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November 18, 2004 by Inter Press Service 
US Election: Democracy in Question 
by Ritt Goldstein
 
STOCKHOLM - John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby
International, told IPS he has been calling it "the Armageddon
election" for about a year. Independent presidential candidate Ralph
Nader believes the Republican Party was able to "steal it before
election day."

Facts suggest something went very wrong on Nov. 2. 

Speculation focuses upon a number of questions -- purposeful
miscounts, anomalies surrounding electronic voting (e-voting)
machines, particularly the optical scan types; and numerous reports of
voting "irregularities" in heavily Democratic areas.

"What they 'do' is minorities," Nader said, highlighting the thrust of
Republican efforts, "and make sure that there aren't enough voting
machines for the minority areas. They have to wait in line ... for
hours, and most of them don't. There are all kinds of ways, and that's
why I was quoted as saying, "this election was hijacked from A to Z,"
Nader told IPS.

Zogby was concerned about the difference between some of the exit
polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots) and the
official vote counts. "We're talking about the Free World here," he
pointedly noted.

On Nov. 10, University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven F Freeman,
whose expertise includes "research methods," compiled an analysis
entitled 'The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy'. The document was
prepared in view of the unusually large differences between what exit
polls had predicted and the recorded vote tallies.

His findings suggest Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry should
have received far more votes than he did.

In three of the key battleground states -- Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania -- Freeman's analysis states the odds of Kerry receiving
the percentage of votes recorded, given the exit poll findings, were
less than three in one thousand, per state.

Freeman also determined that the odds of any two of these states
simultaneously reaching their stated vote tallies were "on the order
of one-in-a-million," and the odds of all three states arriving at the
vote counts they did "are 250 million to one."

"Something is definitely wrong," said Zogby. 

Highlighting both the expected accuracy of exit polls and the
significant disparity that Kerry's defeat illustrated, Republican
consultant, commentator and Fox-TV News regular Dick Morris wrote an
article, 'Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage', suggesting a
pollster conspiracy to swing the election for Kerry.

In doing so he, perhaps inadvertently, provided ammunition for
arguments from the opposite side -- that the exit polls were correct
but the final results were fudged. "Exit polls are almost never
wrong," argued Morris, and in 10 of the 11 key states they had
predicted significantly fewer votes for Republican President George W
Bush than he was eventually credited with.

In New Hampshire, Bush tallied a surprising 9.5 percent more votes
than predicted, the most significant difference in any of the key
states.

Morris observed that outside the United States, exit polls are often
used to provide a check on official vote counts, in his words, "to
foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns."

Among the most cited exit polls were those conducted by Mitofsky
International, whose founder, Warren Mitofsky, is widely credited with
having invented exit polling. Zogby, whose firm was not among those
that provided network TV coverage of the Nov. 2 election, described
the possibility of either incompetence or fraud causing the
controversial deviation as "impossible."

According to Zogby, it would have required "wrong sampling in wrong
areas throughout the country," or the purposeful manipulation of data
to obtain exit poll results so significantly different from the
official totals. He viewed neither as a possibility.

When asked what exactly had happened then, Zogby replied, "a problem,
but I don't know where it is ... something's wrong here, though."

On Nov. 5, Nader requested a hand recount of New Hampshire ballots,
subsequently telling IPS he had "reports of irregularities there, and
we have the cooperation of the state government ... the state
attorney-general and secretary of state."

Nader also said his headquarters had been flooded with requests for
assistance from a number of states.

On Thursday, five of the 11 New Hampshire voting wards where Nader
requested a recount will undertake new tallies. According to his
staff, all 11 wards had their votes counted with optical scan
machines, primarily the AccuVote models made by Diebold.

"If there are irregularities, it may have broader applications in
other states," Nader said, adding that the current recount -- a
45,000-vote sample -- is expected to be completed within a week.

Allegations regarding optical scan machines' potentially allowing the
manipulation of Florida's vote have been widely reported. In Ohio, the
Green and Libertarian parties are pursuing a recount, numerous
instances of voting irregularities having been reported there.

"As far as I'm concerned, this election was clearly stolen. What they
did in Ohio was systematically deny thousands of African Americans,
and other suspected Democrats, the vote," charged progressive author,
commentator and activist Harvey Wasserman of Franklin County, Ohio.

"It was like Mississippi in the fifties, and it was deliberate ... had
there been enough (voting) machines, and had people equal access to
the polls with a reliable vote count, there is no doubt that John
Kerry would have carried Ohio," he told IPS.

The Nov. 14 'Cleveland Plain Dealer', one of the country's top 50
broadsheets, reported a Nov. 13 voter hearing where: "For three hours,
burdened voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony about
election day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe
are threatening democracy."

"People are deeply concerned that this is the end of American
democracy, that we cannot get a fair election," Wasserman said,
poignantly adding, "there was no question of apathy in this election
-- we had more volunteers than could be used ... thousands and
thousands of grass-roots volunteers."

If Kerry had taken Ohio, he would have taken the presidency. 

"In the end, what Nader is doing in New Hampshire is the best answer.
And if there's a recount in Ohio," that is also important, said
Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political
scientist who specializes in statistical methods, elections and public
opinion.

Somewhat concerned about the possible manipulation of e-voting
machines, Franklin was more concerned over "the ordinary
administration of elections," citing the simple logistical problems
that had plagued voters.

He pointedly noted that the last two presidential elections
highlighted "how the decisions of local people (officials) ... can
have a considerable influence over who gets to vote, what rules
govern."

When asked if he was aware of any parallels to the present election,
Zogby replied, "I'm certainly aware of the election of 1960."

"It's been discussed, overtly, the roll that Richard Daley, and the
roll that Lyndon Johnson played, separately," Zogby said, referring to
an episode where the John F Kennedy campaign had supposedly asked,
"How many votes do you have?", the reply allegedly being, "How many
votes do you need?"

Of course, such examples also serve to highlight the influence "local
people" can exert on an election's outcome.

In the end, many people speculated that the 1960 incidents were not
part of a grand conspiracy per se, but the cumulative effects of the
actions of a number of individuals who shared a similar perspective,
acted semi-independently, and did whatever it took to win.

Political "dirty tricks" culminated in the Watergate scandal, forcing
then President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) to resign, ushering in a long
era without similar illicit activity, until questions raised by the
election of 2000.

With American democracy, until now, providing an effective model for
many, as Zogby said, "we're talking about the Free World here."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1118-11.htm