{news} Did 308, 000 canceled Ohio voter registrations lead to 2004 Bushwin? (Fitrakis & Wasserman, Free Press)

[John Battista]

> Did 308,000 Cancelled Ohio Voter Registrations
> Put Bush Back In the White House?
>
> by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
> The Columbus Free Press (Ohio), March 2, 2006
> http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832
>
>
> While life goes on during the Bush2 nightmare, so
> does the research on what really happened here in
> 2004 to give George W. Bush a second term.
>
> Pundits throughout the state and nation---many of
> them alleged Democrats---continue to tell those
> of us who question Bush's second coming that we
> should "get over it," that the election is old
> news.
>
> But things get curiouser and curiouser.
>
> In our 2005 compendium How the GOP Stole Ohio's
> 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, we list more
> than a hundred different ways the Republican
> Party denied the democratic process in the
> Buckeye State. For a book of documents to be
> published September 11 by the New Press entitled
> What Happened In Ohio?, we are continuing to dig.
>
>
> It turns out, we missed more than a few of the
> dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell, and their
> GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an
> election won with death by a thousand cuts, some
> that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next
> few weeks we will list them as they are verified.
>
>
> One of them has just surfaced to the staggering
> tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County
> (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the
> Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that
> registered to vote there for the 2004 election
> were lost due to "clerical error."
>
> As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000
> voters were purged from the registration rolls in
> Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County
> (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from
> Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's
> official alleged margin of victory---just under
> 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the
> Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth
> Blackwell deemed worth counting.
>
> Exit polls flashed worldwide on CNN at 12:20 am
> Wednesday morning, November 3, showed John Kerry
> winning Ohio by 4.2% of the popular vote,
> probably about 250,000 votes. We believe this is
> an accurate reflection of what really happened
> here.
>
> But by morning Bush was being handed the
> presidency, claiming a 2.5% Buckeye victory, as
> certified by Blackwell. In conjunction with other
> exit polling, the lead switch from Kerry to Bush
> is a virtual statistical impossibility. Yet John
> Kerry conceded with more than 250,000 ballots
> still uncounted, though Bush at the time was
> allegedly ahead only by 138,000, a margin that
> later slipped to less than 119,000 in the
> official vote count.
>
> At the time, very few people knew about those
> first 133,000 voters that had been eliminated
> from the registration rolls in Cincinnati and
> Toledo. County election boards purged the voting
> registration lists. Though all Ohio election
> boards are allegedly bi-partisan, in fact they
> are all controlled by the Republican Party. Each
> has four seats, filled by law with two Democrats
> and two Republicans.
>
> But all tie votes are decided by the Secretary of
> State, in this case Blackwell, the extreme
> right-wing Republican now running for Governor.
> Blackwell served in 2004 not only as the man in
> charge of the state's vote count, but also a
> co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign. Many
> independent observers have deemed this to be a
> conflict of interest. On election day, Blackwell
> met personally with Bush, Karl Rove, and Matt
> Damschroder, chair of the Franklin County
> (Columbus) Board of Elections, formerly the chair
> of the county's Republican Party.
>
> The Board of Elections in Toledo was chaired by
> Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, northwestern
> Ohio's "Mr. Republican." A close personal
> confidante of the Bush family, Noe raised more
> than $100,000 for the GOP presidential campaign
> in 2004. He is currently under indictment for
> three felony violations of federal election law,
> and 53 counts of fraud, theft and other felonies
> in the "disappearance" of more than $13 million
> in state funds. Noe was entrusted with investing
> those funds by Republican Gov. Robert Taft, who
> recently pled guilty to four misdemeanor charges,
> making him the only convicted criminal ever to
> serve as governor of Ohio.
>
> The rationale given by Noe and by the
> Republican-controlled BOE in Lucas and Hamilton
> Counties was that the voters should be eliminated
> from the rolls because they had allegedly not
> voted in the previous two federal elections.
>
> There is no law that requires such voters be
> eliminated. And there is no public verification
> that has been offered to confirm that these
> people had not, in fact, voted in those
> elections.
>
> Nonetheless, tens of thousands of voters turned
> up in mostly Democratic wards in Cincinnati and
> Toledo, only to find they had been mysteriously
> removed from the voter rolls. In many cases,
> sworn testimony and affidavits given at hearings
> after the election confirmed that many of these
> citizens had in fact voted in the previous two
> federal elections and had not moved from where
> they were registered. In some cases, their
> stability at those addresses stretched back for
> decades.
>
> The problem was partially confirmed by a doubling
> of provisional ballots cast during the 2004
> election, as opposed to the number cast in 2000.
> Provisional ballots have been traditionally used
> in Ohio as a stopgap for people whose voting
> procedures are somehow compromised at the polls,
> but who are nonetheless valid registrants.
>
> Prior to the 2004 election, Blackwell made a
> range of unilateral pronouncements that threw the
> provisional balloting process into chaos. Among
> other things, he demanded voters casting
> provisional ballots provide their birth dates, a
> requirement that was often not mentioned by poll
> workers. Eyewitnesses testify that many
> provisional ballots were merely tossed in the
> trash at Ohio polling stations.
>
> To this day, more than 16,000 provisional ballots
> (along with more than 90,000 machine-spoiled
> ballots) cast in Ohio remain uncounted. The
> Secretary of State refuses to explain why. A
> third attempt by the Green and Libertarian
> Parties to obtain a meaningful recount of the
> Ohio presidential vote has again been denied by
> the courts, though the parties are appealing.
>
> Soon after the 2004 election, Damschroder
> announced that Franklin County would eliminate
> another 170,000 citizens from the voter rolls in
> Columbus. Furthermore, House Bill 3, recently
> passed by the GOP-dominated legislature, has
> imposed a series of restrictions that will make
> it much harder for citizens to restore themselves
> to the voter rolls, or to register in the first
> place.
>
> All this, however, pales before a new revelation
> just released by the Board of Elections in
> Cuyahoga County, the heavily Democratic county
> surrounding Cleveland.
>
> Robert J. Bennett, the Republican chair of the
> Cuyahoga Board of Elections, and the Chair of the
> Ohio Republican Party, has confirmed that prior
> to the 2004 election, his BOE eliminated---with
> no public notice---a staggering 175,414 voters
> from the Cleveland-area registration rolls. He
> has not explained why the revelation of this
> massive registration purge has been kept secret
> for so long. Virtually no Ohio or national media
> has bothered to report on this story.
>
> Many of the affected precincts in Cuyahoga County
> went 90% and more for John Kerry. The county
> overall went more than 60% for Kerry.
>
> The eliminations have been given credence by
> repeated sworn testimony and affidavits from
> long-time Cleveland voters that they came to
> their usual polling stations only to be told that
> they were not registered. When they could get
> them, many were forced to cast provisional
> ballots which were highly likely to be pitched in
> the trash, or which remain uncounted.
>
> Ohio election history would indicate that the
> elimination of 175,000 voters in heavily
> Democratic Cleveland must almost certainly spell
> doom for any state-wide Democratic campaign.
> These 175,000 pre-2004 election eliminations must
> now be added to the 105,000 from Cincinnati and
> the 28,000 from Toledo.
>
> Therefore, to put it simply: at least 308,000
> voters, most of them likely Democrats, were
> eliminated from the registration rolls prior to
> an election allegedly won by less than 119,000
> votes, where more than 106,000 votes still remain
> uncounted, and where the GOP Secretary of State
> continues to successfully fight off a meaningful
> recount.
>
> There are more than 80 other Ohio counties where
> additional pre-November, 2004 mass eliminations
> by GOP-controlled boards of elections may have
> occurred. Further "anomalies" in the Ohio 2004
> vote count continue to surface.
>
> In addition, it seems evident that the Democratic
> Party will now enter Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial
> and US Senate races, and its 2008 presidential
> contest, with close to a half-million voters
> having been eliminated from the registration
> rolls, the vast majority of them from traditional
> Democratic strongholds, and with serious
> legislative barriers having been erected against
> new voter registration drives.
>
> Stay tuned.
>
>
> Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors
> of "How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and
> Is Rigging 2008". They are co-editors, with Steve
> Rosenfeld, of "What Happened in Ohio?"
> forthcoming in September from The New Press.
> Important research for this piece has been
> conducted by Dr. Richard Hayes Philips, Dr. Norm
> Robbins and Dr. Victoria Lovegren.
>
> © 2006 The Free Press
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