Koehler, Wycliff on the 2004 Election’s Fraud/Non-Fraud
Columnist Robert Koehler has been making some noise lately about events in Ohio during the last election, and the steady grumbling that has been going on since then, and which represents either principled concern for the foundations of our democracy, or sour grapes of the sore loser variety (depending on who’s talking about it). Anyway, see these Koehler columns for more: The silent scream of numbers and Democracy’s Abu Ghraib.
Then see this rebuttal from Don Wycliff of the Chicago Tribune: When winning isn’t everything. Then see the re-rebuttal from Koehler: Citizens in the rain.
Were there irregularities in the 2004 election? Sure. Do they represent a case of successful election theft by Bush? I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s possible to know at this point, or ever will be.
May 9th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
As an Ohio resident I’ve had some concerns about this for a while, but at the same time I feel that some of Robert Koehler’s assertions are off. While I can’t speak to the computer vote errors I will mention that there was a lot of impending worry that everyone would not be able to vote due to the lack of and placement of voting areas. I seem to remember Ken Blackwell (Sec of State) making some TV appearances stating that it would be possible to vote out of district in Ohio. So it would have been at least theoretically possible for someone to transit to another district and vote. As to addressing the long lines, it just seems to be a ‘suck it up’ issue. I have friends that did wait 6 hours in line in Cleveland suburbs to vote, I guess they cared enough to do so. Finally it was noted here that the trend for inner city voting in the black and hispanic communities to be Republican that year. There was a lot of effort in campaigning in Baptist churches to turn out and vote for Ohio’s gay marriage ban and support President Bush because he was anti-gay rights. The gay marriage ban vote was also thought to have resulted in a general higher turnout of people who might not have voted. It’s also noted correctly by Don Wycliff that Cleveland and Columbus went blue. Cleveland very strongly Democrat (along with Akron, Canton & Youngstown) with Columbus just hedging at light blue. The real Waterloo for the Democrats seemed to be Dayton, Toledo and worst off all Cincinatti, which went red.
This issue of a possible fraud came up very early but since the Kerry camp didn’t really pursue it, I think most Ohioans let it drop. Knowing the people of this state like I do, I’m sure there were some fucks that attempted to interfere with people voting Democrat but I would have to question whether interference from Republicans at the polls themselves would have made a huge difference.
What really distrubs me is the possibility that the electronic voting machine s were compromised. Personally, I about shit when I heard they were Diebold machines. We had a Diebold electronic door/debit card system where I went to college and it was frequently point out to be woefully insecure by friends of mine in the computer science dept. for what thats worth.
Ultimately I would have liked for John Kerry to have taken this one, but even if theft of the vote is proven before Bush’s term is up, what would happen? I’m not sure anything I would term a positive result would.
For the record I voted in Portage County, middle class to poor economically speaking on a mechanical punch card machine.