Had to post this:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=...oting&printer=1

Democrats to Probe Ohio Voting Problems

1 hour, 27 minutes ago

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Democratic Party said Monday it will examine reports of voting problems in Ohio, where President Bush (news - web sites)'s victory clinched his re-election.


AP Photo

Outgoing Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) Chairman Terry McAuliffe said the party will spend "whatever it takes" to study complaints from Ohio voters that included uncounted votes, long lines, shortages of ballots, understaffed polling stations and voting machine errors.

McAuliffe said the party is not seeking to overturn the result but to ensure that every vote is counted. He said the study will be conducted by nonpartisan experts to be announced later, with a report issued in the spring that recommends reforms to prevent such problems in the future.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was expected to certify Bush's winning margin of about 119,000 votes on Monday, a margin closer than election night totals but not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

The Green and Libertarian parties are raising money to pay for a recount that would be conducted once the results are certified.

Blackwell, a Republican, oversaw the election process while serving as one of several statewide GOP leaders who co-chaired Bush's campaign. The 2000 Florida recount was also administered by a Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who is now a member of Congress.

In a conference call with reporters, McAuliffe said the panel needs to look at the practice of secretaries of state serving as campaign officials. He said he personally thinks it's a laudable goal for election officials to be nonpartisan.

McAuliffe said it's too early to tell if Republicans were behind any fraud that may have influenced the outcome in Ohio.

McAuliffe said he briefed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) about the study Sunday night and Kerry will be monitoring the results carefully. Kerry often promised voters, particularly black voters, that his campaign would examine any allegations of voter fraud.

Many blacks said irregularities in Florida in 2000 kept their votes from being counted. Democrats want to ensure that blacks do not give up on the voting process because they are such overwhelming supporters of Democratic candidates.


(back to earning a living.)

Thank's for the post...this is great news.....everytime I see/hear that Kerry gets involved my hopes soar....

Kenneth Blackwell deserves a ROUGH DEEP PROBE, and an investigation into vote fraud would be good too :D

in the spring??????????????????????

Well, hopefully just trying to keep from saying that if JOHN KERRY WON then John Kerry is President. Not sure what to make of this. At least they are doing something????????????

for the presidency to be overturned, they would have to find Bush directly responsible for the vote manipulation. it appears to be too late to stop the certification process...but maybe, by spring, enough can come out that is concrete and fully confirmed that 2006 congressional races can be influenced. the best way to stop Bushco at this point is to get Congress to abandon him and his agenda...or to get them so interconnected over voter problems that not only does the system get fixed, but the Repubs get punished at the polls. That would be the best revenge.

The best way to stop bushco is to give the Presidency to the one who won it!

In the SPRING???? Try about in 2 weeks, PLEASE.

I'm not going to buy the idea that a stolen election still belongs to the recipient of the stolen election. That is pure crap.

Here is an excerpt of a statment posted on the DNC homepage:

http://www.democrats.org/news/200412060007.html

The DNC investigative study will examine the legitimate questions and concerns that have been raised in Ohio and will develop factual information which will be critically important in crafting further necessary election reforms. Specifically, the investigation will seek to address questions surrounding the issues of adequate voting resources (machines, pollworkers, etc), the high number of provisional ballots – valid and invalid – as compared with other states, anomalies in the reported results as compared with exit polls, historical data, and reported anomalies within counties and precincts and whether the touch-screen machines and tabulating systems functioned properly.

To address these questions and more, the DNC, at its own expense, will assemble a top-flight team of recognized experts to be named at a later date including:

a political scientist expert in quantitative analysis;
an expert or experts in the design of computer hardware and software systems;
an expert in voting systems and machines;
an investigator with forensic expertise; and
a pollster to survey voters who cast provisional ballots and to conduct other original survey research as needed.

This team will be supported by DNC and state party staff, consultants who were deeply involved in the election effort in Ohio, Ohio attorneys and the DNC legal team. McAuliffe announced that he had reached out to local Democratic elected officials in Ohio and they expressed strong support for the project and promised to cooperate in anyway that they could.

"We are launching this comprehensive investigative study not to contest the results of the 2004 election, but again to help ensure that every eligible vote cast is truly counted. This study will address the legitimate questions and concerns that have been raised in Ohio. Our goal is to understand and report back on what happened and why," said Chairman McAuliffe.