OHIO 2004: Conyers, Nadler Invite Ken Blackwell for Hearing on Voter Suppression

Conyers, Nadler Invite Ken Blackwell for Hearing on Voter Suppression
By Paul Kiel - January 29, 2008, 4:21PM - http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005167.php


Who wouldn't want to relive the 2004 election debacle in Ohio?

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) have invited Ohio's controversial former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (R) for a chat about voting irregularities in the 2004 election. The hearing, which "will explore the current state of voting rights and the allocation of resources to end voter suppression and voter fraud," is scheduled for February 8th. Conyers and Nadler appear to be hoping that Blackwell's past success in suppressing voter turnout will be very informative. The invite is below.

...........

=====================
But, will they answer the questions posed? From:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

Conclusions

In 2004, the Ohio Presidential voting results do not accurately reflect voter intentions. In Cuyahoga County, the election was flawed and the design appears to have been manipulated. At locations with several ballot orders in use, many votes were cast by voters crossing precincts, hence counted other than as intended. At precincts with the highest Kerry support, the percentage of uncounted votes is inexplicably high. The obvious inference—intentional manipulation produced concentrated undercounting, cross-voting, and vote-switching in areas of highest Kerry support—cannot be ignored in the face of the evidence and statistics. The possibilty that ballots were switched to different precincts, post-voting to effect vote-switching, must also be considered.

Many individual ballots resulted in a vote-switch, a two-vote margin difference from the intended result. Switched-votes cast for Kerry and counted for Bush had twice the impact as their actual occurence, by each subtracting one from Kerry and adding one to Bush. Bush and Kerry votes also went uncounted as non-votes or were miscounted as minor candidate votes. A high percentage of all Cuyahoga County votes were cast at locations with multiple ballot orders. The manner in which precincts and ballot orders were combined increased the probability of a Kerry cross-vote being recorded as a Bush vote. Quantitative analyses of candidate votes and of non-vote percentages evidence the cross-voting and the patterns of cross-voting and vote-switching.

Sorting locations and precincts to their specific cross-voting probability subsets reveals intended voting patterns and the degree of cross-voting. The combinations of ballot orders and precincts at polling locations enables quantitative analysis of cross-voting and vote-switching. The complexity of the election's organization—the great number of combinations of ballot orders and locations—also makes the task of determining the number of cross-votes laborious and complex. While that process is not concluded herein, the procedures so far taken in this study define the process. This process may be more easily applied to other Ohio counties given less-complex ballot order combinations.

Any official inquiry into the 2004 irregularities needs to be independent of political interests, and monitored by political interests. The fact that the irregularities discussed herein are known and have been reported to multiple jurisdictions and law enforcement entities, and yet no official inquiry into the election has occurred, illustrates the broader failure of the current election process and judicial system to respond to election fraud and irregularties or to hold officials accountable for their actions. Polling places should never have been arranged such as in Ohio, with multiple ballot orders and separate casting and counting devices. Measures are required to prevent the possibility of similar future flawed election designs. To this end, control of elections should be removed from competing political interests and actors to politically-independent processes, with at the least, independent and political oversight of elections.

Many more conclusions remain to be made as study and analysis continues. The 2004 Ohio election ballots must be preserved to allow further investigations. If this study illustrates anything, hopefully it is the degree to which this problem has not yet been fully considered, and the complete failure of officials to respond. During an era of new voting system technologies and reforms, careful consideration of past errors may prove useful in avoiding their repetition and in preventing future abuses of process and power.

The 2004 Ohio Presidential election remains to be fully investigated. The blatant evidence of irregularities and unfairness of organization continues to be ignored by the authorities who have been informed of the evidence.

.

.

Invitation? shit.

Blackwell about those 250,000 provisional ballots that turned into 150,000 provisional ballots after the phonecall.


http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/oct/07/did_carville_tip_bush_off_to_kerry_strategy_woodward

Hard to imagine Carville did that ONLY for a kiss from his wife.

:hi:

investigated. I know this for a fact.

Until last Jan. Conyers' investigation was stymied by Blackwell.