Hot links on vote fraud

The former Soviet bloc: The Ukraine may well hold a revote, while the Romanian election has come under fire.

Bev Harris did not receive the public records she asked for, and has therefore officially filed a lawsuit.

The Kerry campaign in Ohio has, as noted before, joined the Green/Libertarian effort to recount the votes in Ohio. A Delaware County judge issued a restraining order preventing an early recount on November 23; Kerry/Edwards attorneys are filing an appeal on a higher level. (Are my ladyfriend and I the only ones who distinctly recall Blackwell's election-night promise to complete a count of the provisionals in ten days?)

Yes, the Kerryfolk are acting in a quiet, fanfare-free fashion. That's a good thing. Note, though, that Jesse Jackson has been in contact with Kerry, and reports that the senator supports a full and fair investigation.

The New York Daily News today presents powerhouse evidence of vote fraud in Ohio. Previously, we published a brief squib on the black precincts where Kerry votes seem to have been siphoned off into the tallies for right-wing third party candidates. Here are the details:

In precinct 4F, located at Benedictine High School on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Kerry received 290 votes, Bush 21 and Michael Peroutka, candidate of the ultra-conservative anti-immigrant Constitutional Party, an amazing 215 votes!

That many black votes for Peroutka is about as likely as all those Jewish votes for Buchanan in Florida's Palm Beach County in 2000.

In precinct 4N, also at Benedictine High School, the tally was Kerry 318, Bush 21, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik 163.

Back in 2000, the combined third-party votes in those two precincts - including the Nader vote - was 8. Cuyahoga, like most of Ohio's 88 counties, uses punch-card balloting...

But Peroutka and Badnarik polled unusually well in a few other black precincts. In the 8th Ward's G precinct at Cory United Methodist Church, for instance, Badnarik tallied 51 votes - nearly three times better than Bush's 19. And in I precinct at the same church, Peroutka was the choice on 27 ballots, three times more than Bush's 8. In 2000, independent candidates received 9 votes from both precincts.

The same pattern showed up in 10 Cleveland precincts in which Badnarik and Peroutka received nearly 700 votes between them.

In virtually all those precincts, Kerry's vote was lower than Al Gore's in 2000, even though there was a record turnout in the black community this time, and even though blacks voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.

If this same pattern held true in other cities around Ohio, then quite possibly thousands of votes meant for Kerry somehow ended up in the tallies of the two independent candidates.

To those tempted to ask whether this problem would have swung the election, I direct your attention to the "parable of the pie," as recounted below (under the title "Eat it").

Every "misplaced" vote helped to widen the Bush/Kerry gap -- a gap which, incidentally, narrowed by nearly 10,000 votes when the provisionals were counted in Cuyahoga county, not to mention the additional 1000-or-so votes Kerry gained in Montgomery county.

Recounts in New Mexico and Nevada. The Greens are also initiating a recount in New Mexico and Nevada:

The New Mexico presidential election was marred by reports of voter suppression and problems with electronic voting machines. In Nevada, the lack of paper trails or receipts for electronic voting machines is the primary concern. In an unrelated legal challenge, an election contest case will be heard today in Reno, Nevada, demanding a recount. The suit also seeks to address allegations that people employed by Sproul & Associates, an Arizona-based firm hired by the Republican National Committee, tore up and discarded voter registration forms completed by Democratic voters.

I never much cared for the Green party before, but David Cobb is now acting in a very honorable fashion. If he ever switches to the Democrats, I hope he will find a welcome.

Madsen/Palast: A Palast associate has reconfirmed to me that Wayne Madsen and Greg Palast are not working together on the issue of vote fraud. A creature calling himself "Jack Seymour" has been trying to raise money -- allegedly on the behalf of a joint effort conducted by these two investigative reporters. "Seymour" has posted his continuing appeals for $$$ in various places. I'm sure it's a scam.

North Carolina: A judge will allow a revote in on county for state agricultural commissioner, due to evidence of "machine malfunction." Since we had malfunctions all over the country, why not a full revote -- as is now proposed for the Ukraine?

Richard Roeper, of the Chicago Sun-Times, calls us "boneheads" for continuing to question the election results. Odd thing: Our merry crew of boneheads counts among its members a growing number of academics, scholars and specialists, including Professor Hout of Berkeley and Professor Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania.

Richard Roeper, by comparison, is a movie critic. A bad one. One who has never written a single memorable line.

His invective-filled, fact-free overview of the controversy spits in the eyes of those who have studied the evidence, and in the eyes of the many first-hand eyewitnesses who testified at the Cleveland hearings. He also directs spit at a couple of real journalists, Juan Gonzalez and Larry Cohler-Esses of The New York Daily News, who (as noted above) have provided hard evidence of the rampant fraud in Ohio. Incidentally, Roeper also spews ignorant insults at the Warren Commission critics, another group of "boneheads" which once included, and may still include, his partner Roger Ebert.

I wasn't a big fan of Gene Siskel. But now I miss him.