Did Kerry win the military vote? (Please post stories here)

I am starting to hear stories that Kerry may have won the military vote. Most states are just posting the results for the overseas ballots in the last couple of days. In Austin, TX Kerry got 259 votes, compared to Bush who only got 138 votes. That's a huge margin. I guess the military folks might not be so thrilled with W after all?

Has anyone else seen any reports about the military vote tallies?


NOVEMBER 12, 2004

The late count of provisional and overseas ? predominantly military ? ballots took place Sunday and Monday at the county courthouse. White added 54 votes to her total, whereas Baxter only added 30. (As an interesting footnote, Butts said the majority of military votes in the Travis Co. presidential race went to John Kerry, who took 259 votes to George Bush's 138.) Witnessing the vote count for the Democrats were Butts and lawyer MariBen Ramsey (both representing the White campaign) along with local party Chair Chris Elliott and coordinated campaign director Glen Maxey. Republican poll watchers during the two-day process featured several attorneys from the Locke Liddell & Sapp law firm, as well as the always unpredictable former (Democratic) County Judge Bill Aleshire, representing the Baxter campaign on behalf of the Riggs & Aleshire law firm. County GOP Chair Alan Sager also attended.


http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-11-12/pols_feature5.html

Sunday, November 14, 2004


HOLYOKE - Eight overseas ballots, some of them from soldiers serving in Iraq, were opened Friday by the city's Board of Registrars, and the selections added to the city's bottom line totals from the Nov. 2 election.

Of the eight - all postmarked before the election but received after voting occurred - seven cast presidential votes for U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry. One voted for President George W. Bush. Other elective officers got a smattering of votes.

http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-7/11003357137011.xml

I'm living in schitzophrenic Colrado now, but from S. Hadley Falls originally. You've made me homesick for my blue state!

:hi:

http://www.local6.com/news/3916838/detail.html

I posted this in another thread.

"Meanwhile, the board tallied ballots for 87 Broward voters serving in the military.

Those voters chose Democratic candidate John Kerry over President Bush, 51-34. Two did not make a choice in the presidential race.

The number of rejected overseas military ballots was not available, but County Judge Robert Lee said more were rejected than counted."

WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE??? WHERE'S THE ATTACK ON THE DEMOCRATS???

in fact, WHERE IS THIS BEING DISCUSSED NATIONALLY?..WHERE??..WHERE??

kolbermann@msnbc.com

I have nothing to add to this, but it warms my heart to read these accounts of military support for Kerry.

And it never hurts to kick a good post. :kick:

of military voting, then it's not a shock that we're not hearing about the military vote in the MSM.

the fraud so we can support our troops who are putting their lives on the line. If they're voting for Kerry we owe it to them to do all we can here to change our leadership and give them hope.

If this trend holds true in other places, it may really help Kerry in the Ohio and Florida recounts

that was rescinded. Besides, you're thinking of provisionals not absentees. (Do absentees have DOB on the envelope? I don't know??)

apparently then our troops have no "moral values"



:eyes:

:toast:

up close and personal. I think the votes for Kerry are the most telling tale of this whole presidential fiasco.

This would be interesting to see...if it is true that Kerry got more votes by the military...thats big!! I wonder how the media will spin it??? Will they cover it?? Have they??

but you have to dig around for it.

I'm going to try to collect some new numbers later for FL. I'll keep my eyes open.

someone should try to get a "national" list with these results. It would be very interesting if the trend is to Kerry. The media couldn't ignore it.

You could make a major impact simply by gathering all the data on this one subject in one place. Then we send the media to it and challenge them to report it. What would this number, if it comes out the way these anecdotes suggest, say about the popular vote tabulations?

O, I forgot, you can't do Diebold math with a military ballot.

It would be a very effective media blitz.

Headline:


Kerry Wins Military Vote by 70%--WTF?

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Thanks for the welcome.

:toast:

Bush is only up by 136,000 and there are 156,000 provisionals.

which could be recounted if machines didn't read them correctly.

Camp Pendleton is here as well as the Coronado Naval base and Miramar.

Too bad they aren't hand counting them like they are the Mayor's race. That is probably the only one we will get the true numbers for since the county used Opti-Scan, for the most part.

keep them coming. They are valuable in so many ways, even if we lose recounts.

Kerry. Very interesting.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Please post the numbers here if you do. Thanks.

would raise eyebrows. If it dropped from 70%(?) to around 60%, it is not something the GOP would want reported.

Number about 300-400,000.

"In addition to absentee voters living in the United States, there are approximately three to four hundred thousand military personnel abroad who are eligible to vote. Although there is no official count, it is also estimated that there are between 4 and 10 million Americans living abroad who are eligible to vote by absentee ballot as well. Both political parties, energized by the close results of the 2000 Presidential race, are said to be reaching out to these overseas voters in 2004, energized by the close results of the 2000 Presidential race."

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:Vic6GGLP-AYJ:usinf...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1928

Also, Michael Moore has alot of letters from the troops.

:kick:

I need all the ammo I can get. If I can convince him even the soldiers are voting for Kerry, he might start to re-think it.

. . .and then sending them on to the counties?

Where are all the military votes??

However, where the military ballots are is anyone's guess. I've been scouring the news looking for reports about how the military votes were caste, but I'm coming up with very little.

This media blackout is a pain in the butt.

and, damn, yes, the media is doing its job again! Don't communicate any facts which might be relevant to the public learning the truth.

{sarcasm: off}

Media people, if you are reading this, get off your **%$#@! butt and start covering the story. Nobody pays us for the work which happens here. You don't have that excuse. Educate your editor and write the story and then duck when the shit flies. Your nation needs you.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7769017.htm

"The Pentagon's new Internet-based voting system is vulnerable to tampering and should be shut down, computer scientists reviewing the program said Wednesday.

"``Introducing and running this system means our elections may be at risk,'' said Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University and one of four authors of a 34-page report discussing security flaws in the voting system."

(skip)

"A private firm, Accenture, was hired to build a system that eventually could be used by the 6 million American voters who serve in the U.S. military or live overseas. A Bermuda-based company, Accenture is the world's largest management and technology consulting firm."

Who is Accenture? Our old buddy Arthur "Enron" Anderson.

http://www.ecotalk.org/SERVEaccenture.htm

From McCamy Taylor's link above:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7769017.htm
. . .

"The SERVE program would allow voters to use any Windows personal computer connected to the Internet. Military personnel would receive a digital certificate, which would function much like a password, added to their smart ID cards. Other voters could obtain a digital certificate assigned to them by going to a U.S. embassy or other agency.

The certificate allows voters to gain access to a Web site where they cast their ballot.

. . .

encrypted ballot is then transmitted over the Internet to local voting offices for tabulation."

============

So do you think this how it would be:
*a special secure software is distributed to each county in the 50 states
*encrypted ballot goes to its appropriate local voting office computer then
*it's locked until votes are counted
?????

I wonder how many used this as opposed to a ballot sent by the local voting office.

Sooooo little about the military ballots seems very strange. Doesn't it?

Here are a couple of articles I thought interesting:

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24337&archive=true

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24402&archive=true

in every state. i was curious about this myself. Bush has lied to the military as much as he has lied to us. I knew that Kerry probably got more military votes than the typical democrat. WE MUST COUNT ALL VOTES IN EVERY ELECTION. It's a load of crap that we don't normally count military/absentee/provisional ballots unless its a close election. They always be counted no matter what.

I noticed that in certain precincts, all military ballots were counted, and in others only a few and in still others NONE.

What's up with that?

From what I'm seeing on this thread, they wanted Kerry! ...And overwhelmingly!!!

Is there some way we can have a state-by-state compilation of the military votes? Anyone keeping track???

It would be a big hit to the "mandate" if the military vote shows a demmonstrably favorable vote to Kerry. THAT is NEWS that cannot be ignored by the mainstream news media.

Think about it....Support the troops? Kerry was their choice over Bush!

We need those numbers! Anybody keeping track?

Travis County is overwealming Democratic. It is one of the few counties in TX that did not go for Bush.

One interesting thing to note is that Kerry's win percentage in military votes is considerably higher than his county percentage overall (65% vs. 55%). It could be because of the ethnic makeup of the military voters, or it could be an indication of the dissatisfaction with Bush, or a combination of factors.

I hope she keeps it up.

the silence speaks LOUDLY - i am sure the military votes are going to Kerry.

voting for Kerry.

(and not sure if it's been completely counted yet) Rove would be screaming it from the rooftops, Bush has the support of the military, blah, blah, blah, woof, woof. I suspect that if Kerry won the military vote (which I think he probably did) we will never hear about it at all unless Kerry somehow makes sure we hear about it. It will be very damaging to Bush if it turns out the military vote went to Kerry, and that is why they will probably try and suppress the information, or 'alter' it if they can. We all should be yelling very loudly about this. We, the American people, who support our troops, want to know what the will of the people who are the troops was!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If they won't release that info., it's a red flag.

I think I will see if I can find 2000 methods of reporting votes. Of course then, there was no war. I agree. It is too fishy.

I still haven't heard or seen any official reporting on the subject (unless there was something posted upthread which I didn't read).

:kick:

No hard data yet, but here's a little more information than what we had before. What I want to know is where is McCain and Dole who were screaming about the overseas votes in 2000. No one seems to care this year because the votes were going to Kerry.


November 09, 2004

From the Desk of Diana Kerry:

Dear Overseas Voter:

I want to thank you for making the effort to register to vote and request an absentee ballot in the 2004 Presidential Election. I won?t pretend that I?m not disappointed with the results of this election. I feel that my brother?s record and character were maligned from the start by an uncommonly personal and negative campaign, and that the US news media for the most part failed in their coverage of this important race.


But I want you to know that as disappointed as I am about the election?s outcome, I am downright angry about the way US citizens living abroad have been treated by those charged with helping them exercise their right to vote. Despite millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, the Pentagon?s Federal Voter Assistance Program defaulted on their obligation to serve two important groups: civilian overseas voters and local election officials.

Poor customer service, inaccurate, conflicting and outdated information, blocked websites, last minute rules changes and all the rest: it was an unmitigated disaster. As a result, many voters saw their absentee ballot requests wrongly denied, and a large number of duly registered voters did not receive ballots from their States in time, or at all. Based on preliminary results reported by local election officials, perhaps as many as 30% of registered overseas voters did not return their ballots in time to have them count. A great many of you have been effectively disenfranchised during this election, either deliberately or through blunders, bureaucratic negligence, and worse. Whatever the reason, depriving you of your vote, never mind how you intended to cast it, is wrong.

I?d also like to acknowledge that I know many Americans abroad felt my brother?s concession Wednesday morning was premature, as all the absentee votes in Ohio and elsewhere had yet to be counted. Please rest assured that thanks to the data available from local election officials, the Kerry-Edwards campaign was aware of scale of remaining uncounted absentee ballots, and conceded only after it was abundantly clear that even a massive overseas vote in favour of the Democrats would not have made a difference. And despite that, we are still going to make sure that every overseas vote?military and civilian?is counted, as the law requires. As for possible vote-counting fraud, let me simply say that I hope we have learned our lesson about un-audited black-box voting.

http://www.aokerry.com/aok/2004/11/from_the_desk_o.html


Overseas tally? Don't count on it yet

November 6, 2004


Expatriates responded enthusiastically to calls by American political parties to vote this year, but whether their ballots counted for much remained an open question Friday, with thousands and possibly millions of absentee ballots yet to be tallied.

At present, with no federal agency responsible for tracking absentee U.S. voters, there is no overall tally of the number of absentee ballots requested, sent or returned - or, most importantly, counted, election monitors say.

"You would have to ask at each of the 3,000 counties," said Kimball Brace, president of the nonpartisan Election Data Services, which helps state and local governments with election matters. Furthermore, each state sets different rules about when absentee ballots must be received and counted.

Florida, for example, struggled to meet its deadline to tabulate absentee ballots by noon Thursday, two days after Election Day. Election officials were trying to count nearly 100,000 absentee ballots, but as these votes would make no difference in the outcome of the presidential election, the effort drew little attention.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/05/news/absentee.html

Where are their ballots? No google news luck tonight.

That's one reason that the propaganda machine is going to have to invent some military votes for shrub: if they don't show shrub winning the military vote, EVERYONE will know that the entire election was stolen.....

Of course, WE ALREADY know the election was stolen...but the rest of the country isn't convinced.

The military vote going to Kerry would sure wake up one helluvalot of people.

:kick::kick::kick:

Just yesterday while in an AOL chat room about that ridiculous stunt Bush pulled trying to rescue his own secret service agent, someone was gloating that Bush had easily won the military vote. I responded that I had not heard that before and could he or she provide me with their source. I was not being particularly insulting although it is very hard not to be, I genuinely had not heard anything official on that part of the election results and I just wanted to see who and what the chatter was citing as his or her official source. Well there was no such offering. In stead I was essentially told to go "f---myself with the clear sentiment that the military could "only" vote for their glorious commander in chief. In short and true to form here was a Bush moron trying to substitute something factual with only and opinion. Man the Bush people get so mad when you challenge them that I honestly believe if they had a gun at times they would use it and then try to plead some kind of insanity or other irresistible impulse. I would love to know officially if Kerry won the military count. Boy would I love to stick it to a few people. Even more bizarre is I never used to be this way.

On Nov. 4th, FL posted their '1st Set of Unofficial Returns".

Bush = 3,956,346

Kerry = 3,575,056

On Nov 18th, FL posted their 'Official Results'

Bush = 3,964,522

Kerry = 3,583,544

This gave Bush 8,176 additional votes and Kerry got 8,488 additional votes, during that time frame.

Since the DOS hasn't released the data yet, I am assuming that these 17,264 additional ballots were from overseas and maybe the provisional ballots.

Based on that assumption, it looks like Kerry did win the overseas vote, at least in Florida. That would be very, very significant.

been a handful of reports which came in early, all favoring Kerry, how the military vote went is very clear.

If it had been overwhelmingly Bush we'd know it by now. Damage control is keeping the count quiet. We're the only ones asking, if the public cares they believe that ridiculous reelection poll showing 80% of those responding to an email poll support *. They don't scratch their head and wonder what a poll about their boss would look like at the office if he got to see how they voted. The boss would look pretty damn popular I'd guess, but the military aren't supposed to think about the fact that everyone would know they didn't support the president when they answered the poll.

"Even more bizarre is I never used to be this way."

You and me and millions upon millions of others. I wonder if the proliferation of bushies is one of the plagues the Bible warns about.

She said most of the military ballots came in before Nov 2. She said they didn't get that many ballots after the election. Since the military folks could fax or email their ballots, it was much easier then in the past for them to vote.

They might have numbers for how many ballots came in from overseas before Nov 2, but you might not be able to find out how they voted because they would have been tallied along with all the other votes.

The more I think about it, this could be the sleeper story that could. Nobody is talking about it, so suspicious since that's all they did was scream about counting every military vote in 2000. If it can be proved, and publicly, that Bush lost the military vote resoundingly this time, it will turn the public's concept of his 'supposed' legitimacy on it's head. This is a both sides of the aisle kind of issue. Those young men are over there dying and coming home with grievous wounds, their lives and psyches altered forever. We owe it to them, to make their wishes known, whether or not it could change the outcome. How can we get this information? Anybody got ideas?

I totally agree! I have some FL election 2000 research/inf on a computer in storage. I am overseas now, but the computer is here. I will plan to get it out to see how it was recorded in FL - at least.

It just doesn't "feel" right. There was such a HUGE issue made in 2000 of counting the military vote and now - not a peep.

i will write keith as i am very interested to know here in tampa..the headquarters of this war...vey curious about the military vote!! fly

Please let us know how it goes?

Thanks

. . .and hopefully counted.

If it were a landslide for * it would be all over the place.

That would be their 'military mandate' or some Bushit like that

This could be a huge story.

I know it's out there - just thought I'd see if anyone knows where - offhand. Ta

. . .that I can use for starters.

There was an article with an OH office phone and fax number I can call. I am in Australia but I will get a phone card and call tomorrow.