Transcript of CNN election coverage-4:30 A.M. on Nov 3. Must Read!

[kuozzman]

This raises some questions to say the least. Mentions a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes as well. I didn't realize New Mexico and Iowa were so close. And that they were both having "problems with machines" which was apparently because of fatigue?

http://ignorantusa.tripod.com/electioncoverage/

[imenja]

1. NM wasn't called until a few days after the election

Late in the week. Wisconsin and Iowa were also called late.

[kuozzman]

3. Did New Mexico end up being decided by just a few thousand?

[imenja]

4. Less than 7000 votes

Source: Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/elections/2004/nm/

U.S. President -- New Mexico
Updated 11/24/04 1:59 AM ET
Precincts:100% Incumbent* declared winner

Candidates Votes %

George W. Bush * (R) 376,940 50
John F. Kerry (D) 370,893 49
Other 8,515 1

[kuozzman]

8. Is this not fishy, to say the least.......

This is the count CNN gave with 99% reporting:

Shrub: 333,525
Kerry: 322,571
Other: 3,555

So we're supposed to believe that in the 659,651 votes counted 3rd party candidates got 3,555 and that in the last 96,697 they got 4,960? I'm callin bullshit!

[imenja]

10. absentee and provisional ballots

I'm not saying there couldn't be something wrong with the count, but the numbers were revised some time after the election to take into account provisional and absentee ballots. Those were after the 100% of precincts that reported on election day. I remember Bill Richardson talking about a week or so after the election about the bump in Kerry's margin as a result of those late ballots. As far as I know, every state revises their numbers later, especially because of military votes.

[On the Road]

29. Kuozzman, There is Definitely Something Wrong With Those Numbers

There could be a variety of explanations, including bad data. But you are absolutely correct to notice it. They can't be real?

[imenja]

5. NM Secretary of State

gives the same numbers

http://www.sos.state.nm.us/

It breaks them down by county.

[kuozzman]

2. Woodruff's comment about the "sudden change in the margin"

"Apparently what has happened is that the Associated Press, which we've been telling our viewers all day -- they have been the source of these raw vote numbers for us, calling in votes from actual counties all over the country. They were feeding numbers into us, and then suddenly those numbers changed. In other words, there was about, I'm told, a 2,000- to 6,000-vote margin between President Bush's position and John Kerry's position. And then that margin grew suddenly to an 11,000- vote margin."

[liberal N proud]

6. And they did not call into question why that could happen

Just follow along the regime line and play good little propagandist

[KeireG]

7. Whoa!

Don't attack her the fact that she even mentioned a "sudden change" is tremendous progress. It indicates the definite momentum shift and change in coverage that has occured over the past few days. Believe the MSM is going to pick this up now in a big way.

[GetTheRightVote]

9. My home state is Iowa, do you have any info on this state ??

[kuozzman]

16. Little on Iowa for ya

JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": That's right. But I think we want to be clear on Ohio, Wolf. And that is that if the regular vote count proceeds and the margin gets down to a very small number, it may become mathematically very difficult for John Kerry to make that up. We're not there yet.

But -- but if they keep counting, and the president keeps up the margin or -- excuse me, if that margin grows, the provisional ballot safety net, if you will, may begin to look, you know, even more remote. But we're not there yet.

BLITZER: We're learning a lot about these provisional ballots. We'll see what happens there. Judy, stand by.

Ed Henry is in Washington. You're getting some information in Washington about Ohio as well. What are you hearing, Ed?

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Wolf, obviously both sides, both parties have had lawyers in place for a long time, whether it's Florida, Ohio, whichever state they need to go to in order to mobilize, if in fact there's a recount, if there are legal challenges in any of these battleground states.

Some information coming into CNN. Democratic sources telling us that the owner of the Boston Red Sox, John Henry, has gotten his private plane ready. The pilot for that plane was told a few hours ago, "Get the plane ready. We're not sure where it's going yet. But have it ready to go, so that Democratic lawyers can be deployed to whichever state they feel they need to go to at some time this evening, overnight or first thing in the morning."

We do not know whether that plane has left. We don't think it has, but we've been told by Democratic sources that the plane for John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, somebody who has endorsed John Kerry for president, has his private plane at the ready for Democratic lawyers to mobilize whenever they are ready to do that.

Obviously, the Red Sox, after winning the World Series, have been locked up in the middle of this presidential campaign. Their star pitcher, Curt Schilling, endorsed President Bush. A little bit of controversy about that.

Then John Henry and the general manager, Theo Epstein, they endorsed John Kerry a few days later. But now we're hearing John Henry's private plane could be dragged into all this if, in fact, there are any legal challenges, any recounts.

BLITZER: And if they're heading out to certain states, we presume they'd be going to Columbus, Ohio, the capital, maybe Des Moines, Iowa, as well. Looks like there's going to be a delay at least until tomorrow for a certification of who won there.
- - - - -
CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Still have a smile on my face. It's as exciting as we hoped it would be.

A couple of interesting things to think about it. Iowa, a Democratic controlled government. There is the governor as well as the secretary of state. On the other hand, you go to Ohio, you've got a Republican governor, Republican secretary of state. We learned in 2000 in Florida how important who controls those two seats are. So we may hear about that again.

And in Iowa, I understand -- and here's a little deja vu all over again, that David Kendall, President Clinton's former lawyer, may head up the recount effort there. So we're likely to start to hear the names of some pretty big no -- big name lawyers.

BLITZER: All right. Jeff, come on up with me. I want to take a look at some of these states that are still -- they're still too close that we can't project yet. Ohio...
- - - - - -
C. BOYDEN GRAY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Yeah. I can't quarrel with that except for this proposition. We don't know all the facts at the moment, but it appears as though the president will have a 125,000 minimum vote lead in Iowa - in Ohio after the vote is stopped in the state. That means 175,000 provisionals, maybe 150,000 are good. The challenger, Senator Kerry has to win in order to make up the difference 125,000 out of those 50,000, that's 5 out of 6. That strikes me as being extremely implausible. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be counted, but what is going to happen if we go down this road is they're going to have to start scrambling in this state. We're going to see lots of other challenges trying to cobble up a few votes here, cobble up a few votes there, and we could be in for more than simply ten days.

TOOBIN: And let me throw in another wrinkle here. Under the Ohio law, each of the ten counties in Ohio counts the provisional ballot separately. There's a question left undefined in the law. What standard do you use? How do you decide what's a legitimate provisional ballot and what's not? And do all, Larry, do all 88 counties have to use the same standard? Because isn't that what the Supreme Court said in Bush v. Gore four years ago?

[imenja]

19. Iowa numbers, Washington Post has them all

Do you mean the final vote results?

U.S. President -- Iowa
Updated 11/24/04 1:59 AM ET
Precincts:100% Incumbent* declared winner

Candidates Votes %

George W. Bush * (R) 746,600 50
John F. Kerry (D) 733,102 49
Other 11,738 1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/elections/2004/ia/

The Secretary of State's office in your state will have full results, broken down by county and perhaps even precinct

[stirringstill]

20. Poor Judy

Judy and Wolf are a great pair. Some news anchor/hosts seem cerebral yet project "I'm not telling you what I think." Judy and Wolf seem simply fuzzy and project the "I'm speaking without thinking." I was proud of Judy that night because she relayed an unprogrammed "does not compute."

[stirringstill]

17. Screams manipulation

I am glad to read a transcript of this night. That CNN show was a farce it was as if the whole tone changed of the coverage and then they immediately started ripping at the Kerry campaign. It was sick. The single most valuable clue of fraud (I think) was revealed to us by Judy Woodruff who was talking a bit too much perhaps talking about NM numbers jumping to Bushes favor. Same thing happened in Florida in 2000 resulting in the Fox call. I think it is quite obvious from 2000 and then from the NM/Woodruff incident in 2004 that the Bush team was in some way able to orchestrate the perception of a win through feeding the AP and then other networks votes.

They should hunt down this NM jump timed almost perfectly to the pleas of the Bush administration. Where did those votes come from? When in the chain of reporting do the AP feeds link with the state? That trail may not make a Kerry win but it will reveal how voting is manipulated electronically by the Bushco.

[jbond56]

11. If that is 4:30AM EST

I should have the video. :>

[UL_Approved]

13. If you have the video, I want it

I'm slowly collecting archives of this stuff. I want as many election-oriented items as I can get.

[UL_Approved]

12. It looks like a little revision after all...

This is what the blog community has been saying all along. They just "found" votes. No explanation. They just found them.

[imenja]

14. remember the new or found votes went to Kerry, not Bush

[kuozzman]

18. But CBS said the blog community wasn't credible?

This is good for a laugh:

SHOW: CBS Evening News 6:30 AM EST CBS
November 3, 2004 Wednesday

SCHLESINGER: Yesterday, a few of those early numbers leaked to some bloggers, and today there are a few red faces in cyberspace where some of the information was published.

Mr. JOE LENSKI (Edison Media Research): It's not supposed to be leaked to the campaigns or to characterize who's ahead or who's behind during the day. That's not the purpose of the first wave of exit poll data.

SCHLESINGER: The Internet published numbers showing a close race, but one that Kerry was on the way to winning. According to one post, Kerry would win not just Ohio, but Florida as well.

Unidentified Woman #2: We're waiting for hard data to confirm...

SCHLESINGER: Networks, including this one, struggled with the early numbers, but resisted the temptation to call races based on exit polls. We did report the optimism in the Kerry camp early in the night. Of course, that optimism turned out to be misplaced, based largely on early exit polls that are notoriously unreliable.

Mr. LENSKI: The first wave of data has smaller sample sizes and is only interviewing people that voted that morning. So they're not necessarily going to accurately reflect the entire day's worth of interviews.

SCHLESINGER: Election experts have warned for years that poll numbers are given too much credibility by a nation eager for quick information. This year, it was Internet bloggers who learned the hard way not to consider those numbers a snapshot of voter attitude when they're really just a small part of a much larger picture. Richard Schlesinger, CBS News, New York.

DAVID GERGEN: I sure as hell never anticipated doing early morning television like this. That's for -- no. I didn't anticipate this. I don't think any of us did. We looked at the polls over the last few weeks. The conventional wisdom was the president gets 48, 49 percent in the final polls, he's not going to get much more than that, maybe 1 percent more in the actual election.

I have yet to hear a theory of the case, in effect, for what happened, why it really happened. I mean we have individual states we looked at, we know where he is, but something happened here that's pretty dramatic. And it's -- for the Democrats, it's more than just the candidate. Now, I would make this argument.

The white vote is about 80 percent of the national vote. Bush won by 15 percent. The last time around he won by a much smaller margin. That went up considerably. But the Democrats haven't won a majority of the white vote since 1964, in a presidential election. They haven't won a majority of the national vote, 50 percent or more, since 1976. You know, this is a party that's got some serious questions of how do you get a majority of Americans to support it. It's a big, big question. Since 1994 in the congressional elections, this is the sixth one now, they, in six congressional elections in a row, I don't think they've broken 48.5 percent of the total vote.

They'll say here came John Kerry with a war that clearly wasn't popular, mixed, at best; with an economy that, while getting better, was still somewhat troubled, and particularly in places like Ohio, where the unemployment rate was higher than the 5.4 percent national average, and still he couldn't ultimately deliver.

And so I think one of the other pieces you're going to hear is are we choosing the wrong candidates? Are we choosing the Ivy League educated, you know, straight, tall and erect guys who ultimately aren't connecting in the way that Bill Clinton did, aren't connecting maybe in the way that a governor from Plains once upon a time did. And I think you're going to hear that critique again that we've got to choose not only policy, but personality going forward.

[BeFree]

28. Gergen, caught Red-Handed

Gergen, just like I saw on Fox, had already concluded that Kerry had won. His statements show he KNOWS **** lost, ("...president gets 48, 49 percent..") but as he sees the corrupted numbers coming in, he begins denieng his first conclusion. It's obvious Gergen thinks **** should never have been elected.

Snip from post above:

DAVID GERGEN: I sure as hell never anticipated doing early morning television like this. That's for -- no. I didn't anticipate this. I don't think any of us did. We looked at the polls over the last few weeks. The conventional wisdom was the president gets 48, 49 percent in the final polls, he's not going to get much more than that, maybe 1 percent more in the actual election.

I have yet to hear a theory of the case, in effect, for what happened, why it really happened. I mean we have individual states we looked at, we know where he is, but something happened here that's pretty dramatic. And it's -- for the Democrats, it's more than just the candidate. Now, I would make this argument.

[ClintCooper2003]

15. That sudden change sounds exactly like what happened...

in Volusia County in 2000 (Florida). It sounds very fishy. And why was Bush obsessing so much over New Mexico? Why? Personally, I think it's because his camp knew it was one of the states where they used fraudulent activity to flip the state to their side.

[kuozzman]

21. I think this exchange is significant:

BLITZER: While I have you and Ken Gross there, overall, we were expecting for legal problems all over the country. It looks like it went relatively smoothly so far, based on what we can tell, right, Jeff?

It seriously seems like their reading a script. "While I've got you here" and their responses "very clean election", "no controversies w/challenges" and "provisional ballots not a problem, they're a good thing"

TOOBIN: Absolutely. You know, the phrase that was on everyone's lips was "thousands of lawyers." There are thousands of lawyers out. And there were. But the number of controversies during the day was, in my experience, probably somewhat below average. It was really a very clean election.

There were a few small disputes. Interestingly, some of the things we thought would be controversial were not. In the last few days leading up to the election, there was a big fight in Ohio about the presence of challengers in the voting precincts. Some Democrats fought the Republicans very hard.

It was racing up and down the federal courts and the state courts. The Republicans won. They got the challengers inside the polling places. And there were no controversies. The process seemed to work pretty well.

GROSS: I also think it's worth making the point that provisional ballots are not really a problem. Ironically, it was a solution to some of the problems that they had in Florida last time, and while it's a little upsetting, because it seems like there isn't finality on election night, it's actually a good thing, because people who might otherwise have been disenfranchised, at least their vote is counting at some point in the process.

[kuozzman]

22. What is the cutoff there for an automatic recount?

[jbond56]

23. it gets more interesting

The following graphs show an interesting trend in the popular vote while this is happening.

(seaclyr and I put this stuff together.)

shrubs margin peaks at 3:00 EST then starts to drop. Suddenly at 4:00EST there is another climb and fallen ever since.

The first graph shows the time information and the second is the same graph uncluttered.

<img src="">

<img src="">

Anyone remember what time they cut to the WhiteHouse for the photo op? or what time they reported V signs at the WH?

Here are 2 more views of the same data

<img src="">
<img src="">

[chill_wind]

24. The A.P. and ES&S

Talks in advance about the role of the A.P. that night


http://www.ecotalk.org/AP.htm

"The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.



And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity. Computer scientists have long warned that computer voting is an invitation to vote fraud and system failure. An examination of Diebold election software by several computer scientists, including Dr. Avi Rubin and his staff, proved that secret backdoors can be built into computer programs that allow votes to be easily manipulated without detection.



ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine company that will reportedly count 50% of all votes, describe on their webpage how "accessible" their results are, "At ES&S, we know election administrators and the public want fast and accurate election results. That is why we have developed several election management system software solutions to make the reporting process easier, more reliable, and more accessible." Diebold, the second largest voting machine company, advertises a similar service. Both ES&S and Diebold have close ties to the Republican Party."

(snip)

Follow-up down the page: A very interesting account in Chicago tht night.

"At 7 p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk's computer staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor, where the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind him was Rick Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the first results.



Thurman seemed surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S. He said that the company had about 6 engineers running the computer in the back room. He then checked himself, saying he had said too much.



Later I asked Lin who was actually operating the computer that was generating the results being shown on the monitors. "ES&S is running the mainframe for all of this," Lin said pointing to the television displays."

(.....)

(snip)


http://www.ecotalk.org/APvotes.htm

[chill_wind]

25. Kicking

Can't start new threads, but wish to kick.

[moesse]

26. Did Mehlman broadcast some of the "several routes for victory" on Nov. 2?

This was on NBC between 10-11 PM:

BROKAW: ...Tell us why you think you're going to win Florida tonight, Mr. Mehlman.

Mr. KEN MEHLMAN (Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign Manager): Well, I--I look forward to returning to Florida this time for a vacation, maybe. Here's why I feel good about Florida tonight. First of all, in the swing part of the state, which is along the I-4 corridor, places like Orange County and Pasco County, where last time we lost, this time we're winning. We're also finding that in a lot of Democratic fortress parts of the state, places like Alachua County, which is Gainesville, Broward County, which is Fort Lauderdale, we're doing much better than we did four years ago. And then in the fortress parts of the state, the places where Republicans do there best, our margin in some places is double what it was last time and is much stronger. So overall looking at the state, we're not doing as badly in the Democrat leaning areas, we're winning the swing areas, and we're doing better in what we call the fortress areas, or the Republican leaning areas of the state.

BROKAW: But you can't win with just Florida. You're also going to have to pick either Ohio or Pennsylvania, aren't you?

Mr. MEHLMAN: Well, I think there's a number of different things we're looking at. First of all, I feel good about Ohio. As you pointed out, only a small percentage of the vote is in. We're leading right now. Most of the southwest part of the state, the area around Cincinnati, has not come in yet. That's area where Republicans tend to do very well. We're doing very well in Iowa right now. That's a state we can pick up. We're doing very rar--well right now in Wisconsin. That's a state we can pick up. We're doing very well--well right now in New Mexico. All those are states that I think are going to be very competitive down to the end. So as was the case, and people have said this for weeks, John Kerry basically has one route for victory. We have several routes and all are moving in the right direction now, I think.

BROKAW: All right. Thanks very much Ken Mehlman, one of the principal chess players for the Bush campaign tonight.

[enough]

27. kick