Reply #13: SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF OHIO: SHAME OF A NATION

[Wilms]

PEJ News

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF OHIO: SHAME OF A NATION

Jack Random

Jazzman Chronicles

November 25, 2005

If election fraud was given the media scrutiny of a runaway bride, John Kerry might be president today. Nevertheless, after the debacle of 2004, many of us were grateful that we would not have to hear the word “Ohio” for at least another four years. The very name induces a sickness of the soul that shrouds our hopes and dreams in darkness. It is a venomous toxin best shunted from the system and forgotten.

I do not wish to think about Ohio. I do not wish to hear the words Ohio and election in the same sentence. Nevertheless, for advocates of democracy, Ohio is a recurring nightmare and one that cannot be dismissed until it is fully vetted.

Unfortunately, the executive hubris that has long taken hold of the White House has infected Columbus as well. Not content with altering the outcome of a presidential election, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and the Ohio Republican party want it all. In the recent statewide referenda, pre-election polls predicted a split on four major issues involving election reform, all favored by progressive Ohioans. Instead, the rightwing got a clean sweep by landslide margins.

At this juncture, a refresher course on Ohio 2004 is in order: Given the archaic and anti-democratic formula of the Electoral College, Ohio was the deciding state in the presidential election. As in Florida 2000, Ohio’s election was administered by a Republican-Bush operative, in this case Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. While the methodology of choice in Florida was mass disenfranchisement, Ohio introduced high tech voter fraud with electronic voting machines designed and operated by Diebold Election Systems, whose Republican CEO, Walden O’Dell, famously guaranteed Ohio for the Bush machine well before the election.

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