Originally Posted by kane

There is actually a really good book written about how the republicans stole the election in Ohio in 2004.

Among the things they pulled:

Telling the volunteers that worked at the polls that if someone showed up at the wrong voting location they weren't aloud to vote, but instead had to go to their correct location. The problem is they only told this to to the workers in the democrat heavy areas. In the rural and republican areas it was business as usual meaning if you showed up at the wrong polling location they called the correct one and told them you were voting at the one you were currently at and then let you vote. Many people likely got discouraged after waiting in line for a couple of hours only to be told they had to go across town and wait in another line.

In the rural and republican heavy areas there were plenty of voting machines and volunteers assigned to the polls so things moved quickly and you didn't have to wait in line very long. In the democrat heavy areas there was a shortage of machines and volunteers so the lines were very long. Many people had to wait in line 4+ hours to vote.

There were some number issues. For example in one county where there were around 8,000 registered voters Kerry got 2,500 votes so you would expect Bush to get around 5,500 votes, but instead Bush got 68,000 votes. They said this was a "glitch" in the software and it happened several times in different places around the state. They claimed to fix it and have the correct numbers. The interesting things is that every one of these "glitches" gave Bush a huge amount of extra votes. The "glitch" never helped Kerry or affected any of the ballot measures or local races.

To me these are all examples of why we need to get rid of the outdated electoral college and go with a straight popular vote election for president.