So why didn't the Republics steal THIS election?

[dbt]

No, wait. I'm SERIES here. They may well have done it in 2000; they damn WELL did it in '02 and '04. Now, all of a sudden, the 2006 election looks (relatively) free of Grand Theft Ballot.

What was different this time? There were more voting machines than ever before and I see no reason to think that the corporations that manufacture them have suddenly grown consciences. One in ten flipped votes across all precincts, and we could have continued as RedAmerika.

Why were exit polls CORRECT this time? After decades of reliable methodology, why were these polls suddenly "way off" in the two previous elections, when they were valid in the rest of the world?

Why would the Republic Party suddenly decide to play fair, to abide by the will of the electorate? Nagging Questions arise. Do they have enough restrictive and treasonous legislation in place to guarantee an unending stream of profits to the upper 2 per cent regardless of what Congress may do now? Have they decided to sidestep the avalanche that they KNOW is coming and leave the Democrats holding the bag? Two years is Eternity in ADD Amerika, after all.

So, DU Brainpower, 'splain this shit to me in simple words of few syllables: why did they allow what looks like a fair election THIS TIME?

:freak:
dbt
Remember New Orleans

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. They did But the Dems had too much support anyway.

(Is what I like to think. :D)

[unpossibles]

18. I agree 100%

They obviously used all of their dirty tricks, and it would not surprise me if the real numbers would have been much higher. It's nice to see Americans say, "oh no you're not!" to these bastards. Ha. Now I need to go downstairs and make some crow pie for a few people.

:D

[JI7]

2. they did try to, there were a lot of dirty tricks, but the lead was too high

they did things like call black voters in TEnnessee to say if they voted for Ford in the Primary then theyw ouldn't have to vote again as those would count.

robocalls.

and many other things they most likely have been doing for decades. but only now with elections becoming so close have we taken notice.

[everythingsxen]

3. Because the Republicans let the Dems win an albatross?

As the Dems take power, Hamas declares war on us, Iraq disintegrates.

Suddenly it all becomes the Dems fault. The propped up economy will tank as well, also to be blamed on the Dems.

Then in '08 the Republicans sweep.

Assuming of course in the next month and a half something like the Enabling Act isn't passed.

[wake.up.america]

4. 2008 is more important to them. They can blame everything on the Demos in that presidential election

So, I say the Demos need to make it loud and clear: The country is in a mess and we will try to correct 6 years of mismanagement as best as we can.

[sweetheart]

yep

now we're the official patsy 'pelosi did it'

[Onlooker]

5. I think it's really good news

I was truly worried about corruption, but the good news is the corruption is limited in scope to isolated incidents. That's always been true in American politics. Perhaps there was a little more election fraud than normal this time around, but obviously it wasn't to the level that some of us, myself included, feared.

[halobeam]

6. Maybe it was better to have a Democratic win now,

making people think it can't be stolen, giving the Repubs the White House once again in '08? I believe there was serious tampering going on in this election too, and I HOPE someone earns MoveOn's $250,000 or we may have WAY more difficulties convincing the public that their vote is hackable.

Just my opinion.

[ClintonTyree]

7. Oversight........

among other things, but there were hundreds of poll inspectors this time to keep things from getting out of hand. I also think that we DID see vote tampering in Virginia, Tennessee and a few other key Republican races but the Democratic margin of victory was too great to steal without overtly blatant tampering.
In short, they tried and STILL may succeed, pending recounts.

[rainy]

8. Maybe it was too risky with all the EYES on them and the

law-suits by Kennedy and Mike P. They knew we were watching and that we WOULD take the streets this time. Especially if the exit polls were off again by such ridiculous margins.

[Window]

19. I believe you are correct.

Peace

[Sperk]

9. Maybe the media attention freaked them. THANK AAR and Lou Dobbs!

n/t

[caseycoon]

10. It's not like they didn't try!

They used a shitload of dirty tricks & it just didn't work!
MIRACLES DO HAPPEN!
YESSSSSSS!
:woohoo:

[lapfog_1]

11. Uh, they did.

Or I should say, they tried.

The tsunami was simply too large to overcome.

Let me explain.

going into the election, they looked at polls and saw 4 percent or 3 percent leads for Dems. So they programed the theft to, say 6 points... or more likely 5 points. Giving them a narrow, BUT PLAUSIBLE, 1 or 2 percent victory (like, say, Ohio in 2004). But Election Day arrives and either their own GOTV effort fizzles, their other vote theft favorite, suppression of the opposition, also fails, and the Dems, for once, GOTV big time.
They were caught flat footed. So even a 5 percent point theft doesn't work.

You see, I think that the Dems, minus the Repuke dirty tricks and election theft, would have won 6 senate seats and 45 to 50 House seats.

So yeah, they are still hacking the vote. But you can't hack (enough) to overcome a tsunami (which is a term I wish the MSM would stop using, considering).

[caseycoon]

13. I agree!

We would have done even better without all their crap!
But hey... I'll take it as it is!
YAY DEMS!!!

[magellan]

12. Operative words: "what looks like a fair election"

There was shit going on behind the scenes. You only have to look at the voter complaints to see the same GOP tactics of disenfranchisement and vote-switching going on as in past elections.

I think what kept them from stealing it was the Dem turnout being much higher than they anticipated (an admitted reversal of my previous position, that massive turnouts won't make a difference). Crucial to that, I believe there were too many hills they had to take to focus their attention on one or two the way they've been able to do in the past.

Basically, they would've had to steal so much in so many places it would have been obvious.

[bullimiami]

14. too many people watching too closely. too many voters overwhelming

the schemes.

if we clean up the elections there will be more democratic victories.

[malaise]

15. They couldn't

Thanks to Andy, Bradblog, Bev Harris, Autorank, countless DUers, and more than a few academics, Diebold et al were exposed.

We owe them bigtime.

[Cobalt Violet]

16. No central tabulator?

[DinahMoeHum]

17. They couldn't. Bteween the Iraq war, Katrina, and the corruption

their negatives were too obvious to be ignored. They were stinking up the place big time.

:evilfrown:

[kdmorris]

20. It has to be close to steal it

It just wasn't that close. I think the close races WERE attempts to steal it, but they can only do so much "behind the scenes".

[Terri S]

21. could be too many eyes watching this time

too much publicity on the voting machines. There are still a lot of complaints from a lot of precincts, but it might not be too heavily pursued with this win..which would be a mistake. I personally think this should have been a huge takeover in both houses, but I may be giving too much credit to voters.

Yes, and isn't it funny how this time, exit polls seemed to work just fine!

A lot doesn't add up here. I expected some MAJOR Oct surprise and some really breathtakingly Rovian moves considering what was at stake. Just didn't see it. Maybe it really did boil down to too many people all over the political spectrum just fed up!

[Junkdrawer]

22. I said this in the beginning of October...

...

First, this will be many, many folk's first election with HAVA's new electronic voting machines. A Republican win would turn the now growing Paper Ballot movement into an unstoppable beast. But if there's a big Democratic win, the Election Reform movement will fade and these machines will be cemented in place for a whole generation.

Next, we have Iran. The troops are stretched so thin that a move on Iran will require a draft. Even with a new terror attack I think Bush and an All-Republican congress will have a hard time getting the kind of support they will need. But if a new conscription law were passed by a Democratic congress in response to a terror attack....

...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2315499

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. To be honest I think they did not count on the

massive turn out

[Junkdrawer]

24. I think VA was supposed to be an Allen win...

I think you're right about VA...

[Vinca]

25. IMHO, the only reason we didn't have massive fraud with the

machines is the recent spotlighting of the damn things on Lou Dobbs, HBO and other mainstream outlets. I think they actually believed they could win the good, old fashioned way (honestly) and didn't want to risk it. All that aside, we need to make reliable voting the first order of business.

[Ms. Toad]

26. In the words of a '70s poet:

Keep your confidence
Don't get shook
If you find something different
when you take a look
Just close your mind
And play it cool
Its the exception
That proves the rule.

Perhaps what was going on in 2000-2004 wasn't the kind of orchestrated election theft that many have been attributing to electronic voting, but a combination of garden variety screw-us (e.g. the punch card users directed to the wrong booths in Cuyahoga County, Ohio) and dirty tricks (e.g. phone jamming) and the prerogative which comes with being the party in power to ignore/refuse to investigate the same. In relatively close races, like Florida 2000, those unresolved screw-ups and dirty tricks will change the outcome of the election. In landslides like yesterday problems of this nature still occur and have an impact, but the magnitude of that impact is dwarfed by the margin of victory.

I hope that winning with the machines in place will finally provide enough breathing room that we can have a productive discussion and analysis of what went wrong in 2004 which does not begin by shouting down anyone who has an open mind to the possibility that something other than massive election fraud accounts for losses in 2000-2004. We may find that massive fraud did occur - I have not ruled out that possibility - but if something else happened and we don't find and fix whatever else it is (because it does not meet our preconceived notion that we lost because of election fraud) we will will be in trouble the next time close elections occur.

[Tesha]

27. How do you know they didn't *TRY*?

Certainly in NH, the Dirty Tricks Patrol was out in full force.

But we still use paper ballots up here, so they can only use
the old dirty tricks, not the newest ones.

Tesha

[KayLaw]

28. It's not over yet.

Check out some of the threads here on GD regarding the exit polls in VA and MT.

[htuttle]

29. Don't fool yourselves -- millions of people were still disenfranchised

Luckily, millions more turned out to vote. The Bush mob tried to steal it, and failed.

[Mugsy]

31. Absolutely!

They DID try to steal this one, and now they are focusing on the two Senate races.

They will try to toss ballots and claim fraud, but public scrutiny and skepticism is much higher now than in 2000 and 2004.

[Strelnikov_]

30. Too Distributed. Due To Electoral College, Presidential/Senatorial

are much easier to steal. Focus is only on a few states. I figure Webb, Tester have overcome starting from 4% down.

[pinkpops]

33. thas what I think too.

[davekriss]

32. Why? Two things

Intense public scrutiny, a sense that the public was not going to take it anymore.

And that sense; the Rovian machine was overwhelmed by a tsunami of popular will.