VOTE: New Study: More Absentee Votes than Voters in Ohio

I see that you want a fuller review of all the fraud that has taken place in 2004, wherever the chips may fall.

You should therefore find the second filing into the Supreme Court from the contestors, of interest. It gets meaty from page 18 onwards:

freepress.org...

Initially there is much reliance placed upon the merit of the exit polls (which despite your protestation, have been accurate for 30+ years) and how they have been used to validate that there has been no fraud in overseas elections. Your views would seem to hold that the polls could be uniquely wrong in the USA, but hard stats do not behave differently across borders and the evidence that indicates fraud is far too compelling.

The backroom dealings described with hardware and its reprogramming in county offices cast a great deal of suspicion as well.

I differ greatly with you in the area of whether a political party should be behind this effort. It is better as a citizen-led review of the corruption in electoral practices, in the same vein as the organizations behind the national FOI requests.

Only in America and despotic third world countries do you see the main state official for control of the election also in the position of campaign chairman for one of the interested parties. But only in America and not in despotic third world countries do you see the CEO of the major manufacturer of voting hardware promising delivery of an election result to the candidate that he supports.

This is not democracy, it is corruption.

[edit on 20-12-2004 by MaskedAvatar]

Here are some facts from the current complaint filed with the Ohio Courts by those alleging voter fraud. See MA's post for the link to this document.

exit polls in Ohio showed Kerry 52.1% Actual vote says 48.7% Poll conducted by Warren Mitofsky, actual margin of error 3.4%

According to standard statistical analysis, assuming a random exit poll sample (my emphasis) and an honest vote count, there is a probability of roughly 1 in a thousand that this certifed election result would occur.

The probability that a pollster with the experience, reputation, and ability of Warren Mitofsky would not be able to draw a random sample is vanishingly small.

On information and belief, contestors allege that traditional means of vote fraud were used. (ballot stuffing, and ballot destruction)

That is the crux of the Ohio vote fraud case. They also sight some misbehavior in the handling of the vote by election and state officials, suggesting a cover up but the cast is first and primarily based on the above.

The case rests heavily on the exit polls taken in Ohio and around the country. the plaintiff goes so far as to say that the national election should be called for Kerry according to the exit polls. The problem with that is that exit polls are just voluntary polls. The man in charge of the exit polls, Mr. Mitofsky, has been interviewed about the exit poll discrepencies on several occasions since the election. In each one he has given his reasons why he thinks the exit poll data was incorrect and the election was valid. I am posting below a few quotes I pulled from articles and interviews with Mr. Mitofsky.

WARREN MITOFSKY: Well, in an exit poll, everybody doesn't agree to be interviewed. It's voluntary, and the people refuse usually at about the same rate, regardless of who they support. When you have a very energized electorate, which contributed to the big turnout, sometimes the supporters of one candidate refuse at a greater rate than the supporters of the other candidate.
www.pbs.org...

What is important is that Mitofsky puts the conspiracy theories to rest by declaring- categorically- that after extensive analysis, he believes his numbers were off and sees NO EVIDENCE of systematic voter fraud. www.command-post.org...

Absent further data from NEP, you can choose to believe that an existing problem with exit polls got worse this year in the face of declining response rates and rising distrust of big media, that a slightly higher number of Bush voters than Kerry voters declined to be interviewed. Or, you can believe that a massive secret conspiracy somehow shifted roughly 2% of the vote from Kerry to Bush in every battleground state, a conspiracy that fooled everyone but the exit pollsters - and then only for a few hours - after which they deliberately suppressed evidence of the fraud and damaged their own reputations by blaming the discrepancies on weaknesses in their data.

Now I know I am playing to one side of the issue with this post but it is the side to which i am leaning so I will try to do it justice. If there is rebutting information that I have not come across I welcome it and the discussion it engenders. That being said I will stick my neck out and draw a conclusion that I may well be attacked for. If it is true that the plaintiff's case in this matter rests on the accuracy of the polling data for the state of Ohio then I believe they have built themselves a house of cards since the director of the polling himself has discounted the accuracy of the data and given valid reasons for the discrepency between the election results and the data his people collected.

I will add one final word to this in deference to those who feel that the voter fraud in Ohio needs to be pursued vigorously. It appears that some disturbing precidents were set in the actions of the election officials and state officers who presided over the election. These were in regards to the handling of the public records of the election. I believe that these precidents need to be unmade by official ruling so as to prevent any successful election fraud in the future. Some of the mistakes made could be chalked up to administrative bloopers but certainly not all of them and for whatever reason there does appear to be an effort to delay and hinder the complete vetting of the Ohio election. This could be for political reasons that have little to do with election fraud but could also be a signal of voter problems that someone does not want aired. To coin a phrase where there smoke there is fire and in this case a wisp of smoke is rising from the situation. That does not mean, however, that the electoral college is burning down. It may only be a smoldering ember in someone's dirty laundry.

editted for grammar and clarity

[edit on 20-12-2004 by Johannmon]

... and to think that it may hinge on another arm of government, the judiciary, in the form of the Supreme Court, to deliver findings that are to be seen as clean and free of corruption.

As if that has happened much since the year 2000.

This is how impartiality works:

1. The campaign co-ordinator for Bush is allowed to be the chief electoral official in the key battleground state.

2. If he delivers, he can rise further in the party.

3. He aspires to governorship, and he has been a good boy, corrupt as hell, and stonewalling any investigation into the crime and election fraud that took place in Ohio...


Wednesday, January 5, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ohio�s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell boasted of helping �deliver� Ohio for President Bush and said he was �truly pleased� to announce Bush had won Ohio even before all of the state�s votes had been counted in his own fundraising letter, RAW STORY has discovered.

The letter, which was received by a Butler County resident Dec. 31, is a plea to support Blackwell�s campaign for governor. The resident has asked to remain anonymous.

In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio�s chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush�s Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a �disaster� who would have reaped �terrible� and �horrible� results on both Ohio and the United States.

Further, Blackwell�s use of the word �deliver� finds striking resonance with another controversial fundraising letter sent by the CEO of voting machine manufacturer Diebold Walden O�Dell in the summer of 2003 when he said he was �committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.�


www.bluelemur.com...

[edit on 5-1-2005 by MaskedAvatar]

Masked Avatar

You are very interested in the electoral process in the US, moreso than many Americans are, even though you are not a US citizen. This is commendable; it would be nice if more Americans were as interested and got more involved. It would surely make for a better process.

I am curious. What is the voting situation where you reside? Where do you reside? I think it would be fair to make some comparisons here, don't you? Maybe we can learn from your country.

Originally posted by jsobecky
Masked Avatar

You are very interested in the electoral process in the US, moreso than many Americans are, even though you are not a US citizen.

Thanks, but you don't know me, and I share little about me here. How you would assume anything about my citizenship or where I choose to live and retain properties is beyond me and it is irrelevant.

I will find ATS more satisfying when people can drop labels and assumptions about members and can deal in the facts.

The US electoral system is archaic, past its use by date, and more open to fraud and corruption than that of the vast majority of western countries. It's a shame that few ATS members realize how bad it is and fewer still raise a finger to do anything about it.

If you were interested in proportionate representation as opposed to the stupid two-party lobbying and funding system in the US, you could look to countries such as Germany and New Zealand for models.

If you were interested in getting rid of corruption in voting machines, and how decent paper based systems work with few hiccups outside the US, then just about any country will educate you. The corruption in the US system is largely unique to the US and it is endemic throughout the US to a tragic (not laughable) degree.

Sour grape, or democracy rape, that is the question......

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
Thanks, but you don't know me, and I share little about me here. How you would assume anything about my citizenship or where I choose to live and retain properties is beyond me and it is irrelevant.

No need to get all hissy. Your reasons for the mask are your own, although X's are not really original or unique nowadays. Everybody knows at least one.

I will find ATS more satisfying when people can drop labels and assumptions about members and can deal in the facts.

Me too.

What's an "X"?


Here's the text of Senator Barbara Boxer's statement objecting to the corrupt Presidential election 2004 in Ohio.

It's an important step over what happened in 2000. Good on Babs.


Senator Barbara Boxer's Statement On Her Objection To The Certification Of Ohio�s Electoral Votes


For most of us in the Senate and the House, we have spent our lives fighting for things we believe in � always fighting to make our nation better.

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice.

Now we must add a new fight � the fight for electoral justice.

Every citizen of this country who is registered to vote should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth of their community, their vote has as much weight as the vote of any Senator, any Congressperson, any President, any cabinet member, or any CEO of any Fortune 500 Corporation.

I am sure that every one of my colleagues � Democrat, Republican, and Independent � agrees with that statement. That in the voting booth, every one is equal.

So now it seems to me that under the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees the right to vote, we must ask:

Why did voters in Ohio wait hours in the rain to vote? Why were voters at Kenyan College, for example, made to wait in line until nearly 4 a.m. to vote because there were only two machines for 1300 voters?

Why did poor and predominantly African-American communities have disproportionately long waits?

Why in Franklin County did election officials only use 2,798 machines when they said they needed 5,000? Why did they hold back 68 machines in warehouses? Why were 42 of those machines in predominantly African-American districts?

Why did, in Columbus area alone, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 voters leave polling places, out of frustration, without having voted? How many more never bothered to vote after they heard about this?

Why is it when 638 people voted at a precinct in Franklin County, a voting machine awarded 4,258 extra votes to George Bush. Thankfully, they fixed it � but how many other votes did the computers get wrong?

Why did Franklin County officials reduce the number of electronic voting machines in downtown precincts, while adding them in the suburbs? This also led to long lines.

In Cleveland, why were there thousands of provisional ballots disqualified after poll workers gave faulty instructions to voters?

Because of this, and voting irregularities in so many other places, I am joining with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now.

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.

As we try to do that, and as we are shedding the blood of our military to this end, we must realize that we lose so much credibility when our own electoral system needs so much improvement.

Yet, in the past four years, this Congress has not done everything it should to give confidence to all of our people their votes matter.

After passing the Help America Vote Act, nothing more was done.

A year ago, Senators Graham, Clinton and I introduced legislation that would have required that electronic voting systems provide a paper record to verify a vote. That paper trail would be stored in a secure ballot box and invaluable in case of a recount.

There is no reason why the Senate should not have taken up and passed that bill. At the very least, a hearing should have been held. But it never happened.

Before I close, I want to thank my colleague from the House, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Her letter to me asking for my intervention was substantive and compelling.

As I wrote to her, I was particularly moved by her point that it is virtually impossible to get official House consideration of the whole issue of election reform, including these irregularities.

The Congresswoman has tremendous respect in her state of Ohio, which is at the center of this fight.

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a judge for 10 years. She was a prosecutor for 8 years. She was inducted into the Women�s Hall of Fame in 2002.

I am proud to stand with her in filing this objection.

Barbara Boxer is being joined by more Senators. It's a small thing, but it means that there is some hope for democracy and the right to a vote, which have not existed in the US for some time and which are due for destruction by the incumbent administration.


Five Senators and Eight House Members to Challenge Election
By David Swanson, ILCA

Four Senators Join Boxer, Seven House Members Join Conyers

Senator Barbara Boxer was the first, and Kim Gandy of the National Organization of Women announced it at a rally in Lafayette Square Park Thursday morning, across from the White House. Senator Boxer would be joining Congressman John Conyers and other House Members in challenging the electoral votes from Ohio in a joint session of Congress called to certify the election.

Nearl two hours later, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., took the stage -- the final speaker before the crowd of about 300 activists in orange clothes (as worn in the Ukraine) headed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Jackson told the crowd - to shouts and cheers, and in some cases tears - that Boxer would be joined by Senators Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and Barak Obama. From the House, Jackson said, Congressman John Conyers would challenge the Ohio vote, with the support of Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Dennis Kucinich, Jesse Jackson Jr., Maxine Waters (who also spoke at the morning rally), Robert Scott, Mel Watt, and Jerrold Nadler.

Senator John Kerry, Jackson said, was in Baghdad. "And we need him here in Washington today. Those who cannot lead today cannot lead in 2006 or 2008. This is the moment of truth!" Jackson spoke, as many of the speakers did, of building a coalition of blacks and progressives. The cheers cannot have been missed inside the walls of the White House.

Jackson left by car to go lobby senators.


www.ilcaonline.org...