http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php Kerry Won. . .
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States,
about 3 percent of votes cast are voided--known as "spoilage" in
election jargon--because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing
on what happened in Florida and studies of elections past, Palast
argues that if Ohio's discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would
have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain
Dealer
http://www.cleveland.com/election/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/109956457262001.xml reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if
you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional
ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will
be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted.
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated
the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The
documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times
bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this
month on DVD .
http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm Kerry won. Here's the facts.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung
chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that
messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who
got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New
Mexico, it was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit
poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47
percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51
percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry
took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask
the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio
punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply
not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_election_spoiled_rotten.php Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm
sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other
ballot tricks old and new.
The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something
called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of
the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the
bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by
51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never
happened in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat
100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled
vote.
Whose Votes Are Discarded?
And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every
official report, come from African-American and minority precincts.
(To learn more, click here.)
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/electoral_reform/residual_ballot.php We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a
plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count.
That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of
these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole
wasn't punched through completely--leaving a 'hanging chad,'--or was
punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert
statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated
that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by
black folks. (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, click here .)
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/electoral_reform/residual_ballot.php And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of
ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from
Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other
minority citizens.
So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last
time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the
not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz). Nor
are they demanding we look at the "overvotes" where voter intent may
be discerned.
Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the
vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of
Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, "the
possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state's
primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity."
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/electoral_reform/residual_ballot.php But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed
up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of
eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's
Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed
her a seat in Congress.
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's
office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported.
Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded
reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced
their typical loss--that's 110,000 votes--overwhelmingly Democratic.
The Impact Of Challenges
First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't
punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.'
That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old
Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of
color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid
plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws--almost
never used--allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger
individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts
were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where
race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared
to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door.
In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were
there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky
"provisional" ballots--a kind of voting placebo--which may or may not
be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say
250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at
minorities, no one doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly
Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to
tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match
the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president.
Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio.
Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote
Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality--if all votes are
counted--is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com,
I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico,
though not one ballot has yet been counted."
How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional
ballots.
CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes.
...
Your Kerry Victory Party
So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry-if we count all the
votes.
But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the
leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again.
Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the
spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of
Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which
spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to
step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit
anything close to a full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows
darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.
What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the
shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count
under PATRIOT Act III.
