Bush Got more Votes than there Were Voters - Page 2

Zep · 9th November 2004, 03:39 PM

Whoa! I'm missing something here. Being an ignorant outsider, something seems amiss.

My problem:

1) You need to register to vote. OK.
2) But you need to register to vote AS A CERTAIN PARTY MEMBER?
3) If (2)=YES then If there is no party locally you want to register with, you can't vote?
4) If (3)=YES then Isn't this active disenfranchisement?

Maybe I'm thinking too simple, but I thought that "registering to vote" was like getting a driving license - you went to a government agency of some sort, proved you were you, were eligible to vote, and were this enrolled on some national voting register. When it came time to vote, your name was ticked off and then you were allowed at the machine/ballot/coconut shy and you voted. Party affiliation didn't enter into it at all.

What have I missed?

Rob Lister · 9th November 2004, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zep
Whoa! I'm missing something here. Being an ignorant outsider, something seems amiss.

My problem:

1) You need to register to vote. OK.
2) But you need to register to vote AS A CERTAIN PARTY MEMBER?
3) If (2)=YES then If there is no party locally you want to register with, you can't vote?
4) If (3)=YES then Isn't this active disenfranchisement?

Maybe I'm thinking too simple, but I thought that "registering to vote" was like getting a driving license - you went to a government agency of some sort, proved you were you, were eligible to vote, and were this enrolled on some national voting register. When it came time to vote, your name was ticked off and then you were allowed at the machine/ballot/coconut shy and you voted. Party affiliation didn't enter into it at all.

What have I missed?

The answer to 2) is no. I'm not registered with either party. I'm registered as an independent. If there is a state where you must declare a party membership, I'm not aware of it. In Virginia, the answer is no.

But!!! if you register as a republican then you get to vote in what we call the 'primary' elections for republicans which decides who will be the republican nominee. Likewise for Dems. Many states let you vote in either primary but not both, regardless of your 'official' party affiliation. Some restrict voting to registered 'members' of that party.

aerocontrols · 9th November 2004, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zep

What have I missed?

You're missing the primary elections.

You need to register as a Democrat if you want to tell the Democrats to pick Howard Dean over John Kerry.

You need to register as a Republican if you want to tell the Republicans to pick George Bush over John McCain. Or, in the case of folks here in Georgia, tell the Republicans to pick Isakson for Senate instead of Cain.

If you just want to wait until the Dems pick their guys and the Republicans pick theirs, you don't need to register with a party at all, though you might choose to. 2004 was the first year I voted in a primary. Therefore, I was not previously registered as a member of any party, though I've not missed an election since 1992.

In Atlanta, (at least in this part of it) not voting in the Democratic primary is like not voting locally at all. The real race for mayor is between Democrats, to decide which Democrat will crush his Republican challenger in the fall. If the Republicans bother to run a challenger, that is. We had a ballot initiative for a new sewer system on our primary ballot as well. No doubt this was done because someone hoped they could pass it through the lower-turnout primary election. If you want to vote for that only, you could get an independent ballot.

MattJ

LostAngeles · 9th November 2004, 04:10 PM

Or you can do like my Mom does and show up at the primary declare yourself as whatever party the canidate you intend to vote for is, and then undeclare afterwards.

jj · 9th November 2004, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by corplinx
Before the election, republicans were claiming there were more registrations than there were people and had "numbers" to back it up. Also remember how republicans were up in arms over areas with 99 percent registration growing their registrations by leaps and bounds?

Post election the fringe democrats are claiming there were more voters than registrations.

The problem is in ascertaining what the legit tallies are of A. eligible voters
B. registered voters

While
C. cast votes
is the number that must be reconciled.

The GOP claims there were irregularities between A and B _before_ the election and the democrats claim there are irregularities between B and C _after_ losing.

To make a case for either of these, we need to first verify that the baselines are indeed correct.

Yeah.

As in "precisely".

These numbers are generally considered to be public records. Why isn't somebody shoving numbers in our faces, one way or the other, anyhow?

If the numbers are NOT available, that's a foul in and of itself, but without the numbers, of what I can't say.

Ladewig · 9th November 2004, 04:22 PM

Cuyahoga county numbers here

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/res.../2004/EL52.TXT

This site includes a great number of stories about election irregularities and allows for different sorting options. However, there is a lot of chaff. So much so, that I am unsure if there is any wheat at all. Still, it does seem to be the most comprehensive clearing house available.

Kevin_Lowe · 9th November 2004, 04:54 PM

This site had the best presentation of the Cuyahoga issue, which they are now backing away from:

http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

The short version seems to be that the "extra" votes were absentee ballots, which (for reasons that are as yet unclear) somehow were added onto individual precinct totals, giving the illusion of voter turnouts of up to 1000%.

That makes no sense to me, but the reporter in question has taken down most of their data while they scratch their head over it.

If anyone can explain it to us so that it seems logical that would be great.

materia3 · 9th November 2004, 07:45 PM

MSNBC Countdown tonight (transcript later or tomorrow) discussed the possibilities of a recount changing the election results. Apparently sometime between Dec 1 and 7th is when the States certify their counts but the electors do not get to vote their state's mandates until the first week in January. There was some question as to whether the results, if they change, would result in Kerry being elected and if so what would he do. Keith also asked the guy from the Congressional Quarterly what would happen if 2 years from now , hypothetically, this was discovered. The guy didn't think it would affect Bush's hold on the office unless it could be proven he was in on any criminal wrongdoing and then he would have to be impeached which would do nothing for Kerry. It'd actually make Cheney Prez uness he got impeached also because he was in on it, so on down the line.

It doesn't look like Olberman is going to let go of this and there's more to come.

Link to transcript when available.

corplinx · 9th November 2004, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by materia3

It doesn't look like Olberman is going to let go of this and there's more to come.

More to come?

Frank Newgent · 9th November 2004, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by corplinx

More to come?

Depends on who you ask. Long as it isn't any of those swing state voters from Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada or Iowa.

They lie to everyone.

materia3 · 10th November 2004, 08:22 AM

As promised .......

From Keith Olberman:: Last Night’s Transcript at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/

Quote:

SECAUCUS -- A quick and haplessly generic answer now to the 6,000 emails and the hundreds of phone calls.

Firstly, thank you.

Secondly, we will indeed be resuming our coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida -- and elsewhere -- on this evening's edition of Countdown {8:00 p.m. ET}. The two scheduled guests are Jonathan Turley, an excellent professor of law at George Washington University, and MSNBC analyst and Congressional Quarterly senior columnist Craig Crawford.
For Jonathan, the questions are obvious: the process and…………….
(More at MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/)

Quote:

NEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally.

The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one’s confidence in the whole result from Ohio.

The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (“Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000).

(more at: MSNBC Website: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/)

Quote:

“I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x2636130

Zep · 10th November 2004, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rob Lister
The answer to 2) is no. I'm not registered with either party. I'm registered as an independent. If there is a state where you must declare a party membership, I'm not aware of it. In Virginia, the answer is no.

But!!! if you register as a republican then you get to vote in what we call the 'primary' elections for republicans which decides who will be the republican nominee. Likewise for Dems. Many states let you vote in either primary but not both, regardless of your 'official' party affiliation. Some restrict voting to registered 'members' of that party.

Thanks for that. And it exposes an area of my own ignorance. Namely, that my understanding or the concept "registering to vote" is different from what it appears to be in the USA.

Just to explain by comparison: In Australia, "registering to vote" is a process of notification to a federal body (the Australian Electoral Commission) that maintains the national electoral rolls among other things. You only ever do this once, and you need do nothing else to be able to vote from then on, unless you change address or become inellgible to vote, and party affiliation has nothing to do with it. Coming to party membership, these are open to interested people, who join the party by signing up, etc, etc. Party members then chooses their leaders and candidates themselves by means nefarious or otherwise. The AEC has no role in their operation or membership. (This is a very abbreviated description of things!) As I understand it, the UK has a similar system.

Perhaps someone can eliminate my confusion with regard to the US system of registering??

Luke T. · 10th November 2004, 05:45 PM

[quote]Originally posted by materia3
[b]None Dare Call it Voter Suppression and Fraud
by Bob Fitrakis
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 8, 2004
First Published in The Free Press

Quote:

Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conceded on November 3, based on preliminary postings by the highly partisan Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. These unofficial results showed Bush with 136,483 more votes than Kerry, although 155,428 provisional ballots, 92,672 “spoiled” ballots, additional overseas ballots, and some remaining absentee ballots remained uncounted.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic...g-errors_x.htm

There is an average of two to three percent of spoiled ballots in every election in every state. There were 5,455,811 votes cast in the Ohio election. (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pag...tates/OH/P/00/) Two percent of that number is 109,116. So 92,672 spoiled ballots is well below the expected average.

As for the provisional ballots, those votes will be, are being, counted. But what ridiculous percentage of them would have to be votes for Kerry to affect the outcome? Answer: 87.8 percent.

9th November 2004, 03:39 PM	#41
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,699	Whoa! I'm missing something here. Being an ignorant outsider, something seems amiss. My problem: 1) You need to register to vote. OK. 2) But you need to register to vote AS A CERTAIN PARTY MEMBER? 3) If (2)=YES then If there is no party locally you want to register with, you can't vote? 4) If (3)=YES then Isn't this active disenfranchisement? Maybe I'm thinking too simple, but I thought that "registering to vote" was like getting a driving license - you went to a government agency of some sort, proved you were you, were eligible to vote, and were this enrolled on some national voting register. When it came time to vote, your name was ticked off and then you were allowed at the machine/ballot/coconut shy and you voted. Party affiliation didn't enter into it at all. What have I missed?
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,699

9th November 2004, 03:46 PM	#42
Rob Lister Guest Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 8,504	Quote: Originally posted by Zep Whoa! I'm missing something here. Being an ignorant outsider, something seems amiss. My problem: 1) You need to register to vote. OK. 2) But you need to register to vote AS A CERTAIN PARTY MEMBER? 3) If (2)=YES then If there is no party locally you want to register with, you can't vote? 4) If (3)=YES then Isn't this active disenfranchisement? Maybe I'm thinking too simple, but I thought that "registering to vote" was like getting a driving license - you went to a government agency of some sort, proved you were you, were eligible to vote, and were this enrolled on some national voting register. When it came time to vote, your name was ticked off and then you were allowed at the machine/ballot/coconut shy and you voted. Party affiliation didn't enter into it at all. What have I missed? The answer to 2) is no. I'm not registered with either party. I'm registered as an independent. If there is a state where you must declare a party membership, I'm not aware of it. In Virginia, the answer is no. But!!! if you register as a republican then you get to vote in what we call the 'primary' elections for republicans which decides who will be the republican nominee. Likewise for Dems. Many states let you vote in either primary but not both, regardless of your 'official' party affiliation. Some restrict voting to registered 'members' of that party.
Rob Lister Guest Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 8,504

9th November 2004, 04:18 PM	#45
jj Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 21,381	Quote: Originally posted by corplinx Before the election, republicans were claiming there were more registrations than there were people and had "numbers" to back it up. Also remember how republicans were up in arms over areas with 99 percent registration growing their registrations by leaps and bounds? Post election the fringe democrats are claiming there were more voters than registrations. The problem is in ascertaining what the legit tallies are of A. eligible voters B. registered voters While C. cast votes is the number that must be reconciled. The GOP claims there were irregularities between A and B _before_ the election and the democrats claim there are irregularities between B and C _after_ losing. To make a case for either of these, we need to first verify that the baselines are indeed correct. Yeah. As in "precisely". These numbers are generally considered to be public records. Why isn't somebody shoving numbers in our faces, one way or the other, anyhow? If the numbers are NOT available, that's a foul in and of itself, but without the numbers, of what I can't say.
jj Penultimate Amazing Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 21,381

9th November 2004, 04:22 PM	#46
Ladewig I lost an avatar bet. Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 28,044	Cuyahoga county numbers here http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/res.../2004/EL52.TXT This site includes a great number of stories about election irregularities and allows for different sorting options. However, there is a lot of chaff. So much so, that I am unsure if there is any wheat at all. Still, it does seem to be the most comprehensive clearing house available.
	__________________ I lost an avatar bet to Doghouse Reilly.

9th November 2004, 04:54 PM	#47
Kevin_Lowe Guest Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 12,221	This site had the best presentation of the Cuyahoga issue, which they are now backing away from: http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html The short version seems to be that the "extra" votes were absentee ballots, which (for reasons that are as yet unclear) somehow were added onto individual precinct totals, giving the illusion of voter turnouts of up to 1000%. That makes no sense to me, but the reporter in question has taken down most of their data while they scratch their head over it. If anyone can explain it to us so that it seems logical that would be great.
Kevin_Lowe Guest Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 12,221

9th November 2004, 03:50 PM	#43
aerocontrols Illuminator Join Date: Oct 2001 Posts: 3,444	Quote: Originally posted by Zep What have I missed? You're missing the primary elections. You need to register as a Democrat if you want to tell the Democrats to pick Howard Dean over John Kerry. You need to register as a Republican if you want to tell the Republicans to pick George Bush over John McCain. Or, in the case of folks here in Georgia, tell the Republicans to pick Isakson for Senate instead of Cain. If you just want to wait until the Dems pick their guys and the Republicans pick theirs, you don't need to register with a party at all, though you might choose to. 2004 was the first year I voted in a primary. Therefore, I was not previously registered as a member of any party, though I've not missed an election since 1992. In Atlanta, (at least in this part of it) not voting in the Democratic primary is like not voting locally at all. The real race for mayor is between Democrats, to decide which Democrat will crush his Republican challenger in the fall. If the Republicans bother to run a challenger, that is. We had a ballot initiative for a new sewer system on our primary ballot as well. No doubt this was done because someone hoped they could pass it through the lower-turnout primary election. If you want to vote for that only, you could get an independent ballot. MattJ

9th November 2004, 04:10 PM	#44
LostAngeles Penultimate Amazing Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 10,109	Or you can do like my Mom does and show up at the primary declare yourself as whatever party the canidate you intend to vote for is, and then undeclare afterwards.

9th November 2004, 07:45 PM	#48
materia3 Muse Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 560	MSNBC Countdown tonight (transcript later or tomorrow) discussed the possibilities of a recount changing the election results. Apparently sometime between Dec 1 and 7th is when the States certify their counts but the electors do not get to vote their state's mandates until the first week in January. There was some question as to whether the results, if they change, would result in Kerry being elected and if so what would he do. Keith also asked the guy from the Congressional Quarterly what would happen if 2 years from now , hypothetically, this was discovered. The guy didn't think it would affect Bush's hold on the office unless it could be proven he was in on any criminal wrongdoing and then he would have to be impeached which would do nothing for Kerry. It'd actually make Cheney Prez uness he got impeached also because he was in on it, so on down the line. It doesn't look like Olberman is going to let go of this and there's more to come. Link to transcript when available.
materia3 Muse Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 560

9th November 2004, 07:56 PM	#49
corplinx JREF Kid Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 8,952	Quote: Originally posted by materia3 It doesn't look like Olberman is going to let go of this and there's more to come. More to come?
corplinx JREF Kid Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 8,952	__________________ Nothing Reportable Here

9th November 2004, 09:35 PM	#50
Frank Newgent Philosopher Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 6,800	Quote: Originally posted by corplinx More to come? Depends on who you ask. Long as it isn't any of those swing state voters from Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada or Iowa. They lie to everyone.
	__________________ Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski

10th November 2004, 08:22 AM	#51
materia3 Muse Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 560	Countdown-Tuesday Nov 10 As promised ....... From Keith Olberman:: Last Night’s Transcript at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/ Quote: SECAUCUS -- A quick and haplessly generic answer now to the 6,000 emails and the hundreds of phone calls. Firstly, thank you. Secondly, we will indeed be resuming our coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida -- and elsewhere -- on this evening's edition of Countdown {8:00 p.m. ET}. The two scheduled guests are Jonathan Turley, an excellent professor of law at George Washington University, and MSNBC analyst and Congressional Quarterly senior columnist Craig Crawford. For Jonathan, the questions are obvious: the process and……………. (More at MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/) Quote: NEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally. The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one’s confidence in the whole result from Ohio. The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (“Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000). (more at: MSNBC Website: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/) Quote: “I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2. Even the journalists are pretty horrified. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time, and he was calling from somewhere else. He was trying to figure out how to get the real news out on vote fraud.” http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x2636130
materia3 Muse Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 560

10th November 2004, 04:56 PM	#52
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,699	Quote: Originally posted by Rob Lister The answer to 2) is no. I'm not registered with either party. I'm registered as an independent. If there is a state where you must declare a party membership, I'm not aware of it. In Virginia, the answer is no. But!!! if you register as a republican then you get to vote in what we call the 'primary' elections for republicans which decides who will be the republican nominee. Likewise for Dems. Many states let you vote in either primary but not both, regardless of your 'official' party affiliation. Some restrict voting to registered 'members' of that party. Thanks for that. And it exposes an area of my own ignorance. Namely, that my understanding or the concept "registering to vote" is different from what it appears to be in the USA. Just to explain by comparison: In Australia, "registering to vote" is a process of notification to a federal body (the Australian Electoral Commission) that maintains the national electoral rolls among other things. You only ever do this once, and you need do nothing else to be able to vote from then on, unless you change address or become inellgible to vote, and party affiliation has nothing to do with it. Coming to party membership, these are open to interested people, who join the party by signing up, etc, etc. Party members then chooses their leaders and candidates themselves by means nefarious or otherwise. The AEC has no role in their operation or membership. (This is a very abbreviated description of things!) As I understand it, the UK has a similar system. Perhaps someone can eliminate my confusion with regard to the US system of registering??
Zep Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 26,699

10th November 2004, 05:45 PM	#53
Luke T. Guest Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 14,708	Re: Bush Got more Votes than there Were Voters [quote]Originally posted by materia3 [b]None Dare Call it Voter Suppression and Fraud by Bob Fitrakis www.dissidentvoice.org November 8, 2004 First Published in The Free Press Quote: Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conceded on November 3, based on preliminary postings by the highly partisan Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. These unofficial results showed Bush with 136,483 more votes than Kerry, although 155,428 provisional ballots, 92,672 “spoiled” ballots, additional overseas ballots, and some remaining absentee ballots remained uncounted. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic...g-errors_x.htm There is an average of two to three percent of spoiled ballots in every election in every state. There were 5,455,811 votes cast in the Ohio election. (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pag...tates/OH/P/00/) Two percent of that number is 109,116. So 92,672 spoiled ballots is well below the expected average. As for the provisional ballots, those votes will be, are being, counted. But what ridiculous percentage of them would have to be votes for Kerry to affect the outcome? Answer: 87.8 percent.
Luke T. Guest Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 14,708