election theft

[Guest guest]

Election Theft Emergency

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet

Posted on January 27, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/31217/

For GOP voters, the 2004 presidential election was little short of miraculous:

Behind in the Electoral College even on the afternoon of the vote, the

Bush-Cheney ticket staged a stunning comeback. Usually reliable exit polls

turned out to be wrong by an unprecedented 5 percent in swing states.

Conservatives argued, and the media agreed, that " moral values " had made the

difference.

 

In his latest book, Fooled Again: How The Right Stole The 2004 Election, And Why

They'll Steal The Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them), Mark Crispin Miller argues

that it wasn't moral values which swung the election -- it was theft.

 

TERRENCE McNALLY: You're a professor of media studies. According to your bio,

you write about " film, television, propaganda, advertising and the culture

industries … " Why did you write this book?

 

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Out of a sense of civic emergency. I believe that " Fooled

Again " makes the case quite persuasively that there is actually no convincing

evidence that Bush and Cheney won re-election.

 

This is a civic story of the utmost importance. It has to do with the dire need

for election reform in the United States. But it's also a story about the

colossal failure of the American press to do precisely the kind of job that the

framers had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment. What they had in mind

was that the press would function as a reliable check on executive power. It

would keep the people informed about what their government was up to, and it

would keep them politically engaged in national debate.

 

The newspapers, as limited and defective as they were in the 18th century, did

perform that function, and I believe they performed that function for much of

our history. We now have a corporate media system that is not answerable to the

people nor concerned about the people, but [is] in the service of its pay

masters. And it is far too close to the government for the health of anything

like a democratic system.

 

One of the points of " Fooled Again " is that this is a story of tremendous

importance, as far as a democracy is concerned. Yet the press has for the most

part ridiculed those who have come up with very solid evidence of fraud. They've

been in the business less of talking about the situation than of preventing

anybody else from talking about it. And this includes some of the progressive

media as well. In fact, the most hostile reviews that I've received have been in

Mother Jones and Salon.

 

TM: I read the transcript of you on Democracy Now! with Mark Hertsgaard, a

progressive journalist who has been fairly dismissive of those questioning

Bush's victory. By the end he seemed to be agreeing that everything should be

more fully investigated.

 

I would think that the 2004 election story, if tracked and broken, would be huge

for whoever breaks it. Any other thoughts about why it's so ignored?

 

MCM: We have to understand that for some decades the press has served basically

an establishmentarian function. They have the reputation, and they certainly

have the self-image, of being terribly skeptical, prone to disrespectful

questions, probing dark matters that authority would just as soon have them

leave alone. That's a very flattering view of the press but completely

undeserved. The press will not deal with any story that goes beyond a particular

scandal to cast doubt on the very viability of the entire system. The press in

this country will studiously ignore any story that too violently rocks the boat,

whose implications are too shattering.

 

This is not new. Watergate was a story that the press avoided for months and

months. Only the Washington Post pursued that story; everybody else made fun of

it. Now we look back on Watergate with tremendous nostalgia and

self-congratulation, telling ourselves the press saved the system. But since

Watergate the press has preferred to deal with meaningless and trivial scandals

like the Clinton scandals. They will not talk about 9/11, they will not talk

about the theft of the last three elections.

 

TM: You also include the 2002 congressional election. That one also broke too

consistently against predictions?

 

MCM: That's exactly right. In Colorado, in Minnesota, in Georgia, and in a

couple of other states -- there was what we might call " Diebold magic "

everywhere. In all these states, you had far-right-wing politicians predicted to

lose by pre-election newspaper polls and by exit polls, and all of them won.

 

TM: Why do you believe the two successive Democratic candidates have given in so

easily?

 

MCM: I think basically Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry this last time are far too

concerned with establishment opinion, far too worried that they'll seem to be

sore losers, conspiracy theorists, etc. They have therefore refused to go public

with what they actually believe. Kerry told me personally on October 28th at a

fundraising party that he believes the election was probably stolen.

 

TM: He then disavowed that in the press, didn't he?

 

MCM: Exactly -- a few hours after the story broke. The Democratic Party is as

much a part of the problem as the Republican Party.

 

TM: Are there exceptions among the ranks of mainstream politicians? I think of

Barbara Boxer and John Conyers. Any others?

 

MCM: Tom Daschle has told me he thinks very highly of the book and has given me

permission to quote him to that effect. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Rush Holt. There

are growing numbers of Democratic politicians who are willing to take the risks

of facing the truth on this issue.

 

Let's put it less dogmatically. All right, maybe I haven't proven that the

election was stolen, but I am completely confident that I've provided ample

grounds for a serious investigation of what went on last year. It seems to me

that any Democrat who refuses to even go for that kind of inquiry is really

failing his or her constituency.

 

TM: -- and failing the voters. As a citizen, it bothers me that we leave it to a

Gore or a Kerry, who's thinking about his future reputation or his future

career, to stage the protest. I don't care about their careers. I care about my

vote getting counted or discounted.

 

What's the statement that you're willing to make in " Fooled Again " about the

2004 election: stolen? worthy of investigation? evidence clearly shows in six

states …?

 

MCM: The evidence in Ohio, as anyone who followed the story knows, is copious.

Bush allegedly won that state by 118,000 votes. As I point out -- and this part

of the book is largely based on John Conyers' report to the House Judiciary

Committee -- the various stratagems, tricks and tactics used to prevent people

from registering, to prevent them from voting, to throw away provisional ballots

-- all these add up to a number far greater than 118,000.

 

TM:: That's news to me. Many people have said, yes, there were long lines, yes,

there was disproportionate distribution of voting machines, yes, there was

trouble with provisional ballots, yes, there was intimidation -- but the margin

was 120,000. You're saying that they add up to over 120,000?

 

MCM: Oh easily, easily. It was in the urban parts of Ohio that most of this

stuff went down. All the urban centers in Ohio were Democratic. If people want

to get a strong sense of what was happening at the grassroots level coast to

coast last year, go to a website called the Election Incident Reporting System,

EIRS. Then type in the name of a state or a county, and you'll get a transcript

of all the complaints that were lodged that day by people who called

1-866-MY-VOTE.

 

Now a lot of them couldn't get through because it was understaffed, but those

who did get through left messages. You can find copious firsthand evidence of

what the average person had to go through to try to vote against Bush. This

didn't happen only in Ohio. Electronic touchscreen machines flipped Kerry votes

into Bush votes in at least 11 states.

 

TM: You say similar practices (and occasionally worse ones) were applied in

several other key states -- Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada,

Arizona and even New York?

 

MCM: In New Mexico, for example, we're told that Bush won by some 7,000 votes.

We know of over 17,000 Democratic voters who were unable to cast a vote for

president because the touchscreen machines in their districts refused to record

a vote for president.

 

These 17,000-plus New Mexicans turned out to vote in Democratic areas, and they

didn't record a vote for president. Seventeen thousand is 10,000 more than

7,000. That glitch alone can account for the ostensible victory margin of Bush

over Kerry in New Mexico. Greg Palast's new book will have a whole chapter on

New Mexico. It's hair-raising stuff, and we haven't heard a word about it. The

same kind of thing happened in Iowa, where Bush supposedly won by under 10,000

votes.

 

Tom Daschle was supposedly beaten in South Dakota by 4,500 votes. There was so

much chicanery going on there, that it's easy to argue that John Thunes should

not have won. I know Daschle believes he was robbed.

 

This isn't only a matter of the White House, it's also a matter of the Congress.

I don't believe that this government represents the people of this country. The

people of this country, however frightened some of them may be by terrorism, are

essentially not theocratically inclined. They don't want a Christian republic.

They were not happy with the way the government dealt with the Terry Schiavo

case. Americans basically believe in the American system of government. Checks

and balances, the separation of church and state.

 

The press kept telling us after the election that a huge outpouring of religious

voters account for Bush's miraculous victory. Well that's nothing more than a

talking point that the religious right itself put out after the election. There

is no statistical evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in the number

of religious voters.

 

TM: The big thing that people seized on was one particular exit poll in which

people, when given a choice of a few things, said moral values was the No. 1

reason for their vote. More people answered moral values in 1996 and in 2000

than in 2004. There was actually a drop in the number of people who attributed

their vote to moral values in 2004, not a rise.

 

Let me check a couple of things with you. I've heard that exit polls were most

inaccurate -- by a big margin -- in those areas that used electronic voting

machines with no paper trail. True?

 

MCM: That's basically true, and it was particularly noticeable in five swing

states. There's a lot of stuff floating around out there in cyberspace about the

exit polls. The question of the exit polls has been very badly muddied by a lot

of disingenuous argument. Now a lot of people think that it's not a reliable

gauge, it doesn't tell us anything. That's actually the result of propaganda

obfuscation. The exit polls' sudden divergence, sudden wrongness in these five

states is really a remarkable deviation from the norm.

 

The guy doing the best work on that particular issue is a statistician at the

University of Pennsylvania named Steve Freeman, who will have a book coming out

in a few months primarily about the exit poll question.

 

Bogus reasons for why the exit polls were so wrong include the reluctant

responder argument, which holds that Bush voters were strangely reluctant to

tell exit pollsters how they voted. Well, Freeman has read the raw data at

precinct level and has discovered that, as a matter of fact, if anyone showed a

greater reluctance to come forward and say honestly who they voted for when

confronted with an exit pollster, it was actually the Democrats. There's no

evidence of any numerical kind that can support the view that somehow

Republicans wouldn't fess up.

 

TM: I would assume that the very ones being referred to as reluctant are the

ones who would be proud to say they voted for God's candidate.

 

MCM: One of the weirdest things about this whole election business is that one

of the two parties has, for over the last year and longer, been vociferously

complaining about the dangers of election fraud, and that's the Republican

party.

 

TM: Thus the ID card in Georgia, right?

 

MCM: Exactly. They're the ones who are always screaming about Democratic fraud,

but the Republicans in this last race were really the only ones engaging in

election fraud.

 

This has to do with the peculiarly paranoid quality of the crusading mindset. I

believe this theft was to a great extent carried out thanks to a kind of

crusader mentality. I've got plenty of evidence in the book that the religious

right played an enormously large role in the theft of the election last year.

 

TM: I think first of Diebold, I think of the Ken Blackwells or the Kathryn

Harrises. How does the religious right itself play a role beyond mobilizing its

own troops?

 

MCM: That mobilization is significant when you consider that a lot of those

troops have actually become embedded inside the election system.

 

TM: Local polling officials, that sort of thing?

 

MCM: One Democratic election judge tried to observe the vote count in Pima

County, Arizona. A roomful of polling personnel who all belonged to the same

evangelical church in the area started to call him a liberal demon, a liberal

scum.

 

TM: When you talk about a crusader mentality, you basically mean that if you do

not support my candidate you are an infidel -- and the ends justify the means?

 

MCM: Precisely. See, all these crimes that I attest to in the book were

committed with impunity by people who regard their political adversaries as

demons. And that's not an exaggeration. You know, this government is to a great

extent dominated by people who have that metaphysical view of the current

political situation.

 

It is a very serious mistake I believe to think that all of this is happening

only because of the excessive greed of certain corporate powers. That greed is

decisive It played an enormous role. There is no question about it. But it could

not have succeeded without the vigorous grassroots assistance of a lot of people

who are religious true believers. And I think that they include the likes of Tom

DeLay and others.

 

TM: I've heard that almost all irregularities worked in Bush's favor. True?

 

MCM: Absolutely true. I have not yet heard of a single example of a touchscreen

voting machine flipping a Bush vote into a Kerry vote. This does not mean it

never happened. I'm just saying I haven't heard about it if it has.

 

TM: I've read that in New Hampshire, Ralph Nader's Green Party campaign paid for

an actual recount. They picked the precincts they thought were suspicious, and

the hand recount confirmed the actual vote totals and showed that the exit polls

were, in fact, wrong. What do you say to that?

 

MCM: Well, the recount that they paid for found no evidence of fraud in that

particular case.

 

TM: It confirmed the hand recount, showing that the exit polls were in fact

wrong. So how does that fit your analysis of the whole scheme?

 

MCM: The only thing one can say about that with any scientific certainty is that

the particular hand count that they carried out did not reveal any evidence of

fraud. That does not mean that no fraud was committed. This is a very fine

point, but when we're dealing with questions of electoral honesty and accuracy,

I think we have the right to make fine points. The distinction must be made --

that particular hand count involved a sample, that sample revealed no fraud, but

that does not mean that we can then sit back and say, well, OK, so the exit

polls were wrong.

 

TM: To the question " What is the point of revisiting the last election? " you

point out that there has never been a great reform that was not driven by a

major scandal. Do you believe that true election reform is not going to happen

until the people and the media finally wake up to this?

 

MCM: I think it's going to depend on the people. It's going to depend on the

people simply and irresistibly insisting that the media finally deal with this

subject. That's why I wrote the book.

 

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles

(streaming at kpfk.org).

 

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31217/

 

 

 

 

 

" Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England,

nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the

leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter

to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,

or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ... Voice or no voice, the people

can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have

to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for

lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any

country. "

- General Herman Goering, President of German Reichstag & Nazi Party, Commander

of Luftwaffe