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Green and Libertarian Presidential Candidates to Demand Ohio Recount

David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the 2004 presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, today announced their intentions to file a formal demand for a recount of the presidential ballots cast in Ohio.

"Due to widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process, we are compelled to demand a recount of the Ohio presidential vote. Voting is the heart of the democratic process in which we as a nation put our faith. When people stand in line for hours to exercise their right to vote, they need to know that all votes will be counted fairly and accurately. We must protect the rights of the people of Ohio, as well as all Americans, and stand up for the right to vote and the right for people's votes to be counted. The integrity of the democratic process is at stake," the two candidates said in a joint statement.

The candidates also demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who chaired the Ohio Bush campaign, recuse himself from the recount process.

The Ohio presidential election was marred by numerous press and independent reports of voter intimidation, mis-marked and discarded

Slip-sliding away in Columbus

It was 8:30 pm, and the polls had closed an hour ago. The basement of the Centenary United Methodist Church just outside Columbus was steamy and dank, filled with a line of voters that snaked through several hallways. There were so many loops that the beginning and the end of the line were indistinguishable, but no one fought about it. Several hundred people stood or sat on the floor or on stools they had brought, waiting. At the rate the line was moving, it would take hours more for them all to finish. They had already been waiting for up to eight hours, and they were ready to wait hours more. To vote.

Ten minutes and a world away, TV sets at the America Coming Together Victory Party blared, “It’s all coming down to Ohio.” Those of us volunteers who had gone out in vans in the pouring rain to help at the polls watched it slip away. In this church basement, like so many polling places in predominantly poor, Democratic precincts, our little outpost of hope and grit stood solid, and I watched it refuse to flinch, and I watched it lose.

Voter fraud

WE, AS DEMOCRATS, NEED TO BE ANGRY AND STAY ANGRY UNTIL SOMEONE IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE FRAUD ON NOV. 2, 2004.

I DONT WANT 4 MORE WARS UNDER THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A PRESIDENT. HES NOT MY PRESIDENT, NEVER WILL BE.

Paperless voting machines

Thank you for your article on the paperless machines. Here is how I think they got us all to use them.

Can you imagine a senario where defective paper ballots in Florida were manufactured on purpose to confound and confuse the public over the results of an election? I have been voting for over 30 years on punch -card machines and have never heard of such problems. I suppose there had been some here and there, but never a problem large enough to appear on national news. When you think about it logically, how is it possible that a blunt-pointed awl could not pierce a pre-scored blank on a ballot? The answer is simply that the ballots were made so that the chads would hang. They were not scored thoroughly. To accomplish this would require simply the use of dull tools and insufficient pressure in the production of those ballots. Before this is released, (perhaps thousands have already looked into this) it would be interesting to obtain some of those unused ballots and compare them with ballots from other states, and ballots from previous administrations in Florida. I wonder who purchased those ballots and

Awwww, Ashcroft!

AUSTIN, Texas -- Awwww, Ashcroft! My man. The one I liked best of the whole Cabinet, the most consistently entertaining, the most the most deliciously inept, the most amazingly wrong-headed. Ashcroft, my personal Bush administration icon. And besides, he's so sexy.

How can we forget the golden moments? The day he covered up the nekkid tit on a statue of the Spirit of Justice in the Justice Department headquarters because we can't have that kind of thing. His fabulous pre-9/11 record, especially the day he finally told his top terror guy he just didn't "want to hear about it."

And then there's his even more fabulous post-9/11 record. Indicting Zacarias Moussaoui as the "20th hijacker" when it turned out, oops, that was somebody else. What a showcase for American justice that trial has been. And the famous case of Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber" who not only didn't have any dirty bombs, he didn't even have a plan to get one.

Now for the really bad news

Dreadful news -- the worst. All the 9/11 nuts have relocated to Stolen Election. My inbox is awash. People who have spent the last three years sending me screeds establishing to their own satisfaction that George Bush personally ordered the attacks on the Trade Towers and that Dick Cheney vectored the planes in are now pummeling me with data on the time people spent online waiting to vote in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and how the Diebold machines are all jimmied.

            As usual, the nuts think that conspiracies of inconceivable complexity worked at 100 percent efficiency, that Murphy's Law was once again in suspense, and that 10,000 co-conspirators are all going to keep their mouths shut.

Why did John Kerry abandon his crew (US!) in battle?

In the heat of battle, John Kerry abandoned his crew.

Not in Vietnam.  This is not Karl Rovian Swift Boat libel.

No, John Kerry abandoned us here in Ohio and around the country at precisely the moment we needed him most....when the fire was heaviest and we were taking the hardest casualties....right after Election Day.

This is also not about whether or not the election itself was stolen.  Many of us believe it was, and that the evidence is clear.  Many don't and never will, no matter what the evidence.

But despite all his promises and those of his runningmate John Edwards---who repeated them that very morning---John Kerry left us hanging.  His campaign threw in the towel---and a piece of our hearts---while we were (and are) still collecting evidence.  It abandoned the commitment to full and fair elections not only in 2004 but, perhaps more importantly, for years to come.

A Distant Mirror of Holy War

The conflict in Iraq has become a holy war. In both directions.

On the surface, the most prominent headline on the New York Times front page Nov. 10 was simply matter-of-fact: "In Taking Fallujah Mosque, Victory by the Inch." Yet it's not mere happenstance that American forces have bombed many of Fallujah's mosques.

For public consumption, U.S. military officers -- like their civilian bosses and American journalists -- usually discuss this war in secular, even antiseptic terms. When the Times quoted Marine battalion commander Gary Brandl in another front-page story, on Nov. 6, the lieutenant colonel sounded straightforward: "We are going to rid the city of insurgents. If they do fight, we will kill them."

However, on the same day, the Associated Press reported that the same Lt. Col. Brandl said: "The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Fallujah, and we're going to destroy him."

That statement by Brandl -- an officer with 800 soldiers under his command -- caused a bit of stir in some Internet circles. But mainstream U.S. media outlets scarcely noted his holy-warrior declaration. Most news

Call Us Legion

I would like to respond to all those who have suggested both in the print media and on the airwaves that those of us who voted for John Kerry should “get over it”, and prepare ourselves for another four years of “Bush Family Values”.

Murdering 100,000 innocent people in Iraq is not a value. It is a crime against all the laws of man and God. The latter does not, contrary to the opinion of millions of Bush voters, live in the White House, but only a very flawed excuse for the former.

The God I do worship enjoins me always to stand up to evil, to speak truth to power and corruption in high places. Call us Legion, for there are many who believe as I do, and who have no intention of giving up the chief value necessary to combat the abuses of the Bush Administration, namely courage.

Ohio

Hi and thanks for all your work.  I noticed one of the 12 ways Bush stole the election was Diebold.  I just want to put my two cents in that this is the number one issue for progressives until we get it fixed.  We simply must, must get the vote back out from corporate hands.  It must be a transparent process.   Call me a whiney liberal, but I cannot believe this is happening.  If Democratic leaning corporations had control of the voting machines, the whole media would be up in arms, and everyone would be saying Kerry is an illegitimate president.

Thanks for listening to me rant.  We absolutely must make this priority #1.  The exit polls were right.

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