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Since the stolen presidential election of 2004, Jonathan Simon has been at the forefront of analysis and research into election fraud in America. Yesterday, Simon published the result of his inquiry into the special election last January in which Ted Kennedy's Senate seat (from the nation's most solidly Democratic state) was offered up by the Democrats to a Tea Party Republican.
This was an election with crucial national significance. The Democrats had exactly the 60-vote margin in the Senate needed to push through Obama's health care initiative over united Republican obstruction. Ted Kennedy had been a lifelong champion of that legislation, and his was widely regarded as a safe Democratic seat. State Attorney General Martha Coakley was supposed to be a shoo-in.
But Coakley campaigned half-heartedly -- some would say incompetently. The RNC shoveled money into the race. A media campaign before the election proclaimed that challenger Scott Brown was unexpectedly competitive.
This was an election with crucial national significance. The Democrats had exactly the 60-vote margin in the Senate needed to push through Obama's health care initiative over united Republican obstruction. Ted Kennedy had been a lifelong champion of that legislation, and his was widely regarded as a safe Democratic seat. State Attorney General Martha Coakley was supposed to be a shoo-in.
But Coakley campaigned half-heartedly -- some would say incompetently. The RNC shoveled money into the race. A media campaign before the election proclaimed that challenger Scott Brown was unexpectedly competitive.
Most inexplicably -- perhaps this is the biggest clue -- Coakley conceded the race at midnight, with a quarter of the votes still uncounted.
So this was a curious election in a number of ways, even if you base your view on the story as reported by the mainstream. But there remains a crucial unreported story, which Simon addresses: Were the votes properly counted? Simon gives us good cause to believe that more voters chose Coakley than Brown last January.
The only proof of a stolen election would be to re-count the votes, or to examine software the scanning machines that were used to tabulate 97% of the votes that day. Simon recounts efforts by the Election Defense Alliance to get this evidence from the State, and the State's determination to seal both the paper ballots and the counting process from public scrutiny.
Denied access to the only direct evidence, Simon pursues the indirect evidence with an ingenuity and a thoroughness that makes a solid case for election fraud. His starting point is the fact that among the 3% of ballots that were hand-counted, Coakley won a solid victory. He then proceeds to eliminate, one by one, all the innocent explanations for the disparity between the 3% (hand counted, publicly verifiable) and the 97% (machine-tallied using trade-secret software by two large corporations, ES&S and Diebold, both with partisan Republican ties).
Could it have been a statistical fluke? The chances of this were one in a million.
Were the hand-counted votes in more Democratic parts of the state? No--in fact, these precincts trended slightly more Republican in registration.
So this was a curious election in a number of ways, even if you base your view on the story as reported by the mainstream. But there remains a crucial unreported story, which Simon addresses: Were the votes properly counted? Simon gives us good cause to believe that more voters chose Coakley than Brown last January.
The only proof of a stolen election would be to re-count the votes, or to examine software the scanning machines that were used to tabulate 97% of the votes that day. Simon recounts efforts by the Election Defense Alliance to get this evidence from the State, and the State's determination to seal both the paper ballots and the counting process from public scrutiny.
Denied access to the only direct evidence, Simon pursues the indirect evidence with an ingenuity and a thoroughness that makes a solid case for election fraud. His starting point is the fact that among the 3% of ballots that were hand-counted, Coakley won a solid victory. He then proceeds to eliminate, one by one, all the innocent explanations for the disparity between the 3% (hand counted, publicly verifiable) and the 97% (machine-tallied using trade-secret software by two large corporations, ES&S and Diebold, both with partisan Republican ties).
Could it have been a statistical fluke? The chances of this were one in a million.
Were the hand-counted votes in more Democratic parts of the state? No--in fact, these precincts trended slightly more Republican in registration.
In past elections, were the hand-counted precincts more likely to favor Democrats? No -- the 3% has tracked the 97% accurately in other recent elections.
Simon's genius is to pull together clues from disparate, yet publicly verifiable sources, in order to create a convincing picture out of a muddle of uncertainty. As Edison told us, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Simon has not shied from the task of spreadsheeting historical data from almost 400 different Massachusetts localities, and he offers us all the data in an appendix. If only the State would be as open as Simon in offering us a basis for confidence in the official election results!
If the picture that Simon paints is valid, there is a disturbing and mysterious pattern over the last several election cycles. Most elections in the US have been untainted but they have also been uncontested, with lopsided victories for one side or the other. Among the few that are hotly contested, there has been a thumb on the scale a lot of the time, and the thumb pushes inexorably from Blue toward the Red. (see EDA article on the 2006 election)
We imagine that politicians are playing to win, that politics is a rough and tumble game. The reality is stranger. One side alone is going for the jugular. The Democrats are not just pulling punches, they are actively complicit in their own defeat. Confronted with solid evidence of Republican election fraud, Democrats ignore and deny. The Liberal Media have uniformly refused to report on stolen elections, and what little coverage we see actually comes from Fox news! Proposed legislation that would demand transparency in the way our votes are counted is opposed by Democrats at the state and the Federal level. Ten years ago (in a scene made famous by Michael Moore), Vice President Al Gore presided over a quashing of a Senate protest over the election that had been stolen from him. Six years ago, John Kerry had a $20 million war chest reserved for legal challenges in case he lost the election under questionable circumstances; but after Bush stole the election in Ohio, Kerry conceded promptly and pursued no inquiry or challenge. And Martha Coakley, handed the seat that was still warm from Ted Kennedy's years of liberal service, passed the seat to the Right.
Why do the Democrats want to lose? What's going on, and who is running this show?
