Happy New Year Kossacks! I hope everyone had a blast and isn't nursing too much of a hangover!
Well, I may get banished for this post, but I gots to say what I gots to say... I think Armando's challenge is bull, but I understand why he did it.
First, why it isn't and then onto why it is.
[more below the fold]
I wasn't actually even going to mention the lack of serious thought and investigation that has passed for recommended diaries on the election, but after seeing the "What is the AP hiding?" diary front and center this morning, I will touch on it.
This is exactly why the voter rights activists get dismissed as tin foil hat. Right off the bat I have to assume that most of the people who recommended the diary and who handed out 4's like they were going out of style didn't actually read the "evidence". If they had, they would have realized there was no story.
The diarist misinterpreted what she read and based on all the brouhaha running rampant across the internet thought she had discovered a huge story.
Unfortunately for all of us, there is no story. Let's recap the claims in the diary and then move on:
This is the beginning of the post -
What is the Associated Press hiding? Why has this venerable organization (recently acquired by the conglomorate that also owns the Dallas Morning News, whose owner is Chairman of the Board) refused to provide Representative John Conyers and his staff the information about the election they have requested?
Is it because they do not want it know how many other states, besides Illinois allowed them to take a direct feed from their central vote tabulating computers?
Is it because they do not want to reveal which public officials were paid for providing this "special access" to the public's records? Or maybe that they actually got it for free?
Is it because they now realize that their arrangements with these states, probably the ones where the election returns were expected to be really close, provided a back door through which the vote was "hacked?"
Is it because there is now the risk that their vaunted "election news packages" will go down in flames when it becomes known that the results were bogus?
Wow, sounds pretty damning right? But if you actually read the source material that supposedly proves the above assertions you will find that they didn't have a direct feed into the central tabulation systems...
Q: How will the votes be counted?
A: By 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday the first of nearly 5,000 stringers will have started to report to county election centers. When the first polls close, at 6 p.m. in Indiana and Kentucky, they'll be ready to start phoning in the raw vote as it is counted. They'll place their calls to one of AP's 16 vote collection centers, the largest of which is the Western Election Center in Spokane, Wash.
A total of 450 vote entry clerks will punch in the numbers on a computer screen and feed them onto the state and national election tables that will be seen in the newsrooms of AP's members.
So where is the direct feed? Who knows, it certainly wasn't referenced in this piece. All they said was they had people on the ground phoning in results to the AP who would then data enter the results and disseminate. Illinois was mentioned as a state that absolutely gave the AP a direct feed, but no link was provided to back up the assertion.
It's pretty discouraging IMO to keep pushing non-issues to the front of the pack and giving ammunition to those who would call anyone questioning the election crazy.
That's why Armando issued the challenge from what I gather. Because too many diaries were being recommended that contained dubious claims. So he wanted a case to be made with actual evidence prior to front paging it. Fair enough on its face.
But it is bull. And here's why...
This is a news story. Plain and simple. At least two elected Representatives have said they will challenge the slate of electors from Ohio (Conyers & Waters). Regardless if you agree or disagree with their opinions or the findings of the investigations to date, this is news and deserves as much coverage as the WA recount on the front page.
There is an election lawsuit that Kerry has filed papers in support of, on-going in Ohio. This is just fact and news. By all means put caveats in that we are certainly not saying we have definitive evidence and investigations are on-going, but regardless, this is happening and these issues have been alleged in the lawsuit and in voter and witness testimony.
Here are some more facts from Ohio (source links follow at the end of the piece):
- Kenneth Blackwell, the OH SoS served as party co-chairman for the re-election effort of Bush.
- Kenneth Blackwell filed papers with the OH Supreme Court asking for a "protective order" that would recuse him from being interviewed or testifying due to his status as a high-ranking public official, and accused the voters challenging the results of 'frivolous conduct' and abusive and unnecessary requests of elections officials.
- In Fairfield County, a full recount should have been ordered when the 3% test sample did not match the official vote totals. Instead, based on what county officials said was a recommendation from Mr. Blackwell's office, the recount was "suspended" so that they would not have to do a full recount.
- Votes on electronic machines provided by a funder of Mr. Bush's switched votes for Kerry to Bush multiple times while voters attempted to cast their ballots. This was witnessed by many voters and election officials across multiple precincts and counties, including Mahoning County. During hearings, Mark Munroe, Chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Election, confirmed that vote switching problems occurred in at least 16 precincts and involved some 20 to 30 ES&S machines that "needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent".
- More votes than registered voters were recorded for Bush in at least one OH precinct (Gahanna) and there were many similar reports of machines malfunctioning on election day.
- A careful review of nearly 200 precincts in Trumbull County revealed a considerable discrepancy between the number of certified absentee votes and the number of registered absentee voters identified in the poll books. The investigation showed some 650 more absentee votes than there were absentee voters identified in the poll books examined. Blackwell refused to allow the poll books to be examined prior to certification and the discovery of these types of discrepancies.
- In heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, amidst record turnouts, a predominantly African-American precinct, Cleveland 6C, was certified with just a 7.85 percent turnout. The official count was 45 votes for Kerry versus one for Bush, in a precinct where the day's overall voter turnout would have indicated eight or nine times as many voters.
- In districts that heavily supported Mr. Kerry, voters were required to wait in lines of up to 6 hours to cast their votes. Mr. Blackwell removed voting machines from these precincts and moved them to precincts expected to favor Mr. Bush.
- Long established voting locations were moved at the last minute in districts favoring Kerry and ballots cast provisionally were often discarded for being cast at the wrong location.
- A precinct signature book in Champaign County, necessary to verify that the number of votes that were cast, will not be made available to opposition recount observers until four days after the election is certified on Jan.6th per orders of Blackwell.
- A technician from one of the electronic voting machine companies dismantled Hocking County's tabulation computer days before the recount and "put a patch on it." The technician then provided a "cheat sheet" to the board of elections in order to ensure the machine and hand count totals matched. Similar instances have been recorded in other locations in OH as well.
- In the Miami County town of Concord, certified returns show that all but 10 registered voters cast ballots on Election Day. But the election challenge team has already identified more than 10 registered Concord citizens who did not vote, an incongruity that may point to election fraud.
- In the heavily Republican southern county of Perry, Blackwell certified one precinct with 221 more votes than registered voters. Two precincts -- Reading S and W. Lexington G -- were let stand in the officially certified final vote count with voter turnouts of roughly 124% each.
- Voters in Trumbull County have testified that on Election Day they received punch-card ballots where holes were already punched for Bush.
- The companies who provided the electronic voting machines have consistently refused requests to examine the source code and it had been demonstrated prior to the election by voting rights activists that it is relatively easy to hack the vote.
These are but a few of the many irregularities and deliberate instances of vote suppression that have been documented in hearings and testimony the last few weeks in Ohio.
Finally, the exit polls showed Kerry with a 4.2% lead over Bush, but the vote results gave Bush an alleged 2.5% victory over Kerry, a 6.7% final vote tally percentage shift toward Bush. The exit polls were an important factor in the Ukrainian election (and were funded by the Bush administration) and have been examined by professors at Temple and the University of Chicago.
This at least, with all of the above information, requires a thorough examination of the election in Ohio. Waiting for the system to fix itself is fantasy and will continue to ensure voter disenfranchisement and Republican victories for the forseeable future.
So, bottom line, I think Armando is mistaken in requiring us bloggers to provide evidence (at least as much as the TANG story) when it is all right in front of us. And regardless, it is a news story. Jesse Jackson was even interviewed in the most current issue of Newsweek about it and the NYT has run election related editorials recently...
Sigh
My two cents...
Election links:
Cobb Recount HQ
The Free Press
House Judiciary letter to Triad(pdf)
Wired News
TruthOut.org
Rep. Conyers letter to Senators
AP - Blackwell refusing to testify
Temple prof battleground exit polls
UofC prof national exit polls