The problem in assessing what if any efforts to subvert the vote count on election night were made or planned and then aborted is that by definition any successes at hidden internal machine hijacking or secretly at the central counting node would be invisible to election guards or investigators unless they surround the voting station and/or relevant office suddenly with a battalion of police officers and detectives and shouting “Freeze! No one move!” go in and don’t allow anyone to move while they remove the machines and get trusted highly skilled code jockeys with a background in hacking to examine the evidence line by line to detect changes, which must be almost as hard as getting Microsoft to issue a new operating system which is wholly free of bugs.

If the exit polling didn’t jibe with the official count this would be a giveaway except that as we found in the post earlier the practice of the company in charge of exit polling has been adjusted to avoid the leaking of their tabulation early and according to this new policy they must therefore have waited for the official counts and then adjusted their exit polling numbers to fit.

In other words, if it’s done how are we to know? Only through exit polling showing a wide disconnect with official counting, and that’s been erased from the record. Anyhow in this case logic indicates that whatever was attempted was concealed in the landslide of non white votes which buried McCain and Palin in Obamamania.

Given the three Senate elections which have come down to a few hundred votes maybe we have implicit proof that machine hacking isn’t being done. In Alaska (still undecided whether longest serving Republican Senator in history and future jailbird Ted Stevens will make it in or not, many thousands of ballots still uncounted) and Minnesota (comedian Al Franken may make it if he can catch up 200 votes when the 2.9 million votes cast are all audited and recounted, though since Obama won in the state by 10 per cent he can already be said to have done rather poorly) and Georgia (aided by Obama workers Jim Martin awaits results of hotly contested run off in December 2nd as his opponent incumbent Saxby Chambliss is supported by a McCain speech scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday).

In Minnesota questions surfaced about some ballots that spent time riding around in an election official’s car, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence rising to the surface that actual hacking was attempted. The irony is that Franken was one of those busy earlier disparaging the very notion of voting machine manipulation as worth worrying about and here he is in a very tight race…

Here is one anti-Bush commentator expert in manipulative election tactics, author Glen Greenwald at Salon, who thought on Nov 5 that the polling results agreed too closely with official counts in the general election lineup to allow any thought of Republicans manipulating the machines behind the scenes. He gives a table showing that Obama came out ahead of polling. But it seems clear that he does not mean exit polling, which is the required indicator of fraud in the machine count. Polling before the election is just predictive polling which can’t prove very much.

In Ohio Obama won by 4.1% which was 1.6% better than the polls predicted. In Florida he won by 2.5% which is 0.7% better than the polls promised. In Pennsylvania he was 10.3% ahead which was 3.0% better than the polls.

In what is a key source for anyone alert to the potential in this arena – The Brad Blog – (which today notes that Stevens is still wining by three votes in Alaska) Brad Friedman notes, however, that Al Franken had a 12 point exit poll win, and a GOP (!) threat to sue if any results diverge too much from exit polls, according to one report.

In Alaska the mystery is that tens of thousands of voters seem to have vanished:

(Shannyn Moore, guest on Brad Blog) In Alaska, more people voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than for Sarah Palin on Tuesday despite an identical 61-36 margin of victory. Yes. Only four years ago 54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush, but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008.

Consider the most popular governor in history-and now the most polarizing-was on the Republican ticket. Consider the historic nature of this race; the first African American presidential candidate EVER! The second woman to ever make a presidential ticket; and she’s one of our own. Despite that, we’re supposed to believe that overall participation DECREASED by 11%. Not only that, but this historic election both nationally and for Alaska HAD THE LOWEST ALASKA TURNOUT FOR A PRESIDENTIAL RACE EVER!!! That makes sense. REALLY??? Something stinks.

Here is a story my brother sent me which may explain it, although I have not seen anything further to confirm and/or followed up:

Why the Republicans
backed off last night

Ohio Judge derails 2008 election fraud

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/472.html

A study of Oprah’s influence suggests that she gained about 1 million votes for Obama.

Without the economy tanking and the selection of Palin as VP candidate Obama would have lost, it appears.

From a comment on the NYT editorial above:

1647.November 05, 2008 5:07 pm

For those who insist that Obama eked out a narrow victory, consider the following. Bush’s average margin of victory in two popular elections for president was 1,234,082 votes. Obama’s margin of victory was approximately SIX TIMES that amount, 7,384,000. Bush’s widest margin of victory in the electoral college was 34 votes, in 2004. In 2000 he won by 5 (disputed) electoral votes. His average margin of victory was 19.5 electoral votes. If Obama wins North Carolina and McCain Missouri, Obama’s margin of victory will be 191 electoral votes, roughly ten times the size of Bush’s average electoral victory.
— K. Mims, Sacramento, CA