Stealing votes in Columbus and Cleveland (full documenation by ward)

Voter Suppression: STEALING VOTES IN COLUMBUS

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/columbus.htm

The Free Press on Election Day posted a disturbing story, later confirmed by the Columbus Dispatch. The Free Press reported that Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder deliberately withheld voting machines from predominantly black Democratic wards in Columbus, and dispersed some of the machines to affluent suburbs in Franklin County. Damschroder is the former Executive Director of the Franklin County Republican Party. Sources close to the Board of Elections told the Free Press that Damschroder and Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell met with President George W. Bush in Columbus on Election Day. The idea was to discourage turnout in Democratic wards by forcing voters to wait in long lines at the polling places. Such a strategy would be far more effective than encouraging turnout in Republican wards. Elections are all about margins. There are 74 wards in Columbus. George W. Bush won 12 wards, with a margin of 7.35%. John F. Kerry won 62 wards, with a margin of 37.62%. Affecting Kerry’s turnout would greatly reduce his margin of victory in Columbus, giving the Republicans a much better chance of overtaking Kerry given a strong enough showing in suburban and small town Republican strongholds.

In order to investigate this matter, I obtained from the Franklin County Board of Elections all the data I needed in order to calculate, ward by ward, and precinct by precinct: (1) The ratio of registered voters per voting machine. (2) Percent turnout, calculated as total ballots cast divided by the number of registered voters. (3) Percent for Kerry, calculated as votes cast for Kerry divided by votes cast for president. (4) Margin of victory or defeat for Kerry, calculated as the difference between the vote totals for Kerry and Bush.

All 36 of the wards at the bottom of the list of voters per voting machine were won by Kerry, and they include most of his strongholds. In 29 of the 36 wards, Kerry exceeded his city wide share of 62.22% of the vote. However, these wards suffered a low voter turnout.It is important to understand what these numbers mean. The polls in Ohio were open from 6:30 A.M. to 7:30 P.M. That is 13 hours, or 780 minutes. If there are 400 registered voters per voting machine, and turnout is 60%, each voter has less than 3.5 minutes to vote, and that is assuming a steady stream of voters, with no rushes at certain hours. It also assumes no challenges to voters at the polls. If there are 550 registered voters per voting machine, and the turnout is 60%, each voter has 2.4 minutes. All of this amounts to theft of votes. It has been shown above that the Kerry precincts enjoyed a voter turnout similar to that of the Bush precincts when supplied with enough voting machines.

Thus I conclude that the withholding of voting machines from predominantly Democratic wards in the City of Columbus cost John Kerry upwards of 17,000 votes. A more detailed calculation could be done on a precinct by precinct basis, but that is not necessary here. The purpose is to illustrate the magnitude of the conspiracy. Matt Damschroder did not act alone. There are 74 wards and 472 precincts in Columbus, Ohio. It is not possible for one person to have delivered all the voting machines, and it is unlikely that nobody else was involved in planning where to deliver them. Anyone who associated with Mr. Damschroder on or shortly before Election Day should be investigated for possible complicity. Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. 4 Fisher Street Canton, New York 13617 (315) 379-0820 richardhayesphillips@yahoo.com

Stealing Votes in Cleveland

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/cleveland.htm

Indications of possible ballot box stuffing in Warren County, Ohio

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/warren.htm

Favoritism in the Suburbs

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/suburbs.htm

Analysis Indicates Kerry could win Ohio with a "fair process" and fair vote count

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/uncounted.htm

If anyone has close access to Kerry and his people, they should send this info on immediately and demand their action!

and I'm pretty sure they've shared it with Kerry because they've been trying to get the Kerry team involved.

Thank you for your work. Hopefully someone is going to use this in an Ohio Court. Any takers?

 www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=date&selectstate=OH&selectproblemtype=ALL
www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/985
www.spectrumz.com/z/fair_use/2004/11_04.html

Thank you for this most illuminating analysis. If this behavior by Damschroeder cannot be successfully prosecuting under existing Ohio or Federal laws, I recommend that a top priority of the Election Reform movement, here at DU and elsewhere, should be to endorse and pass legislation which will make it easy to prosecute such crimes against Democracy in the future. Your analysis convincingly shows that the distribution of voting machines was used by Damschroeder and Blackwell, acting on behalf of the Bush campaign, to disenfranchise Ohio voters of color. These people should be ashamed of themselves; the Democratic party should pursue criminal actions against them. And if those actions do not succeed, we must work to reform the existing laws to make sure that such actions shall not go unpunished in the future. Thanks again. Your analysis really nails this one.

With the willingness of elected officials and party apparachiks to sink SO LOW, we need specific laws criminalizing this kind of vote manipulation forevermore.

This is what happened in Ohio, and what cost us the Presidency !

San Diego Dem (who was in Montgomery Cty. that day !)

Strong indications of major electronic glitches or fraud in Ohio in several counties (rural and suburban counties)

In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland running for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than votes than Kerry in many counties. For example in Butler County, Connally received 5347 more votes than Kerry. The list of the counties where Connally actually outpolled Kerry include Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert, and Warren.

The reason the Kerry vote counts are suspect is because Connelly, a retired African-American judge, was vastly outspent in her race, and did not have the visibility of the presidential race. Thus for a more obscure Democratic candidate, farther down on the ticket, to get many more votes statewide than Kerry, suggests something happened to suggest there may have been a transfer of Kerry votes to Bush. ""Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. As of election night, 5,481,804 votes were counted for Bush and Kerry. 4,327,270 votes were counted for Moyer and Connally.

""This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix,"" said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepres.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state’s Supreme Court.

This is the best documentation I've seen; its needs distributing