, , , ,

Bye Bye To Cleveland GOP Election Chair Bob “Ballots For Bush” Bennett

We Do Not Concede

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
April 16, 2007

Ohio’s Bob “Ballots for Bush” Bennett, an essential player in putting George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004, is no long chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. His milestone resignation leaves a legacy of scandal, recrimination, massive voter purges, felony convictions and a pivotal role in a stolen presidential election.

Bennett has quit in a signature cloud of graceless accusations and cheap shots at Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s newly elected Secretary of State, who asked him to resign along with the rest of the Cleveland election authority. His forced departure marks the biggest landmark yet in the unraveling theft of the presidential elections in Ohio 2004.

Bennett remains chair of the Ohio Republican Party. In 2004 he was apparently asked by White House consigliere Karl Rove to stay on at the Cuyahoga BOE to help guarantee Bush’s second term. Cleveland is Ohio’s biggest and most Democratic urban center. A massive sweep there by John Kerry was widely expected to have given him the White House. It was Bennett’s job to mute that margin, and apparently that’s exactly what he did.

Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including 24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry. In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.

In a report issued December 7, 2004, the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition (GCVRC) reported that in addition to the purge of registered voters, some 3.5% of those applying for new registrations were never even entered on the rolls by Bennett’s BOE, or were entered incorrectly, which would result in disenfranchisement of those who had just tried to become new voters. Additionally, the GCVRC estimated that “over 10,000 voters in Cuyahoga County would be compromised because of these clerical errors.”

Bennett refused to respond to the report’s initial conclusions. When the study became public, BOE Executive Director Michael Vu accused the study coordinator of “inciting panic.” Vu did not respond to GCVRC’s request for the reinstatement of 303 voter registrations where there was direct evidence that they had been wrongly cancelled.

The GCVRC also documented that the Cuyahoga County BOE incorrectly classified 463 properly registered voters as not registered. This included 201 voters who were registered on BOE computers on August 17, but for some unexplained reason, were removed from the rolls by October 22. They then were forced to vote provisionally and their votes were rejected as not registered.

In Brunner’s formal complaint against Bennett she cited the fact that Bennett’s BOE did nothing when an estimated 10,000 voters were thrown off the voting roll by a Diebold voter registration computer glitch.

Also, Bennett’s BOE rejected 262 properly registered voters included on its own list as of October 22. They incorrectly listed 183 as not registered and 79 as no signatures. “The Board did not contest our data,” said the GCVRC, “but said again it was just a small percentage due to human error, and then proceeded to certify the entire Cuyahoga County vote even though they thereby knowingly possibly disenfranchised 463 individuals.”

Parallel purges were conducted by Republican-controlled boards of election in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) where some 105,000 voters were purged from the rolls, and in Lucas County (Toledo), where some 28,000 were purged in an unprecedented move in late August 2004. These remain the only three counties in the state known to have conducted massive registration purges prior to the 2004 election. The three mass urban purges decimated the rolls in heavily Democratic areas. Since then, another 170,000 voters have been purged from the rolls in Franklin County, primarily in the heavily Democratic Columbus precincts. Many rural Republican counties, like Miami, practice a “no-purge” policy.

From his post at the helm of both the Ohio GOP and the Cuyahoga BOE, Bennett was at the center of the purges. Many of the 300,000-plus purged voters reported that they never received notice that their voting rights had been cancelled. Should the general 80% pro-Democratic inner city margins have prevailed for all three purged lists, the net loss to the Kerry camp could have been in the range of 100,000 votes.

In addition to the purges, Bennett was also at the center of the election challenges to college students in Democratic enclaves.

Bennett is infamous for far more than massive voter purges. Under his supervision, a legally mandated recount of the 2004 presidential vote was illegally manipulated. Ohio law says precincts must be chosen at random for hand counting as part of the recount process. But two Cuyahoga BOE employees have been convicted of a felony and a misdemeanor each, and have each been sentenced to eighteen months in prison for what prosecutors have called “rigging” the recount.

Bennett was also instrumental in the purchase of some $20 million in Diebold voting machines for 2006 statewide elections. Election protection activists vehemently opposed the purchase, as seen in a nationally televised HBO special, “Hacking Democracy.” Under Bennett and Cuyahoga BOE Executive Director Michael Vu, the machines malfunctioned in Ohio’s 2006 primary, with vote count reporting delayed for five days.

Long-time election activist Adele Eisner characterizes Bennett’s reign at the Cuyahoga BOE as a “culture with fear.” Among other things, Bennett chose to disregard long-standing laws requiring that election results be posted at the precinct level, a decision backed by Ohio’s former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

In a recent audit of the general 2006 elections, Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips found that in the initial vote count, “Cuyahoga County alone accounted for 148,928 undervotes, or 42.47% of the statewide total.” The undervotes occurred in the race for U.S. Senate, where voters apparently opted to not vote for either incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine or Democrat Sherrod Brown, the eventual winner. The undervotes represented 26.48% of the county’s voters.

But, says Philips, “Once the official results were posted, Cuyahoga’s undervote total fell to 3.25%,” leaving him to wonder “how the unofficial results could have been so erroneous in the first place.”

Hayes also found that Cuyahoga County reported 30,791 uncounted absentee and provisional ballots. After these ballots were counted, they reported 39,262 votes, an outcome Phillips terms mathematically “impossible.”

Bennett and Vu were also responsible for more than $12,900,000 in BOE cost overruns, more than doubling the agency’s original budget of $11,000,000.

Vu resigned earlier this year, and has since been hired as an Assistant Registrar of Voters in San Diego County, the number two spot, with a $10,000 salary increase to $130,000 a year. The San Diego Union-Tribune noted that, “Vu’s resignation followed a tumultuous 3 1/2-year tenure as election chief, including a disastrous May 2006 primary when the county began using new electronic voting machines.”

In response to the chaos and recrimination, Brunner requested the resignations of the Cuyahoga board’s two Democrats and two Republicans. Only Bennett vowed to fight his removal.

But he has now become the highest election board official to resign here amidst the deepening scandals surrounding the 2004 election. He has joined the growing Republican chorus echoing Rove’s line that the Democrats are preparing to steal the 2008 election.

But Brunner has taken custody of the 2004 ballots and other vote count materials, which are currently protected by a federal court decision. She is expected to bring them from Ohio’s 88 county boards to a central repository in Columbus.

Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that Karl Rove and the GOP had real-time computer access to both the actual vote numbers in Ohio as well as the exit polling data that would have allowed them to direct how many votes they needed from the suspect Ohio southwestern Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin of victory in the 2004 election. Stay tuned.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman’s books include HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION and WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO from the New Press (with Steve Rosenfeld). https://freepress.org/store.php

Original article at: https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2542

/by
, , , ,

From cover-ups to sunshine: Brunner And Dann Roll Back The Legacy Of Blackwell And Petro

constitution_mth.jpgBy Bob Fitrakis

To paraphrase the late investigative reporter I.F. Stone: Everything we need to know is in the public record. The problem during the Voinovich and Taft years is the fact that public papers were treated like corporate trade secrets. The fact that touchscreen computer voting machines are programmed with private proprietary software is a reflection of the much bigger problem of authoritarianism in the U.S. government.

Benjamin Marrison’s commentary entitled “Dann’s fight for Ohioans to know” in the Sunday, April 8, 2007 Columbus Dispatch provides the proper analysis in distinguishing why corruption has flourished in Ohio.

Having spent nearly two and a half years trying to uncover what happened in the 2004 election, I was occasionally with arrest and usually denied access to public records. The dynamic duo of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Attorney General James Petro worked as follows: the first would urge his county board of elections (BOE) employees not to turn over records and the second would do nothing when the county prosecutors violated their oath of office and refused to hand over voting records.

Eventually, the threatened lawsuits, papers filed and records requests would slowly prevail, but it wasn’t really until the summer of 2006 that many of the ballots, pollbooks and purge lists requested were made available in limited numbers.

There is one exception. Steve Quillen, the Republican appointed director of the board of elections in Miami County remains the only BOE official who acted in good faith and practiced full transparency. Despite some voting irregularities in his county, Quillen’s actions were never called into questions because he did nothing to cover up those activities.

As for most of the state’s other BOEs, particularly those in rural southwest Ohio, Ohio’s new Attorney General Marc Dann needs to go after one of the public officials down there and put his or head on a pike – figuratively, I mean. That’s why the convictions of the BOE workers in Cuyahoga County are so important. It sends a message that law-breaking and election tampering, no matter what the excuse – I was tired and didn’t want to do a real recount as required by law – will end your career and land you in jail.

That’s why Dann’s recent actions in enforcing the sunshine law by pointing out that the Ohio Public Utilities Commissioners were illegally appointed is of great symbolic value. Equally important is Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s actions this week taking custody of all the public records from the controversial 2004 presidential election. Brunner’s commitment to the public records act coupled with Dann’s bold recent actions are first steps to re-establishing rule by the people in the Buckeye State.

/by
, , ,

Ohio’s 2006 Vote Count Now Includes A Higher Percentage Of Uncounted ballots than in 2004, And A Statistically Impossible Swing To The Republicans

by Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman and Ron Baiman
November 14, 2006

Original Article @ https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2250

The percentage of uncounted votes in the allegedly “fraud free” 2006 Ohio election is actually higher than the fraud-ridden 2004 election, when the presidency was stolen here. A flawed voting process that allowed voters to be illegally turned away throughout the morning on Election Day may have cost the Dems at least two Congressional seats and a state auditor’s seat.

The evidence comes directly from the official website of GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell Blackwell website. But researchers wishing to verify the number of uncounted ballots from that web site should do so immediately, as Blackwell is known for quickly deleting embarrassing evidence. In 2004, Blackwell deleted the evidence of excessive uncounted votes after the final results were tallied.

Despite Democratic victories in five of six statewide partisan offices, an analysis by the Free Press shows a statistically implausible shift of votes away from the Democratic Party statewide candidates on Election Day, contrasted with the results of the Columbus Dispatch’s final poll. The Dispatch poll predicted Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland winning with 67% of the vote. His actual percentage was 60%. The odds of this occurring are one in 604 million. 

(Freepress has numbers matrix/chart in this area)

The final Columbus Dispatch poll wrapped up on Friday before the Tuesday election. This poll was based on 1541 registered Ohio voters, with a margin of error at plus/minus 2.2 percentage points and a 95% confidence interval. The Dispatch noted “The survey’s 7-point variance from Democrat Ted Strickland’s actual percentage total broke a string of five straight gubernatorial elections in which the poll exactly matched the victor’s share of the vote.” Read more

/by
, ,

Thanks To All Fraudbuster, Wherever You Are

thankyou_mth.gifWow! The campaign is now over. Congratulate yourselves for a job well done.

Thanks to all of you who participated in and supported our historical and inaugural statewide campaign for the Green Party in Ohio. The approximately 40,000 votes that Anita Rios and I received in the Governor/Lt. Governor race and the more than 70,000 votes Tim Kettler received in the Secretary of State’s race only came a result of many hours of tireless work by numerous volunteers.

In many ways, the campaign was key in defeating Ken Blackwell. For two years, often while the Democrats ducked and covered, our independent and tenacious army of election rights activists unflinchingly attacked Blackwell and his corrupt cronies. I’m not sure Ted Strickland ever said anything negative about Blackwell. Well, we did and more importantly, it was fact-based. We were the fraudbusters. Blackwell and Bush, the fraudsters. Bye, Bye, Blackwell.

The campaign was also historically significant because of the continued role of the Green Party in taking on the great moral issues of the day in Ohio.

First and foremost, I want to thank Phil Nash and Emi Ireland – the webmaster and webmistress extraordinaire. Their work is rapidly passing into the realm of legend. I also want to thank Steve Caruso, who tirelessly updated and monitored the website and blogsite. He is humble and worked quietly in the background, but his efforts made a great impact on public debate in Ohio.

Paul Dumouchelle dutifully kept track of our limited funds and filed the time-consuming al often boring financial reports. I would not have run if he hadn’t agreed to serve as Treasurer. Thank you, Paul! I also want to thank Dorri Steinhoff, who stepped forward to manage the campaign in its early stages and throws some of the best parties I’ve ever attended.

Thanks also go out to the Cincinnati supporters my favorite blogger Andrew Warner, event organizer and mighty emcee Justin Jeffre, the Dean of Cincinnati fighting for truth-justice-and the American Way even when his ballot is eaten by a machine, and to Josh – the fearless leader of the Cincinnati Greens.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my loyal and blunt-speaking running mate Anita Rios. I think we would have gotten more votes if her name was at the top of the ticket! She was a joy to campaign with and sings a mean version of “White Rabbit.” Thanks to her husband, Robert, for being loyal, as well.

Tim Kettler, Roberta his wife and son Malcolm campaigned steadfastly with us throughout the year – even marching in the Gay Pride parade and were the fixtures behind our Ohio State Fair booth. Tim and his family were always there, at every event, bringing food and good cheer to everyone! We will miss hanging around with them.

Finally, I have to express my heartfelt appreciation to my two top campaign staffers.

Paddy Shaffer worked night and day as the campaign manager. She was the dynamo behind the “Five Candidate Election Observer Project 2006” and even accompanied me to my Gore Vidal fundraiser in California. She has earned some well-deserved sleep and the thanks from voting rights activists everywhere.

Judith Powell was there from the beginning. She’s the key reason we ended up on the ballot. Between her and Margie Daffey, the greatest petitioner of all time, we got more than12,000 signatures. While she often told me how proud she was of the work I was doing and the words I was speaking, she never seemed to understand how I was equally proud of her rele

/by
, , , ,

A Monumental Victory For The Election Protection Movement

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 8, 2006

The real winner in the November 7 election is the grassroots voter protection movement.

That the well-oiled, well-funded Rove/Bush theft machine lost control of the US House with the Senate as close as it is says just one thing: somebody was watching. In 2006, that would be thousands of volunteer grassroots activists who left no stone unturned to expose rigged voting machines, Jim Crow registration roadblocks, trashed provisional ballots, manipulated absentee voting processes, and much more.

A nationwide movement has been born to apply the lessons of the stolen elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004. In the lead-up to 2006, activists and independent experts scrutinized voting machines and electoral processes as never before. Mainstream media reports from the New York Times to CNN’s Lou Dobbs to hundreds of radio talk shows finally paid attention to “glitches” and “problems” and “long lines” and “disputes” that just an election cycle ago were dismissed as “business as usual” or the stuff of conspiracy theory. Read more

/by
, , , ,

Sweet Dreams on Election Eve

Blackwell is fighting desperately to keep the GOP ship of state afloat. But it looks like a remake of the Titanic.

Just recently, Vicki Lovegren reported from Cleveland that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections was threatening her with arrest for obstructing official business. Blackwell issued a directive last week refusing to allow amendments for Party and independent candidate observers at the polls and boards of elections. This is another indicator that theft is at hand.

Also, there are reports of tens of thousands of absentee ballots being held at the airport post office in Columbus, Ohio because there’s only one stamp on the envelope instead of two.

Moreover, it’s now confirmed that the Republicans have flagged an estimated million or more people in hopes of forcing them to vote provisionally. They did this by sending out 60-day notices to voters about bringing ID to the polls and other changes from H.B. 3 from the BOEs and, if they were returned, the voters are now “flagged.”

Nevertheless, if everyone stays strong and vigilant – and turn out and vote – there’s nothing the Republicans can do to beat the power of the people. Go to sleep tonight with a positive dream. Representative John Conyers with a subpoena chasing Bush, Cheney and Rove.

Check Out Dr. Bob, Peter Peckarsky and Harvey Wasserman on Lou Dobbs!!!!!!

From CNN Monday, Nov 6, 2006 6:30 P.M.

http://tinyurl.com/yn7nbf

/by
, ,

Tuesday’s Outcome May Depend On The Power Of The Election Protection Movement

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
November 5, 2006

On Election Day 2006, the American people will almost certainly vote to give the Democratic Party one or both houses of Congress.

We will vote to restore at least some of the checks and balances written into the Constitution of the United States. We will vote to end the reign of terror and error imposed on the nation and world since the stolen election of 2000. State by state, governorships and legislatures should return to the opposition party.

All the polls, and all the instincts of credible students of American politics, indicate this will happen. Anyone familiar with the history of the American electorate can be reasonably certain that the issues of war, deficits, economy, environment, scandal, sexual imposition and more will overwhelmingly favor a traditional rejection of the party in power.

But in 2006, the party in power has installed a nationwide system of election theft. And the outcome of Tuesday’s election may depend on the ability of the grassroots American citizenry to overcome this infernal machine.

The GOP engine of vote theft is built primarily on two pillars:

First is the massive disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democrats, including millions of people of color. Second is the simultaneous inflation of mostly rural and suburban Republican votes, including the mythological influx of “last-minute evangelicals” who may well exist primarily in the memory cards of rigged electronic machines.

Throughout the country, a concerted effort by the Republican Party has crippled voter registration drives. In Ohio some 500,000 citizens who were already registered –some ten percent of the electorate—have been deleted (many without notification) in the Democratic strongholds of Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton and Lucas Counties. With easily manipulated electronic registration books now in place, or private partisan vendors controlling registration rolls, throughout the US, millions more may have been deleted or flagged in other largely Democratic urban areas.

Based on what we know from Florida 2000, stolen Senatorial races in 2002, and Ohio 2004, here are some of the things we can expect from the GOP on Tuesday:

Disenfranchisement of alleged “ex-felons,” even in states where it is not illegal for ex-felons to vote, or their intimidation through anonymous phone calls; denial, misprinting and failure to send absentee ballots; denial of voting rights at polling stations through unreasonable or illegal demands for identification; insufficient numbers of voting machines and/or paper ballots at inner city and college town precincts; malfunctioning of those machines and misprinting of those ballots, rendering them erroneous or deliberately confusing; misrepresentation of requirements to obtain regular or provisional ballots; outright trashing of ballots at the voting stations; declaration of phony Homeland Security alerts to remove ballot counting from public scrutiny; outright refusal to count ballots (as in Ohio, where more than 100,000 cast in 2004 have yet to be tallied); termination of the traditional posting of outcomes at precincts; subversion of the recount process.

All this and more was used to steal the elections of 2000 and 2004, and has been documented and broadcast through the internet, at sites such as blackboxvoting.com, freepress.org, bradblog.com and many more. Despite a mainstream media blackout and the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to face this issue, there is no reason to be surprised on Tuesday.

It will not be enough to rely on polls indicating victory, or to call voters to turn out, or to merely vote on Election Day.

No citizen should be turned away without an election protection monitor documenting it. No monitor should be turned away without full documentation and a call to the police. No ballot should be trashed without sworn affidavits as to why. No recount should be conducted without total public scrutiny.

In all cases, we ask anyone involved to send a report to democracy@freepress.org, with at least your publishable e-mail address included.

We further urge that throughout the states, public post-election hearings be convened in the presence of a court stenographer, so that sworn testimony and affidavits can be available for later litigation.

Such documentation has proven crucial in the lawsuits that have preserved the Ohio 2004 ballots and other voting rights here. It will be at the core of continued efforts to restore American democracy.

Electronic voting machines remain problematic. There is no magic bullet except for absolute scrutiny, persistence, and a willingness to fight it out over every electron. Even with high tech thievery, if the People are vigilant, the Truth can eventually win out. The higher the voter turnout, and the greater the vigilence by voters, the more difficult for Bush and Rove to steal the election, and the more likely we are to catch them if they try.

We expect more tricks we’ve not yet seen. Even as we write this, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, is imposing new regulations for obtaining a ballot.

But there is no excuse for throwing up one’s hands in despair. Or for doing nothing in the face of the obvious.

As with the recent rise of the movements for civil rights, peace, social justice and ecological survival, the public campaign for election protection has exploded from the handful to the many to the multitudes.

The power of pro-active grassroots democracy will be sorely tested on Tuesday. The stakes could not be higher.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. They are of counsel and plaintiff in the King Lincoln voter protection lawsuit in Ohio. Bob is an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party. Harvey’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is available at www.solartopia.org.

/by
, ,

The Power Of A Social Movement Can Beat The GOP Double Chickenhawks

The power of a social movement can beat the GOP double Chickenhawks
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
November 2, 2006

It’s never been more true that the one thing we Americans can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we have never elected him president of the United States.

The regime is even more despised than ever, in part because the derogatory term “chickenhawk” now applies in all its worst double meanings.

And while Bush and Karl Rove crow that they’re about to “win” again, we think they are about to run into their worst nightmare: a full-blown grassroots social movement.

The GOP strategy for stealing 2006 is much the same as in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, and in key Senatorial elections in 2002: mass disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democratic voters, combined with mass inflation of mostly rural Republican votes.

The primary tools for disenfranchisement include the decimation of voter registration lists and outright harassment of would-be Democratic voters. In Ohio alone, there has been the electronic disenfranchisement of some ten percent of the state’s registered voters, along with the virtual abolition of the recount process. The attack also includes trashing ballots once cast, combined with fraudulent tabulations and rigged electronic voting machines whose software is kept secret.

The theft is hidden behind the escalating abolition of public reporting mechanisms. In 2006, this will include the virtual elimination of major media support for exit polling. Other staples of public reporting will also be crippled, as is now happening in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio, and elsewhere around the US. Needless to say, there is much much more.

The GOP cover line is familiar. Bush/Rove now claim published pre-election polls are inaccurate. As they push/pull the vote count they will explain away unlikely Republican margins in rural areas by conjuring up mythological hordes of “evangelical voters.” America hosts, to be sure, many millions of right-wing Christian voters. But as we have seen in our preliminary examinations of the 2004 ballots, the decisive numbers attributed to them may well exist only in the minds of the corporate media, in rigged loaves & fishes ballot counts, and in the Holy Ghost memory cards of electronic voting machines that cannot be monitored.

The GOP is desperate to keep control of both the Senate and the House. The realest terrors the Republicans face are public investigations into the astounding sinkhole of military, financial, insider theft, predatory sex, educational, ecological and other catastrophes they have wrought. Rarely in U.S. history has a single scrum of dirty tricksters evoked such widespread, abject hatred, for such good reason.

Part of the public ferocity is now doubly bound in the epithet “chickenhawk.”

In the Vietnam era, it referred to war hawks like Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other dubious draft dodgers who preached patriotism and war while chickening out on their own military service. In the public mind, there is no hotter place in hell than for hypocrites who send others to die in battles they won’t fight themselves.

Chickenhawk is also nasty street slang for despicable sex offenders who prey on children. The exposure of Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s ghastly pursuit of Congressional pages reveals an astonishing streak of personal and political hypocrisy. Like so many of his fellow sex-obsessed neo-puritan GOP gay-bashers, Foley is gay himself. He is the ultimate poster boy for “moral values” conservatism.

Now we face the question of whether the Democrats will carry one or both houses of Congress. Immoderate, intemperate and incompetent at everything except stealing elections, the GOP has ruled the executive, judicial and legislative branches, as well as the corporate media, with an iron fist. The checks and balances so carefully crafted by the Founders have been obliterated. The consequences have been predictable.

From Iraq to the deficits, from insider theft to pompous theocrats, from the decimation of the environment to the destruction of our educational system, from the dictatorial shredding of our Constitution to the smug arrogance of the sanctimoniously ignorant., the US has never been saddled with a more thoroughly rapacious national regime.

Other US elections have been stolen. But none with such organized thuggery, or such a clear eye to permanent Rovian domination. These were not meant to be one-time thefts. The hacked voting machines, ex-felon disenfranchisement, Jim Crow intimidation, deliberately confusing butterfly ballots and other sinister tricks from Jeb Bush’s Florida 2000 have morphed and multiplied. In our on-the-ground studies of Ohio 2004, we have documented scores of distinct tactics used to steal our state’s electoral votes. More become obvious every day. Like a cancer, they’ve spread nationwide.

At bottom, this regime has updated and expanded for use against the people of the United States the covert tactics used by George H.W. Bush and other stealth operatives to overthrow inconvenient elected leaders throughout the Third World. As in countless targets for covert US takeover, the candidate’s brother took Florida 2000, with the help of a secretary of state simultaneously serving as his campaign chair.

In Ohio 2004, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, again the Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, also ran the election that gave George W. Bush a second term. This year he will count the votes in his own run for governor, and will manipulate the outcome of elections that could tip the balance in both the US Senate and House.

It is, to update an infamous phrase from Malcolm X, the chickenhawks come home to roost.

But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a social movement.

There’s been a virtual blackout by the major media, plus indifference and even hostility from the Democratic Party about the subversion of our electoral process.

But the reality that two consecutive presidential elections have been stolen has pierced hearts and minds deep inside the American mainstream. Powerful reports from the Conyers Congressional Committee, the Government Accountability Office, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Brennan Center, Princeton University and others have all come to the same conclusion: it can take just a few keystrokes to steal an election.

After mercilessly attacking those of us who broke this story through the internet—as well as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s definitive articles in Rolling Stone—major media outlets such as the New York Times, Lou Dobbs, HBO and others have suddenly discovered that our electoral system is more than just broken. Bobby’s father’s admonition to “fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it” has finally turned that path into a highway for the saviors of our democracy.

Throughout the US, millions of citizens despair that the GOP will, in fact, steal this election. And well they might.

But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a full-fledged social movement, this time for the restoration of American democracy.

In the past half-century, we’ve seen a social movement for civil rights arise out of a single woman’s refusal to get out of her seat on a public bus. The mass movement to stop the war in Vietnam grew out of the early refusal of a very few individuals to submit to the military draft. Two reporters turned a “third rate burglary” into the resignation of a president who’d just carried the electoral votes of 49 states. Scattered “no nukes” protests in conservative rural communities stopped an atomic power industry that promised a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000, but was able to deliver less than 150.

Today the movement for green power—solar, wind, biofuel and other natural energy sources—once considered marginal and powerless, has birthed a multi-billion-dollar industry destined to deliver a “Solartopia” powered by clean, cheap, reliable and very profitable renewables.

But election protection remains the wellspring from which all future social movements will flow. So far, we have won the preservation of the ballots from both Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004. In New Mexico and Maryland, a Democratic and a Republican governor respectively are calling for a return to paper ballots. In Ohio and throughout the US, citizen lawsuits are forcing concessions on voter ID, ballot access and other issues critical to the restoration of democracy.

On Tuesday, thousands of fiercely committed activists and everyday citizens will go to the polls not just to vote, but to monitor, to double-check, to facilitate, to protect, to inquire, to film, to investigate, to persist, to prevent, and to not give up. They are bound and determined to make sure that another GOP theft either does not happen, or at least does not go unnoticed this time around.

Toward that end, we now urge any election activist who observes any irregularity or problem with Tuesday’s voting to write us at: democracy@freepress.org. Your report will be published there for all to see, as part of an on-going national record that needs to be compiled, studied and acted upon.

No social movement succeeds immediately. The campaign to save the American electoral system has hung on by a thin thread. Its concerns are just barely hitting the mainstream. This Tuesday, it’s everyone’s duty to do more than just vote. And no matter what the outcome, this issue will be with us for years to come….for as long as it takes.

We have taken our democracy for granted for too long. Merely voting is no longer enough.

It won’t be easy to restore and update the free election process that is our legacy. But we have seen the consequences of two consecutive un-elected presidencies. We know what we’re up against.

And we know there is no alternative to winning, however long it might take.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO , just published by the New Press. They are of counsel and plaintiff in the King Lincoln lawsuit challenging the administration of elections in Ohio. Fitrakis is an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party. Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, available at www.solartopia.org.

Original article published @

http://fraudbusterbob.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=198

/by
, , , , , , , , , ,

Dr. Fitrakis On WOSU Radio Open Line With Fred Andrle

microphone09_mth.gif

This show was recorded 10-31-2006.

11:00 AM
Green Party candidate Bob Fitrakis. 

WOSU podcasts available @

http://www.wosu.org/radio/radio-open-line/

The audio on this page has been re-mastered for low bandwidth dial-up connections.

For better audio quality go to Open Line site and look for 10-31-06 archive.

Moderator

/by
, , ,

What Happened in Ohio? A Documentary Record Of Theft And Fraud In The 2004 Election

What_Happened_in_Ohio.JPG

A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election

Robert J. Fitrakis, Steven Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman

An array of primary sources documenting the dishonesty and disenfranchisement that tipped the scales for George W. Bush in 2004.

It is my professional opinion that these numbers are fraudulent.
—STATISTICIAN RICHARD HAYES PHILLIPS, PHD, IN REFERENCE TO OHIO’S 2004 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE COUNT, FROM HIS DEPOSITION IN THE MOSS V. BUSH LAWSUIT, WHICH REACHED THE OHIO SUPREME COURT
In the first comprehensive look at the most critical state’s voting process in the 2004 presidential election, three pathbreaking investigative journalists (one a member of the legal team that sued the state of Ohio for election fraud), compile documentary evidence of massive potential theft and fraud in the presidential vote—problems
that may have changed the outcome of the presidential election in Ohio, and thus the nation.    

What Happened in Ohio? includes trucking receipts that show voting machines were pulled back from minority districts; ballots that contain evidence of tampering; mathematical analysis demonstrating the statistical impossibility of voting totals; testimonials from hundreds of voters, campaign workers, and poll workers about conditions that effectively disenfranchised thousands of voters; copies of flyers instructing Democrats to “vote on Wednesday”; official letters sent to tens of thousands of longtime voters incorrectly informing them they had been deemed “inactive” and ineligible to vote; photos taken of the original exit poll data broadcast on election night before it was retroactively “corrected” by the networks; and much, much more.

For anyone suspicious of the Ohio vote, here’s the evidence you’ve been waiting for.


Bob Fitrakis is a professor of political science at Columbus State Community College, a lawyer, and the executive director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Steve Rosenfeld is a journalist and senior producer of The Laura Flanders Show on Air America. He lives in San Francisco. Harvey Wasserman is a senior editor and columnist for FreePress.org and the author of many books. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Click here to buy. 

 

 

 

/by