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One UNANSWERED Question About The STOLEN ELECTION Article

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Vinnie From Indy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:16 PM
Original message
One UNANSWERED Question About The STOLEN ELECTION Article
Edited on Thu Jun-01-06 06:30 PM by Vinnie From Indy
The article by Kennedy is a concise and comprehensive overview of the situation in Ohio and around the country in regard to the election in 2004. He ties many of the threads together and lays them out in simple language.

The one area that I still wonder about concerns the Democrats in Ohio on county BOE's. Where were the Democratic poll workers in Warren Co. when the votes were being counted? How could some of the counties have "stuffed" the ballot box or put stickers over Kerry votes and switch to Bush without local Democrat officials objecting. Is it not true that BOTH parties must retain JOINT custody of the ballots at all times in Ohio?

Kennedy does not address the presence of local Democrat officials in many instance where they should have been able to witness and prevent SOME of the activities alleged in his article.

I have no doubt that there was a widespread plan to steal the election using exactly the strategies Kennedy identifies in his piece. I was there in Hamilton County (Cincy) on election day to help fight the well advertised "goon" squads formed by the GOP to challenge minorities at the polls and prevent them from voting. I also walked several of the meanest streets in Cincy canvassing homes to get people to the polls to vote for Democrats. I believe most all of the things spelled out in Kennedy's article, but I still want to know more about the Democrats in Ohio and what they were doing when these things are alleged to have happened.
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blm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
1. That's my beef, too. People forget that the most important Dems in Ohio
that day were those INFRASTRUCTURE Dems like those on election boards. The Ohio Dem party infrastructure had been left to rot since the 1996 election, and its hard to fathom WHY the heads of the Dem party then allowed it to happen in such a crucial state.

The DNC knew after 2000 that Ohio was going to be ground zero, and yet they did nothing to strengthen the infrastructure there for the next four years. Dean has to start from scratch in Ohio.
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lakeguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
2. what if some of the so called democrats weren't really dems at all?
maybe they were even registered as dems but that doesn't mean they actually were dems. how are the local officials chosen?
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madmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:27 PM
Response to Original message
3. I don't know about the rest of the state, but I can tell you from my
part, there's just not enough dems to cover it all. The corner of Ohio is so repuke if you're a registered dem and the neighbors know it, you don't dare go out by yourself. Just joking, really about the last part but that's the way it seems!
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The_Casual_Observer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:32 PM
Response to Original message
4. Did he address the role of the fundamentalist church's in getting out
the vote? I don't know if it's just a myth, but I understood that is was a factor in outcome.
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notadmblnd Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:36 PM
Response to Original message
5. Wasn't there an incident where
ballots were taken and people locked out of the building while the counting was going on. I can't remember the particulars of the story now, but it was a big deal then.. anyone recall?
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havocmom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 07:02 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. Seem to recall several instances where ballot counting without witness
in places where citizens were allowed by law to oversee process. Can't recall specifics, but remember there were many complaints of locked doors that should not have been locked
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IndyOp Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 06:55 PM
Response to Original message
6. If you search you might be able to find the story about the Dem
Edited on Fri Jun-02-06 07:59 AM by newyawker99
on BOE in Warren County, Ohio (I think) who resigned his job after he found someone 'on the vote counting system' who no longer worked for the voting machine company and should not have had access to system. He raised the issues with the 'bosses' and they were not concerned about the guy or the voting machine company -- they actually gave him a dressing down for bringing up the issue. He resigned his job in disgust.

How can we imagine that GOPers are commiting election fraud on a large scale and Dems aren't aware of it: GOPers are getting away with it across the nation because they have been trained in GOP workshops how to conduct elections unethically and illegally and Democrats just don't see it coming. In my little town we have had Gerrymandering, our voting machines don't print paper ballots so we could not recount the very close last Congressional election, and our voter registration rolls have just been privatized - and NO ONE thinks anything is really wrong. Yes, the GOPer on the County Council have been a little 'heavy handed' -- but could their behavior be similar to that of GOPers across the nation? It is, but the vast majority of US citizens and Dems have no clue.

Read this: My Right Wing Degree by Jeff Horwitz
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.html

May 25, 2005 | One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, a dozen students meet for the second and final day of training in grass-roots youth politics. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election.

It's nothing illegal -- no ballot stuffing necessary, even at the most liberal colleges. First you find a nonpartisan campus group to sponsor the election, so you can't be accused of cheating. Next, volunteer to organize the thing. College students are lazy, and they'll probably let you. Always keep in mind that a rigged mock election is all about location, location, location.

"Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, a veteran mock electioneer, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?" Stephen, a shy anti-abortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?"

"Stephen has the right answer!" Gourley exclaims, tossing Stephen his prize, a copy of Robert Bork's "Slouching Toward Gomorrah."

The students, strait-laced kids from good colleges, seem unconvinced. The lesson -- that with sufficient organization, the act of voting becomes less a basic right than a tactical maneuver -- doesn't sit easy with some students at first. Gourley, a charismatic senior from South Dakota and the treasurer of the College Republican National Committee, assures them: "This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting." The rest, Gourley explains, is just a matter of turnout.

<snip>

There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard Viguerie; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign. Recently, he's been fighting to save Tom DeLay's job.



In a similar vein:

Paul Weyrich, Father of the Reagan Revolution, Founding Father of the Social Conservative Movement, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation speaking in a church to Republican activists (and probably not knowing he was being recorded) said this:

How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome? Good government.

They want everybody to vote!

I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now.

As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as voting populace goes down.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=428116



Think also about GOP motivations:

"Business ethics" reigns in the GOP and the business ethics can be reduced to "Do anything you can get away with".

And: People never do evil so happily or so well as when they believe they are doing good. The GOP - especially the religious fundamentalist foot soldiers believe they are doing God's work to prevent gay marriage, to end abortion, to "put God back in government". In Ohio, Blackwell has done a lot of work to portray himself as a good Christian man and is working closely with "Patriot Pastors".

In sum: Dems don't see it coming. What benefits Dems is for everyone to vote. We don't expect our GOP neighbors and colleagues on BOEs as being capable of acting unethically.


EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST ONLY 4 OR 5 PARAGRAPHS
FROM THE COPYRIGHTED NEWS SOURCE PER DU RULES.
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sandnsea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-01-06 07:19 PM
Response to Original message
8. Lucas County, for one
From the Ballot Recount Reports, where the observer questioned 3 ballots. Here's the situation with one with a sticker:

Precinct: Sylvania Township K. One ballot had a completely filled in bubble for Bush and a pencil-point dot in the bubble for Kerry. I was able to look at this ballot and could see that a number of other bubbles, for other offices, had been completely filled in. The ballot was placed aside.
It was the first to be run through the optical scanner. It was rejected by the optical scanner several times. We were told that the reason for this was that it was counted as an over-vote.
The election officials determined that the intent of the voter was to vote for Bush. A white sticker was placed over the pencil mark next to Kerry's name. With this modification, the optical scanner did not reject the ballot.
http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/ohio_reports/counties/lucas.php

You can browse through a lot of counties at that web site and read the reports of the observers.
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