Tension Increases in Haiti as Front-Runner's Lead Drops

[Sapphire Blue]

Tension Increases in Haiti as Front-Runner's Lead Drops
By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: February 13, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 12 — The calm that followed national elections in Haiti was replaced by tension on Sunday, and confidence in the process started to weaken, as leaders of this country's fractious political parties expressed frustration with the delay in releasing final results.

At the same time, community leaders in the country's slums, seeing the share of votes won Tuesday by their candidate for president starting to slip, accused electoral authorities of fraud.

With more than 75 percent of the vote counted by Sunday afternoon, the lead held by René Préval, considered the favorite of impoverished masses, dropped to 49.1 percent. A finish of less than 50 percent would force him into a runoff next month.

Mr. Préval's shrinking vote tally has stunned his supporters, who staged scattered protests across this city on Sunday, as well as international observers, whose independent samplings of the votes had shown Mr. Préval winning well above 50 percent of the vote.

Continued @ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/international/americas/13haiti.html

[The Magistrate]

1. This Election Is Being Cooked, Ma'am

There are no grounds to doubt it....

[acmavm]

2. Of course it is. The bush** administration would have no qualms about

screwing the Haitian people over. They did it to us.

[LynnTheDem]

5. They did it to the Haitians. bush kidnapped & overthrew the

democratically elected president of Haiti in 2004.

[Stevepol]

3. Of course as we know exit polls and similar samples are quite accurate.

That is, they're quite accurate in foreign countries. Here they are totally inaccurate. This has been shown clearly here in the US where we have even better sampling tools and of course they didn't predict Bush's awesome vote strength in the 04 election. Many religious right wing supporters who had been completely hidden under rocks and in the cellars of fundamentalist churches suddenly appeared and gave Bush his 3%-point victory. I think Mirofsky et al. would do well to talk it over with some of these international observers to find out what techniques they are using that suddenly give such validity to the polls.

To wit:

"Mr. Préval's shrinking vote tally has stunned his supporters, who staged scattered protests across this city on Sunday, as well as international observers, whose independent samplings of the votes had shown Mr. Préval winning well above 50 percent of the vote."

Would that some of our media would visit with these international observers to learn something about how samplings can show vote fraud, maybe the Columbus OH paper e.g. or maybe some posters on DU who have such a thorough knowledge of exit polls that they trust the results spewing from the central tabulators of Diebold and ES&S above the well-done samplings of people like Mitofsky and Zogby, etc.

[LynnTheDem]

4. Cooked.

Diebolded.