Reply #3: I don't think there was one organized conspiracy. [View All]

[Brotherjohn]

I think few unethical acts by partisans in charge (particularly of Ohio and Florida) went a long way, though.

Voter intimidation DID occur. The Republican National Committee recruited and paid for thousands of "observers" who had the stated goal of challenging voter credentials. They were sent to primarily minority districts.

Since when is this THEIR job?

The Repubublican Sec'y of State's office in Ohio admittedly under-ordered voting machines (coincidentally in primarily minority districts), resulting in long lines and the likelihood that many people who wanted to vote did not vote.

The Republican Sec'y of State and Governor in Florida instituted ANOTHER voter purge which was riddled with innaccuracies, no doubt resulting in many more people being unable to vote.

All this organized obstruction aside (whether or not you want to call it "conspiracy"), all it would take is a few people driven by partisan fervor in a few districts or state offices to tweak a switch or dump some ballots or close some office... all of this could easily lead to millions of votes changing over or lost on a national scale. And it would not have to be an organized conspiracy. It would simply have to be "enthusiasm" run out of control by a few players within the party in power.

As to whether that can ever be proven, well, that's highly unlikely.

But it WOULD be reflected by such things as, oh, I don't know, unexplained discrepancies between exit polls and the official vote tally.

Less provable cases of electoral shenanigans have resulted in elections being overturned in other countries (at our urging, most recently in the Ukraine).

Lastly, if a large Democratic donor who headed one of the biggest vote-tallying machine companies in the country was on record as saying "We're going to deliver Florida for John Kerry", we would have already had a Congressional investigation into the election results.