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

[Miroslav Visic]

You forgot another distinction: 

In Ukraine, people take the streets after the election fraud.
In the US of A people bend over little more...


Ivo Skoric wrote:

>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
>
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>
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