The book keeping will have to show that ballots = voters. I agree on that. But remember this is a new development. If the question can't be answered about the descrepancy, then the door will be open for remedy. I've already stated this.
But in Ohio we had lots of problems...not just in one county.
What can you do about Ohio?
The presidential vote recount in Ohio is over - or is it? The Green and Libertarian Party candidates who paid for the recount may have a claim of fraud against election officials and at least one voting machine company. If they can't get a new recount, they ought to at least get their money back.
Here's what happened.
Any Ohio county did not have to do a full hand recount if a random sample of three percent of the ballots in their county matched the original count.
The first fraud count: Not all the counties, if any, pulled the test precincts at random, nor did they allow the trained observers to see how the test precincts were selected.
Rep. John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to all the presidential candidates, in which he he stated: "At least one precinct in Medina County that would not have voting anomalies was both carefully pre-selected and pre-counted, so that the initial 3% recount that is mandated by the Ohio Secretary of State would not return a mismatch between the initial tally and the recount." [Read Rep. Conyers' Letter]
Once they selected the test precincts, some counties shared that information with the voting machine technicians, who then made adjustments on the machines and gave advice on how to create an exact match. That would be the second fraud count. Technicians from Triad, the company operating many of the counting machines, visited 41 of the 88 county election offices.
Triad technicians admitted that they helped the counties avoid the full recount by faking the match on the three percent count. [Read a transcript of the admissions].
When all else failed, election officials changed ballots to make the count come out right. An election official stated that she "did not want the hand count and the machine count to be different because they did not want to do a complete hand count," according to a trained observer quoted in Rep. Conyers’ letter. That would be fraud count number three.
Mr. Conyers also wrote to Triad, asking them to provide information regarding the company's ability to control the machines remotely, which a Triad representative admitted. [Read Rep. Conyers' Letter to Triad]
Fraud count number four would be that the Secretary of State, who also served as Mr. Bush’s state campaign chairman, refused to issue guidelines to the counties for the handling of undervotes, overvotes and other issues, a clear violation of the “equal protection” ruling of Bush v. Gore. Counties used wildly different rules during the count and the recount, depriving the recount parties of true value for their investment.
The same Secretary Blackwell may have been a party to the systematic violation of equal voting rights by shorting minority precincts of voting machines, while over seventy extra machines languished in a truck. The day-long lines in many minority neighborhoods cost Mr. Kerry thousands of votes, by some estimates.
This article scratches the surface of what was done in Ohio to suppress and subvert the vote and render the recount meaningless. For in depth reporting, your best source is The Columbus Free Press.
What Can You Do?
Rep. Conyers has said that he will stand to object to the acceptance of the Electoral College vote when it arrives at a joint session of Congress at 1pm on January 6. Other House members will join him. One Senator is needed to stand with them.
Senators don't want to look like lunatics. They need support from home. The most effective thing Americans can do THIS MONDAY AND TUESDAY is to print out the Conyers' letters from the links in this article, write a quick letter to the editor as a cover letter, and hand carry them to local newspaper editorial writers.
If a Senator with a concern for democracy can be found, then the Ohio mess will become a major story as committees investigate and the mainstream press piles on. The chance of it overturning the presidential election is miniscule, but it will set the stage for election reforms and for the punishment of criminals in high places, and it will dissolve the notion of a present mandate.
A useful cover letter would state that, regardless of party, Americans must insist on the fair and non-partisan administration of elections, and that our Senators should stand with Rep. Conyers to demand an investigation and a pledge of reform before this year’s election is accepted by Congress. We are too great a country to accept damaged goods instead of a reliably honest election result, or else our claims of spreading democracy to other lands is a sham. Your letter could remind the editors of how many people have sacrificed and died for our freedoms, the emblem of which is, more than our flag, our ballot.
After you hand deliver the letter to your newspaper, take a copy to the field offices of your two Senators, if you live within distance.
Orca |
