Message from ABC: Nightline Senior Producer

VOTE 2004: FAIR OR FRAUD?
Jan. 19, 2005

In this very partisan atmosphere, it may not surprise you to hear that there are some people out there who believe the winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential race was John Kerry -- that he should be the focus of the extravagant inaugural parade that will make its way up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House tomorrow. These very vocal critics believe that because of voting irregularities in Ohio on Election Day, George Bush actually lost the election. Some go even further to say that the Republicans conspired to steal it. Washington has been dressed up once again for the festivities, so it seems a little late, but tonight we'll listen to the arguments and see if they have any merit.



If there had been more voting machines and less partisan oversight of the voting in Ohio, John Kerry would have carried the state, and had the electoral votes to carry the election. That's what some people think. Many of these arguments need to be looked at in the context of the vote in 2000, which also had serious problems and where partisan politics did play a role. It ended up in the Supreme Court and there are still people who believe Al Gore won it fair and square. But do the irregularities in Ohio rise to the same level? Or are we being subjected to much more concentrated criticism because of that anonymous engine of information called the Internet?

Part of the problem surrounding the various arguments about what happened in Ohio (and other states) is that those exit polls threw people off once again. By early afternoon on Election Day the poll results were being leaked very early on, showing that John Kerry was in the winner's column. Those results were turned upside down later by the actual results. But those early results had a lot of people convinced. "Nightline" correspondent Chris Bury, who was in Ohio on Election Day, sorts through all of this to see if any of the arguments that George Bush lost have any merit.

And what about some of the political shenanigans in past presidential elections? There are many great stories about the way political machines used to operate and who got paid to make them run. Ted Koppel will chat with two entertaining Washington watchers who will gingerly remove those political skeletons from the closet, just for some perspective.

We hope you'll join us.

Gerry Holmes & The Nightline Staff
Senior Producer
Washington Bureau

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Write them a letter!

It's so frigging embarrassing! As if it's not bad enough to lose the election, we have to be humiliated by our own loony toony party members.

Yeah, we need election reform, but making these wild claims that Kerry actually won without a shred of proof to support that is really just over the top at this point. You know darn well they got most of that conspiracy theorist stuff here.

The American voting is as flawed as any in the world. Proprietory software with no papertrails cannot be audited. Why not challenge Bush's legitimacy? He really didn't win in 2000.

and look at the software and the data and the fraud will be apparent. Since we have not been allowed to examine one single machine, it is impossible to prove anything. The fact of the matter is that the 2004 General election was rigged in numerous ways, that are well documented. But just like Moore's 9-11 which is mostly a collection of news clips and actually videos of events, the religious insane and bushbots will continue to deny anything that does not fit into their faith based reality.

The stats prove the fraud but must Americans don't understand or trust basic mathematics. However without access to the machines and the data records none of these stats can be proved.

or a whistleblower from Diebold will come forward......we will hear the truth.

having uninformed, clueless people like you in our party going along with and expounding on repuke talking points. I'm not about to convince you of anything. The only thing that needs to be said to you is, start becoming more current on the issues of e-voting and the proprietary software used to log and tabulate the vote totals. You can start with Rep. John Conyers 100 page report of the Ohio irregularities to get yourself started.

If we can't look at the data then how can we assume these elections are legit?

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to postulate their theories, and there is enough evidence to make me believe they are onto something, I'm just not sure what.

The DNC has a message board, perhaps they won't be as much of an embarassment.

How can we possibly certify ( make legitimate) an election when we can not verify (prove) it?

My point is that between the vapor votes on privately owned machines and the nation-wide voter suppression & disenfranchisement, there is no way (other than the exit polls--but this still does not account for the disenfranchisement) to actually say how many votes were cast either way.

I don't allow cheap con men to rob me in my personal life, I'll be damned if I'll shut-up while our nation takes a drastic turn towards a fascist state.

BTW, my name of Zola was given to me by friends of our family to describe the warrior bitch I become when someone thinks that they are going to f with me or mine.

Conan O'Brian!

Kerry and his team thought they did not in the sense that they wouldn't add up to a 140,000 vote swing.
It remains to be proven if that was the case or not.

the point is that there is no way to get a real count of the votes because of proprietary software owned by companies loyal to the Republicans. It's banana republic time. That this is acceptable to anyone in this country is absolutely mind boggling to me. It blows my mind even more to hear Democrats who don't seem to care.

If not then that is not the issue in Ohio. Whereas it is definitely the issues in Miami-Dade and Broward.

... designed to lay the whole issue definitively to rest.

Or will it?

As with yesterday's articles and discussion about how the exit polls really were wrong.

Isn't THIS a LITTLE late??? What's the deal Now??? Where Have they Been.

Don't get me wrong ANY coverage Nationally is wonderful, but I think it should have STARTED Nov. 3rd!!!!!

It aired last night, was a lame attempt to "put the issue to rest" when they never bothered to cover it in the first place. Biggest pile of steam shit I've seen in the MSM in a long time. I have sworn off MSM, but thought I'd tune in and see what Ted had to say. After all, he was bold enough to show the names of the dead soldiers from Iraq. But Ted's gone UPTOWN, looking for a good seat at the coronation today, I guess.

I mentioned it was too bad they had to service their corporate master (sponsor) Ford Motor, who is also donating $250,000 to today's coronation instead of the American public. To close, I pasted in the 14 defining characteristics of fascism and thanked them for contributing to the "cause."

http://www.omnicenter.org/warpeacecollection/facism.htm#14fascism

I spend so much time zapping letters to different Media outlets, but mostly get "auto responses!" I hope you had better luck!

I saw this hideous example of urinalism last night, with the smug and twinkly asshole Ted Koppel whitewashing history. There wasn't any mention of the irregularities of the machines, the ownership of the companies, the disparity between exit polls where there was a paper trail (very close) and where there wasn't (way off, and always in favor of Bush). The very existence of the machines themselves wasn't even mentioned.

No mention was made at all. None. This is disgraceful.

There was also very little mention in Boxer's brief flap with the electors.

It is now ingrained in our collective memory that electronic voting is just fine, and if that's so, we are to inevitably become a theocratic economic monarchy and a murderous imperial conquerer.

YOU THINK? WHORES!