Tell Us Something We Don't Know

Oh wow, voter fraud... Who woulda thunk it?

From the Business Insider:

In an email sent on November 7, 2008, and titled " Insight - The Dems & Dirty Tricks ** Internal Use Only - Pls Do Not Forward **," Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton wrote:

1) The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight. The matter is not dead inside the party. It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to "out".

In an email sent two days earlier and titled "Insight - McCain #5 ** internal use only - Pls do not forward **," Burton wrote:

After discussions with his inner circle, which explains the delay in his speech, McCain decided not to pursue the voter fraud in PA and Ohio, despite his staff's desire to make it an issue. He said no.

Staff felt they could get a federal injunction to stop the process. McCain felt the crowds assembled in support of Obama and such would be detrimental to our country and it would do our nation no good for this to drag out like last go around, coupled with the possibility of domestic violence.

The original emails are here and here.

Of course, this is not the first time that accusations of fraud have made in a Presidential election. the Kennedy/Nixon piss off of 1960 comesimmediately to mind. Although no instances of rampant voter fraud were ever officially uncovered in either Illinois or Texas-

[...]On the other hand, some fraud clearly occurred in Cook County. At least three people were sent to jail for election-related crimes, and 677 others were indicted before being acquitted by Judge John M. Karns, a Daley crony. Many of the allegations involved practices that wouldn't be detected by a recount, leading the conservative Chicago Tribune, among others, to conclude that "once an election has been stolen in Cook County, it stays stolen."  

What's more, according to journalist Seymour Hersh, a former Justice Department prosecutor who heard tapes of FBI wiretaps from the period believed that Illinois was rightfully Nixon's. Hersh also has written that J. Edgar Hoover believed Nixon actually won the presidency but in deciding to follow normal procedures and refer the FBI's findings to the attorney general—as of Jan. 20, 1961, Robert F. Kennedy—he effectively buried the case.

Another man, too, believed Nixon was robbed: Nixon. At a 1960 Christmas party, he was heard greeting guests, "We won but they stole it from us." Nixon nursed the grudge for years, and when he was criticized for his Watergate crimes he would cite the Kennedys' misdeeds as precedent. He may have felt JFK's supposed theft entitled him to cheat in 1972. It's an interesting hypothetical: If no pall had been cast over the 1960 election, would Watergate have happened?