Rally to focus on election fraud claims

http://tennessean.com/local/archives/04/12/63568178.shtml?Element_ID=63568178

Rally to focus on election fraud claims


By HOLLY EDWARDS
Staff Writer

Organizers insist that congressional inquiry needed

Civil rights leaders, social scientists, elected officials and local activists will rally tomorrow afternoon for a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in the November presidential election.

The House Judiciary Committee reported after the election that it received some 57,000 complaints about voting problems on election day, ranging from a shortage of voting machines to glitches with electronic vote casting machines. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the complaints.

Rally organizers said the sheer volume of complaints warrants a Congressional investigation into possible election tampering and points to the need for a massive overhaul of the country's voting system. They said they hope Congress looks into the complaints before it accepts the decision of the Electoral College.

''After looking at all the evidence, this appears to be a fraudulent election,'' said Bernie Ellis of Murray County, who organized the rally. ''In the future, we need an election that's verifiable with a paper trail. The sanctity of the voting process is in question and we're tampering with the future of our democracy here.''

At the third ''Gathering to Save Our Democracy'' rally tomorrow, leaders of the 1960s Nashville civil rights movement will discuss what was necessary to secure voting rights in the past, social scientists will review the latest evidence of election problems in Ohio and other states, and elected officials will discuss what can be done now.

Among the top concerns of the group is the lack of an election ''paper trail.'' Electronic voting machines are not audited for accuracy and provide no receipt. With complaints that some machines registered a vote for President George Bush when voters selected Sen. John Kerry, rally organizers said the need for an auditing mechanism is clear.

Controversy about the machines surfaced last year after the chief executive of one of the main providers of the machines, Diebold, Inc., wrote that he was ''committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.''

The CEO, Walden O'Dell, later changed his company's policy to prohibit top officials from engaging in any political activity except voting.

''We need to either go back to a paper ballot or get a receipt, just like you get when you use your ATM card,'' said Alma Sanford of the Tennessee Democratic Party. ''If people don't have confidence in elections, we don't have a democracy anymore.''

If you go

The third Gathering to Save Our Democracy will be from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Vanderbilt University's Benton Chapel. The public is invited to attend.

Holly Edwards can be reached at 259-8035 or hedwards@tennessean.com.

Will John Kerry Report for Duty?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/010405.html

Will John Kerry Report for Duty? By Robert Parry January 4, 2005

Early in Campaign 2004, Sen. John Kerry challenged George W. Bush’s operatives to “bring it on,” fully expecting that they would try to smear his patriotism despite his Vietnam War medals. In accepting the Democratic nomination, Kerry again highlighted his national service by snapping off a salute with the words: “Reporting for duty.”

Yet one of the biggest disappointments for many Democrats was that the “bring it on” John Kerry didn’t show up at key moments in Election 2004. He failed to respond aggressively when a Republican front group spread lies about his war record. He then meekly conceded defeat on the day after the Nov. 2 election rather than fight for a full examination of voting irregularities.

Now, John Kerry may have one more chance to “report for duty.” On Jan. 6, after the new Congress convenes, he could join with Reps. John Conyers, Maxine Waters and other members of the House of Representatives in supporting their expected motion for a full-scale investigation of Election 2004, particularly the widespread allegations of voting fraud in the pivotal state of Ohio.

For the House motion to have any standing, it must be signed by at least one U.S. senator. So far, no U.S. senator has stepped forward despite petition drives from rank-and-file Democrats demanding that Bush’s victory be contested.

Black Opposition

A similar situation arose dramatically after Election 2000, when House members from the Congressional Black Caucus rose to challenge election fraud in Florida that disenfranchised thousands of African-Americans and put Bush over the top. At that time, Kerry and other Democratic senators refused to join them.

The painful tableau was captured in Michael Moore’ “Fahrenheit 9/11” with then-Vice President Al Gore presiding over a joint congressional session and repeatedly ruling African-American representatives out of order due to the absence of a senator’s signature. Out of apparent desire not to further divide the country, Gore and the Democratic senators accepted Bush’s dubious election. [For details on how Bush “won” in 2000, see Consortiumnews.com’s “So Bush Did Steal the White House.”]

Now, on Jan. 6, 2005, assuming Conyers and other representatives go ahead with their challenge, it would be Vice President Dick Cheney gaveling down African-American Democrats unless a U.S. senator agrees to sign their motion.

Of course, even if the motion gets a senator’s signature and is ruled to be in order, the Republican congressional majority is sure to block a full-scale investigation and instead simply certify Bush’s election. Still, the challenge would mark a new determination among the Democrats to fight the Republicans over principles of democracy.

The motion also presents John Kerry with a difficult political and ethical choice. He basically would have three options: He could join the demand for a full investigation and risk being dubbed a “sore loser”; he could choose to sit silently while Cheney pounds his gavel; or he could stay away from the session altogether. One Kerry adviser told me the senator may be traveling outside the country on Jan. 6.

Political ‘Viability’

Since Election Day, most of Kerry’s political advisers have been counseling him to accept defeat gracefully and protect his “political viability,” possibly with an eye toward another run for the presidency in 2008. By contrast, many rank-and-file Democrats have demanded that Kerry and other national Democratic leaders dig in and fight.

To many of these grassroots Democrats, Kerry should have ignored the advice of the professionals even before the election and waged a more aggressive campaign against Bush. These Democrats have complained that Kerry’s political advisers, such as consultant Bob Shrum, staged a Democratic National Convention in July 2004 that tried so hard to be positive that it largely avoided telling the American people why a second Bush term would be a national disaster. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Campaign 2004’s Jedi Mind Tricks.”]

Kerry’s advisers also turned a deaf ear to early warnings about the political damage that could be inflicted on Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a pro-Bush group that accused Kerry of lying about his war record and faking his wounds. Kerry’s advisers didn’t believe the mainstream news media would give the accusations much credibility and then were shocked when CNN and other mainstream outlets pushed the allegations. [For more on the Swift boat case, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bushes Play the ‘Traitor’ Card” and “Reality on the Ballot.”]

Instead of responding in kind – by hammering Bush’s contradictory accounts about how he ducked service in the Texas Air National Guard – the Kerry campaign sought the high ground, even urging pro-Kerry groups to mute their criticism of Bush’s National Guard record. [For more on Bush’s National Guard contradictions, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush the ‘Infallible.’”]

For his part, Bush refused to specifically denounce the attacks on Kerry’s patriotism and indeed presided over a Republican convention where some delegates wore Purple Heart band-aids to mock Kerry’s war wounds. Kerry’s negatives soared as Bush built a double-digit cushion that helped him absorb opinion-poll blows that followed his stumbling performances in the three presidential debates.

Bush’s ‘Late Vote’

Then, for a few hours on Election Day, Kerry’s advisers thought their finessing strategy had worked. Exit polls showed Kerry winning by about a three-percentage-point margin nationwide and carrying almost all the battleground states. Kerry’s advisers informed him that he would likely be the next President of the United States.

At the White House, Republican advisers also broke the news to Bush about Kerry’s impending victory. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove was one of the few optimists, reportedly assuring Bush that his vote “would come in late.”

And, indeed, as the “official” results rolled in, Bush took the lead nationally and was awarded six of the battleground states that had appeared headed for Kerry’s column. By the end of the tally, Bush had amassed a record total of more than 61 million votes and had registered about a three-percentage-point win over Kerry. [See Consortiumnews.com “Election 2004’s Myths & Mysteries.”]

Though Ohio’s 20 electoral votes could have tipped the Electoral College to Kerry – and rank-and-file Democrats already were howling about voting irregularities there – Kerry’s political advisers concluded that Bush’s Ohio margin, then around 136,000, could not be erased by the provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted.

So Kerry agreed to concede on Nov. 3 while still vowing to fight for the principle that all the outstanding votes must be counted. But Kerry’s concession effectively prevented any thorough examination of voting irregularities in Ohio and across the country.

Two small parties – the Greens and Libertarians – filed for a recount in Ohio, but Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell slow-rolled the process on the grounds there was no compelling need for speed. Blackwell, a co-chairman of the state’s Bush-Cheney campaign, refused to permit any recounting until an official tally was certified on Dec. 6, more than a month after the election. By then, Bush’s lead had dwindled to about 119,000 votes.

Blackwell next held off the start of a limited recount until Dec. 13, the day the Electoral College met to formalize Bush’s victory. The delayed recount was limited to a three-per-cent sampling of Ohio precincts, amounting to little more than a re-tabulation of the count, with Bush’s total shaved to about 118,500 votes. Tens of thousands of rejected ballots were never examined to determine whether they actually did record preferences for president.

Reasons to Challenge

In perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of Ohio’s flawed election and problems in the recount, the Columbus (Ohio) Free Press described “10 preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute, and why Congress must investigate rather than certify the Electoral College.”

The Free Press reported that in Ohio and other key states, the Bush campaign appears to have followed a “do-everything” strategy to suppress the vote in Democratic precincts, including providing inadequate numbers of voting machines that forced long lines and caused many voters with children or other duties to give up and not vote.

The Free Press also reported that more than 106,000 Ohio ballots were left unexamined, mostly for supposedly not registering a choice for president, again predominantly in Democratic precincts. Meanwhile, the Free Press said voting in pro-Bush precincts appears to have been exaggerated, at times exceeding 100 percent of the registered voters.

“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 Nov. 2, as reported in national exit polls,” according to the Free Press article by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman. “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.” [Free Press, Jan. 3, 2005]

Nationwide, many rank-and-file Democrats remain angry over what they see as a Bush campaign that relied on dirty tricks, voter suppression, vote tampering and stonewalling of recount demands. Indeed, a large number of Democrats appear convinced that Bush stole a second presidential election on Nov. 2.

I’ve spoken to or exchanged e-mails with many Democrats from a variety of backgrounds who even believe that the Republicans now have in place electronic means for rigging elections. A surprising number of these Democrats knew details about this controversy although it has received little attention in the major news media.

They know, for instance, that Ohio-based Diebold, with more than 75,000 electronic voting stations operating across the United States, is headed by Walden O’Dell, a major Bush fundraiser who announced that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president.” [See a Plain Dealer article about O’Dell’s statement, Sept. 16, 2003, posted at Diebold’s Web site.]

Political Chasm

Because of a wave of these Democratic e-mails in the days after the Nov. 2 election, I wrote a story about the technological feasibility of computer tampering. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Evidence of a Second Bush Coup?”] We also have run stories about the anomalies in voting patterns in traditional Democratic precincts in south Florida and elsewhere [see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s ‘Incredible’ Vote Tallies.”], as well as stories contrasting the major U.S. news media’s outrage over electoral problems in Ukraine with ridicule heaped on U.S. citizens challenging the Nov. 2 election here. [See “Big Media’s Democracy Double Standards.”]

Whatever the truth about systematic vote rigging, it’s now clear that the growing suspicions represent another threat to Democrats in the future. Many rank-and-file Democrats now believe that national elections are being rendered meaningless, with a Republican victor preordained through computer hacking, so why vote?

A chasm also seems to be opening between the Democratic base and the Democratic professionals in Washington over how to deal with today’s Republican-dominated government. With the Jan. 6 congressional session looming, many rank-and-file Democrats want to escalate the fight with Republicans over democracy in the United States, while the Democratic professionals seem ready to move on to other issues.

This division represents a political risk, too, for John Kerry. While his Washington advisers may have assured the senator that his future political “viability” is best protected by him playing the part of “good loser,” many Democrats want him to stand with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in demanding a full investigation of the Nov. 2 election even if he gets called a “sore loser” for doing so.

For many in the Democratic base, it may be Kerry’s last chance to show that he meant what he said when he challenged the Bush dirty tricksters to “bring it on.”

---

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Re-Vote Ohio

Re-Vote Ohio

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=6944

(This article was put together with much assistance from colleagues who have been deeply involved in the Ohio recount.)

“Our next governor should enter office without any doubt about the legitimacy of his or her office. The people of Washington deserve to know that their governor was elected fair and square. Unfortunately, the events of the past few weeks now make it impossible for you or me to take office on January 12 without being shrouded in suspicion.”

-Dino Rossi, Republican candidate for Governor of Washington, in open letter to Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire Rossi’s argument is equally applicable to the Presidential election. Following an extremely flawed and probably illegal “recount” in Ohio, no one can say for sure who won that state’s 20 Electoral College votes, and these 20 votes are necessary for either George Bush or John Kerry to claim a victory in the 2004 election.

Following the example of the people of the Ukraine, we should demand that Ohio’s 5.5 million voters be given a chance to vote for president again in a fair and transparent process.

What Happened in Ohio?

Many thousands of duly-registered African American voters did their civic duty and went to the polls in Ohio on Election Day.

Many stood for three, four or even eight hours in the cold and rain with tired, hungry children and sick or elderly relatives.

These people, whose children are disproportionately represented in the U.S. military and the Iraq war, suffered disproportionately from misallocation of voting machines, biased application of voting standards, outright harassment, and the ultimate indignity for a voter:

unbeknownst to them, many of their votes were not even counted.

Concerns that the votes of African Americans and other Ohio voters were not fairly counted were one of the main reasons that David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party demanded a recount of the votes in Ohio. Now that the recount is finished, the picture is a lot worse than any of us thought. Not only were African Americans in huge numbers denied the right to vote on Election Day, but something even more shocking was discovered: we have no idea who won the presidential vote in Ohio.

And because we have no idea who won the vote on November 2, we must immediately raise the call for an Ohio re-vote.

The vote totals we are seeing in the newspapers assume that there has been no tampering with the vote totals.

While no one has as yet proven definitively that there was vote tampering, any impartial observer can say with certainty that it would be impossible to say that there was NO tampering.

How can we say this so unequivocally? Private company technicians from Triad and possibly Diebold had unsupervised access to ballots and vote counting machines after the initial vote counting and before the recount.

In some counties, ballots were not locked up in ways that would preserve their integrity.

In almost all counties, the recounts did not comply with the dictates of Ohio election law that the precincts re-counted must be “randomly” selected.

Whether in the interest of hiding something, or merely in the interest of wanting to go home for the Christmas holiday, pre-selecting the precincts to be re-counted could lead to re-counting precincts without problems instead of those where machines failed, ballots were soiled, or other problems occurred.

Thankfully, the Ohio recount fulfilled its purpose. It helped us to see the extent of the problems in Ohio’s voting processes.

It reminded us that many Ohio state and local elections officers should either be fired for incompetence or criminally indicted for allowing voters to be disenfranchised on Election Day.

It provided a way to keep the reform process in public view so that changes can be made in time for the 2006 election season.

Most importantly, however, the Ohio recount has led us to a conclusion that should be obvious to fair-minded people of any political party:

no one can claim victory in a contest when the score-keeping system was broken.

If you take a few minutes to read County Recount Reports from the observers who monitored the recount in Ohio's 88 counties, you will see why Ohio’s Electoral College votes are tainted and must be rejected by Congress.

For example, in Fairfield County, Ohio, a full recount should have been ordered when the 3% test sample required under Ohio election law did not match the official vote totals. Instead, based on what county officials said was a recommendation from Secretary of State Blackwell's office, the recount was "suspended" so that they would not have to do a full recount. http://www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/

In Champaign County, a precinct signature book, necessary to verify that the number of votes that were cast, will not be made available to recount observers until after January 10 (four days after Congress has counted the Electoral College votes), per orders of the Secretary of State.

Meanwhile, in Van Wert County, an observer reported:

"When asked if Triad had serviced the machine, the deputy director and a board member stated that they had serviced the machine over the phone via modem on December 9th."

Many other counties used vote tabulation machines that were “serviced” by technicians outside the supervision of anyone else between the November 2 election and the recount date.

In Ashland County, there were other security issues: "The cast ballots are stored by precinct in open cubicles along one wall of this room, completely open and visible to anyone who enters this room....Piled on top of the cubicles holding the vote are baskets, Doritos, paper plates, mugs, cleaning products, Fresh-n-Soft, Glad Wrap, etc."

These "chain of custody" issues are especially important when you consider that, as reported in the New York Times, "Voting machine companies and their supporters have been given a large say in the process [of setting federal standards for electronic voting machines], while advocates for voters, including those who insist on the use of voter-verified paper receipts, have been pushed to the margins. The chairman of the working group preparing the standards for voting machines is a top executive of Election Systems and Software [ES&S], a large and controversial voting machine maker." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/27/opinion/27mon1.html

Didn’t Impartial Democrats Monitor the Process?

Yes, both Democrats and Republicans supervised the voting and recounting processes.

According to the Columbus (Ohio) Free Press, however, their impartiality is not a given, because Ohio election law calls for directors, deputy directors, and members of all county boards of elections to be assigned by the Secretary of State.

“They hold these paying jobs at his discretion regardless of whether they are Democrat or Republican. A major argument of those who claim Ohio’s 2004 presidential election was fraud-free centers on the myth that local precincts are run as bipartisan operations, deflecting charges of partisan interference while failing to account for the fact that the principals all owe their jobs to the Secretary of State, who in this case served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.” http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/1046

The Constitution calls for a convening of Electors in each state, who cast ballots that then are opened and read by Congress.

This year, the Electors met on December 13, 2004, and Congress receives and counts their votes on January 6, 2005.

The problem we have this year is that the 20 Electoral votes cast by Ohio Electors are fundamentally flawed because they were cast before the recount even began, and because it was a seriously problematic recount.

Therefore, John Kerry’s concession has no legal meaning. If a re-vote results in his winning the Ohio popular vote, he will win Ohio’s 20 Electoral votes and the presidency.

The issue facing us now, however, is not the election of Bush, Kerry, or even the Green or Libertarian presidential candidates. The issue is that we do not know who won Ohio.

And as the people of the Ukraine have shown us, a re-vote is possible.

Indeed, there are 48 million voters in the Ukraine and only 5.5 million in Ohio, so the process would be ten times easier.

How Could a Fair Re-Vote Take Place?

If the voting processes are so fundamentally flawed, you ask, how could we trust a new re-vote?

Simple.

A

paper ballot can be easily produced with the names of the presidential candidates on it.

Every voter will hand in one piece of paper with a check mark next to one candidate’s name, and another piece of paper with his or her name, address, and other necessary voter registration information.

These two piles will be kept in case a recount is needed.

Observers from the various presidential campaigns should be allowed to monitor the 88 county election proceedings, and we also may want to bring in some international election observers comparable to those who supervised the election in the Ukraine.

President Bush can issue a call for a re-vote himself, following the lead of Dino Rossi in Washington State. He can declare that he wants to be elected by a fair and transparent process.

Or Congress can demand a re-vote when it convenes to receive the Electoral votes on January 6, 2005. If neither of those take place, it is imperative that the mushrooming pro-democracy movement that has been developing since the elections escalate its pressure and its tactics to reflect the urgency of what is at stake. We must assert out Tenth Amendment power to reclaim our right to a fair election in Ohio and a fairly elected President of the United States.

If we let this one go by without the political fight of our lifetimes, we just might have kissed what’s left of our democracy goodbye.

Ted Glick is the outgoing National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network (www.ippn.org) and is very active with the Winter Democracy Campaign. He can be reached at futurehopeTG@aol.com.

academic research exposes vote-rigging across several states

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/pdfs/Exitpoll_discrep_v00p1_Part_I.pdf

Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio GOP Election Operative, is still dancing the dance

Expect to see Blackwell to get a cushy appointment from his good friend George W Bush. Kathrine Harris, the Florida secretary of state first got a seat in the House, and now is in the Senate. I expect nothing less for Blackwell.
Apparently in June 2000, some insiders thought he might be GWB's running mate rather than Cheney:
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2000/06/04/loc_wilkinson_blackwell.html

He has Heritage Foundation credentials:
Let Freedom Ring: Making the Dream a Reality by J. Kenneth Blackwell
January 14, 1998 (Heritage Lecture #606)
Let Freedom Ring: Making the Dream a Reality


Anyway, Blackwell is working hard to position himself as defensively as possible. It will be interesting if he comes out as shiney clean as JEB and Cathrine Harris of the 2000 election fraud. Past history is on his side.

Ohio Official Refuses Interview Over Vote
Monday December 27, 2004 11:46 PM

AP Photo OHWS101

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Statehouse Correspondent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4696816,00.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has requested a protective order to prevent him from being interviewed as part of an unusual court challenge of the presidential vote.

Blackwell, in a court filing, says he's not required to be interviewed by lawyers as a high-ranking public official, and accused the voters challenging the results of ``frivolous conduct'' and abusive and unnecessary requests of elections officials around the state.

Citing fraud, 37 people who voted for president Nov. 2 have challenged the election results with the Ohio Supreme Court. The voters refer to irregularities including long lines, a shortage of voting machines in minority precincts and problems with computer equipment.

President Bush defeated John Kerry by 119,000 votes, according to the official count by Blackwell. Ohio's 20 electoral votes gave Bush the 270 he needed for victory. Kerry conceded the morning after Election Day.

The challenge, with support from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, is based on comparison of reports of exit polling data with the official vote. Columbus lawyer Cliff Arnebeck and other lawyers on the case say they would like to see the supporting data that produced the exit poll results.

The voters ``are not trying to actually contest the presidential election but are merely using this litigation to cast public doubt on the voting system of the State of Ohio without a shred of evidence supporting their theories,'' Attorney General Jim Petro, representing Blackwell, said in last week's filing with the Ohio Supreme Court.

Petro said the voters ``are again engaging in frivolous conduct'' after a Dec. 20 request to interview elections board officials in 10 counties was denied.

Petro also argued that the state Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction over a federal election. Even if the court did, the attorneys for the voters aren't following the proper timelines for collecting evidence.

Arnebeck said Blackwell's request shows ``a lack of good faith'' in the process to contest elections.

On Dec. 21, officials named in Arnebeck's challenge learned that he planned to issue subpoenas to several high-ranking officials, including Blackwell, Bush and the president's political adviser, Karl Rove, according to Petro.

The state Supreme Court ``should halt their ability to subpoena any person until such time as they make a good faith showing for the reason to take any deposition,'' Petro said.

The last time a similar challenge was made to a statewide race came in 1990 when Paul Pfeifer contested Lee Fisher's 1,234-vote victory in the attorney general's race. Six justices of the court sided with Fisher.

^---

On the Net:

Secretary of State: http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos//

Truthout Video Exposing Election Fraud

My reaction to the video is the guy has polished social skills despite being under fire for election fraud. His emotions are tightly rained. I think he will make a good presidential press secretary someday. I find him too polished to trust. Someone like this has had some practice at facing questions about his work, I wonder what he has been doing before he got the gig of manipulating election machines and coaching people on how to respond to answers from election audit investigators.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404X.shtml