link to Petition Congress to Investigate Election, Great article OH fraud

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Tue Nov 09 2004 @ 2:56 PM

Petition Congress to Investigate Election (link)

http://www.petitiononline.com/uselect/petition.html

 

For those who are interested , the link is a petition that will be sent to

members of Congress to hopefully open an investigation into the " election fraud "

matter. This isn't only an investigation of the results themselves, but also

the system that is used and the background of companies that have created the

electronic voting machines.

 

-Why is all of this necessary?

 

This story was printed in Monday's Columbus(OH) Free Press

If you don't have time, at least check out the highlighted parts.

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

None dare call it voter suppression and fraud

By Bob Fitrakis, Columbus Free Press

 

Evidence is mounting that the 2004 presidential election was stolen in Ohio.

Emerging revelations of voting irregularities coupled with well-documented

Republican efforts at voter suppression prior to the election suggests that in a

fair election Kerry would have won Ohio.

 

Democratic hopeful Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conceded on November

3, based on preliminary postings by the highly partisan Republican Ohio

Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. These unofficial results showed Bush

with

136,483 more votes than Kerry, although 155,428 provisional ballots, 92,672 “

spoiled†ballots, additional overseas ballots, and some remaining absentee

ballots remained uncounted.

 

The day after his concession, Kerry drew 3,893 votes closer to Bush when a

computerized voting machine “glitch†was discovered in an Ohio precinct. A

machine in ward 1B in the predominantly Republican Gahanna, Ohio, recorded 4,258

votes for George W. Bush when only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church

polling site. Buried on page A6 of the Columbus Dispatch, the story also

reported that the voting machine recorded 0 votes in a race between Franklin

County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks. Franklin County Board of

Elections Director Matt Damschroder told the Dispatch that the voting machine

glitches were “why the results on election night are unofficial.â€

 

The right-wing New Life Church voting glitch is interesting. Free Press

reporter Marley Greiner has been tracking Blackwell’s relationship with far

right-wing religious forces like Biblical America and Christian dominionist

groups

that want to establish theocratic religious rule in America. Blackwell was

campaigning around the state with the Reverend Rod Parsley as part of a

“Silent No

More†tour in support of amending the Ohio Constitution to outlaw gay

marriage, on the ballot as Issue One. Many mainstream commentators claim it was

the

widely popular Issue One amendment campaign that brought out Bush voters in

record numbers in rural Ohio. Gay marriage was already outlawed by state

statute,

and six of the seven Ohio Supreme Court justices are Republicans.

 

The nonpartisan Citizen’s Alliance for Secure Elections (CASE) is

investigating various other voting irregularities in Ohio, among them:

 

 

In Auglaize County, a letter dated October 21 under the signature of Ken

Nuss, the county’s former deputy director, alleges that Joe McGinnis, a former

employee of Election Systems & Software (ES & S), violated election protocol with

his unauthorized use of the county’s central tabulating computer that creates

ballots and compiles election results. Nuss, who resigned on October 21,

alleges that McGinnis was improperly granted access to the computer the weekend

of

October 16.

 

In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting at 9am EST Wednesday,

Nov. 3, Bush had 20,807 votes (65.80%) and Kerry had 10,724 (33.92%). Miami

reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after

all precincts reported, boosting Bush’s vote to 33,039 (65.77%) to Kerry’s

17,039 (33.92%). CASE is investigating why the percentage of the vote stayed

exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point after nearly

19,000 new ballots were added. CASE members speculate that it’s either a

long-shot

coincidence with the last three digits remaining the same, or that someone had

pre-set a database and programmed a voting machine to cough up a pre-set

percentage of votes. Miami County uses an easily hackable optical scanner with

the

central counter provided by the Republican-linked vendor ES & S.

 

In Warren County, administrators and election officials locked down the

county administrative building and prohibited all independent election observers

from watching the vote count. County officials cited “homeland security,â€

according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WCPO-TV Channel 9 News Director Bob

Morford

told the Enquirer that he had “never seen anything like it.†Morford

asserted

that throwing the media and independent observers out of the centralized

counting area under the guise of “homeland security†was a “red

herring.†He

said, “That’s something to put up when you don’t know what else to put up

to keep

us out.†In Warren County, Bush picked up an additional 12,000 votes over his

2000 election total.

 

In Franklin County, where Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt

Damschroder is also the former Executive Director of the county’s Republican

Party, the county Board of Elections building looked like a bunker. Scores of

city buses blocked parking spaces on the street outside, numerous concrete

barricades surrounded the parking lot, and a metal detector was stationed at the

only entrance. A phalanx of armed deputy sheriffs swarmed the only site where

provisional voters could cast a guaranteed ballot. The Columbus Dispatch

confirmed an Election Day Free Press story that far fewer voting machines were

present

in predominantly black Democratic inner-city voting wards than in the recent

primary election and the 2000 presidential election, with their lighter

turnouts. The reduced number of machines caused voters to wait up to seven hours

and

wait an average of approximately three hours. One Republican Central

Committee member told the Free Press that Damschroder held back as many as 2000

machines and dispersed many of the other machines to affluent suburbs in

Franklin

County.

 

In rural Drake County, Kerry received 78 less votes than Al Gore in 2000, but

Bush received 3000 more votes. Drake is the only county in Miami Valley where

Kerry’s votes was less than Gore’s and where Bush’s vote rose

dramatically.

Prior to the discovery of these irregularities, investigative reporter Greg

Palast, who exposed the systematic disenfranchisement of Democratic voters in

Florida in 2004, wrote an article entitled, “Kerry won.†Palast and numerous

other observers point to the fact that the exit polls showed Kerry winning.

Palast concludes that the exit polls were correct, but Kerry votes were far more

likely to remain uncounted on election night.

 

Unofficial Ohio presidential results provided by the Secretary of State’s

Office show 155,428 provisional ballots cast. Blackwell was all over the

national

news telling everyone who would listen that these ballots were randomly

distributed and not disproportionately for Kerry. As former New York Mayor

Rudolph

Giuliani raved on national TV demanding Kerry’s concession, a basic analysis

of the provisional ballots suggested that they were disproportionately for

Kerry.

 

Historically, provisional ballots are far more likely to be cast by poor and

minority voters, who live in the urban centers and move more often. Ohio has

88 counties, the vast majority of them rural. Kerry won 15 counties in Ohio,

virtually all large urban centers. In those counties, 85,096 provisional ballots

remain uncounted. Past elections point to the fact that these provisional

ballots are hardly ever cast in the affluent, primarily Republican

municipalities, but are overwhelmingly from the central city. Also, an

additional 17,038

provisional ballots are from Hamilton County and Wood County. Bush won Hamilton

with 53% of the vote and Wood County with 53.5%. Traditionally, the provisional

ballots in Hamilton County come from Cincinnati and its poor central city

areas. These are areas where John Kerry won handily on Election Day.

 

Thus, 102,134 of the provisional ballots, nearly two-thirds (65.7%) in all

probability come from solidly pro-Kerry areas and are most likely cast by

pro-Kerry supporters such as African Americans and the poor. These fit the same

socio-economic demographics and racial profiles of voters targeted by the GOP

for

challenges in Ohio.

 

Palast also points to the 92,672 so-called “spoiled†ballots in Ohio that

have yet to be counted, and may never be tallied. The most famous spoiled

ballots were the 2004 Florida punch cards that could not be machine read, but

when

looked at manually the voter’s intent could be determined. Expert

statisticians

who investigated spoilage in the 2000 election in Florida found that 54% of

these discarded ballots were cast by blacks. In Ohio, most of the spoiled votes

were lost through punch card ballots in 2004.

 

By Blackwell directing county Boards of Elections not to count the

provisional ballots for 11 days, it benefited the Bush campaign since an

immediate

counting would have no doubt made the race tigher between Kerry and Bush, and

perhaps prompted Kerry to request a recount. This would have the 92,672

discarded

" spoiled " ballots that were also likely to favor Kerry.

 

Daniel Tokaji, Professor of Law at the Ohio State University College of Law

commented: " One other point. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has

reportedly said that provisional ballots won't be counted for 11 days. I'm not

sure

where he's getting this, but he may be relying on ORC 3505.32. This statute

provides that the boards of election are to begin canvassing election returns

between 11 and 15 days after the election and ‘continue the canvass daily

until it

is completed.’ Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see how this

precludes provisional votes from being counted earlier than that, even if the

canvass doesn't begin until the 11th day. "

 

Spoiled ballots will only be counted if someone with standing, such as five

Kerry electors or the Ohio Democratic Party, demands and legally qualifies for

a recount. Thus, the exit polls may have been correct. A majority of people

voted for Kerry in Ohio; but 250,000 votes were not counted, most favoring Kerry

over Bush. If Kerry had won by even one vote in Ohio, he would be the next

President of the United States.

 

Irregularities in other key battleground states have prompted three U.S.

representatives to urgently request that the Comptroller General of the United

States David Walker and the General Accounting Office “immediately undertake

an

investigation of the efficiency of voting machines and new technologies used in

the 2004 election.†Tom Hartmann, in his post election article on

CommonDreams.org (“Evidence mounts that the vote was hackedâ€), reminds

readers that Bev

Harris, who started blackboxvoting.org, showed Howard Dean how to hack a

county “central tabulator†computer in 90 seconds live on CNBC.

 

***The Diebold Corporation, which helped count the Ohio vote with e-voting

machines and optical scan machines, is run by a notoriously pro-Republican CEO,

Wally O’Dell. Last year O’Dell wrote a letter to Ohio Republican donors

telling them that he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes

to

the President next year.†O’Dell is a proud member of Bush’s Pioneer and

Ranger team of major donors who visit the Crawford ranch. The other major

election

vote counting firm is ES & S, which is being investigated for allegedly having a

machine that subtracted votes when the totals surpassed 32,000.***

 

On Election Day, the Election Protection Coalition observers who covered 58

polling places in central Ohio, documented thousands of voter complaints over

long lines and recorded numerous people leaving the polls for work or because

they were elderly or handicapped and physically unable to wait for hours to

vote. Professor James K. Galbraith, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public

Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote the following summary of

Election Day in Ohio: “. . . I drove a young African-American voter, a

charming

business student, seven months pregnant, to her polling place at Finland

Elementary School in south Columbus. We arrived in a squalling rain to find

voters

lined up outside for about a hundred yards. . . . The real problem was a

grotesque

shortage of voting machines.â€

 

Ohio State University Law Professor Edward B. Foley told the New York Times, “

When your lines get to two or three hours, it’s system failure.â€

 

Other bizarre tactics emerged in the run-up to the election:

 

 

Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and Democratic Parties, or any

slate of five candidates, may embed official election challengers inside

polling places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that the Republican Party

intended to place thousands of lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls

to challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here that the key goal was

to jam lines and frustrate new voters. After two federal judges rejected the

GOP challengers, Republicans got a favorable ruling from the Sixth Circuit,

which allowed them to place challengers in Ohio polling places. Michael Beaver,

Deputy State Commander with the Election Protection Coalition says, “We now

believe that the challengers were a smokescreen to hide the real plan to

orchestrate a machine shortage in Democratic wards.â€

 

The Republican Party sent letters challenging thousands of Franklin County

registered voters who requested absentee ballots. Franklin County is home to

Columbus, the state's largest city and its capitol. Though it is also home to

Ohio State University, thousands of local students go to schools outside the

county or state. The GOP targeted young voters for challenges. The GOP

pre-challenged an estimated 35,000 voters and rented arenas in Cleveland and

Columbus to

conduct the challenges. The GOP sent registered letters to registered voters’

addresses and when they failed to pick up a letter from the Republican Party

in primarily Democratic areas, they were challenged for fraud. A federal judge

disallowed the challenges less than a week before the election.

 

The Franklin County Board of Elections has called or written an undetermined

number of voters who obtained absentee ballots, challenging their addresses.

In at least one case, after a series of angry phone calls, the Board admitted

there was nothing wrong with the address in question and re-instated voting

rights. The voter in question was a registered Democrat. His wife, an

independent

at the same address, was not challenged. It is unclear how many others have

been wrongly knocked out.

 

Even if they are counted, Franklin County's absentee ballot forms are

designed in ways strikingly reminiscent of those notorious butterfly ballots in

the

Florida 2000 presidential election. On Franklin County absentee ballot forms,

Kerry is the third name on the list of presidential candidates on the left side

of the ballot. But, the punch card is designed to fit in the middle, so the

actual number you punch for Kerry is hole " 4. " If you mistakenly punch hole " 3 "

you've just voted for Bush.

 

Damschroder, Franklin County's right-wing Elections Director is insisting on

e-voting machines that have malfunctioned in at least two Congressional

elections. The machines have no paper trail and one subtracted 3% from former

Rep.

John Kasich’s and added 3% to Ed Brown, a six-point shift. The November issues

of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines ran the following headlines

on their covers, respectively: " E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled

chads were bad' " and " Could hackers tilt the election? " Vigorous protests

against

the paperless machines have been staged here, but many will be used,

rendering a meaningful recount impossible.

 

Twenty GOP-dominated Ohio counties have given wrong information to former

felons about their voter eligibility. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati and

the Republican Taft family, officials told numerous former felons that a judge

had to sign off before they could vote, which is blatantly false.

 

Franklin County, which normally cancels 2-300 registered voters a year for

felony convictions, has sent at least 3,500 cancellation letters to both current

felons and ex-felons whose convictions date back to 1998. The list includes

numerous citizens who were charged with felonies but convicted only of

misdemeanors.

 

Republican Secretary of State Blackwell reversed a long-standing Ohio

practice and is barring voters from casting provisional ballots within their

county

if they are registered to vote but there's been a mistake about where they are

expected to cast their ballot. In this year's spring primaries, Blackwell

allowed voters to cast provisional ballots by county, even if they were in the

wrong precinct. But this fall, voters had to leave if they were in the wrong

precinct and find their way to the right one even though they had waited in line

two to three hours. Blackwell hopes to succeed Republican Bob Taft as governor,

and has labored hard to install Diebold e-voting machines with no paper trail

throughout Ohio. Blackwell is being widely compared to the infamous Katherine

Harris, who handed Florida to George W. Bush in 2000 and was rewarded with a

safe Congressional seat. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones accused

Blackwell of seeking “to disenfranchise the people of the state of Ohio.â€

Tubbs Jones

pointed out that the 2000 census had caused massive redistricting,

particularly within inner city precincts, which would lead to many people ending

up at

the wrong voting site.

 

The October 22 Columbus Dispatch, which endorsed Bush, and WVKO Radio have

both documented phone calls from people impersonating Franklin County Board of

Elections workers and directing registered voters to different and incorrect

polling sites. One individual was falsely told not to vote at the polling

station across the street from his house, but at a " new " site, four miles away.

Under Blackwell's new rules, such a vote would not be counted. Nor do the

precinct

locations make much sense in the inner city. Someone living on the northwest

corner of Bryden and Wilson, instead of walking half a block to the polling

site at Franklin Alternative School, must vote seven blocks northeast at the

Model Neighborhood facility polling site. The previous polling site for the

precinct was two blocks west before the Republicans consolidated several inner

city

polling places in the 1990s.

 

In Cincinnati, some 105,000 voters were moved from active to inactive status

within the last four years for not voting in the last two federal elections.

This is not required under Ohio law, but is an option allowed and exercised by

the Republican-dominated Hamilton County Board of Elections.

 

Secretary of State Blackwell ruled that any voter registration form on other

than 80-pound weight bond paper would not be accepted. This is an old law left

over from pre-scanning days. Many voters who had registered on lighter paper,

had their registration returned, even though the forms had been officially

sanctioned by local election boards.

 

On Election Day, fliers littered the inner city telling voters that

Republicans were to vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday.

 

No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio. The voting

irregularities suggest that Bush is the first Republican President to win the

presidency without winning the actual Ohio vote. Kerry won the vote in Ohio.

The exit polls are correct. The mainstream media, instead of investigating the

massive irregularities, are busy concocting theories as to how all the exit

polls, the safeguards for fair elections, were all wrong on election night in

the

Buckeye State. None dare suggest voter suppression and fraud.

 

--------

Bob Fitrakis is a Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department

at Columbus State Community College. He has a Ph.D in Political Science and a

J.D. from The Ohio State University Law School. He is the author of seven

books, an investigative reporter, and Editor of the Columbus Free Press

(freepress.org). He has won ten major investigative journalism awards including

Best

Coverage of Politics in Ohio from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.

He served as an international election observer in the 1994 presidential

elections in El Salvador and was the co-author and editor of the report to the

United Nations. He served as legal advisor for eight polling locations on

Columbus'

Near East Side for the Election Protection Coalition.

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Congress is GOP controlled so why would they want to do anything to get the GOP

in trouble?

 

C

 

 

" there are only 2 tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the

other is getting it. "

Oscar Wilde

 

 

 

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