None dare call it stolen - Mark Crispin Miller

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Sat, 10 Sep 2005 15:31:05 -0400

None dare call it stolen - Mark Crispin Miller

 

 

 

 

http://www.freepress.net/news/11306

 

None dare call it stolen

From Harpers, September 7, 2005

By Mark Crispin Miller

 

Whichever candidate you voted for (or think you voted for), or even if

you did not vote (or could not vote), you must admit that last year's

presidential race was—if nothing else—pretty interesting. True, the

press has dropped the subject, and the Democrats, with very few

exceptions, have " moved on. " Yet this contest may have been the most

unusual in U.S. history; it was certainly among those with the

strangest outcomes. You may remember being surprised yourself. The

infamously factious Democrats were fiercely unified—Ralph Nader

garnered only about 0.38 percent of the national vote—while the

Republicans were split, with a vocal anti-Bush front that included

anti-Clinton warrior Bob Barr of Georgia; Ike's son John Eisenhower;

Ronald Reagan's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, William J.

Crowe Jr.; former Air Force Chief of Staff and onetime " Veteran for

Bush " General Merrill " Tony " McPeak; founding neocon Francis Fukuyama;

Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, and various large alliances of

military officers, diplomats, and business professors. The American

Conservative, co-founded by Pat Buchanan, endorsed five candidates for

president, including both Bush and Kerry, while the Financial Times

and The Economist came out for Kerry alone. At least fifty-nine daily

newspapers that backed Bush in the previous election endorsed Kerry

(or no one) in this election. The national turnout in 2004 was the

highest since 1968, when another unpopular war had swept the ruling

party from the White House. Yet this ever-less-beloved president, this

president who had united liberals and conservatives and nearly all the

world against himself—this president somehow bested his opponent by

3,000,176 votes.

 

How did he do it? To that most important question the commentariat,

briskly prompted by Republicans, supplied an answer. Americans of

faith—a silent majority heretofore unmoved by any other politician—had

poured forth by the millions to vote " Yes! " for Jesus' buddy in the

White House. Bush's 51 percent, according to this thesis, were roused

primarily by " family values. " Tony Perkins, president of the Family

Research Council, called gay marriage " the hood ornament on the family

values wagon that carried the president to a second term. " The pundits

eagerly pronounced their amens— " Moral values, " Tucker Carlson said on

CNN, " drove President Bush and other Republican candidates to victory

this week " —although it is not clear why. The primary evidence of our

Great Awakening was a post-election poll by the Pew Research Center in

which 27 percent of the respondents, when asked which issue " mattered

most " to them in the election, selected something called " moral

values. " This slight plurality of impulse becomes still less

impressive when we note that, as the pollsters went to great pains to

make clear, " the relative importance of moral values depends greatly

on how the question is framed. " In fact, when voters were asked to

" name in their own words the most important factor in their vote, "

only 14 percent managed to come up with " moral values. " Strangely,

this detail went little mentioned in the post-electoral commentary.[1]

 

The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of

the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them.

This animus appeared soon after November 2, in a spate of caustic

articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed

speculation: " Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call

results rigged, " chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. " Internet

Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed, " proclaimed the Boston Globe on

November 10. " Latest Conspiracy Theory—Kerry Won—Hits the Ether, " the

Washington Post chortled on November 11. The New York Times weighed in

with " Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried " —making

mock not only of the " post-election theorizing " but of cyberspace

itself, the fons et origo of all such loony tunes, according to the Times.

 

Such was the news that most Americans received. Although the tone was

scientific, " realistic, " skeptical, and " middle-of-the-road, " the

explanations offered by the press were weak and immaterial. It was as

if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without acknowledging

the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire.[2] Since

Kerry has conceded, they argued, and since " no smoking gun " had come

to light, there was no story to report. This is an oddly passive

argument. Even so, the evidence that something went extremely wrong

last fall is copious, and not hard to find. Much of it was noted at

the time, albeit by local papers and haphazardly. Concerning the

decisive contest in Ohio, the evidence is lucidly compiled in a single

congressional report, which, for the last half-year, has been

available to anyone inclined to read it. It is a veritable arsenal of

" smoking guns " —and yet its findings may be less extraordinary than the

fact that no one in this country seems to care about them.

 

* * *

 

On January 5, Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking

Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released Preserving

Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio. The report was the result of a

five-week investigation by the committee's Democrats, who reviewed

thousands of complaints of fraud, malfeasance, or incompetence

surrounding the election in Ohio, and further thousands of complaints

that poured in by phone and email as word of the inquiry spread. The

congressional researchers were assisted by volunteers in Ohio who held

public hearings in Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati, and

questioned more than two hundred witnesses. (Although they were

invited, Republicans chose not to join in the inquiry.) [3]

 

Preserving Democracy describes three phases of Republican chicanery:

the run-up to the election, the election itself, and the post-election

cover-up. The wrongs exposed are not mere dirty tricks (though

Bush/Cheney also went in heavily for those) but specific violations of

the U.S. and Ohio constitutions, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil

Rights Act of 1968, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help

America Vote Act. Although Conyers trod carefully when the report came

out, insisting that the crimes did not affect the outcome of the race

(a point he had to make, he told me, " just to get a hearing " ), his

report does " raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said that

the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a

manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone Federal requirements and

constitutional standards. " The report cites " massive and unprecedented

voter irregularities and anomalies " throughout the state—wrongs,

moreover, that were hardly random accidents. " In many cases, " the

report says, " these irregularities were caused by intentional

misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of

State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign

in Ohio. " [4]

 

The first phase of malfeasance entailed, among many other actions,

several months of bureaucratic hijinks aimed at disenfranchising

Democrats, the most spectacular result of which was " a wide

discrepancy between the availability of voting machines in more

minority, Democratic and urban areas as compared to more Republican,

suburban and exurban areas. " Such unequal placement had the

predictable effect of slowing the voting process to a crawl at

Democratic polls, while making matters quick and easy in Bush country:

a clever way to cancel out the Democrats' immense success at

registering new voters in Ohio. (We cannot know the precise number of

new voters registered in Ohio by either party because many states,

including Ohio, do not register voters by party affiliation. The New

York Times reported in September, however, that new registration rose

25 percent in Ohio's predominantly Republican precincts and 250

percent in Ohio's predominantly Democratic precincts.)

 

At Kenyon College in Gambier, for instance, there were only two

machines for 1,300 would-be voters, even though " a surge of late

registrations promised a record vote. " Gambier residents and Kenyon

students had to stand in line for hours, in the rain and in " crowded,

narrow hallways, " with some of them inevitably forced to call it

quits. " In contrast, at nearby Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, which

is considered more Republican leaning, there were ample waiting

machines and no lines. " This was not a consequence of limited

resources. In Franklin County alone, as voters stood for hours

throughout Columbus and elsewhere, at least 125 machines collected

dust in storage. The county's election officials had " decided to make

do with 2,866 machines, even though the analysis showed that the

county needs 5,000 machines. "

 

It seemed at times that Ohio's secretary of state was determined to

try every stunt short of levying a poll tax to suppress new voter

turnout. On September 7, based on an overzealous reading of an obscure

state bylaw, he ordered county boards of elections to reject all Ohio

voter-registration forms not " printed on white, uncoated paper of not

less than 80 lb. text weight. " Under public pressure he reversed the

order three weeks later, by which time unknown numbers of Ohioans had

been disenfranchised. Blackwell also attempted to limit access to

provisional ballots. The Help America Vote Act—passed in 2002 to

address some of the problems of the 2000 election—prevents election

officials from deciding at the polls who will be permitted to cast

provisional ballots, as earlier Ohio law had permitted. On September

16, Blackwell issued a directive that somehow failed to note that

change. A federal judge ordered him to revise the language, Blackwell

resisted, and the court was forced to draft its own version of the

directive, which it ordered Blackwell to accept, even as it noted

Blackwell's " vigorous, indeed, at times, obdurate opposition " to

compliance with the law.

 

Under Blackwell the state Republican Party tried to disenfranchise

still more Democratic voters through a technique known as " caging. "

The party sent registered letters to new voters, " then sought to

challenge 35,000 individuals who refused to sign for the letters, "

including " voters who were homeless, serving abroad, or simply did not

want to sign for something concerning the Republican Party. " It should

be noted that marketers have long used zip codes to target, with

remarkable precision, the ethnic makeup of specific neighborhoods, and

also that, according to exit polls last year, 84 percent of those

black citizens who voted in Ohio voted for Kerry.[5]

 

* * *

 

The second phase of lawlessness began the Monday before the election,

when Blackwell issued two directives restricting media coverage of the

election. First, reporters were to be barred from the polls, because

their presence contravened Ohio's law on " loitering " near voting

places. Second, media representatives conducting exit polls were to

remain 100 feet away from the polls. Blackwell's reasoning here was

that, with voter turnout estimated at 73 percent, and with many new

voters so blissfully ignorant as to have " never looked at a voting

machine before, " his duty was clear: the public was to be protected

from the " interference or intimidation " caused by " intense media

scrutiny. " Both cases were at once struck down in federal court on

First Amendment grounds.

 

Blackwell did manage to ban reporters from a post-election

ballot-counting site in Warren County because—election officials

claimed—the FBI had warned of an impending terrorist attack there. The

FBI said it issued no such warning, however, and the officials refused

to name the agent who alerted them. Moreover, as the Cincinnati

Enquirer later reported, email correspondence between election

officials and the county's building services director indicated that

lockdown plans— " down to the wording of the signs that would be posted

on the locked doors " —had been in the works for at least a week. Beyond

suggesting that officials had something to hide, the ban was also,

according to the report, a violation of Ohio law and the Fourteenth

Amendment.

 

Contrary to a prior understanding, Blackwell also kept foreign

monitors away from the Ohio polls. Having been formally invited by the

State Department on June 9, observers from the Organization for

Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international consortium based

in Vienna, had come to witness and report on the election. The

mission's two-man teams had been approved to monitor the process in

eleven states—but the observers in Ohio were prevented from watching

the opening of the polling places, the counting of the ballots, and,

in some cases, the election itself. " We thought we could be at the

polling places before, during, and after " the voting, said Søren

Søndergaard, a Danish member of the team. Denied admission to polls in

Columbus, he and his partner went to Blackwell, who refused them

letters of approval, again citing Ohio law banning " loitering " outside

the polls. The two observers therefore had to " monitor " the voting at

a distance of 100 feet from each polling place. Although not

technically illegal, Blackwell's refusal was improper and, of course,

suspicious. (The Conyers report does not deal with this episode.)

 

To what end would election officials risk so malodorous an action? We

can only guess, of course. We do know, however, that Ohio, like the

nation, was the site of numerous statistical anomalies—so many that

the number is itself statistically anomalous, since every single one

of them took votes from Kerry. In Butler County the Democratic

candidate for State Supreme Court took in 5,347 more votes than Kerry

did. In Cuyahoga County ten Cleveland precincts " reported an

incredibly high number of votes for third party candidates who have

historically received only a handful of votes from these urban

areas " —mystery votes that would mostly otherwise have gone to Kerry.

In Franklin County, Bush received nearly 4,000 extra votes from one

computer, and, in Miami County, just over 13,000 votes appeared in

Bush's column after all precincts had reported. In Perry County the

number of Bush votes somehow exceeded the number of registered voters,

leading to voter turnout rates as high as 124 percent. Youngstown,

perhaps to make up the difference, reported negative 25 million votes.

 

In Cuyahoga County and in Franklin County—both Democratic

strongholds—the arrows on the absentee ballots were not properly

aligned with their respective punch holes, so that countless votes

were miscast, as in West Palm Beach back in 2000. In Mercer County

some 4,000 votes for president—representing nearly 7 percent of the

electorate—mysteriously dropped out of the final count. The machines

in heavily Democratic Lucas County kept going haywire, prompting the

county's election director to admit that prior tests of the machines

had failed. One polling place in Lucas County never opened because all

the machines were locked up somewhere and no one had the key. In

Hamilton County many absentee voters could not cast a Democratic vote

for president because county workers, in taking Ralph Nader's name off

many ballots, also happened to remove John Kerry's name. The

Washington Post reported that in Mahoning County " 25 electronic

machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bush

column, " but it did not think to ask why.

 

Ohio Democrats also were heavily thwarted through dirty tricks

recalling Richard Nixon's reign and the systematic bullying of Dixie.

There were " literally thousands upon thousands " of such incidents, the

Conyers report notes, cataloguing only the grossest cases. Voters were

told, falsely, that their polling place had changed; the news was

conveyed by phone calls, " door-hangers, " and even party workers going

door to door. There were phone calls and fake " voter bulletins "

instructing Democrats that they were not to cast their votes until

Wednesday, November 3, the day after Election Day. Unknown

" volunteers " in Cleveland showed up at the homes of Democrats, kindly

offering to " deliver " completed absentee ballots to the election

office. And at several polling places, election personnel or hired

goons bused in to do the job " challenged " voters—black voters in

particular—to produce documents confirming their eligibility to vote.

The report notes one especially striking incident:

 

In Franklin County, a worker at a Holiday Inn observed a team of 25

people who called themselves the " Texas Strike Force " using payphones

to make intimidating calls to likely voters, targeting people recently

in the prison system. The " Texas Strike Force " paid their way to Ohio,

but their hotel accommodations were paid for by the Ohio Republican

Party, whose headquarters is across the street. The hotel worker heard

one caller threaten a likely voter with being reported to the FBI and

returning to jail if he voted. Another hotel worker called the police,

who came but did nothing.

 

* * *

 

The electoral fraud continued past Election Day, but by means far more

complex and less apparent than the bullying that marked the day

itself. Here the aim was to protect the spoils, which required the

prevention of countywide hand recounts by any means necessary. The

procedure for recounts is quite clear. In fact, it was created by

Blackwell. A recount having been approved, each of the state's

eighty-eight counties must select a number of precincts randomly, so

that the total of their ballots comes to 3 percent (at least) of the

county's total vote. Those ballots must then be simultaneously hand

counted and machine counted. If the hand count and the new machine

count match, the remaining 97 percent of the selected ballots may be

counted by machine. If, however, the totals vary by as little as a

single vote, all the other votes must be hand counted, and the

results, once reconfirmed, must be accepted as the new official total.

 

The Ohio recount officially started on December 13—five days after

Conyers's hearings opened—and was scheduled to go on until December

28. Because the recount (such as it was) coincided with the inquiry,

Conyers was able to discover, and reveal in his report, several

instances of what seemed to be electoral fraud.

 

On December 13, for instance, Sherole Eaton, deputy director of

elections for Hocking County, filed an affidavit stating that the

computer that operates the tabulating machine had been " modified " by

one Michael Barbian Jr., an employee of Triad GSI, the corporate

manufacturer of the county's voting machinery.

 

Ms. Eaton witnessed Mr. Barbian modify the Hocking County computer

vote tabulator before the announcement of the Ohio recount. She

further witnessed Barbian, upon the announcement that the Hocking

County precinct was planned to be the subject of the initial Ohio test

recount, make further alterations based on his knowledge of the

situation. She also has firsthand knowledge that Barbian advised

election officials how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that

[the] preliminary hand recount matched the machine count.[6]

 

The committee also learned that Triad similarly intervened in at least

two other counties. In a filmed interview, Barbian said that he had

examined machines not only in Hocking County but also in Lorain,

Muskingum, Clark, Harrison, and Guernsey counties; his purpose was to

provide the Board of Elections with as much information as

possible— " The more information you give someone, " he said, " the better

job they can do. " The report concludes that such information as

Barbian and his colleagues could provide was helpful indeed:

 

Based on the above, including actual admissions and statements by

Triad employees, it strongly appears that Triad and its employees

engaged in a course of behavior to provide " cheat sheets " to those

counting the ballots. The cheat sheets told them how many votes they

should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they

should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could

avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law. If

true, this would frustrate the entire purpose of the recount law—to

randomly ascertain if the vote counting apparatus is operating fairly

and effectively, and if not to conduct a full hand recount.

 

The report notes Triad's role in several other cases. In Union County

the hard drive on one tabulator was replaced after the election. (The

old one had to be subpoenaed.) In Monroe County, after the 3 percent

hand count had twice failed to match the machine count, a Triad

employee brought in a new machine and took away the old one. (That

machine's count matched the hand count.) Such operations are

especially worrying in light of the fact that Triad's founder, Brett

A. Rapp, " has been a consistent contributor to Republican causes. "

(Neither Barbian nor Rapp would respond to Harper's queries, and the

operator at Triad refused even to provide the name of a press liaison.)

 

There were many cases of malfeasance, however, in which Triad played

no role. Some 1,300 Libertarian and Green Party volunteers, led by

Green Party recount manager Lynne Serpe, monitored the count

throughout Ohio.[7] They reported that: In Allen, Clermont, Cuyahoga,

Morrow, Hocking, Vinton, Summit, and Medina counties, the precincts

for the 3 percent hand recount were preselected, not picked at random,

as the law requires. In Fairfield County the 3 percent hand recount

yielded a total that diverged from the machine count—but despite

protests from observers, officials did not then perform a hand recount

of all the ballots, as the law requires. In Washington and Lucas

counties, ballots were marked or altered, apparently to ensure that

the hand recount would equal the machine count. In Ashland, Portage,

and Coshocton counties, ballots were improperly unsealed or stored.

Belmont County " hired an independent programmer (`at great expense')

to reprogram the counting machines so that they would only count votes

for President during the recount. " Finally, Democratic and/or Green

observers were denied access to absentee, and/or provisional ballots,

or were not allowed to monitor the recount process, in Summit, Huron,

Putnam, Allen, Holmes, Mahoning, Licking, Stark, Medina, Warren, and

Morgan counties. In short, the Ohio vote was never properly recounted,

as required by Ohio law.

 

* * *

 

That is what the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee

found, that is what they distributed to everyone in Congress, and that

is what any member of the national press could have reported at any

time in the last half year. Conyers may or may not have precisely

captured every single dirty trick. The combined votes gained by the

Republicans through such devices may or may not have decided the

election. (Bush won Ohio by 118,601 votes.) Indeed, if you could

somehow look into the heart of every eligible voter in the United

States to know his or her truest wishes, you might discover that

Bush/Cheney was indeed the people's choice. But you have to admit—the

report is pretty interesting.

 

In fact, its release was timed for maximum publicity. According to the

United States Code (Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 15), the President of

the Senate—i.e., the U.S. Vice President—must announce each state's

electoral results, then " call for objections. " Objections must be made

in writing and " signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the

House of Representatives. " A challenge having been submitted, the

joint proceedings must then be suspended so that both houses can

retire to their respective chambers to decide the question, after

which they reconvene and either certify or reject the vote.

 

Thus was an unprecedented civic drama looming on the day that

Conyers's report appeared. First of all, electoral votes had been

contested in the Congress only twice. In 1877 the electoral votes of

several states were challenged, some by Democrats supporting Samuel

Tilden, others by Republicans supporting Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1969,

Republicans challenged the North Carolina vote when Lloyd W. Bailey, a

" faithless elector " pledged to Richard Nixon for that state, voted for

George Wallace.[8] And a new challenge would be more than just

" historic. " Because of what had happened—or not happened—four years

earlier, it would also be extraordinarily suspenseful. On January 6,

2001, House Democrats, galvanized by the electoral larceny in Florida,

tried and failed to challenge the results. Their effort was aborted by

the failure of a single Democratic senator to join them, as the law

requires. Al Gore—still vice president, and therefore still the

Senate's president—had urged Democrats to make no such unseemly waves

but to respect Bush's installation for the sake of national unity.

Now, it seemed, that partisan disgrace would be redressed, at least

symbolically; for a new challenge from the House, by Representative

Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio, would be co-signed by Barbara Boxer,

Democratic senator from California, who, at a noon press conference on

January 6, heightened the suspense by tearfully acknowledging her

prior wrong: " Four years ago I didn't intervene. I was asked by Al

Gore not to do so and I didn't do so. Frankly, looking back on it, I

wish I had. "

 

It was a story perfect for TV—a rare event, like the return of

Halley's comet; a scene of high contention in the nation's capital; a

heroine resolved to make things right, both for the public and

herself. Such big news would highlight Conyers's report, whose

findings, having spurred the challenge in the first place, would now

inform the great congressional debate on the election in Ohio.

 

As you may recall, this didn't happen—the challenge was rejected by a

vote of 267?31 in the House and 74?1 in the Senate. The Boston Globe

gave the report 118 words (page 3); the Los Angeles Times, 60 words

(page 18). It made no news in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today,

Newsweek, Time, or U.S. News & World Report. It made no news on CBS,

NBC, ABC, or PBS. Nor did NPR report it (though Talk of the Nation

dealt with it on January 6). CNN did not report it, though Donna

Brazile pointedly affirmed its copious " evidence " on Inside Politics

on January 6. (Judy Woodruff failed to pause for an elaboration.) Also

on that date, the Fox News Channel briefly showed Conyers himself

discussing " irregularities " in Franklin County, though it did not

mention the report. He was followed by Tom DeLay, who assailed the

Democrats for their " assault against the institutions of our

representative democracy. " The New York Times negated both the

challenge and the document in a brief item headlined " Election Results

to Be Certified, with Little Fuss from Kerry, " which ran on page 16

and ended with this quote from Dennis Hastert's office, vis-à-vis the

Democrats: " They are really just trying to stir up their loony left. "

 

Indeed, according to the House Republicans, it was the Democrats who

were the troublemakers and cynical manipulators—spinning " fantasies "

and " conspiracy theories " to " distract " the people, " poison the

atmosphere of the House of Representatives " (Dave Hobson, R., Ohio),

and " undermine the prospect of democracy " (David Dreier, R., Calif.);

mounting " a direct attack to undermine our democracy " (Tom DeLay, R.,

Tex.), " an assault against the institutions of our representative

democracy " (DeLay); trying " to plant the insidious seeds of doubt in

the electoral process " (J. D. Hayworth, R., Ariz.); and in so doing

following " their party's primary strategy: to obstruct, to divide and

to destroy " (Deborah D. Pryce, R., Ohio).

 

Furthermore, the argument went, there was no evidence of electoral

fraud. The Democrats were using " baseless and meritless tactics "

(Pryce) to present their " so-called evidence " (Bob Ney, R., Ohio),

" making allegations that have no basis of fact " (Candice Miller, R.,

Mich.), making claims for which " there is no evidence whatsoever, no

evidence whatsoever " (Dreier). " There is absolutely no credible basis

to question the outcome of the election " (Rob Portman, R., Ohio). " No

proven allegations of fraud. No reports of widespread wrongdoing. It

was, at the end of the day, an honest election " (Bill Shuster, R.,

Pa.). And so on. Bush won Ohio by " an overwhelming and comfortable

margin, " Rep. Pryce insisted, while Ric Keller (R., Fla.) said that

Bush won by " an overwhelmingly comfortable margin. " ( " The president's

margin is significant, " observed Roy Blunt, R., Mo.) In short, as Tom

DeLay put it, " no such voter disenfranchisement occurred in this

election of 2004—and, for that matter, the election of 2000. Everybody

knows it. The voters know it, the candidates know it, the courts know

it, and the evidence proves it. "

 

That all this commentary was simply wrong went unnoticed and/or

unreported. Once Bush was re-inaugurated, all inquiries were

apparently concluded, and the story was officially kaput. By March

talk of fraud was calling forth the same reflexive ridicule that had

prevailed back in November—but only now and then, on those rare

moments when somebody dared bring it up: " Also tonight, " CNN's Lou

Dobbs deadpanned ironically on March 8, " Teresa Heinz Kerry still

can't accept certain reality. She suggests the presidential election

may have been rigged! " And when, on March 31, the National Election

Data Archive Project released its study demonstrating that the exit

polls had probably been right, it made news only in the Akron

Beacon-Journal.[9] The article included this response from Carlo

LoParo, Kenneth Blackwell's spokesman: " What are you going to do

except laugh at it? "

 

* * *

 

In the summer of 2003, Representative Peter King (R., N.Y.) was

interviewed by Alexandra Pelosi at a barbecue on the White House lawn

for her HBO documentary Diary of a Political Tourist. " It's already

over. The election's over. We won, " King exulted more than a year

before the election. When asked by Pelosi—the daughter of House

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—how he knew that Bush would win, he

answered, " It's all over but the counting. And we'll take care of the

counting. "

 

King, who is well known in Washington for his eccentric utterances,

says he was kidding, that he has known Pelosi for years, that she is

" a clown, " and that her project was a " spoof. " Still, he said it. And

laughter, despite the counsel of Kenneth Blackwell's press flack,

seems an inappropriate response to the prospect of a stolen

election—as does the advice that we " get over it. " The point of the

Conyers report, and of this report as well, is not to send Bush

packing and put Kerry in his place. The Framers could no more conceive

of electoral fraud on such a scale than they could picture Fox News

Channel or the Pentagon; and so we have no constitutional recourse,

should it be proven, finally, that the wrong guy " won. " The point of

our revisiting the last election, rather, is to see exactly what the

damage was so that the people can demand appropriate reforms. Those

who say we should " move on " from that suspicious race and work instead

on " bigger issues " —like electoral reform—are urging the impossible;

for there has never been a great reform that was not driven by some

major scandal.

 

" If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of

civilization, " Thomas Jefferson said, " it expects what never was and

never will be. " That much-quoted line foretells precisely what has

happened to us since " the news " has turned into a daily paraphrase of

Karl Rove's fevered dreams. Just as 2+2=5 in Orwell's Oceania, so here

today the United States just won two brilliant military victories,

9/11 could not have been prevented, we live in a democracy (like the

Iraqis), and last year's presidential race " was, at the end of the

day, an honest election. " Such claims, presented as the truth, are

nothing but faith-based reiteration, as valid as the notions that one

chooses to be homosexual, that condoms don't prevent the spread of

HIV, and that the universe was made 6,000 years ago.

 

In this nation's epic struggle on behalf of freedom, reason, and

democracy, the press has unilaterally disarmed—and therefore many good

Americans, both liberal and conservative, have lost faith in the

promise of self-government. That vast surrender is demoralizing,

certainly, but if we face it, and endeavor to reverse it, it will not

prove fatal. This democracy can survive a plot to hijack an election.

What it cannot survive is our indifference to, or unawareness of, the

evidence that such a plot has succeeded.

About the Author

 

————————-

 

Mark Crispin Miller is the author of The Bush Dyslexicon and, most

recently, Cruel and Unusual. His next book, Fooled Again, will be

published this faU by Basic Books.

 

————————

 

Notes

 

1. Another poll, by Zogby International, showed that 33 percent of

voters deemed " greed and materialism " the most pressing moral problems

in America. Only 12 percent of those polled cited gay marriage.

 

2. Keith Olbermann, on MSNBC, stood out as an heroic exception,

devoting many segments of his nightly program Countdown to the myriad

signs of electoral mischief, particularly in Ohio.

 

3. The full report can be downloaded from the Judiciary Committee's

website at www.house.gov/judiciary_ democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf

and is also, as of May, available as a trade paperback, entitled What

Went Wrong in Ohio. I should note here that, in a victory for family

values, the publishers of that paperback are my parents, Jordan and

Anita Miller.

 

4. When contacted by Harper's Magazine, Blackwell spokesman Carlo

LoParo dismissed Conyers's report as a partisan attack. " Why wasn't it

more than an hour's story? " he asked, referring to the lack of media

interest in the report. " Everybody can't be wrong, can they? "

 

5. Let it not be said that the Democrats rose wholly above the

electoral fray: in Defiance County, Ohio, one Chad Staton was arrested

on 130 counts of vote fraud when he submitted voter-registration forms

purportedly signed by, among others, Dick Tracy, Jeffrey Dahmer,

Michael Jackson, and Mary Poppins. Of course, depending on party

affiliation, the consequence of election misdeeds varies. Staton, who

told police he was paid in crack for each registration, received

fifty-four months in jail for his fifth-degree felonies; Blackwell,

for his part, is now the G.O.P. front-runner for governor of Ohio.

 

6. In May 2005, Eaton was ordered by the Hocking County Board of

Elections to resign from her position.

 

7. The recount itself was the result of a joint application from the

Green and Libertarian parties.

 

8. Offended by the president-elect's first cabinet appointments (Henry

Kissinger, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, et al.), Bailey was protesting

Nixon's liberalism.

 

9. On the other hand, the thesis that the exit polls were flawed had

been reported by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the

Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Columbus

Dispatch, CNN.com, MSNBC, and ABC (which devoted a Nightline segment

to the " conspiracy theory " that the exit polls had been correct)

 

 

 

 

 

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