Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

Greg Palast: Liberal Whites Blinded

Liberal Whites are, as I write this, doing all they can do to prop up the idea that massive voter fraud against black voters was responsible for Kerry's loss. While I'm confident that black voters and democrats in general got the short end of the ballot, the sheer size of the electorate tells me that something else is responsible for Bush's victory. Over at Greg Palast's website Mr. Palast wants us to believe that exit polls are accurate.

For the uninitiated, exit polls are when some organization has someone stand outside a voting spot and asks voters exiting the poll who they voted for and they record the answers. Now in order for an exit poll to be 100% accurate, there would have to be a polster at each and every voting station.

There is not.

Each and every person would have to be asked and would have to answer truthfully.

They do not ask all persons and there is no way to guarantee that a person has answered truthfully.

So given the above, how can Greg Palast make the claim that exit polls are 100% accurate? That is simply untrue. When David Dinkins faced Guiliani for the mayorship of NYC, exit polls had Dinkins ahead of Guilinani. Dinkins lost. Why were the exit polls wrong? Because people lied. The general explanation given was that the voter being asked did not want to seem "racist" and /or possibly endure more questioning. So they lied.

How many people lied this time around?

During the primaries I studied the returns for Iowa or somewhere because I wanted to know how many black people voted, who they voted for and their demographics. Well the return listed 2 black voters which elsewhere in the document listed 4. OK. Catch my drift?


Let's look at something else Greg Palast wrote:

New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'

Ummm.. Hispanics broke 35% for Bush in the 2000 election and are expected to have gone UP this election. Do h ow does that fit with the assertion that "hispanics" are "democratic turf?


Over at TomPain.com They assert that the Cleveland Plain Dealer reporst 247,672 votes were not counted (96,672 voided, 155,000 provisional). Now I'd be interested in what those ballots were because the people ought to know. But lets "do the math":

Kerry supposedly lost Ohio by 136,483 votes. That would mean that out of the 155,000 provisional ballots, 88% of them would have to be Kerry votes.

Long shot.

Let's look at that Cleveland report: It says:

For the provisional ballots to make a difference in this year's presidential race, virtually all of them would have to be Kerry votes - and all of them would have to count. About 85,000 of these ballots, or more than half, were cast in the 15 counties where Kerry won a majority of the votes, according to unofficial results compiled by the secretary of state.

50% of the provisional ballot were cast in places where Kerry lost. so we could say that 50% of those could be Bush ballots. that's 35,000 ballots that would put the total number of Kerry ballots at under the 136,483 that Kerry would have needed to tie Bush in Ohio. But since Bush would have taken some of those 81,000, his lead would be larger than the 136,483 that he has now without the provisionals being added.

In other words white liberals are playing us for GOT-DAMN fools, knowing we will be too lazy to do the math for ourselves.

Let's look at the electoral numbers for a sec.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2004_ELECTIONRESULTS_GRAPHIC/
Looking at the counties in Ohio you see that Bush averaged a 58.1% victory over Kerry in some places. Overall 70 counties had Bush up over 51%. Where Bush lost he lost big which given the segregated nature of Ohio residences means that these were Democratic areas. So even If there was voter fraud in these districts I don't see how it affected the overall outcome given they went to Kerry by a huge margin.
In 40 Districts (50%) Bush cleaned Kerry's Clock getting returns of over 60%. Believe me, the Kerry campaign did the math and regardless to what Greg Palast wants you to believe Kerry lost Ohio.