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Key Issues For An Informed Ohio Electorate

School funding:
School funding should be equalized with each child getting the same amount of money regardless of whether their parents own a mansion or rent a shack. Vouchers for private schools should end, but publicly chartered voucher schools under school districts should be encouraged. The prison budget should be cut back dramatically by medicalizing drug addiction and ending the senseless war on drugs, and shifting the savings into the school budget.

Key factors for Ohio jobs:
Providing universal health care for all Ohio workers, developing new high-tech and green industries, and going back to the future by building trains, trams and trollies to improve our mass transit system and freight rail and to create jobs.

Why best candidate?
I am more interested in changing the culture of corruption in Ohio than being a player in one of the major political parties. The two major parties are incapable of ending the pay-to-play system in Ohio. Only an outside independent force can restore integrity in Ohio politics. My background as a political scientist, investigative reporter and attorney, I have the skills to bring back honest government to the people of Ohio. I want to see Ohio become a place known for green alternative energies, convenient mass transit, clean air and water, great college and universities, and a place where the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution in enforced.

Appropriate role:
Government should rein in the large trans-national corporations when they engage in anti-social practices such as polluting our environment. Government should encourage the relocalization of small entrepreneurial businesses throughout Ohio. It is illegal for government to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant. Federal officials who engage in such practices should be arrested. Government should move out of people’s bedrooms and quit enforcing an insane racist and class-based war on drugs. There should be a separation of church and state.

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STEALING AMERICA Vote By Vote Film Local Event

STEALING AMERICA
Vote by Vote
A new documentary film by
an OSCAR-nominated, EMMY-wining filmmaker

For more information contact: The Free Press, 614-253-2571, truth@freepress.org
Date: September 10, 2006

On September 24, at 7:30pm the new documentary STEALING AMERICA: Vote by Vote will be shown at the Drexel Gateway Theater, 1550 N. High St.

This film brings together dramatic behind-the-scenes stories related to the election of November 2, 2004. The heart of the story is a candid assessment of ways in which privatized election systems, disenfranchisement of certain populations and vulnerable voting technology are impacting our democracy.
Honors for the Director’s media work include an ACADEMY AWARD nomination and the CPB Gold Medal (Best Short Documentary from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting).

The film features voters in Ohio and interviews with local voting rights activists Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman and Charles Traylor. The event is a fundraiser for the Columbus Free Press.

WHAT:
A screening of the new film STEALING AMERICA: Vote by Vote

WHEN:
September 24, 7:30-9:30pm. Discussion with filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman following the screening.

WHERE:
Drexel Gateway Theater, 1550 N. High St., south OSU campus.

ADMISSION: $8 or $5 for students.
Reporters wanting background information on the film, or on invited guests, should call – the Free Press, 253-2571 or email truth@freepress.org.

Parking is available in the garage behind the theater.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Interviewees include poll workers, computer experts, journalists, politicians, voters of all ages and others concerned about reports that certain communities may have been targeted for intimidation. The film introduces a spectrum of issues, including discrepancies between exit polls and final official tallies, the silence of the media following the election and the impact of technological glitches – for example more votes than voters, and vote flipping from one candidate to another. The film documents stories such as those of inner city voters who experienced waiting hours in line, along with the apparent unequal distribution of voting machines. Throughout, we underscore that election reform is not a partisan issue. It is the responsibility of both Democrats and Republicans to work with each other to address these issues. Various solutions to real problems are integrated into the film.

Our goal is to be provocative, but not confrontational. We want to engage viewers who may be uncomfortable addressing the realities of the election system. Our goal is to open people’s minds to the irregularities in the technology and open their hearts to the devastating impact of disenfranchising voters. The final question that the film poses is: How can we create an election system in which voters have confidence, and in which they can trust that their vote is being counted fairly?

 

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Bill Cohen, Statehouse News With Dr. Fitrakis

Third Party Candidate For Ohio Governor Vows Fight To The Finish 

Bill Cohen, Ohio Public Radio

COLUMBUS, OH (2006-09-18) His name is on the ballot in this year’s race for ohio governor, but he’s been shut out of the debates and is rarely mentioned in news reports. He’s Bob Fitrakis, the favorite of the Green party and activists on the political left. Fitrakis is a lawyer and political science professor from Columbus and he has sparked headlines by helping file two lawsuits, claiming Republicans stole Ohio’s last presidential election and, with it, the national election. Statehouse correspondent Bill Cohen has this audio portrait of a candidate who admits he’s a long shot but isn’t giving up:

 

(original link http://tinyurl.com/r68a4)

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Dr. Fitrakis on Jerry Pippin Show

Jerry Interviews Bob 9/16/06

In this interview, Bob Fitrakis details the various means by which the Republican Party, led by current Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, rigged the 2004 election results in Ohio and assured George Bush’s (literally) taking the state.

Fitrakis has won the Green Party Nomination for Governor of Ohio and this November he will be facing Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and Democrat Ted Strickland.

His running mates, Anita Rios and Tim Kettler are both involved in lawsuits against Blackwell’s official actions which disenfranchised substantial numbers of voters in the last election. Fitrakis, Rios, and Kettler are campaigning (as Greens) to clear the miasma created by both major parties and their big money contributors and operations.

He and Jerry discuss the fact that they both have a love for exposing fraud and corruption and shining the light of truth into the dark corners of the political world.

He’s optimistic about winning the election—or as he puts it, he subscribes to the notion of, “Pessimism of the mind and optimism of the heart.” If elected, his first action will be to prohibit the Ohio National guard from being deployed to Iraq. Which, he knows will result in legal actions and they will be deployed anyway, but the illegality of the war will nevertheless be brought to the fore in the ensuing discussions.

Naturally, Jerry took the opportunity to mention the Muskogee Impeachment Grand Jury during the course of the discussion.

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Bob Fitrakis at Santa Monica Teach-In on Election Fraud And Other Things

From LA City Beat http://tinyurl.com/etxhr

Enter the Fraudbuster          

 

[Elections] Enter the Fraudbuster

When John Kerry conceded Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004, the mainstream media shrugged off all the strange questions about the elections there and the GOP got away with its most rigged federal election since, well, Florida in 2000. But Bob Fitrakis and the writers at Columbus, Ohio’s decades-old lefty news organization, The Free Press, started digging. The end result was a blistering series of articles, precinct-by-precinct poll results, and hard evidence showing how Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who was also running Bush’s state campaign, used dirty tricks to keep as many as 350,000 Democrats from casting legal, counted votes in that election.

Fitrakis published that work as a fat, 772-page tome titled Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? A whole bunch of it then turned into an equally blistering congressional report by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mi), and was then reprised by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair and in a June Rolling Stone story by Robert Kennedy, Jr., who managed to move it back into the mainstream in crystal clear detail.

Now Fitrakis, who is a political science professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences department at Columbus State Community College, is the Green Party candidate for governor in Ohio – if only so he has standing to sue his opponent, Ken Blackwell, if there’s any funny business.

“Our main function in the campaign has been about transparency in the elections and our pledge is to make sure every vote is counted,” Fitrakis says from a campaign stop in Detroit. “I fully intend to sue Mr. Blackwell if he attempts to steal another election in Ohio.”

Fitrakis makes a campaign stop here in Los Angeles this Saturday, first at an elections forum and then at a fundraising dinner hosted by Gore Vidal. But Fitrakis is taking the fight higher. In October, he’s making a formal request for U.N. election watchers to monitor the Ohio contest.

(This event happened Sat 16th Sept.)Election Protection Forum “If They Could Steal Ohio They Could Steal California,” with Gore Vidal, Debra Bowen, Maxine Waters, Brad Friedman, Mimi Kennedy, and Bob Fitrakis, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd. Sat., 3-5 p.m. $10 requested donation. Info at Socalgrassroots.org. “The State of Our Democracy,” dinner discussion with Vidal, Fitrakis, and Ian Masters, 3717 Mountainview, Mar Vista. Sat., 7-9:30 p.m. $50, RSVP essential. Call Pat at (310) 390-8141 or Sheri at (310) 397-6011.

–Dean Kuipers

Also Here is a video of Dr. Fitrakis during the ongoing challenge of the 2004 Election investigation.

Now that the Doctor is back we will have more for you, so stay tuned!

Moderator

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If The President Is Spying On Americans

http://tinyurl.com/roa55

Blackwell Faces Green Challenger in Ohio Governor Race

By Matthew Cardinale, News Editor and National Correspondent
Atlanta Progressive News (September 16, 2006)

(APN) ATLANTA – “People need somebody running who can keep Blackwell from stealing an election. Democrats can’t say ‘Quit stealing,'” Bob Fitrakis, 50, told Atlanta Progressive News.

Fitrakis has won the Green Party Nomination for Governor of Ohio and this November he will be facing Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and Democrat Ted Strickland.

“There’s a socialization process in the media that ‘By god, you don’t challenge the results of the election.’ Because the corporate media would fry them,” Fitrakis said.

Fitrakis is running for many reasons, but one of these is to “give me some [legal] standing,” in case of elections integrity issues in the 2006 Gubernatorial Election in Ohio.

Fitrakis is an amazing person. In addition to running for Governor of Ohio, he is a Professor of Political Science at the Columbus State Community College, the Editor of the Columbus Free Press Newspaper, and an attorney.

Fitrakis’s Republican opponent Blackwell is pretty amazing too.

While apparently treating Blacks not-so-well as Secretary of State during the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio, Blackwell was also the Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Reelection Committee in Ohio. Read more

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Doctor Robert Fitrakis Speaks On His Candidacy For Ohio Governor With Harvey Wasserman

Here is a recording of a show (via www.freepress.org/podcasts) done July 1, 2006 just after Dr. Fitrakis’ candidacy for governor petitions were accepted.

Special Guest, Richard Hayes Phillips, tries to explain 359 consecutive ballots cast for Mr. Bush in the precinct by precinct inspection of ballots and other things in the Ohio (Mexican?) election.

If you had doubts about Ohio election improprieties, doubt no more.

The Editor

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How The GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election And Is Rigging 2008

From the blog Editor:

We will present some recorded audio from time to time when Dr. Fitrakis is busy doing other things to enlighten us here in Ohio and the rest of the planet!..

You can go to www.freepress.org/podcasts for more audio.

The first is Dr. Fitrakis  live on Community Forum speaking about his and Harvey Wasserman’s book How the GOP stole America’s 2004 election and is rigging 2008, and the second a very short clip on Tom NOE the coin dealer, who was just sentenced to 17 months in prison with still more charges pending.

Thanks,

The Editor

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Columbus Dispatch Distains Fact-based Reality

Sorry that I haven’t blogged in awhile. Been busy with many things, particularly the Save the Ballots campaign. I was helping coordinate research information related to the recent lawsuit by civil rights attorneys to save the ballots from the 2004 presidential election from destruction.

The mainstream corporate media’s coverage has been somewhat confusing. The New York Times wrote a ground-breaking story on Thursday, August 31 that everyone should read. It mentioned my forthcoming book , co-authored with Harvey Wasserman and Steve Rosenfeld, “What Happened in Ohio? A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election” by the New Press. While the Times coverage was great, as well as their follow-up editorial questioning e-voting, Ohio’s parochial papers like the Columbus Dispatch have continued their legacy of covering up the election theft and pretending like Ken Blackwell is an honest man.

Recently, they chastised Ted Strickland after their first debate (which did not include Bill Peirce and myself, despite the fact that we are gubernatorial candidates) for suggesting that Blackwell played a key role in Bush becoming president in 2000. Oddly, right wing political sites and the Bush family called J. Kenneth their “secret weapon” and assigned him the role of key election law advisor during the 2000 race in Florida.

The Dispatch has a long history of stating counter-factual information regarding Ken Blackwell and the Bush family’s illegal stealing of two elections. Take today’s paper, that quotes unnamed election officials “at the state and county levels” as saying it was “highly unlikely, if not impossible” for ballots to have been double-punched disproportionately in urban areas in the 2004 election, causing an “overvote” and consequently nullifying votes in heavily pro-Kerry areas. What the Dispatch hasn’t done with its enormous resources, is send its lazy and complacent reporters into actual Boards of Elections to look at real ballots.

On the other hand, the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism/Free Press, with no fulltime staff member, has coordinated efforts that led to researchers looking at more than 50,000 actual ballots. A then-Dispatch reporter informed the Free Press that Michael Dawson, the media spokesperson for U.S. Senator Mike Dewine, lobbied the Dispatch editorial board not to assign any investigative resources to the 2004 election.

That’s why the Free Press is leading the charge to save the ballots, while the Dispatch, which hasn’t endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1916, is leading the coverup.

Yesterday, Sept. 7, U.S. District Court Judge Algernon Marbley ordered all of Ohio’s 88 Boards of Elections to preserve all ballots in paper or electronic form from the 2004 presidential election until the civil rights suit, by inner city black organizations against Ken Blackwell, is resolved. Perhaps the Dispatch may throw off its partisan cloak and act like newspapers did in Florida, and actually count the statewide ballots. You remember:  when all the ballots were actually counted, they found that Gore won. Still, the Dispatch seems comfortable in its non-fact-based reality. Being a closely-held corporation, owned by a multimillionaire Republican family, doesn’t create much incentive for facts.

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