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Evidence of election fraud continues
to surface
Recount underway in Ohio
Compiled by Liz Allen
Nov. 17 (AGR) — A Florida-style nightmare has unfolded
in North Carolina since Election Day, with thousands of votes missing.
The fiasco has not reached the proportions of what happened in Florida
in 2000 — in part because George W. Bush beat John Kerry in North
Carolina by more than 400,000 votes in unofficial returns. But election
observers say North Carolina has been the site of some of 2004’s
worst problems.
The biggest failure resulted from a computer glitch that wiped out more
than 4,400 votes in one county, while other disputes have focused on
how to count provisional ballots. In another county, 12,000 early and
absentee votes were misplaced due to a procedural error, but later found.
Two statewide races — for agriculture commissioner and superintendent
of public instruction — were not resolved in North Carolina until
Nov. 15. The race for state auditor was not settled until eight days
after the election.
The most glaring failure in North Carolina occurred in Carteret County,
where a machine used to store electronic ballots ran out of storage
space and county officials mistakenly continued to try to save ballots.
Since the machines had no memory left, 4,438 votes disappeared.
In NC counties seven different voting methods are used, ranging from
paper ballots to touch-screen computers.
In Washington state, as of Nov. 17, the governor has yet to be decided
and a recount appears imminent because of a vote margin of less than
2,000.
Recount in Ohio
On Nov. 11, David Cobb, the Green Party’s 2004 presidential candidate,
announced his intention to seek a recount of all votes cast in Ohio.
Since the required fee for a statewide recount is $113,600, the only
question was whether that money could be raised in time to meet the
filing deadline. That question has been answered.
“The grassroots support for the recount has been astounding. The
donations have come in fast and furiously, with the vast majority in
the $10-$50 range, allowing us to meet our goal for the first phase
of the recount effort in only four days,” said Blair Bobier, Media
Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign. A demand for a recount in Ohio
can only be filed by a presidential candidate who was either a certified
write-in candidate or on the ballot in that state. Both Green Party
candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik will
be demanding a recount.
The recount must be completed within 10 days of the request being made
and could revise the official state count.
In Florida in 2000, before the Supreme Court interceded in the election
outcome, there was no statewide recount conducted. A coalition of newspapers
later analyzed the vote, in essence, doing their own recount. They found
Al Gore had won.
This year’s Ohio presidential election was marred by reports of
90,000 spoiled ballots, software glitches resulting in more votes tallied
than the number of registered voters, to new voters not being notified
where their polling places were.
A number of citizens’ groups and voting rights organizations held
a hearing on Nov. 13 and one on Nov. 15 in Columbus, Ohio, to take testimony
from voters, poll watchers and election experts about problems with
the Ohio vote.
The hearings, sponsored by the Election Protection Coalition, were to
collect testimony of voting troubles that might be used to seek legislative
changes to Ohio’s election process.
At the hearings, tales of waiting more than five hours to vote, voter
intimidation, under-trained polling-station workers and too few or broken
voting machines largely in urban or heavily minority areas were retold.
At each of the meetings, voters, one after another, offered sworn testimony
about Election Day voter suppression and irregularities that they believe
are threatening US democracy.
Lawyers and notaries were present to take affidavits that might be used
in future litigation, said Claire Reichstein of the San Francisco-based
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which prevailed in two pre-election
lawsuits in Ohio and is contemplating a third.
Diebold settles lawsuit
Diebold agreed Nov. 10 to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed
by California alleging that the electronic voting machine company sold
the state and several counties shoddy voting equipment.
Although critics characterized the settlement as a slap on the wrist,
Diebold also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to partially reimburse
Alameda, San Diego and other counties for the cost of paper backup ballots,
ink and other supplies in last week’s election. California’s
secretary of state banned the use of one type of Diebold machine in
May, after problems with the machines disenfranchised an unknown number
of voters in the March 2004 primary.
Faulty equipment forced at least 6,000 of 316,000 voters in Alameda
County, just east of San Francisco, to use backup paper ballots instead
of the paperless voting terminals. In San Diego County, a power surge
resulted in hundreds of touch-screens that wouldn’t start when
the polls opened, forcing election officials to turn voters away from
the polls.
According to the settlement, the Ohio-based company must also upgrade
ballot tabulation software that Los Angeles County and others used on
Election Day. Diebold must also strengthen the security of its paperless
voting machines and computer servers and promise never to connect voting
systems to outside networks.
The original lawsuit was filed a year ago by electronic voting critic
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting and activist Jim March, who characterized
the $2.6 million settlement as “peanuts.”
March, a Sacramento whistle-blower who filed suit on behalf of California
taxpayers, could receive as much as $75,000 because of the settlement.
But he said the terms don’t require Diebold to overhaul its election
servers — which have had problems in Washington state’s King
County and elsewhere — to guard them from hackers, software bugs
or other failures.
“This settlement will shut down a major avenue of investigation
before evidence starts trickling in,” March said. “It’s
very premature.”
Sources: Alternet, AP, Cleveland Plain
Dealer, LA Times, Truth Out
Ex-cons and the electoral college
By Ernest Drucker and Ricardo Barreras
Nov. 9 — Since the Florida election of 2000 (where 600,000
citizens with criminal convictions were barred from voting ) felony
disenfranchisement has attracted a lot of attention. Over the last three
decades 12 million Americans have lost the right to vote for all or
most of their adult lives. It’s no surprise then that many politicians
believe that “these people don’t vote anyway” –
a convenient rational for ignoring them.
But that may be about to change.
While it is true that many with felony convictions are unable to vote,
at least four million others in the criminal justice system (or recently
released from it) are legally eligible to vote. This includes over 700,000
now in city and county jails, 2.25 million on probation or parole (in
states that allow them to vote), and well over a million who have finished
their sentences in recent years.
We have been interviewing current and former prisoners in New York,
Connecticut, and Ohio about their voting histories, attitudes about
voting, and knowledge and understanding of the rules of disenfranchisement
that apply to them. We find that prior to disenfranchisement they registered
and voted at rates similar to the general population (40 to 50 percent)
and most would like to do so again.
As few realize they have the right to vote, their registration and voting
rates post-release are reduced to half of what they were before. This
is accompanied by a time lag in getting back on the roles that effectively
doubles the years of voting life lost to disenfranchisement.
A recent study by The Sentencing Project finds sharp disparities in
the effects of disenfranchisement by race: in Atlanta one of every seven
African American males is disenfranchised. So as the imprisonment rate
for blacks has climbed over three decades, long traditions of voting
in many black families have been broken – each successive generation
votes at lower rates than the previous one. This is true of all Americans
since the 1960s, but the rates are most pronounced in black communities,
where 30-40 percent of the men have been disenfranchised. A study by
the University of Virginia School of Law finds that in states with the
harshest disenfranchisement laws the overall voter turnout among African
Americans is 13 percent lower than those who disenfranchise only for
prison time.
And that may be no accident.
Among the large populations recently released from prison, parole, or
probation (and now eligible to vote) there is widespread misinformation
about the disenfranchisement rules – deterring many eligible voters
because it is a felony to even try to vote if you are ineligible. Florida
made it a point to widely publicize this intimidating fact again this
year – until stopped by a court. In one area of Georgia, all Hispanic
voters were called in six days before the election, to present “proof
of citizenship.”
In Connecticut, which two years ago halved the size of their disenfranchised
population by rescinding probation disenfranchisement, we found that
two-thirds of probationers and parolees still did not know they were
able to vote – 72 percent said no judge, parole or probation officer,
or lawyer had ever said a word about the issue to them. Another 60 percent
thought that anyone is ineligible to vote if they’d “ever
had a felony conviction,” and fewer than half of those actually
eligible to vote right now, believed that they would ever be eligible
to vote again. In Ohio we found similar beliefs widespread among jail
inmates and probationers, all of whom have the right to vote there.
What can be done about this “de facto” disenfranchisement,
whose numbers exceed those who are disenfranchised “de jure?”
In most states there is an automatic computerized system to “purge”
felons from the voting roles as they are convicted. But there is no
comparable process to reinstate them once they finish their sentences.
In response, Connecticut authorities are now placing voting information
and registration cards in all centers where prisoners get processed
out. They are even discussing producing a video to tell re-entering
prisoners the rules and routines for registration and will provide registration
cards at discharge.
Serious efforts to mobilize this large hidden vote have been underway
in this election year by the National Right to Vote Campaign and many
local organizations. In Ohio the Racial Fairness Project has been successfully
educating prisoners about their voting rights in the jails and registering
eligible inmates – 1500 in the Cleveland jail alone. As a result
74 percent got the right answers on a test of their knowledge of the
rules. A few weekends ago The Fortune Society of New York sent 10 parolees
(barred from voting by New York State law) to Cleveland to tell their
Ohio counterparts – “we can’t vote but you can –
so do it!”; they helped sign up over 500 inmates to vote in the
Nov. 2, 2004 election.
This huge but forgotten pool of voters may have their voices heard again
in the electoral process. Some key states now have more formerly disenfranchised
(but now eligible) voters than the 2000 gap between Bush and Gore: in
Ohio (where Bush won by 165,000 votes in 2000) there are 225,000 eligible
voters in the criminal justice system today. And, with millions of these
“hidden votes” in play nationally, ex- felons votes could
be decisive in future elections.
Source: The Black Commentator
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