The Democrats stole two Senate seats--and still it wasn't enough ~ WSJ.

The Wall Street Journal. editorial page ^ | November 14, 2002 | The Wall Street Journal. Editorial Board

[Elle Bee]

It's not enough for John Thune to just talk about "unethical" voting practices.

Republican John Thune threw in the towel on his South Dakota Senate race yesterday, notwithstanding the suspicious circumstances under which he lost by a mere 524 votes. We think that at a minimum he owed his many supporters a recount.

[afraidfortherepublic]

We think that at a minimum he owed his many supporters a recount.

Amen!

[MsLady]

My thoughts exactly!!!

[gaspar]

Thune couldn't kick my 14 year old nephew's butt. You don't screw around with losers, especially one who got so much time from Bush. Give him an embassy and forget about it.

[Reb Raider]

I am not sure I believe those numbers and here's why--one of the flukes that caught a forgery was when a lady processing absentee ballot requests in a mainly republican county saw a request from a repub.friend for an absentee ballot and she noticed her friends' birthday wasn't correct. The dems had alot of votes to manufacture and couldn't come up with all of them in dem.counties. I am pretty sure this wasn't the only case of questionable absentee ballot requests from counties more repub than dem. I don't have to guess how the fradulent ballots that did get through voted. Vote all repub except for Thune--exactly the propaganda dems. were using--so they could bring home the bacon for S.D. Congressman Billybob said Becky Red what'shername was implicated in forgeries in at least 25 counties.

The other way repub.votes for Johnson could have been inflated is through their "independent contractor" voter registration drives. Some of those were probably listed as repub. This would serve the purpose of making sure at least some of the made up new voters were repub. to make it look less fishy.

Finally,it would make people think the repub voting for Johnson actually gave the victory to Johnson and take some of the focus off their unrealistic voter turnout and absentee ballot rate in a few counties. This all fits perfectly with their tatic of a talking point to take the limelight off the real issue. "Why,those republicans did this to themselves".

This senate race was everything to the dems by this point. Daschle would look terrible if he couldn't carry Tim J. through for the dems. On a paper ballot ,erasing a Thune vote and filling it in for Johnson would be easy. One article noted they got caught "darkening the pencil " marks on ballets "so the machine could read the ballot" instead of having a duplicate made as law requires in front of members of a board. Their answer-- "oh we do it this way all the time so the machine will read it". Losing in S.D. just wasn't going to happen and they had the time to put the fix in before reporting the final votes. I am not saying some repubs didn't vote for Johnson,but that just wasn't the way the voter mood in the country was blowing and I believe the numbers of republicans voting for Johnson were inflated and stolen from Thune. I have no absolute proof,but am awaiting the investigations to see what turns up.

[Reb Raider]

I feel so sorry for you. I am being serious. Arkansas has a political machine in place that Bill and Hill controlled for so many years that it will take longer to clean it up than in most places. Now they have got their claws in New York and it was already an uphill battle for a pub to win there.

The dems are always screaming about voter intimidation if I.D. is verified or republicans have poll watchers at polling precincts. I say let's intimidate them this way--arrest,prosecute,and incarcerate every one of them caught cheating in elections. Eventually it will have a chilling effect on some people when they figure out going to jail to put a dem in office they probably know little about just isn't worth it.

[Ima Lurker]

Right on brother!

[friendly]

Hopefully, this will be the end of Thune's political career. The Republicans don't need another eunuch.

True, so true. What gives? Is Thune another corrupt connected lawyer like Trent Lott? (in which case good riddence)

Or is is he a woossie democrat butt boy? What gives with the submissive masochist deal before such obvious election theft?

[lepton]

Lets see. Nixon went with out the recount and won the White House four years later.

Eight.

[lepton]

Should 500 of them be found to be fraudulent, you cannot simply take 500 votes away from Johnson. How are you going to prove how these 500 fraudulent voters voted? We can assume that they were Johnson votes, but you can't PROVE it.

On the other hand, if you have 1000 fraudulent votes in an area that voted 90+% for Johnson, I think a reasonable argument could be made that if all votes for Thune were discounted first, then Johnsons to complete out the number, then Thune would pick up a sizable net change. It depends on how big the fraud is.

[Miss Marple]

1000 votes. 900-Johnson, 100-Thune.

Assume 500 fraudulent votes.

You cannot assume that half the Johnson votes and half the Thune voes were fraudulent.

I guess you could throw out ALL the Thune votes and 400 of the Johnson votes, but it would still leave Johnson with a 500-0 lead in that precinct.

[lepton]

I would be more likely to remember someone who fought for the people that voted for him, forget about fighting for himself. I would remember someone who fought for voters that had their votes negated by fraud and cheating, that's who I would remember. Not someone who is looking out for himself in a possible future race.

So would dropping out and then pushing the investigation fit your wishes?

[lepton]

I live 17 miles from one reservation and 22 miles from another. I have friends on both. The tactics were unbelievable. I would not have the imagination to dream of the ideas let alone the cajones to try to pull them off.

Like what?

[lepton]

1000 votes. 900-Johnson, 100-Thune.

Assume 500 fraudulent votes.

You cannot assume that half the Johnson votes and half the Thune voes were fraudulent.

I guess you could throw out ALL the Thune votes and 400 of the Johnson votes, but it would still leave Johnson with a 500-0 lead in that precinct. I'm not assuming half and half. In your last example, Johnson would have a 500 vote lead instead of a 800 vote lead, reducing his overall lead by 300. The point being that the ratios, both of who voted for the candidates, and of valid votes to fraudulent votes, are meaningful if they are large.

[Miss Marple]

I see your point. However, since we can assume that some Thune votes and some Johnson votes were not fraudulent, you cannot simply throw out arbitrary numbers of votes, regardless if it is all or half, because you really don't know which votes were valid.

I think the only remedy is to throw out the entire precinct and re-vote. At least, that is what is done in Indiana.

[deport]

A question: Have you seen any documentation to the reference that some 22,000 Republicans voted for Johnson? I've not seen how that number was derived. But if in fact that many did vote for Johnson then it appears that Johnson was to win regardless. I know there is a difference between one's free will to choose to vote for Johnson and a fraud vote for him, but the fact remains that if that many republicans voted for Johnson (13.7% of his total) then so be it.

[Miss Marple]

I have only seen that quoted here. I do not know where the figure comes from, or if it is accurate. I do know tha polls showed them about dead even all year, in which case some Republicans must have been supporting Johnson.

[deport]

The quote came from this article, but I've not seen it in any other context nor explained how it was derived.....

"While it's all well and good to laud the Democrats' registration effort, they weren't responsible for the win. It was crossover Republicans," Richardson said.

The political science professor calculates that 23,000 Republicans voted for Johnson. He doubts Republican voters will be that willing to cross party lines in two years, when Daschle is up for re-election.

[d14truth]

"...under Clinton's #1 butt boy, Roy Romer..."

The current head of the Los Angeles Unified School District(LAUSD)---English as a second language and over 50% of the high school graduates can't read or write.

Now, he is Gov. 'Doofus' butt boy.