Don’t Give Up Hope

Electronic voting irregularities could still swing election to Kerry

By Chaelan MacTavish, Counter Propaganda

[This article was published in the Portland State University Vanguard, 11/12/2004. Chaelan MacTavish can be reached at counterpropaganda@dailyvanguard.com.]




We still do not know for certain who will be president for the next four years. There are two reasons for this. First, the Electoral College does not formally convene to choose the president until Dec. 13. Second, the results of voting in the states of Florida and Ohio are shadowed in doubt.

Both of these states used electronic voting technology and both went to President Bush by very narrow margins. Paradoxically, the exit polls in both states favored Kerry.

Indeed, the exit polls favored Kerry by a much wider margin than he took in seven other states as well. The difference between the exit polls and the “actual” returns was an average of 6.25 percent.

Peculiar. Nothing to warrant suspicion, that is, until it is noted that the exit polls in other states, and other elections, were nearly dead-on. Other states with paper ballots. This year, in states with verifiable voting, the exit polls were off by an average of 0.8 percent.

What could account for the difference? Why would states that use electronic voting machines have a substantial percentage of voters who would lie to exit pollsters? These same polls showed that Republicans would carry the majority of Senate races, which they did. Why would the Senate polls prove right, and the presidential ones wrong? Is it possible that electronic voting may be the key to that difference?

The Miami Herald reports that a software failure in Broward County caused up to 13,000 votes to be lost because the machines were programmed to start counting backwards once a certain number of voters had voted had been reached.

CNN reported that a machine in Franklin County, Ohio, registered four thousand extra votes for Bush.

A study by ustogether.org pointed out some Florida counties that have twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans for some reason went overwhelmingly for Bush.

An Election Day Associated Press report found some voters had to try ten times before they could press the “Kerry” button and not see “Bush” pop up.


Coincidentally, all of these instances leaned in the Republican’s candidate’s favor. Coincidentally, most voting machine companies, including industry leader Diebold, have CEOs that are heavy Republican contributors. When all “gliches” favor one candidate, it’s time to recognize that this was planned. Electronic fraud has given the presidency to Bush, who again cannot seem to win a legitimate election.

On the web site www.blackboxvoting.org, they are currently seeking donations to continue the largest Freedom of Information Act drive in history and recover all of the election results in dispute. If they can prove before Dec. 7, when a formal determination of controversy must be declared in the choosing of electors, that there is verifiable fraud in either of these states, the Democrats set of electors will have a majority, and John Kerry will be the next president.

His concession speech, it must be noted, is not legally binding. He conceded when facts told him he lost; fraudulent facts, however, do not make truth. Kerry learned this when he changed his position on the Iraq war. How utterly appropriate than within the next two weeks we may see the “flip-flopper” reverse himself yet again, and claim victory.