At this moment of triumph, with the Georgia Senate Race and a Democratic SuperMajority hanging in the balance, it would be a huge mistake to forget the lessons of 2000 Florida and 2004 Ohio.
Saxby Chambliss is the firewall for the Republicans, which means, imho, that all options are on the table, with option numero uno being criminal fraud.
And the signs are all bad.
Yesterday, I posted GA Senate: Martin v. Chambliss. Count the Votes! (hereinafter, Part I).
Please check it out and then follow me down for Part II.
(CORRECTION -- 6:55 pm ET)
Many thanks to all who have recommended this diary and posted comments. The subject of this diary is a serious matter. Unfortunately, I made a significant mistake in my statistical analysis, set forth below. This mistake was pointed out by user ddarko - here.
As ddarko correctly points out, The Georgia Secretary of State pdf table from which I pulled 2004 "registered" voters data actually used the strange and heretofore unknown (to me) category "active" voters. This mistake in turn rendered inaccurate all the specific percentages and all the comparisons of 2004 v. 2008, as set in the first two paragrphs below.
My sincere apologies to everyone for these material inaccuracies.
Because I am exhausted and have to head out for home, I cannot undertake at this point to rethink all the specific analyses, recalulate new "apple to apple" percentages, and otherwise clean up this mistake, other than to identify it out by means of this correction and clarification.
I do want to add, however, as stated in my reply to ddarko's comment:
Regardless, setting the specifics of the statistical analysis aside for a moment, the basic premise and the concerns expressed are still completely valid and I will stand by the diary in those regards; as well as the previous diary, "Part I" - here.
Once again, many thanks to all and my apologies for the mistake.
First, here is a quick bit of statistical and historical analysis. In 2004, Georgia had 4,248,802 registered voters total, of whom 1,914,254 / 58 percent voted for Bush and 1,366,149 / 41 percent voted for Kerry. Link The 2004 turnout rate was 77.32 percent, with African American voters representing 26.26 percent of the total and turning out at 73.79 percent. Warning pdf Link .
By 2008, the registered voters had increased a dramatic 26.19 percent to 5,755,750 registered voters total, with African American voters represented 29.89 percent of the total. Link.
In Georgia's 2008 early voting, according to the Wall Street Journal:
A record 1.99 million people, or 36% of Georgia's registered electorate, voted during the 45-day-period set aside for early voting, according to statistics from the Georgia Secretary of State's office. That is more than 60% of the 3.28 million total voters in the 2004 presidential election, and far more than the number that voted early that year.
As of this morning, the official website of the Georgia Secretary of State, Georgia Election Results section continues to have not been updated with the actual vote count on the Martin v. Chambliss race since early yesterday morning, which was the first and only update since sometime after 11:00 Tuesday night, and presently continues to reflect the following:
96% of precincts reporting
Saxby Chambliss Republican 1,838,908 49.9%
Jim Martin Democratic 1,721,098 46.7%
Allen Buckley Libertarian 126,003 3.4%
Totals 3,686,009
So, if these numbers are to be believed, the total turnout was supposedly only 405,596 higher than in 2004, despite 1,507,948 new registered voters and overwhelmingly hugh turnout for the early voting period; and that the turnout percentage has plummeted to only 64.04 percent, an amazing 13.28 percent less than 2004.
Update/Correction -- approx 1:15 pm ET: A commenter correctly pointed out an error on the 2008 turnout percentages. Rather than 64.04 percent, yielding a decrease from 2004 of 13.28 percent, as set out in the above paragraph, the correct numbers are 66.43 and 11.36. Sorry about that.
Sorry, but this very obviously Makes.No.Sense.Whatsoever.
In Part I, two articles were linked from the AP and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which contain point-blank statements that there were hundreds of thousands of uncounted early votes as of Tuesday night.
Here is another, from WSB-TV, which is the Atlanta ABC affiliate:
Fulton and Gwinnett Counties failed to include any advance votes in their election totals by 11 p.m. Tuesday night.
Officials at the Secretary of States office confirmed to WSB-TV Channel 2 that the votes were not being included in early returns.
Up to two million votes may be going uncounted.
"Something's really wrong out there," said WSB-TV political analyst Matt Towery.
Here is a follow-up article yesterday from the AP:
A record 2 million Georgians cast their ballots early, more than a third of the state's registered voters. Many counties were slow in tallying and reporting both early in-person and absentee mail-in votes. Each county counts its votes differently, but some bigger counties waited to tally their early voting figures until they racked up the rest of the votes.
Almost 600,000 voters cast early ballots in the big metro Atlanta counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett. Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, had about 40,000 of those votes still to count, as did Cobb. Gwinnett County had as many as 20,000 more ballots to count. DeKalb finished counties its ballots early Wednesday.
The inescapable conclusion is that something is very, very wrong here and the question is what needs to be done to address it.
Let's get to work.