Poll: Was the 2004 election rigged?

pattylou

Specifically, do you think the machines could be and were tampered with, in order to skew a result in favor of Bush.

This is not a question about other forms of vote - tampering (disenfranchisement, etc).

I am also curious for the correlation between your opinion on this, and your political leanings. So, there are four options given to choose from.

Feel free to add comments on this topic as well.

That looks like it worked (whew!)

Option 1: Left leaning, thinks the election was (at least partially) electronically rigged.

Option 2: Left leaning, thinks there was no electronic tamering of the vote.

Option 3: Right leaning, leaning, thinks the election was (at least partially) electronically rigged.

Option 4: Right leaning, thinks there was no electronic tamering of the vote.

Townsend

Just a question....

What does public opinion have to do with what is a fact and what is fiction?

pattylou

Nothing. I have been curious what the actual sentiment is among the populace and have yet to see Pew or Zogby ask about this.

Question: Why shouldn't the general populace's opinion be ascertained?

Townsend

Because there is a risk that people will use it as evidence to establish the truth of the proposition. It is not evidence and as long as it is not used in such a manner then ascertaining that information is fine.

pattylou

It is certainly not evidence.

It may, on a larger scale, have some bearing on how important politicians (etc) feel that it is to revamp voting procedures.
If a decent percentage of the population thinks the machines are tamperable, then voter confidence is pretty low, and that's bad for morale. It affects the vote, etc etc.

Townsend

Ah..I see. Well in that case I will vote in your poll.

LeonhardEuler

Is there any evidence the vote was tampered with? I personally was very disappointed with the re-election of Bush, but to say that the results were rigged is a big accusation with what seems like no evidence. I would like to know why 56% of people said there was tampering.

BobG

I'm wondering how the left-leaning/right-leaning part figures in. Is it assumed that all right-leaning folks were pro-Bush and all left-leaning folks were pro-Kerry? Or were you looking for some completely different correlation - left-leaning people have less faith in government's ability to conduct fair elections, hence the need for more government control while right-leaning people have more faith in government's ability to conduct fair elections, hence the need for less government interference?

Actually, I think people's opinion of the fairness of an election depends more on whether their favorite candidate won or lost than overall political alliance, but that's just the cynicism of a former soccer referee.

Personally, I'm left-leaning when I'm walking to the North and right-leaning when I'm walking to the South, but I live on the side of a mountain ( - okay, that's just plain facetious)

Townsend

agreed....

pattylou

Have you looked at blackboxvoting.org's reports on this issue? I can point you to specific reports if you like. The most interesting one in my opinion, came out at the end of May.

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/mess...tml?1122737304

(I couldn't find the PDF, sorry!)

See also here for the technical, longer report:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf

BBV is a consumer advocate group that opposes electronic voting. Thus they are biased. That does not necessarily negate the results that they put out.

They are not, however, partisan, and they vehemently maintain that both parties have been cashing in on Diebold's loopholes to fix votes.

pattylou

Several reasons - (1) If this site is just a bunch of democrats then that part of the question will give that picture of the community. (2) Also I think I would be a lot less opinionated on the subject if Kerry had won. I would still have faith in the system and no reason to question it. So, I expect that that sort of general bias might be evident from the results.

LeonhardEuler

Here are some quotes from that website blackboxvoting.org you mentioned:

(OH) Did the GOP steal another Ohio Election?
Jeb Bush Insures Election Irregularities in Florida!
Unconfirmedsources report Florida Governor Jeb Bush has made great strides to insure the November Election will be the model of corruption and unfairness.

This is obviously a website built for the sole purpose of an anti-republican rant that only claims to be non-partisan. Do you have any sources from the mainstream media?

pattylou

There are additional quotes attacking the democrats. I can find them if you like. The admins are definitely non-partisan; many participants are angry democrats.

Feel free to dismiss it, alternatively feel free to read the admins analysis that I linked above and decide if the loopholes are of concern to you or not. THey may not be.

As far as mainstream media, Rep. John Conyers (D. MI) has been the front leading reputable source on this in the mainstream media. You could try google news searches with his name and "vote" or "diebold" or "fraud."

iansmith

Antiphon replied to pattylou earlier attempt to make a similar thread. By merging the threads, antiphon reponse became the first post of the thread. To reduce confusion, I am posting antiphon reply

DM

The trouble with those sites, and already mentioned on another thread in this forum, is its credibility. Despite my anti-Bush stance, I remain skeptic about rigged elections.

BobG

The bias reflected in (2) wouldn't necessarily show up in the results.

For example, I'm right-leaning, voted for Kerry, and don't feel the election was rigged (which is why I selected the fourth choice).

Considering the state of affairs, assuming Democrats voted for Kerry while Republicans voted for Bush isn't necessarily a valid assumption. The 'don't change presidents in the middle of a war' folks would vote for Bush whether they were liberal or conservative, especially if they bought into the WMD in Iraq theme. Some Republicans might find the Bush administration's actions so scarily incompetent that they would have voted for Kucinich ... uh, well, for Dean ... geez ... well, maybe for Al Sharpton then, before they'd vote for Bush.

Burnsys

Beside bias, credibility and anti bush stance, in those site was the OPEN SOURCE CODE of the diebold voting system, and screenshots of all the steps to hack the software and change the results of the elections..