My talking points

[lapsedmodernist]

Shut the fuck up, all of you "maturely" talking about how we have to accept the fact that the American public, in their "blessed are the idiots for they will inherit the Empire" lemming effect voted Bush into the office again. Shut the fuck up about how we need to respect the procedures, and it´s no conspiracy theory, Kerry just got outvoted.

1. You are no better than whorish CNN and Fox news who are calling the election as a voter suppression tactic, despite the fact that people ARE STILL VOTING AT THE POLLS in Ohio and that Iowa may be recounted. Even so, CNN is reading emails from people urging Kerry to concede, just "to get it over with." In 2000 we had a president-elect who gave up the fight, even as we hoped against hope for weeks. This year the Democrats are not giving up until every vote is counted. Why the hell are you? The Kerry campaign has the money and the infrastructure to challenge the integrity of this election everywhere. This is not Al Gore as King Arthur at the Yankee Court. Hundreds of thousands of votes have not been counted yet. I for one am not ready to hand over the country to the Apocalyptic neocons for round two. Why the hell are you?

2. You are not mature, you are naive. If you think you are informed from reading your "liberal" mainstream media, and now you are nodding your head and saying, well, Kerry didn't appeal to Middle America, you have been keeping your hand in the sand about the depth of corruption, voter indimidation/suppresion, electronic machine fraud and other wonderful phenomena of the New World Order playing out today. Why were there milions of electronic votes cast for Bush before the polls even opened? What the fuck happened with the exit polls yesterday? The exit polls showed a clear Kerry advantage in Ohio and Florida. Early in the counting yesterday, Bob Woodward expressed reservations about the wide disparity between the exit polls and the claimed vote count. And the gap between exit polls and BBV counts has only increased since then. The 2000 election was stolen. Why is it so hard for you to believe it is happening again, right now?

3. Shut the fuck up about the 2008 election. If this election is stolen again, we are not going to have an election in 2008, at least not in any meaningul way.

4. And all of you who can vote yet didn't vote for Kerry yesterday, or think that voting is unimportant, get the fuck off my friends list.

Comments

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

This morning I dreamt that a civil war was starting, and waiters were surreptitiously setting things on fire, and smarmy suits in restaurants were eating what they thought were adventurous dishes continued, oblivious to the murderous rage around them, but nobody knew what would come of it.

Then I woke up to the nightmare.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I have half a mind to trade in my ticket to SF for the 12th for a ticket to OH for tomorrow.

[warpsmith.livejournal.com]

Right on. I can't imagine how it got this far. Where's the outrage over easily-corruptible voting machines manufactured by ideological warriors? Do people actually think the Constitution won't be cancelled as Tommy Franks suggested? Good God. And the thought of an ultra-statist Scalia court scares the bejeezus out of me.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you for not giving up either.

Can I add to your talking points the 58,000 "lost" absentee ballots that Florida voters never received?

Not to mention that BBC is talking about the embarrassing flub of the exit pollers--why didn't they consider the election mechanisms instead??

And, I don't understand the plea for instant gratification--"getting it over with" will be only the beginning. The Democrats should not cede anything.

But you know all that.

At least my coworkers keep sympathetically checking in. My country director is ready to give up the ghost though...she may have even voted Shrub, I don't know.

[polymorphic.livejournal.com]

What I like best is your anger and use of my favorite word: fuck. Yes, fuck. I admire your optimism. Please visit Ohio. Fix it.

[ex-redcalx.livejournal.com]

no one wants to believe you more than me. but where's the fucking evidence? i've been online for hours, looking for something. i've got nothing.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Look at a site which lists the exit polls before they were "corrected.” Correction is the procedure by which the exit polls are retrofitted to match the figures provided by the vote counting machines. It is easily done by changing the exit poll results, such as the 2.00 a.m. re-assignment of the Nevada exit poll scores which was done without varying the sample size.

Results can be also changed by other methods like screwing with the weighting.

So let's look at raw exit polls vs. announced results

Here is one list as an example of raw exit poll data:
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=386

Then look at the results by state, such as here
http://news.yahoo.com/electionresults


The GOP says that the exit polls are not large enough samples and so there is a large random error in the results. If this were true, then the exit polls would
scatter on either side of the actual result, ESP. if the final result is so close to 50/50.

When we compare exit polls with actual results we see a skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had previously stated to be target states in play. The skew favors Bush every time.

The exit poll results are not scattered about the mean, they are all on the Kerry side of the vote counts as issued by the states except for a few of states where the final figures are very close to poll figures.

Here are the figures. They list the four contemporaneous and uncorrected exit polls. Kerry is listed first and Bush second in each pair of figures. Published = the figure presented as the vote count as of 10.00 a.m. EST on 11/3/04

AZ Poll one 45-55 Final 45-55 Published 44-55
CO Poll one 48-51 2nd 48-50 3rd 46-53 Published 46-53
LA Poll one 42-57 Final 43-56 Published 42-57
MI Poll one 51-48 Published 51-48 Published 51-48
IOWA Poll one 49-49 3rd 50-48 Final 49-49 Published 49-50
NM Poll one 50-48 2nd 50-48 3rd 50-48 Final 50-49 Published 49-50
ME 3rd 55-44 Published 53-45
NV: 3rd 48-49 Published 48-51
AR: 3rd 45-54 Published 45-54
MO Final 46-54 Published 46-53

These tracking polls are as expected and within the margin of error. But in othe states that is not the case. Either the exit polls were wrong or the vote count is wrong:

WI Poll one 52-48 3rd 51-46 Final 52-47 Published 50-49
PA Poll one 60-40 3rd 54-45 Final 53-46 Published 51-49
OH Poll one 52-48 2nd 50-49 3rd 50-49 Final 51-49 Published 49-51
FL Poll one 51-48 2nd 50-49 3rd 50-49 Final 51-49 Published 47-52
MINN Poll one 58-40 3rd 58-40 Final 54-44 Published 51-48
NH Poll one 57-41 3rd 58-41 Published 50-49
NC Poll one 3rd 49-51 Final 48-52 Published 43-56

Taking the figures and measuring the size and direction of the poll to supposed vote count discrepancy, we find:

OH Bush + 4%
FL Bush + 7%
NH Bush + 15%
NC Bush + 9%

etc.

Still don´t think the election was tampered with?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure you saw the Palast article (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204V.shtml) that about a million votes being stolen before the polls even opened, right? Can you post info you've got about BBV and other "irregularities"? The usual sources seem pretty quiet this morning.

According to these calculations (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/95349/1374), it's still possible for Kerry to win Ohio if the provisionals/absentees are counted.

Kerry is apparently going to deliver a speech (http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/3886612/detail.html) at noon, and there are rumours that it will be a concession speech. Let's hope not.

Jacob

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

look at my response above for some numbers.

He has already conceded. We pinched our noses and fought for him and he didn't fight for us.

[(Anonymous)]

I was just looking at your numbers, and will definitely want to check this out thoroughly. I don't know enough about statistics or polling methodology to comment either way at this point, though I am very willing to believe the race was tampered with, per Walden O'Dell's promise to deliver Ohio to Bush this year.

Btw, CNN just quoted (http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/election.main/index.html) a Kerry advisor as saying that he conceded because "'there was no way to gain votes on Bush without an "exhaustive fight,' something that would have further divided this country.'"

What the fuck? As if we haven't been in an 'exhaustive fight' for years now.

Jacob

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Of course the race was tampered with, this is just the most glaringly obvious evidence. What happened inside the BBV machines we will never know unless there is some kind of lawsuit where raw audit log data is subpoenaed and actually received.

Either way it does not matter. Kerry makes Al Gore look like a hero.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

According to Josh Marshall, the real surprise is all the young people who didn't vote. I want them off my friends list too.

[labrujah.livejournal.com]

There was a story on NPR last night about how in New Hampshire, somebody (I wonder who) was calling registered Democrats and saying "Hi I'm from the Kerry campaign, we're going to win the state so you don't have to go vote!"

SO underhanded.

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

About 3:30 or 4 yesterday the Kerry phone bank coordinators pulled my room off calls to students in New Hampshire who had been told they'd have to pay back their grants if they voted in NH and put us on calls to folks who'd been receiving the calls you describe.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

This is on the accelerated path to urban legend--I heard that in Florida the ruse was to get people to enter their vote over the phone and thus excuse them from going to the polls.

[seltix.livejournal.com]

i seem to remember reading the quote from the maker of the voting machines that went something like this: "i will deliver the great state of ohio to george bush."

i need a hall pass to leave this planet.

[seltix.livejournal.com]

and oh yeah. wasn't ohio the state where, just the other day, judges banned election monitors from being allowed in the voting areas?

[spawnsong.livejournal.com]

i haven't been immersed in it for the past four years. i haven't encountered a divergence between 'the process as it may actually be' and 'the process as i percieve to be (more legit than not). You are scaring me. i hope you're wrong. better a fit of zealotry on your part than the alternative:

"And they say that when fascism crosses our borders it'll be wrapped up in a shroud
Glowing red, white, and blue
And our rectors they say will explain it away
As the ravings of a passionate few."

-good riddance

I have to tell you, i'm not really ready to face up to what's going on intellectually or emotionally just yet. I feel this 'let life go on because it always has and will' kind of feeling creeping up and i'm thinking of dropping out for a while and doing just that...and i live in a another country for fuck's sake.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I am scared too, Sepand. My best friend says he does not know whether to be more horrified if the election was stolen or if it had been won fair and square, which is a fair point, but the philosophical implications of the second variant aside, we are still dealing with the first one, and with the fact that the ruling party has demonstrated that it has instituted the infrastructure necessary to maintain control on the executive branch (the legistlative branch has been beaten into submission and Bush will stack the Supreme Court with Scalia's soulmates during the next two years).
Everything happened just as Greg Palast predicted it would. Read this if you haven't yet. http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0

I don't know what to do now that it seems the only hope for the country is the Right splitting into two factions, the fundies and the fiscal conservatives.

While obviously this entry was impassioned, it was not zealotry, the place I was coming from was legitimate fear in light of substantiated facts, many of which have been reported, over and over, by Greg Palast, Amy Goodman, Black Box Voting and the rest of the remnant of independent investigative journalism in the United States.

Dropping out, like "tune in, turn on, drop out" or dropping out like a personal media blackout for the sake of mental health?

[spawnsong.livejournal.com]

'dropping out' so that i can absorb the possibility that things are worst than i would like to believe and re-grouping...so the second variant. As for your 'zealotry', you dont' have to justify your position to me babe; i trust your juedgement and sensability more than most people's whom i've yet to meet, and i mean that wholeheartedly. I just thought you were angry, scared and dissapointed and probably had cried not too long before writing this post, and if i were around, i'd likely give you a hug and allow for the fact that we (as people with common ideals) are heading into uncharted waters and it's frightning. It would be less so if it weren't for the fact that we don't know how not to be aware and how not to care.

I'll know by the end of today when i'll be in Cali. If i have a few days leaway, i'd like to tailer my arrival to coincide with you benig there, so i'll let you know.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I just thought you were angry, scared and dissapointed and probably had cried not too long before writing this post

Check, check, check, check. I think I cried on and off for 12 hours, which is probably why I didn't notice that I had a pretty high fever by the end of it.

I honestly feel like my life just cracked open, and I have to figure out what to do next, but my brain is working at it kind of like frozen fingers undo coat buttons.

Looks like you might have to marry me after all *sad smile, no icon for that *

Just read your reply about CA, I will be there through the 15th definitely. Let me know once you have tickets. I really do look forward to meeting you a lot, it's one of the few bright things I can conceptualize at the moment.

[wilhemina.livejournal.com]

Feel your pain.

Thank you for all this.