MSNBC Covers 2004 Voting Problems
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
Just watched Keith Olbermann on MSNBC in which he did a story on election problems. He said that there were 90,000 more votes cast in Ohio than registered voters (he went through a list of counties and said how many voters were registered in each and how many extra thousands of votes were recorded).
He reported how in Florida counties, heavily-leaning dem counties went overwhelmingly for Bush -- the first time these counties have ever voted Repub. He showed charts with numbers, etc., it was very compelling.
He said that all the irregularities in Florida and Ohio have happened in counties using non-paper-trail e-voting from the companies run by Bush's friends.
He interviewed a reporter from the Cincinnati paper who discussed how homeland security barred reporters from witnessing the voting in some of the major minority areas in town, that this was the first time the press was ever kept out of and barred from witnessing the voting. The Sec of State in Ohio says that it was under orders from Bush's Homeland Security chief, who said that these cities in Ohio were under a highly increased threat of terrorism during the election. For this reason, only one entrance was open for the voting in these (largely democratic) areas, and the press was barred from coming in to see the voting, or to have the usual offices in the building they have had in every past year.
Olbermann then had Rep. John Conyers on and there are a dozen or so representatives demanding an investigation from the GAO. So it's Chicago-style voting taken to a national level -- the GOP dead vote, the GOP takes away votes from Dems and turned them into Bush votes, and they just add extra votes (for pres, not on the other issues or candidates) to the totals.
In Florida where Bush scored big, on the same ballots Democratic measures scored big, such as making a Florida minimum wage $1 above the federal level. In other words, all these people voted for Bush AND voted to pass these Democratic measures, which the GOP had tried to defeat. So this indicates that only the presidential election voting was rigged, they didn't rig the rest of the voting form.
Looks like maybe we're going to get some sort of investigation into the fraud that's gone down after all, even if Kerry caved in.
Also, some counties in Ohio where the press has always been allowed to inspect figures from voting -- have been taken away and they're not allowed to view them. They're filing something in court to force the Sec of State to release them for public review.
Also, one heavily-Dem county in Florida discovered a huge stack of absentee ballots that had not been counted and told the Sec of State's office about the ballots and said they would count them -- and the Sec of State told them to hold on, and then came and took the ballots away, so the officials in that county were never able to count them.
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