Jesse Jackson Joins Critics of Ohio Vote
By John McCarthy
The Associated Press
Sunday 28 November 2004
COLUMBUS | Although John Kerry has conceded the election and the
Democratic Party is largely on the sidelines, critics of Ohio's vote
count on Nov. 2 have found plenty to gripe about - uncounted punch-card
votes, disqualified provisional ballots and too many votes for
President Bush.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that the Ohio Supreme Court should
consider setting aside Bush's win in Ohio and that Congress should
investigate how Ohioans voted.
Bush defeated Kerry in Ohio by 136,000 votes, according to unofficial
results.
"This is about the integrity of the vote. This is not about the Kerry
campaign," said Jackson, who supported the Democrat for president.
On the morning of Nov. 3, less than 12 hours after Ohio's final votes
were cast, Kerry called Bush to congratulate him on his victory.
His campaign figured he would not get enough of the 155,000
provisional ballots, or those cast by voters whose registrations could
not be confirmed at polling places, to overtake Bush's total.
The counting of provisional ballots and wide gaps in vote totals for
Kerry and other Democrats on the ballots in certain counties have
raised too many questions to let the vote stand without further
examination, Jackson said.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live with fraud and
stealing," Jackson said.
Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who has represented political activist
groups, said he would ask the Ohio Supreme Court, probably on
Wednesday, to take a look at the election results. If the court decides
to hear the case, it can declare a new winner or throw the results out.
Since the election, several complaints have surfaced:
* The Green and Libertarian parties asked a U.S. District Court judge
to order an immediate recount. The judge agreed with the state that a
recount cannot begin until Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
certifies the statewide vote, sometime between Dec. 3 and 6. The two
parties are raising the $113,600, or $10 per precinct statewide, needed
to force a recount.
* People for the American Way, a national watchdog group, is trying to
stop the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland from rejecting
8,099 of the 24,472 provisional ballots cast there. The ballots were
thrown out because voters did not properly complete them or cast them
at polling places that were not their own.
* An error was detected in an electronic voting system, giving
President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus. Elections
officials caught the glitch and the votes will not be added to the
official tally. Some groups also have complained about thousands of
punch-card ballots that were not tallied because officials in the 68
counties that use them could not determine a vote for president. Votes
for other offices on the cards were counted.
Elections officials concede some mistakes were made but no more than
most elections.
"There are no signs of widespread irregularities," Blackwell
spokesman Carlo LoParo said.
The Ohio Democratic Party believes every effort should be made to get
an accurate count, but it is not planning legal action of its own,
spokesman Dan Trevas said.
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Go to Original
Jesse Jackson Demands Ohio Presidential Recount,
Blasts GOP Election Officials, and
Says Kerry Supports the Process
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
Columbus Free Press
Monday 29 November 2004
COLUMBUS - Preaching to a packed, wildly cheering central Ohio
citizen congregation, Rev. Jesse Jackson blasted the presidential
election back into the national headlines Sunday. Jackson said new
findings cast serious doubt on the idea that George W. Bush beat John
Kerry in Ohio November 2. A GOP "pattern of intentionality" was behind
a suspect outcome, he said. At stake is "the integrity of the vote" for
which "too many have died." "We can live with losing an election," he
said. "We cannot live with fraud and stealing."
Jackson is the first major national figure to come here challenging
the idea that Ohio has given George W. Bush a second term in the White
House. Jackson emphasized that the vote "has not yet been certified"
and demanded the removal of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
from supervising the recount, which Jackson termed a case of "the fox
guarding the chicken house." Blackwell co-chaired the Bush-Cheney
campaign in Ohio and has been widely criticized for a series of
partisan decisions that have thus far indicated Bush carried the state.
Exit polls by Zogby and CNN showed Ohio going for Kerry with 53% and
51% respectively, which would win him presidency in the Electoral
College.
Blackwell says a complex series of rules allows him to limit a
recount to just a few days. He says he may certify the Ohio vote
between December 3d and 6th, with any recount due to be completed
December 13, when Ohio's electors are scheduled to meet.
Jackson has demanded Blackwell recuse himself, saying "the owner of
the team can't also be the referee." A broad-based legal team--now
including Jackson's PUSH/Rainbow Coalition as Plaintiff--is preparing
to file an election challenge asking the election results be
overturned. Jackson says computer forensic experts must be given full
access to electronic voting machines that have provided no paper trail,
but which could be electronically analyzed from within. Jackson said he
has spoken with Democratic candidate John Kerry, who indicated his
support for the recount process.
New findings indicate that Kerry's margins in 37 (of 88) Ohio
counties are suspiciously low when compared to those garnered by Judge
Ellen Connally, an unsuccessful Democratic Supreme Court candidate. The
calculations focus on standardized county-wide ratios between
bottom-of-the-ticket tallies won by Judge Connally versus those won by
Kerry in heavily Republican, rural counties. According to a wide range
of experts, there appears to be a systematic removal of Kerry votes by
hackers who overlooked the Connally votes, which now clearly infers
something went wrong. "It's simply not credible that a vastly
underfunded African-American female candidate at the bottom of the
ticket could outpoll John Kerry in Butler County," said Cliff Arneback,
a lead attorney for the challenging legal team. Jackson said the
situation "does not pass the smell test."
Before some 500 supporters, Jackson preached a litany of doubt
surrounding the Ohio outcome, prompting at least 50 congregants to file
affidavits documenting their own experiences trying to vote November 2.
Several hundred such documents have been filed at a series of hearings
in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.
According to the sworn testimony, a systematic denial of voting
machines to inner city precincts resulted in waits of three, five and
even eleven hours for thousands of voters, many of whom left in
frustration without casting their ballots. Charges of intimidation,
misinformation, faulty registration lists and denial of provisional
ballots are listed. So are serious questions about the integrity of
touch screen machines, many of which were widely reported to have
turned Kerry votes into Bush votes. In Warren County, Homeland Security
was inexplicably invoked to bar independent observers and the media,
leaving the vote count under control of Republicans. In the Franklin
County precinct of Gahanna, 4258 votes were registered for Bush where
only 628 people voted. In another county, a GOP election official took
voting results to his private home for final, unsupervised reporting.
"We need federal supervision of federal elections," said Jackson.
"Right now we have 50 separate but unequal ways to vote. There can be
no safe harbor for a flawed process that leaves people disenfranchised.
"You can't have public elections on privately-owned machines,
especially where one of the owners has vowed to deliver the state for
George Bush," Jackson added, referring to Wally O'Dell, a major Bush
supporter and CEO of Diebold, a leading Ohio-based supplier of
electronic voting machines and voting software.
"You can hack these machines," Jackson said. "The playing field is
uneven. These numbers will not go away. We as Americans should not be
begging a Secretary of State for a fair vote count. We cannot be the
home of the thief and the land of the slave."
"This is not about John Kerry versus George Bush," said Jackson.
"This is about Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer and Viola Liuzzo.
About Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner, and twenty-seven years in prison
for Nelson Mandela," he said, referring to heroes of the movements for
equal rights. "It's about a will to dignity. It's not too much to ask
for our vote to count."
-------
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of the upcoming
ANOTHER STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004
(freepress.org). Fitrakis is publisher and Wasserman is senior editor
of freepress.org. Fitrakis is co-counsel for the Alliance For Democracy
which has announced that it will file a lawsuit to ensure a fair
recount of the votes in Ohio.
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