Robert Koehler: A Crime Without a Name

A Crime Without a Name
'Concern' about election fraud is useless without guts and anger

By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services
November 10, 2005

Some news is so big it won’t fit into a headline. For example: WIDESPREAD VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT IN 2004.

Sorry. It may be true, but it’s a no-go on the front pages and TV news programs of America. The reality hovers namelessly, like the disappeared of Central America. Shhh, don’t refer to it directly. Wait 20 years, until they dig up the mass graves.

No matter the election was a multilayered travesty of disenfranchisement: widespread malfunctioning of electronic voting machines that continually worked to the benefit of George Bush over John Kerry; Jim Crow-style spurious challenges of African-American and other likely Democratic voters; preposterously long lines in inner-city neighborhoods while unused machines sat in warehouses; mysteriously inaccurate exit polls that picked Kerry until Bush suddenly emerged victorious; dirty tricks galore; more than 100,000 uncounted provisional ballots in the bitterly contested state of Ohio alone; and now, a just-released General Accounting Office report on electronic voting in 2004, which found evidence of lost and miscounted votes, sloppy security and other problems.

Even the most high-profile victim of all this malfeasance and chicanery, the losing candidate himself, seems unable to give it a name, though he stands for all that’s right and good: “Barriers to voting — whether it’s intimidation, disinformation or a lack of voting machines — have no place in the freest, greatest nation in the world.”

http://commonwonders.com/

Koehler's column, Part II
http://commonwonders.com
Sen. Kerry is one of the sponsors of the Count Every Vote Act of 2005, which contains provisions to “discourage partisan manipulation and deceptive practices in elections” and, radically, “ensure that all votes are counted.”

But why should this be necessary? It took me a day, basically, of journalistic tooth-pulling — that is, repeated pestering of his press office — to get the following concession: “Yes, 2004 is what inspired the Count Every Vote Act.”

Cut now to a Kerry fund-raiser last week, where writer and political analyst Mark Crispin Miller stood waiting by the door for the senator to walk in. Miller, the author of the newly published “Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too” (Basic Books), was able to grab a few moments with the guest of honor. He handed Kerry a copy of his book and said, “You were robbed, Senator!”

Let me note that “Fooled Again” is a meticulously researched, engrossing and infuriating book. It’s excellent. It lays out not just the case of ’04 election fraud, but examines in harrowing detail the psychology of the zealots and theocrats who perpetrated it: these true believers, these latter-day crusaders against evil, who will stop at nothing to thwart evil’s minions, be they terrorists or Democrats.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

http://www.commonwonders.com

What's the story on that?

There are 93,000 ballots that were never counted at all (undervotes) and over 100,000 provisionals, about 78% of which were counted.

in Ohio, Florida, and other states

Election Officials declared votes by voter in wrong precinct don't count; then there was widespread campaign to make sure large numbers of minority voters voted in the wrong precinct.

They were commonly told the wrong precinct by officials and poll workers; there was manipulation in many of the polling places with multiple precincts by directing voters to the wrong line- then not counting their votes.

There was widespread systematic dirty tricks to confuse minority voters as to their correct precinct
Large numbers of precinct voting place changes just before the election in minority precincts;
Precinct signs were taken down in minority precincts;
Thousands of letters, flyers, hangers, phone calls to minority voters telling them their precinct voting place had changed in many counties of most swing states

And etc.

Also widespread purges of minority voters in swing states like Ohio and Florida

http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html
http://www.flcv.com/ohiosum.html

For all to read. This issue must never head for the back burner. At least DU resounds this, no thanks to the silent media-whores.

God bless Bob Koehler.

Sometimes the enormity of a crime is it's greatest cover.