Kerry Won?!

If the Democrats are going to investigate this, they need to do it very very very very quietly.

And, if that's not possible (Which ia what i would suspect), just don't do it at all. I highly doubt it would be worth the P.R disaster it would surely cause.

 

*punches wall*

 

I don't get this. At our precint, we fed our punch cards into a machine that let us know whether everything was kosher. Why don't these exist elsewhere?

 

I believe that if a candidate conceeds, than unless a recount is declared, he has effectively ended the race. So at this point a recount would have to be declared for Kerry to even be able to challenge. This is why Gore never conceeded until it was all over.

 

As a staunch Democrat and liberal, I have to say that if you can't figure out how to punch a card through cleanly, then you don't deserve to have your vote counted. After the Florida debacle of 2000, if you don't understand that you have to punch your vote through completely, then there is no hope for you on this earth.

If this is such a big problem, why wasn't there an advertising campaign in key states like Ohio and Florida to educate people on how to punch a hole? I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is equally ridiculous that people can't do it. If you want the desired outcome, you have to educate the public on this, no matter how insipid it seems.

 

Palast is overwhelmingly credible. That's why he can't work here; he produces detailed pieces for BBC Newsnight, that are then farmed out around the globe. Due to his BBC work, he may be one of the most well-known Americans working in news on earth.

In fact, the first time I saw Palast (I had read him and heard him, but never SEEN him) was in the Seoul Hilton Namdaemun for the World Cup; one of his reports on the state of the American media was on Korean television.

I've not seen a single one of his reports disputed, or refuted. I'd like to, actually, if that critique is out there.

He's probably right about this. He's certainly right here in his take on the type of journalism we need but never really get when he says:

...Investigative reports share three things: They are risky, they upset the wisdom of the established order and they are very expensive to produce. Do profit-conscious enterprises, whether media companies or widget firms, seek extra costs, extra risk and the opportunity to be attacked? Not in any business text I’ve ever read. I can’t help but note that Britain’s Guardian and Observer newspapers, the only papers to report this scandal when it broke just weeks after the 2000 election, are the world’s only major newspapers owned by a not-for-profit corporation.

But if profit lust is the ultimate problem blocking significant investigative reportage, the more immediate cause of comatose coverage of the election and other issues is what is laughably called America’s “journalistic culture.” If the Rupert Murdochs of the globe are shepherds of the New World Order, they owe their success to breeding a fiock of docile sheep -- snoozy editors and reporters content to munch on, digest, then reprint a diet of press releases and canned stories provided by government and corporate public-relations operations.

Take this story of the list of Florida’s faux felons that cost Al Gore the presidential election. Shortly after the U.K. story hit the World Wide Web, I was contacted by a CBS TV network news producer eager to run a version of the story. The CBS hotshot was happy to pump me for information: names, phone numbers, all the items one needs for your typical quickie TV news report. I freely offered up to CBS this information: The office of the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, brother of the Republican presidential candidate, had illegally ordered the removal of the names of felons from voter rolls -- real felons who had served time but obtained clemency, with the right to vote under Florida law. As a result, another 40,000 legal voters (in addition to the 57,700 on the purge list), almost all of them Democrats, could not vote.

The only problem with this new hot info is that I was still in the midst of investigating it. Therefore, CBS would have to do some actual work -- reviewing documents and law, obtaining statements.

The next day I received a call from the producer, who said, “I’m sorry, but your story didn’t hold up.” And how do you think the multibillion-dollar CBS network determined this? Answer: “We called Jeb Bush’s office.” Oh.

I wasn’t surprised by this type of “investigation.” It is, in fact, standard operating procedure for the little lambs of American journalism. One good, slick explanation from a politician or corporate chieftain and it’s case closed, investigation over. The story ran on television, but once again, in the wrong country: I reported it on the BBC’s Newsnight. Notably, the BBC is a publicly owned network -- I mean a real public network, with no “funds generously provided by Archer Mobil Bigbucks.”

Let’s understand the pressures on the CBS TV producer that led her to kill the story simply because the target of the allegation said it ain’t so. The story demanded massive and quick review of documents, dozens of phone calls and interviews -- hardly a winner in the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am school of U.S. journalism. Most difficult, the revelations in the story required a reporter to stand up and say that the big-name politicians, their lawyers and their PR people were freaking liars.

It would be much easier, a heck of a lot cheaper and no risk at all to wait for the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to do the work, then cover the commission’s report and press conference. No one ever lost their job writing canned statements from a press release. Wait! You’ve watched Murphy Brown so you think reporters hanker to uncover the big scandal. Bullsh1t. Remember, All the President’s Men was so unusual they had to make a movie out of it.


Here's some great work by him.

His antidote to the current ills of the process and of the nation? Get in the streets. Forget the Dem Party, or any party. Get in the streets.

 

I'm looking for critique/refutation of his work; have you any? I'd like to see it.

 

Why didn't the Democratic lawyers and poll watchers say something about it?

His exit poll numbers don't jive with CNNs, either, especially the gender based ones:

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OH/P/00/epolls.0.html

 

A "concession" has no legal status. The President is not even truly the President-Elect until the electoral college votes. The Ohio election results aren't even official until certified by the Secretary of State.

Of course, in our political tradition, these are all simply formalities, but the concession itself does not sacrifice any actual legal rights to challenge that Kerry might have.

 

Uh, this is less than compelling in the face of his body of work and the prodigious distribution of his submission onto media which doesn't have to engage him at all.

When you say Palast is "well known for being anti-Bush and will write just about anything to discredit the guy," do you have anything for us other than you just saying that?

 

Most likely, Kerry is letting this go, but some journalists will want access to the ballots throught the FOIA and do their own count of the spoiled ballots.

This whole argument is insane. How can we NOT develop a system where votes are counted? Its 2004. Mario, I tend to agree with you, except I have no idea whether my votes were counted in the past. You punch a hole, and then move on. There is no way of confirming (until you pull your ballot out) whether or not the Chad came off of the ballot. I moved to a new area that doesn't use punch cards, but I would like to think that this year, I would have looked at the back of my ballot to insure that I voted correctly, but why should it be an issue at this point?

Jesus HW Christ, automated phone calls have figured out how to accurately take your information ("you have entered the zip code 60610. It that is correct, press #") why can't voting machines? Up until 2000, the % of spoiled ballots was understandable, and almost forgiveable as it never really did come down to a few votes (nationally anyway), but NOW, any state that hasn't figured out a way to reduce spoiled ballots should have their elected officials in charge of elctions flogged.

 

I just found out my vote has not yet been counted. Neither has my wife's. Neither have 207,000 of my neighbors. We actually have a free media here in the San Jose / Santa Cruz area. They are doing some investigating, not in widespread fraud, but widespread incompetence. The San Jose Mercury News link:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/

Those does have some implications, though, when coupled with the Ohio situation. In California, 100% of the precincts were reporting by the time Kerry conceded and Bush accepted. How can 100% of the precincts have reported, with record turnout, without having the votes counted?

Something is very wrong.

 

When I voted, I check and triple checked my card. Then gave to the election official that ran it through the machine, I saw my vote being counted. Isn't it that way for everyone?

 

You know, they have aliens and spaceships at Area 51, as well. Really, they do.

 

So, what, Kerry wins California by 207,000 more votes? Stunning.

 

Actually, if you could somehow see through the haze, you'd see I was mocking your "Election Conspiracy" with the fact that many people also believe the US Government is involved in an "Alien Conspiracy".

But, perhaps you just don't get biting sarcasm.

For that, I apologize.

 

Solution: Federal Office, Federal Election, Federal Mandate, Federal Money...

You want to make sure that a federal office election gets a kosher count? Take the responsibility away from states, order that they use uniform machines, use federal monies to oversee it, and if states want to f*** up their own elections for Senate on down the line... So Be It...

We can make machines that are fool-proof, and can be checked... But the corporate whores in Washington want to make sure there's "competetion" in designing them, and someone's pockets can be lined...

 

No, I read the article. It sounds exactly like what I can hear on "Coast to Coast AM" every night.

It's just more of the same, dressed up a little differently.

And it cuts both ways. There are several elderly members of my family who think that there are ballot boxes buried in Florida from the 1960 election and they blame LBJ.

The point really is that there is always going to be someone who claims "conspiracy" about anything, yet there is never any concrete proof.

 

Ohio is counting the provisional votes right now. If it turns out that they make the race so close as to warrant a recount, someone will call for one. But as it stands, there's no hard proof of fraud so we're just moving on. There are a couple of examples of incorrect vote counts that have already been discovered and corrected -- no sign of conspiracy or fraud, just bad vote counting. In a 100 million vote election it's bound to happen.

By the way, a concession is not a legal declaration of defeat. It's just political protocol. If Kerry wins every single provisional ballot (unlikely) and overtakes Bush in the Ohio vote (almost 100% impossible), it's not like BushCo can turn around and say, "But you conceded! I win!" The vote is the vote.