It's been a few days, but I refrained from posting an update (1) because finals come first; (2) I wanted things to calm down a bit here and (3) there really wasn't much news.
As you may have notice, I've changed the title from "Ohio Update" to "Election Update." This is because, as we get closer to inauguration, I'll be adding more about the electoral vote process in the Congress and such.
Ready for an update? Let's roll.
1. Arnebeck's Lawuit refiled...does it even matter?
Attorney Cliff Arnbeck refiled his lawsuit on Monday after it hit a
procedural roadblock last week. He refiled the lawsuit separately, and you can read the updated version
here. Word on the internets is a decision will come down this week.
Lawyers are expensive, and since Arnebeck isn't on Kerry or the Green's payroll, he needs some dough. The legal costs of this are around $200,000. Any donations to the fund are tax-deductible since he's working with a group.
That being said, am I the only that is pissed off at Kerry? Many think he has $51 million sitting in the bank. That's not accurate. He only has a fraction of that for recounts. But the man who said "every vote counts and every vote should be counted" should put up or shut up. No matter how many millions he has, be it $50 million or $14 million, the Ohio recount efforts need a mere $200,000. He gave just as much, more actually, to the WA state recount (as I think he should have) yet here, where people are essentially fighting for him and for the democratic process that our party holds in the highest regard, he's tight with the purse strings. Madness, I say.
2. Remember Conyer's letter to the FBI?
Asking for an investigation into vote tampering? Well, on Monday, the FBI asked the technician to replicate what he did:
Prosecutors and local police found no evidence of election tampering when they watched Monday as a technician repeated a repair to a tallying computer that led a congressman to request an FBI investigation.
Observers, including Green Party representatives who re quested a presidential recount, agreed that the procedure did not alter the hard drive where data are stored, Hocking County Prosecutor Larry Beal said.
"Everybody felt better," he said.
Everybody felt better. Isn't that nice? Keep reading, let's see if the feeling stays....
3. Oh My, Not Just Ohio....
Read here about widespread balloting problems. You'll be shocked, angry, and you'll realize that it's not just about fraud; that our whole system needs overhaulin':
A review of election results in a 10-county sampling revealed
more than 12,000 ballots that failed to record a vote for president, almost one in every 10 ballots cast. The unofficial audit by Scripps Howard News Service uncovered malfunctioning voting machines, improperly designed ballots and poor accounting procedures around the nation.
The review of certified election returns led authorities to restore 662 votes for president in Louisiana and West Virginia that had been miscounted in easily detectable errors made by local officials.
But most of the ballots discovered missing in the study will remain lost.
"I'm so upset over this that I can't sleep," said Sandy Campbell, clerk of Pike County, Ark., upon learning that a damaged optical scanning machine permanently lost nearly 700 votes. "We had no idea this had happened. But I'll know what to look for in the future. We'll try never to let this happen again."
The study - part of a yearlong project examining errors in America's election practices - checked the accuracy of the Nov. 2 election by comparing official results for president against the reported number of ballots cast in more than 2,400 counties nationwide.
Ten counties with some of the nation's worst voting record discrepancies were selected in the project. Local election officials were asked why their vote tallies didn't match their ballot counts.
All but one county official admitted they did not make this important crosscheck before reporting results that, most now concede, contained significant errors. State officials also failed to notice the discrepancies.
[...]
"We're so glad we found this. I don't know how it happened. Thank you so much for calling us," said Registrar of Voters Bettye Moore in Madison Parish, La., after finding errors that misplaced 419 votes for Democrat John Kerry and 15 lost votes for President Bush.
[...]
"I can't believe I did this!" said Jackson County Clerk Sarah Benter upon discovering a 1,664-vote error in her ballot count. "I'm going to have to get with our state Election Division to get this fixed."
[..]
Other problems uncovered in this study found much larger numbers of miscounted votes that cannot be corrected or recovered. The largest discrepancy occurred in Carteret County, N.C., where a programming error in a 10-year-old touch-screen voting machine erased 4,439 ballots.
"It was the most elementary error," said Edward Pond, chairman of the Carteret County Elections Board. "The machine was set so that it had a vote capacity of only 3,005 votes. If I hadn't been there watching the tally, I don't know when we would have noticed this."
Pond said his board plans to "send a letter of apology to each of these voters" and to invite them to a new election Jan. 11 to vote for North Carolina's agriculture commissioner, which is still undecided because of the error.
[...]
Voting machines again came under suspicion in two Arkansas counties where optical scanners apparently falsely reported that hundreds of voters selected two or more presidential candidates, a disqualifying error called "overvoting."
"Basically, we had a mechanical failure," said Pike County Clerk Campbell. The scanner disqualified 692 of the county's 4,083 voters - more than one in six voters. The machine also disqualified 433 votes in the U.S. Senate race for the same reason.
[...]
Officials in two of the 10 counties selected in this study refused to review ballots or check for missing votes.
"I don't have time to go through all of this, although it does sound like it ought to be gotten to the bottom of," said County Clerk John Jones of Worth County, Mo.
Only 1,132 of his 1,326 ballots registered a presidential vote, which means nearly 15 percent of Worth County voters appear to have ignored the presidential race. "Sir, I cannot record votes for president that are not there," Jones said later.
Only 2,063 of the 2,283 ballots cast in Adams County, Idaho, registered a vote for president. Officially, only 90 percent of the voters in this rural county had an opinion in the presidential race.
"If you can convince the secretary of state of Idaho to order a recount and to reimburse my county for it, then we'll do a recount. But I'm not going to do it," said Adams County Clerk Michael Fisk. "All of that stuff has been put away. What difference does it make? The election is over."
Fisk said Scripps Howard's request that he review he election tallies angered him.
"You are not going to assert that any votes are missing in Adams County. I'm not going to listen to that stuff. Goodbye," With that, Fisk hung up the telephone.
Frustrated yet? Our elections are far from perfect --- they're so far from perfect, they need to get on a shuttle and travel a few hundred thousand light years just to reach perfect.
What we have here is a toxic combination of malfunctioning computers, carelessness, and apathy across the nation...all which leave the door wide open for manipulation. As my newly changed signature says: "Where's my damn paper trail?"
4. Must Reads
WiredNews has a skeptical perspective on the recount.
A short little blurb on the "Stealth Recont"
Stephen Crockett has a good piece, The Republican Leadership's Problem With Democracy
The powerful alliance of our largest media corporations with Bush Republicanism has stifled awareness of the vote fraud issue for most casually informed Americans. Republican buzz words like "conspiracy theory" have routinely been substituted for real investigative journalism. Non-fact based criticism of exit polling has been substituted for real mathematically based analysis of fishy vote totals. The media has been harping on the fictional "Bush mandate" and "morality voting" when real journalism would be examining the serious threat to American Democracy in vote fraud and not having legal votes counted.
The entire American way of life is under attack by a small number of politically and economically powerful leaders in our government, media and some elements of our largest businesses. We have Fox News, Sinclair TV stations, most other major newspapers and TV stations, the corporate controlled Republican Right Wing talk radio programs along with the rest of the Corporate Media all spinning the news we see in ways that make being an informed voter difficult. We are constantly fed the Corporate Republican view on everything. We have almost all voting machines manufactured by companies with close ties to Republican partisans. These companies control our vote counting process often with no auditable paper-trail.
Robert Lockwood Mills, The Greatest Story Never Told
None of the above news has reached holiday revelers in this Christmas season. The same media that failed to investigate Bush administration claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq now won't explore what happened on Nov. 2. They're eager to report to us on fraudulent elections in Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, Kazakhstan, even Puerto Rico. But the very notion that an administration that deceived the American people about why it engaged in preemptive war against a country that wasn't threatening us, would also rig an election in its own favor, is somehow incomprehensible.
[...]
Where are our Three Wise Men today? Where is the Star of Bethlehem in 2004? Will the truth be known? It would be a wonderful Christmas present for a country that has lost its way.
How about some Pravda? Seriously. Check out this quote:
So what does this "tale of two elections" prove?: That the Ukraine is a democracy in its birth-pangs, where integrity in the democratic process is not only expected but demanded, while America is a democracy in its death-throes, where corruption and fraud have become an entrenched and accepted part of the political landscape. [...]
But how did America arrive at this sordid state, where fraud masquerades as democracy, where so-called "morality" apparently does not condemn the "bearing of false witness" to wage illegal wars, and where a man as venal, megalomaniacal, ignorant, dishonest and hypocritical as George W. Bush is viewed by many as a paradigm of virtue?
The answer resides in the Bush dictatorship"s ability to exploit and manipulate America"s reaction to the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001..."
Pravda. No shit.
Football fans out there? X-Files fans? Read 37 Reasons To Ignore Election Fraud" Great back and forth of how to respond to people who aren't ready to buy into a flawed election. My fav:
'Say Uncle' Argument: "It should stop." RESPONSE The wheels of justice are too loud. The warm feeling of sand in our ears and the close-up view of the worms in this hole is quite comfortable. Our democracy just cannot take all this scutiny. Stop it!"
5. Must Sees
RECOUNTDOWN!
With Keith Olbermann (::swoon::) Very entertaining!
Curti's sworn testimony before the Judiciary Committee. Full version finally available via Bradblog. While you're there, check out the audio from Curtis' interview on Sunday.
Arnebeck interview on CSPAN
Video The Vote, Michael Moore's video documenting voter problems on Nov. 2.
6. Must Dos
1. Read roseiter's diary about the rumblings going on with Electors. Conyers apparently said he has a senator, or more than one, to contest the election. I am still waiting for a confirmation email from the radio station where he said this. First, let's catch up on the law. Under 3 U.S.C. §15:
Objections to the electoral vote must be called for and considered prior to voting on final certification. Rules for objections are:
* Objections, in order to be considered, must be signed by at least one Senator and one Representative.
* There are two acceptable reasons for objections: (1) a dispute over the qualifications of the electors who cast those votes, or (2) the electors cast their votes for a candidate other than the one they were pledge to, called "faithless" electors.
History lesson! When was the last time there was an objection to the Electoral College results? (cue Jeopardy music...)
Anyone?
1969.
A Rep. and Senator objected in writing to the counting of one electoral vote from North Carolina. But both houses rejected the objection.
See, when an objection is received, the joint session is suspended while each house meets and considers it separately. Just because you make an objection doesn't make it valid. Unless both houses of Congress agree to it, the objection fails and the votes count as cast. If both houses do agree, the objection stands and the disputed votes are not counted.
So, when is the last time an objection was made AND accepted? (cue Jeopardy music again....)
1877.
Yep. I think we're about due for another one. Read all the juicy details of the Hayes vs. Tilden showdown here . Study up! We might need to know this stuff for stratergery.
2. Speaking of stratergery, read up on the dirty details of electoral college ratification here Scintillating stuff.
3. Donate to the Ohio recount fund, help Arnebeck raise his funds.
That's about it for now. I'll do the Ohio diary round-up in a bit.
Update [2004-12-21 14:27:50 by georgia10]:: Let's get some confirmation on the Conyers statement, shall we?
I want to hear his intonation on this. Listen to the Ed Shultz show today 3 pm - 6pm Eastern, where he will be replaying the Conyers interview.
Also, head on over to Michael Moore and notice his front page: Ohio: A Crime Against Democracy. It's an article by Stuart Comstock-Gay (Executive Director of the Voting Rights Institute). He gives a general overview or call to action of sorts. Interesting that Moore, Mr. "There was no fraud, Bush won" has placed this article on his website.
On a tangential note, I've been talking with some people today about the election developments and they dropped the phrase "Banana Republican." Have you read the book? Better yet...have you seen the website?
Hysterical.
Until the next update...