Vote fraud: Not just a conspiracy theory anymore

This country still has not washed off the stink from the filthy Ohio recount process. Now, according to Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, criminal prosecutions have arisen from that morass:

Prosecutors say these cases involve "rigging" the recount in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), where tens of thousands of votes were shifted from John Kerry to George W. Bush, or else never counted. Meanwhile, corroborating evidence continues to surface throughout Ohio illuminating the GOP's theft of the presidency. According to the AP, County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that "the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless." Baxter said the three election workers "did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount.

That's going to be the fallback position, methinks: "We didn't want to toss it to Dubya -- we just wanted to save time."

But Cleveland, which usually gives Democrats an extremely heavy margin, was crucial to Bush's alleged victory of roughly 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million counted. Some 600,000 votes were cast or counted in Cuyahoga County. But official turnout and vote counts varied wildly and improbably from precinct to precinct. Overall the county reported about a 60% turnout. But several predominantly black precincts, where voters went more than 80% for Kerry, reported turnouts of 30% or less. In one ward, only a 7% turnout was reported, while surrounding precincts were nearly ten times as high. Independent studies indicate Kerry thousands of votes in Cuyahoga County that rightfully should have been counted in his column.

The story goes on to describe what we already knew: During the recount, Ohio law required a random sampling of precincts; instead, the choice was anything but random.

Meanwhile, Daniel Hopsicker has a new story on Sarasota County and the questionable Florida 13 race. More on that soon (probably on Monday)...