Anonymous, Karl Rove, and Ohio

Interesting story emerging regarding Anonymous' claim that they thwarted Karl Rove's attempts to electronically steal Ohio. If true, it certainly goes a very long way toward explaining Rove's near religious certainty that Romney would take Ohio despite overwhelming polling evidence pointed in the opposite direction.

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

I want this to be real so bad, but my cynicism is overwhelming my desire for conspiracy.

Hmm, I'm not sure if Rove was the type to outright steal an election. He seems to me as a "works the system" kind of guy, finding the loopholes and exploiting them. In my admittedly ignorant opinion, I'm not sure he is the "let's commit massive fraud and treason" type.

If Anonymous does have proof, I hope it gets released, though it would no doubt be tainted for its association with them.

Hopefully they do give some info to wikileaks, and then we can do something more than speculate. It would be nice if we could set up a system where this was not an issue in the first place.

I have a hard and fast rule that every conspiracy theory I hear is complete and utter crap until something resembling proof is given. Frankly, this "plan" by Rove sounds like the kind of thing that would have been thought up as a plot point for a 90s movie in the nascent days of the internet. Not buying it at all.

There is no way the US Govt will act on something posted on Wikileaks. That would give the organization legitimacy, especially after all the effort the US has put into making Assange's life miserable.

The reason why I see this as plausible is because it fits so well with the bizarre performance Karl Rove put on not only on election night but throughout the last month of the campaign. He is many things, but I have not known him in the past to be completely delusional and any sober reading of the polling data overwhelmingly indicated a different outcome than the one he was predicting.

Until we get the evidence, we will never know.

Ooooooh, this is a fun conspiracy. Kingmaker. Cool.

Jolly Bill wrote:

Hopefully they do give some info to wikileaks, and then we can do something more than speculate. It would be nice if we could set up a system where this was not an issue in the first place.

Anonymous and Wikileaks had a bit of a spat over an overlay Wikileaks started using (just went to it myself but didn't encounter it) that blocked the page unless you tweeted, shared on FB, paid $, or simply waited . Anonymous made noises about setting up their own leak site. It looks like the overlay isn't there anymore, but it's made Anonymous rethink it's support of Wikileaks.

garion333 wrote:

Ooooooh, this is a fun conspiracy. Kingmaker. Cool.

Yeah, it is. I kind of want it to be true.

As one who buys into shenanigans stealing the vote in 2004 Ohio, this was my thought exactly when I saw Rove meltdown election night. But it is was also pure wild speculation on my part,so I decided to keep that thought to myself and just enjoy the meltdown.

I would love for this to be true, but it sets up a pretty scary premise. The story might be his failure this year, but what does this say about 2004? That's an actual presidential election stolen based on the same rumors.

If they have the details, release it to the Secret Service please.

What does it say about 2004? Hell, what does it say about 2016?

Podunk wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Ooooooh, this is a fun conspiracy. Kingmaker. Cool.

Yeah, it is. I kind of want it to be true.

I would prefer to live in a world where this is true, because then I can be angry at someone with cause.

Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Well, to be fair, Rove isn't so much a person as he is the Chet turd monster from Weird Science.

IMAGE(http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q40/mattstan8/1chet.jpg)

Nevin73 wrote:

Hmm, I'm not sure if Rove was the type to outright steal an election. He seems to me as a "works the system" kind of guy, finding the loopholes and exploiting them. In my admittedly ignorant opinion, I'm not sure he is the "let's commit massive fraud and treason" type.

If Anonymous does have proof, I hope it gets released, though it would no doubt be tainted for its association with them.

Wasn't Rove speculated previously to be behind such things as the 2000 election phone campaign during the primaries where they started asking people if they'd be more or less likely to vote for John McCain if they found out he had an illegitimate black child? I seem to remember that surfacing during the election and laughing... but really, with that on the table, is anything else really surprising or unexpected? The guy is has always seemed to me as someone who has a win by all means necessary campaign strategy for the GOP... rather than worrying about things like how to appeal to the population with sound policies or ideas.

Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

You're talking about Ham Rove, right? He's dead you know. He got eaten by the dog.

Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Dude, joke.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Dude, joke.

Dude, habeus corpus and due process.

EDIT: Nevermind, pointless. Carry on, I'm out.

Even if there WAS an organized effort to hack the elections, I am curious as to how Anonynous connects it specifically to Rove.

Poe's law. Now kiss.

boogle wrote:

Poe's law. Now kiss.

*pucker*

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Even if there WAS an organized effort to hack the elections, I am curious as to how Anonynous connects it specifically to Rove.

Scariest guy in the GOP when it comes to elections? Also scary looking... like makes Cheney look cuddly.

Some counterthoughts from Salon.com:

Salon wrote:

The details in the Anonymous claim are currently unverified and there are many lingering question. For one, as our own Alex Seitz-Wald pointed out via email, “they never explain how Rove was stealing the election in Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. [There are] not many e-voting machines and not sure how else you’d do it.”

Secondly, it seems questionable whether the ORCA system (which belonged to Romney’s campaign, not Rove, as the Anonymous letter suggests) was capable of rigging an election — it barely functioned as a GOTV project. Writing at Ace of Spades, John Ekdah called Project ORCA an “unmitigated disaster“. He details a long list of problem that indicate the massive undertaking lacked the necessary “planning, training and coordination” to be successful.

Even without Anonymous’ alleged efforts, it is unclear that ORCA had the sophistication to rig votes. Although perhaps nefarious intentions behind the project account for its failure as a GOTV system. Again, we can only speculate — the onus is on Anonymous to provide further proof before we can believe these (albeit delicious) claims.

Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Dude, joke.

Dude, habeus corpus and due process.

Dude, he's Canadian, they don't have real laws up there.

Yeah, this story is crap. The number of things that go into complex software systems makes it very unlikely somebody could do TEH H4X0RZ without hosing something up; frankly, there are enough bugs and problems with software just as delivered without imagining people jumping into the midst of an undoubtedly very-complex database and happening to run updates on all the related tables. Considering their general viewpoint on government and freedom, I'd have to think if Anonymous had any info like this, they'd be spitting it out to every media organization they could with carefully-detailed proof.

It just doesn't add up at all.

Still, putting a password on a port doesn't seem like rocket science to me...

garion333 wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Also if true, Rove should be flayed alive and boiled in his own fat.

Can't this just be done anyway?

Yay cruel and unusual punishment! It's OK if you don't like the person you're flaying!

*facepalm*

Dude, joke.

Dude, habeus corpus and due process.

Dude, he's Canadian, they don't have real laws up there.

Hell, we still use paper ballots for our elections! Granted, there's never much in the way of fraud scandals up here but we also have a lot fewer people too.