Election conspiracy theories persist

By JULIA MALONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  11/09/04

WASHINGTON ? Planning for President Bush's second term is well under way, but some disappointed supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry are not giving up ? at least not yet.

Fueled by skepticism about voting machinery and vivid memories of the election debacle of Florida four years ago, conspiracy theories are swirling around the Internet.
Activists are forming groups with names like stolenelection2004.com, and members of Ohio Recount 2004 are assembling to share their suspicions.

None of the conspiracy theorists has provided proof of widespread errors that might have changed the outcome of the election, which official tallies say Bush won with a 3.5 million popular vote margin and 286 electoral votes, 16 more than needed. Independent groups that monitored the voting found problems scattered around the country, but nothing decisive, and election officials have generally dismissed the Internet chatter.

Even so, Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan research group set up to study the nation's voting system, is not surprised that doubts are surfacing. After the 2000 election, he said, "any problem is going to get noticed, no matter how small."

Election Day shortcomings have provided plenty of fodder for "bloggers," Internet users who run opinion and discussion Web sites.

Among the glitches, a voting machine in Franklin County, Ohio, gave Bush more than 4,000 votes when only 638 votes were cast. The error was corrected after a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch called the county board of elections.

In North Carolina, an estimated 4,500 votes were lost because computer voting machines were allowed to exceed the capacity of their memory.

And a still-unknown number of voters around the country have complained about problems with touch-screen machines that appeared to record a different candidate from the one they chose.

Adding to the speculation are early exit polls that showed Kerry leading in states where he ultimately lost. While news organizations have discounted the polls as inaccurate, some with voting fraud suspicions question whether it was the ballot counts that were off.

The group Blackboxvoting.org, founded by Seattle computer programmer Bev Harris, claims to have documents proving fraud in last week's balloting. It also asks for donations to pursue the charge.

Another site, ustogether.org, uses charts of election data to suggest an anomaly, based on its conclusion that Democrats turned out in surprisingly large numbers for Bush in several Florida counties that used optical scan equipment, while voters in counties that used touch-screen equipment appeared to vote according to their party identification.

Still another site reports that Jeff Fisher, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Florida's Palm Beach County, has asked the FBI to investigate possible vote fraud there. Fisher, who did not immediately return a call seeking comment, lost by more than 111,000 votes to veteran Republican Rep. Mark Foley.

Many of the bloggers beseech Kerry to withdraw his concession and they criticize the mainstream media for failing to investigate.

"I am not surprised to hear that there are people who believe that Senator Kerry was robbed in 2004 the same way Vice President [Al] Gore was robbed in 2000," said Chapin of Electionline.org, but he added, "I have yet to see any evidence that bears that out."

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the nonpartisan tech group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has closely followed electronic voting errors, concurred that there were many problems.

Cohn said her group questions whether computerized machines malfunctioned and will seek legal authority to examine equipment in a handful of Ohio and Florida counties.

She cautioned, however, that she has no evidence of malicious intent and has not found errors large enough to change the outcome of the election. "We just need to sort out what the hard facts are," she said.

Internet activists such as Juliet Stewart of Cincinnati want more drastic action.

"We believe that John Kerry legally won Ohio," she said. However, she acknowledged that so far, the never-say-die Kerry supporters have been unable to energize even the Democratic Party.

The key to Bush's victory came the morning after the election, when Kerry advisers determined there would not be enough valid votes for their candidate among Ohio's 156,000 provisional ballots, which are still being sorted, to overcome Bush's apparent 136,000-vote lead. Provisional ballots, new this year, are given to voters who go to a polling place and find they aren't listed on the voter rolls. If it is later determined they should have been listed, their votes may be tallied.

Donald McTigue, a Democratic lawyer in Columbus helping oversee the aftermath of the Ohio elections, said he continues to work to ensure that all absentee and valid provisional ballots are counted. He said the results should be clear by early next week.

"Our purpose is to just make sure that all the questions are answered regarding credible problems," he said. "Thousands upon thousands of people worked tirelessly [in the Kerry campaign]. If nothing else we owe it to them to make sure that everything is straight up.