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A rigged election?

After eight tense and almost pointless hours, with media pundits pointing to the collection of blue and red states on the big board and making very obvious statements about what needs to happen for either candidate to win, George W.

After eight tense and almost pointless hours, with media pundits pointing to the collection of blue and red states on the big board and making very obvious statements about what needs to happen for either candidate to win, George W. Bush was acclaimed as the president of the United States of America.

I would say he was re-elected, but then he was never really elected in the first place. The manual recount in Florida was halted, investigations into malfeasance by election officials dropped, and the very partisan Supreme Court made the final call. That was 2000. And one can’t help but think that the world would be a very different place if Gore had stood his ground and forced every single ballot to be recounted.

In 2004, the election results appear to be cut and dried. Nascar Dads and Security Moms, ultra-religious types who believe marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, and all those that believe in the war on terrorism as it’s currently being fought, came out in droves to support the administration – somehow outnumbering all the minorities, college students, liberals and traditional democrats out there.

End of story? Not quite.

While there is no lingering debate over hanging chads this year or tales about confused seniors and butterfly ballots, there is some concern over widespread voter intimidation and disqualification in swing states, as well as a rather compelling story about electronic voting. And the very real possibility that the 2004 election was somehow rigged.

If you’re not into conspiracy theories then stop reading, because there’s very little concrete evidence of e-voting fraud (at least not yet) with no certifiable paper trail or auditing system to follow.

If you believe in second shooters on grassy knolls, MK Ultra experiments, Area 51, faked moon landings and have a theory how Cadbury gets the caramel inside a Caramilk bar, then keep reading.

First of all, about one-third of Americans voted electronically in 2004, using a variety of different systems from touch-screen systems to paper ballots with optical scanners. Some systems even provided voters with paper receipts of their selections.

Most of these e-voting results were okay, and generally verified by exit polls – the polling of individuals outside of voting stations to find out who they pulled the lever for.

There were a few notable exceptions. One of them was in – you guessed it – Florida. The other was Ohio, where the manufacturer of voting machines just happens to be a huge Republican supporter. Ohio also had its fair share of problems with paper ballots, and a number were spoiled or thrown out for a variety of suspicious reasons.

Both states were crucial for the Democrats in winning this election, and both states were rife with reports of impropriety by political parties and election officials before election day.

As the results were coming in, exit polls in both of those states, as well as several other swing states, showed that Kerry was solidly leading Bush by up to six per cent. But when all the votes were counted, Bush was up by as much as three per cent, an unexplainable swing of up to nine per cent – not impossible, but very unlikely.

Exit polls are not completely accurate and there is always a margin of error with any survey, but they’re usually pretty good. And according to election bloggers around the U.S. the exit polls were bang on, within 0.5 per cent accurate, in states that still used paper ballots.

Several news organizations that used the exit polls as part of their election coverage said they would look into the issue, how the polls were presented and why the results of the polls were so different than the actual outcome of the election.

Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org, a grandmother with some computer knowledge, just filed the largest Freedom Of Information Act writ in history. She is looking for $50,000 in donations to back her request to obtain a variety of computer logs and other information from 3,000 counties and townships. Although there’s no audit system in place, she will look for any irregularities in the data or possible evidence of hacking – such as large blocks of votes being counted rather than single votes.

In a primary election on Sept. 15, Harris uncovered an internal audit log from King County, Washington containing a three-hour deletion on election night. In other words, none of the votes in a three-hour period were counted.

There was some suspicious modem activity and other problems with security, including the accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers. If one of those poll workers knew something about computers and had the will, they could have used that information to distribute the election any way they wanted.

Harris and Black Box Voting aren’t the only experts looking into the 2004 election results, but they are a rallying point for what appear to be hundreds of other independent investigations.

Was the 2004 presidential election fair? Did voters in Florida and Ohio really vote for Bush?

If Harris gets her way, we may know the answer to that question in a few months.

But with the Republicans controlling the Senate, Congress, Supreme Court, the majority of Governorships and the Civil Service, there’s a good chance that Harris’s FOIA request will be denied outright.

Which would be suspicious in itself.

For more on the rigged election theory, visit www.thomhartmann.com, www.dailykos.com, www.blackboxvoting.org, www.bluelemur.com, www.buzzflash.com and www.commondreams.org.