Wednesday, November 03, 2004 commentary:
States with electronic voting machines gave Bush mysterious 5% advantage; bloggers do the math that broadcast networks fail to follow

Is Bush trying to pull a fast one? It's not fooling bloggers over at DemocraticUnderground.com, who have put together some fascinating numbers showing that a mysterious "5% advantage" goes to Bush only in those states using electronic voting machines. Or, put another way, all the exit polls showed Kerry winning, and the exit polls asked people who they actually voted for. But strangely, the "official" count appears to have been boosted in favor of Bush.

How was it boosted? Read up at BlackBoxVoting.org to learn how electronic voting machines can easily be hacked. And since there's no paper trail -- are we insane? -- there's no record of how the votes were actually cast.

Another burning question is surfacing: if this was such a record turnaround, with long lines all over the country, where did all the votes go? Because the vote totals don't show much of a difference from the 2000 election. It's as if a few million votes just vanished...

Just to make things even more frustrating for Democratics, the e-voting machines have no way to offer a meaningful recount of votes. As this WIRED article explains, the machines leave no paper trail. The votes are recorded as mere bits and bytes, meaning there's really no way to tell how the people actually voted in the first place. (Only in America could we decide our national elections with the aid of voting machines that leave no paper trail.)

Developing...

Overview:

An analysis of exit polling, which showed Kerry with a tighter margin and leading in myriad states, raises serious questions about the authenticity of the popular vote in several key states, RAW STORY has learned.

The analysis, conducted by a poster at the popular Democratic forum, Democratic Underground, suggests possible voter fraud in states that do not have electronic voting receipts.

An exit poll involves asking someone after they walk out of the election booth who they voted for.

Exit polls were recently used in Venezuela to ensure the vote was accurate and legitimate.

Perhaps more importantly, while exit polling is unreliable, the odds of President Bush having gaining an advantage from every exit poll in swing states is an extremely improbable coincidence.

Actual voting counts found that Bush trailed by 5 percent, with a 5 percent discrepancy favoring Bush.

Source: http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388