you have.

Why not pick what you think is the best case study from Fund's book, in terms of evidence, seriousness and relevance to the current discussion? We can talk about that. Just show us the evidence, if you have any.

[pomeroo]

There are plenty of US posters in the thread who I'm sure would be interested in any actual evidence you have.

Why not pick what you think is the best case study from Fund's book, in terms of evidence, seriousness and relevance to the current discussion? We can talk about that. Just show us the evidence, if you have any.



Should I copy two twenty-page chapters from Fund's book? Skeptigirl will dismiss them with a childish insult. We can't debate a book that only I have taken the trouble to read.

[Skeptic Ginger]

It is tiresome to keep presenting evidence that is waved away. I am no expert in Tasmanian politics, so I shouldn't expect you to follow American politics too closely.Are you really in that much denial that you look at my detailed posts discrediting your unsupported claims and you believe I waved away your evidence with childish insults?

Excuse me pomey, but it is you who is waving away the evidence with childish excuses.

I posted citations and detailed analyses of the evidence you offered. Your claim I had nothing to say boggles the mind.

Copy the 22 pages if you are unable to sift through them for the supportable facts and citations supporting them. I'm game.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Fact: I personally know a Kerry supporter who, along with other Kerry supporters, drove up to Wisconsin to "help" residents of a senior citizens home too frail to do it themselves fill out their absentee ballots. Guess who those seniors all voted for? :rolleyes:

Call me a liar if you want, but I know it to be true.Taking this at face value, first, it is an individual. The reason I put this thread in the CT forum was to look at party leadership involvement or at least involvement on the top levels.

Second, there is an issue here of what constitutes ethical campaigning and what constitutes unethical campaigning and what amounts to outright voter fraud.

I assume you are claiming your friend voted for incompetent people. You cannot be sure, however, that some of those "frail" people didn't exert their own desires on those ballots. What irks me the most about the accusations here is that all of those people for whom votes were cast had a right to vote. The implication is because they were influenced in a way one person doesn't think is right, that something fraudulent occurred.

Is it any less fraudulent to put out false Swift Boat attack ads? Is it any less fraudulent to help a relative send in an absentee ballot if that person is not legally incompetent? Is it fraudulent to grant a couple million dollars of taxpayer's money to a large Evangelical congregation via the Faith Based initiative fund and have that church pastor recommend the congregation vote for certain candidates?

Ky. representative uses 'faith-based' funding to win votes, critics say (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200206/ai_n9127838)

2004: Bush Campaign Seeks "Friendly Congregations" To Aid Re-election Campaign. (http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2223/1/47?TopicID=1)

The point is, "feeble" is not a legal definition. There are laws prohibiting legally incompetent persons from voting. If any of those "feeble" voters had legal guardians assigned due to court declared incompetence, then your friend could be prosecuted for breaking the law. Otherwise, you are bringing up an issue that is very gray.

I have no problem discussing the ethical issues involved in influencing voters as long as you want to discuss all the ways voters are unethically influenced rather than just this particular type of influence.

In any case, voter ID wouldn't impact this. Voter disenfranchisement isn't the issue. Voter fraud in this case is a matter of opinion where to draw the line. The court draws it at legally being declared incompetent. And this isn't a widespread practice being directed from the highest ranks in the Democratic Party.

[Skeptic Ginger]

How does this refute Fund's claim? The PBP is clearly talking about voters purged for all reasons (death, no longer live in county, etc) while Fund specifically was talking about criminal purges.

In making this claim [in the book, Stealing Elections], Fund selectively quoted from a May 27, 2001, article in the Palm Beach Post. While the article did state that "[a]t least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election," it also stated that an additional 996 people who had been convicted of crimes in other states but were now eligible to vote were also cut from the rolls.

Fund then compared what he called the "trivial number" of 108 voters with the 1,420 military ballots that were rejected statewide, ignoring the other 996 who were eligible but were denied the right to vote.

From the May 27, 2001, article in the Palm Beach Post:

But a Palm Beach Post computer analysis has found at least 1,100 eligible voters wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election -- the collateral damage from an aggressive and ill-conceived state plan to prevent felons from voting.

[...]

At least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election. DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race. One Naples man was told he couldn't vote because he was linked with a felon still serving time in a Moore Haven prison.

Florida officials cut from the rolls 996 people convicted of crimes in other states, though they should have been allowed to vote. Before the election, state officials said felons could vote only if they had written clemency orders, although most other states automatically restore voting rights to felons when they complete their sentences. This policy conflicted with a 1998 court ruling that said Florida had "no authority" to deny civil rights to those who had them restored in other states. After the election, the state changed its policy.See bolded text.

[pomeroo]

Taking this at face value, first, it is an individual. The reason I put this thread in the CT forum was to look at party leadership involvement or at least involvement on the top levels.

Second, there is an issue here of what constitutes ethical campaigning and what constitutes unethical campaigning and what amounts to outright voter fraud.

I assume you are claiming your friend voted for incompetent people. You cannot be sure, however, that some of those "frail" people didn't exert their own desires on those ballots. What irks me the most about the accusations here is that all of those people for whom votes were cast had a right to vote. The implication is because they were influenced in a way one person doesn't think is right, that something fraudulent occurred.




[quote=skeptigirl;2709843]
Is it any less fraudulent to put out false Swift Boat attack ads?



If you can tell us what was fraudulent about them, you'll be doing far more than John Kerry was able to do. Bear in mind that on the single bone of contention between Kerry and the Swift Boat vets that is NOT a matter of opinion, it has been established that Long John lied and the Swiftees told the truth: Kerry was not in Cambodia over the 1968 Christmas holiday and Richard Nixon was not President at the time. Those falsehoods were "seared" into his memory.


[quote=skeptigirl;2709843]
Is it any less fraudulent to help a relative send in an absentee ballot if that person is not legally incompetent? Is it fraudulent to grant a couple million dollars of taxpayer's money to a large Evangelical congregation via the Faith Based initiative fund and have that church pastor recommend the congregation vote for certain candidates?

Ky. representative uses 'faith-based' funding to win votes, critics say (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200206/ai_n9127838)

2004: Bush Campaign Seeks "Friendly Congregations" To Aid Re-election Campaign. (http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2223/1/47?TopicID=1)




You can't be serious. If any Republican dared to campaign in churches as though they belonged there, the way Democrats routinely commandeer the pulpits of black churches, the media would go berserk.




The point is, "feeble" is not a legal definition. There are laws prohibiting legally incompetent persons from voting. If any of those "feeble" voters had legal guardians assigned due to court declared incompetence, then your friend could be prosecuted for breaking the law. Otherwise, you are bringing up an issue that is very gray.

I have no problem discussing the ethical issues involved in influencing voters as long as you want to discuss all the ways voters are unethically influenced rather than just this particular type of influence.

In any case, voter ID wouldn't impact this. Voter disenfranchisement isn't the issue. Voter fraud in this case is a matter of opinion where to draw the line. The court draws it at legally being declared incompetent. And this isn't a widespread practice being directed from the highest ranks in the Democratic Party.



You have no idea what the Democrats have pulled in Milwaukee in the last two presidential elections.

[pomeroo]

Are you really in that much denial that you look at my detailed posts discrediting your unsupported claims and you believe I waved away your evidence with childish insults?

Excuse me pomey, but it is you who is waving away the evidence with childish excuses.

I posted citations and detailed analyses of the evidence you offered. Your claim I had nothing to say boggles the mind.

Copy the 22 pages if you are unable to sift through them for the supportable facts and citations supporting them. I'm game.



Your "detailed analyses" were not very impressive. Fund devotes most of chapter on the Democrats' vote fraud in Palm Beach County. He makes a convincing statistical case that Bush lost roughly 15,000 votes there. He outlines the methodology of the fraud: Democratic poll workers were creating overvotes. You present a Washington Post piece that points to the huge number of overvotes containing a mark for Kerry--exactly what we'd expect if Fund is correct--and claims, either disingenuously or obtusely, that they hurt Kerry!

[Kevin_Lowe]

Your "detailed analyses" were not very impressive. Fund devotes most of chapter on the Democrats' vote fraud in Palm Beach County. He makes a convincing statistical case that Bush lost roughly 15,000 votes there. He outlines the methodology of the fraud: Democratic poll workers were creating overvotes. You present a Washington Post piece that points to the huge number of overvotes containing a mark for Kerry--exactly what we'd expect if Fund is correct--and claims, either disingenuously or obtusely, that they hurt Kerry!

There are two problems here.

Firstly you haven't given us any actual evidence, or even a convincing statistical case, you have just claimed they exist in Fund's book and ignored repeated requests to share that information. I'm open to any actual evidence you do have, but the longer you evade requests for specifics the more likely it seems that the specifics aren't up to scratch.

Secondly, while the hypothesis that Democratic party workers created overvotes in Palm Beach County by punching Kerry-holes in non-Kerry ballots (and I thought we were talking about Gore in 2000, so one of us is muddled) covers the known facts, so does the hypothesis that Republican party workers created overvotes by punching non-Democratic holes in Democratic ballots. So the fact that your favoured hypothesis covers the facts is not conclusive given other hypotheses do too.

My last point is only relevant if you are the one who is muddled and not me. If we are talking about 2000, it occurs to me that since the subsequent media-sponsored recount claimed to clearly show that Gore would have won if the voters who wanted to vote for Gore had punched their cards correctly, that would seem to indicate that many of the overvotes with a Gore hole punched had scribbled "Gore" on their ballot or otherwise made it obvious that Gore was their intended choice. In such cases, the hypothesis that Democrats spoiled those votes would make little sense.

[pomeroo]

There are two problems here.


Firstly you haven't given us any actual evidence, or even a convincing statistical case, you have just claimed they exist in Fund's book and ignored repeated requests to share that information. I'm open to any actual evidence you do have, but the longer you evade requests for specifics the more likely it seems that the specifics aren't up to scratch.




Why do you pretend that I've "ignored" your requests when I have explained that I have no intention of copying a twenty-page chapter.



[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2710408]
Secondly, while the hypothesis that Democratic party workers created overvotes in Palm Beach County by punching Kerry-holes in non-Kerry ballots (and I thought we were talking about Gore in 2000, so one of us is muddled) covers the known facts, so does the hypothesis that Republican party workers created overvotes by punching non-Democratic holes in Democratic ballots.

My mistake. I have been posting about Kerry in another thread and he was on my mind. Obviously, we're talking about Gore. Your other comment makes absolutely no sense. There is an inexplicable shortfall in Bush's total for Palm Beach County of 15,000 votes. There is a huge spike in overvotes, roughly ten times the percentage recorded in other counties. Fund makes the statistical case in detail.





[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2710408]
So the fact that your favoured hypothesis covers the facts is not conclusive given other hypotheses do too.




Wrong.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2710408]
My last point is only relevant if you are the one who is muddled and not me. If we are talking about 2000, it occurs to me that since the subsequent media-sponsored recount claimed to clearly show that Gore would have won if the voters who wanted to vote for Gore had punched their cards correctly,


Claims about the infamous "butterfly ballot," designed by a Democrat and published, as required by law, weeks before the election have nothing to do with the specific vote fraud described by Fund.





that would seem to indicate that many of the overvotes with a Gore hole punched had scribbled "Gore" on their ballot or otherwise made it obvious that Gore was their intended choice. In such cases, the hypothesis that Democrats spoiled those votes would make little sense.


The overvotes in Palm Beach County are indicative of fraud. A former Democratic Congressman conceded as much.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Why do you pretend that I've "ignored" your requests when I have explained that I have no intention of copying a twenty-page chapter.

Because presumably Fund cites primary sources which you could share with us in much less than twenty pages.


My mistake. I have been posting about Kerry in another thread and he was on my mind. Obviously, we're talking about Gore. Your other comment makes absolutely no sense. There is an inexplicable shortfall in Bush's total for Palm Beach County of 15,000 votes. There is a huge spike in overvotes, roughly ten times the percentage recorded in other counties. Fund makes the statistical case in detail.

Link to somewhere that has specifics? You make it sound like there may be a case to be made, but at this stage nobody is going to take your word for it.


The overvotes in Palm Beach County are indicative of fraud. A former Democratic Congressman conceded as much.

Who? When? Where?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pomey, I am not going to hijack my own thread providing the evidence to you about the Swift Boat lies, go look them up for yourself and post about it in another thread.

Nor am I going to play ever shifting goalposts with you. I do believe I have made my case, and I do believe you have yet to make yours.

The Defense rests until such time as actual evidence worth investigating is presented showing massive voter fraud perpetrated by the top members of the Democratic Party that is at least equal to the numbers of voters disenfranchised by actions directed by top members of the Republican Party.

[pomeroo]

Pomey, I am not going to hijack my own thread providing the evidence to you about the Swift Boat lies, go look them up for yourself and post about it in another thread.




Not interested. The pompous blowhard was beaten. The Swiftees didn't tell any lies, and do you know why I can state this so baldly? Because Kerry was unable to show any of those lies. He huffed and puffed, brayed about his unmatched valor, but on the single issue that was resolved definitively, it turned out that he was the liar and the Swiftees were telling the truth.


[quote=skeptigirl;2710587]
Nor am I going to play ever shifting goalposts with you. I do believe I have made my case, and I do believe you have yet to make yours.




Of course you think you've made a case. In the loony-left blogosphere, making a case means citing raving lunatics like Brad Friedman and never ever reading a serious book.



[quote=skeptigirl;2710587]
The Defense rests until such time as actual evidence worth investigating is presented showing massive voter fraud perpetrated by the top members of the Democratic Party that is at least equal to the numbers of voters disenfranchised by actions directed by top members of the Republican Party.



The disenfranchisement scam has served the Democrats well. If they never have to produce an actual living person who was "disenfranchised," they will have demonstrated--redundantly--that crime pays.

Incidentally, I suspect that most of us noticed that nobody ever said anything about Democratic vote fraud being perpetrated by "top members" of the Democratic Party. The fraudsters in Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, etc. are locals.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Incidentally, I suspect that most of us noticed that nobody ever said anything about Democratic vote fraud being perpetrated by "top members" of the Democratic Party. The fraudsters in Hawaii, New Mexico, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, etc. are locals.

Evidence of this fraud please. Just a few links to non-partisan primary sources will do, we're not demanding a twenty page chapter.

[pomeroo]

Evidence of this fraud please. Just a few links to non-partisan primary sources will do, we're not demanding a twenty page chapter.





Completely cognizant that posting this brief excerpt from Fund's chapter on fraud in St. Louis will accomplish nothing, I can't resist giving a sample of the book's abundant riches:

"Secretary Blunt's investigation of the 2000 election also detailed how the federal Motor Voter Law was facilitating fraud. He calculated that a total of 247,135 St. Louis residents, dead or alive, were registered to vote, as compared with the city's voting-age population of 258,532. That translated to a whopping 96 percent registration rate, the envy even of places like Pyongyang, where not voting is a capital offense.

"The secretary of state also made the following findings:
Sixty-two (62) federal felons voted in that election along with fifty-two (52) state felons; Sixty-eight (68) people voted twice; Fourteen (14) dead people cast votes; Seventy-nine (79) registered to vacant lots in the city of St. Louis voted in the election; 45 of the city's election judges were not registered to vote, as they are required to do in order to lawfully hold the position of election judge. 250 addresses [were discovered] that are not identified as apartments from which eight or more individuals are registered to vote. A random sampling of 54 of these locations indicates that 14 might have been used as drop-sites for multiple false voter registrations.

"Democrats responded to the report by insisting that their only interest had been to ensure that as many people voted as possible."

[Bob Klase]

rying to find any dirt he could possibly get the Clinton's on and all he ended up with was Bill's entrapped perjury about a blow job.

Asking a question of someone under oath and getting them to answer is 'entrapment'? That's an interesting legal theory. I wonder if you'd apply that kind of thinking to Libby's conviction for perjury?

[Kevin_Lowe]

Completely cognizant that posting this brief excerpt from Fund's chapter on fraud in St. Louis will accomplish nothing, I can't resist giving a sample of the book's abundant riches:

"Secretary Blunt's investigation of the 2000 election also detailed how the federal Motor Voter Law was facilitating fraud. He calculated that a total of 247,135 St. Louis residents, dead or alive, were registered to vote, as compared with the city's voting-age population of 258,532. That translated to a whopping 96 percent registration rate, the envy even of places like Pyongyang, where not voting is a capital offense.

Primary source? Also, how many of those people actually voted?


"The secretary of state also made the following findings:
Sixty-two (62) federal felons voted in that election along with fifty-two (52) state felons; Sixty-eight (68) people voted twice; Fourteen (14) dead people cast votes; Seventy-nine (79) registered to vacant lots in the city of St. Louis voted in the election; 45 of the city's election judges were not registered to vote, as they are required to do in order to lawfully hold the position of election judge. 250 addresses [were discovered] that are not identified as apartments from which eight or more individuals are registered to vote. A random sampling of 54 of these locations indicates that 14 might have been used as drop-sites for multiple false voter registrations.

Primary source? You do understand why a primary source is important, right? Without primary sources your book is a source of fertiliser, not a source of riches.

If I recall correctly, in some places in the USA homeless people have been known to register as living in vacant lots, since they have to put some location down. Homeless people are still entitled to vote of course so this is not so much fraud as the system not keeping up with the times. For that matter eight people of voting age living in one house is unusual but far from inconceivable, even if some similar "address of convenience" business is not going on in those cases.

I'd also like to know how they established the number of people who voted twice or voted while dead, just to rule out the possibility of accidental error. If a legitimate voter has a name and address similar to that of a dead person or someone else who has already voted elsewhere, then human error at the polling booth could lead to the discrepancy claimed without any actual malice or any actual effect on the outcome.

How many of the naughty election judges were Democratic representatives and how many were Republican?

I'm not ruling out voter fraud, just trying to nail down the details of the case study in question. Please link us to Fund's primary sources.


"Democrats responded to the report by insisting that their only interest had been to ensure that as many people voted as possible."

Ah, Fund, you are a comic genius, and completely non-partisan too.

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is a lot of material here. I've posted a lot of the text from the links below so people don't have to read through every link but it makes for an overly lengthy post. It's even almost too long for me to re-read to edit it.

Here is the summary:

No one has said voter fraud doesn't occur. Blunt found a small number of confirmed cases and a larger number of potential cases because the registration roles were cluttered with errors and deceased voters. Subsequent investigations from a couple different reporters found there were more registration errors than illegal votes.

Exaggerating the problem, Blunt got state voter ID legislation passed by a very small margin. It was overturned by the state supreme court who found the amount of fraud was small and the ID reqs amounted to a poll tax. There was one dissenting judge and I posted his opinion as well as the majority's below.

This is the same thing that is turning up in all these cases. There are a small number of illegal votes. (No surprise) The Republicans are using those to go around campaigning for voter ID reqs. The allegations continue to be found to be greatly exaggerated and there is a considerable number of people who are convinced the voter ID amounts to a move to disenfranchise a large number of voters, especially in key states.

But oh what a tangled web they weave...

Turns out Blunt was helped in his Secretary of State campaign by the RNC just before he made the public cries about voter fraud and pushing for voter ID laws. And the firing of Attorney Cummins in the same state to make way for Griffin ties in nicely if one is looking at Karl Rove's advance planning to disenfranchise a large number of voters in key states in the 2008 election. Not only is Missouri evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, there is a key Senate race coming up in Missouri that is likely to be a close call.

This just adds a ton to the credence to my conspiracy claim. The attorney scandal includes firing Bud Cummins from Missouri and replacing him with Griffin, from Rove's inner circle who had no qualms directing the well documented Fl. caging incident. (Reminder: the caging list existed, the RNC admitted so with an absurd excuse for its existence, Goodling testified under oath the caging incident occurred and Griffin was involved, and Griffin resigned because of it.) Clearly Rove has a hand in elections and attorneys in Missouri for a reason.

Looking at the Wiki entry on Blunt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Blunt) and this article (http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:5zbCwh3UtHcJ:www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17168096.htm%3Ftemplate%3DcontentModules/printstory.jsp+Secretary+Blunt%27s+investigation+o f+the+2000+election&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a) which outlines the claims Blunt made about voter fraud and the subsequent events surrounding state legislation enacting voter ID, we have a microcosm of things to come.

There is a curious connection to the voter disenfranchisement plot. Blunt went investigating voter fraud in Missouri shortly after being elected to Sec. of State.

From Wiki:Election as Secretary of State

Blunt received considerable fundraising support from his father's supporters and from out-of-state Republicans in his 2000 Secretary of State bid. Senior political strategist Karl Rove appeared at an April 21, 2000 fundraiser in Springfield.[2] The state Republican Party contributed $160,000 to Blunt's campaign, having received $100,000 in donations from Rep. Roy Blunt's PAC[3], and the 7th District Congressional Republican Committee - a fundraising group affiliated with the senior Blunt - donated $40,000.[4]. Contributions from 84 of Rep. Blunt's colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives totalled over $65,000.[5][6] Matt Blunt defeated his Democrat opponent Steve Gaw with 51.4% of the vote, to Gaw's 45.1%.[7]

Seems Blunt then went on to run for governor and won. Again we have evidence he is close with the big guys in the RNC and not above taking advantages in a race when the opportunity arises.

It seems some of his campaign money for the governor's race was tainted with the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff illegal dealings (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-06-delay-blunt_x.htm) via Blunt Sr's manipulations. After all, ethics are taught at home. When it all ended, DeLay's private charity, along with the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son, Matt, who now is the state's governor, all ended up with a piece of the pie, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also appeared in the picture.

The complicated transactions are drawing scrutiny in legal and political circles after a grand jury indicted DeLay on charges of violating Texas law with a scheme to launder illegal corporate donations to state political candidates.

The government's former chief election enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money was concealed. And we have this little jewel:For someone concerned about voting practices as Blunt claims to be, this was a bit hipocritical. Voting Rights: Missouri Compromised (http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0825-08.htm)John Hickey is the executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition. He said today: ... As we witnessed in 2000, the secretary of state plays a very crucial role in the electoral process. It's essential that this person runs fair and impartial elections and does not misuse the office for partisan gain. Unfortunately, recent events in Missouri show serious problems can arise from partisan use of this key public office. Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt has spent almost $48,000 in public money on statewide newspaper advertising that included his name and picture, urging voters to turn out for the August 3 primary -- where he was running on that same ballot as a Republican gubernatorial candidate! Adding to the irony is the fact that the funds Blunt used for what amounted to a publicly-paid campaign ad were from federal appropriations to Missouri from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was enacted in 2002 as a response to the events in Florida. That money is supposed to be used for purposes such as recruiting and training election judges, buying voting machines that disabled people can use, and improving maintenance of voter lists. It's outrageous that a secretary of state used HAVA money as a personal political slush fund."

Hickey added: "Matt Blunt is the son of Roy Blunt, the current Republican Majority Whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, a very powerful position. Roy Blunt has already raised money for his son's previous campaigns, and the Matt Blunt bid is a priority for the Republican National Committee."No wonder! Missouri's race for governor was neck and neck (Blunt won 51 to 49%) as was the 2000 election where the Blunt's claims of voter fraud surfaced. And voter ID law was passed by a slim margin. If you were Karl Rove planning your 2008 strategy of voter disenfranchisement in key states, Missouri would clearly be a candidate. Send in one of the 'team', Griffin, and make sure to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as the opportunity allows. And you have already helped get your man, Blunt, in as governor after he did your bidding looking for voter fraud. Not to mention there will be a close race for a Senate seat in 2008 as well as the vote for President which could change the power in the House.

Also from Wiki:United States Attorney Controversy -
In April 2006 it was reported that United States Attorney Bud Cummins "is handling an investigation into how the license fee offices were awarded to political supporters of the Blunt administration."[26] On October 4, 2006, Cummins announced "that he has concluded an inquiry into alleged wrongdoings involving the awarding of contracts for Missouri fee offices with no indictments sought or returned." Cummins elaborated: "First, the matter has been closed with no indictments sought or returned. Second, at no time was Governor Blunt a target, subject, or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegation being investigated. Any allegations or inferences to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous." [27] Cummins has since become embroiled in the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy: in December 2006, Cummins resigned from his post in favor of Tim Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove. Cummins acknowledges that he "served at the pleasure of the president," and that Attorney General Gonzales "doesn't owe me an apology." [28] Cummins concluded his investigation of the Blunt Administration two months before he resigned.


Here is the account of the events from 2000 on. It is long, but this whole affair has that much crap in it. Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved. Before last fall's election:

-Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.

-The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House's help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.

-Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat.

-Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election.

-In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he'd just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who "are well aware of" the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had "a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene" to keep the election clean.

Missouri Republicans have railed about alleged voter fraud ever since President Bush narrowly won the White House in the chaotic 2000 election and Missouri Republican Sen. John Ashcroft lost to a dead man, the late Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan, whose name stayed on the ballot weeks after he died in a plane crash.

Joining the push to contain "voter fraud" were Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who charged that votes by dogs and dead people had defeated Ashcroft, Missouri Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, whose stinging allegations of fraud were later debunked, and St. Louis lawyer Mark "Thor" Hearne, national counsel to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, who set up a nonprofit group to publicize allegations of voter fraud.

Many Democrats contend that the efforts amount to a voter-suppression campaign.

"The real problem has never been vote fraud," said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo. "It's access to the polls. In the last 50 years, no one in Missouri has been prosecuted for impersonating someone else at the polls. But thousands of eligible voters have been denied their constitutional rights. . . . It's sickening."

However, Jessica Robinson, a spokeswoman for Blunt, said a report he'd authored in 2001 as secretary of state "documented credible instances of fraud." She said Blunt wanted the legislature to take another shot at passing a photo ID bill as "a reasonable step . . . to help stamp out" such abuse.

The Republican-dominated legislature is considering the bill again this year, along with a resolution asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment so the measure can withstand court challenges.

In a separate assessment of alleged voter fraud in Missouri, Lorraine Minnite, a Barnard College professor, found scant evidence of it. The study was undertaken for the nonpartisan policy-research group Demos, which despite its name isn't affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Minnite, who's writing a book on the issue of voter fraud, said successful drives to register poor people and minorities in recent years had threatened to "tip the balance of power" to Democrats, so it was understandable that the Republican Party would seek restrictions that "disproportionately hinder the opposition."

It's difficult to capture the emotional debate over the issue of voter fraud in Missouri without considering the Election Day tumult in St. Louis on Nov. 7, 2000. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of voters were turned away because their names weren't on official lists, and many of them converged on the city's election board seeking assistance.

Responding to the bedlam, Democrats won an emergency court order that kept some polls open beyond their scheduled 7 p.m. closings. That outraged Republicans, and Hearne, the Bush campaign lawyer, in turn won an emergency appeals-court ruling that shut the polls within an hour.

In the ensuing days, Bond blamed Ashcroft's defeat on "a criminal enterprise."

The following summer, then-Secretary of State Blunt alleged in a 47-page investigative report that the use of affidavits to allow more than 1,000 "improper ballots . . . compels the conclusion that there was in St. Louis an organized and successful effort to generate improper votes in large numbers."

But an investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, launched before Ashcroft settled in as U.S. attorney general in 2001, found the reverse. In a 2002 court settlement with the department's Voting Rights Section, St. Louis election officials acknowledged that they'd improperly purged some 50,000 names from voter lists before the 2000 elections and had failed as required by federal law to notify those people properly that they'd been placed on inactive status. No one knows how many eligible voters were denied their right to cast ballots.

Missouri's Rep. Clay charged in a recent interview that Blunt's report was an attempt "to violate the voting rights of certain Missourians."

Things didn't heat up again until 2005, when Schlozman authorized a Justice Department suit naming the newly elected Missouri secretary of state - the daughter of the late governor - as the defendant. It alleged that her office had failed to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible people from local voter-registration rolls.

A federal judge dismissed the suit last month, saying the government had provided no evidence of fraud.

Speaking on behalf of Schlozman, who's now with the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, agency spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are disappointed with the court ruling." [Surprise, more ties to the US Attorneys scandal]

Separately, Hearne helped establish the nonprofit American Center for Voting Rights in February 2005, which issued lengthy reports alleging voter fraud in states across the country, including Missouri. One director of the supposedly nonpartisan group was Brian Lunde, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee who switched his allegiance in 2000 and headed Democrats for Bush in 2004.

Barnard's Minnite said the center's summary on Missouri consisted of "a litany of overblown allegations of fraud appearing in newspapers, most of which turn out to be minor problems or no problem at all."

Republican state Sen. Delbert Scott of Lowry, Mo., chief sponsor of the photo-ID bill last year, said Hearne had helped draft it and served as a key adviser.

Hearne didn't respond to several requests for comment. His organization closed down its Internet site in March and has disappeared from view.

Last fall, with Missouri's new voter-ID law thrown out by the court, allegations of fraud arose over registration drives among Democratic-leaning minorities in St. Louis and Kansas City by the Democratic-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN).

Brian Mellor, a Boston lawyer for ACORN, said many of the accusations surrounded the submission of duplicate or multiple registration forms for the same voters. Such duplication would be caught by election officials and wouldn't enable anyone to vote twice, he said.

But officials at St. Louis' Board of Elections took the unusual step of alerting the FBI to those and other irregularities, Mellor said, and he wound up turning over copies of 40,000 St. Louis-area registration forms to bureau agents.

Facing the FBI scrutiny, Mellor said, ACORN reviewed its forms in Kansas City and found several with similar handwriting, suggesting that they were bogus. He said the group turned over evidence involving four workers to a county prosecutor in mid-October.

That same month, at the initiative of a Republican appointee, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters warning 5,000 people who'd registered through ACORN that their voting status was in question. They were given one week to return signed copies of the letter and confirm personal identifying information or they'd lose their registration status.

ACORN attorneys charged that the notice "appears to be an unlawful attempt to suppress and intimidate voters of color." The board sent another mailing withdrawing the threat.

Meanwhile, the evidence against the four ACORN workers ended up with the FBI.

Five days before the election, U.S. Attorney Schlozman got another voter-fraud headline, announcing the indictments of the four workers. The indictments charged that six applications that ACORN had submitted were fraudulent.

"ACORN abhors fraud," Mellor said. He said the timing of the indictments seemed to be aimed at hurting Democrats.

Justice Department spokesman Boyd said the policy that prosecutors "refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election" didn't bar pre-election indictments and was intended to ensure that investigators didn't intimidate voters during an election. Boyd said officials in the department’s Public Integrity Section approved the indictments.

But Joseph Rich, who headed the department's Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, said the timing of the indictments "flies in the face of long-standing policy. . . . There was no need to bring cases on the eve of the election."

Reporters from the Kansas City Star (http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/elections/onevote.html) investigated the voter fraud supposedly found by Blunt.
The Star's investigation uncovered more double voters, and records suggest there could be more than 300 statewide. The exact number is impossible to determine because many counties have shredded their poll books, as allowed under state law, and state computer files are rife with data errors.

Of the more than 300 potential cases of vote fraud in 2000 and 2002, The Star found about 150 in St. Louis or St. Louis County, 60 in the Kansas City area — including three dozen in Kansas City itself — and the rest scattered across the state.

The total number of cases could be even higher.

Anyone registered under a slightly different name or date of birth in two places would escape detection in the newspaper's analysis of voter registration databases in Missouri and Kansas. The study only flagged people registered in two places under exactly the same names and dates of birth.

The figure may be smaller, on the other hand, because the state computer files contain many errors that show people voting who did not actually vote.

Information for the St. Louis area in the state computer file, however, is especially corrupt. For example, nearly 15,000 voter names appear with no date of birth or dates before 1880. With so many errors, many of the voters listed as having voted in two places in the St. Louis area may actually have voted in only one.

A state audit in May found 24,063 persons registered in St. Louis who were dead, registered somewhere else, convicted of a felony or listed as living at a vacant lot.

Local election officials said they don't think the problem of double-voting is widespread. Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, which provides nonpartisan information about election reform, said fraudulent absentee ballots seem much more common.

The State Supreme Court ruling on the voter ID law:
October 17, 2006; Missouri State Supreme Court Affirms Order Barring Implementation of State Voter ID System (http://electionlawblog.org/archives/006943.html)The court's opinion is here. Though this is decided on state constitutional grounds (which insulates it to a great extent from U.S. Supreme Court review), the court's decision has the same structure of those other court decisions that have struck down similar laws in other jurisdictions. (1) These laws impose too great a burden on the right to vote, and indeed can constitute a poll tax to the extent that the state does not pay the expenses associated with obtaining the documentation necessary to get the i.d. and (2) the state has not shown a sufficient interest in the law as a means of fraud prevention, given the paucity of evidence that such laws would meaningfully prevent "impersonation" voter fraud.

One state court justice dissented, and pointed to this evidence of impersonation voter fraud in the record:

According to the majority, there has been no fraud in the polling places; thus no need to prevent it. But the evidence, in part, is this: In an investigative report issued after the 2000 presidential election by outgoing Secretary of State Rebecca McDowell Cook, and introduced in evidence in this case, "135 people who were not registered to vote were permitted to vote at a polling place without a court order and without apparent authorization from [an election] Board Official." A subsequent report from then Secretary of State Matt Blunt noted, as even the plaintiffs have acknowledged here, that 79 voters registered from vacant lots, 45 people voted twice, and 14 votes were cast by the "dead." Further, as part of a federal investigation in the aftermath of the 2000 election, the United States Department of Justice found a stunningly large number of duplicate and ineligible voter registrations throughout the state. According to that report,...

And if, as in the DOJ report, there are more voters registered to vote than persons eligible to vote, the requirement to present a photo ID will at least eliminate those who attempt to vote in the place of others and those who attempt to vote more than once. It must be said, too, that even if there were no substantial evidence of existing voter impersonation fraud, legislatures are permitted to respond to the potential for such fraud, and they may do so "with foresight" rather than "reactively." Munro v. Socialist Workers Party, 479 U.S. 189 (1986). In any event, as the Carter-Baker Commission recently concluded, "there is no doubt that [in-person voter fraud] occurs" and that such fraud "could offset the outcome of close elections"

[Article commentary]Why else would registration fraud occur? Because there is sometimes a bounty paid for each registration turned into election officials. The more important question is whether these number, assuming they are accurate (they may not be) would justify an onerous voter identification law. Spencer Overton's recent book [Stealing Democracy, the New Politics of Voter Suppression (http://www.stealingdemocracy.com/)] and forthcoming article [Voter Identification; SPENCER A. OVERTON; George Washington University - Law School (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=908371)] explore this question very nicely.
More commentary from Bob Bauer [Voter ID: The Missouri Supreme Court Evaluates Legislative "Foresight" (http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/news.html?AID=840)].

October 18, 2006; More on Fraud Allegations in Missouri Supreme Court Voter ID Dissent (http://electionlawblog.org/archives/006952.html) Judge Limbaugh's characterization was itself inaccurate, and incorrectly bolsters a report often cited as proof that fraud occurs.

In the snippet that was disseminated, the dissent claims that "A subsequent report from then Secretary of State Matt Blunt noted, as even the plaintiffs have acknowledged here, that 79 voters registered from vacant lots, 45 people voted twice, and 14 votes were cast by the 'dead.'"

On page 9 of the report itself (http://bond.senate.gov/mandate.pdf), Secretary Blunt was more precise:
"Based on information provided by the City and County Boards of Election Commissioners (the "City Board" and "County Board", respectively), it is highly probable that twenty-three (23) people voted more than once in the November 7 election, and it is likely that an additional forty-five (45) persons voted twice.

"Based on information provided by the Missouri Department of Health, fourteen (14) persons in St. Louis City and County who were reported as deceased before the November 7 election nevertheless are recorded as having voted in the election.

"Based on information provided by the City Board, it appears that seventy-nine (79) voters who were registered from vacant lots in St. Louis City voted in the November 7 election."
(emphasis added).

Later in the report, Secretary Blunt revealed the basis for these three assessments. The first two do not necessarily reveal fraud. And the last has been conclusively disproved.

For the double-voters, investigators used voting history entries in St. Louis City and County computer databases to determine whether individuals were listed as voting twice. 23 voters who were apparently listed in both databases as voting in the same election matched name, date of birth, and social security number; 45 voters matched names and date of birth. Although I do not have ready access to the actual list of compared names, if the names are even relatively common, it would not be surprising to find 45 pairs of distinct voters whose name and date of birth match, out of more than 613,000 votes cast in St. Louis City and County in 2000. And though it is, of course, possible that the voters whose name, date of birth, and social security number were actually double voters, before determining that such a conclusion is "highly probable," I'd want some rough approximation of the rate of clerical errors -- which have been mistaken for double votes before. (See, e.g., http://www.jsonline.com/story/?id=350183)

For the deceased voters, investigators compared a list of individuals who died in St. Louis City and County from 1990-2000 against the same voter databases, and found 14 voters with the same names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. Again, it is possible that these votes were fraudulent. But before so concluding, in addition to examining the clerical error rate, it would be useful to double-check to see whether any of the voters on the deceased list actually died after the election. (See, e.g., Marcia Myers, Election Theft Ruled Out, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 24, 1995, at 1A.)

Finally, for the 79 voters apparently registered from vacant lots, the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners provided a report of addresses "verified to be vacant by the Board" and the names and voting history of individuals registered to vote at those addresses. Exemplary follow-up investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that the supposedly vacant lots were, in fact, not vacant; indeed, some apparently contained buildings more than 50 years old. As a Demos report by Lori Minnite and David Callahan reported, "Errors in the city's property records and methods for classifying vacant a multi-parcel address if only one of the parcels at the address is vacant" apparently accounted for the errors. (See, e.g., http://www.demos.org/pubs/EDR_-_Securing_the_Vote.pdf at 49 & n.88).

Finally, this abstract from voter ID article above sums up the reason for not implementing the voter ID regs:In the wake of closely contested elections, calls for laws that require voters to present photo identification as a condition to cast a ballot have become pervasive. Advocates tend to rely on two rhetorical devices: (1) anecdotes about a couple of elections tainted by voter fraud; and (2) common sense arguments that voters should produce photo identification because the cards are required to board airplanes, buy alcohol, and engage in other activities. This Article explains the analytical shortcomings of anecdote, analogy, and intuition, and applies a cost-benefit approach generally overlooked in election law scholarship. Rather than rushing to impose a photo identification requirement for voting, policymakers should instead examine empirical data to weigh the costs and benefits of such a requirement. Existing data suggests that the number of legitimate voters who would fail to bring photo identification to the polls is several times higher than the number of fraudulent voters, and that a photo identification requirement would produce political outcomes that are less reflective of the electorate as a whole. Policymakers should await better empirical studies before imposing potentially antidemocratic measures. Judges, in turn, should demand statistical data to ensure that voter identification procedures are appropriately tailored to deter fraudulent voters rather than legitimate ones and do not disproportionately exclude protected classes of voters.That leaves the question about why are the Republicans pushing so hard for this action? Very little evidence the ID reqs would do anything except cost money. Hmmm, now why would they want to spend money on something to prevent a few illegal votes that very little evidence suggest matter? Could it be they hope it will prevent a lot of legal votes that will matter?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Asking a question of someone under oath and getting them to answer is 'entrapment'? That's an interesting legal theory. I wonder if you'd apply that kind of thinking to Libby's conviction for perjury?Oh come on, Bob. Asking a guy to admit he cheated on his wife when she obviously didn't know about it at the time...yes, unless there was a good reason the testimony was needed, it was entrapment.

The whole 54 million taxpayer Grand Jury Ken Star investigation was supposedly looking into the financial dealings. How was Monica's BJ and semen on a dress in any way related to that?

[Bob Klase]

Oh come on, Bob. Asking a guy to admit he cheated on his wife when she obviously didn't know about it at the time...yes, unless there was a good reason the testimony was needed, it was entrapment.

I'll assume that you're using the common (rather than legal) definition of entrapment.

The whole 54 million taxpayer Grand Jury Ken Star investigation was supposedly looking into the financial dealings. How was Monica's BJ and semen on a dress in any way related to that?

Well Monica's BJ wasn't related to "that". But the questions (and Clinton's lying) were in civil court and the questions were asked by Paula Jones lawyers, not Starr. So your initial point still isn't valid.

But feel free continue look for distractions when you don't have a valid point.

[Skeptic Ginger]

"COUNT #2. "President Clinton lied under oath to the grand jury about his sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky."

Move on. The whole thing was a disgusting 8 year relentless partisan attack by a bunch of hypocrites. Start a new thread if you want to discuss it. This one is about manipulating the democratic process by top Republican Party operatives. It's about something that actually matters to the public.

[pomeroo]

[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2712846]Primary source? Also, how many of those people actually voted?



Primary source? You do understand why a primary source is important, right? Without primary sources your book is a source of fertiliser, not a source of riches.




What's with the demand for "primary sources"?* You're not an objective scholar. Citing raving fools like Brad Friedman is hardly the mark of a serious investigator. You're a partisan leftist who has no real interest in anything that contradicts his prejudices. If you want to check all of Fund's footnotes, buy his book.

I had one of the dumbest debates of my life in the politics forum here. I commented that the far-left's vile practice of comparing Bush to Hitler ought to be criticized by fair-minded liberals. A few jokers kept insisting that I was exaggerating. Every article I posted as evidence was mindlessly dismissed by these clowns until a couple of honest posters blew the whistle on the farce. The spectacle of close-minded, uninformed leftwing zealots pretending to be rational was comical, but unedifying.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2712846]
If I recall correctly, in some places in the USA homeless people have been known to register as living in vacant lots, since they have to put some location down. Homeless people are still entitled to vote of course so this is not so much fraud as the system not keeping up with the times. For that matter eight people of voting age living in one house is unusual but far from inconceivable, even if some similar "address of convenience" business is not going on in those cases.

I'd also like to know how they established the number of people who voted twice or voted while dead, just to rule out the possibility of accidental error. If a legitimate voter has a name and address similar to that of a dead person or someone else who has already voted elsewhere, then human error at the polling booth could lead to the discrepancy claimed without any actual malice or any actual effect on the outcome.

How many of the naughty election judges were Democratic representatives and how many were Republican?




ALL the judges were Democrats.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2712846]
I'm not ruling out voter fraud, just trying to nail down the details of the case study in question. Please link us to Fund's primary sources.


Ah, Fund, you are a comic genius, and completely non-partisan too.



Yes, it's a funny line, and, no, Fund is not a Republican operative. Democratic vote fraud is a very poorly-kept secret. But nobody will be doing anything about it for the forseeable future.

*
"Hey, stay for the election": Steve Hilton, St. Louis Post Dispatch, March 28, 2002

"Not that Judge Baker": Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 12, 2000

"Secretary Blunt's investigation": Missouri Secretary of State's Report on Conduct of Election in City of St. Louis, May 2001

"McCaskill concluded": Audit Report of the Missouri State Auditor, May 26, 2004

[Kevin_Lowe]

What's with the demand for "primary sources"?* You're not an objective scholar. Citing raving fools like Brad Friedman is hardly the mark of a serious investigator. You're a partisan leftist who has no real interest in anything that contradicts his prejudices. If you want to check all of Fund's footnotes, buy his book.

I don't recall citing Friedman lately. Not that it matters.

The reason we ask for primary sources is that we don't want to be reliant on Fund's word for exactly what happened. We want to get just the actual facts, not Fund's spin on the facts or (in a worst case scenario) outright lies.

For example, let's take one primary source you cited, the auditor's report from Missouri. It contains the figures Fund reported, but it has two bits of extra information Fund chose not to present. Want to see the full version?

From: http://auditor.mo.gov/press/2004-40.htm

"Voter files included deceased persons, Illinois residents, and felons

The BEC registers St. Louis voters and maintains the voter registration data. There were 249,346 voters as of April 2003 (194,060 were active voters and 55,286 were inactive voters). Auditors ran various computer matches to check the background of voters and found more than 24,000 questionable voters including: deceased persons, convicted felons, Illinois residents, voters who listed a city vacant lot as their addresses, and voters registered in other Missouri counties. Such computer matches can improve the integrity of the voter files and help St. Louis decrease its percentage of inactive voters (22 percent), which is nearly twice the national and statewide 12 percent average. (See page 10)".

(My bolding).

You see how Fund created his little bit of spin there? By leaving in the facts and figures about how many questionable registrations existed, without mentioning that they were flagged as questionable merely by a computer search and that there was reason to think many of the questionable registrations were inactive, he creates the impression of massive fraud when in fact it looks much more like sloppy record keeping.

Does that answer your question with regard to why we ask for primary sources?


I had one of the dumbest debates of my life in the politics forum here. I commented that the far-left's vile practice of comparing Bush to Hitler ought to be criticized by fair-minded liberals. A few jokers kept insisting that I was exaggerating. Every article I posted as evidence was mindlessly dismissed by these clowns until a couple of honest posters blew the whistle on the farce. The spectacle of close-minded, uninformed leftwing zealots pretending to be rational was comical, but unedifying.


Fantastic.


ALL the judges were Democrats.


Primary source?


"Hey, stay for the election": Steve Hilton, St. Louis Post Dispatch, March 28, 2002

Available on-line for $2.95, which I'm disinclined to pay. Judging by the first two lines, it's probably not a serious investigative piece.


"Not that Judge Baker": Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 12, 2000

Interestingly, this article does not exist in the St Louis Post Dispatch archive even though the archive extends back into the nineties.


"Secretary Blunt's investigation": Missouri Secretary of State's Report on Conduct of Election in City of St. Louis, May 2001

No longer available on-line so far as I can tell.


"McCaskill concluded": Audit Report of the Missouri State Auditor, May 26, 2004

Available on-line, and demonstrates that Fund created a misleading picture by leaving out important facts.

Fund can't be blamed if his sources are not always easily available on-line, of course. Although if you do want to pass off rubbish as fact, sources that cannot easily be checked are the best. However it is cause for concern that we can't track down most of his sources, and the ones we can track down he has misrepresented. We can't fully assess his scholarship or lack of it from so few data points but it does not look good.

ETA: Since I went to the trouble of checking your sources, please take the time to read this report. It's very good. It also covers Blunt's allegations in detail. Not to spoil the ending or anything, but not only were they mostly rubbish but massive misconduct by the St Louis Election Board got them sued by the Justice Department for disenfranchising large numbers of (probably Democrat-leaning) voters.

http://projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/Publications/Politics_of_Voter_Fraud_Final.pdf

[pomeroo]

[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2713683]I don't recall citing Friedman lately. Not that it matters.




After I posted, it occurred to me that it might have been skeptigirl or conspiraider who cited Friedman. A lunatic on Brad's Blog outdid himself last November. Following George Allen's concession to Jim Webb, the poster opined that Allen conceded the razor-close race because he didn't want his (Allen's!) vote fraud exposed in a recount. Yes, the loser was trying to cover up fraud. Now, your reflexive retort will be that of course a loser can engage in vote fraud. No argument there, but consider that Allen led by small margins in the final state polls. Had a Democrat suffered such a statistically insignificant turnaround, the loony-left blogs would have exploded with accusations of Republican fraud. Where was all that Republican fraud while the Dems were winning ALL the close races last year?





[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2713683]
The reason we ask for primary sources is that we don't want to be reliant on Fund's word for exactly what happened. We want to get just the actual facts, not Fund's spin on the facts or (in a worst case scenario) outright lies.




"We" also don't want to take the trouble to read what the man wrote. "We" have no interest in "primary sources" when parroting material invented by leftwing screamers.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2713683]
For example, let's take one primary source you cited, the auditor's report from Missouri. It contains the figures Fund reported, but it has two bits of extra information Fund chose not to present. Want to see the full version?

From: http://auditor.mo.gov/press/2004-40.htm

"Voter files included deceased persons, Illinois residents, and felons

The BEC registers St. Louis voters and maintains the voter registration data. There were 249,346 voters as of April 2003 (194,060 were active voters and 55,286 were inactive voters). Auditors ran various computer matches to check the background of voters and found more than 24,000 questionable voters including: deceased persons, convicted felons, Illinois residents, voters who listed a city vacant lot as their addresses, and voters registered in other Missouri counties. Such computer matches can improve the integrity of the voter files and help St. Louis decrease its percentage of inactive voters (22 percent), which is nearly twice the national and statewide 12 percent average. (See page 10)".

(My bolding).

You see how Fund created his little bit of spin there? By leaving in the facts and figures about how many questionable registrations existed, without mentioning that they were flagged as questionable merely by a computer search and that there was reason to think many of the questionable registrations were inactive, he creates the impression of massive fraud when in fact it looks much more like sloppy record keeping.

Does that answer your question with regard to why we ask for primary sources?




I'm afraid I missed the spin. St. Louis has a colorful history of Democratic vote fraud tracing back to the days of the Pendergast machine. To your extremely unobjective view, such a high percentage of questionable registrations seems harmless. But, then, you know little about the subject and have done no serious investigating. Fund wrote a twenty-page chapter on Democratic vote fraud in St. Louis. Nothing can persuade you to read it.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2713683]
Fantastic.




That's the word for it.





ALL the judges were Democrats.


Primary source?




Yawn. Let's just assume he's lying.


[quote=Kevin_Lowe;2713683]
Available on-line for $2.95, which I'm disinclined to pay. Judging by the first two lines, it's probably not a serious investigative piece.



Interestingly, this article does not exist in the St Louis Post Dispatch archive even though the archive extends back into the nineties.



No longer available on-line so far as I can tell.


Available on-line, and demonstrates that Fund created a misleading picture by leaving out important facts.

Fund can't be blamed if his sources are not always easily available on-line, of course. Although if you do want to pass off rubbish as fact, sources that cannot easily be checked are the best. However it is cause for concern that we can't track down most of his sources, and the ones we can track down he has misrepresented. We can't fully assess his scholarship or lack of it from so few data points but it does not look good.



We can't assess Fund's work at all if we lack the intellectual integrity to read it.

[Kevin_Lowe]

After I posted, it occurred to me that it might have been skeptigirl or conspiraider who cited Friedman. A lunatic on Brad's Blog outdid himself last November. Following George Allen's concession to Jim Webb, the poster opined that Allen conceded the razor-close race because he didn't want his (Allen's!) vote fraud exposed in a recount. Yes, the loser was trying to cover up fraud. Now, your reflexive retort will be that of course a loser can engage in vote fraud. No argument there, but consider that Allen led by small margins in the final state polls. Had a Democrat suffered such a statistically insignificant turnaround, the loony-left blogs would have exploded with accusations of Republican fraud. Where was all that Republican fraud while the Dems were winning ALL the close races last year?


Fantastic. Can we stick to the matter at hand?


"We" also don't want to take the trouble to read what the man wrote. "We" have no interest in "primary sources" when parroting material invented by leftwing screamers.


Where did I do that? Oh, never mind.


I'm afraid I missed the spin. St. Louis has a colorful history of Democratic vote fraud tracing back to the days of the Pendergast machine. To your extremely unobjective view, such a high percentage of questionable registrations seems harmless. But, then, you know little about the subject and have done no serious investigating. Fund wrote a twenty-page chapter on Democratic vote fraud in St. Louis. Nothing can persuade you to read it.


So cite case studies and primary sources for this stuff. Or explain why you think that the high rate of questionable registrations in St Louis is evidence of significant amounts of voter fraud rather than evidence of sloppy record-keeping.

It's a bit much to pretend I'm being unreasonable in not reading Fund's book. I can't exactly pull a copy out of thin air, I don't imagine Tasmanian libraries will be well stocked with it, and I'm not going to lash out on express international delivery from amazon.com when so far every case study has turned out to be a distortion or unverifiable.


Yawn. Let's just assume he's lying.


Would I be completely wrong if I guessed that it's not immediately obvious from the text of Fund's book where he found evidence for that particular claim?


We can't assess Fund's work at all if we lack the intellectual integrity to read it.

I've read the sections you posted, I've made a good faith effort to track down the primary sources you cited, and I've found other properly sourced on-line resources relevant to the issues Fund discusses. What more do you want?

I do hope that you hold yourself to the same standard you are trying to hold me to in all your other internet debates. I don't care enough to search your post history to see if you have ever failed to read a book somebody else claims is important, but amazon.com must love you if you do.

Have you read the pdf I linked to? What did you think of it?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Still working on your answer to post 319 pomey?

[Skeptic Ginger]

The following from my post on page 8 gives the details which discuss the voter fraud claimed by Matt Blunt that Fund used as the source in his book. Judge Limbaugh was the single dissenting judge in the finding of the voter ID law amounting to a poll tax that would disenfranchise voters. The majority ruling was that Blunt exaggerated the numbers of incidents of voter fraud.Judge Limbaugh's characterization was itself inaccurate, and incorrectly bolsters a report often cited as proof that fraud occurs.

In the snippet that was disseminated, the dissent claims that "A subsequent report from then Secretary of State Matt Blunt noted, as even the plaintiffs have acknowledged here, that 79 voters registered from vacant lots, 45 people voted twice, and 14 votes were cast by the 'dead.'"

On page 9 of the report itself (http://bond.senate.gov/mandate.pdf), Secretary Blunt was more precise:
"Based on information provided by the City and County Boards of Election Commissioners (the "City Board" and "County Board", respectively), it is highly probable that twenty-three (23) people voted more than once in the November 7 election, and it is likely that an additional forty-five (45) persons voted twice.

"Based on information provided by the Missouri Department of Health, fourteen (14) persons in St. Louis City and County who were reported as deceased before the November 7 election nevertheless are recorded as having voted in the election.

"Based on information provided by the City Board, it appears that seventy-nine (79) voters who were registered from vacant lots in St. Louis City voted in the November 7 election."
(emphasis added).

Later in the report, Secretary Blunt revealed the basis for these three assessments. The first two do not necessarily reveal fraud. And the last has been conclusively disproved.

For the double-voters, investigators used voting history entries in St. Louis City and County computer databases to determine whether individuals were listed as voting twice. 23 voters who were apparently listed in both databases as voting in the same election matched name, date of birth, and social security number; 45 voters matched names and date of birth. Although I do not have ready access to the actual list of compared names, if the names are even relatively common, it would not be surprising to find 45 pairs of distinct voters whose name and date of birth match, out of more than 613,000 votes cast in St. Louis City and County in 2000. And though it is, of course, possible that the voters whose name, date of birth, and social security number were actually double voters, before determining that such a conclusion is "highly probable," I'd want some rough approximation of the rate of clerical errors -- which have been mistaken for double votes before. (See, e.g., http://www.jsonline.com/story/?id=350183)

For the deceased voters, investigators compared a list of individuals who died in St. Louis City and County from 1990-2000 against the same voter databases, and found 14 voters with the same names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. Again, it is possible that these votes were fraudulent. But before so concluding, in addition to examining the clerical error rate, it would be useful to double-check to see whether any of the voters on the deceased list actually died after the election. (See, e.g., Marcia Myers, Election Theft Ruled Out, Baltimore Sun, Aug. 24, 1995, at 1A.)

Finally, for the 79 voters apparently registered from vacant lots, the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners provided a report of addresses "verified to be vacant by the Board" and the names and voting history of individuals registered to vote at those addresses. Exemplary follow-up investigation by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that the supposedly vacant lots were, in fact, not vacant; indeed, some apparently contained buildings more than 50 years old. As a Demos report by Lori Minnite and David Callahan reported, "Errors in the city's property records and methods for classifying vacant a multi-parcel address if only one of the parcels at the address is vacant" apparently accounted for the errors. (See, e.g., http://www.demos.org/pubs/EDR_-_Securing_the_Vote.pdf at 49 & n.88).

[Brainster]

Oh come on, Bob. Asking a guy to admit he cheated on his wife when she obviously didn't know about it at the time...yes, unless there was a good reason the testimony was needed, it was entrapment.

Eh? Entrapment basically consists of enticing someone into committing a crime and then arresting them. The court had already ruled that Monica Lewinsky and other females who worked for Clinton were considered material to the case. That it is natural for someone to lie in a situation does not excuse it before the law.

The whole 54 million taxpayer Grand Jury Ken Star investigation was supposedly looking into the financial dealings. How was Monica's BJ and semen on a dress in any way related to that?

It was added to his bailiwick by the three-judge panel that appointed him.

[AZCat]

I'm afraid I missed the spin. St. Louis has a colorful history of Democratic vote fraud tracing back to the days of the Pendergast machine. To your extremely unobjective view, such a high percentage of questionable registrations seems harmless. But, then, you know little about the subject and have done no serious investigating. Fund wrote a twenty-page chapter on Democratic vote fraud in St. Louis. Nothing can persuade you to read it.

Pendergast was Kansas City, not St. Louis.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Claims that every legal ruling which supports the position being promoted by one party and opposed by the other are simply the result of partisan judges is getting a bit tiring, pomey.

The idea that judges all over the country rule according to party line is a fallacy. Of course, given the appointment of all the partisan attorneys in the Justice Department and Bush's attempt to appoint his lackey, Miers, to the Supreme Court certainly indicates what the Republican leadership would like to have in the judicial branch.

When the FL Supreme Court, appointed by Democrats, ordered the FL 2000 Presidential votes recounted and the US Supreme Court split along party lines (by who appointed them) overturned that and elected ruled the vote counting over [been hashed and rehashed, dig up old threads if you want], the country was reminded that the judicial branch isn't completely partisan free.

But Judge John E. Jones III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Jones_III), a Bush appointee, who wrote the Kitzmiller Dover decision restored my faith in the judicial branch when I read his speech to the Anti-Defamation League (http://www.adl.org/Civil_Rights/speech_judge_jones.asp) after the trial.Kidding aside, Ms. Schlafly obviously enjoys the same First Amendment right of free speech that we all do as citizens of the United States, and she's entirely free to disagree, as she most pointedly did, in my conclusions. Hers is a point of view as it involves the establishment clause and establishment clause cases that many people share.

But the way that she conducted her analysis is instructive, and points out a problem which is pervasive and therefore threatens to, I think, tear at the fabric of our system of justice in the United States. Ms. Schlafly's column makes it clear that she views me as an activist judge of the very worst kind. Yet in her column and within other criticisms directed at my opinion, time and again writers would omit to note the role legal precedents play as they relates how judges decide cases that come before them. That is, as a trial judge, I must follow the law as previously established by the higher courts and in particular by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The premise of Ms. Schlafly and some others seems to be that judges can and should act in a partisan matter rather than strictly adhering to the rule of law. Now, to those who believe that judges must cast aside precedents and rule as according to an agenda, let me say that I believe that the public's dependence upon the impartiality and the integrity of judges is absolutely essential to its confidence in our system of justice. It is especially important for our citizens to understand that judges must be impartial and that the independence of the judiciary is premised on a judge's pledge of freedom from partisan influences.

In the context of the Dover case, there exists over a half century of strong legal precedents which have emanated from the Supreme Court and the intermediate appellate courts. Among other things, this history verifies and validates not only the separation of church and state, but also guides us as judges with respect to the test that we must apply to the factual circumstances as we find them.

Applied correctly, these tests direct us in our determination of whether an act by a governmental entity, in this case the School Board, is violative of the establishment clause. Now, I won't bore you with the case names or details, but suffice it to say that judges are constrained by their responsibility to interpret precedents that constitute the settled law of the United States.

That is precisely the task that I undertook in deciding the Dover case. Reasonable people may disagree whether I correctly applied those cases and precedents. However, I did not have the power – and Ms. Schlafly and others fail to mention this – I did not have the power to omit utilizing those tests, nor did I have the ability to invent tests other than those recognized by existing jurisprudence against which to measure the facts of the case.

Manifestly, I did what I believe all good judges must do, which is to approach the case without a political agenda or a bias or a predisposition or a thought that if a case is decided in a certain way, it will offend a political benefactor.

It's always risky business to divine what the founding fathers might think about current developments, but I'm certain, I'm entirely certain, that by deciding the Dover case the way that I did, I performed my duties as a district judge in exactly the way that the founding fathers had in mind when they created the Federal Judiciary in Article III of the Constitution.

In fact, I will submit to you that had I decided the Dover matter in a different way, I would have then engaged in just the kind of judicial activism which critics decry. That was a pleasant reminder that there is an established tradition in the judiciary which has not yet been destroyed. And since the pendulum seems to be swinging back in favor of checks and balances, democracy is not in danger of complete destruction just yet.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Eh? Entrapment basically consists of enticing someone into committing a crime and then arresting them. The court had already ruled that Monica Lewinsky and other females who worked for Clinton were considered material to the case. That it is natural for someone to lie in a situation does not excuse it before the law.

It was added to his bailiwick by the three-judge panel that appointed him.Right, Star had nothing to do with it. He was just doing his job. Pluueeese!

Keeping this short so as not to bore anyone else, Jones files a suit 2 years after an incident in which the judge ruled (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/03/jones.opinion/) the factshe never missed a day of work following the alleged incident, she continued to work at AIDC another nineteen months (leaving only because of her husband's job transfer), she continued to go on a daily basis to the governor's office to deliver items and never asked to be relieved of that duty, she never filed a formal complaint or told her supervisors of the incident while at AIDC, she never consulted a psychiatrist, psychologist, or incurred medical bills as a result of the alleged incident,And could the following little fact maybe have been behind this 'tragically scarred for life' woman's lawsuit rather than a real injury?

The men who kept Paula Jones' lawsuit going - RICHARD MELLON SCAIFE - HOW ASSOCIATES OF BILLIONAIRE CLINTON-HATER RICHARD MELLON SCAIFE PROPPED UP HER LEGAL BATTLE (http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/cov_02news.html)

You can define entrapment differently, perhaps there is a better term to describe the relentless attack on the Clintons by Republicans for God knows what reason. But myself and at least half the country are disgusted by the out of proportion assault which wasted taxpayers money and probably added to the fact Clinton didn't stop Osama before 9/11. (You know, that little "Wag the Dog" publicity campaign when Clinton did try to deal with Osama. Hmmm?)

If creeps like Star and Scaife were more interested in what was best for the country instead of their fanatical efforts to get Clinton out so we could have someone like the embodiment of excellence, GW Bush, instead then maybe we might not even have had 9/11 or this incompetent bunch using it to bolster their personal power and line the pockets of their cronies afterward.

You won't be changing my opinion anytime soon and I don't expect to change anyone else's if they haven't figured it out by now. The campaign to make Clinton's sexual behavior into the crime of the century and his denial of his other affairs turned into this absurd obstruction of justice, no one is above the law, perjury is a crime campaign was used to get a lot of people to support the anti-Clinton drive. These things were bad, but give me a break, on a scale of 1-10 they ranked about a 2.

And after that success, we again have the sultans of propaganda going around claiming once again totally out of proportion portrayal of incidents of voter fraud. The incidents should be dealt with but do not rise to the level of needing voter ID laws implemented. Voter ID laws which incidentally just happen in the opinion of a whole lot of people to have the additional effect of eliminating more than a few Democratic voters from voting.

Does the Republican leadership want free and fair elections? I think not. They want to get their people elected and they have demonstrated that they are not above disenfranchising as many voters as they can to do it.

So I summarize this again. The actions on the Republican side are being initiated at the top levels. And I am trying to say Republican leadership because I'm sure there are many Republicans who wouldn't approve of this activity. These actions are being sold to people like pomey, who despite each and every claim he posts that he read in Fund's book turning out to be false or at a minimum greatly exaggerated, still holds to the propaganda he's been fed.

Are there cases of people voting twice and sending in dead relative's absentee ballots? Of course. Why anyone thinks no Republicans are doing this and such practices favor Democrats is conveniently not being discussed. The minimal impact this has had compared to practices like caging, the fact it isn't coming from the party leadership, and the fact voter ID is obviously a poor way to deal with it (improving registration practices would go a lot further) should make it obvious to anyone, the people pushing for voter ID laws have another agenda.

[Skeptic Ginger]

So here's a new question for you pomey? What evidence is there that these voter fraud activities are not equally divided among Republicans and Democrats? Why wouldn't some Republicans be sending in their dead relative's absentee ballots as well?

One of the reasons cited by the Republican, Bush appointed, federal attorney, John McKay here in WA State for not pursuing the handful of illegal votes in our close governor's race which led to his replacement with a more party loyalist attorney, was the fact that Republicans had taken the time to dig up a few voter irregularities in King County, but no one had bothered to look at the other counties. McKay knew that regardless of where you looked you could find a small number of voter irregularities. The Republicans tried to portray it as massive irregularities in King County as if it had been the only county with any problems. Well how would they know since no one looked at any other county? McKay didn't buy it.

What reason should I have for not believing Rove wanted McKay replaced with someone who would have pursued the King County irregularities and not looked at any Republican leaning county records? In other words an attorney who might use his position to unfairly influence the next election? (BTW, serving at the pleasure of the President doesn't mean the Federal Department of Justice is supposed to help the President or his party obtain an advantage in elections.)

[pomeroo]

Pendergast was Kansas City, not St. Louis.


Yup, you're right: very careless of me. Pendergast was born in St. Louis, but the city he controlled was Kansas City. Still, St. Louis has suffered from the corruption of Democratic-machine politics for a long time.

[gumboot]

What is the obsession on this forum with people constantly referring to posters they disagree with by using condescending distortions of their user name?

-Gumboot

[pomeroo]

So here's a new question for you pomey? What evidence is there that these voter fraud activities are not equally divided among Republicans and Democrats? Why wouldn't some Republicans be sending in their dead relative's absentee ballots as well?



Motive and means: both sides have motive; only Democrats have the means. Activities conducing to vote fraud on a large scale can't be undertaken by Republicans because they are unable to meet the requirements: deployable blocs of voters concentrated in areas controlled by one party.
Republicans are not predominant in cities. The Republican machine in Nassau County, New York was almost as corrupt as any big-city Democratic machine. It was not, however, able to engage in vote fraud because there are too many Democrats in Nassau. Oversight hinders the traditional methods of fraud. I have often served on the Board of Elections, but sometimes I was one of the few Republicans to show up for work at the polling station. Fund explains all of this, and nothing he wrote in the book you refuse to read has been debunked.


[quote=skeptigirl;2715305]
One of the reasons cited by the Republican, Bush appointed, federal attorney, John McKay here in WA State for not pursuing the handful of illegal votes in our close governor's race which led to his replacement with a more party loyalist attorney, was the fact that Republicans had taken the time to dig up a few voter irregularities in King County, but no one had bothered to look at the other counties. McKay knew that regardless of where you looked you could find a small number of voter irregularities. The Republicans tried to portray it as massive irregularities in King County as if it had been the only county with any problems. Well how would they know since no one looked at any other county? McKay didn't buy it.

What reason should I have for not believing Rove wanted McKay replaced with someone who would have pursued the King County irregularities and not looked at any Republican leaning county records? In other words an attorney who might use his position to unfairly influence the next election? (BTW, serving at the pleasure of the President doesn't mean the Federal Department of Justice is supposed to help the President or his party obtain an advantage in elections.)


You could read Richard Baehr's piece, "The Sound of Stealing": http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/12/the_sound_of_stealing.html

[ConspiRaider]

What is the obsession on this forum with people constantly referring to posters they disagree with by using condescending distortions of their user name?

-Gumboot
Yer a bit of a panty waist on this yourself, dude. I referred to you as "Gum", just as a nicknamish kind of a thing and you damned near tore my head off. Sheez.

Are you a neat freak too? Let your hair down a bit why dontcha.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Motive and means: both sides have motive; only Democrats have the means. Activities conducing to vote fraud on a large scale can't be undertaken by Republicans because they are unable to meet the requirements: deployable blocs of voters concentrated in areas controlled by one party.
Republicans are not predominant in cities. The Republican machine in Nassau County, New York was almost as corrupt as any big-city Democratic machine. It was not, however, able to engage in vote fraud because there are too many Democrats in Nassau. Oversight hinders the traditional methods of fraud. I have often served on the Board of Elections, but sometimes I was one of the few Republicans to show up for work at the polling station. Fund explains all of this, and nothing he wrote in the book you refuse to read has been debunked.This is just made up rationalizing. There is a claimed argument by logic with absolutely no supporting evidence whatsoever. It is absurd. Spokane is the 3rd biggest city in this state and it is heavily Republican. Your reasoning is just foolish. We are talking about people who register and vote twice and some that keep voting for deceased relatives. That doesn't even have anything to do with where you live.

You continually refer to Chicago in the 60s as if it represents the Democratic Party today. Where is your evidence of any current Democratic Party leadership incidents of producing masses of fraudulent votes?

You could read Richard Baehr's piece, "The Sound of Stealing": http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/12/the_sound_of_stealing.html
If what this blogger's interpretation of the facts were correct, McKay would have been all too happy to prosecute. You present no evidence here, only distortions and opinion. McKay's testimony before Congress, his reputation, the failure of Gonzales to give any good reason for firing McKay all testify to the facts that there was no fraud by anyone in King County at the elections management level. I repeat what McKay said, if you would have looked at Spokane, you would have found the same thing. The Republicans looked for all the errors in King County they could find. But they never presented a case that either it was conspired voter fraud or that the same thing didn't exist in every county.

The Republicans did try to make it look like King County was the exception. It was misleading propaganda, pure and simple and the same thing the Republican Party tried to do in a number of key states. And I have posted at least two of those states where in the end it was the Republicans that ended up caught trying to fake evidence for fraudulent votes. That was both in Missouri and in South Dakota.

You aren't getting anywhere, pomey, but you sure are refusing to face up to the facts that dispute Fund's book.

[Kevin_Lowe]

You've had a while now Pomeroo. Have you found the intellectual integrity time to read that pdf I posted a link to? What did you think of it?

[pomeroo]

This is just made up rationalizing. There is a
claimed argument by logic with absolutely no supporting evidence whatsoever. It is absurd. Spokane is the 3rd biggest city in this state and it is heavily Republican. Your reasoning is just foolish. We are talking about people who register and vote twice and some that keep voting for deceased relatives. That doesn't even have anything to do with where you live.

You continually refer to Chicago in the 60s as if it represents the Democratic Party today. Where is your evidence of any current Democratic Party leadership incidents of producing masses of fraudulent votes?



You say I "continually" refer to Chicago. I say I have not made ANY references to Chicago (Baehr did). As usual, I'm right and you're wrong.


[quote=skeptigirl;2716871]
If what this blogger's interpretation of the facts were correct, McKay would have been all too happy to prosecute. You present no evidence here, only distortions and opinion. McKay's testimony before Congress, his reputation, the failure of Gonzales to give any good reason for firing McKay all testify to the facts that there was no fraud by anyone in King County at the elections management level. I repeat what McKay said, if you would have looked at Spokane, you would have found the same thing. The Republicans looked for all the errors in King County they could find. But they never presented a case that either it was conspired voter fraud or that the same thing didn't exist in every county.



Uh, Baehr DID look at King County and his facts are correct. The Dems stole an election in broad daylight.


[QUOTE] [quote=skeptigirl;2716871]
The Republicans did try to make it look like King County was the exception. It was misleading propaganda, pure and simple and the same thing the Republican Party tried to do in a number of key states. And I have posted at least two of those states where in the end it was the Republicans that ended up caught trying to fake evidence for fraudulent votes. That was both in Missouri and in South Dakota.




Falsehoods. The Republicans did NOT attempt such fraud: there is zero evidence suggesting that they did. Byron York's piece in National Review, which you would refuse to read, made a convincing case for the Democratic fraud in South Dakota. The fraud in St. Louis is an ongoing problem. Your attempts to sweep it under the rug are embarrassingly inept.



You aren't getting anywhere, pomey, but you sure are refusing to face up to the facts that dispute Fund's book.


Of course I'm not getting anywhere. Debates with zealots are not terribly productive.

[pomeroo]

You've had a while now Pomeroo. Have you found the intellectual integrity time to read that pdf I posted a link to? What did you think of it?


You are attempting to discuss a book you haven't read.

[Skeptic Ginger]

And you pomey are ignoring all the evidence posted against your case.

McKay addressed the King County votes. Why would the Bush appointed Republican attorney with an excellent job reputation who actually investigated the King County evidence be wrong and some blogger's mere speculation be right?

Yet you can't see that you are just going with the story you prefer instead of where the evidence leads.

[Kevin_Lowe]

You are attempting to discuss a book you haven't read.

I'm attempting to discuss information, about a particular issue.

One particular presentation of some of that information is locked up in a book I don't have access to, but that's okay. You can always link us to the primary sources the book refers to, or present particular arguments the book contains, or find other people presenting similar claims. Fund is not the only person who has written about the issue.

However if it makes you happy we can drop the discussion of Fund's book in and of itself. We can instead talk about the pdf I linked to. With Fund's book to serve as your private directory of relevant primary sources you should be well equipped to dismantle the pdf if it is incorrect or misleading.

So how about it? If I lack intellectual integrity because I won't pony up the cash to get Fund's book delivered to me and then spend the time to read the whole thing, what does that say about someone who won't read a relatively brief pdf which is a click away?

[Darth Rotor]

And you pomey are ignoring all the evidence posted against your case.

McKay addressed the King County votes. Why would the Bush appointed Republican attorney with an excellent job reputation who actually investigated the King County evidence be wrong and some blogger's mere speculation be right?

Yet you can't see that you are just going with the story you prefer instead of where the evidence leads.

Take your blinders off.

It's all over the map.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070701/NATION/107010039/1002&template=nextpage

Sure, the WT needs a grain of salt, but where the smell comes from, so too the steaming feces that gave birth to it.

You really need to take your partisan shilling and park it.

DR

[WildCat]

BTW, happened to spend the day yesterday throwing horsehoes with my friend who went to Wisconsin to "help the senior citizens get the vote out" for the 2004 election. He admits that he actually filled out the absentee ballots, all for Kerry of course. The senior citizens themselves probably didn't even know their own names, let alone who was running for office. I really doubt this was an isolated case.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Take your blinders off.

It's all over the map.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070701/NATION/107010039/1002&template=nextpage

Sure, the WT needs a grain of salt, but where the smell comes from, so too the steaming feces that gave birth to it.

You really need to take your partisan shilling and park it.

DRHow does this have anything to do with A) WA State; B) voter ID; C) voting? The story has a number of mis-stated sentences confusing caucus selection of party candidates and voting.

This is about a local Democratic Party membership discriminating against other Democrats in selecting candidates at the caucus level. It's not good but it's irrelevant to the discussion.

[Skeptic Ginger]

BTW, happened to spend the day yesterday throwing horsehoes with my friend who went to Wisconsin to "help the senior citizens get the vote out" for the 2004 election. He admits that he actually filled out the absentee ballots, all for Kerry of course. The senior citizens themselves probably didn't even know their own names, let alone who was running for office. I really doubt this was an isolated case.Didn't you post this already? Or is this one of those, "I know someone" stories that goes around and around. Hmmm. Think I'm gonna see if this is the same thing as on another forum. Or are you just saying you saw him again?

[Skeptic Ginger]

I probably could have put this in any one of a few new threads, but this is the one where I had posted the most on the subject. The PBS series, Now (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html) had a look tonight at the issues I brought up in this thread about the voter fraud, caging, voter ID, voter disenfranchisement, the Palast emails, the attorney firings and the program much pretty much confirmed and reiterated what I have been saying here, including election fraud from 2004 and planned for 2008. And Iglesias, one of the fired attorneys believes it goes all the way to Bush.

Was there a White House plot to illegally suppress votes in 2004? Is there a similar plan for the upcoming elections? This week NOW examines documents and evidence that points to a Republican Party plan designed to keep Democrats from voting, allegedly by targeting people based on their race and ethnicity with key battleground states like Ohio and Florida of particular interest. "It was a partisan, discriminatory attempt to challenge voters of color," Eddie Hailes, a senior attorney for The Advancement Project, a civil rights group, told NOW.

Was the White House involved? David Iglesias, one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, thinks so: "It's reprehensible. It's unethical, it's unlawful. It may very well be criminal." Iglesias told NOW he was repeatedly urged by his superiors at the Justice Department to investigate allegations of false voter registrations. After his investigations came up short, Iglesias said Republican officials got angry and complained to White House aide Karl Rove. Soon after Iglesias lost his job. As a result of allegations by Iglesias and others, Congress is investigating whether the White House acted unlawfully.

While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to answer many questions about the controversy as he testified before the Senate this week, Iglesias told NOW he believes the White House is keeping documents from Congress to protect the Bush Administration. "That's why there has been such a circling of the wagons around Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor. I believe there to be incriminating, possibly criminally incriminating evidence contained in those e-mails and other memoranda," he said.

Extended interview with Attorney David Iglesias. (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/david-iglesias.html)NOW: Clearly, voter fraud is a crime. When do efforts to ferret out those few offenders cross the line into something more inappropriate where you are engaging in an effort to strike legitimate voters from the rolls?

DI: Are you putting pressure on the U.S. Attorneys to try to file indictments immediately before an election? If so, that is inappropriate. In fact, there's a longstanding policy in the Justice Department to not do that. And it appears, in some districts, there was pressure put on us to engage in unlawful activities. And that is not what the Justice Department stands for.

NOW: One press account described it as, "A misuse of power of the Department of Justice in the service of the Republican Party." Do you agree?

DI: I think that handsomely covers the issue, yet.

...

NOW: It wasn't only officials at the Department of Justice who were expressing an interest in pursuing such cases. You were getting requests from other individuals, correct?

DI: That's correct. In fact, there was a Republican attorney, Pat Rogers, who was a prominent local attorney who tried to pressure me to come up with cases. He would send emails to my assistant, who I had tasked with running this election fraud taskforce ... And I had lunch with Mr. Rogers last fall and he expressed his concern about what he believed to be this systemic, ongoing election fraud. I did not know at the time that he belonged to an organization called the American Center for Voting Rights. He did not disclose to me that he was representing any other interest. And I've also found out that the Republican Party was very interested in stamping out what it believed to be instances of voter fraud.

NOW: The State Republican Party or the National Republican Party?

DI: Both. But who contacted me or some of my assistants was the State Republican Party.

NOW: What interest would they have in seeing you pursue cases of voter fraud?

DI: If they believe there to be prosecutable cases, it obviously sends a strong message. You don't violate federal criminal laws. But I do understand there are some allegations that, in battleground states such as New Mexico, prosecuting even a few cases sends a very strong message and could actually result in suppressing minority voting. It was never made that blunt. It was never that clearly presented to me. And a lot of this I'm reconstructing since leaving office on March 1 [2007].

NOW: What was the nature of the allegations that Rogers and other state GOP officials that you heard from or had contact with?

DI: They singled out ACORN [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now] as an entity that they thought was engaging in this systemic election fraud. Specifically, they believed there to be a plan to register individuals who were not legally entitled to vote. Under-aged people, people who perhaps were felons, people who perhaps were not American citizens.

But it was generally that there were people voting who did not have the legal right to vote. And that may skew the result. And I believe this to be as a direct result of Al Gore's razor thin victory over George Bush in 2000.

NOW: Remind us of what happened in the 2000 election in your state?

DI: Al Gore won New Mexico by a very small margin. If memory serves me, it was approximately 344 votes. It was the smallest margin of victory of any of the 50 states. I distinctly recall hearing among Republican Party activists, there was a belief that George Bush actually won the 2000 election [in New Mexico]. And that somehow Gore stole the election. So I think there was this belief that let's not let this happen again. That's what I believe to be the genesis of them attempting to put pressure on me to find prosecutable cases.

NOW: In one press account you're quoted as characterizing Mr. Rogers' interest in this issue as "obsessive."

...

NOW: In retrospect, do you believe they were rightly motivated or do you believe they were motivated by partisan politics?

DI: They were clearly partisan. I can't reach into their minds and tell you what they were thinking but I am very disturbed to read accounts of what appears to be "voter caging" in Arkansas and other parts of the country. There appears to be a growing body of evidence that suggests that there's voter suppression going on throughout the country. I'm not sure if that happened in New Mexico. All I know is there was an attempted pressure put on me by local Republicans to indict voter fraud cases. I resisted that. I thought I was going to be protected by the Bush Justice Department and I was wrong in that assumption.

NOW: Did any state Republicans complain to the White House about you?

DI: They did ... I believe they spoke to Karl Rove. I know that Senator Pete Domenici called and complained to President Bush about my alleged lack of zealousness in voter fraud issues. But I didn't know any of this until after I left office. The hearings have resulted in thousands of pages of documents and emails and what not. And I've been able to find out what was going on behind my back.

NOW: Why do you think you were fired from your position?

DI: I've maintained from day one for illicit, partisan political reasons. Specifically not coming up with voter fraud cases, number one. And number two not rushing forward indictments involving prominent Democrats during the election cycle. And thirdly, and this is a possible, since the evidence, it hasn't rolled out yet. But my reserve military duty being gone from the office a lot, I was called an absentee landlord. I believe it's a combination of those three reasons.

NOW: How would you characterize the act of enlisting a U.S. attorney in activities that will benefit a political party at the polls?

DI: It's reprehensible. It's unethical. It's unlawful. It very well may be criminal ... I know it's a marked departure from prior administrations, both Republican and Democrat, who understood that U.S. attorneys, as chief federal law enforcement officials, have to stay out of politics. And that's consistent with what Former Attorney General John Ashcroft told me in the summer of 2001. When he said, "Politics cannot enter into your decision making as a US attorney."

NOW: Where do you believe it went off the rails?

"That's why there has been such a circling of the wagons around Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor. I believe there to be incriminating, possibly criminally incriminating evidence contained in those e-mails and other memoranda."
DI: Once Alberto Gonzales took over from Ashcroft, I don't think he ever fully understood that his role as the Attorney General was for the United States of America, that his client was the American public. It wasn't serving the needs of the President. I think that's where the train left the rails.

NOW: Do you think the problems surrounding the U.S. attorneys' firings, as well as what we're learning about some of these voter suppression efforts has tainted the party?

DI: It's tainted the party and it's tainted the Justice Department, which is a real shame. It's a tragedy because, for many years, the only agency that really had a standing as the untouchable agency from partisan politics was the Justice Department. And unfortunately, what's happened over the passed couple of years has tarred it with a very, very ugly brush ... It's a serious problem. The American people have the right to believe that "prosecutive" decisions are made on the basis of evidence alone. And right now, that's called into question.

Every president has the right to set their priorities. But they have to stay within the rules. I mean, this entire scandal in one sense is about the rule of law. And this sordid affair was an attempt to use the power of the Justice Department in an unethical and unlawful way.

NOW: Trying to use the office of a U.S. Attorney for partisan political purposes is unethical. But you're saying it is actually illegal?

DI: Right. That's why there has been such a circling of the wagons around Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor. I believe there to be incriminating, possibly criminally incriminating evidence contained in those e-mails and other memoranda. That's why the White House doesn't want to produce it to Congress....


Palast emails now entered into evidence in Congress. (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/DNC-Memo-RNC-emails.pdf)

Brennan Center for Justice; NYU School of Law (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/)Snippets from the News: Link Between Voter Fraud and Photo ID

Much of the hue and cry about voter fraud is accompanied by calls for restrictive ID requirements. Some of this may be a sincere, if mistaken, belief in the need for restrictive ID measures. But this clip from a May 17, 2007, Houston Chronicle article suggests another rationale:

Among Republicans it is an 'article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections,' [Royal] Masset[, former political director of the Republican Party of Texas,] said. He doesn't agree with that, but does believe that requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote.

[more inks from the page]
*

Analysis & Reports: Policy briefs, reports, and other national resources assessing allegations of voter fraud.
*

Case Studies by Issue: Examinations of voter fraud claims, sorted by the type of fraud alleged.
*

Case Studies by State: Examinations of voter fraud claims, sorted by the location of the fraud alleged.
*

Commentary: Opinions and editorials on the hunt for individual voter fraud.
*

Litigation: Materials assessing claims of voter fraud, filed in court cases around the country.
*

News: Links to news stories, press releases, and announcements about voter fraud. The Link Between Voter Fraud and Restrictive ID. (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/commentary/the_link_between_voter_fraud_a.html) Each subtitle is a link to an article.This is a partial list of commentaries and editorials regarding the link between alleged voter fraud and the push for restrictive voter identification.

These pieces assert that there is little voter fraud that would be prevented by restrictive identification rules:

* Response to John Fund's June 13th Commentary (Wendy Weiser, letter to the editor [second item], Wall Street Journal, 6/18/07)
* Access Denied: The Problem With Voter ID Laws (Meg E. Cox, Christian Century, 6/12/07)
* Why Right to Vote, Without an ID, is Worth Fighting For (State Sen. Mario Gallegos, Houston Chronicle, 5/22/07)
* Get Out the Vote; On Second Thought, Let's Suppress It (John Young Column, Waco Tribune-Herald, 5/20/07)
* David and the Goliath of Ambition (Bob Ray Sanders Column, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 5/20/07)
* Photo ID Does Not Combat Voter Fraud (Rep. Judy Baker, Columbia Missourian, 5/18/07)
* Voter ID: Legislation Requiring Photo ID at Polls Doesn't Deserve Consideration (Editorial, Lufkin Daily News, 5/16/07)
* With Clock Ticking, Legislators Rush to Solve Nonexistent Problems (Arnold Garcia, Jr., Column, Austin American-Statesman, 5/6/07)
* Voter Identification Burden Put Where It Belongs — on the State (Victor Landa, Op-Ed, San Antonio Express-News, 5/5/07)
* House Republicans Swarm to Vote ... Hoping that Others Won't (Editorial, Austin American-Statesman, 4/26/07)
* Ballot Barriers (Editorial, Houston Chronicle, 4/25/07)
* Voter Fraud? Oversold (Editorial, Waco Tribune-Herald, 4/25/07)
* Unimpeded Polls (Editorial, Dallas Morning News, 4/25/07)
* Is GOP Really After Voter ID Fraud or Minority Democrats at Polls? (Jaime Castillo Column, San Antonio Express-News, 4/24/07)
* Legislators Should Reject 'Fix' that Lacks a Problem (Mario Perez Op-Ed, Austin American-Statesman, 4/24/07)
* There's No Need for Photo ID (Editorial, Madison Capital Times, 4/19/07)
* Voter ID Laws Need Measured Implementation (Timothy J. Ryan, Viewpoint, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, 4/18/07)
* Make It Easier, Not Harder, To Cast a Ballot (Laura Scott Op-Ed, Kansas City Star, 2/26/07)
* Don't Create Another Obstacle for the Voters (Editorial, Kansas City Star, 2/22/07)
* A Right, Not a Privilege (Editorial, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/18/06)
* Fraud Reform? (Richard L. Hasen, Slate, 2/22/06)
* Rationale for Voter ID Law Fraudulent (Editorial, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10/20/05)

And these assert that restrictive identification rules would meaningfully prevent voter fraud:

* Proof of Citizenship Should Be Required in Order to Vote (Anthony J. Adolph, letter to the editor [first item], Wall Street Journal, 6/18/07)
* Vote-Fraud Demagogues (John Fund, Wall Street Journal, 6/13/07)
* Photo IDs Could End Voter Fraud (J. Karl Miller, Columbia Missourian, 5/16/07)
* Letter from Lt. Governor David Dewhurst on Voter I.D. Bill (Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, reported in Austin American-Statesman, 5/16/07)
* Voter Photo ID Needed (Editorial, Tate County Democrat, MS, 5/8/07)
* ID Rule Will Bolster Integrity of Elections (Tom Aldred and Brent Connett, Op-Ed, Austin American-Statesman, 5/1/07)

More coming soon.

[JimBenArm]

Why did you revive this stupid thread? Why not start another in Politics, where someone might actually care about this nonsense?

[Skeptic Ginger]

I do believe the PBS program, NOW, is quite popular. So apparently some people actually do "care about this nonsense" as you call it. If you would have bothered to read my post, the program aired last night. That's why I revived the thread. And NOW reiterated much of what I had said throughout this thread. Why would I want to start another thread which repeated what was already in this one?

[Grimlorn]

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but are there any facts on this. I mean I read like half the first page and I feel like my head is going to explode. It keeps coming off the dems did this and did faked votes or whatever or the repubs made a bunch of fake votes. No one is linking any information. Its just he said she said. And there is no way of knowing who is telling the truth.

Is there any facts at all on this subject or is this thread just speculation? I mean after 10 pages have you guys found enough facts to prove that the repubs fake votes or whatever its called.

[pomeroo]

Skeptigirl is upset because a lefty group was just busted for creating over 1800 fraudulent voter registrations in the state of Washington.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but are there any facts on this. I mean I read like half the first page and I feel like my head is going to explode. It keeps coming off the dems did this and did faked votes or whatever or the repubs made a bunch of fake votes. No one is linking any information. Its just he said she said. And there is no way of knowing who is telling the truth.

Is there any facts at all on this subject or is this thread just speculation? I mean after 10 pages have you guys found enough facts to prove that the repubs fake votes or whatever its called.I am assuming you are new to the thread and need a bit of a summary instead of wading through 9 pages?

Did you look at the link to the NOW segment? Those web pages review some of the material.

In a nutshell though, there is mounting evidence top level officials in both the Republican Party and the Bush administration have been carrying on a number of various schemes to remove thousands of legitimate voters from the voter registration rolls in heavily Democratic leaning counties in key races in the all the major elections since at least 2000 and are planning and working on the same tactics for 2008. They have enlisted illegally the Department of Justice through Alberto Gonzales to assist them in their effort. And, they are getting better at it and more successful as they go.

The methods include caging which is to send out registered mail to people in heavily Democratic areas and when the letters are returned undeliverable because the recipients are out of town, including students who were sent the letters during summer break, and soldiers who were sent the letters while they were in Iraq, then the Republicans made lists and claimed these were all illegal voters. Some of those on the lists just had their names removed from voter registration rolls without their knowledge. Some were challenged when they showed up to vote. And some were sent notices to appear in order to prove they should be registered. Can you imagine how many people would blow off some notice to go to court during working hours at the time designated, not at a time you scheduled, in order to be able to vote?

Another scheme was/is to take legal actions against newly registered voters and groups out on voter registration drives for clerical and other errors. For example, here in Seattle where ACORN hired people by the name to get new registered voters, some of those hired sat in the library and just copied names out of a phone book. While the reason was to cheat ACORN, not to cheat when it came time to vote, the Republicans are playing it up as if it was some scheme to have people cast fake votes. ACORN was fined and agreed to tighten supervision of registration workers which I'm sure they wanted anyway since it certainly didn't benefit anyone at ACORN to pay for fake voter registrations. It does, however, intimidate new voter registration workers and new voters to think they will be prosecuted for making a mistake on their registration or if people collecting the registrations make mistakes.

And the third major scheme is to play up these prosecutions as if some major scheme is underway to cast fake votes. Even though all the evidence points to this not occurring. By claiming it is and convincing people, the Republicans have pushed through voter ID requirements that don't solve the problem but do discourage the very poor from voting. See the NOW link for a ton of citations supporting that this is indeed the case and the result of voter ID laws. Remember, no one is saying you don't have to prove you should be voting. You do that when you register. Your signature is the proof of who you are and that only one person votes for that voter registration.

Those are the major schemes which there is good evidence if not proof are occurring.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Skeptigirl is upset because a lefty group was just busted for creating over 1800 fraudulent voter registrations in the state of Washington.Right Pommy, and were there any convictions that the fraudulent voter registrations were intended to be followed up with fraudulent voters?

No. Of course not. ACORN paid by the name for workers to register new voters and the workers copied names out of phone books thereby cheating ACORN. ACORN was then fined to pay the cost of processing the fake registrations and investigating.

Of course people like you who are apparently so easily misled, somehow think this is related to voter fraud. It is voter registration fraud. And anyone with a brain between their ears see why there is a difference.

Do you think that instead of parroting this nonsense you could actually discuss the issues here? Or do you condone the real election fraud so you knowingly play up the fake election fraud?

[Grimlorn]

Ok thanks. I know it must have taken a lot of time to post that. Is the now link you are referring to the democracynow.org link on your OP?

It would be nice and easier for people on these forums if they edited their OP post with facts on both sides of the argument so someone doesn't have to read 10 to 20 pages on something to get the facts if they are new to the thread. I'm just thinking since I'm new to these forums and am way behind on some of this stuff.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ok thanks. I know it must have taken a lot of time to post that. Is the now link you are referring to the democracynow.org link on your OP?

It would be nice and easier for people on these forums if they edited their OP post with facts on both sides of the argument so someone doesn't have to read 10 to 20 pages on something to get the facts if they are new to the thread. I'm just thinking since I'm new to these forums and am way behind on some of this stuff.Here's the link to NOW (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/index.html). It's a couple posts up, #348.

I understand what you mean. We can't edit any post after 2 hours though. I can't tell you how many times I replied to an OP only to find out the discussion was 10 pages past it. Even now I sometimes still forget to check when a new thread pops up on the active thread page how many pages are actually in the thread already.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Did Mr. Palast release those e-mails yet? Or is he not done writing them yet?

[Grimlorn]

Its hard to tell with the information presented whether they are just targeting low income communities. There does look like enough information to have it investigated. I don't see why having a picture ID is such a big deal. Aren't you required to have a photo ID like a Driver's License or something when you're 18? I am a bit concerned about this government. There have been quite a few scandals all with people appointed by Bush. There needs to be more evidence on how many different places and neighborhoods this was done in. It is a terrible thing if anyone is really doing this. People's addresses can change quite often. Using this as a way to exclude new registered voters is wrong.

I really can't believe they have so much trouble with the voting system. It should be set up in a better way so there isn't a need to investigate so much.

I didn't know that this was linked to the US Attorney firings though. I just heard that they were investigating Democrats and stuff as opposed to Republicans and when some of them refused or didn't find anything they were fired.

Alberto Gonzalez pretty much committed purgery and got nothing for it. If you watch his testimony you can see he often lies about several things. I can't believe you can say you are in the room at a meeting with people and don't remember what anyone was talking about or remember the documents you signed off on. What kind of **** is that? Its amazing he still gets to keep his job after that. Its not like he would go to jail or anything. Bush would probably pardon him.

[pomeroo]

Right Pommy, and were there any convictions that the fraudulent voter registrations were intended to be followed up with fraudulent voters?

No. Of course not. ACORN paid by the name for workers to register new voters and the workers copied names out of phone books thereby cheating ACORN. ACORN was then fined to pay the cost of processing the fake registrations and investigating.


Um, yes, that is ACORN's cover story.





Of course people like you who are apparently so easily misled, somehow think this is related to voter fraud. It is voter registration fraud. And anyone with a brain between their ears see why there is a difference.



You gotta love it!



Do you think that instead of parroting this nonsense you could actually discuss the issues here? Or do you condone the real election fraud so you knowingly play up the fake election fraud?



Democratic vote fraud is a very serious issue. Blinkered ideologues like yourself weaken the electoral process.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Did Mr. Palast release those e-mails yet? Or is he not done writing them yet?
Pdf file of e-mails entered into testimony in the Congressional Oversight Committee hearings. (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/DNC-Memo-RNC-emails.pdf) I also posted some of this a few pages back. And the Republican National Committee admitted the list of addresses from the emails was real when they tried to make excuses for it. I also posted that.

An independent analysis of the demographics of the addresses has shown the RNC's explanation of the list isn't consistent and I believe there are some actions being taken to file a complaint charging a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

It is clear Palast has the emails. I haven't read his book so I can't say whether he has 50 or 500, but he certainly had some.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Um, yes, that is ACORN's cover story.

You gotta love it!

Democratic vote fraud is a very serious issue. Blinkered ideologues like yourself weaken the electoral process.Pomy, this all came out AFTER the election, not before. No one voted under those fake registrations. Care to cite your logic on why you think ACORN was intending to send voters to illegally vote?

[pomeroo]

Pomy, this all came out AFTER the election, not before. No one voted under those fake registrations. Care to cite your logic on why you think ACORN was intending to send voters to illegally vote?


I live in New York City. The Republican organization, apart from a few enclaves, is nonexistent here. Certain districts in Manhattan and the Bronx are known as red-light districts because the turnout frequently exceeds the number of registered voters. No one cares--least of all you.

Skeptigirl, I don't want to fight with you about this. I just wish you'd recognize that there's more to the vote fraud problem than the DNC propaganda suggests.

[Unfit4Command]

I live in New York City. The Republican organization, apart from a few enclaves, is nonexistent here. Certain districts in Manhattan and the Bronx are known as red-light districts because the turnout frequently exceeds the number of registered voters. No one cares--least of all you.

Skeptigirl, I don't want to fight with you about this. I just wish you'd recognize that there's more to the vote fraud problem than the DNC propaganda suggests.

That reminds me of a country around where I live. There are only 500 eligible voters, but 800 were registered before the 2004 elections. I believe one of the extra names was "Marry Popins."

:)

[Skeptic Ginger]

Its hard to tell with the information presented whether they are just targeting low income communities. There does look like enough information to have it investigated. I don't see why having a picture ID is such a big deal. Aren't you required to have a photo ID like a Driver's License or something when you're 18? I am a bit concerned about this government. There have been quite a few scandals all with people appointed by Bush. There needs to be more evidence on how many different places and neighborhoods this was done in. It is a terrible thing if anyone is really doing this. People's addresses can change quite often. Using this as a way to exclude new registered voters is wrong.

I really can't believe they have so much trouble with the voting system. It should be set up in a better way so there isn't a need to investigate so much.

I didn't know that this was linked to the US Attorney firings though. I just heard that they were investigating Democrats and stuff as opposed to Republicans and when some of them refused or didn't find anything they were fired.

Alberto Gonzalez pretty much committed purgery and got nothing for it. If you watch his testimony you can see he often lies about several things. I can't believe you can say you are in the room at a meeting with people and don't remember what anyone was talking about or remember the documents you signed off on. What kind of **** is that? Its amazing he still gets to keep his job after that. Its not like he would go to jail or anything. Bush would probably pardon him.From the NOW program links:

The Truth about Voter fraud. (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/litigation/)

The link between voter fraud and Restrictive ID (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/commentary/the_link_between_voter_fraud_a.html) lists multiple citations for further reading on the subject.

Here are two worth reading to understand what the issues are. The second one presents a balanced discussion of the issues and evidence on both sides:

Jaime Castillo: Is GOP really after voter ID fraud or minority Democrats at polls? (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA042507.1B.castillo.3605b42.html)

Viewpoint: Voter ID Laws Need Measured Implementation; Timothy J. Ryan, Research Assistant, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project; April 18, 2007 (http://www.electionreformproject.org/Resources/fcab6b1d-4d6a-4374-82ce-aa87a9b50d75/r1/Detail.aspx)

[Skeptic Ginger]

I live in New York City. The Republican organization, apart from a few enclaves, is nonexistent here. Certain districts in Manhattan and the Bronx are known as red-light districts because the turnout frequently exceeds the number of registered voters. No one cares--least of all you.

Skeptigirl, I don't want to fight with you about this. I just wish you'd recognize that there's more to the vote fraud problem than the DNC propaganda suggests.
I have looked and looked and read and read. I followed up on every single voter fraud claim made in these forums and thoroughly checked into John Fund's allegations.

The cases amounted to nothing. A few people voting for dead relatives. I posted citation after citation documenting the cases of voter fraud and not one of them was significant nor was a single one directed from the DNC top levels. Yet you want to make the false claim that I somehow just refuse to believe.

No Pomy, that is false. You can't find any real evidence. I would even wager you cannot support your anecdotes nor can Unfit4. If you can support those anecdotes, have at it, I'll read it.

I don't care if you recognize that there is NOT more to the vote fraud problem and there is NO DNC propaganda on this subject. But stop accusing me of not thoroughly looking into this matter.

I spent hours searching for the facts in this case. I did not spend hours searching for facts to support my preconceived view. There are 10 pages here in this thread alone and many of them are filled with the evidence my conclusions are based on.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT YOUR FALSE CONCLUSION. IF THERE WAS YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD POST IT OR STOP MAKING YOUR FALSE CLAIMS!!!!!

[Skeptic Ginger]

That reminds me of a country around where I live. There are only 500 eligible voters, but 800 were registered before the 2004 elections. I believe one of the extra names was "Marry Popins."

:)Did you mean county? Which county? Did 300 extra people vote or simply turn in fake registrations? Did someone pay anyone by the name to collect new voter registrations?

[Skeptic Ginger]

I live in New York City. The Republican organization, apart from a few enclaves, is nonexistent here. Certain districts in Manhattan and the Bronx are known as red-light districts because the turnout frequently exceeds the number of registered voters. No one cares--least of all you....A Google search for Manhattan Bronx voter turnout exceeds registered voters (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mgd&q=Manhattan++Bronx+voter+turnout+exceeds+registere d+voters&btnG=Search) does not turn up a thing which substantiates your anecdote. Care to try again?

[pomeroo]

I have looked and looked and read and read. I followed up on every single voter fraud claim made in these forums and thoroughly checked into John Fund's allegations.

The cases amounted to nothing. A few people voting for dead relatives. I posted citation after citation documenting the cases of voter fraud and not one of them was significant nor was a single one directed from the DNC top levels. Yet you want to make the false claim that I somehow just refuse to believe.

No Pomy, that is false. You can't find any real evidence. I would even wager you cannot support your anecdotes nor can Unfit4. If you can support those anecdotes, have at it, I'll read it.

I don't care if you recognize that there is NOT more to the vote fraud problem and there is NO DNC propaganda on this subject. But stop accusing me of not thoroughly looking into this matter.

I spent hours searching for the facts in this case. I did not spend hours searching for facts to support my preconceived view. There are 10 pages here in this thread alone and many of them are filled with the evidence my conclusions are based on.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT YOUR FALSE CONCLUSION. IF THERE WAS YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD POST IT OR STOP MAKING YOUR FALSE CLAIMS!!!!!


Fund provides abundant evidence in his book. You should read it.

[pomeroo]

A Google search for Manhattan Bronx voter turnout exceeds registered voters (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mgd&q=Manhattan++Bronx+voter+turnout+exceeds+registere d+voters&btnG=Search) does not turn up a thing which substantiates your anecdote. Care to try again?


Nope. I have wasted many Election Days as a poll worker. Google is not the repository of all knowledge. I know what I'm talking about; you don't know what you're talking about.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Fund provides abundant evidence in his book. You should read it.Fund has been thoroughly discredited, I read plenty. You should look at the evidence cited in this thread.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nope. I have wasted many Election Days as a poll worker. Google is not the repository of all knowledge. I know what I'm talking about; you don't know what you're talking about.Right, "Evidence? forget the evidence, I know what I know".

I give that position 4 rolleyes.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

[pomeroo]

Fund has been thoroughly discredited, I read plenty. You should look at the evidence cited in this thread.


In reality, Fund has not been discredited at all.

His damning evidence for Democratic fraud in Palm Beach County in 2000 was dismissed in hilarious fashion by another zealot here. Fund showed that Democrat poll-workers were guilty of tampering, creating overvotes by thrusting a metal object through the "Gore" hole in stacks of paper ballots. The terribly confused lefty argued that most overvotes contained Gore's name, so the Dems couldn't have been cheating. Fabulous stuff!

http://www.opinionjournal.com:80/diary/?id=110010400

[pomeroo]

Right, "Evidence? forget the evidence, I know what I know".

I give that position 4 rolleyes.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:


Sorry, ballot-box stuffing in NYC is a very poorly-kept secret.

[Kevin_Lowe]

In reality, Fund has not been discredited at all.

His damning evidence for Democratic fraud in Palm Beach County in 2000 was dismissed in hilarious fashion by another zealot here. Fund showed that Democrat poll-workers were guilty of tampering, creating overvotes by thrusting a metal object through the "Gore" hole in stacks of paper ballots.

You have not got a terribly good track record when it comes to substantiating your claims. Can you substantiate this one?

"Fund said it, I believe it, that settles it" does not count as substantiation.


The terribly confused lefty argued that most overvotes contained Gore's name, so the Dems couldn't have been cheating. Fabulous stuff!

I am not intimately familiar with the US process, but how could the Democrats gain any advantage by spoiling non-Bush votes? The only numbers that really mattered were the number of valid Bush votes and the number of valid Gore votes, so what on Earth would be the point of spoiling third party ballots?

For those who didn't click Pomeroo's link it contains no reference to the Gore overvote business, although you could be forgiven for thinking it must have been a link to supporting evidence given the way it was presented.

Did you read the pdf I linked much earlier in this thread, before you went into hiding Pomeroo? What did you think of it? Armed with Fund's meticulously researched tome, can you show any errors or deceptions in it which we should be aware of?

[pomeroo]

You have not got a terribly good track record when it comes to substantiating your claims. Can you substantiate this one?

"Fund said it, I believe it, that settles it" does not count as substantiation.


Substantiating claims made in a book that one side refuses to read is a tricky business.



I am not intimately familiar with the US process, but how could the Democrats gain any advantage by spoiling non-Bush votes?


Is this question disingenuous or merely silly? No familiarity with American elections is necessary to figure out the answer. As is obvious, the Dems could not derive any advantage from spoiling non-Bush votes. That is not what they did. They could derive a tremendous advantage from spoiling NON-GORE votes, which is exactly what they did in Palm Beach County.



The only numbers that really mattered were the number of valid Bush votes and the number of valid Gore votes, so what on Earth would be the point of spoiling third party ballots?



Nobody is talking about third-party votes. If you take a stack of paper ballots and insert a punch through the "Gore" hole, you don't affect the votes actually cast for Gore. YOU SPOIL BALLOTS CAST FOR ANY OTHER CANDIDATE, CREATING OVERVOTES.

The percentage of overvotes in Palm Beach County was ten times higher than in other county. Similarly, Bush's vote showed an inexplicable drop-off, causing him to run behind the Republican senatorial candidate, who lost his statewide race by over 300,000 votes. Fund describes the array of statistical anomalies that present a compelling case for vote fraud.




For those who didn't click Pomeroo's link it contains no reference to the Gore overvote business, although you could be forgiven for thinking it must have been a link to supporting evidence given the way it was presented.



I'm less forgiving, perhaps. Skeptigirl and I were discussing ACORN's recent legal problems over fraudulent registrations. There was no good reason to suppose I was linking to anything relating to the Florida controversy.




Did you read the pdf I linked much earlier in this thread, before you went into hiding Pomeroo? What did you think of it? Armed with Fund's meticulously researched tome, can you show any errors or deceptions in it which we should be aware of?



You sound confused. I pointed out the most absurd blunder (or is it a deliberate deception?) Fund's detractor made. If Fund is charging that Democrats were creating overvotes by punching the "Gore" slot on ballots cast for other candidates, and you try to refute him by acknowledging that most overvotes have the "Gore" slot punched, you are missing the point completely.

[pomeroo]

I was harsh and unfair. If you hadn't read the previous posts, you could reasonably assume that I was linking to something relating to the Palm Beach vote fraud.

As the people arguing on behalf of the DNC's trumped-up allegations refuse to read the book I've recommended, I'll leave the field.

My parting suggestion is to bear in mind that voting is a simple process: you register; you vote. Anyone attempting to make it sound more complicated is up to no good.

The liar Greg Palast pretends that a million minority voters have been disenfranchised and shameless Democratic pols parrot the nonsense. Produce one of those voters who can state: My name is ___; I live at __; I am registered to vote in the __ precinct; I was not permitted to vote when I showed up on Election Day.

That would constitute disenfranchisement, and it isn't happening. Nobody thinks it is.

There is something profoundly anti-democratic (small "d") about manufacturing huge lists of voters, many of whom don't live where they claim to, have multiple identities, are dead, or aren't even human, and claiming that something wonderful has been accomplished. People are individuals. They have a responsibility (an obscene word to leftists) to get themselves registered and to go out and vote. The idea that ideologized hacks strain to figure out ways of bypassing reasonable precautions against fraud and flood the polls with illegal votes should offend admirers of the American Experiment.

[Skeptic Ginger]

No one has refused to read Fund's book, Pomy. That is not true. You are welcome to address the rebuttal pointing out all the lies and fallacies in Fund's book. But just making the straw man claim that we haven't read the book as if that was going to make a difference is not convincing anyone but yourself.

You call Palast a liar but cannot rebut the email he gave to Congress with the list of caging addresses. The RNC admitted they had indeed sent that list out via email. You asked me over and over, had Palast published the emails and when I showed them to you via links you have yet to respond. Instead you resort back to your statement that Palast was a liar. At least some of the emails are now well documented. What do you have to say about that?

[pomeroo]

No one has refused to read Fund's book, Pomy. That is not true. You are welcome to address the rebuttal pointing out all the lies and fallacies in Fund's book. But just making the straw man claim that we haven't read the book as if that was going to make a difference is not convincing anyone but yourself.

You call Palast a liar but cannot rebut the email he gave to Congress with the list of caging addresses. The RNC admitted they had indeed sent that list out via email. You asked me over and over, had Palast published the emails and when I showed them to you via links you have yet to respond. Instead you resort back to your statement that Palast was a liar. At least some of the emails are now well documented. What do you have to say about that?


You and Kevin Lowe have refused to read Fund's book.

I addressed a huge error in the disingenuous rebuttal to the book.

I haven't asked anything about Palast's e-mails. You're thinking of another poster.

There is no "campaign" to disenfranchise minority voters. Democrats trot out this canard to disguise their efforts to commit vote fraud.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Okay, I'm less confused about the Palm Beach thing.

The allegation is that evil Democratic party folks didn't sort the votes, they just stacked them up and ran a spike through the spot the Gore hole occupied, thus spoiling any non-Gore votes in the stack, right?

Okay. If someone successfully did that, we'd see lots of overvotes where people appeared to have voted for Gore and somebody else. I'd like to see someone replicate the feat of course, since in my experience stacked perforations are quite resistant to mass tearing, but let's assume it's physically possible for the stunt to have been done as described.

Problem: You would get the same result if a villain got a stack of votes from a mostly pro-Gore district and shoved a metal rod through any non-Gore hole that appealed to them.

So what exactly is the evidence that the overvotes were due to Democratic party shenanigans? Who exactly is supposed to have witnessed this, and when, and where is it recorded other than in Fund's fertile imagination?

Let me guess... "I refuse to tell you... er, I mean, that is, you refuse to read it!".

[pomeroo]

Okay, I'm less confused about the Palm Beach thing.

The allegation is that evil Democratic party folks didn't sort the votes, they just stacked them up and ran a spike through the spot the Gore hole occupied, thus spoiling any non-Gore votes in the stack, right?



Off-duty cops observed Democratic poll workers inserting a long, thin metal rod through stacks of paper ballots.

Naturally, you will assume that the cops are lying, but the statistical evidence is quite damning.



Okay. If someone successfully did that, we'd see lots of overvotes where people appeared to have voted for Gore and somebody else. I'd like to see someone replicate the feat of course, since in my experience stacked perforations are quite resistant to mass tearing, but let's assume it's physically possible for the stunt to have been done as described.



Yes, there were lots of overvotes, an implausible number of them, almost all showing the "Gore" hole punched.

We will assume that it's physically possible to press a metal rod through a stack of paper ballots because it is physically possible and, in fact, rather easy to do.





Problem: You would get the same result if a villain got a stack of votes from a mostly pro-Gore district and shoved a metal rod through any non-Gore hole that appealed to them.

So what exactly is the evidence that the overvotes were due to Democratic party shenanigans? Who exactly is supposed to have witnessed this, and when, and where is it recorded other than in Fund's fertile imagination?


You persist in failing to understand why the incident was suggestive of vote fraud.

First, the overvote rate for Palm Beach County was more than ten times higher than that of any other county in the state.

Second, Bush's total showed an astonishing drop-off. He actually got fewer votes in the county than Bill McCollum, the Republican senatorial candidate who was handily defeated statewide by over 300,000 votes. He ran behind the Republican candidates for House seats whose districts were inside Palm Beach County. Gore's vote total shows no corresponding increase. The "missing" Bush votes simply disappear into the overvotes. Bush's percentage in Republican precincts drops to levels not seen anywhere else in the state.

Third, attempts to examine the ballots in December, after the U.S. Supreme Court had handed down its historic ruling, were frustrated by the county supervisors, all Democrats, who reported that the ballots had been destroyed--a blatant violation of normal procedure. As the culprits were unidentified Democrats, Jesse Jackson didn't lead any marches and John Conyers didn't convene any hearings.


You unfairly allude to Fund's "fertile imagination." There is nothing to suggest that Fund has fabricated anything.



Let me guess... "I refuse to tell you... er, I mean, that is, you refuse to read it!".



Hey, that's easy to guess. I never say, I refuse to tell you, and you do refuse to read Fund's invaluable book.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pomer, you are so easily misled when it is something you want to believe. First you spout this stuff off because you heard or read it somewhere with any effort to critically examine if the story is true or not. Where is some link to something so I can see your source? I couldn't find it just searching for anything similar.

But I did find this which completely discredits your claim:

Fla. 'Overvotes' Hit Democrats The Hardest Gore 3 Times as Likely as Bush To Be Listed on Tossed Ballots (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53804-2001Jan26)By Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 27, 2001; Page A01

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Florida voters who spoiled their ballots because they punched more than one presidential candidate's name were three times as likely to have included Vice President Gore as one of their choices as George W. Bush, a Washington Post analysis has found.

A review of computerized records for 2.7 million votes in eight of Florida's largest counties offers new details of how voters erred. It reveals that, while both Vice President Gore and George W. Bush each may have lost votes that were intended for them, Democratic voters were significantly more likely to have invalidated their ballots than Republican voters. ...

...According to the Post's analysis, the biggest problem for Gore was in "overvotes," ballots invalidated because voters indicated multiple choices for president. Although the number of ballots thrown out for that reason was known shortly after the Nov. 7 election, The Post analysis for the first time shows the voting patterns contained in those ballots. Gore was by far most likely to be selected on invalid overvoted ballots, with his name punched as one of the choices on 46,000 of them. Bush, by comparison, was punched on 17,000....So according to your rumor this is because someone punched through the Gore choice thus over voting everyone but Gore. But then you read on to the further analysis. Gore may have lost even more votes from those whose ballots were not counted because they reflected two votes for president. In the eight counties examined, people who overvoted for president but cast a valid vote in the U.S. Senate race favored the Democrat 70 to 24 percent.

In almost every county, the pairing of Gore with each of the more obscure candidates garnered more votes than the lesser-known candidate got alone. In the most prevalent combination, more than 6,800 voters punched holes for both Gore and Libertarian Harry Browne. Browne's name appeared right after Gore on the ballots in seven of the counties.

The next most common choice was Gore and Reform Party nominee Patrick J. Buchanan, with 6,300 ballots. That combination was most prevalent in Palm Beach County, where the butterfly ballot positioned Gore's spot between Buchanan and Socialist David McReynolds.

The Palm Beach County voters who punched either Gore-Buchanan or Gore-McReynolds voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the U.S. Senate race, favoring Bill Nelson over Republican Bill McCollum, 6,645 to 632.

Many of the obscure candidates had thousands more punches on invalid overvotes than on valid ballots. Socialist Workers candidate James Harris won only 300 votes in the eight counties, but his name was punched on more than 12,600 overpunched ballots, or 42 spoiled punches for every legitimate vote...I think someone saw the information about the overvotes, speculated before looking at any thing else then started some bogus claim it was witnessed.

I bet you cannot find an original source for that story.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Good catch, Skeptigirl.

To sum up for the peanut gallery, Pomeroo claims that the large number of overvotes involving Gore is circumstancial evidence supporting the story that unnamed off-duty police saw unnamed party workers spoiling non-Gore ballots. Skeptigirl has linked to actual evidence that the Gore-overvotes in fact included third party candidate votes far more often than Bush votes, which is circumstancial evidence that the "evil democratic people with sticks" theory is false since evil Democratic party people with sticks would have absolutely no incentive to do that.

Now if Pomeroo can substantiate some of the other claims he has made about the vote distribution in Palm County, where Bush votes disappeared, that would go some distance towards restoring the credibility of the "evil democratic people with sticks" theory. If those numbers were actually real rather than imaginary, then there would indeed be an anomaly worth investigating that might be indicative of Democratic partisan vote spoiling.

However at this stage, I've very little faith Pomeroo will substantiate anything he says. Restore my faith with some primary sources for your claims, Pomeroo.

[pomeroo]

Good catch, Skeptigirl.

To sum up for the peanut gallery, Pomeroo claims that the large number of overvotes involving Gore is circumstancial evidence supporting the story that unnamed off-duty police saw unnamed party workers spoiling non-Gore ballots. Skeptigirl has linked to actual evidence that the Gore-overvotes in fact included third party candidate votes far more often than Bush votes, which is circumstancial evidence that the "evil democratic people with sticks" theory is false since evil Democratic party people with sticks would have absolutely no incentive to do that.

Now if Pomeroo can substantiate some of the other claims he has made about the vote distribution in Palm County, where Bush votes disappeared, that would go some distance towards restoring the credibility of the "evil democratic people with sticks" theory. If those numbers were actually real rather than imaginary, then there would indeed be an anomaly worth investigating that might be indicative of Democratic partisan vote spoiling.


However at this stage, I've very little faith Pomeroo will substantiate anything he says. Restore my faith with some primary sources for your claims, Pomeroo.


You prattle mindlessly about a "good catch" but you and the blinkered ideologue Skeptigirl fail to comprehend the rather simple statistical point.
As you refuse to read the chapter in which Fund lays out the statistical case for Democratic vote fraud in Palm Beach County, you are reduced to parroting irrelevant nonsense. I have grown very bored talking to myself here. One more hint: if Palm Beach County shows an overvote rate TEN TIMES HIGHER than any other county in the state and Bush's vote there shows an otherwise inexplicable drop-off (to see the specific quantification you'd have to read what Fund writes and that, of course, is impossible for you), you might try fabricating an explanation that doesn't conclude that the missing Bush votes disappear into the overvote pile.

"It reveals that, while both Vice President Gore and George W. Bush each may have lost votes that were intended for them, Democratic voters were significantly more likely to have invalidated their ballots than Republican voters. ..."

Precisely wrong. Incorrect. Bass-ackwards.

More overvotes contain "Gore" punches because Gore supporters PRODUCED THOSE OVERVOTES!


You and Keating really don't get this, do you?

[Skeptic Ginger]

We await your enlightenment, Pomer. Are you seriously claiming I should go buy a book I have found arguments and evidence which exposes the book as less than credible and then read it all because you cannot verbalize whatever these supposed statistical arguments are?

I presented the statistical evidence Fund was wrong. You read the book. Tell us how Fund's statistics contradict the WA Post's analysis of all 2.7 million FL votes. I even pointed out to you how looking at half the data was misleading in exactly the same way you claim Fund concluded. This on top of numerous other links discrediting Fund's book.

The Palm Beach County voters who punched either Gore-Buchanan or Gore-McReynolds voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the U.S. Senate race, favoring Bill Nelson over Republican Bill McCollum, 6,645 to 632.

Many of the obscure candidates had thousands more punches on invalid overvotes than on valid ballots. Socialist Workers candidate James Harris won only 300 votes in the eight counties, but his name was punched on more than 12,600 overpunched ballots, or 42 spoiled punches for every legitimate vote...So according to you, 6,000 voters in Palm Beach voted for the Democratic senator but Buchanan or McReynolds for President. And James Harris, the Socialist Workers candidate, had over 12,000 votes on spoiled ballots but only 300 in the rest of the state which were not punched in error. And the supposed incident where these were punched by the cheaters just happened to find most of the Harris votes in one or two stacks of ballots.

Fund used this very kind of misleading stories throughout his book. Anyone not taking the time to find out the real story would have read a very convincing argument by a convincing con-man. And you are one person among many who fell for the con.

[Kevin_Lowe]

The alleged shortage of Bush votes cannot be explained as Bush votes falling into the overvote pile, if the overwhelming majority of overvotes contained no Bush vote. Surely you see that Pomeroo?

If your story was the correct one we would expect to see tens of thousands more ballots punched just in the Bush and Gore holes, right? Where did they all go?

[pomeroo]

From statistician John Lott:

Dear Ronald:


I actually knew this stuff cold six or so years ago, but that was many, many projects ago.� It would take me some time to go through and reconstruct what happened in the instance that you ask about.� Unfortunately, I am behind on some projects, but I will try to look soon.� In any case, if it might help, attached are two published academic papers that I have on the topic.


Best,


John


Kevin and Skeptigirl, if you will PM me your e-mail addresses, I'll happily send you the pdf. files Lott attached.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Can't you just post the summary or abstract and we can see from that?

Or if it is an academic paper, give me the author's name or the paper's title and I'll see if it's on the web.

[pomeroo]

Can't you just post the summary or abstract and we can see from that?

Or if it is an academic paper, give me the author's name or the paper's title and I'll see if it's on the web.


Um, wouldn't the author's name be John Lott?

[Kevin_Lowe]

Would this be the same John Lott who publishes fairly dodgy pro-gun books, assumed a false net persona to effusively praise himself and his teaching skills, and has been caught repeating statements he knew to be false?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott#Mary_Rosh_online_persona

The guy who went about claiming he did a study that showed that merely brandishing a gun was sufficient to scare off criminals 98% of the time, and when asked for his raw data said that the dog ate his homework? Then went about making similar claims even after he had admitted he had lost all his (possibly imaginary) evidence?

How surprising he shows up as one of Fund's sources.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Um, wouldn't the author's name be John Lott?Spaced out, it happens.

Appears to be less than credible as Kevin found on Wiki. Here's a Mother Jones article, Double Barreled Double Standards (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/we_590_01.html)News: For years, John Lott has provided a vital scholarly basis to the pro-gun movement. But now his research and his integrity are drawing heavy fire....

...Were Lott to be discredited, an entire branch of pro-gun advocacy could lose its chief social scientific basis.

That may be happening. Earlier this year, Lott found himself facing serious criticism of his professional ethics. Pressed by critics, he failed to produce evidence of the existence of a survey -- which supposedly found that "98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack" -- that he claimed to have conducted in the second edition of "More Guns, Less Crime". Lott then made matters even worse by posing as a former student, "Mary Rosh," and using the alias to attack his critics and defend his work online. When an Internet blogger exposed the ruse, the scientific community was outraged. Lott had created a "false identity for a scholar," charged Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy. "In most circles, this goes down as fraud."It appears he makes his living making popular data up. Given this plus the fact I showed exactly how a misleading claim of these supposed punched ballots could have come about, I rest my case.

You are standing on shaky ground there Pomer. Your evidence is nothing but a couple people, Fund and Lott, who make their millions writing what those who cannot support their beliefs with real evidence want to hear. Trouble is it's all based on fraudulent claims.

[Pardalis]

Skeptigirl, what if the Democrats win the next elections?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Skeptigirl, what if the Democrats win the next elections?Well if they can stop this unethical voter suppression they probably will. So I'm not sure what you are asking. You think if they win it will mean nothing happened? Not necessarily. This kind of unethical shenanigans can only affect the outcome of a close election.

[funk de fino]

Pro-guns and No planers

is there actually a difference?

[pomeroo]

Spaced out, it happens.

Appears to be less than credible as Kevin found on Wiki. Here's a Mother Jones article, Double Barreled Double Standards (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/10/we_590_01.html)It appears he makes his living making popular data up. Given this plus the fact I showed exactly how a misleading claim of these supposed punched ballots could have come about, I rest my case.

You are standing on shaky ground there Pomer. Your evidence is nothing but a couple people, Fund and Lott, who make their millions writing what those who cannot support their beliefs with real evidence want to hear. Trouble is it's all based on fraudulent claims.


No, John Lott does not make up his data. The people who hurl this dishonest allegation are liars. I sent Lott the post by Kevin Lowe containing the false claim and here is his reply:

"I had a hard disk crash, so I redid the survey. The data for the redone survey can be found here: www.johnlott.org (http://www.johnlott.org/). If someone else wants to redo the survey, they are perfectly entitled to do so. I always provide my data for all my studies. Academics at hundreds of universities around the world have used my data on concealed handgun laws. "

[pomeroo]

Well if they can stop this unethical voter suppression they probably will. So I'm not sure what you are asking. You think if they win it will mean nothing happened? Not necessarily. This kind of unethical shenanigans can only affect the outcome of a close election.

There is no "unethical suppression." This canard has allowed the Dems to steal elections for too long. Remember, voting is not rocket science. You register; you vote. Anyone who makes it sound more complicated is up to no good.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I can't get to any of that data without registering. Lott needs to present the data to people who are capable of checking whether or not he just made it up. I'll see what else I can find.

[pomeroo]

I can't get to any of that data without registering. Lott needs to present the data to people who are capable of checking whether or not he just made it up. I'll see what else I can find.


Nobody but loony-left liars claim that Lott "made up" anything.

[pomeroo]

I can't get to any of that data without registering. Lott needs to present the data to people who are capable of checking whether or not he just made it up. I'll see what else I can find.


Uh, I just registered to be able to access Lott's data. It took me thirty seconds.

Let's see: You want to debate a book you refuse to read and you want to find out what some ignorant loon has to say about data you refuse to look at for yourself.

You're quite the little scholar, aren't you, Skeptigirl?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here is a very detailed objective investigation by a Professor of Law from Northwestern University into the validity of the claims about the survey. Lott's excuses are blatantly difficult to believe. It is a thorough review of all the evidence so you can read it for yourself. I repeat my earlier conclusion, people buy this stuff because it supports what they already believe. You wasted your money if you bought either Lund's or Lott's books. That is unless you just read them because you enjoy having people reinforce your beliefs regardless of the validity of the reinforcement. I prefer to read stuff I can rely on to be more trustworthy.

In the next post I also found some more stuff on Lott's 2000 Florida statistics.

Comments on Questions; About John R. Lott’s Claims Regarding a 1997 Survey (http://timlambert.org/guns/lindgren.html)In September 2002 I offered to look into a question raised about John Lott’s work. I thought that offering such help to Lott and to the profession was the responsible thing to do when serious questions were raised, and I thought it would be exceedingly simple to establish that a survey of 2,424 people had been done. While I recognized that it is extremely easy to lose data in a computer crash, I had not anticipated that Lott would claim to have done a large national survey without discussing the sampling design with anyone, leaving any financial or other records of the study, or remembering anyone who had worked on it. I had never heard of a professor doing anything of that size with no funding, paid support, paid staff, phone reimbursements, or records (though there are probably precedents for such an unusual method). As it stands now, unless someone comes forward to verify working on the study--as I still hope occurs--we may never know with any certainty whether the 1997 study was done. Although I strongly favor emailing 1997-98 University of Chicago college graduates to see if any remember any classmates working on the study, John Lott now raises serious questions about how complete the University’s alumni records are, rendering that approach a less reliable route to an answer than I had anticipated....

...James Lindgren, Professor of Law, Northwestern University...

...Lambert wrote: "it seems increasingly likely that the survey is fictional." He was following up on problems first identified by Otis Dudley Duncan and discussed publicly in the Jan./Feb. 2000 issue of The Criminologist. These extremely serious charges concerned a study referred to in the second edition of Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime, but never actually published. Over the years, however, Lott has referred to this 98% number over four dozen times in publicly available sources....

[evidence detailed]

...That means that the source that Lott gave for the 98% figure has shifted over time:

1. In the 1998 edition of More Guns, Less Crime, John Lott attributes the 98% figure to “national surveys.”
2. Elsewhere in 1997 and 1998, Lott appears to attribute the 98% figure to “such polls” as the “Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates.”
3. In a May 13, 1999 letter and in 1999 revisions to the 2000 edition of his book, Lott attributes the 98% number instead to his own 1997 study, saying in the letter that the 98% figure is not based on Kleck.
4. In almost identical February 9, 2000 and March 1, 2000 articles for the Independence Institute, Lott switches to attributing the 98% figure, not to his own study, but to Gary Kleck’s (which does not support this figure).
5. In the Criminologist (Sept./Oct. 2000), Lott switches back to claiming that the 98% figure came from Lott’s own 1997 study, not from Kleck, which is where things stand as of this report.

Note that by using the plural “national surveys” and “such studies” Lott is stating that there are more than just one study showing the 98% figure, yet he now insists that the 98% figure came from his own study, not Kleck’s (and Kleck’s study does not support the 98% figure). Indeed, as discussed in the next section, because the 98% figure is supposed to be based on his own study, not those done by others, Lott says that his critics will have “nailed” him if they find that he began talking about the 98% figure before he says he did his study in 1997. Yet, if Lott really based the 98% figure on his own study alone, it seems strange that he would attribute the 98% figure to such plural entities as “national surveys” or “such studies”--until Duncan challenged him in 1999 and Lott revealed for the first time that the 98% figure was based on a study he did himself. ...

... In the Criminologist, Lott also wrote: “My survey was conducted over 3 months during 1997.” Lott called me on the telephone and repeated that he had conducted the study over several months during 1997. If he spent 3 months doing it in 1997, as he claims, the earliest that he could have completed it would be early April. Further, in an email to me Lott wrote, “I am willing to bet that I don't start mentioning this [98%] figure until the spring of 1997. If I use it before I said that I did the survey, I will say that they nailed me. But if I only started using it about the time that I said that I did the survey, I think that it would be strong evidence the other way.”

Lott’s first mention of the 98% figure located by Dudley Duncan is February 6, 1997, nearly two months before he could have completed the survey, according to his prior claims...

...If this newspaper account is accurate (and newspapers often aren’t), it is odd that Lott would try to answer the reporter’s claims about the Kellermann household study without pointing out that he had done a big household study himself. Although this contextual evidence is less telling, it does tend to fit the pattern that, until Lott replied to Duncan in mid-May 1999, Lott had consistently attributed the 98% figure to several specific survey organizations or to no one, never to his own 1997 study....

...2. Technical Problems
Another problem (mentioned by Tim Lambert and Dudley Duncan) is....

...3. The More Serious Issue: Was the 1997 Study Ever Done?
a. Circumstantial Evidence of a 1997 Computer Crash...

...As I posted in September, all evidence of a study with 2,400 respondents does not just disappear when a computer crashes. Having done one large survey (about half the size of John Lott’s) and several smaller surveys, I can attest that it is an enormous undertaking. Typically, there is funding, employees who did the survey, financial records on the employees, financial records on the mailing or telephoning, the survey instrument, completed surveys or tally sheets, a list of everyone in the sample, records on who responded and who declined to participate, and so on. While all of these things might not be preserved in every study, some of them would almost always be retained or recoverable. Just to get a representative list of the US public would take consultation with an experienced sampler and probably the purchase of an expensive sample. As far as I know, there was no cheap commercial list of almost every person or household in the United States from which to draw a good sample. .....

...b. No Direct Evidence of a 1997 Survey...[List of Lott's excuses]

...“I used students to conduct the survey. Most (though not all) of the information was originally entered into the students' own computers and then they were combined onto my machine. You know what happened to my computer.” This version of the story suggested original computer entry of data, which would have required central programming of a data form and then sharing of that program with several callers for their home computers. From Lott’s discussions with me, I was left with the impression that the callers instead used sheets to record answers, which he thought that he no longer retained. Besides the possible discrepancy between the two versions of the ways that the students collected and conveyed the data, if the data were instead sitting on the students’ computers, it is possible that Lott could have replaced most or all of his lost data by asking the students to give it to him again.

With the surprising lack of any of the normal indicia of having done a large national study of 2,424 respondents, the key remains locating the undergraduates who Lott says did the calling. The 1997 study was large, extremely time-consuming, and very expensive in phone charges. Getting 2,424 respondents with refusals and callbacks would have required thousands and thousands of phone calls. Students would have had to spend many hours calling, which they and their friends would well remember. With John Lott’s permission, I therefore contacted Saul Levmore, the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, requesting him to try to obtain from the alumni office the email addresses of the 1997 and 1998 college graduating classes at the University of Chicago, so that I could contact them asking whether any of them or any of their friends had done any research for John Lott during his fellowship at Chicago. Levmore declined to make such a request for email addresses from the University of Chicago Alumni Office at this time, but he did not rule out cooperating with a request coming from other quarters or in a different situation. Of course, my request was in the form of fact-finding, rather than a complaint, which might have triggered a different process.

Thus, I have reached a temporary dead end. If someone were to email the 1997-98 Chicago college alumni twice, it is likely that at least one of those who did the study for Lott would come forward, if the study were actually done. [Like maybe John Lott?????????]...

...4. Comments on John Lott’s Response to this Report
a. Several Changes in Lott’s Story...
...b. Lott’s Attempt to Put Things in Context...

...End discussion on survey. . . . [notes about Lott’s contact info omitted here] . . .

1) I have lots of people who can say that I lost my hard disk in July of 1997: for example, David Mustard ([phone omitted]), Geoff Huck (the editor at the University of Chicago Press ([phone omitted]), John Whitley, William Landes. If you want to you can feel free to contact especially David and John. Russell Roberts is someone that I bounced the survey questions off of

and he can possibly talk to you about it, though he hasn't kept e-mails from 1997. . . . [Personal comment about Lott omitted for privacy reasons] I have told people for years about the data being lost.

2) I lost ALL the data for my paper with David in the JLS and for my book. David and I reconstructed the county and state level data from our paper and I got the rest together that was in my book. I have consistently provided the county, state, and city level data as well as the multiple victim shooting data and the safe storage data to people when they have asked. That constitutes almost all the numbers mentioned in the book. Months were spent redoing this data so that it could be given out to people. (Just a note, the critics to whom we had given out the data up to that point were unwilling to return the data to us so we had to put the JLS data together all over again.) If I had the other data, I would have been happy to give it to who ever wanted it.

The survey data could not be replaced by going to things like the UCR or the census data. It could only be replaced by doing another survey. I ended up only briefly mentioning the survey in the past and worked on replacing all the other data that I lost for not just the book but for all the other projects that I was working on. I spent a good portion of the next two years trying to replace data for other projects that I had been working on. I had important papers for the Journal of Political Economy and other journal for which replacing the data was my first priority after replacing the data for the JLS and the book. Thinking about the survey was well down on my list. Its importance was not particularly high given that I had only one sentence on the issue in my book and have never written the survey into a research paper because the data was lost.

3) This is something that was done six years ago. During the intervening time I have moved three times. Usually I pay students in cash. When I am at universities I don't apply for grants and the money is mine so there is no record of universities paying for the students. My records of the

students names and contact information were lost. You can get an idea of how much total time was involved from the survey discussed above. An ad was taken out in the fall in the University of Chicago Alumni magazine to try to contact the two University of Chicago students who organized some other people from different places to work on it. I have gone through well over 12 RAs and interns independent of those used on the survey since I got to AEI and I can't say that I remember most of their names (I am really horrible at names).

4) Issues about the significance difference in results. Given the very small sample sizes, the differences in results are not statistically significant and are really trivial. About one percent of people in a survey note that they have used a gun defensively. Whether one is talking about 2

percent or 20 percent simply brandishing a gun, you are talking about the different of 2 percent of 1 percent or 20 percent of 1 percent. Depending upon who answers the questions and what weighted group they are in, you are literally talking about the answers of a few people out of 1,000 that is the difference between these two results.

5) If you have doubts about anything in specific, you should ask me about it. Last year I worked extremely hard. I was the only affirmative numbers expert for the Senator Mitch McConnell's side in the campaign finance case. Once that was done, I had to deal with something that Ian Ayres and John Donohue wrote attacking my work and finishing things for my book. Only in the last couple of weeks have I gotten a breath on things, but I have responded when people e-mailed me. I am not a member of the firearms discussion groups and I have not been following them. I read your site once in a while just to keep up with the news (and because of that I have sent you some money from time to time e.g., just on Saturday), but otherwise I have been too busy to follow a lot of things. (When I recently accidentally sent you an e-mail it was at the end of one of many all nighters.)...

[pomeroo]

Here is a very detailed objective investigation by a Professor of Law from Northwestern University into the validity of the claims about the survey. Lott's excuses are blatantly difficult to believe. It is a thorough review of all the evidence so you can read it for yourself. I repeat my earlier conclusion, people buy this stuff because it supports what they already believe. You wasted your money if you bought either Lund's or Lott's books. That is unless you just read them because you enjoy having people reinforce your beliefs regardless of the validity of the reinforcement. I prefer to read stuff I can rely on to be more trustworthy.

In the next post I also found some more stuff on Lott's 2000 Florida statistics.

Comments on Questions; About John R. Lott’s Claims Regarding a 1997 Survey (http://timlambert.org/guns/lindgren.html)


But, you swallow uncritically all the DNC's propaganda because it's what you want to believe.

Your far-left cranks are hardly trustworthy. Palm Beach County produced over 19,000 overvotes, a rate ten times higher than any other county in the state. Not one of your ideologized impostors can account for the anomaly. Bush received fewer votes than Republican candidates for House seats in the county. A staggering anomaly that your "authorities" are silent about.

Lott claims that his hard drive crashed. The data is now available and you refuse to look at it.

Incidentally, you should really attempt to read the information you linked to. Lott's comments are quite interesting.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Fuzzy math (http://timlambert.org/2004/02#florida), from Tim Lambert's blog about the Lott 2000 Florida election statistical analysis.... African-American Republicans who voted were 54 to 66 times more likely than the average African American to cast a non-voted ballot (either by not marking that race or voting for too many candidates). To put it another way: For every two additional black Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional non-voted ballot. By comparison, it took an additional 125 African Americans (of any party affiliation) in the average precinct to produce the same result.

So 50% of black Republican’s ballots were rejected? How is that even possible? Can anyone even think of a mechanism? This is an obviously spurious correlation. Any normal person would decide that this meant that there was something wrong with their statisitical model, bu not Lott—he goes ahead and publishes. His nonsense was actually published in The Journal of Legal Studies, indicating some serious deficiencies in the reviewing process at that journal.

Lott’s numbers don’t even add up....The second blog entry is well worth reading as well. There are even more lies Lott was caught telling. Lott has no credibility whatsoever.

Media Transparency on Lott. (http://www.mediatransparency.org/personprofile.php?personID=56)

Source Watch on John Lott (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_R._Lott%2C_Jr.) Sock puppets

Lott has given himself seventeen five-star reviews using various techniques to conceal that he was the author. He's also written concealed negative reviews of books whose authors he didn't like. (For example, after Michelle Malkin's column denouncing him (see above), he gave her book a one-star review.) He has posed as another person and posted defenses of himself on discussion groups, under false names like "Mary Rosh". ("I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had," Rosh gushed in one Internet posting. "There were a group of us students who would try to take any class that he taught. Lott finally had to tell us that it was best for us to try and take classes from other professors.")

Unmasked by bloggers, he conceded "I shouldn?'t have used [the psuedonym"[2]. He later told the Washington Post, "I probably shouldn't have done it -- I know I shouldn't have done it -- but it's hard to think of any big advantage I got except to be able to comment fictitiously."

But the very next day Lott started up again under a new name. He later went so far as to have one puppet disagree with things he posted as another puppet!

Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy concluded "What [Lott] did was to construct a false identity for a scholar, whom he then deployed in repeated support of his positions and in repeated attacks on his opponents. In most circles, this goes down as fraud." [3]

--

Of course, none of this stops a rabid NeoCon think tank like the AEI (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute) from using Lott as a source for supporting their claims. No integrity. Put out any lie or liar as long as you can fool some people into believing it supports their views. Create followers with false propaganda. Does it bother you Pomer, that people at the AEI probably know full well Lott is a liar. But the NeoCon leaders just want to drum up support so that they benefit from their followers' support. Because the follower certainly don't.

From the link on the AEI:...Casting Doubt on Global Warming

In February 2007, The Guardian (UK) reported that AEI was offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, "to undermine a major climate change report" from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). AEI asked for "articles that emphasise the shortcomings" of the IPCC report, which "is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science." AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer "to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere," in a letter describing the IPCC as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent." [6]

The Guardian reported further that AEI "has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees," added The Guardian. [7] ...

[pomeroo]

Fuzzy math (http://timlambert.org/2004/02#florida), from Tim Lambert's blog about the Lott 2000 Florida election statistical analysis.The second blog entry is well worth reading as well. There are even more lies Lott was caught telling. Lott has no credibility whatsoever.

Media Transparency on Lott. (http://www.mediatransparency.org/personprofile.php?personID=56)

Source Watch on John Lott (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_R._Lott%2C_Jr.)

Of course, none of this stops a rabid NeoCon think tank like the AEI (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute) from using Lott as a source for supporting their claims. No integrity. Put out any lie or liar as long as you can fool some people into believing it supports their views. Create followers with propaganda. Does it bother you Pomer, that people at the AEI probably know full well Lott is a liar. But the NeoCon leaders just want to drum up support so that they benefit from their followers. Because the followers certainly don't.


No one has shown any "lies" that Lott has told. Your far-left cranks are themselves egregious liars (see Mark Blumenthal's refutation of the exit poll nonsense peddled by Bob Fitrakis, RFK, Jr., and Steven Freeman). Lott sent me a pdf. file of his Florida 2000 analysis. You refuse to look at it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is no "unethical suppression." This canard has allowed the Dems to steal elections for too long. Remember, voting is not rocket science. You register; you vote. Anyone who makes it sound more complicated is up to no good.Like the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections? :rolleyes:

[pomeroo]

Like the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections? :rolleyes:

Yes, EXACTLY like the 2000 and 2004 elections! No observed Republican fraud; considerable Democratic fraud.

[Skeptic Ginger]

No one has shown any "lies" that Lott has told. Your far-left cranks are themselves egregious liars (see Mark Blumenthal's refutation of the exit poll nonsense peddled by Bob Fitrakis, RFK, Jr., and Steven Freeman). Lott sent me a pdf. file of his Florida 2000 analysis. You refuse to look at it.Just so it's clear to other readers in this thread. This reply (emphasis mine) was almost as soon as I posted my links. In other words, pomer, you have no interest in reading the actual evidence of Lott's data faking.

I'll read your evidence as soon as there is evidence that supports it's validity. You are asking thread readers and me to read both Fund and Lott after seeing a lot of convincing evidence they are both not credible sources. In addition, I did look at Lott's claims about the Florida stats, and I looked at the evidence against his conclusions and he can only make his claims if you don't look at all the data. Once you look at all the data, there is no question Lott is drawing false conclusions.

And the exit polls have nothing to do with this discussion at all, BTW. We aren't discussing the FL 2000 election, we are discussing Lott's misleading presentation of cherry picked data from the election.

PM me with Lott's data. I'm just not sure I should give you my email address.

[pomeroo]

Just so it's clear to other readers in this thread. This reply (emphasis mine) was almost as soon as I posted my links. In other words, pomer, you have no interest in reading the actual evidence of Lott's data faking.

I'll read your evidence as soon as there is evidence that supports it's validity. You are asking thread readers and me to read both Fund and Lott after seeing a lot of convincing evidence they are both not credible sources. In addition, I did look at Lott's claims about the Florida stats, and I looked at the evidence against his conclusions and he can only make his claims if you don't look at all the data. Once you look at all the data, there is no question Lott is drawing false conclusions.

And the exit polls have nothing to do with this discussion at all, BTW.


Uh, Skeptigirl, there are only about five of us who haven't walked away from this "discussion" in disgust. Everyone gets the idea that you don't examine anything. You hear something that upsets your prejudices and you do a Google-search to find some lefty who'll do your thinking for you.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about statistics--why pretend otherwise? "...There is no question Lott is drawing false conclusions"--you don't even know what conclusions he's drawing!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Right, Pomer, I never read anything, never investigate, never look at opposing views. :rolleyes:

Walked away in disgust? I would think that after 11 pages people have simply said all there is to say.

[pomeroo]

Right, Pomer, I never read anything, never investigate, never look at opposing views. :rolleyes:



You read nothing that doesn't reinforce your prejudices.



Walked away in disgust? I would think that after 11 pages people have simply said all there is to say.


Agreed. Let's call it a day.

[WildCat]

ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: Caging is an illegal way of getting rid of black votes. You get a list of all the black voters. Then you send a letter to their homes. And if the person doesn't sign it at the homes, the letter then is returned to the Republican National Committee. They then direct the state attorney general, who is friendly to them, who’s Republican, to remove that voter from the list on the alleged basis that that voter does not live in the address that they designated as their address on the voting application form.

Looks like I'm being caged! Got this letter yesterday, presumably from the evil Republicans who control the Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois governments. They are trying to disenfranchise me as part of the evil vast right-wing Republican conspiracy! I bet they found out I support gay marriage...

Should I sign it and send it back, or just ignore it and alert the news media to my disenfranchisement come election day when they refuse me my right to vote when I show up with no ID 2 minutes before the polls close?

http://home.mindspring.com/~turniton/COTC/caged.jpg

[Parsman]

[quote=pomeroo;2830443]Bush received fewer votes than Republican candidates for House seats in the county. A staggering anomaly that your "authorities" are silent about.

quote]

Just a quick observation, but isn't it entirely possible that some people would vote one ticket for the House and another for the Presidency? After all each have seperate roles and responsibilities under your constitution. In the UK it is still possible to vote for different groups or parties depending on the personalities or policies offered or the area in which they operate. I myself split my vote for the Scottish Parliament, voting SNP on first past the post and Green for the regional seats.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Looks like I'm being caged! Got this letter yesterday, presumably from the evil Republicans who control the Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois governments. They are trying to disenfranchise me as part of the evil vast right-wing Republican conspiracy! I bet they found out I support gay marriage...

Should I sign it and send it back, or just ignore it and alert the news media to my disenfranchisement come election day when they refuse me my right to vote when I show up with no ID 2 minutes before the polls close?

http://home.mindspring.com/~turniton/COTC/caged.jpgWA State is changing to all mail in ballots which will rely on signatures for verification. They have sent out similar letters to those of us who normally vote at the polls. The idea is to get current signatures for comparison.

That isn't what happened in the caging letters. The caging letters were sent by someone other than the election commission. Then those groups used the list of returned mail to challenge voters on the registration rolls claiming that since the letters were returned undeliverable, the registration must be invalid. Except that many of the letters were returned in spite of the person living at the address and being a legally registered voter because the letters required the addressee sign for them. If you were out of town the letter was returned to sender.

If you had moved, you may have needed to update your registration, but the same letters and challenges did not go out to voters across the county or state, they were targeted to specifically purge certain voters. And that is illegal.

In the case of my Republican friend here in King County, his vote was challenged because his signature didn't match his registration from a couple decades earlier. He was given 2 days to come in person to the county registrar's office or his ballot would not be counted. He didn't make it in. He was sure a Democrat had challenged his vote. But it was actually the Republicans who requested to review all ballots in the Democratic majority King County. They had no way of knowing which were Republican and which weren't but it didn't matter. What they wanted to do was toss out as many votes as possible in heavily Democratic areas. It didn't help, the Democrat still won the governorship.

After losing, the Republicans tried to make the case there were all these illegal votes in King County. My friend who didn't make it to the registrar's office with 2 days notice was an example of the supposed illegal votes. This is where federal attorney John McCay failed to satisfy Bush. He refused to charge the county (or something like that) with election fraud. McCay noted and rightly so, that if you did the same analysis in every county, you would find an equal number of voting errors. The Republicans tried to make it sound like only King County had errors. Sure, only King County was examined.

After McCay was fired the new federal attorney went after his big case. :rolleyes: He found ACORN had paid for registrations and the workers made up fake forms. It cost ACORN money and they were fined on top of it. Not a single fake registration was ever used by a fake voter. Real big voter fraud case. :rolleyes: But it isn't about real voter fraud. It is about marketing the message there is voter fraud so voter disenfranchisement campaigns can be promoted.

[Skeptic Ginger]

[quote=pomeroo;2830443]Bush received fewer votes than Republican candidates for House seats in the county. A staggering anomaly that your "authorities" are silent about.

quote]

Just a quick observation, but isn't it entirely possible that some people would vote one ticket for the House and another for the Presidency? After all each have seperate roles and responsibilities under your constitution. In the UK it is still possible to vote for different groups or parties depending on the personalities or policies offered or the area in which they operate. I myself split my vote for the Scottish Parliament, voting SNP on first past the post and Green for the regional seats.It is possible for any individual. But the evidence was a lot more than simply a few votes that didn't make sense. There were thousands and the exit polls differed. I'm not going to debate it here, there are other threads with the evidence of past election fraud in Ohio and FL in 2000 and 2004. Some people reject the evidence and some of us think it is overwhelmingly convincing. See the other threads.

[funk de fino]

Just a quick observation, but isn't it entirely possible that some people would vote one ticket for the House and another for the Presidency? After all each have seperate roles and responsibilities under your constitution. In the UK it is still possible to vote for different groups or parties depending on the personalities or policies offered or the area in which they operate. I myself split my vote for the Scottish Parliament, voting SNP on first past the post and Green for the regional seats.

Good man

Lots of spoilt papers this time though eh? Could have been a disaster.

[SpaceMonkeyZero]

I vote for the individual. Not the party. So it's not uncommon for me to "split" my vote

[WildCat]

If you had moved, you may have needed to update your registration, but the same letters and challenges did not go out to voters across the county or state, they were targeted to specifically purge certain voters. And that is illegal.
I have not moved, and my live-in g/f did not receive such a letter (though it could have been sent out and not yet received). I see no reason why I should have received this letter. I even voted in the last election.

That isn't what happened in the caging letters. The caging letters were sent by someone other than the election commission. Then those groups used the list of returned mail to challenge voters on the registration rolls claiming that since the letters were returned undeliverable, the registration must be invalid. Except that many of the letters were returned in spite of the person living at the address and being a legally registered voter because the letters required the addressee sign for them. If you were out of town the letter was returned to sender.

Seems to me that this is a local issue in Washington, why Washington law allows such flimsy evidence to be used to remove someone from the voter rolls is a matter for state officials, is it not?

[BenBurch]

So there's a conspiracy to prevent vote fraud? The horror!

A lot of speculation, little substance in that story. I'd like to see someone here in Chicago ask for ID at the polls, I've never seen it here, ever.

I've seen it here in Elgin, IL. I wasn't asked but my wife, who looks Hispanic but isn't was...

[SDC]

[quote=pomeroo;2830443]Bush received fewer votes than Republican candidates for House seats in the county. A staggering anomaly that your "authorities" are silent about.

quote]

Just a quick observation, but isn't it entirely possible that some people would vote one ticket for the House and another for the Presidency? After all each have seperate roles and responsibilities under your constitution. In the UK it is still possible to vote for different groups or parties depending on the personalities or policies offered or the area in which they operate. I myself split my vote for the Scottish Parliament, voting SNP on first past the post and Green for the regional seats.

Splitting is very easy, since typically everything -- every office -- is on separate lines. I think I can't just flip a switch for all of a party's candidates, though in other states perhaps it can work that way.

One thing that is often hard for non-US people to understand is that the presidential election is really 50+ separate state elections. Or rather, 50 states plus several other entities... Puerto Rico yes? DC no? (What about Guam? Have we annexed Canada? Who would notice?)

I've voted in two states (well, once in a 3rd where I grew up, mostly in two, but I have no recollection of how that worked) over the decades and one uses ancient mechanical devices while the other uses paper-read-by-electronic devices. Neither has gone through the agonies of Florida or Ohio.

[WildCat]

Or rather, 50 states plus several other entities... Puerto Rico yes? DC no?
Puerto Rico and other terrirories cannot vote for President despite the fact that they're US citizens, but they're not taxed either so you avoid the whole "taxation w/o representation" thing. Residents of DC can vote for President due to the 23rd Amendment.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have not moved, and my live-in g/f did not receive such a letter (though it could have been sent out and not yet received). I see no reason why I should have received this letter. I even voted in the last election.


Seems to me that this is a local issue in Washington, why Washington law allows such flimsy evidence to be used to remove someone from the voter rolls is a matter for state officials, is it not?The caging incident I described was done in Florida, the letter my friend got to verify he was the signer who voted was here in WA.

It isn't the law that is at issue here, it is Republicans sending out teams to challenge voters. In King County, WA, the Republicans looked at signatures on mailed in ballots and then protested any they felt didn't match the voter registration records. The election board then tried to verify that the person who signed the ballot and the registration were the same. Trouble is, there is a time limit on counting the votes and not everyone can just take time off work and go down to the elections office with 2 days notice.

The Republicans challenged so many votes on the basis of unmatched signatures which turned out in most cases to be the simple fact people had registered decades earlier and their signatures had changed over time, that the county sent out requests to provide an updated signature for the registration records.

Your letter says it is from the voter registration office. I'd find out if I were you why you were sent the letter if you don't know. Someone could be trying to purge you from the registration rolls. It could be that someone challenged your registration and I'd want to know who that was and why they made the charge.


After I found out who/why someone challenged your registration, I would most certainly be calling the news media. Without the facts behind the story though, it's not clear if any reporters would bother investigating.

[pomeroo]

[quote=pomeroo;2830443]Bush received fewer votes than Republican candidates for House seats in the county. A staggering anomaly that your "authorities" are silent about.

quote]

Just a quick observation, but isn't it entirely possible that some people would vote one ticket for the House and another for the Presidency? After all each have seperate roles and responsibilities under your constitution. In the UK it is still possible to vote for different groups or parties depending on the personalities or policies offered or the area in which they operate. I myself split my vote for the Scottish Parliament, voting SNP on first past the post and Green for the regional seats.


Parsman, your unfamiliarity with American elections explains why this subject is confusing to you. I will try to explain.

In America, very few congressional seats are competitive. The situation makes a mockery of our professed devotion to democratic ideals and rewards mediocre people who spend all their time raising campaign funds, The ossification of Congress comes at the expense of bright people with ideas. But, that's how it is.

The 2000 election in Florida featured a race for U.S. Senate that pitted a weak Republican candidate, Bill McCollum, against a popular Democrat incumbent. While Bush and Gore were running essentially even in the state, the Democrat won the Senate race by 300,000 votes. Bush ran ahead of McCollum everywhere in the state, except in Palm Beach County.

So far, we have an anomaly. We must look more closely. Another Palm Beach mystery crops up: Republican candidates for House seats also ran ahead of Bush in the county. Do these results suggest that Bush, for inexplicable reasons, was unusually unpopular in Palm Beach County? No, they don't, and here's why.

In honest elections, a candidate's loss is his opponent's gain. In other words, in the rare instances where the Republican candidate for a House seat is an extremely popular incumbent who manages to run better than Bush, the head of the ticket, you see Bush's unpopularity in relation to the
incumbent reflected in Gore's vote total. In Palm Beach County, Bush's votes simply vanish. But, they don't actually vanish: they wind up in the overvote pile. The rate of overvotes in Palm Beach was ten times higher than in any other county in the state. Think about this--if you spoil ballots that contain votes for Bush, you affect Bill McCollum less because some of those Bush votes contained votes for McCollum's opponent.

Review some of my earlier posts on this topic. If you still have questions, I will try to answer them.

[pomeroo]

[quote=Parsman;3014351]It is possible for any individual. But the evidence was a lot more than simply a few votes that didn't make sense. There were thousands and the exit polls differed. I'm not going to debate it here, there are other threads with the evidence of past election fraud in Ohio and FL in 2000 and 2004. Some people reject the evidence and some of us think it is overwhelmingly convincing. See the other threads.


There is considerable evidence of Democratic election fraud in Florida in 2000.

There is no evidence whatever of Republican fraud in Ohio in 2004.

[JoeEllison]

There is considerable evidence of Democratic election fraud in Florida in 2000.

There is no evidence whatever of Republican fraud in Ohio in 2004.

Which of your comments is more wrong, hmmmm... it is so hard to choose!

[Corsair 115]

(Have we annexed Canada? Who would notice?)The Republican Party would surely have noticed, since such annexation would have added millions of Democratic voters to the electorate. A solid majority of the Canadian population would vote Democratic if given the choice.

[pomeroo]

Which of your comments is more wrong, hmmmm... it is so hard to choose!


Actually, it's quite easy. Both comments are completely correct. Admittedly, they run counter to cherished leftist myths, but--face it--the loony-left earned its reputation.

[JoeEllison]

Actually, it's quite easy. Both comments are completely correct. Admittedly, they run counter to cherished leftist myths, but--face it--the loony-left earned its reputation.

Interesting, because there are absolutely no facts that support your assertions, and yet you believe them anyways. Of course, from your use of terms like "loony-left", it is clear that you are one of these people (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/), and no amount of evidence or facts will sway you.

Good day.

[pomeroo]

Interesting, because there are absolutely no facts that support your assertions, and yet you believe them anyways. Of course, from your use of terms like "loony-left", it is clear that you are one of these people (http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/), and no amount of evidence or facts will sway you.

Good day.



You mean, you refuse to learn the facts that support my assertions.

Your skill at identifying me as a member of the Religious Right mirrors the acuteness of your political analysis.
To be completely honest, I tried to become a member of the Religious Right, but it seems that they held my atheism against me. Go figure.

[Skeptic Ginger]

There is considerable evidence of Democratic election fraud in Florida in 2000.

There is no evidence whatever of Republican fraud in Ohio in 2004.Nice claims, no supporting evidence. I, on the other hand, posted volumes of evidence in this thread about multiple incidents of voter disenfranchisement perpetrated by the Republicans and lack of voter fraud which the Republicans claim occurred. If anyone is refusing to learn any facts, I'm afraid dear boy, that would be you.

[pomeroo]

Nice claims, no supporting evidence. I, on the other hand, posted volumes of evidence in this thread about multiple incidents of voter disenfranchisement perpetrated by the Republicans and lack of voter fraud which the Republicans claim occurred. If anyone is refusing to learn any facts, I'm afraid dear boy, that would be you.


Your "evidence' turned out to be bogus--just the baseless propaganda churned out by the DNC to allow them to steal elections. You and other leftist zealots tend to over-complicate. Voting means the following: You register. You vote. Anyone who pretends that there is more to it is up to no good.

Voting rolls in big cities accumulate much useless data over the years. Attempts to prune the names of voters who have died or moved away are sensible measures designed to reduce fraud. In the process, a few--very few!--individuals may find their names removed improperly. It is extremely easy for them to correct the record. I know, because it happened to me.
Democrats don't want voting rolls to be pruned, as, for reasons we are not permitted to mention in polite society, they tend to receive almost 100% of the dead-or-moved vote.

[Skeptic Ginger]

What bogus evidence? In your dreams maybe. Yes, voting rolls grow errors as people move. So then address the rolls evenly, that's legal. Just purging members of one party or members in districts that have one majority party is an illegal activity called caging.

[pomeroo]

What bogus evidence? In your dreams maybe. Yes, voting rolls grow errors as people move. So then address the rolls evenly, that's legal. Just purging members of one party or members in districts that have one majority party is an illegal activity called caging.



Yes, let's address the rolls fairly. Ooops! The Democrats refuse to consider that suggestion. At least, Terry McAuliffe wouldn't hear of it when he was the head of the DNC.
Remember: You register. You vote. And that's all there is to it. Anyone who says otherwise is up to no good.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Has Greg Palast finished making up those 500 e-mails yet?

[Kevin_Lowe]

[quote=skeptigirl;3014603]

There is considerable evidence of Democratic election fraud in Florida in 2000.

Hang on, didn't we go over this in great detail already?

Your only sources have been totally discredited, and your main story (about nameless Democratic people observed by nameless off-duty police running a pole through piles of votes) is not only totally unverifiable and from a discredited source but also inconsistent with the evidence.

The large majority of spoiled ballots were for Gore and another candidate other than Bush. There is no possible benefit for Democratic partisans in spoiling third party votes. If they really did run a pole through the Gore hole, you would expect to see large numbers of votes for Bush and Gore, and we do not see large numbers of such votes.

This twaddle about Bush votes "disappearing into the overvote pile" is nonsense on stilts, Pomeroo.

Maybe Bush votes went somewhere, although no sane and rational person would trust the word of Fund or Lott on the topic, but the story you keep pushing is not only unverifiable and from a suspect source, but stupid to boot.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Has Greg Palast finished making up those 500 e-mails yet?
You missed the link to some of the emails I take it? Or are you just challenging the volume? I think Palast has pretty much proved he did get some emails that were sent to .org instead of .com. The Republicans admitted Palast had an Excell file of addresses they sent the caging letters to and the only other way he could have had that was a leak. The emails are real. I don't know whether there are 500 but I have no reason to believe there aren't.

[Skeptic Ginger]

[see above]

Hang on, didn't we go over this in great detail already?

Your only sources have been totally discredited, and your main story (about nameless Democratic people observed by nameless off-duty police running a pole through piles of votes) is not only totally unverifiable and from a discredited source but also inconsistent with the evidence.

The large majority of spoiled ballots were for Gore and another candidate other than Bush. There is no possible benefit for Democratic partisans in spoiling third party votes. If they really did run a pole through the Gore hole, you would expect to see large numbers of votes for Bush and Gore, and we do not see large numbers of such votes.

This twaddle about Bush votes "disappearing into the overvote pile" is nonsense on stilts, Pomeroo.

Maybe Bush votes went somewhere, although no sane and rational person would trust the word of Fund or Lott on the topic, but the story you keep pushing is not only unverifiable and from a suspect source, but stupid to boot.This thread is not about the 2000 or 2004 elections. The fraud which occurred in FL and OH which I am aware of was in purging voter registration roles. This thread is about efforts to purge voter registration roles and efforts to create voter disenfranchisement in the 2008 election by various means of which I posted considerable supporting evidence.

I am not rehashing 2000 and 2008 in this thread. Objections to the title of the thread have been duly noted.

Whoops, just re-read the post. Yes, Pomeroo's source on the supposed voter fraud was thoroughly discredited. It really looks like you are claiming my sources were discredited, Kevin. I only know you are talking about Pom because he made the claims about the punching of Gore votes and indeed his source was a single author who was thoroughly discredited.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yes, I apologise, I mangled the formatting and Pomeroo's quote got attributed to you. You can see the orphaned quote bracket thing where I screwed up.

[pomeroo]

[quote=pomeroo;3018023]

Hang on, didn't we go over this in great detail already?


Yes. It's all right here in this very thread.



Your only sources have been totally discredited, and your main story (about nameless Democratic people observed by nameless off-duty police running a pole through piles of votes) is not only totally unverifiable and from a discredited source but also inconsistent with the evidence.


Yeah, of course. The problem is, when lefties get crushed, they have this silly habit of declaring victory. Needless to say, you discredited nothing. Your refusal to consider reading the book I referred to stamps you as intellectually uncurious. I explained exactly how the glut of overvotes in Palm Beach County is consistent with the charge of Democrat vote fraid. You can't comprehend it: your problem.



The large majority of spoiled ballots were for Gore and another candidate other than Bush. There is no possible benefit for Democratic partisans in spoiling third party votes. If they really did run a pole through the Gore hole, you would expect to see large numbers of votes for Bush and Gore, and we do not see large numbers of such votes.

This twaddle about Bush votes "disappearing into the overvote pile" is nonsense on stilts, Pomeroo.


Your feeble attempt to blow smoke is the nonsense. The number of overvotes cannot possibly be explained away as votes cast for minor party candidates. Someone's lying.



Maybe Bush votes went somewhere, although no sane and rational person would trust the word of Fund or Lott on the topic, but the story you keep pushing is not only unverifiable and from a suspect source, but stupid to boot.



Yes, thousands of Bush votes went into the overvote pile. You can hurl abuse at any name I happen to cite, but the arithmetic dooms your deception. You are pretending that 10-15 thousand votes cast for minor-party candidates in Palm Beach County mysteriously ended up with the Gore hole punched and it's just some sort of statistical freak? Nope. Sorry. Keep trying.

Tell us why the DEMOCRAT county commissioner refused to allow the ballots to be inspected. Why were they improperly destroyed?

Better still, stick to smearing Fund and Lott. It's easier.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yeah, of course. The problem is, when lefties get crushed, they have this silly habit of declaring victory. Needless to say, you discredited nothing. Your refusal to consider reading the book I referred to stamps you as intellectually uncurious. I explained exactly how the glut of overvotes in Palm Beach County is consistent with the charge of Democrat vote fraid. You can't comprehend it: your problem.


All you have are allegations you cannot back up, from a source that has been proven to be unreliable, that don't even make sense.


Your feeble attempt to blow smoke is the nonsense. The number of overvotes cannot possibly be explained away as votes cast for minor party candidates. Someone's lying.


Assuming (and it's one heck of a big assumption) that Fund is accurately reporting the facts, the explanation he presents for those facts makes no sense.


Yes, thousands of Bush votes went into the overvote pile. You can hurl abuse at any name I happen to cite, but the arithmetic dooms your deception. You are pretending that 10-15 thousand votes cast for minor-party candidates in Palm Beach County mysteriously ended up with the Gore hole punched and it's just some sort of statistical freak? Nope. Sorry. Keep trying.


Follow me step by step here, Pomeroo.

Step one. The large majority of overvotes were for Gore and a minor party. Agreed?
Step two. There is no conceivable way that spoiling minor party votes could affect the outcome of the election. Agreed?
Step three. Democratic party partisans would have to be stupid to spoil Gore votes by punching a third party candidate hole in them.
Step four. Democratic party partisans therefore have absolutely no reason to spoil
third party votes, and obviously they have superb reason not to spoil Gore votes.

So how do we explain the tens of thousands of ballots with holes punched for Gore and a minor party? There is no conceivable scenario in which Democratic partisans would want to punch Gore holes in third party ballots, nor any conceivable scenario in which they would want to punch third party holes in Gore ballots.

"No no!" you cry, "You don't understand! They just stacked up the votes and ran a rod through the Gore hole, thus spoiling all non-Gore votes!".

Okay, so why aren't there a huge pile of ballots punched for Bush and Gore? That's what we would see if we stacked up a pile of ballots, many of which were for Bush, and then poked a rod through the Gore hole, right? Those ballots do not exist.

Face it Pomeroo, if your "evidence" was proof of fraud it would be proof of Republican fraud. The overvote problem helped Bush if it did anything based on your evidence.

What's wrong with the "official" story, that the butterfly ballot was just really confusing and caused an unprecedented number of unintended overvotes?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pomeroo simply ignored the overwhelming evidence against his source and his position and continues on in his dreamland version of the world.

[pomeroo]

Pomeroo simply ignored the overwhelming evidence against his source and his position and continues on in his dreamland version of the world.


Your "overwhelming evidence" is merely uninformed drivel written by far-left cranks. You can't understand the nature of the claim.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I believe your statement would be considered projection, pomy.

[pomeroo]

I believe your statement would be considered projection, pomy.


Look, we can continue this unedifying tap dance for as long as you like. Bush ran well ahead of an unpopular Republican senatorial candidate in every county in Florida except Palm Beach. What happened there is pretty clear: Bush's vote simply disappeared without moving over to the Gore column. Your stubborn refusal to read Fund's book--at least, the relevant chapter--leaves you looking ridiculous. You have no idea of what you're arguing.

[Corsair 115]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do not understand the apparent American fascination for mechanical or electronic machines to do the voting on the ballot and the counting afterwards.

In Canada, federal elections use paper ballots hand-marked and hand-counted. Results sufficient for projections of which party will form the government are had within a couple of hours at most, and usually earlier than that.

Personally, I want to mark that ballot with my own hand and not rely on or trust a machine to punch a hole or count something electronically.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

You missed the link to some of the emails I take it? Or are you just challenging the volume? I think Palast has pretty much proved he did get some emails that were sent to .org instead of .com. The Republicans admitted Palast had an Excell file of addresses they sent the caging letters to and the only other way he could have had that was a leak. The emails are real. I don't know whether there are 500 but I have no reason to believe there aren't.

I remember you posting a link to an e-mail header and a jpeg of what Palast claims was an attachment.

If you posted a link to all 500 of the e-mails Palast claims to have, could you repost it?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Look, we can continue this unedifying tap dance for as long as you like. Bush ran well ahead of an unpopular Republican senatorial candidate in every county in Florida except Palm Beach. What happened there is pretty clear: Bush's vote simply disappeared without moving over to the Gore column. Your stubborn refusal to read Fund's book--at least, the relevant chapter--leaves you looking ridiculous. You have no idea of what you're arguing.There is just no answer for your blind spot for the evidence against Fund. He's been discredited. You may be the only one in the thread who hasn't noticed.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I remember you posting a link to an e-mail header and a jpeg of what Palast claims was an attachment.

If you posted a link to all 500 of the e-mails Palast claims to have, could you repost it?I never claimed there were 500 emails or that Palast has provided that evidence. Palast has provided evidence he received at least some emails including ones that implicated the Republican Party in illegally trying to purge voter roles of Democrats by way of caging. The Republican Party admitted it, the scandal reached into the Gonzales federal attorney firings and led to the Bush appointed attorney in Arkansas, Tim Griffin, resigning after it was revealed he was part of the illegal caging scam.

Raging Caging - What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care? (http://www.gregpalast.com/raging-caging-what-the-heck-is-vote-caging-and-why-should-we-care/) by Greg Palast.Last week, in her testimony before the House judiciary committee, Monica Goodling referred several times to “vote caging” possibly done by Arkansas’ soon to be ex-interim, never-confirmed U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin. Yet Goodling was questioned about this almost not at all, nor did the media do much more than report the words of the former liaison between the White House and Alberto Gonzales (why a “liaison” is required between two institutions with no boundaries between them is incomprehensible, but perhaps another story). Meanwhile, liberal talk radio, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the blogosphere went nuts. So, which is it: Is vote caging the most underreported part of this U.S. attorneys scandal or the most over-hyped?So you can ignore this attempt to illegally purge voter registration roles as the Republican Party would so love to have people ignore, or you can take a serious look at the voter fraud involved.

I don't care if the number of emails was 5 or 500. Palast uncovered and provided enough evidence that Griffin resigned, the Republican Party made excuses but admitted Palast had an Excell file the Republicans could not explain other than Palast had indeed intercepted emails mis-addressed and now Gonzales has resigned because the fired federal attorneys could not be explained except that voter intimidation was the underlying reason.

Read the thread if you care about democracy.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

If Mr. Palast really does have 500 e-mails and american democracy is under dire threat, then his refusal to release them tells you how much he cares about democracy.

I would also like to see where you claim the republicans admitted to vote fraud.

[pomeroo]

There is just no answer for your blind spot for the evidence against Fund. He's been discredited. You may be the only one in the thread who hasn't noticed.


You're comical. You refuse to read the book and rely on blinkered ideologues for your sources. You still can't comprehend the math behind the Palm Beach scandal and, frankly, it isn't that difficult.

It would be nice to wave a magic wand and discredit anyone whose research produces data inconvenient to your prejudices, but reality is indifferent to emotional needs.

[pomeroo]

If Mr. Palast really does have 500 e-mails and american democracy is under dire threat, then his refusal to release them tells you how much he cares about democracy.

I would also like to see where you claim the republicans admitted to vote fraud.


Palast is an egregious liar. He fills my mailbox with one sensational revelation after another and somehow the party of trial lawyers never finds anything worth taking to court. I replied to his latest e-mail by asking when we can expect to see his hard-hitting expose on the HillBillies' New Square shenanigans.

[Skeptic Ginger]

If Mr. Palast really does have 500 e-mails and american democracy is under dire threat, then his refusal to release them tells you how much he cares about democracy.

I would also like to see where you claim the republicans admitted to vote fraud.The Republicans admitted the Excell file of addresses in black Democratic areas of Florida was their list. Monica Goodling testified under oath before Congress that the list was tied to a caging scheme and Tim Griffin resigned after the testimony. The links are in this thread. I'll hunt them down for you later. If you can't put these three things together you have a problem

In the meantime, it just so happens that a report investigating voter caging was published just last month. If you care to know the truth, read it. If you prefer to live in your "it can't happen here" state of mind, then I suggest you not open your eyes.

Caging Democracy: A 50-Year History of Partisan Challenges to Minority Voters (http://projectvote.org/fileadmin/ProjectVote/Publications/Caging_Democracy_Report.pdf); by Teresa James, J.D. Projectvote.org.

From the executive summary:Voter caging is a term that drew public attention as a result of testimony provided by Monica Goodling, former White House liaison to the Department of Justice, to a 2007 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the firings of eight US Attorneys. Although public interest in voter caging is relatively recent, the practice is not new. Republicans have engaged in voter caging on the national and state level since the late 1950’s. According to many election observers, voter caging is a controversial political tactic that typically targets minority voters to directly disenfranchise them or suppress their vote by intimidation. Republican officials, on the other hand, maintain that voter caging is part of what they describe as “ballot security” measures necessary to combat voter fraud.

The following report reviews Republican voter caging operations during the last 50 years,
culminating with the unprecedented number of large voter caging operations conducted across the nation in the 2004 presidential election. ...



The author of the article since I think that is an important part of evaluating a source of information:
About Project Vote ... staff: (http://projectvote.org/about-us/our-staff.html)Teresa James, Counsel
Before joining Project Vote, Teresa James served as a legal editor with LexisNexis, a global legal and business information service. Her editing experience followed years in the practice of law at Legal Aid, a private law firm, and in her own practice. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and of Case Western Reserve Law School. During her time in college and in legal practice she maintained her community involvement with organizations such as the ACLU and the Lorain County Urban League . Teresa has served on the boards of the Oberlin ACLU and the Lorain County Legal Aid. She has also been active in Ohio community organizations involved in promoting open, fair, and transparent elections.


The report is worth a new thread so I'll start one.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Pomy, no one is relying on Palast as a source here. We're only citing what can be backed up with corroborating sources. Fund has no corroborating evidence for anything he claims and much of what he wrote in his book has been shown to be a fraud. You seem to have forgotten everything in this thread.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here's the new thread just on caging. (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=3035323#post3035323) This thread can continue with the other aspects of the discussion.

[pomeroo]

Pomy, no one is relying on Palast as a source here. We're only citing what can be backed up with corroborating sources. Fund has no corroborating evidence for anything he claims and much of what he wrote in his book has been shown to be a fraud. You seem to have forgotten everything in this thread.


No, you are pretending that Fund has been discredited. In reality, nothing of the sort has happened. You have forgotten that the fabrications of your far-left screamers are inadequate to make scholarly points. You chose to dismiss the statistical implications of the mysterious drop-off in Bush's vote in Palm Beach County. To understand the issue, you can either a) read Fund's chapter in which he explains what happened, or b) check out the Florida Board of Elections webpage and compare the 2000 Presidential and Senatorial results. The latter involves more than cutting-and-pasting, so it won't appeal to you.

[SDC]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do not understand the apparent American fascination for mechanical or electronic machines to do the voting on the ballot and the counting afterwards.

In Canada, federal elections use paper ballots hand-marked and hand-counted. Results sufficient for projections of which party will form the government are had within a couple of hours at most, and usually earlier than that.

Personally, I want to mark that ballot with my own hand and not rely on or trust a machine to punch a hole or count something electronically.

Several comments. (And yes, Americans historically have been fascinated by machine-based "improvements," whether they make sense or not.)

1/ How are Canadian fed elections administered? As one big election, or as many different elections at the provincial level? In the US, the presidential election, with attendant congressional elections, are really managed at the state level. While there are limits, some of which you are reading about in this thread, the states are largely able to handle their own mechanics, devices, and other means.

2/ Well, the US has 10 times the population of Canada, and this proportion has been very roughly constant since the 19th century. That complicates matters.

3/ But come to think of it, both Canada and the US are spread across 4 or 5 (?) time zones. We still deal with that per state, which has led to complaints in the western states, since the eastern states finish (and report) while the western states are still voting. The states can set their own voting hours, I think. (If I remember correctly, New York tends to open ballots 6 am-9 pm. Michigan 7 am-8 pm. And both are in the eastern time zone.) The losers in national elections in recent years tend to blame the media -- "your early misleading reports from the east discouraged my western voters who all stayed home making pouty faces" How does Canada deal with that fact?

4/ In New York I've voted on rather old machines, when one pushes down small levers for each name/ position and then throws a great big lever to register the whole megillah. In Michigan, we used paper and felt tip pens -- you fill in a blank next to the name /position you are voting for. Then you take it over to a machine which "reads" it. I have never dealt with chads and hope never to.

5/ Are there no histories of large scale vote fraud in Canada? With respect, I'd be surprised if Canadian parties are more honest than ours. Could be, of course. It just is hard to figure into a consistent picture of human nature.

[Corsair 115]

How are Canadian fed elections administered? As one big election, or as many different elections at the provincial level? Federal elections are administered by Elections Canada, an independent non-partisan agency which reports to Parliament. Federal elections are one large, national election.

For everything there is to know about federal elections in Canada head over to the Elections Canada (http://www.elections.ca/home.asp) web site. There's a huge amount of information and material there. In fact, there's probably more there than anyone would want to know... :D

But come to think of it, both Canada and the US are spread across 4 or 5 (?) time zones. We still deal with that per state, which has led to complaints in the western states, since the eastern states finish (and report) while the western states are still voting... How does Canada deal with that fact? There have been similar complaints here. Some years back the voting hours in each province were staggered; polls in eastern provinces open later and close later than polls in western provinces to try and offset some of the time zone differences. Also, there are strict limits on the media in that they cannot report election results from other provinces until polls are closed in that particular province.

As an aside, campaign financing here is, as I understand it, quite a bit more restrictive than it is in U.S. presidential elections.

Are there no histories of large scale vote fraud in Canada? With respect, I'd be surprised if Canadian parties are more honest than ours.None that I'm aware of offhand, but I'll freely admit it's an area I know little about. The A History of the Vote in Canada (http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=gen&document=index&dir=his&lang=e&textonly=false) page on the Elections Canada web site would probably mention such situations. (Those history pages look to be pretty detailed — I should probably go through them myself!)

Speaking of voting, it's going to be a busy time the next couple of days. There's a provincial election for Newfoundland & Labrador on Oct. 9th, then Ontario holds its provincial election the next day.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Look, we can continue this unedifying tap dance for as long as you like. Bush ran well ahead of an unpopular Republican senatorial candidate in every county in Florida except Palm Beach. What happened there is pretty clear: Bush's vote simply disappeared without moving over to the Gore column. Your stubborn refusal to read Fund's book--at least, the relevant chapter--leaves you looking ridiculous. You have no idea of what you're arguing.

If we are the ones who have no idea what we are arguing, why are you the one sliding the goalposts around in response to our arguments?

The new goalposts say "Okay, the metal rod idea was stupid and Fund probably made it up out of whole cloth. However there is an interesting discrepancy in the number of Bush votes counted".

Now if we take Fund's numbers as accurate (yeah, I know, but for the sake of discussion we'll ignore all the obvious reasons not to) then yes, the totals do look odd.

The million dollar question, Pomeroo, is this. If a vote tally is off by the amount it was off in Palm, compared to a plausible guess at what the tally might have looked like, is that strong evidence of fraud?

Yes, this is totally a trick question. If you say yes, then we're going to go find precincts where Democrat candidates or left-wing proposals got unexpectedly low tallies. Then we're going to say that they must be strong evidence of fraud too.

[ChaoticLimbs]

..But to those we'd like to believe as well.

Skeptics require evidence to believe in something like a conspiracy. To accept it just because we don't like Bush is not behaving in a skeptical manner.

Also, both sides cheated. It happens every election. However, it's not the candidates who generally cheat, it's overzealous county clerks and volunteers.

[pomeroo]

If we are the ones who have no idea what we are arguing, why are you the one sliding the goalposts around in response to our arguments?

The new goalposts say "Okay, the metal rod idea was stupid and Fund probably made it up out of whole cloth. However there is an interesting discrepancy in the number of Bush votes counted".

Now if we take Fund's numbers as accurate (yeah, I know, but for the sake of discussion we'll ignore all the obvious reasons not to) then yes, the totals do look odd.

The million dollar question, Pomeroo, is this. If a vote tally is off by the amount it was off in Palm, compared to a plausible guess at what the tally might have looked like, is that strong evidence of fraud?

Yes, this is totally a trick question. If you say yes, then we're going to go find precincts where Democrat candidates or left-wing proposals got unexpectedly low tallies. Then we're going to say that they must be strong evidence of fraud too.


Again, your refusal to read Fund's chapter on Palm Beach leaves you looking very silly. What on earth can "Fund's numbers" be? Are they different from the official tally? If so, let us ignore them. Assuming that there is no such animal as "Fund's numbers" and that you invented this red herring to mask your unwillingness to learn anything about the issue, we can proceed.

A Democratic congressman, who chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, has stated that the bizarre results can only be explained by fraud. Naturally, you and Skeptigirl will purposely miss the point and reflexively rage against his anonymity. That's fine, but what could be another explanation for this glaring statistical anomaly? Before you start fabricating, pause for a moment and reflect that you don't have the slightest idea of what the anomaly is.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Again, your refusal to read Fund's chapter on Palm Beach leaves you looking very silly. What on earth can "Fund's numbers" be? Are they different from the official tally? If so, let us ignore them. Assuming that there is no such animal as "Fund's numbers" and that you invented this red herring to mask your unwillingness to learn anything about the issue, we can proceed.

I haven't paged back through the thread to find Fund's numbers, then googled around to check them against reliable sources. Partially because I'm lazy, and partially because I want to get a straight answer out of your first regarding whether it's legitimate to take the numbers Fund claims as strong evidence of fraud.


A Democratic congressman, who chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, has stated that the bizarre results can only be explained by fraud. Naturally, you and Skeptigirl will purposely miss the point and reflexively rage against his anonymity. That's fine, but what could be another explanation for this glaring statistical anomaly? Before you start fabricating, pause for a moment and reflect that you don't have the slightest idea of what the anomaly is.

Actually unless my memory is faulty you pasted a chunk of text explaining the anomaly into one of your previous posts.

Now as I was saying, if Fund's numbers are accurate, are you absolutely sure that such numbers are strong evidence of fraud? I've warned you about where this is going.

[Skeptic Ginger]

..But to those we'd like to believe as well.

Skeptics require evidence to believe in something like a conspiracy. To accept it just because we don't like Bush is not behaving in a skeptical manner.

Also, both sides cheated. It happens every election. However, it's not the candidates who generally cheat, it's overzealous county clerks and volunteers.This post is an example of someone coming into a thread at the end of 12 pages and assuming there is no evidence in the rest of the thread.

This thread is chock full of evidence Chao, I suggest you review some of it if you are really interested in the evidence based version of this story.

[pomeroo]

I haven't paged back through the thread to find Fund's numbers, then googled around to check them against reliable sources. Partially because I'm lazy, and partially because I want to get a straight answer out of your first regarding whether it's legitimate to take the numbers Fund claims as strong evidence of fraud.


You are wasting time with this disingenuous attempt to portray John Fund, a respected columnist for the Wall Street Journal, as a partisan hack. Fund isn't even a Republican. Yes, it is legitimate to take the official tally for Palm Beach County as strong evidence of vote fraud.



Actually unless my memory is faulty you pasted a chunk of text explaining the anomaly into one of your previous posts.

Now as I was saying, if Fund's numbers are accurate, are you absolutely sure that such numbers are strong evidence of fraud? I've warned you about where this is going.


Stop warning and start learning.

[Kevin_Lowe]

You are wasting time with this disingenuous attempt to portray John Fund, a respected columnist for the Wall Street Journal, as a partisan hack. Fund isn't even a Republican. Yes, it is legitimate to take the official tally for Palm Beach County as strong evidence of vote fraud.


The fundamental problem here is that despite being shown evidence that Fund should not be trusted as a source, you carry on pretending that there is evidence Fund is an honest and thorough reporter. Similarly, I'm about to give you a couple of links and you are going to decide, based on their content, that the information on those pages was made up by wacky, crazy, loony-left moonbat hippie yippie dippie tie-dyed upside-down space cases on acid.

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/voter_fraud.html
http://www.ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm

If sloppy work like that of Fund must be accepted as canonical by us then such slop from the other side must be too. Assuming that we are being simply gullible rather than merely biased, of course.

Now those links actually have some advantages over Fund if you think about it. They have links to other sources, even though the sources are not always that reliable themselves. That beats unsupported claims that don't even make sense. In addition they are freely available so every party to the discussion can read them.


Stop warning and start learning.

It seems to me that if you believe Fund has provided strong evidence the Democrats cheated in Palm County, then if you are consistent you now also have to believe that Republicans cheated all over the place.

Now you might be tempted to cherry pick one or two of the weaker claims on those pages, mock them, declare victory, and so avoid ever engaging with the stronger claims. Please resist this temptation. We have already stomped some of Fund's weaker claims, so a supporter of Fund has no right to complain if some of the other side's evidence is wonky.

Lastly, if you think we should give up on presenting partisan tripe as evidence and discuss reliable reports we can do that too.

[pomeroo]

The fundamental problem here is that despite being shown evidence that Fund should not be trusted as a source, you carry on pretending that there is evidence Fund is an honest and thorough reporter. Similarly, I'm about to give you a couple of links and you are going to decide, based on their content, that the information on those pages was made up by wacky, crazy, loony-left moonbat hippie yippie dippie tie-dyed upside-down space cases on acid.

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/voter_fraud.html
http://www.ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm



These links are worthless. They present a farrago of nonsense fabricated by leftwing loons. Of course you don't believe me: What I'm saying is inconvenient to your prejudices. But these articles recycle all the rubbish invented by the far-left blogosphere and refuted by serious investigators. The extremely liberal "Cleveland Plain-Dealer" ran a series on the fraud allegations and found no substance to any of them.

No, Bush did not get more votes than there were registered voters. No, Bush was not expected to lose the 2004 election. In the aggregate of all national polls, he led by 2-3 points on the eve of the election. No, Kerry did not recieve 54% of the vote in Ohio--he would have won the state if he had (duh!). Nobody in the Kerry camp thinks their candidate won Ohio. No, there was no fraud in Warren County. It is a heavily-Republican county (Bob Dole got 66% in 1996) and Democrat supervisors present during the lockdown saw nothing suspicious. Diebold machines were used in precisely TWO counties in Ohio, and Kerry won the larger of them. And on and on...

You refuse to read the definitive articles on the flawed exit polls written by Democrat pollster Mark Blumenthal (pollster.com).



If sloppy work like that of Fund must be accepted as canonical by us then such slop from the other side must be too. Assuming that we are being simply gullible rather than merely biased, of course.

Now those links actually have some advantages over Fund if you think about it. They have links to other sources, even though the sources are not always that reliable themselves. That beats unsupported claims that don't even make sense. In addition they are freely available so every party to the discussion can read them.



It seems to me that if you believe Fund has provided strong evidence the Democrats cheated in Palm County, then if you are consistent you now also have to believe that Republicans cheated all over the place.

Now you might be tempted to cherry pick one or two of the weaker claims on those pages, mock them, declare victory, and so avoid ever engaging with the stronger claims. Please resist this temptation. We have already stomped some of Fund's weaker claims, so a supporter of Fund has no right to complain if some of the other side's evidence is wonky.

Lastly, if you think we should give up on presenting partisan tripe as evidence and discuss reliable reports we can do that too.



You are a far-left fanatic and no evidence that runs counter to your insulated worldview will ever suffice for you. Your cherished myths are articles of faith. To understand the statistical case for fraud in Palm Beach County, you should read the relevant chapter in Fund's book. You are too ideologically-blinkered to do that.

[Kevin_Lowe]

These links are worthless. They present a farrago of nonsense fabricated by leftwing loons. Of course you don't believe me: What I'm saying is inconvenient to your prejudices. But these articles recycle all the rubbish invented by the far-left blogosphere and refuted by serious investigators.

Yet you don't see that this stuff is no better and no worse than Fund's rubbish.

You are a far-left fanatic and no evidence that runs counter to your insulated worldview will ever suffice for you. Your cherished myths are articles of faith. To understand the statistical case for fraud in Palm Beach County, you should read the relevant chapter in Fund's book. You are too ideologically-blinkered to do that.

I guess when you only have one note, you have to play it over and over again.

[pomeroo]

Yet you don't see that this stuff is no better and no worse than Fund's rubbish.



Not quite. I see that Fund is a respected columnist for the Wall Street Journal, whose work has NOT been "discredited" by the fabrications of far-left screamers. I see that Loo's rubbish is incompetent drivel.



I guess when you only have one note, you have to play it over and over again.


You must be reading my mind. Now, that's projection!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Are you related to this Ron Wieck, pomer?

http://www.ronwieck.com/

Hope you don't mind my asking but if you do then feel free to ignore the question.

[Pardalis]

Are you out of arguments Skeptigirl?

[pomeroo]

Are you related to this Ron Wieck, pomer?

http://www.ronwieck.com/

Hope you don't mind my asking but if you do then feel free to ignore the question.


I don't mind the question. No, I am not Ron Wieck the state senator from Iowa. I am Ron Wieck the chess player and bon vivant from New York.

Oddly enough, last year someone sent me e-mails addressed to "Senator Wieck." There are all sorts of nuts on the net, so I didn't pay much attention. But after the third one, I asked, "What's with that 'Senator' business?" The guy told me that he had assumed I was a senator, and that is how I came to know of the existence of my namesake.

[SpaceMonkeyZero]

Are you out of arguments Skeptigirl?

Sounds like it.

I bet she was wringing her hands to call pomeroo a "Right Wing Shill" for refusing to believe the CT that the elections were stolen.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Are you out of arguments Skeptigirl?No, I'm busy giving flu shots. But thanks for asking. :)

[Pardalis]

Any news on Craig Palast and his 500 emails? I couldn't find anything.

[Tricky]

Zombie thread moved to correct forum.

[Pardalis]

My point in reviving this thread is that since the elections weren't stolen, does this mean that the caging conspiracy was successfully prevented or defeated, or was this all just a politically motivated and unsubstanciated conspiracy theory?

[fullflavormenthol]

My point in reviving this thread is that since the elections weren't stolen, does this mean that the caging conspiracy was successfully prevented or defeated, or was this all just a politically motivated and unsubstanciated conspiracy theory?

I do believe that for the most part it was politically motivated to put doubt into people as to the results of the next election if it went to the other party, assuming that he people who would push it were from the other side of the isle.

For the other group, no election would ever be seen as legitimate to them given their pre-assumed distrust for the election system. Hence the occasional Ron Paul supporter who will push that the primaries were unfair against him.

[Brainster]

My point in reviving this thread is that since the elections weren't stolen, does this mean that the caging conspiracy was successfully prevented or defeated, or was this all just a politically motivated and unsubstanciated conspiracy theory?

False dichotomy. The Democrats won by a much larger percentage than the voting machines registered, and in fact not a single person in the country other than John McCain voted for John McCain. So far from this being an unstolen election, in fact this was the greatest heist in history.

But I'm sure Skeptigirl has a more sensible interpretation.

[Kevin_Lowe]

My point in reviving this thread is that since the elections weren't stolen, does this mean that the caging conspiracy was successfully prevented or defeated, or was this all just a politically motivated and unsubstanciated conspiracy theory?

I agree that it's a false dichotomy, and I think there's an alternative hypothesis which covers the facts. Mind you I haven't kept a grip on this issue in the last few years, so my impressions may be out of date.

I've never seen any coherent explanation for the exit poll anomaly in the 2004 election, other than grass-roots electoral fraud to pad the Bush vote in Republican-controlled electorates. The fact that the anomaly was confined to Republican strongholds which did not use hand-counted paper ballots, but was found in electorates with many different electronic voting systems, rules out any other sensible hypotheses I or anyone else on these forums have come up with.

This meshes with the fact that any number of local exploits for various electronic voting systems have been published and/or demonstrated, but nobody has presented any evidence that existing electoral systems can be, or have been, hacked en masse from a central point or distributed with malicious software. (As opposed to culpably insecure software which can be trivially hacked without leaving traces).

For those curious, I'm agnostic about whether such vote rigging made any difference in the 2004 election but I've never seen any convincing figures that show that any plausible level of manipulation could have been decisive. Toss together caging and possible electronic vote rigging and it's conceivable Ohio might have been stolen, but from memory even if you go that far, that alone still didn't decide the election. Currently I lean towards the view that there was a substantial amount of small-scale, local electronic vote fraud in 2008 as well as other highly unethical attempts to influence the vote (such as caging) but that Bush probably would have won the Presidency without them.

The incentives to engage in such acts in the 2008 Presidential elections were, I think (I'm open to persuasion on this point) significantly less than in 2004. Firstly there was more public awareness of the problems with voting machines by 2008 and many districts had dumped electronic voting or significantly tightened up their systems. Secondly the election was obviously going to be an Obama landslide rather than a cliffhanger so small-scale electoral fraud would be unlikely to make any difference to the Presidential outcome. If it's not going to make any difference, there's less incentive to do it.

If that theory's right I'd expect that there were still some dirty electorates in the 2008 election, but fewer than in 2004, and I'd expect that any difference they made to the Presidential race was swamped by the volume of Obama votes. Quite possibly the elections for local dogcatcher or whatever were rigged at the grass-roots level in some places - the incentives for such manipulations are obviously still there.

Ideally this would be testable by sending people in to electorates which yielded the most suspect 2004 exit poll results to audit their machines and ballots, immediately after the election was held. If you'd find evidence of fraud anywhere that's where I'd expect to see it. Failing that, exit polling suspect areas could yield more circumstantial evidence of funny business, but as we've seen before most USians won't accept circumstantial evidence of funny business in US elections as being real evidence. "It can't happen here" and all that.

[dudalb]

I refuse to take seriously the opinions of anybody on American politics who uses the term USians, since that use of that term is evidence of a dislike for the USA in general.

[CORed]

False dichotomy. The Democrats won by a much larger percentage than the voting machines registered, and in fact not a single person in the country other than John McCain voted for John McCain. So far from this being an unstolen election, in fact this was the greatest heist in history.

But I'm sure Skeptigirl has a more sensible interpretation.

I voted for John McCain, so I'm sure he got at least two votes.

[Pardalis]

It's testable alright, Palast suggested he had evidence, why hasn't he come out with it ?

[Kevin_Lowe]

It's testable alright, Palast suggested he had evidence, why hasn't he come out with it ?

I googled "palast caging emails", which scarcely qualifies as a stroke of genius, and the top three hits were this (http://www.gregpalast.com/bushs-new-us-attorney-a-criminal) article by Palast claiming that vote caging is a felony under the Voting Rights Act, this other (http://www.gregpalast.com/rove-pick-for-us-attorney-resigns-following-conyers’-request-for-bbc-documents) article on former AG for Arkansas Tim Griffin resigning as the threat of an investigation into his vote caging activities loomed, and a wikpedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list) article about caging in the 2004 and 2008 elections with copious references.

So when you said...

Any news on Craig Palast and his 500 emails? I couldn't find anything.

...I guess you hadn't looked very hard.

It looks like vote caging was business as usual in the 2008 election, but it didn't significantly affect the outcome of the Presidential election.

[Pardalis]

I googled "palast caging emails", which scarcely qualifies as a stroke of genius, and the top three hits were this (http://www.gregpalast.com/bushs-new-us-attorney-a-criminal) article by Palast claiming that vote caging is a felony under the Voting Rights Act, this other (http://www.gregpalast.com/rove-pick-for-us-attorney-resigns-following-conyers%E2%80%99-request-for-bbc-documents) article on former AG for Arkansas Tim Griffin resigning as the threat of an investigation into his vote caging activities loomed, and a wikpedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list) article about caging in the 2004 and 2008 elections with copious references.

So when you said...

...I guess you hadn't looked very hard.

did you see the dates attached to these articles?

Please pay attention, I was asking for any "news" meaning any new development since last time, about the story in the OP.

[Kevin_Lowe]

did you see the dates attached to these articles?

Please pay attention, I was asking for any "news" meaning any new development since last time, about the story in the OP.

As far as I can tell Palast handed over all the emails, the government investigated the matter, and nobody has yet pressed charges against Griffin or anyone else. Possibly that's because the evidence is insufficient, possibly it's because the theory that caging is a felony has not been tested in court and might not be upheld, possibly it's because (as with torture) it would be "divisive"

Not that vote caging isn't pretty damned divisive itself, of course.

The wikipedia article had several links to caging articles related to the 2008 election.

So now what?

[Pardalis]

So now what?

Exactly.