Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Following the election last November the state of Ohio became the main focus of controversy. After the announcement of some seriously weird election results and reports of widespread problems Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb quickly raised the money for a full recount in the state of Ohio. (1) John Kerry had already conceded the election to Bush and he took a pass on the whole recount thing despite the serious and credible evidence of fraud.

Now Ohio's recount laws are quite simple. "The board must randomly select whole precincts whose total equals at least 3% of the total vote, and must conduct a manual count. If the tabulator count does not match the hand count, and after rechecking the manual count the results are still not equal, all ballots must be hand counted. If the results of the tabulator count and the hand counted ballots are equal, the remainder of the ballots may be processed through the tabulator (for optical scan and punchcards)."

Enter the villain of the story, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Remember Katherine Harris of Florida fame? Well SSDS...Same s*** different state. Blackwell was the not only the Chief Elections Officer of the state of Ohio but also the co-chair of the Bush re-election committee. Badnarik and Cobb requested that he recuse himself from the recount process due to conflict of interest. Of course he did not. Prior to the election Blackwell did everything in his power to suppress the vote. One of his big moves was to dis-allow any provisional ballots that were cast at the wrong precinct. This means that if grandma walked into the big gymnasium at the high school and accidentally went to the wrong table to vote she would be asked to fill out a provisional ballot. Her ballot would then be thrown out because, while she was at the right address, she went to the wrong table. Thank you Mr. Blackwell.

Well, Blackwell continued his maneuverings during the recount. You know the Ohio law that says the recount board must randomly select precincts? Well, they were NOT selected randomly. Mr. Blackwell also dragged his feet with the recount, doing everything in his power to keep it going long after the electors had already been sent to Washington. Voting tabulator machines were tampered with prior to the recount, official observors were not allowed to do their jobs and Cobb and Badnarik were forced to go to the courts time after time just to get the recount done. In the end the results were basically bullshit, Blackwell went through the motions but the numbers were tainted by his political machinations. The details of the Ohio recount are too extensive for a blog entry but you can read detailed accounts at the Cobb/LaMarche web site and in this article written by Cobb.

Fortunately there are politicians out there who were willing to put their careers and credibility on the line by confronting this issue. If you saw the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 you probably remember the scene at the beginning of the film where members of the Congressional Black caucus are trying to get just one senator to sign on to their objections to the certification of the Florida vote. It is a sad and embarrassing thing to watch. Well, in 2004 the ever stalwart John Conyers convinced Senator Barbara Boxer to object to the certification of the Ohio vote. (2) (3) For the first time since 1877 the counting of the electoral vote was put on hold to debate the legitimacy of the votes coming out of Ohio. No one expected the debate to change the results, the main goal of Boxer's objection was to bring attention to the massive problems associated with our current system. She was characterized in the media as being a whiny sore loser. The objection did some good however, legislation has been put forth for massive election reform. The problem is, the party who has benefited from the current flawed system is the party in power. They've got the whole If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude going.


You'll notice that many of the references and charts that I've linked are from fringe and left wing sources (adding to the whole "Conspiracy Theory" mystic of this idea) Believe me, if I could reference the MSM on this one I definitely would but the supposed "watch dogs" of democracy left this entire story dangling in the wind with barely a whiff of mention. (4) Keith Olbermann was the only MSM reporter to even approach the subject (video clips.) I remember sitting at my computer last Christmas season following the hearings, watching the evidence unfold and pulling my hair out at the machinations of Blackwell wondering why in the hell the media wasn't screaming.

If the media is so damned liberal, why didn't we see this stuff ad nauseum following the election? The answer is simple. The media isn't liberal and frankly, I don't think it's conservative either. The media in the United States is like a toothless old lion who was castrated and left to bleed by the side of the road. It may have been great and powerful at one time but now the only thing they are capable of reporting on are the trials of Michael Jackson and the latest cute-girl murder. We can no longer rely on our nightly news to inform us of important events in the world, we are left to our own devices to find the truth behind the spin.

Look at the links I've presented here and follow your own nose, read what everyone has to say and look for the truth in the middle. I don't expect everyone to come to the same conclusion that I have reached but I think it is foolish to completely disregard the possibility. The technology exists to provide the entire country with fair, transparent and verifiable elections and it is in the best interest of ALL the citizens of the United States to push for reform that will bring that dream to reality. We cannot afford the luxury of blind belief in our system. We have been taught that we live in this perfect ideal of Democracy, that our system is beyond reproach, but that very belief is what will allow scoundrels to take advantage of the weakness in the system without suspicion ever being raised.

Here are a few more links that may be of interest.

Article from the March 2005 issue of Vanity Fair

Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio by John Conyers

Something's Fishy in Ohio by Jesse Jackson

Speech given by Barbara Boxer on election reform.

Wikipedia entry on the 2004 election controversy.

Reference: Election 2004 and Election Reform

Reference: Black Box Voting

Check out today's entry at Cyberpols. The August issue of Harper's Magazine will have an article relating to this subject.