Please write Baltimore Sun and give them your opinion on this!

Opinion Silencing the vote
http://www.baltimoresun.com

By David Lytel
Originally published December 9, 2004
PEOPLE FROM all over Ukraine have gone to Kiev to protest dishonest vote counting in their presidential election. Exit polls, so trustworthy that they are used worldwide to uncover election fraud, showed the opposition candidate had won, and the people didn't believe the news when it reported the government's surprise victory.
To those of us who doubt President Bush won the election in the United States, the key differences between here and Ukraine are the methods of fraud and the passivity of the news media.

Here the party in power used unverifiable computerized voting to boost its totals and intimidation and misinformation to suppress the vote totals of its opponents, but the news media haven't investigated it.

The recounts by the Libertarian and Green parties in Ohio and by the Ralph Nader campaign in New Hampshire are not being covered by the commercial news media, despite being under way for more than two weeks. And that's not even the most consequential story the national press has not yet seen fit to print.

In Franklin County, Ohio, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Bush campaign official, distributed voting machines so that Republicans could vote efficiently while ensuring that Democrats had to give up hours of their time waiting in line because of a shortage of voting machines in their districts, thus reintroducing a poll tax that the Constitution forbids. Mr. Blackwell did the same elsewhere. One polling place in Howard County, Ohio, that was under court order to permit everyone in line to cast their vote sent them all home at midnight because the order applied only to Election Day itself.

Warren County, Ohio, closed the vote count to outside observers on the advice of the Department of Homeland Security. This county in suburban Cincinnati is of no interest to al-Qaida but it is the single most important county in the nation to Mr. Bush's re-election, having produced nearly one-third of his statewide margin. Democratic registration improved by one-third from four years ago, while Republican registration dropped by 10 percent. Mr. Bush's performance statewide dropped, too, but despite all the arrows in the other direction, Mr. Bush's vote totals mysteriously increased.

Mr. Bush's total increased dramatically over four years ago in the 26 Florida counties using the optical scan equipment manufactured by Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. Democratic performance apparently plummeted everywhere Diebold equipment counted votes.

Multiple counties in these states recorded more votes than there are registered voters.

Exit polls nationwide showed more voters casting ballots for Sen. John Kerry than for Mr. Bush. But instead of explaining the accuracy of exit polling and the dubious trustworthiness of the voting machinery, the news media have refused to investigate.

About 70 percent of Ohio's voters cast punch card ballots. The recount may undermine Mr. Bush's very narrow victory in Ohio. In New Hampshire, we'll learn if voting equipment manufactured by corporations openly in Mr. Bush's camp gave him a bonus. All of these "glitches" and "irregularities" nationwide and not one improperly credited vote to Mr. Kerry? What are the chances of that being random?

Finally, we deserve an investigation because there are so many of us. According to a post-election Harris Poll, 38 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of people who are not enrolled in either of the two major parties believe there were either "some" or "many" attempts at unlawful vote suppression.

The most conservative estimate would be 37 percent of the millions of Democrats who voted, or 18 million Americans. When the independents are added, the total is 30.3 million Americans who do not trust the legitimacy of our own presidential election.

We oppose faith-based voting and demand complete transparency in the vote casting and counting. Like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy to hold the football steady enough to kick, the leaders of our party seem determined to ignore both reason and experience.

Unless we act, the nation will get the same result as in 2000 -- no investigations, no indictments, no convictions and more fraud. We suspect that if the votes had been tallied honestly, we would be preparing for the inauguration of the candidate who authorities with a huge stake in the outcome tell us lost the election.


David Lytel, founder of ReDefeatBush.com, served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the first Clinton administration.

Will do!

Do you have a direct address?

letters@baltsun.com

thanks!

I've been at the hospital most of the day and am playing catch up. I'm really amazed this topic and several others are not getting any attention. This is media speaking out on the election fraud and condemming the media for lack of coverage. This is what we have been yelling about. Where is everybody??????

Not one newscast that I watched yesterday mentioned the Conyers hearing in Ohio on the vote fraud. If they hadn't had C-Span to cover it - the cable and network news blackout would have tolled the death knell on it, hoping C-Span rebroadcasts on the week-end when more people aren't working and can catch it.

As it is, with the R's having a full Nelson on all three government divisions, we are not going to get any action IMHO, but that doen't mean we shouldn't raise as much h*** as possible so that it is well known how they acquired their power.


lenal

Done..but Oy! this is so scary...I can't believe it's happening right in front of our faces...blatantly...and nothing is being done!

Thanks so much for posting this. It is soooo refreshing to hear this in a newspaper. I am having a hard time with not seeing people very angry over all of this! Well.. as they say: "ignorance is bliss" and most people are not aware of the fraud in this election.

1. Watch the schedule at www.cspan.org (note, times are EST).
2. Email play times to your friends.
3. Record it, donate a copy to your library. Run it on community access TV.

oops, wrong thread. Where's the delete option?

I started another thread today about how it finally is hitting the European media.
I have a feeling that the trickling is about to turn into a floodgate.

Moving this to the top. It needs attention. We need to promote all the media attention we get. Hopefully it will force mainstream media to cover it.

they did a bit on NPR today Diane Rehm show!

Not only that, but if you said anything was out of the ordinary, you would be labeled as a left wing nutcase (wingnut?). If you saw Novak this morning on CSPAN, he received 2 seperate calls at the beginning and end of the hour, both basically asking "why should Judith Miller go to jail to serve time for your crime...".

He brushed both aside, saying (paraphrase) "You must be reading those left wing web blogs..."

That is the "letter to the editor" address. If you want to send a plain "thank you", use [/B]publiceditor@baltsun.com[B]

Here's my letter, feel free to palgerize (but make some changes so it does not appear we are drinking kool-aid).

Thank you Baltimore Times-Sun for publishing a guest editorial a piece by David Lytel, founder of ReDefeatBush.com (Silencing the vote).

Your paper is the only one in the continental USA, to my knowkedge, to print anything behond the most basic information about the vote recounts.

There has been spot coverage, primarily out of Florida, and some coverage in student newspapers, technical journals, and alternative weeklies, but yours is the first "major" paper to carry information of this magnitude.

How do I know this? I have been actively monitoring Google News, Yahoo News, US Newswire and participating in Common Ground Common Sense - target='_blank'>


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/ for more hours since 11/2 than I would care to admit.

Please continue your coverage.

Email me if I can be of any service in supplying more information.

(name & address)

THANKS!!

did you see that GOP Governor Ehrlich is trying to silence the Baltimore Sun jounalists by 'officially banning' them from publishing items on state issues!!!!!

I saw that, and a repeat performance today!

We sure don't care over here like ukraine does....