Election Fraud?

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

MC said:

But the odds of the exit polls being wrong are probably smaller than the odds of the official result being wrong, in this case. The exit polls and the official results are two different attempts to determine how people voted, and when they disagree there is a problem, and we ought not to just assume that it is the exit polls that are at fault, especially when the official results could be so easily tampered with.

Neatly summed up.

On a global scale one should never confuse making the world safe for America with making it safe for democracy. A Bush in the White House is not worth two doves of peace.

[Habs_fan_in_LA]

M. said:

Neatly summed up.

On a global scale one should never confuse making the world safe for America with making it safe for democracy. A Bush in the White House is not worth two doves of peace.

Very neatly summed up!

Mr. Bush is not responsible to make the world safe for democracy. He was not elected by the democracies of the world or the UN. He was elected by the people of America to make the world safe for America.
If helping others to be safe makes us safer then we help them. if eliminating them makes us safer, we eliminate them.
Bob Gainey was not hired to make the teams in the NHL better. He was hired to make the Hab's better. If improving the Hab's means making some trades that improve other teams too, he should do it to the extent that the trades benefit the Hab's. The difference is that President Bush is very clear about what he will do, there is no ambiguity or false pretext, and people believe that he will do exactly what he says he will do. Many people who didn't elect him don't like his agenda, and that is their perogative. He is not attempting to curry favor, he is keeping his word.

[MC Habber]

Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.

the discovery raises questions such as why the apparent forgeries were given to inspectors and why U.S. and British intelligence agents did not recognize that they were not authentic.

Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's.

Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said.

"The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents -- which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger -- are not in fact authentic," ElBaradei said in his March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council.

Close said the CIA should have known better.

"They have tremendously sophisticated and experienced people in their technical services division, who wouldn't allow a forgery like this to get by," Close said. "I mean it's just mystifying to me. I can't understand it."

Ex-CIA Officers Questioning Iraq Data

A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.

Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends - while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.

No false pretext?

[PTH]

Habs_fan_in_LA said:

If helping others to be safe makes us safer then we help them. if eliminating them makes us safer, we eliminate them.

I have a real problem with any line of thought that has no boundaries, shades or nuances.

That line of thought is something that can easily give birth, and has given birth, to the very worst that humankind has to offer. Look up Hitler, Adolf if you want to know more. Just like Bush, he was elected and did exactly what he always said he was going to do, and more along the same lines. Does that make him a great leader ?

What about ethics ? What about human rights ? What about the environment that we all (including every single Yank, Republican or Democrat) must live in ?

[MC Habber]

To be fair, Hitler was never actually elected. (But then neither was Bush [the first time] so there you go - come to think of it, both managed to get into power without being elected and both used similar tactics to keep their power....)

[Habs_fan_in_LA]

MC said:

To be fair, Hitler was never actually elected. (But then neither was Bush [the first time] so there you go - come to think of it, both managed to get into power without being elected and both used similar tactics to keep their power....)

The only country that I know of that considers themselves democratic, yet has leaders that are not elected is Canada.
Campbell is an example of the way Canadians fill backrooms with party loyalists and choose a leader with disregard for the voters.
The US holds elections, has voting rules and with incredible scruitiny by the press and Legislative branch chooses a leader.

[duster]

Habs_fan_in_LA said:

The only country that I know of that considers themselves democratic, yet has leaders that are not elected is Canada.
Campbell is an example of the way Canadians fill backrooms with party loyalists and choose a leader with disregard for the voters.
The US holds elections, has voting rules and with incredible scruitiny by the press and Legislative branch chooses a leader.

No offense but I respectfully disagree. Britain comes to mind (Canada's model) among others. Cabinet ministers are members of parliament elected by simple popular vote. Fill out your piece of paper, put it in the box and watch the results that night. Simple and effective. Most, if not all, indirect democracies operate in this fashion. BTW, are your Secretary of State or Defense Secretary etc... elected officials?

Campbell came to power in much the same way Gerald Ford did. Her predecessor left office before the expiration of her party's mandate. Furthermore, she was elected by her party as was Ford using delegates.

Media scrutiny is the same come election time but perhaps a little more reserved (who cares about his or her religion?) except when it comes to abuse of the public purse.

Come up and visit some time...You've been away too long

[PTH]

MC said:

To be fair, Hitler was never actually elected. (But then neither was Bush [the first time] so there you go - come to think of it, both managed to get into power without being elected and both used similar tactics to keep their power....)

Both weren't elected outright, but used constitutional means to gain the leadership of the country. And then perverted that constitution and the institutions of their countries.

[Skilly]

Habs_fan_in_LA said:

The only country that I know of that considers themselves democratic, yet has leaders that are not elected is Canada.
Campbell is an example of the way Canadians fill backrooms with party loyalists and choose a leader with disregard for the voters.
The US holds elections, has voting rules and with incredible scruitiny by the press and Legislative branch chooses a leader.

There is a line of succesion just as in America. The States go President-Vice President-Speaker of the House with no election. Canada goes Prime Minister - Leadership conference where registered delegates (ie the die hard party members) elect a new PM. In both cases it does not go to a popular vote.

The only problem I have with Canada's model is that you are not directly voting for the prime minister, but you indirectly are voting for him, and that to me is not democratic. As an example, my MP is Norman Doyle. I consider him a good person, a man who will stand up for the rights of his district. The choice I had during the election was basically Norman Doyle, Walter Noel, or the NDP candidate. Walter Noel was ousted from provincial politics months beforehand and I had reservations with the way he handled himself in provincial matter. (I wanted someone who would vote along party lines on every issue). So to vote for what I perceived to be the best candidate for my district was essentially a vote for Stephen Harper, a man who at the time I did not want to be Prime Minister.

So I was in a conundrum. Vote for a man I didn't like for a PM who I could live with, or vote for a man I liked for a PM I couldn't live with. So I voted NDP.

We should have the ability to vote for the PM seperately.

Also, I am not in favour of this population proportional representation model. It is fine for a lower house, but when it come to policies and governing every province should have equal voices. We do not need 308 people running this country, every province should have 4-5 elected members in the Governing House. It might mean more minority governments but look at the trouble powerful majority government have gotten us into in the past.

[Skilly]

MC said:

But the odds of the exit polls being wrong are probably smaller than the odds of the official result being wrong, in this case. The exit polls and the official results are two different attempts to determine how people voted, and when they disagree there is a problem, and we ought not to just assume that it is the exit polls that are at fault, especially when the official results could be so easily tampered with.

Anything can be fixed if you want it to be bad enough. There will always be conspiracy theorists out there.

In Canada we trust our counting to the Returning Elections Officer. Do we ask he/she how he/she voted before the counting begins, or what way her political ideology is leaning ... left or right?

Again though I do not accept the "odds of the exit polls being wrong are probably smaller" train of thought. In statistics the larger the sample the lower the percent of accuracy. An exit poll has a sampling of about 100 ..... the fact they get them so quick leads me to believe it could be lower but I wouldn't be surprised with anything in the 100-1000 range.

The official results have a sample pool of 115.4 Million. So the official results clearly have the smaller odds of being wrong statistically speaking. From a conspiracy theorist point of view, sure they could have been rigged, but as I have stated earlier, so to could have been the exit polls.

[razor]

I would normally take part in pointing out aspects of how Canada is superior to the US. But, in this case I have to remind everyone about the 1995 Referendum. I do not want to get any seperatists riled up, but if you recall there were many problems and irregularities with that "democratic" vote.

Below is a little reminder of the vote:

"After over a year neglecting to govern the province, instead promoting separation and setting the scene for a referendum, the PQ finally called the 1995 referendum for October 30, 1995, with a question specifically designed to solicit a YES vote from "soft nationalists". The result was a narrow victory for the NO side. Widespread electoral fraud by the YES side was reported and (at the time of writing) is still being investigated. Also, from the analysis of public opinion polls, some 30% of YES voters were voting for unspecified change, widely felt to mean more powers for Quebec, while expecting to remain in Canada with Canadian passports, Canadian dollar and other rights of Canadian citizenship. Uncorrected for fraud, the result was: 50.6% NO, 49.4% YES. At the time of publication (Jan 1996), there are no referendum results corrected for fraud but it will likely remain close at some 51.5% voting NO and 48.5% voting YES. Of course, corrected for real intent to separate the result would have been over 60% NO to less than 40% YES."

[MC Habber]

Skilly said:

Anything can be fixed if you want it to be bad enough. There will always be conspiracy theorists out there.

In Canada we trust our counting to the Returning Elections Officer. Do we ask he/she how he/she voted before the counting begins, or what way her political ideology is leaning ... left or right?

Consider how many people are involved in counting the votes when it's done the old fashioned way. It would be much harder to get that many people to lie and manage to keep it a secret than it would be to get one person (or maybe one person in each of a few key states) to change the numbers stored on a computer. This is simple logic to me - I don't see why anyone would argue with that. Further, if voting is done the old fashioned way, there is a hard record of how the votes were cast, and if the Returning Elections Officer tries to fudge the results he is putting himself at considerable risk of discovery. With most voting machines, there is no hard record, so any tampering is much harder to detect.

What's even worse is that almost anyone could commit election fraud with the current voting machines. Because of their security flaws, all you need to do is determine the phone number of a central counting machine and you can change the outcome of the election.

Again though I do not accept the "odds of the exit polls being wrong are probably smaller" train of thought. In statistics the larger the sample the lower the percent of accuracy. An exit poll has a sampling of about 100 ..... the fact they get them so quick leads me to believe it could be lower but I wouldn't be surprised with anything in the 100-1000 range.

The official results have a sample pool of 115.4 Million. So the official results clearly have the smaller odds of being wrong statistically speaking. From a conspiracy theorist point of view, sure they could have been rigged, but as I have stated earlier, so to could have been the exit polls.

The TOTAL number of people polled in exit polls is much greater than 100, I'm sure.

In statistics, given 2 samples of different sizes, you can determine the probability that they disagree by more than a certain amount. We aren't talking about accidental tabulation errors or statistical anomalies here, we're talking about deliberate "miscounting." Sure, the exit polls could have been fixed, but so could the official result, and just as easily. Also, the exit polls were fixed - in Bush's favour. NEP has admitted that the results were changed to match the official count, meaning that they were altered to favour Bush, so why would they fix the polls in favour of Kerry and then refix them in favour of Bush?

Dismissing something as nothing but a conspiracy theory is no better than attacking someone's credibility by calling them a terrorist (or a communist during the McCarthy era). Sure, there are all kinds of wild conspiracy theories out there, but there are also conspiracies. The evidence in this case clearly indicates problems with the voting, whether it's part of a conspiracy or simply bad judgement I don't know.

[Skilly]

A couple of things.

I am not dismissing the fact that there was some election tampering. It happens everywhere all the time. Innu communities buy votes with alcohol bribes, communities fail to count votes (there was an interesting case of election tampering here last election for the Liberal nomination), and then there is the nasty process of validating votes/spoiled ballots. In a traditional vote count (human counts pieces of paper) there is usually a representative present for both parties, they have to agree when a vote counts and when it doesn't, and the returning election officer has the final say. The ballot clearly say "Mark with an X". If you place a "tick mark" on the ballot odds are it will be debated and possibly thrown out and not counted. Or if you started to "X" one and stopped because you mistakenly marked the wrong candidate (and there is a noticeable mark in the box) and and then place an "X" next to another candidate then that is a spoiled ballot. Legally, they say they can not predict your intent or the order of the markings so it is spoiled. This is a form of election tampering, someone who thought their intentions were clearly defined is not getting a vote counted.

But does that have an overall effect on the outcome. In Ohio they said it wouldn't have matter. Even Kerry, I believe, has agreed that all the supposed election tampering wouldn't have mattered.

[PTH]

razor said:

"

Why put this all in quotes without providing a source ?

After over a year neglecting to govern the province, instead promoting separation and setting the scene for a referendum, the PQ finally called the 1995 referendum for October 30, 1995,...

Just this tells me this isn't an objective text, whatever the source may be, so the rest of this loses most of its value.

with a question specifically designed to solicit a YES vote from "soft nationalists".

Duh. Maybe they should've phrased it so that their option would lose? There was no hidden agenda here, the PQ chose a question that favoured the position they've been backing for 30 years now.

The result was a narrow victory for the NO side. Widespread electoral fraud by the YES side was reported and (at the time of writing) is still being investigated.

This article is obviously old if the investigations weren't over...

Also, from the analysis of public opinion polls, some 30% of YES voters were voting for unspecified change, widely felt to mean more powers for Quebec, while expecting to remain in Canada with Canadian passports, Canadian dollar and other rights of Canadian citizenship.

So what ? Some people don't understand the issues in just about every single election/referendum. Plenty of people on the "no" side probably believed the wild promises of a better Canada and more flexibility for Quebec, etc, etc. But this biased piece won't recognize that, of course, it would kill their point.

Uncorrected for fraud, the result was: 50.6% NO, 49.4% YES. At the time of publication (Jan 1996), there are no referendum results corrected for fraud but it will likely remain close at some 51.5% voting NO and 48.5% voting YES.

So there was a total of 0.9% of "fraud"; that's actually not bad overall for a highly charged issue.

Of course, corrected for real intent to separate the result would have been over 60% NO to less than 40% YES."

Another meaningless, baseless statistic that kills the credibility of whichever moron wrote this...

[MC Habber]

Skilly said:

A couple of things.
In a traditional vote count (human counts pieces of paper) there is usually a representative present for both parties, they have to agree when a vote counts and when it doesn't, and the returning election officer has the final say. The ballot clearly say "Mark with an X". If you place a "tick mark" on the ballot odds are it will be debated and possibly thrown out and not counted. Or if you started to "X" one and stopped because you mistakenly marked the wrong candidate (and there is a noticeable mark in the box) and and then place an "X" next to another candidate then that is a spoiled ballot. Legally, they say they can not predict your intent or the order of the markings so it is spoiled. This is a form of election tampering, someone who thought their intentions were clearly defined is not getting a vote counted.

What you describe is a major reason why traditional vote counting is better - you have more transparency and the opportunity for review by either side. At least the rules are clearly defined - if someone can't figure out how to mark an X, they probably can't use an electronic voting machine either. With paper ballots those that are spoiled are not counted. If my grandmother is trying to use an electronic voting machine and hits the wrong button, her vote isn't just being ignored, it's actually counting towards the wrong person. But these are relatively minor concerns. The problem with voting machines is that they make tampering on a massive scale easy.

But does that have an overall effect on the outcome. In Ohio they said it wouldn't have matter. Even Kerry, I believe, has agreed that all the supposed election tampering wouldn't have mattered.

In this particular election, maybe it had an effect, maybe it didn't, but that's not really the point. Kerry, for whatever reason, decided not to challenge the vote - maybe because if he lost the challenge it would destroy him politically, maybe because of the credibility hit the US electoral system would take, maybe because he knew he couldn't win against a Republican senate and Supreme Court, or maybe because the Democratic party didn't want to weaken the system that gives them and the Republicans a joint monopoly over democracy. Whatever the case, it's hardly proof that the system works.

[MC Habber]

Skilly said:

In Canada we trust our counting to the Returning Elections Officer. Do we ask he/she how he/she voted before the counting begins, or what way her political ideology is leaning ... left or right?

One of the 3 major companies that makes the voting machines actually stated that it is very important for them to be impartial. Let's ignore the fact that the company leadership is not simply supporting Bush but is actively campainging and raising funds for him, and pretend that they are, in fact, impartial. Well, in 10 years, many of those people will be gone and the company will have a different group of people in charge - how can the current 'impartial' leadership possibly guarantee that their successors will be impartial? Who can say they won't be replaced by a bunch of Neo-Nazis? After all, they're a private business, they can hire whoever they want.

This is a fundamental problem with putting a private company in charge of any aspect of the democratic or legal processes. The current situation is no better than hiring Pepsi to appoint judges to the Supreme Court.

[BadCompany]

While I can't speak for the security of the voting machines, knowing nothing about them, I do think the exit polling discrepancy bears further investigation. As the first post pointed out, several elections in other nations have been deemed fraudulent, based on discrepancies between actual results and exit polls. If exit polls are viewed as statistically accurate enough for those elections, why are they suddenly irrelevent in the US election?

If you go to CNN.com today, there is an article talking about possible fraud in Ukraine's national election, with the following included:

Exit polls showed Yushchenko, a pro-Western reformer, winning Sunday's vote in contrast to the official results giving victory to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych -- hiking tensions in a battle for the presidency that many from the start have feared could lead to violence.

A prominent group of foreign observers said Monday that the vote did not meet international democratic standards.

edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/22/ukraine.ap/index.html

While the exit polls were not the only issue causing concern in this election, it was one of them, as, I believe, MC believes it should be considered one of the concerns in the US election.

[razor]

PTH said:

Duh. Maybe they should've phrased it so that their option would lose? There was no hidden agenda here, the PQ chose a question that favoured the position they've been backing for 30 years now.



So what ? Some people don't understand the issues in just about every single election/referendum. Plenty of people on the "no" side probably believed the wild promises of a better Canada and more flexibility for Quebec, etc, etc. But this biased piece won't recognize that, of course, it would kill their point.

So you fail to see the problems with that referendum?

Why, when the result was are either yes or no, were there multiple questions? When comparing to the US election - they vote for either Kerry or Bush, not six different questions with various divisions of power between the two.

We laugh at the fact Florida was able to influence the results of the last US election given the fact Bush's brother was govenor. But, at the time of the referendum, deputy returning officers were named by the the party in power, not the chief returning officer. These were the people who decided whether a vote was valid or not. The result of which was a mirror of the hanging chad issue.

We were about to divide our country on a election that had as many problems as the US election had.

[PTH]

razor said:

So you fail to see the problems with that referendum?

No, I see them, I just don't see them as being all that horrible. It's a good thing that they've been examined, but my biggest problem was with the highly biased article you used.

Why, when the result was are either yes or no, were there multiple questions?

As far as I know, the referendum question was with a simple yes/no answer.

We laugh at the fact Florida was able to influence the results of the last US election given the fact Bush's brother was govenor. But, at the time of the referendum, deputy returning officers were named by the the party in power, not the chief returning officer. These were the people who decided whether a vote was valid or not. The result of which was a mirror of the hanging chad issue.

Well, the issues were worked on and this is a good thing. However, the referendum policies were in place for quite a while, and the Liberals probably had the same rules in place for the 1992 referendum about the Charlottetown accord. Both parties should have looked them over, but didn't.

We were about to divide our country on a election that had as many problems as the US election had.

Again, you bias is showing.... Why not look at it in terms of building a new country ? It's all just a question of point of view.

[PTH]

BadCompany said:

If exit polls are viewed as statistically accurate enough for those elections, why are they suddenly irrelevent in the US election?

To me, that's the key issue. Maybe exit polls just generally aren't that good, but if so then we shouldn't use them as a measuring stick for anything more than taking the general pulse of the trends going on.

Or maybe exit polls are just easier to manipulate...

[Habs_fan_in_LA]

Is anyone suggesting that we hold elections, throw out all the ballots and count the exit poles.
The election commisions have much more credability than pollsters. Anybody can be a pollster. How many people think the election was unfair? There, I'm a pollster. Overturn the results because a pollster says so!

[PTH]

Habs_fan_in_LA said:

Is anyone suggesting that we hold elections, throw out all the ballots and count the exit poles.

No, no one is saying that, and I can't see why you'd think we are.

[MC Habber]

Habs_fan_in_LA said:

Is anyone suggesting that we hold elections, throw out all the ballots and count the exit poles.

Is anyone suggesting we spend a lot of money to do exit polling, throw out the results and just make up numbers that line up with the election results? Oh wait, that's what happened.

[Skilly]

MC said:

Is anyone suggesting we spend a lot of money to do exit polling, throw out the results and just make up numbers that line up with the election results? Oh wait, that's what happened.

Only on the surface. Because as I have pointed out, the exit polling questions do not take into account the perception of the voter.

If the voter is asked. How do you feel on the issue of IRAQ, for or against? And he says against, we do not know why he is against? He could be against it because he hates war, or he could be against it because he has a son over there, or he could be against it because he likes Iraq, or he could be against it on principle. But the next logical question should be "do you think we should remove our troops?" .... he could say no to this because he views the war on Iraq the same as the war on Terrorism. It is a contradictory response but plausible.

The exit polls are too easy to manipulate. I liken it to a scientific experiment, in which you suggest a hypothesis. Some students research to determine whatthe outcome should be before writing the hypothesis, some do the more correct approach of suggesting a possible outcome and then forget it to not invoke any preconcieved biases into the experiment. If you know what the result should be, it is human nature to look for ways that ultimately give you that result. Certain questions bunched together gave the impression that Bush would have won if that was the trend, so it had to be true because he did win. Not necessarily true, but neither is the "conspriacy theory", that by fudging results is proof that Bush did not win.

[BadCompany]

Skilly said:

The exit polls are too easy to manipulate. I liken it to a scientific experiment, in which you suggest a hypothesis. Some students research to determine whatthe outcome should be before writing the hypothesis, some do the more correct approach of suggesting a possible outcome and then forget it to not invoke any preconcieved biases into the experiment. If you know what the result should be, it is human nature to look for ways that ultimately give you that result. Certain questions bunched together gave the impression that Bush would have won if that was the trend, so it had to be true because he did win. Not necessarily true, but neither is the "conspriacy theory", that by fudging results is proof that Bush did not win.

So why are exit polls taken as "scientific enough" to discredit elections in other nations, but not in the US?

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

BadCompany said:

So why are exit polls taken as "scientific enough" to discredit elections in other nations, but not in the US?

Because they are not US.

[Montrealer]

BadCompany said:

So why are exit polls taken as "scientific enough" to discredit elections in other nations, but not in the US?

www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPoll.pdf (edit: more recent version)

According to this interesting paper by a U of Pennsylvania professor, the odds of the three exit polls for Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania being so far off is roughly 600,000 to 1. (edit: first revision of his paper was stating 250,000,000 to 1, he explains his recalculation in the newer revision)

He points out that students at the U of Utah have been doing exit-polling exercises for twenty-two years, and they are always well within 1% of the final vote outcome, every time. The fact that so many states showed the exit polls about 6-10% off from the true final totals is evidence that there is something seriously wrong.

Either the exit polls were tampered with, as Dick Morris maintained on November 4, or the election results were tampered with. Either way, it's an amazing thing for the world's "foremost democracy" to deal with - as the paper above said, exit poll discrepencies caused Georgia's population to help the opposition take over that nation's government; the same is now ongoing in Ukraine.

[Skilly]

BadCompany said:

So why are exit polls taken as "scientific enough" to discredit elections in other nations, but not in the US?

The only answer I have for that is that in "newbian democratic" nations (those not used to democracy) they are more easy to jump to revolution to ensure they are democratic.

In the US - they perceive themselves to be the ultimate specimen of democracy. So they do not listen to the rest of the world's opinion on their system.

I am not saying that election wasn't tampered with. I am saying that exit polls can be wrong. The liklihood however minute, doesn't matter. If it is 600,000 to 1. Well there is that one chance. I am sure we have all heard of strange things. Like the likelihood of being hit by lightning is 700,000 to 1. But people get struck, in fact I read somewhere that a guy was struck by lightning 7 times. (I believe his name was Roy Sullivan - I'll have to check Guinness) Then there is the actor Jim Caviezel. During the filming of "Passion of the Christ" he was struck by lightning twice! The odds on that are 9,000,000 to 1. Yet it happened.

And I am sure we have all heard of the odds of winning the lottery. Now it depends on the number of tickets sold, but roughly it is about 100,000,000 to 1 in the US, and around 10,000,000 to 1 in Canada. Yet people win two lottery jackpots, and there is a winner every week.

Just because the odds are great doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Back to election frauds.

Every country has election frauds. Canada did the last election, the Us, Ukraine, Afganistan, Ukraine, Iraq, England, the list is endless ..... it doesn't make it right, but it is up to each country to decide how they are going to handle it, not Canada's. I did not hear anyone rise (probably because I wasn't read NonHabsStuff back then) in protest back when Martin and Harper were screwing around with the nomination procedures. Or when Danny Williams was doing the same here in Newfoundland when he out right refused to let some people even run for the PC nomination. Yet, the anti-American sentiment always brings people to chastise them on matters of their own country, even when it is happening in our own country. I just wonder would the same people be yelling out if Kerry won, oh wait ...... they still think Kerry played 100% by the rules just because he lost.

[MC Habber]

Skilly said:

I just wonder would the same people be yelling out if Kerry won, oh wait ...... they still think Kerry played 100% by the rules just because he lost.

I started this thread not because Bush won or even because I think he cheated (I honestly have no idea - tampering could have been done by anyone). My biggest problem is with the voting machines (which we do not use in Canada, though that isn't the point here). I was never a big fan of John Kerry, and the fact that he lost (whether ligitimately or not) doesn't exactly change that.

Just because the odds are great doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Now you are grabbing at straws. Maybe Bush is an alien or a robot. Perhaps the moon landing was faked. Afterall, we can't rule out those possibilities, no matter how unlikely.

And there's a very small chance that all the air in your room right now will spontaneously form a vacuum around your head, causing you to suffocate. I don't know about you, but I'm terrified.

Thanks to Montrealer for the link, which, in the absence of any counter-evidence whatsoever, is proof (as far as I'm concerned) that there was either tampering or a systematic error in the voting machines, and that it probably cost Kerry the election.


Isn't it disturbing that in the "ultimate specimen of democracy" nearly half of voting age people don't vote? That there are only 2 parties and both have the same position on the death penalty (for example)? That over one third of voters have no idea of the policies of the people they're voting for? That the entire election process is being sold to a couple of companies who are literally incompetent and the votes counted using 'infallible' machines? That civil liberties are being taken away and people hardly notice? That it may well happen that the whitehouse is occupied by 2 families for a combined 36 years straight?

Do I sound anti-American? I prefer to think of it as anti-US government, since the majority of its actions make the world worse, as far as I'm concerned. But there's a reason why I pay more attention to what happens in the US than Argentina - it affects me and most of the world a whole lot more. Not that I like Paul Martin either - he should be in jail for the way he runs/ran his shipping company, using foreign registries to avoid Canadian tax, labour, and safety laws. In a way, Canadians are worse than Americans, because we actually have a system that gives us (or rather should give us) choices and we still elected someone like that.

[M. Beaux-Eaux]

MC said:

Maybe Bush is an alien or a robot. Perhaps the moon landing was faked. Afterall, we can't rule out those possibilities, no matter how unlikely.

Unlikely?

And there's a very small chance that all the air in your room right now will spontaneously form a vacuum around your head, causing you to suffocate. I don't know about you, but I'm terrified.

I knew it wasn't asthma.