Voices of Suspicion (11/17/04)
by Dean Hartwell
The 2004 Presidential Election is not over yet. The electors from each of the states will meet at their capitols on Monday, December 13th to vote for President and Vice-President. The votes will be counted in a joint session of Congress on Thursday, January 6, 2005.
Before then, something must be done about the voices of suspicion over the voting which took place on November 2nd. These voices have circulated opinions, mostly on the Internet, that there may have been fraud.
The skeptics cite exit polls as one reason to doubt the election result. Exit polls in several states varied tremendously from the final results. Curiously, in all cases, the final tallies favored Bush.
Indeed, Dr. Steven F. Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated that the odds were slim that Senator Kerry’s predicted percentage of the vote, 52.1% would vary so greatly from the outcome (48.5%). He pointed out that a bell-shaped curve can be formed around the predicted percentage, akin to the “margin of error” used in polls. This curve represents a ninety-nine percent statistical confidence that the true percentage was within that curve. However, Kerry’s true percentage fell outside the curve. Freeman thus calculated the likelihood that Kerry would receive only 48.5% of the vote is one in one thousand. (Source: http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/articles/exit-poll-discrepancy-1110.pdf)
Why would the exit polls be so different?
To begin with, exit polls have a reputation for accuracy. According to political strategist Dick Morris, they are rarely wrong. News networks have used them for years to project winners and losers of elections.
Then, too, with the widespread use of electronic voting, hacking becomes possible. Auditors furthermore cannot verify the accuracy of the voting. We have no legitimate way of double-checking the votes in the states that use them.
Deeply suspicious is the comment made by one of the owners of the electronic voting machines. Walden O’Dell of Diebold Inc. stated that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004 (http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Diebold_Election_Systems). An owner of machines that enable people to vote has no business making this kind of statement.
Speaking of owners of machines used in the elections, an Internet news company reported that two of the owners have criminal records for misdeeds such as bribery (http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6912004.html). The public has had no say about who owns the very instruments with which it makes its voice heard. By contracting with people of such ill character, states have sold out the voters and fueled the suspicion.
Then there were overvotes – counties in which there were more votes cast in Ohio than people registered to vote. According to one source, Colin Shea, there were nearly 100,000 such votes in Ohio alone (Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1115-20.htm).
Suspicion has carried so far that two of the losing candidates in the presidential race, Green David Cobb and Libertarian Michael Badnarik, have pursued a recall of the vote in Ohio (www.votecobb.org). Independent Ralph Nader has done the same in New Hampshire.
Mysteriously inaccurate exit polls. Shady voting machine owners. Overvotes. Recall efforts. None of this suspicion adds up to convincing proof that President Bush or his surrogates fixed the election.
In fact, the mainstream media has so far ignored or downplayed these concerns. It has been the Internet that has mostly carried the story of possible fraud.
But the votes should be counted and investigated. By reading this and other articles and discussing them with others, you can keep the voices of suspicion alive and contribute to the chance they will be heard by the time the final votes are counted before Congress.