A Brief History of Election Fraud

As evidence suggests there�s a chance that the GOP/Bush Administration may have rigged this election. However, election fraud is hardly a new concept, pre-dating 2000 in our short memories by nearly 150 years.

Civil War/Reconstruction Era:*

(If that link doesn't work, try this one: theunjustmedia.com...)

President Lincoln used a tactic of furloughing registered Republican soldiers while keeping Democrat ones in the field on election day. He put federal soldiers at the polls, "Under the protection of Federal bayonets, New York went Republican by seven thousand votes in 1864�, says Lincoln Biographer David Donald.

During reconstruction, millions of southern white men were disenfranchised. White men could not vote if they participated in the war in any way - which includes giving food and clothing to Confederates. All black slaves were registered to vote Republican. By 1868, 10 of 14 southern Senators were Republican and the majority of other high ranking government officials were northern Republicans.

Essentially, the GOP was borne in election fraud and voter disenfranchising .

But to give credit where credit is due, the Democrats have a history of this as well.

The 1960 election:

Most of you know what happened during this election, I�ll just throw some numbers out. In the deciding state of Illinois JFK beat Nixon by only 9000 votes. This result was as hotly contested as Ohio is or Florida was due to reasons I�ll give later. Texas went Kennedy by merely 46000 votes. The state of California switched from Kennedy to Nixon after absentee ballots had been counted. Kennedy won the popular vote by a mere 120,000 votes. Much, much closer than this election. That evidence would suggest that the country was more divided then, more than now.

Where does election fraud come into play?

New York Herald-Tribune writer, Earl Mazo:
In Texas, Mazo alleged that:
Democratic leaders bought hundreds of poll-tax certificates and gave them to poor Mexican-Americans who might not otherwise vote.
Voting machines were fixed. In one San Antonio precinct, a machine didn't record votes for Nixon.
People voted illegally. One young girl said her father was sick and voted for him.
In Republican districts, officials strictly enforced rules about how ballots must be marked, voiding many of them. In nearby Democratic districts, officials were more lax.
Tabulators were guilty of what we might call "fuzzy math." In Fannin County, for example, 6,138 votes were cast when only 4,895 people were on the rolls.

In Cook County Ill., Mazo alleged that:
"Ghosting" occurred. A man who had died, and his son who had moved away, both voted in Ward 4, Precinct 31.
A doctor claimed that he was told his parents had voted, even though one was deceased and the other hadn't voted in 10 years.
More fuzzy math. In Ward 27, Precinct 27, 397 votes were recorded from 376 voters.
Interpreters who accompanied Spanish-speaking voters instructed them, "Vote straight Democratic, that's all."
A precinct captain in Ward 4, Precinct 47 voted twice.
After someone left a voting booth without voting, an election judge entered the booth and pulled the lever for the Democratic ticket.
In Ward 5, Precinct 22, a voter stuffed six ballots in the ballot box.

Mayor Richard Daly in Chicago had a long history of vote tampering, those 9000 votes could easily have been made up by nefarious tactics.

I know you�re thinking: �what does it matter, this is 2004�? For some reason we don�t learn from the past. What�s happening in 2004 has happened in the US before, and many times. Now people are shocked and outraged? Now we think it�s the greatest conspiracy to happen to the nation? We shouldn�t forget history only to be shocked when it repeats itself.




*The Author of that piece, Thomas DiLorenzo has a lot of interesting stuff to say about Lincoln.
EDIT: Grammar.





[edit on (11/10/0404 by PistolPete]