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BURNED_IN_2004

                                             December 10, 2006
                                             November 03, 2004

How I became a rabid "fraudie"...
                                           LAST_EXIT_FOR_DEMOCRACY
Back in 2004, right after the
election, I tried to estimate
the possibility that Bush had
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 scan was the thing that swung
Ohio.  As I wrote back on back on November 3rd, 2004:

    My tentative conclusion is "probably
    not", but these machines remain a
    scandalously bad idea, and it's
    astounding that they used them at all
    (just think: "need paper trail" and
    you'll be up-to-date with the latest
    thinking on the subject).


It didn't sound like a big-enough chunk of the
vote was carried by Diebold machines, so that
didn't seem too likely -- and Bush's lead was
a little too big to make a Diebold exploit
scenario seem plausible.


The trouble was
that I looked at
only *one* method,
and they had
*many* at their
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
            machines in
            Democratic
            precincts.)


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

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

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

       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 which
                    that 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 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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