Have you asked your Reperesentative to sign a letter of support to the Conyers request for a GAO invetstiation into Votergate?

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http://www.northcountynews.com/view.asp?s=12-8-04/news3.htm

Area activists demand FBI probe
Lowey supports investigation of Election Day fraud
Congresswoman Nita Lowey

by Adam Stone

Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D/Harrison) told North County News Friday she supports a federal investigation into voter fraud surrounding the 2004 presidential election.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating reported voting irregularities on Election Day that some Democrats believe unfairly handed President George W. Bush a second term.

"Almost immediately following the election this year, a group of representatives, most of whom are on the House Judiciary Committee, contacted the GAO to request an investigation into various reports of voting irregularities," Lowey said. "This is an important request and I will watch to ensure that the GAO conducts a thorough investigation of these issues."

"I believe that the right to vote is fundamental to the continued survival of our democracy, and because of that belief I have been working in Congress to ensure that Americans' votes count," she also stated through her spokeswoman, Julie Edwards.

On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots.

Participating House Democrats have said as part of this inquiry, they will provide copies of specific incident reports received in their offices, including more than 57,000 such complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certified Ohio's final presidential election results on Monday, declaring Bush the winner. With provisionals, absentees, and corrections, it turned out to be not a 136,000-vote margin for Bush, but rather one of 119,000. The two-percentage point victory over Kerry is not enough to trigger an automatic recount.

Lawyers for the Green Party and the Libertarian Party - supported by Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign - were expected to file requests yesterday (Tuesday) in each of Ohio's 88 counties seeking a recount, a process that could take several weeks.

Today (Wednesday), lawyers from Alliance for Democracy, a group based in Massachusetts that advocates fair elections, plan to ask the Ohio Supreme Court to throw out the election results and declare Kerry the winner.

Officials with the group, which is filing the request on behalf of 25 Ohio voters, said they would be able to demonstrate widespread irregularities and fraud in the heavily Republican counties surrounding Cincinnati.

Officials from the Green and Libertarian parties say they have raised more than $250,000 to defray the cost of recounting ballots in all 88 counties. And the Alliance for Democracy raised $108,000 through its website for the recount effort, according to published reports.

Under Ohio law, the recount must begin within 10 days of the formal request and groups calling for a recount have to pay for part of the cost.

Ohio's presidential electors are scheduled to meet Monday to cast their votes for Bush.

Kerry captures the White House if he wins Ohio, though the Massachusetts senator's surrogates have said they don't believe a recount would change the results.

Despite the assertions of the campaign surrogates, the senator indicated last month he is holding out hope.

"Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted - and they will be counted - we will continue to challenge this administration," Kerry said through a web-exclusive statement and video.

Also, asked by North County News about the possibility of a recount swinging the election, David Wade, a Kerry spokesman, said: "We are receiving frequent updates (about) the counting of ballots, so there'll be no surprises."

And although the Kerry team insists it is not challenging the outcome, their declarations on the subject are frequently qualified.

For instance, on Monday, before rejecting the idea Kerry might have won, the senator's lead electoral attorney in Ohio, Daniel Hoffheimer, started a sentence by saying: "While the election of the Bush-Cheney ticket by the Electoral College is all but certain..."

Kerry conceded the day after the election, saying there were not enough provisional and other ballots to swing the results his way.

Critics say Ohio's numbers are suspect because of several irregularities on election night. Those included disparities in the vote totals for different Democrats on the same ballot and the disqualification of more than 90,000 presidential votes on punch-card ballots because the choices could not be determined.

State and county election officials have said there were irregularities November 2, but no more than in any other election.

In addition to Lowey, northern Westchester's three other federal lawmakers were asked to speak about the recount effort and the voting irregularities.

Jennifer Hanley, press secretary for U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D/Chappaqua), did not respond to questions after she objected to interview methods. Clinton, many believe, will run for president in 2008.

Press officers for U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D/Brooklyn) and Congresswoman Sue Kelly (R/Katonah) did not return phone calls.

Twelve of the 15 members of the House Judiciary Committee signed a letter addressed to Blackwell that calls on him to assist in the GAO investigation of voting irregularities. Blackwell is a Republican who co-chaired this year's Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio.

The letter, dated December 2, asks for Blackwell's assistance with, as the letter puts it, the "ongoing investigation of election irregularities in the 2004 presidential election."

The GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, agreed to undertake a systematic and comprehensive review of election irregularities throughout the nation.

Democratic Congressman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, spearheaded the effort to get the GAO to investigate.

"It appears that a series of actions of government and non-government officials may have worked to frustrate minority voters," the letter from the lawmakers states. "Consistent and widespread reports indicate a lack of voting machines in urban, minority and Democratic areas, and a surplus of such machines in Republican, white and rural areas."

"As a result," the letter continues, "minority voters were discouraged from voting by lines that were in excess of eight hours long. Many of these voters were also apparently victims of a campaign of deception, where flyers and calls would direct them to the wrong polling place."

"Once at that polling place, after waiting for hours in line, many of these voters were provided provisional ballots after learning they were at the wrong location," the letter to Blackwell reads. "These ballots were not counted in many jurisdictions because of a directive issued by some election officials, such as yourself."

Conyers is also calling for Warren Mitofsky, head of Mitofsky International, one of the two companies that conducted exit polling for the television networks, to release any of the so-called 'raw data' from November 2, the materials constituting the exit polls that sparked controversy.

Other than alleged voting irregularities, some have called into question the reversal of the exit polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots), which early on predicted a Kerry victory.

Based on the full set of the 4 p.m. Election Day exit poll data, Dr. Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that "the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to one."

The 15-page letter to Blackwell outlines counting irregularities and procedural irregularities. One segment discusses "unusual results in Cuyahoga County."

"Precincts in Cleveland have reported an incredibly high number of votes for third party candidates who have historically received only a handful of votes from these urban areas," the letter states. "For example, precinct 4F in the fourth ward cast 290 votes for Kerry, 21 for Bush, and 215 for Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka. In 2000, the same precinct cast less than eight votes for all third party candidates combined."

As president, Peroutka - the most conservative candidate on the ballot -said he would advocate a total ban on all abortions and a total ban on any federal funding of abortions, here or abroad, according to his website. He also said he would do everything within his power to see "that women do not serve in the armed forces - at all, anywhere, period."

None of Peroutka's stated positions on the issues jibe with the ideology of the typical Democrat.

The letter to Blackwell analyzes the phenomenon in Cleveland.

"This pattern is found in at least 10 precincts throughout Cleveland in 2004, awarding hundreds of unlikely votes to the third party candidate," the letter reads. "Notably, these precincts share more than a strong Democratic history: the use of a punch card ballot."

Blackwell is asked if he has investigated whether the punch card system used in Cuyahoga County led to voters accidentally voting for third party candidates instead of the Democratic candidate and if a third party candidate ever received such a high percentage of votes in these precincts.

Another counting irregularity highlighted in the letter to Blackwell involves a "Warren County lockdown."

"On election night, Warren County locked down its administration building and barred reporters from observing the counting," the lawmakers write. "When that decision was questioned, county officials claimed they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a '10' on a scale of one to 10, and that this information was received from an FBI agent. Despite repeated requests, county officials have declined to name that agent, however, and the FBI has stated that they had no information about a terror threat in Warren County. Your office has stated that it does not know of any other county that took these drastic measures."

"In addition to these contradictions," the letter continues, "Warren County officials have given conflicting accounts of when the decision was made to lock down the building. While the county commissioner has stated that the decision to lockdown the building was made during an October 28 closed-door meeting, e-mailed memos - dated October 25 and 26 - indicate that preparations for the lockdown were already underway."

"This lockdown must be viewed in the context of the aberrational results in Warren County," the letter also states. "In the 2000 presidential election, the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, stopped running television commercials and pulled resources out of Ohio weeks before the election. He won 28 percent of the vote in Warren County."

"In 2004," the lawmakers add, "the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, fiercely contested Ohio and independent groups put considerable resources into getting out the Democratic vote. Moreover, unlike in 2000, independent candidate Ralph Nader was not on the Ohio ballot in 2004. Yet, the tallies reflect John Kerry receiving exactly the same percentage in Warren County as Gore received, 28 percent."

They go on to ask Blackwell whether he has conducted an investigation of the "lockdown" and ask: "If county officials were not advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent, have you inquired as to why they misrepresented this fact?"

Throughout predominately Democratic areas in Ohio on Election Day, there were reports of long lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines, the letter to Blackwell also states.

"Evidence introduced in public hearings indicates that 68 machines in Franklin County were never deployed for voters, despite long lines for voters at that county, with some voters waiting from two to seven hours to cast their vote," the lawmakers write.

"The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on Election Day, and Franklin County (Board of Elections) Director Matt Damschroder admitted on November 19, 2004 that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day," they continue.

"It has come to our attention that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 Election Day," the letter adds. "However, Franklin County's records reveal that they had 2,866 'machines available' on Election Day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day."

"An analysis revealed a pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, and more machines to the primarily Republican suburbs," the Democratic representatives state.

In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, the letter also states, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. There were reportedly only two voting machines at that precinct.

"The House Judiciary Committee staff has received first hand information confirming these reports," the letter to Blackwell reads. "Additionally, it appears that in a number of locations, polling places were moved from large locations, such as gyms, where voters could comfortably wait inside to vote to smaller locations where voters were required to wait in the rain."

Based on that information, the House members asked Blackwell how much funding Ohio received from the federal government for voting machines, what criteria were used to distribute those new machines, among other questions.

Carlo LoParo, a Blackwell spokesman, did not respond to e-mail and telephone messages requesting comment.

Both Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik have demanded that Blackwell recuse himself from the recount process because of his affiliation with the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign in Ohio. He has declined.

A Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, now a member of Congress, administered the 2000 Florida recount.

The United States comptroller general, David M. Walker, released a statement pertaining to election-related matters on November 23.

"General questions concerning the issues, as well as specific allegations of voting irregularities, generally are addressed to state and local officials, such as the secretary of state or the state attorney general," he wrote.

Walker did add the GAO would do "its part in connection with important election issues."

Through her spokeswoman, Lowey also said, "It is essential that all votes are counted and that any instances of fraud are investigated to ensure fair elections. As a co-sponsor of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, (I have) pushed to require voter-verified paper ballots for voting systems, ensuring that a manual audit can be performed."

"Congresswoman Lowey supports the GAO study and will be closely monitoring its progress to make sure it is thorough and that it resolves any lingering questions on the results of the most recent election," Edwards, the spokeswoman, stated in an e-mail.

A rally was held in front of the FBI office in White Plains Friday. Westchester County activists are calling on the bureau to investigate irregularities.

Organizer Nick Mottern of Peekskill estimated a 40-person turnout at the 222 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains office.

"Folks were very enthusiastic, glad to be acting on their concerns," Mottern said. "We got much favorable reaction from motorists."

The local activists, whose group is named Transparent Democracy, plan on rallying in front of the building again today (Wednesday) at noon.

The area resident addressed a letter on the issue to FBI Director Robert Mueller.

"On behalf of myself and other concerned citizens of Westchester County, New York, I implore the Federal Bureau of Investigation to urgently and intensively investigate evidence of widespread conspiracy to tamper with votes and suppress voting in the 2004 presidential election," Mottern writes in the letter to Mueller.

Mottern requested the FBI "immediately" send additional agents to Ohio and Florida, key electoral states where, he said, "there are indications of gross tampering and suppression."

"Discrepancies between exit polls and tallies from electronic voting machines leaving no paper trails indicate the need for investigations in Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania," Mottern writes.

"We request that the FBI interview, in addition to public officials, employees of firms involved in electronic voting in the 2004, the most prominent including: Diebold Election Systems; Election Systems and Software; Science Applications International Corporation, Sequoia Voting Systems; and VoteHere, Inc.," Mottern wrote in his letter.

Diebold is headed by Republican Wally O'Dell. Last year, O'Dell wrote to Ohio Republican donors, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The activists from Transparent Democracy attempted to present the complaint to the FBI, but News 12 Westchester later reported the FBI refused to accept delivery of the letter.

On Monday, Mottern sent the letter express/certified mail to Mueller in Washington. Prior to that, on Friday, 14 other people at the rally had signed the letter after they learned the FBI office would not send someone to personally receive it.

In an interview with North County News, an FBI agent, Joseph Valiquette - a press officer with the bureau - said the letter Mottern drafted should first be handled by national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and then it would likely be directed to regional offices, in states such as Ohio and Florida, as well as the others Mottern suggested.

A U.S. attorney in those states would then, according to protocol, launch a preliminary investigation before opening - if warranted - a "full-blown federal investigation," Valiquette said.

North County News provided the agent with a copy of Mottern's letter.

"I'm sure headquarters…would reach out to those field offices," Valiquette remarked.

A state's federal prosecutor "would have to at least make (an) inquiry," the agent explained.

Bob Hawk, a Cleveland special agent and press handler said if the office received Mottern's letter "it wouldn't be ignored."

The bureau would review the charges in such a letter if there was "any substance," but Hawk added it is "pretty tough to speculate on what might happen."

Bill Carter and Paul Bresson, FBI agents and press officers out of the bureau's national headquarters, did not return phone calls.

Kerry had more than $14 million in one of his election accounts in late November, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, The New York Times reported on Saturday. The Kerry campaign, before Election Day, was preparing for the current recount battle. "We reserved resources to go toe-to-toe with Karl Rove's army in a scorched-earth World War III recount battle in as many as five states," Wade, the Kerry spokesman, said.

Wade also told North County News last month that: "We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn't be any higher - no (irregularity) will go unchecked. Period."

Brooke Gladstone, co-host of WNYC's weekend On the Media program, which is distributed by National Public Radio, said the mainstream media might be largely ignoring the story because many reporters are relieved that a "long and nasty campaign" is over.

"Moreover, accusations of vote fraud emerged first in the blogs, which mainstream media regard with some suspicion," she stated. "Blogs break important stories, but they're also repositories for rumor, so every charge needs to be checked….That takes a lot of commitment on the part of reporters and editors that (have) been eroded by charges of left-wing bias from the right, lack of outrage from the Democrats, shrinking news holes and budget cuts."

"I strongly believe that demonstrable voter fraud, whether or not it changes the outcome of the election, is a front-page issue," she also stated.

Gladstone said after 9/11 "reporters (have been) afraid to get in front of a story." They prefer, she said, to receive "cover from politicians," and without "Kerry making a fuss," they might fear charges of liberal bias.

A wire editor with The New York Times, Dan Gold, was asked whether allegations of voter suppression and the call for a recount warranted more significant play by top-level editors at his paper.

"All I can tell you is it's an interesting story you're working on," Gold said.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said on Monday his party would spend "whatever it takes" to conduct "a comprehensive investigative study" of the vote in Ohio, one to be completed some time next year.

North County News has received hundreds of e-mails from activists across the country begging for coverage of the reported voting irregularities that aren't being chronicled in the mainstream press.

"There cannot be a fair recount because the voting machines - many were used in Ohio and were in the only precincts where exit polls were wrong - leave no paper trail and therefore their votes cannot be verified," Dr. Justin Frank, the author of Bush on the Couch, a psychoanalysis of the 43rd president, remarked. "All they do when recounting machine ballots is look at the same printout and add it up again. That is not a recount at all, because it says nothing about possible machine error."

"If there were a paper trail this would not be a problem because the paper trail could be checked against the vote total," he continued. "Since that is not the case, a recount is impossible."

"They must do a revote," Dr. Frank concluded.

Thanks for posting that, Paine. I'm not positive whether my congressman (Marty Meehan) signed on to the GAO investigation.

Marty Meehan is a windbag. He is so full of himself and unresponsive, I work with the rep in the next district (Jim McGovern, Mass 3rd).

And, OK, I'll come clean, in protest, I voted for Ilana Freedman, Libertarian-turned-Republican. (Don't worry, he won 70-30%, the Mass delegation remains 100% Democrat).

I like Marty. But then I grew up in Lowell, and he's also from Lowell. Maybe he just doesn't speak fluent "Metro-West".

Who here has contacted their representative and demanded that he/she support the GAO investigation?

I believe our Rep is one of those who signed on to the Judiciary Committee OH investigation. In fact, at least 3 MA Dem Reps are involved - Meehan, Frank and Delahunt I know for sure. Not certain about others.

I wonder why peeps are trying to discredit this investigation?

Could it be they got something real bad to hide..... :o :o :o