Paul Craig Roberts: Was the 2004 Election Fixed?

Paul Craig Roberts: Was the 2004 Election Fixed?: "Political Machines
Was the 2004 Election Fixed?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller's new book, 'Fooled Again' (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the January 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat.

The Florida panhandle is thorough-going Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper's editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, 'The shepherds and the sheep,' Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold's claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.

The pre-election statement by Diebold's CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new 'foolproof' electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in one million."

I've been harping on this as much as who forged the yellow-cake Niger documents, and I am glad, some light is shining in but does anyone have a plan? If your voting machines gives you a receipt, do either of the political parties have a plan on how to use those receipts to challenge crooked elections? Can the receipts be counterfeited? Or, are we stuck with exit polls and whining?