More Potential Evidence of Voter Fraud - In Oklahoma?
I'd like you to pull up two links:
Tulsa World Election 2004 Coverage
Towards the middle of the page on the left hand side, you'll see a county-by-county breakdown of the election results in Oklahoma. These results are listed as unofficial, and supposedly are a snapshot of the vote count after 70% of the votes had been counted.
Now, pull up the CNN Election Results for Oklahoma after 100% of the precincts had reported:
CNN Oklahoma Election Results
There are some huge discrepancies between these two result sets. You'd think that after adding the final 30% of the election results, both candidate's total vote count would increase in each county. This is simply not the case. In 57 different counties, Bush's vote count went up substantially, while Kerry's vote count dropped substantially.
Here are just a few examples I pulled at random:
Adair:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 2,137 GB, 3,704 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 4,971 GB, 2,560 JK
(Bush Gained 2,834 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,144 Votes)
Canadian:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 16,380 GB, 11,518 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 33,297 GB, 9,712 JK
Bush Gained 16,917 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,806 Votes)
Pontotoc:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 3,949 GB, 6,249 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 9,647 GB, 5,165 JK
(Bush Gained 5,698 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,084 Votes)
Wagoner
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 10,072 GB, 8,081 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 19,081 GB, 9,157 JK
(Bush Gained 9,009 new votes, while Kerry gained just 1,076 Votes)
The overwhelming trend was that in every small rural county, Bush gained thousands of new votes, while the vote count for Kerry actually decreased. I am at a complete loss as to how these numbers can be explained -- outside of a vast right-wing conspiracy to commit voter fraud. Perhaps this is an honest mistake -- perhaps the numbers published by Tulsa World were all overwhelming incorrect. Is is possible? sure. Unlikely? yes. It now seems to me that we have credible evidence of a massive electoral fraud scandal.
If you were trying to pull off a voter fraud scheme, don't you think you would concentrate on spreading the fraud over a large number of small, rural counties, so that no individual county looks way out of wack. It appears that this was what they tried pulling off. They probably thought they could get away with it too -- who would bother to second guess a victory for Bush in Oklahoma.
The votes for the 57 counties in question where Kerry lost votes were all conducted on ES&S Optech Machines. In total, Kerry lost 37,982 Votes, while Bush gained a whopping 393,825 votes.
So -- what happens next? Should there be a call to recount Oklahoma. The state presidential race was decided by over 450,000 votes, so it appears unlikely that Kerry would win the state by any imagined scenario.
The evidence is alarming. The silence by the media while evidence has mounted pointing to voting irregularities has been almost unbearable. It is laughable to me when I here cried of a liberal media bias. Where is this so-called liberal media when we need them? The only vocal critic of the electoral process heard in the mainstream media has been Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. For his courage, we see ridicule by the media, such as an article entitled Keith Olbermann's Dan Rather Moment. I am outraged by the silence in the mass media. They have completely failed us.
While I am at it, I would also like to outrage over the medias handling of the entire Dan Rather/Rathergate Fiasco. Bush brought us to war on false pretenses, sending thousands of troops in harm's way, without a reasonable explanation. Evidence, such as the 9/11 commission report, has come out to show that the justifications provided for the war were a complete sham. Bush himself was a complete coward in his own youth. He used his relationship with his father to avoid duty in Vietnam, instead taking a position with the Texas Air National Guard. The problem is that the papers that should show Bush's record with the National Guard are missing. Should this not be a major cause for concern? What do you have to hide, Mr. Bush?
The mass media has given the Bush Administration a free ride for far too long. There is no liberal media to speak of. Any time somebody like Dan Rather or Keith Olbermann tries to step out and make a public statement, the mass media is all over the story, ridiculing the so-called liberal media every step of the way.
This behavior has got to stop. There is credible evidence that some things may have gone afoul during the presidential election. This is a message to the mass media--It is time to stick out your neck, and demonstrate some journalistic integrity and tenacity. There are several stories worth investigating:
Tulsa World Election 2004 Coverage
Towards the middle of the page on the left hand side, you'll see a county-by-county breakdown of the election results in Oklahoma. These results are listed as unofficial, and supposedly are a snapshot of the vote count after 70% of the votes had been counted.
Now, pull up the CNN Election Results for Oklahoma after 100% of the precincts had reported:
CNN Oklahoma Election Results
There are some huge discrepancies between these two result sets. You'd think that after adding the final 30% of the election results, both candidate's total vote count would increase in each county. This is simply not the case. In 57 different counties, Bush's vote count went up substantially, while Kerry's vote count dropped substantially.
Here are just a few examples I pulled at random:
Adair:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 2,137 GB, 3,704 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 4,971 GB, 2,560 JK
(Bush Gained 2,834 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,144 Votes)
Canadian:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 16,380 GB, 11,518 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 33,297 GB, 9,712 JK
Bush Gained 16,917 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,806 Votes)
Pontotoc:
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 3,949 GB, 6,249 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 9,647 GB, 5,165 JK
(Bush Gained 5,698 new votes, while Kerry lost 1,084 Votes)
Wagoner
Tulsa (70% Complete) - 10,072 GB, 8,081 JK
CNN (100% Complete) - 19,081 GB, 9,157 JK
(Bush Gained 9,009 new votes, while Kerry gained just 1,076 Votes)
The overwhelming trend was that in every small rural county, Bush gained thousands of new votes, while the vote count for Kerry actually decreased. I am at a complete loss as to how these numbers can be explained -- outside of a vast right-wing conspiracy to commit voter fraud. Perhaps this is an honest mistake -- perhaps the numbers published by Tulsa World were all overwhelming incorrect. Is is possible? sure. Unlikely? yes. It now seems to me that we have credible evidence of a massive electoral fraud scandal.
If you were trying to pull off a voter fraud scheme, don't you think you would concentrate on spreading the fraud over a large number of small, rural counties, so that no individual county looks way out of wack. It appears that this was what they tried pulling off. They probably thought they could get away with it too -- who would bother to second guess a victory for Bush in Oklahoma.
The votes for the 57 counties in question where Kerry lost votes were all conducted on ES&S Optech Machines. In total, Kerry lost 37,982 Votes, while Bush gained a whopping 393,825 votes.
So -- what happens next? Should there be a call to recount Oklahoma. The state presidential race was decided by over 450,000 votes, so it appears unlikely that Kerry would win the state by any imagined scenario.
The evidence is alarming. The silence by the media while evidence has mounted pointing to voting irregularities has been almost unbearable. It is laughable to me when I here cried of a liberal media bias. Where is this so-called liberal media when we need them? The only vocal critic of the electoral process heard in the mainstream media has been Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. For his courage, we see ridicule by the media, such as an article entitled Keith Olbermann's Dan Rather Moment. I am outraged by the silence in the mass media. They have completely failed us.
While I am at it, I would also like to outrage over the medias handling of the entire Dan Rather/Rathergate Fiasco. Bush brought us to war on false pretenses, sending thousands of troops in harm's way, without a reasonable explanation. Evidence, such as the 9/11 commission report, has come out to show that the justifications provided for the war were a complete sham. Bush himself was a complete coward in his own youth. He used his relationship with his father to avoid duty in Vietnam, instead taking a position with the Texas Air National Guard. The problem is that the papers that should show Bush's record with the National Guard are missing. Should this not be a major cause for concern? What do you have to hide, Mr. Bush?
The mass media has given the Bush Administration a free ride for far too long. There is no liberal media to speak of. Any time somebody like Dan Rather or Keith Olbermann tries to step out and make a public statement, the mass media is all over the story, ridiculing the so-called liberal media every step of the way.
This behavior has got to stop. There is credible evidence that some things may have gone afoul during the presidential election. This is a message to the mass media--It is time to stick out your neck, and demonstrate some journalistic integrity and tenacity. There are several stories worth investigating:
- Why have I not heard anything more about the story in Volusia county, where it appeared that Bev Harris of Black Box Voting had uncovered an attempt to dispose of the official paper trail. From the initial stories coming out, it appeared that this entire ordeal was caught on camera, and that proof of voter fraud was found. This story should be a national headline by now. Instead it appears that it has been dusted into the corner to be forgotten until it is too late
- Somebody should jump all over this story in Oklahoma. Start by contacting the Tulsa World to find out where they received the initial results published in the 11/03/2004 paper. Somebody needs to provide a real answer for these discrepancies
- The Ohio Recount - Start it already. Get James Blackwell out of there. Does anybody not see the conflict of interest in having the chair of the George W. Bush Election Commitee also running the election in Ohio? What about Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, quoted in the Fall of 2003 as saying: "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
- Transparent Voting, Open Source Technology, and a Paper Trail -- Did we not learn enough from the 2000 Florida Election? When will we learn our lesson? A national call for a transparent open source electoral process is needed. I have heard cries for running the entire election as a paper-based vote, but it appears that our nation is far too impatient to wait for the results from such an election. The next best solution is a single solution developed by an open source consortium. Get the universities involved in this.
- Several studies have demonstrated massive statistical abnormalities in the voting results. These studies have already led to a recount in certain counties and precincts within New Hampshire. Way to go Ralph Nader! The most famous of these is a UC Berkeley study which has found that the electoral results in several major democratic counties in Florida are completely unbelievable. The study finds that there is only a 1 in a 1000 chance that the abnormalities found could be attributable to chance. In other words, the results were tampered with.
In conclusion, I'd just like to state that I am extremely disappointed in the media. The evidence is there -- where is your journalistic integrity? I don't have the resources to send a team of journalists and fact checkers to chase down each of these major stories to verify the information involved -- YOU DO! Sure, it is much easier to sit down here and right a blog entry about these stories than it is to publish a journalistic piece for all the world to see. I understand the desire to keep your neck and reputation intact, but I don't understand the complete silence on the issues. This silence is completely unacceptable.
posted by markh100 at
1:50 AM
