Of Course It Was Stolen (Again)
Despite overwhelming evidence that the United States’ Presidential Election was stolen for the second time in a row in 2004, the press chose to promote the party line that “there might have been irregularities, but they weren’t enough to shift the result.”
But they were, and they did.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., writes, in a heavily-footnoted article in Rolling Stone:
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush’s victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.
…But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush….A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004 — more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes. (See Ohio’s Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn’t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes — enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
”It was terrible,” says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ”People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct — it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I’m terribly disheartened.”
Read the Full Article in Rolling Stone
“Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Current Issue
This comes on top of the earlier fine article by Mark Crispin Miller on the same subject in Harper’s:
It seemed at times that Ohio’s secretary of state was determined to try every stunt short of levying a poll tax to suppress new voter turnout. On September 7, based on an overzealous reading of an obscure state bylaw, he ordered county boards of elections to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not “printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight.” Under public pressure he reversed the order three weeks later, by which time unknown numbers of Ohioans had been disenfranchised. Blackwell also attempted to limit access to provisional ballots. The Help America Vote Act—passed in 2002 to address some of the problems of the 2000 election—prevents election officials from deciding at the polls who will be permitted to cast provisional ballots, as earlier Ohio law had permitted. On September 16, Blackwell issued a directive that somehow failed to note that change. A federal judge ordered him to revise the language, Blackwell resisted, and the court was forced to draft its own version of the directive, which it ordered Blackwell to accept, even as it noted Blackwell’s “vigorous, indeed, at times, obdurate opposition” to compliance with the law.
Under Blackwell the state Republican Party tried to disenfranchise still more Democratic voters through a technique known as “caging.” The party sent registered letters to new voters, “then sought to challenge 35,000 individuals who refused to sign for the letters,” including “voters who were homeless, serving abroad, or simply did not want to sign for something concerning the Republican Party.”
Read the Full Article in Harper’s
“None Dare Call It Stolen”
by Mark Crispin Miller
August, 2005
Bill Standley wrote:
Good post, Tom, as always.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to conjecture what would have happened had Kerry been installed as our Tyrant in Chief. Some even speculate that had Gore won, 9/11 would not have occurred. God only knows.
The problem isn’t, in my opinion, Bush or Kerry per se, my outrage over stolen elections notwithstanding. The real problem is the power that’s been amassed by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Who among us, even a saint, could withstand the temptations that come with that kind of power?
As Hoppe has pointed out, at least monarchs had an incentive to preserve their kingdom for their heirs, but an elected official in a democracy? Grab what you can for you and your friends, and get the hell out.
I frankly don’t see any peaceful means of reducing that power, either. The bigger they come, the harder they fall, and as empires go, we’re about the biggest the world has ever seen.
When — not if — this empire falls, it’s not going to be pretty.
Posted 02 Jun 2006 at 12:58 pm ¶
Tom Chappell wrote:
Christ, yes, it’s unbelievable, the power being seized by the Executive, and the flaccid, spineless, corrupt little men running Congress just sit there and watch it happen. “More pork, Mr. Hastert?” “Don’t mind if I do, Mr. Frist!”
Perhaps the Loyal Opposition has something to say? Yes, Mrs. Clinton?
“Only that I quite agree that we absolutely mustn’t have flag desecration; oh, my goodness no, there’s got to be a law against that! Oh, and remember, I’d still have gone to war against Iraq, knowing what I know now!”
Posted 02 Jun 2006 at 9:40 pm ¶
Jeff Lorenzini wrote:
I like Tom Chappell’s title: Of Course It Was Stolen!
Clearly, the name of the Help America Vote Act was truncated. The actual title was Help America Vote For Republicans.
I mean, really, why else would it not mandate a paper trail?
I voted today and apparently California has added paper receipts that you can review but not touch. A good move, but we’re still using proprietary voting hardware and software.
Posted 06 Jun 2006 at 12:38 pm ¶