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Elections 2004

US Black Vote

    World News
11/1/04 - 11/7/2004

None dare call it voter suppression and fraud  11/7/2004 Free Press: "The day after his concession, Kerry drew 3,893 votes closer to Bush when a computerized voting machine “glitch” was discovered in an Ohio precinct. A machine in ward 1B in the predominantly Republican Gahanna, Ohio, recorded 4,258 votes for George W. Bush when only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. Buried on page A6 of the Columbus Dispatch, the story also reported that the voting machine recorded 0 votes in a race between Franklin County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks. Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder told the Dispatch that the voting machine glitches were “why the results on election night are unofficial.” The right-wing New Life Church voting glitch is interesting. Free Press reporter Marley Greiner has been tracking Blackwell’s relationship with far right-wing religious forces like Biblical America and Christian dominionist groups that want to establish theocratic religious rule in America."

Dollar expected to fall amid China's rumoured selling  11/7/2004 FT: "China, which has $515bn of reserves, was also said to be selling dollars and buying Asian currencies in readiness to switch the renminbi's dollar peg to a basket arrangement, something Chinese officials have increasingly hinted at. Any re-allocation could push the dollar sharply lower and Treasury yields markedly higher."

Sarin gas threat  11/7/2004 Herald Sun, Australia: "STOCKPILES of sarin nerve gas destroyed at the end of fighting may cause Gulf War syndrome, according to an official report to be released next week. A leak from a US Department of Veterans' Affairs report suggests Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons may have caused nerve damage to tens of thousands of allied soldiers during the first Gulf War. In March 1991, a chemical weapons site at Khamisiyah was destroyed, creating a large plume of deadly smoke which may have drifted over more than 100,000 allied soldiers. Australian sailors aboard vessels in the Persian Gulf may have been exposed to low levels of the nerve agent, which causes long-term damage to the nervous system and brain."

Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm  11/7/2004 NYT: ""We dodged a bullet this time, but the problems remain," said Heather K. Gerken, who teaches election law at Harvard. "We have problems with the machines, problems with the patchwork of regulations covering everything from recounts to provisional ballots, and problems with self-interested party officials deciding which votes count.""

Unreported war: US document reveals scale of conflict  11/7/2004 Robert Fisk: published 7/29/04

Black support proves crucial to Bush win - Modest gains pay major dividends  11/7/2004 Times Picayune, LA: "In winning a second term, President Bush made great progress with Hispanic voters nationally and very little with black voters. But beneath that story lies an intriguing and surprising development: Bush's new success with Hispanics was concentrated in the overwhelmingly Republican South, especially in Texas, where it mattered little. And his far more limited success with black Christian conservatives, especially in Ohio, proved critical to his re-election."

Suicide squads await US troops' assault on Falluja  11/7/2004 Times, London 

Electronic Ballots – Major Media Report Major Problems  11/7/2004 Want to Know: "Another notable Votescam criminal can now be found sitting on the bench of the highest court in the nation. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, while still a Federal Appeals Judge, single handedly destroyed what would have been an historic lawsuit filed against Justice Department lawyer Craig Donsanto, who had refused to prosecute the extensive vote fraud evidence brought to him by the Colliers. The evidence included videotape of the League of Women voters tampering with ballots in a close door vote "counting" session. The women were illegally punching holes in already cast ballots."


Saturday  11/6/2004

Rebels launch attacks across central Iraq as US prepares assault on Fallujah  11/6/2004 AP 

Did Republicans steal the Florida election by rigging optical-scan voting machines?  11/6/2004 Blue Bunny: "So, after wrestling with this issue for three days, I've concluded: The exit polls were actually wrong. The odd-looking Florida numbers are easily explained by the fact that many southern Democrats are Democrats in name only and increasingly vote for Republican candidates. What is not in doubt is the fact that the Republicans carried out a number of schemes to suppress voter turnout in traditional Democratic constituencies, particularly the African-American community. It is difficult to tell just how successful these despicable measures were, but the possibility remains that they determined the election's outcome. Once African-Americans vote, their votes may not be counted, due to high rates of ballot "spoilage" in low-income African-American election districts. In other words, the system itself suppresses the African-American vote."

Jesse Jackson says Kerry ignored key Democratic blocs  11/6/2004 Chicago Tribune 

Evidence Mounts That The Vote Was Hacked  11/6/2004 Common Dream: "According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked. And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states. So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed."

Questionable Tactics by GOP  11/6/2004 Common Dream: by Anita F. Hill

Evidence of a Second Bush Coup? By Robert Parry  11/6/2004 Consortium News: "With questions lingering about discrepancies between the Nov. 2 exit polls and Bush's final tallies, some Democrats are wondering whether the intelligence community's cyber-war capabilities may have come home to roost."

Ohio Poll Worker on the Rigged Vote  11/6/2004 Dream Puppet 

Endlösung For Fallujah And Ramadi  11/6/2004 Jihad Unspun: "Osama Bin Laden’s central theme in his latest message is once of retribution. He was very precise when he referred to America’s insecurity arising not from its military weaknesses but its foreign policy. His message is not that of an irrational person who enjoys killing like the US soldiers apparently do with their high-tech weapons being detonated Hollywood styled like they are playing some video game. This made it was difficult for the US administration to respond to other than with one line of meaningless rhetoric. The motives of Al-Qaida are pretty much a taboo subject for a dutiful US media that fears culpability; it is much easier to paint Bin Laden as an irrational man bent on killing all infidels. Such superficial views are easy for its superficial masses to swallow in particular the hysterical Christian fundamentalist; the powerbase of the neo-cons and George Bush. Meanwhile, the more liberal and intelligent Americans are still trying to figure out what happened on the 2nd of November. Unfortunately the train is moving out of the station and there is no more time to wait. Endlösung for Fallujah and Ramadi is about to be delivered and Americans are poised to simply turn their heads away."

Three Senators Consider Bids for Governor  11/6/2004 NYT: "People are just giving up," said one Democratic strategist who has been a key adviser to Senate and House candidates from the New York region. "They're realizing that they may be able to accomplish a lot more from a governor's mansion than from Capitol Hill."

U.S. Expands List of Lost Missiles  11/6/2004 NYT: "American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday. A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said."

The Open Voting Consortium  11/6/2004 Open Voting: "The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections."

Like clinging chads, Kerry faithful hang on  11/6/2004 Plain Dealer,n OH: "One Web site includes a form letter for visitors to message Denny White, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, and urge him to request a statewide recount of the ballots."

Over 4000 early votes lost in Carteret County  11/6/2004 Sun Journal, NC 


Friday  11/5/2004

Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?  11/5/2004 Alternet: "Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about a third of the 2004 electorate, has fueled the flames of conspiracy theorists convinced Republican ideologues – now known to be willing to lie in television advertising – would extend their "ends justifies the means" morality to stealing the vote "for the better good of the country" they think single-party Republican rule will bring."

Colombia: Bush's Triumph Gladdens Uribe, Scares Others  11/5/2004 AntiWar: ""I am going to say something very frank: the hope is that the situation in the Middle East will become so complicated for the United States that it will not focus on the crisis in the Andean region, and in Colombia in particular," historian and political scientist Jaime Zuluaga, with the Institute of Political and International Studies (IEPRI) at the National University of Colombia, told IPS."

Congressional Black Caucus says Democrats may have lost but African Americans gained in Congress  11/5/2004 AP 

Group Finds Voting Irregularities in South  11/5/2004 AP 

US Christian right exultant after Bush re-election  11/5/2004 AP 

3 Blacks elected Mayor in Southern cities  11/5/2004 Black America Web: "In Richmond, former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder came out of retirement to win election as mayor of the city that once served as the capital of the Confederacy. In 1990, Wilder was sworn in as the state's first black governor. Eighth-grade teacher Mike Blake also won a mayoral contest Tuesday when voters in Cocoa, Fla. made him that city's chief executive officer. Residents of Cocoa, whose population is 60 percent white, also elected a majority-black city council. In Louisiana, state Sen. Melvin “Kip” Holden was elected mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes the city of Baton Rouge. He defeated the city's white incumbent mayor by nearly 15,000 votes. The parish's population is 60 percent white and 40 percent black. Holden, a Democrat, beat Republican Mayor Bobby Simpson with the support of white voters."

Jim Crow Constitution upheld in Ala.; 3 Strikes law stand in Calif.  11/5/2004 Black America Web: "Voters in Alabama – where former Gov. George Wallace once vowed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" – narrowly defeated a move to strip Jim Crow language for the state's constitution that provided for segregated schools. With 99 percent of the votes counted, the amendment was losing by 2,561 votes. A total of 690,155 people voted against the amendment while 687,594 voted for it, according to unofficial results from the office of Alabama secretary of state."

Ohio to keep counting provisional ballots  11/5/2004 Black America Web 

Bev Harris: 'Fraud Took Place In The 2004 Election'  11/5/2004 Counterbias 

"First Protect Your Vote" - Lessons for Democrats on Fixing Elections from Chicago  11/5/2004 Counterpunch: "What was the Kerry campaign's response? Why; to concede the election, of course, despite their avowal to ensure that all the votes would be counted. This sure-lose strategy came on the heels of an abysmal failure on the part of the Kerry campaign, the Democratic Party and the Democratic Leadership Council to throw resources into voter registration and turnout projects, until Black leaders threw a series of fits in the closing weeks of the election and the party hacks relented -­ a day late and a dollar short."

Big Wins for Instant Runoff Voting - Election 2004 By the Numbers  11/5/2004 Counterpunch: "If anything, the number of battlegrounds likely will decline in 2008. If this year,s national vote had been a 50-50 tie and the vote share had changed equally across the nation, only 5 states would likely have been decided by less than 4%, and only 15 states by less than 8%. Democratic states in fact are more solid than Republican ones in this scenario ­ a tie vote this year certainly would have elected John Kerry based on this year,s results. Thus, don,t expect more inclusive presidential campaigning in 2008 ­ and quite possibly an even smaller one, with all attention again paid on the two big truly swing states, Florida and Ohio."

It's a New Day! By CYNTHIA McKINNEY  11/5/2004 Counterpunch 

House Judiciary Committee letter to GAO regarding voting machines  11/5/2004 Democratic Underground 

Florida Stories  11/5/2004 Election Protection 

New York Times Killed "Bush Bulge" Story  11/5/2004 FAIR: "Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist's analysis of pictures of the president’s back from the first debate."

Understanding the 2004 Presidential Election: Beyond the Polarized Electorate, And The Republicans' Superior Voter Turnout  11/5/2004 FinLaw: "The caller had also told her friends that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq - and pointed out that Vice President Cheney had admitted as much in the Vice Presidential debate, and that the 9/11 Commission's report had so found. But her friends insisted there had indeed been such a relationship; that Cheney had misspoken, and she was wrong about the 9/11 Commission's report. Where did her two colleagues get their factually erroneous information? The caller explained that they attended the same evangelical church, and got their information from a sermon their minister had given on the subject."

Grand Theft Election - Karl Rove's Turd Droppings All Over This One  11/5/2004 Global Research 

Silent Death of the TruVote System  11/5/2004 Global Research: ""TruVote allows voters to touch their candidates' names on a computer screen and receive receipts of their vote at the end of the process. They can then go to a Web site, punch in their voter validation number and make sure their vote was recorded." "

Outrage in Ohio: Angry residents storm State House in response to massive voter suppression and corruption  11/5/2004 IMC, Michigan 

Arafat Was Slowly, Fatally Poisoned Say Palestinian Sources  11/5/2004 Islam Online 

Allegations Of Voter Fraud In US Election Begin To Surface  11/5/2004 Jihad Unspun: "So what do we actually see when comparing exit polls with actual results? There is skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had previously stated to be target states in play. The skew is in the same direction every time; that is to say in favor of Bush. The exit poll results are not scattered about the mean as the alternative theory predicts. They are all on the Kerry side of the vote counts as issued by the states except for a hand full of states which hit amazingly close to the exit poll figures."

Iraq Thursday US Withdraws From Fallujah After Guardsmen Flee  11/5/2004 Jihad Unspun 

Vigilance vital for soldiers in battle against suicide bombers  11/5/2004 Scotsman 

The Gay Marriage Myth - Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election.  11/5/2004 Slate: "politics Who's winning, who's losing, and why. The Gay Marriage Myth Terrorism, not values, drove Bush's re-election. By Paul Freedman Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM PT Did "moral values"—in particular, the anti-gay marriage measures on ballots in 11 states this week—drive President Bush's re-election? That's the early conventional wisdom as Democrats begin soul-searching and finger-pointing. These measures are alleged to have drawn Christian conservatives to the polls, many of whom failed to vote last time. The theory is intriguing, but the data don't support it. Gay marriage and values didn't decide this election. Terrorism did. The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election. The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well. Continue Article -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush's vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush's vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere… These differences hold up at the state level even when each state's past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap."

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results  11/5/2004 US Together: "Voters nationally voted along party lines by about 90%. We are in the midst of doing further studies of other states' election results and other measures of comparing counties for comparison." [not so in Florida…]

Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters  11/5/2004 Washington Dispatch 

Should America Trust the Results of the Election?  11/5/2004 Washington Dispatch: "Members of the discussion forum, DemocraticUnderground.com dug in and have already found a clear error in the vote count within Ohio. In one voting precinct in Gahanna, Ohio, 4,258 voters supposedly cast an electronic ballot for George Bush while only 260 voted for John Kerry. While it is vaguely possible that over 94% of voters in the precinct supported George W. Bush, it is a hard number to believe considering that only 638 voters were counted at the polling center. The Columbus Dispatch has investigated the matter and the director of the board of elections within the county admitted that Bush only received 365 votes. He stated that a "glitch" occurred in the electronic voting machine during the vote tally. This glitch could have given nearly 4,000 fake votes to George Bush if it had not discovered. The Gahanna incident is just one confirmed mistake and was discovered by activists on the Internet."

House Dems Seek Election Inquiry  11/5/2004 Wired: "In their letter, representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida asked the GAO to "immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration." John Doty, spokesman for Nadler, said the congressmen emphasized that they were not seeking a nationwide recount and were not anticipating that an investigation would change the outcome of the election. "But we do want to make sure that where there are problems they're fixed so that it won't affect other elections in the future," Doty said. "We want to make sure that people can be confident in the system." "

A review: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and bin Laden  11/5/2004 Zmag 


Thursday  11/4/2004

Computer Scientists Cautious of E-Voting  11/4/2004 AP: "Computer scientists reserved judgment. Many acknowledged that the hardware performed well. But software errors may have changed results, they said. The vast majority of touch screens in the United States do not produce paper records. And that means, critics say, that the machines could alter or delete ballots without anyone noticing. "What has most concerned scientists are problems that are not observable, so the fact that no major problems were observed says nothing about the system," said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "The fact that we had a relatively smooth election yesterday does not change at all the vulnerability these systems have to fraud or bugs." "

Fla. Rep.: Bush win is a gut-check for Black America  11/4/2004 Black America Web: "Hours after it was clear that President George W. Bush had reclaimed the White House, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek said he was disappointed but determined to keep the black electorate engaged… The congressman said he was proud to see so many first-time voters and the record turnout by blacks at the polls. However, Meek said, Bush probably "will not invest" in a black community that worked so hard to remove him from office. Meek also said future social-service programs must be funded locally because Bush "really don't care about ya'll now." "

Kerry loss prompts call for closer look at Black Democratic role  11/4/2004 Black America Web 

Vote Save Error #9  11/4/2004 Black Box Voting 

Black Consensus Remains Intact  11/4/2004 Black Commentator: "After a “decent interval” of cynical niceties – a charade that began on Wednesday and will be catered by Kerry’s DLC – the GOP has every intention to bring to bear the full power of the Bush II state against mainstream Black America political structures."

Black Voters Stand Tall  11/4/2004 Black Commentator: "Black America, with the help of our allies, proved that citizens can face down the racist bullies of the Republican Party, who believed that we could be intimidated by their brazen huffing and puffing, their threats of massive challenges, their disinformation campaigns – all based on the premise that Black folks are stupid and timid, and tired of fighting the powers-that-be. Instead of rolling over, we stood firm and in greater numbers than ever before. We are the spine – the moral and intellectual backbone – of America, the smartest and bravest citizens in the land. Our numbers and resolve intimidated the would-be intimidators. In the end, their plan to bum-rush Black polling places was reduced to a scattering of anecdotal incidents. Our lawyers – 16 thousand of them – faced down their lawyers. And Michael Moore marshaled 1,200 amateur and professional filmmakers to record the Republicans’ antics. Republicans apparently didn’t relish the idea of appearing in a reverse version of the TV show “Cops” starring themselves as the perpetrators caught in the act of violating federal law."

Democracy Spoiled  11/4/2004 Civil Rights Project, Harvard: cited by Greg Palast in today's article.

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy  11/4/2004 Common Dreams 

Tensions Rise Across Ranks In Iraq As Troops Are Told To Gut It Out  11/4/2004 Defense and the Naitonal Interest 

Yes, the evidence of fraud is indisputable...but there is no accoutability  11/4/2004 Democratic Underground: "Analysis of Florida's 67 counties: Mysterious variance between Touchscreens and Optical-Scanners ...It is noteable that exit polling has worked for decades both here in the US and elsewhere, but since the widespread implementation of auditless electronic voting machines in 2000, the exit poll methodlogy has suddenly become flawed? No. Politics is a high-stakes game, and the history of voting manipulation is long and sometimes colorful. But today it can be done quietly from a remote keyboard, and essentially transparent without exit polling data or audit capability."

Greg Palast says Kerry won Ohio  11/4/2004 Democrats.com 

AFTERMATH IN MICHIGAN: Parties' voting-place monitors keep challenging each other  11/4/2004 Detroit Free Press 

VOTING SYSTEMS ORGS AND COMPANIES  11/4/2004 EcoTalk 

Military Is Afraid to Tell Bush, Cheney the Truth, Says Sy Hersh in 'WP' Online Chat  11/4/2004 Editor & Publisher 

Election Protection Archives for 2004 Elections  11/4/2004 Election Protection: numerous intimidations and suppression of vote incidents.

Dutch arrest 8 Islamists in van Gogh killing  11/4/2004 IHT 

Indymedia Election Coverage  11/4/2004 IndyMedia: protests, jailings, beatings over vote fraud issues.

Mujahideen Prepare For Fallujah Battle  11/4/2004 Jihad Unspun 

Florida numbers vs 2000 - something is wrong  11/4/2004 KOS 

Two voting companies & two brothers will count 80 percent of U.S. election using both scanners & touchscreens  11/4/2004 Online Journal: the family name is Serbian. Originally printed 4/04

Republicans Appeal to Latinos' Conservative Side to Sway Vote - Ethnic Media Reaction to Election 2004  11/4/2004 Pacific News 

"Now comes the Revolution"  11/4/2004 Rigorous Intuition 

First of all, this election was definitely rigged  11/4/2004 Salon: "Talk to anyone from a real democracy -- from Canada or any European country or India. They are staggered to discover that 80 percent of our touch-screen electronic voting machines have no paper trail and are manufactured by companies owned by Bush Republicans. But there is very little sense of outrage here. Americans for a host of reasons have become alienated from the spirit of the Bill of Rights and that should not be tolerated."

Diebold To Patent "+1" Operation  11/4/2004 Scoop: "Diebold, ChoicePoint and Sproul - in a new partnership between government and business involving unprecedented interagency cooperation between the RNC/PNAC, the Patent Office, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security - and funded in part by venture capital from Microsoft's capital-markets division - have announced plans to form a joint venture to leverage core software patents and other intellectual property for the purpose of maintaining America's strategic edge at providing "the best democracy money can buy.""

Ohio Whitewash  11/4/2004 SpectrumZ: " worked for 3 days, including Election Day, on the statewide voter protection hotline run by the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio. I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable. Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio."

Electronic-Voting Critics Scrutinizing U.S. Election  11/4/2004 Straight Talk 

Kerry Won  11/4/2004 Tom Paine: by Greg Palast - "Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots."


Wednesday  11/3/2004

An Outsider's View  11/3/2004 Alternet: "For example, one aspect of the U.S. electoral system that our observer delegation found deeply disturbing is the partisan oversight and administration of elections. The secretaries of state are elected on a partisan platform and hold office as either Democrats or Republicans, as do most county clerks. This is a major departure from the global norm. In most other democracies, the elections are overseen by non-partisan commissions, which gives voters confidence that narrow interests won't manage the elections for their own ends. Here in the U.S., partisan electoral management has led to accusations of bias, especially in Florida and Ohio. Regardless of whether the allegations are true, their mere existence creates the perception of partisan mismanagement, eroding public faith in the system. Several other facets of U.S. elections caught our attention. We were disappointed that touch screen voting machines – which nearly one in three voters will use this year – do not provide a paper trail. We were confused as to why the public financing of the presidential race – in which each candidate receives up to $70 million – is not duplicated for House and Senate races, a reform which would surely improve voter confidence. And we were distressed by the laws in eight states that permanently disenfranchise felons even after they have completed their sentences, laws that we felt create subcategories of citizenship. We were also troubled to find that there are no provisions in most state laws for non-partisan poll observation. The Democrats choose a poll watcher and the Republicans choose theirs. But who represents the interests of the voting public at large, including the growing number of citizens who are registered as Independents?"

Supreme Disenfranchisement  11/3/2004 Alternet: "Indeed, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court wrote, "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote" in presidential elections (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104) Moreover, in Bush v. Gore, the court was emphatic that state legislatures have the power to bypass the popular vote and select presidential electors. "The State legislature's power to select the manner of appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself." (Bush, 531 U.S. at 104) That's the nightmare scenario of 2004. As millions of Americans join the new democracy movement, the Supreme Court has given this opening to the Republican Party: if Tuesday's vote is disruptive enough – polls not closing on time, allegations of voter fraud, lawsuits, perhaps violence by frustrated voters – then legislatures in the disputed states can come in and appoint its own electors. The popular vote would not matter."

Possible evidence of voter fraud in Ohio  11/3/2004 America Blog 

Nader Can't Reprise His Spoiler Role  11/3/2004 AP 

Hungary announces Iraq pull-out  11/3/2004 BBC 

Election 2004: "Sour Grapes" or Voter Fraud  11/3/2004 Buzzflash: "The unprecedented high turnout coupled with new registrations (that were overwhelmingly in favor of John Kerry) suggest that there was foul play at the voting booths. As a result, consumer investigator and activist Bev Harris (founder of Black Box Voting) "is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. On election night, Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships." ...The fact of the matter is (as every reasonable person who hasn't been hoodwinked by the pageantry of election night fraud realizes) that the election was stolen again in full view of the American public. The Republican owned voting machines prevailed over exit poll projections and the will of the American people."

Why Did CNN Change Their Exit Poll Data for Ohio After 1:00 AM?  11/3/2004 Buzzflash: with relevant screen shots from CNN

The Case For Fraud  11/3/2004 Counterbias: "Logic tells us that about half the exit polls would show "false positives" for the Republican side. But in the past two presidential elections, they have almost always (should I strike out the word "almost"?) delivered "false positives" for Democrats only. The simplest explanation: The Democratic "false positives" are not, in fact, false. The computerized tally is false."

The Ghost Votes in the Machine Voting Snafus Across the Nation  11/3/2004 Counterpunch: "A non-partisan coalition monitoring problems at polling sites has reported failures of electronic votig machines around the United States - some of which recorded touch screen votes for candidates voters had not selected. While errors were resolved in the cases brought to the attention of poll watchers, many voters remain uncertain whether their proper vote was cast in a bitterly contested election in which President George Bush has claimed victory. A number of people who thought they were voting for Kerry, when the screen came up it showed they were voting for Bush," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which is a member of the coalition. "We've seen it across several voting systems, not just one machine." ...As of November 3rd, members of the Election Protection Coalition received 4,459 reports of ballot problems, 2,867 calls about polling place irregularities, and 7,152 complaints regarding voter registration glitches. Another 1,074 people phoned in to say that they had witnessed voter intimidation. Unlike the voting problems that occurred during the 2000 elections, the voting problems reported during the 2004 election were spread across the entire country and aggravated the long lines voters endured at polling places. The group Common Cause also reported 50,000 calls reporting voting problems to its election hot-line, although not all the complaints were related to e-voting problems."

Election 2004: Shoplifting the Presidency?  11/3/2004 Democracy Now: with Greg Palast

Small bonuses of staying up all night  11/3/2004 Eric Umansky: "Fareed Zakaria on ABC News, at about 3am: “This is what really divides the U.S. from the other industrial democracies: Gods, Gays and Guns, if you will. If you were to take a sampling of public opinion in countries all the world—and this has been done by the Pew foundation—you would find that the United States on most of these core cultural issues is much closer Nigeria and Saudi Arabia than it is to Europe to Japan.”"

Al-Qaida is bleeding US to bankruptcy, Bin Laden claims  11/3/2004 Guardian: "Delivering a financial report on the "war on terror", he says that every dollar spent by al-Qaida in attacking the US has cost Washington $1m (£545,000) in economic fallout and military spending. The remarks appear in a full transcript of the 18-minute tape posted on the website of al-Jazeera. They were omitted last Friday when the TV station broadcast extracts. Referring to Afghanistan, Bin Laden says: "We, alongside the mujahideen, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat ... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." He says that diplomats and others have given lectures at Chatham House in London estimating that al-Qaida spent $500,000 on "the event" (the September 11 attacks), "while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest estimate - more than $500bn. Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated $1m by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs."

Defense stocks surge after Bush win  11/3/2004 Guerrilla News 

Global monitors find faults  11/3/2004 IHT: "The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system. . "To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. . "They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system," Olszewski said… "Unlike almost every other country in the world, there is not one national election today," said Gould, who has been involved in 90 election missions in 70 countries. "The decentralized system means that rules vary widely county by county, so there are actually more than 13,000 elections today." . Variations in local election law not only make it difficult for election monitors to generalize on a national basis, but also prohibit the observers from entering polling stations at all in some states and counties. Such laws mean that no election observers from the organization are in Ohio, a swing state fraught with battles over voter intimidation and other polling issues."

Overreaching at the polls - OUR OPINION: LAW SHOULD PROTECT VOTERS -- AND FREE SPEECH  11/3/2004 Miami Herald: "Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore and sheriff's deputies abused their authority with the arrest of freelance journalist James S. Henry for trying to photograph voters waiting in line on Sunday. In the process, they violated the First Amendment and true intent of statutes to ensure orderly voting. State law restricts nonvoters -- specifically, political committees, committees of continuous existence or other groups or organizations -- from ''within 50 feet of the entrance to any polling place.'' Ms. LePore's order restricting journalists to a tent 100 feet away violates the spirit and letter of the law as well as the media's right to monitor elections as the public's surrogate."

Russian Observer Shocked by U.S. Election Procedures  11/3/2004 Moscow News 

Now What? First, We Kill the Media  11/3/2004 NarcoNews 

Fixed - The Stealing Of Another Election  11/3/2004 Rense.com: "SoCalDem has done a statistical analysis on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results. In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error."

Florida numbers vs 2000 - something is wrong  11/3/2004 Stolen Election 2004 

Surprising Pattern in FL counties by voting machine type  11/3/2004 Stolen Election 2004: "There is a striking difference in patterns with a HUGE percent change that Republicans picked up in op-scan counties that is amazingly larger than in DRE counties."

Presidential Votes Miscast on e-Voting Machines Throughout The Country  11/3/2004 Technocrat 

Exit polls and ‘actual’ results don’t match; Evoting states show greater discrepancy  11/3/2004 The Blue Lemur: "In Florida, Bush led exit polling by CNN of more than 3 million voters by just 5355 votes. Yet he led by 326,000 in the end result. This morning, CNN changed their exit polling to favor Bush, saying that had overweighted African American voters."

Young People and Christians  11/3/2004 Village Voice: "Along with many other sources, Christianity Today's blog thinks evangelical Christians probably swung it. "Among those who cited moral values as their top priority, Bush defeated Kerry 79-18. The numbers were dramatic in Ohio, the state that ensured Bush's victory. Self-described white evangelical/ born-again voters composed 25 percent of the Ohio electorate and supported Bush by a 76-24 margin."


Tuesday  11/2/2004

Arafat & the Original 'October Surprise'  11/2/2004 Consortium News: "A top aide to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has dropped a new clue about the original “October Surprise” mystery of 1980: the name of the Republican operative who sought the Palestine Liberation Organization’s help to block President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free 52 Americans then being held hostage in Iran. Longtime Arafat confidant Bassam Abu Sharif said that in mid-1980, he met in Paris with John Shaheen, a friend to both Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s campaign chief, William J. Casey. Abu Sharif told me that Shaheen, a former U.S. intelligence officer of Lebanese origin, extended a Republican offer of improved U.S. relations with the PLO if the Arafat-led organization would assist in persuading the Iranians to delay the hostage release until after the November 1980 elections."

U.S. lifts arms embargo to Haiti as violence grows  11/2/2004 Final Call 

Is there inner-city election suppression in Franklin County, Ohio?  11/2/2004 Free Press 

Day of the Dead: The Haunting of the White House By Cynthia McKinney and Catherine Austin Fitts  11/2/2004 From the Wilderness: "Driven by survivor families, independent researchers, journalists, and a growing number of ordinary citizens, an emergent "9/11 truth movement" has organized several public inquiries into the events of September 11 during the past year. As co-chairs of the first 9/11 Citizens' Commission, held in New York City in September, we were entrusted with answering questions the Kean Commission ignored. What did we hear? We heard evidence of specific advance warnings about the 9/11 attacks from overseas. We heard about the spiking of FBI terrorism investigations and the lack of response during the attacks by high officials, including George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers. We heard about air toxicity at Ground Zero still afflicting firefighters, first responders, and New York residents - and how, in the days after September 11, the White House intervened to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing a strong warning that the air in Lower Manhattan was unsafe to breathe. We also learned that, although there was a stunning abandonment of standard procedure for hijackings and air defense on September 11, the 9/11 Commission Report fails to issue a call for official accountability."

Group tallies more than 1,100 e-voting glitches  11/2/2004 IDG 

Presidential Votes Miscast on E-Voting Machines Across the Country  11/2/2004 Kansas City InfoZine: "Voters from at least half a dozen states reported that touch-screen voting machines had incorrectly recorded their choices, including for president. Voters discovered the problems when checking the review screen at the end of the voting process. They found, to their surprise, that the machines indicated that they voted for one candidate when they had voted for another. When voters tried to correct the problem, the machine often made the same error several times. While in most cases the situation was reportedly resolved, many voters remain uneasy about whether the proper vote was ultimately cast. Meanwhile, voting experts are concerned that other voters are experiencing the problem, but failing to notice that the machine is indicating the wrong choice on the "summary" screen."

FOX's Hannity baselessly accused Dems of voter fraud  11/2/2004 Media Matters 

Rock the Vote Irks Republicans  11/2/2004 Reuters 

White House takes aim at U.N.'s nuclear chief Some in Bush camp say ElBaradei trying to help elect Kerry  11/2/2004 SF Chronicle: "After the explosives story broke last week, Bush administration officials said they would oppose ElBaradei's bid for a third term as head of the agency when it comes up for renewal next year. Although the United States does not have veto power on the IAEA's 35-member board, opposition from Washington would carry considerable weight, and some analysts say the administration is determined to oust him."

Foreign monitors barred from some US polling stations: OSCE observer  11/2/2004 Sierra Times: "Another Danish OSCE observer, conservative Carina Christensen, reported less serious irregularities in Jacksonville, Florida, but said police had been called when she tried to visit a Republican office. She and three other delegation members had been well received by local representatives of the Democrat Party who had ensured their access to polling stations. But Republicans were less welcoming. "We were denied entry to a local Republican office in Orlando," she told Ritzau: "They called the police, saying they had received guidelines from Washington to do so." "

White House source tells mag they're confident on FL, OH  11/2/2004 The Raw Story: "In a telephone coversation, the reporter said, "political operations" was "very confident and completely dismissive of the early day numbers." Believing an unverified claim on the conservative Drudge Report, that the early exit polls were skewed in favor of women voters (who prefer Kerry by-and-large), the White House source told the Review they believe there was "skewing" of early exit polls."

IRS Investigating over 60 Charities on Political Activities  11/2/2004 Web CPA 

Watchdogs Spot E-Vote Glitches  11/2/2004 Wired 


Monday  11/1/2004

VENEZUELA - 20 of the 22 states in the hand of the Bolivarian forces  11/1/2004 Granma 

AN ELECTION SPOILED ROTTEN  11/1/2004 Greg Palast: "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled until Tuesday night. Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed one million votes."

Fierce Fighting Raged Everywhere On Weekend  11/1/2004 Jihad Unspun