Presidential Elections

Bush stole the election in 2000 and probably stole the vote in pivotal Ohio in 2004 - - but he was President and not Kerry. (Maybe Senator Edwards not becoming VP was a blessing after all.) So many dirty tricks on either side! Read "The Selling of the President" series to find how candidates sow static and panic in other campaigns. My favorite was how Nixon would have dozens of pizzas delivered to HUmphrey press conferences just to make them seem disorganized. In 2008, with so many new voters out there, the word was spread that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday (the actual election day) and Democrats would have to wait till Wednesday (AFTER the real election day). All part of the US experience.

I think my feelings about George W. Bush's Presidency are pretty well-documented here but I'll try to respond here as objectively as I can. I think there were enough doubts planted in the minds of the voters in both 2000 and 2004 to make some of us wonder and when you couple all of the allegations of fraud and corruption with the fact that the Supreme Court intervened as they did and with the fact that Bush didn't win the popular vote and that it came down to a three-digit margin in one state, the claim that the elections had been "stolen" isn't all that far-fetched. The 2008 election, on the other hand, wasn't even close so as much as the President's detractors wish it were so I don't think there's any doubt he legitimately won. Annie

I don't think the vote fraud that happened in both of these elections made a difference as to the outcome.

Bush did not steal the election, but the democrats thought he did. Obama did not steal the election but people voted him in for the wrong reasons, i.e. other then loving his policies and wanting America to be a socialist state. I doubt that when Bush was running, that people cared for where he came from or said "I think Texans make better presidents so if the candidate does not come from Texas, I will not vote for him." I do think that they did make a larger effort to check for voter fraud and influence in Bush's case then Obama. I do think the media wanted Obama to be president and made sure the opponents were in a bad light. So in that regard, perhaps Obama stole the election because if the media had given fairness to both sides and there was not the "a black man will bring justice and be better then anyone else," that if Obama had won under those circumstance, it would have been a better victory. So I guess he did steal the election.

Simple answer: No. Every election has voting irregularities, valid votes that are not counted, and invalid votes that are counted. Then you have some people who cry voter intimidation if a police car is on the same street as a voting location, and others who think it's perfectly legitimate for uniformed black panthers to stand in front of a door, carrying weapons, and shouting racial slurs at people going their to vote. The closer the election is, the bigger a deal people make of such things. in 2008 and 2004, the elections weren't too close so the issues were largely ignored. People figured that even if everything was perfect, and it never is, that it wouldn't have been enough to sway the final winner. 2000 was a huge issue for several reasons. First, Gore won the popular vote. Second, Florida was declared a win for Gore with only a fraction of the votes counted and voting booths still open in the panhandle which is a different timezone than the rest of the state. Third, the vote was close and the recount bit was a disaster. The close race triggered an automatic recount in Florida when Bush won. That recount showed Bush as the winner a second time. Then, per Florida state rules, Gore was able to ask for a recount ONLY in the 4 most heavily democrat counties in the state. The counts were completed in all but one of the counties and Bush was still the winner. The supreme court determined the partial count was unconstitutional. Gore then demanded a third statewide recount. That was shut down by the supreme court and Bush was declared the winner. Now it should have ended there, but every issue in the state was put under a microscope. People even complained over a supposedly confusing ballot in Palm Beach County where some old folks claimed they were too stupid to check the box next to Gore and instead checked Buchanan. They called it a republican conspiracy even though a democrat had created the ballot and it had been approved by both republicans AND democrats. The funny thing is, the Miami Herald and a few other newspapers got together to fund a massive statewide recount deal months after the election. They used four different standards as the method of counting votes was questionable with punchcard votes. Under their recount Bush won on 3 of the 4 methods. Oddly enough, the only method Bush lost by was the one he himself had wanted to use where only votes with a clear indication of who the person was voting for was present. Under the method Gore wanted, where every ballot with any hint of a vote was counted, Gore lost by the largest margin.

Stole the election? We live in a democracy, swing votes count and swing states determine who wins.