Post by graybeard on Oct 24, 2008 13:40:05 GMT -6
McCain's Warning on Voter Fraud Gets Details Wrong
Commentary by Ann Woolner
Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- As the counting dragged on election night 2004, the presidential race in the balance, officials in Lebanon, Ohio, shooed away reporters and shut down the county administration building saying federal authorities had warned of a possible terrorist attack.
``We were trying to protect security,'' Warren County Commissioner Pat South told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
If you find it peculiar that al-Qaeda might target southwest Ohio, you're right. Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security had picked up chatter about a terrorist plot against Ohio. Officials later changed their story, saying they feared the predicted huge turnout would create security problems.
That night and into the morning, Warren election officials counted votes in the only Ohio courthouse that barred reporters from watching, the Enquirer reported. One of the last counties in the state to report its tally, Warren went heavily to President George W. Bush, who wound up with fewer than 119,000 more Ohio votes than John Kerry.
Delegate-rich Ohio cinched Bush's re-election.
Ohio was also one of those states where voters, mostly in inner-city, Democratic precincts, stood in line for hours -- or left to return to jobs or children -- because their polling places had fewer machines than more affluent areas. It's where the top election official, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, also headed the Bush-Cheney campaign and, as the Enquirer reported at the time, swore he would defy federal court orders to comply with the law on provisional balloting if need be.
`Cheat Sheets'
It's also where three election officials in Cleveland were later convicted of using ``cheat sheets'' to ensure a recount didn't change the outcome, thus guaranteeing no statewide recount. And where a whistleblower who exposed election equipment tampering was later asked to quit, the Columbus Dispatch reported. It's where Republicans urged Blackwell to purge thousands of registered voters in advance. Many of them turned out to be legitimate, according to news reports.
Maybe the statisticians aren't far off when they conclude that the official count didn't accurately reflect the true vote as did the exit polls on Election Day, which predicted Kerry would take Ohio by more than 4 percentage points. Officially, he lost by 2.5 points.
Senator John McCain was right when he warned Americans last week of a ``grave danger to our electoral system.'' His mistake was singling out one group he accused of ``maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.''
Phantom Voters
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has a nasty habit of hiring day workers who register thousands of phantom voters, often in swing states. ACORN denies responsibility, insisting it culls for bogus names, fires whoever turned them in and flags any irregularities to authorities.
If you doubt ACORN's story and worry that fake registrations can lead to false voting, I don't blame you. But you will probably strike out if you try to find phony votes that were actually cast. Officials verify registrations before accepting them.
Whatever you make of ACORN, don't let its misdeeds blind you to the rest of the picture.
Consider Nathan Sproul, former Republican Party chief for Arizona, who ran a multistate voter drive in 2004. Some of his former employees have told reporters that his group destroyed registration forms filled out by Democrats, fired canvassers who turned them in and submitted to state authorities only the registrations of those who said they were Republicans. Sproul denied the allegations.
Oregon Probe
An Oregon investigation into Sproul's 2004 operation there confirmed ``instances of wrongdoing'' but found insufficient evidence to prosecute, according to the state's Justice Department.
Bad as it is to submit fake registrations, no harm is done unless one of those made-up registrants gets approved by the state and then shows up at the polls and votes.
``Keep in mind with these stories about potentially bad registrations, they don't equal bad votes,'' says Terri Enns, a senior fellow at Election Law @ Moritz, out of Ohio State University.
But if you register voters and then shred their registration forms because they support the wrong candidate, you rob legitimate voters of their ballots in an attempt to tilt the election result.
Ancient history, you say? This year Sproul has a new group which the Republican Party and the McCain campaign have hired for voter drives.
Red Herring
As for the hoopla over ACORN, ``It's a complete red herring,'' says Steven F. Freeman, who teaches management and research methods at the University of Pennsylvania and who co- authored a book on the 2004 presidential election. ``It deflects attention from the real issue, which is election fraud.''
Freeman focuses not on voter registration but on whether actual votes are counted correctly.
``Tremendous evidence indicates that they're not,'' he says.
Freeman, who says he is ``pretty down on both parties,'' answers the question the title of his book asks, ``Was the Presidential Election of 2004 Stolen?'' He is one of a number of scholars at major universities -- not to mention more partisan writers -- who have concluded that an accurate vote count would have given the election to Kerry.
Wacko theories by leftist professors focusing on an election with no relevance now?
I wish.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.
Commentary by Ann Woolner
Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- As the counting dragged on election night 2004, the presidential race in the balance, officials in Lebanon, Ohio, shooed away reporters and shut down the county administration building saying federal authorities had warned of a possible terrorist attack.
``We were trying to protect security,'' Warren County Commissioner Pat South told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
If you find it peculiar that al-Qaeda might target southwest Ohio, you're right. Neither the FBI nor Homeland Security had picked up chatter about a terrorist plot against Ohio. Officials later changed their story, saying they feared the predicted huge turnout would create security problems.
That night and into the morning, Warren election officials counted votes in the only Ohio courthouse that barred reporters from watching, the Enquirer reported. One of the last counties in the state to report its tally, Warren went heavily to President George W. Bush, who wound up with fewer than 119,000 more Ohio votes than John Kerry.
Delegate-rich Ohio cinched Bush's re-election.
Ohio was also one of those states where voters, mostly in inner-city, Democratic precincts, stood in line for hours -- or left to return to jobs or children -- because their polling places had fewer machines than more affluent areas. It's where the top election official, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, also headed the Bush-Cheney campaign and, as the Enquirer reported at the time, swore he would defy federal court orders to comply with the law on provisional balloting if need be.
`Cheat Sheets'
It's also where three election officials in Cleveland were later convicted of using ``cheat sheets'' to ensure a recount didn't change the outcome, thus guaranteeing no statewide recount. And where a whistleblower who exposed election equipment tampering was later asked to quit, the Columbus Dispatch reported. It's where Republicans urged Blackwell to purge thousands of registered voters in advance. Many of them turned out to be legitimate, according to news reports.
Maybe the statisticians aren't far off when they conclude that the official count didn't accurately reflect the true vote as did the exit polls on Election Day, which predicted Kerry would take Ohio by more than 4 percentage points. Officially, he lost by 2.5 points.
Senator John McCain was right when he warned Americans last week of a ``grave danger to our electoral system.'' His mistake was singling out one group he accused of ``maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.''
Phantom Voters
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has a nasty habit of hiring day workers who register thousands of phantom voters, often in swing states. ACORN denies responsibility, insisting it culls for bogus names, fires whoever turned them in and flags any irregularities to authorities.
If you doubt ACORN's story and worry that fake registrations can lead to false voting, I don't blame you. But you will probably strike out if you try to find phony votes that were actually cast. Officials verify registrations before accepting them.
Whatever you make of ACORN, don't let its misdeeds blind you to the rest of the picture.
Consider Nathan Sproul, former Republican Party chief for Arizona, who ran a multistate voter drive in 2004. Some of his former employees have told reporters that his group destroyed registration forms filled out by Democrats, fired canvassers who turned them in and submitted to state authorities only the registrations of those who said they were Republicans. Sproul denied the allegations.
Oregon Probe
An Oregon investigation into Sproul's 2004 operation there confirmed ``instances of wrongdoing'' but found insufficient evidence to prosecute, according to the state's Justice Department.
Bad as it is to submit fake registrations, no harm is done unless one of those made-up registrants gets approved by the state and then shows up at the polls and votes.
``Keep in mind with these stories about potentially bad registrations, they don't equal bad votes,'' says Terri Enns, a senior fellow at Election Law @ Moritz, out of Ohio State University.
But if you register voters and then shred their registration forms because they support the wrong candidate, you rob legitimate voters of their ballots in an attempt to tilt the election result.
Ancient history, you say? This year Sproul has a new group which the Republican Party and the McCain campaign have hired for voter drives.
Red Herring
As for the hoopla over ACORN, ``It's a complete red herring,'' says Steven F. Freeman, who teaches management and research methods at the University of Pennsylvania and who co- authored a book on the 2004 presidential election. ``It deflects attention from the real issue, which is election fraud.''
Freeman focuses not on voter registration but on whether actual votes are counted correctly.
``Tremendous evidence indicates that they're not,'' he says.
Freeman, who says he is ``pretty down on both parties,'' answers the question the title of his book asks, ``Was the Presidential Election of 2004 Stolen?'' He is one of a number of scholars at major universities -- not to mention more partisan writers -- who have concluded that an accurate vote count would have given the election to Kerry.
Wacko theories by leftist professors focusing on an election with no relevance now?
I wish.
(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.