Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Ohio election fraud story making a comeback?

Ok, this makes me crazy. Here is a journalist who, by his own admission, ignored the Ohio voter fraud story of 2004, dismissed those of us who were spitting blood angry as psycho liberal conspiracy theorists. The cognitive dissonance of wanting to slap him with one hand and welcome him back to the angry leftist fold with the other is making my head hurt. I suppose his piece may reach other scoffers like himself with the added weight of his late conversion. I will add it to my long list of proof that there really is a great rightwing conspiracy hellbent on taking over the world.

Here's the thing about Ohio. Until you really look at it, you won't understand its significance, which is this: the techniques used in this particular theft have the capacity to alter elections not by dozens or hundreds or even thousands of votes, but by tens of thousands.

Obviously people who have followed this story before know the basic facts already, but for those who ignored Ohio until now, here's a very brief greatest hits of Ohio irregularities:

* As was the case in Florida, the secretary of state (Kenneth Blackwell, in Ohio), who is in charge of elections, was also the co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.

* In a technique reminiscent of the semantic gymnastics of pre-Civil Rights Act election officials, Blackwell replaced the word "jurisdiction" with "precinct" in an electoral directive that would ultimately result in perhaps tens of thousands of provisional ballots--votes cast mainly by low-income residents--being disallowed.

* Blackwell initially rejected thousands of voter registrations because they were printed on paper that was, according to him, the wrong weight.

* In conservative, Bush-friendly Miami County, voter turnout was an Uzbekistan-esque 98.55 percent.

* In Warren county, election officials locked down the administration building and prevented reporters from observing the ballot counting, citing a "terrorist threat" (described as being a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10) that had been reported to them by the FBI. The FBI made no such report. Recounts conducted during this lockdown resulted in increased votes for Bush.

* In Franklin County, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush in a precinct where there were only 800 registered voters.

Better late than never, I suppose.

3 comments:

Lenora said...

"Until you really look at it, you won't understand its significance"

Sentences like that one make me tired. That whole I-fucking-told-you-so section of my brain is rubbed raw from reading sentences like that.

Ole Blue The Heretic said...

The press have digraced themseleves, and denied "we the people" the truth

red rabbit said...

You can't win if you don't play the game.