I'm going to say something to my fellow Democrats that will anger a few people.

We lost this election! We have to deal with it.

Yes I don't think Bush was elected last time. He was this time.

Instead of spending your time and energy figuring out how Bush cheated...

PUT IT AWAY!!

And work on how we can start winning!

I disagree.

I just think our energy would be put in a much constructive way if we spent our time on how we win next time.

You can do that.

Many of us know that the election was a fraud. WE WILL NOT LAY DOWN THIS TIME!!!

Must be getting close when Poppy Bush 41 comes on the board
and tries to help his retarded son out.
(oops, I didn't mean to insult the mentally ill by degrading them comparing them to W...I meant the low life pond scum....oops, didn't mean to degrade the low life pond scum...I meant the ...)

TESTIFY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tooteaching, this article is for you. read it in its entirity, then let us know whether you think the florida dems consider the election to be over!

Published on Saturday, November 6, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked

by Thom Hartmann


When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat. "It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me. And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004. The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.

While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed. In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush. Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm. And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big. Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day. Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report. But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states. Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged. Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points. "Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "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." He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs 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." Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush. How could this happen? On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine. That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC. "In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?" Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer." "So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?" Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software. Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning. "Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program. But, it's running on a Windows PC. So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400. "Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger." They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election." As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds." On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv.) Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide. Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked. And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states. So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed. But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play." Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann .com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

We are. However, we can't rule out fraud. You'll have to note the fact that while some signs still point to a bush win, some of this evidence is insurmountably odd in context to the facts. While I'm personally looking ahead to 06, I actively support anyone who is looking for fraud. I think all dems should.

Roffles.

I am a self-declared pessimist about Kerry's chances for triumph, in this election.

But you weren't here right after the election...people were laid low. So, if this miniature movement helps motivate liberals, what is wrong with hope?

I uderstand that we are angry and disappointed. I agree Florida in 2000 was a fraud.

But I thingk we need to look forward in this election to two to four years down the road. There were not enough provisional ballots for Kerry to win.

We were outgunned and outorganized.

Let's work on winning not wallowing!

If you don't care if your vote counts or not in the future, than you have the right to give up. Kerry will not get the Presidency, that is not the point, there is at least very strong suspicion of vote fraud, and perhaps actual evidence of vote fraud , and by fighting, we must show them we are going to watch everything they do.

my friend, READ the article, get informed, then come back with your opinion.

looks like you come to rile the colonies

before you say that, and you might be right....look at this chart:

http://www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm

Do you realize no one is talking about provisional ballots. What we are talking about is that computers are being hacked and optical scanners are designed immproperly to give bush the election.

If you care about 2006 and 2008, you better care about this.

As am I.

However, as they all said, this motivates the currently gloomy party. That's enough for it to be a plus.

I care that my vote counts. I want every vote to count. However, that's not what happened this time.

Do we need to reform the voting system. Yes! But that's not what happened here.

tooteaching, you're busy writing replies. take some time to read the article, will you?

"Perkiness" = the bane of the 2000s

WOW!! The Swift Boat Vets led by John O'Neill are all celebrating - maybe we should go join them!! (Please note my sarcasm!!)

We'll stay here and do what we can!!

We have all the info we need to make a difference in my sig line!! Use it Kerry Avengers!!

You don't have any evidence that vote fraud did not occur do you? We must go through the process to be absolutely assured it did not occur. From what I have seen, vote fraud DID occur.

I agree with this. It is possible that Bush did win without cheating. But the discrepancies are too large to ignore, and the consequences of allowing such a thing too profound, for us to drop the issue at this time. Imagine, if you will, that the chances for significant fraud are only 10%. I think they are higher than that. But here's my point: even if they are only 10%, only someone with a death wish for democracy would urge us to ignore that chance and sweep our doubts under the rug prior to a full airing and investigation. If this election was stolen and we fail to put up a fight, then we've given away our nation and the world to a gang of thugs who will destroy it. I say we can't take that chance.

I would agree. Argued the same thing on the Washington Post On Politics forum shortly after the 2000 election to no avail. People really believed that when the truth about the stolen election in Florida would come out, that Bush would go down and the voters would run the Republicans out of office in 2002. But Bush didn't go down, the Republicans made gains in the House, retook the Senate and the supposedly outraged people in Florida re-elected Jeb Bush to another term in a landslide.

this will make us stronger in the future.

Ok I read the article. But we didn't lose because of Florida! We lost because of Ohio!

We won this one ......and the last one.....
How many times are we supposed to roll over and be silenced for "the good of the country"? The record turn-out? Do you honestly believe it was for Bush? I think not and I want all the legitimate votes counted and all the all the stolen votes put back. We are talking about DEMOCRACY here!!!

Ohio used the same machines as Florida... <_<

I say "boloney" to tooteaching!

If perchance Bush did win, let's get it proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Having half the population believing Bush is a crook, does the country more harm than just sweeping these "irregularities" under the carpet. <_<

I've read the article, looked at the county by county data, compared it to the 2000 county data, and am now locating sources to compare rural/urban voting patterns by party registration in Florida and throughout the south. If you look only at the data linked to in the article it is quite startling, but when you look deeper the voting pattern is consistent with the 2000 election and appears consistent with the rural/urban split in this election.

Hopefully Jeff Fisher has something of substance besides this statistical analysis to take to the FBI, but right now none of us knows that. While I'm not ready to give up on the possibity of proving massive fraud, my hopes of such are fading. Don't be too hard on TooTeaching for wanting to move on.

seems someone doesn't know how to count; kerry's at 252 right now, add the florida count, subtract it from b's side. who wins???

OK, I don't have a problem with getting over it if he really won this time. But it seems there is a possibility there was "error" involved. Are you not in the least bit curious about this? Get over it is not logically convincing for me. If you can present a logically convincing argument for me I would be happy to entertain the idea. I'm not trying to be a smart ass - I just honestly want to understand.

bootleg, i already challenged you on this in another thread. also, look at tooteaching's reply!

i disagree with you and let me repeat why: the florida dems are not going to take action that would be damaging to them or to kerry. there is no doubt in my mind that they got the green light from the dnc and that they have a leg to stand on. your comments about fisher are speculation and not founded on anything i find convincing. sorry!

If I honestly believed this election was stolen I would be calling for Bush's head.

But we lost lost because Rove and the evangelicals outorganized us. That isn't illegal.

A good team does not wallow in a loss. A good team figures out why they lost and looks at fixing it for next time. That's what we have to do.

There may be a reason party leaders and others are telling us to move on. I just don't know what it is.

Florida = 27 Electoral Votes

Sorry, if there is a chance we don't have to live through another 4 years of this, I will invest some of my time in this effort.

You can believe whatever you WANT to believe, but that isn't what happened. Voter fraud isn't a conspiracy theory, it's a crime.

I say if even ONE vote was stolen, Bush should be impeached!

I don't like 4 more years of Bush either. However, this is the way the system works. Wallowing won't fix it.

Let's develop a strategy so Bush will do as little damage as possible in the next 4 years.

Florida = 27 Electoral Votes

Photo from http://www.electoral-vote.com/

If one looks at the exit polls as posted at the CNN website, 50% of the people who voted in West Virginia were Democrats but Bush carried the state. Nobody that I know of is complaining about West Virginia.

I can kinda see what you you are saying - But I'm sorry, after all I experienced during this election, it's hard for me to believe the election went the way it did. And yes, I WILL seek out reasons why & not let it rest! Perhaps the reasons may never be proven, perhaps they may not even be so... but I have that right and it doesn't make me a sore loser!
I talked to Repubs who were voting Kerry, I talked to people who had never voted but wanted to make sure they did this year, for Kerry. I can honestly say that only about 1 in 6 people I met were going to vote for Bush (probably more like 1 in 10) - did they go out & vote, I have no idea. But I do know that the people I drove & the people that my Republican friend drove to the polls weren't voting for Bush.
It just doesn't add up - not from what I experienced. Those first exit polls were what I experienced days & weeks before the election. I'm sorry but I smell a rat, and I've been smelling it for pretty much the past 4 years. Now tell me, if it smells bad, should we just 'eat' it anyway?
Not this time - no way. The internet(s) has given us a way to connect with others & inform others like never before. I say we use this tool to ENCOURAGE people to question things, not bow down. It doesn't matter what becomes of it, as long as we tried & made sure we did everything possible instead of just accepting things.
Do you honestly believe that most of the changes that have come about in America were the result of people 'bowing down' or saying 'well we should just accept this'... NO, it was because people questioned, because people tried, because they DID NOT stop when they KNEW they were right! So now, why ask people to do that? No matter what results, it's all good! Because that is Democracy at it finest!

If you want to research WV go ahead. Many of us have been spending our time on FL and Ohio because they are the most obvious.

It has only been 4 days since the election!!! Let us "wallow" for a couple months at least until the vote fraud has been proven, or swept under the rug!! There is plenty of time to develop a strategy over the next 4 years.

That is where you're wrong. We lost because of both of them, not one or the other. If ohio had been called first, it could arguably be said that we lost because of Ohio. If we won 1 of them, it would overturn the election. That is why both states need to have their democratic parties researching and looking for fraud.

Could there be another obvious answer on those exit polls.

1. The exit polls were conducted poorly. People screw up. It happens.

2. People simply lied. People do lie. It happens.

We have too much work to do that guess about what could have happened. It's over.

Therefore, there seems to be an entrenched program of election fraud favoring the Republicans.

We shall see.

Look, they got away with it in 2000 and that is why they figured that they could get away with it in 2004. If we look away now and don't investigate than we give them the green light to continue. There is no harm in investigating this especially when there have been so many reports of fraud. I don't want to ignore this. If they continue to commit fraud and get away with it there is no reason what so ever for us to work on winning the next time.

Must be a lot of smoke coming out of people's ears on this thread right now. I can just feel the wheels churning... :D