CLEVELAND — Two election workers were convicted Wednesday of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio's most populous county.
Jacqueline Maiden, elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct by an elections employee. They also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure to perform their duty as elections employees.
Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. They worked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.
Ohio gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry in the close election and hold on to the White House in 2004.
Maiden and Dreamer will be sentenced Feb. 26.
This article was buried in the LA Times' online "Politics" section. The bottom line is that Bush should NOT be president right now (or even back in 2000 - hello, Florida?) but it seems like there's nothing that can be done. There are no consequences for his actions; in fact, it seems like he's been rewarded quite heavily. How can we call ourselves a democracy when certain votes don't count or are tampered with? How can we tell kids that it's important to vote, and why should anyone vote, if the Presidency can just be bought?
2 comments:
I am outraged!
OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in probability study
Defining the vote outcome probabilities of wrong-precinct
voting has revealed, in a sample of 166,953 votes (1 of
every 34 Ohio voters), the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15%
when the population is sorted by probable outcomes of
wrong-precinct voting.
The Kerry to Bush 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen
when the large sample is sorted by probability a Kerry
wrong-precinct vote counts for Bush. When the same large
voter sample is sorted by the probability Kerry votes count
for third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal
in both subsets.
Read the article with graphs of findings:
Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html
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