Election 2004 aftermath - now what?
illustration: Ballot Box by Tim Nyberg
On this page:
History Lessons for the Next Term
Lamentations and Admonitions
Who Really Won? - Voter fraud in this election, too?
Rant on Ukraine Election Recall
Ohio Recount - an affidavit
Jim Crow Lives
History Lessons for the Next Term
Johann Christoph Arnold
The long awaited presidential election is over. The American people have spoken and given our president another four years to govern the country. Unlike the last election, he won the popular vote and now has a clear mandate. And although we have just been through the most polarizing campaign in recent memory, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing—that our nation now needs to be united.
In a recent CNN poll a majority of Americans were hopeful that President Bush would do more to unite our country than to divide it. To do this, he must lead the country in truly seeking God’s will, not his human will. This will require bipartisan action, openness, and even more importantly, humility, prayer, and sacrifice. Although he won the election, there are still millions who disagree strongly with him on many points. Their views must be listened to with respect. Blindly forging ahead with policies that barely half the nation supports is no way to win the hearts of the opposition. To serve the country, our president must go beyond protecting the American people from terror. He has to address the many social ills plaguing our nation, which divide its citizens from one another and from the rest of the world.
But whether we are saddened or elated by the prospect of another four years, now is not the time for depression or gloating. How can we help our country in a world of war, terror, and fear? Jesus reminds us that we should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Possibly, in these last four years, we have done neither. We have not respected our president enough and we have not cared enough for our neighbor and for the great need of the world. The time of greed and materialism has to come to an end. We have to start caring for other people, other nations, and especially our children. And whether or not we agree with him, we should pray for our president that God gives him the wisdom to guide our nation through these turbulent times.
Let us remind one another that regardless of who is president, God is ultimately in control. It is to Him that we as a nation should turn. Our president says that he is a man of faith. Perhaps he can learn important military and spiritual lessons by studying the history of the founder of his faith. Jesus himself said that the days of an eye for an eye are over. This Old Testament teaching has never worked, and only increased violence, fear and death. Instead, he told us not to resist an evil man, “but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also, and if anyone compels you to go one mile, go with him two.” Such words were not a sermon, but a way of life for Jesus; he was born in Bethlehem, under Roman occupation and under the fear of war and terror. Yet still he instructed us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and do good to those who hate us.
Interestingly, many people looked to Jesus as a military leader who would free the Jewish people from their oppressors. To their surprise and dismay, Jesus offered humankind a weapon that would destroy all enemies and all fear: the weapon of love and of prayer. This weapon has never failed. Today the whole world is watching our president. He has the chance of a lifetime to become a true leader, such as our nation has not had in decades. He can leave a legacy that will be hard to surpass by future presidents, if he truly acts on the faith he professes to have. This is a moment of God’s history. May our president, and all of us, be found worthy.
Jesus called on his followers to be peacemakers, and told them that they would be called the sons of God. This promise still exists for us today. These are simple but powerful words. If they worked in Christ’s time, why shouldn't they work today as we struggle to rid the world of terror? It is easy to pay our taxes, abide by the rule of law, and otherwise dutifully give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But what about the second half of that commandment? That is harder to fulfill. In the end, only when we each become a peacemaker will we achieve the unity that politicians of all stripes are fond of giving lip service to. Then we will have given to God what belongs to God.
More of Johann Christoph Arnold's writings may be found at Bruderhof.com
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Lamentations and Admonitions
HOPE WAS ON THE WAY
by Tim Nyberg
November 2nd, 2004. Mark the date. It's the day that 51% of Americans refused treatment for the country's illness. Four more years without treatment can certainly turn this malady into a terminal disease.
This narrow majority of Americans have chosen with their vote to subject our country to four more years of fear-laden lies of an inept and self-serving "leadership." They have chosen to continue lining the pockets of the rich, to disregard the poor, to bankrupt our educational system. They have voted for more nicely-named initiatives that are of little or no value. They have chosen to continue tossing money to our corporations through giant tax loopholes even while these corporations avoid taxation and send jobs overseas. Their vote propagates a blatant disregard for our fragile environment and the under funding of social programs until they die of starvation...
Hypocritically (or blindly), THROUGH THEIR VOTES they have favored the killing of God's children through preemptive wars, poverty (and its corresponding rise in abortion rate), and under funded medical programs. They have chosen discrimination based upon bigotry. They have chosen to promote family values with an embarrassing disregard for the necessities which allow families to thrive.
Those who claim to have voted this way based on their "moral values" have work to do. They must first BOYCOTT the FEAR that has been used to manipulate their lives. Then, take a fresh look at the teachings of Christ and other significant spiritual leaders and (this requires the utmost effort) LIVE ACCORDINGLY.
The other 49% of us have even more work to do - we must immediately begin to act on our convictions. It's up to us to pick up the slack for the second term of a failed leadership. We must fight against any and all justification for killing. We must defend the rights of the defenseless, and work to eliminate the blind greed that nourishes poverty. We must become angry, barking watchdogs biting at the ankles of a corrupt, self-serving government. We must learn what it means to "work for peace". We must reach out our hands and hearts to the world and reclaim a unified brother and sisterhood - ALL nations UNDER GOD.
IN OUR HANDS, HOPE IS STILL ON THE WAY
P.S. If Kerry, had won, we'd still have the same work to do.
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Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?
By Thom Hartmann, Posted on AlterNet November 5, 2004.
The rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote" movement must become: Get Corporations Out of Our Vote!
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time – and through the efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters – we may well find out (Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] filing in history), and bloggers and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states. Even raw voter analyses are showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.
But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the concept of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony committed by conservatives this year.
At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important places to invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things that had to do with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of all of us. Over time, these commons – in which we all make tax investments and for which we all hold ultimate responsibility – have come to include our police and fire services; our military and defense; our roads and skyways; our air, waters and national parks; and the safety of our food and drugs.
But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our hard-earned tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by us (through our elected representatives), answerable to us, and most directly responsible for stewardship of our commons.
And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is our vote.
About two years ago, I wrote a story for Common Dreams, "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Sen. Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state. And in all probability, Hagel will run for president in 2008.
In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which they mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia – another state that went all-electronic – "USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, 'In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49% to 44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss.' Cox News Service, based in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, 'Pollsters may have goofed' because 'Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them.'" Nearly every vote in the state was on an electronic machine with no audit trail.
In the years since those first articles appeared, Bev Harris has published her book on the subject ("Black Box Voting"), including the revelation of her finding the notorious "Rob Georgia" folder on Diebold's FTP site just after Cleland's loss there; Lynn Landes has done some groundbreaking research, particularly her new investigation of the Associated Press, as have Rebecca Mercuri and David Dill. There's a new video out on the topic, Votergate, available at votergate.tv.
Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about a third of the 2004 electorate, has fueled the flames of conspiracy theorists convinced Republican ideologues – now known to be willing to lie in television advertising – would extend their "ends justifies the means" morality to stealing the vote "for the better good of the country" they think single-party Republican rule will bring.
Most important, though, the rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote" movement must become: Get Corporations Out Of Our Vote!
Why have we let corporations into our polling places, locations so sacred to democracy that in many states even international election monitors and reporters are banned? Why are we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote, in a secret and totally invisible way? Particularly a private corporation founded, in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the Constitution; in another case run by one of Ohio's top Republicans; and in another case partly owned by Saudi investors?
Of all the violations of the commons – all of the crimes against We The People and against democracy in our great and historic republic – this is the greatest. Our vote is too important to outsource to private corporations.
It's time that the U.S.A. – like most of the rest of the world – returns to paper ballots, counted by hand by civil servants (our employees) under the watchful eye of the party faithful. Even if it takes two weeks to count the vote, and we have to just go, until then, with the exit polls of the news agencies. It worked just fine for nearly 200 years in the U.S.A., and it can work again.
When I lived in Germany, they took the vote the same way most of the world does – people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil servants taking a week off from their regular jobs, watched over by volunteer representatives of the political parties. It's totally clean, and easily audited. And even though it takes a week or more to count the vote (and costs nothing more than a bit of overtime pay for civil servants), the German people know the election results the night the polls close because the news media's exit polls, for two generations, have never been more than a tenth of a percent off.
We could have saved billions that have instead been handed over to ES&S, Diebold, and other private corporations.
Or, if we must have machines, let's have them owned by local governments, maintained and programmed by civil servants answerable to We The People, using open-source code and disconnected from modems, that produce a voter-verified printed ballot, with all results published on a precinct-by-precinct basis.
As Thomas Paine wrote at this nation's founding, "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."
Only when We The People reclaim the commons of our vote can we again be confident in the integrity of our electoral process in the world's oldest and most powerful democratic republic.
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. His most recent books (click on titles to order) are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."
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Elections - There and Here
A rant on the Ukraine Election Recall - Tim Nyberg
So, as it turns out, elections in the Ukraine are more fair and "democratic" than here in the United States - when election results there are called into question, they are voided and another election takes place.
In the United States, however, the 2000 election was tipped with obvious (and now proven) election fraud and corruption in Florida costing Gore the presidency. Did we get a "redo"? No, all we got were some cute "Sore Loserman" signs passed around the internet.
2004: It's happened again! In Florida and now in Ohio - with, among other infractions, over 250,000 votes (mostly from Black precincts) not counted.
But is Secretary of State Colin Powell concerned about possible election corruption in his own United States? Is there public outrage here? Is there picketing in our streets? Heck no! We just want to be left alone to return to our comfortable couches where we can catch the latest "Fear Factor" or favorite "reality" show.
It's time we get off our collective duff and demand fair elections in the United States. We must recognize our right and obligation to speak out before the staged reality and fear offered up on television is eclipsed by the fear of a reality brought upon us by greed and corruption.
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Ohio Recount Affidavit - Richard Hayes Phillips
Monday, 13 December 2004, 10:55 am
Press Release:
OHIO RECOUNT
AFFIDAVIT
December 10, 2004
From: http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/supreme.htm
I, RICHARD HAYES PHILLIPS, do swear and affirm the following:
1. I hold a Ph.D. in geomorphology from the University of Oregon. I am a professional hydrologist and am well versed in standard techniques of statistical analysis, with special expertise in spotting anomalous data. A copy of my curriculum vita is attached to this Affidavit as Exhibit A.
2. I have analyzed unofficial precinct level results from the November 2, 2004 general election in nine Ohio counties, including Cuyahoga, Franklin, Warren, Butler, Clermont, Miami, Montgomery, Hamilton, and Lucas. In have compared these results with those from the November 7, 2000 general election where such data is available. I have examined the unofficial and official results for the November 2, 2004 election, county by county. I have examined, in Franklin County, data on the number of voting machines deployed in each precinct. I have also examined United States census data for 2000 and 2003.
3. There are numerous examples of incorrect presidential vote tallies in certain precincts in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County. These irregularities include at least 16 precincts where votes intended to be cast for Kerry were shifted to other candidates’ columns, and at least 30 precincts with inexplicably low voter turnout, including 7.10%, 13.05%, 19.60%, 21.01%, 21.80%, 24.72%, 28.83%, 28.97%, and 29.25%, and seven entire wards where voter turnout was reportedly below 50%, even as low as 39.35%. Kerry won Cleveland with 83.27% of the vote to 15.88% for Bush. If voter turnout was really 60% of registered voters, as seems likely based upon turnout in other major cities of Ohio, rather than 49.89% as reported, Kerry’s margin of victory in Cleveland has been wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes.
4. The systematic withholding of voting machines from predominantly Democratic wards in Columbus, many of them with high black populations, severely restricted voter turnout in these wards and cost John Kerry 17,000 votes. I have meticulously compared election results with the number of registered voters per voting machine for each precinct in Columbus, and for each ward in Franklin County. In Columbus, the median Bush precinct had a 60.56% turnout, while the median Kerry precinct had only a 50.78% turnout. County wide, the 73 wards with fewer than 300 registered voters per machine had a 62.33% turnout; 58 were in the suburbs, and 54 were won by Bush. The 73 wards with 300 or more registered voters per machine had a 51.99% turnout; 59 were in Columbus, and 58 were won by Kerry. In addition, there were 68 machines not provided to anyone, according to data provided by the Board of Elections.
5. It has been widely reported that in Warren County, the administrative building was locked down on election night and no independent persons were allowed to observe the vote count. Based upon the official Board of Elections reports, there has been a 15.51% increase in voter registration in eight months time, and voter turnout was reportedly above 80% in 55 precincts. Since the 2000 election, voter registration was reportedly up by 79.0%, 38.3%, 32.4%, 31.0%, 29.7%, and 28.4% in six townships that provided 68.75% of Bush’s margin of victory in Warren County. While the county population has increased by 14.75% since the 2000 census, 87 of 157 precincts had shown declines in voter registration at other times since the 2000 election, and yet every single precinct, 157 of 157, showed increases in voter registration since March 2, 2004. In Butler County, there are nine precincts and two entire townships where Kerry received fewer votes than Gore despite a sharp increase in voter turnout; and there are precincts with reported increases in voter registration, since November 7, 2000, of 177.9%, 143.5%, 69.3%, 65.5%, 64.5%, 48.2%, 43.3%, 38.8%, 36.9%, 34.3%, 34.0%, and 33.8%, compared to an increase in population of only 3.12% county wide. In Clermont County, where the population has grown by 4.39% since the 2000 census, voter registration was reportedly up by 85.4% and 67.6% in two precincts, and down by 49.4% in another precinct, all in the same township; there were 23 precincts where turnout was up, but Kerry got fewer votes than Gore. All these data are indications that votes may have been shifted from Kerry to Bush. According to the official results certified by the Ohio Secretary of State, these three counties combined provided Bush with a plurality of 132,685 votes, which is 13,910 votes more than his statewide plurality of 118,775 votes. Given that George Bush carried these counties by 95,575 votes in 2000, the net loss for John Kerry could be as high as 37,000 votes.
6. It is my professional opinion that there is compelling evidence of fraud in Miami County. Early on election night, when 31,620 votes had been counted, and later, when 50,235 votes had been counted, John Kerry had exactly the same percentage, 33.92%, and the percentage for George Bush was almost exactly the same, dropping by 0.03%, from 65.80% to 65.77%. The second set of returns gave Bush a margin of exactly 16,000 votes, giving cause to question the integrity of the central counting device for the optical scanning machines. Compared to 2000, voter turnout increased by 20.86%, while the population increased by only 1.38%. Voter turnout was reported at 98.55% and 94.27% in two precincts in Concord, numbers nearly impossible to achieve. Voter turnout was reported to have increased by 194.58% and 152.78% in two precincts in Troy compared to the 2000 election, and by more than 30.0% in ten other precincts. There are no data for voter registration in 2000, so the ballots cast offer the only meaningful comparison. Comparing the results of the 2004 election to the results of the 2000 election, there is one precinct where the reduction in turnout exactly matched the reduction in votes counted for the Democratic presidential candidate. It is my professional opinion that these numbers are fraudulent, in that the true election results have been altered. Given that Bush officially carried Miami County in 2004 by 16,394 votes, and that Bush carried Miami County in 2000 by 10,453 votes, the net loss to John Kerry could be as high as 6,000 votes.
7. In Toledo, Lucas County, there were 50 precincts with less than 60% reported turnout. All of them were won overwhelmingly by John Kerry, by a margin of better than 5 to 1 in the aggregate. There were 45 precincts with more than 80% reported turnout; 12 were won by Bush, 33 were won by Kerry, and most were competitive. When the precinct numbers are combined into totals for each ward, data not provided by the Board of Elections, a clear and unmistakable pattern emerges. The 14 wards with the highest reported turnout were won by John Kerry by a margin of 11 to 7 in the aggregate. The 10 wards with the lowest reported turnout were won by John Kerry by a margin of 6 to 1 in the aggregate. It is my professional opinion that the election in Lucas County was rigged, most likely by altering the vote totals in each ward by a percentage chosen for that ward, plus or minus, based upon voting patterns in past elections. If turnout in Toledo had been as high as that reported elsewhere in the county, John Kerry’s plurality would have been 7,000 votes larger.
8. There are still 92,672 uncounted votes in Ohio, exclusive of any uncounted provisional ballots. According to unofficial results provided by the Ohio Secretary of State, there were 5,574,476 ballots cast, and 5,481,804 votes counted, which leaves 92,672 regular ballots (1.66%) still uncounted. The official results, now certified, do not include these ballots, but differ from the unofficial results only in the addition of provisional ballots and some absentee ballots to the tally. In Montgomery and Hamilton counties, these uncounted votes come disproportionately from precincts that voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry. In Montgomery County there are 47 precincts, all of them in Dayton, where the percentage of uncounted ballots is 4% or more. Kerry won all 47 of these precincts, by a margin of 7 to 1 in the aggregate. County wide in Montgomery County, the percentage of uncounted ballots was 1.70%. In Hamilton County there are 26 precincts, 22 of them in Cincinnati, where the percentage of uncounted ballots is 8% or more. Kerry won all 26 of these precincts, by a margin of 10 to 1 in the aggregate. Altogether there are 86 precincts in Cincinnati where the percentage of uncounted ballots is 4% or more. Kerry won 85 of these precincts, by a margin of 5 to 1 in the aggregate. County wide in Hamilton County, the percentage of uncounted ballots was 2.34%. Although I have not yet had time to examine similar data for Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Akron, Youngstown, Canton, or elsewhere, it is possible that the same pattern will emerge in these cities as well. If these 92,672 uncounted votes were cast for Kerry by a 5 to 1 margin, this would reduce the statewide margin between the candidates by another 61,781 votes.
9. There are still provisional ballots uncounted in Ohio. On election night the Ohio Secretary of State reported that 5,481,804 ballots had been counted, and 155,428 provisional ballots had been issued. According to the official results, now certified, 5,625,621 votes have now been counted, an increase of 143,817, which represents the number of newly counted ballots. Some of these were absentee ballots. The reported count of provisional ballots was 79,482 for Kerry, and 61,505 for Bush. This would leave 14,441 provisional ballots uncounted.
10. In summary, it is my professional opinion that John Kerry’s margins of victory were wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes in Cleveland, by 17,000 votes in Columbus, and by as many as 7,000 votes in Toledo. It is my further professional opinion that John Kerry’s margins of defeat in Warren, Butler, and Clermont counties were inflated by as many as 37,000 votes in the aggregate, and in Miami County by as many as 6,000 votes. There are still 92,672 uncounted regular ballots that, based upon the analysis set forth above of the election results from Dayton and Cincinnati, may be expected to break for John Kerry by an overwhelming margin. And there are 14,441 uncounted provisional ballots.
11. My research into the topics discussed in this affidavit is continuing, and I reserve the right to modify my conclusions as new information becomes available.
TO THIS I SWEAR AND AFFIRM,
___________________________________
Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
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JIM CROW RETURNS TO THE VOTING BOOTH
DOES AMERICA HAVE APARTHEID VOTE-COUNTING SYSTEM?
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Wednesday, January 26, 2005
by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Greg Palast
The inaugural confetti has been swept away and with it, the last quarrel over who really won the presidential election.
But there is still unfinished business that can't be swept away. After taking his oath, the president called for a "concerted effort to promote democracy." The president should begin with the United States.
More than 133,000 votes remain uncounted in Ohio, more than George W. Bush's supposed margin of victory. In New Mexico, the uncounted vote totals at least three times the president's plurality -- and so on in other states.
The challenge to the vote count is over, but the matter of how the United States counts votes, or fails to count them, remains.
The ballots left uncounted, and that will never be counted, are so-called spoiled or rejected ballots -- votes cast by citizens, but never tallied. This is the dark little secret of U.S. democracy: Nationwide, in our presidential elections, about 2 million votes are cast and never counted, most spoiled because they cannot be read by the tallying machines.
Not everyone's vote spoils equally. Cleveland State University Professor Mark Salling analyzed ballots thrown into Ohio's electoral garbage can. Salling found that, "overwhelmingly," the voided votes come from African American precincts.
This racial bend in vote spoilage is not unique to Ohio. A U.S. Civil Rights Commission investigation concluded that, of nearly 180,000 votes discarded in Florida in the 2000 election as unreadable, a shocking 54 percent were cast by black voters, though they make up only a tenth of the electorate. In Florida, an African American is 900 percent more likely to have his or her vote invalidated than a white voter. In New Mexico, a Hispanic voter is 500 percent more likely than a white voter to have her or his ballot lost to spoilage.
Unfortunately, Florida and New Mexico are typical. Nationwide data gathered by Harvard Law School Civil Rights Project indicate that, of the 2 million ballots spoiled in a typical presidential election, about half are cast by minority voters.
The problem is that some officials are quite happy with the outcome of elections in which minority votes just don't count. They count on the "no-count."
Before last November's election, the American Civil Liberties Union sued five states for continuing to use punch-card machines, those notorious generators of "hanging" chads and "pregnant" chads that disproportionately disenfranchise black voters.
Four of those states settled with the ACLU by adopting simple fixes to protect voters. One state, notably, refused: Ohio, which forced 75 percent of its voters to use punch-card machines. In minority and low-income areas, these old machines on average spoil an unacceptable 8 percent of the votes cast on them. In high-income white districts, spoilage is typically 1 percent.
In Ohio, the decision to keep the vote-destroying machines in place in African American districts was made by the state's Republican attorney general, Jim Petro, and its secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell, not incidentally, co-chaired the Bush-Cheney re-election committee. The election in Ohio was fundamentally flawed, a fact compounded by the widespread use of electronic voting machines susceptible to manipulation and hacking.
This election saw an explosion in a new category of uncounted, ballots: rejected provisional ballots. In Ohio alone, more than 35,000 of these votes were never tallied. Once again, the provisional ballots were cast overwhelmingly in African American precincts.
Why so many? In November, for the first time since the era of the Night Riders, one major political party launched a program of mass challenges of voters on Election Day. Paid Republican operatives, working from lists prepared by the party, fingered tens of thousands of voters in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, questioning their right to a ballot.
One of these secret "caging lists" was obtained by BBC Television from inside Republican campaign headquarters in Florida. Every one of the voters on those sheets resided in African American neighborhoods, excepting a few in precincts of elderly Jewish voters.
These lists helped Republican poll workers challenge voters on the basis of an alleged change of address. An analysis of one roster showed that several of those facing challenge were African American soldiers whose address changed because they were shipped overseas.
Challenged voters were shunted to "provisional ballots," which, in Ohio and elsewhere, were not counted on the flimsiest of technicalities.
Who won the presidential race? Given the millions of ballots spoiled and provisional ballots rejected, the unfolding mystery of the exit polls and widespread use of electronic voting machines, we will never know whether John Kerry or George W. Bush received the most votes in Ohio and other swing states
But we can name the election's big winner: Jim Crow.
Last Thursday, the president said, "Our country must abandon all the habits of racism."
From benign neglect of the voting machinery to malign intent in challenging minority voters en masse, the United States is turning that ill habit into an electoral strategy.
In 1965, Congress gave us the Voting Rights Act, promising all people the right to cast a vote. It is now time to making counting that vote a right, not just casting it, before Jim Crow rides again in the next election.
Rev. Jackson is founder of Rainbow Coalition/ People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH). Greg Palast, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, investigated the election for BBC Television.
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