not just the MSM...many of the left leaning blogs and commentators

[dogindia]

are not even speaking of vote fraud. Why? This has disturbed me for many weeks.

Again I say hurrah for Conyers.

[jamboi]

1. Good point. If the liberal media and grass roots were fully mobilized it

would change this picture entirely. I think that's coming next.

[Cocoa]

2. because they're talking about other things

[idealista]

3. the cripling effect of shame...

Democrats' and liberals' reluctance to talk about the 2004 election being tainted must have some origins in the psychology of the individual.

Could it be that the idea of having been cheated and played for a fool causes so much shame deep in the brain-pan that these people prefer to believe they lost in a fair fight?

Makes them feel like suckers to have LET this happen. They just can't go there.

[ohio_liberal]

4. I wrote about this today

Even if the most popular liberal/progressive blogs must have absolute proof in front of them before they'll really address the fraud issue, why on earth isn't the fact that there was a judiciary hearing about it worth mentioning? Come on people, this is NEWS!

[UVASAM1]

5. they dont buy it

a lot of people in the Democratic party just dont buy it. While there's always some level of fraud/irregularities in any election, many loyal dem's just dont see it making any difference in this election nationally or swaying a state

[ohio_liberal]

6. That's such a cop out

It shouldn't matter whether it makes a difference in the outcome.

[Stephanie]

7. It DOESN'T MATTER if it sways the election, damnit!

What matters is that we have a fair and open voting system where every vote is COUNTED and nobody's RIGHT TO VOTE is violated. If we lose that we lose our democracy. So whether it would change the outcome is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the NECESSITY that we fix the system NOW.

[UVASAM1]

8. agree

I completely agree that it should be fully investigated and any problems found should be fixed as soon as possible and measures taken so that they don't reoccur. But there is contingent that's ready to take this info or seize on this 'hearing' and head to the streets in protest over the election results, saying the election was stolen and rigged.

I'm sure there were problems in West Va, and I'm sure if they were fixed, Kerry/Edwards would have picked up more votes. But * still won the state in a landslide, and I'm not sure marching and talking of a rigged and stolen election is helpful.

[ohio_liberal]

10. You live in a solid red state.

I can understand that you aren't interested in taking to the streets.

I happen to live in Ohio. I sat back and watched some hayseed neocon fundimentalist challenge 600+ voter registrations in the county next to mine. It was an effort to suppress the Democratic vote. I watched my county throw out 42% of the provisional votes. I watched my local precincts that were unable to find registered voters in the poll books, and made them vote with provisional ballots that may or may not have been counted. I stood in line to vote behind a 65 year old woman who had voted in the same precinct for 30 years and her name was "purged" from the voter rolls for no apparent reason. Did you know that Kenneth Blackwell ordered these purges in July?

I watched on TV and the internet the story of thousands and thousands of minority voters who stood in line for hours in the pouring rain to vote. I've never in my life heard of such a thing. Would you want to choose between going to work and standing in line all day to vote? It isn't a freaking coincidence, it isn't a freak occurance. It happened all over the minority areas in Ohio, and it happened on purpose. What more does it take to get people fired up about this?

[UVASAM1]

12. huh

West Virginia is a solid red state?

It may be strongly trending that way, but its not yet. If the Democratic party writes off states like WV, we have NO chance.

In culture, WV is remarkably similar to Ohio in many respects. It would have been extremely close here but we jsut dont have the large pockets of urban voters you guys have.

[ohio_liberal]

13. Bush won 2004

56% to Kerry's 43%. Bush won 2000 52%, 46% Gore. I'd say that's pretty red.

[glitch]

15. How do you know? We can't trust the vote count so we can't trust

the results. If they cheated in OH what makes you think they didn't cheat in WV?
Right now we have no way of knowing who won what, when or by how much.
The vote count results are not independently verified, therefore we cannot trust any of them.
Our best estimates are the exit polls. What was the variance between the exit poll and the count in WV?

[ohio_liberal]

17. I surely

trust a Democratic governor and a Democratic SoS in WV to run a fair election more than a Republican Kenneth Blackwell in OH. The only voter suppression tactics I've ever heard of in WV this election were phone calls in Berkeley and Jefferson counties.

Edited to add exit poll info:

West Virginia
Kerry 45
Bush 54
Nader 1

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109053/

[glitch]

19. Not just voter suppression tactics - machine counts

And while I trust dems in charge more than I do reps, I don't trust the people they put their trust in.
Too many pols trust the voting machine corps implicitly. This is a big mistake.
Sounds like you are concentrating on the blatant voter suppression, which is a good thing to focus on, too.
But we also need to focus on the problems in the voting systems, and they are much less obvious and the potential for abuse is much more pervasive.
Until the vote counts are independently verified, you cannot rely on their stated results.
Since the results are unreliable, you cannot use them to base your conclusions.

[jsascj]

16. I also live in a very red part of a red state (VA)

But I'll tell you that I think things were 'funny' here. I have no doubt that votes were stolen here too..if only to pad the vote.

I have never seen so many Dem signs, bumper stickers, etc as I did this year in VA. Have never spoken to so many people who HATED Shrubya. Even Zogby said, "Watch for some surprises from VA, PA, CO and some other state" on election day. I really felt that Kerry might be close. Lines were long, many more voted here than before. We've never had to wait in line before. When I went to deliver my ballot...guess what? The counter was 'jammed' and I was instructed to put it in a box. I kind of joked about it but it was early and I did not realize the extent of similar problems all across the state. Then, in the end, VA went pretty much the same as it did in 2000. WHAT? How could that be? I really don't think it was. I think votes were padded across the country.

[UVASAM1]

21. i've heard the same

I've heard a lot of the same things from other people.

I know there were an unprecedented number of signs for Al Weed in his race against Virgil Goode in the 5th. There were long lines in liberal Charlottesville, and tons of signs everywhere and lots of support for Weed. But he got killed and everybody was like, what happened?

Truth is, we cant go to anybody with this kind of evidence. We cant investigate seriously in Cville with claims about road signs and long lines. This kind of thing was the same in my district in WV, which Shrub got 57% of the vote in (Wheeling). I mean the hatred of Shrub was there, but I'm not sure it was as widespread as many of us thought, esp outside of our social circles.

[jsascj]

23. Obviously can't go anywhere with anecdotes

But I just do not buy that Shrubya beat Kerry by 9% points. Zogby had them almost tied and Electoral-vote.com only had VA leaning red. I do take some comfort in knowing that the Tidewater area (military) actually went for Kerry

[Stephanie]

11. Really? Not helpful to whom?

When you saw those people in OH waiting in line ten hours to vote, did you think that was right? Or did you think perhaps someone made that happen on purpose? And if they would do that, do you think they would be above tampering with the computers? We have already had ONE stolen election, in 2000. You might want to read up on that one. What is not helpful is when we sit down and shut up, instead of confronting every single instance of criminal malfeasance by these lying hypocritical thugs who have seized power by any means necessary. This is a constitutional crisis, our democracy is at stake, and we damn well better say so and LOUDLY.

I will gladly take to the streets. Why wouldn't you?

[MarkusQ]

18. Then they're ostriches

Just the voter disenfranchisement due to inequitable allocation of resources in Ohio could be enough to flip the election, as could the various consequences of precincts voting in the same place.

There is enough evidence on the table right now to make the outcome suspect. And that's not even considering things such as the possibility of consistent miscounting or fraud.

--MarkusQ

[Old and In the Way]

9. Deliberate orchestration?

Until there is hard evidence accummulated and understood, all of our complaints would be spun as "sore losermen" whining by the Democrats.....and by the time the discovery phase would be completed, the general public's outrage of the findings would be diluted and diffused.

Maybe there is a deliberate plan to keep the anger and accusations bottled up until a time that irrefutable facts of fraud can be released as real news. At that point, we may suddenly see a full scale campaign by the progressive media to make a case for systematic criminal gaming of the election.

If that's not the case, everyone has rolled.....at this point, I'm not willing to concede that's what happened.

[UVASAM1]

14. hard evidence

Our proof has to be ironclad and easy to understand. Not statistical studies by grad students from Cal.

I know everyone points at 2000, but the dynamic's completely different. The margin in the PV is different, and large. The margin in OH is not 500 votes. We dont have the natural audience and interest we had then.

We need more than what we have now to take to the general public, or else we're going to scream and yell a lot, nobody's going to listen, and I fear we'll just alienate more people from the Dem. Party.

[Old and In the Way]

20. Evidence takes time to acquire.

No statute of limitations......I know it was gamed, the statistics back it up. Now we need the proof. And when we get it, I hope we have a media that'll support democracy and tell it like it is.

[RaulVB]

22. Individual character

You have to be bold and courageous to fight for democracy.

Those bloggers are mostly very timid and show no spine, unfortunately.

[IndyOp]

24. A congressional staffer has given me a contact in left leaning institute

who wants information about vote fraud. Request is in this thread:

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x130512>