Left: Bush at second debate, with bulge. 

This is from Dan Froomkin's account at washingtonpost.com of Charles Gibson's Good Morning America interview with Bush aired October 26th.:

"Brandishing a copy of the photo, Gibson asked: "Final question. What the hell was that on your back, in the first debate?"

Bush chuckled.  Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "

Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "

Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."
 

On November 8^th, updated thru November 11^th, an MSNBC news host, a respected and veteran journalist, reported what he called as a “blood curdling group of reports of voting irregularities and possible fraud” in the recent Presidential election.  You can view the 16-minute video from http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm. 

A new report  raises more questions concerning the vote result disparities in Florida reported by MSNBC.

Summary: Many Florida counties that were overwhelming Democratic by voter registration, up to 88%, wound up voting overwhelming for Bush, as much as 4-1.  The interesting thing is that this situation occurred selectively in counties with a certain type of vote-counting technology (optical scanning) provided by Diebold.  In the chart below, note how the Bush vote is much higher than expected, up to 200% more, only in the counties using these Diebold optical scanning devices.

Also of interest is an academic report which concludes that the discrepancy in Bush votes tallied v. sampled in exit polls is sizable and difficult to explain.  See, for example, the exit polling for Ohio reported late election night (third attachment) which put Kerry 4.2% ahead; the official vote count has Bush ahead 2.5%.  (Note, by the morning of November 3^rd, posted media exit polls had all been adjusted to reflect official vote counts.)  The tallied v. exit poll discrepancies for Bush in other states, for example, were 9.5% in New Hampshire, 6.5% in Pennsylvania, 5.5% in Minnesota, and 4.9% in Florida. Nationally, exit polls put Kerry 2% ahead, not 3% behind as totaled from the official vote counts.  This paper lists exit polling v. tallied results for several states, with sample sizes.

It provides some interesting background on exit polling data, including this quote from Republican pollster Dick Morris: “Exit polls are almost never wrong....  So reliable are the surverys that actually tap voters as the leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.”  And this interesting bit of history: “Last fall, international foundations sponsored an exit poll in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia during a parliamentary election.  On Election Day, the pollsters projected a victory for the main opposition party.  When the sitting government counted the votes, however, it announced that its own slate of candidates had won.  Supporters of the opposition stormed the Parliament, and the president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, resigned under pressure from the United States and Russia.”

In North Carolina, a study of November 2^nd election results find some strange anomalies comparing the absentee vote with the live results in various races. In most of these races the result were quite similar. In the governor's race, for example, there was only a 0.5% difference between the absentee and live results. But in the senatorial race the pro-GOP gap was six points higher in  the live results than in the absentee vote. And in the presidential race the difference was 9 points.

HOWEY POLITICAL REPORT – In North Carolina, election equipment counted straight party votes for Democratic candidates as Libertarian votes, in an error "that could affect election outcomes in as many" as 9 counties. Democrats discovered the error in Franklin County  on 11/9 after noticing a final tally they couldn't "decipher."

The reports above square with several other credible reports I have seen in news sources and from direct accounts by acquaintances watching the November 2^nd election of voting machines having Republican candidates selected by default, of significant discrepancies in voter count v. total presidential vote in individual precincts, and other problems. 

MSNBC, 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Nov. 8, 8 PM ET

EXCERPTS: “There is a small but blood curdling group of reports of voting irregularities and possible fraud. . . . In Dixie County [Florida], 77.5 percent registered Democrats, Bush 4,433, Kerry 1,959.  Lafayette County, 83 percent Democratic, Bush, 2,460.  Kerry, 845. . .  Five examples in 29 counties [in Florida] with decided Democratic margins that suddenly voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Bush. 

The 29 counties in which that happened were among the 52 in the state that tallied their votes using paper ballots that were optically scanned by machines produced by the Diebold Corporation, the Sequoia Company or Elections Systems and Software. . . . In Florida counties where optical scanning of paper ballots was not used, no such violent swings were reported  Counties with heavy Democratic registration voted Democratic, counties with heavy Republican registration voted Republican. . . .

Download full election irregularities overview (100k).

Prior content:

SEE: Trust or Hustle: The Bush Record

Download "Trust or Hustle"

Why did Bush pick Chalabi, a swindler on the lam, as his favorite Iraqi?

See material from 2000 on the Florida election