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Crying Wolf over ‘Stolen Elections’
Sore losers are eating away at trust in the democratic process. And guess who the latest "victim" is ...
It has become commonplace in modern political discourse to assert that the Republican Party stole the 2000 election and there is a growing chorus, recently detailed in these pages, charging that the GOP pilfered the 2004 election as well.
Now there is a new rumble of thunder building on the left concerning possible election fraud in the 2008 primaries. This time the designated victim is none other than Senator Hillary Clinton!
Yes, you heard that right. Hillary Clinton, she of Whitewater and the Rose Law Firm billing records fame, has a growing and vocal coterie of agents charging that she was unfairly jobbed by unseen forces who refused to allow a woman to lead the Democrats into the November election. While this characterization of the Democratic nomination battle is bizarre and easily disproved, it certainly holds dangerous implications for the future, namely the fact that every future election will be subject to allegations of fraud and that candidates who cannot concede defeat gracefully will resort to the “big lie” in order to rationalize their loss and delegitimize an opponent’s victory.
This disturbing aspect of modern politics began, appropriately, in the 2000 general election. The Democrats and their media echo chamber charged that George W. Bush and the Republicans stole Florida and fraudulently won the election. They willfully discounted documented evidence of Democratic Party shenanigans in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Detroit. Likewise, those charging vote fraud ignored Democratic candidate Al Gore’s efforts to disqualify military absentee ballots which would certainly have trended Republican and his attempts to cherry-pick Democratic counties in Florida for special recounts. Finally, after exhaustive studies by Florida daily newspapers determined that Bush did, indeed, win the state, the Democratic conspiracy mongers shrugged their shoulders and continued to insist that the “other” party stole the 2000 election.
The crying-foul tactic worked well enough for the Democrats that they decided to re-employ it in 2004. The party and their media allies ignored Democratic dirty tricks, such as flattening the tires of thirty vans the Milwaukee Republicans had rented to drive voters to polling places. Instead, the Democrats with the assistance of a complicit media simply hammered home their theme that Republican skulduggery had stolen Ohio and thus the election. The fact that Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes did not dissuade the conspiracy theorists one bit. They repeated their “fraudulent election” mantra until certain people started believing them.
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Brian E. Birdnow is a historian and the author of Communism, Anti-Communism, and the Federal Courts in St. Louis 1952-1958: The Trial of the St. Louis Five. Dr. Birdnow teaches at a university in the St. Louis area and is currently working on a biography of President Gerald Ford with a publication date of June 2010.
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41 Comments
1. Marc Malone:No one cares about a gracious loser, when they know the fix was in. They care about the fix. I want the ‘Pubs to scream about voter fraud. Not because it makes them lose, but because it makes us all lose.
Oct 3, 2008 - 2:55 am 2. Jack Okie:What was the final count at the Democrat’s 2008 convention – delegates and superdelegates? Why was there no visible roll-call? I’m a conservative Republican who’s backing McCain / Palin. I have watched the conventions since Eisenhower – Taft and Stevenson – Kefauver in 1952. I don’t recall any convention where the delegates were not polled on the convention floor.
So if there was no chicanery at the 2008 DNC, what was the final count, by delegate name?
Oct 3, 2008 - 4:45 am 3. Valerie:I got news for you, bub. The cheating by the Obama campaign in Texas was real, and the complaints were from individuals, and compelling. Further, Texas ran a caucus/primary, and the difference in results was significant. This is objective evidence of something ontoward. The Clinton Campaign did nothing to further the complaints of individuals or respond to them.
Meanwhile, in Maryland, the Democratic party now has an unreliable electronic system with no paper trail that cost $90M. They changed this from a perfect system that had survived election challenge and audit. The old system involved a long ballot with large type where a vote was recorded using a wide magic marker to complete an arrow directed to the candidate’s name. The ballot would then be scanned and checked for errors such as double-votes on the spot, and recorded. The first time I voted in a primary in Maryland, the results were in within an hour of the polls’ closing.
There’s a real problem with voter fraud in this election, and it could benefit from some genuine historical-type research, instead of gratuitous Clinton-bashing.
Oct 3, 2008 - 4:52 am 4. Genghis_Khan:The 2008 will be “One man, one vote – once.” Come 2012, President Obama will use, and I daresay ARRANGE, a pretext to suspend elections. Forever.
Oct 3, 2008 - 5:52 am 5. myth buster:Why isn’t anyone investigating the Republican primary? There are credible reports of Ron Paul receiving zero votes in some NH precincts, despite his supporters in those precincts reporting that they had voted for him. Many Huckabee supporters question the results in Texas, since they didn’t bare any semblance to the polls in the days leading up to the Primary, and Huckabee’s get out the vote effort was vastly superior to John McCain.
Oct 3, 2008 - 6:15 am 6. Tina Trent:The author misrepresents the issue. In caucus states, there were mass reports of manipulation and even outright cheating. But instead of examining this, he skates over the subject.
Why write an article at all, if you’re not going to explore the issue you raise and do so in good faith? Because you feel some emotional need to whine about Clinton? Enough of that.
Oct 3, 2008 - 7:10 am 7. TheGoatWhisperer:County rejects large number of invalid voter registrations
BY BILL DOLAN
bdolan@nwitimes.com
219.662.5328 | Thursday, October 02, 2008
CROWN POINT | Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley wants a federal investigation into hundreds of voter registrations bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people.
“Fraudulent applications are the workings of ACORN groups operating from Milwaukee and Chicago who are getting out the vote for Obama. I’m Republican, but I want everyone who should vote to vote. But I want a clean election,” Curley said at a Wednesday news conference.
Lake County elections officials acknowledged they have found problems and had to reject a large portion of the 5,000 registration forms turned in recently by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, an activist group that conducted registration drives across the county this summer.
An ACORN spokesperson couldn’t be reached Wednesday for comment. Telephones to ACORN offices in Gary, Indianapolis, Chicago and Milwaukee were reported to be disconnected.
Oct 3, 2008 - 7:18 am 8. Jeff Shultz:Until those states using it ditch the rather outdated and backwards caucus system, the primaries are going to be ripe for fraud – on all sides.
Oct 3, 2008 - 8:11 am 9. Lisa:Look… they said Florida and Michigan, two strong CLinton states, didn’t count so that Obama could keep his ‘lead’. When she started winning more states, his surrogates started muttering that the superdelegates better not steal the election from him because he was winning the popular vote. YET, he won the nomination because of the supers, because they took dedicated Clinton delegates and gave them to Obama in Michigan, because they only counted half votes in Florida and Michigan.
They did everything in their power to keep her out of power.
I was a Democrat my entire life. I voted for CLinton, then Gore, then Kerry and then CLinton in the primary.
I’m voting McCain/Palin this year.
It still stuns me that the Democratic party, the supposed protector of minorities and women, could spew such sexism.
Screw you guys.. I’m voting Republican.
Oct 3, 2008 - 9:03 am 10. Self-hating boomer:Saying that it’s easily disproved isn’t disproof. Cough up your “disproof”, or eat your words.
Oct 3, 2008 - 9:21 am 11. Self-hating boomer:Because it wasn’t close. Cheating only matters when elections are close. It’s completely implausible that anyone but McCain won the Republican primary. The cheating would have to be on an unprecedented and unimaginable scale, and certainly would have left more than a few tell-tale signs.
Oct 3, 2008 - 9:32 am 12. Sandra M:Obama’s close connection to ACORN leads me to believe this election will be “stolen” by him not “won.”
We the people should DEMAND a national foolproof photo ID for voting purposes with proof of citizenship.
Obama did well in caucuses not so well in primaries.
Caucuses remind me of how communists would dominate union meetings. Delay, delay, the vote until people got disgusted and left and then in the dead of night, call for a vote.
Also, caucuses disenfranchise those who are working while the caucus is being held and those who can’t attend.
Lastly, if we’re going to use electronic machines they must have a paper trail.
Do the people who handle these matters get paid year-round? If so, they should be fired for incompetence.
Oct 3, 2008 - 10:19 am 13. jerry:A future historian will write that the 2000 US Presidential election laid the foundation of the destruction of the Republic. Unlike 1960, where Richard Nixon graciously handed JFK the Presidency when there was clear evidence of vote fraud, Al Gore decided to change the outcome come hell or high water. His egotism has unleashed a collective insanity upon the Democratic party voter base.
I had a “conversation” with a neighbor last night who repeated all the disproven claims of Republican voter suppression in Ohio and he even added ballot box stuffing charges to the list. (You know, things Democrats do.) In the course of this “conversation” he added that he is supicious of a combat brigade returning from Iraq for “crowd control” about the time of the election. Of course he was implying that Bush is going suspend the election and declare himself dictator. This is the same kind of lunacy that fuel mass totaltitarian movements.
I see how this is affecting our side of the political spectrum. We are become polarized by our respective conspiracy theories. This is a sure sign that era of Republican governement under the Constitution is coming to and end.
Oct 3, 2008 - 10:40 am 14. ic:May be the “crying wolvies” are used to 1) innoculate the voters from real voting frauds, 2) give those who perpetuate the frauds an excuse: oppositions are doing it.
Ohio, a known swing state allows “voters” same day registration to vote. Even if the instant voters were declared ineligible months later, their “votes” would have been counted.
I remember in the last election cycle, I believe it was Washington State. The judge said there was voting irregularities, but the Republican candidate failed to identify which votes were fraud, which were not. He ruled for the Dems who harvested more votes after losing a close election from abandoned warehouses and backlots.
Oct 3, 2008 - 10:59 am 15. Joe Buzz:DC election officials say that static electricity causes 1500 unexpected votes to show up. Nice:
http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1008/558138.html
Oct 3, 2008 - 11:07 am 16. Joe Buzz:DC election officials say that static electricity causes 1500 unexpected votes to show up. Nice:
http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1008/558138.html
so tell me again about what is eating away at the democratic process?
Oct 3, 2008 - 11:13 am 17. Lynn:although I respect the author’s opinion, those in caucus states know better.
Oct 3, 2008 - 11:50 am 18. Steve:wewillnotbesilenced2008.com
Lynn and others expressing concern that the Texas caucuses were rigged on behalf of The One — please feel free to express your true displeasure by crossing the aile to McCain/Palin.
Oct 3, 2008 - 12:05 pm 19. Cliff:Don’t forget about the 2006 Rossi / Gregoire race for Wash. state governor. Gregoire forced 3 re-counts until she won the election.
Oct 3, 2008 - 12:48 pm 20. Cliff:Cliff out
One more related issue. Do you think Obama would have one the Dem. primaries if the Edward’s affair scandal was announced before hand? We will never know.
Cliff out
Oct 3, 2008 - 12:52 pm 21. Mudpie:The dems know all about election fraud as they
Oct 3, 2008 - 12:54 pm 22. Tonto (USA):have been committing it for at least 100 years.
Historically, elections at all levels have been rigged, or cheated in. Multiple votes by long dead people and people not registered at all have been alleged as far back as the Revolution. Some of it is undoubtedly true. JFK stole his nomination with the help of the Chicago mob, Bobby got whacked by the GOP paid mafia….etc, etc, ad nauseum. However, if you can’t prove it, it ain’t so. And that’s the merry berries there.
Oct 3, 2008 - 1:18 pm 23. Ex-fetus:There is a long history in America of election being stolen.
It’s as American as apple pie to mangle a metaphor. It might not matter;
http://texashillblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/federal-judge-orders-obama-to-produce-his-birth-certificate/
It seems a federal judge has decide that Ohhhh….BAMA needs to PROE he is an American born citizen. Since Ohhhh….BAAMA admits that he isn’t, there is a problem. Like he isn’t allowed by the Constitution to run for President. Talk about not vetting sombody.
Now we will see the Chicago machine spring into action.
I had figured this election, like the 2000 election would be settled in court. I didn’t think it would start in October. Speaking of October, does this count as a surprise? Obama not being a natural born citizen has been spoken of for some time now.
Oct 3, 2008 - 1:55 pm 24. Self-hating boomer:And Cliff, just so there’s no mistake about it, there’s enough here to make a pretty convincing case that Acorn, by themselves, stole that election:
http://www.biaw.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=66&tabid=166&navid=1
Oct 3, 2008 - 5:35 pm 25. Wildmonk:Both parties engage in dirty tricks at times. However, I am under the strong impression that the Democrats are fanning the flames of outrage as high as possible after each election because they think it will help them “justify” their “response” when it comes at the next close election (e.g. mob action to “prevent another election from being stolen”). It won’t be pretty.
Oct 3, 2008 - 5:53 pm 26. pa-musing:Maybe someone knows how to check on this: I heard that in 2004, Pennsylvania was a closer election than Ohio – of course, Kerry won it. But I also heard that the most corruption was by Democrats in Philadelphia. So I always thought that a more interesting narrative would have been played by Republicans concerned about the Pennsylvania results. –Or do I have my facts wrong?
Oct 3, 2008 - 6:07 pm 27. Ex-fetus:Here is a link to the Berg vs Obama et. al. motion in which berg puts forth some pretty compelling arguments that OBAMA is an illegal alien;
tp://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/13/
Interesting stuff.
The next President will be chosen by the judges again.
Wildmonk, I don’t think so. I say that because the rioters will be black. The Mayor that is telling them to clam down will be black. The cops arresting them will be black. The Judges and lawyers in court will be black. The businesses burned and looted will be black, etc. So if it does happen, it won’t be a race riot. And if they try to relocate the riots to the ‘burbs, well go rent “Zulu”.
Oct 3, 2008 - 6:51 pm 28. Red Blooded American:There are irregularities in every election, on both sides. You are talking about a process that is different in every state and territory. A completely accurate count of 150 million votes tabulated with countless different methodologies is impossible. There is a margin of error in any measuring technology, including voting. It may be 0.001% or it may be 0.1%. But when the margin of victory is less than the margin of measurement error, you can’t draw meaningful conclusions from the measurement. This is especially unfortunate in the case of an election. In 2000 Gore pressed every legal avenue of recount in Florida, to the Supreme Court. But he did accept their decision and has put his energy into other areas than questioning the legitimacy of the the election results of 2000.
George W. Bush would have done well to realize that he needed to actually bring the country together after a divisive and bitter election. Eisenhower could have done it. Ford could have done it. George W. Bush chose not to try, and instead governed as if he had won a landslide. This strategy on his administration’s part increased the polarization in the country. He was an ideologue who put ideology ahead of country, and who put crafting a ban on stem cell research ahead of focusing on the immanent threat of terrorist attack inside the U.S. Say what you want, he spent all of August 2001 holed up in Crawford working crippling the American biotech industry with his stem cell policy. It was the longest presidential vacation since the Eisenhower administration. Although he was directly warned of the dangers of terrorist attack, he felt that ideology and leisure higher priorities than security.
Whatever the result of the 2008 election is, let us all hope that the results are clear enough that no state has a less than 0.1% margin of victory, and that whoever does win the election puts the country first in a true sense and not in just a sound-bite sense.
Oct 3, 2008 - 8:16 pm 29. ic:Red Blooded American:
“Whatever the result of the 2008 election is, let us all hope that the results are clear enough that no state has a less than 0.1% margin of victory, and that whoever does win the election puts the country first in a true sense and not in just a sound-bite sense.”
Even a non-believer like me has to pray “May God help us.”
Oct 3, 2008 - 8:58 pm 30. Believer:“Sore losers are eating away at trust in the democratic process.”
Flagrant corruption – and no accountability – has been eating away at the “trust” issue for decades.
Think Fannie/Freddie for a more recent illustration. Think taxpayer money going to BO’s ACORN even after multiple indictments for fraud. Hey, a heck of alot of Congressmen signed on to a very fine portion of our “bailout” dollars earmarked for that stellar organization.
No. I think of NYC – preGuiliani – and the stories of it being out of control — (kind of like BO’s Chicago right now, perhaps?) And what did he do? He got TOUGH. (I like to think: just like God does with us when we go too far out of bounds.) It’s the only thing that works.
You gotta smack evil upside the head. Refuse to take it anymore. If you don’t, it spreads like a cancer. Only radical surgery will do.
Welcome to metastatic American politics. With BO as its biggest star.
Time to grab the scalpel.
Oct 3, 2008 - 9:01 pm 31. Marc Malone:Gee, it sounds like the riots protesting Obama’s loss will come before the election if Berg has his way. God bless his soul (and give him an armed escort).
Oct 3, 2008 - 11:27 pm 32. Timothy Birdnow » Their Cheatin` Hearts; Demos Cry Wolf on Vote Fraud:[...] favorite trick of alleging voter fraud at Pajamas Media. Below is page one; be sure to read the entire article, and check out the links and [...]
Oct 4, 2008 - 6:52 am 33. Lynn:STEVE:
Oct 4, 2008 - 7:56 am 34. maryo:Am campaigning for McCain/Palin. I never have approved of theft or intimidation at the polls.
Hello, Hillary? No one likes you. That’s why you did not win the nomination.
Oct 4, 2008 - 5:16 pm 35. Papa Ray:Don’t get carried away, the Judge has not decided on the suit by Berg. He will most likely decide this coming week. The document everybody is seeing on the web is Bergs motion to not dismiss but ask for documents from Obama and present them within three (3) days.
The unsigned and undated motion is here:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/13/
But I have no real hope of it being granted. I think the Judge will cave and give Obama a dismissel of all charges.
Papa Ray
Oct 4, 2008 - 6:46 pm 36. Jeff:West Texas
USA
This is just a fictional story that I have created to bring light to the time that we are in now —
Two men from the year 3000 decided to take their spacecraft on a trip back in time to learn the events of the past.
One man asked the other, “Steve, which part of history should we go back to?”
So Steve replied, ”Let’s go back to 2008, John. It was a very significant time in our history. This was the time when our country was at the crossroads of deciding our future and the end results of their decisions are what we are living with now. I heard that our country was at its most crucial time because it was economically crumbling at the core of its foundation.”
“Fair enough Steve, let’s go back to 2008,” John agreed.
So they both entered their spacecraft and took a trip back to 2008. Within light speed they zoomed across time going back to 2008 and soon appeared above The White House in Washington DC, up in the sky just hovering in stealth mode.
Steve turned to John and said, “Let’s turn on the screen and watch all the events of this time starting back from the day America was attacked on 9/11/01, John.”
So John turned on the screen and the two watched all of the events starting from 9/11 to the current year that they were in, which is 2008. While they were watching all of the events of 9/11, the Afghanistan War, and the events of the Iraq War up to the current time that they are at, which is November 4th of 2008. They paused the screen and looked at each other, just scratching their heads.
John looked at Steve and commented, “Steve, these events are devastating after 9/11. We went into Afghanistan which was right but everything shows that we had no reason to go into that other country called Iraq. There was so many of our soldiers and people that died in this carelessness.”
So Steve thought about it and replied, “It appears that you are right, John, but the people of America seem to stand with this President. Now let’s un-pause the screen and watch this 2008 election and the 4 years that follow this. Then we go back home.”
So John un-paused the screen and the two watched the 2008 election and the 4 years that followed this election and went back to their own time, which is the year 3000.
John looked at Steve and commented, “This trip gave me a new view of humanity, Steve. I don’t understand why we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. That white man was just a continuation of that last President but our ancestors voted for him anyway because America could relate to him more. They voted for him because he looked similar to the majority of them but denied the other candidate simply because he looked different. Although that other candidate looked different, he seemed to want to help the country turn around. He seemed to look forward to the future and had futuristic ideas of not just transforming America for the better but creating a unity in the world. He seemed to be a man of the world and the world seemed to view him very favorably.”
So Steve answered, “I understand how you feel and I share the same sentiments, John. At that time in history, human mentalities had not transcended beyond fear of the different and the unknown. The human mentalities at that time had not transcended above and beyond the differences in color, creed, religion, and cultural backgrounds of this world. Because of this ignorance, our society is what it is today. It’s the year 3000 and wars are the only one thing that seems to be unable to evade humanity. Now, we are crumbling at our feet with all these wars all across the globe. We had a defining movement in history, John. We had a chance to open our minds and hearts to something different and something new, but we, as a collective, blew it. Now humanity is at an endless conflict and I fear that we are meeting our extinction. God help us all.”
Oct 4, 2008 - 8:15 pm 37. Wolf Pangloss:Jeff, puh-lease! That was as subtle and well-written as a Chick comic.
Oct 4, 2008 - 11:14 pm 38. Sharpshooter:Anyone remember the demonstrations in LA for the illegal aliens when people (ACORN?) was handing out voter registrations cards to IA’s?
Someone (INS?) in 2001 estimated that 300,000-800,000 illegal aliens voted in the 2000 election.
An estimated 7,000 illegal aliens voted in the 2002 gubernatorial election in which Democrat Janet Reno (a vehement IA supporter) won by only about 600 votes.
It was recently uncovered that 10,000 felons voted in Florida alone in 2000. A check of voter registrations in Florida showed that of the 10K registrations by felons, 85% had registered as Democrats.
Now the Dem’s want, not only to over-rule voter ID, but make Motor Voter that national norm.
To use a twist on the old cliche, …if you can’t beat ‘em, CHEAT!
Now the Dem’s want voting rights re-established for felons. Gee…I wonder why?
Oct 5, 2008 - 3:34 pm 39. Barry:yeah the 2000 Missouri Senate race was the worst I’ve ever seen. The Constitution says that a candidate MUST be a resident of the State on the day of the election. Mel Carnahan was DEAD on the day of the election, thus failing the Constitutional requirement.
No matter, the media told us. Nothing to see here. Move along, please.
We have the government we deserve when we let stuff like that go unchallenged.
Oct 5, 2008 - 8:17 pm 40. Ex-fetus:Barry is correct. If the people elected to defend the Constitution waon’t, then the citizens themselves have to. Otherwise, there is no Constitution.
Oct 6, 2008 - 6:25 am 41. Crying Wolf Over ‘Stolen Elections’:America IS the Constitution. The Constitution IS America.
[...] Crying Wolf Over ‘Stolen Elections’ Sore losers are eating away at trust in the democratic process. And guess who the latest “victim” is … [...]
Oct 30, 2008 - 12:09 pm