Who Really Won?

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Irony Alert

US officials are questioning the vailidity of the election....


In the Ukraine:

The victory for the prime minister, by a margin of nearly 3 percentage points, that was given in official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places (exit polls) that gave the opposition as much as an 11-point lead. Opposition organizers pushed for protest and mass action.

The findings of the international election mission included abuse of state resources in favor of the prime minister; the addition of about 5 percent of new voters to the rolls on election day; pressure on students to vote for the state's choice; pressure on state workers to turn over absentee ballot forms for presumptive use by someone else; widespread abuse of absentee voters, including some who were bused from region to region; the blocking of poll workers; suspiciously, even fantastically, high turnouts in regions that supported the prime minister; inaccurate voter lists and overt bias of state-financed news media.


The difference between us and them? Fox news is not directly state financed, although I'm sure they get many tax breaks. And they didn't get the news that if exit polls and 'actual counts' diverge, you must blame the exit polls.