Global

Hi

Thank you for the 11/18/04 article "Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt." We need all citizens aware and involved in this issue - if we do not put a stop to voter intimidation, black box voting and scanners, we'll never have a legitimate election again. I am so very afraid where the nation is headed - does democracy still exist??

Sincerely,
Susan Kerwin
Goldendale, WA

Dear Editor:

I am a "rinky-dinky non-credible person" from Utah, barely even a bug. Nobody believes me because I am a sky-blue petunia in an onion patch of rabid Republicans. I committed the unpardonable sin in my neck of the woods and I voted for John Kerry. However, I'm glad that I did.

Once upon a time I was a Republican and I was ready to leap off any high-rise building for my cause -- a Right-wingy-dingy fundamentalist world. I even almost started hating the very place that brought my family together in the first place -- Yellowstone National Park. I, as an at the time only child, was raised for nearly a month on the ground in Yellowstone by two protective parents, but that's another story for another time.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are just a pair of CON MEN.  

For their information in every state of the Union were delays, faulty machines, arrogant  poll people, etc.  

I am myself part of the minority, Hispanic/Conservative in NYC and have never complain about my lot..Why? Because I am able to realize that we all live in an imperfect world, full of imperfect human beings, that life is not fair and yet we all want "fair treatment" for everything not realizing that THAT is only a WISH.  

So, please Bob and Harvey stop crying like babies, feeling sorry for all those that did not make a real effort to vote even if it were going to take them 6 to 12 hours to cast their vote.

Stop feeling sorry for those that had an exam the next day or had to go to work or had to take his or her child to school, etc..Those are only BIG EXCUSES that the minorities always find while trying to convince the others that they were being disenfranchised or discriminated against!!What a joke!!  

Yours,
  Luis D. Rey

Dear Dr. Fitrakis,

I just want to say that until a week ago I had never heard of you. Since then I've been reading many of your articles and posting them on my website, which is devoted to the voter fraud issue.

Thank you for your great work. I really admire you and your obvious devotion to finding the truth and writing about it. You are a shining light in a sea of sewage we call "the media."

My website is here if you want to have a look:

solarbus.org/stealyourelection

I don't have to tell you, the battle we are in right now is the most important one of our lives. To me it's all about the truth. I just want to know the truth, whatever it is.

Peace,
Gary Beckwith

Dear Free Press:

Hello from Little Rock 11/17/04. This evening, they are opening the festivities for the Clinton Library.

But even as they do, I wonder if it isn't, by the second, becoming increasingly irrelevant.

You have touched a nerve with me, and I suspect with a lot of people, as we see these reports about the third parties trying to put together the money to recount the election.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are all in Little Rock, flipping us all the bird, bragging on themselves and their Clinton Library.

Well, I'm a lifelong AR resident. I would have appreciated all this a lot more if they'd timed it a little differently. It is a colossal case of bad timing.

I'm not a Vietnam veteran--or a veteran of any kind. I'm poor, and I struggle to believe the Democratic Party is about me. I'm a male WASP from the South. I have so many back and forth feelings about the Democratic Party anyway. No matter how poor you are, or even if you are homeless, the Democrtats often seem totally indifferent if you're a white male, especially from the South.

Thank you so much for speaking out about the voting process.  We must demand that it be transparent and public.  Paper trails don’t mean much if you can hack the totals, and I’m afraid that has become a red herring.  Paper trails are a necessary step, if we must use machines.  They are by no means the answer.  I believe we, as progressives, have to make this our number one priority until we get the vote back out of corporate, partisan (of either party) hands.

G.L. LeBlanc
Oregon

I'm way behind you guys being successful in your Recount contest. I even made a contribution toward the filing fee, however minimal the amt. I could afford to make toward that great expense.

However, a quick read of your Free Press art., I wanted to pass onto you one comment, about one of the points raised -- b/c I think it's not a good point, and you better come up with better arguments than that if you hope to be successful in your challenge.

I'm referring to the Pastor, Werner Lange's remarks about min. no. of voting machines required. I think you should drop that one argument and move on with better ones -- not about how many machines were nec. required, but the 'wait times' standing in line, say at black precincts -- where you say peo. had to wait for incredible periods of time, like 3-6 hours!!! And, that, as a result, some voters got discouraged and left...I think that's a good example that whatever they were doing inside the polling place (not enough machines, not enough poll workers; slow processing time, whatever), that's a good indication that something was not working right in this process.

I've been doing my own analysis of the Florida election data today comparing 2004 results for President to the 2000 results and also to the increase in registration for Dems and Repubs between 2000 and 2004.

The stuff about the small optical scan counties appears to be mostly a red herring- nothing substantial there. The small Dixiecrat counties really vote like that.

But there are some big unusual patterns in the big touchscreen counties and a few of the big optical scan counties. They had a big Repub vote swing that was not consistent with the 2000 vote and the Dem and Repub registration increases between 2000 and 2004. For those who are interested I can email you my spread sheets.

The touchscreen counties with unusual Repub vote increases include: Broward, Hillsboro, Indian River, Lake, Martin, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Sarasota. I don't know whether the absentee ballots were included in the data I used or the extent that they were so this could be a smaller issue. Charlotte, Lee, Miami-Dade also had similar patterns but to a somewhat lesser degree.

Thank you for telling the story. While what the Warlord in the White House is doing to Iraq is terrible, their suffering has been promoted by the U.S. for a quarter century. African Americans have suffered for much longer. They deserve to have their grievances redressed first.