Do We Have Sufficient Grounds?

[Roger_Otip]

this piece on DailyKos is worth a read:

So to all those who are screaming "where is the indisputable facts or truth, because I haven't heard any yet," I say to them, "that at this point in the proceedings, indisputable proof is not required whatsoever."

In fact, because we are not suggesting that a criminal action be brought, the standard of proof is even less than "a reasonable suspicion." Don't we at least have some of that from what we have thus far heard? OF COURSE, WE DO. Just think about what we now know to have occurred in Volusia County, Florida; or what has occurred in South Carolina; or what has occurred in Ohio, and so on and so on. Even the enormous
improbabilities regarding the discrepancies between the exit polls and the actual poll results should raise within all reasonable people a "reasonable suspicion" that something is definitely awry concerning many of the 2004 poll results. Wasn't the odds 250,000,000 to 1?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/30/185532/75

[Straight Shooter]

1. Incredible article.

Help America Vote Act Madness:

For those who do not know, the act actually financially rewards companies like Diebold that introduce "Direct Electronic Voting Machines Without Paper Trails" to new voting districts that formerly utilized a different voting system or operational format, including the OP-Scan System. Beyond that, HAVA has not changed much of anything else of any significant import or improvement. Yep, the Democrats simply got hoodwinked again. Hell, haven't we all figured that out by now? What else is new? "But damn the torpedoes, and full steam ahead," shouldn't WE bloody well now change OUR Modus Operandi before it's way too late?

Long post on dailykos, but absolutely worth the read. Go now. Waste no time. Prepare to absorb knowledge to refute the Repubs.

[smartone]

2. did anyone post this article ?

Ohio tally fit for Ukraine
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/257365p-220441c.html
Voter fraud in the Ukraine? Give me a break.

It has been a month now and we still don't have a clear count of the votes for our own presidential race from the state of Ohio.

For those who may have forgotten, Ohio supposedly assured George W. Bush a second term in the White House - only the most important job on the planet.

The morning after the election, we were told Bush was ahead of John Kerry in that state's unofficial count by 139,000 votes, or 2.5%.

At the time there were 155,000 uncounted provisional ballots and an unknown number of overseas ballots, but Kerry concluded they would not produce enough of a margin to erase his deficit, so he promptly conceded.

At the same time, given the bitter Democratic memories of the 2000 Florida fiasco, he assured his supporters he would fight to have every vote properly counted this time.

Within a few days, other problems began to show up in Ohio's preliminary tally.

We learned, for example, that an additional 93,000 voters had gone to the polls yet machines had registered no preference of theirs for President. Only a manual recount can tell us for sure what happened to those 93,000 ballots.

Then, red-faced election officials in Franklin County admitted a computer error on Election Night had tallied 4,258 votes for Bush in a precinct where only 638 people voted. That correction alone will drop Bush's margin by 3,620.

And now Daily News reporter Larry Cohler-Esses and I have uncovered some more unusual vote totals, this time in black neighborhoods of Cleveland. Those results are from the precinct-by-precinct tallies released by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where Cleveland is located.

In the 4th Ward on Cleveland's East Side, for example, two fringe presidential candidates did surprisingly well.

In precinct 4F, located at Benedictine High School on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Kerry received 290 votes, Bush 21 and Michael Peroutka, candidate of the ultra-conservative anti-immigrant Constitutional Party, an amazing 215 votes!

That many black votes for Peroutka is about as likely as all those Jewish votes for Buchanan in Florida's Palm Beach County in 2000.

In precinct 4N, also at Benedictine High School, the tally was Kerry 318, Bush 21, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik 163.

Back in 2000, the combined third-party votes in those two precincts - including the Nader vote - was 8. Cuyahoga, like most of Ohio's 88 counties, uses punch-card balloting.

"That's terrible, I can't believe it," said City Councilman Kenneth Johnson, who has represented the 4th Ward since 1980. "It's obviously a malfunction with the machines."

But Peroutka and Badnarik polled unusually well in a few other black precincts. In the 8th Ward's G precinct at Cory United Methodist Church, for instance, Badnarik tallied 51 votes - nearly three times better than Bush's 19. And in I precinct at the same church, Peroutka was the choice on 27 ballots, three times more than Bush's 8. In 2000, independent candidates received 9 votes from both precincts.

The same pattern showed up in 10 Cleveland precincts in which Badnarik and Peroutka received nearly 700 votes between them.

In virtually all those precincts, Kerry's vote was lower than Al Gore's in 2000, even though there was a record turnout in the black community this time, and even though blacks voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.

If this same pattern held true in other cities around Ohio, then quite possibly thousands of votes meant for Kerry somehow ended up in the tallies of the two independent candidates. So far, however, precinct-by-precinct results have not been posted by boards of elections in other counties, but by Thursday all official results are due.

On Monday, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell will certify Ohio's results and then a manual recount will be requested by the Green and Libertarian parties.

The Badnarik and Peroutka surge was not the only unusual occurrence in Cleveland.

Also unusual was the drop in the Democratic vote in scores of precincts compared to 2000. But more on that next time.

[renate]

6. The Ohio recount is going to be a lot of fun to watch

What an amazing article--WELL worth the time to read. Thank you for posting it.
215 votes for Peroutka and 290 for Kerry! OMG. Not all people who voted for Bush are wild-eyed reactionaries. Most are decent, though easily misled, people who do believe in democracy. (This is my own theory, anyway.) Now that there's a reason for the MSM to pay attention to the Ohio story, when this kind of stuff gets out "WTF" will echo across the land. (Maybe just "What the hey?" from the Bush voters.)

[truehawk]

3. "Res Ipsa Loquitor," My favorite part

What It Means:

There is something else that I should discuss at this point. There is an old legal doctrine on the books known as "Res Ipsa Loquitor." It is a Latin phrase which basically means, "Let the object speak for itself."

Where's the Burden of Proof?

How is Res Ipsa Loquitor applicable here? Well, in theory, when something goes awry concerning an object or instrumentality which is in the exclusive control of a person or persons, be it equipment or the like, and that failure does not normally occur without fault or without negligence, then the burden to prove that the object or the machine did not malfunction in a certain way then legally shifts to the owner or exclusive possessor of that very object or machine.

Respectfully, under the principles of this specific, time-tested legal doctrine, I would contend that Diebold, et al., should be required to prove how any of its vote machines malfunctioned in any given instance, or put another way, they should have the burden of proof to demonstrate that all of its machines functioned properly, just as they were intended to function. You know, when you really think about the fact that our democracy itself happens to be at stake, that isn't asking a whole lot.

[texpatriot2004]

5. Have you ever noticed how they pass laws that have really

great titles but actually do the opposite of what they sound like they will do? HAVA is a good example or B*'s clear skies deal that leaves environmental clean up to the polluting corporations. Or the economic policies that eliminate jobs. It's weird, like if only we lived in the land of opposite. Well, actually it's infuriating but hey...

[berniew1]

4. Strong indications of major electronic glitches or fraud in Ohio

Strong indications of major electronic glitches or fraud in Ohio

In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland running for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than votes than Kerry in many counties. For example in Butler County, Connally received 5347 more votes than Kerry. The list of the counties where Connally actually outpolled Kerry include Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert, and Warren.

The reason the Kerry vote counts are suspect is because Connelly, a retired African-American judge, was vastly outspent in her race, and did not have the visibility of the presidential race. Thus for a more obscure Democratic candidate, farther down on the ticket, to get many more votes statewide than Kerry, suggests something happened to suggest there may have been a transfer of Kerry votes to Bush. ""Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. As of election night, 5,481,804 votes were counted for Bush and Kerry. 4,327,270 votes were counted for Moyer and Connally.

""This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix,"" said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepres.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state’s Supreme Court.

See also: www.flcv.com/ohiov04.html

[New Earth]

7. we already know all of this!!!

:)

[Terre]

8. Except for those of us that didn't

And for those of us that did, it's very nice to have it summed up - and quite passionately too.

[Terre]

9. Clarification

I'm speaking of the dKos post of Major Tom's if that's what you meant by "knowing it already". If not, my apologies and nebbermind. :o)

[Straight Shooter]

10. Faye is replying to berniew1

And that post which appears at random, when you least suspect it, like a pop-up ad, and although tangentially related to the subject at hand, never quite makes the connection with forethought.