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Purges in 2000 under the watchful eyes of Kathryn Harris and good ole Jeb Bush, and then Ohio 2004: 1. MISALLOCATION OF MACHINES (and less reliable machines) in high Dem Precincts: Fixing America's Broken Elections Rep. John Conyers, Jr. February 08, 2005 My staff reviewed thousands of pages of primary source materials, including copies of actual ballots, voter registration databases, and poll books. They also met with several individuals having firsthand knowledge of irregularities. What they found indicated problems in multiple areas, from machine tampering and malfunction, to the intimidation and caging of minority voters in urban and rural areas, to the purposeful misallocation of voting machines and the unjustifiable restrictions that were placed on the use of provisional ballots. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/fixing_americas_broken_elections.phpOhio 2004 election thief grabs Gov nod while (surprise! surprise!) voting machines malfunction by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman May 5, 2006 Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has grabbed the GOP nomination for governor in a vote count riddled with machine breakdowns. In Franklin and Delaware Counties, election officials had to "shut down and recalibrate throughout the day," according to the Columbus Dispatch. Election officials use recalibration as a code word when machines are malfunctioning including the recording of votes for wrong candidates.
<snip>
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1953
2. MANIPULATION OF VOTER REGISTRATIONS and PURGES:
Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
February 28, 2006
<snip>
It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified.
One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error."
As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell, deemed worth counting.
<snip>
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832
Discrepancy in Number of Registrations in Franklin Co vs Purges
“Finally on Voter Registration Mr. Chairman, as the Committee is well aware, there were innumerable political parties and 537’s spending tens of millions of dollars on voter registration drives. In Franklin County alone, we processed more than a quarter of a million voter registration forms between January 1, 2004 and the close of registration in early October. This was twice the registration activity as compared to the same period in 2000.”
Bill Anthony testimony on March 21 2005
http://cha.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=477
Mr Anthony’s testimony stated that in Franklin County alone, more than a quarter million voter registrations forms were processed between Jan. 1 2004 and the close of registration in early October. Yet when the registered voter numbers are compared from 2003 to 2004, we see a change of 120,869.
google: Ohio voter registration historical data
http://elections.ssrc.org/data/voterreg/
Ohio Election Data - Registered Voters before Certification
The Feminist Majority Foundation
Detailed chart of annual changes in Ohio voter registration numbers from 2000 to 2004. The data demonstrates a large voter roll purging in 2002 and relatively high numbers of new registrants from 2002-2004.
voters in 2004 = 845,720
voters in 2003 = 724,851
# Changed
from 03-04 = 120,869
http://www.feminist.org/pdfs/OH_election_precert.pdf
-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10
***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm
3. UNCOUNTED VOTES:
Cranks and Kooks: Kerry won in '04
by Greg Palast
May 11, 2006
Answer: The Uncounted.
In Ohio, there were 153,237 ballots simply thrown away, more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was fives times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. In all, over three million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. The official number is bad enough-1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, reported to the federal government's Election's Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count. Correcting for the under-reporting of the undercount, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. And there are certainly more we couldn't locate to tote up.
Why doesn't your government tell you this? Hey, they do. It's right there in black-and-white on a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election -- in a footnote to the report on voter turn -- out. The Census tabulation of voters voting "differs," from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives for the 2004 presidential race by 3.4 million votes.
This is the hidden presidential count which, excepting the Census' whispered footnote, has not been reported.
Unfortunately, that's not all. In addition to the 3 million ballots uncounted due to technical "glitches," millions more were lost because the voters were prevented from casting their ballots in the first place. This group of un-votes includes voters illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1961
November 2, 2004 Election
Iowa New Mexico Ohio
Ballots “spoiled” 18,847 21,084 103,660
Provisional Ballots Uncounted 7,368 6,593 33,998
Absentee Ballots Uncounted 10,596 4,217 15,519
Ghost Votes & blocked votes unknown 2,087 85,950
Total Uncounted * 36,811 33,981 239,127
Bush “Victory” Margin 10,059 5,988 118,599
*Totals here include ghost vote only for New Mexico and machine shortage only for Ohio. Registry purges etc., would increase these totals.
-U.S. Civil Rights Commission reports that ballots of “non-black” voters were rejected: 1.6% (1 in 63 did not count); while black voter ballots were rejected 14.4% or 1 in 7 African American votes went uncounted.
-The rejection of provisional ballots were cast over-whelmingly in Democratic precincts.
-In New Mexico, 9 out of 10 votes uncounted were cast by non-Anglo voters. (90% of this population vote Democratic.
-Nationally, the total numver of voters voting provisionally was 3,107,490 and the rejection rate was 1,090,729.
SOURCE: Greg Palast "Armed Madhouse"
1,597 Provisional Ballots from Franklin Co categorized as Status 200-”Not Registered”, yet voters were registered
http://my.core.com/~rhh/index.htm
Study of Provisionals in Cleveland
From a recent Cleveland study on ‘04:
Almost 1,000 provisional ballots may have been wrongfully rejected because of registration problems alone. At least 944 rejected provisional ballots, mostly classified as “not registered”, were apparently mistakenly purged from the registration lists. Since this error was detected by only one type of search, which did not detect other voters who claimed similar errors, the true number of provisional ballots wrongfully rejected is likely to be higher.
We estimate that 2 out of every 5 provisional ballots that were rejected should have been accepted as legitimate. If we combine incorrectly purged provisional votes, projected votes rejected because of initial registration errors, provisional ballots lost through polling place misinformation and innocent errors filling out the provisional application, it appears that over 41% of rejected provisional ballots (or 14% of all provisional votes) may have been unnecessarily rejected.
We estimate that simply changing residence exposes voters to a 6% chance of being disenfranchised. Youth, the poor, and minorities are disproportionately affected. In fact, with respect to just provisional ballots, we found a two-fold increase in rejection rate in predominantly African-American compared to predominantly Caucasian precincts.
Full text: http://www.clevelandvotes.org/news/reports/summary.html
from Feb 2005-but important, in case you missed it.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005; Page A28:
A Defense Department survey on military voting found that 79 percent of military personnel tried to vote in the 2004 presidential election and that 73 percent of those actually voted .
But the survey obscured an important fact: Disenfranchisement of military and overseas absentee voters remains high. Between 30 and 45 percent of these potential voters failed to receive their absentee ballots or received them too late to matter, according to surveys by the National Defense Committee and the Overseas Vote Foundation.
About 1.4 million active-duty members of the uniformed services and 1 million spouses and family members are eligible for absentee voting. In addition, an estimated 4 million U.S. civilians who live abroad are eligible. Yet most states still conduct absentee voting through U.S. mail via a cumbersome three-step process.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/13/AR2005121301729.html
4. GOP DIRTY TRICKS:
Busheviks connected to New Hampshire phone-jamming scheme
by The Ostroy Report
April 14, 2006
Every day brings new surprises in the wild and wacky world of the Bush Monarchy. One day its WMD lies, the next day illegal wiretappings, the next day leaks of classified data, and now news that the Busheviks and the GOP may be central figures in the 2002 phone-jamming scheme that kept New Hampshire Democrats from voting in that year's midterm elections, according to court documents.
Phone records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin made dozens of calls to the White House in the immediate days leading up to New Hampshire's election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert C. Smith. Tobin and two others were convicted in December 2005 of hiring Virginia-based GOP Marketplace on behalf of the New Hampshire GOP to jam another phone bank being used by the state Democratic Party and the firefighters' union to get-out-the-vote for then-governor Jeanne Shaheen. John E. Sununu, the Republican candidate, won 51% to 46%. The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004.
<snip>
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1931
GOP SUPPRESSION FLYERS
http://www.solarbus.org/stealyourelection/voter-suppression-flyers.html
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
February 08, 2005
My staff found substantial evidence, admitted by a Triad voting machine company employee—in public, videotaped testimony— that he developed documents and manipulated voting machines for the purposes of allowing county officials to forgo a legally required full hand recount of ballots. Other instances of inappropriate political advocacy by voting machine company officials are well known.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/fixing_americas_broken_elections.php
Free Press uncovers evidence of ballot tampering in Warren County, Ohio
April 19, 2006
After locking out all media observers and declaring a Level 10 Homeland Security Alert, the Republican-dominated Warren County, Ohio reported the vote tally in the wee hours of the morning on November 3, 2004 -- and gave George W. Bush a surprising 14,000 vote boost. Two election workers told the Free Press that the ballots had been diverted to an unauthorized warehouse where they had been possibly stuffed. That is, punched for Bush only. Maps were supplied to the Free Press showing the locations of the warehouse and the Board of Elections.
Warren County officials refused to allow the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism to handle the ballots, but they did allow us to photograph a few. Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., has analyzed the ballots for the Free Press and concluded that there is evidence of fraud in Warren County. The ballots as photographed with Dr. Phillips' commentary below each ballot are included here for the first time.
The Free Press predicted early on that the ballots would be found punched only for Bush in Warren County. The Moss v. Bush lawsuit pointed to Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties as the three counties that provided more than Bush's entire margin in the Buckeye State: Bush won Ohio by 118,000, and 132,000 votes were supplied in these three southwestern Republican counties.
Now, for the first time, the Free Press is releasing images of the obvious election fraud in Warren County. The Free Press will continue its ongoing investigation in Ohio despite stonewalling by Republican state officials. See the images by clicking on the link below.
<snip>
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1355
Ohio GOP Challenges 35,000 Voters
Saturday, October 23, 2004; Page A09
The Ohio Republican Party challenged the eligibility of 35,000 newly registered voters yesterday, an action that party officials said was unprecedented but necessary to prevent election fraud in a state where polls show President Bush and John F. Kerry in a statistical tie.
Most of the 35,000 voters live in urban, Democratic areas, party spokesman Jason Mauk said. Local party officials, joined by Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie at a news conference, said the voters were mainly registered by "shadowy" Democratic-leaning groups and were chosen after the GOP sent them mail that was returned as undeliverable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55472-2004Oct22.html
Texas Strike Force
The following affidavit was prepared in the Moss v. Bush case during a videotaped interview with Jim Branscome, who described himself as a conservative, following the 2004 presidential election. The affidavit was never submitted in court for the case and after editing and approving the affidavit, Branscome left his position at the Holiday Inn shortly thereafter. I've spoken to Linda Byrket about releasing the tape of the Branscome interview and she informed me she would work on digitizing for submission. Also, as the co-host of a twice weekly talk show on WVKO 1580AM during this time, callers made me aware of "white people with southern accents" posting fliers and talking to people in the inner city of Columbus telling people that due to the anticipated heavy voter turnout, that Republicans were to vote on Tuesday and Democrats were to vote on Wednesday. I call was made to my house directing me to the wrong polling place, one, by the way, thanks to Ken Blackwell, that is actually closer to my house. Hundreds of documents obtained by public records requests are being released in September in a New Press book I've edited with Harvey Wasserman and Steve Rosenfeld entitled "What Happened in Ohio?
A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election." Hundreds of other documents will be made available on a digital archive online soon. The Free Press has accumulated over 20,000 election documents, including many public records and sworn affidavits from voters. I would be willing to meet Professor Tokaji for a debate anytime he likes, with each of us presenting our evidence and knowledge. I realize that Tokaji is not the problem, the problem is lack of real debate on the issue. As of today, the Free Press staff has looked at precinct data from over 9300 precincts in Ohio and despite massive roadblocks thrown up by local county officials, intends to look at all the more than 11,000 precincts in the state.
Affidavit
I, James Branscome, residing at XXX South XXXX Street, Newark, Ohio, 43055-3682, do swear and affirm the following:
1. I am an employee of the Holiday Inn, 175 E. Town St., Columbus, Ohio 43215. I work the 3:30-12pm shift drivng people to and from the airport. I have personal knowledge of the incidents relayed below.
2. On October 27, 2004, I picked up 7-10 individuals from the airport to drive them to the Holiday Inn. I made two more runs to pick up people from the group, for a total of approximately 25 people.
3. The individuals identified themselves as the Texas Strike Force. Most of them said they were from Texas, one person was from Florida.
4. The individuals stated they had paid their own way to come to Ohio. The Holiday Inn record for payment for their hotel rooms indicated the rooms were paid for by the Ohio Republican Party.
5. Their hotel rooms were in the back of the hotel, directly overlooking the Republican Party headquarters, which was behind the Holiday Inn.
6. On November 1, I overheard one of the Texas Strike Force men talking on the pay phone in the hotel lobby. He was telling someone that he would call the FBI on them if they went out to vote. He had a big “W” on his shirt.
7. Laverne Sanders, night auditor at the hotel, called the police. When the police arrived, they did nothing. One of the female Texas Strike Force individuals told the police about Democrats at the hotel who were “speaking Arabic.”
8. The phone caller from the Texas Strike Force accused the hotel personnel of violating his civil rights. He was staying in room 617 and was identified by another individual in the hotel as an attorney from California.
TO THIS I SWEAR AND AFFIRM,
(If you would like to review this affidavit, please contact freepress.org)
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