" Bush 2004 vote does not compute" ...investigative journalists conclude
Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute, and why Congress must investigate rather than certify the Electoral College (Part One of Two)
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
January 3, 2005
The presidential vote for George W. Bush does not compute.
By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the freepress.org investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans -- because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush.
Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida, indicate John Kerry was most likely the actual winner on November 2, as reported in national exit polls. At very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio's votes were counted and re-counted, has compromised this nation's historic commitment to free and fair elections.
On Thursday, January 6, the Electoral College will be challenged by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of Congress under a law passed in 1887 in reaction to the fraudulent election of 1876. A fuller investigation requires assent by at least one Senator.
As this vote nears, Ohio’s certified presidential vote (and quite likely those of at least Florida and New Mexico) is simply not credible. George W. Bush’s ‘victory’ appears to have resulted from multiple frauds – a GOP ‘do-everything’ strategy to win the state that swung the election.
In today's article, we list the top ten glaring flaws in the Ohio vote that have allowed Bush to gather the votes to ‘win’ the presidency in Ohio with an apparent margin of 118,775 votes - the result from an official recount that manually examined only 3 percent of ballots cast.
This list involves very large totals of uncounted, tainted or fraudulent votes. Taken together, they exceed Bush's margin of victory in Ohio.
These expert analyses are based on state and local Board of Election statistics, U.S. Census reports, and other public documents. They were not conducted with any assistance from John F. Kerry’s campaign. All the conclusions presented can be re-checked among the wide range of documents posted at freepress.org under the Election 2004 department. The authors will also respond to specific journalistic inquiries at truth@freepress.org. Additional key sources are specified below.
These flaws involve very large numbers of votes. But they cannot fully explain how the results were recorded on Election Day for one crucial reason: the paper and digital record trail needed to analyze the actual voting has been sealed from public scrutiny by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who both administered the state's election and served as the co-chair of Ohio's 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.
Blackwell and other Republican officials continue to discount such criticisms. Blackwell has written that the election ran "smoothly." His office has refused subpoenas requesting him to testify, terming them a form of "harassment." Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett has said that this year's election had "fewer glitches" than previous ones. "We have bipartisan (election" boards and very specific rules and procedures," he says. "To have fraud within the counting process in Ohio, you would have to have massive collusion."
Nearly 85 percent of the state used paper ballots. Most were tabulated electronically – meaning an evidence trail exists, if it has not been destroyed or fatally compromised. But we have reason to believe this destruction has already occurred in a number of Ohio counties, rendering a full recount and audit impossible.
While the anomalies we have found in the Ohio vote are deep and serious, an in-depth study now indicates shocking parallels in New Mexico, which we will discuss in tomorrow's article.
The Bush-Cheney ‘do-everything’ strategy in Ohio covered a very wide range of tactics, from disenfranchisement of minority voters to discarding of ballots to tampered tabulators and much more.
Taken as a whole, this compendium of error, fraud, cover-up and contempt indicates that this was not a legitimate election, and is not worthy of being certified by the Congress of the United States:
1. More than 106,000 Ohio ballots remain uncounted. As certified by Blackwell, Ohio’s official results say 92,672 regular ballots were cast without indicating a choice for president. This sum grows to 106,000 ballots when uncounted provisional ballots are included. There is no legal reason for not inspecting and counting each of these ballots. This figure does not include thousands of people who did not vote, despite intending to do so in Ohio’s inner cities, due to a lack of voting machines, having no available ballots, intimidation, manipulation of registrations, denial of absentee ballots and other means of depriving American citizens of their rightful vote.
2. Most uncounted ballots come from regions and precincts where Kerry was strongest. In Hamilton County, 4,515 ballots or 51.64 percent of the uncounted county total, came from Cincinnati, where Kerry won 67.98 percent to Bush’s 31.54 percent. In Cuyahoga County, 4,708 ballots or 44 percent of the county total came from Cleveland, where Kerry won all 65 precincts. In Summit County, 2,650 ballots or 48.72 percent of the county total came from Akron, which Kerry won 68.75 percent to Bush’s 28.00 percent.
3. Of the 147,000 combined provisional and absentee ballots counted by hand after Election Day, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. In the 10 largest Ohio counties, Kerry’s margin was 4.24 to 8.92 percent higher than in the certified results, which were predominantly machine counted. As in New Mexico, where George W. Bush carried every precinct whose votes were counted with electronic optical scanning machines, John Kerry's vote count was significantly lower among ballots counted on Election Day using electronic tabulators.
4. Turnout inconsistencies reveal tens of thousands of Kerry votes were not simply recorded. Systematic mathematical scrutiny reveals that the certified results at the statewide and precinct-to-precinct level display key patterns against a backdrop of implausible results. Most striking is a pattern where turnout percentages (votes cast as a percentage of registered voters) in cities won by Kerry were 10 percentage points or more lower than in the regions won by Bush, a virtually impossible scenario.
In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, Kerry won 346 precincts to Bush’s 125. The median Kerry precinct had 50.78 percent turnout, compared to 60.56 percent for Bush. Kerry’s lower numbers are due to local election officials assigning more voting machines per capita to Republican-leaning suburbs than the Democrat-leaning inner city – a political decision and likely Voting Rights Act violation. If Kerry-majority precincts in Columbus had a 60 percent turnout, as recorded throughout the rest of the state, he would have netted an additional 17,000 votes.
5. Many certified turnout results in key regions throughout the state are simply not plausible, and all work to the advantage of Bush. In southern Perry County, two precincts reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters. These impossible turnouts were nonetheless officially certified as part of the final recount by Blackwell. But in pro-Kerry Cleveland, there were certified precinct turnouts of 7.10, 13.15, 19.60, 21.01, 21.80, 24.72, 28.83 and 28.97 percents. Seven entire wards reported a turnout less than 50 percent. But if the actual Cleveland turnout was 60 percent, as registered statewide, Kerry would have netted an additional 22,000 votes. Kerry is also thought to have lost 7,000 votes in Toledo this way.
6. Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage. All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.
7. In Miami County, two sets of results were submitted to state officials. The second, which padded Bush's margin, reported that 18,615 additional votes were counted, increasing Bush’s total by exactly 16,000 votes. Miami County’s turnout was up 20.86 percent from 2000, but only had experienced a population increase of 1.38 percent by 2004. Two Miami County precincts were certified with reported turnouts of 98.55 and 94.27 percent. In one of the precincts this would have required all but ten registered voters to have cast ballots. But an independent investigation has already collected affidavits of more than 10 registered voters that did not cast ballots on Nov. 2, indicating that Blackwell's officially certified vote count is simply impossible, which once again favoring Bush.
In Warren County, in southern Ohio, an unexplained Homeland Security alert was cited by Republican election board officials as a pretext for barring the media and independent observers from the vote count. In Warren and neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Bush won by a margin of 132,685 votes. He beat Gore in these counties in 2000 by 95,575 votes, meaning an implausible pickup of almost 40,000 votes.
But Bush’s numbers meant 13,566 people who voted for C. Ellen Connally, the liberal Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice, also voted for Bush. In Butler Country, Bush officially was given 109,866 votes. But conservative GOP Chief Justice Moyer was given only 68,407, a negative discrepancy of more than 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Connally was credited with 61,559 votes to John Kerry's 56,234. This would mean that while Bush vastly outpolled his Republican counterpart running for the Supreme Court, African-American female Democrat running for the Supreme Court on the Democratic side outpolled Kerry. By all accounts such an outcome is inconceivable. Again, it indicates a very significant and likely fraudulent shifting of votes to Bush.
8. Democratic voters were apparently targeted with provisional ballots. These ballots require voters to fill out extensive forms at the poll. Under extraordinary rules established by Blackwell these ballots were set to be discarded if even minor errors were committed. Poll watchers in Cleveland and Columbus have testified that most provisional ballots were given to minority and young voters. The same is true with presumed liberal college and university students. In Athens, where Ohio University is located, 8.59 percent of student ballots were provisional. At Kenyon College and Oberlin College, liberal arts institutions, there were severe shortages of voting machines when compared with nearby religious-affiliated schools. Students at Kenyon waited up to eleven hours to vote. Provisional ballots were also required of mostly African-American students at Wilberforce College.
9. Ohio's Election Day exit poll was more credible than the certified result, according to intense statistical analysis. In-depth studies by Prof. Ron Baiman of the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that Ohio's exit polls in Ohio and elsewhere were virtually certain to be more accurate than the final vote count as certified by Blackwell. Ohio's exit polls predicted a Kerry victory by percentages that exceeded their margin of error. Compared to the voter access, voting technology and vote counting problems in Ohio, the exit polls were far more systematic and reliable. Critics of the exit polls’ accuracy say too many Democrats were sampled, but a detailed analysis of that assertion shows no credible evidence for it. The stark shift from exit polls favoring Kerry to final results in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio all went in Bush's direction, and are, according to Baiman, a virtual impossibility, with odds as high as 150 million to one against.
10. The Ohio recount wasn’t random or comprehensive and may have involved serious illegalities. Under Ohio law, 3 percent of the ballots in a precinct are examined by hand. If the numbers match what was counted on Election Day, then the rest of the ballots are compiled electronically. In many districts, Republican Secretary of State Blackwell chose the precincts to be counted in a partisan manner, weighing the choices toward precincts where there were no disputes while avoiding those being contested. Moreover, there have been numerous confirmed instances where employees of the private companies that manufactured the voting machines had access to the machines and the computer records before the recount occurred. In at least two counties, technicians from Diebold and Triad dismantled key parts of voting machines before they could be subjected to audits for recount. In some counties, vendor companies conducted the recount – not public election officials. At least one county---Shelby---has admitted to discarding key data before the recount could be taken. In Greene County unrecounted ballots were left unguarded in an unlocked building, rendering the recount moot.
These ten points are among the most serious clouding the electoral outcome in Ohio, but are only part of a larger pattern. Their correlation with similar evidence in New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere gives them added gravitas. Scores of sworn affidavits and the on-going work of teams of attorneys, statisticians and other experts have revealed far more points of contention and suspicion, many of which we will present in tomorrow's article.
The sources used for this report are available at http://freepress.org. The statistical analysis was primarily done by Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD. A transcript of his deposition in the election challenge lawsuit detailing these findings can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Phillips.pdf. The exit poll analysis was by Ron Baiman, PhD, and a transcript of the deposition describing his analysis can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Baiman.pdf. Additional material appears in court filings in Moss v. Bush and related legal actions filed with the Ohio Supreme Court.
Taken together, these ten points involve votes that cumulatively exceed Bush's 118,775 vote margin in the state.
These flaws must be thoroughly investigated before Congress ratifies the Electoral College. The legitimacy of the presidency and American Democracy is at stake. In tomorrow's article we will outline more of the evidence leading up to Thursday's historic vote.
--
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, a book/film project from http://freepress.org. Tax-deductible donations are welcome there and at the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism, 1240 Bryden Road, Columbus, OH 43205.
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
January 3, 2005
The presidential vote for George W. Bush does not compute.
By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the freepress.org investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans -- because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush.
Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida, indicate John Kerry was most likely the actual winner on November 2, as reported in national exit polls. At very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio's votes were counted and re-counted, has compromised this nation's historic commitment to free and fair elections.
On Thursday, January 6, the Electoral College will be challenged by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of Congress under a law passed in 1887 in reaction to the fraudulent election of 1876. A fuller investigation requires assent by at least one Senator.
As this vote nears, Ohio’s certified presidential vote (and quite likely those of at least Florida and New Mexico) is simply not credible. George W. Bush’s ‘victory’ appears to have resulted from multiple frauds – a GOP ‘do-everything’ strategy to win the state that swung the election.
In today's article, we list the top ten glaring flaws in the Ohio vote that have allowed Bush to gather the votes to ‘win’ the presidency in Ohio with an apparent margin of 118,775 votes - the result from an official recount that manually examined only 3 percent of ballots cast.
This list involves very large totals of uncounted, tainted or fraudulent votes. Taken together, they exceed Bush's margin of victory in Ohio.
These expert analyses are based on state and local Board of Election statistics, U.S. Census reports, and other public documents. They were not conducted with any assistance from John F. Kerry’s campaign. All the conclusions presented can be re-checked among the wide range of documents posted at freepress.org under the Election 2004 department. The authors will also respond to specific journalistic inquiries at truth@freepress.org. Additional key sources are specified below.
These flaws involve very large numbers of votes. But they cannot fully explain how the results were recorded on Election Day for one crucial reason: the paper and digital record trail needed to analyze the actual voting has been sealed from public scrutiny by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who both administered the state's election and served as the co-chair of Ohio's 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.
Blackwell and other Republican officials continue to discount such criticisms. Blackwell has written that the election ran "smoothly." His office has refused subpoenas requesting him to testify, terming them a form of "harassment." Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett has said that this year's election had "fewer glitches" than previous ones. "We have bipartisan (election" boards and very specific rules and procedures," he says. "To have fraud within the counting process in Ohio, you would have to have massive collusion."
Nearly 85 percent of the state used paper ballots. Most were tabulated electronically – meaning an evidence trail exists, if it has not been destroyed or fatally compromised. But we have reason to believe this destruction has already occurred in a number of Ohio counties, rendering a full recount and audit impossible.
While the anomalies we have found in the Ohio vote are deep and serious, an in-depth study now indicates shocking parallels in New Mexico, which we will discuss in tomorrow's article.
The Bush-Cheney ‘do-everything’ strategy in Ohio covered a very wide range of tactics, from disenfranchisement of minority voters to discarding of ballots to tampered tabulators and much more.
Taken as a whole, this compendium of error, fraud, cover-up and contempt indicates that this was not a legitimate election, and is not worthy of being certified by the Congress of the United States:
1. More than 106,000 Ohio ballots remain uncounted. As certified by Blackwell, Ohio’s official results say 92,672 regular ballots were cast without indicating a choice for president. This sum grows to 106,000 ballots when uncounted provisional ballots are included. There is no legal reason for not inspecting and counting each of these ballots. This figure does not include thousands of people who did not vote, despite intending to do so in Ohio’s inner cities, due to a lack of voting machines, having no available ballots, intimidation, manipulation of registrations, denial of absentee ballots and other means of depriving American citizens of their rightful vote.
2. Most uncounted ballots come from regions and precincts where Kerry was strongest. In Hamilton County, 4,515 ballots or 51.64 percent of the uncounted county total, came from Cincinnati, where Kerry won 67.98 percent to Bush’s 31.54 percent. In Cuyahoga County, 4,708 ballots or 44 percent of the county total came from Cleveland, where Kerry won all 65 precincts. In Summit County, 2,650 ballots or 48.72 percent of the county total came from Akron, which Kerry won 68.75 percent to Bush’s 28.00 percent.
3. Of the 147,000 combined provisional and absentee ballots counted by hand after Election Day, Kerry received 54.46 percent of the vote. In the 10 largest Ohio counties, Kerry’s margin was 4.24 to 8.92 percent higher than in the certified results, which were predominantly machine counted. As in New Mexico, where George W. Bush carried every precinct whose votes were counted with electronic optical scanning machines, John Kerry's vote count was significantly lower among ballots counted on Election Day using electronic tabulators.
4. Turnout inconsistencies reveal tens of thousands of Kerry votes were not simply recorded. Systematic mathematical scrutiny reveals that the certified results at the statewide and precinct-to-precinct level display key patterns against a backdrop of implausible results. Most striking is a pattern where turnout percentages (votes cast as a percentage of registered voters) in cities won by Kerry were 10 percentage points or more lower than in the regions won by Bush, a virtually impossible scenario.
In Franklin County, where Columbus is located, Kerry won 346 precincts to Bush’s 125. The median Kerry precinct had 50.78 percent turnout, compared to 60.56 percent for Bush. Kerry’s lower numbers are due to local election officials assigning more voting machines per capita to Republican-leaning suburbs than the Democrat-leaning inner city – a political decision and likely Voting Rights Act violation. If Kerry-majority precincts in Columbus had a 60 percent turnout, as recorded throughout the rest of the state, he would have netted an additional 17,000 votes.
5. Many certified turnout results in key regions throughout the state are simply not plausible, and all work to the advantage of Bush. In southern Perry County, two precincts reported turnouts of 124.4 and 124.0 percent of the registered voters. These impossible turnouts were nonetheless officially certified as part of the final recount by Blackwell. But in pro-Kerry Cleveland, there were certified precinct turnouts of 7.10, 13.15, 19.60, 21.01, 21.80, 24.72, 28.83 and 28.97 percents. Seven entire wards reported a turnout less than 50 percent. But if the actual Cleveland turnout was 60 percent, as registered statewide, Kerry would have netted an additional 22,000 votes. Kerry is also thought to have lost 7,000 votes in Toledo this way.
6. Due to computer flaws and vote shifting, there were numerous reports across Ohio of extremely troublesome electronic errors during the voting process and in the counting. In Youngstown, there were more than two-dozen Election Day reports of machines that switched or shifted on-screen displays of a vote for Kerry to a vote for Bush. In Cleveland, there were three precincts in which minor third-party candidates received 86, 92 and 98 percent of the vote respectively, an outcome completely out of synch with the rest of the state (a similar thing occurred during the contested election in Florida, 2000). This class of error points to more than machine malfunction, suggesting instead that votes are being electronically shifted from one candidate to another in the voting and counting stage. All reported errors favored Bush over Kerry.
7. In Miami County, two sets of results were submitted to state officials. The second, which padded Bush's margin, reported that 18,615 additional votes were counted, increasing Bush’s total by exactly 16,000 votes. Miami County’s turnout was up 20.86 percent from 2000, but only had experienced a population increase of 1.38 percent by 2004. Two Miami County precincts were certified with reported turnouts of 98.55 and 94.27 percent. In one of the precincts this would have required all but ten registered voters to have cast ballots. But an independent investigation has already collected affidavits of more than 10 registered voters that did not cast ballots on Nov. 2, indicating that Blackwell's officially certified vote count is simply impossible, which once again favoring Bush.
In Warren County, in southern Ohio, an unexplained Homeland Security alert was cited by Republican election board officials as a pretext for barring the media and independent observers from the vote count. In Warren and neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Bush won by a margin of 132,685 votes. He beat Gore in these counties in 2000 by 95,575 votes, meaning an implausible pickup of almost 40,000 votes.
But Bush’s numbers meant 13,566 people who voted for C. Ellen Connally, the liberal Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice, also voted for Bush. In Butler Country, Bush officially was given 109,866 votes. But conservative GOP Chief Justice Moyer was given only 68,407, a negative discrepancy of more than 40,000 votes. Meanwhile, Connally was credited with 61,559 votes to John Kerry's 56,234. This would mean that while Bush vastly outpolled his Republican counterpart running for the Supreme Court, African-American female Democrat running for the Supreme Court on the Democratic side outpolled Kerry. By all accounts such an outcome is inconceivable. Again, it indicates a very significant and likely fraudulent shifting of votes to Bush.
8. Democratic voters were apparently targeted with provisional ballots. These ballots require voters to fill out extensive forms at the poll. Under extraordinary rules established by Blackwell these ballots were set to be discarded if even minor errors were committed. Poll watchers in Cleveland and Columbus have testified that most provisional ballots were given to minority and young voters. The same is true with presumed liberal college and university students. In Athens, where Ohio University is located, 8.59 percent of student ballots were provisional. At Kenyon College and Oberlin College, liberal arts institutions, there were severe shortages of voting machines when compared with nearby religious-affiliated schools. Students at Kenyon waited up to eleven hours to vote. Provisional ballots were also required of mostly African-American students at Wilberforce College.
9. Ohio's Election Day exit poll was more credible than the certified result, according to intense statistical analysis. In-depth studies by Prof. Ron Baiman of the University of Illinois at Chicago shows that Ohio's exit polls in Ohio and elsewhere were virtually certain to be more accurate than the final vote count as certified by Blackwell. Ohio's exit polls predicted a Kerry victory by percentages that exceeded their margin of error. Compared to the voter access, voting technology and vote counting problems in Ohio, the exit polls were far more systematic and reliable. Critics of the exit polls’ accuracy say too many Democrats were sampled, but a detailed analysis of that assertion shows no credible evidence for it. The stark shift from exit polls favoring Kerry to final results in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio all went in Bush's direction, and are, according to Baiman, a virtual impossibility, with odds as high as 150 million to one against.
10. The Ohio recount wasn’t random or comprehensive and may have involved serious illegalities. Under Ohio law, 3 percent of the ballots in a precinct are examined by hand. If the numbers match what was counted on Election Day, then the rest of the ballots are compiled electronically. In many districts, Republican Secretary of State Blackwell chose the precincts to be counted in a partisan manner, weighing the choices toward precincts where there were no disputes while avoiding those being contested. Moreover, there have been numerous confirmed instances where employees of the private companies that manufactured the voting machines had access to the machines and the computer records before the recount occurred. In at least two counties, technicians from Diebold and Triad dismantled key parts of voting machines before they could be subjected to audits for recount. In some counties, vendor companies conducted the recount – not public election officials. At least one county---Shelby---has admitted to discarding key data before the recount could be taken. In Greene County unrecounted ballots were left unguarded in an unlocked building, rendering the recount moot.
These ten points are among the most serious clouding the electoral outcome in Ohio, but are only part of a larger pattern. Their correlation with similar evidence in New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere gives them added gravitas. Scores of sworn affidavits and the on-going work of teams of attorneys, statisticians and other experts have revealed far more points of contention and suspicion, many of which we will present in tomorrow's article.
The sources used for this report are available at http://freepress.org. The statistical analysis was primarily done by Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD. A transcript of his deposition in the election challenge lawsuit detailing these findings can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Phillips.pdf. The exit poll analysis was by Ron Baiman, PhD, and a transcript of the deposition describing his analysis can be found at: http://freepress.org/images/departments/Dep_Baiman.pdf. Additional material appears in court filings in Moss v. Bush and related legal actions filed with the Ohio Supreme Court.
Taken together, these ten points involve votes that cumulatively exceed Bush's 118,775 vote margin in the state.
These flaws must be thoroughly investigated before Congress ratifies the Electoral College. The legitimacy of the presidency and American Democracy is at stake. In tomorrow's article we will outline more of the evidence leading up to Thursday's historic vote.
--
Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, a book/film project from http://freepress.org. Tax-deductible donations are welcome there and at the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism, 1240 Bryden Road, Columbus, OH 43205.
posted by dsekou at 1:28 PM
5 Comments:
While this report makes a compelling case, it does not do one important thing: prove Kerry won. This is a serious point. I remember right after the Election: Greg Palast declaring that Kerry Won Ohio, yet that claim was reduced to "Kerry may have won Ohio." and is now at the stage : "There were voting irregularities in Ohio." This shift is important to keep in mind because it underscores the biggest problem with 'the numbers." That is they assume that every "spoiled ballot" went to Kerry. That is a pretty bold assumption in the wake of Zell Miller, a supposed 16% Bush vote among African Americans and a 40%+ Bush vote among Hispanics. One also has to consider that there are Democrats who may vote Republican for top office while voting democratic for local elections. It happens. There is nothing odd about that.
Furthermore, if we look at the example of Kerry taking Bush, 68% to 32% in Cincinatti, the first thing one must do is assume that the "spoiled votes' are split the same way. Once you do that you must add the 32% of votes to Bush's lead prior to subtracting Kerry's gains. Which means Kerry needs more than that 118,000 to win. But alas, we won't know and THAT is the real problem, since there was no paper trail for those electronic votes and no doubt tampering with the "evidence" has happened. But even with all of that tampering, which should be investigated, One cannot say that it is probable that the outcome would have been different with the votes we do have.
what did you do man , sink your nestegg in diebold stock ?
i cannot believe you still believe that there is any need to prove that kerry won.
the irregularities all favor bush...bush's boy ran the ohio election , bush's boy refused to cooperate with congressman conyer's investigation into the election irregularities. bush met in person with his boy kenny blackwell in ohio on election day. bush gained the presidency in 2000 under a similar cloud of impropriety and charges of criminal wrongdoings...
the burden of proof is on bush and his boy to prove that they DID NOT STEAL the election ...a blind man can see that this is the case...
bush cheated plain and simple. there never should have been a bush vrs kerry election because bush cheated in the bush vrs gore election .
in both cases ,the modus operandi of election theft was by singling out african american voters for deliberate and illegal disenfranchisement.
greg palast was instrumental in revealing this information to the public in both cases.
if the bought off Us media had not been accomplices to the crime by covering up the first theft , the opportunity for the second theft would never have been available to bush .
what you are saying is the same as saying that bush cheated, but the second time that he cheated , he didn't cheat effectively enough to really effect the outcome so we should forget about it and move on.
i'm saying this man should be investigated all the way back to his winning the governor's chair in texas---an election that he won by narrow margin also btw...not only that greg palast recently wrote about how the lt. governor of texas admitted pulling strings for daddy bush in getting a young ,drunken ,drug addicted dubya into the safety of the national guard and away from the carnage of the vietnam war...
there is more than enough evidence to call for an investigation into criminal wrong doing on the republicans' part in this election and the election of 2000.
bush met in person with kenny blackwell in ohio on election day 2004.
exit polls predicted kerry as winner in ohio and that was despite all the republican shennanigans designed to suppress and throw out african american vote and votes in general in democratic districts.
"KERRY WON.
HERE'S THE FACTS.
Thursday Nov 4, 2004
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry. Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53% to 47%. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51% to 49%. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state. Get the full story in the next hour on TomPaine.com. A special Greg Palast invesigation."
"Seven key reasons why the vote must be challenged at the electoral college
by Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
January 3, 2005
1. Exit Polls Did Not Match Actual Vote in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida
The gulf between the exit polls and counted votes was glaring. The Zogby Poll and the media consortium poll (including CNN and AP) had Kerry winning an electoral landslide with 53% and 51% respectively in Ohio. Why did exit polls match the actual vote in the nation – EXCEPT for Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania?
Exit polls are considered the most accurate measurement of the vote. Exit polls were responsible for calling for a revote in the Ukraine. The odds of the exit polls being outside the margin of error in these three battleground states are about 155 million to one. The exit poll data has never been released. There must be an investigation of the exit poll disparities. "
do you really believe that after what we now know about vote tampering that we can believe that 16 percent of african americans and 45 percent of hispanics voted for bush?
"Hispanic voters in Cleveland were forced to vote at precincts where all of the ballots were in English, and poll workers did not speak Spanish."--jesse jackson
like the old saying goes ,"if you'll lie ...you'll steal" .
george dubya bush is guilty of both these sins...he is a liar and a thief . he deserves to be in the jailhouse and not the white house...
Nope. No Diebold stock. Again, let me stress my point: It cannot be proven, and that's the key point here, that Kerry won Ohio, I don't dispute any of the reports of machine malfunctions, machine mis-allocation, and those things. In fact that is my entire "speil" if you will, I don't dispute those things which can be verified. And when I say verified, I mean the facts on hand. Ie the votes as reported. Even with the "no-paper trail." No one can say what someone did or did not vote for, you only have what is in front of you. The Black Commentator repeated some math from the Daily Kos which I had to dispute because it simply failed to acknowledge that by its own math Bush would have picked up votes against Kerry. How did they mess up? simple: the failed to add up "new" Bush votes. This is also the large failure of this report. They assume, and that's the key point, that all lost votes, be it provisional or "spoiled" went to Kerry. That is mathematically impossible. Since even in the "Heavily Democratic" areas, there were still Bush votes. If the pattern of voting irregularities holds then the "bad' ballots from those same places should split the same way. If they do, which is statistically more probable than "all votes for Kerry", then Bush still wins. Couple that with the fact that many if not most of the provisional ballots were cast in areas where there were next to no blacks at all, means that there is a high probability that Bush would pick up votes in those areas, which Kerry votes would have to offset. Every report I read fails to bring this up yet it is key to any claim of Kerry winning.
In regards to the 16% Black Bush vote and the 40+ % Hispanic vote. I can only go by what was posted. Given the increased visiblity of "conservative" blacks I would not be surprised to find such a historical rise. Especially coupled with the Gay marriage hoopla that many Born-Agains would get distracted by. The 40% Hispanic numbers are national and not specific to Ohio.
Instead of trying to figure out what vote went where, in a climate that not even baby Jesus Obama is too scared to stand up ( I would have even if I didn't believe the outcome would change), black folks ought to be re-assessing black and democratic leadership that allowed this fiasco to happen. For example how did areas with high black populations get so little voting machines? Are you telling me that Republicans run the voting apparatus in a heavily Democratic space? Or is it that Democrats were in cahoots? If they were then that should bring up a whooooole mess of questions. Why are Blacks, 500 years into the American system still, STILL Acting as if the government is looking out for them? Why are they, after the fact, dealing with these issues? Isn't the best defence a good offense? Didn't Blacks learn anything from Florida 2000? What was the NAACP, Urban League and leagues of black officials been doing for 4 years? Those questions, to me, are far more important questions to have answered, then some "Assumptions" about how people may or may not have voted in Novemeber.
Also, That CNN exit poll. I don't buy exit polls. There is not a single person who can verify that the person voted as they said. You cannot guarantee that people are not lying nor can you guarantee that you got everyone. Anmd yes, exit polls have been known to be incorrect, the two examples that come to mind are Douglas Wilder's bid for governor of Virginia and David Dinkin's run for Mayor of NY. In both cases the exit polls had the eventual loser up by as much as 10%.
sondjata ,as to the sell out by so-called black "leadership" ,the democratic party and big bad john , you can see my previous posts here as to my very low opinions of them all...but that is not the key point
no , the key point... and i have said this to you again and again , IS THAT BUSH ONCE AGAIN CHEATED .
no one ever said to my knowledge that all 100 percent of the thrown out votes or provisional ballots were for kerry , but they are saying that voters in african american areas and areas believed to be democratic strongholds were many times more likely to have their ballots thrown out for spoilage or forced to request a provisional ballot than voters in republican areas.
you saw the maps posted here and elsewhere asking why the black and democratic areas visibly had so much more spoilage than republican areas .
1. the massive nationwide voter registration drives in the african american community were specifically designed by the african american community nationwide as an integral part of our strategy to get rid of bush as payback for what he did to us in florida 2000 and his anti-people policies of the past 4 years.
2. the voter registration drives in the african community were combined with massive get out the vote campaigns as part of our strategy for defeating bush and getting him out of the white house
3. the republican widespread intimidation and obfuscation and subterfuge campaign significantly suppressed the numbers of the african american vote---people were forced to wait in line to vote for 10 hours in many cases .
many gave up because of work or obligations or frustration and never got their chance to vote .
others were turned away when polls closed by blackwell's orders contradicting on a technicality a judges' order that polls stay open late so voters could get their chance to vote .
others were deliberately confused and prevented from voting by deliberate contradictory instructions from election officials helping them to cast votes in places and through methods , that would later invalidate them
4. serious lack of voting machines in african american communities despite anticipated huge turnouts because of newly registered voters and get out the vote campaigns
5. in anticipation of republicans again as in the 2000 elections , denying registered african american voters the right to vote, as part of the nationwide african american defeat-bush election strategy , was the constant admonition disseminated over african american media for voters to demand a provisional ballot if denied the opportunity to vote by election officials .
6. the overwhelming amount of "spoilage" or thrown out votes in ohio were from african american areas and democratic areas ... approximately 90,000 to 100,000 votes thrown out by antiquated machines in mostly black and democratic areas which through a hand count and eye examination could easily be read.
7. reports of voting machines switching kerry votes to bush , ballots given to voters already default punched for bush
8. the bush "victory" in ohio based on 118,000 votes , primarily was built on the obviously shaky foundation of points one to seven summarized above , plus the highly suspicious electronic voting and vote tabulation machines and programs designed and compiled by companies connected to rightwing republican religious zealots ... even if bush had 118 million votes ... whatever "majority" bush has still cannot stand because it is based upon FRAUD .
that bush "won" in ohio by a narrow margin and it TOOK all the above shaky , fraudulent and criminal activities for bush to "win" by that narrow margin , tells us that it is obvious that if bush needed so much dirty help from his dirty friends , then he must not have won in the first place... bush must have known that it was likely that he would not win and had his dirty little friends in key positions as an insurance policy because he doubted that he could win in ohio ... and after ohio losing 300,000 manufacturing jobs under bush's watch ...his doubts that he could win in ohio were rightly so...
now if you have a dispute with greg palast over his conclusions that kerry won based on an article he wrote two days after the election after extensively investigating and reporting on bush's deliberate disenfranchisement of african americans in florida 2000 and his observations of similar targeting of african americans in ohio 2004 , i think he'd be easy to contact for further explanation of his position .. i think this would interesting...
http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
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