I know, I don't want to go there, but I've started reading some of the articles, and this is very disturbing. For example:
1. The electronic voting system in one county in North Carolina lost over 4,000 early votes (votes made before election day). As Dems in many parts of the country outnumbered Repubs in early voting - well, you can see where this is heading.
2. The discrepancy between the exit polls and the actual "electronic ballot" results:
...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.3. Read more analysis here at the Democratic Underground.
In Florida, Bush led exit polling by CNN's exit polling consortium by just 5355 votes (when the exit polling information is multiplied by the actual vote). Yet he led by 326,000 in the end result. This morning, CNN changed their exit polling to favor Bush, saying that had overweighted African American voters.
In Wisconsin, where exit polls put Kerry up seven percent, Bush has a lead of one percent, an unexplained difference of eight percent.
In New Mexico, Kerry led Bush by 3.8 percent, yet Bush leads Kerry by 3 percent in actual reported voting.
In Minnesota, where a new law sharply restricts reporters’ access to polls, Kerry led 9.6 percent in exit polling. Actual voting counts found that Bush trailed by 5 percent, with a 5 percent discrepancy favoring Bush.
Ohio, which does have paper trail capability but does not mandate receipts, had exits showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat; in the near-final results, Bush led by three percent.
Exit polls put Kerry up by 8 percent in Michigan; actual results show Bush trailing by just 3 percent.
Nevada, which also has electronic voting – though should have mandated paper trails, had a variance of 4.2 percent. Kerry led the exit polls by 1.2 percent, while Bush led reported votes by 3 percent.
I find myself casting a doubting eye at conspiracy theories. Then again, would I put it past GOP operatives in the various states - the kind of right-wing-nuts who have been posting the hate-filled vitriol on this blog the past 2 days - to cheat? Hardly. Do they have a record of cheating? Yeah. So is it possible they cheated enough to steal the election? Well... yeah it is.
It doesn't mean they did cheat, but I'm kind of creeped out by the fact that I honestly couldn't swear that Bush won for real this time. Is this a great country, or what?
