"Kerry Won"
I want to know more about this "spoilage"... and I wonder what Palast would have to say about the Diebold machines. I believe they used those in the urban areas of Ohio as well...
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php
And then there's this piece, from an obviously pissed Mark Crispin Miller, who manages quite nicely to stay coherent even when he's mad (I need to work on developing that skill!):
First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it.
It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he
got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians,
and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were
eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy
to get Bush elected.
But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new
voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that Bush
got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do with the
electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely untrustworthy, and
that's why the Republicans use them. Then there's the fact that the
immediate claim of Ohio was not contested by the news media -- when Andrew
Card came out and claimed the state, not only were the votes in Ohio not
counted, they weren't even all cast.
I would have to hear a much stronger argument for the authenticity, or I
should say the veracity, of this popular vote for Bush before I'm willing to
believe it. If someone can prove to me that it happened, that Bush somehow
pulled 8 million magic votes out of a hat, OK, I'll accept it. I'm an
independent, not a Democrat, and I'm not living in denial.
And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as Democratic a
state as Guatemala used to be. The news media is obliged to make the
Republicans account for all these votes, and account for the way they were
counted. Simply to embrace this result as definitive is irrational. But
there is every reason to question it ... I find it beyond belief that the
press in this formerly democratic country would not have made the integrity
of the electoral system a front page, top-of-the-line story for the last
three years. I worked and worked and worked to get that story into the
media, and no one touched it until your guy did.
I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him about
it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa was really
indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down at me -- he's
about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't register. It set off
all his conspiracy-theory alarms and he just wasn't listening.
Talk to anyone from a real democracy -- from Canada or any European country
or India. They are staggered to discover that 80 percent of our touch-screen
electronic voting machines have no paper trail and are manufactured by
companies owned by Bush Republicans. But there is very little sense of
outrage here. Americans for a host of reasons have become alienated from the
spirit of the Bill of Rights and that should not be tolerated.
---Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor of communications at New
York University, and author, most recently, of "Cruel and Unusual:
Bush/Cheney's New World Order."---
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php
And then there's this piece, from an obviously pissed Mark Crispin Miller, who manages quite nicely to stay coherent even when he's mad (I need to work on developing that skill!):
First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it.
It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he
got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians,
and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were
eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy
to get Bush elected.
But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new
voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that Bush
got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do with the
electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely untrustworthy, and
that's why the Republicans use them. Then there's the fact that the
immediate claim of Ohio was not contested by the news media -- when Andrew
Card came out and claimed the state, not only were the votes in Ohio not
counted, they weren't even all cast.
I would have to hear a much stronger argument for the authenticity, or I
should say the veracity, of this popular vote for Bush before I'm willing to
believe it. If someone can prove to me that it happened, that Bush somehow
pulled 8 million magic votes out of a hat, OK, I'll accept it. I'm an
independent, not a Democrat, and I'm not living in denial.
And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as Democratic a
state as Guatemala used to be. The news media is obliged to make the
Republicans account for all these votes, and account for the way they were
counted. Simply to embrace this result as definitive is irrational. But
there is every reason to question it ... I find it beyond belief that the
press in this formerly democratic country would not have made the integrity
of the electoral system a front page, top-of-the-line story for the last
three years. I worked and worked and worked to get that story into the
media, and no one touched it until your guy did.
I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him about
it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa was really
indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down at me -- he's
about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't register. It set off
all his conspiracy-theory alarms and he just wasn't listening.
Talk to anyone from a real democracy -- from Canada or any European country
or India. They are staggered to discover that 80 percent of our touch-screen
electronic voting machines have no paper trail and are manufactured by
companies owned by Bush Republicans. But there is very little sense of
outrage here. Americans for a host of reasons have become alienated from the
spirit of the Bill of Rights and that should not be tolerated.
---Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor of communications at New
York University, and author, most recently, of "Cruel and Unusual:
Bush/Cheney's New World Order."---