Two Consecutive Stolen Elections
June 7, 2006
............................
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Rolling Stone Magazine have made a major
contribution to democracy and the country with their four month investigation
of the different forms of disenfranchisement and vote fraud that occurred in
the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. Here's hoping that Kennedy's
persuasive and well referenced article "Was the 2004 Election Stolen," and
Rolling Stone's editorial "Call for Investigation" into the threats posed by
privatized electronic voting machines will force these issues into the national
spotlight.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Free Press in Columbus, Ohio have
been following the machinations of stolen elections for some time. On June 3
they noted that "it has been a long, torturous crawl to finally have someone
with real media clout report in depth on what has happened to our electoral
process. From Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 and 2005, Bev Harris's Blackboxvoting.org
and a few other stalwarts such as Danny Schechter, Joan Seckler, Greg Palast,
Mark C. Miller, Ron Baiman, Steve Freeman, Richard Hayes Philips, the EON film
group, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Conyers, John Boniface, and a precious
handful of unsung, hard core activists have kept the story alive."
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1995
Archives of articles by all the above individuals from 2000 to 2006 are available at FreePress.org. Access to investigations and demonstrations conducted around the country illustrating the massive security threats and inadequacies posed by electronic voting machines (especially Diebold machines) is available at Black Box Voting.
Our mainstream media have failed to cover the disenfranchisement and fraud that have plagued our elections, just as they have failed to cover -- and have acted as megaphones and stenographers for -- the lies, omissions and distortions that led us into the Iraq war.
In October, 2003 the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) reported that many citizens had one to three major misperceptions about the Iraq war, and that these misperceptions were in part a function of where they got their "news." PIPA also found that 80% of their combined sample of 3300 individuals got most their news from the broadcast media as opposed to the print media; that only 3% got their news from NPR or PBS; and that there were wide variations in the number of misconceptions held by individuals based upon the commercial network they got their news from.
Writing at the time, Jim Lobe reported "PIPA found that 48 percent of the public believe US troops found evidence of close pre-war links between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group; 22 percent thought troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq; and 25 percent believed that world public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq."
Lobe also commented that "for each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far. Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between." http://www.alternet.org/story/16892/
This very same pattern of misconceptions repeats itself in terms of whether individuals view the 2004 election as stolen. On May 15, 2006, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Free Press posted an article containing the following three paragraphs:
"A recent OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll of Pennsylvania residents, found that "39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. But let's look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary source of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically."
Here, from that poll, are the stations listed as first choice by respondents and the percentage of respondents who thought the election was stolen: CNN 70%; MSNBC 65%; CBS 64%; ABC 56%; Other 56%; NBC 49%; FOX 0.5%.
With 99% of Fox viewers believing that the election was "legitimate," only
the constant propaganda of Rupert Murdoch's disinformation campaign stands in
the way of a majority of Americans coming to grips with the reality of two
consecutive stolen elections."
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1964
Here's hoping that Kennedy, Rolling Stone, and all the other individuals that have been working so tirelessly to address disenfranchisement and election fraud have finally prodded the mainstream media and especially Fox into vigorous and accurate reporting.
Joseph Miller
Dept. of Psychology
51 Madeleva
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
St. Joe Valley Greens, South Bend, IN