WE NEED ONE SENATOR (and then we need fifty one) Senator Kerry leaves the country to evade vote fraud issues at Thursday's Electoral College ratification
Congress is poised to ratify rigged results on January 6, 2005 - Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and a number of other Representatives promised to challenge the fraudulent Electors from Ohio, but at least one Senator is needed to join the call for an investigation before ratifying the Electoral College results. Please call Senators between TODAY insist they investigate the numerous examples of vote fraud in Ohio (and other states) before rubber stamping a second stolen election by the Bush team. The phone numbers for all 100 Senators can be reached via http://www.senate.gov or call the US Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
If you don't have time to read all of the articles appended here -- just make a phone call to your two Senators (if you don't live in Washington, DC) and your Representative. Feel free to call other Congressional offices outside -- they ALL share the same Constitutional obligations to ensure that the Electors from the States are legitimate before voting to ratify the Electoral College on Thursday (which technically determines who becomes President).
The House of Representatives can also be reached at this number -- it would be nice if the challenge to the fraudulent electors of the 2004 election are made by a multi-racial coalition this time (in 2000, none of the Representatives who challenged the fraud were of European heritage). The Civil Rights movement that freed the South from legal Apartheid in the 1950s and 1960s succeeded to the degree that it did due to a multi-racial coalition. Please urge the Democrats -- and honest Republicans -- to take a strong stand against voter fraud.
January 6, 2005 is not the end of efforts for real elections and democracy, but merely one episode of a multigenerational effort to realize the promises of freedom in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and other noble statements of intent. Bush's stolen elections were hardly the first rigged races in US history -- and there are many ways to tamper with the outcome beyond touch screen voting machines.
If the Democrats rubber stamp the frauds in Ohio, Florida and several other states, then the main question will be whether those still interested in democracy should seek to take over the scandalous fraud of the Democratic Party, or give up any illusions that it is reformable and seek to create a real Second Party (not even a "Third" Party). There's probably not enough energy to do both (take over the D's and create a real opposition), which one is more practical may take a little time to see, given the outrage likely among the Democratic Party's constituents to their capitulation to the Cheney-Bush-Rove regime.
One small benefit from the stolen 2004 election -- a lot more people now realize the US is not really a democracy, that "elections" on the federal level have become merely a means of ratifying undemocratic selections of national leadership. And no one even bothers with the pretense of electing members of the covert parts of the federal government, which is beyond legislative or judicial oversight.
see http://www.oilempire.us
the connections between
stolen elections - 9/11 - fascism
World War IV - media - Peak Oil
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Many of the voters who voted for Kerry with great regret realized he was a flawed candidate for President. Now, we see the final, bitter proof of just how flawed he really is:
from:
Votergate Resource Center - Pass it On!
http://www.miamedia.com/votergate
Kerry the Wimp Runs Away from the Electoral Vote on Jan 6
"Small group of House Democrats to contest formal electoral vote count"
House Democrats plan a long-shot effort to prevent Congress from counting Ohio's pivotal votes when lawmakers tally the electoral vote on Thursday. "Kerry is traveling in the Middle East and will not attend Thursday's joint session."
In a written statement, spokeswoman April Boyd seemed to provide little support for Conyers' effort. "Senator Kerry conceded the election on November 3rd. ... He has been very clear all along that voting irregularities must be examined, not because it would change the outcome of the election but because it's critical to our democracy," Boyd said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/01/04/national1856EST0699.DTL
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http://www.oilempire.us/stolenelection2004.html
some of the best sites keeping track of the fraudulent "election"
http://www.auditthevote.org
http://www.blackboxvoting.org Bev Harris's efforts to expose the fraud of touch screen voting machines
http://www.caseohio.org/CaseOhio/ Ohio group documenting the fraud of the 2004 election
http://www.electionfraud2004.org good slideshow introduction to the issues
http://www.freepress.org Free Press, a Columbus Ohio publication that has done some of the best reporting
http://www.indyvoter.org the League of Pissed Off Voters, which has helped hold public hearings on the vote fraud
http://www.legitgov.org Citizens for Legitimate Government, founded to oppose the 2000 coup in Florida, excellent news service
http://www.nov2truth.org great collection of articles, links
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Madsen/120604madsen.html controversial article alleging CIA involvement in the 2004 electoral fraud
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/121704Landes/121704landes.html the solution is paper ballots, counted by hand (not a "paper trail")
http://www.scoop.co.nz New Zealand based news service with better reporting on US scandals than most US based media
http://www.ThomHartmann.com syndicated columnist Thom Hartmann, who has been writing about vote fraud and fascism
http://www.votescam.com Vote Scam, a book about vote fraud investigations in Florida in the early 1970s
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Dear Friends,
Here are two excellent articles published today.
1) Dialing In For Democracy - Now Is Critical, by Thom Hartmann
2) Ten Preliminary Reasons Why the Bush Vote Does Not Compute, and Why Congress Must Investigate Rather
Than Certify the Electoral College - Part One of Two by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey
Wasserman
Also, see the Election 2004 section at freepress.org in Columbus, Ohio
[ http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19 ] for many recent articles detailing the breathtaking mountain of clear cut evidence for systematic, widespread criminal election fraud in Ohio - with plentiful indications of the same in New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, and other states.
If you have not already done so, please call both your Senators and your Representative - regardless of their party - and tell them that they simply must read Representative Conyers' detailed report on the widespread Ohio vote fraud before they can possibly make an informed decision as to how they will vote the Thursday, January 6 when the Electors are officially considered for acceptance and ratification by a joint session of Congress. I have done this and can report that each office was quite receptive to hearing this. They have already received a copy of it from Rep. Conyers, the senior Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, who, along with several other Representatives held several hearings in Ohio in December.
If you can, add something to the effect that this issue is politically viable because of the detailed evidence of fraud that the media has ignored and the clear evidence supporting the conclusion that Bush's seeming national popular vote victory was gained by widespread fraud, vote padding, etc. Psychologically it helps them take it seriously when you can address this dimension of 'realpolitik' with the person you are speaking with. And if you ask, you may be able to speak to one of the Legislative Aides. I was able to do this when I phoned my Representative's office. It is this matter of "well, Bush won such a clear national popular vote victory that it is not politically realistic or worthwhile to contest one state" that is the primary false construct being used by media (Washington Post in particular) and the Democratic "leadership" to put down the call to take our country back - to say nothing of the scorn being heaped by some Republicans on intelligent citizens asking intelligent questions about this most basic question of whether we have any remnant of democracy alive in our national elections.
Best,
Bruce
_____________________________________________________________________
1)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0103-32.htm
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Dialing In For Democracy - Now Is Critical
by Thom Hartmann
Jeff Taylor is one of Vermont's three electors - representatives elected by the citizens of Vermont to vote for President of the United States. He and his two peers have joined the electors of several other states in signing resolutions asking their state's congressional delegation to protest the Ohio slate of electors.
"If they can have fair elections in Kiev," Taylor told me, "why not in Cleveland?"
Here's what troubles Taylor:
If you flip a coin a hundred times, odds are that around fifty times it will come up heads and fifty times tails. In reality, it may be 49-51 or even 47-53, but it will always pretty much evenly split. That's the nature of random events, including random errors and mistakes.
So if the tens of thousands of election "irregularities" being reported all across the nation - but particularly in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, and North Carolina - showed "irregularities" worked randomly to the benefit of both parties, it would be easy to say that we have a broken, but not a stolen or hacked, election system. But that was not the case.
In nearly every case now documented, producing odds not of 50:50 but, according to credible statisticians, sometimes rising to 1:250,000,000, "irregularities" seem always to favor George W. Bush or other Republican candidates. These include:
machine errors
misplaced machines
unmailed absentee ballots
certification of more votes than registered voters in some areas, and dramatically low voter turnouts in other areas
modem-connected voting machines and tabulators
different standards for provisional ballot recounts in different areas
phony companies registering voters and then tearing up the registrations of people who checked one party but not the other
voting machines defaulting to a particular candidate or 'jumping' by recording a vote for one candidate when another's button was pushed
exit polls not corresponding with reported votes
voting elections officials creating what look like phony election machine poll tapes and tossing original, signed tabulations in the garbage.
And while the vast majority of the "irregularities" in 2004 are breaking to the benefit of George W. Bush, they also did so in 2000, and for Republicans generally in 2002.
It's time to start using the "F" word. George W. Bush was made President of the United States in 2000 by fraud, and apparently has done it again.
First, 2000.
As The New York Times reported on November 12, 2001, in an article titled "Examining The Vote: The Overview" by Ford Fessenden and John M. Broder, a media consortium was pulled together to actually count every questionable ballot in the 2000 Florida election.
The media consortium included The Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots. The research group employed teams of three workers they called coders to examine each undervoted ballot and mark down what they saw in detail. Three coders provided a bulwark against inaccuracy or bias in the coding. For overvotes, one coder was used because there was seldom disagreement among examiners in a trial run using three coders.
The data produced by the ballot review allows scrutiny of the disputed Florida vote under a large number of situations and using a variety of different standards that might have applied in a hand recount, including the appearance of a dimple, a chad dangling by one or more corners and a cleanly punched card.
The result clearly demonstrated that Al Gore won the 2000 Florida vote. But the Supreme Court, in the lawsuit initiated by George W. Bush against Al Gore now known as 'Bush v. Gore', ruled that "irreparable harm" might be done to candidate Bush if such a recount was performed in Florida by Florida authorities. Justice Antonin Scalia, in his concurring majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, wrote that "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush], and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election."
And Scalia was right, if "irreparable harm" means that counting all the votes may lead to the petitioner [Bush] "losing an election." When the Consortium examined all the ballots statewide, noted the Times, "The findings indicate that Mr. Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to 'count all the votes.'"
(To his eternal credit, Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, writing that: "Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm. On the other hand, there is a danger that a stay may cause irreparable harm to the respondents [Gore] - and, more importantly, the public at large - because of the risk that 'the entry of the stay would be tantamount to a decision on the merits in favor of the applicants [Bush].'")
Further, "In a finding rich with irony," note the Times writers, "a statewide recount -- could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent."
Count the dimpled chads or not. Count the overvotes or not. Count the pregnant chads or not. No matter WHAT standard was chosen - Gore won Florida in 2000.
And that doesn't begin to examine the true fraud that occurred in Florida when Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, according to the NAACP and Greg Palast's reporting on the BBC, illegally removed tens of thousands of African American voters from the voter rolls - a crime that is still in the courts and has yet to be prosecuted. (An amazing documentary of this is the DVD "Unprecedented".) Or, as I reported in an article commissioned by MoveOn.org in July of 2003, many computer irregularities across the nation also drew into question the legitimacy of the 2000 and 2002 elections.
And now, in 2004, we are again visited by a Stalinesque fusion of cronies funding and controlling the election apparatus, national media intimidated into silence, and a populace so preoccupied with daily survival concerns - and uneasy about being identified as "troublemakers" by a new, highly centralized state security apparatus - that they don't have the means or time to react.
Yet react we must.
Congressman John Conyers has conducted hearings in Ohio, which uncovered sufficient evidence to call into question - at least in the mind of the Congressman himself and many associated with him - the validity of the Ohio vote.
The Electoral College was modeled after a form of governance used by the British before the Norman invasion in 1066, as documented in The History of England As Well Ecclesiastical As Civil by Paul de Rapin Thoyras, one of the two books that Thomas Jefferson repeatedly cited as the most important histories every written.
It's been out of print for two centuries, but in my copy, printed in London in 1728, Thoyras writes, presaging language later re-used in the U.S. Constitution, "Now in order to preserve a perfect Union, it was necessary some way of communication and intercourse between them [the people in remote locations and their government] shou'd be established. This was done by the means of a Wittena-Gemot or Assembly of Wise Men, who were the Representatives of the whole Nation. This Method the Saxons brought with them from Germany, where all publick affairs were transacted in such like conventions...[including their] Presidents." (Italics from the original.)
Section II, Article 2 of the Constitution, amended by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, create and define the Electoral College, modeled by the Framers after the Saxon Wittena-Gemot. Each state chooses its own electors any way it wants, although all today do so by election of the people.
Electors have already met in the various states to vote, but that vote will not be opened until Thursday, January 6th. If Conyers' protest is matched by the protest of at least one single senator, then the House and Senate retire to their respective chambers for a maximum of two hours to debate the legitimacy of the Ohio (and, possibly, other) electoral slates. After two hours, with a maximum of 5 minutes for any member to speak, a vote is taken. If both the House and the Senate vote by majority to sustain the challenge, then the presidential vote goes to the House of Representatives, where each state has a single vote.
Given that Republicans control both the House and Senate, and a majority of states were "red" in this past election, even if a senator joins Conyers it won't change the outcome of this election, unless between now and Thursday such massive, credible evidence of election-changing vote fraud is presented that even Republicans will agree that the election was stolen. Given how often Republicans in the House and Senate have placed the interest of their party's power above the needs and interests of democracy or the nation in the past few decades, it's extremely unlikely that a challenge will result in a change in the election.
But - vitally - it will put the issues of vote fraud in America on the table in a way that even the mainstream media can no longer ignore. And it may lead to getting private, Republican-affiliated corporations out of handling our votes in secret, and to other electoral reforms such as IRV and public financing of elections. It could be a huge step in pulling us back from the brink of the Stalinist state the Bush administration seems determined to lead us into.
Rallies are being held in Columbus, Ohio and Washington, DC, and news stories of them are easily found on this and other progressive news sites. But for those who can't travel, perhaps the most important step you can take today is to call your two senators at 1-202-224-3121 or 1-800-839-5276 and ask them to join Conyers in his protest of the Ohio electors. This is particularly important if you live in California, West Virginia, Minnesota, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland, Illinois, or Maine, as those state have senators who may be more inclined to join Conyers than most.
Make your call now. It's one of the last ways we can still reach our elected representatives without a Republican corporation in the middle.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," "The Edison Gene", and "What Would Jefferson Do?."
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2)
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0103-24.htm
Published on Monday, January 3, 2005 by the Free Press (Columbus, Ohio)
Ten Preliminary Reasons Why the Bush Vote Does Not Compute, and Why Congress Must Investigate Rather Than Certify the Electoral College
Part One of Two
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
The presidential vote for George W. Bush does not compute.
By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the freepress.org investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans -- because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush.
Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida, indicate John Kerry was most likely the actual winner on November 2, as reported in national exit polls. At very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio's votes were counted and re-counted, has compromised this nation's historic commitment to free and fair elections.
On Thursday, January 6, the Electoral College will be challenged by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of Congress under a law passed in 1887 in reaction to the fraudulent election of 1876. A fuller investigation requires assent by at least one Senator.
As this vote nears, Ohio's certified presidential vote (and quite likely those of at least Florida and New Mexico) is simply not credible. George W. Bush's 'victory' appears to have resulted from multiple frauds - a GOP 'do-everything' strategy to win the state that swung the election.
In today's article, we list the top ten glaring flaws in the Ohio vote that have allowed Bush to gather the votes to 'win' the presidency in Ohio with an apparent margin of 118,775 votes - the result from an official recount that manually examined only 3 percent of ballots cast.
This list involves very large totals of uncounted, tainted or fraudulent votes. Taken together, they exceed Bush's margin of victory in Ohio.
These expert analyses are based on state and local Board of Election statistics, U.S. Census reports, and other public documents. They were not conducted with any assistance from John F. Kerry's campaign. All the conclusions presented can be re-checked among the wide range of documents posted at freepress.org under the Election 2004 department. The authors will also respond to specific journalistic inquiries at truth@freepress.org. Additional key sources are specified below.
These flaws involve very large numbers of votes. But they cannot fully explain how the results were recorded on Election Day for one crucial reason: the paper and digital record trail needed to analyze the actual voting has been sealed from public scrutiny by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who both administered the state's election and served as the co-chair of Ohio's 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.
Blackwell and other Republican officials continue to discount such criticisms. Blackwell has written that the election ran "smoothly." His office has refused subpoenas requesting him to testify, terming them a form of "harassment." Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett has said that this year's election had "fewer glitches" than previous ones. "We have bipartisan (election" boards and very specific rules and procedures," he says. "To have fraud within the counting process in Ohio, you would have to have massive collusion."
Nearly 85 percent of the state used paper ballots. Most were tabulated electronically - meaning an evidence trail exists, if it has not been destroyed or fatally compromised. But we have reason to believe this destruction has already occurred in a number of Ohio counties, rendering a full recount and audit impossible.
While the anomalies we have found in the Ohio vote are deep and serious, an in-depth study now indicates shocking parallels in New Mexico, which we will discuss in tomorrow's article.
The Bush-Cheney 'do-everything' strategy in Ohio covered a very wide range of tactics, from disenfranchisement of minority voters to discarding of ballots to tampered tabulators and much more.
Taken as a whole, this compendium of error, fraud, cover-up and contempt indicates that this was not a legitimate election, and is not worthy of being certified by the Congress of the United States:
1. More than 106,000 Ohio ballots remain uncounted. As certified by Blackwell, Ohio's official results say 92,672 regular ballots were cast without indicating a choice for president. This sum grows to 106,000 ballots when uncounted provisional ballots are included. There is no legal reason for not inspecting and counting each of these ballots. This figure does not include thousands of people who did not vote, despite intending to do so in Ohioâ*™s inner cities, due to a lack of voting machines, having no available ballots, intimidation, manipulation of registrations, denial of absentee ballots and other means of depriving American citizens of their rightful vote.
2. Most uncounted ballots come from regions and precincts where Kerry was strongest. In Hamilton County, 4,515 ballots or 51.64 percent of the uncounted county total, came from Cincinnati, where Kerry won 67.98 percent to Bush's 31.54 percent. In Cuyahoga County, 4,708 ballots or 44 percent of the county total came from Cleveland, where Kerry won all 65 precincts. In Summit County, 2,650 ballots or 48.72 percent of the county total came from Akron, which Kerry won 68.75 percent to Bushâ*™s 28.00 percent.
3. Of the 147,000 combined provisional and absentee ballots counted by hand after Election Day, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. In the 10 largest Ohio counties, Kerry's margin was 4.24 to 8.92 percent higher than in the certified results, which were predominantly machine counted. As in New Mexico, where George W. Bush carried every precinct whose votes were counted with electronic optical scanning machines, John Kerry's vote count was significantly lower among ballots counted on Election Day using electronic tabulators.
4. Turnout inconsistencies reveal tens of thousands of Kerry votes were not simply recorded. Systematic mathematical scrutiny reveals that the certified results at the statewide and precinct-to-precinct level display key patterns against a backdrop of implausible results. Most striking is a pattern where turnout percentages (votes cast as a percentage of registered voters) in cities won by Kerry were 10 percentage points or more lower than in the regions won by Bush, a virtually impossible scenario.
In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, Kerry won 346 precincts to Bush's 125. The median Kerry precinct had 50.78 percent turnout, compared to 60.56 percent for Bush. Kerry's lower numbers are due to local election officials assigning more voting machines per capita to Republican-leaning suburbs than the Democrat-leaning inner city - a political decision and likely Voting Rights Act violation. If Kerry-majority precincts in Columbus had a 60 percent turnout, as recorded throughout the rest of the state, he would have netted an additional 17,000 votes.
5. Many certified turnout results in key regions throughout the state are simply not plausible, and all work to the advantage of Bush. In southern Perry County, two precincts reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters. These impossible turnouts were nonetheless officially certified as part of the final recount by Blackwell. But in pro-Kerry Cleveland, there were certified precinct turnouts of 7.10, 13.15, 19.60, 21.01, 21.80, 24.72, 28.83 and 28.97 percents. Seven entire wards reported a turnout less than 50 percent. But if the actual Cleveland turnout was 60 percent, as registered statewide, Kerry would have netted an additional 22,000 votes. Kerry is also thought to have lost 7,000 votes in Toledo this way.
6. Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage. All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.
7. In Miami County, two sets of results were submitted to state officials. The second, which padded Bush's margin, reported that 18,615 additional votes were counted, increasing Bush's total by exactly 16,000 votes. Miami Countyâ*™s turnout was up 20.86 percent from 2000, but only had experienced a population increase of 1.38 percent by 2004. Two Miami County precincts were certified with reported turnouts of 98.55 and 94.27 percent. In one of the precincts this would have required all but ten registered voters to have cast ballots. But an independent investigation has already collected affidavits of more than 10 registered voters that did not cast ballots on Nov. 2, indicating that Blackwell's officially certified vote count is simply impossible, which once again favoring Bush.
In Warren County, in southern Ohio, an unexplained Homeland Security alert was cited by Republican election board officials as a pretext for barring the media and independent observers from the vote count. In Warren and neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Bush won by a margin of 132,685 votes. He beat Gore in these counties in 2000 by 95,575 votes, meaning an implausible pickup of almost 40,000 votes.
But Bush's numbers meant 13,566 people who voted for C. Ellen Connally, the liberal Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice, also voted for Bush. In Butler Country, Bush officially was given 109,866 votes. But conservative GOP Chief Justice Moyer was given only 68,407, a negative discrepancy of more than 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Connally was credited with 61,559 votes to John Kerry's 56,234. This would mean that while Bush vastly outpolled his Republican counterpart running for the Supreme Court, African-American female Democrat running for the Supreme Court on the Democratic side outpolled Kerry. By all accounts such an outcome is inconceivable. Again, it indicates a very significant and likely fraudulent shifting of votes to Bush.
8. Democratic voters were apparently targeted with provisional ballots. These ballots require voters to fill out extensive forms at the poll. Under extraordinary rules established by Blackwell these ballots were set to be discarded if even minor errors were committed. Poll watchers in Cleveland and Columbus have testified that most provisional ballots were given to minority and young voters. The same is true with presumed liberal college and university students. In Athens, where Ohio University is located, 8.59 percent of student ballots were provisional. At Kenyon College and Oberlin College, liberal arts institutions, there were severe shortages of voting machines when compared with nearby religious-affiliated schools. Students at Kenyon waited up to eleven hours to vote. Provisional ballots were also required of mostly African-American students at Wilberforce College.
9. Ohio's Election Day exit poll was more credible than the certified result, according to intense statistical analysis. In-depth studies by Prof. Ron Baiman of the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that Ohio's exit polls in Ohio and elsewhere were virtually certain to be more accurate than the final vote count as certified by Blackwell. Ohio's exit polls predicted a Kerry victory by percentages that exceeded their margin of error. Compared to the voter access, voting technology and vote counting problems in Ohio, the exit polls were far more systematic and reliable. Critics of the exit polls' accuracy say too many Democrats were sampled, but a detailed analysis of that assertion shows no credible evidence for it. The stark shift from exit polls favoring Kerry to final results in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio all went in Bush's direction, and are, according to Baiman, a virtual impossibility, with odds as high as 150 million to one against.
10. The Ohio recount wasn't random or comprehensive and may have involved serious illegalities. Under Ohio law, 3 percent of the ballots in a precinct are examined by hand. If the numbers match what was counted on Election Day, then the rest of the ballots are compiled electronically. In many districts, Republican Secretary of State Blackwell chose the precincts to be counted in a partisan manner, weighing the choices toward precincts where there were no disputes while avoiding those being contested. Moreover, there have been numerous confirmed instances where employees of the private companies that manufactured the voting machines had access to the machines and the computer records before the recount occurred. In at least two counties, technicians from Diebold and Triad dismantled key parts of voting machines before they could be subjected to audits for recount. In some counties, vendor companies conducted the recount - not public election officials. At least one county---Shelby---has admitted to discarding key data before the recount could be taken. In Greene County unrecounted ballots were left unguarded in an unlocked building, rendering the recount moot.
These ten points are among the most serious clouding the electoral outcome in Ohio, but are only part of a larger pattern. Their correlation with similar evidence in New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere gives them added gravitas. Scores of sworn affidavits and the on-going work of teams of attorneys, statisticians and other experts have revealed far more points of contention and suspicion, many of which we will present in tomorrow's article.
The sources used for this report are available at http://freepress.org . The statistical analysis was primarily done by Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD. A transcript of his deposition in the election challenge lawsuit detailing these findings can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Phillips.pdf . The exit poll analysis was by Ron Baiman, PhD, and a transcript of the deposition describing his analysis can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Baiman.pdf . Additional material appears in court filings in Moss v. Bush and related legal actions filed with the Ohio Supreme Court.
Taken together, these ten points involve votes that cumulatively exceed Bush's 118,775 vote margin in the state.
These flaws must be thoroughly investigated before Congress ratifies the Electoral College. The legitimacy of the presidency and American Democracy is at stake. In tomorrow's article we will outline more of the evidence leading up to Thursday's historic vote.
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, a book/film project from http://freepress.org. Tax-deductible donations are welcome there and at the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism, 1240 Bryden Road, Columbus, OH 43205.
© 2004 Columbus Free Press
http://www.suntimes.com/output/jesse/cst-edt-jesse04.html
Senators should object to Ohio vote
January 4, 2005
BY JESSE JACKSON
Advertisement
This Thursday in Washington Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the senior minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will formally object to the counting of the Ohio electoral vote in the 2004 presidential election. If any senator joins him, the counting of the vote is suspended and the House and the Senate must convene separately to hear the objections filed, and to vote on whether to accept them.
The grounds for the objections are clear: The irregularities in the Ohio vote and vote count are widespread and blatant. If the Ohio election were held in the Ukraine, it would not have been certified by the international community.
In Ohio, the gulf between exit polls and counted votes is vast and glaring. Blatant discrimination in the distribution of voting machines ensured long lines in inner-city and working-class precincts that favored John Kerry, while the exurban districts that favored President Bush had no similar problems.
Systematic efforts were made to suppress and challenge the new voters in Kerry precincts, whether students or African Americans. Some precincts were certified with more votes than the number registered; others were certified with preposterously low turnouts. Voting machines, produced by a company headed by a vowed Bush supporter, provide no paper record. Ohio's secretary of state, the inappropriately partisan head of the state's Bush campaign, has resisted any systematic recount of the ballots.
The systematic bias and potential for fraud is unmistakable. An in-depth investigation is vital -- and the partisan secretary of state has opposed it every step of the way. In this context, Conyers and his colleagues in the House are serving the nation's best interests in demanding an investigation of the irregularities in Ohio, and objecting to business as usual in counting the vote.
If Harry Reid, the new leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, has any sense, he will lead members of the caucus to support their colleagues from the House and demand a debate that will expose the irregularities in Ohio. If Kerry wants to establish his continued leadership, he will stand first to join with Conyers and demand a debate.
Will the debate overturn the outcome of the election? That is doubtful, although the irregularities in Ohio suggest that Kerry may well have won if a true count could be had. But the debate is vital anyway. This country's elections, each run with different standards by different states, with partisan tricks, racial bias, and too often widespread incompetence, are an open scandal.
We need national standards to ensure that we get an honest count across the country. National standards, accompanied by a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote for all Americans, will be passed only if leaders in the Congress refuse to close their eyes to the scandal, and instead stop business as usual.
Conyers, Reid and Kerry will face harsh criticism for violating what might be called the Nixon precedent. When Kennedy beat Nixon by a few thousand votes in an election marked by irregularities in Illinois and Texas, Nixon chose not to challenge the result. Gore essentially followed that rule after the gang of five in the Supreme Court disgraced themselves by stopping the vote count in Florida. But the effect of the Nixon precedent is to provide those who would cheat with essentially a free pass. Particularly when the state officials are partisans, they can put in the fix with little fear of exposure so long as they win.
So Conyers will step up, accompanied by other courageous members of the House. They will object to the count and demand a debate. To force that debate, they need only one member of the Senate to join them. Reid should lead the entire caucus to join them. Kerry should stand alone if necessary to demand clean elections in America.
If America is to be a champion of democracy abroad, it must clean up its elections at home. If it is to complain of fraudulent and dishonest election practices abroad, it cannot condone them at home. But more important, if our own elections are to be legitimate, then they must be honest, open, with high national standards.
The time has come to stand up for clean elections, and to let it be known that massive irregularities will not go unchallenged.
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