Vote notes: Ohio was even stranger than you thought (NEW INFO!)

Breaking: The House now has its own version of the emergency paper ballot act, sponsored by Rush Holt of New Jersey. And John Kerry has become yet another co-sponsor of the senate version. CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVE NOW! Congress has only a couple of days to pass these bills. If they pass, an honest vote in November may place subpoena power in Democratic hands.

Poll this. Michael Collins reports on a Zogby poll which indicates that only 45% of the American citizenry feels "very confident" that George Bush won the 2004 vote fair and square. The bad news: 20% still feel "somewhat confident."

When you consider the average person's traditional unwillingness to confess the emperor's nudity, these are remarkable numbers. Zogby's findings indicate that the efforts of numerous writers and activists have borne fruit.

But not enough fruit. We need to get the truth into more noggins. How to accomplish that goal? Publicize the following story...

Amazing news from Ohio! Let's let Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman tell it:

Ohio election protection activists have won a landmark court battle to preserve the ballots from 2004’s disputed presidential election, and researchers studying those ballots continue to find new evidence that the election was, indeed, stolen. Among other things, large numbers of consecutive votes in different precincts for George W. Bush make it appear ever more likely that the real winner in 2004 should have been John Kerry. Meanwhile, indictments and prison terms are mounting among key players in that tainted contest.

That's just the teaser. Dig:

So far, even the limited inspection of ballots has yielded astonishing results. Three precincts in two counties have shown consecutive runs of Bush votes that qualify as “virtual statistical impossibilities.”

* In Delaware County, Precinct Genoa I, researcher Stuart Wright viewed and recounted 3 separate bundles of ballots. In the second bundle, there were 274 consecutive ballots for Bush. In the third bundle there were 359 consecutive ballots for Bush. Genoa I was not one of the four precincts recounted as part of a required official recount, conducted on December 15, 2004.

* In Delaware County, BOE officials told Phillips that after the votes were cast on Election Day, ballots were unloaded by a team of teenage volunteers including the Boy Scouts who carried them into the BOE building where they were then given to a "mentally retarded man" who scraped the chads off the punch card ballots. Dr. Phillips estimates that the "mentally retarded man" would have had to scrape four or five ballots per second on election night in order to comply with the posting of the results at 12:40am for the nearly 80,000 ballots cast there.

* In Delaware County, Ross Township precinct, Philips has discovered that the BOE certified that 70% of the ballots cast for C. Ellen Connally, an African-American woman from Cleveland running for the Ohio Supreme Court, were also counted for Bush. The implausibility of this outcome in a white, Republican suburb is underscored by the fact that Connally trailed both Bush and Kerry very substantially throughout the rest of the state. Some 60% of the Township’s ballots opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (which passed substantially) also were punched for Bush, an extremely implausible outcome widely branded as the “Gays for Bush” anomaly.

* In Butler County, Phillips found that in Monroe City precinct 4CA, Bush received 52 consecutive votes near the start of voting, and then another run of 212 consecutive votes.

Folks, we've just begun. Ponder this anomaly:

In Clermont County, which contributed significantly to Bush’s margin of victory, researcher Dr. Ronald Baiman discovered a suspicious use of replacement ballots, that are meant to be issued only if a regular ballot is somehow spoiled by a voter. In a random draw of one ballot from each of the 192 precincts, against huge odds, Baiman found a replacement ballot. Baiman asked that the next ballot from the precinct be drawn and it, too, was a replacement ballot. Continuing pulling ballots from that same precinct, Baiman witnessed 36 straight replacement ballots in a row, a virtual statistical impossibility. Dr. Philips recorded only five spoiled ballots in this same precinct, raising the question of where the other 31 replacement ballots came from.

There much more; go here.

Stealing America. Dorothy Fadiman has made a new film about the 2004 vote theft in Ohio, and I've read very good things about it. The film features interviews with RFK Jr. You can buy it for -- get this -- five bucks. Go here.

REMINDER: Have you contacted your senators and congressfolk to insist that they pass the Confidence in Vote Act? A mere thousand of you could make the difference. CALL OR EMAIL NOW!