Could the Democrats Steal Votes this Time?
By James Pinkerton Fellow
Newsday
August 5, 2004
So what's next to worry about?
Should we fear the next round of terrorist threats or should we fear that Uncle Sam is lying to us about those threats? Or should we save room to worry about less dramatic but more familiar threats, such as vote fraud?
The issue of who counts the votes came into stark relief in Florida four years ago, although it's hard to know if the situation has improved since. Just last week, officials in Miami-Dade County announced that their computer records for the 2002 election had been lost. Then, three days later, they found them.
Touch-screen computerized voting was supposed to be the solution to the problems of mechanical ballots - "hanging chads" and all that. But now the vote-computers, and their makers, are under assault. The new criticism is that the ballot records are as ephemeral as electrons, making it even easier to cheat.
The critics have a point. But one wonder if those critics aren't deliberately pointing in the wrong direction, toward those who are unlikely to cheat this November, away from those who have cheated every year for as long as anyone can remember.
Today, it's a commonplace - because it's so commonly alleged - that the Republicans are out to steal the '04 election. Democrats cite a 2003 letter written by Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, an Ohio-based voting machine manufacturer, as their "smoking gun." O'Dell wrote that his goal was "helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." That was a dumb thing to say, but it's hard to believe that he could in fact do anything improper to help George W. Bush even if he wanted to.
Why? Because Diebold is a publicly traded company. Shareholders, fearful of anything that would attract litigation or regulation, care more about their money than they do about Bush. And Diebold's 13,000 employees no doubt include some whistleblowers, and outside the company gate legions of reporters and liberal activists are all ears, listening for any tale-telling toot.
So if Diebold is unlikely to commit vote fraud this year, who is? That's easy: the usual suspects. So let's start with Chicago. Few dispute that in 1960 the Chicago Democratic political machine stole enough votes in the Windy City to give John F. Kennedy his 8,858-vote margin - out of nearly 5 million ballots cast statewide - in Illinois.
Legendary columnist Mike Royko - no conservative - detailed how the Democrats did their dirty work. The machine, he wrote, "never misses a chance to steal a certain number of votes and trample all over the election laws. Most of it goes on in the wards where the voters are lower middle class, black, poor white, or on the bottle." In the face of such fraud, Royko continued, "The Democratic judges don't mind, and the Republican election judges are probably Democrats."
Today, of course, the Democrats are up in arms about balloting. John Kerry says he will deploy "SWAT teams" at the polls. In Boston last week, Al Sharpton pledged to protect the "sacred" right to vote against all GOP comers. But is it possible that Democratic anger is part of a diversionary ploy? That is, could Democrats loudly rail against Diebold Republicans, even as their own fellow partisans, angered and emboldened by Florida - confident, in any case, that they will never be convicted by a downtown jury - go about righting the "wrong" of 2000?
One close observer thinks so. The new book by The Wall Street Journal's John Fund is entitled, bluntly, "Stealing Elections." Says Fund, "Exaggerated complaints and fears about electronic voting and disenfranchisement can divert attention from more common voting problems - old-fashioned vote stealing. While electronic voting generates its own concerns, you don't need it to manufacture votes; you can just follow in the footsteps of Boss Tweed, or Lyndon Johnson, or Mayor Richard J. Daley." Those were all Democrats, by the way.
I think Fund is on to something. That's one more thing to worry about, a little or a lot, depending on your perspective.
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June 18, 2007: My niece Christi had her baby
GIRL!
10:15 a.m.....
Emily Debra....
7 Lbs. 10 Ozs....
21" in length. She has a little dark hair...moves her lips and mouth so sweetly...has pretty petite features...
thank you God!!