Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
Election 2004: Stolen or Lost
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Hedge Fund Would Rather Shut Down a Plant Than Pay Its Workers a Fair Wage
Art Levine
DrugReporter:
The Supreme Court Resists Drug War Hysteria
Krystal Quinlan
Environment:
Summer Downsizing: 31 Ways to Jumpstart Your Local Economy
Sarah van Gelder
Health and Wellness:
10 Dangerous Household Products You Should Never Use Again
Immigration:
Huron, California May not Exist in a Year
Viji Sundaram
Media and Technology:
Michael Jackson's Death Was Tragic, But He Was Little More Than an Icon of Mediocrity
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Movie Mix:
Up: This Time, Pixar Has Gone Too Far
Eileen Jones
Politics:
Hunter Thompson Knew It Well: Robert McNamara's Vision for America Was Imperial and Elitist
Joe Costello
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
My First Abortion Party
Byard Duncan
Rights and Liberties:
Does a Senior Obama Official Have Unseemly Ties to Notorious Human Rights Abuser Chevron?
Jeremy Scahill
Sex and Relationships:
How to Make Marriage More Than an Arrangement of Love-less, Sexless, Domestic Drudgery
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
Ending Indefinite Detention is AlterNet's Top Take Action Campaign of the Week
Byard Duncan
Water:
Energy Industry Threatens Water Quality, Sways Congress With Misleading Data
Abrahm Lustgarten
World:
What Kind of "Hope" Is Obama Offering to Latin American Countries Still Traumatized by U.S. Empire?
Roberto Lovato
Many of us fear that the Ohio election was stolen because people – like talk-show sleuths, blogger number-crunchers, forensic attorneys, crusading professors and partisan activists – keep telling us so. We don't even know most of these people, yet we gladly forward their e-mails and web links, their pronouncements, analyses, essays and statistical exercises. While their credentials may not be that impressive, we listen to their conspiracy theories because – frightened by the direction our country has taken – we want to believe them.
As an old-style investigative reporter, I, too, was alarmed by charges that outright fraud might have changed the outcome of the most important presidential election in recent times. So I recently traveled to Ohio – where I connected with a group of attorneys who were fighting to have the Ohio presidential results overturned, and the state – and, by extension, the presidency – awarded to Kerry. In legal pleadings known collectively as the "Contest" these attorneys are not shy about using the F-word: "While a variety of methods were used to perpetrate the election fraud of which there is clear and convincing evidence in the form of the exit polls, ... it is likely that traditional easily detectable means were one of the principal methods of the election fraud."
Strong words indeed. Among the evidence supporting them:
This week, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., released a report that catalogues widespread problems in the Ohio vote. The report concludes that the "massive and unprecedented" voting irregularities in Ohio were in many cases caused by "intentional misconduct and illegal behavior." Sounds like fraud to me.
Conyers' report is considerably tamer and more cautious than earlier pronouncements out of his office, and certainly more so than many of the allegations being circulated on the internet. Much of his report, however, is based on charges emerging from the Contest. Let's see how such charges hold up under close scrutiny.
Voting Irregularities
Charge: Misallocation of voting machines
Finding: True
Intentional? Probably not
The Contest petition lists specific counties where voting irregularities occurred, including Franklin and Trumbull: "In Franklin County there was a discriminatory assignment of more voting machines per registered voter to precincts with more white voters than African-American voters. ..."
William Anthony is the chairman of the Franklin County board of elections. As an African American and a Democrat himself (in fact, he is the county chairman and works as a union representative) Anthony resents the suggestion that Franklin County authorities somehow worked to help Bush. "I worked my ass off in those precincts," he says of African-American areas of the county.
A precinct-by-precinct historical comparison of registered and actual voters, and of voting machine assignments, does show that some precincts with a large African-American population ended up with fewer machines per person than some mostly white precincts. But Anthony points out that Franklin County faced a number of challenges. For one thing, it was using very old electronic voting machines that under new state law will be defunct by the next presidential election, when every county will be required to have a paper trail for recounts. Given the short lifespan of the machines, it didn't make economic sense to buy more of them. So it was a matter of allocating a scarce resource. That resource was stretched thinner by an increasing population. Franklin County had a spurt of growth in outlying areas, with blocks of apartments sprouting recently where cornfields had been. Suddenly, authorities had 29 additional precincts to conside – requiring approximately 200 more machines.
Also, although incoming voter registration figures showed surges in certain areas, that didn't mean the newly registered would necessarily vote. And certainly not in greater numbers than in many established precincts where a high percentage of registered voters typically went to the polls.
When the county elections director recently explained the machine assignment process as "a little bit art, a little bit science," he was ridiculed by the critics. But in fact, what he meant was that a whole multiplicity of factors had to be considered – it wasn't a simple formula.
Russ Baker, a founding fellow of the new Fourth Estate Society, is a regular contributor to TomPaine.com. Support was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
| More News and Analysis: | ||
|
How to Make Marriage More Than an Arrangement of Love-less, Sexless, Domestic Drudgery Sex and Relationships: Marriage was designed way back when life expectancy was a couple of decades. Now we're living four times that long. By Vanessa Richmond, The Tyee. July 10, 2009. |
Does a Senior Obama Official Have Unseemly Ties to Notorious Human Rights Abuser Chevron? World: The story of this slick oil company's romance with the government has recently taken a crude twist. By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet. July 10, 2009. |
What Kind of "Hope" Is Obama Offering to Latin American Countries Still Traumatized by U.S. Empire? World: Throughout the Americas, there exists a powerful political tradition in which esperanza (hope) is defined by the fight against U.S. domination. By Roberto Lovato, AlterNet. July 10, 2009. |