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Skriven 2004-11-11 05:43:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Theories
================
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=239735&page=1

Conspiracy Theories Abound After Bush Victory

Web Sites, E-mails Conjure Phantom Voters, Invented Malfeasance

By JAKE TAPPER and AVERY MILLER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2004 -- There were minor voting irregularities on 
Election Day — long lines, voting machine breakdowns, shortages of 
provisional ballots — but some people are now leveling charges of voter 
fraud.


Doug Chapin, a nonpartisan election analyst, finds the claims to be 
baseless. "There were no problems that would lead me to believe that 
there were stolen elections or widespread fraud," he said. 


"There was no overwhelming reason to cast doubt on the outcome of this 
election," seconded Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the campaign 
manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "George Bush got more votes this 
time." 

Nevertheless, many people have devised various theories, including 
stories of voters in largely Democratic counties in Florida whose votes 
were changed for Bush, phantom voters in Ohio and exit polls showing 
John Kerry in the lead that were truer than the final tally. Off the 
record, many Democratic strategists dismiss such allegations, but they 
also know such resentment can be channeled for political use in the 
future. 


Those Florida Democrats Who Mysteriously Voted for Bush

Based at least in part on these conspiracy theories, three Democratic 
congressmen have written a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability 
Office.

"We are requesting an investigation into all the allegations, of 
irregularities with respect to the electronic and other voting machines 
so that people can have confidence in the result of this election, and 
so that any weaknesses are changed before the next election," said Rep. 
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. 

The congressmen's letter mentions the Web site ustogether.org, which 
questions why so many counties in Florida that have more registered 
Democrats than Republicans ended up voting for Bush. The Web site 
implies someone fixed the results. 

In regard to Lafayette County, one of the counties in question, it is 
true that there are far more registered Democrats in that county than 
Republicans (3,570 to 570, respectively), and that the county elected 
Bush in this year's election, but the county elected Bush in the last 
election, too. 

Four years before that, the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, 
won in Lafayette County as well, as did the first President Bush four 
years before that. 


Rep. Kendrick Meek, the co-chair of the Kerry campaign in Florida, says 
he knows why Bush was re-elected, and it has nothing to do with fraud. 
"We did a good job, but the other side did a better job," he said. 



Meek expresses serious concern that the conspiracy theories might create 
a sense of helplessness among voters and suppress future Democratic 
turnout. 



The counties in question use Optiscan ballots (where voters indicate 
their choice by marking a circle with a No. 2 pencil), which was not the 
voting method people worried about before the election since, unlike 
electronic voting, the ballots leave a paper trail, and unlike punch 
card ballots, they can be counted and used easily.



"Before the election in many places you saw people questioning the 
process because they were concerned about the result," said Chapin. "And 
now there are people looking at the result and using that as a basis to 
question the process."




Ohio Conspiracy Theories


In the battleground state of Ohio, where conspiracy theories abound, a 
Web site for Cuyahoga County seemed to show more votes than voters in 
some precincts.



The county's Web site was confusing — it lumped several precincts' 
absentee ballots together and then counted them several times, for each 
precinct. But those were glitches in vote-reporting — not vote-counting. 
The "phantom" voters who mysteriously appeared and voted for Bush in the 
county — which voted overwhelmingly for Kerry — did not exist other than 
in the imagination of Democrats upset about Kerry's loss. 



This afternoon, the Web site that first raised the questions about the 
Cuyahoga votes took it all back. "OK," wrote the Webmeister at 
"Americans 4 America," "finally had a chance to figure this out. I 
apologize for any anxiety that went along with these numbers. It seems 
that data is useless without knowing how counties arrived at the numbers 
and this was a particularly tricky process." 

Finally, there is the controversy regarding the television networks' 
exit polls, which seemed early on to indicate a better day for Kerry 
than the one he actually had. 

But as we now all know, the exit polls were off a bit. Regardless, exit 
polls are not hard data, they are as accurate as polling — which is 
sometimes on target, and sometimes not. "If I'm given exit polls and 
voting results, and I'm [asked] which do I rely on more, I rely on 
voting results," said Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the 
American Enterprise Institute. 



Clearly for many people, however, results are not enough. When Mark 
Twain remarked that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the 
truth can put on his shoes, it's astounding to think he was speaking 
decades before the invention of the Internet. 



Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.


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