Editorials
And the "Fun" Just Keeps On Happening...
December 15, 2004
Below is the text of a letter I sent in today to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cuyahoga County's monopolistic daily newspaper:
I would like to know why when the integrity of the 2004 election results is at best suspect, and at worst outright fraudulent, the Plain Dealer chose in its December 15th editorial to lie to its readers.
The Plain Dealer lied through ommission: state secretary J. Kenneth Blackwell in a blatant and as yet unchallenged conflict of interest was also co-chair for the Bush campaign in Ohio. Anyone remember Florida's Katherine Harris? Voting machine shortages, acccording to freepress.org, took place almost exclusively in poor, minority and heavily Democratic districts.
From freepress.org's December 13th article (which may be found at http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/985):
- In Warren County, where election officers declared a homeland security emergency on Election Day, and barred reporters and others from watching the vote count, it now has been revealed that county employees were told the previous Thursday they should prepare for the Election Day lockdown. That disclosure suggests the lockdown was a political decision, not a true security risk. Moreover, statements also describe how ballots were left unguarded and unprotected in a warehouse on Election Day, and they were hastily moved after county officials received complaints.
- In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, the election director, Matt Damschroder, misinformed a federal court on Election Day when he testified the county had no additional voting machines – in response to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by the state Democratic Party that minority precincts were intentionally deprived of machines. It now appears as many as 81 voting machines were being held back, out of 2,866 available, according to recent statements by Damschroder and Bill Anthony, the chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections. The shortage of machines in Democratic-leaning districts lead to long lines and thousands of people leaving in frustration and not voting. Damschroder's contradictory statements raise the possibility of perjury.
- Also in Franklin County, a worker at the 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" members 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.
- In Knox County, students at Kenyon College, a liberal arts school, stood in line for up to 11 hours, because only one voting machine was in use. However, at nearby Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, there were ample voting machines and no lines. This suggests the GOP shorting of voting machines was a more widespread tactic than just targeting inner-city neighborhoods.
- Reports in sworn affidavits affirm numerous instances of direct official interference with the right to vote. In Warren County, Democrats were being targeted and forced to use provisional ballots, even if they had proper identification. These ballots were then subjected to more rigorous standards to be counted than were other ballots. In a half-dozen precincts in Franklin County, people who were not inside polling places by 7:30 PM were told to leave - even if they had waited in line for hours. This is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Sworn affidavits also confirmed reports of old voter rolls being used, meaning that new voters were not on the list and would be given provisional ballots, if allowed to vote at all.
And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg (for more, go to http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/986).
When the Plain Dealer writes a news article, it has a responsibility to present all sides of the story so that readers may discern the truth from events. To a greater extent, the same must hold true for editorials. Kenneth Blackwell had ample motivation, ample means, and more than ample opportunity to see to it that the candidate whose victory he had an interest in delivering, took Ohio on November 2nd. And that's not all; the CEO of Diebold had been reported earlier this year as boasting he would deliver Ohio to George W. Bush--whose campaign he contributed heavily to. Diebold machines were used in a small but nevertheless significant number of Ohio's precincts last month.
Furthermore, the voting problems in critical states including Ohio were such that even members of the House Judiciary Committee as well as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are looking into the voting problems.
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/greenecountyohpr121204.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohgovdelayelectorsltr121304.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/mitofskyelecfollowltr121404.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellresp121404.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellrespfollowup121404.pdf
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/brockbealohelecltr121504.pdf
The contents of the above links should prove interesting to Plain Dealer readers. When even members of Congress and the GAO are concerned enough about the voting irregularities to ask serious questions about the integrity of the election, and criticize Blackwell for stonewalling investigations--thereby appearing as though he is trying to hide evidence of a crime, that is cause to be more than a little worried. Indeed, it truly is cause to make a big deal over George W. Bush's "win" last month.
If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, chances are good that it's a duck. And considering the highly dubious nature of Bush's 2000 "win," and the mounting evidence that this year's vote was probably manipulated by politicians with a stake in seeing their preferred candidate elected president, it is outrageous that the Plain Dealer's editorial staff would so casually dismiss the concerns of a large percentage of Americans (20% according to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) about the state of our democracy and its electoral process. The editorial from December 15th was entitled, "MoveOn.Now." But America cannot "move on" until and unless we have full confidence in our electoral process restored. To simply dismiss our concerns as "conspiracy theories" or "sour grapes" is dishonest and a disservice to your paper's readers. Whoever wrote and authorized the December 15th editorial ought to be ashamed of himself.
And below is the editorial in today's edition that prompted the letter:
The zealots who refuse to accept Ohio's vote count risk undermining confidence in the system itself
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Most Americans, including the vast ma jority of those who supported John Kerry for president, have grasped the most basic reality of Election Day 2004:
George W. Bush was re-elected. He won roughly 60.7 million votes and carried 31 states with 286 electoral votes. Ohio's 20 Electoral College members formally cast ballots for the president Monday in the Statehouse.
Unfortunately, there is a small, but very vocal, group of Americans who refuse to accept this reality. They argue that what appear to be routine technical glitches and human errors were in fact an elaborate conspiracy to skew the election results. They claim that long lines at a few polling places, the rather unsurprising result of high voter interest, were evidence of a systematic campaign to discourage participation. In short, having failed to get the outcome they wanted at the polls, they have decided to mount an irresponsible campaign aimed at undermining public confidence in the electoral system itself.
Ohio, arguably the most intensive battleground for Bush and Kerry, has been the No. 1 target of these diehards.
Since Election Day, they have seized on isolated problems in a relative handful of this state's 11,366 precincts as proof of greater ills or even criminal activity.
One speaker in Columbus over the weekend likened Ohio to Ukraine. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has complained of widespread "fraud and stealing."
The Green and Libertarian parties, whose presidential candidates got a combined three-tenths of one percent of the vote in Ohio on Nov. 2, have demanded a recount of the state's 5.7 million ballots. That will cost taxpayers about $1.4 million. A coalition of critics, led by a former Ohio organizer for Ross Perot, has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the presidential election, as well as the outcome in the race for chief justice. The Kerry campaign, reflecting its leader's maddening desire to have everything both ways, has said it does not expect a recount to change anything - yet has also issued a list of things it wants local elections officials to double-check.
Obviously, there were problems on Election Day. There always are. Elections are run by imperfect humans. Many individual polling places are in the hands of civic-minded neighbors with a few hours of training. Machines malfunction. Voters mess up ballots.
But Ohio has already done its usual intensive post-election audit and reconciliation, a process designed to spot mistakes. That canvass resulted in Bush's unofficial 136,000-vote margin being reduced to the 119,000-vote edge that Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certified last week.
Ohio's bipartisan elections system makes the kind of GOP conspiracy that some allege all but impossible to execute. Every county board of elections consists of two Democrats and two Republicans. So when Jackson and other national Democrats question Ohio's outcome, they demean their own allies. William Anthony Jr., the African-American who chairs both the Franklin County Democratic Party and its elections board, has been personally stung by Jackson's slander: "Why would I sit there and disenfranchise my own community?" he asks.
The recount will go forward because by law it must; history suggests few votes will change. But it is time to focus on how to make future elections more efficient.
Clearly it would help if groups that register new voters did not deliver thousands of applications at the last minute. Ohio also needs an early voting system to relieve at least some of the pressure on Election Day. And rather than retreating from electronic voting machines, the state needs to find a secure system and back it up with a paper record.
Common-sense solutions can make a difference. Endless sour grapes will not.
Please write letters to the Plain Dealer's editorial staff at letters@plaind.com and demand that they print a full retraction of this shameful editorial. Please feel free to use any links you think are credible and will help in presenting your case. With your help, we can get AT LEAST one letter telling our side of the story printed. Thank you.
December 13, 2004
Ohio's electors met to cast the Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes to George W. Bush today, further solidifying the Shrub's fraudulent victory over Senator John Kerry (D) of Massachussetts.
However, questions over the integrity of the vote on November 2 still abound as legal challenges by Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition are due to come before the Ohio court.
According to an ABC News Story, the "[challengers] claim there were disparities in vote totals for Democrats, too few voting machines in Democrat-leaning precincts, organized campaigns directing voters to the wrong polling place and confusion over the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose names did not appear in the records at polling places."
This should not be surprising. After his theft of the 2000 presidential election, it ought to have been obvious to everyone but the most dimwitted that Bush's campaign would use the power of his incumbency to rig the vote in his favor. Kerry's concession on November 3rd despite his call to "let every vote be counted" didn't help matters.
Still, there is yet hope even as Congress convenes today to certify the election results.
Should the court hear the challenge, it may either declare a new winner or toss the results in the trash where they belong. This hope is not without reason; the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating the voting problems and twelve of the fifteen Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee met in Columbus today to hold a rare field hearing on the manipulation of the vote in Ohio.
But, the likelihood of the next four years being Bush-free is not good. So the best Americans can hope for is that the 2006 midterm elections place a Democratic majority in either chamber of Congress.
Cartoon by Michael K. Kwiatkowski - 09/17/2004
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