Christopher Hitchens thinks the OHIO VOTE WAS STOLEN
by BooMan23
[Unsubscribe]
we got us a neoCON saying this!!!
Wed Feb 9th, 2005 at 02:07:12 EDT
Christopher Hitchens has a new article in Vanity Fair entitled, OHIO'S ODD NUMBER'S. The lead-in states "No conspiracy theorist, and no fan of John Kerry's, the author nevertheless found the Ohio polling results impossible to swallow: Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines."
Hitchens was never a supporter of George W. Bush per se. He was active before the 2000 election in highlighting the felons list in Florida. Generally speaking, Hitchens holds leftist political views that have evolved unpredictably over time. He has been a relentless critic of Henry Kissinger.
(Ohio Vote stuff below the fold)
Diaries :: BooMan23's diary ::
I admire him for his beautiful use of language, his excellent book reviews, and his high tolerance for alcohol. I even sympathized with many of his pre-war arguments for invading Iraq. Hitchens has been an agitator against religious and ethnic hatred for a long time and has taken a special interest in Cypriots and the Kurds. I believe he sincerely thought that Iraq would be a better place (especially for the Kurds) without Saddam Hussein, and that the only proper response to 9/11 had to begin with "solving" the containment policy in Iraq.
However, Hitchens has never come to grips with some of the inherent problems with the way the Bush administration chose to solve that problem. The largest shortcoming was the basic dishonesty the Bush team used about motives. Misusing and hyping intelligence was both unnecessary and harmful to their program. Another shortcoming was their failure to share the post-war lucre with potential allies like France, Russia, and China that had a financial disincentive to help us remove Saddam. This led directly to our failure at the United Nations, which was more important than whether those countries deserved a piece of the pie. The Bush administration also failed diplomatically in the region. Most glaringly they gave guaranteed loans in the billions to the Turks, and received a refusal to base our troops in return.
And then there was the inadequate troop deployment that was a direct result of our failure to enlist anticipated support. And then there was our rejection of the State Department reconstruction plan. And then there was our use of torture and renditions. On and on, and Hitchens has never stepped back and asked himself seriously, whether he was misguided to place his trust in the Bush administration to carry out a mission that might have had potential to make us safer, but has manifestly failed to do so.
So enlisted is he in the Iraqi Liberation Project that he developed a hatred of those who criticized its implementation and began to move toward wholehearted and uncritical support of Bush's reelection.
As he says about Kerry in this Vanity Fair article: "...I did not think that John Kerry should have been President of any country at any time."
Yet, in spite of this, he now says that, "The Federal Election Commission, which has been a risible body for far too long, ought to make Ohio its business. The Diebold company, which also manufactures A.T.M.'s, should not receive another dime until it can produce a voting system that is similarly reliable. And Americans should cease to be treated like serfs or extras when they present themselves to exercise their franchise."
Why?
Most of the reasons that Hitchens cites will be familiar to those fraudniks that followed Georgia10's peerless work after the election.
First, the county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct discepencies. In Butler County, for example, a Democrat running for State Supreme Court chief justice received 61,559 votes. The Kerry-Edwards ticket drew about 5,000 fewer votes, at 56,243. This contrasts rather markedly with the behavior of the Republican electorate in that county, who cast about 40,000 fewer votes for their judicial nominee than they did for Bush and Cheney. (The latter pattern, with vote totals tapering down from the top of the ticket, is by far the more general-and probable-one nationwide and statewide)...In 11 other counties, the same Democratic judicial nominee, C. Ellen Connally, managed to outpoll the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nominees by hundreds and sometimes thousands of votes. In Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland, two largely black precincts on the East Side voted like this. In Precinct 4F: Kerry 290, Bush 21, Peroutka 215. In Precinct 4N: Kerry 318, Bush 11, Badnarik, 163....In 2000, Ralph Nader's best year, the total vote received in Precinct 4f by all third-party candidates combined was eight.
In Montgomery County, two precincts recorded a combinced undervote of almost 6,000...that number represents an undervote of 25 percent, in a county where undervoting averages out at just 2 percent. Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than Republican ones.
In Precinct 1B of Gehanna, in Franklin County, a computerized voting machine recorded a total of 4,258 votes for Bush and 260 votes for Kerry. In that precinct, however, there are only 800 registered voters, of whom 638 showed up.
Miami County also managed to report 19,000 additional votes for Bush after 100 percent of the precincts had reported on Election Day
Hitchens begins the article by detailing the 8-11 hour wait that 2,200 voters from Kenyon College endured waiting to vote on ONE voting machine. There had been two, but one broke down around lunch time. Apparently the mayor of Gambier had requested more machines ten days before the election and was refused.
Hitchens also reports on "vote-hopping" where a vote in one column comes up reported as a vote in another. And he makes an overall point about the trend in such problems:
Machines are fallible and so are humans, and "expletive deleted" happens, to be sure, and no doubt many Ohio voters were able to record their choices promptly and without grotesque anomalies. But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to finge-party losers.
From all this Hitchens draws the proper conclusions. A conclusion NOT DRAWN BY THE ADMINISTATORS OF THIS SITE:
Whichever way you shake it, or hold it up to the light, there is something wrong about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many "vote hops" the computerized machines mights have performed unnoticed...
...there is one soothing explanation that I don't trust anymore. It was said, often in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be "a conspiracy so immense" as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to be part of the plan. The stakes are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.
I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommenended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people, would have to be "in on it."
And if that doesn't convince RonKfromSeattle, maybe this will:
I asked her finally, what would be the logical grounds for deducing that any tampering had in fact occurred. "Well. I understand from what I have read", she said, "that the early exit polls on the day were believed by both parties." That, I was able to tell her from direct experience, was true. But it wasn't quite enough, either. So I asked, "What if all the anomalies and malfunctions, to give them a neutral name, were distributed along one axis of consistency: in other words, that they kept on disadvantaging only one candidate?" My question was hypothetical as she had made no particular study if Ohio, but she replied at once, "Then that would be quite serious."
Indeed. Quite serious. The election was stolen, and instead of getting our hands on the machines and "send(ing) the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit(ing) the party that had engaged in fraud" we worried about looking like sore losers. I'm with Hitchens on this one, even though I'm pleasantly surprised to see that he is with me.
see diary for approrpriately quoted format and comments
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/9/1712/26186
Full Version: Hitchens thinks OHIO VOTE WAS STOLEN
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Civil Rights and Civil Liberties > Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Archive
Gannon International Group/ Ohio Secretary of State. This NEOCON group seems to only have one state they have serviced,OHIO. HMMMMMMMMMMMMm
so what happens now?
QUOTE
Hitchens also reports on "vote-hopping" where a vote in one column comes up reported as a vote in another. And he makes an overall point about the trend in such problems:
Machines are fallible and so are humans, and "expletive deleted" happens, to be sure, and no doubt many Ohio voters were able to record their choices promptly and without grotesque anomalies. But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to finge-party losers.
Machines are fallible and so are humans, and "expletive deleted" happens, to be sure, and no doubt many Ohio voters were able to record their choices promptly and without grotesque anomalies. But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to finge-party losers.
Eureka!
http://www.nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/
QUOTE
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Breaking News: Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Calls for Ohio Investigation, Says "There Is Something Wrong About the Ohio Election"
By ADVOCATE STAFF
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY IS DEVELOPING].
From Hitchens' most recent Vanity Fair article:
Whichever way you shake it, or hold it up to the light, there is something wrong about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many "vote hops" the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed....there is one soothing explanation that I don't trust anymore. It was said, often in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be "a conspiracy so immense" as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to be part of the plan. The stakes are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.
I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people, would have to be "in on it."
Hitchens is a nationally-renowned columnist.
The Advocate expects this story to hit the mainstream media, and expects, indeed, some significant critical assessment and consideration of Hitchens' analysis, as the Vanity Fair writer is not viewed as a Kerry admirer or sympathizer. According to the high-traffic progressive website Daily Kos, Hitchens has said of Kerry, "I did not think that John Kerry should have been President of any country at any time."
Despite this, Hitchens cites numerous voting and tabulation irregularities in Ohio, as well as personal investigation of electronic voting machine security, as the basis for his belief that a massive Congressional investigation into the 2004 presidential election is warranted.
The Hitchens article comes at a strange time in the post-election Ohio debacle, as Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has just refused to show up to the first bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Congressional hearing on the 2004 presidential election.
Said U.S. Representative and Republican -- yes, Republican -- Bob Ney (R-OH) of Blackwell's suspicious no-show, "[w]e can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide."
Blackwell also recently made a bizarre filing in a U.S. Federal Court in Ohio, alleging that that federal court had no jurisdiction to oversee his actions in a federal election.
What?
What is this man hiding?
Does The Advocate sense an assertion of Fifth Amendment rights in Blackwell's future?
The Guardian [UK]
More as we get it.
Breaking News: Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens Calls for Ohio Investigation, Says "There Is Something Wrong About the Ohio Election"
By ADVOCATE STAFF
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY IS DEVELOPING].
From Hitchens' most recent Vanity Fair article:
Whichever way you shake it, or hold it up to the light, there is something wrong about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many "vote hops" the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed....there is one soothing explanation that I don't trust anymore. It was said, often in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be "a conspiracy so immense" as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to be part of the plan. The stakes are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.
I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people, would have to be "in on it."
Hitchens is a nationally-renowned columnist.
The Advocate expects this story to hit the mainstream media, and expects, indeed, some significant critical assessment and consideration of Hitchens' analysis, as the Vanity Fair writer is not viewed as a Kerry admirer or sympathizer. According to the high-traffic progressive website Daily Kos, Hitchens has said of Kerry, "I did not think that John Kerry should have been President of any country at any time."
Despite this, Hitchens cites numerous voting and tabulation irregularities in Ohio, as well as personal investigation of electronic voting machine security, as the basis for his belief that a massive Congressional investigation into the 2004 presidential election is warranted.
The Hitchens article comes at a strange time in the post-election Ohio debacle, as Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has just refused to show up to the first bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Congressional hearing on the 2004 presidential election.
Said U.S. Representative and Republican -- yes, Republican -- Bob Ney (R-OH) of Blackwell's suspicious no-show, "[w]e can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide."
Blackwell also recently made a bizarre filing in a U.S. Federal Court in Ohio, alleging that that federal court had no jurisdiction to oversee his actions in a federal election.
What?
What is this man hiding?
Does The Advocate sense an assertion of Fifth Amendment rights in Blackwell's future?
The Guardian [UK]
More as we get it.
Yup, something smells rotten in the state of O-HI-O...
EVERY VOTE COUNTS COUNT EVERY VOTE
EVERY VOTE COUNTS COUNT EVERY VOTE
Breaking News: Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens, a Bush Supporter, Calls for Ohio Investigation: "There Is Something Wrong About the Ohio Election"
http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02...hristopher.html
The Nashua Advocate
A News Outlet for the American "Orange Revolution"
News From The U.S. Election Reform Movement
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
By ADVOCATE STAFF
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY IS DEVELOPING].
From Hitchens' most recent Vanity Fair article:
Whichever way you shake it, or hold it up to the light, there is something wrong about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many "vote hops" the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed....there is one soothing explanation that I don't trust anymore. It was said, often in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be "a conspiracy so immense" as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to be part of the plan. The stakes are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.
I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people, would have to be "in on it."
Vanity Fair March 2005 [TOC]
Hitchens is a nationally-renowned columnist.
The Advocate expects this story to hit the mainstream media, and expects, indeed, some significant critical assessment and consideration of Hitchens' analysis, as the Vanity Fair writer is not viewed as a Kerry admirer or sympathizer. According to the high-traffic progressive website Daily Kos, Hitchens has said of Kerry, "I did not think that John Kerry should have been President of any country at any time."
In fact, Hitchens is a Bush supporter.
He announced his endorsement in this article, saying
Should the electors decide for the President, as I would slightly prefer, the excruciating personality of George Bush strikes me in the light of a second- or third-order consideration. If the worst that is said of him is true--that he is an idiotic and psychically damaged Sabbath-fanatic, with nothing between his large Texan ears--then these things were presumably just as true when he ran against Al Gore, and against nation-building and foreign intervention. It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the parallel lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me skeptical....The President, notwithstanding his shortcomings of intellect, has been able to say, repeatedly and even repetitively, the essential thing: that we are involved in this war without apology and without remorse. He should go further, and admit the evident possibility of defeat--which might concentrate a few minds--while abjuring any notion of capitulation. Senator Kerry is also capable of saying this, but not without cheapening it or qualifying it...
Despite his support for the President, Hitchens cites numerous voting and tabulation irregularities in Ohio, as well as personal investigation of electronic voting machine security, as the basis for his belief that a massive Congressional investigation into the 2004 presidential election is warranted.
Hitchens may be the most powerful and noteworthy non-politician "convert" to the "Investigate Ohio" troupe, particularly given his scathing comments for angry Democrats just days after the November presidential election. On November 9th, 2004, just one week after the election, Hitchens wrote in this article in Slate,
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo.
According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate.
These days, the Democratic "hysteria" Hitchins derided after the election apparently doesn't seem so "extraordinary" or "pitiful" to the politically moderate commentator.
Perhaps it's because he took some time to look at the evidence, which the vast majority of the media has yet to do?
[The Advocate remembers, here, the recent release of Edison/Mitofsky's pathetic "report" on the November exit polls, which was unquestioningly released by the mainstream media as the final word on why last year's exit polls were the most "inaccurate," it would appear, in the nation's general election history. In fact, the report blamed Edison/Mitofsky's "errors" on bad weather and exit-pollsters with a media age in their thirties. Make sense to you? It hasn't thus far to any competent statistician who's read it, as our coverage in The Advocate attests. The non-partisan U.S. Count Votes organization says that there remains a distinct possibility the actual raw vote tallies from Election Day were "corrupted" either through fraud or machine error, a reality which, if proven, could have swung/could yet swing the election to the Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry].
The Hitchens article comes at a strange time in the post-election Ohio debacle, as Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has just refused to show up to the first bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Congressional hearing on the 2004 presidential election.
Said U.S. Representative and Republican -- yes, Republican -- Bob Ney (R-OH) of Blackwell's suspicious no-show, "[w]e can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide."
Blackwell also recently made a bizarre filing in a U.S. Federal Court in Ohio, alleging that that federal court had no jurisdiction to oversee his actions in a federal election.
What?
What is this man hiding?
Does The Advocate sense an assertion of Fifth Amendment rights in Blackwell's future?
The Guardian [UK]
More as we get it.
posted by News Editor at 2/9/2005 01:04:17 PM
http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02...airs-christophe r.html
Copyright © 2005 The Nashua Advocate. Used by permission. Please visit the Nashua Advocate web site at http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com for much more information on voting and elections.
http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02...hristopher.html
The Nashua Advocate
A News Outlet for the American "Orange Revolution"
News From The U.S. Election Reform Movement
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
By ADVOCATE STAFF
[EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS STORY IS DEVELOPING].
From Hitchens' most recent Vanity Fair article:
Whichever way you shake it, or hold it up to the light, there is something wrong about the Ohio election that refuses to add up. The sheer number of irregularities compelled a formal recount, which was completed in late December and which came out much the same as the original one, with 176 fewer votes for George Bush. But this was a meaningless exercise in reassurance, since there is simply no means of checking, for example, how many "vote hops" the computerized machines might have performed unnoticed....there is one soothing explanation that I don't trust anymore. It was said, often in reply to charges of vote tampering, that it would have had to be "a conspiracy so immense" as to involve a dangerously large number of people. Indeed, some Ohio Democrats themselves laughed off some of the charges, saying that they too would have had to be part of the plan. The stakes are very high: one defector or turncoat with hard evidence could send the principals to jail forever and permanently discredit the party that had engaged in fraud.
I had the chance to spend quality time with someone who came to me well recommended, who did not believe that fraud had yet actually been demonstrated, whose background was in the manufacture of the machines, and who wanted to be anonymous. It certainly could be done, she said, and only a very, very few people, would have to be "in on it."
Vanity Fair March 2005 [TOC]
Hitchens is a nationally-renowned columnist.
The Advocate expects this story to hit the mainstream media, and expects, indeed, some significant critical assessment and consideration of Hitchens' analysis, as the Vanity Fair writer is not viewed as a Kerry admirer or sympathizer. According to the high-traffic progressive website Daily Kos, Hitchens has said of Kerry, "I did not think that John Kerry should have been President of any country at any time."
In fact, Hitchens is a Bush supporter.
He announced his endorsement in this article, saying
Should the electors decide for the President, as I would slightly prefer, the excruciating personality of George Bush strikes me in the light of a second- or third-order consideration. If the worst that is said of him is true--that he is an idiotic and psychically damaged Sabbath-fanatic, with nothing between his large Texan ears--then these things were presumably just as true when he ran against Al Gore, and against nation-building and foreign intervention. It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the parallel lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me skeptical....The President, notwithstanding his shortcomings of intellect, has been able to say, repeatedly and even repetitively, the essential thing: that we are involved in this war without apology and without remorse. He should go further, and admit the evident possibility of defeat--which might concentrate a few minds--while abjuring any notion of capitulation. Senator Kerry is also capable of saying this, but not without cheapening it or qualifying it...
Despite his support for the President, Hitchens cites numerous voting and tabulation irregularities in Ohio, as well as personal investigation of electronic voting machine security, as the basis for his belief that a massive Congressional investigation into the 2004 presidential election is warranted.
Hitchens may be the most powerful and noteworthy non-politician "convert" to the "Investigate Ohio" troupe, particularly given his scathing comments for angry Democrats just days after the November presidential election. On November 9th, 2004, just one week after the election, Hitchens wrote in this article in Slate,
Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo.
According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate.
These days, the Democratic "hysteria" Hitchins derided after the election apparently doesn't seem so "extraordinary" or "pitiful" to the politically moderate commentator.
Perhaps it's because he took some time to look at the evidence, which the vast majority of the media has yet to do?
[The Advocate remembers, here, the recent release of Edison/Mitofsky's pathetic "report" on the November exit polls, which was unquestioningly released by the mainstream media as the final word on why last year's exit polls were the most "inaccurate," it would appear, in the nation's general election history. In fact, the report blamed Edison/Mitofsky's "errors" on bad weather and exit-pollsters with a media age in their thirties. Make sense to you? It hasn't thus far to any competent statistician who's read it, as our coverage in The Advocate attests. The non-partisan U.S. Count Votes organization says that there remains a distinct possibility the actual raw vote tallies from Election Day were "corrupted" either through fraud or machine error, a reality which, if proven, could have swung/could yet swing the election to the Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry].
The Hitchens article comes at a strange time in the post-election Ohio debacle, as Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has just refused to show up to the first bipartisan -- yes, bipartisan -- Congressional hearing on the 2004 presidential election.
Said U.S. Representative and Republican -- yes, Republican -- Bob Ney (R-OH) of Blackwell's suspicious no-show, "[w]e can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide."
Blackwell also recently made a bizarre filing in a U.S. Federal Court in Ohio, alleging that that federal court had no jurisdiction to oversee his actions in a federal election.
What?
What is this man hiding?
Does The Advocate sense an assertion of Fifth Amendment rights in Blackwell's future?
The Guardian [UK]
More as we get it.
posted by News Editor at 2/9/2005 01:04:17 PM
http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02...airs-christophe r.html
Copyright © 2005 The Nashua Advocate. Used by permission. Please visit the Nashua Advocate web site at http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com for much more information on voting and elections.
FBI checking Clermont voting
Congressman claims tampering
By Reid Forgrave
Enquirer staff writer
2004 COUNTY TALLY
George W. Bush won Clermont County handily in the November presidential election, garnering 70.7 percent of the county's vote.
Total votes:
George W. Bush, Republican: 62,949
John F. Kerry, Democrat: 25,887
Michael Badnarik, Libertarian: 149
Michael Peroutka, Constitution: 89
BATAVIA - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is interviewing members of the Clermont County Board of Elections because of a Democratic Congressman's claim of vote-tampering during the presidential election.
The allegations stem from white oval-shaped stickers, about the size of an M&M, placed on fewer than 100 ballots.
Poll workers used them on Election Day to correct mistaken votes and determine intent on the optical scan ballots. Some voters, for example, marked their vote, but also etched a small mark in the space for another candidate, which threw off the machines.
Michael Brooks, a spokesman with the FBI's office in Cincinnati, confirmed Tuesday that the agency is conducting preliminary interviews with Clermont elections officials. The bureau hasn't yet decided to open a formal investigation.
The FBI is responding to a letter from Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., requesting an investigation "of vote-tampering if not outright fraud" based on recount observers' statements.
Clermont Republicans, as well as the elections board director, dismissed the allegations as a ploy by some Democrats to "muddy the waters" of President Bush's victory in Ohio - where a 118,599-vote victory over Sen. John Kerry sealed Bush's second term.
"It's a farce," said Tim Rudd, chair of the Clermont County Republican Party and member of the bipartisan elections board. "I don't know what they're trying to do here. What we did see (during the state-mandated recount) was a couple of white ovals used to correct ballots for the voters' intent. What they didn't see was 50,000 adhesive ovals on these ballots."
Critics admit the alleged discrepancy wouldn't affect the outcome, but they say every vote count is a matter of principle.
"I don't think anyone would be foolish enough to say the election was stolen," said Bob Drake, a University of Cincinnati professor and Green Party recount observer. "It has nothing to do with the outcome of the election. We simply want the count to be accurate.
Board of Elections Director Dan Bare said elections are never perfect. He denied that there was any election fraud and said he welcomed the FBI scrutiny of the counting process, which includes one Republican and one Democrat through every step.
E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com
Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., sent a letter dated Jan. 28 asking the FBI to open an investigation into election irregularities during the presidential election in Ohio. A link to his letter is available at www.house.gov/conyers.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...ate=printpicart
Congressman claims tampering
By Reid Forgrave
Enquirer staff writer
2004 COUNTY TALLY
George W. Bush won Clermont County handily in the November presidential election, garnering 70.7 percent of the county's vote.
Total votes:
George W. Bush, Republican: 62,949
John F. Kerry, Democrat: 25,887
Michael Badnarik, Libertarian: 149
Michael Peroutka, Constitution: 89
BATAVIA - The Federal Bureau of Investigation is interviewing members of the Clermont County Board of Elections because of a Democratic Congressman's claim of vote-tampering during the presidential election.
The allegations stem from white oval-shaped stickers, about the size of an M&M, placed on fewer than 100 ballots.
Poll workers used them on Election Day to correct mistaken votes and determine intent on the optical scan ballots. Some voters, for example, marked their vote, but also etched a small mark in the space for another candidate, which threw off the machines.
Michael Brooks, a spokesman with the FBI's office in Cincinnati, confirmed Tuesday that the agency is conducting preliminary interviews with Clermont elections officials. The bureau hasn't yet decided to open a formal investigation.
The FBI is responding to a letter from Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., requesting an investigation "of vote-tampering if not outright fraud" based on recount observers' statements.
Clermont Republicans, as well as the elections board director, dismissed the allegations as a ploy by some Democrats to "muddy the waters" of President Bush's victory in Ohio - where a 118,599-vote victory over Sen. John Kerry sealed Bush's second term.
"It's a farce," said Tim Rudd, chair of the Clermont County Republican Party and member of the bipartisan elections board. "I don't know what they're trying to do here. What we did see (during the state-mandated recount) was a couple of white ovals used to correct ballots for the voters' intent. What they didn't see was 50,000 adhesive ovals on these ballots."
Critics admit the alleged discrepancy wouldn't affect the outcome, but they say every vote count is a matter of principle.
"I don't think anyone would be foolish enough to say the election was stolen," said Bob Drake, a University of Cincinnati professor and Green Party recount observer. "It has nothing to do with the outcome of the election. We simply want the count to be accurate.
Board of Elections Director Dan Bare said elections are never perfect. He denied that there was any election fraud and said he welcomed the FBI scrutiny of the counting process, which includes one Republican and one Democrat through every step.
E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com
Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., sent a letter dated Jan. 28 asking the FBI to open an investigation into election irregularities during the presidential election in Ohio. A link to his letter is available at www.house.gov/conyers.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...ate=printpicart
QUOTE(iowaedwards2 @ Feb 9 2005, 09:06 AM)
Gannon International Group/ Ohio Secretary of State. This NEOCON group seems to only have one state they have serviced,OHIO. HMMMMMMMMMMMMm
I see you mentioned Gannon. Pretty interesting, is that group private or public, if private figures, but still interesting, I wonder if there is a link between the hack reporter Jeff Gannon and Gannon International. I did a search on Jeff Gannon at highbeam.com and it comes out saying he is also owner of the Free Speech Foundation. Did a google search, nothing shows up except at a site called probush.com which has a link to the website to donate money to freespeechfoundation.org. Go to the site, it is a pretty sad site, no about us or anything, but you can donate money through paypal. I went through guidestar.com to check if it is a real non-profit, does not show up either, at least the The CNP shows up.
Vanity Fair?
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.