Talk:U.S. presidential election, 2004, vote count controversy

I have created this page and relocated material from the page that started out specifically on Diebold - the original article was far wider than just Diebold.


 * Yes, there are more issues than just Diebold and yes we need to describe all elements of the controversy. I thought results of the U.S. presidential election, 2004 was fine for that but maybe you're right, the controversy will in the long term need separate documentation from the actual official results.


 * However, none of the existing articles are actually *replaced* by this one, though it provides a place for some of what's in them to live instead of where they are:


 * The alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004 should really just report Bev Harris and blackboxvoting.org's allegations straight - including how they were arrived at which might require some more background here and there, but always linking off to an article. For instance the exit poll issue must be mentioned in a line like "Evidence from U.S. presidential election, 2004, exit polls suggests some tampering may have occured with that data, triggering concern than votes were tampered as well."  That sort of thing.

I have also removed some of the more speculative material which no supporting evidence was provided for and toned down some of the other statements.


 * Look, it's just impossible to attribute EVERY LINE of what's written to a source. There are LOTS of sources listed. Some speculations don't require evidence either - for instance, to say that a vulnerable computer system WAS LIKELY hacked is not even remotely controversial, even though it is speculative, because the payoff in this case for doing so is extremely high.  Any system that *CAN* be hacked *WILL* be hacked if what is at stake is the control of the USA and its vast arsenal and resources.  That kind of thing does not need "evidence it happened", only "evidence that it could easily happen"...  Let's not have a case of raising standard of evidence here.

As this page is work in progress for the moment I have left in a number of statements that really need supporting evidence added. I'll return later and rewrite if links havenlt been added. --Bob Burton 15:44, 11 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * OK, thanks. Working on it.  But what's really required is more people doing web searches and finding more on this critical issue, not more people trying to cut out fair statements that have already been reported in the press SOMEWHERE.

-- I just went and had a look to see what was happening on this topic at Wikipedia -- there is an extensive set of articles there at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_controversies_and_irregularities addressing the issue in more detail than is currently in D and with a significant number of contributors.

I don't think that the topic is so central to SourceWatch's purpose that there is a need to have two wikis working on exactly the same topic but with different contributors. Given that Wikipedia has more people up to speed on the issue and participating in the edits I suggest that it is more sensible to direct people there. That way quality of the article is likely to be better and SourceWatchns won't spend a lot of energy editing articles covering the same ground.--Bob Burton 21:01, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)