so says Bush. Too bad he'll need to borrow way more REAL capital to cash in on that political stuff.

Also this sounds really promising (NOT) to those who were worried that Bush would not reach out to the left a bit...basically you're with me or against me from the sounds of it.

With the campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I will reach out to everyone who shares our goals and I'm eager to start the work ahead," Bush said in a news conference at the Executive Office Building in Washington.

as he has such a 'mandate' from the people. it's funny how his campaign was based on 9-11 and the people closest to the damage called a collective BS on his schtick. If NYC and Dc get it, what's wrong with you people?

Word is Bush already cashed in his capital for $200 bills. :(

<img src="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/art3/bushbill1.jpg">
<a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushbill1.html" target="_blank">http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushbill1.html</a>

so says Bush. Too bad he'll need to borrow way more REAL capital to cash in on that political stuff.

Also this sounds really promising (NOT) to those who were worried that Bush would not reach out to the left a bit...basically you're with me or against me from the sounds of it.

We know he likes to spend it, but did he earn it?

Kerry Won...
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Excerpted from TomPaine.com


---Kerry won. Here are the facts.---

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]


---Whose Votes Are Discarded?---

And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African-American and minority precincts. (To learn more, click here.)

We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely-leaving a 'hanging chad,'-or was punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here .)

And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.


---The Impact Of Challenges---

First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws-almost never used-allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.


---Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote---

Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality-if all votes are counted-is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted."

How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional ballots.

CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts-Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'


To read the article in full, click here: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

So this guy is saying that exit polling was accurate and the actual voting wasn't? He's nuts! Seriously nuts.

Bush won. Sad, but true.

What he is saying is that exit polls counted every response they recieved, whereas the election did not count every vote that was cast.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! No the pollsters tried to manipulate the late voting by pumping up Kerry's early exit poll numbers. This is a hoot. The sky is falling and pigs are flying! Man I never took you for a conspiracist lover Czar. Ah, it must be spicing up your otherwise olive drab life!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! No the pollsters tried to manipulate the late voting by pumping up Kerry's early exit poll numbers. The machinations of the Liberal Universe again, Steam? :(

Mine sounds more plausible TO ME :)

I think this guy is going off half-cocked. Face it, Ohio voted for Shrub in pretty much the way all the other states in the region did. If there was one iota of evidence of votes being thrown out, you can bet the democratic party and the NAACP would be all over the Ohio election comittee in a flash.

Give it a rest. He lost. It was a good fight, but he lost.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! No the pollsters tried to manipulate the late voting by pumping up Kerry's early exit poll numbers. This is a hoot. The sky is falling and pigs are flying! Man I never took you for a conspiracist lover Czar. Ah, it must be spicing up your otherwise olive drab life!



Which is more likely:

a) The pollsters colluded to lie about the results
b) Votes were not counted

The first implies that someone's reputation is on the line. The second has a good deal of historical truth to it, and we (as a society) keep facing the issue in every election.

No we keep facing the allegation in every election to undermine people's trust in the outcome when it doesn't go the way certain segments of our society desired it to. This was the most closely monitored election in history. Get over it Duane.

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD bgColor=#000000 rowSpan=2>http://www.thehill.com/global/morris.jpg</TD><TD bgColor=#003399 height=25>Dick Morris</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=center align=left bgColor=#0066cc height=50>The Political Life</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD class=body>Those faulty exit polls were sabotage

By now it is well-known and a part of the 2004 election lore how the exit polls by the major television networks were wrong.

Likely this faux pas will assume its place among wartime stories alongside the mistaken calls on Florida’s vote for one side and then for the other in the 2000 election. But the inaccuracies of the media’s polling deserve more scrutiny and investigation.

Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state.

So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox’s campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible.

But this Tuesday, the networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just some of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong. So, according to ABC-TV’s exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points.

To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.

The mistaken exit polls infiltrated all three networks and the cable news outlets and had a chilling effect on the coverage of election night.

While all anchors refrained from announcing the exit-poll results, it was clear from the context of their comments that they expected Kerry to win and wondered if Bush could hold any key state.

Indeed, one network hesitated to call Mississippi for Bush because of the uncertainty injected by the bogus exit polls. Dark minds will suspect that these polls were deliberately manipulated to dampen Bush turnout in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones by conveying the impression that the president’s candidacy was a lost cause.

The exit pollsters plead that they oversampled women and that this led to their mistakes. But the very first thing a pollster does is weight or quota for gender. Once the female vote reaches 52 percent of the sample, one either refuses additional female respondents or weights down the ones one subsequently counted.

This is, dear Watson, elementary.

Next to the forged documents that sent CBS on a jihad against Bush’s National Guard service and the planned “60 Minutes” ambush over the so-called missing explosives two days before the polls opened, the possibility of biased exit polling, deliberately manipulated to try to chill the Bush turnout, must be seriously considered.

At the very least, the exit pollsters should have to explain, in public, how they were so wrong. Since their polls, if biased or cooked, represented an attempt to use the public airwaves to reduce voter turnout, they should have to explain their errors in a very public and perhaps official forum.

This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

By and large the exit polls were conducted in the larger metropolitan areas, areas that went to Kerry. As usual the vast and more "rural" areas were left out and they were the areas that went for Bush. The polls just did not get the appropriate cross section.

If Dick Morris says so, it must be true! :)

Electronic machines should leave a paper trail. And voter "spoilage" is a real problem. Whether or not the exit pollsters and Palast are off-base, we need to have better, more transparent voting machines in place for future elections.

And surely the manufacturers of voting machines shouldn't be prominent supporters of either candidate or party. If you don't have medium-term memory loss, the CEO for Diebold, one of the primary manufacturers of the ATM-style machines, Walden "Wally" O'Dell, made public statements that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" and is a main Bush benefactor.

In addition, everyone must remember that never in the history of the US has a challenger for the presidency received as many counted votes as Kerry has.

I think this guy is going off half-cocked. Face it, Ohio voted for Shrub in pretty much the way all the other states in the region did. If there was one iota of evidence of votes being thrown out, you can bet the democratic party and the NAACP would be all over the Ohio election comittee in a flash.

Give it a rest. He lost. It was a good fight, but he lost.

Maybe. "Spoilage" is an issue. Palast is the one who broke the story about shenanigans in Florida in 2000.

Shouldn't our votes counted with as much care as banks count money?

Get over it!

http://www.marshallart.com/fun/EdButts.jpeg

as he has such a 'mandate' from the people. it's funny how his campaign was based on 9-11 and the people closest to the damage called a collective BS on his schtick. If NYC and Dc get it, what's wrong with you people?

Mandate? Political capital to borrow and spend? Bush won by a narrow margin. In fact, no wartime incumbent president in American history has ever won by a narrower margin.

Yes I too believe that the voting system for federal elections should be uniform. I also believe that everyone should have to show a voter's card with a picture ID and a voter number. No one should be voting that isn't legally allowed to be voting. Everything should be accountable, including those who are casting the votes.

Get over it!

You're unwilling to stand up for democracy?

Yes I too believe that the voting system for federal elections should be uniform. I also believe that everyone should have to show a voter's card with a picture ID and a voter number. No one should be voting that isn't legally allowed to be voting. Everything should be accountable, including those who are casting the votes.

The problem with voter numbers is that we have the right to a secret ballot.

The voter number does not have to be attached to a vote. It just needs to be presented with your photo ID before being allowed to vote. You would retain your anonymity.

The voter number does not have to be attached to a vote. It just needs to be presented with your photo ID before being allowed to vote. You would retain your anonymity.



Doesn't have to but could and would therefore discourage some people from voting.

BTW did you know that in Jacksonvile, North Carolina a new electronic voting machine lost 4,530 votes? The machine didn't have enough capacity to handle the votes cast.

Local officials said UniLect, the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65601,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

Doesn't have to but could and would therefore discourage some people from voting.

BTW did you know that in N.Carolina county a new electronic voting machine lost 4,530 votes? The machine didn't have enough capacity to handle the votes cast.



http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65601,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
It's OK...if Kerry had won, Steam would be raising holy heck now and posting all kinds of crazy stuff from Newsmax on why the election wasn't fair.

That's just your supposition :p

It's OK...if Kerry had won, Steam would be raising holy heck now and posting all kinds of crazy stuff from Newsmax on why the election wasn't fair.

God, that would've been a lot more fun!

Instead we have God's gift to the comedians getting a second term.

Yes I too believe that the voting system for federal elections should be uniform. I also believe that everyone should have to show a voter's card with a picture ID and a voter number. No one should be voting that isn't legally allowed to be voting. Everything should be accountable, including those who are casting the votes.

I'll bet you can go places in New York and have a voter card with a picture ID made for $10. Or you could make your own with a color printer and laminating kit.

A better idea is biometrics: Fingerprints, retina scans, etc. Record it when you register, verify it before you vote. Since these body features are unique, we could insure that people only vote once.

I think we have the technology to use something much simpler than what you suggest. I am assuming you weren't being facetious :)

I think we have the technology to use something much simpler than what you suggest. I am assuming you weren't being facetious :)



And, after the 2000 debacle, it should have been put to use already!

I think we have the technology to use something much simpler than what you suggest. I am assuming you weren't being facetious :)



I'm not being facetious. What is simpler than putting your thumb on a reader? It's quick, it's simple, it's totally accurate, and unless you can buy a new thumb on the street, you can't fool the system. Come up with something else that can satisfy those requirements and I'll buy into it. A voter ID card with a picture doesn't even come close.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! No the pollsters tried to manipulate the late voting by pumping up Kerry's early exit poll numbers. This is a hoot. The sky is falling and pigs are flying! Man I never took you for a conspiracist lover Czar. Ah, it must be spicing up your otherwise olive drab life!



You don't even know how exit polls are done. Is it always a conspiracy when you don't know something?

I would think you libs would be against such a thing. I mean that would give the government everyone's fingerprint. Isn't that something you would cite as Big Brother looking for ways to track people for reasons other than elections? Doesn't sound very lib to me.

I don't think the Dems want such a thing. It makes it much harder to cheat!

I don't think the Dems want such a thing. It makes it much harder to cheat!

But who's been in charge the past 4 years and could have gotten it done if they wanted to? Republicans.

"I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it" so says Bush.

You can't make this stuff up.

Mandate my ass! His margin is the narrowest in American history for a wartime incumbent president (yes, I'm set on repeat). And Kerry got the second-most votes ever in American history.

You're unwilling to stand up for democracy?Nor will he fight for his country. A Real Man if ever there was one, :rolleyes:

I would think you libs would be against such a thing. I mean that would give the government everyone's fingerprint. Isn't that something you would cite as Big Brother looking for ways to track people for reasons other than elections? Doesn't sound very lib to me.

Yeah, well, surprise, surprise, I'm no lib. Just because I live in the SF Bay Area and can't stand Bush doesn't make me a liberal. I'm actually quite conservative on many issues, especially fiscal issues, unlike, say, President Bush. I know that blows your mind, and it might destroy your mind completely to know that I am not alone.

Doesn't have to but could and would therefore discourage some people from voting.

BTW did you know that in Jacksonvile, North Carolina a new electronic voting machine lost 4,530 votes? The machine didn't have enough capacity to handle the votes cast.



http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65601,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

likewise you have this little tidbit from one ohio precinct.
Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct
638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST

US Senator:
Fingerhut (D) - 167 votes
Voinovich (R) - 300 votes

US President:
Kerry (D) - 260 votes
Bush (R) - 4,258 votes

now whether this error can be explained, either as mechanical or human error, or whether this is election fraud is yet to be determined. but it does raise the question about the validity of all votes tabulated on the new electronic voting machines, and this issue should be explored further. this isn't a matter of who really won this election, but a matter of "do these new machines actually work?".

"do these new machines actually work?".

How rampant are these problems? Does anybody besides us care?

'mandate' was used bathed in sarcasm. sorry for it being obtuse

How rampant are these problems? Does anybody besides us care?


and there's the $64,000 question. was this an isolated incident, or part of a widespread effort to rig the vote? is there evidence to explain this error as either mechanical or human? and if there isn't, just how trustworthy are these machines? and what's the real vote tally?

that's what needs to be found out.

'mandate' was used bathed in sarcasm. sorry for it being obtuse

Fair enough! I don't own serial rights either. Mandate my ass! :p

From The Rude Pundit:

And later, when asked if he felt free, he said one of the most nakedly power mad things anyone's every claimed in a so-called democracy, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style." He may as well have said, "L’etat, c’est moi" and renounced the Edict of Nantes. It was a chilling reminder to anyone who believed that "bipartisanship" is even remotely possible. He is King Kong, Bush said. Let New York City cower beneath his giant b*lls.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com

ROTFL!!!!