We may have seen the first black box stolen election

Grounds for further research--noticed on electoral-vote.com today [link.]

Various people sent me mail saying that it is awfully fishy that the exit polls and final results were substantially different in some places. I hope someone will follow this up and actually do a careful analysis. Does anyone know of a Website containing all the exit poll data? If we go to computerized voting without a paper trail and the machines can be set up to cheat, that is the end of our democracy. Switching 5 votes per machine is probably all it would take to throw an election and nobody would ever see it unless someone compares the computer totals and exit polls. I am still very concerned about the remark of Walden O'Dell a Republican fund raiser and CEO of Diebold, which makes voting machines saying he would deliver Ohio for President Bush. Someone (not me) should look into this carefully. The major newspapers actually recounted all the votes in Florida last time. Maybe this year's project should be looking at the exit polls. If there are descrepancies between the exit polls and the final results in touch-screen counties but not in paper-ballot counties, that would be a signal. At the very least it could be a good masters thesis for a political science student. The Open voting consortium is a group addressing the subject of verifiable voting.

Until proven otherwise, I have to assume that the election results do reflect the views of the American people. It does us no good to assume that the majority are with us when it is obvious that they are not. We may style ourselves the 'reality-based' community, but that means we really have to face the fact that we have a lot of work to do.

I am going to read over the Republican Party 2004 platform and see what a majority of Americans apparently want. I want to see how Republicans frame issues morally (if indeed they do.) I do not think that we Democrats will win by being imitation or pseudo-Republicans; but we certainly won't win be merely being anti-Republicans.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)