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Issue 10 - Spring / Summer 2005 Page 68 |
On election night at least half of the American electorate realized something went terribly wrong. How could George W. Bush possibly have gotten back into power? Here’s how …George Bush Stole the 2004 Election |
BY STEVE MOORE
When Actress Susan Sarandon appeared on the Bill Maher show (5 Nov. 04), he asked her what is the biggest issue facing Americans as a nation. Her reply was ‘Voter fraud’. Bill Maher, who is usually in-the-know about current events, had no idea what she was talking about.
The problem, of course, is ‘undetectable fraud’ according to Avi Rubin, a computer expert at John Hopkin’s University.1 The issue is the new electronic voting machines with no paper trail and their role in the stealing of the 2004 election. (See my previous articles in Global Outlook.2)
The facts are Bush carried Ohio by an apparent margin of 118,775 votes. If Kerry had just 60,000 of these 118,775 votes, he would have won all of Ohio’s electoral votes and therefore, be the President of the United States today. In this election, whoever won Ohio’s electoral votes became President. So what actually happened in Ohio, Florida and the other swing states is extremely important. In short, can "undetectable fraud" be detected from the evidence available by March, 2005? My answer is "yes." This article presents a summary of the evidence that supports my contention that George Bush stole the 2004 election.
Election Night Mood Swings
Of course, mood swings don’t prove a thing, except when there is a valid emotional response to an actual loss of a friend, a spouse or an election. In these cases, it is called emotional intelligence. Here is Newsweek’s description of the intuitive moods among journalists and both political camps before and during election night:
The journalists were convinced Bush would lose. Backstage at rallies, reporters plugged the latest poll numbers into electoral math calculators on the web. Kerry came out ahead every time … On Election Day the early exit polls seemed to bear out the correspondent’s predictions: Bush was losing Florida and Ohio and was getting demolished in Pennsylvania.
Bush’s top aids couldn’t believe the numbers. … At headquarters in Virginia, Bushies were staring at their computer keyboards ‘trying to disappear,’ as one aide put it. They had planned a victory party … but the place was a ‘morgue,’ the aide explained.3
Then, later that night, everything suddenly changed. Tim Griffin, the Republican National Committee’s top opposition research man called Kevin Peraino, the Newsweek reporter, over to Republican Headquarters and announced "We’re gonna win big!" Kevin thought it was the myth of a ‘spin doctor’. And yet Griffin knew something unbelievable, something against all the evidence. Bush would not only win, but win ‘big’.4 What is it that Griffin knew? Griffin knew about ‘computer doctors’.
Electronic Voting Machine Fraud
By January, 2005, the evidence for detectable electronic voting machine fraud was starting to emerge even in "respectable" liberal journals, like Harper’s Magazine. Here are some basic facts presented by Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis H. Lapham:
• A precinct in Franklin County, Ohio, possessed of only 638 voters awarded 4,258 votes to Bush.
• In forty-seven of the sixty-seven counties in Florida, Bush received more votes than there were registered Republicans.
• Of the 120,200,000 votes cast on Election Day roughly a third were processed by electronic voting machines supplied not by government but by private corporations, at least one of them (Diebold) controlled by a zealous partisan of the Republican Party who made no secret of his wish to bring victory home for the holidays. The software programs enjoyed the protection granted to commercial trade secrets.
• In three states that relied extensively on paper ballots (Illinois, Maine, WI) the exit polls corresponded to the final tally. In six states that relied extensively on electronic touch screens (North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio) the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final tally invariably favored Bush.
• In ten of the eleven swing states the final result differed from the predicted result, and in each instance the shift added votes for Bush.
• Voters in six states, most particularly those in three Florida counties (Broward, Dade and Palm Beach) reported touching the screen for Kerry and seeing their ballots marked for Bush.
• The electronic machines in Broward County began counting absentee ballots backward once they had recorded 32,000 votes; as more people voted, the official vote count went down.
• Exit polls in states equipped with verifiable paper receipts corresponded to the final tally; in states employing electronic touch screens the margin of difference between exit polls and the final tallies was as high as 5, 7 and 9%.5
Voter Challenges
These emerging facts caused numerous court challenges in Ohio. The Green Party, the Libertarian Party and the Alliance for Democracy filed requests for a recount in 88 Ohio counties and also planned to ask the Ohio Supreme Court to throw out the election results. According to Clifford Arnebeck, the lawyer and Cochairman of the Alliance for Democracy, "We will allege in the complaint that the result should have been Kerry winning."6
US Congress Debate Challenges Election
Voters were not the only ones protesting ‘Voter Fraud’. For only the second time since 1877, the US Congress debated a "formal challenge to the electoral votes from Ohio". This rare and important historical event – this debate by the highest institution of American democracy on whether the 2004 election was stolen – was presented by the New York Times on page 15 … I repeat on page 15. The New York Times noted in passing that the two-hour debate introduced "a sharp note of partisan acrimony".7
Senator Boxer from California was instrumental in challenging what she said was a ‘flawed system’ in the 2004 election. Senator Boxer zeroed in on the electronic voting machines by arguing:
Why did a computing error in Franklin County initially award 4,258 extra votes to George Bush when only 638 people had actually voted? Thankfully they fixed it, but how many other votes did the computers get wrong?8
Clearly, as Mr. Lapham, from Harper’s, has already mentioned above, these Bush ‘ghost’ votes were also a problem in 47 of the 67 counties in Florida, as well as in North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and other Ohio counties. And most of these errors were never explained or reversed. In fact, they were certified in the final election totals.
Yet the House voted 267 to 31 against the challenge to the results of the 2004 election. In the Senate, only Senator Boxer voted to challenge the election. The complete defeat of the challenge was largely due to a spineless leadership of the Democratic Party. For example, the New York Times reported that, "The Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, did not support the objection, nor was he on hand to witness it …"9
The Role Of The Alternative Politics & Press
Still, it is a miracle that the debate even happened within the emerging American dictatorship.
The role of the progressive forces such as the civil rights groups and internet activists and magazines like Global Outlook was extremely important. Even the New York Times had to admit that, "In many ways, the debate came about because of the relentless efforts of a small group of third party activists, liberal lawyers, internet muckrakers and civil rights groups who have been arguing since Election Day that the Ohio vote was rigged for Bush."10
Computer Vote Fraud In Ohio
92,672 regular ballots were cast in Ohio without indicating a choice for President. Many of these non-votes for President were cast by voters who waited in line for hours. Given the increased interest in and the increased voter turnout for the 2004 election, non-votes for President should have raised some eyebrows. Yet, no inspection and re-counting of these ballots took place.
Interestingly, these no-vote ballots came from regions where Kerry was strongest. In Hamilton County, 4,515 ballots or 51.64% of the uncounted county total came from Cincinnati, where Kerry won 67.98% to Bush’s 31.54%. In Cuyahoga County, 4,708 ballots or 44% of the uncounted county total came from Cleveland, where Kerry won all 65 precincts. Similar results happened in Akron.11
In short, all the large Democratic Party cities in Ohio had an unusual number of no-votes for President. Somebody pressing delete vote buttons on a Republican-built Diebold computer is one probable answer. No other explanations have been given for why 92,672 people would wait in line for hours in a presidential election and then refuse to vote for a presidential candidate.
Then, we have the add-ons, the famous Bush ‘ghost’ votes. In Southern Perry County (Ohio), two precincts reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124 percent of registered voters. This is impossible.
You cannot have more votes than voters. Nevertheless, Ohio, under Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, officially certified these Perry County votes as part of the final vote total. In contrast, in pro-Kerry Cleveland there were precincts where certified voter turnouts were only 7.10, 13.15, 19.6, 21.01,21.80, 24.72, 28.83 and 28.97% of the registered voters.12
In short, Kerry registered voters were either physically disappearing at an alarming rate or were being deleted by a computer while Bush registered voters were appearing in greater numbers than actual physical bodies – i.e. the so-called ‘ghost’ votes.
Teed Rockwell, a philosopher at Sonoma State University in Sonoma, California counted 93,136 extra ghost votes in just 29 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. For example, Bay Village precinct had 13,710 registered voters and yet 18,663 ballots were cast. Similar numbers exist for the other 28 precincts. The source: The official web site of the Cuyahoga County Election Board at http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/currentresults1.htm#top. Given Kerry lost by 118,775, these 93,136 votes in Cuyahoga County could have been instrumental in swinging the US election.
Steve Moore is a retired teacher of American History residing in British Columbia. Copyright belongs to the author. All rights reserved.
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