Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Was the 2004 election stolen? I'd like to think this is wrong

I'm no fan of Bush, but I am a fan of the American system of government. So I'd just as soon see this refuted.

What case can be made against this report, that came out in Rolling Stone Magazine last summer?

5 comments:

steve said...

Sure you want to go down this road, Vic?

If the 2004 election was stolen, and if the 2000 election was stolen as well, then Bush gets to run for two more terms in office since the two terms he actually served were null and void.

That makes ten more years of Bush as commander-in-chief!--assuming he wins.

Victor Reppert said...

You're not paying attention. I don't want to go down this road. I would very much like ot see this refuted. I mean it!

Ivan Wolfe said...

Salon.com refutes the argument here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/

excerpt:
If you do read Kennedy's article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data. The first salient omission comes in paragraph 5, when Kennedy writes, "In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots." To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites "Democracy at Risk," the report the Democrats released last June.

That report does indeed point out that many people -- 26 percent -- who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn't say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn't find their names listed. The Democrats' report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a "provisional" ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same -- a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy's claim of "astounding" partisanship.

Such techniques are evident throughout Kennedy's article. He presents a barrage of seemingly important, apparently damning data to show that Kerry won the race. It's only when you dig into his claims that you see what thin ice he's on.


Also, the mystery pollster has some thoughts here:
http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/06/is_rfk_jr_right.html

excerpt:
Everyone agrees that the 2004 exit poll results gathered by the news media consortium known National Election Pool (NEP) showed a small but statistically significant difference that favored John Kerry when compared to the official count. But is that discrepancy evidence of fraud? It might be, if we could rule out the possibility that other problems or potential sources of error in the exit polls that can also explain the discrepancy. What I have argued for the last year and a half is that the exit polls have many such weaknesses that have long been in evidence.

Victor Reppert said...

I linked to this essay two posts later.

Ivan Wolfe said...

That's what I get for surfing into the post directly, rather than checking the whole blog out.....