Maybe I missed it, but I don't see where he offered anything even sort of conclusive as to why the "spoilage votes" would be for Kerry.
Dude, read more carefully. 100% precincts reporting, but 1/3 of the Santa Clara county votes are not counted. I voted three weeks ago, in absentia, but they haven't got around to it yet. Somehow, national and state level issues have been decided but 207,000 votes, including mine, are not part of the result. The only votes that have been counted so far are those that have been done electronically. In San Diego, only 49% of the votes have been counted, as of last night. Palast was writing about spoiled ballots, but something is very wrong when non-spoiled ballots haven't been counted, and results have been posted with 100% precincts reporting. Something is wrong.
Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. Greg Palast's math doesn't add up. Provisional ballots are provisional because there's something irregular with the voter's status to cast a ballot. I believe at most 30 percent of those would be counted. (It was reported that 7-20 percent of provisional ballots were ruled valid in a close Illinois election recently.) So for Kerry to have won Ohio, every discarded ballot plus every valid provisional ballot would have to have been for him. In a state that split 50/50, that's impossible. Nice try, Greg.
LBJ admitted as much in his memoirs about vote counting fraud. So, too, has Jimmy Carter. Why do you think he has his knickers in a twist about fair and free elections abroad? He knows something about how vote counting is really done.
I'm not going to argue that provisionals will, or even could, give the vote to Kerry. But the number of provisionals that are accepted is going to be a lot higher than 20% or 30%, probably more like 75-80% given the way that people were contested over anything on Election Day, and the percentage of those accepted that voted for Kerry is likely to be over two-thirds, given where they were cast (Cuyahoga, mostly). That's why it took until midday Wednesday for him to concede - they wanted to see how many provisionals there were. If it were 250K as they had hoped, we'd all be reading court briefs right now. It's going to get closer after the provisionals -- probably under 100K difference once they're done -- but it's not going to get so close as to trigger a recount.
This is and isn't true. Yes, something's irregular, but not usually with the "voter's status to cast a ballot," which I interpret to mean, "the eligibility of the voter to legally vote." Most provisional ballots are given to people who go to the wrong precinct because they moved but didn't change their registration address. Or, in states that require ID, the address on the ID doesn't match the address on the registration. These are all simple mix-ups for people who are perfectly eligible to vote.
I clicked on the "respond to author link" on his page and sent him this: Dear Greg Palast, STFU, Signed, Mike Lastort A Democrat who would like to have a chance to see a Democrat in the White House again in his lifetime
What I meant was "the eligibility of the voter to legally vote in that precinct." We'll see how many provisional ballots hold up in Ohio. But it's certainly not going to tip the election the other way.
I think we need to keep track of all the election inconsistencies. 4500 Bush votes in a precinct with 680 voters is an obvious error. With electronic voting, it is easy enough to mask the results without creating "extra" votes. So far - Ohio: 4,000 extra votes for Bush - North Carolina: 7,000 deleted votes - Florida: missing absentee ballots from Brower County - California: 207,000 uncounted votes in Santa Clara county alone, with 100% of precincts reporting and the list goes on. I'm beginning to wonder if the results were just "made up." Next soccer game I play, I'm going to do a goal celebration after every shot I take, figuring that eventually I'm going to confuse the ref and he will award me credit for a goal, whether it was on-frame or not.
We need to departisanize this issue. Like that word? No? Too bad. ATMs give you a receipt, every damn time, and the error rate is in the microscopic range. There's no reason that the same can't be done for voting machines. Both Republicans and Democrats should be entirely on board with this, given the amount of complaining both sides have done about the other's cheating. Palast is almost certainly right about Florida irregularities...but Bush won by three million. If Kerry had won the popular, or if I thought there was a way for Bush to have stolen three million votes nationwide, I'd be the very, very first guy screaming about it. Like I did in 2000. But it's too late for Kerry. We need to straighten this out for 2008, so the winner is unquestionably legitimate. The Reeps, on similar grounds, would have claimed that Kerry took office by cheating had he won. This sort of thing is flat-out poisonous for democracy, and it must be changed.
You are right. This is not a partisan issue and it needs to be fixed, very soon. But you are not right about your last point. We need to acknowledge the mistakes before we can fix them. According to Bushies, the system works, therefore it won't get fixed. I'm not holding my breath.
Agree. but with all parts of government being Republican, you think they'll listen to these complaints? I am not holding my breath.... If, on the other hand, someone of high profile makes this a public case in the media......All he/she has to do is ask to pass a law that makes it certain all machines provide a receipt that will be placed in a box as back up to the automatic count, then it'd be different....Instead, all we had was stupid late court challenges up to the election day itself, on matters that should have been settled much earlier...... And you'd think states like New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania (sp?) should be the ones with the most relevance when it comes to tabullating ballots correctly, as they are usually swing states.....Hopefully a bipartisan consensus can be built on this, but i'm not too hopeful....
You've already proven yourself to be one of the least insightful people on here. I'd expect nothing less from you. Besides that, Coach doesn't need your bonafide mancrush defending him.
Distinguish between one's: a) political ability to mount a challenge that doesn't seemed idiotic; and b) one's legal right to challenge. Conceding effectively burns a), but has no effect on b). That's all I'm saying. For practical purposes, you're right, but in extraordinary circumstances (say, a massive Diebold-Rove-Blackwell conspiracy is unearthed; note, I'm not suggesting that this exists), the Kerry campaign has just as much right to challenge today as it did on Wednesday before Kerry called Bush.
1. As I understand it, the law in Ohio is different. They expect a high percentage of provos to count. 2. There's a reason it was the GOPs that were against this. 90% for Kerry? No. 70%? I expect that.
FWIW, I heard the Ohio Sec of State say on election night that he expected 90% of provisional ballots to count.
which i believe was a function also of where : -minorities were located and, -where the crappier (i.e more error-prone) machines are placed
The same guy who said that if you voted in the wrong place, it wouldn't count? He seems to be using the provisional ballot as someone required to vote somewhere, you go there and you're not in the list. He specificly told his people that if you voted in the wrong place, tough titties.