Nov 24 2004
Kerry clutches to hopes of recount victory
White House calls on nation to 'come together'

 http://www.northcountynews.com/view.asp?s=11-24-04/news...
Some supporters of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and running mate John Edwards cling to the hope that an Ohio recount can swing the election

by Adam Stone

A White House spokeswoman told North County News last Friday that citizens should embrace the Election Day results and dismiss recount efforts in Ohio that could hand Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts the presidency.

"The election has ended, and now is the time for the country to come together to address the challenges our nation faces," the spokeswoman, Suzy DeFrancis, remarked.

Bush won Ohio by a vote of 2,796,147 to John Kerry's 2,659,664, according to the official tally.

In a series of e-mail interviews with North County News two weeks ago, Kerry spokesman David Wade spoke about recount efforts led by a team of 17,000 lawyers that could trigger the removal of President George W. Bush from office.

Since then, under mounting pressure from alternative media outlets as well as progressive voices outside the Democratic Party, Kerry issued a statement to his supporters that left open the possibility that he could obtain--through a recount--the requisite electoral votes to seize the White House.

"Regardless of the outcome of this election, once all the votes are counted--and they will be counted--we will continue to challenge this administration," Kerry said through a web-exclusive statement and video Friday, which, curiously, was not distributed to the press.

The usage of the word 'regardless' in the carefully parsed statement was the first indication Kerry has offered that, in his mind, the official election results might be inaccurate enough to tilt the election in his favor.

Wade was e-mailed the remarks from the White House spokeswoman.

"Any president of the United States should make it a priority to count every vote in our country because every citizen's full faith in the democratic process is critical," Wade responded yesterday (Tuesday). "That's why John Kerry and John Edwards built a voter protection team of lawyers around the country, lawyers who are today monitoring recounts and the counting of provisional ballots including Ohio and New Mexico. Every vote will be counted, and we Democrats aren't afraid to fight to protect voters' rights."

A Kerry victory in Ohio would give the senator enough electoral votes to seize the White House.

In another signal the Kerry/Edwards team is increasing its involvement in the recount effort, a note was posted on the campaign website yesterday that called on supporters to contribute to the Kerry-Edwards 2004 General Election Legal and Accounting Compliance Fund.

"The Federal Election Commission has just granted our request to raise funds now to cover recount expenses," the website states. "Your contribution to Kerry-Edwards 2004 GELAC will provide the resources to make sure we are prepared to win the post election day battles."

Other than alleged voting irregularities, some have called into question the reversal of the exit polls (surveys of individuals who have just cast ballots), which early on predicted a Kerry victory.

Based on the full set of the 4 p.m. Election Day exit poll data Dr. Stephen F. Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania calculated that "the odds of just three of the major swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all swinging as far as they did against their respective exit polls were 250 million to one."

The Ohio Election Protection Coalition's public hearings have documented insufficient voting machines in black Democratic precincts resulting in five-to-seven hour waits, voter intimidation, machine malfunctions and other irregularities.

Another significant development this week was the Democratic Party breaking its silence on the matter.

Ohio Chairman Dennis White distributed a press release on Monday afternoon that ran the headline: "Kerry/Edwards Campaign Joins Ohio Recount."

It stated "assuring Ohioans receive an accurate count of all votes cast for president has prompted the Democratic Party to join the initiative to recount the results of the November 2 presidential election."

The White House was asked to respond specifically to Wade's statements in last week's North County News article and also address the Ohio recount and reports of voting irregularities.

DeFrancis declined to comment on the particulars.

The article sparked dozens of impassioned e-mail responses from readers outside of North County News' northern Westchester coverage area, with the piece being picked up by assorted alternative media news outlets.

With the recount controversy spreading through the Web universe at a feverish pace, the article ranked as the top hit on the Yahoo search engine for basic research entries about what is being dubbed as "Votergate."

The article buoyed the spirits of a New York-based activist group that was formed to pressure the mainstream media into covering the stories chronicling voting irregularities and the Ohio recount effort commissioned by the Libertarian and Green parties.

"Democracy is at stake and this needs major media attention," remarked Ellen Frank, an East Hampton, New York resident.

"There is an unofficial lockdown by the mainstream press," said Frank, whose brother, Dr. Justin Frank, published a book in June named "Bush on the Couch: Inside the mind of the president."

"When I read the article, I said: '17,000 lawyers. Is this really true? Are they really working on this?,'" remembered Frank, who distributed the article at a MoveOn.org party.

"We're trying to get enough major media attention to challenge the election," said Frank, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2000 election, citing herself as a disenfranchised voter.

Two minor-party presidential candidates raised enough money to file for an official recount of the vote in Ohio.

The Green Party has been working with the Libertarian Party--both parties were on the ballot in Ohio--in securing a recount. Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik say they've demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who co-chaired this year's Bush campaign in Ohio, recuse himself from the recount process.

Cobb Media Director Blair Bobier said, "The Ohio presidential election was marred by numerous press and independent reports of mismarked and discarded ballots, problems with electronic voting machines and the targeted disenfranchisement of African-American voters."

"Due to widespread reports of irregularities in Ohio's voting process, we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote," Badnarik and Cobb said in a joint statement. "Voting is at the heart of the American political process and its integrity must be preserved. When Americans stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote, they need to know that their votes will be counted fairly and accurately..."

The Ohio vote will be certified on December 3 at the latest, Bobier said. The Electoral College votes on December 13, so it is unclear whether or not a recount would be completed by then.

The minor-party presidential candidates filed a federal lawsuit Monday to force a recount of Ohio ballots, and a spokesman for the state Democratic Party said it intended to join the suit.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo, Bobier said.

Dan Trevas, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said the party would join the recount request after the secretary of state certified the results, or sooner if an early recount is ordered by a court.

"Counties are very upset," said Keith Cunningham, director of the Allen County Board of Elections and incoming president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, who called the lawsuit "frivolous."

"Commissioners are beginning to understand--and if they don't, will understand soon--what kind of financial impact this is going to have on them, in a year when elections already cost a great deal more than expected," Cunningham told the Associated Press.

Badnarik and Cobb have raised $235,000 as of Monday morning, an amount which covers the $113,600 bond they had to provide as demanded by Ohio election law, plus some of their own organizational expenses.

Ohio law requires payment of $10 per precinct, or $113,600 statewide, but election officials say the true expense would be far greater. "It's going to crush county governments," Cunningham said.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell, has estimated the actual cost at $1.5 million.

Dr. Frank, whose book explores Bush's "psychological limitations," believes the Ohio recount will hand Kerry the presidency.

"I think that a recount in Ohio, if done properly, will show a narrow Kerry victory and he should be inaugurated hopefully by January 20, 2005," the Washington D.C.-based, clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center said.

"The disruption and cries of foul will be huge," the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst said. "But I think Bush lost. Kerry people are finally joining in, though I think they have been active all along, just quietly."

Pursuant to a request by independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, votes in some New Hampshire towns are being recounted. An analysis showed wide differences in voting trends between the 2000 and 2004 elections: about three quarters of precincts with severe changes used Diebold optical scanning machines.

Last week, Diebold agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit with the state of California. Diebold officials misled state leaders about the security and certification of its products to get payments from the state, according to California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Diebold is headed by Republican Wally O'Dell. Last year, O'Dell wrote to Ohio Republican donors, saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."

Nader doesn't expect to change the outcome: In New Hampshire, Kerry defeated Bush, 50 percent to 49 percent, while Nader got less than one percent from the state's 301 precincts.

Don DeBar, an Ossining resident and Nader campaign worker in San Antonio, Texas this year, is trying to stitch together the fragmented left and have progressive activists unite on the recount issue.

Liberals, he said, need to "get past political antagonisms," for the time being.

"One thing that I've done is bring this to the airwaves in NYC," the area activist said. "As a reporter on the drive-time morning program Wake Up Call on WBAI-FM, I provided some detailed coverage of the issue, from the many reports of intimidation, error and fraud to the failure of the Kerry campaign to act to protect the voting rights of his own voters..."

The University of California's Berkeley Quantitative Methods Research Team released a statistical study - the sole method available to monitor the accuracy of e-voting -reporting irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded 130,000 to 260,000 or more excess votes to President George W. Bush in Florida in the 2004 presidential election. The official tally in Florida shows Bush with 380,978 more votes than Kerry. The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic: Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, respectively.

CNN reported a 377,000-vote margin between Bush and Kerry. The study shows an unexplained discrepancy between votes for President Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods, what the team says can be deemed a "smoke alarm."

The probability of this arising by chance, they say, is less than 0.1 percent. The research team formally called on Florida voting officials to investigate.

Kathryn Levy was a volunteer coordinator in the Kerry headquarters in Broward County, Florida and said yesterday she received "innumerable complaints."

She was the supervisor of a hotline in Broward that handled the complaints.

Levy believes "there was a systematic effort to disenfranchise thousands of citizens in that heavily Democratic county."

"Many newly registered voters were told that they needed to present multiple IDs at polling places, when in fact only one is required," Levy wrote for an intended op-ed piece that was truncated into a letter to the editor published last Tuesday in Long Island's Newsday. "Others were informed that they had already voted and were turned away although they had not yet cast their vote. Many of those requesting provisional ballots were denied even that recourse."

"Perhaps the most chilling complaints concerned the electronic voting machines," Levy continued. "We received several reports of voters who repeatedly pressed the name Kerry on their voting screen only to have Bush appear. In other cases, voters pressed Kerry and were later asked to confirm their Bush vote."

John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, is concerned about the difference between some of the exit polls and the official vote counts.

"We're talking about the Free World here," he told the Inter Press Service News Agency.

"Something is definitely wrong," Zogby also told the news agency.

Bush now leads Kerry by about 136,000 votes in Ohio. A battle is looming over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots. The Ohio Democratic Party has joined a lawsuit by elector Audrey J. Schering, which asks United States District Judge Michael H. Watson to order Blackwell to impose uniform standards for counting provisional ballots in all 88 counties.

The lawsuit cites the United States Supreme Court's opinion in Bush v. Gore, which "held that the failure to provide specific standards for counting of ballots that are sufficient to assure a uniform count statewide violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution."

Of 11 counties that had completed checking provisional ballots, 81 percent have been ruled valid.

On Saturday, November 13, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition's public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers and party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities.

The testimony, according to Harvey Wasserman, a senior editor at the Columbus Free Press, revealed an effort on the part of Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time.

On November 17, Blackwell wrote an op-ed piece for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, stating "every eligible voter who wanted to vote had the opportunity to vote. There was no widespread fraud, and there was no disenfranchisement. A half-million more Ohioans voted than ever before with fewer errors than four years ago, a sure sign of success by any measure."

Additional testimony also called into question the validity of the actual vote counts. There are doubts that the final official tally in Ohio, due December 1 to Blackwell's office, will have any validity.

At the Columbus hearings, witnesses testified under oath that the election was riddled with discrimination and disarray.

"In precincts 1 A and 5 G, voting (at) Hillman Elementary School, which is a predominantly African-American community, there were woefully insufficient number of voting machines in three precincts," Werner Lange, a pastor from Youngstown, Ohio, said in his testimony.

"I was told that the standard was to have one voting machine per 100 registered voters," he continued. "Precinct A had 750 registered voters. Precinct G had 690. There should have been 14 voting machines at this site. There were only 6, three per precinct, less than 50 percent of the standard. This caused an enormous bottleneck among voters who had to wait a very, very long time to vote, many of them giving up in frustration and leaving...I estimate, by the way, that an estimated loss of over 8,000 votes from the African American community in the City of Youngstown alone, with its 84 precincts, were lost due to insufficient voting machines, and that would translate to some 7,000 votes lost for John Kerry for president in Youngstown alone. . . ."

According to a November 5 article by the Associated Press, election officials in Ohio admitted that an error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Franklin County reported Bush with 4,258 votes and John Kerry with 260, even though only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting, along with people from Florida Fair Elections, showed up at Florida's Volusia County Elections Office on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 16 and asked to see, under a public records request, each of the poll tapes for the 100-plus optical scanners in the precincts in that county. The election workers, having been notified in advance of her request, handed her a set of printouts dated November 15 and lacking signatures.

Harris pointed out that the printouts given to her were not the original poll tapes and had no signatures, and thus were not what she had requested.

Reportedly, they told her that the originals were held in another location, the election office's warehouse, and that, since it was the end of the day, they should meet her the following morning to show them to her. The next day she started searching the garbage bags outside, finding public record tapes in the trash. Disparities between the November 15 tape and November 2 tape emerged--all reportedly favoring President Bush.

Harris could not be reached for comment by press time.

The mainstream media, which has suffered increasingly in recent years by charges of liberal bias and Democratic partisanship, has largely taken a pass on the recount story. In fact, The New York Times, the symbol and primary target of conservative media critics, published a front-page article two weeks ago that portrayed the recount effort as a campaign being waged by partisan, conspiratorial and error-happy bloggers with a liberal agenda.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has tracked the story aggressively on both his "BLOGGERMANN" msnbc.com web log and "Countdown," a television news analysis program he hosts for the cable network, which is home to commentators of all political stripes, from Pat Buchanan to Ron Reagan.

In fact, Olbermann referenced the North County News article in a Sunday blog entry. He borrowed a quote from the article that triggered perhaps the most attention from activists: "We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn't be any higher -no (irregularity) will go unchecked. Period," Wade had told North County News.

Kerry conceded the 2004 presidential contest on November 3, the day after the election, a decision that carries no concrete legal standing. That day, he and his running mate, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, pledged to ensure every vote is counted, although they said at the time there was no chance a voting tally update would result in swinging the result in their favor.

Former Vice President Al Gore conceded in his 2000 battle with Bush for the White House before demanding a recount, which was ultimately halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the debacle in Florida.

Howard Fineman, chief political correspondent for Newsweek, appeared on Countdown on Monday night.

"They keep saying these little things designed to make clear, at least to their supporters and the whole blogosphere out there, that they take the possibility (of a Kerry victory) and the need for a recount seriously," Fineman said of Kerry and his surrogates during an interview with Olbermann.

Fineman said he talked to Blackwell earlier in the evening.

"There in fact will be a recount," Fineman remarked. "We will be talking about chads once again."

Olbermann posted an entry on his blog on Monday evening, after that night's Countdown telecast.

"As Kerry himself calculated early on November 3, the provisional ballots alone obviously could not provide anything close to enough bona fide Democratic votes to overcome President Bush's 135,000 vote plurality in the Ohio election night tally," he wrote. "But as Howard also pointed out - and my colleague David Shuster so thoroughly extrapolated in a previous post on Hardblogger - the provisionals plus the 'undercount' could make things very close indeed. The punch-card ballots 'where it looks like nobody marked anything' when read by an optical scanning machine, might produce thousands of legitimate votes if hand-counted and judged by Ohio's strict laws defining how many corners of the proverbial chads have to be detached to make a vote valid."

Fineman's analysis, Olbermann writes, "(puts) it in terms that the mainstream can't ignore."

That's heartening to the likes of Ellen Frank.

"There is something very wrong here with the press," said Frank, who suspects, like other recount activists, that top level producers and editors in the mainstream press have barred their talent from covering the story extensively, as to avoid the appearance of partisanship.

"We believe democracy itself is at risk," said Frank, whose ad hoc group of philanthropists, writers and other activists are, among other things, mounting letter-writing campaigns about the recount to newspapers across the nation.

"We believe this was a fraudulent election," she said. "...We are fearful that 'major' media is intimidated. We are fearful we are abandoned by our own Democratic Party. We are working to hold the administration and our party accountable."

The piece talks about one California National Guard unit currently training in New Mexico.  Its soldiers have complained of poor training and equipment shortages and warned that these will translate into casualties once the unit is in Iraq.  

More troubling, a number of the soldiers said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent that they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year. "We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.

Here's what one brave soldier was willing to say on the record, at the risk of retribution:

"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."

After touching on the perception that some guard units have that the regular army doesn't regard them or treat them like regular army, it lists several incidents that, taken together, make it sound like there is general sense if mutiny bubbling just below the surface as the incompetent war planning of the administration forces citizen soldiers to burden more of the cost of this war.

Here's a big chunk of the rest:

Military analysts, however, questioned whether the soldiers' concerns could be attributed entirely to the military's attempt to mirror conditions in Iraq. For example, the soldiers say that an ammunition shortage has meant that they have often conducted operations firing blanks.

"The Bush administration had over a year of planning before going to war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has acted as a defense lawyer in military courts. "An ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love."

Turley said that in every military since Alexander the Great's, there have been "gripes from grunts" but that "the complaints raised by these National Guardsmen raise some significant and troubling concerns."

The Guard troops in New Mexico said they wanted more sophisticated training and better equipment. They said they had been told, for example, that the vehicles they would drive in Iraq would not be armored, a common complaint among their counterparts already serving overseas.

They also said the bulk of their training had been basic, such as first aid and rifle work, and not "theater-specific" to Iraq. They are supposed to be able to use night-vision goggles, for instance, because many patrols in Iraq take place in darkness. But one group of 200 soldiers trained for just an hour with 30 pairs of goggles, which they had to pass around quickly, soldiers said.

The soldiers said they had received little or no training for operations that they expected to undertake in Iraq, from convoy protection to guarding against insurgents' roadside bombs. One said he has put together a diary of what he called "wasted days" of training. It lists 95 days, he said, during which the soldiers learned nothing that would prepare them for Iraq.

Hubbard had said he would make two field commanders available on Tuesday to answer specific questions from the Los Angeles Times about the training, but that did not happen.

The fact that the National Guardsmen have undergone largely basic training suggests that Army commanders do not trust their skills as soldiers, said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. That tension underscores a divide that has long existed between "citizen soldiers" and their active-duty counterparts, he said.

"These soldiers should be getting theater-specific training," Segal said. "This should not be an area where they are getting on-the-job training. The military is just making a bad situation worse."

The soldiers at Doña Ana emphasized their support for the war in Iraq. "In fact, a lot of us would rather go now rather than stay here," said one, a specialist and six-year National Guard veteran who works as a security guard in his civilian life in Southern California.

The soldiers also said they were risking courts-martial or other punishment by speaking publicly about their situation. But Staff Sgt. Lorenzo Dominguez, 45, one of the soldiers who allowed his identity to be revealed, said he feared that if nothing changed, men in his platoon would be killed in Iraq.

Dominguez is a father of two -- including a 13-month-old son named Reagan, after the former president -- and an employee of a mortgage bank in Alta Loma, Calif. A senior squad leader of his platoon, Dominguez said he had been in the National Guard for 20 years.

"Some of us are going to die there, and some of us are going to die unnecessarily because of the lack of training," he said. "So I don't care. Let them court-martial me. I want the American public to know what is going on. My men are guilty of one thing: volunteering to serve their country. And we are at the end of our rope."

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/volusia-lawsuit.html

"Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided."

"Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished."

"According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives."

COMPLAINT TO CONTEST ELECTION

Plaintiff, Susan Rose Pynchon, sues the Volusia County Canvassing Board and Ann McFall, defendants, and alleges:

1. This is an action brought under section 102,168, Florida Statutes (2004), to contest the certification that Ann McFall received more votes in the November 2 General Election in Volusia County, Florida, than did Patricia Northey.

2. Plaintiff is an elector resident and qualified to vote in Volusia County, Florida, residing at (redacted address).

3. Defendant Volusia County Canvassing Board consists of Joie Alexander, Member of the Volusia County Council, the Honorable Steven deLarouche, County Judge, and Deanie Lowe, Supervisor of Elections.

4. Defendant Ann McFall, (redacted address), is the candidate certified by the defendant Canvassing Board to have won the November 2, 2004 election for Supervisor of Elections.

5. Plaintiff has been informed that the Volusia County Canvassing Board certified the election results on November 12, 2004. Plaintiff is aware that the statutory deadline for filing this complaint is ten days following the date of that certification. Plaintiff alleges, however, that this complaint should be deemed timely filed for two reasons:

b. The certification was based on inadequate and incomplete information regarding the election results, as will more particularly appear, and is, therefore, an invalid certification of those results.

6. A copy of the public records request emailed and faxed to the Supervisor of Elections on November 2, 2004, is attached. Some or all of the information requested is still missing from 59 of the 179 voting precincts, including portions of or all of the voting machine tapes for those 59 precincts, which are a vital part of official paper record of the election results from those precincts.

7. Complete information on problems with the voting machines prior to and during the election has not been provided.

8. Complete information relating to memory card failures during the election has not yet been provided.

9. Only a partial list of the transmission logs from the Accu-Vote optical scan server has been provided. Despite repeated requests, the Elections office has refused to provide to the Volusia County Democratic party the official election results, now stating that those results will not be available until December 1, 2004.

10. The Elections office has provided incomplete data regarding Early Voting and Absentee ballots. The Supervisor of Elections, for example, reported that the total number of absentee ballots and Early voting ballots, combined equaled 89,999 votes, yet the published figures for those totals is 84,100 votes, leaving over 5,800 votes unaccounted for.

11. Section 102, 168(3)(a) Florida Statutes (2004) provides that an election may be set aside for "misconduct, fraud, or corruption on the part of any election official or any member of the canvassing board sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election."

12. In Beckstrom v. Volusia County Canvassing Board, et al, 707 S. 2d 720 (Fla. 1998) the Florida Supreme Court said: "... if a court finds substantial noncompliance with statutory election procedures and also makes a factual determination that reasonable doubt exists as to whether a certified election expressed the will of the voters, then the court in an election contest brought pursuant to section 102.168, Florida Statutes (1997), is to void the contested election even in the absence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing."

13. In addition to the pattern of delay in providing the requested information, the true election results are in doubt because of numerous violations of election law procedure and unanswered questions concerning the results.

14. The polls were opened early and closed late during Early Voting.

15. Many public records, including one signed results tape from a voting machine were found in the trash. Many of the requested records not furnished by the Elections office have been found in the trash. Results from the tapes found in the trash do not match the results of the copies of tapes furnished.

16. An email from Mark Earley, of Diebold Elections Systems, Inc., to the Elections office was provided which asked the recipient for an explanation of why Volusia County had more memory card failures than all of their other Florida customers combined, and then asked why the 17 memory card failures which the Elections office reported on November 3, increased to 25 before November 12, 2004.

17. The reported memory card failures were significant and troubling and included reporting zero votes after one week of voting, requesting permission to upload votes before the voting began, and messaging whether the card should be reformatted.

18. According to a statement by the Supervisor of Elections on November 17, 2004, the GEMS computer is not networked, and is "stand alone." The furnished computer logs show evidence of at least two attempts to remotely access the GEMS central tabulator, which is claimed to be secure. A computer screen shot printout on November 17, 2004 (found in the trash) shows that the GEMS computer at that time had two networked hard drives.

19. Plaintiff is reasonably concerned that access to the memory cards and voting machine tapes is presently not restricted, and that the opportunity for tampering with that critical evidence exists. Plaintiff accordingly requests that This Honorable Court immediately order the Supervisor of Elections to seal and sequester all memory cards and voting machine tapes pertaining to or used during the November 2, 2004 general election in Volusia County, during the pendency of this Cause.

SUSAN ROSE PYNCHON

DANIEL R. VAUGHEN, P.A.
Attorney for Plaintiff
Fla. Bar No. 083486

John E. O'Neill
CLEMENTS O'NEILL PIERCE WILSON ET AL
1000 LOUISIANA ST STE 1800
HOUSTON, TX, 77002
phone (713) 654-7604
Bar Card Number: 15297500

John E. O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command, is an attorney licensed and practicing in Texas.

According to the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct:

Rule 8.04 Misconduct (a) A lawyer shall not: ...(3) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation;

Look at each of those words carefully.  Deceit.  Misrepresentation.  This is less even than a lie.

PLEASE WRITE, FAX, FED EX THE TEXAS STATE BAR TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THESE VIOLATIONS - including at least one specific example of a lie. Include your name and indicate that you expect a response, or you will pursue it further directly with Kelly Frels (@ Bracewell & Patterson in Houston), the president of the State Bar:

Texas State Bar
P.O. Box 12487
Austin, Texas 78711
1414 Colorado St.
Austin, TX 78701
Fax: (512)463-1475 <----------------------------

Telephone Numbers --- but writing is better
Toll Free: (800)204-2222
Local: (512)463-1463

COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF O'NEILL'S DEBUNKED LIES AT:

www.mediamatters.org - search on "O'NEILL"

www.disinfopedia.org - search on "Swift boat"

Also - pick apart this interview on Hardball:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5694561

And see this from the Daily Howler:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh101804.html

www.texasbar.com for more info if you need it

Take your time, write something concise and compelling - not just an angry outburst.

May want to add that John Kerry is attorney and that it is inappropriate for one attorney to make such a public, dishonest attack on the reputation of another member of the profession.

(AND WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF TEXAS NEWSPAPERS ASKING WHY O'NEILL IS NOT BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE UNDER THIS RULE)

See also Texas Disciplinary Rule of Profesional Conduct - Rule 8.02:

(a) A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory official or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.

Media allowed conservative religious leaders to define "moral values"

In five days following election, conservative religious figures made 15 media appearances to progressive religious leaders' five

Following the November 2 presidential election, Media Matters for America documented the media's largely unquestioning acceptance of the notion that "moral values" determined the election. In their acceptance, the media did not explain or define what voters meant by "moral values." MMFA found that during the five days after the election, network and cable news outlets gave conservative religious leaders a forum in which to provide that definition; these leaders often appeared without other guests to counter their claims.

Between November 3 and November 7, conservative religious figures appeared a total of 15 times on the major broadcast and cable networks (ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and FOX News Channel, but not CBS) to discuss "moral values," while progressive religious figures appeared a total of only five times. MMFA excluded Newsday columnists Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman of "The God Squad" from this tally of figures. Although the two authors and religious speakers did not openly endorse President George W. Bush's reelection, they did speak of the election results as an indicator of a deeply religious nation, of which the "secular" coastal states are "unaware."

Reverend Jerry Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, and Reverend Joe Watkins, a Bush-Cheney '04 campaign adviser and talk radio host, appeared four times each in the five days following the election. Reverend Jesse Jackson was the only progressive religious leader to make multiple appearances (three) in that time period.

Four conservative religious figures appeared without opponents on news programs between November 3 and November 7: Watkins, Christian Coalition of America founder Reverend Pat Robertson, Peter Sprigg, senior director of policy studies at the Family Research Council (which "promotes the Judeo-Christian worldview"), and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. No progressive religious leaders appeared alone.

Further, when not appearing alone, conservative religious leaders were more often paired with Democratic or progressive pundits who are not religious figures than with progressive religious leaders. For example, on the November 4 edition of CNBC's Capital Report, Falwell was paired with syndicated columnist and MSNBC political analyst Bill Press. On the November 7 edition of CNN's Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff, Randy Tate -- former U.S. Representative and former executive director of the Christian Coalition (which identifies itself as "America's Leading Grassroots Organization Defending our Godly Heritage") -- appeared opposite U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). Watkins appeared three times opposite progressive pundits who are not religious figures (in his November 3 appearance on CNN's American Morning, he was not described as a "reverend" but as a "Republican strategist"). Progressive religious figures appeared only twice without conservative religious counterparts: Jackson appeared with conservative author and nationally syndicated radio host William J. Bennett on the November 7 edition of NBC's Today, and Reverend Al Sharpton appeared on a panel (on the November 3 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews) that also included NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham, and Republican strategist Ed Rollins.

Many of the conservative religious figures suggested that Bush's victory shows public support for Republican positions on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. As MSNBC host Deborah Norville pointed out, however, polling shows that Democrats are actually more aligned with the American public than Republicans are on those issues.

Here are some examples of conservative religious figures delineating "moral values":

• Robertson claimed on the November 4 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes that voters' overwhelming opposition to gay marriage was the decisive factor in the election: "President [George W.] Bush ought to send roses to that bunch up there in Massachusetts [the Massachusetts Supreme Court]. I mean, they won him the victory. ... [T]o cater to a two-percent minority in the United States, to give them what they want [gay marriage] is insane. And the American people aren't going to do that."
• Also November 4, Falwell asserted on CNN's American Morning that "because of the issues of faith and family, the unborn, the same-sex marriage, and the war on terrorism ... Mr. Bush had to go back [to the White House]." The same day, Falwell said on Capital Report that in addition to those issues, "questioning 'under God' in the pledge [of allegiance] and 'In God we trust' on the coinage" and "kicking the Ten Commandments out of schoolhouses, [and] courthouses" had also contributed to "awaken[ing] a sleeping giant."
• In addition to anti-abortion issues, on the November 7 edition of CNN's Inside Politics, Tate included "a tax system where families can keep more of their own money to spend on themselves" as a "moral values" issue that benefited Bush at the polls.
• On CNN Live Saturday on November 6, Sprigg added the "type of sex education" that students receive to "the unlimited abortion license and the issues of same-sex marriage" as crucial "moral issues" that determined the election.
• Radio host and WorldNetDaily columnist Rabbi Shmuley Boteach claimed on the November 4 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country that another aspect was "the whole issue of a moral focus ... in foreign policy. Guys like me are sick and tired of the Democratic Party being apologists for tyrants."
• On the November 3 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now, Watkins suggested that black Democrats' religious values spurred them to vote for Bush over Kerry: "I had callers calling in [to my radio program] saying, 'I'm an African American, I am a Democrat, and I normally vote Democrat, but this year because of my faith, I'm voting for George W. Bush.'" (According to exit polling, Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote.)
• On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on November 7, Dobson warned that Republicans have a duty to implement the policies of "morality," or else "I believe they'll pay a price at the -- in the next election."

The claim that the election was a rejection of Democratic views on social issues was exemplified by a particularly skewed panel on the November 4 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, which featured Rabbi Boteach, Catholic League President William Donahue, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, former Republican presidential candidate and MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan, Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle, and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The two religious leaders on the panel attacked and smeared the Democratic Party. Donahue declared, "I think that there's something in the Democratic Party. There's an absolute animus, a hostility to people who hold religion seriously. Either that or they were delirious, in which case, you have got to get the straitjackets. Put them in the asylum." Aside from his claim that Democrats are "apologists for tyrants," Boteach also claimed that "Robert Reich is being totally disingenuous when he blames the corporations rather than the Democrats for the smut in the culture." Host and former U.S. Representative Joe Scarborough (R-FL) suggested that his panel provided a balanced discussion of moral values because Donahue is Catholic and Boteach is Jewish -- but he failed to mention that both men hold highly conservative views: "Rabbi, let me -- we've been talking about evangelical Christians. Bill Donahue, obviously a Catholic. But this isn't just about being a Christian, is it? I mean, it goes beyond that." The "God Squad" appearance on CNN also featured a Christian and a Jew (Hartman and Gelllman) who presented a unified message on moral values and the election.

Boteach and Donahue were not the only conservative religious leaders to use the topic of moral values as an opportunity to attack Democrats. As MMFA previously noted, Falwell said during a November 3 appearance on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 that Kerry's position on same-sex marriage is "like saying 150 years ago, 'I'm opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor wants to own one, that's alright.'" (Kerry opposes same-sex marriage but he also opposes the proposed constitutional amendment to ban it, which the U.S. Senate defeated in a procedural vote on July 14.)

Falwell called NOW "the National Order of Witches"

Reverend Jerry Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, labeled the National Organization for Women (NOW) the "National Order of Witches," said he was going to invite People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to Christian men's gatherings called "Wild Game Night" so that they "can sit there and suffer," and called Americans United for Separation of Church and State "an anti-Christ" group.

From Falwell's November 21 televised service, broadcast from his Thomas Road Baptist Church:

And we're going to invite PETA [to "Wild Game Night"] as our special guest, P-E-T-A -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We want you to come, we're going to give you a top seat there, so you can sit there and suffer. This is one of my special groups, another one's the ACLU, another is the NOW -- the National Order of Witches [sic]. We've got -- I've got a lot of special groups.

From the November 22 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes:

FALWELL: Up until this generation with the influence of the American Civil Liberties Union and anti-Christ groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State --

COLMES: Oh "anti," that's not true, Reverend. They're not "anti-Christ."

FALWELL: It is true. I know those guys and the fact is they're so anti-religious, anti-Christian that they have tried to secularize the country.

Reverend Barry Lynn, an attorney and ordained minister, is the executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Other Christian leaders serve on the group's board of trustees. According to its website, "Americans United for Separation of Church and State is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom."

Calling NOW the "National Order of Witches" was far from Falwell's first expression of his opposition to feminists. Falwell mobilized opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment through his organization The Moral Majority (founded in 1979 and disbanded in 1989). In 1989, Falwell stated:

I listen to feminists and all these radical gals ... These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it, and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem.

And shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Falwell accused feminists, gays and lesbians, and a variety of progressive groups of having "helped" make the attacks happen.

Falwell is pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a 22,000-member church in Lynchburg, Virginia, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Falwell's weekly services, titled "The Old Time Gospel Hour" are broadcast from the church and reach global audiences by television, radio and internet. Falwell is founder and chancellor of Liberty University, operates the Liberty Channel cable and satellite network, publishes the National Liberty Journal, and writes a weekly column published by conservative news outlets such as WorldNetDaily.com and NewsMax.com. Falwell endorsed President George W. Bush's reelection.

— N.C.

Posted to the web on Tuesday November 23, 2004 at 3:27 PM EST

Redistrict Illinois
by Joe in DC - 11/24/2004 11:23:41 AM

The elections in Illinois showed a clear mandate for Democrats again. Obama got 70% of the vote. The state has a Democratic Governor and the Senate and House are controlled by Democrats. Yet, because of antiquated districts, the Democrats only have a one seat advantage in their U.S. House delegation.

Is it time to redistrict Illinois? In Texas, the Republicans faced a similar situation. Under the watchful eye of Tom DeLay, the Texas legislature drew new boundaries. Without the Texas seats, the House Republicans probably would have lost a seat this year.

DeLay and Texas set the precedent that there is no reason to wait for the census to redistrict. Power is enough. I bet Illinois legislators could do an even better job and do it without all the illegal activity that apparently took place in Texas.

Dennis Hastert and Henry Hyde are two dinosaours who clearly don't represent the new Democratic trend in the state. I bet there are some creative ways that their districts, which abut one another, could be made much more demographically representative.

Based on the trends, it is clear that Illinois should have more Democrats in Congress. With more appropriate congressional district boundaries, that can happen.

December Meetup Agenda

The next two months represent an exciting opportunity to grow our Meetup groups and influence the future of the Democratic Party. Nationally, Democracy for America is experiencing rapid growth and many Meetup groups are reporting a record number of new signups. In the coming weeks, we need to make these newcomers feel welcome and help the entire DFA community get involved locally to make a difference in the months ahead.

December Meetup Goals:

1) Discuss election results and DFA's success stories, such as the ten DFA-endorsed candidates who defeated incumbent Republicans, as well as the other notable Dean Dozen successes. Dean Dozen candidates won elections at all levels of government, in both red and blue states. No other comparable organization experienced this kind of success and demonstrates the power of the grassroots. For more information, see http://democracyforamerica.com/dd_returns.php.

2) Start planning and recruiting candidates to run for office in 2005. Brainstorm what offices are up for election in the spring and assign one member of the group to research filing deadlines and requirements. Many offices have filing deadlines in late December and early January!

3) Build participation in your local Democratic Party. Over the next two months, many local party committees will be undergoing a process of reorganization, where they elect new officers and executive committees. The only way for us to have a role in this process is to get involved and attend our local meetings at the town, county and state levels. Before the Meetup, please check both DFA's website and your local Democratic organization's website to find the schedule of meetings in your area. At the Meetup, you should work with your group to lay out specific plans for how your Meetup attendees can get
involved in their local Democratic organization and influence the future direction of our Party.

4) Grow your Meetup group. Set the goal of doubling your November Meetup attendance over the next two months. Ask everyone in your group to bring one new person with them to each Meetup.

You can download the full agenda at:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/meetuphosts

The December Meetups are an important opportunity to harness the renewed enthusiasm and support of DFA members and newly-activated voters into a proactive force that can make a difference in 2005 and beyond.

Tom Hughes
Political Director
Democracy for America

PS: Governor Dean will be taping a Meetup message this week and we will post it online later in the week. We will send an email when the video is ready for download.