Yet another reason to send the House Judiciary Committee an email telling them to investigate the election in Ohio.
If nothing else, it demonstrates how these machines weren’t treated very securely.

Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble
By Kim Zetter for Wired News.

As a statewide election recount got underway in Ohio last week, a Democratic congressman called on the FBI to impound vote-tabulating computers in at least one county and investigate suspicions of election tampering in the state.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, sought the investigation after an Ohio election official disclosed in an affidavit (.pdf) that an employee of Triad Governmental Systems, the company that wrote voting software used with punch-card machines in 41 of Ohio’s 88 counties, dismantled Hocking County’s tabulation computer days before the recount and “put a patch on it.”
Conyers called the action “inappropriate and likely illegal election tampering.” A spokesman for the Green Party, one of the parties requesting the recount, called it “compelling evidence” of deliberate tampering. A public hearing in Ohio on Monday will determine if there is cause for an investigation.
But Sherole Eaton, a Democrat and the deputy director of elections for Hocking County who wrote the affidavit, said her words have been blown out of proportion. She doesn’t think Triad tampered with the votes and is a little angry that the Green Party and others have spun her words to imply that they did.

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It’s late, and I’m taking off in the morning for a couple days to go see my sister’s play in Los Angeles, so I want to make sure to let you guys know that in an hour or so I’ll have uploaded this week’s clips on the Ohio Recount/Voting Fraud situation from our new buddy, a friend to you, me, and democracy…
My man Keith Olbermann.
Keith has continued to be impressive with his coverage of the Ohio situation.
Not to mention that he’s the only journalist in America covering this story on a national news channel. It’s really astounding. But there he is and we’re all just lucky to have him.
He’s got a blog too.
With that in mind, here are quicktimes and mp3s from the 13, 14, 16, and 17th:

What The Hell Is Going On In Ohio? (just fixed this link. sorry guys)
(Mirror)

But really guys, after taking so long to file the damn thing, couldn’t you at least get the rules right?
Anyway, it looks like it will be refiled, but it is a bit disheartening.

Ohio Justice Throws Out Election Challenge
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins for the Associated Press.

The Ohio Supreme Court’s chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state’s presidential election results. The 40 voters who brought the case will likely be able to refile the challenge.
Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.
The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush’s campaign of “high-tech vote stealing.”
Claiming fraud, the voters cited reports of voting-machine errors, double-counting of ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as reasons to throw out the results…
Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.
The allegations are based on an analysis comparing the presidential race to Moyer’s Supreme Court race against a Cleveland municipal judge.
But nothing in state law or any previous court decision allows challenges to be combined, Moyer said.
“Were this court to sanction consolidation here it would establish a precedent whereby twenty-five voters could challenge, in a single case, the election results of every statewide race and issue on the ballot in any given election,” Moyer wrote.

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Startling new revelations highlight rare Congressional hearings on Ohio vote
by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman of the Free Press

Startling new revelations about Ohio’s presidential vote have been uncovered as Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee join Rev. Jesse Jackson in Columbus, the state capital, on Monday, Dec. 13, to hold a rare field hearing into election malfeasance and manipulation in the 2004 vote. The Congressional delegation will include Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and others.
Taken together, the revelations show Republicans

My peeps are sending me great links and lots of them. I’ll be trying to catch up tonight and tomorrow so just keep em coming as events progress.
Basically:
1) It’s time for the electoral college to officially cast their votes in Ohio
even though
2) the recount has just started
and
3) Rep. Conyers held a congressional hearing last week on the matter and
4) He just held another on in Ohio State today
meanwhile
5) The vote switching software allegations are being investigated. The programmer has testified to Conyers and the Judiciary Committee Democrats holding hearings this morning in Columbus, Ohio on Election 2004 Voting Irregularities.