Voting Controversies

Sent in by Andrea and David: We listened to the entire four hours of the Randi Rhodes Show today which was totally devoted to the election and the "irregularities." There is a mainstream media black-out of any coverage about a recount. The only person who is covering this issue on broadcast or cable TV is Keith Olbermann on Countdown (MSNBC). On his program last night, Olbermann talked with Jonathan Alter of Newsweek who encouraged him to keep on top of this story.

This issue is being kept alive because of us bloggers. The Kerry lawyers have gone back to Ohio because we are making so much noise. They are saying that even though Kerry conceded, Edwards said that they wouldn't be satisfied until all the votes had been counted. Kerry's concession is not legally binding and can be withdrawn.

During Randi's program, she talked with Laura Flanders, host of the Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio and author of BushWomen, and Bev Harris, executive director and author of Black Box Voting. Randi and Laura talked about Ohio. Bush is ahead in Ohio by 136,000 votes. The 155,000 provisional ballots, the absentee ballots, the overseas ballots and the military ballots have not been counted yet in that state.

On election day in Warren County (northeast of Cincinnati) county officials sealed off the monitoring of the count to observers and the media stating that the FBI and Homeland Security had put Warren County on a Level 10 (the highest) terrorist alert. Later, the FBI and Homeland Security said they had never issued that alert. There are also other "irregularities" in the state.

Today, David Cobb, the Green Party candidate for President, and Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate for President, said they were going to file a formal demand for a recount in Ohio. They are being supported by Common Cause for Ohio and the Alliance for Democracy and need $110K ASAP. Please click here  to donate any amount.

Randi and Bev talked about Florida. Black Box Voting is going to be able to do a recount in Florida barring the immediate passage of any legislation in Florida prohibiting them from conducting it. Bush claims he won by 3 million popular votes (giving him his "mandate") but popular votes don't win an election - electoral votes do. Every vote has to be counted and every black box has to be examined in Ohio and Florida.

It is vitally important that we stay on top of this in order to have clean elections now and in the future. Please help in any way you can. Please forward this to friends and supporters.
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Editor's Notes: You can also contribute to the ongoing efforts of Black Black Voting and the National Ballot Integrity Project via Help America Recount, a 527 organization formed by these two groups.

Cam Kerry, John's brother, has sent out an email stating that if anyone has specific factual information about voting problems that could be helpful to the lawyers doing their job, they should send it to vri@dnc.org.

Finally, providing an alternate view, here's a New York Times article that takes on some of the the accusations and tries to debunk them.