Moonbats: "Bush didn't win FL in 2004!"

A "nonpartisan, nonprofit" group called BlackBoxVoting.org is questioning the election results on 2004, but not like the other moonbats out there. See, they're not questioning Ohio's votes, but Florida's votes. It seems that a 381,000 vote margin is a bit too razor thin for their liking. From the AP:

An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.

Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.

It's to be expected that the manufacturers would dispute the findings. However, it should be telling that the hyperpartisan liberals who run the Palm Beach County elections board disagree with the assessment. Continuing:

Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida — and its 27 electoral votes — by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.

BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.

Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.

OK, my math is a little suspect, but I wuz edyookated reelie goode while I growed up: even in the unlikely event that Kerry won every damned one of those votes, that's only 100,000 (or, if you count the 70,000 "stuck cards" as separate from the 100k logged errors, a total of 170,000) votes. So 381,000 - 100,000 is 281,000 votes, Bush still ahead. Seeing this math, the "nonpartisan nonprofit" (and minority-owned, a factoid conspicuously (but I'm sure coincidentally) omitted from the AP article) group comes to the only logical conclusion that anyone else could possibly come to:

"I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," Harris added. "But with that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to."

Uh...right. No way of telling who the 51% of Americans and 3+ million more Bush voters really meant to vote for, huh? I've got a wacky and crazy conspiracy theory, too. Follow me for a second, people:

Maybe, just maybe, Bush got more people to actually vote for him than Kerry did! You know, in a state with a popular two-term Republican governor who is his brother, GOP controlled state House and Senate and entire cabinet, GOP controlled U.S. Congressional delegation, a Republican U.S. Senator (with the Democrat, Bill Nelson, very vulnerable this year), and a plethora (for those of you on the left, that means a whole bunch) of military bases chock full of predominantly Republican voters! I know, I know...that's just crazy talk!

So how do Palm Beach officials view the "nonpartisan, nonprofit" group's findings?

Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper procedures.

Gasp! How dare they blame these poor voters in Palm Beach County for getting it wrong! Sure, the blue-haired condo commandos can operate 57 bingo cards at the same time, but that kind of eye-hand coordination doesn't translate into intuitive operation of voting machines! What were they supposed to do if they had problems or questions, ask a poll worker or something?!? Oh...they were supposed to ask? Uh...yeah, well, I'm sure Halliburton had the machines rigged with oil money buying the election!

Damn...Florida was stolen! Two elections in a row! Why, it's an outrage that Babs Boxer burned her substantial Thann Franthithco political clout on Ohio instead of Florida! Recount, recount! Gore got more...oh, dammit, now I'm getting my stolen elections mixed up again!

For those of you on the left, the prior two paragraphs (and a decent chunk of the other aforementioned commentary) was sarcasm.