U.S. National

John Kerry supports a “full investigation” into voting irregularities in Ohio, Rev. Jesse Jackson said Saturday, during a teleconference with media regarding a recount and legal challenge of the Nov. 2 vote.

“John Kerry supports a full investigation,” Jackson said. He recently spoke with the Democratic presidential nominee and reported that Kerry said he conceded the race on the morning after Election Day because “originally, he was inclined to believe what he was told” about the results. On Wednesday, Nov. 3, Kerry said there was little chance he could close George W. Bush’s 130,000-vote lead with the uncounted provisional and absentee ballots.

Jackson’s brief remarks may be the first that shed some light on Kerry’s fast concession – a decision many supporters felt was too hasty. Jackson will be in Ohio today, Sunday, Nov. 28, to declare his support for a recount of the Ohio vote and for a broader investigation into voting patterns that he said were “suspicious” and could have given votes to Bush that he did not earn.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The following study is intended as a companion to STEALING VOTES IN COLUMBUS, and should be read in that context.

The Free Press on Election Day posted a disturbing story, later confirmed by the Columbus Dispatch. The Free Press reported that Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder deliberately withheld voting machines from predominantly black Democratic wards in Columbus, and dispersed some of the machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.

Damschroder is the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party. Sources close to the Board of Elections told the Free Press that Damschroder and Ohio s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell met with President George W. Bush in Columbus on Election Day.

Colin Powell (November 24, 2004), US Secretary o State tells the Ukraine to recount their resent election!! (Associated Press Published November 24, 2004) This is no joke. It seems that Powell was sent the Ukraone by our Commender and Thief to insist that the Nation recount the votes in their election because of suspected FRAUD.

It is a tragedy that Kerry has stood the role of a great leader, who would save our Democratic Republic from the grips of a corrupt and criminal machine, only to run away when things get really tuff. Kerry could have been a Gandhi, or Dr. King, or FDR, but he seem to have been playing an "ego game"? to get the glow of greatness without the substance to do the bidding of that position.

The following is the affidavit by:

As of election night there were 155,428 provisional ballots still to be counted in Ohio. The eagerly awaited Ohio recount cannot possibly begin until after the votes are counted for the first time.

It is now Friday, November 26, 2004. Twenty-four days have passed since the presidential election. There are 88 counties in Ohio. To my knowledge, only 13 have examined their provisional ballots, counted them, and posted the results on their websites. The 13 counties are: Ashland, Brown, Butler, Clinton, Geauga, Greene, Hancock, Montgomery, Pickaway, Preble, Tuscarawas, Union, and Warren.

Altogether, there were 23,873 provisional ballots issued in these 13 counties, or 15.36% of the statewide total. At this rate, it would take five months to count them all. This strikes me as a deliberate stalling tactic to delay the Ohio recount until after the electoral college meets in December.

Here are the unofficial results in the 13 counties, with the sum totals compared with those reported on election night, so as to compute the net gains:

ELECTION RESULTS AFTER COUNTING PROVISIONAL BALLOTS

As I received my assignment to monitor the November 2, 2004, Presidential Election in the swing state (and ultimately the last stand state) of Ohio as part of the Election Protection Program, my mind was filled with one objective: make every vote count. After witnessing the shaming of our democracy in Florida during the 2000 elections I was determined not to let it happen again. We chose Ohio because if any place was going to be the Florida of 2004, Ohio was going to be it. While it wasn’t quite Florida 2000, the election did end up hanging on Ohio. When I awoke at 4:30 a.m. on Election Day, I wasn’t prepared for what I would experience even though I had completed two training sessions. I arrived at 5:30 a.m. at the Election Protection Legal Command Center. I was paired up with a local attorney. We were to rove around six precincts located in African American neighborhoods. As we arrived at the first polling site at 6:30 a.m., lines were already forming. It was then that I knew this would be a very long day. By the time we made it to our second stop we began to see problems.

The Free Press on Election Day posted a disturbing story, later confirmed by the Columbus Dispatch.  The Free Press reported that Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder deliberately withheld voting machines from predominantly black Democratic wards in Columbus, and dispersed some of the machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County.

 

Damschroder is the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party.  Sources close to the Board of Elections told the Free Press that Damschroder and Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell met with President George W. Bush in Columbus on Election Day.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 19 -- The situation was somewhat surreal.  At yesterday's press conference in The Governor's House Hotel, representatives of the 'Election Verification Project', a coalition of technologists, voting rights and legal organizations, seemed strangely out of touch with reality and their own past concerns, as they promoted a plan that leaves voting machines firmly entrenched in the election process. 

Public doubt continues to grow over the 2004 election results.  That doubt is rooted in suspicions surrounding the use of voting machines, suspicions that these very groups helped to cultivate.

Contradictory claims abounded. Kim Alexander, of The California Voter Foundation, sang the praises of touchscreen machines, despite the mayhem she admits their use caused in this year's election. "Problems were reported with all vendors and across most of the states that use e-voting. Electronic voting machines lost votes in North Carolina, miscounted votes in Ohio, and broke down in New Orleans, causing long lines and shut-downs at polling places, " she said. 

Ohio’s 2004 presidential vote will be challenged as soon as next week in the state Supreme Court, a coalition of public-interest lawyers announced Friday.

The lawyers have taken sworn testimony from hundreds of people in hearings in Columbus and Cincinnati, and will use excerpts as well as documents obtained from county election officials and Election Day exit polls to make a case that thousands of votes were incorrectly counted or not counted on Election Day.

“The objective is to get to the truth,” said Columbus Ohio lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, coordinator of the Ohio Honest Elections Campaign. “What’s critically important, whether it’s President Bush or Sen. Kerry, whoever’s been elected actually elected, is to know you won by an honest election. So it’s in the interest of both sides as American citizens to know the truth and have this answered.”

Renewed concerns have been raised since the election about the accuracy and accountability of electronic voting machines. Numerous charges have surfaced in Ohio and elsewhere that, among other problems, voters touched the name on the screen for one Presidential candidate but a vote was cast for another candidate. The overall general concern is that only electronic voting corporation officials have access to the computer code(s) while the public is left out of the vote counting equation. Public Board of Election officials are replaced by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) corporation, Sequioa corporation and Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems corporation-programmed machines to tabulate votes in public elections.

The increasing corporatization of vote counting is simply a step in closing the circle of corporatization of Presidential elections in our society.