Bush Faces Mounting Allegations of Widespread Fraud in 2004 Election

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Bush Faces Mounting Allegations of Widespread Fraud in 2004 Election

 

Commentary ~ November 14, 2004: The evidence is mounting against George Bush

and his election team for committing widespread fraud in the November 2004

elections. Documented allegations range from telephone subterfuge to get

Democrats to stop voting, to high-tech warfare that suppressed the votes of

thousands

of Kerry supporters.

By far the most effective method for Bush may have been the use of electronic

voting machines, provided by three companies run by close friends of the Bush

family. A total of three companies manufacture " black box " computer voting

machines. All three were committed to re-electing Bush.

Black box voting machines leave no paper trail. No paper trail means no

recounts: what the computer says is the what gets accepted – even if exit

polls

show the exact opposite. In Ohio, for example, exit polls showed Kerry leading

Bush. But the black boxes told a different story.

Diebold Election Systems provided the electronic voting machines that are in

use all over Ohio. Diebold’s president, Walden O'Dell, told Republicans in the

summer of 2003 that he was " committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral

votes to the president next year. " Diebold, which is based in Ohio, provided

computer voting machines for 16 Ohio counties with somewhere around 800,000

voters.

Bush claimed he won Ohio by 136,000 votes – not counting the provisional

ballots still in dispute. Ohio’s 20 electoral votes put Bush over the 270 mark

and

effectively handed him the presidency for another four years.

The Associated Press, quoting election officials, reported that an error with

an electronic voting system gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to

Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast

ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County

Board

of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch that Bush actually received only 365

votes in the precinct.

Also in Ohio, eligibility criteria for provisional ballots (which are

expected to favor Kerry) changed after the election in Cuhayoga County. Ballots

without birth dates were ordered to be thrown out even though earlier

instructions

clearly stated lack of birth date was not a disqualifier. Meanwhile, in West

Dayton, Ohio, registered Democrats received calls reminding them to vote on

Nov. 5 — three days after the election.

Over in Nebraska, Sarpy County election officials are trying to figure out

how they ended up with more votes than voters in the general election. As many

as 10,000 extra votes have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for

corrected totals.

In Indiana, in a predominantly democratic county, more than 50,000 votes were

not counted due to an electronic voting machine " glitch " . At about 7 p.m. on

election day, it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from

individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each

precinct

was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of

voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than

79,000 registered voters. LaPorte County Clerk Lynne Spevak said workers at the

clerk's office thought a computer correction could be done once they received a

software patch from Election Systems and Software, the Chicago company that

makes nearly half the voting machines used in the United States, including all

those used in Nebraska. However, the patch did not work.

" We thought we could get a copy of it e-mailed to us and start all over, but

once the program was downloaded from Chicago, it still didn't work right, "

Spevak said.

In Florida, Broward County officials had to correct a computer glitch that

miscounted thousands of absentee votes, instantly turning a slot-machine measure

from loser to winner and reinforcing concerns about the accuracy of

electronic election returns. The Miami Herald reported that the bug, discovered

two

years ago but never fixed, began subtracting votes after the absentee tally hit

32,500 -- a ceiling put in place by the software makers.

In North Carolina, The Sun Journal reported that a systems software glitch in

Craven County's electronic voting equipment is being blamed for giving Bush

11,283 more votes than the total number cast.

In New Hampshire, the Republicans were slightly more low-tech in their

approach to cheating: The New Republic reported they simply called up registered

Democrats and told them “you don't have to bother voting, because Kerry is

doing

so well we feel there are enough people who have already voted in the state of

New Hampshire. "

In West Virginia, democratic leaders in one of the nation’s most

hotly-contested battleground states received reports of voter suppression

activities that

can be traced back to the Republican Party. According to the report,

Republican operatives, pretending to be from the Democratic Party, tricked

voters into

revealing personal information, and then told them they were ineligible to

vote.

These few examples are reportedly just the tip of the iceberg. The

independent watchdog organization, VoteWatch 2004, has documented at least 123

allegations of voter fraud from around the nation – more than enough to tip

the scale

in Bush’s favor.

Despite the mounting evidence, many Americans are refusing to question Bush's

legitimacy. But is it so incredible to consider that Bush, who claimed to

have “won†Florida's 27 electoral votes in 2000 because large numbers of

ballots

were thrown away, and who was installed in the White House by a 5-4 Supreme

Court decision, would cheat to win re-election?

What worked for Republicans in 2000 still works for them in 2004, except this

time around they had the added benefit of the magical black box voting

machine.

The Republicans have essentially turned the United States into a Third World

dictatorship, where those who want to hold onto power simply manufacture a

façade of democracy to keep the illusion alive. As Stephen Post at the Daily

Collegian has put it: “Bush and his henchmen have hijacked American policy to

serve their own ends.â€

But Bush and his henchmen have hijacked more than American policy – they have

hijacked and bushwhacked democracy itself. Thanks to them, this country may

never again realize that illusive dream first articulated by this country’s

founding fathers.