Posted on 12/12/2004 6:00:15 AM PST by Libloather
For Some, the Race Remains Far From Over
47 minutes ago
By Sam Howe Verhovek Times Staff Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Clifford Arnebeck won't let it go. He can't let it go. Not, he says, while America refuses to recognize that John F. Kerry was elected president Nov. 2.
Arnebeck, a Democratic lawyer here and co-chairman of a self-styled national populist alliance, is petitioning the state's highest court to throw out official results that favor President Bush and instead hand Ohio's 20 electoral votes — and thus the White House — to Kerry. Or, at least, order a revote.
The bid appears quixotic, to put it politely, as Bush has been officially declared the winner by 119,000 votes and Arnebeck is arguing before a Republican-dominated Supreme Court in Ohio. Nor is the Massachusetts senator helping him out, said Arnebeck.
"I can't for the life of me understand why Kerry isn't fighting harder for this. Maybe it's some secret Skull and Bones tradition, where you're not supposed to show up the other guy," Arnebeck said, referring to the Yale secret society of which Bush and Kerry were both members.
Most of the country may have moved on, and electoral college slates are due to meet in all 50 states Monday to cast formal votes that will give Bush a 286-252 winning edge and a second term.
Even many who are disturbed by aspects of the recent election — such as long lines at polling places or touch-screen voting machines with no paper trail for audits — say they want future improvements but nonetheless believe Bush won a fair battle.
But for Arnebeck and thousands of others, this contest is far from over.
They feed each other's postelection rage over the Internet, swapping reports about voter suppression and possible computer hacking or other electronic manipulation of the results.
Protests continue to be staged, including a "rally to change the tally" in San Francisco and black-armband demonstrations in Denver and Boston this weekend against what organizers call the "media blackout of election fraud." But they are especially focused on Ohio, whose 20 electoral votes proved crucial.
"I would like to welcome you to Ukraine," said Susan Truitt, a speaker last weekend at a rally outside the Ohio statehouse, where 400 showed up to demand an inquiry into fraud allegations. She was referring to the nation about to hold a new presidential election after protests that the first one was rigged.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also appeared at the rally, cited a recurring grievance of the groups who questioned the legitimacy of Bush's 2004 victory. Why is it, Jackson asked, that exit polls seemed to point toward a Kerry victory that day?
Rather than analyzing faults in the exit polls, Jackson and others say, why aren't the media and public officials digging more aggressively for chicanery in the tabulations?
"We can live with winning and losing," Jackson recently told a Baptist congregation in Columbus. "We cannot live with fraud and stealing."
Officials here are not taking kindly to the charges.
"Jackson owes every election official in Ohio an apology," said Keith Cunningham, vice president of the Ohio Assn. of Election Officials. "His accusations are outrageous, preposterous and baseless."
Because every Ohio county election board has two Democrats and two Republicans, officials here argue, manipulation of voting would require a massive conspiracy.
But that is just what Jackson and various protest groups allege, and they point to what they say are several suspicious occurrences that demand further investigation:
• In several counties, a Democratic candidate for state chief justice got more votes than Kerry, even though she lost statewide by a wider margin than did Kerry, and the overall total of votes cast in her race was 4.4 million, well below the 5.6 million cast in the presidential race.
• A "computer glitch," as local officials called it, recorded an extra 3,893 votes for Bush in suburban Columbus, in a precinct with only 638 votes cast. Officials say they caught the glitch and fixed it, showing that the system works; but protesters say they wonder where else such discrepancies may have gone undetected.
• Long lines forced many Ohioans to wait hours to vote and may have deterred some from voting at all. They were reported to be especially long in urban Democratic areas and in some college towns. Some voters want to know why. At Kenyon College in rural Knox County, a machine malfunction caused some students to wait as long as 10 hours to vote, college officials say, the last emerging at 4 a.m.
Another controversy, which surfaced last year and is a continuing target of outrage, involved the chief executive of Ohio-based Diebold Inc., a major player in the electronic touch-screen voting industry. In an August 2003 invitation to a Bush fundraising event, he wrote that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."
The official, Walden O'Dell, later described himself to the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "a real novice on the political side," and he amended company policy to prohibit himself and other top officials from making or raising political contributions or engaging in any other political activity other than voting.
Just how many people are actively protesting the election is difficult to gauge, and interviews on the street suggest that a lot of people, Democrats and Republicans alike, just want to put it behind them.
"I voted for Kerry. I wanted him to win. I thought he would win," said Anne Matthieson, an account assistant at a downtown insurance firm. "But he didn't win."
Still, for those who believe otherwise, there are several websites dedicated to the cause. Several have links that allow a person, at the push of a button, to send a message to hundreds of reporters and public officials, demanding further investigation into voting problems. One accuses the media of "cowardice and complicity" in reporting on election results.
The sites are also raising money, enough to pay for a recount of the Ohio vote (which is formally being undertaken on behalf of the Green and Libertarian party presidential candidates, who are both critical of Ohio voting procedures) and for the legal challenge that Arnebeck, the Columbus lawyer, is spearheading.
State officials say the recount will cost more than the $10-per-precinct fee that the challengers are paying.
Kerry, who may be interested in running again in 2008, is walking a bit of a fine line in the matter, encouraging the recount process but dampening any expectation it will yield a political miracle.
"It's important that every vote be counted," said his spokesman, David Wade. "There's no reason to believe the outcome of the election will change."
A Democrat close to the Kerry campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kerry had received plenty of "do not make this concession" advice from party members.
"It's not just the Internet conspiracy community," said the Kerry ally. "The every-vote-counts community is very strong inside the Democratic Party, and one does not want to discourage them."
Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who also was co-chairman of the state campaign for Bush and a likely gubernatorial candidate in 2006, said he was just as interested as anyone in counting every vote.
"This was an election where you have some glitches but none of these glitches were of a conspiratorial nature, and none of them would overturn or change the election results," Blackwell said Monday, announcing his certification of the results.
Under the certified results, Bush had 2.86 million votes, or about 51% , to Kerry's 2.74 million, or 49%. After all provisional votes were counted, the Bush margin represented a drop of about 17,000 votes from the totals announced just after election day.
Arnebeck, who has made two unsuccessful runs for Congress and was an Ohio coordinator for Ross Perot, is undeterred. If the court orders a full and thorough investigation, he said, Kerry will win. He wishes Kerry would join the fight.
"He and his people are too ready to disbelieve that Republicans could be this bad," Arnebeck said. "They are this bad. Ballot-box stuffing is an old American tradition, and they've just updated it. I'm not surprised that somebody hacked this vote."
Sorry to point this out, but unless you have some sort of subtle reasoning that isn't obvious to me, your calculations aren't correct.
The EV is 286-252. If the President had lost Ohio and all of the other states remained unchanged, W would have 266 and sKerry would have 272.
The 20 Ohio votes would not simply disappear.
What I found strange, other than Effin' Kerry winning Iowa after being in third place a day before, was how Big Media picked Ohio to be SO close and important for Effin' Kerry about six months out from the election. New Jersey was supposed to be in play for Dubya. Hawaii popped up at the last minute. But no state had so much attention paid to it like Ohio did. Even Floriduh wasn't paid attention to as much because it was supposed to have had it's problems fixed from the 2000 debacle.
I thought something was fishy from the beginning...
If the Republican Nominee is Betty Montgomery then I for one will vote for whomever the Democrats nominate.
The pimpster didn't finish.
"We cannot live with fraud and stealing that doesn't go our way"
Betty Montgomery has been attorney general of the state. She has been fairly quiet as far as statewide visibility. I don't know whether she is even very conservative or not. If she is a candidate it will be because the party insiders decided it is her turn. Sort of a Bob Dole thing.
Blackwell has of course had a lot of statewide publicity, and in a primary I would think he would be the favorite.
If anyone would like to dend the good Mr Arnebeck an email, his addy is arnebeck@aol.com
The Ohio Legislature, as do all of the other States in the Union uses the popular vote of the People of the State to allocate its 20 Electoral College votes. The Ohio Legislature determined that it would assign ALL of its alloted Federal Electoral College votes to the winner of the Federal general election held in November of this year. The popular vote totals were certified by the Ohio Secretary of State, Mr. Blackwell and the Bush slate of 20 Ohio Electoral votes for President Bush was chosen and will be voted tommorrow in Columbus, Ohio on Monday December 13th. The Governor of the State of Ohio will authenticate both the Certificates of Ascertainment and Certificates of Votes with his signature and the State Seal. These documents and their certified copies will then be transmitted to the multiple appropriate authorities in Washington, D.C as required by Fedral statute.
Given the problems with the presidential election of 1876 between the winner Hayes(R) and Tilden(D) Federal Statues were enacted which ensured that there would be no contesting of a States electoral votes transmitted to the Federal Capitol if said electors were determined six days prior to their meeting in their State capitol to vote in the Electoral College. This is the so-called 'safe-harbor' provision adopted by the 45th Congress still holds sway today. All Congresses since the 45th are still bound to honor this law, so the Bush slate of electors votes transmitted must be accepted by the 109th Congress in January 2005.
Now if the recount would somehow change the popular vote result, or the Ohio Supreme Court would somehow order that ANOTHER slate of Kerry electors would be sent to the Federal capitol then the 109th Congress would deal with the possible two slates of Ohio electors. The bottom line - the Bush slate would be counted and Bush is determined to have a majority of the elctoral votes and is elected President of the United States.
Here is a source with all the technical details:
Source: 4President.org
Hope this helps,
dvwjr
Because he's not a barking LW moonbat like you
No they would not disappear. Bush has already won them per the safe harbour provision. Kerry cannot win them.
Bush has won. The only way the electors would change is both the House and the Senate vote to take the votes away from Bush. If only one the houses were to give the votes to Kerry and the other Bush, the decision would go back to the Governor of Ohio, Taft, a Republican.
Have you, Mr. Aenebeck, no conviction for the decision making abilities of your man, the flip flopper Jf'nK?
After all he did concede the election!
Was it a poor decision?
You said "Now if the recount would somehow change the popular vote result, or the Ohio Supreme Court would somehow order that ANOTHER slate of Kerry electors would be sent to the Federal capitol then the 109th Congress would deal with the possible two slates of Ohio electors. The bottom line - the Bush slate would be counted and Bush is determined to have a majority of the electoral votes and is elected President of the United States.<\b>
So even if a recount determined that Kerry won, you say the Congress would still accept the original elctoral vote from Ohio?
The irony of the 2004 election is that the Democrats (DNC) complained so much so loudly of supposed "Republican fraud" prior to Nov. 2 that it forced the RNC and the GOP watchdogs to launch a massive watchdog effort, which thereby prevented the Democrats from swindling their usual 2 or 3 percent of ADDITIONAL phantom votes from inner cities and union strongholds.
Even with our diligence, there supposedly were some VOTER REGISTRATION PADDING attempts by rabid Dems in liberal cities like Philadelphia, but with the eyes of the nation focusing like a laser on each precinct, McCauliff and the unions could not stack the deck as easily as they've done in the past.
After all, isn't it amazing how votes did not magically appear from after hours polls in St. Louis, or at Indian reservations in Arizona, New Mexico and North Dakota?
Even in states where Kerry won, the margin of victory was much less than in 2004, and I strongly believe it was due to the diligence that Karl Rove and the RNC's small army of lawyers.
For me, the sweet irony of 2004 is that Dems seem to have cut off their own fraudulent foot, I believe, by stirring up claims BEFORE the election about supposed intimidation and ballot irregularities.
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