Black Box Voting

GOP�s Blackwell crows about �delivering� Ohio to Bush

By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

January 5, 2005�Kudos to Raw Story for breaking the story that Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican, �boasted of helping �deliver� Ohio for� George W. Bush �and said he was �truly pleased� to announce Bush had won Ohio even before all of the state�s votes had been counted in his own fundraising letter . . .�

(See Blackwell�s letter below.)

Blackwell, who apparently is a graduate of the Katherine Harris School of Election Fixing, now thinks the prize for his dirty deeds should be the Buckeye State�s governor�s office. Why not? Florida�s Harris, who �delivered� the Sunshine State to Bush in 2000, has twice snatched a seat in Congress.

Perhaps Bush did win last November, but how will we ever know, thanks to computerized voting in the hands of private corporations, election officials who embraced the expediency of black box voting and turned a blind eye to how easily the votes could be rigged, GOP operatives who did everything to keep Democrats (especially black Democrats) from voting and people such as Blackwell, who, like Harris, wore two hats: Ohio�s top election official and state chairman of the Bush campaign?

Like so many criminals, the Bush criminals can�t keep from publicly bragging about their crimes. But instead of receiving justice for their deeds, they receive rewards. Injustice is reserved for the people that oppose them and whom they now seek to lock away forever without charge or trial.

Yet, the US corporate media are blind to it all: a bogus �war on terrorism,� illegal wars, war crimes and stolen elections. It�s all figments of we �conspiracy theorists�� imaginations.

Thanks to the US corporate media that refuses to even entertain the notion that this election was stolen, many people abroad�and even our own who get all their news from television�believe a majority of Americans cast their votes for Bush. And thanks to Ken Blackwell, who could well wind up as Ohio�s next governor if he still controls the voting systems, and his equally nefarious counterparts in other so-called battleground states, we will never know. Yet, the world will now tar us all with the same brush.