Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of = the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after = midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled = to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were = clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted = the AP report.=20
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.=20
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were = rigged.=20
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton = campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an = article for The Hill <http://www.thehill.com/morris/110404.aspx> , the = publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a = couple of brilliant points.=20
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the = two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating = actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."=20
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, = all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to = Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."=20
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, = as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states = the election was called for Bush.=20
How could this happen?=20
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, = Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev = Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org <http://www.blackboxvoting.org/> from her living room. Bev pointed out = that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only = done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that = read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, = in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.=20
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.=20
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, = "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling = places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places = in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can = add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to = each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?"=20
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What = surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I = use. It's just a regular computer."=20
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"=20
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program = called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between = them loaded with Diebold's software.=20
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.=20
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.=20
But, it's running on a Windows PC.=20
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the = normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk = C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, = Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." = Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a = database program like Excel.=20
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.=20
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's = give 100 votes to Tiger."=20
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."=20
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And = you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.=20
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."=20
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv <http://www.votergate.tv/> .) And they had left no tracks whatsoever, = Harris said, noting that it would be nearly impossible for the election = software - or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered.=20
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a = landslide.=20
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to = cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But = the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to.=20
According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense = that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that = the vote itself was hacked.=20
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this = hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office = in the most-hacked swing states.=20
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story = was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted = that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far = uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media = are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how = the exit polls had failed.=20
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the = board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."=20
Man, I was so happy with our win, but then I found out that places like Democratic Underground are arguing that Bush stole the election once again. What? But what about all those votes? Well, Wikipedia even has a page up about how the election was stolen with charts and everything. Is something up? Well, I contacted my local wing of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy who patched me into the national arm of the VRWC. Then I got to talk to two people I shall refer to as Hacker1 and Hacker2. Here is the conversation:
Frank: So, did we steal the election this time?
Hacker1: Yeah, totally. We like rigged all the machines so there was no way we could lose.
Frank: Why didn't you tell me we had it in the bag? I was like totally worried about this election!
Hacker2: Sorry, dude, but we were like told not to spread it around too much.
Hacker1: Yeah, we needed everyone to act like it was close and worrisome so no one would know we like totally hacked it. That Karl Rove is smart, dude; he knows how to run things.
Hacker2: Yeah, Rove is totally evil and totally cool.
Frank: So did you hack voting everywhere?
Hacker1: Yeah, otherwise it would look weird if we only improved in the battleground states.
Hacker2: Rove was completely in charge of all that. He even came in last minute and said, "Give them New Hampshire," and we were like, "Whatever."
Frank: So was it hard hacking the vote?
Hacker1: Sorta, but Diebold gave us easy to follow instructions.
Hacker2: We totally owned all the votes.
Hacker1: Totally.
Hacker2: It was funny to see the Democrats try and cheat the old-fashioned way. They can bring in all the dead people they want to vote, but we'll just change their votes to Republican in the end.
Hacker1: (laughs) I bet you didn't know this, but Michael Moore voted for Bush.
Hacker2: (laughs) He doesn't know it either.
Frank: But aren't people going to find out about this eventually?
Hacker1: Not if we're careful, dude.
Hacker2: First off, we're not going to hand out many landslides. It's going to be a bunch of real close ones so we can say to the Democrats, "Oh, that was so close. You really should try again."
Hacker1: (laughs) We're going to drive them nuts.
Hacker2: Anyway, the VRWC will save money in the future as we cut back on commercials and campaign appearances, but Rove will make sure we don't cut back so much that it looks suspicious.
Frank: Except to the Democratic Underground.
Hacker1: Yeah, there's no fooling those guys. They're on top of everything. Luckily, Rove had a plan for them too.
Hacker2: What he did was get all these mental patients - total schizos - and brainwash them about how evil the Republicans are. Then he gave them internet connections.
Hacker1: Now the schizos that Rove planted totally rule the Democratic Underground discussion forum. They're the most prolific posters. Instead of getting anywhere on all the evil plans we have, they waste time blaming a Democrat event being rained out on Karl Rove.
Hacker2: Which is stupid because our weather machine is only 60% complete.
Frank: What about bloggers talking about voting malfeasance?
Hacker1: Dude, Rove totally owns the blogosphere. Most of the popular bloggers write only what Rove tells them.
Frank: Like who?
Hacker1: Well, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, half the people at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Scott Ott of Scrappleface.
Frank: I knew it!
Hacker2: The phrase "Axis of Weasels" was all Rove's idea.
Frank: So he controls the bloggers to combat the left-wing blogs like the DailyKos?
(both hackers laugh)
Hacker1: Dude, Rove personally writes DailyKos.
Hacker2: Yeah, he wants to control what the left are whining about.
Frank: Whoa! That Rove is one sinister, evil dude!
Hacker2: Totally.
Frank: Hey, has Rove ever mentioned my site?
Hacker1: Uh... yeah, once. He asked me, "What's this site 'IMAO'?" And I told him, "Remember, it's the one with the moon exploding." And he said, "Oh yeah, it's the stupid site about the angry dog."
Frank: Cool! He knows my site! So, back to the main subject, what's in the future of voting now that we own it?
Hacker1: We'll only keep fixing elections for so long. Eventually we'll dissolve the Democratic party and turn the U.S. into a one-party ruled dictatorship.
Hacker2: That's Rove's long-term plans.
Frank: Neato. Well, thanks for talking to me.
Hacker1: You're not going to publish this, are you?
The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.
In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.
But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories.
Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go.
Much of the controversy, called Votergate 2004 by some, involved real voting anomalies in Florida and Ohio, the two states on which victory hinged. But ground zero in the online rumor mill, it seems, was Utah.
"I love the process of democracy, and I think it's more important than the outcome," said Kathy Dopp, an Internet enthusiast living near Salt Lake City. It was Ms. Dopp's analysis of the vote in Florida (she has a master's degree in mathematics) that set off a flurry of post-election theorizing by disheartened Democrats who were certain, given early surveys of voters leaving the polls that were leaked, showing Senator John Kerry winning handily, that something was amiss.
The day after the election, Ms. Dopp posted to her Web site, www.ustogether.org, a table comparing party registrations in each of Florida's 67 counties, the method of voting used and the number of votes cast for each presidential candidate. Ms. Dopp, along with other statisticians contributing to the site, suggested a "surprising pattern" in Florida's results showing inexplicable gains for President Bush in Democratic counties that used optical-scan voting systems.
The zeal and sophistication of Ms. Dopp's number crunching was hard to dismiss out of hand, and other Web users began creating their own bar charts and regression models in support of other theories. In a breathless cycle of hey-check-this-out, the theories - along with their visual aids - were distributed by e-mail messages containing links to popular Web sites and Web logs, or blogs, where other eager readers diligently passed them along.
Within one day, the number of visits to Ms. Dopp's site jumped from 50 to more than 500, according to site logs. On Nov. 4, that number tipped 17,000. Her findings were noted on popular left-leaning Web logs like DailyKos.com and FreePress.org. Last Friday, three Democratic members of Congress - John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida - sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office seeking an investigation of voting machines. A link to Ms. Dopp's site was included in the letter.
But rebuttals to the Florida fraud hypothesis were just as quick. Three political scientists, from Cornell, Harvard and Stanford, pointed out, in an e-mail message to a Web site that carried the news of Ms. Dopp's findings, that many of those Democratic counties in Florida have a long tradition of voting Republican in presidential elections. And while Ms. Dopp says that she and dozens of other researchers will continue to analyze the Florida vote, the suggestion of a link between certain types of voting machines and the vote split in Florida has, at least for now, little concrete support.
Still, as visitors to Ms. Dopp's site approached 70,000 early this week, other election anomalies were gaining traction on the Internet. The elections department in Cleveland, for instance, set off a round of Web log hysteria when it posted turnout figures on its site that seemed to show more votes being cast in some communities than there were registered voters. That turned out to be an error in how the votes were reported by the department, not in the counting.
And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated.
But while authorities acknowledge that there were real problems on Election Day, including troubles with some electronic machines and intolerably long lines in some places, few have suggested that any of these could have changed the outcome.
"There are real problems to be addressed," said Doug Chapin of Electionline.org, a clearinghouse of election reform information, "and I'd hate for them to get lost in second-guessing of the result."
It is that second-guessing, however, that has largely characterized the blog-to-e-mail-to-blog continuum. Some election officials have become frustrated by the rumor mill.
"It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said.
"Some from the traditional media have called for an explanation," he said, "but no one from these blogs has called and said, 'We want to know what really happened.' "
Whether that is the role of bloggers, Web posters and online pundits, however, is a matter of debate.
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply "can't imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president."
But some denizens of the Web see it differently.
Jake White, the owner of the Web log primordium.org, argues that he and other election-monitoring Web posters are not motivated solely by partisan politics. "While there are no doubt large segments of this movement that are being driven by that," he said in an e-mail message, "I prefer to think of it as discontent over the way the election was held."
Mr. White also quickly withdrew his own analysis of voting systems in Ohio when he realized the data he had used was inaccurate.
John Byrne, editor of an alternative news site, BlueLemur.com, says it is too easy to condemn blogs and freelance Web sites for being inaccurate. The more important point, he said, is that they offer an alternative to a mainstream news media that has become too timid. "Of course you can say blogs are wrong," he said. "Blogs are wrong all the time."
For its part, the Kerry campaign has been trying to tamp down the conspiracy theories and to tell supporters that their mission now is to ensure that every vote is counted, not that the election be overturned.
"We know this was an emotional election, and the losing side is very upset," said Daniel Hoffheimer, the lead lawyer for the Kerry campaign in Ohio. But, he said, "I have not seen anything to indicate intentional fraud or tampering."
A preliminary study produced by the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to a similar conclusion. Its study found "no particular patterns" relating to voting systems and the final results of the election.
"The 'facts' that are being circulated on the Internet," the study concluded, "appear to be selectively chosen to make the point."
Whether that will ever convince everyone is an open question.
"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, "but blogging it doesn't make it so. We can change the future; we can't rewrite the past."
Our shaky elections system or the jayvee journalism practiced on Keith Olbermann's fake MSNBC news show "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"?
I cast all of my votes for Olbermann.
The recovering sportscaster is openly liberal and his irreverent, run-and-quip offense is easy to detest. But I kind of like him and his fast-paced infotainment show, which has the fatal misfortune to occupy the 8 p.m. time slot opposite Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."
Olbermann, however, really made a Dan Rather of himself last week.
He never directly charged that Republicans stole the election or demanded that Karl Rove should be picked up for questioning by the U.N. But for 15 minutes on Monday, Olbermann pointed to a "small but blood-curdling group of reports of voting irregularities and possible fraud" from across the country, topped it with some vague partisan innuendo from Democrat Congressman John Conyers, and acted like he deserved a Peabody Award for Civic Journalism.
On Tuesday I checked out some of Olbermann's claims. Using a high-tech personal communication device professional journalists refer to as a "telephone," I called an elections bureau person in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (greater Cleveland), where, as Olbermann pointed out, 93,000 extra votes had been inexplicably cast Nov. 2.
It turns out the votes were "a computer anomaly" that didn't affect or reflect the official vote count. And those 18,472 votes Olbermann said were counted in Fairview Park, a Cleveland suburb that had only 13,342 registered voters? Absentee ballots from many precincts had been grouped together by the computer and credited to Fairview Park, where 8,421 voted.
But what about Florida, the Vote-Fraud State?
Olbermann had made a big sinister deal about 29 counties whose registered voters were predominantly Democrat "suddenly" voting "overwhelmingly for Mr. Bush." He slyly left the impression that massive vote-stealing could have been perpetrated by ballot tabulating companies like Diebold, whose bosses were known Bush allies.
I called Baker County, Fla., Olbermann's first example. Yes, twanged the cheery election lady, 69 percent of voters in her rural county on the Georgia border are registered Democrat. Yes, "Mr. Boosh" got 78 percent of the vote and trounced Kerry, 7,738 to 2,180.
This was nothing new or untoward, she said. Folks in Florida's Panhandle are conservative, especially on social and moral issues. They mostly register as Democrats and vote that way on local issues, but in national and state elections, they go Republican. Been doing so for years.
I heard the same explanation from election ladies in the tiny and large counties of Calhoun, Lafayette, Escambia, Highland and Liberty, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by as much as 9 to 1. Yet Bush beat Kerry in every one.
If they had cared, Olbermann and the producers of "Countdown" could have discovered these facts before they began flogging their sloppy Internet-spawned conspiracy Monday and Tueday nights. Non-Republican journalists on Salon.com and Slate.com. had no trouble explaining/debunking it. Nor did bloggers.
By Wednesday, Olbermann's fever had cooled. But he had abandoned the Florida conspiracy angle, explained Cleveland's oddities and mostly was yukking it up about a Unilect computer that ate 4,000 votes in North Carolina.
Still, he and his guest enabler from the grownup world of journalism, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, were concerned about the wussiness of the news media. Why had no major print or electronic outlet pursued this shameful story?
I don't know, boys. Maybe it's because before they start making wild charges of "vote fraud," real journalists pick up a telephone.
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