bwhahah
Posted on 11/09/2004 10:42:09 PM PST by ambrose
Kerry may have given up, but Internet backers haven't
By Julia Malone
Cox News Service
WASHINGTON | John Kerry has conceded, President Bush declared victory by a 3.5 million vote margin, and planning for the second term is well under way at the White House.
Top 5 stories Teen Gets 25 Years in Ex-Friend's Murder Storm System Brewing in Central Caribbean Prairie Dog Won't Get Federal Protection Two Dead, Three Missing After Calif. Blast Missing N.D. Woman Died of Gunshot Wound But after the most emotional election campaign in recent memory, some of the disappointed supporters of the Democratic challenger are not giving up.
Fueled by skepticism about voting machinery and vivid memories of the election debacle of Florida four years ago, conspiracy theories are swirling around the Internet.
Activists are forming groups with names like "stolenelection2004.com" and members of "Ohio Recount 2004" are assembling to share their suspicions.
On the airwaves of predominantly black radio station WAOK in Atlanta, the hot topic this week has been whether hackers rigged computer voting equipment or to ask why the early exit polls seemed to point to a Kerry victory.
None of the conspiracy theorists has provided proof of a widespread error that might have changed the election outcome. Independent groups who monitored the voting found problems scattered around the country but nothing decisive, and election officials have generally dismissed the Internet chatter.
"There are also Web sites devoted to theories that there was no landing on the moon," said James Lee, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Lee noted that the well-lawyered Kerry campaign has not challenged the loss.
Even so, Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a non-partisan research group set up to study the nation's voting system, is not surprised at the dark doubts that are surfacing. After the debacle of the 2000 election, he said, "Any problem is going to get noticed, not matter how small."
Among the glitches, a voting machine in Ohio's Franklin County first gave Bush more than 4,000 votes, when only 638 votes were cast. (The error was quickly corrected, after a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch called the county board of elections.)
In North Carolina, an estimated 4,500 votes were lost altogether because a computer voting machines were allowed to be overloaded.
And a still unknown number of voters around the country have complained about problems with touch-screen machines that appeared to record a different candidate from the one the voters chose.
The group Blackboxvoting.org, founded by a computer programmer Bev Harris, who works from her home from Seattle, warned before Election Day that the electronic voting systems could be easily hacked. Her Internet site alleges that it has documents that prove fraud in last week's balloting. It also asks for donations to pursue the charge.
Another site, "ustogether.org," uses charts of election data to suggest an anomaly because Democrats turned out in surprisingly high numbers for Bush in several Florida counties that used "optical scan" equipment, while voters in counties that used touch-screen equipment tended to vote according to their party identification.
And still another site reports that Jeff Fisher, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Florida's Palm Beach County, has asked the FBI to investigate possible vote fraud there. Fisher, who did not immediately return a call for comment, lost by more than 111,000 votes to veteran Republican Rep. Mark Foley.
Many of the "bloggers" beseech Kerry to withdraw his concession and lambaste the "mainstream news media" for failing to investigate voting irregularities.
At the watchdog group Electionline.org, Chapin said, "I am not surprised to hear that there are people who believe that Senator Kerry was 'robbed' in 2004 the same way Vice President (Al) Gore was 'robbed' in 2000."
But as he surveys the allegations, Chapin said, "I have yet to see any evidence that bears that out."
Cindy Cohn, legal director for the non-partisan tech group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been closely following electronic voting problems, concurred that there were many problems.
Cohn said her group has questions about whether computerized machines malfunctioned in some areas and would be seeking legal authority to examine equipment in a handful of counties, including Mahoning and Franklin in Ohio and Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida.
She cautioned, "I don't have any evidence of malicious intent," nor has she found errors large enough to change the outcome, considering the size of the Bush margin.
"We just need to sort out what the hard facts are," she said.
Internet activists such as Juliet Stewart of Cincinnati want more drastic action. "We are going to go all the way with this thing," she said, outlining hopes for finding a lawyer willing to work for free to make the case for a recount.
"We believe that John Kerry legally won Ohio," she said. However, she acknowledged that so far the never-say-die Kerry supports have been unable to energize even the Democratic Party.
Donald McTigue, a Democratic Columbus lawyer, is helping oversee the aftermath of the Ohio elections, including the absentee ballots and "provisional" ballots.
"We are doing out due diligence to insure that all the provisional ballots that are legally entitled to be counted are counted," McTigue said, adding that he was also gathering any information about discrepancies in the voting. He said the results should be clear by early next week.
"Our purpose is to just make sure that all the questions are answered regarding credible problems," he said. "Thousands upon thousands of people worked tirelessly (in the Kerry campaign). If nothing else we owe it to them to make sure that everything is straight up."
I hear that Republican thugs unleashed a whole bunch of pit bulls on lines of waiting voters.
Update - They haven't found any concrete evidence of voter fraud as yet, but did turn up Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis Presley living on a small farm in rural Ohio with the last surviving alien from the Roswell crash.
Yawn. This is getting so old. They will use Florida forever when it was actually them trying to steal an election before the eyes of the world. Get a new angle okay democrats. We are all getting pretty weary of this one.
Yeah, they're nuts.
bwhahah
I hope they don't uncover Karl Rove's scheme of using aliens from Mars and Venus to vote in Ohio.
Matt, u gotta lern how 2 spel!
Damn, I just can't quite make out what it is that "Makes Stress And Pain Fly Away..." for that lady in the middle picture. It would probably explain quite a lot.
Its not just these fringe websites, NPR (and my state's Public Radio) is mucho guilty of persistently airing shows with left-leaning hand-wringers that are analyzing every aspect of their MAJOR DEFEAT. HAHA.
They just don't get it...yet.
"The group Blackboxvoting.org, founded by a computer programmer Bev Harris, who works from her home from Seattle, warned before Election Day that the electronic voting systems could be easily hacked. Her Internet site alleges that it has documents that prove fraud in last week's balloting. It also asks for donations to pursue the charge.
This Bev Harris character is over at DU getting them all in a buzz, and the idiots over there are sending her their lunch money. Cruise some of the BBV threads over there and you will see what she is doing to those suckers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.