Heads up! Keith Olbermann will be interviewing Rep. Conyers tonight on "Countdown."

:D

Just started.

CONYERS & NEW YORK HAWKS

starting now.

Well, THAT went well....I think.

Conyers is the mn. Did anybody else hear Kith ask him why not contest the election with a senator and Conyers response: we are prepared to do that...? That's what I heard.

Yup, senator remains unknown, though.

Did you also hear him reply to the FBI question that NOBODY FROM THAT BUREAU has yet to contact him regarding his complaint.

This us a US Representative, and the FBI refuses to talk with him???

I missed it! Was anything critical said that's not covered in his blog?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240
December 15, 2004 | 4:06 p.m. ET

Conyers: "Maintenance" violates state and federal laws (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS— Congressman John Conyers' request that the FBI investigates the actions of a voting equipment manufacturer in Hocking County, Ohio last week, includes the assertion that those actions may have violated two federal laws, and as many as four state statutes.

Conyers, who will appear live on tonight's edition of "Countdown," notes in his letter to the FBI (and the Hocking County Prosecutor), that "for a period of 22 months from the date of a federal election... it (is) a felony for any person to 'willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter' any such record."

The Michigan representative also wrote that under Ohio law, "during a period of official canvassing, all interaction with ballots must be 'in the presence of all of the members of the board and any other persons who are entitled to witness the official canvass'." Conyers notes that just last week, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell had declared that the so-called "canvassing period," which usually expires ten days after an election, had been extended to cover the period of the Ohio recount.

Conyers' office indicated there had not yet been a response from the FBI field office in Cincinnati, nor from the Hocking County Prosecutor's Office.

• December 15, 2004 | 10:29 a.m. ET

Conyers and cautions (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK— At least this should put a spike through the still-rampant rumor that the mainstream media is “locked down” and not reporting anything of the investigation into the apparent Ohio voting irregularities.

It is not a banner headline; in fact, it is but nine paragraphs. But those nine paragraphs are in this morning’s editions of The New York Times.

Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the newspaper reports, will today ask the FBI and a county prosecutor in Ohio to investigate what he has termed “inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering” in one or more counties in that state.

And beginning on the front page of this morning’s Washington Post, there cascades down upon the reader no less than 41 paragraphs, told soberly and without much evident partisanship, reciting the litany of Ohio screw-ups that led that newspaper to invoke the headline “Several Factors Contributed to ‘Lost’ Voters in Ohio.”

Conyers’ invoking of the FBI doesn’t even make it into The Post’s pages, probably because The Times makes it clear that Conyers shared his letter of request to the Bureau and Ohio prosecutors with them. Ironically, that letter apparently focuses on a reported irregularity not in the November 2 vote per se, but in the days preceding the recount. As The Times notes, Conyers’ inquiry rests primarily on a sworn affidavit by the deputy director of elections of Hocking County, Ohio, the Democrat Sherole Eaton.

Ms. Eaton’s story has been circulating around the Internet for days, and was presented to Conyers at the first stop of his “Voting Forum” road tour in Columbus on Monday, to his apparent shock and awe. Her affidavit contends that last Friday, in advance of the recount, a representative of the manufacturer of the vote-counting software used in her county’s vote November 2, made several adjustments to the Hocking County tabulator.

The employee of Triad Governmental Systems then asked, according to Ms. Eaton’s statement, which of Hocking’s voting precincts would be selected as the “sample” for the small hand-count required in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. She claims that when informed, the Triad man, as the Times’ Tom Zeller put it, “made further adjustments to the machine.”

The Times quotes Conyers as saying “This is pretty outrageous. We want to pursue it as vigorously as we can.” But the reporter also reached the president of the Triad company, Brett Rapp, who calmly welcomed any investigation, and added that, in correspondent Zeller’s words, “preparing the machines for a recount was standard procedure and was done in all 41 counties where Triad handles votes,” insomuch as the company not only supplies the tabulating software, but is also contractually obligated to maintain it. Mr. Rapp did acknowledge to the newspaper that it would be atypical for an employee to have asked about a specific voting precinct.

As it proved, Hocking County election officials chose a precinct different than the one purportedly mentioned to the Triad representative, from which to gather the three percent of a county’s ballots that must be counted by hand under Ohio’s recount laws. They also found nothing amiss that would trigger a full hand recount for the entire county.

John Conyers is clearly not a tin-foil-hatter. His description of the response to the request he and a small number of other Democratic congressmen made of the Government Accountability Office for an Ohio investigation was, however, a little fulsome. At the time of the GAO’s answer, Conyers presented it as a full-blown victory for transparent government. The actual letter from the GAO read much more like tepid boilerplate language.

There is also the matter of the inviolability of the affidavit as a truth-telling mechanism. Without characterizing that to which Hocking County’s Ms. Eaton swore, while all states equate filing a false affidavit with perjury, prosecutions are spotty, and thus the risk of straying from the truth probably carries less weight than it would at first blush appear to the layman. One need only remember the flurry of paperwork that accompanied last summer’s Swift Boat advertisements and book— and in particular the one Vietnam vet who changed his story faster than a sportswriter providing a running round-by-round description of a championship boxing match— to recall that today’s absolute truth can be followed by a statement like “I probably shouldn’t have signed that.”

Nevertheless, if the FBI, or Ohio prosecutors, actually do accede to Conyers’ request, the Eaton affidavit will loom very large, and she will presumably be asked to repeat her statements to the Bureau, or to the local investigators, with the threat of stronger penalties attached.

It is the appropriate place here to clarify something about the Conyers forums, both in Washington last week, and in Columbus two days ago. They have been characterized by many on the web as “Congress Investigates Ohio,” but this exaggerates both the scope and the formality. One reader even asserted to me that a “majority of the House Judiciary Committee” was “conducting hearings.” In fact, Conyers and several of his House colleagues, some on Judiciary, some not, are meeting ad hoc without nearly all of the powers a true congressional or senatorial committee could muster. There are no subpoenas to be issued, very little budget, and not even the hint of the statutory bipartisanship that a bona fide committee or subcommittee would bring with it. In short, Congress isn’t investigating the Ohio vote or even these latest allegations about the recount— Congressman Conyers and several of his Democratic cohorts are taking testimony in informal hearings.

Nonetheless, Mr. Conyers has succeeded in dragging parts of the voting story into the mainstream: the GAO, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and possibly the FBI. This underscores a point I made here some time ago: that what was understandably misinterpreted as a "media lockdown" is much more likely to have been media passivity. Senator Kerry conceded, therefore Ohio couldn’t change the election, con't...

I don't think they discussed anything we haven't talked about here a zillion times. I was most surprised by the fact the F.B.I. hasn't contacted him yet. Slowly, slowly, slowly, this is going mainstream with the coverage today in the New York Times and Washington Post. If only one of them would do a significant piece that lists the thousands upon thousands of complaints about voting in this election so the American public would wake up and listen.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240

December 15, 2004 | 11:07 p.m. ET

Conyers "prepared" to contest Ohio Electoral Vote (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK - The ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee told us tonight on Countdown that he and others in Congress are considering formally challenging the slate of electors who cast Ohio’s votes, when those votes are opened and counted before a joint session of Congress on January 6th.

“We’re prepared to do that,” Conyers said. “And we understand the law as well as you.” After the on-air interview ended, the Michigan representative added that he and his colleagues had not yet decided whether or not to take the extraordinary constitutional step, and he had not sought the support of a Senator who would have to co-sign the challenge.

The constitution provides the challenge process for the eventuality that a given state’s popular vote is determined to have been compromised after that state has certified the vote, and its members of the Electoral College have cast their ballots for a presidential candidate. Such a challenge needs to be in written form, signed by one member of the Senate, and one member of the House. Upon its presentation, the joint vote-counting session would be adjourned, and the Senate and House separately vote, by simple majority, whether to accept the challenge, or let that state’s electoral votes stand as cast.

Conyers also rebuffed criticism that his “voting forums” in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio, had included formal participation only by Democratic congressmen and politicians. “The fact that Republicans didn’t join us isn’t our problem, it’s their fault.” Republican Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio last week announced plans to conduct an investigation into the 2004 vote under his auspices as Chairman of the House Administration Committee.

Conyers said he had not yet received a reply to his request to the Cincinnati field office of the FBI and the office of the Hocking County, Ohio, Prosecutor, to begin an investigation into the allegations that a vote-tabulating machine there was manipulated there last Friday, contrary to the statewide instructions of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell that no ballots or vote-counting equipment be inspected except in the presence of bi-partisan observers of that state’s recount.

He said he “didn’t know” if the explanation offered by the president of Triad, the manufacturer of the tabulator, that his employee merely conducted maintenance on the machine, was valid. But he did note that the source of the allegations, Hocking County Deputy Director of Elections Sherole Eaton, has “given a sworn affidavit. The president of the company hasn’t.”

E-mail me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Thanks for the posts. I missed the show, but this helps a lot.

Any news on the FBI dissing of Rep. Conyers?

No news?

Hmmm... I guess not.