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BURNED_IN_2004

                                             December 10, 2006
How I became a rabid "fraudie"...            November 03, 2004
                                       Rev:  July     15, 2007
Back in 2004, right after the
election, I tried to estimate
the possibility that Bush had       LAST_EXIT_FOR_DEMOCRACY
stolen it, and essentially
I got sung to sleep...

The one name on everyone's mind
was "Diebold", so I immediately
looked into the possiblity that
a Diebold scam was the thing
that swung Ohio.

It didn't sound like a big chunk of
the vote was carried by Diebold
machines (and Bush's lead was a
little too big) so the notion that           Back on November 3rd,
rigging them could have carried Ohio         2004, I wrote:
didn't seem too likely
                                             My tentative conclusion is
                                             "probably not", but these
                                             machines remain a
                                             scandalously bad idea, and
                                             it's astounding that they
The trouble was                              used them at all (just
that I looked at                             think: "need paper trail"
only *one* method,                           and you'll be up-to-date
and they had                                 with the latest thinking on
*many* at their                              the subject).
disposal.

    What I now figure:

    (1) they used e-vote scams
        (among others) nation
        wide, to narrow the              Grasping the *scale* of
        race to Ohio                     what happened was difficult.
                                         It sounds too much like
    (2) In Ohio, they used               comspiracy theory paranoia --
        primarily more                   since then I've concluded
        conventional fraud               that the "vast right-wing
        techniques                       conspiracy" is no joke.

           (e.g. shorting                TOO_MANY_ACTORS
            machines in
            Democratic
            precincts.)
                             (And actually, there's an earlier
                             stage before stage (1): attempting
                             to disallow voters from groups
                             that are expected to vote Democrat,
                             e.g. black people, even if they're
                             members of the armed services...)


Once again, as I wrote back on November 3rd, 2004:

    However Andrew Tannenbaum (a famous
    academic unix hacker) who runs the      [ref]
    electoral-vote site says this:

       "One thing that is very strange is how
       much the exit polls differed from the
       final results, especially in
       Ohio. Remember that Ohio uses Diebold
       voting machines in many areas. These
       machines have no paper trail. Early in
       the campaign, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell,
       a GOP fundraiser, promised to deliver
       Ohio to Bush. He later regretted having
       said that."

    But some slashdot guys are saying that this
    isn't the case...  though it appears that          Note: back in those
    the CNN exit polls changed during the              days I hadn't twigged
    election.  So, Bush voters hit the polls           to the presence of
    late?  Or CNN tweaked the data to avoid            the "Rover Boys" on
    embarrassment?  Myself, I'm inclined to bet        slashdot...
    on Tannenbaum's opinion (he's a serious
    poll watching nerd, take a look at that web              THE_ROVERS
    site).  Maybe there's a funny exit poll
    discrepency, but how funny is probably open
    to question.


                    So, what about that exit
                    poll discrepancy that
                    Tannenbaum mentioned?

                    Well, first I heard
                    about a Berkeley study
                    that claimed they had
                    spotted statistically
                    significant exit poll
                    discrepensies that
                    favored Bush, and they
                    correlated with
                    the use of electronic
                    voting machines...

                    But then I heard about a
                    Caltech study that
                    contradicted this finding.

                    I wasn't convinced that
                    there was no problem,
                    but I didn't think there
                    was clear evidence of it...

                    Until I read Freeman and Bleifuss,
                    and discovered that the MIT/Caltech
                    guys later retracted their
                    "study"... and the media never
                    reported the retraction.

                    Instead, they published many
                    a sneer at "internet conspiracy
                    theories" and then dropped the
                    story...

                        LAST_EXIT_FOR_DEMOCRACY

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