Major fraud in Oklahoma?

[ClintCooper2003]

According to what I've been able to find, here is a comparison in turnout (among registered voters) for some Central Plains states:

South Dakota 2000: 68.4% 2004: 71.5%
Nebraska 2000: 64.23% 2004: 64.92%
Kansas 2000: 66.64 2004: 72.52%

OKLAHOMA 2000: 55.26 2004: 75.50%

Now remember, this isn't just a surge in the AMOUNT of voters. It's a surge in the percentage of registered voters getting out in voting. The general population has actually been decreasing in Oklahoma. They had one electoral vote taken away from them (8 in 2000, only 7 in 2004). The amount of registered voters went down from 2000 to 2004.

Doesn't this kind of look fishy when you compare it to the odd numbers that were posted by Tulsa World the night of the election? Also, Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in Oklahoma (UNLIKE Nebraska and Kansas) and John Kerry did not capture ONE COUNTY in Oklahoma. Not one.

[purduejake]

1. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole country was rigged.

[Kellis]

3. ha~

I *do* believe the whole country was rigged-lol.NOW...if we can just prove it!!

Good Work on the Oklahoma numbers CLintCooper2003-are there any officials that are looking into the election fraud story there?I mean-what a *perfect* place to pad his numbers right?

[sepia_steel]

2. "Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in Oklahoma"

Huh? I grew up there, and I highly doubt this (or at least that they vote Democrat NOW). I didn't bat an eye when Bush won OK. Whether he cheated there or not, I don't know, but I don't think he would have to cheat there. It WOULD be an inconspicuous spot to pad his margin, though.

edit: many of those Democrats would have to be people whose families before them were Democrat. Having lived there most of my life, I'm pretty confident they voted heavily in favor of the Liar. I've not seen numbers of registered Dems vs. Reps, but it honestly would have shocked the hell out of me if Bush didn't win OK. They may be registerd Dems but I can't fathom most of them voting for Kerry.

[RocktheStatusQuo]

4. .

[sepia_steel]

5. The only place

Kerry would have had a shot is in Tulsa or OKC. Oklahoma is nothing but small towns, and trust me, the small towns love Dubya.

[customerserviceguy]

13. And let's not forget

Oklahoma had a gay marriage ban on its ballot, that would have shaken them out of the fundie churches, big time.

[ClintCooper2003]

17. No, that's factually incorrect. North Dakota, Montana, and

10 other states had the same measure, and they didn't have the same surge.

[gaia_gardener]

41. But, OK is getting used to it

we had cockfighting on the ballot for the governor election had pretty large voter turnout then too. We're getting the point that voting is important. And our legislators are getting the point that they can greatly affect voter turnout through ballot iniatives. We also had a tobacco tax iniative, a lottery iniative and some other iniatives.

Plus, OK has a high number of unemployed people, it's easy to vote when you have all day. And our "connect the arrow" form of voting allows for a quick turnaround (the biggest bottleneck is getting your name found on the role).

My precinct didn't have that high a turnout - something like 50% when I was there at 5:30, but I suspect there were some absentee ballots since my precinct is made up largely of retirees.

[Razorback_Democrat]

34. Actually the only "blue" county there I believe was Sequoyah

county which is very rural, but very democratic.

[sepia_steel]

8. One link showing newer registration trends...

http://edmondsun.teamemagine.com/print.php?story_id=51394


And while that follows the prevailing trend of more than double Republican voters vs. Democrat voters, the Independent category also saw a significant increase since the first of the year, records from the Oklahoma County Election Board show.
Independents gained 685 new voters. This compares to 401 new Democrats and 2,324 new Republicans. This equals a 6.5 percent increase from the number of registered voters in 2002 in the city.
The city’s total voter registration now equals 56,270. Out of that number there are 34,077 Republicans and 15,425 Democrats. That is followed by 19 registered Libertarians, one Reform Party member and 6,748 voters registered as Independents. Two years ago, there were 52,840 registered voters and 48.2 percent turned out for the gubernatorial election.


(still looking for a better site to link to)

[sepia_steel]

11. Here's where OK stands now - Dems vs. Reps

http://student-voices.org/news/index.php3?NewsID=15456

Democrats are still the dominant party in the state with 1,102,423 registered voters, or 51 percent of registrations, according to state Election Board statistics.

Republicans, meanwhile, now can count 817,771 among their ranks, or 38 percent of state registered voters. Independents, whose ranks number 225,397 voters, comprise about 11 percent of all registrants, with 30,063 signing up this year.

The Libertarian Party numbers increased by 232 to 687 voters. The Reform Party numbers increased seven to 32 voters.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in 19 counties, including the state's two largest counties, Oklahoma and Tulsa. In Tulsa County GOP registrations account for 49.4 percent of the voters. In Oklahoma County, Republicans represent 44.2 percent of the rolls.

[arcos]

12. I think the Presidential race is irrelevant here...

I don't think Bush had any interest in cheating in OK, or that someone thinks he would have won by less than a landslide...

BUT... there was a close Senate race!

[Razorback_Democrat]

33. Only one congressional district Dem anymore but

statehouse is dem
governor is dem

but on the Prez level very red

vote padding might have happened there as no one would question Bush winning there,

[gaia_gardener]

39. The Democrats in OK are largely

"Dixiecrats". They'll vote democrat in local elections and sometimes state elections (but they're moving away from that), but they almost always go repub for national.

I do think there were some oddities. Latimer Co is home of the Yellow Dogs, they've never gone repub and always HEAVILY favor the dems, yet this year they went repub. That doesn't really add up.

[andino]

6. Bushs numbers really didn't matter here. What did matter was

the Senate race.....

Crazy Ass Coburn... I still don't see how he won it by the margin that he did. The polls had them tied.

[ClintCooper2003]

14. Do we see a trend here people? Both Coburn and Bush win by...

larger margins than expected...

[MarkusQ]

7. Tulsa World was a typo

The "Tulsa World" funny numbers were apparently from another race (on a proposition, IIRC). The current theory is that somebody did a cut-and-paste on the table to get the format & county names, and then forgot to change the numbers. So it looks like that's a "Doh!" instead of an "Ah ha!".

--MarkusQ

[sepia_steel]

9. Yep

Definitely a "D'oh"

[sepia_steel]

10. hilarious!

http://www.lsb.state.ok.us/house/news6956.html

Oklahoma’s Voting Laws Disenfranchise
Hundreds of Thousands of Voters, Legislator Points Out

In Pawnee County, the sheriff was elected July 27 solely by Democrats; since no Republican filed for the office, Pawnee County’s 3,163 Republicans were excluded in the primary from voting for sheriff, along with 670 Independent voters and one Libertarian. The same situation prevailed in neighboring Noble County, where the only candidates for sheriff were Democrats.


What the hell kind of law is that??? So glad I don't live there anymore...

[RoyGBiv]

19. Closed Primary

This is nothing new or unusual. Several states have the system. It has long been criticized, and rightfully so. However, there are arguments in favor of it as well, or there would be if our political primary process weren't hard-coded into our election laws now.

The real problem is the primary system being controlled almost entirely by the two major parties. The closed vs. open primaries are an artifact of that system's evolution.

OnEdit: FWIW, the harshest critics of closed primaries in OK are Republicans. The reason is that on the state level, until the last 10-20 years, Democrats were dominating, and the Republican political machinery was so inpet it couldn't make inroads into these local races where people vote for Democrats just because they are Democrats. What they want is to be able to influence the Democratic primary to fit their own agenda.

[gaia_gardener]

42. And this is why you see such large democrat

numbers there. My parents are definitely repubs, but the register democrat because only democrats run there. But they're DINOs - all of them. Any time a real democrat runs, the state party finds someone else to run against them, even if it means getting a repub to change his party affiliation.

My state legislator is repub and when I complained about something he told me that he didn't care about me because there were no democrat candidates running against him and I wouldn't get the chance to vote against him. ASSHOLE.

[ClintCooper2003]

16. Okay, I'll call them tomorrow morning and ask.

They must be phenomenally embarassed to have someone so thoroughly incompetent on their staff.

[ClintCooper2003]

15. REVISION!

Sorry folks, my numbers were a bit off. The turnout in 2004 was 68.20% of registered voters. I apologize. But that is still a 13% leap, which is anomalous.

[RoyGBiv]

18. Your numbers ...

Where are you getting them?

From the sources I've seen, turnout in 2000 was around 55%, and turnout in 2004 was around 59%. It's way too late/early, and I don't have the energy to look it up at the moment, but that's what I recall.

I'll await a response and then look this up tomorrow if there's an unexplained discrepancy. Just looking at it, it seems as though you're comparing % of voting age in 2000 to % of registered voters in 2004, but that's a guess.

As for some of the other comments in this thread, there are a number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings mentioned. Briefly, OKC and Tulsa (think oil) provide the worst chances for Democrats, i.e Dems have to overcome the urban vote. Rural areas in SE OK are more strongly Democratic than rural areas in the NW. Gore and especially Clinton got a lot of support there. No single county voting for Kerry is off recent trends, but not as far off as some seem to think. Democrats in Oklahoma are generally conservative overall and tend to dislike "coastal" Dems. They'd vote against a so-called NE Liberal out of spite.

OK politics is Southern politics with a twist provided by oil interests. In short, the political environment doesn't fit the model most respondents here have tried to apply to it. We do have a Democratic legislature, a Democratic governor currently, and a Democratic attorney general. It makes the mind boggle sometimes really, but it makes sense in its specific context.

And there was another issue on the ballot that was actually more energizing of the electorate than either the gay marriage amendment or even the general election: state lottery. It passed, handily, against the wishes of the state's fundamentalist leaders. Stick that into the equation and watch the computers explode.

That said, was there fraud? I think so. My ideas on this have been posted elsewhere at length. In short, to claim a "mandate" Shrub needed more than a close electoral vote. The best place to run up a popular vote total was in so-called "safe" states. That such a thing also benefits a Republican in a close Senate race makes OK an even more appealing target.

[ClintCooper2003]

21. Sorry, you're incorrect.

My percentages of turnout (voters to registered voters) are correct in my revision.

[RoyGBiv]

36. Fine, then ...

You wouldn't have a problem stating your source, I assume?

[tritsofme]

20. Party ID in OK is 43%GOP 40%DNC & 16IND, Dems do not outnumber

by large margins

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/OK/P/00/epolls.0.html

In 2000 party ID was 44%GOP 42%DNC 14%IND
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/2000vote/general/ok_epollgridPres.html

[ClintCooper2003]

23. No, you're referring to exit polls of PEOPLE WHO VOTED.

I'm talking about people who are REGISTERED with a certain party. People who have been registered Democrats for many years might be identifying themselves as Republican. That's possible. But please refer to the Secretary of State's statistics.

[tritsofme]

25. If they no longer consider themselves Dems

then what relevance is their party registration?

[ClintCooper2003]

29. Look, I'm just reporting objective data. The only point I was...

originally making was that Oklahoma doesn't have the same makeup of registrations as Kansas or Nebraska do. I was simply pointing out differences.

[ISUGRADIA]

22. I'm not sure what these % are but here are real #s

OKLAHOMA

1,233,000 in 2000

1,464,000 in 2004

18% increase

SOUTH DAKOTA

317,000 in 2000

387,000 in 2004

22% increase

SD had a larger increase in tournout than OK. You may be comparing voting age population turnout in 2000 compared to registered voter turnout. The % would be very different.

Plus the only Democrats that win in Oklahoma statewide are conservative Democrats. A liberal Democrat like Kerry is boud to do worse than Gore.

[ClintCooper2003]

24. Um, no, you are incorrect. I'm comparing amounts of actual

votes to actual registered voters. Get a clue.

[ISUGRADIA]

27. Friendly aren't you?

I don't always have numbers at hand to confirm things. What I mentioned is a common mistake that can cause skewed percentages.

I have checked now and it appears there has been a major purging of voters from the rolls from 2000 to 2004 in OK from 2,233,000 to under 2,000,000 in early 2004 (as late as I could find at this moment). Get rid of a lot of registered voter, see an increase in turnout and the % of registered voters goes up 20%.

The actual % increase in voters 2000 to 2004 is comparable to SD which you cited.

[ClintCooper2003]

28. Did not mean to be rude, but...

as you can see I am going by number of voters divided by number of registered voters. There was about a 13% jump in Oklahoma and only a 3% jump in South Dakota if you look at these statistics.

[RoyGBiv]

37. Cite your source ... n/t

[ClintCooper2003]

54. In both cases, my "source" is the Secretary of State of each state

[RoyGBiv]

57. Personal Communication?

Website, what? I'm trying to understand the basis of your numbers here, and pardon me for saying that you've been rather evasive and caustic with some of those who have questioned your data and/or conclusions. This makes me suspicious.

The Oklahoma State Elections Board's website does not currently have all this information displayed, particularly the bit about number of registered voters or official turnout. For this, one is directed to to an address and phone number from which to request information. I'd like a citation if that's possible because I've waded through the data I have available and cannot come up with the numbers you did for Oklahoma.

I do have these numbers, based on information displayed at census.gov, elections.gmu.edu, www.uselectionatlas.org, and the Oklahoma Elections Board.

Estimated Voting Age Population for Oklahoma in:

2000: 2,567,612
2004: 2,665,645

Votes cast for President in:

2000: 1,234,229
2004: 1,463,758

Turnout as a percentage of VAP in:

2000: 48.0%
2004: 54.9%

That's a jump, but not a remarkable one given nationwide trends. (I note I was a bit off in my "that I recall" estimate last evening, but the proportions of the increase were about what I remembered.)

What's more interesting is some of the lower level races, the results of which will place the Oklahoma House under Republican control for the first time in 82 years. In addition, Coburn's margin of victory was ten percentage points when immediate pre-election polls had the race statistically tied. (At one point, Carson had been polling outside the margin of error.) In addition, as one odd anomaly, the independent candidate in the Senate race, one Sheila Bilyeu who is convinced the government has placed radio transmission devices in her brain and has sued the federal government seeking to have it removed with financial compensation awarded, got 6%. That kind of result is simply bizarre and deserves closer scrutiny rather than Carson's pathetic attempts at rationalization.

In any case, I'm not saying you're wrong about the potential for fraud. I'm saying I don't understand your numbers, and thus your basis for claiming fraud. A correct charge based on faulty information is worse than no charge being leveled at all. The former discredits all attempts at seeking redress.

Throw me a bone here. How are you calculating the numbers? Show me.

[ClintCooper2003]

58. As I've already said, my calculations are based on votes compared...

to registered voters. See previous posts for exact numbers.

[RoyGBiv]

59. Where are you getting them?

I've read your posts. I've seen your numbers. Where are they coming from? You say the Secretary of State for each of the states. Okay, did you call Ms. Savage's office? Did you get them off a website?

[ClintCooper2003]

60. websites

[RoyGBiv]

62. Are you enjoying this?

I'm pretty much done playing this game. For future reference, if you want people to take you seriously, you might try a little mutual respect for those who ask genuine questions. Not properly citing your sources is a form of intellectual dishonesty, and I personally am not impressed by it. Not that you seem to care, but nonetheless ...

That being said, I was finally able to reproduce pretty much the percentages you presented in your revision after much searching. Mostly I had to dig a little deeper into census.gov, and I followed a link (http://student-voices.org/news/index.php3?NewsID=15456) posted by someone else in this thread for current registration information.

2,233,602 registered voters in 2000 cast 1,234,229 votes for President, yielding a turnout of 55.2% as a percentage of registered voters. As mentioned already, turnout as a percentage of the VAP was 48.0%

2,146,278 registered voters in 2004 cast 1,463,758 votes for President, yielding a turnout of 68.1% as a percentage of registered voters. Turnout as a percentage of the VAP was 54.9%.

What should immediately strike us is that registration in 2004 was actually down from 2000, yet the voting age population was up. This surprised me, so I'm only just beginning to form a hypothesis about this. My initial assumption is a registration purge of those who had not voted since 1992, which is when OK voter registration was at its height. (OK law allows for occasional purges of the rolls based on participation, but I forget the exact time frame.) Voter registration in 2004 was up by 207,933 from 2002, which would indicate that voter registration went down by almost 300,000 between 2000 and 2002. That deserves further study.

In any case, the jump in the turnout as a percentage of registered voters is not particularly remarkable in and of itself, especially if the reason for the overall drop in registration from 2000 to 2004 was a result of cleaning the rolls of non-participatory voters. That would in fact explain somewhat the increase.

Anyway, thanks for starting an interesting thread. Next time, try a little cooperation with your fellow travelers.

[ClintCooper2003]

63. One of the things that occured is that Oklahoma lost people...

between 2000 and 2004. Anyway, I'm glad you're "pretty much done," because the info. was all in the posts, all you had to do was look at them. If you look at my "revision" post, that's where I put the 55% and 68% figures.

[RoyGBiv]

64. However ...

You didn't include the numbers upon which those percentages were based. Percentages by themselves mean absolutely nothing.

As for OK losing people, I'm not sure how you think that relates to any of this. Our population loss is a loss as figured by a proportion of the national population.

Whatever the case, most estimates I've seen put Oklahoma's population growth as stagnant ... a little plus, a little minus. Between 1990 and 2000, the population went up by somewhere near 200,000 people. The precise figure depends on whether you take the "official" count or the official count plus the estimated undercount.

The growth between the censuses was well bellow the national trend, so we lost a rep to other, faster growing states.

[Hamoth]

26. Weren't Tulsa World's numbers off? -NT

[ExBuffguy]

30. No Fraud in Oklahoma...

I live just south of Oklahoma City. Here is the actual situation, not numbers that vary depending on who is reporting them.

Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republican by about 300,000.

In Oklahoma, because of the closed primary, you have to register as a D, R or I to be able to vote in the primary.

Many registered Democrats are legacy Democrats. Pretty much since statehood, the Democrats have held the legislature, although that trend is reversing itself.

Oklahomans are very conservative. Brad Carson, the Democratic candidate for Senate, ran numerous ads talking about his ratings with the NRA, how many times he supported Bush, etc.

With some exceptions, Oklahomans vote Democratic locally and Republican nationally. Lieberman actually had quite a following here, but with the exception of a handful of "Kerry-Okies", the yard signs were overwhelmingly Republican. Kerry was perceived as far too liberal.

I have been voting here for a long time and I have NEVER seen lines at the polls like I did this year. Normally, I walk in, vote and walk out. Our voting machines (optical scanners) show how many people have deposited ballots. Normally, coming home from work, I will be somewhere in the mid-90s. On Election Day 2004, I was number 589 and that was at noon. So the numbers were incredible. There were several ballot issues that brought voters out. Gay marriage, lottery and tribal casino issues drove numbers up.

Just thought I'd defend my state against fraud charges. (Another clue is that Sen. Kerry avoided coming to Oklahoma like the plague. He knew this was a solid red state.)

[newyawker99]

32. Hi ExBuffguy!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ClintCooper2003]

38. Thanks for the input. It just seemed like an easy place to pad...

Bush's total.

[gaia_gardener]

43. Kerry came to OK

he had a stopover in OKC. My aunt went to listen to him speak and loved him.

This was during the primaries, though, so it was easy to miss.

[karlrschneider]

45. You're exactly right. (Correct)

I lived in OK from age 7 (in 1949), was 'away' from 1967 to 1972 in the USAF, then came 'home' for a while until moving to Tampa, FL in 79 'til
1983 when I came back to OK to be near my mom (now 88 yrs old)

But I've always kept up with 'local' politics...there was never any chance that Kerry had a snowball's chance in Hell of winning here in this bastion of hypocritical wingnuts. Zero, zilch, nada. It's just that simple. The people here will fuck their neighbor's wife and go to church the next day and be 'absolved' because they're "christian." It's SOP for these hypocritical bastards...I KNOW this.

[spotbird]

61. Yard signs were stolen the night they went up.

The Republicans had paid people to take care of it.

[blueokie]

31. an okie opinion

I think the churches made 'em.
I had to vote at a church- But church goers- which are the majority in these parts were told god would hate them if they didn't vote or something. I actually think they gave out tickets to heaven if you checked the Repug box.

[Razorback_Democrat]

35. LOL

I live 2 miles from Oklahoma

same story here I believe

I do think that if there was vote padding that went on, Oklahoma would have been a great place for it with the margin for Bush so high, who would notice if it were a little higher?

no proof, just a hunch

[gaia_gardener]

44. My grandmother was told

she needed to get down on her knees because she had a Kerry sticker on her car. I can't believe she still goes to that church. I would have told them all to piss off and go to hell and reminded them that Jesus was about peace, etc. But, not her. She's gone there almost her whole life and wouldn't dream of leaving them.

[stella2cat]

40. I raised this issue a few days ago, wondering if Oklahoma

was an entire state of dixiecrats. My post is buried too far down now, I can't find it. Anyway, the responses I received indicated that it is indeed. But actually, I think they're okiecrats.

[karlrschneider]

46. It is even worse than you can imagine. The local "newspaper" won't print

any of my many letters. I am going down to their local office tomorrow and take out a full goddamn fucking page "ad" that they will HAVE to print. I've sent money to so many places with little result, it's time to raise some hackles. Now I am pissed.

[blueokie]

47. you and me both

I have sent letters to them and same here no story. I also sent letters to the on air 'celebs' and got a thank you from their intern...thanks for watching!

They don't call it the daily disappointment in journalism schools for nothing!!!

[stella2cat]

49. how about full page ads in many many little papers?

any idea what full pagers cost in the the rural papers? maybe a lot more bang for our bucks

[Peace Patriot]

48. A place to look for Bush padding...

Any anomaly should be investigated, considering the sheer number and magnitude of the anomalous election returns that have already been found--items like the 130,000 to 260,000 phantom votes for Bush (or votes stolen from Kerry) in three of the biggest Dem counties in FLA (the Berkeley study), the OH counties where it appears that Bush Inc. stole REPUBLICAN votes for Kerry and changed them to Bush, the 93,000 more votes than voters in one OH county, the 10,000 in Nebraska, the weird and large discrepancy between absentee ballots and e-votes in NC, and so on.

Bush Inc. needed, 1) the Electoral vote (they probably tweaked some of the really close states, like NMex and Iowa, toward Bush); 2) a modest popular majority (an absolute must, after the Elect. vote--probably grabbing %'s here and there all over the map); 3) the illusion that it all comes down to a few "provisional" ballots in OH (which they worked hard to make it seem like); and 4) the public perception of a Bush win (getting the TV networks to hide the big Kerry numbers in the Exit Polls, by mixing the Repub-controlled electronic vote tally in with the non-partisan Exit Poll numbers in the late afternoon on Election Day).

A master work of the "dark arts."

We're looking for the #2 "here and there" %'s even in California (which also has some suspicious numbers). I'd look deeper in OK.

[blueokie]

50. not a math buff... but

I really believe that I didn't expect oklahoma to turn but I expected some sort of shift. I work in a large office of 700+ people and I bet you 98% are dems- true dems. I've actually never met a dixiecrat here. All true homophobic close minded racist republicans or wealthy people protecting their $$.
I know if carson and coburn TIED in the polls surely we have more dems this time around.
I'd love to help I looked at the #'s but they just look like #'s.

[ClintCooper2003]

52. True, except it seemed like Carson was speaking very well of Bush...

which may account for the gulf between his numbers and Kerry's numbers.

[spotbird]

53. Kerry had no campaign in Oklahoma, none

Even getting signs was an issue. That could be part of the issue.

Also the Carson campaign was arrogant which cost them dearly.

[blueokie]

55. signs

when I went to get my yard signs the local dems office was just rude to me. I even dropped off a donation at the same time and only got one sign but I had to go walking around to get someone to come address me. Doesn't seem like they had much hope either!

[ClintCooper2003]

56. They were probably hand-picked by the Bush team. lol.

[ClintCooper2003]

51. They also needed the popular vote to be very clear on election day...

because they must have known those overseas and late absentee ballots were not going to swing in their favor.