What Did You Do During the Stolen Election, Daddy?

[farmbo]

I volunteered as an attorney/observer during the November 2nd 2004 election at the Ohio State University Student Union. This polling station covers both the OSU south campus dorms as well as the predominantly liberal campus housing area. Not exactly Bush Country.

Inadequate numbers of voting machines caused the lines to stretch from the south end of the second floor of the building, back to the north stairwell, all the way down through the first floor hallway, then out into the rain. Waits were three to four hours. After noon, the students-- many anxious to cast their first Presidential ballot-- just started filtering away.

But what was most troubling were the persistent questions I received from scores of students who asked whether they could still vote even if they had sent in an Application for an absentee ballot.

In September, it appears, a group of clean-cut college age men and women worked the campus, telling students (you'll LOVE this) that the only way their votes would reliably be counted was by voting absentee...and they just so happened to have Ohio Absentee Voting Applications in hand for them to sign. (Once an absentee ballot application had been filed, a voter could no longer vote on election day, as confirmed on the Ohio Secretary' of State's website.) From my firsthand accounts, scores of students signed the applications and gave them to these "helpful young volunteers" to mail in.

Of course, the applications were never received at the Boards of Election. Subsequent inquiries confirmed similar "absentee voter drives" at the Universities of Akron and Toledo. Heaven knows how many thousands of students fell for this swindle across the state.

Thus, it seems apparent that an organized and well-funded group of Vote Thieves were deployed to Ohio before the election; perhaps, as Mark Crispin Miller has opined, the same Christian Reconstructionist goons who were caught red-handed in Nevada several weeks earlier doing exactly the same thing. And I'll just bet that they all kneeled down and prayed together before they set out on their nefarious rounds.

Like innumerable other Ohioans, I am now convinced that this election was stolen. Good Gawd, any first year Assistant Prosecuting Attorney could have proven this...if he/she had only been given the chance. No serious inquiries have been made even into the most blatant actions: a mysterious (and fraudulent) late-nite terror lockdown in critical Warren county, constant vote flipping on the Mahoning County machines, unauthorized (and illegal) access to county tabulators by Triad technicians before the so-called "recount", just to name a few of the more egregious offences.

As Ohioans, we need to begin stopping the election fraud deniers-- in mid sentence if necessary-- and reminding them that there has NEVER BEEN ANY SORT OF OFFICIAL OHIO INVESTIGATION AND NO SOS/BOE OFFICIALS HAVE EVER BEEN QUESTIONED UNDER OATH regarding these election law violations. Alas, in a state where the election was managed by the Bush/Cheney Co-Chair, Ken Blackwell, they literally laughed off the prospect of an official investigation. The local print media dutifully scoffed at the critics and moved on. With few exceptions, their money was already on the Bush horse.

It seems apparent that EF Deniers who whine that we in Ohio can't produce "evidence" of election fraud, aren't really interested in "evidence" at all. If so, they would calling full-throatedly for preservation of Ohio's voting machines, software, tabulators, ballots and ballot books. (The latter are presently scheduled for destruction by Blackwell after Nov 2, 2006).

It seems that many otherwise progressive writers and bloggers have prematurely staked their editorial stances (and their reputations) on the comfortable, mainstream notion that "boys will be boys...get over it." Now, faced with study after well-sourced study challenging the results in Ohio, they are simply too stubborn to admit that they were wrong.

My hopeful entreaty to progressive EF Deniers everywhere on behalf of all Ohioans: "Get over it...the election WAS stolen. Now help us get at the truth."

[stellanoir]

1. I honor your truth.

K & R'd with ardant furor.

[ariellyn]

2. Wisconsin was also a hotly contested state. Fake registrars staked

out Walmart and other locations and disappeared votes too. Yes, they did it again.

[Doctor_J]

3. And what' will be different in 2006?

Not one fucking thing. We probably missed the one chance to do something about election theft in 2000. Delay's mob in Palm Beach should probably have been greeted with baseball bats or small arms fire. That MAY have discouraged what happened in OH and GA and FL in 2002 and 2004.

BTW, anyone who still thinks Smirk won Ohio fairly in 2004 is a freeper.

[ariellyn]

4. You are absolutely correct. I wonder if we are totally helpless though.

The fact that so much is surfacing about 2004 now is encouraging. I know that it's after the fact but we know about 2000, now 2004. There is no excuse for letting 2006 slide by.

I believe that it is up to you and me.

The election forum has some good ideas.

We can communicate what we know about theft tactics. Fake voter registrations, purging the voter rolls and putting broken or too few machines in polling places are common practices since 2000. Warning people not to register anywhere but at official locations is a start. There are free cable channels where this can be done as well as free local papers that take ads or stories.

The Greatest Page shows that Robert Kennedy is suing some eVoting manufacturers.

I don't have all the answers but I have some time to help. I hope that we can come together to fend off the inevitable.

[demo dutch]

6. Many people don't even know! cause it's not widely publicized by the MSM

I'm very discouraged!

[demo dutch]

5. Evidence galore! but nothing is being fixed, get ready for a 06 &08 repeat

[tom_paine]

7. Holy crap, if this is true (and it is anecdotal at this stage)

we are in terrible trouble.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2685566

This thread very convicingly describes a VERY believable scheme in which thousands of votes (at the very least, hundreds, depending on the scope of it) were suppressed in Ohio. One of MANY seperate strategies the Busheviks pursued in broad daylight, knowing they were safe from investigation and prosecution (GOD does totalitarianism SUCK to live in, even our Kinder and Gentler version at this early-middle stage in it's devolution...the insults to the intelligence by Comrade Bushevik and his Busheviks).

Not so much because of what they have done in a systematic and well-financed way, but because they could get away with it openly so easily.

As you say and I have been saying since about the time I joined DU in April 2001, there is enough losse-end and evidence laying around that a rookie ADA, 3 assisstants and a $5,000 budget could get to the bottom of it. On so many of the dozens of the Bushevik vote-stealing, altering, or blocking schemes, the same is true. It is done really almost as openly as the poll taxes of the early and mid 20th Century down in the NeoBushfederacy.

I have placed the link of this thread in the body of the message because this sucker is going in my Journal, tom_paine's The Age of UnReason.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2685566

[cally]

8. I'm optimistic that more Dems are starting to take

this issue seriously. Two Presidential elections have been stolen. I'M starting to see a consensus on the left.