Are folks less likely to believe in the fraud

[LittleClarkie]

If they didn't particularly like John Kerry in the first place, and therefore more likely to believe he lost?

[elshiva]

1. Yes,

ask any republican.

[JohnKleeb]

2. I dunno

Whatever the case, the people who are calling him a coward are people who never believed in him in the first place likely. Ive seen believers of fraud shit on Kerry and people who dont believe in fraud shit on Kerry.

[Firespirit]

3. Not sure.

I remember a LOT of people in the Election forum during December constantly bashing Kerry, people who did believe. They went after him because he didn't set himself up as a bull's-eye for the Republicans to shoot at.

There may be a connection, though... most of the current Kerry bashing centers on the campaign, not the post-election stuff, so that suggests it comes from nonbelievers. (Myself, I believe in it not because I want to but because of the evidence I've seen supporting it--and in a few cases, proving it. My admiration for Kerry had nothing to do with it.)

---
Edit to clarify the post.

[Firespirit]

4. Oh yeah..

More in this vein.

I say that because initially, I didn't believe in it myself... It took me until about mid-November to admit the possibility, then the big ugly stories started coming out, soon after that (I think) the specter of electronic fraud was raised, and after that there was no going back for me. I'll believe unless and until it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was legit.

But I distinctly remember on Nov. 3 that although I didn't really suspect fraud, I was absolutely not going into bash-Kerry mode and in fact dreaded seeing the knives come out for him. During those days, when I thought it was generally legit in OH and elsewhere, I didn't blame Kerry, because I don't like blaming smart people for the actions of dumb ones.

I think that there are just a lot of people who never really got over the primary. They will find any excuse to attack him, whether they believe or not. If they do believe in fraud, then they'll bash Kerry for his part in the "overtime," a few of them even blaming him for the outcome of that. If they don't, then it's no holds barred on the man and the campaign.

[sandnsea]

5. No

I think most people think highly irregular things happened in this election. I think people think politics is a dirty business and the lack of machines and wrong ballots is part of it. We don't have a history of clean elections after all. So they're hesitant to scream fraud over that because that's just the way elections are. Not that we need to let them stay that way.

On the machine hacking, there's just no proof. If machines were hacked all over the country it would take quite a few people. Somebody would have squealed at this point, seems like. Plus, the NH recounts didn't prove anything. The OH recounts, even though some were illegal, didn't prove anything. IA and NM were held open for days so you know Vilsack and Richardson were going over those votes very carefully.

I'm not even sure that the pollsters didn't try to give the impression Kerry won, hoping to discourage late Republican voters in the west.

So I think it's some honest people who are saying there's no proof of prosecutable fraud, although something happened. Like me. And probably some moles.

[TayTay]

6. That is the problem

Something happened. What an awful thing to say about America, the so-called leader in Democracy for the world. Something happened. We know about voter 'caging lists' in Ohio and other states that were meant to intimidate voters into not even showing up on election day. We know about the lists of convicted felons in Florida and that innocent people were put on this list to prevent them from voting. We know that Blackwell cooked the numbers and shifted the voting equipment in Ohio in order to suppress African-American votes. And that doesn't even take into account the voting machine problems, both with casting ballots and with getting those ballots counted.

I believe that the Kerry campaign had problems (hardly an earth-shattering statement. All campaigns, even winning ones, have problems.) But I also believe that there was something else going on. And we need to fix that something else or we are no longer a true democracy.

[sandnsea]

7. Yes we do

I hope I didn't leave the impression that I was brushing the whole thing off. I gave money, went through news articles and numbers and all the rest. I focused on the voting machine glitches because I didn't think we'd get anywhere with the voter suppression. If people really understood how many machine failures there were, all across the country, I think we'd have a different response right now. I just read an article yesterday that Arkansas had voting problems too, including power outages and machine problems. Between that and spoiled ballots and the rest, possibly enough to flip the state.

You're in Boston. I had heard at 3:00 my time, 6 yours, that the big media had descended on Boston because everybody thought Kerry had won. You were there, is that what it was like? My husband and I cried twice that day, once when we got word from campaign staff in DC that Kerry had won. And then all evening when the numbers came in.

[TayTay]

8. Not questioning you

I thought I was agreeing with you. We know something bad happened. What exactly was it? Well we had the deliberate Rethugs challenges to legitimate voters and then electronic problems that might add up to fraud. We are on the same page.

Boston was cold, wet and rainy that day. I had been in Copley Square the weekend before for the Red Sox victory parade. I could see them putting up the bleachers and press pens for Tuesday night. I wasn't there on Tuesday however. I know from local coverage that it was awful. When Kerry went out to vote and then have his traditional lunch at The Union Oyster House, it looked good. Then I saw what everyone say, Florida to *, Ohio close. Awful. There was a lot of entertainment planned for that night, and they stretched and stretched bringing anyone out with info to the crowd. Finally, John Edwards came out (around 1:30 or 2:00 am) and said nobody knew anything, we are trying to count every vote. People went home. Everyone re-assembled the next day to watch the concession at Faneuil Hall. (People lined the roads to see the short procession from Beacon Hill to Faneuil Hall. That was sweet.)

[Firespirit]

9. Well.. FWIW...

The reason why there's no proof of anything with respect to the machines is that we couldn't ever get into them, not because we got into them and couldn't find anything. I sincerely hope our folks in the House who are investigating this thing manage to get access to that stuff.

(Incidentally, it wouldn't take as many people as you might think. Those machines are online--public internet--for anyone to access who had the right IP and a login, and all it would take would be some bad code broadcast to the central tabulators--which are your standard PCs--that would monkey with the total and rig it for whoever you wanted. Apparently the vendors can also login remotely with full rights to the system. I'm sure that Diebold, Triad, etc., maintain lists of IPs for all the tabulators that run their software, and it would just be a matter of writing up a little program that ran through such a list and installed some evil "upgrades" here and there.)

[ginnyinWI]

10. whatever else our legislators do in the next few years,

we must not let them forget that the Republicans are still the ones counting the votes! (they own the machines and the codes.) No way to take back any part of government until that is changed! :mad: