[Mb-civic] None Dare Call It Stolen

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

 None Dare Call It Stolen - Ohio, the Election, and 
America's Servile Press
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/080205F.shtml
    By Mark Crispin Miller
    The Columbus Free Press

    Sunday 24 July 2005

    While commentators, prompted by Republicans, claimed Bush won 
the 2004 election through the votes of a silent majority concerned with 
"family values," Mark Crispin Miller writes that when voters were asked 
to state, "in their own words the most important factor in their 
vote,"only 14 percent named "moral values." He details how the press 
(except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) ignored "the strange details 
of the election-except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss themIt 
was as if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without 
acknowledging the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire."

    Then he lists the copious evidence pointing to a stolen election, 
easily available on the web or in paperback, from Michigan 
Representative John Conyers' report, Preserving Democracy: What 
Went Wrong in Ohio. More than dirty tricks, it covers "the run-up to the 
election, the election itself, and the post-election cover-up," listing 
"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."

    The Conyers report details the disenfranchisement of Democrats 
through "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."

    There was unequal placement of voting machines. County boards of 
elections were ordered to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not 
printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight. 
Access was limited to provisional ballots. "Caging"was used to 
challenge 35,000 individuals who did not sign for registered letters sent 
to new voters. There was restriction of media from covering the 
election and conducting exit polls. There was a prearranged FBI 
terrorist attack warning in Warren County which kept reporters from 
observing a post-election ballot-counting. There was restriction of 
foreign monitors from "watching the opening of the polling places, the 
counting of the ballots, and, in some cases, the election itself. 
Numerous statistical anomalies all deducted votes from Kerry. In 
Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties, "the arrows on the absentee ballots 
were not properly aligned with their respective punch holes, so that 
countless votes were miscast." In Mercer County, 4000 votes were 
mysteriously not in the final count. In Lucas County a polling place 
never opened because no one had the key. In Hamilton County, many 
absentee voters could not vote for Kerry because his name was not on 
the ballot. In Mahoning County 25 electronic machines changed Kerry 
votes to Bush. Dirty tricks told voters to go to false polling places; that 
Democrats were to vote on November 3; volunteers offered to take 
absentee ballots to the election office; voters were challenged to prove 
eligibility to vote. The "Texas Strike Force" (25 people registered at a 
Franklin County Holiday Inn, paid by the Republican Party) threatened 
targeted people from a pay phone, if they voted. Secretary of State J. 
Kenneth Blackwell created rules for the Ohio recount (requested by the 
Green and Libertarian Parties) which would prevent "countywide hand 
recounts by any means necessary." The end result was "the Ohio vote 
was never properly recounted, as required by Ohio law." On December 
13, 2004, it was reported by Deputy Director of Hocking County 
Elections Sherole Eaton, that a Triad GSI employee had changed the 
computer that operated the tabulating machine, and had "advised 
election officials how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that 
[the] preliminary hand recount matched the machine count." This same 
Triad employee said he worked on machines in Lorain, Muskingum, 
Clark, Harrison, and Guernsey counties.

    "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."

    In Union County, Triad replaced the hard drive on one tabulator. 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.)" Green and Libertarian volunteers 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." Even though 
the 3 percent hand recount in Fairfield County was different than the 
machine count, there was no hand count as required. "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." At great cost, Belmont County had an 
independent programmer change the counting machines so they 
would only count votes for President. "..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.

    Miller writes about the January 6, 2005 Electoral challenge from 
Ohio Representative Stephonie Tubbs-Jones and California Senator 
Barbara Boxer. He decries its rejection by the Congress and the press, 
with the Republicans calling the Democrats "troublemakers and cynical 
manipulators", etc., etc.

    According to Miller, "all this commentary was simply wrong" and 
"went unnoticed and/or unreported;" and with Bush's re-inauguration 
"all inquiries were apparently concluded, and the story was officially 
kaput." Miller emphasizes that, even after the National Election Data 
Archive Project, on March 31, 2005, "released its study demonstrating 
that the exit polls had probably been right, it made news only in the 
Akron Beacon-Journal," while "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.."

    In conclusion, Mark Crispin Miller does not expect to reverse the 
2004 election, but to make it possible for us to move on, and achieve 
real electoral reform.

    The point of our revisiting the last election.. is to see exactly what 
the damage was so that the people can demand appropriate reforms 
for there has never been a great reform that was not driven by some 
major scandal.

    ...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.

    -------

    The piece on which this summary is based was originally published 
in Harper's. Mark Crispin Miller is a professor at New York University, a 
political/media commentator, and author of his latest book, Fooled 
Again: How the Right Stole the Election of 2004, and Why They Will 
Keep Doing It Unless We Stop Them, which will be published by Basic 
Books this October.


-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050803/bf86534e/attachment-0001.htm