Pacifica Coverage
of the Voter Controversy in Ohio
Live from Columbus, Ohio From the Afro-Centric Middle School
December 4, 2004
6 PM - 9 PM EST
(for our affiliate stations - Left Channel KU)
- audio archives to the right, thanks to KPFTx.org
Featured speakers include:
Greg Palast - Journalist
Reverand Jesse Jackson - Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Bob Fitrakis - editor, Columbus Free Press
Susan Truitt - Ohio voter activist
Bill Moss - Columbus School Board Member
Anita Rios - from Green Party
Cliff Arnebeck - lead attorney, Alliance for Democracy
[is filing suit within days, says he has evidence voting
machines were tampered with in Ohio]
Bill Berga - Pres Ohio ACLU
With national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky.
For our affiliate stations
Technical Questions: Jim Bennett 510 848-6767 ext 214
Other questions: Stephenie Hendricks 415 258-9151
****************************
the
original published Tuesday, November 30, 2004
by the New York Daily
News
Ohio Tally Fit for Ukraine
by Juan Gonzalez
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.
Juan Gonzalez is a reporter for the New York Daily News
and co-host of [Pacifica Radio's] Democracy
Now!.
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