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From Coilín ÓhAiseadha, Ireland.
(pronounced koh-LEEN oh-HASH-oo):
Bo (Danish Reporter) suggested that I send English translations of Danish articles about the Ohio fraud to you, so that you could post them to the right forum/fora on democraticunderground.com (or elsewhere). So here comes the first. Hope you find it a useful summary of the story so far.
This translation was done by a translator colleague, Billy O'Shea. Incidentally, Billy was the man who identified the manufacturer of the Raytheon missile that struck the marketplace in Shuale in Baghdad in March last year, leading to embarrassing questions in the British House of Commons.
This is an English translation of an article written by journalist Klaus Justsen for the Danish national newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, www.jp.dk. This English translation is copyright 2004 by Billy O’Shea, www.oshea.dk.
They're counting and counting in Ohio
Jyllands-Posten, 19 December 2004, Section 1, page 8
John Kerry recognises that the new vote recount in Ohio will not change the result of the presidential election, but several civil rights groups are refusing to give up. Irregularities have been revealed, and the protests continue.
By Klaus Justsen
Jyllands-Posten's correspondent
Washington
This week, Ohio's 20 Republican electors met in the state capital, Columbus, to formalise the decision that the voters made on 2 November. As expected, all 20 voted for George W. Bush, before repairing around the corner for a modest lunch. Shortly afterwards, Ohio Secretary of State and electoral overseer Kenneth Blackwell signed the result and sent it on to Washington. The formal confirmation that the Republican candidate George W. Bush had won the election contest against the Democrat John F. Kerry does not, however, mean that the counting is over in Ohio. All this week, the punchcards have been examined under a magnifying glass, and polling officials have discussed whether the choices of voters were clearly for one candidate or the other. The scene at several polling places has revived memories of the long counting processes in parts of Florida four years ago. Back then, the result was not clear until the Supreme Court put a stop to the counting processes and declared George W. Bush the winner. This time there is no prospect of the Supreme Court becoming involved, but parts of the count have already been examined by a local court after two candidates demanded a recount. The state must honour this demand, as the candidates have collected the 113,600 dollars demanded by the state's electoral legislation as a minimum requirement to prevent abuse of the system.
The result will stand
John Kerry's campaign staff did not ask for a recount, but are supporting the demand, although the Democratic graduate has already confirmed that the election result will not be altered, no matter how many times the contended votes are counted. However, several civil rights groups do not regard the issue as quite that cut and dried, and emphasise that a recount is necessary if confidence in the democratic electoral process of secret and fair elections is not to suffer a serious blow. According to the calculation that Kenneth Blackwell signed, Bush won the industrial state by 119,000 votes. This means that the transfer of less than 60,000 votes to John Kerry could have altered the result, which would have resulted in the Democrat being sent to the White House, even though Bush won more than three million more votes at national level. Having cast her vote for the President, Karyle Mumper claimed that the demonstrators outside the state assembly, where she was meeting with her 19 colleagues, were merely bad losers. They should trust that everything had been done correctly. However, this brash claim cannot conceal the fact that several irregularities have come to light over the past seven weeks. There is nothing to indicate that these would have been of a sufficient scope to change the election result, but they raise questions about the accuracy of the process. The first count awarded victory to the President by a margin of 135,000 votes; later, questions were asked about 92,000 votes which were not registered as being for either presidential candidate. This week, John Kerry requested permission to examine these ballot papers; a request to which electoral overseer Blackwell has not replied, provoking charges from critics that the Republicans must have something to hide.
A double role
Kenneth Blackwell is not just the electoral overseer, but also one of the two chairmen of the Bush campaign in Ohio – a double role that he has insisted on retaining, despite growing criticism. Most of the 92,000 ballot papers showing no indication of a preferred presidential candidate were made on punchcards, which has given rise to a court case and the claim that these cards, the use of which was particularly concentrated in the poorer areas of the state, did not ensure equal treatment for voters and their votes. A judge has rejected this claim, stating that everyone had been given the opportunity to vote, and that the actual technical method used was unimportant. This claim has been countered by references to the fact that President Bush did better in areas in which the voting was done on a computer screen, or by filling out optically-read ballot papers.
A new test case
According to civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, this bias adds to the suspicion that someone or other tampered with the machines so as to provide the President with more votes. Jackson has added both pathos and drama to the affair with his claim that Ohio has become a new test case for the civil rights movement. He is awakening memories of Martin Luther King with his talk of "from Selma to Palm Beach to Columbus". Jackson is supported by a few statisticians, who describe it as suspicious that the first exit polls taken on election day indicated a quite convincing victory for John Kerry. The experts claim that such a substantial deviation from the polls would be a one in a million event. However, Kerry’s campaign staff recognise that such statistical comparisons cannot be used to alter the election result.
Computers taken apart
The affair was given an almost tragicomic air when the polling officials in one precinct raised the alarm when a representative of the computer company that supplied the voting equipment turned up to check the system. The technician claimed that there was a fault in the machine, took it apart and assembled it again. A spokesperson for the computer company explained that this was part of a standard procedure in which the machines were adjusted to ensure that they only registered votes for the presidential candidates, and not for the many other posts that are decided on the same ballot paper. This explanation, however, did not satisfy John Conyers, a member of the House of Representatives, who has asked the FBI to investigate. The FBI has apparently not yet responded to this request.
Slow count
It is uncertain when the recount of the votes cast in Ohio's 88 counties can be concluded. State legislation requires three percent of the votes to be counted by hand. If these give the same result as the first total count, all of the votes may then be counted by machine; if the result is different, all the votes must be counted by hand. Such a process is unlikely to be concluded before some time between Christmas and the New Year. Even another clear victory for the President will not put an end to the criticism; a group that has come together under the slogan "Never Again!" has already declared that the protests will continue. They insist that Democratic voters were not given fair treatment, that there was a lack of voting machines in their areas, and that many voters were even lured to the wrong voting centres as the result of a carefully-planned campaign.
klaus.justsen-AT-jp.dk
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