GOP Robber Barons

Marli links to a recent Rolling Stone piece making the case for a stolen election in 2004. Robert Kennedy, Jr., recently known for his environmental activism, documents the abuses of local authority in Ohio, most of which were explicitly directed by OH Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell. Among the abuses: illegal voter challenges by a method called "caging," systematic challenges of new voters at the polls, intimidating calls to potential voters threatening illusory legal process, changing the method of registering new voters, and even requiring a last-minute change in paper stock weight to register new voters. In each case, the voters targeted were--unsurprisingly--black or from urban voting districts.

Two of the most incredible tricks the RNC and the OH GOP deployed were so blatant that I simply could not believe they happened, as did some source checking to verify it. (And big kudos to Kennedy for providing copious, if not uniformly helpful, citations). I'll choose one of these as an illustrative example. It involved "old-fashioned ballot-stuffing:"

Take the case of Ellen Connally, a Democrat who lost her race for chief justice of the state Supreme Court. When the ballots were counted, Kerry should have drawn far more votes than Connally -- a liberal black judge who supports gay rights and campaigned on a shoestring budget. And that's exactly what happened statewide: Kerry tallied 667,000 more votes for president than Connally did for chief justice, outpolling her by a margin of thirty-two percent. Yet in these twelve off-the-radar counties, Connally somehow managed to outperform the best-funded Democrat in history, thumping Kerry by a grand total of 19,621 votes -- a margin of ten percent.(181) The Conyers report -- recognizing that thousands of rural Bush voters were unlikely to have backed a gay-friendly black judge roundly rejected in Democratic precincts -- suggests that ''thousands of votes for Senator Kerry were lost.''(182)...

How might this fraud have been carried out? One way to steal votes is to tamper with individual ballots -- and there is evidence that Republicans did just that. In Clermont County, where optical scanners were used to tabulate votes, sworn affidavits by election observers given to the House Judiciary Committee describe ballots on which marks for Kerry were covered up with white stickers, while marks for Bush were filled in to replace them. Rep. Conyers, in a letter to the FBI, described the testimony as ''strong evidence of vote tampering if not outright fraud.'' (184) In Miami County, where Connally outpaced Kerry, one precinct registered a turnout of 98.55 percent (185) -- meaning that all but ten eligible voters went to the polls on Election Day. An investigation by the Columbus Free Press, however, collected affidavits from twenty-five people who swear they didn't vote. (186)

I highly recommend reading the entire article.

Here's my reply to Marli's post:

Kudos on spreading the word on this, and providing the link. Rolling Stone isn't among my daily reads. Perhaps I shouldn't wonder why no other news source--among the many I cover each day--has even deigned to mention this important subject.

The circumstantial evidence is stunningly strong, and Kennedy has crafted a convincingly complete and well-sourced case. The devious machinations in Ohio make the "Brooks Brothers riot," Katherine "tammy Faye" Harris, and other Florida2000 happenings seem farcical and bumbling. Yet, the Republicans deployed their lessons on easy intimidation with skill in 2004. Operatives on the ground were well trained, and deftly took advantage of the impotence of the courts. As an earnest student of the law, it makes me cringe to read the opinions of these judges, flailing on paper, all sound and fury, achieving nothing because the election, once stolen, cannot be "reversed and remanded."

In the end, though, what's the answer? The trouble does in fact lie with "the entire system," and it is indeed this fact that causes the reticence of the MSM to question the results. That and their blood-boiling cynicism toward Democratic claims combined with their chummy wink-wink conviviality with the Bush Farce. But that is changing. The MSM is beginnning, à tâtons, to grow some teeth, however nubby, in investigating the Republican antics. And the Ohio GOP is reaping what it has sown. The Party in OH is reeling under crushing scandal--including the fiasco described here--and will suffer huge losses in 2006.

The answer is that we need a platform. If miracle-of-miracles, the Dems can pull out a win in Congress this year, the investigations will begin. Have faith. They have been trying to rig and steal elections since 1877. They have sometimes succeeded. Hopefully, we can continue working to make it ever-harder for them.