How did Mitt Romney beat Rick Santorum in Ohio?

Last night Rick Santorum started out with a big lead over Mitt Romney and kept it steadily for the fist hour as results came in. It opened up with a large lead at only one percent reporting but this was statistically irrelevant. By the time about ten percent was reporting the lead was about three percent and that is where it stayed for over an hour until more than sixty percent was reporting. The rounded percentage was consistent at a three point lead and the vote count steadily rose to reflect the amount reporting within half a point presumably.

(This was originally posted on Open Salon March, 7, 2012)

By the time it reached about sixty percent reporting the lead was about 15 or 16 thousand in favor of Rick Santorum; then it started shrinking until it was only about 10,000 and the percentage was reduced to two percent. At this point one of the commentators was talking about how the Santorum campaign was happy with the results and that they thought they would do well when the rural counties reported indicating that they might increase their lead and win. The lead did increase to about 12 or 13 thousand still at a two percent lead for Rick Santorum at this point with about 72% reporting. At this point I began to suspect that Santorum might win the popular vote and lose the delegate count due to the confusing rules that seemed to give Mitt Romney the advantage.

My thinking was that this would be a public relations disaster for the Romney campaign especially since it seemed clear that they were going to lose at least two other states and probably three to Rick Santorum plus Georgia to Newt Gingrich.

Then this morning 96 % was reporting and the lead was reversed with about a 12 thousand vote lead for Romney which only represented 1% by this time due to the larger returns. The advantage that Romney gained during the final 24% reporting had gain to overcome Santorum’s lead is presumably about 6 to 9 % which is dramatically bigger than the trivial changes that took place during the first hour and a half or so of reporting.

This could easily be a statistical fluke and meaningless but if you consider a few other incidents including the many discrepancies that have already taken place in many states this year and in the past things it may be worth looking a little closer.

Also for what it is worth this morning there was a commentator that was talking about how Mitt Romney was going to have a tough time in some of the next states including Alabama and Mississippi which could make it appear as if he is losing momentum and his campaign is in trouble. And if you add this to the fact that his campaign is already being suspected of wrong doing in many other states including Maine where there is some reason to believe that the Romney supporters in that state are resisting a full counting. The obvious implied motive for that is that they might think that that state is close enough to go to Ron Paul and that after Romney lost four states to Rick Santorum he needed the win going into Super Tuesday and the is still some indication that final results on that state may actually wind up coming out after Super Tuesday, possibly with Ron Paul in the lead.

Another reason this should be looked at closely is the fact that there have been a growing number of problems overall in the election system over the last fifteen years and that this isn’t new; problems with rigging the pols have gone back to the beginning of the election process over two hundred years but they do seem to escalating dramatically. This became widely known in 2000 during the Florida election debacle which many people are starting to forget. The truth is that this wasn’t that unusual; the only thing that was unusual is that it was close enough and important enough that the mass Media actually paid attention to it. There were many more problems with elections since then but they receive much less reporting in the Main stream Media. There are, however, many investigators that have looked closer and then written books about them one of these is Andrew Gumbel “Steal This Vote” 2005 (excerpts). Gumbel provides a thorough and credible investigation into the history of voter fraud including the fraud that took place in the 2000 and 2004 election. Another one of these that specifically investigated activities that happened in 2004 including extensive coverage of Ohio is Mark Crispin Miller “Fooled Again” 2005 (excerpts) and there are more where that came from which should be more than enough to indicate that there might be some investigation warranted.

This doesn’t guarantee that there is a problem but it does seem to fit a pattern of behavior and I suspect people more familiar with these books and or other investigations into the growing amount of fraud will be much more inclined to believe that there is a possibility of fraud.

This doesn’t mean that the attempts to make it harder to vote in many states across the country are justified; in fact it is quite the opposite. The investigation that Andrew Gumbel, Mark Crispin Miller and others have done clearly indicates that this is further evidence of efforts to suppress the vote while the real fraud might be committed by the people controlling the election process. In some cases they have even indicated that the computers that have been used have proven to be fraudulent and that the source code is considered proprietary information which means the secrecy surrounding the elections is protected by law effectively banning scrutiny.

And if you add to that the excessive amount of propaganda and the fact that the Mass Media is only giving attention to the candidates that they approve of and that there is little or no discussion about important issues the problems get even worse. If you look at the campaign speeches that they typically have they have an enormous amount of cheering that clearly seems to be planned. One of the most blatant examples last night was newt Gingrich who attempted to portray this as a major victory and present himself as the inevitable nominee that is the only one who can debate and beat Barack Obama. Only the most naïve fool could possibly believe that if they know anything about what has been going on yet they all cheered on cue as if it he was winning.

Another blatant example is the way the supporters of several candidates respond when “Obamacare” is mentioned in disgust as if the plan being presented by their own candidate is better. This is typical propaganda where the families are clearly being instructed to show the appropriate amount of emotion at the right time to give certain impressions with out discussing the details of any given policy. As I indicated in Santorum etal including Romney and Obama endorse Health Care Waste and Fraud I have no doubt that Obama’s health care bill isn’t in the best interest of the public but the plan that these candidates want to implement isn’t any better, in fact if anything it is probably worse!

 Recently Mitt Romney seems to have an unusually easy question on this issue that enabled him to please the person asking the question which might also raise questions about whether the audience is being selected that might support the candidate or if questions are even being planted for propaganda purposes. The individually said something about needing to hear that he definitely repeal Obamacare and Mitt Romney was able to respond happily by saying, “Why wouldn’t I?” as if his own health care bill in Massachusetts wasn’t almost identical. My best guess is that it is more likely that they might try to find people that they think might support their candidate and ask questions to make a good impression for their favorite; this way it will be less likely that the person asking the question might leak it.

This doesn’t mean that I support Rick Santorum any more than I think Mitt Romney or Barack Obama should win but the integrity of the election process should be investigated and subject to scrutiny.
On top of that the process that they’ve been using to appoint delegates is highly confusing and few if any people can keep track of it without thorough investigation and the majority of the public isn’t in a position to do that. This is clearly designed to benefit those that control and understand the rules which are often made to benefit the candidate that is endorsed by the people running any given state. This year that is usually Mitt Romney; however that doesn’t mean they implement the same rules in every state in many cases they may provide different rules from one state or another depending on which method would give their candidate the biggest advantage. One of the more blatant problems this year was the Michigan delegates that were awarded. Initially they awarded them fifty-fifty according to the rules that were set beforehand; then after the fact they changed it to give Romney a one delegate advantage. This could give some people the impression that they may have initially tho0ught the rules might benefit Romney but when it didn’t work out that way and Rick Santorum had the opportunity to claim a tie in the delegate count they changed it. Ironically this looks as bad if not worse than allowing Rick Santorum to have the single delegate which is trivial; the appearance of changing the rules after the fact makes it look tainted.

This clearly indicates that the preferences of the voters don’t count for much if anything. In Virginia Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and many others couldn’t even get on the ballot presumably because the governor supported Romney and wanted to give him the advantage. I have no doubt that if the people running the campaigns took notice of this blog that they might dispute it; however if they do they should at least try to come up with something much closer to a democratic process than this!

If the was even close to being fair I might not be quite so quick to raise questions!

We clearly need some major Election Reform that is controlled by the public and enables them to control the interview process and possibly have a much bigge4r opportunity to create their own laws using ballot initiatives and take advantage of proportionate representation and or instant run-off election.

(For more information on Blog see Blog description and table of context for most older posts.)

The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

He won barely.

Don Rich March 07, 2012 11:17 AM

[r] Bravo, Zachd!!! Good attention on this. Another "yawn issue" for the vast American citizenry but how crucial it is. The memory hole of election frauds 2000 and 2004 and probably going on back. Integrity is just not on the American agenda, is it? There is the media propagandizing (leading people by the nose as to whom is okay to vote for), the use of mystification and complication to block voters, and downright monkeying with the d*mn machinery.

Are the one percenters capable of that ya think? God, yes, and so much more.

We are looking at Russia's election? What about ours????? best, libby

libbyliberalnyc March 07, 2012 11:17 AM Maybe

zacherydtaylor March 07, 2012 11:17 AM

Libby, are elections are more like Russians than most people want to admit and the investigations clearly seems to back it up; even Jimmie Carter seems to agree.

zacherydtaylor March 07, 2012 11:20 AM

Electronic voting box’s make fixing election results fun and easy. The cattle are happy because they think they voted, its kind of like when you tip them over when they are sleeping and they can’t get up. The elitist criminals get a big laugh out of it because tipping cattle is fun.

Jack Heart March 07, 2012 02:16 PM

At the moment, Americans still have no guarantee that there is any correlation between votes cast and results.

We have quite a good system here in New Zealand. Voting happens the old fashioned way, by ticking a paper ballot. Every voter receives an ID card in the post that they must bring to the polling place. Without the ID card, their vote is classified as a special vote and investigation is conducted to make sure the vote is valid.

Each party is allowed to have scrutineers at every polling place to make sure there is no ballot stuffing and to watch votes being counted (by hand) and recorded. Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall March 07, 2012 08:08 PM

Jack, that sounds about right; I can’t help but wonder if they think they can continue to get away with it indefinitely especially with the growing number of protests that aren’t about to stop even if the cut back on the coverage of them.

Stuart, It would be nice to compare systems from around the world on voting and other issues like heath care; I have no doubt that if this happened then it would be clear that ours isn’t nearly the best. Unfortunately the Mass Media isn’t inclined to do it so until that is reformed the comparison has to be at the grass roots level where there is still some sincerity from many people.

Also it should just be the different parties verifying the votes but citizens groups controlled by the public.

BTW I added a couple comments to the post about Michigan and Romney’s softball question if anyone is interested; thanks all.

zacherydtaylor March 09, 2012 09:57 AM