State Exit Poll Deviations by Voting Method ( x )

From: Up-to-date compendium of TIA's work on 2004 election fraud
x-post: Updated ( State Exit Poll Deviations by Voting Method)

That's obscene.

to the "Optical Scanners - 37%" figure?

That seems like it should not be possible.

...so it is quite easily possible.

programming, and so are the central tabulators, and so are the scanners used to enter Absentee Ballot votes into this extremely insecure and insider riggable system.

And with some states doing a ZERO PERCENT audit (automatic recount), and even the best of states doing only a meager, totally inadequate 1% audit, the system is virtually DESIGNED TO BE rigged.

By contrast, Venezuela uses electronic voting, but it is an OPEN SOURCE CODE system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and even with an open source code system, they handcount a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud.

Our system is ABSURD. It's in Alice's Wonderland. It's upside down, backwards and inside out from what it should be--just as everything else is, in this government. 70% of the people oppose the Iraq War and wanted it ended, and OF COURSE, then, they elect a Democratic Congress that ESCALATES the war, and lards $100 billion more of our tax dollars on this horrendous crime, to keep it going.

This is the difference between transparent and non-transparent vote counting. In Venezuela, they have a president and legislature that are using the country's oil revenues to help the poor. Here, we have a president and legislature that is slaughtering poor people to steal their oil.

It couldn't be clearer.

Optiscans are the Corporate Rulers' fallback position. They figured we'd get onto the DREs (touchscreens)--especially with this dumbfuck president and his Darth Vader puppetmaster that people were supposed to have voted for. So corporate has just the thing--ANOTHER billion dollar system that can ALSO rig elections, so long as it is not strongly audited. And this is the fallback position that our Democratic Party leaders fell back to, when the grass roots wouldn't be silenced about stolen elections. It sucks. And, if we want our country back, we have to dump these machines into 'Boston Harbor,' or, at the least, demand a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT audit. We can't trust Diebold and ES&S in ANY part of our voting system. We can't even trust them to print ballots. See what Dan Rather has to say about ES&S printing of the punchcard ballots in Florida 2000.

Great documentary: "The Trouble With Touchscreens," Dan Rather, www.HD.net. (It's not just about touchscreens. It's about the whole corrupt system of corporate interference in our elections.)

...or, if you prefer, outsourced it to the private sector. It is hardly surprising that said sector has a different agenda than did the civil servants who used to run our elections.

It IS surprising (and disgusting) that this country full of woolly-hided fools let it happen, and don't care now that it has. The majority of the American people are lemmings, plain and simple.

any of the other names they are called, meaning that they are stupid, uninformed or don't care. The fraudulent election system that was installed between 2002 and 2004--the fast-tracking of electronic voting machines, all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--is THE most black-holed news story of all time, with both Democratic and Republican Party leaderships SUPPORTING this fascist coup in our voting system and contributing to making this a forbidden topic.

As with most important issues, it is difficult for the American people to get good information, but this particular issue--the most important issue of all--was quite deliberately kept under the radar, and our Democratic Party leaders bear special responsibility for this, because people look to them to keep the voting system honest, and look to them for guidance on it.

I have a well-educated, well-informed friend who was unaware of what had been done to our voting system. She lives in the all-paper-ballot-mail-in state, Oregon. When I told her the basic facts of the system that had been installed almost everywhere else, she said, "But the Democrats wouldn't let that happen, would they?"

The important point is not "would they" let it happen; the important point is that they DID let it happen. That is a fact. But this friend's faith in our democracy and its institutions, and particularly in the Democratic Party, currently "the opposition," who would supposedly have a big stake in accurate vote counts, blinded her. And no one in the party leadership, and no one in the media, and nothing that she read, told her otherwise, or set off those citizen alarm bells that would have activated someone like this to look into it.

Is she a lemming? Is she a sheeple? Is she a woolly-hided fool? Is she uncaring? Absolutely not. None of these things are true of her. Take my word for it.

She. simply. didn't. know.

Now how much brainwashing, black-holing of news, and propaganda do you think it takes to create a situation like that?

An intense effort, I would say, of all the guilty parties--our war profiteering corporate news monopolies, fascist Republicans, collusive or scared Democrats, and the gaggle of global corporate predators and war profiteers who are running our government.

Do you know what has been THE MOST difficult problem for those who have tried to reform our election system? Collusive Democrats! They are blocking reform right now, in Congress.

Let me give you two stats that, to me, say everything. 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb. '03). That is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and, believe me, it was). Did you see this significant opposition reflected in corporate monopoly news coverage and opinion in the leadup to the war? No. Not even in the paper that DID the poll--the NYT--which buried this info in its back pages, and on its front pages, ran false story after false story about Iraq WMDs, blowing the trumpet for war. (Note: Other polls showed 54%-55% opposed.) And this was true across the board. This 56% majority against the war has now grown to a whopping 70% majority--an epochal anti-war majority--and STILL it gets little or no coverage, and now these corporate news monopolies are on to the NEXT war.

Are the people who comprised that 56% early majority against the war lemmings? Sheeple? Woolly-hided fools? Are they uncaring? What about the people who make up this whopping 70% antiwar majority?

I think you have to conclude that these people--the majority of Americans--care quite a lot. The first group--the early opposition to the war--took the trouble to find alternative information, or used their past experience (Vietnam, say), or their native distrust of Bush, to conclude that war was not justified. And what of the 70% against the war now? They took the trouble to find alternative information, and to think things through, and changed their minds.

The two words that come to my mind to describe these folks--most of America--are DIS-EMPOWERED and DISENFRANCHISED. Not sheeple. Not uncaring. But mystified, as to why our democratic system is not working. Lied to about it. Denied information. And constantly blasted, 24/7, relentlessly, with news media whose MAIN MESSAGE is that the great peace-minded, justice-minded, progressive American majority is dead, and that the rightwing is on the rise. Result: People feel isolated and alone, in their progressive views. They feel dis-empowered. And they are, in fact, disenfranchised in many ways--but most critically in the actual stealing of their votes.

It takes TIME to overcome this kind of pervasive propaganda, with word-of-mouth (supplemented by our new "committees of correspondence"--the internet). 56% of Americans figured things out, early on, as to the war--despite being drenched with propaganda. They're pretty smart, it seems to me. And more people caught up with them--now 70%. The same thing has to happen with regard to the voting machines--and IS happening. This is much harder thing to get across--not that their government invented a war, not that their government lied to them about war--they've seen that before--but that their government is TREASONOUS, that their government is directly, methodically rigging their elections. It's hard for people to take in. And when they do take it in, it's hard to know where to begin to fix it--because it really and truly is a conspiracy of the political establishment, with both parties involved.

A lot of the early election reformers had this experience: They would talk to a Democratic elections official, or a Democratic legislator, about this outrageous situation of "TRADE SECRET" vote counting, and they would get blank stares. Behind those blank stares was collusion, corruption, fear and ignorance, in various combinations.

Blank stares.

The Corporate Rulers (and their lapdog politicians) WANT us to believe that we are sheeple, that we are powerless, that we don't care. They want us to feel defeated and dis-empowered. These are their major weapons against us. And if you keep repeating them--and speaking of the American people with contempt--you are merely heaping abuse upon the already abused. You are not helping. Take a different tack. Think of the American people who saw the war coming, who opposed it in great numbers--the majority--who marched against it, in the hundreds of thousands, and, in 2004, voted against it--in what was more than likely a landslide--and in 2006, voted against it again--overwhelmingly--and still the war goes on. Think how they must feel. And don't try to make them feel WORSE.

It's a long and difficult project to restore this democracy. Critical to this long struggle will be restoring the American peoples' confidence in themselves. Think of them as a "battered wife." It's an apt image. How do you restore confidence, and strength, and help people face the truth, and help them build a better life--or, in this case, a better country? You don't do it by bad-mouthing them, and attacking their self-image--which is already quite poor. A lot of people know that things are very wrong. But they are at a loss to know what to do about them. Provide suggestions--some way they can contribute to repairing the election system, for instance. Be very practical about it--just as if you were dealing with a "battered wife," whose first need is, perhaps, the confidence to go job hunting, or practical suggestions for finding an apartment, or a list of child care facilities and use of a phone. She doesn't meed to be told it's her fault. She doesn't need to hear negative comments about her character. She needs to take the practical steps to start a new life, and THOSE items--the doing of them--build confidence.

I am by no means saying to take a pollyanna attitude, and to "only look at the positive side," and go around saying only sunny things, and not acknowledging, describing and analyzing what we are up against. People need THE TRUTH (--just as a "battered wife" needs to hear the truth about her situation, so that she doesn't remain in illusion-land about it). And if you continue to believe that the majority of Americans are "sheeple," and that is the truth to you, go on speaking it. I'm just asking you to think about it. I settled the question in my own mind, mostly by those stats--56%, 70%. Not sheeple. Disenfranchised (and I didn't have to look far to understood how it was done). But if you are right--that most Americans are "sheeple" and don't care--then what do you do about THAT? Education, information and de-programming, I would say. I myself concluded that, while those things are always important in the public life of a democracy, what is more important, right now, is counting all the votes.

And BTW, you are quite right that counting all of the votes is the key to it all. However, my assessment of the American populace as a whole stands. Here's why:

Since 2001, I have been out there trying to alert people to the danger. I started with local election officials, who just couldn't believe what they saw. They couldn't argue with it, but to believe the facts would be incredibly upsetting, so they chose to pretend that they were still in charge, that the nice young men from Triad and Diebold and ES&S weren't in control of the vote counts. They chose comfort over truth.

Ditto with House staffers in DC. They called in experts who validated the evidence presented, and... did nothing. The stark fact of election fraud paralyzes the elected: they wonder if, perhaps, their own elections were rigged. They shrink from the thought, and again choose comfort.

National media, likewise. Some don't want the story because it won't sell advertisements like gossip or innuendo, and some because their editors don't want them wasting their time. It's so damned easy to serve up pablum, isn't it.

Finally, those fool sheeple. Yes, they ARE SHEEP. There have been stories out, HBO, and Dan Rather. I and others have gone directly to voters and shown them why the machines are not to be trusted. And what do they do? They walk up to that touch-screen device AND USE IT ANYWAY.

This cannot be put down to mere ignorance. It is laziness, a desire to be comfortable.

There was election fraud in the Ukraine, not too long ago. The people took to the streets in force, and demanded (and got) the published results lined up with the actual tallies. What happened in America?

JACK-FUCKING-SHIT, that's what. There were news stories, and people shrugged. Lazy, fat, sheep.

I am so god-damned sick of this failed experiment in Democracy. People wave flags by the millions, but will they take ten minutes and DO something? Hell, no. They'll just buy flag stickers and put 'em on their cars.

It is kind of you to take a better view of our fellow citizens, but I can't. Not any more. They deserve whatever they get, because they got fat and lazy and forgot that freedom isn't free. It requires work. They won't serve on Jury duty. They take the quick and easy way to do EVERYTHING, including voting.

Flash on this for a minute: Everything that Bush has done happened because of election fraud. Iraq? Election fraud. The rape of the Treasury? Election fraud. The gang-rape of the constitution? Election fraud

WERE IT NOT FOR ELECTION FRAUD, INCLUDING THE SUPREME COURT DECISION, NONE OF THIS WOULD BE HAPPENING. It is the root cause, and is largely ignored.

I invite you to look at the number of postings on election fraud versus almost any other topic. It is one reason I rarely post on the topic, because I know that very few will read it. Even among the activist community there is a tendency to deny that the elephant is in the room, even as we drown in its shit. I spend my energies elsewhere, in the hope that I will find something that will work.

I will not absolve myself, or any other American citizen, of our sins. We as a populace have failed to protect our country, and still make excuses for ourselves. Individuals have tried and failed, and the masses lumber along to the precipice.

Yes, Lemmings. Yes, Sheep. Nice words and patience are not called for, it is time for bitch-slaps and bricks upside the head.

making excuses for the uncaring or the lazy, and those with their heads in the sand. I have been thinking strategically. What could start turning things around the fastest? And, with 70% disapproval of the war among the American people, the obvious place to start to by counting all their votes, in an open, transparent, PUBLIC process. It won't get us a good president, because that office is the most blockaded--by money, by Diebold and, I'm sure, by other means (spying, blackmail, hitmen at the ready...). But we CAN start electing congress members and other officials both to enact, protect and expand transparent vote counting, to watchdog other government functions, and to start proposing REAL reform.

MOST revolutions have had a tough, knowledgeable, activist core, widening circles of various levels of activism, and a whole lot of people who are uninvolved, maybe some of whom seem uncaring, others who are in fact uncaring, some who can be rallied for certain activities, others who can't be--sometimes for valid reasons (heavy responsibilities, care of children, the sick, the elderly) but most of whom are being harmed by fascist rule, and most of whom, if you asked them, DO care. We make a mistake thinking of, say, the masses storming the Bastille, as typical of revolutions. They are more often successful by long, hard work by the activist core, many efforts along the way--some of which fail, but plant seeds, ideas, in others' minds that they can throw off their shackles--and slow, steady work to educate and organize.

To expect a people who have been so long propagandized, with such special care taken to create illusions for them, to fool them, and to disempower and disenfranchise them, and for whom revolution is so difficult, given the size and complexity of the country, the overwhelming oppressive power of the government, the overwhelming corruption of the government, in every sphere, and things like the cost of travel, the pervasive marginalization of protest, the cost of travel, and many other factors, is being very un-strategic, I think--and dreaming, so that, when it doesn't happen, when people are not instantly mobilized, and seem deaf, you feel disappointed, and rail against them.

I really think that you underestimate what has been done to the American people--especially psychologically--and you should really be marveling at their resistance to the propaganda. 70% of them opposed to the war, 60% to 90% of them still with progressive views (depending on the issue)--and they can't get the war stopped, and they can't get good government, and they can't get their interests attended to.

I'm a long time activist myself, and I've seen, and been involved in, a lot of public activities. I've sat in crushingly boring "public meetings," where citizens are limited to 3 minutes, and what is stake is the forest, our planet, global warming, our life, our children's lives. 3 minutes. Then our corrupt officials--who are themselves bored to death and are enduring this process--democracy--for the personal rewards they will get, move on--and, of course, approve whatever the corporate predator wants to do. And this, in a state that touts its strong environmental laws. I've been in courtrooms, where, as an advocate of the public interest, I've been ordered to remain in my seat, by a "bought and paid for" judge, and watched over by an armed guard, so that I cannot consult with our organization's lawyer, out in the hall. I've seen the "Banana Republic" oppression of this supposedly free and democratic country, in small ways and big ones.

And I've been through, and participated in, a couple of revolutions here, including the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. So I have some experience, and I'm also widely read. The oppression of the American people, right now, is like no other oppression I have ever seen or read about. It is mostly a psychological phenomenon--a feeling of powerlessness, so that many people who really do care may seem like they don't, and also, they are absolutely baffled as to what to do. They see the uselessness of street protest (or, they become convinced of its uselessness by how it is portrayed in the media), and/or, they become distance from it, psychologically, when the government is completely deaf to the vast majority of people--who, for instance, want this war ended. You have to have a PARTLY democratic and accountable system for protest to work. You have to have office holders who CARE what people think.

It is very, very, very difficult for people to understand how bad things are--and they mix up their desire for good government and their belief in democracy with the illusions that are spun for them, that these things are real, or will somehow start working right, at some point--and when you attack them for their faith in these illusions, you are attacking their core desires and beliefs as a human being.

This oppression is of a very unusual kind. On the one hand, there are so many things wrong, that activists get distracted, and torn among various crises, or get too wrought up and burn themselves out. On the other hand, you have a population of poorly nourished, media-harassed, disempowered citizens, many of whom endure long commutes (with almost nothing but rightwing rants on the radio, or fascist-shaped "news"--so they turn that off, for relief, and listen to music, or vegetate), whose lives and pocketbooks are being slowly squeezed--a slow frog boil--so that they live an illusion of prosperity, but are beset with anxieties about credit card debt, losing their homes, losing their jobs--and someone asks them to come to an all-day government meeting in a distant city, where they might get 3 minutes to plea for the forest, at the end of a long, excruciatingly boring meeting, at which THEIR time to speak is never specified--a meeting DESIGNED TO repel public participation. And they're supposed to think that that MATTERS, that that is going to CHANGE anything? The alternative: protest, shut down the meeting, go to jail. Or file a lawsuit. And none of that matters either. And most people can't go to jail or file a lawsuit. Maybe they can contribute money to organizations that do. That's about it.

The basic social contract between the people and their representatives has been broken--yet the forms remain. And it's THAT reality that we political activists, who have figured things out, need to address. How do you rebuild a broken democracy, when the people are not yet being rounded up in detention camps, and live in the illusion that they never will be? How do you RE-EMPOWER people, restore their self-images as citizens, and revive their natural desires for good government and progressive policy, in this situation?

It's just not a matter of BLAMING them. That is useless. It's a matter of finding the way--in THIS circumstance--to inspire and energize them. You don't think Martin Luther King had this problem? Or Gandhi? Or Nelson Mandela? The vast majority of oppressed people who get used to things as they are, and try to avoid trouble--were a great drag on all three of them. And I happen to know how that worked in the south--scared people, people who didn't want to "rock the boat," people with heavy family responsibilities. The courage of some is all the more amazing and laudable, versus the great gray middle, who benefited from de-segregation, but would never have integrated a diner or a school, on their own, and held back and hid out while others did. But at least these leaders were trying to activate people who could see and feel their oppression, because it was so overt. And all three had history on their side, and liberal establishments with many sympathizers with their cause.

You can't revolutionize a nation--particularly this massive nation, in the condition it's in--without doing the ground work, and you must do it with a spirit of detachment, knowing that what you do may not bear fruit for many years. This is not going to be turned around in a month, or a year. And things may have to get worse before they get better. And, ultimately, you have to respect the people you are fighting for, or at least have compassion for them. If they want democracy, then democracy they will have. Nothing can stop them. Nothing! It's up to them. You can't create democracy FOR them. That is not democracy. All you can do is what you do--and I praise and bless you a thousand times a thousand--for what you HAVE done. It is not lost work. It ripples throughout the common consciousness of the nation. It inspires. It plants seeds.

So, if you are moved to bitch-slap people and sends bricks upside the head, do even that with detachment. If it works, great! If it doesn't--if they crawl back into their shells of illusion--try something else. Step by step education. Baby steps of activism. And choose your ground carefully. Personally, I think that, if the Iraq antiwar movement had focused on election fraud and election reform, they would be a lot further along in their goals than they are. Protesting to Bush, or this Congress, about the war may be important for moral witness, but it does nothing to address the power situation. Transparent vote counting does. It hands power back to the people--or, is the bottom line condition for doing that. Got to start with what the power of the people is, how they lost it, and how to get it back.

You are on the right ground, in my opinion. That is the ground to fight on. If you're tired and frustrated, and too angry, give it up for a while. Rest, recuperate. Live to fight another day. Long term thing, democracy. Long fight ahead of us. But, some day, enlightenment will dawn, and it will seem almost magical how fast things can change--as if the transformation of America toward any even better democracy came out of nowhere.

...I'll take a break in 2009, maybe. I expect it'll do a world of good.

That "37%" pertains to the portion of the deviation attributable to Optical Scanners amongst all National Voting Methods.

4,258,000  (4258k) == Total Deviation of Exit-Polled "Votes" from the Recorded Vote "Count" in 2004   == 100% 
1,564,000  (1564k) == Exit Poll deviation from Recorded Vote associated w Optical Scanners            ==  37%

The direction of the deviation from precinct Exit Poll totals is indicated by its sign: A "-" indicates a deviation that "went against Kerry", or -- to put it in Edison-Mitofsky's phrasing -- "a negative WPE represents a Democratic overstatement in the exit poll and a positive WPE represents a Republican overstatement in the exit poll." For commentary on Edison-Mitofsky's approach and accuracy see: 2004-2006 Election Fraud Analytics:   Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ :
and PART II: RESPONSE to the TruthIsAll FAQ -- Describing the Exit Poll Discrepancies

For details with data-links of the Exit Poll / Vote Count discrepancy controversy and how the 4 million vote discrepancy figure can be ascertained, see: Three Preliminary Unadjusted Exit Polls of Interviewed-Voters' Votes   vs.   A Final Exit Poll "Forced" to Match the Recorded "Count" of Votemarks