A Certain Outcome

[struggle4progress]

January 23, 2005
By Jeff Schult

<snip> As it turned out, the recount itself was mostly meaningless. Only 3 percent of the 5.7 million ballots were tested, and they were not from precincts at random, as required by law. The most suspect precincts, according to volunteers, were not examined at all. Nearly 15 percent of Ohio's votes were cast on electronic machines with no paper trail. Whatever fraud there was in Ohio was not the sort that would be undone by simply counting again, though it was a good start. Eventually, the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Forum, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would issue a 102-page report that alleged massive fraud on Election Day. Separately, lawyers filed suit seeking to overturn the results, to award Ohio's 20 electoral votes - and the presidency - to Kerry. They claimed "a pattern of vote fraud and discrimination" and problems with state voting machines. <snip>

The turnout in many precincts that backed Bush was impossibly high. A small but prominent example: In the Concord South West precinct of Miami County, turnout was certified at 98.5 percent, meaning that all but 10 eligible voters went to the polls. Reporters for the Columbus Free Press found, and pretty quickly, 25 people who were registered to vote and said they had not done so.

Shortages of voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts kept at least 22,000 Ohioans from voting, according to a mathematician's study.

In Warren County, the administrative building was locked down on election night, all in the name of a "homeland security alert" that the FBI later denied issuing. No independent observers were allowed to watch the vote count. Bush's margin of victory in the county was nearly 30,000 more than it had been in 2000. <snip>

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-bysiewicz.artjan23,1,6395348.story?coll=hc-headlines-northeast