December 6, 2004

HOW THE FOXES GUARDING THE HEN HOUSE CONVINCED KERRY HE COULDN'T WIN
(5000 words)

By Claire W. Gilbert, Ph.D.,
Copyright 2004

This is written for the twenty million or so Americans and our international friends who are baffled by the re-election of George W. Bush. There are three sections, "Baffled Americans," "Snatching Defeat from Victory," and "The Hoodwink."

BAFFLED AMERICANS
A large swath of Americans continue to believe something is rotten about the recent Presidential election and were dumbfounded when Presidential Candidate John F. Kerry conceded the election to George W. Bush. Much of the rest of the world was startled, disappointed, and seriously concerned as well. Sadness, anger, bewilderment, depression, and confusion continued for days and longer. Even weeks after the concession, Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb said on radio that he remains stunned.

How did Kerry's concession happen when so many people believed that he won the election in Ohio and all over the U.S.? A month after the election, all of the votes are still NOT counted and certified in Ohio, the state that gave Bush the election and wrongly convinced Kerry he could not win!

When one begins to comprehend the frequency of consistent errors in voting that favored Bush all across America, the disenfranchisement of predominantly Democratic voters in Florida, Ohio, and New Mexico, the 3 millions vote lead of George Bush can also be considered a false result perceived as real. False because it does not reflect the will of the voters.

We found ourselves baffled because the spirit of the moment on November 2 was simply that Kerry was going to win. Four years ago, Vice President Al Gore conceded and then un-conceded to Bush in the 2000 Presidential Election. Kerry was reported to have said that he would not do that -- he'd fight if there was any doubt about the vote count.

People "knew" in their heart of hearts that Kerry could still gain the necessary electors when all the votes were counted. Legions were aware that the opposition would pull out all the stops to win, fairly or not. In the old days, election fraud was local, but today it exists on a national scale, which includes the cooperation of the Republican National Committee which received and acknowledged receipt of the "cage" [purge] lists from Florida, and then, upon questioning, provided different implausible reasons it was sent the list. Electronic voting machines and tabulators make it easy to change totals, despite the fact that many people are convinced this is not so.

Green Party Cobb and Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik have raised funds to finance their request for a recount of votes in Ohio because of hundreds of reported irregularities -- machines that added Bush votes; undersupply of voter machines in Democratic areas creating lines of four hours, eight hours, or more; people in Democratic areas being misdirected to polling places; registered voters names being removed from lists; ballots uncounted; and many other strategies to depress voting for Kerry.

Of course, votes that were never cast, ballots thrown out, and machines leaving no trails, cannot be counted, but if such disenfranchisement is extensive enough, it is possible to call for a re-vote altogether. There is such a suit pending. On the other hand, the exit polls showed (before they were tampered with) Kerry leading Bush.

I've been following Presidential elections since 1932 when I was four years old, and I've never seen anything like the strong public reaction on the part of the U.S. public and the international community in 2004.

In the weeks before the election, pollsters reported a neck and neck race more or less. As Election Day approached, the polls increasingly favored Kerry. On the eve of the election the feeling of victory was in the air for Kerry. Swing voters tend strongly to go for the challenger, and newly registered voters favored Kerry.

The media endorsement for Kerry was overwhelming. Bush's hometown paper endorsed Kerry but so did a large number of the most powerful newspapers in the U.S., including conservative and/or Republican newspapers, such as the Washington Post and several Florida newspapers. Across the country, newspapers which previously endorsed George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000, now endorsed Senator Kerry. The New Yorker Magazine, broke with their 80 year neutrality and endorsed Candidate Kerry at the same time strongly opposing Bush.

Musical celebrities became activists, performing large concerts in Kerry's support, in swing states especially. Leaders in the professions came out in large numbers for Kerry. Across the nation, there was a powerful "Anyone but Bush" movement. Green Party Cobb, in battleground states, told Green Party members to vote for Kerry rather than him.

On the afternoon of the election, the Bush people appeared depressed and the Kerry crowd were energized, according to press reports. Late polling of likely voters, and then the later early exit polling results showed a landslide for Kerry.

Exit polls are more accurate indicators of voter behavior than telephone surveys of "likely voters." The exit polls describe how people actually voted. Exit polling has been used successfully in the U.S. for decades and is used around the world to check on the accuracy of vote counts in elections where fairness is a question, which is currently the case in the Ukraine.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, the projections of exit polls have been right on the money, until some recent elections and the advent of electronic voting machines and tabulators.

On November 2, when the votes were counted and tabulated, the exit polls did not agree with the results, but unlike the Ukraine which took that as a sign that the results were fraudulent, our media networks their pollsters said the exit polls were wrong. So what did they do? They changed the exit poll numbers to agree with the voting numbers reported. They did this by saying they had improperly weighted different factors in reaching totals. But, Lordy, they've had many decades of successful experience and by now have their models so good that an election is overturned in the Ukraine based on polls.

Still, even if a poll was wrong in a few counties or even a state, to get all of them wrong for many states, all in the same direction, is impossible. Add to that, they were "wrong" for the Presidential candidate but they were "right"for other elective offices? Impossible. Something is sadly and extremely rotten here.

Vote tampering was predicted to happen. Yet, most of us assumed that there was just one problem and since it was so well known, it would be fixed. Surely, somebody would do something about it. Really?

Democratic Senator Bob Graham of Florida sponsored a bill which dealt with fixing the problem, but it never got onto the floor for a vote, blocked by Republicans who stymied it at every turn. And the poll watchers admit in retrospect that they looked in the wrong places for irregularities. Yet some poll watchers saw examples such as a heart-braking disenfranchisement as when a woman on chemotherapy and supported by a cane waited 2 hours and thirty minutes to vote. The poll watcher asked to have this woman moved to the front of the line then, and was told she had to wait her turn. Barely able to stand, the woman gave up and left. The refusal to let her vote right away violates disability provisions of the law and is also mean spirited.

Poll watchers looked at the precincts, but huge irregularities occurred out of their sight in summaries of precinct votes, "calculated" by electronic tabulators at remote locations. Data were fed by telephone lines to central tabulators, and the tabulations were done on PC’s. The vote totals in precincts could be correct, but the summary of the totals of precincts added votes for Bush and/or subtracted votes for Kerry. It's been publically demonstrated on television by Bev Harris of Black Box Voting that hacking into these PC's and changing the totals takes less than two minutes.

We have an insane system in the U.S. The election officials in charge of elections in states are often also campaign managers as well, such as in Florida and Ohio. In ALL other modern nations, these election officials are not permitted to take sides. To do so, invites corruption and lets the team owner be the umpire.

After the 2000 Election in which Bush "won" Florida and thereby won the Presidency, recounts of the Florida vote were performed by both news and academic research organizations, and in each case, no matter what method of counting votes, Gore won. These recounts have never been brought to the public's attention. Gore would have become the President of the United States if the vote counting had not been stopped by Katherine Harris, the Republican campaign manager of Florida. Today, Blackwell of Ohio is being called "the Katherine Harris of Ohio." The Florida story is very ugly. The Ohio story is even uglier. But you won’t read it in your corporate owned, monopolistic, Republican media.

Twenty percent of Americans believe the election was not fair. These tend to be Democrats. They also tend to be among the most informed of U.S. citizens. In general, Republicans think the election was fair.

SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM VICTORY
On the morning after the election, John Kerry snatched defeat from victory -- going down with no fight, like a rubber balloon out of which you let the air. Was he just too tired after the campaign to fight on? Some people thought conceding was the right thing to do -- not to make a ruckus like Al Gore finally did.

Those tens of millions of us that were stunned experienced a disjunction or split between reality -- the spirit of victory for Kerry -- and what we saw and heard on TV on November 3. Kerry won the election and we knew it in our bones. What took the wind out of Kerry's sails, leading him to concede to the real loser?

Our personal reality and that of the media didn’t jibe. It did not add up in our souls and minds, as well as in our bones, what we saw and heard on TV. Sometimes reality and make-believe get mixed up on TV as when the World Trade Center was being struck by aircraft, people turned on TV and wondered if it was just a fiction like King Kong. How do you know on TV what is real or what is not?

Some people believe there is one big reality for all, but specialists who study the nature of reality know it is consensual in most cases, particularly "social reality." This means, there is agreement among ordinary peers that something is real or not, such as "reindeers" and "unicorns." When there is universal agreement, individuals are not perplexed about the existence of an entity.

Americans who get their information from TV and radio (including NPR) and print mass media, are much more poorly informed than any other "modern" national group in the world. Within the U.S., those who get their news from Fox News are the least factually informed among all viewers.

After the election the media told us (as well as Kerry) that Bush was the winner of the election. But it was unknown who the winner really was. The votes are still not certified for Ohio, a month later! There is excellent reason to believe that the as yet uncounted votes (if they haven’t been shredded) will favor Kerry. Additionally, one out of fifty votes will be thrown out because they are unreadable because of the chads and these will be predominantly Democratic votes: Districts that used these antiquated and broken machines are heavily Democrat and -- in Ohio -- Black.

And we are being told we are paranoid. We are told "Get over it."

Millions of Kerry votes will never be counted. Greg Palast, whom Katherine Harris has denigrated, exposed the disenfranchisement of voters in Florida in 2000. Now, he wrote that already before the first vote was cast in 2004, one million votes were already lost for Kerry through a series of disenfranchisement schemes in various states, including but not limited to, purging voters from lists and innocent looking mistakes. But these "facts" were not innocent because they consistently favored Bush.

Note as very important: The odds of getting such a large number of mistakes to fall into only one direction is like tossing a coin 15 or 20 or more times and always coming up with heads. If the coin is true, getting the results to always fall in one direction impossible. (Try it.) Likewise the irregularities, with little exception if any, fall to Bush's favor. It is simply impossible without fixing the game. IT IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT FIXING THE GAME.

We are told the mistakes are insignificant numerically, that Bush still won. But we only know about the DISCOVERED "mistakes." What about all those that are not discovered?

Computer scientists warned us about the use of computers for casting and counting votes. They warned that both the software and firmware can be easily manipulated. Did you know that secret software (which are not verifiable) tabulate the votes of nearly 80% of all votes? This is a system that leaves no fingerprints. Experts say that our democracy has been outsourced to partisan corporations.

More millions of votes will never be counted because in a large number heavily Democratic precincts, especially in low income areas, there were not enough voting machines -- or in some cases even provisional ballots. Many voters could not wait four or more hours or more to vote. Others were lost when machines broke, losing the votes. In some places, machines did not register votes for Kerry but rather instead for another candidate, some fringe, but also many for George Bush. All of these mishaps went in one direction, to favor Bush by giving him votes or taking them from Kerry.

Critics dismiss these concerns as coming from "poor losers" or "it's sour grapes." (Was Kerry concerned with being a called a "poor loser"?) These days, true concerns for our our democracy (with almost no exception) are only expressed through alternative media such as the internet and Pacifica Radio. The large, corporate media will not touch the election issue.

But why did Kerry concede? Why? Why? Why? Theories fly around this subject -- he never intended to win; the stock market; or he wants to run again in four years. I think he wanted to win and really believed he lost.

If you were watching the TV until the bitter end and beyond, you saw Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards come out in the wee hours of November 3. You saw that he vowed all the votes would be counted, suggesting there would be no obvious winner for a while.

We heard the next morning that Kerry was going to concede and tens of millions of us were stunned. Concede Kerry did. Why?

Kerry said he was convinced there was no way he could win since the number of provisional ballots to be counted in Ohio were fewer than the votes he needed.

But Kerry was wrong. The Ohio numbers emanated from a crook, the Ohio Republican Bush Campaign Co-chair, Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell.

It should be noted that a concession has no legal standing. Ah, but it's significance cannot be overstated because "as a situation is defined as real, it becomes real in its consequences." That is an old truism from sociology, credited to William I. Thomas. It's been proven true over and over. (That's why experiments are performed "double-blind," so the beliefs of the experimenter cannot influence the outcomes.)

I think some of what we saw on TV on election night was to create a belief that would impact the majority of viewers including the politicians watching the screen, including John Kerry. I think it was a PSYCH-OP. PSYCH-OPs has "skills" needed to break the spirit of national leaders, by the way. You can destroy their leadership ability without killing them by creating a situation in which their influence is reduced in the eyes of their followers and, importantly, in their own eyes. I believe that PSYCH-OPS was used on election night/next morning right before our very eyes on TV for everyone to see and remember without knowing its significance.

Bear in mind, it's the TV networks which call the winner of Presidential Elections. In 2000, when Al Gore was neck and neck in Florida (the deciding state), George Bush's cousin got on Fox News and called the election for George W. Bush. That changed the destiny of America and the world. And remember, all impartial recounts (after Bush's inauguration) in Florida, by the press and by scientists found that Gore won the majority of votes in Florida.

Election night 2004, I was watching broadcast TV, changing channels occasionally to get different inputs but mostly staying with Dan Rather and CBS. Dan Rather was cautious in calling states for Kerry or Bush. As vote counts in a state seemed complete enough to any network for it to make a call, it was done. The candidates, themselves, were not to be seen on TV or even at their big celebration parties, which were going strong in headquarters of both parties, as reported.

At some point, Florida was called for Bush. No pundit on TV voiced a question about the accuracy of the call. Nobody really knew yet about the tens of thousands of irregularities which were to be testified to later, and "talked away" by Republicans and pundits or, more likely, not even mentioned. TV has a lockdown on such reporting. Yet, many voters' rights groups are keeping tabs.

The irregularities and cheating being widespread is not a conspiracy "theory." It's a conspiracy.

As the election night droned on, spirits damped down in the Kerry headquarters when Florida was "lost." This was mentioned more than once on TV. The stolen Florida victory may have set the tone for the drama to follow. The Bush party was reported to be high in spirits. Did they know the fix was in for Ohio, the final state to matter in the battle for the Electoral College vote?

Bits of hard evidence are emerging: Found and caught on camera in Volusia County, Florida, are the original, signed precinct totals that were thrown in the garbage to be shredded. False documents were given to an investigator. In addition, researchers who analyzed votes in precincts using electronic machines found an over-vote for Bush in comparison to those precincts that didn’t use them. After allowing for all kinds of variables, the differences remained. The discrepancies had one chance in 250,000,000 to have happened without cheating. Of course, you can always find a statistician that will disagree. Nevertheless, putting the finger on the weighing scale, that's Florida's "mandate" for Bush.

Ah, but then Ohio was also called for Bush, which now gave him the number of electoral votes he needed to win the election. Ohio was the last big cluster of electoral votes that Kerry also needed in order to be elected. Kerry didn't concede at that time, and it was rumored around on TV that the Bush people were very angry that Kerry didn't immediately concede. We waited and waited. And waited.

Then, in wee hours while I was getting bleary eyes watching TV in California, and the TV anchors and commentators were very tired, out comes a refreshed Karen Hughes, the "image-maker," communication strategist for Bush. She appeared on each TV network. If you know who she is, you know she is always casual looking, usually appearing in a blazer jacket of some kind with windblown hair. Ah, but now she was magically refreshed, meticulously groomed, and coiffed without a loose hair. Her makeup was very exacting. I noticed because she looked "different." She didn't look like a bedraggled campaigner who was up all night. Her persona was completely transformed. She was wearing as best I can recall a taffeta-like dress of black and white, tiny checkers, complete with a cloth flower on her lapel or shoulder made of the same fabric. It was reminiscent of styles worn a long time ago by "ladies."

Her manner of speaking exuded intimidating confidence, like so many Republican women speak. She said was convinced that Bush had been reelected. She said it was clear that even when all the provisional ballots would be counted there will not be enough votes for Kerry to win Ohio. In a condescending way, she said that Kerry perhaps "needed more time to reflect." She seemed to make sure that every channel carried what she had to say. Kerry could not have missed this if he was watching TV, nor could he have missed the following.

A while later, Andrew Card, Bush’s Chief of Staff, came out on TV with the same message: We are convinced that President Bush has been reelected. He said that Bush had a 140,000 vote lead and the Secretary of State (of Ohio, Blackwell), informed them that this margin is statistically impossible to surmount. Except this wasn't so.

There were various kinds of ballots outstanding -- more provisionals than reported plus absentee ballots plus tens of thousands of thrown out punched ballots that were not machine readable but can be read by hand, all told totally perhaps half of million were as yet uncounted votes. If Kerry conceded, which he did, these votes would never be counted unless someone interceded. Although other candidates have subsequently interceded, an Ohio judge ruled that the recount cannot be speeded up, so it appears that the votes may be counted too late to matter. Kerry’s concession was like folding a poker hand too soon with a pair of aces and a pair of kings because you though the other guy had a full house. Had you taken your next card, you would have had the winning hand. You folded too soon.

The PSYCH-OP game had to be to get Kerry to concede at once, before all the votes were counted. It wasn’t overly hard to break his spirit at that time. He was exhausted from the campaign trail and concerns for his family and that of John Edwards. His balloon was punctured with the announcements of losses of states which he thought he won because of polling results and because of the enthusiasm he had experienced everywhere. I can only imagine he did not have the vision of someone like Dennis Kucinich, who saw through the Bush Administration lies about Iraq before voting for giving authority to Bush to do whatever he wanted. Not seeing clearly through lies, it was easy in his tired state to believe what was said on TV about him not being able to win Ohio. Remember, what is believed as real becomes real in its consequences. I think he believed as real that he lost Ohio. TV said so.

Later on the morning of November 3, John Kerry called George Bush to congratulate him. Then, later, he came out and made a statement. Note his words, for they parroted those he heard earlier of Karen Hughes and Andrew Card, words which were said to emanate from the Ohio Secretary of State. Kerry said:

IT IS NOW CLEAR THAT EVEN WHEN ALL THE PROVISIONAL BALLOTS ARE COUNTED, THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH OUTSTANDING VOTES FOR US TO BE ABLE TO WIN OHIO AND THEREFORE WE CANNOT WIN THIS ELECTION.

He took THEIR word for it! Earlier estimates had put the number of uncounted provisional ballots in Ohio at a high enough level that counting them would make a difference in the outcome. Of course, there were more than uncounted ballots and also absentee and provisional ballots -- there were enough irregularities to warrant an investigation by the Government Accounting Office (which is commencing), based on tens of thousands of reports to it of disenfranchisement, irregularities, fraud, and so on. But the situation was set up to make Kerry's loss APPEAR real to him. The PSYCH-OPs worked.