A chilling tale – theft of the presidency 2004
Having just finished reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lengthy Rolling Stone article on the possible Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, I have to say that he makes a compelling case. There actually isn’t a whole lot that’s completely new in the piece, but seeing the mountain of evidence all laid out in one place is truly chilling.
Is it possible that the reign of the worst and most destructive president in American history has been forced upon us by not just one stolen election in 2000, but by two?
If you care about American democracy you should read the whole article, but here’s a small taste:
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush — and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush’s victory as nut cases in ”tinfoil hats,” while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ”conspiracy theories,”(1) and The New York Times declared that ”there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.”(2)
But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots — or received them too late to vote(4) — after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment — roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush’s victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)
June 1st, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Breath-taking indeed.
I thought I had followed the election closely but seeing it all laid before me in one coherent piece is astonishing.
There were many in other democratic forums who were warning about fraud before the election but the problem was, I think, they were looking for one, big, fraud (e.g. manipulation of tallying machines) and instead, we got multiple little, subtle frauds in multiple places and multiple times.
Could the Presidency have been stolen twice? As hard as that concept is to digest, the evidence says yes.
hizzhoner.
June 1st, 2006 at 4:33 pm
It is my humble opinion that Bush could NOT have won RE-elction in 2004, since he was NOT ELECTED in 2000.
June 1st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Just some appropriate quotes: Letting the past be my voice.
“I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.” Thomas Jefferson (1743″1826),
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy - it’s the counting.” Tom Stoppard
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. ” Douglas Adams ” (1952 ” 2001)
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear: Harry S Truman
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted”. Frank Herbert (1920-1986), Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva
“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” David Brin (1950- ) Author
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth: Publius Cornelius Tacitus
“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President 1782 Source: Notes on Va.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.” Walter H. Judd
June 1st, 2006 at 11:12 pm
It will be interesting to see the outcome of the 2006 elections.