Ohio Voting Fraud.

[theweaselking]

Ohio had five items on the ballet for referendum, using the unaccountable and recordless Diebold voting machines that Diebold themselves says were determined to give Ohio to Bush in 2004.

The election results are, like the 2004 ones, blatantly fradulent.

On Issue 1, a proposition for state programs to encourage high-tech industry, the monumentally corrupt government of Ohio wanted it to pass. Exit polls: Passes with 53%. Official tally: Passes with 54%.

Issue 2, about making it easier to vote by mail or vote early (and verifiably, with votes ON PAPER). Opposed by the government, because it makes voting possible. - Poll: Passes with 59% to 33% against. Official tally: Fails with 63.5% against, 36.5% in favour.

Issue 3, Campaign Finance Reform - disallowing direct donations from corporations and removing the asinine "donations up to $10K per person over 6 allowed rule." Opposed by the government, because this is a great source of graft for them. Polls say: Passes with 61% in favour, 25% opposed. Official results: Fails with 67% opposed, 33% in favour.

Issue 4, a badly worded Gerrymandering rule change. Poll: fails, with 31% support, 45% opposed, 25% undecided. Official results: Fails with 30% support, 70% opposed - putting ALL "undecided" votes into the "against" column.

Issue 5, taking control of elections away from the incumbent administration and putting it to a nonpartisan committee. Polls say: Too close to tell, with 41% yes, 43% no, 16% undecided. Official results: fails, with 70% opposed, 30% in favour, nobody undecided.

Check it out yourself. Predictions and results.

Comments

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Yes, living in Ohio sucks.

Why do I bother wasting my time voting again?

[(Anonymous)]

So, in other words, you believe an unregulated, unofficial sample over a highly regulated, overseen five ways to Sunday actual vote.

If they *really* wanted to defraud the vote, and could do so so easily, why make it such a landslide? And in every county no less?

The reason why polling has become more and more unreliable (it has for the past twenty years become less and less so) is because conservatives and Republicans have seen too many polls which push for a certain answer or twist the result to say what they do not.

I myself hang up on pollsters. Let them watch the actual vote, like everyone else.

[maxgoof.livejournal.com]

So, in other words, you believe an unregulated, unofficial sample over a highly regulated, overseen five ways to Sunday actual vote.

If they *really* wanted to defraud the vote, and could do so so easily, why make it such a landslide? And in every county no less?

The reason why polling has become more and more unreliable (it has for the past twenty years become less and less so) is because conservatives and Republicans have seen too many polls which push for a certain answer or twist the result to say what they do not.

I myself hang up on pollsters. Let them watch the actual vote, like everyone else.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I think you mean "An unregulated, unofficial sample that historically matches the actual vote almost exactly over an unregulated official actual vote where there is no oversight possible and the people running the vote do their best to make sure that the mechanics of voting can't be checked, and the numbers cannot be confirmed".

And yes, yes I do - especially when the polls match the results to within the polling margin of error in every case where the votes *are* tallied on paper and can be verified, and the polls don't match, off in the direction of the people overseeing the elections, in every case where the votes *cannot* be confirmed and the voting process *cannot* be monitored. Don't believe me? Look at your 2004 election results again.

As well, the voting machines are trivially hackable - the exploit was demonstrated in 2003 and has not yet been fixed - and Diebold's internal memos indicate that they're aware of the hack, deliberately concealing it, AND their CEO expressed confidence that his machines would cause Ohio to go to Bush.

because conservatives and Republicans have seen too many polls which push for a certain answer or twist the result to say what they do not.

Yeah, like "Would you be less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew he had an illegitimate black child?"

Less snarkily, I'm honestly glad you acknowledge that conservative and Republican aren't the same thing, though. Too many people confuse the terms.

Food for thought: when the exit polls didn't match the vote counts in the Ukraine, by *less* than the numbers that were off in the USA, it was cause for Bush to intervene and demand that the votes be counted openly and honestly.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

An aside: I've got a pile of new commenters on my journal today who don't appear to share any friends or communities in common with me, or most of my Friends list. That means I've been linked somewhere.

I always love seeing those. Since Livejournal doesn't do Trackback yet, I'll just ask: where did you find the link to me?

[maxgoof.livejournal.com]

I was given the link on the Ohiofur maillist from someone who used it as a reference to voting fraud.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks for telling me.

[toku666.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure you understand the precise heinousness of the passage of Issue 1.

Saying "(the) monumentally corrupt government of Ohio wanted it to pass" is very imprecise. The arch-conservative forces in the state legislative branch hated it because of the hard-felt fears their supporters had/have that Third Frontier money will eventually find its way into stem-cell research. Most Democrats, and all independents, hated it because Third Frontier is so fully Bob Taft's baby. And so fully about literally handing tax money to big businesses with naught but the scantest of check and balance.

But here's the funny thing: Whether or not it was accurate, the impression was successfully given by Issue 1 opponents that Issue 1 and "Taft economic plan" were virtually synonymous. Taft, at the time, had already dipped well below 20% approval rating, and was into month two of serving as both governor and convicted, though unjailed, criminal.

So the extent of this particular stripe of voting fraud goes beyond "state government" wanting it (since it was just Taft's gang of gov/biz cronies that desired the passage of Issue 1) to the purely absurd:

A governor who is roasted in comic effigy at every turn (check out TIME Magazine's three worst state governors issue) backs a ludicrously unpopular funding directive with a creepy name in a state already under scrutiny for voting fraud (not to mention that Issue 1 appeared on the very same ballot attempting to fix said fraud) and not only does the funding directive get to live, the voting fraud issues all fail miserably.

Thanks to whatever forces made it be that Issue 7/ADAMH passed, and here's a big middle finger to all those corporate/government puppetmasters who just blatantly "finessed" Ohio's November ballot.