Marshall suggests 2004 election stolen

What happened to Josh Marshall? He's one of my favorite bloggers, but lately he's been sounding increasingly conspiracy-obsessed.

In late September, Marshall made the joke "Time to hit the Diebold panic button?" in this post on President Bush's low approval ratings. Even if he wasn't serious, the suggestion of conspiracies to rig elections using electronic voting machines was probably taken seriously by some of his readers.

Today, Marshall went much further, suggesting without any evidence that the 2004 presidential election was stolen:

Helping steal the 2004 election wasn't enough. Down by double digits and facing a career-ending election, Ken Blackwell accuses Ted Strickland of being pro-pedophile, possibly gay.

Blackwell's charges against Strickland are sleazy, but it's an even more serious allegation for Marshall to accuse someone of "[h]elping steal" a presidential election. Where did this come from? As far as I can tell from Google, Marshall's never mentioned Blackwell before.

Moreover, there's no evidence that the 2004 election was stolen. As I wrote last year, "Democrats even conceded that there was no evidence of fraud when releasing their report on irregularities in Ohio" and "Walter Mebane, a respected political scientist at Cornell who consulted on the DNC report, told the Washington Post that it is 'highly unlikely' that Kerry would have won Ohio no matter what."

Update 10/18 9:02 PM: To be clear, there are allegations that Blackwell acted in bad faith in his role as the chief election official in Ohio in 2004. But there is no credible evidence that he helped "steal" the election.

Comments

[Petey]

"it's an even more serious allegation for Marshall to accuse someone of "[h]elping steal" a presidential election. Where did this come from?"

There is quite a bit of decent evidence that Blackwell was involved in various hijinx to suppress the vote in Democratic precincts in '04.

Even if you don't accept the allegations of more serious fraud, Blackwell was pretty clearly performing his '04 election duties in extremely bad faith, much like Katherine Harris did in '00.

[Wickedpinto]

Marshall has been retarded by his own hatred for some time.

Sometimes, when he isn't talking about bush (hasn't happened in about year) he's quite bright and interesting, but when it comes to bush, he's putting on his bicycle helmet, riding a short bus and banging his head against the wall of the sanitarium until someon pays attention to him.

[Native Ohioan Living Abroad]

A credible hypothesis posited by someone who was no friend of Kerry and is no conspiracy theorist...

Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair (March 2005): "Ohio's Odd Numbers."

Check his Web site for the full text.

[ThePolishNizel]

Petey...What hijinks?

[Don Meaker]

Imagine, Katherine Harris certified the election the way the county election officials counted it.

The nerve of her!

The corruption in Florida just happened to occur in counties where the election officials were democrats. Just as the corruption in West Texas and Cooke County Illinois in 1960 occured in Democrat controlled counties.

Some day there will be an honest election, with voters having to provide ID. When that happens we will all be surprised how few Democrats are on the ground (and not under it).

[ian]

Only Democrats are ever the victim of election fraud. That's what the Democrats say, and this must be accurate because Democrats, in addition to being incorruptible, are just so darn honest. To put this another way, are they smoking crack?

Marshall is little more than a hack doing what his contributors tell him to do. He's full of shit, and quite thin-skinned as well.

[Michael Turner]

Hey, if you want to read that TPM prop wash don't complain because Marshall's an idiot. How else does one come up with his BS? I will not and cannot attribute it to some diabolical plot - he's just a fool made that way by an advanced case of BDS brought on by watching one defeat after another. Suggest you spend you time reading the white pages of the phone book. Much more interesting and far more truthful.

[Cover Me, Porkins]

If there was election fraud in Ohio it would have been in Cuyahoga County, and if so, Kerry benefited from most of it.

So there.

[Reid]

NOLA - I looked up Hitchens story. Interesting, but by no means dispositive. I respect Hitch, but this is mostly anecdotal and hearsay. Maybe enough to arouse one's curiosity but, not enough to allow one to go levying wild accusations of heinous crimes against presumed innocent people without inviting scorn and derision.

[DaveS]

Don Meaker,

Katherine Harris acted in bad faith not by certifying as counted, but by certifying on the date that was required of her by the state laws, and constitution (which gave the legislature the right to make the law that told her when to do it). Get it right, dude. :-)

It's amazing to me that there are still so many people who haven't yet bothered to look back and realize how silly all of those Harris accusations were. Don't get me wrong, she's a bit of a moron lately, but every complaint about her wrt to the 2000 election is based on misinformation or ignorance of the Florida laws.

[spacemonkey]

I think it's obvious who is behind the increase in conspiracy theories, yeah it's the government.

They are trying to make paranoidaly deluded look more paranoid and deluded than usual.

[Steven Jens]

To borrow a line from my brother: it's not a conspiracy -- that's just what they want you to believe!

[glenstein]

did malkin link here or what?

I suggest to some of you who doubt the possibility of election meddling in Ohio (perhaps this includes you, Brendan), that you look at John Conyers' report on the 04 election entitled "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong In Ohio". It has a lot on the so called hijinks that Blackwell himself was involved in.

But I will share one (of at least three of four) involving Blackwell...

Mr. Blackwell’s decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr. Blackwell’s decision departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidence that a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption at the polling places, and did not do so in other states.

[Portones]

Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania were all closer races than Ohio in the 2004 presidential election. However, Kerry won those states. Iowa and New Mexico were also closer than Ohio, and won by Bush.

I recall articles about suspicious ballots and counting in Madison, WI. Kerry would have needed 64,000 votes to switch in OH to win that state. Then Bush would only have needed 6,000 votes to switch in WI to still win overall.

Ohio was not the closest race. There was no one "key" state. Kerry lost because many saw him as a candidate who stood for very little, and would adopt about any position to win. If Democrats want to win, they need to get a better candidate out of their primaries. Gore and Kerry were both opportunistic loosers.

[ke_future]

Conyer is a partisan political hack. Isn't he the one that was holding "hearings" in the capital basement and insisted on being called "mr chariman"?

just saying that his report is far less than credible

[NorMan]

I too pulled a "Whaaa??" when I read that at Marshall's site last night. I never knew he was one of the guys advocating that the 2004 election was stolen. Yet he also commented on the fact that when you lose so many times in a row, you see a conspiracy behind everything. From another post of his:

"We don't know what will happen November 7th. Elections can turn dramatically in the final weeks. But unless something dramatic changes, it's going to be a really, really bad one for the GOP. Yet there are many Democrats who are convinced that Karl Rove has the matter all in hand and is just waiting to spring some trap.

Why do I raise this point? The last several years have taken a harsh toll on the country. But it's taken one on the psyche of Democrats too. Look over time and geography and you'll see a regular pattern. Those who are cut off from power and have the experience of repeated defeats began to believe that those who oppress them possess power and control over events all out of proportion to reality. It's the experience of being beaten repeatedly which can warp perceptions as much as winning too much."

So all those Rovian conspiracies are only in the minds of defeated Democrats and liberals? Naaahhhh, ya think? Yet at the same time as Marshall writes this, he apparently believes the 2004 election was stolen. Is he schizo or what?

[James Stephenson]

Didn't a pollster do a study of the last few 20 years of elections and come out saying that before the elections the Dems had a big lead in polls but seldom won with such a lead.

In most instances they were 5% off. For the Dems and Reps, which would be a 10 point swing. I am not sure if this is the true or not, but his data was compelling, I wish I could remember where I saw it.

The thing is in my opinion this is the one of the last chances that the Dems have to win the House for a while. Once the 2010 census is completed some blue states will again lose seats to the south. And it will continue to lose seats to the south, since the north is not having children. As a matter of fact, the Dems need to recognize the future and start planning for it.

[DLO]

Stolen elections: The obsession of those whose candidates are unelectable.

[Emilio Cerra]

If you think we've had a lot of conspiracy theories to date, imagine what will happen if by some miracle the republicans end up keeping their majorities this fall.

[JohnW]

The only people convicted for electoral fraud in the 2004 election were Democrats...

[Seth]

JohnW, untrue. Allen Raymond is currently serving time in a federal prison for jamming Democratic party phone banks in New Hampshire.

As for Cuyahoga county, the states major Democratic stronghold, lines were 8 times as long as any other county. Now it would be wrong to say that Blackwell stole the election, but he didn't go out of his way to ensure everyone who wanted to vote got the opportunity.

[enigma825]

Seth:
The County Clerk of Elections (Democrat for Cuyahoga CO) requests the number of voting machines he/she needs, and allocates them by precinct accordingly. Blackwell had NOTHING to do with the long lines.

[glenstein]

Brendan, as for the "key distinction", Marshall only said Blackwell "helped" steal this election, and the furthest reach of any real accusation on Josh Marshall's part is against Blackwell. I don't think Josh needs a proven nation wide conspiracy theory, he just needs that Blackwell had meddled with the Ohio election. I think the Conyers report does that.

On that note, none of you writing off Conyers for being a hack are really contributing much, and even if this partisan and dead end conclusion had truth to it, you are only convincing yourselves.

It would be better for those of you who disagree to show how with some substance that your assumption is true, rather than assume you are right because he's a 'hack' and expect that to be enough for the rest of us. But I have a feeling that any such good will would have been shown by now, as much of the above ought to go without saying.

[glenstein]

*Conyers report shows that, rather.

[Brendan Nyhan]

"Helping steal" implies the election was stolen (if someone said they helped steal a car, you would assume that the car was actually stolen). Marshall didn't write "helped try to steal."

[Jay]

A saying I heard years ago: "Conspiracy theories are the sophistication of the ignorant". I expect the number of conspiranoiacs to increase as the education system continues to decline.

[Charles George]

Blackwell's personal atacks are sleazy, but not abnormal for modern politics (What's up Lyndon Johnson?). More disturbing is the hackneyed attempt to dredge up and disqualify his opponent on technicalities.

As other's have mentioned he also aggresily purged democratic districts, and understaffed. He didn't steal the election, but he also didn't make it an easy or paticularly fair one. Those issues are well documented.

What's less documented is the statistical abnormalities. The statistical abnormalities aren't nearly enough to base a case off of, but they warrant further investigation. And if they pass that investigation they should be tossed in the rubbish bin (such as the rediculous "Call" argument presented in 9/11 conspiracies.

Even if 2004 had no fraud, even if 2006 has no fraud, the current technologies: centralized counting stations, Push screens, voting machines bootable from flash drives, voting machines being updated post sealing, leave elections extremely vulnerable to tampering.

[Mr Anon]

Helping steal the 2004 election wasn't enough. Down by double digits and facing a career-ending election, Ken Blackwell accuses Ted Strickland of being pro-pedophile, possibly gay .

-------------------------------

I can see why someone would accuse someone of being pro-pedophile.

But to accuse someone of being gay? I.e. think of the absurdity of accusing someone of being straight, or having a big nose, or...

[anonymous]

Just maybe he's looking at the statistics.

OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in probability study.

Defining the vote outcome probabilities of wrong-precinct voting has revealed, in a sample of 166,953 votes (1/34th of the Ohio vote), the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15% when the population is sorted by probable outcomes of wrong-precinct voting.

The Kerry to Bush 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen when the large sample is sorted by probability a Kerry wrong-precinct vote counts for Bush. When the same large voter sample is sorted by the probability Kerry votes count for third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal in both subsets.

Read the revised article with graphs of new findings:

Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html