Observations

A house divided: David Cobb of the Green party blasts John Kerry for not contributing to the recount effort. Cobb alleges that Kerry retains $51 million of leftover campaign money. The vast majority of that money, however, was given to the DNC for the financing of future campaigns for lower offices.

Readers may snarl, but I retain great admiration for both men.

I have been told by at least one tireless worker for Kerry that the senator is not doing nothing. But suppose he were to shout "I was robbed!" -- what good could he accomplish? He'd be the butt of Jay Leno's jokes for weeks. He would not become president, and he would lose his senate seat to a Republican in the next election.

On the other hand, I hope that he will contest the selection of electors from Ohio, if no other senator takes on the task.

An update from Katrina Sumner on fraud and harassment. I hope publishing the following message (received in my email) will cause no problems. You'll want to give this one a careful read.

Update from Katrina in Greene County 6:30 PM ET

Precincts 442 ,224 and 31 are the only precincts that were recounted in Greene County.

There seems to be some confusion as to which 3% to use:

a) 3% of registered voters
b) 3% of ballots cast
c) 3% of 'valid' ballots cast

The Greene County BOE is basing the recount on 3% of 'valid' ballots cast. (gives least handcounts)

Katrina has been researching Absentee votes that were not considered valid. She has found and copied about 350 Absentee votes that were not counted that should have been. The ballots were not counted because they arrived after Nov. 2nd. Katrina contents that Absentee ballots should be counted if they are signed, dated and post marked by Nov. 2nd and arrive at the BOE by Nov. 12th. The under-counted absentee ballots that she has found arrived between the 3rd and the 8th. I am not certain if this is for a single precinct or all of Greene County.

Someone asked if other people were being targeted. The answer is yes. Katrina knows of the following:

4 people have been physically threatened.
2 people have been "touched".
3 people have had their cars broken into.
1 person had their home entered and desk "ransacked" and confidential contact info was taken.
2 people are missing (that is alarming, isn't it).

The police have refused to take a report on the missing people. One of the persons may have left due to being threatened. Katrina says that she thinks that this person would have contacted her before leaving so she is suspicious.

The other missing person was last seen leaving the Greene County BOE. The Police say that this person was "pulled over" by the after leaving the BOE and then sent to Wal-mart to meet up with other volunteers but supposedly never arrived.

She says that until she hears from either of these people that she will consider them missing.

Another strange behavior from the local police: As you probably know, volunteers have been watching the Greene County BOE 24 hours a day since the mysterious "unlocked door" last Saturday morning. I have several audio recordings of the local Sheriff stopping by the BOE and talking very politely with Katrina while she watched the building Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Those that volunteered for watching the building on Sunday and Monday night also had polite conversations with the local law enforcement when they stopped by during the night to check the building.

However, on Tuesday night, before the recounts were to start in Greene County on Wednesday, Katrina says that the "police did everything possible to make sure there would be no one there". Katrina stopped by the BOE on Tuesday night to find that several Police cars had "surrounded" the volunteers watching the building and that "police were threatening to jail this person".

Katrina was also pulled over in Greene County because her license place was "crooked" and the tint on her window was too dark.

Katrina is not working directly with Joan and Eve right now so she can't speak to the details they have provided in interviews. She does say they are working in the same County.

We've all heard the phrase "driving while black." Perhaps now we can recognize a new term: "Driving while Democratic."

(This admission may not speak well of me, but I refused to affix a Kerry/Edwards sticker to my car. The boys in blue tend to see, and vote, red. One doesn't relish the prospect of getting pulled over because a taillight won't light on one side.)

Grand exits. A reader just asked me a few simple questions -- damned good questions.

Are there exit poll results for the races for governor, senator, representative, whatever? Did those poll results consistently undervalue the Republican vote, or is that phenomenon restricted to the presidential contest?

Mind you -- if the exits predicted a margin of victory differing from the actuals in races for lesser office, we should not discount the possibility of vote fraud in those instances as well. Just ask Tom Feeney. He knows all about that sort of thing.

Speaking of Feeney... The congressman's hometown newspaper, the Seminole Chronicle, has written a terrific piece on the Clint Curtis allegations:

Curtis said he has been trying to get attention drawn to his claims since shortly after leaving Yang Enterprises, but has had difficulty until this year. After watching a news report about voting machines in Florida being installed at precincts without having their software inspected, he said he redoubled his effort to get public attention.

"People finally care," Curtis told the Chronicle. "Coming forward isn't the problem, it's people caring."

The Democrats are listening, as is a non-partisan government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group, which began working with Curtis in early December, is working to verify elements of his story.

You know that if Feeney were a Democrat, Curtis' claims would have long since created headlines in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and beyond...

Is it worth it? The Constitution specifies that a member of the House and a Senator must make a formal request in order to mount a challenge to any state's group of electors. This year (as opposed to 2000), it may be possible to find members of both houses willing to denounce the widespread voter disenfranchisement.

What would happen next? The matter would go to a vote of both houses. The Republicans control both houses. What, then, would be the purpose of such an exercise?

I see several advantages:

1. We have no idea how events will break. As I write, there are rumors -- just rumors -- of "insiders" willing to confess all. A last-minute confession could make the election of Kerry (or better still, a revote) possible. So could a belated revelation of some other type of Bushian malfeasance.

2. Carrying the fight into Congress will create (pardon the expression) a shit-storm. The resultant discussion will focus national attention on the G.O.P.'s undeniable efforts to disenfranchise blacks. Each day that discussion continues will make more people aware that the party of "Christian virtue" is actually the party of filthy electoral tactics. The odor of manipulation may rob Bush of his domestic "political capital," not to mention whatever may be left of his overseas credibility.

3. Even if Bush takes the oath, public outrage over the abuses of November 2 may force the Republicans to play a cleaner game next time.

4. Emphasizing the efforts to target blacks will undercut long-term Republican efforts to woo minorities.

5. Everyone knew that the Republicans did not have the votes to impeach and remove President Clinton, but they nevertheless fought to the bitter end. Do we want it said that we, unlike our enemies, lack the belly for battle?

Are Republicans interested in counting every vote? Nope. In Washington state, where the governor's race remains as tight as a Bush at Yale, a cache of illegally discarded ballots from King County was discovered:

Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend said it was simply too late for counties to reconsider ballots from the November election, even if such ballots were erroneously rejected by election workers.

"It is clear to me that it is not appropriate to go back and revisit decisions on whether ballots should or should not be counted," Arend said.

So let's get this straight: If you are a Republican election worker in a Democratic-leaning district, you need merely arrange for the "erroneous" disposal of a load of ballots. Even if the error is later discovered, it cannot be rectified. So ruleth Judge Stephanie.

The Conyers investigation makes the New York Times -- and they actually give the Triad controversy a more-or-less unbiased bit of coverage.

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. has more on vote inflation and vote switching in various areas of Ohio.

Machine politics. Mathematician Tom Lohrentz, in a piece that I should have cited earlier, absolutely nails the long-heard allegation that voting machines were deliberately withheld from African-American neighborhoods. Republicans crow about their get-out-the-vote efforts, when all focus should stay on their keep-the-vote-low efforts:

The level of crowdedness did make a difference. Overall, voter turnout (percent voting of active voters) was 12.5 percentiles higher in precincts that were not crowded compared to precincts that were extremely crowded. Using these differences, the analysis calculated an estimate of the number of disenfranchised voters, assuming that each precinct had sufficient voting machines, i.e. was not crowded. All told, over 22,000 voters were likely kept from voting due to long lines at the polling stations. Of these, about 70 percent or over 15,000 were in heavily Democratic precincts. Because Democratic voters are more vulnerable to long lines than Republican voters, an even higher percentage of these 22,000 votes would likely have been cast for the Democratic candidate.

The Republicans must be a political price for this racist behavior.