George Bush won... he did get more votes than our guy, both in the popular column, and in the Electoral College...it's reality. You disagree...do it somewhere else.
This is a painful task, made necessary by a sad event. But I am going to lay out for everyone why Markos is both wrong, and disrespectful to a large group of people that have never shown him any disrespect.
It starts by doing a thought experiment. Try forgetting the rancor and heartbreak on this site since the election. To aid in this process, consider a hypothetical election in the future.
In this election we have the same voting procedures and equipment that we had in the election of 2004. An employee of a Voting Machine Company has access to the proprietary code for vote tabulating, is familiar with the standards and procedures, is in charge of the service contracts, and has an abiding belief that the fate of the free world depends on the outcome of the upcoming election.
He realizes that he can single handedly cast the one and only vote in the election. Does he do it?
Let's say that he decides that he wants to go ahead and exercise his power, but he is worried that he will be caught.
He discovers that if he adds votes to the preferred candidate in his areas of strong support it will quickly begin to look like one of Saddam Hussein's elections, with absurd and suspicious margins.
He discovers that if he adds votes to the preferred candidate in areas that are closely contested that it will move them into safe areas that will be hard to explain in terms of registration data, in comparison with other races, and when contrasted with historical data.
But, he realizes, if he adds votes in the preferred candidate's weakest areas it will barely make a blip on the radar. Instead of losing 30-70 his candidate will lose 65-35, which can be attributed to a lack of enthusiasm among the base. Perhaps black people are wary of gay marriage, for one example, and they have strayed from the left.
He begins identifying the areas of his preferred candidates weakest support and discovers that they are in urban centers. In Florida, this is Dade County, Broward Co., Palm Beach Co., etc. In Ohio it is Cuyahoga Co., Franklin Co. etc. In California, it is Los Angeles Co., Marin Co. etc.
Next, he decides whether the election in these states is close enough that he can safely steal enough votes to assure his preferred candidates victory without raising any red flags. He decides California is outside that range but that several other states are within it.
Finally, he goes ahead and writes and implements a code that will take every tenth vote for Kerry and count it as a vote for Bush. (A county wide virus of this type would count for 92,000 votes in Cuyahoga Co.).
The result of his hack job is that his preferred candidate gains between 50,000 and 200,000 votes in a few dozen locations throughout the country. None of these locations actually flips to his preferred candidate, but the margins are diminished from landslide to strongly against. However, the cumulative effect of his tampering are enormous. Whereas the actual popular vote for his preferred candidate was 48-51, it is now showing the exact opposite (51-48). Well over a million votes have switched hands.
There is no smoking gun. It appears that the preferred candidate exceeded expectations, and the popular vote margin is taken as proof that some sentiment existed for the preferred candidate that people were not revealing when they were poll canvassed. A small but detectable dip in the urban vote for the non-preferred candidate, is taken as evidence that the base was not as supportive as in the past.
In this scenario there are only three indicators that anything may have gone wrong. The first is that the preferred candidate outperformed state polls in only those states that were hacked. The second is that the preferred candidate outperformed the exit polls by a wide margin in the states that were hacked. And the third and strongest indicator is that the popular vote is out of whack with both exit polls and Gallup/Zogby type polls.
There is no way to know that the hack has occurred without looking at the code and finding the virus. But the code is proprietary, and the size of the popular vote gives the preferred candidate such strong standing that it appears that they have the will of the people behind them. This discourages the non-preferred candidate from contesting an election when they have no proof of foul play.
Under these circumstances, there is only one way to find out that the election was stolen. That way is: you have to assume that it was based on the indicators (described above), knowing that no other indicators are possible. You now will have to win a legal fight to gain access to the proprietary software, for which you will first have to gain access to the proprietary exit polling (to help substantiate probable cause and irreparable harm.)
For this purpose you will need to demonstrate that the public at large does not accept the legitimacy of the vote absent an invasive investigation. You will need to ramp up the outrage so that any reasonable judge will have to agree that the public does not accept the election at face value. Street demonstration would be very helpful, but failing a risk to public order, a loud and vigorous dissent will have to do.
What our evil programmer is counting on is this:
To be successful, we can't let the other side tar us as 'sour grapes'. Saying, "okay, Bush won, now let's make the system better" would be far more effective in rallying support. As opposed to screaming, "Fix things now so Republicans can't steal another election!!!!!"
In other words, he is counting on the opposing side to focus on fixing the problem by looking to the next election, rather than doing the tremendous amount of work it will take to prevent the inauguration of the preferred candidate.
When the opposing side raises questions, he can count on them being marginalized by centrists and pragmatists that argue one of two things, or both.
a) our candidate lost the popular vote, so he sucked and didn't deserve to win.
b) We will look like sore losers or conspiracy theorists, and we'll never find out in time anyway, so let it go.
The following Markos quotes are examples of b):
But the Ohio Fraudsters have not just made the issue highly partisan, but they have cried wolf so many times that it's easy for opponents to dismiss ALL of these issues.
I don't want the increasingly shrill and wacked out fraudster noise harming this site's reputation for reality-based commentary. All it takes is 30 recommendations, sometimes less, to push the latest conspiracy theory into the recommended diaries. And to be frank, it makes us all look bad.
There are other example of Markos making post-election commentaries in the mode of a).
Which leads us to:
The tension lies (sic) when the community is hijacked by a minority on a divisive issue.
and
George Bush won... he did get more votes than our guy, both in the popular column, and in the Electoral College...it's reality. You disagree...do it somewhere else.
For me anyway, this was never about Volusia Co, or long lines, or ripping up voter registration cards. It was about the actual data we were seeing being (almost) exactly consistent with what I would expect to find in a hack of the type described above.
Every time someone asked for some proof that it occurred I said the same thing. The only proof in such a hack is an unexplained popular vote margin, inverted exit polls, and slightly depressed numbers in the black community. To catch it, you have to assume it. You not only have to assume it, you have to raise the level of outrage over the vote, and you have to do it very fast. And even then, the election will most likely be stolen. But you might get the momentum to uncover it later, and you certainly will gain momentum for election reform but rousing a good 33-40% of the electorate into open dissent.
A failure to do this, is the same thing as allowing the vote to be stolen through apathy. And that means that you didn't deserve to win.
There is a large community at DailyKos that knows all this, and they have been pushing for someone to fight. In doing so, some have apparently been highly critical, highly offensive, and highly impatient with the Front Pagers. I missed most of this. I didn't post much in the first week after the election. I was too depressed and I was focused on why we lost, rather than the possibility that we didn't. So, I missed almost all the Wayne Madsen stuff, and while I read the Bev Harris stuff with interest, I wasn't among those pushing to make it a Front Page issue.
So, this is not personal to me. I didn't act like an asshole. But I discovered that when I did take an interest in this topic that the waters had been spoiled, and that the Front Pagers were lumping all "stolen election theorists and strategists" together as disrespectful kooks and jerkoffs.
Armando has asked me to acknowledge that Markos has taken some unjustified lumps from the conspiracy crowd. I never saw it, but I acknowledge it. Some people owe him an apology obviously. But that is not my business.
What concerns me now, is that I have been asked to discuss this in another venue from now on. At least, I am concerned that that is Markos's wish. But you, Markos's should know, after reading through the over 600 strong posts in response to your article, that there are whole lot of people here who never disrespected you, who have nothing but admiration for you, but who disagree with you on this issue.
And a lot of people have hurt feelings over the tone of your article.
Particularly the timing, which came both as an ostensible response to Georgia10's hard work, and in the midst of the battle to get a Senator to help Conyers contest the election.
Proof? Proof is not possible without a forensic investigation.
Respectfully yours.
The Boo Man