I don't need this. The Brooks Brothers Riot of 2000 was all I needed to see. You folks might find it useful to have the story and linked references all in one nice handy package, courtesy of Ourstorian.
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
The complete article, with Web-only citations, follows. [P6: that is, it follows over there. Here, as usual, you get an abstract] For more, see exclusive documents, sources, charts and commentary.
Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote--after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.
The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.
In this sidebar editorial R.F.K., Jr documents the on-going problems with e-voting machines and calls for an official investigation.
On another note, I've known Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell for more than thirty-five years. I met him before he entered politics. Back then, in the late sixties, he was a black partisan, or at least pretended to be. We occasionally cross paths from time to time, mainly due to the fact we still share a number of close friends from the old days (all of whom have remained black partisans and progressives). However, I haven't seen Blackwell since we buried a close mutual friend in Cincinnati nearly three years ago. I'm bringing this up because I am so deeply ashamed and enraged by his actions and antics since he joined the White Nationalist Party, and because I am still having a hard time reconciling what he has done and is doing given the man I knew so many years ago. In those early days he was extremely supportive of me personally, even providing a forum for me to speak at XU in Cincinnati at a time when most doors were shut to me and my black radical agenda. I haven't forgotten that gesture. At the same time, however, I have not allowed our previous relationship to cloud my opinion of his betrayal of black folks in particular and the nation as a whole.
During our past encounters we have studiously avoided any discussion of politics, and I have managed to resist the overwhelming urge to cuss his punk ass out. The next time our paths cross will be remarkably different. Moreover, I am encouraging everyone I know in Ohio to work to ensure his defeat in the Gubernatorial race. You would think this would be an easy task. But, believe it or not, Blackwell has a lot of black folks hoodwinked and mesmerized by that giant Bible he carries with him everywhere he goes. Like his white allies on the Christian right, he has turned religion into a weapon of mass deception and destruction.