As Fast as Blogs See Vote Fraud, Web Is Proving Rumors Wrong - NYT 11/12

As Fast as Blogs See Vote Fraud, Web Is Proving Rumors Wrong
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html
<snip>---
The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.

In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, also accelerated the resolution of questions that, in an earlier age, might have lingered and fed conspiracy theories for years.
---<snip>

... one cannot help but wonder why everyone is so scared and all these stories are suddenly appearing with such intensity and speed.

Nothing else we've ever done has provoked this response.

hope.

when it's the right-wing blogs making all of the noise?

Poor NYTimes, too gutless to cover the story, so scared they will miss out and be shown up as the whores they are.

when insisting on Swiftboat nonsense as 'truths' or how Kerry was really a VietCong in disguise.

Blogs were heralded as the new investigators. The power of many.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1226959/posts

On September 10, Dan Rather told us: "I know that this story is true. I believe that the witnesses and the documents are authentic. We wouldn't have gone to air if they would not have been. There isn't going to be (an) apology."


The arrogance at CBS prevailed. In an absurd announcement, Rather labeled anyone not agreeing with his liberal baloney "partisan political operatives."


Throughout this fiasco, knowledgeable bloggers on the Internet joined forces, traded information and published what they found for comment. There were very extended, in-depth discussions concerning the memos on Free Republic<1>. Drudge posted much of the information and links to some of the discussions. Talk radio jumped on the topic. Fox News presented a lot of the evidence for those without computers to see. And, clearly, CBS quickly became the laughing stock of the Old Media.


It took 10 full days for CBS to finally start to admit they were attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the American people. On September 20, Rather announced: "I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. ... We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry."


...

Jonathan Klein, a former senior executive at "60 Minutes," said on Fox News a few days ago that "Bloggers have no checks and balances. . . . (It's) a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas."


Well, Jonathan, take it from someone who has been writing op-eds on this New Media for over ten years: that just is not true at all.

...

Simply put, Old Media is just too biased and makes too many subtle errors to keep up with New Media. Which means, this is probably the last Presidential campaign that Old Media will be able to influence.

... this election was stolen? Why do they only focus on the evidence that CAN be explained away like the Dixiecrat theories and totally ignore the "rest"...

the dixiecrat "theory" that they use so conveniently to show us wrong I think will fail miserably.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35025-2004Sep20.html

It was like throwing a match on kerosene-soaked wood. The ensuing blaze ripped through the media establishment as previously obscure bloggers managed to put the network of Murrow and Cronkite firmly on the defensive.

The secret, says Charles Johnson, is "open-source intelligence gathering." Meaning: "We've got a huge pool of highly motivated people who go out there and use the tools to find stuff. We've got an army of citizen journalists out there."

the CBS story were taken so much more seriously so quickly? And notice how, instead of calling the credibility of the bloggers into question, they are emphasizing the expertise these people have?

who are still shellshocked from 2000 and just want all the votes counted. They sure know how to frame an issue.

We don't need that, just call them crazy!

Let's be realistic here. They keep picking the same few theories over and over again to debunk. The easy ones. But what has given me the strength to continue to believe so strongly that this election was robbed is the fact that an immense majority of our theories/facts/mishaps have not been disputed or some even discussed at all. I find that quite encouraging. As long as so many disturbances exist, we have every right to cry FRAUD. I do data analysis and problem solving for a living. One thing I have to say is the most LOGICAL, not wild conspiracy theory, but LOGICAL explanation for ALllllllll the theories, would simply be fraud. So let them debunk away. They have a helllll of a lot more to do if they want to get back to even ground. Cause right now, yes, I'll say it, we are winning this battle.

Thank you all and keep the effort going. We are making history here.

Either I (and we) are truly off the deep end, which I do not believe, or there is a level of government force that is controlling things to a level that I don't think any of us have experienced in our lifetimes.

With that in mind, we indeed must be making history...in fact it reminds me of pre-ww2 Europe...

and that sounds like an example to follow.

There was a coup in 2000 -- and now we are having a repeat of that bloodless coup in slow motion.

The media is repeating the propaganda -- they are telling us that what our gut and what logic tell us is wrong.

Kerry had HUGE a voter turnout.

The exit polls are supposed to be wrong -- BUT the media is using the very same exit polls to tell the dems how they lost.

The US media is part of the PSY OPS -- the Propaganda machine is spewing out bogus stories full time.

This same corporate media repeat the meme -- Gore wants to keep recounting the votes -- when the truth was all the votes were never counted in the first place.

The media is part of the coup -- they are doing their best to make us believe that war is peace and up is down.

Apparently reality is the Internet (& DU and Buzzflash and TruthOut and Moveon.Org) -- and common sense -- and we need to help each other to keep our eyes open.

Hot damned -- is this the Matrix effect?

And, is obviously well researched, something I did not see in the ABC News vote fraud debunking story.

If Garofalo thinks the NYTimes' reporters assertions are wrong, then prove it. What she just did is what drives us all crazy about the Freepers! Remember how they reacted when Bush's hometown paper endorsed Kerry?

I saw the data they wrote about and it was a large part of what convinced me there was fraud. I'm going to check out their claims with a non-partisan mind.

re WMDs in Iraq, seems they are still regurgitating instead of investigating, nothing new here.

That dismissed Kerry's investigations of Iran-Contra and BCCI, suggesting that they weren't well founded.

oops. Don't know if they ever apologized for that.

And hire some of the wrong people. Jayson Blair, anyone? :evilgrin: There was a lot of GREAT fact-checking on his stories! Pffft!! :eyes:

has been badly tarnished. Oh and didn't they poo-poo Watergate initially?

I think everyone dismissed Watergate, initially, but the NY Times has a distinct reluctance to report what they themselves have not discovered - unless it's handed to them by the WH. WMD in Iraq sound familiar? :eyes: The Times was the flag-bearer for that 'truth'.

the one with dinosaurs labeled "big media" or something, and a big comet coming labeled "the internet."

that needs to be the new meme. that IS the new meme. desktop posters away! who made that one?

I for one do not think this is going to overturn the election and have
said so repeatedly.

It's also been said that the MIT/Cal tech analysis has some assumptions
that are as bad as the assumptions they accuse blumur of, which is "bundling" together heterogeneous voting methods to fit their viewpoint.

they and nobody has this, the real raw exit polls.

Why do our journalists just try to slam Americans banging out the facts
instead of doing some real investigative journalism.

For years it has been reported, by experts, how vunerable and problematic the American voting system is...

do they press investigation and present solutions? Hell no.

Instead they try to bury the discourse with derogatory terminology...
which is why the blogosphere can into being in the first place..

we cannot trust the media for in depth objective journalism.

Fight on, comrades--lest ye find yourselves in a camp.

Complain about their article and DEMAND That they perform their journalistic duty and properly investigate the claims, rather than just pandering to the conservative readership.

editorial@nytimes.com
(I don't have an email for Tom Zeller, the author)

""It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said."


Well is that so?

And WHY was it caught and corrected? Because of DU. This error would of NEVER been reported had the DU members not examined the voting results and caught the error.

So the problem is simply "unusual and remains unexplained"? What kind of crap is that? Is this what passes for journalism today? Why isn't that being questioned and investigated? Computers don't just make unsual and unexplained errors like this. They react logically to programming. If the vote was off by 4,000, then something is amiss and it must be explained!


"Some from the traditional media have called for an explanation," he said, "but no one from these blogs has called and said, 'We want to know what really happened.' "

Are you kidding me? Not ONE DU member has asked for an explanation? I think it's time we acted. Mount a media campaign and flood the inboxes at The NY Times and at the Ohio election offices and DEMAND they have an independent investigation and get to the bottom of this.

"We know this was an emotional election, and the losing side is very upset," said Daniel Hoffheimer, the lead lawyer for the Kerry campaign in Ohio. But, he said, "I have not seen anything to indicate intentional fraud or tampering."

Are you serious? What do you call 4000 lost votes?

What about these other 250 plus incidents?

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/gaoinvestvote2004ltr11804.pdf

Every DU member reading this thread needs to do the same.

.......here, who also belong to or support Black Box Voting.org, have filed 3,000 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests so far. There are many more to follow as the official canvas of votes in each state is certified. :)

Email them right now and send them your comments! The NY Times claims no one has complained.

Well, have they looked at the code in the black box voting machines?

UNTILL YOU SEE THE CODE OF THE BLACK BOX VOTING MACHINES YOU CAN NOT CONCLUDE THAT THERE WAS NO TAMPERING!

and I know I read that they used the "fixed" exit polls. Also, no one ever mentions the voter intimidation or the POSSIBILITY of tampering which has been outlined by blackbox.org

Here is the reexamination of the original study:

http://ustogether.org/election04/mitteldorf/Liddle.htm

Here is the original post:

http://www.ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

The web site clearly seems to be backing off it's original assertions.

They didn't even bother to crunch any numbers or provide any evidence whatsoever.

Just simply, 'People are stupid, they do stupid things. Look! We can't explain it away so we'll call them conspiracy theorists.'

To some extent, I'm not too optimistic about them finding anything right now — at least not until after there's a recount.

We have strong statistical evidence with regard to the exit polls in the 7 main swing states — evidence that can't be explained away with being "early" or "not big enough samples" or just "not done right" — what, did they have amateurs doing them, or was it the first time? No. We have recorded and snapshot images of the exit polls before they were fixed Wednesday morning to match the results. They are a very reliable predictor, and the odds that those 7 states would be that far off are, what? Enough in any case.

Enough of an anomaly to audit any corporation in the country, then it's enough to demand an recount. If the Opti-Scans were hacked it will come out afterwards and the fraud will be evident. Or we're all officially conspiracy nuts. Either way the truth will (hopefully) be known.

and I grind my teeth every time I hear the "Dixiecrat" (or however you spell it) used to debunk our efforts.

What actually occurred is Florida changed their numbers late last week. There has not been any explanation for the change in numbers. There are still some questions, at least for me, regarding the new data.

I, like others on this thread, believe they are spending a lot of time talking about "nothing" if it were truly nothing. Additionally, it is disturbing that they don't seem to be interested in the underlying issues rather than "not changing the outcome of the election".

Well, I for one, am pretty impressed how they feel so certain that these problems might not change the outcome. How do they know. Unless you know what the problems are and what caused them then you don't know how wide spread they are.

I find it rather odd that so many people point out a specific glitch and seem to believe it is an isolated event. In reality, if it was honestly an isolated event it was probably tampering. Whereas, if it is a defect of the system it will exist everywhere that hardware/software combination is used. It may not effect every place it exists but on the other hand it might. That's the point we don't really know the impact of all these problems, do we?

I like reading articles like this one. It keeps me from becoming depressed and pisses me off enough to renew my determination to see this through.

Unless there is an indisputable smoking gun.

Is it like Bush looking for WMDs?

That must mean they want to break the story, themselves. They don't want to share the credit with anyone on a blog, that's for certain. They're professionals, dontcha know? :eyes:

"And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated."

HUH? He says the exit polls are inaccurate because they showed Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio. But that's the whole point! The idiot author is saying the exit polls are not useful as evidence the count is wrong because...they don't agree with the count. (If they agreed with the count, I suppose it would be o.k. to use it.)

He also cites the crap non-study by MIT/CalTech. See this DU thread on it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=43258&mesg_id=43258&page=

and my comments on it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=43258&mesg_id=43697

All this from the newspaper who for two years refused to acknowledge Greg Palast's investigation of the Florida 2000 felon list that cost Gore thousands of votes.

what is the point of them even writing that article. better that they write about how there are millions of people in this country that will never accept bush's policys no matter how many yeehaws vote for him. i belive it is called "a free society". i really don't understand all this civility bullshit. why must we be civil about a group of people that lied their way into office. is that not as bad as voter fraud. how is it that much different than voter fraud. to quote a great movie line, "never give up, never surrender".

While I don't buy into the Dixiecrat theory, it is not the only place there were problems. Also, has anyone figured up the total republican votes in these 'Dixiecrat' states, they are listed as very small. So what are we talking about in the big picture? I'm looking at the data now, a little too tired to crunch the numbers, but a quick guess of around 500k extra votes - well worth the trouble of getting (comparing actual to expected votes). I think they chose the counties to cheat in wisely, thinking ahead. Of course all of this is probably not fraud votes, there was a slight trend to cross vote in 96 - I discard 2000 as spoiled data.
So why are they wanting to hit this aspect and ignore some of our other points - because this one is provable, they have paper ballots that we can recount.

http://www.thegeneralconversation.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=3088

"We do not know if Election 2004 was fraudulent. But equally important, the paperless machines have made it impossible to verify that it was not fraudulent. And it is the inalienable right of a free people that their franchise be fair, accurate, transparent, and verifiable. "

did anyone else here?