Election Issues

Having just watched the premier of Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” I couldn’t help but see the parallels between the global warming issue and the 2004 stolen presidential election. Gore related his attempts over the years to get Congress, the media and the public to believe that global warming is a crisis, only to be derided and discredited. Those of us who expose stolen elections often receive the same reaction – mostly from the media.

I had the privilege of seeing Vice President Gore’s presentation live at the Ohio State University on April 16, 2004. So it was no surprise when I heard theatergoers gasp as Gore presented the scientific evidence for global warming. The charts, the graphs, the pictures – all make a clear and convincing case.

My forthcoming book, with co-editors Harvey Wasserman and Steve Rosenfeld entitled What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (New Press), attempts to put the issue of Ohio’s 2004 election in a similar light.

The eyes of the nation are once again focused on Ohio thanks in part to Robert F. Kennedy's epic essay in the June 15 Rolling Stone, entitled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" Kenneth F. Bunting, the Associate Publisher of the Seattle Post-Intellligencer, wrote that the article essentially is "singling out Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for much of the blame, . . ." Blackwell, never one to be an easy target, recently fingered William Anthony, the Franklin County Democratic Party Chair and Chair of the county's board of elections, as the real culprit. Blackwell told a group of black ministers in Cleveland that the long waits to vote on November 2, 2004 in Columbus were due to the black Democrat, Anthony.

The target: Black votes

In a previous posts (see: www.baiman.blogspot.com ), I’ve claimed that the official returns for third party and independent candidates in the Run-Off Election and Primary for the 50th Congressional District in San Diego conducted on June 6 – the Busby / Bilbray race, are implausible.

Since these posts, readers with more detailed and accurate knowledge of California voting behavior and San Diego politics have raised a serious of explanations that I believe could serve as plausible explanations for the San Diego official returns.

These are as follows:

a) Independents in California don’t vote in Primaries.

Since writing the above, I've been informed by several people that poll workers in California, in violation of the law, often do not inform voters of the "decline to state" Primary voting option and that many (or most?) Independents don't request Primary ballots. This could, at least partially, explain the discrepancy in total vote count between the Run-Off and the Primary.

b) Republican and AIP Social Conservatives Voted for Griffith in the Run-Off.

The prevailing silence on election fraud 2004 was interrupted June 1 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his article Was the 2004 Election Stolen? [1] He argues clearly and forcefully that the 2004 election was stolen, basing his analysis and evidence on events and outcomes in the state of Ohio. Had Kerry won the Ohio race, he would be president today. Hence, the theft of Ohio was the theft of the election.

Kennedy relied on far more than his own record of activism and a name representing decades of political prominence. The well written and thoroughly documented article in Rolling Stone Magazine makes a number of assertions, each backed up with references to evidence linked within the body the article. Kennedy is unambiguous in his claim that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans.

“Before his swearing-in, Bilbray said he looked forward to replacing the images of airplanes that used to decorate the walls with photos of surfboards and sailboats." — USA Today

Unfortunately, the immigrant-bashing Brian Bilbray wasn't talking about decorating his dorm room. California's newest congressman is moving into the Rayburn House Office Building, specifically the office vacated by Randall “Duke" Cunningham, bribe taker extraordinaire, who is now serving eight years in prison. Bilbray edged past Democrat Lorraine Busby in a special, allegedly closely watched election on June 6, allowing Republicans to hold the 50th District in traditionally conservative San Diego County.

And the folksy detail about Bilbray's taste in poster art, in lieu of reportorial outrage, seems to signal that, once again, America has moved on from a shoddily conducted election — making Congress seem about as trustworthy as a New Orleans rebuilt atop the toxic waste stirred up by Hurricane Katrina. Somebody's going to get sick from this sooner or later.

Editor’s note:With the attacks coming fast and furious from the mainstream corporate press and their apologists like Farhad Manjoo of salon.com, the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism/freepress.org continues to do the difficult work of counting ballot by ballot, precinct by precinct in Ohio. The more we count on the precinct level, the more Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s thesis in the Rolling Stone article is confirmed. As pollster Lou Harris informed us, once the precincts are counted in the “rural and exurbia areas” of Ohio, the more readily apparent the election theft becomes. The Free Press will have shocking information within the next few months, that is being verified ballot by ballot as I write. I’ve enclosed the latest research from Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. from his recent trip to Warren County. Recall Warren County called a bogus Level 10 terrorist alert on Election Day and diverted the ballots to an unauthorized warehouse under the control of a Republican operative. Remind people that this is exactly the type of research that Manjoo and other apologists and deniers refuse to do.

Unless San Diego is a veritable “hot bed” of third party and independent candidate activism (something that I wasn’t aware of), I find it hard to understand how a full 35% of voters (6,914 out of 19,739 votes) in the Busby/Bilbray 50th Congressional District run-off election who did not vote in the primary (in the same election) would vote for Libertarian and Independent candidates.

This represents an increase in third party and independent vote of 1,143% in the Run-Off relative to these votes in the primary! From 605 (69 for Clark of the Peace and Freedom Party and 535 for King of the Libertarian Party) to 6,914. Clark was replaced by Griffith, an Independent candidate, in the Run-Off. This is more than an 11 fold increase. Where did this huge increase in “militant – I will vote third party or independent no matter what the consequences in terms of who actually gets elected” voters come from?

In contrast Busby, the Democratic candidate in the run-off received only 59% of these 19,739 voters who voted in the Run-Off but not in the primary.

Dear Editor:

In his June 2, 2006 Salon article “Was the 2004 Election Stolen? No”, Farhad Manjoo claims to have “thoroughly debunked” a June 15, 2006 article in Rolling Stone by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election”.

As one of the (applied) statisticians cited in Kennedy’s article, I find that Manjoo’s “debunking” is either superficial spin that is easily refuted by adding more detail to Kennedy’s already very long piece, or simply factually erroneous. I will focus on the Manjoo points that relate to official return and exit poll data - my particular area of expertise.

Editor's note: The Free Press is releasing these articles by Ron Baiman that generally support the analysis by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the current issue of Rolling Stone. Also see Richard Hayes Phillips' Through a Glass Darkely.

Connally Spreadsheet (Excel Spreadsheet)

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: The History, The Crime, The Cover-Up, and Conclusions (Adobe PDF)

Analysis of Connally Spreadsheet

1) Of only 14 out of 88 counties where Bush did abnormally well relative to Moyer (better than a 1.43 Bush/Moyer ratio - Column E) 9 of them (M) just happen to be the same counties where Kerry did implausibly poorly relative to Connally (R).

At Last!!!!

The story of the stolen election of 2004 has FINALLY busted into the mainstream media, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Rolling Stone Magazine.

We all owe them great thanks.

Now we'll see if there's any further media follow-up. And if the Democratic Party actually DOES SOMETHING about the fact that America is about to be hijacked again in 2006, and then for the third straight presidential race in 2008.

The massive article in this week's RS focuses on the impossible contrast between exit polls showing a clear and overwhelming Kerry victory versus bogus "official" vote counts giving George W. Bush four more catastrophic years in the White House. It also details some of the horrific intimidation, manipulation and outright theft used by Ohio's GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to deny hundreds of thousands of mostly Democratic voters their right to a ballot. And it discusses in some depth the fact that Diebold and other electronic voting machine and software producers make it possible for any inside operator to use a laptop and a few keystrokes to flip an entire election in a matter of seconds.