Was '04 election stolen? prof asks

As the official story runs, President Bush was re-elected in 2004. But one professor has his doubts. In a speech at the Penn Bookstore last night, professor Steven Freeman said that exit polls predicted a victory for Democratic candidate John Kerry. He added that the electoral process might be to blame for the discrepancy. "Exit polls aren't like phone surveys - they should be like measuring precipitation after rain has already fallen," said Freeman, a visiting professor at the Center for Organizational Dynamics. "You're asking people who they voted for after they've left the booth." Intrigued by the inaccuracy of the exit polls and what he said was a lack of media coverage following the election, Freeman started researching the available data in an attempt to answer the question that became the title of his recently-published book: Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Nationwide, there was a 7-percent disparity between the exit polls and the final ballot count, but in three key battleground states - Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida --- the disparity was even higher, Freeman said. "If the votes had turned out the way the exit polls were being reported, Kerry wouldn't have lost by 3 million votes," he said. "He would've won by 6 million." Freeman, who admitted he is "not a political person," explained that his biggest concern with current elections is electronic voting. "We push a button and expect that button to take the vote correctly, but any programmer can change millions [of] votes with one programing code," he said. "And we have a system where three companies control 80 percent of voting machines in the country, two of which have enormous connections with leaders of the Republican party." Freeman said some people wonder why he is trying to raise awareness about this issue two years after the election and tell him to "move on." "But if, by all these indications, the election was stolen, . it's like Chief Justice [John] Roberts said: 'If we don't have the right to vote, we have nothing at all,'" he said. Economics graduate student Dionissi Aliprantis said he was in agreement with Freeman. "I think the important thing is there should at least be some dialogue," Aliprantis said. "'Just get over it' isn't acceptable in a democratic society."

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