None Dare Call It Stolen - Ohio, the Election, and America's Servile Press

There was unequal placement of voting machines. County boards of elections were ordered to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight. Access was limited to provisional ballots. "Caging"was used to challenge 35,000 individuals who did not sign for registered letters sent to new voters. There was restriction of media from covering the election and conducting exit polls. There was a prearranged FBI terrorist attack warning in Warren County which kept reporters from observing a post-election ballot-counting. There was restriction of foreign monitors from "watching the opening of the polling places, the counting of the ballots, and, in some cases, the election itself. Numerous statistical anomalies all deducted votes from Kerry. In Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties, "the arrows on the absentee ballots were not properly aligned with their respective punch holes, so that countless votes were miscast." In Mercer County, 4000 votes were mysteriously not in the final count. In Lucas County a polling place never opened because no one had the key. In Hamilton County, many absentee voters could not vote for Kerry because his name was not on the ballot. In Mahoning County 25 electronic machines changed Kerry votes to Bush. Dirty tricks told voters to go to false polling places; that Democrats were to vote on November 3; volunteers offered to take absentee ballots to the election office; voters were challenged to prove eligibility to vote. The "Texas Strike Force" (25 people registered at a Franklin County Holiday Inn, paid by the Republican Party) threatened targeted people from a pay phone, if they voted. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell created rules for the Ohio recount (requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties) which would prevent "countywide hand recounts by any means necessary." The end result was "the Ohio vote was never properly recounted, as required by Ohio law." On December 13, 2004, it was reported by Deputy Director of Hocking County Elections Sherole Eaton, that a Triad GSI employee had changed the computer that operated the tabulating machine, and had "advised election officials how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that [the] preliminary hand recount matched the machine count." This same Triad employee said he worked on machines in Lorain, Muskingum, Clark, Harrison, and Guernsey counties.
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The piece on which this summary is based was originally published in Harper's. Mark Crispin Miller is a professor at New York University, a political/media commentator, and author of his latest book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the Election of 2004, and Why They Will Keep Doing It Unless We Stop Them, which will be published by Basic Books this October.