Recount of Ohio votes get green light: Wonk says turnover of election a possibility! hehehehehehehhe

[link to www.freepress.org]

Columns
Bob Fitrakis

Did Kerry Concede Too Soon?
November 5, 2004

Why did a voting machine in Republican Gahanna, Ohio report 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 computerized e-voting machine recorded 0 votes in a race between Franklin County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks.

Kerry conceded on Nov. 3 before some troubling election irregularities have surfaced in Ohio. Investigative reporter Gregory Palast has pointed out that there are more than 92,000 “spoiled” ballots in Ohio, mostly in Democratic wards that could easily be hand counted, 155,000 uncounted provisional ballots, uncounted overseas military ballots and some uncounted absentee ballots.

Despite the comments of Kerry’s running mate, Senator John Edwards, that every vote should be counted, Kerry’s concession makes that promise unlikely. In Ohio, an estimated 14.6% of the votes are cast on e-voting machines, known for their glitches and susceptibility to hacking and fraudulent manipulation. Just this year, four Ohio counties purchased voting machines from the notoriously partisan Diebold corporation, whose CEO, Columbus resident and Bush fundraiser Wally O’Dell, pledged to help “Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.”

Voting rights activists from Citizen’s Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE-OH) have already begun to claim that the voting places with e-voting machines were sites that did not match scientific exit poll data.

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.”

Damschroder is the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party, and sources close to the Board of Elections tell the Free Press that Damschroder and Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell met with President Bush in Columbus on Election Day.

The Dispatch also confirmed a Free Press story, posted on Election Day, involving far fewer voting machines in predominantly black Democratic inner-city voting wards. On page one, under the misleading headline, “Suburbs were busiest even with more machines,” the Dispatch reports that: “As seasoned voters in many of Columbus’ predominantly black neighborhoods waited in long lines Tuesday, they quickly recognized that the crush of new voters wasn’t the sole cause of congestion. There also were fewer voting machines.” In one precinct, the Free Press reported 12 voters leaving due to work or because they were handicapped or elderly.

Prior to Election Day, the Republican Party in Ohio planned to utilize an archaic Ohio election law to place Republican poll challengers in every polling site. The strategy, according to Republican insiders, was to clog the voting lines in predominantly black Democratic wards in urban areas, so voters would turn away in frustration. When that plan came under heavy media scrutiny, federal courts in Ohio ruled against it, and a massive Election Protection Coalition operation was put in place to monitor the polling sites, Republican Central Committee sources say that Damschroder instituted “Plan B.”

One Republican Central Committee member told the Free Press that Damschroder held back up to 2000 machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.

The Free Press has previously documented massive Republican voter suppression techniques leading up to this year’s election in an article entitled “Twelve Ways Bush is now Stealing the Ohio Vote” ( [link to freepress.org] The growing election irregularities suggest that John Kerry conceded too soon, and that spoiled ballots, provisional ballot, e-voting glitches and partisan manipulation by Republican election officials deprived the Senator of the victory projected in Zogby and CNN exit polls. The lesson voters in Ohio take away from this election is that every vote doesn’t count and computer glitches count more.

--
Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of the Free Press (freepress.org), a political science professor, an attorney, and co-author with Harvey Wasserman of George W. Bush vs. the Superpower of Peace. He served as an international observer for the national elections in El Salvador.

[link to www.commondreams.org]

Published on Wednesday, November 10, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
A Note On The Presidential Election in Ohio
by Congressman Dennis Kucinich

The 2004 presidential election was determined by the results of Ohio. The unofficial result, as reported on November 3, had George Bush with approximately 136,000 more votes than John Kerry. Senator Kerry conceded the election to President Bush. He also said every vote would be counted.
I have been vigilant in monitoring Ohio´s election in 2004. Attorneys from my party closely monitored the election before and during election day. While there were some incidents of voter intimidation noted by the attorneys, most if not all cases were resolved at the scene because of quick action by challengers, witnesses, the Kerry campaign, and volunteers from other campaigns including my own.

The unofficial count gave Ohio to George Bush by approximately 136,000 votes. The official count by county Boards of Election will begin on Saturday, November 13, 2004. It is due at the Secretary of State´s office by December 1. The Secretary of State must certify the election by December 3.

During this interim period, attorneys from both political parties, and those representing me, will be watching the procedures by county Boards of Elections carefully. Among the most important issues to note is the counting of the overvotes. Overvotes occur when more than one candidate is indicated on the punch card. Another issue relates to whether all properly cast provisional ballots will be counted.

My constituents have also brought other issues to my attention. In an effort to provide appropriate government oversight, I am reviewing every issue and bringing them to the attention of attorneys, congressional authorities, party officials, or Boards of Elections, as appropriate. I want to assure my constituents and others who have contacted me with their concerns, that I am paying c lose attention to this important period of time between the initial results and the official vote tabulation and will not hesitate to take appropriate legal action where supported by facts.

Serious problems surfaced in this election that must be addressed at the state and national level. Some were inefficiencies in handling the massive turn out. No citizen should have to wait for hours to vote, or worry whether their vote was actually counted.

Glitches in electronic voting in the Columbus area should move all legislatures to demand paper receipts for voting machines. Without such a paper trail, no true recount can ever be done. Note that no Diebold electronic voting machines were employed in Ohio.

Clear efforts at voter suppression and intimidation were well handled by the courts and election officials. Dirty tricks occurred across the state, including phony letters from Boards of Elections telling people that their registration through some Democratic activist groups were invalid and that Kerry voters were to report on Wednesday because of massive voter turnout. Phone calls to voters giving them erroneous polling information were also common. Attempts to subvert our right to fair elections must be investigated and prosecuted when possible.

With passion running so high in this country and specter of Florida 2000 still hanging over the presidential voting process, it is important to gather hard evidence prior to disputing the legitimacy of the election.

Meanwhile, it is obvious that the Help America Vote Act of 2002 needs to be refined. Arduous voter identification rules unfairly penalize the poor, lead to a violation of rights and defeat the intent of the act.

The official tabulation of votes for Ohio will begin on Saturday and will include four categories not reflected in the unofficial count: provisional ballots, late absentee ballots, overseas military and overseas civilian.

If the difference between George Bush and John Kerry is less than one quarter of one percent after the official tally is completed (about 16,000 votes) an automatic recount occurs under Ohio law.

If the margin is greater than one quarter of one percent, a candidate can request a recount at an expense to the candidate of $10 per precinct. Because there are approximately 12,000 precincts in Ohio, the recount would cost about $120,000, before legal fees. A recount would entail a visual inspection of every punch card ballot.

I believe we must pursue every lead which raises questions about the integrity of the electoral process. Our work may not change the outcome, but it will demonstrate that beyond our commitment to our candidates, we have a higher commitment to our democracy.

Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) is Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

heheheheheh

[link to www.freepress.org]

Presidential Election: The Perfect Election Day Crime
Posted by : DavidSwanson on Tuesday, November 16, 2004 - 08:10 AM

The Perfect Election Day Crime
Steven Rosenfeld, TomPaine.com

In Ohio, questions persist about intentional or accidental voting mishaps.

Which voting problem cost Kerry the most votes may never be known. Kerry´s fate aside, Air America´s Steven Rosenfeld´s investigation found the inadequate supply of polling machines in Ohio shows a system badly in need of reform.

Americans are learning there are many ways to tilt and take elections.

That’s the only clear conclusion since John Kerry’s concession speech. We now know there are as many ways to manipulate the vote as there are types of voting machines and different communities that can be targeted by those who want to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. But the big unanswered question of Nov. 2, 2004, is which tactic, technical breakdown or error lost the most votes.

On Thursday, Nov. 11, a step was taken toward finding at least part of the answer. Cliff Arnebeck, the Columbus, Ohio-based attorney who is counsel for Common Cause’s Ohio chapter and the Alliance for Democracy, announced that the groups would pursue a recount of the Ohio vote . Arnebeck said the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates each agreed to file for a recount, providing the $110,000 filing fee could be met. He announced that a fund drive was underway, as was putting pressure on the Kerry campaign to pay for it. In coming days, Ohio’s provisional ballot count is likely to be finished. That starts a five-day clock during which a recount can be formally requested. As of Monday morning, Nov. 14, $200,000 had been raised toward an Ohio recount—all but assuring it will happen.

But many voters have yet to consider the intricacies of the recount procedure. They´re still trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong. By now, many people have heard about discarded or spoiled ballots in Ohio that could have cost Democrats tens of thousands of votes (as claimed by journalist Greg Palast). They’ve heard of the computerized voting machines that caused thousands of votes for Bush to be erroneously added in single precincts. And they’ve heard declarations by BlackBoxVoting.org (Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson) that they’ll make the biggest ever Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of it.

But something else also happened in Ohio’s urban precincts that hurt Democrats as much as these much-publicized snafus—something so simple many election protection observers, and certainly the national press, missed it.

What Wasn´t There

Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three.

The lack of voting machines was a disaster.

“I don’t think this story has been told,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender from Bridgeport, Conn., who went to Ohio as a legal observer and discovered this trend by overhearing elderly voters talk about fewer machines. “The press and election protection people weren’t looking for this. They were looking for poll challenges. But this is the perfect way to suppress the vote.”

The shortage of voting machines didn’t just create long lines. It kept thousands of new and longtime voters from casting ballots in the state’s minority communities—the Democratic strongholds. The accounts of people who had to leave the polls for work or family obligations were everywhere. But on Election Day, very few Democrats realized this was happening. They just saw long lines.

"The lack of adequate voting machines helped the GOP in Ohio," said Brian Clark, site coordinator for SierraClubVotes.org in Franklin County, where the city of Columbus is located. He managed a voter contact and get-out-the-vote effort in 43 precincts that reached a third of the county’s 250,000 voters. "There were fewer machines in some inner city precincts than in 2000, despite Board of Elections and secretary of state’s projections of record turnout."

The Long Wait

Franklin County is a good microcosm for understanding what happened in Ohio. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush there by 4,156 votes. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush there by 41,341 votes, according to the unofficial results on the Ohio secretary of state’s website. But Kerry´s margin could have been far larger, activists said, if people didn´t have to wait to vote.

"There were widespread anecdotal reports that inner city voters were leaving the polls because of 2-hour plus wait times, " Clark said. "Granted, there were also waits in suburban areas. But the impact on final voter turnout was clearly very different—a lawyer can be late and keep her job, a grocery store clerk can´t."

And then there’s the question of how and where voting machines were distributed. Even though Franklin County election officials have their ready defense to deflect charges of intentional voting rights violations, Democratic field organizers said the placement of too-few voting machines at inner city precincts came amid a broader campaign of voter intimidation aimed at Democrats.

Protecting the right to vote is the heart of the federal Voting Rights Act. If fewer voting machines were put in African-American precincts, on a per capita basis, than were placed in the county’s whiter suburbs—and that prevented African-Americans from voting—that would violate the Voting Rights Act.

"If this was planned and systematic and not accidental, it would be a violation," Gerety said. "If this was a means of disenfranchising African-American voters, it’s a clear violation."

Franklin County election officials have said they used the 2000 presidential vote as the basis for allocating voting machines in the 2004 election. They’ve also said that local election boards are bipartisan, so any plan to redistribute voting machines would have been approved by Democrats and Republicans. Common Cause´s Arnebeck said that bipartisan explanation makes proving there was an intentional violation difficult. Also, the jurist who would try the voting case—if it was needed in an Ohio recount—is a Republican, the chief justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court.

The Politics Of Recount

The voting rights concerns would be one element of the Ohio vote that could be examined in a recount, Arnebeck said. But all Ohio’s ballots would be recounted, he said, including the provisional ballots, absentee ballots, spoiled ballots and votes by the paperless computer machines. Moreover, during a full statewide recount, any issue relating to voter fraud conceivable could be raised, he said.

This is where the politics could get very intense and possibly reopen the question of who won Ohio. Arnebeck said he had proof that in one rural county there were more votes recorded by computer machines than were actually cast: that’s fraud. Moreover, there are so many instances where newly registered voters “most of whom were presumed to be Democratic—were not treated the same way as the state’s veteran voters." In the county where Cleveland is, people who registered by mail were not notified where their poll was, election protection lawyers said. Other Ohio voters I contacted said they saw new voters being given provisional ballots.

"It’s interesting to note that the inner-city precincts where we spent most of our time working, turnout was about 50 percent higher than it was in 2000," Clark said. "Yet the Franklin County Board of Elections moved voting machines from the inner city precincts out to the suburbs. It was pretty dispiriting to know that we spent months trying to get new voters to the polls and they didn’t even have machines to go to once they got there."

Clark also said the GOP’s much-publicized efforts to challenge new voters only focused on Democratic precincts. "The Republicans only challenged voters in inner-city precincts," he said. "The Columbus Dispatch did an analysis of their challenges. They did not challenge anyone who lived in a Republican-leaning precinct in Franklin County."

The Big Tilt?

The question that emerges from these irregularities— as well as the reports of spoiled and discarded ballots, and computer voting snafus—is which problem affected the most votes ´tilting´ the outcome to Bush. That answer isn’t known. So far, computerized voting has gotten the most attention. But the Sierra Club’s Clark said all or some of these tactics could have swayed the election.

"Based on what we were being told by people on the ground, at the door, on the phones as we were doing our get out the vote effort, it was very clear that enough people went out intending to vote to meet the projected turnout by the secretary of state, which was 73 percent," he said. "The final number was about 70 percent of the voting age population actually voted. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 3 percent of the people who went out to vote didn’t get to vote, because of these problems statewide."

Ohio’s 2004 vote has not yet been certified. But in the unofficial results on the secretary of state’s web site, George W. Bush had 51.0 percent, compared to 48.5 percent for John Kerry. That difference is on par with the gap between the secretary of state’s projected turnout and the percentage of people who got to vote. Had all Ohioans who wanted to vote cast their ballots, both Clark and Gerety said Kerry might have won the state and the presidential election.

While there still may be a recount in Ohio—if it will happen, it will be triggered next week—former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Carole Moseley-Braun said all legal remedies must be pursued to understand what happened on Election Day. That means FOIA requests to understand what happened with electronic machines, Voting Rights Act suits for disenfranchised minority voters—and, yes, a statewide recount.

“I come out of Chicago and I am reminded of how the Chicago machine used to operate in the old days,” Braun said. To beat the Republicans, she said her party and its activists had to make a commitment to mastering the intricacies and the details of the election process. "It’s all kinds of things that can be done to keep people’s feet to the fire on the intricacies, the details of the electoral process."

Indeed, only when all these remedies are pursued will Democrats be able to answer the question: What cost John Kerry the most votes in Ohio?

Steven Rosenfeld is senior producer of The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio. Previously he was senior editor of TomPaine.com

Green Party Claims Ohio Ballot Recount a ´Certainty´
By David Thibault
CNSNews.com Managing Editor
November 16, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Almost two weeks after Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, threw in the towel in the 2004 race, the Green Party claims that a recount in the crucial state of Ohio is now a "certainty."

[link to www.cnsnews.com]

GET A LIFE YOU TREASONIST LIBERALS!!!

YOU TOO SLACKER!!!!

i have a life and so do my children. that´s why i´m concerned about possible voting fraud in our republic. if you´re an american citizen i should think you´d be worried about it too.

You´re pretty silly

Do you think that the gop would steal an election and leave evidence around for a recount?

Be that as it may, a recount will make no difference, bush will not give up power.

and the american people can´t unite for a fight....bitch and whine will be all they do.

bush will give up power, it´s the rule of law if the recount shows he lost Ohio and its electoral college votes.

How funny that certain posters think that searching and demanding the truth must mean you do not have a job and must be liberal!

And I thought, according to the talking-heads, America voted based on morals!

The greatest moral to cherrish is Truth.

Now, everybody contact all media-outlets and your representative and demand the truth...

I wish you would shut the fuck up! Whiney baby!!!! ASs kissing loser!!!

like I said, pretty silly.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF IT WERE DISCOVERED THAT KERRY ACTUALLY DID WIN?

Heyyyyyy sLAcKer;

Yet another shameless cut and paste creation! My, my, your posts information credibility further wanes as your mind does also.

Thank you;

A/C

I like that they are doing this pretty much behind the curtain. Much better than the 2000 circus.
I hold no hope that Kerry will win. But I sincerely hope that the Diebold group will be tossed out on its´ ear before our next elections, IF they are found to have been tampered with.

Slacker,

BOW down to your leader (THE EMPEROR) GW Bush for the next 4 years!!!

Slacker, hang in there and ignore the jerks criticizing you. I look forward to a recound - too cool if it actually yielded valid results for Kerry!!!

thanks ac 9:09

me too

"And I thought, according to the talking-heads, America voted based on morals!"

Those would be the ´talking-heads´ from the liberal media that told you that.

The rest of us know better.

This is great news for the DIMS© will be forced to admit once and for all that Lurch Kerry lost fair and square. Start working for your Hive Mother Hillary is my best advice® if you are a DIM©.

Last election the liberals had an excuse for all their crying, moaning and hand wringing. The claimed they won the popular vote.

This election they don´t have that. Check out this map that shows a huge majority of the country voted for Bush.

[link to www.newsmaxstore.com]

FUCK Ohio I say!

hey all you bush fans and conservatives...thanks for the bump!

hehehehehe

yay! and when the USA turns into Canada we can be a french/spanish speaking country with a poverty level matched only by N. Korea.

laughing, these young kids really give me a chuckle, at their naivity.

I mean just look at that pic, if thats not ego and overcompensation I don´t know what is.

I think back to the days when I was young, full of myself, thinking I knew everything. I still don´t know shit, the difference being is I´m self-aware of it.

again mr. serious old guy, egoless AC, thanks for the bump!

Geez, are only the american kids online or what?

These can´t possibly be reactions from american adults, can they?

I mean, what I see is Slacker posting articles about a most serious topic that involves everybody and all he gets is contempt and ridicule!

This attitude you portray here, is also the attitude your leaders portray to the rest of the world.
It´s not something to be proud of! It´s not a sign of intelligence! It´s not inspiring!

It´s counter productive as it only creates more polarization and hate.

yeah, what he said!

You LIBBIES will learn to love me and my RiceBaby© in due time; and you now have Four(4) More Years to do so.

:dubya::dubya::dubya:

AC above me...you have quiet a knack for emoticon art...i like your style kid...keep up the good work!

The symetry in the trademarked AC´s emoticon work is definitely inspired.