What's the difference between Ukraine and the U.S.?

[Ivo Skoric]

1) In Ukraine, 'Democrats' did not concede elections. Instead they 
refused to accept defeat. Yuschchenko told people to remain in the 
streets, unlike Kerry who congratulated Bush on the succesfully 
committed electoral fraud. Mr. Yushchenko, addressing the public, 
began a multipronged effort to block Mr. Yanukovich's claim on 
office. He urged his supporters to remain united and in the streets, 
and called for an urgent session of Parliament to review extensive 
allegations of state manipulation of the election, and for the 
judiciary to investigate documented complaints. "We express no 
confidence in the Central Election Commission because of its being a 
passive, or maybe a too active, participant in falsifications," he 
said. And what's up with Kerry? He reminds me of that lame duck 
Scottish nobles from Mel Gibson's Braveheart.

2) In Ukraine, a member f the US Senate saw electoral irregularities. 
Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 
had led an American mission to Ukraine to urge the departing 
president, Leonid D. Kuchma, to organize fair elections. "A concerted 
and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with 
either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities," 
sanctimonious senator said Monday in Kiev. He should know, shouldn't 
he? Yanukovich even managed to achieve the 3% lead over Yuschchenko, 
just like Bush had over Kerry, meaning that Eastern-Europeans became 
just as savvy cheaters as their American pals are, dealing away with 
the implausible 90% victories. 

3) In Ukraine, they added voters to the ballots. 5% the last day. In 
the US just last week, a research team at UC Berkeley reported that 
irregularities associated with electronic voting may have awarded 
Bush 130,000-260,000 excess votes in Florida alone, in the 2004 
presidential election. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy
between votes for Bush in counties where electronic voting machines 
were used, versus counties using traditional voting methods. In 
Ukraine fraud is still done the old-fashioned way. In the U.S. 
cheaters hide behind computers. In New Hampshire, some of the 126 
precincts using Diebold's 'Accuvote' optical scanning machines gave 
Bush up to 15% more votes than had been expected on the basis of exit 
polls and the 2000 presidential vote. Diebold was awarded a no-bid 
contract to operate ATM machines in Saudi Arabia shortly after its 
services to the President were judged to be satisfactory. In the U.S. 
they also subtract minority voters from the ballot in the so-called 
'spoilage' or 'provisional ballots' and count the vote behind locked 
doors citing a terrorist threat...

4) Red Ukraine vs. Blue Ukraine: Dr. Charles Tannock, a British 
member of the European Parliament, said the conduct of the election 
was less what he expected from Ukraine than from Turkmenistan, an 
authoritarian state. Sadly, he did not say what did he expect, if 
anything, from the U.S. He then worried aloud that what seemed to be 
the election's illegitimacy might serve to split Ukraine into a north 
and west supporting Mr. Yushchenko, and a region in the east 
(Ukraine's HEARTLAND or RETRO) supporting the prime minister. There 
were hints of this by nightfall, as Mr. Yushchenko claimed the 
support of at least four Ukrainian cities, including the city council 
in Kiev (Ukraine's Manhattan or METRO), which rejected the election 
results. In the US not a single city, county or state rejected (yet) 
the results of election. Maybe there is something Americans could 
learn from Ukrainians. 

5) In Ukraine, the victory for the prime minister, by a margin of 
nearly 3 percentage points, that was given in official results 
diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places 
that gave the opposition as much as an 11-point lead. Opposition 
organizers pushed for protest and mass action. In The U.S. Steven F. 
Freeman, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, thoroughly
examined discrepancies between reported results and exit poll data, 
with particular emphasis on the crucial states of Ohio, Florida, and
Pennsylvania. Specifically, Ohio's reported results gave Bush a 6.7%
premium over exit polls in 2004, Florida gave him an extra 5%, and
Pennsylvania boosted him by 6.5%. Freeman calculates the combined 
statistical probability of these three discrepancies occurring in 
2004, is one in 250 million. In 10 of the 11 so-called "battleground" 
states, he observes, "the tallied margin differs from the predicted 
margin, and in every one, the shift favors Bush." I suppose the 
statistical probability of fraud is still higher in Ukraine. But wait 
for 4 more years, and they'd be at about the same level with the U.S.

6) The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, whose country holds the 
European Union presidency. "We don't accept these results. We think 
they are fraudulent," he said at a news briefing, Reuters reported. 
He might privately think the same about the U.S. elections, but he is 
keeping THAT to himself for now.

Ivo

with help of reporting by The New York Times and Ian Reed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/international/europe/23ukraine.html?
oref=login&th
http://www.ReedandWrite.com
---------------------------------------------------------
Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org