Like a snowball
Nov. 9th, 2004 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistWas Flordida stolen again?
Did all the unborn fetuses vote in Nebraska?
Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election.
A Media Blackout: Media Blacks Out Voting Problems.
A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.
more strange numbers by country in Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania
And here is the article of the day:
None Dare Call it Voter Suppression and Fraud
Evidence is mounting that the 2004 presidential election was stolen in Ohio. Emerging revelations of voting irregularities coupled with well-documented Republican efforts at voter suppression prior to the election suggests that in a fair election Kerry would have won Ohio.
Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conceded on November 3, based on preliminary postings by the highly partisan Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. These unofficial results showed Bush with 136,483 more votes than Kerry, although 155,428 provisional ballots, 92,672 “spoiled” ballots, additional overseas ballots, and some remaining absentee ballots remained uncounted.
The day after his concession, Kerry drew 3,893 votes closer to Bush when a computerized voting machine “glitch” was discovered in an Ohio precinct. A machine in ward 1B in the predominantly Republican Gahanna, Ohio, recorded 4,258 votes for George W. Bush when only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. Buried on page A6 of the Columbus Dispatch, the story also reported that the voting machine recorded 0 votes in a race between Franklin County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks. Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder told the Dispatch that the voting machine glitches were “why the results on election night are unofficial.”
The right-wing New Life Church voting glitch is interesting. Free Press reporter Marley Greiner has been tracking Blackwell’s relationship with far right-wing religious forces like Biblical America and Christian dominionist groups that want to establish theocratic religious rule in America. Blackwell was campaigning around the state with the Reverend Rod Parsley as part of a “Silent No More” tour in support of amending the Ohio Constitution to outlaw gay marriage, on the ballot as Issue One. Many mainstream commentators claim it was the widely popular Issue One amendment campaign that brought out Bush voters in record numbers in rural Ohio. Gay marriage was already outlawed by state statute, and six of the seven Ohio Supreme Court justices are Republicans.
The nonpartisan Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) is investigating various other voting irregularities in Ohio, among them:
* In Auglaize County, a letter dated October 21 under the signature of Ken Nuss, the county’s former deputy director, alleges that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), violated election protocol with his unauthorized use of the county’s central tabulating computer that creates ballots and compiles election results. Nuss, who resigned on October 21, alleges that McGinnis was improperly granted access to the computer the weekend of October 16.
* In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting at 9am EST Wednesday, Nov. 3, Bush had 20,807 votes (65.80%) and Kerry had 10,724 (33.92%). Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting Bush’s vote to 33,039 (65.77%) to Kerry’s 17,039 (33.92%). CASE is investigating why the percentage of the vote stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point after nearly 19,000 new ballots were added. CASE members speculate that it’s either a long-shot coincidence with the last three digits remaining the same, or that someone had pre-set a database and programmed a voting machine to cough up a pre-set percentage of votes. Miami County uses an easily hackable optical scanner with the central counter provided by the Republican-linked vendor ES&S.
* In Warren County, administrators and election officials locked down the county administrative building and prohibited all independent election observers from watching the vote count. County officials cited “homeland security,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WCPO-TV Channel 9 News Director Bob Morford told the Enquirer that he had “never seen anything like it.” Morford asserted that throwing the media and independent observers out of the centralized counting area under the guise of “homeland security” was a “red herring.” He said, “That’s something to put up when you don’t know what else to put up to keep us out.” In Warren County, Bush picked up an additional 12,000 votes over his 2000 election total.
* In Franklin County, where Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder is also the former Executive Director of the county’s Republican Party, the county Board of Elections building looked like a bunker. Scores of city buses blocked parking spaces on the street outside, numerous concrete barricades surrounded the parking lot, and a metal detector was stationed at the only entrance. A phalanx of armed deputy sheriffs swarmed the only site where provisional voters could cast a guaranteed ballot. The Columbus Dispatch confirmed an Election Day Free Press story that far fewer voting machines were present in predominantly black Democratic inner-city voting wards than in the recent primary election and the 2000 presidential election, with their lighter turnouts. The reduced number of machines caused voters to wait up to seven hours and wait an average of approximately three hours. One Republican Central Committee member told the Free Press that Damschroder held back as many as 2000 machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.
* In rural Drake County, Kerry received 78 less votes than Al Gore in 2000, but Bush received 3000 more votes. Drake is the only county in Miami Valley where Kerry’s votes was less than Gore’s and where Bush’s vote rose dramatically.
Unofficial Ohio presidential results provided by the Secretary of State’s Office show 155,428 provisional ballots cast. Blackwell was all over the national news telling everyone who would listen that these ballots were randomly distributed and not disproportionately for Kerry. As former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani raved on national TV demanding Kerry’s concession, a basic analysis of the provisional ballots suggested that they were disproportionately for Kerry.
Historically, provisional ballots are far more likely to be cast by poor and minority voters, who live in the urban centers and move more often. Ohio has 88 counties, the vast majority of them rural. Kerry won 15 counties in Ohio, virtually all large urban centers. In those counties, 85,096 provisional ballots remain uncounted. Past elections point to the fact that these provisional ballots are hardly ever cast in the affluent, primarily Republican municipalities, but are overwhelmingly from the central city. Also, an additional 17,038 provisional ballots are from Hamilton County and Wood County. Bush won Hamilton with 53% of the vote and Wood County with 53.5%. Traditionally, the provisional ballots in Hamilton County come from Cincinnati and its poor central city areas. These are areas where John Kerry won handily on Election Day.
Thus, 102,134 of the provisional ballots, nearly two-thirds (65.7%) in all probability come from solidly pro-Kerry areas and are most likely cast by pro-Kerry supporters such as African Americans and the poor. These fit the same socio-economic demographics and racial profiles of voters targeted by the GOP for challenges in Ohio.
Palast also points to the 92,672 so-called “spoiled” ballots in Ohio that have yet to be counted, and may never be tallied. The most famous spoiled ballots were the 2004 Florida punch cards that could not be machine read, but when looked at manually the voter’s intent could be determined. Expert statisticians who investigated spoilage in the 2000 election in Florida found that 54% of these discarded ballots were cast by blacks. In Ohio, most of the spoiled votes were lost through punch card ballots in 2004.
By Blackwell directing county Boards of Elections not to count the provisional ballots for 11 days, it benefited the Bush campaign since an immediate counting would have no doubt made the race tigher between Kerry and Bush, and perhaps prompted Kerry to request a recount. This would have the 92,672 discarded "spoiled" ballots that were also likely to favor Kerry.
Daniel Tokaji, Professor of Law at the Ohio State University College of Law commented: "One other point. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has reportedly said that provisional ballots won't be counted for 11 days. I'm not sure where he's getting this, but he may be relying on ORC 3505.32. This statute provides that the boards of election are to begin canvassing election returns between 11 and 15 days after the election and ‘continue the canvass daily until it is completed.’ Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see how this precludes provisional votes from being counted earlier than that, even if the canvass doesn't begin until the 11th day."
Spoiled ballots will only be counted if someone with standing, such as five Kerry electors or the Ohio Democratic Party, demands and legally qualifies for a recount. Thus, the exit polls may have been correct. A majority of people voted for Kerry in Ohio; but 250,000 votes were not counted, most favoring Kerry over Bush. If Kerry had won by even one vote in Ohio, he would be the next President of the United States.
Irregularities in other key battleground states have prompted three U.S. representatives to urgently request that the Comptroller General of the United States David Walker and the General Accounting Office “immediately undertake an investigation of the efficiency of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election.” Tom Hartmann, in his post election article on CommonDreams.org (“Evidence mounts that the vote was hacked”), reminds readers that Bev Harris, who started blackboxvoting.org, showed Howard Dean how to hack a county “central tabulator” computer in 90 seconds live on CNBC.
The Diebold Corporation, which helped count the Ohio vote with e-voting machines and optical scan machines, is run by a notoriously pro-Republican CEO, Wally O’Dell. Last year O’Dell wrote a letter to Ohio Republican donors telling them that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” O’Dell is a proud member of Bush’s Pioneer and Ranger team of major donors who visit the Crawford ranch. The other major election vote counting firm is ES&S, which is being investigated for allegedly having a machine that subtracted votes when the totals surpassed 32,000.
On Election Day, the Election Protection Coalition observers who covered 58 polling places in central Ohio, documented thousands of voter complaints over long lines and recorded numerous people leaving the polls for work or because they were elderly or handicapped and physically unable to wait for hours to vote. Professor James K. Galbraith, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote the following summary of Election Day in Ohio: “. . . I drove a young African-American voter, a charming business student, seven months pregnant, to her polling place at Finland Elementary School in south Columbus. We arrived in a squalling rain to find voters lined up outside for about a hundred yards. . . . The real problem was a grotesque shortage of voting machines.”
Ohio State University Law Professor Edward B. Foley told the New York Times, “When your lines get to two or three hours, it’s system failure.”
Other bizarre tactics emerged in the run-up to the election:
* Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and Democratic Parties, or any slate of five candidates, may embed official election challengers inside polling places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that the Republican Party intended to place thousands of lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls to challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here that the key goal was to jam lines and frustrate new voters. After two federal judges rejected the GOP challengers, Republicans got a favorable ruling from the Sixth Circuit, which allowed them to place challengers in Ohio polling places. Michael Beaver, Deputy State Commander with the Election Protection Coalition says, “We now believe that the challengers were a smokescreen to hide the real plan to orchestrate a machine shortage in Democratic wards.”
* The Republican Party sent letters challenging thousands of Franklin County registered voters who requested absentee ballots. Franklin County is home to Columbus, the state's largest city and its capitol. Though it is also home to Ohio State University, thousands of local students go to schools outside the county or state. The GOP targeted young voters for challenges. The GOP pre-challenged an estimated 35,000 voters and rented arenas in Cleveland and Columbus to conduct the challenges. The GOP sent registered letters to registered voters’ addresses and when they failed to pick up a letter from the Republican Party in primarily Democratic areas, they were challenged for fraud. A federal judge disallowed the challenges less than a week before the election.
* The Franklin County Board of Elections has called or written an undetermined number of voters who obtained absentee ballots, challenging their addresses. In at least one case, after a series of angry phone calls, the Board admitted there was nothing wrong with the address in question and re-instated voting rights. The voter in question was a registered Democrat. His wife, an independent at the same address, was not challenged. It is unclear how many others have been wrongly knocked out.
* Even if they are counted, Franklin County's absentee ballot forms are designed in ways strikingly reminiscent of those notorious butterfly ballots in the Florida 2000 presidential election. On Franklin County absentee ballot forms, Kerry is the third name on the list of presidential candidates on the left side of the ballot. But, the punch card is designed to fit in the middle, so the actual number you punch for Kerry is hole "4." If you mistakenly punch hole "3" you've just voted for Bush.
* Damschroder, Franklin County's right-wing Elections Director is insisting on e-voting machines that have malfunctioned in at least two Congressional elections. The machines have no paper trail and one subtracted 3% from former Rep. John Kasich’s and added 3% to Ed Brown, a six-point shift. The November issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines ran the following headlines on their covers, respectively: "E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were bad'" and "Could hackers tilt the election?" Vigorous protests against the paperless machines have been staged here, but many will be used, rendering a meaningful recount impossible.
* Twenty GOP-dominated Ohio counties have given wrong information to former felons about their voter eligibility. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati and the Republican Taft family, officials told numerous former felons that a judge had to sign off before they could vote, which is blatantly false.
* Franklin County, which normally cancels 2-300 registered voters a year for felony convictions, has sent at least 3,500 cancellation letters to both current felons and ex-felons whose convictions date back to 1998. The list includes numerous citizens who were charged with felonies but convicted only of misdemeanors.
* Republican Secretary of State Blackwell reversed a long-standing Ohio practice and is barring voters from casting provisional ballots within their county if they are registered to vote but there's been a mistake about where they are expected to cast their ballot. In this year's spring primaries, Blackwell allowed voters to cast provisional ballots by county, even if they were in the wrong precinct. But this fall, voters had to leave if they were in the wrong precinct and find their way to the right one even though they had waited in line two to three hours. Blackwell hopes to succeed Republican Bob Taft as governor, and has labored hard to install Diebold e-voting machines with no paper trail throughout Ohio. Blackwell is being widely compared to the infamous Katherine Harris, who handed Florida to George W. Bush in 2000 and was rewarded with a safe Congressional seat. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones accused Blackwell of seeking “to disenfranchise the people of the state of Ohio.” Tubbs Jones pointed out that the 2000 census had caused massive redistricting, particularly within inner city precincts, which would lead to many people ending up at the wrong voting site.
* The October 22 Columbus Dispatch, which endorsed Bush, and WVKO Radio have both documented phone calls from people impersonating Franklin County Board of Elections workers and directing registered voters to different and incorrect polling sites. One individual was falsely told not to vote at the polling station across the street from his house, but at a "new" site, four miles away. Under Blackwell's new rules, such a vote would not be counted. Nor do the precinct locations make much sense in the inner city. Someone living on the northwest corner of Bryden and Wilson, instead of walking half a block to the polling site at Franklin Alternative School, must vote seven blocks northeast at the Model Neighborhood facility polling site. The previous polling site for the precinct was two blocks west before the Republicans consolidated several inner city polling places in the 1990s.
* In Cincinnati, some 105,000 voters were moved from active to inactive status within the last four years for not voting in the last two federal elections. This is not required under Ohio law, but is an option allowed and exercised by the Republican-dominated Hamilton County Board of Elections.
* Secretary of State Blackwell ruled that any voter registration form on other than 80-pound weight bond paper would not be accepted. This is an old law left over from pre-scanning days. Many voters who had registered on lighter paper, had their registration returned, even though the forms had been officially sanctioned by local election boards.
* On Election Day, fliers littered the inner city telling voters that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio. The voting irregularities suggest that Bush is the first Republican President to win the presidency without winning the actual Ohio vote. Kerry won the vote in Ohio. The exit polls are correct. The mainstream media, instead of investigating the massive irregularities, are busy concocting theories as to how all the exit polls, the safeguards for fair elections, were all wrong on election night in the Buckeye State. None dare suggest voter suppression and fraud.
Did all the unborn fetuses vote in Nebraska?
Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election.
A Media Blackout: Media Blacks Out Voting Problems.
A statistical analysis of exit polling conducted for RAW STORY by a former MIT mathematics professor has found the odds of Bush making an average gain of 4.15 percent among all 16 states included in the media’s 4 p.m. exit polling is 1 in 50,000, or .002 percent.
more strange numbers by country in Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania
And here is the article of the day:
None Dare Call it Voter Suppression and Fraud
Evidence is mounting that the 2004 presidential election was stolen in Ohio. Emerging revelations of voting irregularities coupled with well-documented Republican efforts at voter suppression prior to the election suggests that in a fair election Kerry would have won Ohio.
Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conceded on November 3, based on preliminary postings by the highly partisan Republican Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. These unofficial results showed Bush with 136,483 more votes than Kerry, although 155,428 provisional ballots, 92,672 “spoiled” ballots, additional overseas ballots, and some remaining absentee ballots remained uncounted.
The day after his concession, Kerry drew 3,893 votes closer to Bush when a computerized voting machine “glitch” was discovered in an Ohio precinct. A machine in ward 1B in the predominantly Republican Gahanna, Ohio, recorded 4,258 votes for George W. Bush when only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. Buried on page A6 of the Columbus Dispatch, the story also reported that the voting machine recorded 0 votes in a race between Franklin County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks. Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder told the Dispatch that the voting machine glitches were “why the results on election night are unofficial.”
The right-wing New Life Church voting glitch is interesting. Free Press reporter Marley Greiner has been tracking Blackwell’s relationship with far right-wing religious forces like Biblical America and Christian dominionist groups that want to establish theocratic religious rule in America. Blackwell was campaigning around the state with the Reverend Rod Parsley as part of a “Silent No More” tour in support of amending the Ohio Constitution to outlaw gay marriage, on the ballot as Issue One. Many mainstream commentators claim it was the widely popular Issue One amendment campaign that brought out Bush voters in record numbers in rural Ohio. Gay marriage was already outlawed by state statute, and six of the seven Ohio Supreme Court justices are Republicans.
The nonpartisan Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) is investigating various other voting irregularities in Ohio, among them:
* In Auglaize County, a letter dated October 21 under the signature of Ken Nuss, the county’s former deputy director, alleges that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), violated election protocol with his unauthorized use of the county’s central tabulating computer that creates ballots and compiles election results. Nuss, who resigned on October 21, alleges that McGinnis was improperly granted access to the computer the weekend of October 16.
* In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting at 9am EST Wednesday, Nov. 3, Bush had 20,807 votes (65.80%) and Kerry had 10,724 (33.92%). Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting Bush’s vote to 33,039 (65.77%) to Kerry’s 17,039 (33.92%). CASE is investigating why the percentage of the vote stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point after nearly 19,000 new ballots were added. CASE members speculate that it’s either a long-shot coincidence with the last three digits remaining the same, or that someone had pre-set a database and programmed a voting machine to cough up a pre-set percentage of votes. Miami County uses an easily hackable optical scanner with the central counter provided by the Republican-linked vendor ES&S.
* In Warren County, administrators and election officials locked down the county administrative building and prohibited all independent election observers from watching the vote count. County officials cited “homeland security,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WCPO-TV Channel 9 News Director Bob Morford told the Enquirer that he had “never seen anything like it.” Morford asserted that throwing the media and independent observers out of the centralized counting area under the guise of “homeland security” was a “red herring.” He said, “That’s something to put up when you don’t know what else to put up to keep us out.” In Warren County, Bush picked up an additional 12,000 votes over his 2000 election total.
* In Franklin County, where Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder is also the former Executive Director of the county’s Republican Party, the county Board of Elections building looked like a bunker. Scores of city buses blocked parking spaces on the street outside, numerous concrete barricades surrounded the parking lot, and a metal detector was stationed at the only entrance. A phalanx of armed deputy sheriffs swarmed the only site where provisional voters could cast a guaranteed ballot. The Columbus Dispatch confirmed an Election Day Free Press story that far fewer voting machines were present in predominantly black Democratic inner-city voting wards than in the recent primary election and the 2000 presidential election, with their lighter turnouts. The reduced number of machines caused voters to wait up to seven hours and wait an average of approximately three hours. One Republican Central Committee member told the Free Press that Damschroder held back as many as 2000 machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.
* In rural Drake County, Kerry received 78 less votes than Al Gore in 2000, but Bush received 3000 more votes. Drake is the only county in Miami Valley where Kerry’s votes was less than Gore’s and where Bush’s vote rose dramatically.
Unofficial Ohio presidential results provided by the Secretary of State’s Office show 155,428 provisional ballots cast. Blackwell was all over the national news telling everyone who would listen that these ballots were randomly distributed and not disproportionately for Kerry. As former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani raved on national TV demanding Kerry’s concession, a basic analysis of the provisional ballots suggested that they were disproportionately for Kerry.
Historically, provisional ballots are far more likely to be cast by poor and minority voters, who live in the urban centers and move more often. Ohio has 88 counties, the vast majority of them rural. Kerry won 15 counties in Ohio, virtually all large urban centers. In those counties, 85,096 provisional ballots remain uncounted. Past elections point to the fact that these provisional ballots are hardly ever cast in the affluent, primarily Republican municipalities, but are overwhelmingly from the central city. Also, an additional 17,038 provisional ballots are from Hamilton County and Wood County. Bush won Hamilton with 53% of the vote and Wood County with 53.5%. Traditionally, the provisional ballots in Hamilton County come from Cincinnati and its poor central city areas. These are areas where John Kerry won handily on Election Day.
Thus, 102,134 of the provisional ballots, nearly two-thirds (65.7%) in all probability come from solidly pro-Kerry areas and are most likely cast by pro-Kerry supporters such as African Americans and the poor. These fit the same socio-economic demographics and racial profiles of voters targeted by the GOP for challenges in Ohio.
Palast also points to the 92,672 so-called “spoiled” ballots in Ohio that have yet to be counted, and may never be tallied. The most famous spoiled ballots were the 2004 Florida punch cards that could not be machine read, but when looked at manually the voter’s intent could be determined. Expert statisticians who investigated spoilage in the 2000 election in Florida found that 54% of these discarded ballots were cast by blacks. In Ohio, most of the spoiled votes were lost through punch card ballots in 2004.
By Blackwell directing county Boards of Elections not to count the provisional ballots for 11 days, it benefited the Bush campaign since an immediate counting would have no doubt made the race tigher between Kerry and Bush, and perhaps prompted Kerry to request a recount. This would have the 92,672 discarded "spoiled" ballots that were also likely to favor Kerry.
Daniel Tokaji, Professor of Law at the Ohio State University College of Law commented: "One other point. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has reportedly said that provisional ballots won't be counted for 11 days. I'm not sure where he's getting this, but he may be relying on ORC 3505.32. This statute provides that the boards of election are to begin canvassing election returns between 11 and 15 days after the election and ‘continue the canvass daily until it is completed.’ Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see how this precludes provisional votes from being counted earlier than that, even if the canvass doesn't begin until the 11th day."
Spoiled ballots will only be counted if someone with standing, such as five Kerry electors or the Ohio Democratic Party, demands and legally qualifies for a recount. Thus, the exit polls may have been correct. A majority of people voted for Kerry in Ohio; but 250,000 votes were not counted, most favoring Kerry over Bush. If Kerry had won by even one vote in Ohio, he would be the next President of the United States.
Irregularities in other key battleground states have prompted three U.S. representatives to urgently request that the Comptroller General of the United States David Walker and the General Accounting Office “immediately undertake an investigation of the efficiency of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election.” Tom Hartmann, in his post election article on CommonDreams.org (“Evidence mounts that the vote was hacked”), reminds readers that Bev Harris, who started blackboxvoting.org, showed Howard Dean how to hack a county “central tabulator” computer in 90 seconds live on CNBC.
The Diebold Corporation, which helped count the Ohio vote with e-voting machines and optical scan machines, is run by a notoriously pro-Republican CEO, Wally O’Dell. Last year O’Dell wrote a letter to Ohio Republican donors telling them that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” O’Dell is a proud member of Bush’s Pioneer and Ranger team of major donors who visit the Crawford ranch. The other major election vote counting firm is ES&S, which is being investigated for allegedly having a machine that subtracted votes when the totals surpassed 32,000.
On Election Day, the Election Protection Coalition observers who covered 58 polling places in central Ohio, documented thousands of voter complaints over long lines and recorded numerous people leaving the polls for work or because they were elderly or handicapped and physically unable to wait for hours to vote. Professor James K. Galbraith, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote the following summary of Election Day in Ohio: “. . . I drove a young African-American voter, a charming business student, seven months pregnant, to her polling place at Finland Elementary School in south Columbus. We arrived in a squalling rain to find voters lined up outside for about a hundred yards. . . . The real problem was a grotesque shortage of voting machines.”
Ohio State University Law Professor Edward B. Foley told the New York Times, “When your lines get to two or three hours, it’s system failure.”
Other bizarre tactics emerged in the run-up to the election:
* Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and Democratic Parties, or any slate of five candidates, may embed official election challengers inside polling places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that the Republican Party intended to place thousands of lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls to challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here that the key goal was to jam lines and frustrate new voters. After two federal judges rejected the GOP challengers, Republicans got a favorable ruling from the Sixth Circuit, which allowed them to place challengers in Ohio polling places. Michael Beaver, Deputy State Commander with the Election Protection Coalition says, “We now believe that the challengers were a smokescreen to hide the real plan to orchestrate a machine shortage in Democratic wards.”
* The Republican Party sent letters challenging thousands of Franklin County registered voters who requested absentee ballots. Franklin County is home to Columbus, the state's largest city and its capitol. Though it is also home to Ohio State University, thousands of local students go to schools outside the county or state. The GOP targeted young voters for challenges. The GOP pre-challenged an estimated 35,000 voters and rented arenas in Cleveland and Columbus to conduct the challenges. The GOP sent registered letters to registered voters’ addresses and when they failed to pick up a letter from the Republican Party in primarily Democratic areas, they were challenged for fraud. A federal judge disallowed the challenges less than a week before the election.
* The Franklin County Board of Elections has called or written an undetermined number of voters who obtained absentee ballots, challenging their addresses. In at least one case, after a series of angry phone calls, the Board admitted there was nothing wrong with the address in question and re-instated voting rights. The voter in question was a registered Democrat. His wife, an independent at the same address, was not challenged. It is unclear how many others have been wrongly knocked out.
* Even if they are counted, Franklin County's absentee ballot forms are designed in ways strikingly reminiscent of those notorious butterfly ballots in the Florida 2000 presidential election. On Franklin County absentee ballot forms, Kerry is the third name on the list of presidential candidates on the left side of the ballot. But, the punch card is designed to fit in the middle, so the actual number you punch for Kerry is hole "4." If you mistakenly punch hole "3" you've just voted for Bush.
* Damschroder, Franklin County's right-wing Elections Director is insisting on e-voting machines that have malfunctioned in at least two Congressional elections. The machines have no paper trail and one subtracted 3% from former Rep. John Kasich’s and added 3% to Ed Brown, a six-point shift. The November issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines ran the following headlines on their covers, respectively: "E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were bad'" and "Could hackers tilt the election?" Vigorous protests against the paperless machines have been staged here, but many will be used, rendering a meaningful recount impossible.
* Twenty GOP-dominated Ohio counties have given wrong information to former felons about their voter eligibility. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati and the Republican Taft family, officials told numerous former felons that a judge had to sign off before they could vote, which is blatantly false.
* Franklin County, which normally cancels 2-300 registered voters a year for felony convictions, has sent at least 3,500 cancellation letters to both current felons and ex-felons whose convictions date back to 1998. The list includes numerous citizens who were charged with felonies but convicted only of misdemeanors.
* Republican Secretary of State Blackwell reversed a long-standing Ohio practice and is barring voters from casting provisional ballots within their county if they are registered to vote but there's been a mistake about where they are expected to cast their ballot. In this year's spring primaries, Blackwell allowed voters to cast provisional ballots by county, even if they were in the wrong precinct. But this fall, voters had to leave if they were in the wrong precinct and find their way to the right one even though they had waited in line two to three hours. Blackwell hopes to succeed Republican Bob Taft as governor, and has labored hard to install Diebold e-voting machines with no paper trail throughout Ohio. Blackwell is being widely compared to the infamous Katherine Harris, who handed Florida to George W. Bush in 2000 and was rewarded with a safe Congressional seat. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones accused Blackwell of seeking “to disenfranchise the people of the state of Ohio.” Tubbs Jones pointed out that the 2000 census had caused massive redistricting, particularly within inner city precincts, which would lead to many people ending up at the wrong voting site.
* The October 22 Columbus Dispatch, which endorsed Bush, and WVKO Radio have both documented phone calls from people impersonating Franklin County Board of Elections workers and directing registered voters to different and incorrect polling sites. One individual was falsely told not to vote at the polling station across the street from his house, but at a "new" site, four miles away. Under Blackwell's new rules, such a vote would not be counted. Nor do the precinct locations make much sense in the inner city. Someone living on the northwest corner of Bryden and Wilson, instead of walking half a block to the polling site at Franklin Alternative School, must vote seven blocks northeast at the Model Neighborhood facility polling site. The previous polling site for the precinct was two blocks west before the Republicans consolidated several inner city polling places in the 1990s.
* In Cincinnati, some 105,000 voters were moved from active to inactive status within the last four years for not voting in the last two federal elections. This is not required under Ohio law, but is an option allowed and exercised by the Republican-dominated Hamilton County Board of Elections.
* Secretary of State Blackwell ruled that any voter registration form on other than 80-pound weight bond paper would not be accepted. This is an old law left over from pre-scanning days. Many voters who had registered on lighter paper, had their registration returned, even though the forms had been officially sanctioned by local election boards.
* On Election Day, fliers littered the inner city telling voters that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday.
No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio. The voting irregularities suggest that Bush is the first Republican President to win the presidency without winning the actual Ohio vote. Kerry won the vote in Ohio. The exit polls are correct. The mainstream media, instead of investigating the massive irregularities, are busy concocting theories as to how all the exit polls, the safeguards for fair elections, were all wrong on election night in the Buckeye State. None dare suggest voter suppression and fraud.
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Date: 2004-11-09 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2004-11-09 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 09:18 am (UTC)...those counties in Flordia that are overwhelming in numbers of registered Democrats that went to Bush by overwhelming numbers...a lot of those are the same counties that went overwhelmingly to Bush in the 2000 elections as well.
now...one could rightly argue that there was theft of the election in 2000 as well, and so therefore that doesn't mean anything.
however...those same counties also went for Reagan during both of his runs for the presidency.
so...this means one of two things...either the Republicans have been practicing this kind of voter fraud in Florida for well over 20 years now...or, and as much as i don't want to admit this...it's possible that these Democrats down in Florida actually do vote for Republicans...which wouldn't be unheard of, considering that most of the south used to be Democratic.
there has never been, nor will there ever be, a perfect, problem-free election...in any country. that being said...my gut says that this election was stolen. there are too many stories, too many inconsistencies and too many statistics to ignore. it definitely raises red flags, to say the least. but the objective, analytical part of my brain is thinking that we need a full-scale investigation before coming to any definite conclusions about whether there was actual "fraud" or not.
just something to think about.
thank you for keeping people aware of these stories. i, for one, appreciate it greatly.
~the lad
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 09:51 am (UTC)Ok. I'm all with you, except I'd like to see the evidence to back up this statement. Do you have a historical breakdown of Florida counties' party affiliation registration, & their Presidential election results?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 10:30 am (UTC)I fully agree with you about a full-scale investigation, that's why I think it's premature to say Kerry won. That shouldn't be our rallying cry. That's the wrong motivation, that way lies "we'll hack the White House back from them" logic. The whole point is to get the votes counted.
Thank you for all your work bringing stories to light daily.
Recount the Florida vote.
Date: 2004-11-09 10:55 am (UTC)1. the voters who registered as democrats in the counties with touch-screen machines voted in percentages that matched the exit polls.
2. the voters who registered as democrats in the counties with optically-scanned ballots (and ONLY those counties) voted in percentages wildly different from the exit polls. just a coincidence?
3. end the speculation one way (bush won) or the other (kerry won) -- rescan and recount the votes in florida -- ALL of florida (don't make the mistake gore made).
In the case of the touch-screen voting, all records are electronic, so there will be no "re-count" there. But the optically-scanned ballots can be rescanned and MONITORED.
At this time, I believe that this is the BEST chance we have of checking this election for a possible theft. And should it be done in Florida, then attention will be paid (it will be DEMANDED by repubs) about the vote counts in other states.
What needs to be done is to take legal action in Florida to get a recount demanded (there are legal steps to do this -- I don't know what they are) before the vote is certified and final.
Not much time remains for this. I'm not certain, but I think that Friday, November 12 is the deadline.
Re: Recount the Florida vote.
Date: 2004-11-09 10:58 am (UTC)Re: Recount the Florida vote.
Date: 2004-11-09 05:25 pm (UTC)Re: Recount the Florida vote.
Date: 2004-11-10 09:18 pm (UTC)http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2657197&mesg_id=2657197
"Consumer group rallying citizens for recounts in Ohio, Florida; voters can fund audits of Ohio and court challenges in Florida by donating to HelpAmericaRecount.org, a 527 tax exempt organization set up exclusively for recount funding."
...
"Using a little-known provision in Ohio law, any five Ohioans who did not vote for the winning candidate can file for recounts. In Florida, citizens can file to contest the election, county by county. Black Box Voting researchers are helping to identify key counties with the worst anomalies, for hand counts and other audits, to detect computer intrusions and vote count discrepancies."
Re: Recount the Florida vote.
Date: 2004-11-10 09:20 pm (UTC)as early as next week with hand counts initiated by Black Box Voting on behalf of American voters. Just got that confirmed, and unless something gets blocked somehow, I think Florida may be a go and will not dip into the Help America Recount fund, because I think we've got it covered.
If we cover Ohio and New Hampshire, Colorado has to be next, followed by New Mexico. Both places stink to high heaven.
This was a bitch to set up yesterday -- it all came at once, and I had about 3 hours to pull together the details. Kathleen Wynne, a new employee of Black Box Voting, was the one who discovered the 5-citizen Ohio recount technicality. She's from Cleveland, and she rocks.
Hedda had put the Help America Recount thing into place with our attorney, Lowell Finley, just 24 hour before.
Ralph Nader was moving ahead with a press conference, called, invited me to come. I figured everything was converging. The biggest stress was getting the HelpAmericaRecount.org web site operational in time, and it's coming along quickly.
Help America Recount is an entirely separate entity from both Black Box Voting and the National Ballot Integrity Project. Because these two groups are 501c(3) nonprofits, we cannot do candidate stuff, and so the 527 organization was set up specifically for recount funds. Great job, Hedda!
I expect to have two more announcements, one as early as Friday, fingers crossed, and one early next week.
We will need volunteers to help with the hand count in Florida, which it does not know it will be required to do. I know how to muscle them into letting us do it, at no charge, but will need people in about 44 counties to help. If you have volunteered with the Cleanup Crew, make sure we have your address if you are in Florida.
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 11:10 am (UTC)2 - some people are claiming that. others, like in the link posted near the top of this entry, claim that there is no difference. i've also heard some people claim that the counties where touchscreen voting was used in Florida didn't match up with exit polls...but the districts where paper ballots were used did. i don't think we know the real answer yet...only time and a thorough investigation will tell. this needs to be looked at further before reaching a conclusion...and it will only hurt, not help, our cause to go around making (possibly) unfounded accusations. just because someone posted something in a blog somewhere doesn't make it true.
3 - agreed. and not just in Florida...in ANY state where these inconsistencies are apparent.
~the lad
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 05:30 pm (UTC)http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm
and as i said, if florida is challenged sucessfully, then there will be no problem get other states challenged -- repubs will be on the hunt for votes. florida gets the recount started.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 06:17 pm (UTC)two issues with it though...
1) if you look at the year 2000 results, (which are available as a link towards the bottom of that page), they are fairly well consistent with the 2004 results (ie - places with a majority of Democratic registrants voting Republican...which, as i pointed out, is fairly consistent with the notion of "Reagan Democrats"...fairly consistent with the voting history of those counties going back several elections...and are mostly in counties that are close to Georgia, and therefore consistent with being fairly conservative, regardless of what people label themselves as).
2) those charts don't list people who are registered as Independents. not people who ended up actually voting for Independents...which we can find out on sites like C-SPAN, where we see that the votes for all Independent candidates in total was around a mere 1% of the vote in Florida. but i think the fact that this statistic (registered Independents) is missing makes that chart somewhat troubling, since it doesn't give us a complete and accurate picture of what went on down there...and if we're squabbling over specific numbers, then we should include ALL numbers...otherwise, the results we end up with are bunk.
personally, as i've said twice now in comments to this post...i don't see this as the silver bullit that's going to turn it around for us in Florida. i think these numbers, while appearing odd, to say the least, can be logically explained away. which is why i think focusing on felon purges and voter intimidation might be the more appropriate way to go. if we start making leaps of logic...which is essentially what's being asked by having people focus on these charts and numbers in a vaccum without putting them into historical context...then it's going to be even easier for the Rethugnicans to paint us as conspiracy theorists. don't make their job easy for them.
~the lad
no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 12:00 pm (UTC)anyway...here's a link to the analysis of "Reagan Democrats" in those districts in Florida, in case whomever posted a response, and then deleted it, would like to see it...or anyone else reading this entry, for that matter.
my big problem with this analysis is that the person says "i downloaded the information from 1980 through 2004"...but they don't themselves give the raw data, or even a link to the raw data. so, personally, i'm putting this in the "to be taken with a large grain of salt" category until and unless i see that raw data myself. but if it's an accurate analysis...then it's time for everyone to drop the "there are more registered Democrats there...and therefore there's no way that Bush could've won" argument...unless they have something more than just a gut feeling to back it up with. there are much more solid examples of actual potential fraud or voter purging and/or intimidation that we should focus our energies on.
~the lad
it's my fault
Date: 2004-11-09 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 12:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-09 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 05:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-10 05:41 am (UTC)