This is from the December 22, 2004 program of
Countdown With Keith Olbermann.
The clip is only 47 seconds long, but it means a hell of a lot. I’ve transcribed the entire thing below, and Video and an MP3 file is also available.
I’ll be posting more about the details of this tonight and all day tomorrow, along with an article that puts everything together in one cohesive post.
I’m doing this for everyone, of course, but I’m also doing it to make it easier for press folks in the mainstream media to cover these developments over this upcoming, critical week.
The situation seems a bit complicated, at first, and I found myself having to print out all of the articles and lay them out on my desk and read them over a couple of times to understand which names kept coming up, and why, and what seemed to be the important story to tell, which, as it turns out, is actually quite simple:
The Ohio Recount has been totally invalidated due to a combination of factors, most notably the obvious and incontestable recount machine tampering by a Triad employee.
Bush can’t win without Ohio, so if the results are in question, the entire election is in question. (Final count: Bush: 286 Kerry: 252 – so Ohio’s 20 electorates switching to Kerry would make the count Bush 266 Kerry 272.)
The Kerry-Edwards campaign is filing papers tomorrow to impound all of the recount equipment in question until the entire matter can be investigated in a timely manner.
Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and others are planning to challenge the election on January 6th, and they say that, this time around, unlike in 2000, they can get the support of one or more Senators to make the Challenge hold.
Here’s the Video (2 MB) and MP3 (1 MB) of the Countdown story quoting Kerry’s attorney.
I’ve transcribed the entire thing right here:

And although the race for president really is all but over tonight, in the state of Ohio, Senator John Kerry’s legal team is filing papers in Federal Court, asking in effect that all of the evidence obtained during the recount be saved, and that the court move quickly to uncover the facts.
While Senator Kerry is still technically the third party in all of this, acting in support of the Libertarians and the Greens, the parties that officially requested the recount, the outcome affects him. Kerry’s lawyer in Ohio, Daniel Hoffheimer, telling Countdown tonight that the Democratic ticket wants to make sure that things are done right:
“Senators Kerry and Edwards and very concerned that the law for conducting the recount should be uniformly followed. Only then can the integrity of the entire electoral process and the election of Bush-Cheney warrant the public trust.”

Yippie! The irregularities have made the NY Times.

Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
By James Dao, Ford Fessesfen and Tom Zeller Jr. for the NY Times.

From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year’s example for every ailment in the United States’ electoral process.
With a state recount expected to be completed next week, few experts think the problems were enough to overturn President Bush’s victory here. And many of the shortcomings have plagued elections for decades.
But with the 36-day Florida recount of 2000 proving that every vote counts and with the two major parties near parity, the electoral system is being scrutinized more closely than ever. Election lawyers and academics say Ohio is providing a roadmap to a second generation of issues about the way the nation votes.
Congressional passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 – which mandated the provisional ballot as a failsafe and provided states money to update voting technology – was considered a landmark overhaul that would help prevent another Florida.
But an array of voting rights groups contend that Ohio has underscored shortcomings in the law, including one of its centerpieces, the provisional ballot. Now those groups are pushing for a re-examination not only of the law, but also of other voting issues, including the role of partisan secretaries of state in overseeing elections, electronic voting and the elimination of the Electoral College…
Certainly there were problems on Election Day.
In Franklin County, a computing error initially awarded nearly 4,000 extra votes to President Bush. In Mahoning County, improperly calibrated touch screens resulted in an unknown number of votes incorrectly going to President Bush before the problem was caught.
And most recently, election challengers in various Ohio counties have said that the tabulators used to count punch cards may have been tampered with before the recount…
Perhaps the most visible of Ohio’s problems were its long lines. Christopher McQuoid reached his polling place in Columbus at 4:30 p.m., congratulating himself for beating the after-work rush. By 7:30, he was getting impatient. And when he finally voted at 9:30, there were 150 people in line behind him.
“I was lucky,” said Mr. McQuoid, a radio announcer. “I had the day off.”
But how many people decided not to vote because of long lines, and was it enough to make a difference? No one has been able to say with authority. Much attention has focused on whether elections officials served one constituency better than another.
Among the 464 complaints about long lines in Ohio collected by the Election Protection Coalition, a loose alliance of voting rights advocates and legal organizations, nearly 400 came from Columbus and Cleveland, where a huge proportion of the state’s Democratic voters live…
In the Columbus area, the result was that suburban precincts that supported Mr. Bush tended to have more machines per registered voter than center-city precincts that supported Mr. Kerry – 4.6 machines per 1,000 voters in Mr. Bush’s 50 strongest precincts, compared with 3.9 in Mr. Kerry’s 50 best. Mr. McQuoid’s precinct, a Kerry stronghold, lost one of the four machines it had in 2000, despite an increase in registration.
“Somebody came up with a very sophisticated plan for machine distribution which, either by accident or design, greatly enhanced the president,” said Robert Fitrakis of Columbus, who is part of a group that has contested the election results in court…
The problem was pronounced in minority areas, typically Kerry strongholds. In Cleveland ZIP codes where at least 85 percent of the population is black, precinct results show that one in 31 ballots registered no vote for president, more than twice the rate of largely white ZIP codes, where one in 75 registered no vote for president.

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Electors speaking out like this is absolutely unprecedented.
Electors from five different states are saying the system sucks, and they don’t feel good about casting their electoral votes at this time.
One has even cast their vote as “provisional,” pending “all votes being counted – provisional, absentee, under- and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc.”
Perhaps now, someone in the Senate will listen. Now is a good time to start writing them. I think we should target Hilary and Barbara Boxer, for starters.

Electors Call for National Voting Reforms
By Greg Guma for The Vermont Guardian.

Breaking with tradition, electors in at least five states have called for a congressional investigation of voting violations during the Nov. 2 election for president. Electors in Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina registered their concerns as they cast their votes last week.
The following day, the Berkeley City Council adopted a resolution “supporting the request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of voting irregularities in the 2004 elections.” Drafted by Berkeley’s Peace and Justice Commission, the resolution also lists 17 measures to improve elections…
Massachusetts electors passed a motion urging members of Congress to object to the vote. It also requested an investigation of “all voting complaints that might have any validity” and remedies for “any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts.”
Massachusetts elector Tom Barbera said his life was threatened during get-out-the-vote efforts.
Another elector spoke of being targeted for intimidation. Noting that many whose voting rights were violated were African American, Barbera, who presented the Massachusetts’ motion, said, “we believe that as electors, we have a unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied.”
Vermont electors expressed concerns about a reported 57,000 complaints received by a congressional Judiciary Committee and called on Congress and Vermont’s congressional delegation to investigate.
In California, one elector cast his ballot provisional upon “all votes being counted – provisional, absentee, under- and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc.”
This is an attempt to get the message read on the floor of Congress prior to certification on Jan. 6, when the ballots are opened.
“Never has such a vote been cast by an elector,” said Grace Ross, an organizer of the national effort to support electors to take action, and a member of Truth in Elections. “And without a parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the Electoral College level, we await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise, or whether they, too, will ignore provisional votes.”
In North Carolina, Democratic electors and activists talked about local problems while Republicans voted inside. Elector Mary Roe mentioned problems she witnessed as an election observer in her own county. State officials admit that 4,500 votes disappeared in a computerized voting machine crash.

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I’ll have some video up from Keith Olbermann on this a little later this morning.
After the recount, and before another 700+ votes were counted from the largely democratic Seattle area (King County), Democrat Chris Gregoire is ahead by a slim margin.
Rossi (R) hasn’t conceeded yet, but after the King County votes are in, he’ll probably have to.
Here’s an article on this from the Baltimore Sun:

Democrat is declared governor of Washington
3rd count gives Gregoire the victory by 130 votes

Democrat Christine Gregoire won the Washington governor’s race by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced yesterday from Seattle’s King County, the last of the state’s 39 counties to report.
Hundreds of belatedly discovered ballots helped extend what otherwise would have been just a 10-vote advantage for Gregoire in her race with Republican Dino Rossi. The first ballot count showed Rossi winning by 261 votes, and a subsequent machine recount had Rossi winning by 42. The latest recount was conducted by hand.

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Kerry to Enter Ohio Recount Fray
By William Rivers Pitt for t r u t h o u t.

2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry will file today, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Specifically, Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter…
Kerry’s entry into this recount effort changes the math on this matter dramatically. He can likewise show irreperable harm, and unlike the Green and Libertarian candidates, he can also prove a substantial chance for success on the merits because he lost the Ohio vote by a statistical whisker.
It should be noted that Kerry’s filing of these requests does not indicate his complete entry into the recount process, but does clearly indicate that he is moving decisively in that direction. His previous stance on the matter was based simply on his desire to defend the right to have a recount in the first place. The evidence of election tampering in Ohio, specifically surrounding Triad, has motivated him to actively join the fight. The Democratic Party is also quietly putting financial resources into the Ohio recount effort.

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Jesse Jackson reminds us to stay focused over the holidays, because
critical developments are taking place, now, in Ohio.
A lawsuit challenging Ohio’s election result has been filed successfully
(Moss v. Bush).
Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Blackwell have all been subpoenaed.
Blackwell’s attorney considers it harassment, and has already stated that Blackwell has no intention of testifying under oath.
Remember in Farenheight 911, when several members of the house filed a challenge to the election results, but they couldn’t get ONE senator to sign on to it? Well Conyers is getting ready to file one of those, but this time I would hope that we could at least get one senator to sign it.
Anyway, there’s a lot going on and this article does a good job of explaining it.
I’ll be putting up the week’s Keith Olbermann probably thursday or friday night.

Ohio electoral fight becomes ‘biggest deal since Selma’ as GOP stonewalls
By Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman for the Free Press.

As Republican officials stonewall subpoenas and subvert the recount process, Rev. Jesse Jackson has pronounced Ohio’s vote fraud fiasco “the biggest deal since Selma” and has called for a national rally at “the scene of the crime” in Columbus January 3.
Another major national demonstration will follow in Washington on January 6, as Congress evaluates the Electoral College. Should at least one US Representative and one Senator challenge the electors’ votes, a Constitutional crisis could ensue.
Meanwhile, volunteer attorneys have poured into Columbus from around the US to help investigate the bitterly contested presidential vote that has allegedly given George W. Bush Ohio’s electoral votes and thus a second term. A lawsuit filed at the Ohio Supreme Court charges that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than Bush.
On December 21, notice of depositions were sent to President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony regarding the legal challenge of Ohio’s elections results in the case Moss v Bush et al.
But Republican Blackwell’s attorney at the Secretary of State’s office told the attorneys issuing the notice of deposition and subpoena that Blackwell will not testify under oath. The Republican-controlled Attorney General’s office has labeled any attempt to put Blackwell under oath, “harassment.” Blackwell supervised the November 2 vote in Ohio at the same time he served as co-chair of the state’s Bush-Cheney campaign….
In a December 21 conference call with activists from the around the US, Jackson said he has urged Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to stand with US Representatives who intend to challenge the Electoral College’s expected approval of George W. Bush for a second term. A challenge by US Representatives in 2000 failed because no Senators would join their motion.
Jackson says this year will be different, urging election protection activists to stay focused over the holiday season. “We can’t let [the Republicans] get away with this, he told the conference call. “Do not underestimate the outrage of the people. We are a legitimate force for democracy, here and around the world.”
“We will count every vote,” he said, and make sure “every vote counts.”…
The election challenge suit was filed Dec. 17. Blackwell, the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Ohio�s Republican electors have 10 days to respond. Then, according to court procedural rules, each side has 20 days to do discovery � or additional evidence gathering, with those bringing the suit going first. With January 6 being the date Congress accepts the Electoral College vote, and January 20 being the inauguration, the GOP seems determined to make the recount drag on as long as possible.

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