UPDATE #3: Go to this site for more proof of stolen elections:
http://www.itjungle.com/...
"Here are some of the suspicious outcomes that surfaced in the last few election cycles.
When Nebraskan Chuck Hagel first ran for the Senate in 1996, his victory against the incumbent Democratic governor was called "the major Republican upset in the November election." Hagel, the first Nebraska Republican to win a Senate seat in 24 years, miraculously won virtually every demographic group in the state, including large African American communities that had never previously voted Republican. Upsets happen, but voters didn't know that Hagel was the head of (and continues to have an ownership interest in) the parent company of a voting machine provider. The same provider that installed, programmed, and supplied technical support for the voting machines used by most of Nebraska's voters. In the following election, all pretense of fairness was abandoned and Hagel won in a landslide with an improbable 83 percent of the vote--the widest margin of victory in the history of Nebraska.
In Georgia, the Democratic incumbent was Vietnam veteran and triple amputee Max Cleland. His opponent, Saxby Chambliss, who managed to avoid military service, nonetheless ran on the goofy premise that he was more patriotic than Cleland. Max Cleland was believed to be untouchable. But contrary to every pre-election poll, Chambliss won. Coincidentally, Georgia was also the state that ran its election using the most electronic voting machines.
Similarly, no polls predicted the upset victory of Georgia Republican Sonny Perdue over incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes. Perdue won by a handsome margin of 52 to 45 percent. However, the last Mason Dixon Poll before the election had shown Barnes ahead by an even larger margin of 48 to 39 percent. Barnes had a 9 point lead and lost by 7 points--a 16 point swing! A former Diebold employee subsequently admitted that the company installed unauthorized patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial elections--programming changes that were neither independently tested nor approved by Georgia election officials.
In Texas, three Republican candidates in three separate races received an identical number of votes: 18,181. In Ohio, there were machines that flipped the vote, and touch screen machines that registered Bush votes even though Kerry had been selected. There were ballots used in heavily Democratic precincts that did not list presidential candidates at all; and ballots where the punch-card votes for Kerry were taped over to be unreadable by an optical scanner while a Bush vote was punched by pen, not the stylus provided in the voting booth. There was also a precinct which, based on the number of votes cast, would have required a highly improbable 98.55 percent turnout. These and other abuses are meticulously documented by Richard Hayes Phillips in his book, Witness to a Crime, which is based on 30,000 images of forensic evidence.
With the introduction of voting machines, polling--especially exit polling--that had been highly accurate and refined over a half century, suddenly became wildly inaccurate. In critical races, the Republican Party profited from a pronounced last-minute swing of between 4 and 16 points. Not, perhaps, by coincidence, these mysterious shifts were concentrated in critical Senate races that guaranteed Republicans complete control of Congress. That Republicans benefited almost exclusively from these irregularities can be explained by the fact that Diebold is owned by a Republican activist."
UPDATE #2: Gosh, talk about "tough love"! I'm as blue as any of you. I am not a troll and I don't know how you would expect a diary like this to benefit McCain. I'm of the opinion that it's better to talk about what the other side might be up to so that we're all on the same page here and not waking up on Wednesday morning wondering what the hell happened. I'm not writing this to demoralize Obama supporters, just to suggest that this might be a real possibility and to be prepared to battle this out in the courts post-Tuesday. Nothing in this diary suggests that we should give up on getting out the vote -- quite the opposite: the only way to win is to win with such overwhelming force that any attempt to steal it would fail. That's what we're hoping for. But we would be naive to expect that McCain and company will settle for a loss.
Just exactly who do you think is going to lose the most if Obama is elected? Oil companies; Halliburton; Blackwater; etc., etc. Do you really believe that oil companies, Halliburton and Blackwater don't have their own agendas in this election, that they don't have their own security forces which can enforce these agendas? Do you remember that it was Ross Perot's company (EDS) which actually carried out an attempted military rescue of American hostages? These are major international companies that probably own major stock in these voting machine companies and who have heavily armed security forces. That's how they look at things -- in the long term. Anyone who doesn't think that Halliburton and Blackwater wouldn't try to steal this election is being naive.
If any of you doubt that this isn't something that the Bush Administration has been thinking about doing, then you haven't been privy to the loss of civil liberties that Cheny et al. have perpetrated on Americans during the last 8 years. Are you even aware of what Bush is doing right now during Congress' absence? I'm not saying that McCain will be successful, but I do know that Bush Administration officials guaranteed to certain overseas allies that McCain would win the election. This was stated in certain posts early last summer. Now, it looks like Obama will win a fair-and-square election. What are they supposed to do? Watch the election go down the drain? No, they are going to fight with any snarky, sleazy action they can.
We have to think strategically, folks. The polls are correct; despite some tightening, Obama is going to win. But none of that will matter if the people who control the electronic voting machines (and other ballots) are determined that the outcome will be a McCain win. And all of this talk by McCain and company is setting us up for a McCain win.
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Original Post:
You betcha. Watch out, and listen to what the McCain/Palin campaign is saying: "The polls are much closer than what you think. We are going to pull an upset." They are going to do this by (1) talking up "close" polls and spreading the word that "the polls are close" and (2) talking up the Bradley Effect (even though it's been discredited). They are going to steal the election by misrepresenting the vote totals from electronic voting machines and then they are going to explain the difference from expected results by saying that the polls were close than anyone thought and the Bradley Effect kicked in. That's how they are going to sell the stolen election to the American people. Don't take my word for it: listen to Rush, Sean Hannity, McCain, Schmidt, and Fox News for the next few days and see if they aren't trying to build up some momentum for these talking points? No, they are not just trying to get out the vote -- they are laying the groundwork for explainaing unbelievable results on election night.
How can they pull an upset, with voters going to the early polls in record numbers? By stealing the votes -- that is, by fraudulently reporting results from touch-screen voting machines and, probably, even undercounting paper ballots. That's right. Old fashioned fraud. The Republicans are planning to steal this election right from under us. And the opening salvo of this heist is the constant refrain that "the polls are closer than you think."
You see, if the polls are correct, there's no way that McCain can win. However, if the polls are wrong, then McCain can say with a straight face that he won the election. That's the first step in getting people to accept a McCain win.
You think I'm paranoid? Then how do you explain the recurring references by Matt Drudge, Fox News and the McCain/Palin campaign to polls that are too close to be believed? They are setting up the American people to believe that, yeah, the polls were tighter than everybody thought, and yeah, McCain did win this election fair and square. We all know that's not the case -- we know this because of the people we are talking to and the people who are going to the polls. The Republicans are going to steal this election.
So, how do we combat this? First, OBAMA MUST NOT CONCEDE ON TUESDAY NIGHT. Obama should sue and force recounts wherever feasible. But he should go beyond simple recounts. Obama should ask the court to "audit" certain precinct totals to prove that the reported tally aligns with voter sentiment. How do you do that? You take a representative sample of every person who voted in that precinct, the judge asks each one "in camera" how they voted (to preserve the secrecy of the ballot), and if the outcome of such audit is statistically significantly different from the reported results, you declare voter fraud.
This is exactly the kind of "surprise" that Obama should be prepared to handle. We already know that Republicans are gearing up to contest results in certain precincts -- that's what all the fuss is about in getting these voter registrations thrown out. They are setting up a chain of events in order to contest the election.
Watch carefully, people, and if McCain "appears" to be winning on Tuesday night, don't be disheartened. OBAMA SHOULD NOT CONCEDE ON TUESDAY NIGHT.
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UPDATE: Forgot to mention another quiver in the McCain arsenal to back-up the "McCain from behind" victory that is sure to be the cover story for a stolen election: THE BRADLEY EFFECT. That is, if there is any question about the reliability and legitimacy of the returns from the voting machines, expect the McCain campaign to say (1) the polls were much closer than you thought and (2) the Bradley Effect kicked in, where people told pollsters they were voting for Obama when, in fact, they were racist and not voting for Obama. The Bradley Effect has pretty much been discredited in this election, but expect McCain to use it to defend his come from behind surprise victory. The real story is that the election will be stolen by the misrepresentation of the ballot results from electronic voting machines and out-and-out undercounting of paper ballots.