Were The 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked?
November 17th, 2006Many folks across the country, particularly those who have worked on the inside of the struggle to stop the use of electronic voting systems, held our collective breath as we watched election results on the evening of November 7th. I count myself among those who were sceptical that the Democrats could pull out a win. Greg Palast predicted that a 4.5 million-vote thumb had been placed upon the vote-tally scale.
Between the robo calls (here and here), rampant voting machine failures and other dirty tricks, I was inclined to take Karl Rove at his word that the Republicans would walk away being declared the winners yet again. So did he…
As a programmer, and recognizing that one number is as easy to program as the next, I found it compelling to believe that if the 2006 election were to be stolen, it would not matter how many votes the Dems managed to encourage out to the polls. But folks like Thom Hartmann simply insisted that if 4.5 million votes were going to be erased, we would simply have to come with 5 million votes.
Imagine the collective sigh of relief as the returns failed to disappoint the sceptics.
Did Democrats turn out such massive numbers that to steal sufficient votes would have been too obviouis? Jonathan Simon thinks so.
Jonathan Simon, who did a lot of the analysis of exit polls and statistics in 2004, was hard at work capturing the National Election Poll (NEP) data that night. Surprisingly, just like in 2004, he discovered that unadjusted NEP data was publicly revealed for a period of time before being “adjusted” later that night.
Simon and the Election Defense Alliance have published a report that has led to this article, claiming that they have demonstrated that an attempt was made to steal the November 2006 election. And TruthIsAll, a poster at Democratic Underground who likes to study such numbers, has performed this analysis.
Was the election closer than it might have been without some illicit help? Dunno… I really don’t. But I know that until we return to a point where we have verifiable elections that elicit trust and confidence in the process, and use equipment that can withstand scrutiny and recounts, such questions will linger with every future election.
Demand meaningful election reform!