Friday, November 19, 2004
Ohio: Vote suppression, vote creation
Ohio voters testified at hearings at an African-American church and a county courthouse to bear witness to intimidation, harassment, deception and extreme inconvenience designed to suppress the heavily Democratic African-American and student vote in Ohio.
Pacifica Radio recorded the church hearings. As I listened, I heard stories of students at Kenyon College waiting up to 12 hours to vote; voters, including the elderly, made to stand in line in the rain for hours; and people falsely being told that they could vote on Nov. 3 because of the long lines on the 2nd. Then there was one particularly tragic case in which a man suffered a medical emergency in his home, and his wife was not home to help him because she had to wait hours to vote; he died.
One particular cause for the extraordinarily long lines was often cited: an insufficient number of voting machines. The normal ratio of one machine per 100 voters in a precinct was routinely ignored in precincts that were expected to vote heavily Democratic. Based on the testimony of the witnesses, it appears that many of those precincts, had fewer than half the machines they needed.
While vote suppression was going on in some Ohio precincts, certain others in Cuyahoga County (Greater Cleveland) had more votes than voters! The article I posted on my web site about these extra votes has drawn fully a third of my hits this month so far. (And my total is on pace to be more than double the total I've had in my best month this year). Clearly, many people are interested in the phantom voters of Cuyahoga County.
Meanwhile, on November 11, the Associated Press reported that lawyers for the Kerry campaign were on a “fact-finding mission” in Ohio. According to the article, lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said the goal is to identify any voting problems and quell doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio election being raised on the Internet.
Yes, Mr. Hoffheimer, three voting problems emerged in Ohio:
Pacifica Radio recorded the church hearings. As I listened, I heard stories of students at Kenyon College waiting up to 12 hours to vote; voters, including the elderly, made to stand in line in the rain for hours; and people falsely being told that they could vote on Nov. 3 because of the long lines on the 2nd. Then there was one particularly tragic case in which a man suffered a medical emergency in his home, and his wife was not home to help him because she had to wait hours to vote; he died.
One particular cause for the extraordinarily long lines was often cited: an insufficient number of voting machines. The normal ratio of one machine per 100 voters in a precinct was routinely ignored in precincts that were expected to vote heavily Democratic. Based on the testimony of the witnesses, it appears that many of those precincts, had fewer than half the machines they needed.
While vote suppression was going on in some Ohio precincts, certain others in Cuyahoga County (Greater Cleveland) had more votes than voters! The article I posted on my web site about these extra votes has drawn fully a third of my hits this month so far. (And my total is on pace to be more than double the total I've had in my best month this year). Clearly, many people are interested in the phantom voters of Cuyahoga County.
Meanwhile, on November 11, the Associated Press reported that lawyers for the Kerry campaign were on a “fact-finding mission” in Ohio. According to the article, lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said the goal is to identify any voting problems and quell doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio election being raised on the Internet.
Yes, Mr. Hoffheimer, three voting problems emerged in Ohio:
1) Votes were suppressed;
2) votes were created out of thin air, or shall I say thin pixels; and
3) the apparent losing candidate thinks it's his job to quell doubts about the legitimacy of his opponent's possibly fraudulent victory.
