Stolen Election 2004: Wednesday Update

At long last, the White House demanded an investigation of election fraud:

The United States is deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ohio presidential election. We strongly support efforts to review the conduct of the election and urge Ohio authorities not to certify results until investigations of organized fraud are resolved. We call on the Government of Ohio to respect the will of the Ohio people, and we urge all Ohians to resolve the situation through peaceful means. The Government bears a special responsibility not to use or incite violence, and to allow free media to report accurately on the situation without intimidation or coercion. The United States stands with the Ohian people in this difficult time.

Hmm... is there a glitch in my keyboard?

Apparently Judge James G. Carr, a federal judge based in Toledo, didn't get the message from the White House. Instead, he denied a request by David Cobb and Michael Badnarik to force a recount of Ohio ballots before the official count was finished. Their lawyers are considering an appeal.

Keith Olbermann also noticed the "spectacular irony" of Republicans howling about the stolen election - in Ukraine.

It was a spectacular irony - a Republican senator using the word “fraud” about the presidential election. More spectacular still, he was visiting his condemnation of apparent election manipulation on the incumbent party. And beyond all that, he and others based their conclusions largely on the incredible disparity between the last exit polls and the vote count itself.  Of course, Indiana’s Richard Lugar was talking about the presidential election in the Ukraine.  But in so doing, he underscored that once again, the exit polls appear to have fulfilled the time-honored international tradition of the canary in the mine shaft.  If only we could have used them in that way here.

Olbermann interviewed pollster John Zogby at length about the problems with the exit polls and doubts about the legitimacy of Bush's "election"

“But, Keith, 20 percent don’t think the president is legitimate. And worse yet, if you take the other half, those that didn’t vote for him, about half of the other side doesn’t think the president is legitimate. That just hasn’t existed for a long, long time in our system. We need to restore, I think, some semblance of legitimacy and honor to the system.”

Zogby called for a Blue Ribbon panel to investigate the election:

“I think it's in the interests of the nation that we study what happened in this election and widen that, let's study what happened with the exit polls, and let's come out with a definitive conclusions by a blue ribbon panel to restore the legitimacy of this election.”

Speaking of exit polls, Olbermann received a blistering e-mail from the man who did them, Warren Mitofsky. Mitofsky bitterly attacked the bloggers who posted mid-day exit poll results, and insisted his final exit polls had an average error of only 1.9%.

“The exit polls have been better in the past. They were far from perfect, but nowhere near as bad as your broadcast made them sound. Only the unauthorized leakers and bloggers were misled - a fate they richly deserved.”

Unfortunately Olbermann didn't confront Mitofsky with the findings of Dr. Steven Freeman, author of The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy. Freeman examined Mitofsky's final exit polls (as he found them on CNN) before Mitofsky suddenly "massaged" them into the "official story" he now presents. Freeman calculated the odds against the exit polls being wrong in the battleground states. He calculated the odds against the errors in the 3 key states - Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania:

The odds against all three occurring together are 662,000-to-one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.

So what if the exit polls were right - and the official results were wrong?

Researchers are finding increasing evidence of fraud. Richard Hayes Phillips, who documented fraud in Cleveland precincts last Friday, just examined precincts in Columbus, and levels heavy charges against Elections Director Matt Damschroder (the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party) and his co-conspirators.

I conclude that the withholding of voting
machines from predominantly Democratic wards in the
City of Columbus cost John Kerry upwards of 17,000
votes.  A more detailed calculation could be done on
a precinct by precinct basis, but that is not
necessary here.  The purpose is to illustrate the
magnitude of the conspiracy.

Matt Damschroder did not act alone.  There are 74
wards and 472 precincts in Columbus, Ohio.  It is not
possible for one person to have delivered all the
voting machines, and it is unlikely that nobody else
was involved in planning where to deliver them.
Anyone who associated with Mr. Damschroder on or
shortly before Election Day should be investigated
for possible complicity.

In Cleveland, election officials rejected 8,099 provisional ballots - one out of three of the 24,472 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election.

As county elections workers stood watch over a hand truck bearing 10 boxes stuffed with invalidated ballots, an ensemble of lawyers, professors and others who were active in voter registration drives made it clear that the board's decision won't quell the lingering disquiet about the possibility that some legitimate votes won't be counted.

During the 2½ hours the board meeting was delayed, lawyers and elections volunteers swapped tallies, analyses and stories about Election Day mishaps, many of which they offered in testimony after the board vote.

Confusion among poll workers about provisional-ballot procedures resulted in inconsistent, and sometimes erroneous, directions to voters, and some legitimate voter registrations never made the official rolls because of administrative errors, according to testimony.

Seventy percent of the rejected ballots, or 5,595, won't count because there was no record of their registration.

"I find it inconceivable that over 5,000 voters in the county would wait an hour in the pouring rain to vote if they haven't registered," said Dr. Norm Robbins, a neurosciences professor at Case Western Reserve University who volunteered for the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.

John Kerry's brother Cameron Kerry says Kerry campaign lawyers are examining these reports of fraud.

From: Cameron Kerry
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004

I am grateful to the many people who have contacted me to express their deep concern about questions of miscounting, fraud, vote suppression, and other problems on election day, especially in Florida and Ohio. Their concern reflects how much people care about the outcome of this election.

I want to you to know we are not ignoring it. Election protection lawyers are still on the job in Ohio and Florida and in DC making sure all the votes are counted accurately. I have been conferring with lawyers involved and have made them aware of the information and concerns people have given me. Even if the facts don't provide a basis to change the outcome, the information will inform the continuing effort to protect the integrity of our elections.

If you have specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, please send it to vri@dnc.org rather than to me.

The election protection effort has been important to me personally, and I am proud of the 17,000 lawyers around the country who helped. It's obvious that we have a way to go still, but their efforts helped make a difference. Their work goes on.

Thank you,
Cam Kerry

As Matthew Cardinale reports, the GAO Agrees to Investigate Election Problems from 2004, but not with any intent (or timetable) to change the Presidential election results.

Eighteen days following the initial request, the General Accountability Office (GAO) has agreed today to investigate several incidents of election problems from the recent November election, to satisfy the concerns brought forth by Representative John Conyers (D-IL) and 13 other Congresspersons.

Results from the investigation are not expected to be available prior to Bush’s currently-planned Inauguration. “I don’t think the results are going to be as rapid as people want them to be,” said press spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Mr. John Doty...

CNN reported the GAO, in their research, “will not investigate every charge listed by the Democrats, but will examine ‘the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines and counting of provisional ballots.’'