RantWorld

What's Wrong with Franklin, Ohio?

Many voters in Franklin County, Ohio, home to the city of of Columbus, experienced waits of five hours or more on election day. Lawsuits against the Ohio Secretary of state were filed that day on behalf of some of these voters. There were many reports of voters leaving before they could vote, in some cases because they were too old or infirm to be able to wait in line for hours.

Voting machines in Franklin county had to handle 170 voters each, on average, much more than the 86 voters per machine in Summit County (Akron) and 68 per machine in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). [LINK]

The conventional wisdom is that "record turnout" swamped the precincts and caused the lines. This seems to be false. There was high turnout throughout the rest of Ohio on November 2nd, but not in Franklin County.

In fact Franklin's 60.95% turnout rate was LESS than in 2000, when the rate was 61.30%. However voter registration in Franklin county had increased by 24% since 2000. You would expect nearly all of the new voters to go to the polls, so turnout should have been much greater. That seems to indicate that many thousands of voters didn't get a chance to vote in Franklin, perhaps because of intentional vote suppression tactics by the Republicans.

Statewide voter turnout was about 70% in Ohio this year, up from about 64% in 2000. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati, where vote suppression tactics don't seem to have been as intense, turnout was 73%.

If Franklin county had 73% turnout this year, an additional 76,115 votes would have been recorded. Let's say these voters would go for Kerry 75% to 25% -- a reasonable assumption given that Democratic-leaning precincts seem to have been targeted. That means a net gain of 38,057 votes for Kerry.

38,057 votes isn't enough to overcome the highly-publicized gap of 136,000 votes that Kerry needs to win the state back from Bush. But combined with the provisional vote count yet to be completed, losses from vote suppression tactics in other counties like Cuyahoga, and future adjustments due to fraud or machine malfunctions [LINK], it could have been significant.

It appears that a lack of voting machines in certain precincts was the cause of some long lines. According to the Columbus Dispatch, "many polling places in inner-city neighborhoods had fewer voting machines than during the last presidential election." [LINK]

Rove Feared Dean More than Kerry

I haven't read Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," but in it Karl Rove describes that he was more worried about facing Howard Dean than John Kerry, at least when it came to debating the war in Iraq. John Nichols highlights this in a recent article: [LINK]

Noting that Rove believed the war in Iraq was turning into "a potential negative" for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, Woodward wrote, "Previously, Rove had claimed he was salivating at the prospect that the Democrats would nominate former Vermont Governor Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential race. But Dean had imploded and Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, had won 12 of the first 14 Democratic primary contests and it looked like he was headed for the nomination."

What did Rove have to say about this development? "'The good news for us is that Dean is not the nominee,' Rove now argued to an associate in his second floor West Wing office. Dean's unconditional opposition to the Iraq war could have been potent in a face-off with Bush. 'One of Dean's strengths through the primary was he could say, I'm not part of that crowd down there.' But Kerry was very much a part of the Washington crowd, and he had voted in favor of the resolution for war. Rove got out his two-inch-think loose-leaf binder titled 'Bring It On.' It consisted of research into Kerry's 19-year record in the Senate. Most relevant were pages 9-20 of the section on Iraq."

Woodward explained that, "Rove believed they had Kerry pretty cold on voting to give the president a green light for war and then backing off when he didn't like the aftermath or saw a political opportunity. Whatever the case, Rove sounded as if he believed they could inoculate the president on the Iraq war in a campaign with Kerry."

"Rove," Woodward observed, "was gleeful."

What's Wrong with Liberty, Florida?

Liberty County in Florida has 320 registered Republicans and 3,597 registered Democrats, and 158 voters registered to other parties or "No Party".

On November 2nd, 2004, Liberty country delivered 1,927 votes for Bush, 1,070 votes for Kerry, and 24 for other candidates.

Yes those numbers are correct, straight from official postings of the Florida Secretary of State's office as of yesterday.

A county with only 320 Republicans gave Bush 1,927 votes. That is 6 times more votes for Bush than there are registered Republicans (602% to be exact).

For that to happen, based on the voter turnout rate of 74% in Liberty county, about 1600 Democrats had to switch sides to vote for Bush. That's 60% of all the Democrats who voted there.

Sorry, that strikes me as impossible. Exit polls in Florida showed 11% of Democrats voting for Bush, nowhere near 60%.

Was this a temporary madness limited to isolated people in one small county? It doesn't look like it. Here are the numbers from a few other Florida counties:

Baker County: Registered REP: 3,126  Bush Votes: 7,738   248%
Calhoun County: Registered REP: 993  Bush Votes: 3,780   381%
Franklin County: Registered REP: 1,212  Bush Votes: 3,472   286%
Gadsden County: Registered REP: 3,012  Bush Votes: 6,253   208%
Hamilton County: Registered REP: 1,140  Bush Votes: 2,792   245%
Holmes County: Registered REP: 2,344  Bush Votes: 6,410   273%
Lafayette County: Registered REP: 570  Bush Votes: 2,460   432%
Liberty County: Registered REP: 320  Bush Votes: 1,927   602%
Jackson County: Registered REP: 5,962  Bush Votes: 12,115   203%

There are many more counties with similar results. Kathy Dopp provides more detailed analyses of similar numbers on this page.

In all of these counties the majority of the registered voters are Democrats, and they all use optical scan voting machines from ES&S, Diebold, or Sequoia.

Florida law only provides for a recount when the difference in votes is less than one half on one percent. However it does say that "if there is an obvious error" on the returns from a county a recount of that county's ballots shall be ordered. A recount may also be ordered if "the unofficial returns may contain a counting error in which the vote tabulation system failed to count votes that were properly marked...".

It seems to me like the wild variations shown above could be "obvious errors" or a failure by machines to count the votes correctly. It seems to me that the canvassing boards in these counties should be calling for recounts themselves.

Does anyone know of a way recounts can be forced in these Florida counties?

Demand a Recount in Ohio!

The Kerry campaign has decided not to call for a recount in Ohio. I don't understand the reasoning behind this. There are plenty of indicators that the voting process in Ohio was seriously flawed. Investigative reporter Greg Palast believes that if all the Ohio votes are counted, Kerry would win Ohio. [LINK]

If there's even a remote chance that a recount in Ohio would tip the state in favor of Kerry, shouldn't one be done? The stakes in this election are too high to let the votes go uncounted. Even if a recount wouldn't change the electoral votes, it could still shine a light on the many unethical practices and dirty tricks played in Ohio to keep people from voting.

I believe someone should call for a recount in Ohio right away. Here's why:

• Most counties in Ohio still use punch-card ballots, which are notoriously prone to miscounting by the machines. In Ohio punch-card ballots are used in mostly Democratic counties. By some estimates the "spoilage" of these ballots could be as high as 2-3% of the total, or up to 165,000 ballots uncounted.
• There are still 155,000 provisional ballots to be counted, and an unknown number of absentee ballots. Most likely, counting these will reduce Bush's lead in the state.
• Republican vote challengers were granted access to polling places in predominantly Democratic precincts in order to prevent voters from casting ballots. The two judges whose ruling allowed this are long-time Republicans.

Diebold Delivers Ohio?

Is anyone going to push for audit reports or recounts in Ohio? Now might be a good time to remember the pledge made by the CEO of Diebold, Inc. last year:

Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., told Republicans in an Aug. 14 fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/business/6646063.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp&1c

I'd hate to see Ohio's results go unchallenged. Apparently any candidate or group of only 5 citizens can call for a state recount in Ohio. Will Kerry do it? Probably not. It would be bad P.R., and Kerry and Edwards still have Senatorial careers to think about. But there must be five citizens in Ohio with the will to do this!

One good thing (believe it or not) is that Ohio uses mostly punch-card ballots which in spite of their inaccuracy are probably truer to the voters' intentions than the paperless touchscreens or even the optical scanning machines. Especially when you hear the anecdotal evidence from voters like this one, who was interviewed on CNN (from Eschaton).

The Case for a United Front

Here's an interesting quote by Wayne Madsen from an article written right before the 2002 elections:

"German opposition figures in the mid-1930s often lamented the fact that they could have stopped the rise of the Nazis if only they had been more united in a common front when they had a chance. However, they fell prey to the media manipulation of Goebbels and fought among themselves more than they did against the menace from the far right."

Guess which Republican strategist Madsen likened to Goebbels...?

Hypocrisy and Justice for All

Oh no, here comes more hypocrisy. I've been thinking about what to post about the election, and then in the background I heard the start of Cheney and Bush's victory speeches. According to Cheney we have all responded to Bush's message of "optimism and hope"! (I guess all that terror-mongering was just our imagination). And of course it was a "broad victory" and a "mandate". (Yes Mr. Bush, we're all behind you 51%!).

How can people fight this when the bad guys can get their message amplified unchallenged through all the major media? When they own the voting machines themselves?

Many are saying that we as Americans deserve the leader we vote for, that the terror and depression we'll experience for the next four years will be justified. But we didn't all vote for him, and if we had a balanced press and fair voting machines I doubt he would have won at all.

A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy. - Benjamin Disraeli

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to to the core. - Hannah Arendt

Election Eve

What better time than Election Eve for a new post?

With all the "100 Reasons to Vote for Kerry" lists out there [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] it's refreshing to hear some clear and fundamental reasons for voting Kerry...even from unexpected sources.

One conservative source I've always respected is the Economist magazine. They are avidly pro-business but on political issues they are more balanced and pragmatic. They recently endorsed John Kerry over Bush, which is a bit of a shocker. [LINK]

Bush Had Iraq Attack Ideas in 1999

In this mostly overlooked article from Guerilla News Network, Houston journalist Mickey Herskowitz confirms that as early as 1999 George W. Bush wanted to get into a war with Iraq if he became President.

Here's an excerpt:

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Bush Planning an October Surprise?

I saw a report a few minutes ago that U.S. forces may have Osama Bin Laden surrounded. According to the report, they are essentially waiting for an order from the Bush administration to capture bin Laden. The report's author believes that Bush will time the capture to maximize the effect it will have on his re-election campaign.