I hate to say it, but don’t forget that both Republicans and Democrats have cheated in the past. Bush won the popular vote by 3 million, but we can’t start from the assumption that “we like Kerry so he must have really won, but Bush stole 3 million votes”.
During the election season, some of the polls were lousy (like Zogby, as usual), but most of them were consistent. Bush was going to win by a few points, that was obvious. His approval rating was about 51%, and that’s what he got. John Kerry wasn’t popular enough to win. He never reached above 48% in the polls, not even after his convention. Bush got 51% after his convention (taking the average of the polls, that is).
Bush won, and it wasn’t as close as people were saying it was going to be. The media went on and on, “this is as close as it gets.” Well, not really. It’s all about money. They want people watching their news shows and what gets more ratings than a superclose race? They always say stuff like this.
“If only 70,000 Bush voters switched to Kerry in Ohio, Kerry would’ve won!”
This is spin to emphasize how close the race was. As if it’s easy to get 70,000 Bush voters to change their minds? Just try it. I know a lot of Bush voters, and I couldn’t get a single one to change their minds, let alone 70,000. If you’re a Kerry voter, do you think someone could change your mind? It would be easier to find 140,000 more undecideds and get them to vote Kerry.
Even if he did that, though, Kerry still would not have won. Remember, Ohio got called because Bush won by a substantial margin. Bush won Ohio by more votes than JFK won the entire USA against Nixon in 1960. If Kerry got 140,000 more votes, it would be close, we would be in Recount Hell right now, and then you’d get to see that Army of Lawyers. shudder
Face it, Bush didn’t win because there were a bunch of Republican Cheaters and absolutely no Democrat Cheaters. He won because a majority of people approved of his job or didn’t like Kerry. All you hear in the media is about how much people hate Bush, but remember that’s what gets the ratings. If you put a bunch of people on saying “Bush is alright, I’m not a big Kerry fan” = no ratings. You get ratings from a bunch of people saying Bush is Hitler.
Paper ballots aren’t that great. In the days of all paper ballots, there was a lot more cheating than there is today. Electronic voting machines are not necessarily bad, they don’t necessarily get hacked–even if you don’t like the outcome. Remember, something a lot more important than the president is determined by machines like these: $$$. All of your credit cards, all of your ATMs, your back accounts are all electronic. Same goes for the other 300,000,000 Americans. They still get my balance correct down to the penny every time, despite the billions of transactions that take place every day. Somehow I doubt my bank would let me punch chads to keep account of my balance. “Whoops, looks like the million chad is a little pregnant, maybe I’m short a million dollars, maybe I’m bankrupt?” (Actually I kind of like the sound of that.)
The future of voting is electronic machines, there’s no question about it.
Remember the exit polls done by the end of the day confirm what happened. The early exit polls had Kerry ahead, but they had the electorate as 58% women and 42% men. (Women vote more for Kerry.) This is not as bad a screw-up as we’ve had in the past. The early exit polls for the 2000 election had similar messed-up results, so they pulled the plug to avoid bad publicity.
The later exit polls had 52% women and 48% men. They had 37% Republicans and 37% Democrats, with the rest Independents. the Independents were split 49% Kerry 48% Bush.
The difference came in the loyalty along party lines–twice as many Democrats voted Bush than Republicans voted Kerry (11%, 6%). No surprise there, Bush had his base pretty solid all the way through, while Kerry ticked off a number of moderate Democrats by bashing the war (the Iraq war didn’t get favored 3-1 in the beginning without a lot of Democrats’ support), and a lot of southern democrats have always voted Republican anyway.