Examining the results of this election reveals some striking details that should make everyone who opposed Bush very concerned. In 2000 Al Gore received 51.00 million votes, in 2004 Kerry only received 55.7 million. The 2.5 million Nader voters who left him did not simply evaporate. Nader supporters are intelligent progressives who oppose corporate rule and the two-party system, but knowing the stakes this time around, it was very predictable they would abandon him. This 2.5 million went to John Kerry. Exit polls show that Kerry also picked up a small 1 in 10 fraction of 2000 Bush voters, meanwhile Bush picked up the same amount of the 2000 Gore supporters this time around, making this issue a wash. With these facts, namely the 2.5 million Nader supporters going to the side of the Democrats, Kerry already had 53.5 million votes solidified. The assertion that 2.5 million voters who voted for a third party in 2000 went to Kerry in 2004 is probably actually an understatement. A CNN exit poll showed that out of the minority of 3.87 million people who voted for any third party in 2000, 71% voted for Kerry this time around. That equals to about 2.75 million voters. So again, adding this figure to Gore’s total of 51.00 million in 2000 shows that Kerry would have had 53.5 – 53.75 million votes in this election regardless of any new voter support. Therefore, according to the official results, the Kerry campaign was only able to capture no more than 2 million new voters to get him to his total of 55.7 million this past election.

On the other hand, President Bush received only 50.45 million votes in 2000, but now the official results show him having 59.3 million votes. That’s nearly 9 million new voters that turned out for him. Very impressive isn’t it? Remember listening to all the pundits talking about how both sides are planning to register new voters? Remember the hundreds of thousands of new registrations in urban areas in swing states that were overwhelmingly concentrated in Democratic strongholds. This was a well-documented issue and a cause for concern for the Republicans who consequently insisted on challenging voters in urban minority districts. The exit polls didn’t exactly show a Kerry landslide among new voters, but they did show him with a comfortable 54-45 majority among those who did not vote in 2000.

Wait a minute, how can all of this add up? Pre-election news stories about voter registrations seem to favor Kerry by extreme margins, exit polls of new voters show Kerry winning with a moderate but solid majority, the cultural movement of “Anyone-But-Bush” that included the rise of MoveOn.org and fan base around Michael Moore made it pretty predictable that there would be a lot of new voters out there casting their ballots to get rid of Bush. Heck, the very fact that an election for an incumbent president was predicted to have strong turnout inherently favors the challenger. People do not wait in long lines and break their typical pattern of apathy only to vote to reaffirm what they have, they only vote when they feel a desperate need for change. This is a basic truism that applies to every situation and society involving electoral politics.

The fact of the matter is that despite these fundamental and reasonable expectations, the official returns showed that Bush got somewhere in the range of 9 million new voters turning out for him, meanwhile Kerry only got no more than 2 million. Aside from the analysis I’ve made, this is also a shock for another reason. The Republicans have always turned out their base in great numbers; this problem has only and always been with the Democrats. The official results are an utter shock and a slap in the face of this basic analysis. Without any additional information, it is up to each individual to draw conclusions. The two likely possibilities are either electoral fraud in electronic voting machines, or an unprecedently successful effort by Karl Rove to skim the Bible-belt for 9 million new non-voters to back George Bush along with a massive conspiracy by all exit pollsters to show a consensus of Kerry winning a small but considerable majority of previous non-voters.

7,355,296 (2004) - 5,963,657 (2000) = 1,392,639 new voters (99% precincts counted, no provisionals or absentees).
So, we have 1.39 million new voters, and Kerry loses by 376,923 votes? Thus, he lost an overwhelming majoirty of them, or he lost an overwhelming majority of regular voters - much, much more than Gore lost.

We have 77,197 fewer third party votes, but Kerry loses the vast majority of these?

Exit polling numbers show that Kerry had more Hispanic and Cuban support than Gore did, and Kerry lost?

Most exit polls in Florida showed Kerry leading, yet he loses by a massive 5%?

All this after an incredibly failed presidency?

Something looks very wrong in Florida...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/5/18466/2846

My analysis shows that 12 counties have reported votes for Presidential candidates in excess of reported turnout. Six have discrepancies of less than 1% of turnout (though still more than 0, obviously, and worrisome), and I'll focus for now on the other six:

* Glades: 2443 Bush/1718 Kerry/27 Other; Turnout 3446; 742 Discrepancy = 21.53% over turnout
* Highlands: 25874 Bush/15346 Kerry/271 Other; Turnout 33996; 7495 Discrepancy = 22.05% over turnout
* Miami-Dade: 358613 Bush/406099 Kerry/3841 Other; Turnout 716574; 51979 Discrepancy = 7.25% over turnout
* Osceola: 43108 Bush/38617 Kerry/453 Other; Turnout 63589; 18589 Discrepancy = 29.23% over turnout
* Palm Beach: 211894 Bush/327698 Kerry/3243 Other; 452061 Turnout; 90774 Discrepancy = 20.08% over turnout
* Volusia: 111544 Bush/115319 Kerry/1495 Other; 209052 Turnout; 19306 Discrepancy = 9.24% over turnout

The other six counties are:

* Collier: 83485 Bush/43713 Kerry/1154 Other; 127409 Turnout; 943 Discrepancy = 0.74% over turnout
* Lake: 74382 Bush/48216 Kerry/1340 Other; 123751 Turnout; 187 Discrepancy = 0.15% over turnout
* Leon: 51594 Bush/83830 Kerry/890 Other; 136229 Turnout; 85 Discrepancy = 0.06% over turnout
* Okaloosa: 69654 Bush/19358 Kerry/695 Other; 89485 Turnout; 222 Discrepancy = 0.25% over turnout
* Orange: 192390 Bush/193217 Kerry/2145 Other; 386104 Turnout; 1648 Discrepancy = 0.43% over turnout.

Additionally, as fellow dKos user DEA points out, Escambia county looks very strange, too. Turnout exceeded reported votes for president by 18193, 11.29% of turnout, making it a strong outlier.

Maryland e-voting controversy continues in presidential race
http://www.wtonline.com/news/1_1/daily_news/24878-1.html

A voter advocacy group monitoring the use of electronic voting machines in Maryland reports a number of software glitches occurred during yesterday’s presidential election, but state election officials said the allegations were baseless.

The software running on the touch-screen machines used across the state failed to record some votes correctly, jumped to other pages on the ballot without being prompted by the voter and inadvertently omitted some political races, according to TrueVoteMD, a nonpartisan citizens’ group focused on protecting voting integrity.

“We have received hundreds of calls from across the state,” said Bob Ferraro, the group’s co-director, said Tuesday afternoon.

In one precinct, Bush’s tally was supersized by a computer glitch
http://www.dispatch.com/election/election-president.php?story=dispatch/2004/11/05/20041105-A6-01.html

A computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct.

Franklin County’s unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry’s 260 votes in Precinct 1B, which votes at New Life Church on Stygler Road. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there.

The remaining 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president.

Damschroder said he received some calls yesterday from people who saw the error when reading the list of poll results on the election board’s Web site.

Should America Trust the Results of the Election?
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_10500.shtml

The Gahanna incident is just one confirmed mistake and was discovered by activists on the Internet. It was a fairly easy "glitch" to detect given the large discrepancy between the head count at the polling station and the votes for Bush. Given this voting error one must ask, how many more glitches occurred that only involved tens or hundreds of votes?

In Florida, exit polling data showed the opposite of the final results provided through the state. Even more surprising are the changes in votes per party that occurred on November 2nd. Counties using e-touch voting machines in Florida showed an average vote gain of 29% for Republicans and a 23.8% increase for Democrats. However the counties that used optical scan vote machines showed drastic differences. Republicans gained by 128.45% in counties using optical scan voting machines while Democrats had a -21% loss (yes, that is negative 21%). Some districts in Florida showed gains of over 400% while one, Liberty County, gained over 700% for Republicans.

Software flaw found in Florida vote machines
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/shared/news/politics/stories/11/05flavote.html

Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone ... down.

It turns out the software used in Broward County can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would ever be designed to vote backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. It had her on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software.

Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one. Final tallies were reached by cross-checking machine totals and officials are confident they are accurate.

Election problems due to a software glitch
http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=
18297&Section=Local

A systems software glitch in Craven County's electronic voting equipment is being blamed for a vote miscount that, when corrected, changed the outcome of at least one race in Tuesday's election.

Then, in the rush to make right the miscalculation that swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast, a human mistake further delayed accurate totals for the 40,534 who voted.

The Ohio Factor: Did Homeland Security and the FBI Interfere with the Vote Count?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111204I.shtml

In Warren County, Ohio election officials took a rather unprecedented action on November 2. They locked down the building where the votes were being tallied, blocking anyone from observing the vote counting process. County officials said they took the action in response to a terror threat warning from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. County Commissioner Pat South said they were told by an FBI agent that the county was facing a level 10 security threat on a scale of 1 to 10.

FBI denies warning officials of any special threat
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/10/loc_warrenvote10.html

"The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day," FBI spokesman Michael Brooks said.

Group Finds Voting Irregularities in South
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4598911,00.html

The group sent monitors Tuesday to 700 precincts in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Their goal was to observe such issues as the timely opening of polls, the presence of correct ballots and functioning machines, and the impartiality of elections officials.

Among their preliminary findings, the group listed a shortage of early voting locations in Duval County, Fla., the largest county in Florida in area and voting-age population, the failure of electronic voting machines in three South Carolina counties, and the loss of votes at a North Carolina precinct when too much information was stored on a computer unit.

``In one case, sprinklers came on while people were waiting to vote and the poll workers didn't know how to turn them off,'' said Alma Ayala, who monitored voting in St. Petersburg, Fla.