The Tease of Things I Don't Need

About the vote...
(Have we been swindled by experts?)

I took Wednesday night off, being as burnt out as the rest of you were by the disappointment and momentary sense of futility the previous 24 hours had brought. There was some guilt, as I knew that this was just the time for me to keep my eyes and ears open, but I needed the break.

So it was with some interest that I came across a piece this morning via the Daily KOS concerning problems with the exit polling vs. the tallied votes, with an emphasis on how Ohio and Florida were apparently the only two locations where the exit polls gave John Kerry a strong win, only to be dashed by election results that swung hard in the opposite direction.

Upon hearing the general news the night of November 2nd that the exit polls had skewed towards Kerry but that the votes had tracked in the other direction, being a reasonable and kindly soul my initial thought was that so much emphasis had been placed recently on new young and minority voters that the pollsters were targeting them disproportionately, and that they - suddenly finding people interested in their choices - had been eager to talk. However, this shouldn't have only resulted in swings in two, critical states. This looks highly suspicious, folks.

As the author of the linked-through piece above jokingly suggests, this could be explained if we presume that Ohio and Florida voters are simply markedly less honest than voters elsewhere. Hardly a balanced and charitable assumption.

The other possibility? We haven't seen the real results.

An overnight comment (in the comments section after the "It's only the end if we let it be." piece below) from Handsome asked about two pieces I'd previously run concerning the electronic voting machines and the people behind them.

Certainly, one has to press on without regard to the inevitable name-calling - be it "conspiracy theorist" or plain old "sore loser" - if one's to be true to reality, because the pieces were there for months and longer. One was from back in April, focusing on the who is behind the machines that counted 80% of the votes cast, and another from August concerning "flaws" that enable those in the know to corrupt and even replace in one, huge block, all of the votes recorded in one of these machines. Upon revisiting these, I see that the latter piece contains a link which has been scrambled due to recent restructuring and BlackBoxVoting.org, but since their overall focus remains on possible vote tampering it still gets you to the general point of interest.

Also, don't forget that it was in 2003 that Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., pledged in a fundraising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Don't be dissuaded. It could be that there weren't quite so many duped, frightened sheep at the polls this year as the November 2nd/3rd results led us to believe. Press the issue. Look for news. Ask questions. Spread the word. There's more than enough information to support some suspicions, and even enough to keep a little, burning core of anger going. Keeping a clear and reasoned approach is important, but so is keeping some righteous anger burning. Use it. Be passionate.

(More problems with Blogger. This is the second attempt to post this.)