No Holiday for Vote Thieves

The Black Commentator, Issue 119, December 23
2004
www.blackcommentator.com/119/119_cover_vote_thieves.html


The Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus is
confident that at least a few U.S. Senators will
join House members on January 6 to question the
fairness of the November 2 election. John
Conyers, Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee, told Salon.com he doesn’t
believe the Senate will repeat its performance of
four years ago, when Black lawmakers sought in
vain for one senatorial objection to “official
misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to
suppress voter turnout by unlawful means” in
Florida, as Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-FL) put
it at the time.

“No, I think the Senate is going to go along with
an inquiry this time,” said Conyers. “I don't
think they would embarrass themselves to let this
happen two times in a row… I just don't think the
Senate would get caught in that position.”
Conyers is careful not to name names, claiming he
hasn’t spoken directly to a single Senator, but
adding, “there are Republicans who support what
I'm doing who haven't been willing to come
forward.”

Conyers is the indispensable person among the
righteous Grinches who are casting a shadow over
the Republicans’ holiday. Through his hearings in
the Capitol and Ohio – unsanctioned and
unattended by Republicans – and his engagement of
the Government Accountability Office to study
election “irregularities,” the 75-year-old
Detroit lawmaker has thrown an institutional
spotlight on GOP crimes and misdemeanors. How
“high” these crimes can be connected is another
story, but there is no doubt that massive
violations of a variety of laws occurred on the
ground. Conyers prefers to call them “things that
went wrong” in swing states like Ohio:

“It depends on what part of the state we're going
to examine. In Hocking County, a private company
accessed an election machine and altered and
tampered with it in the absence of election
observers. It disturbed a deputy chair of the
election in the county so much that she has given
a sworn affidavit that has been turned over to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we're in
the process of running that down. But what about
in Cleveland, Ohio? There, thousands of people
claimed that their vote for Kerry was turned into
a vote for Bush. Poll workers made mistakes that
might have cost thousands of votes in Cleveland.
And in Youngstown, machines turned an
undetermined number of Kerry votes into Bush
votes as well. Provisional ballots were thrown
out. There were several conflicting rules. There
was mass confusion. In Warren County, they talked
about [the possibility that] terrorism might
close down the election. I mean, please.”

Conspiracy? Conyers understandably avoids using a
word that corporate media so eagerly associate
with nut cases. Instead, Conyers employs a less
loaded term:

“Well, you know, orchestrated attempts don't
always require a conspiracy. People get the drift
from other elections and the way [campaign
leaders] talk about how they're going to win the
election. When you have the exit-polling
information discrepancies that occurred in 2004,
where the odds of all the swing states coming in
so much stronger for Bush than the exit polls
indicated – they say that that is, statistically,
almost an improbability.”

But conspiracies do exist; they occur every time
a group of persons plans to commit criminal acts.
Conyers knows this. He’s not only a lawyer, he’s
a Watergate lawyer, having sat on the same
Judiciary Committee that saw Richard Nixon’s
presidency unravel in 1973-74. District attorneys
in big cities across the nation love conspiracy
law, designed to connect the seemingly random
depredations of criminal gangs. Conspirators can
be convicted even if they don’t know all the
other players or the whole scope of the criminal
enterprise. They need only be shown to have acted
in the furtherance of the larger scheme.

Sounds very much like Rep. Conyers’ “orchestrated
attempts,” doesn’t it?


To catch a vote thief

A prosecutor like Rudy Giuliani would have a
field day with the GOP’s myriad 2004 criminal
offenses. Just a few examples:

* Nathan Sproul, the former head of the Arizona
Republican Party (and of the state’s Christian
Coalition), managed a multi-state, Republican
National Committee-financed campaign to sign up
new GOP voters. In the process, his poorly paid
employees, pretending to be non-partisan voter
registration workers, reportedly destroyed
hundreds if not thousands of signed, but
unwanted, Democratic registration forms – serious
criminal offenses committed in concert in the
furtherance of the GOP’s electoral fortunes. A
non-Republican “Giuliani” would want to know
about every conversation Sproul had had with
Republican Party officials over the course of at
least a year. Investigators would interview each
of Sproul’s interlocutors, and warn them – and
Sproul – of the additional penalties attached to
conspiracy. The investigator’s goal is to “turn”
conspirators into witnesses in the search up the
chain, or to catch bad actors in a lie – an
additional charge to hold over their heads. This
is how the larger scheme – the criminal
enterprise – is routinely fleshed out.

* According to the Free Press, a team of 25 men
calling themselves the “Texas Strike Force”
positioned themselves at a hotel across the
street from Republican Party headquarters in
Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus), and proceeded
to make intimidating phone calls to likely
Democratic voters, “targeting people recently in
the prison system.” These imported Texans’ rooms
were reportedly paid for by the Ohio Republican
Party. A “hotel worker heard one caller threaten
a likely voter with being reported to the FBI and
returning to jail if he voted” – a crime if
committed by an individual, but a much more
serious conspiracy if engaged in by the entire
interstate flying squad and the Republicans who
paid, accommodated and sent them on their
felonious mission. There is a raft of conspiracy
angles to be worked in this case – angles that
could lead…anywhere in the GOP matrix in Ohio,
Texas and beyond.

* Another issue of the Free Press – an excellent
chronicler of the GOP election crime wave –
reported that in “a largely minority area in
Hillsborough County [Florida] half as many voting
machines were in use as had been used for the
earlier primary…. [A]s it turned out, the same
happened all throughout Florida and Ohio. But in
predominantly Republican neighborhoods, plenty of
voting machines were on hand, lines were normal,
and everyone who wanted to vote, did.” Such
practices form a pattern, conceived by real
persons, who handed down orders to other persons,
with the result that Black precincts were so
starved of voting machines that it was
mathematically, predictably and deliberately
impossible to service the area’s voters.

Those who act in concert with others to violate
the Voting Rights Act or related laws (such as
the National Voter Registration Act, in the box
below) should be confronted with the prospect of
conspiracy charges in addition to criminal
penalties (prison time) for individual offenses.
That’s the way gangsters are brought down, every
day.


Thousands of perps

The “dozens of problems” of which Rep. Conyers
speaks are actually hundreds of specific criminal
offenses involving perhaps thousands of persons
acting with large or small groups of others in
Ohio and Florida, alone. Investigators should
view the legions of co-conspirators in Republican
election crimes – some casual or even unwilling,
others purely mercenary and politically
unreliable – as assets, potential witnesses in a
constellation of criminal conspiracies, any one
of which might lead to the Mother Lode: the Bush
inner circle.

We have purposely not dwelt in this article on
the mega-crimes whose outlines became apparent in
statistical analyses of the exit polls vs.
tabulated votes in “battleground” and other
states, or damning variances in results depending
on modes of vote counting – the hawk’s eye view
of the crime. (On Wednesday, Rep. Conyers called
on news organizations to provide his committee
with raw exit poll data, rather than the numbers
that were “adjusted” to conform to the official
vote tallies.) What has too often been lost in
the conversations surrounding the 2000 and 2004
elections, is the fact that laws already in
existence have been violated.

In every other arena of criminal justice it is
standard procedure to entangle suspected
perpetrators in their own lies, and in the lies
of their co-conspirators. Yet somehow, this
practice does not obtain when Black voting rights
are criminally violated. It is as if no crime has
been committed, at all, just mere voting
“irregularities.” “Get over it,” say the
corporate media. Concentrate your energies on
“reforms” from the next Congress, or the one
after that, say others, including some people who
claim to be “progressive.” Such responses are
maddening, outrageously racist at their very
core, the product of a profoundly Jim Crow
worldview that denies African Americans their
full measure of dignity as human beings, that
treats our victimization as a matter of course
whose resolution – but never redress – can always
be put off to another, more convenient day. To
paraphrase the infamous U.S. Supreme Court Chief
Justice Taney’s 1857 Dred Scott decision:
“African American voters have no rights that the
larger society is bound to protect.”

It is these rights that are at issue, Black human
and citizenship rights. The outcome of the
presidential election is secondary.


Hostility to Black citizenship

It has been suggested that violations of Black
voting rights are treated lightly by media,
prosecutors and predominant white public opinion
because of the “white collar” nature of the
crimes. Not so. As with all aspects of criminal
justice in the United States, race is the primary
prosecutorial and political determinant. With a
zealotry that spans seven generations, from
Reconstruction to the present, yesteryear’s
Dixiecrats and today’s Republicans have succeeded
in firmly linking the words “Black” and “vote
fraud” in the public mind. This
historical/mythological association is the
rationale for the now-routine invasion of Black
polling places by hordes of GOP “observers” –
whose real mission is voter intimidation.

Registering-voters-while-Black has long been a
crime in Dixie. Alabama and federal lawmen spent
four years, beginning in 1995, prosecuting Black
Belt electoral activists for alleged absentee
ballot fraud. The November 15, 1999 issue of The
Nation recounts:

”In all, nearly 1,000 people in three counties
were questioned and asked to submit handwriting
samples to state and federal officials. The
investigation was a joint state and federal
undertaking spearheaded by Alabama Attorney
General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, a
politician with a history of making racist
comments about blacks and launching voter-fraud
investigations in predominantly black counties.
He would go on to win a seat in the US Senate in
1996.”

Confronting the full weight of the state and
federal governments, nine African Americans
ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud charges in
1999. According to The Nation article, the feds
were much more lenient with North Carolina
Republican Senator Jesse Helms who, while
“trailing a black opponent in 1990, mailed out
postcards to 125,000 black voters implicitly
threatening them with jail if they went to the
polls. Helms's campaign settled a complaint with
the Justice Department in 1992, but not before he
had won another term.”

Ain’t a damn thing changed in the 21st Century.
As columnist Bob Herbert reported in the New York
Times this past August, Florida Governor Jeb
Bush’s State Police targeted Black, mostly
elderly members of the Orlando League of Voters
on “suspicion” of absentee ballot vote fraud.
Joseph Egan, an Orlando lawyer who represented
some of activists on the state’s hit list, told
Herbert: "People who have voted by absentee
ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign
workers to come to their homes. And volunteers
who have participated for years in assisting
people, particularly the elderly or handicapped,
are scared and don't want to risk a criminal
investigation."

No, vote fraud is only treated as a white collar
infraction – an “irregularity” – when the alleged
perpetrators are white.

The truth is, somewhere around a majority of
whites don’t really think African Americans
should have an unqualified right to vote –
although very few will say so, and most may be
unaware of their constricted views of Black
rights. This is the only conclusion that can be
derived from a study by Harvard political
scientists Michael Dawson and Lawrence Bobo,
which found that 62 percent of whites surveyed
just before the 2004 election believed Blacks had
little reason to worry that they would be
prevented from voting. Such fears were either
“not a big problem” (20%), “no problem at all”
(17%), or a “complete fabrication” of the
Democrats (25%). In nearly identical proportions,
whites surveyed shortly after the 2000 election
tended to dismiss Black complaints of voter
suppression and fraud in Florida. These numbers
reveal far more than ignorance or denial, but
rather, an underlying hostility to full Black
citizenship rights.

(Close to half of Americans don’t think Muslims
should have full citizenship rights, either. A
Cornell University poll found that 44 percent of
respondents favor some degree of curtailment of
Muslim Americans' rights, including 27 percent
who say Muslims should be required to register
their locations with the federal government.
These are undoubtedly the same people who believe
Democrats fabricated all those stories about
abuse of Black voters in Florida.)

Thus, the corporate media may be more reflective
of than responsible for the widespread demand
that African Americans “get over” the events of
the last two presidential elections. Recounts and
investigations of systematic Black voter
suppression are made to seem ridiculous if the
results do not alter the outcome. By such
reasoning, it would not matter if all the Black
voters of Alabama and Mississippi were turned
away from the polls, since whites were going to
give George Bush the electoral votes of those
states, anyway. Crimes against Black citizenship
do not matter unless it can be proven that the
election was tipped in the process (or maybe not
even then). Television news personalities smirk
while presenting election protest items,
conveying the message: “You lost. Why don’t you
people quit?” As if the harm done to untold
numbers of Black citizens is of no consequence.
It’s like telling a rape victim to “get over it”
and be grateful she wasn’t killed.

This pervasive mindset also infects elements of
the white “left.” Greg Moses, editor of the Texas
Civil Rights Review, calls it “type two racism” –
the dogged insistence on disconnecting race and
racism from election crimes:

”Overt racism by right-wing Republicans is the
core dynamic at work here, but it is aided and
abetted by invisibility racism found in left
commentators and media reports, who fail to
center the civil rights struggle. An issue that
is clearly about racism and civil rights has been
whitewashed into ‘voter fraud’ generica. Type one
racism answered with type two.”
Serious business

Given the hostile backdrop, post-November 2
protesters, investigators, litigators, agitators
and fundraisers are nothing less than heroic.
Although he would disagree with the notion, Rep.
Conyers is acting as “our” Special Prosecutor,
methodically laying the factual groundwork for
future legal and political action while at the
same time giving the “troops” a central focus
around which to orbit.

Already a congressman for nearly a decade when
the Watergate hearings began in May 1973, Conyers
is a long-haul legislator and lawyer who
understands the critical importance of
documentation. “I ask and invite everybody to
turn in any evidence that they want that helps
prove whatever position they believe, or even a
position they don't believe,” he told Salon.com.
“But this isn't a hunch and suspicion game. This
is very serious business.”

The arrogant and shameless Ohio Secretary of
State, Kenneth Blackwell, who refused an
invitation to appear before Conyers’ hearings,
has earned his place at the nexus of the
investigation. “I know that Kenneth Blackwell
made some decisions that were blatant and
outrageous for a secretary of state,” said
Conyers. “How he felt that his head was big
enough to be chairman of the ‘Re-elect Bush’
committee and also head of the administration of
the electoral vote for the president in that same
state was beyond me. … There are very few people
who did what he did.”

Conyers’ December 2 letter to Blackwell reads
much like a prosecutor’s document. For example:

(27) “How did you inform your workers, and the
public, that their vote would not be counted if
cast in the wrong precinct?” (28) “Your directive
was exploited by those who intentionally misled
voters about their correct polling place, and
multiplied the number of provisional ballots
found invalid. What steps have you or other
officials in Ohio taken to investigate these
criminal acts?”
We think Conyers smells conspiracies, or at least
some very nasty “orchestrated attempts” to break
the law.

Without Conyers’ clear determination to press
forward with hearings, it is doubtful that the
“movement” (if it can called that) to lay bare
the facts of November 2 could have been
sustained, to this point. There might have been
no national “scene of the crime” rally in
Columbus, Ohio, scheduled for January 3; no
growing list of Electoral College Electors
demanding, for the first time in history, a
“complete investigation”; and little prospect of
even one senator standing with the Congressional
Black Caucus on January 6, when the body meets to
certify the Electoral College vote. And no
possibility, however remote, of anyone going to
jail for the crimes of November 2.

Absent relentless agitation, litigation and
investigation of the past election, Congressman
Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s constitutional amendment
guaranteeing the right to vote will come to
naught, as will every other effort at meaningful
election reform.


Rich man’s dream

Hawking his Social Security personal savings
accounts, George Bush this week attempted to
explain his vision of an “ownership society,”
stammering: “One of the philosophies of this
government is if you own something, it is – it
makes the country a better – if more people own
something, the country is better off; you have a
stake in the future of the country if you own
something.”

Political translation: The best society is one in
which those who own, rule. This was in fact a
core belief of the Founding Fathers, who created
a system in which a very tiny cohort of white men
with property held all political power. In a
brief but brilliant 1994 essay, “Democracy Was
Not What They Had On Their Minds,” Marquita Hill
points out that only 30,000 voters – less than 1%
of the population – participated in the
presidential election of 1796 in which John Adams
defeated Thomas Jefferson. Only about 112,000
citizens took part in the 1804 election, out of a
total population of more than six million! “Total
votes didn't top a million until Native American
killer Andrew Jackson's defeat of John Quincy
Adams in 1828,” Ms Hill wrote. By then, the U.S.
population was approaching 12 million. Hill
concludes: “Handfuls of white, male propertied
voters established the precedent that only their
kind would sit in the White House.”

This was the intention of the Founders who
launched the nation on its rule-by-the-white-rich
trajectory. Our struggle is to force that
trajectory to “bend toward justice.”


= = =


National Voter Registration Act

973gg-10. Criminal Penalties

A person, including an election official, who in
any election for Federal office,

knowingly and willfully intimidates, threatens,
or coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten,
or coerce, any person for--

registering to vote, or voting, or attempting to
register or vote;

urging or aiding any person to register to vote,
to vote, or to attempt to register or vote; or

exercising any right under this subchapter; or

knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or
attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a
State of a fair and impartially conducted
election process, by--

the procurement or submission of voter
registration applications that are known by the
person to be materially false, fictitious, or
fraudulent under the laws of the State in which
the election is held; or

the procurement, casting, or tabulation of
ballots that are known by the person to be
materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under
the laws of the State in which the election is
held, shall be fined in accordance with Title
18…or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

----------
Ohio Electoral Fight Becomes 'Biggest Deal Since Selma' as GOP Stonewalls
By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
Wednesday 22 December 2004

Columbus - As Republican officials stonewall subpoenas and subvert the recount process, Rev. Jesse Jackson has pronounced Ohio's vote fraud fiasco "the biggest deal since Selma" and has called for a national rally at "the scene of the crime" in Columbus January 3. Another major national demonstration will follow in Washington on January 6, as Congress evaluates the Electoral College. Should at least one US Representative and one Senator challenge the electors' votes, a Constitutional crisis could ensue.

Meanwhile, volunteer attorneys have poured into Columbus from around the US to help investigate the bitterly contested presidential vote that has allegedly given George W. Bush Ohio's electoral votes and thus a second term. A lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court charges that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than Bush.

On December 21, notice of depositions were sent to President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony regarding the legal challenge of Ohio's elections results in the case Moss v Bush et al.

But Republican Blackwell's attorney at the Secretary of State’s office told the attorneys issuing the notice of deposition and subpoena that Blackwell will not testify under oath. The Republican-controlled Attorney General's office has labeled any attempt to put Blackwell under oath, "harassment." Blackwell supervised the November 2 vote in Ohio at the same time he served as co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.

However, some counties like Clarmont have agreed to cooperate with the attorneys in the election challenge. On December 22, a team of attorneys descended upon the Clarmont County Board of Elections between 8:30-10:30am to pour over election day records.

In a December 21 conference call with activists from the around the US, Jackson said he has urged Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to stand with US Representatives who intend to challenge the Electoral College's expected approval of George W. Bush for a second term. A challenge by US Representatives in 2000 failed because no Senators would join their motion.

Jackson says this year will be different, urging election protection activists to stay focused over the holiday season. "We can't let [the Republicans] get away with this, he told the conference call. "Do not underestimate the outrage of the people. We are a legitimate force for democracy, here and around the world."

"We will count every vote," he said, and make sure "every vote counts."

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have strongly questioned Bush's purported victory, pointing out that more than half the votes cast in Ohio and the nation were recorded on electronic voting machines owned by Republicans, with no audit trail.

Conyers recently conducted hearings at Columbus City Hall to take testimony from Ohioans who were deprived their right to vote. Another public hearing in Mahoning Valley, at the Warren Heights and Trumball Library, documented "thousands of complaints of voting irregularities" that helped throw the vote count to Bush. Election observers have testified under oath that more than a dozen voting machines in Mahoning County regularly switched Kerry votes to Bush votes while voters watched in amazement. Some 580 more absentee voters were certified than were identified by election board officials. As in Franklin and other counties, there were also strategic machine shortages in largely Democratic precincts. The November vote, said one observer, was "the crime of the century."

As dozens of volunteer attorneys pour into the state to help with the recount, Blackwell's stonewall has prompted widespread suspicion about what the Republicans are hiding.

On Monday the expanded legal team issued subpoenas to top election officials in 10 counties where vote-count fraud is suspected.

The rapid filing of subpoenas, the first step in interviewing people under oath, provoked the shrill rejection from Blackwell. Though Blackwell is a state constitutional officer, his business office is in a private building, where protesters - including former California Congressman Dan Hamburg - -have been arrested without apparent provocation.

"They huffed and they puffed, trying to bully people around," said attorney Peter Pectarsky, a key member of the election challenge legal team. "Now we’re fighting over discovery. We served 10 depositions. The attorney general blew a gasket. They filed a motion to stop it… We will file our response."

This past Friday, attorneys refiled their election challenge suit, a day after state Supreme Court dismissed it on a technicality. The challengers are trying to get a meaningful recount before the January 6 Congressional vote, while Blackwell's GOP has done all it can to stall.

The election challenge lawsuit claims that statewide vote patterns reveal vote count fraud on a scale that incorrectly awarded the state’s majority – and the presidency – to George Bush. They are using the litigation process to document that fraud.

"Maybe this (the explanation of the Ohio vote) is much closer to the surface than anybody thinks," said Pete Pectarsky, a lead challenge attorney. "It doesn’t add up. If everything was above board, why are they hiding everything? They could bury people in the details… Okay, look at these records. Look at those."

The election challenge suit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio’s Republican electors have 10 days to respond. Then, according to court procedural rules, each side has 20 days to do discovery – or additional evidence gathering, with those bringing the suit going first. With January 6 being the date Congress accepts the Electoral College vote, and January 20 being the inauguration, the GOP seems determined to make the recount drag on as long as possible.

"We have stuff that points to big numbers," Pectarsky said, referring to votes that should have been counted for John Kerry. "What we need now is (someone saying) ‘We did it. Here’s how. Don’t take my word. Here’s the evidence.’"

Tuesday, December 22 is the starting point for Pectarsky's negotiations with election officials from 10 counties as to when they can be deposed. They will be asked a wide range of questions to uncover answers explaining the presence of what are, at the least, voting irregularities.

In the Miami County town of Concord, certified returns show that all but 10 registered voters cast ballots on Election Day. But the election challenge team has already identified more than 10 registered Concord citizens who did not vote, an incongruity that points to election fraud.

In Trumbull County, citizens using electronic machines saw their vote for Kerry register as a vote for Bush. Additional hearings in Trumbull and other counties are adding to the litany of fraud and theft.

In the meantime, among the attorneys who have come at their own expense to join Ohio's presidential election challenge:

Bonnie McFadden, formerly a deputy public defender, law professor from both the University of New Guinea and the University of Hawaii, and director of the Cambodia Defenders Project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, currently resides in Maui. Bonnie believes that Conyers’ Committee hearings have provided clear evidence of illegal election practices. "Democracy cannot survive without honest elections. The Ohio election fraud lawsuits are about saving our democratic form of government. There is nothing more important than that."

Karen Peterson, an attorney who worked for more than a decade in legal services specializing in public benefits, consumer and family law and was a professor at both Cornell and the University of Minnesota law schools, is volunteering in Ohio because she believes that it is critically important that election irregularities are exposed to the light of day. "We will lose our democracy unless we are willing to fight for it. If we allow voter suppression and dirty tricks to go uncovered and unpunished, we should not be surprised if these tactics become more virulent in future elections."

Lillian Ritt, formerly a research attorney working for the San Diego Superior Court and the 4th DCA Division 1 for more than twenty years, and part of the team researching election law for Al Gore, is in Ohio because she believes voting is critical to our democracy. "Voting has to be done openly and without any possibility of machine error and/or tampering. The problems in Ohio threaten this world, not just the United States. If they are not solved, then I consider this to be another stolen election by Bush without the courage of the Ukraine people."

Steve Chaffin, an attorney in Ohio for twenty-four years, has worked in many ways to provide for those who have needed legal assistance and not been able to afford it. He has worked with those who are facing rising costs of health care and other quality of life issues. His interests and work have been to help those who are disenfranchised. Steve’s latest focus is on election and political issues. Volunteering for this legal battle is just one more way in which he is helping our country.

Judy McCann, a civil rights attorney from Santa Rosa, California, left for Ohio with one day’s notice promising her children she would be home for Christmas, even if it meant she would be on a plane back to help in Ohio on December, 26th. Judy expressed her concern for the integrity of the voting process. She spent Election Day in Florida monitoring the vote, learning first hand that our votes may be cast but not accurately counted. Judy has been asked by the legal team to take depositions and to travel to counties to collect the evidence of voting irregularities.

Melanie Braithwaite, an attorney in Columbus, Ohio, wants to volunteer for this election contest because of her concern for her children and grandchildren. "To me free _expression and exchange of ideas, and the right to vote in free and fair elections are paramount moral and civic values to be protected at all costs. If it costs me some time and inconvenience to volunteer in this effort, then so be it. It is the price I pay to be an American citizen. I personally witnessed a moral outrage on election day. I am peculiarly in a position to take this one on, as I have personally nothing left to lose."

As the team of election protection attorneys grows alongside the grassroots demand for a fair vote count in Ohio and around the nation, the likelihood of an unprecedented Constitutional confrontation beginning January 6 continues to escalate.

Stay Tuned!
----------------------
January 6, 2005:
Take Action on Election Violations
as Congress Meets to Certify the Vote!

More than a month has passed since voters cast votes
for the President and Vice-President of the United
States -- but every day, more and more stories surface
that call into question the election's integrity.

Machines broke down, counted backwards, eliminated
votes, and registered votes for the wrong candidate.
progressive and African-American neighborhoods
experienced by far the longest lines on election day,
the most vote spoilage, the most elimination of
provisional ballots, and the most victimization by
precinct manipulation.

Four hundred thousand callers phoned voter protection
hotlines, with complaints ranging from absentee
ballots lost in the mail, to outright voter
intimidation and disenfranchisement. And partisan
election officials with conflicts of interest
undermined voting rights in states from Ohio to
Florida to New Mexico. Even progressive Democrats on
the House Judiciary Committee have questioned the
elections' legitimacy, in a series of rigorous,
painstakingly detailed letters documenting the
unprecedented extent and scope of vote suppression,
available at www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/

How can we have confidence in American democracy when
so many questions about this election remain
unanswered? In addition to the longstanding issues
subtly undermining democracy -- corporate domination
of the two major parties, plurality elections, and
corporate media bias - the recent election betrayed
democratic principles overtly.

Despite the efforts of a few valiant members of
Congress, most of our Senators and Representatives
have ignored our pleas for serious investigation into
the "irregularities" that surrounded the 2004
election. But one more opportunity remains for these
government officials to stand for democracy.

URGE PROGRESSIVE SENATORS TO TAKE A STAND ON JAN. 6,
WHEN CONGRESS MEETS TO CERTIFY THE VOTE

On January 6, 2005, Congress will meet in joint
session to certify the 2004 presidential election. On
that day, if one member of the House and one member of
the Senate object to the certification of the vote,
then all members of Congress will finally discuss
these issues. On January 6, 2001, not a single Senator
would join with the Representatives who demanded an
inquiry into the Florida recount. This year, let's
make our Senators take a stand!

The following seven Senators are some of the most
progressive members of the Senate. Please call them
immediately, and urge them to defend democracy on
January 6.

*SPREAD THE WORD TO PEOPLE YOU KNOW TO KEEP DOING THE
SAME UNTIL JANUARY 6.*

Senator Barbara Boxer, (202) 224-3553,
senator (at) boxer.senate.gov

Senator Dick Durbin, (202) 224-2152,
dick (at) durbin.senate.gov

Senator Russ Feingold, (202) 224-5323,
russ_feingold (at) feingold.senate.gov

Senator Tom Harkin, (202) 224-3254,
tom_harkin (at) harkin.senate.gov

Senator Jim Jeffords, (202) 224-5141,
Vermont (at) jeffords.senate.gov

Senator Edward Kennedy, 202/224-4543,
senator (at) kennedy.senate.gov

Senator Patrick Leahy, (202) 224-4242,
senator_leahy (at) leahy.senate.gov

ON JANUARY 6, PROTEST IN WASHINGTON, DC AND AT
SENATORS' OFFICES IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITIES

While our Senators and Representatives are inside
Congress, tallying the electoral college vote, We the
People must have a presence outside, bringing
attention to the disenfranchisement, suppression and
fraud that pervaded the 2004 election - and demanding
real reforms to extend and protect democracy in
America. Please join us on January 6 in Washington,
DC. Details on the DC protest TBA. Check
www.Nov3.US or www.counter-inaugural.org
for more information.

If you can't come to DC, we urge you to organize a
protest outside a Senator's office in your community,
and list your event at www.Nov3.US

This call to action is initiated by No Stolen
Elections! and United Progressives for Democracy.
-----------------
Published on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Ohio County Reports: Details of an Injustice
by David Cobb

The Ohio recount is uncovering serious problems in our electoral processes that must be addressed immediately, both in Ohio and other states. The Green Party has posted a number of the Ohio County recount reports on its website at www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/index.php, and more are being posted every day.

Here are just a few of the problems we have uncovered:


Hamilton County: Approximately 400 provisional ballots allegedly were rejected because they were cast in the wrong precinct, despite the fact that they were cast at the right polling station (i.e., at a polling station with more than one precinct).
Fairfield County:: When the hand recount of the 3% test sample did not match the official vote totals, a full recount should have been ordered for all county ballots. Instead, the recount was "suspended" by county officials who said that Secretary Blackwell recommended that the recount should begin again "from scratch." The Green recount observers then were told that it was 4:00 PM, the building was closed, and all had to leave. The Republican contingent, however was allowed to stay in a conference room for an additional ten minutes or so for a private discussion.
Summit County: Recount witnesses were threatened with expulsion if they spoke to counting teams. In some instances, they were expected to "observe" from up to 20 feet away, despite Ohio Election Law allowing observers to be close enough to actually observe.
Medina County:: Election officials were aware of several "problem" districts, but instead chose to perform the manual 3% test recount on two precincts that had been part of a School Levy Recount the previous Monday. That meant that those ballots had been taken out of the standard "double lock" situation and had been handled several times since Monday.
Cuyahoga County:: Almost all of the witnesses felt that the ballots were not in random order, and that they had been previously sorted. As the ballots were fed into the counting machines, there were long runs of votes for only one candidate and then long runs for another, which seemed statistically improbable to most.
Huron County: The punchcard tabulator test was observed only by Republican witnesses. This test was conducted the day before the Green witness was invited to observe the recount.
Henry County and Fulton County: We found that the Triad Company can reprogram voting machines using remote connections. Is this the case for other counties as well? Don't voters have a right to know?
Samples Were Not Randomly Chosen

These and other irregularities are the subject of further investigation and action. Also, nearly all of the 88 Ohio counties may be in violation of the Ohio recount law because they did not choose the precincts to be manually recounted in a random manner. For example, in Vinton County, a unilateral decision was made to pick a county for the 3% manual recount test simply because its vote total was closest to 3% of the county total. In Morrow County, a decision as to what is “random” was made without input from recount observers after a county election official called Secretary of State Blackwell’s office and was told that her interpretation of “random” was the correct one, despite Green recount observer protests.

Ohio Election Law is very clear on this point. Section 3515 of the Ohio Revised Code says:


The board must randomly select whole precincts whose total equals at least 3% of the total vote, and must conduct a manual count.
If the tabulator count does not match the hand count, and after rechecking the manual count the results are still not equal, all ballots must be hand counted. If the results of the tabulator count and the hand counted ballots are equal, the remainder of the ballots may be processed through the tabulator (for optical scan and punchcards).
Lack of random samples threatens to undermine the entire recount process, as it does in other situations where random sampling is critical. Would you, for example, be willing to play a hand of poker if the cards were already dealt when you got to the table?

Relating this back to the recount procedures, when you read in the newspapers that recounts were done and no discrepancies were found, it could be because the election officials chose to do test recounts on precincts where there were no problems. There may still be problems or there may not be, but no one can know for sure. What we do know is that lack of random recounts does not follow either the spirit or letter of the law, and may necessitate further action, including a second statewide recount.

Background on the Recount

While the nation has spent the last few weeks observing and talking about an activity called the “Ohio Recount,” in reality there have been 88 different recounts taking place in Ohio’s 88 counties. The political maxim that “all politics is local” is especially true as it relates to the process of registration, voting, and counting the ballots.

When David Cobb and the Green party teamed up with Michael Badnarik and the Libertarian Party to demand that each Ohio vote be counted, several steps had to be followed. First, the parties demanding the recount had to raise $10 per precinct for the recount costs. With 11,360 precincts in Ohio, the amount needed was $113,600. Thanks to over 6,000 donors giving small donations over the Internet, the money was raised in four days.

The candidates filed their formal demand for a recount, along with the necessary filing fees, in each of Ohio’s 88 counties on November 19. At that time, approximately half of the counties already had completed their initial canvass of the vote. Secretary of State Blackwell and the counties, however, did not start the recount at that time.

Next, the candidates went to court to try to expedite the recount process. Kenneth Blackwell, who served both as Ohio Secretary of State (the man in charge of Ohio’s vote-counting process) and the partisan co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign in Ohio, took six weeks to certify the Ohio vote count, the same time needed by Washington State to certify the vote, complete a state-wide recount, and start a second one. While the courts did not require the recount to be speeded up, they did order every county to participate.

Over 3,000 volunteers came to Ohio to help us with this recount, and each one deserves a big thanks from the rest of us for their faith in democracy and their willingness to participate in this historic process. Many of them served as official county recount witnesses or regional coordinators, and it is their reports you will be reading on the website at www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/index.php

The Next Step

Reports are still flowing in from the 88 counties. Once they all are completed, we will meet with our attorneys, state election officials, and the broad coalition of groups who have participated in this historic undertaking.

No matter what the outcome of the recount, these are but a few of the steps which must be taken to make our elections more open, accountable, and fair:


Demand that electronic voting machines produce voter-verified paper trails.
Demand public access to and scrutiny of the software used on electronic voting machines and tabulators (vote counters).
Establish Election Day as a holiday, and provide for voter registration right up to Election Day (already the law in Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Idaho).
Establish uniform standards for the conduct of elections and recounts.
Ensure that sufficient voting machines are provided in all communities, not just affluent ones.
Aggressively investigate reports of voter suppression and intimidation, and voting machine tampering. Prosecute the individuals, companies, and organizations involved in any illegal activity.
Abolish the Electoral College, and use Instant Runoff Voting to elect the President.
Shorten the long lines seen at polling places such as the African American precincts in Cuyahoga County.
Fully fund and fairly deploy Election Day resources so that places such as Columbiana County will have more than four telephone lines available on Election Day and more poll workers will be able to get through to report problems.
Clear up the vagueness in Ohio Election Law that allows each county to interpret words such as “random” recount in their own way.
Establish non-partisan election law arbiters in each county and on the statewide level so that the Secretary of State and other officials will not have a conflict between their official and campaign responsibilities.
Other Electoral Reforms: The Green Party has consistently called for other electoral reforms that will improve the voting process and bring us closer to a one-person-one-vote democracy, including Proportional Representation and Publicly Financing Campaigns. For more details, see www.votecobb.org/issues/democracy/
Conclusion

While many of the local election officials and staff members we have met in Ohio’s 88 counties are hard-working, well-meaning people, almost none of them have allowed the recount to proceed using “random” recount processes. In addition, we have found election and recount procedures in several counties that do not appear to follow the spirit or letter of Ohio Election law. Finally, election laws appear to have been applied unevenly across Ohio in ways that produced unfairness against poor and minority voters.

We will continue to post the latest information and analysis on the www.votecobb.org website as it becomes available.

David Cobb was the Presidential candidate for the Green Party during Campaign 2004 (www.votecobb.org). He has joined with Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party to file an historic recount challenge to the 2004 presidential election results in Ohio.

----------------
Ohio Vote Count Battles Escalate Amidst New Evidence of Potential Criminal Activity
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman

The epic legal battle over Ohio's presidential vote count is back in the state Supreme Court, with an election challenge claiming George W. Bush was wrongly declared the winner on Nov. 2 and seeking a court-ordered reversal of that victory.

Meanwhile, efforts to recount Ohio's vote may have been fatally tainted by the Republican Party, raising questions of what the GOP has to hide, and prompting demands for criminal prosecution.

New affidavits point to possible criminal activity by top Ohio election officials, raising yet more questions about the 2004 vote. Rhonda J. Frazier, a former employee of the Ohio Secretary of State's office, has confirmed in an affidavit taken by Cynthia Butler, working with freepress.org, that the Office had secret slush funds. Frazier says it also failed to comply with the requirements of "The Voting Reform Grant" that required all the voting machines in Ohio to be inventoried and tagged for security reasons.

"I was routinely told to violate the bidded contracts to order supplies from other companies for all 17 Secretary of State offices throughout the State which were cheaper vendors, leaving a cash surplus differential in the budget," Frazier states, "After complaining about the office's repeated practices of violating grants and contracts I was fired."

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has come under intense fire for his role in officiating the disputed Ohio balloting and vote count. Blackwell served as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign while running an election he says went "smoothly."

Blackwell's role has been central to a week that started with a bang and rapidly escalated to a dramatic last-minute filing at the state Supreme Court Friday afternoon, December 17.

On Monday, December 13, with Rev. Jesse Jackson at hand, citizen activists filed the now-famous landmark Moss V. Bush action demanding the Ohio Supreme Court vacate the apparent victory for George W. Bush and award the state's 20 electoral votes -- and thus the presidency -- to John Kerry. The filing lists a litany of problems with the November 2 balloting and vote count. The official tally showed a victory for George W. Bush of some 119,000 votes. But the filing claims the real outcome was a 134,000 vote victory for John Kerry, and it demands the Court install a slate of Democratic electors.

The filing was followed by a unique Congressional hearing staged at Columbus City Hall. Conducted by U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the nearly four-hour gathering hosted a wide range of testimony charging manipulation, intimidation and fraud surrounding the Ohio election. Most pointed to Secretary of State Blackwell's "clear conflict of interest" as election administrator and Bush-Cheney co-chair. Among other things, in the lead-up to Nov. 2 Blackwell circulated a taped message asking Ohio voters to approve a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and abolishing spousal benefits for unmarried partners. That partisan position came amid multiple orders from Blackwell to local election officials on how to conduct the actual vote count.

At noon on Monday, 20 Republican electors convened at the Ohio statehouse and certified their votes for Bush, which were then mailed to Washington. On January 6, they will be evaluated by Congress. It is now possible that for the first time since 1877, there will be a formal challenge to those electoral votes by Democratic members of Congress.

High among the charges against Blackwell was the fact that he delayed certifying the Ohio vote count to make it impossible for a meaningful recount to occur before the electors met. If this was a fair vote, wondered Rev. Jackson, "what are they hiding?"

Jackson plans to be fully visible on January 3 at a large rally in Columbus, Ohio sponsored by Rainbow/PUSH.

But far more serious charges than a mere delay surfaced at Conyers' hearing. A letter from the Shelby County Board of Elections, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, admitted that data critical to a meaningful recount had been discarded, possibly illegally. Sworn testimony from election observers in Greene County indicated that ballots had been left loose on tables in an unlocked, unguarded building, open to manipulation and theft, prior to a recount. And in Lucas County and Hocking County, it was revealed that technicians from the Diebold and Triad companies had inexplicably taken control of voting machines and dismantled them, rendering verifiable recounts impossible.

On Wednesday, December 15, U.S. Representative John Conyers posted an affidavit from Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science and a voting technology consultant. In Professor Jones' opinion, the bizarre behavior by the Triad Company, which provides computer software and voting machines in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties, may have tainted the entire recount effort. A Triad employee took apart a computer used in the recounting process and inserted new parts as well as alleged modifications of the software. "As a result, the incident in Hocking County could compromise the statewide recount and undermine the public's trust in the credibility and accuracy of the recount," Jones stated in an affidavit.

As evidence of fraud, manipulation and sabotage of a recount poured in, citizen activists filed for a Temporary Restraining Order demanding the Ohio Supreme Court step in to protect ballots and voting records from further destruction.

On Thursday, Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyers denied the original Moss v. Bush filing, saying it had wrongly joined actions on two separate elections, the one for president and one for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. The Supreme Court race of Moyer and Ellen Connally had been part of the filing because citizen litigators found fraud in its conduct as well.

The litigation team worked all night in order to refile the two challenges on Friday, December 17. These challenges on both the Bush-Kerry race and on the Supreme Court case were filed separately, reinstating the original thrust of Monday's action and asserting that Kerry had won the Ohio vote, as had Connally.

With court battles escalating, attempts to conduct a meaningful recount have proceeded. Democratic, Green and Libertarian party officials have helped in training volunteers to examine voter records and what to look for as the Ohio vote tally continues. Hundreds of volunteers are observing at election boards around the state trying to get a grasp on what actually happened November 2. Amy Kaplan, head of the Green Party's Franklin County recount, reported to the Free Press that two of the electronic voting machines in Franklin County had faulty cartridges that generated error messages despite being in use on Election Day.

The observers' work has been frustrated and the recount tainted by destroyed records, compromised evidence, and by private vendors who have "re-programmed" machines in both Lucas and Hocking Counties.

Despite his early concession, Kerry has now issued a letter to election boards in all 88 Ohio counties asking a series of questions about the vote count. Thus, charges that Republicans are hiding an outright theft have gained increasing media attention, as have charges that deliberate and illegal destruction of records has been rampant.

Where this will all lead remains unclear. An escalation of court battles is the only certainty. The presidential election of 2004 is by no means over.

Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of the upcoming OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, to be published by freepress.org, which is accepting donations for the project.

© 2004 Free Press
--------------
COBB/LaMARCHE 2004 GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
www.votecobb.org

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release: December 17, 2004
Contact: Blair Bobier, Media Director at 541.929.5755

OHIO ELECTION OFFICIALS OBSTRUCT RECOUNT

Reports from throughout Ohio present a clear and disturbing pattern of state and local election officials obstructing the recount of Ohio's 2004 presidential vote, according to the Green Party's presidential campaign which initiated the recount and is monitoring the process.

"Ohio election officials are violating both the spirit and the letter of the law governing the recount," said Cobb-LaMarche Media Director
Blair Bobier.

In two counties, Monroe and Fairfield, election officials have refused to do a full hand recount, as required, when hand and machine tallies don't match. They have instead opted to get new machines to count the votes.

in the vast majority of counties, election officials have pre-selected precincts to be sampled, rather than choose them randomly as
required by law. In Cuyahoga County, the pre-selection of precincts eliminated those which reported the most problems on Election Day, thwarting the intent of the recount and raising serious concerns about the integrity
of the process.

"Ohio's partisan vote-counter and Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, presided over the most error-ridden election in the country and he is now intent on preventing the people of Ohio from scrutinizing those results. We have asked Mr. lackwell to establish uniform standards and uidelines for the conduct of the recount and he has refused," said Bobier.

In at least two counties, Montgomery and Coshocton, the recount has discovered that the state certified the wrong vote totals. The fficial results won't be changed, however, because of loopholes in Ohio's election laws.

Other problems with the recount range from volunteers being told they couldn't ask questions, to an allegation of tampering with voting machines.

Reports from the recount are being filed by Green Party monitors on a daily basis. They can be found on the Cobb-LaMarche website at www.votecobb.org/press/.

-30-

-------------

Several Factors Contributed to 'Lost' Voters in
Ohio

By Michael Powell and Peter Slevin
Washington Post, December 15, 2004; Page A01
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64737-2004Dec14


COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Tanya Thivener's is a tale of
two voting precincts in Franklin County. In her
city neighborhood, which is vastly Democratic and
majority black, the 38-year-old mortgage broker
found a line snaking out of the precinct door.

She stood in line for four hours -- one hour in
the rain -- and watched dozens of potential
voters mutter in disgust and walk away without
casting a ballot. Afterward, Thivener hopped in
her car and drove to her mother's house, in the
vastly Republican and majority white suburb of
Harrisburg. How long, she asked, did it take her
to vote?

Fifteen minutes, her mother replied.

"It was . . . poor planning," Thivener said.
"County officials knew they had this huge
increase in registrations, and yet there weren't
enough machines in the city. You really hope this
wasn't intentional."

Electoral problems prevented many thousands of
Ohioans from voting on Nov. 2. In Columbus,
bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000
frustrated voters turned away without casting
ballots. It is unlikely that such "lost" voters
would have changed the election result -- Ohio
tipped to President Bush by a 118,000-vote margin
and cemented his electoral college majority.

But similar problems occurred across the state
and fueled protest marches and demands for a
recount. The foul-ups appeared particularly acute
in Democratic-leaning districts, according to
interviews with voters, poll workers, election
observers and election board and party officials,
as well as an examination of precinct voting
patterns in several cities.

In Cleveland, poorly trained poll workers
apparently gave faulty instructions to voters
that led to the disqualification of thousands of
provisional ballots and misdirected several
hundred votes to third-party candidates. In
Youngstown, 25 electronic machines transferred an
unknown number of votes for Sen. John F. Kerry
(D-Mass.) to the Bush column.

In Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo, and on
college campuses, election officials allocated
far too few voting machines to busy precincts,
with the result that voters stood on line as long
as 10 hours -- many leaving without voting. Some
longtime voters discovered their registrations
had been purged.

"There isn't enough to prove fraud, but there
have been very significant problems in running
elections in Ohio this year that demand reform,"
said Edward B. Foley, who is director of the
election law program at the Ohio State University
law school and a former Ohio state solicitor. "We
clearly ended up disenfranchising people, and I
don't want to minimize that."

Franklin County election officials -- evenly
split between Republicans and Democrats -- say
they allocated machines based on past voting
patterns and their best estimate of where more
were needed. But they acknowledge having too few
machines to cope with an additional 102,000
registered voters.

Ohio is not particularly unusual. After the 2000
election debacle, which ended with a 36-day
partisan standoff in Florida and an election
decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress
passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002. The
intent was to help states upgrade aging voting
machines and ensure that eligible voters are not
turned away. To a point, it has had the desired
effect.

"Viewed dispassionately, the national elections
ran much more smoothly than in 2000," said
Charles Stewart III, a professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a
specialist in voting behavior and methodology.
Because of improved technology "nationwide, we
counted perhaps 1 million votes that we would
have lost four years ago."

But much work remains. Congress imposed only the
minimal national standards and included too few
dollars. Tens of thousands of machines --
including 70 percent of Ohio's machines -- still
use punch-card ballots, which have a high error
rate. A patchwork quilt of state rules governs
voter registration and provisional ballots.
(Provisional ballots are given to voters whose
names do not appear on registration rolls --
studies show that minorities and poor voters cast
a disproportionate number of such ballots.) Ohio
recorded 153,000 provisional ballots. But in
Georgia, one-third of the election districts did
not record a single provisional ballot in 2004.

In Florida, ground zero for 2000's election
meltdown, professors and graduate students from
the University of California at Berkeley studied
this year's voting results, contrasting counties
that had electronic voting machines with those
that used traditional voting methods. They
concluded, based on voting and population trends
and other indicators, that irregularities
associated with machines in three traditionally
Democratic counties in southern Florida may have
delivered at least 130,000 excess votes for Bush
in a state the president won by about 381,000
votes. The study prompted heated critiques from
some polling experts.

Stewart of MIT was skeptical, too. But he ran the
numbers and came up with the same result. "You
can't break it; I've tried," Stewart said.
"There's something funky in the results from the
electronic-machine Democratic counties."

Berkeley sociologist Michael Hout, who directed
the study, said the problem in Florida probably
lies with the technology. (Florida's touch-screen
machines lack paper records.) "I've always viewed
this as a software problem, not a corruption
problem," he said. "We'd never tolerate this
level of errors with an ATM. The problem is that
we continue to do democracy on the cheap."

A Heated Run-Up


By October, the Bush and Kerry campaigns knew
that this midwestern state was a crucial
battleground. Each side assembled armies of 3,000
lawyers and paralegals, and unaffiliated
organizations poured in thousands more
volunteers. Both parties filed lawsuits
challenging rules and registrations.

Two decisions proved pivotal.

Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth
Blackwell, who was co-chairman of the Bush
campaign in Ohio, decided to strictly interpret a
state law governing provisional ballots. He ruled
that voters must cast provisional ballots not
merely in the county but in the precise precinct
where they reside. For cities such as Cleveland
and Cincinnati, where officials long accepted
provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct,
the ruling promised to disqualify many voters.
"It is a headache to take those ballots, but the
alternative is disenfranchisement," said Michael
Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of
Elections, which includes Cleveland.

Earlier this year, state officials also decided
to delay the purchase of touch-screen machines,
citing worries about the security of the vote.
That left many Ohio counties with too few
machines. County boards are split evenly between
Republicans and Democrats, and control the type
of machines and their distribution. In Cuyahoga
County, officials decided to quickly rent
hundreds of additional voting machines.

Other counties decided to muddle through. At
Kenyon College, a surge of late registrations
promised a record vote -- but Knox County
officials allocated two machines, just as in past
elections. In voter-rich Franklin County, which
encompasses the state capital of Columbus,
election officials decided to make do with 2,866
machines, even though their analysis showed that
the county needed 5,000 machines.

"Does it make any sense to purchase more machines
just for one election?" asked Michael R. Hackett,
deputy director of the Board of Elections. "I'll
give you the answer: no."

On Election Day, more than 5.7 million Ohioans
voted, 900,000 more voters than in 2000.

In Toledo, Dayton, Columbus and Akron, and on the
campuses at Ohio State and Kenyon, long lines
formed on Election Day, and hundreds of voters
stood in the rain for hours. In Columbus, Sarah
Locke, 54, drove to vote with her daughter and
her parents at a church in the predominantly
black southeast. It was jammed. Old women leaned
heavily on walkers, and some people walked out,
complaining that bosses would not excuse their
lateness.

"It was really demeaning," Locke said. "I never
remembered it being this bad."

Some regular voters filed affidavits stating that
their registrations had been expunged. "I'm 52,
and I've voted in every single election," Kathy
Janoski of Columbus said. "They kept telling me,
'You must be mistaken about your precinct.' I
told them this is where I've always voted. I felt
like I'd been scrubbed off the rolls."

Aftermath of Nov. 2


After the election, local political activists
seeking a recount analyzed how Franklin County
officials distributed voting machines. They found
that 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines
per registered voter showed majorities for Bush.
At the other end of the spectrum, six of the
seven wards with the fewest machines delivered
large margins for Kerry.

Voters in most Democratic wards experienced
five-hour waits, and turnout