Good article on Ohio - Election Day
-
Mike Hunte
- Senior Troll
- Posts: 293
- Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2003 4:48 pm
- Location: Bed
-
lukpac
- Top Dog and Sellout
- Posts: 4592
- Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2003 11:51 pm
- Location: Madison, WI
- Contact:
Here's the text of that, bolding mine:
The Perfect Election Day Crime
Steven Rosenfeld
November 12, 2004
In Ohio,questions persist about intentional or accidental voting mishaps. Which voting problem cost Kerry the most votes may never be known. Kerry's fate aside, Air America's Steven Rosenfeld's investigation found the inadequate supply of polling machines in Ohio shows a system badly in need of reform.
Steven Rosenfeld is senior producer of The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio. Previously he was senior editor of TomPaine.com
Americans are learning there are many ways to tilt and take elections.
That’s the only clear conclusion since John Kerry’s concession speech. We now know there are as many ways to manipulate the vote as there are types of voting machines and different communities that can be targeted by those who want to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. But the big unanswered question of Nov. 2, 2004, is which tactic, technical breakdown or error lost the most votes.
On Thursday, Nov. 11, a step was taken toward finding at least part of the answer. Cliff Arnebeck, the Columbus, Ohio-based attorney who is counsel for Common Cause’s Ohio chapter and the Alliance for Democracy, announced that the groups would pursue a recount of the Ohio vote . Arnebeck said the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates each agreed to file for a recount, providing the $110,000 filing fee could be met. He announced that a fund drive was underway, as was putting pressure on the Kerry campaign to pay for it. In coming days, Ohio’s provisional ballot count is likely to be finished. That starts a five-day clock during which a recount can be formally requested. As of Monday morning, Nov. 14, $200,000 had been raised toward an Ohio recount—all but assuring it will happen.
But many voters have yet to consider the intricacies of the recount procedure. They're still trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong. By now, many people have heard about discarded or spoiled ballots in Ohio that could have cost Democrats tens of thousands of votes (as claimed by journalist Greg Palast). They’ve heard of the computerized voting machines that caused thousands of votes for Bush to be erroneously added in single precincts. And they’ve heard declarations by BlackBoxVoting.org (Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson) that they’ll make the biggest ever Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of it.
But something else also happened in Ohio’s urban precincts that hurt Democrats as much as these much-publicized snafus—something so simple many election protection observers, and certainly the national press, missed it.
What Wasn't There
Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three.
The lack of voting machines was a disaster.
“I don’t think this story has been told,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender from Bridgeport, Conn., who went to Ohio as a legal observer and discovered this trend by overhearing elderly voters talk about fewer machines. “The press and election protection people weren’t looking for this. They were looking for poll challenges. But this is the perfect way to suppress the vote.”
The shortage of voting machines didn’t just create long lines. It kept thousands of new and longtime voters from casting ballots in the state’s minority communities—the Democratic strongholds. The accounts of people who had to leave the polls for work or family obligations were everywhere. But on Election Day, very few Democrats realized this was happening. They just saw long lines.
"The lack of adequate voting machines helped the GOP in Ohio," said Brian Clark, site coordinator for SierraClubVotes.org in Franklin County, where the city of Columbus is located. He managed a voter contact and get-out-the-vote effort in 43 precincts that reached a third of the county’s 250,000 voters. "There were fewer machines in some inner city precincts than in 2000, despite Board of Elections and secretary of state’s projections of record turnout."
The Long Wait
Franklin County is a good microcosm for understanding what happened in Ohio. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush there by 4,156 votes. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush there by 41,341 votes, according to the unofficial results on the Ohio secretary of state’s website. But Kerry's margin could have been far larger, activists said, if people didn't have to wait to vote.
"There were widespread anecdotal reports that inner city voters were leaving the polls because of 2-hour plus wait times, " Clark said. "Granted, there were also waits in suburban areas. But the impact on final voter turnout was clearly very different—a lawyer can be late and keep her job, a grocery store clerk can't."
And then there’s the question of how and where voting machines were distributed. Even though Franklin County election officials have their ready defense to deflect charges of intentional voting rights violations, Democratic field organizers said the placement of too-few voting machines at inner city precincts came amid a broader campaign of voter intimidation aimed at Democrats.
Protecting the right to vote is the heart of the federal Voting Rights Act. If fewer voting machines were put in African-American precincts, on a per capita basis, than were placed in the county’s whiter suburbs—and that prevented African-Americans from voting—that would violate the Voting Rights Act.
"If this was planned and systematic and not accidental, it would be a violation," Gerety said. "If this was a means of disenfranchising African-American voters, it’s a clear violation."
Franklin County election officials have said they used the 2000 presidential vote as the basis for allocating voting machines in the 2004 election. They’ve also said that local election boards are bipartisan, so any plan to redistribute voting machines would have been approved by Democrats and Republicans. Common Cause's Arnebeck said that bipartisan explanation makes proving there was an intentional violation difficult. Also, the jurist who would try the voting case—if it was needed in an Ohio recount—is a Republican, the chief justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court.
The Politics Of Recount
The voting rights concerns would be one element of the Ohio vote that could be examined in a recount, Arnebeck said. But all Ohio’s ballots would be recounted, he said, including the provisional ballots, absentee ballots, spoiled ballots and votes by the paperless computer machines. Moreover, during a full statewide recount, any issue relating to voter fraud conceivable could be raised, he said.
This is where the politics could get very intense and possibly reopen the question of who won Ohio. Arnebeck said he had proof that in one rural county there were more votes recorded by computer machines than were actually cast: that’s fraud. Moreover, there are so many instances where newly registered voters “most of whom were presumed to be Democratic—were not treated the same way as the state’s veteran voters." In the county where Cleveland is, people who registered by mail were not notified where their poll was, election protection lawyers said. Other Ohio voters I contacted said they saw new voters being given provisional ballots.
"It’s interesting to note that the inner-city precincts where we spent most of our time working, turnout was about 50 percent higher than it was in 2000," Clark said. "Yet the Franklin County Board of Elections moved voting machines from the inner city precincts out to the suburbs. It was pretty dispiriting to know that we spent months trying to get new voters to the polls and they didn’t even have machines to go to once they got there."
Clark also said the GOP’s much-publicized efforts to challenge new voters only focused on Democratic precincts. "The Republicans only challenged voters in inner-city precincts," he said. "The Columbus Dispatch did an analysis of their challenges. They did not challenge anyone who lived in a Republican-leaning precinct in Franklin County."
The Big Tilt?
The question that emerges from these irregularities— as well as the reports of spoiled and discarded ballots, and computer voting snafus—is which problem affected the most votes 'tilting' the outcome to Bush. That answer isn’t known. So far, computerized voting has gotten the most attention. But the Sierra Club’s Clark said all or some of these tactics could have swayed the election.
"Based on what we were being told by people on the ground, at the door, on the phones as we were doing our get out the vote effort, it was very clear that enough people went out intending to vote to meet the projected turnout by the secretary of state, which was 73 percent," he said. "The final number was about 70 percent of the voting age population actually voted. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 3 percent of the people who went out to vote didn’t get to vote, because of these problems statewide."
Ohio’s 2004 vote has not yet been certified. But in the unofficial results on the secretary of state’s web site, George W. Bush had 51.0 percent, compared to 48.5 percent for John Kerry. That difference is on par with the gap between the secretary of state’s projected turnout and the percentage of people who got to vote. Had all Ohioans who wanted to vote cast their ballots, both Clark and Gerety said Kerry might have won the state and the presidential election.
While there still may be a recount in Ohio—if it will happen, it will be triggered next week—former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Carole Moseley-Braun said all legal remedies must be pursued to understand what happened on Election Day. That means FOIA requests to understand what happened with electronic machines, Voting Rights Act suits for disenfranchised minority voters—and, yes, a statewide recount.
“I come out of Chicago and I am reminded of how the Chicago machine used to operate in the old days,” Braun said. To beat the Republicans, she said her party and its activists had to make a commitment to mastering the intricacies and the details of the election process. "It’s all kinds of things that can be done to keep people’s feet to the fire on the intricacies, the details of the electoral process."
Indeed, only when all these remedies are pursued will Democrats be able to answer the question: What cost John Kerry the most votes in Ohio?
The Perfect Election Day Crime
Steven Rosenfeld
November 12, 2004
In Ohio,questions persist about intentional or accidental voting mishaps. Which voting problem cost Kerry the most votes may never be known. Kerry's fate aside, Air America's Steven Rosenfeld's investigation found the inadequate supply of polling machines in Ohio shows a system badly in need of reform.
Steven Rosenfeld is senior producer of The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio. Previously he was senior editor of TomPaine.com
Americans are learning there are many ways to tilt and take elections.
That’s the only clear conclusion since John Kerry’s concession speech. We now know there are as many ways to manipulate the vote as there are types of voting machines and different communities that can be targeted by those who want to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. But the big unanswered question of Nov. 2, 2004, is which tactic, technical breakdown or error lost the most votes.
On Thursday, Nov. 11, a step was taken toward finding at least part of the answer. Cliff Arnebeck, the Columbus, Ohio-based attorney who is counsel for Common Cause’s Ohio chapter and the Alliance for Democracy, announced that the groups would pursue a recount of the Ohio vote . Arnebeck said the Green Party and Libertarian Party presidential candidates each agreed to file for a recount, providing the $110,000 filing fee could be met. He announced that a fund drive was underway, as was putting pressure on the Kerry campaign to pay for it. In coming days, Ohio’s provisional ballot count is likely to be finished. That starts a five-day clock during which a recount can be formally requested. As of Monday morning, Nov. 14, $200,000 had been raised toward an Ohio recount—all but assuring it will happen.
But many voters have yet to consider the intricacies of the recount procedure. They're still trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong. By now, many people have heard about discarded or spoiled ballots in Ohio that could have cost Democrats tens of thousands of votes (as claimed by journalist Greg Palast). They’ve heard of the computerized voting machines that caused thousands of votes for Bush to be erroneously added in single precincts. And they’ve heard declarations by BlackBoxVoting.org (Bev Harris and Andy Stephenson) that they’ll make the biggest ever Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of it.
But something else also happened in Ohio’s urban precincts that hurt Democrats as much as these much-publicized snafus—something so simple many election protection observers, and certainly the national press, missed it.
What Wasn't There
Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three.
The lack of voting machines was a disaster.
“I don’t think this story has been told,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender from Bridgeport, Conn., who went to Ohio as a legal observer and discovered this trend by overhearing elderly voters talk about fewer machines. “The press and election protection people weren’t looking for this. They were looking for poll challenges. But this is the perfect way to suppress the vote.”
The shortage of voting machines didn’t just create long lines. It kept thousands of new and longtime voters from casting ballots in the state’s minority communities—the Democratic strongholds. The accounts of people who had to leave the polls for work or family obligations were everywhere. But on Election Day, very few Democrats realized this was happening. They just saw long lines.
"The lack of adequate voting machines helped the GOP in Ohio," said Brian Clark, site coordinator for SierraClubVotes.org in Franklin County, where the city of Columbus is located. He managed a voter contact and get-out-the-vote effort in 43 precincts that reached a third of the county’s 250,000 voters. "There were fewer machines in some inner city precincts than in 2000, despite Board of Elections and secretary of state’s projections of record turnout."
The Long Wait
Franklin County is a good microcosm for understanding what happened in Ohio. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush there by 4,156 votes. In 2004, Kerry beat Bush there by 41,341 votes, according to the unofficial results on the Ohio secretary of state’s website. But Kerry's margin could have been far larger, activists said, if people didn't have to wait to vote.
"There were widespread anecdotal reports that inner city voters were leaving the polls because of 2-hour plus wait times, " Clark said. "Granted, there were also waits in suburban areas. But the impact on final voter turnout was clearly very different—a lawyer can be late and keep her job, a grocery store clerk can't."
And then there’s the question of how and where voting machines were distributed. Even though Franklin County election officials have their ready defense to deflect charges of intentional voting rights violations, Democratic field organizers said the placement of too-few voting machines at inner city precincts came amid a broader campaign of voter intimidation aimed at Democrats.
Protecting the right to vote is the heart of the federal Voting Rights Act. If fewer voting machines were put in African-American precincts, on a per capita basis, than were placed in the county’s whiter suburbs—and that prevented African-Americans from voting—that would violate the Voting Rights Act.
"If this was planned and systematic and not accidental, it would be a violation," Gerety said. "If this was a means of disenfranchising African-American voters, it’s a clear violation."
Franklin County election officials have said they used the 2000 presidential vote as the basis for allocating voting machines in the 2004 election. They’ve also said that local election boards are bipartisan, so any plan to redistribute voting machines would have been approved by Democrats and Republicans. Common Cause's Arnebeck said that bipartisan explanation makes proving there was an intentional violation difficult. Also, the jurist who would try the voting case—if it was needed in an Ohio recount—is a Republican, the chief justice of Ohio’s Supreme Court.
The Politics Of Recount
The voting rights concerns would be one element of the Ohio vote that could be examined in a recount, Arnebeck said. But all Ohio’s ballots would be recounted, he said, including the provisional ballots, absentee ballots, spoiled ballots and votes by the paperless computer machines. Moreover, during a full statewide recount, any issue relating to voter fraud conceivable could be raised, he said.
This is where the politics could get very intense and possibly reopen the question of who won Ohio. Arnebeck said he had proof that in one rural county there were more votes recorded by computer machines than were actually cast: that’s fraud. Moreover, there are so many instances where newly registered voters “most of whom were presumed to be Democratic—were not treated the same way as the state’s veteran voters." In the county where Cleveland is, people who registered by mail were not notified where their poll was, election protection lawyers said. Other Ohio voters I contacted said they saw new voters being given provisional ballots.
"It’s interesting to note that the inner-city precincts where we spent most of our time working, turnout was about 50 percent higher than it was in 2000," Clark said. "Yet the Franklin County Board of Elections moved voting machines from the inner city precincts out to the suburbs. It was pretty dispiriting to know that we spent months trying to get new voters to the polls and they didn’t even have machines to go to once they got there."
Clark also said the GOP’s much-publicized efforts to challenge new voters only focused on Democratic precincts. "The Republicans only challenged voters in inner-city precincts," he said. "The Columbus Dispatch did an analysis of their challenges. They did not challenge anyone who lived in a Republican-leaning precinct in Franklin County."
The Big Tilt?
The question that emerges from these irregularities— as well as the reports of spoiled and discarded ballots, and computer voting snafus—is which problem affected the most votes 'tilting' the outcome to Bush. That answer isn’t known. So far, computerized voting has gotten the most attention. But the Sierra Club’s Clark said all or some of these tactics could have swayed the election.
"Based on what we were being told by people on the ground, at the door, on the phones as we were doing our get out the vote effort, it was very clear that enough people went out intending to vote to meet the projected turnout by the secretary of state, which was 73 percent," he said. "The final number was about 70 percent of the voting age population actually voted. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 3 percent of the people who went out to vote didn’t get to vote, because of these problems statewide."
Ohio’s 2004 vote has not yet been certified. But in the unofficial results on the secretary of state’s web site, George W. Bush had 51.0 percent, compared to 48.5 percent for John Kerry. That difference is on par with the gap between the secretary of state’s projected turnout and the percentage of people who got to vote. Had all Ohioans who wanted to vote cast their ballots, both Clark and Gerety said Kerry might have won the state and the presidential election.
While there still may be a recount in Ohio—if it will happen, it will be triggered next week—former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Carole Moseley-Braun said all legal remedies must be pursued to understand what happened on Election Day. That means FOIA requests to understand what happened with electronic machines, Voting Rights Act suits for disenfranchised minority voters—and, yes, a statewide recount.
“I come out of Chicago and I am reminded of how the Chicago machine used to operate in the old days,” Braun said. To beat the Republicans, she said her party and its activists had to make a commitment to mastering the intricacies and the details of the election process. "It’s all kinds of things that can be done to keep people’s feet to the fire on the intricacies, the details of the electoral process."
Indeed, only when all these remedies are pursued will Democrats be able to answer the question: What cost John Kerry the most votes in Ohio?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD