[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in doubt (Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Free Press)

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>Hearings on Ohio voting put 2004 election in
>doubt
>by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
>
>The Free Press, November 18, 2004
>http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/886
>
>
>Highly-charged, jam-packed hearings held here in
>Columbus have cast serious doubt on the true
>outcome of the presidential election.
>
>On Saturday, November 13, and Monday, November
>15, the Ohio Election Protection Coalitionís
>public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive
>sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio
>voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal
>observers, party challengers. An additional 66
>people provided written affidavits of election
>irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is
>that this year's election in Ohio was deeply
>flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied
>their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote
>count is very much in doubt.
>
>Most importantly, the testimony has revealed a
>widespread and concerted effort on the part of
>Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
>to deny primarily African-American and young
>voters the right to cast their ballots within a
>reasonable time. By depriving precincts of
>adequate numbers of functioning voting machines,
>Blackwell created waits of three to eleven hours,
>driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic
>voters away from the polls and very likely
>affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count,
>which in turn decided the national election.
>
>On November 17, Blackwell wrote an op-ed piece
>for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times,
>stating: ìEvery eligible voter who wanted to vote
>had the opportunity to vote. There was no
>widespread fraud, and there was no
>disenfranchisement. A half-million more Ohioans
>voted than ever before with fewer errors than
>four years ago, a sure sign on success by any
>measure,î Blackwell wrote. Moon's extreme right
>wing Unification Church has long-standing ties to
>the Bush Family and the Central Intelligence
>Agency.
>
>Additional testimony also called into question
>the validity of the actual vote counts. There are
>thus serious doubts that the final official tally
>in Ohio, due December 1 to Blackwellís office,
>will have any validity. Blackwell will certify
>the vote count on December 3.
>
>While Blackwell supervised the Ohio vote he also
>served as co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney
>re-election campaign, a clear conflict of
>interest that casts further doubt on how the Ohio
>election and vote counts have been conducted.
>
>At the Columbus hearings, witness after witness
>under oath gave testimony to an election riddled
>with discrimination and disarray. Among them:
>
>Werner Lange, a pastor from Youngstown, Ohio, who
>said in part:
>ìIn precincts 1 A and 5 G, voting as Hillman
>Elementary School, which is a predominantly
>African American community, there were woefully
>insufficient number of voting machines in three
>precincts. I was told that the standard was to
>have one voting machine per 100 registered
>voters. Precinct A had 750 registered voters.
>Precinct G had 690. There should have been 14
>voting machines at this site. There were only 6,
>three per precinct, less than 50 percent of the
>standard. This caused an enormous bottleneck
>among voters who had to wait a very, very long
>time to vote, many of them giving up in
>frustration and leaving. . . . I estimate, by the
>way, that an estimated loss of over 8,000 votes
>from the African American community in the City
>of Youngstown alone, with its 84 precincts, were
>lost due to insufficient voting machines, and
>that would translate to some 7,000 votes lost for
>John Kerry for President in Youngstown alone. . .
>.î
>
>ìJust yesterday I went to the Trumbull Board of
>Elections in northeast Ohio, I wanted to review
>their precinct logs so I could continue my
>investigation. This was denied. I was told by the
>Board of Elections official that I could not see
>them until after the official vote was given.î
>
>Marion Brown, Columbus:
>ìI am here on behalf of a friend. My friend came
>to my home very upset while she was away standing
>four hours in the voting, her husband passed
>away. The funeral was on yesterday, November
>13th, at 2:00. Perhaps had she not stood so long
>in the line, she may have been able to save her
>husband.î
>
>Victoria Parks:
>ìIn Pickaway County, oh, my goodness, in Pickaway
>County, I entered there, I was shown a table, 53
>poll books were plunked down in front of my. I
>noticed there were no signature on file in any of
>the poll books, in any of the poll books, and
>furthermore, a minute later the director of the
>Board of Elections of Pickaway County came into
>the room and snatched the books away from me and
>said you cannot look at these books. I said are
>you aware that what you are doing is against the
>law? She said I have been on the phone with the
>Secretary of State and he has instructed me to
>take these books away and you cannot see them. I
>paraphrase very slightly here. She took them
>away. I was persona non grata. I did not want to
>risk arrest, and I left. . . . There were no
>signatures, and furthermore, the writing in the
>book seemed to have been written in the same
>hand, because that is a requirement.î
>
>Boyd Mitchell, Columbus:
>ìWhat I saw was voter intimidation in the form of
>city employees that were sent in to stop illegal
>parking. Now, in Driving Park Rec Center there
>are less than 50 legal parking spots, and there
>were literally hundreds and hundreds of voters
>there, and I estimated at least 70 percent of the
>people were illegally parked in the grass around
>the perimeter of the Driving Park Rec Center, and
>two city employees drove up in a city truck and
>said that they had been sent there to stop
>illegal parking, and they went so far as to
>harass at least a couple of voters that I saw,
>and when they were talking to us, they were kind.
>But when they didn't realize we were overhearing
>them talking to voters, they were trying to keep
>people from parking where they were parking. They
>went so far as to set up some cones, trying to
>block people from getting into a grassy area...î
>
>ìI calculated that I maybe saw about 20 percent
>of the people that left Driving Park D and C, I
>personally saw and talked to about 20 percent of
>them as they left the poll between 12:30 and 8
>p.m. And I saw 15 people who left because the
>line was too long. The lines inside were anywhere
>from 2 1/2 to 5 hours. Most everybody said 4
>hours, and I saw at least 15 people who did not
>vote, and I heard a gentleman who was earlier
>making some mathematical calculations, well, if
>this is going on across town, and, you know, in a
>precinct where it was going so heavily for Kerry,
>and me only seeing 20 percent of the people
>coming out, I saw 15. We could just do the math
>and extrapolate that out into a huge number of
>people who might have voted had they had a
>chance.î
>
>Joe Popich (entered into the record copies of the
>Perry County Board of Election poll book):
>ìThere are a bunch of irregularities in this log
>book, but the most blatant irregularity would be
>the fact that there are 360 signatures in this
>book. There are 33 people who voted absentee
>ballot at this precinct, for a total of 393 votes
>that should be attributed to that precinct.
>However, the Board of Elections is attributing 96
>more votes to that precinct than what this log
>book reflects.î
>
>Derek Winsor, Columbus:
>ìOut of the six total voting machines that were
>at 14 C, three of them showed some type of
>malfunction that at one point or another during
>the three our so hours that we were waiting, and
>between my wife and me, we had asked poll workers
>individually if they could explain what was going
>on and what kind of reassurances they could give
>us that, for one machine in particular that the
>votes had already been posted on, that machine
>would be counted, and the response was just, oh,
>they will be counted. And how can you be sure of
>that? What storage mechanism do they use to
>ensure that the votes are stored, and, again, the
>response was just, well, they just are. And that
>was a bit of a concern here.î
>
>Carol Shelton, presiding judge, precinct 25 B at
>the Linden Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan
>Library:
>ìThe precinct is 95 to 99 percent black. . . .
>There were 1,500 persons on the precinct rolls.
>We received three machines. In my own precinct in
>Clintonville, 19E, we always received three
>machines for 700 to 730 voters. Voter turnout in
>my own precinct has reached as high as 70 percent
>while I worked there. I interviewed many voters
>in 25 B and asked how many machines they had had
>in the past. Everyone who had a recollection said
>five or six. I called to get more machines and
>ended up being connected with Matt Damschroder,
>the Director of the Board of Elections. After a
>real hassle -- and someone here has it on
>videotape, he sent me a fourth machine which did
>not dent the length of the line. Fewer than 700
>voted, although the turnout at the beginning of
>the day would cause anyone to predict a turnout
>of over 80 percent. This was a clear case of
>voter suppression by making voting an
>impossibility for anyone who had to go to work or
>anyone who was stuck at home caring for children
>or the elderly while another family member
>voted.î
>
>Allesondra Hernandez, Toledo:
>ìWhat I witnessed when I had gotten there about 9
>A.M. was a young African American woman who had
>come out nearly in tears. She was a new voter,
>very first registered, very excited to vote, and
>she had said that she had been bounced around to
>three different polling places, and this one had
>just turned her down again. People were there to
>help her out, and I was concerned. I started
>asking around to everyone else, and they had
>informed me earlier that day that she was not the
>only one, but there were at least three others
>who had been bounced around. Also earlier that
>day the polls had opened an hour late, did not
>open until about 7:30 A.M. The polling machines
>were locked in the principal's office. Hundreds
>of people were turned away, were forced to leave
>the line because they needed to be at school,
>they needed to be at work, or they needed to take
>their children to school. The people there who
>were assisting did the best they could to take
>down numbers and take down names, but I am
>assuming that a majority of those people could
>not come back because of work and/or because of
>school, because they had shown up to vote, and
>that was the time that they could vote, and that
>is why they were there. Also along the same
>lines, they ran out of pencils for those
>ballots.î
>
>Erin Deignan, Columbus:
>ìI was an official poll worker judge in precinct
>Columbus 25 F, at the East Linden School. We had
>between 1100 and 1200 people on the voter
>registry there. We had three voting machines. We
>did the math. I am sure lots of other people did
>too. With the five-minute limit, 13 hours the
>polls were open, three machines, that is 468
>voters, that is less than half of the people we
>had on the registry. We stayed open three hours
>past 7:30 and got about 550 people through, but
>we had one Board of Elections worker come in the
>morning. We asked if he could bring more
>machines. He is said more machines had been
>delivered, but they didn't have any more. We had
>another Board of Elections official come later in
>the day, and he said that in Upper Arlington he
>had seen 12 machines.î
>
>Matthew Segal, Gambier:
>ìIn this past election, Kenyon College students
>and the residents of Gambier, Ohio, had to endure
>some of the most extenuating voting circumstances
>in the entire country. As many of you may already
>know, because they had it on national media
>attention, Kenyon students and the residents of
>Gambier had to stand in line up to 10 to 12 hours
>in the rain, through a hot gym, and crowded
>narrow lines, making it extremely uncomfortable.
>As a result of this, voters were disenfranchised,
>having class to attend to, sports commitments,
>and midterms for the next day, which they had to
>study for. Obviously, it is a disgrace that kids
>who are being perpetually told the importance of
>voting, could not vote because they had other
>commitments and had to be put up with a 12-hour
>line.î
>
>Blackwell characterized Ohioís Election Day as
>ìtremendously successfulî in the Washington
>Times. Several people at Saturdayís hearing said
>theyíd like to hear Mr. Blackwell testify under
>oath, preferably under a criminal indictment.
>
>--
>Bob Fitrakis, Ph.D, J.D., a legal advisor for the
>Election Protection Coalition, convened and
>moderated the public hearings. Harvey Wasserman
>is Senior Editor of the Columbus Free Press and
>freepress.org. Audio from the hearings can be
>found at: http://www.theneighborhoodnetwork.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand