OpEd: Doubtful Elections in George Bush's America

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_elizabet_051227_from_the_new_deal_to.htm

Sorry if dupe

December 27, 2005

From the New Deal to the Dirty Deal by Elizabeth Jordan and Oliver T. Dawshed

The present work discusses how to identify electoral fraud and estimate its scale. Reasons to believe it occurred in Florida in 2000 and, with less certainty, in 2004 are outlined. It should be noted, however, that statistical analysis on its own is not sufficient to prove fraud. Proof can only result from direct evidence gathered by a searching investigation. A political strategy must be combined with an analytic strategy to obtain that investigation.

A critical element of that strategy is to develop a genuinely impartial media. Even if it were shown that votes were not being stolen, media performance has been so defective that American elections cannot be said to be free and fair. Indeed, two former American presidents and several senior members of Congress have indicated that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were not.

much more...

:kick:

outlining the stinky stew we call elections in these United States.

Needs one more vote to get to greatest page.

:kick:

peace.

At the end of the article it states that these are pseudonyms. So who actually wrote the article and why are they using pseudonyms?

"flaming tire" form of retribution Dan Rather refered to in 2002?

http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/rather.htm

EDIT: Whomever they may be, thank you.

..."develop a genuinely impartial media?"

reform without media reform, but one could ask if we can have media reform without eletion reform just as easily. It's a catch 22.

"Reasons to believe it occurred in Florida in 2000 and, with less certainty in 2004 are outlined" can only mean that they have not read Conyer's texts or the overwhelmingly copious volume of material on DU by such people as Autorank and TIA, and are therefore writing about a subject for which they are extremely ill-prepared; or they are knaves and/or fools.

They also seem to overstate the weight given by the courts to circumstantial evidence. Anyway that caveat is academic, as there is abundant direct evidence. Anyway the lad who murdered his wife was convicted almost entirely on circumstantial evidence, I believe.

Their constant tentativeness in the face of the massive evidence of all kinds is like being coy about the noxious effects of an H-bomb. It doesn't make them sound like serious people, but like dilettantes out of their depth.

I suppose this is elitist on my part, but when TIA publishes a book with the intellectual (or, heck, physical) heft of Bush's Fifth Ace, I might consider the hypothesis that Dawshed and Jordan are foolish dilettantes by comparison.

I'm not saying that Dawshed and Jordan are cooler than TIA because they wrote a book. They may be cooler than TIA, but that wouldn't be much of a reason. My point is that they have sweat equity in the election fraud issue, and they are entitled to state their own views without crossreferencing DU heroes -- although actually, they cite quite a few.

I suspect that KCDM posted without reading the Jordan/Dawshed op ed. Possibly even without reading the quotation, since I can't think why he would cite the Conyers Report to criticize their statement about Florida.

Here's a link to some work by Dawshed and others -- by strange coincidence, actually the first link is to... umm, the Conyers Report. http://www.failureisimpossible.com/ElectionStudies/

It's not a matter of crediting DU heroes - who incidentally are national heroes, though that obviously passes over your head - it's about the CONTENT of their posts. Not the surface, the substance. It's very important to be able to discern the difference.

There was enough fraud of every imaginable kind in 2004, attested to by people from all walks of life, as could bend the national elections in every country in the world for the next few centuries. Were your friends as tentative in their reaction to the original Ukranian election result, which were evidently relatively straight!!!!? Not straight, but sorely lacking in the wonders produced by extra-terrestrial voting machines.

"There was enough fraud of every imaginable kind in 2004, attested to by people from all walks of life, as could bend the national elections in every country in the world for the next few centuries."

I can't help but speculate that you aren't the sort of person who takes words particularly literally. I have no idea what this statement actually means. Just how many votes do you suppose were stolen in 2004? and where were they stolen? (Obviously I don't expect exact counts.)

Jordan and Dawshed have tried to address one part of that question for one state. You apparently are content to say, "Lots! Lots and lots! Everyone knows it!" OK, that's a choice.

...in Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade.

This is the Berkley Grad students' number. I'll buy it because it matches voting patterns, registration, and previous Democratic pluralities, particularly in Broward.

Simon bought it too... He just didn't buy that it correlated to a particular machine type ("Something happened..").

Maybe twice that number (300,000 to 600,000) statewide...

That's not counting 700,000 disenfranchised (worst felony disenfranchisement law in the country, including Texas - and dating directly from Reconstruction, to boot). That's not counting 200,000, conservatively, purged from the voting rolls (and almost 200,000 more that were almost purged). And that's not counting 100,000 plus that were spoiled in 2000 but supposedly were counted in 2004 because of new technology... no uptick in the effected precincts.

Jordan and Dawshed did a lot of work. The website isn't bad either.

e.g. the SSRC write-up, available at http://www.vote.caltech.edu/media/documents/InterimReport122204-1.pdf , numbered pages 8-12 or so.

Incidentally, Florida may have the worst felony disenfranchisement law in the country, but according to Mike McDonald's numbers, Georgia has more than twice as high a disenfranchisement rate. (The rate in Texas is higher too.) I hope it's clear that I'm not saying that to make Florida's sound better.

got news for you. Their bottom line is, we can't be sure of "significant" fraud on the available evidence about 2004, so let's forget about it, and concentrate on sorting the system out. Well, how about doing both, eh? Going after the "censored" evidence of fraud and those responsible for the fraud and the censorship.

See the top post in the Greatest Discussions thread, about the evidence of massive voter registration fraud in Ohio coalescing.

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I too was struck by the tentativeness on 2004 but any voice raising questions is a voice that needs to be heard. I'm glad to see someone concentrating on Florida. Ohio got the spotlight as "the new Florida" and Blackwell lived up to his promise (as did O'Dell). What a sorry collection of morons we have in the press. They say, " Even if it were shown that votes were not being stolen, media performance has been so defective that American elections cannot be said to be free and fair. Indeed, two former American presidents and several senior members of Congress have indicated that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were not." Regrettably, this won't change unless the market demands it. I think we're nearing that point. The horrors of the Bush administration are directly related to election 2004 and it will be a small national spark that will set off a raging fire storm of critique and conclusion that "he probably stole the darn thing." The public will be right and the press will get off it's lazy ass and do something, only for the sake of expediency but, again, who cares if they produce the truth.

Best regards!
autorank

I know you're right, any questioning is better than none. But it rankled like mad that they were talking as if there was some suspicion.... that the 2004 election, too.... might not have been above board. I'd heard of "damning with faint praise", but never expected to witness "damning with faint condemnation". When you think all those poor people who waited for hours in queues to vote, only to be denied their constituional right by double-dyed villains - who I hope one day will pay with jail terms. Young snakes-in-suits looking over their shoulders while they voted, thuggish police, the litany is endless. And that's just a sample of the impeccably-attested voter suppression.

Truth to tell it was worse than surreal. Kafka would have been stumped, for sure. The thing is, beyond the surreal has long been part of the fabric American politics. It's only if you live outside the US (and you don't have to worry that maybe you're going mad, and its actually fairly normal) that the pantomime hits you with its full force. Jospeh Heller could never have dreamed this up in a million years. Nor J D Rowlings for that matter. But Eisenhower, a Republican himself, who knew them all too well, could see them coming from afar, adn all too clearly.

(from another thread)

But here's the best evidence that 2004 was stolen...motive, means, inclination

Motive: keep power, we al know that one...they must stay in power, must have their war, must have their rake off with tax cuts etc., must avoid global warming, must have power to avoid prosecution.

Means: American elections have had problems since colonial times. There's an infrastructure out there available. The voting machine companies, at that time, were all right wing...the voting machine security was/is a joke, and some employees at a key company had big time records for computer fraud! The machines are just crude computers that can be programmed to flip votes, incorrectly tabulate votes, and such. AND nobody can look to see if there's a problem because the machines are "proprietary," their "software and methods" cannot be examined by public officials or the public.

INCLINATION: If you defend 2004 here are the people you're defending, the people you argue so hard DID NOT STEAL THE ELECTION, arguments around this forum since the the suspicions started.

Naysayers, the people you defend did the following:

--Let a city be destroyed through inaction;
--Let several hundred thousand survivors starve for days by inaction;
--Spend $26 million on voting machines for Louisiana in 2004...
--...and denied $24 million the same year (2004) for levee maintenance;
--Lied about WMD;
--Paid people to lie about WMD (Chalabi);
--Allowed NYT and Miller to lie about WMD;
--Let Osama sit while attacking Iraq based on lies;
--Got thousands of our people killed and tens of thousands injured by the bogus war;
--Ruined our good standing from Clinton throughout the world;
--Let tens of thousands suffer from illness, lack of medical care, no power, etc. in Iraq;
--Ignored global warming--lied about it;
--Ignored the uninsured in this country;
--Allowed drug companies to rip-off seniors and the rest of us;
--Listened in on phone and other conversations illegally;
--Appointed lunatics to the Federal bench thus perpetuating the madness;
--Tolerated a culture of corruption in their party (e.g., DeLay) and
--Actually put mercury back in the eco system.

So, when naysayers show up to defend the result of election 2004, these are the people they are defending.

What's stealing an election in light of all this; and, what of all this could not have been accomplished without stealing the election?

New: How some people can defend Bush and his legitimacy in light of all this is truly amazing. Such defense defies any degree of rationality necessary to function responsibly in society. It's not the same as denial in terms of lack of or mis information. It's defense with knowedge of the huge questions about 2004 juxtaposed to the above list of crimes. Breath taking, isn't it?

machines are "proprietary," their "software and methods" cannot be examined by public officials or the public".

Stalin would have been proud of it.... and lost in admiration. Poor old Kafka, though. It would have done his head in competely.

No wonder this is so brutal. I think you're right, Kafka would have had real trouble with this.

Our travails are really "The Trial!" Would help if it stops sometime soon.