On December 9, 2004, I posted an article on Lucas County.  I noted with deep suspicion the voter turnout data for the City of Toledo.  Of the 495 precincts in Lucas County, the 88 precincts with the lowest turnout, all in the City of Toledo, were won by John Kerry.  Of the 8 precincts with less than 50% reported turnout, 4 are located in 2 wards.  Of the 29 precincts with less than 55% reported turnout, 20 are located in 4 wards.  Of the 63 precincts with less than 60% reported turnout, 34 are located in 4 wards, 39 are located in 5 wards, and 43 are located in 6 wards.

When the precinct numbers are combined into totals for each ward, 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.  The more competitive the ward, the higher the reported turnout.  Conversely, the less competitive the ward, the lower the reported turnout.

I give my heartfelt thanks to Coleen Christensen for producing the spreadsheets and to Roman Sasik for producing the tables of data that made it possible for me to write this report in a timely manner.

Three days ago I produced a report entitled “Uncounted Votes in Montgomery County.”  These are ballots cast but not counted because they were regarded as “undervotes” and “overvotes,” or “blank” and “void,” as they are known in New York State.  The true number of such votes can be easily determined by subtracting votes counted from total ballots cast.

I was shocked to learn of 47 precincts in Montgomery County where the percentage of uncounted ballots is 4.0% or more, and that every single one of those precincts was won by John Kerry, nearly all of them by overwhelming margins, 7 to 1 in the aggregate.

I resolved to apply the same analytical technique to other Ohio counties, beginning with Hamilton County.

I give my heartfelt thanks to Joe Knapp for his Cuyahoga County spreadsheet, to Bernard Windham for forwarding it to me, and to Roman Sasik for compiling the table of precincts according to my instructions.

Provisional ballots are issued to persons who show up at the polls on Election Day but find that, for whatever reason, their names are not on the voter rolls, or find their right to vote challenged by a member of the opposing party.  They are asked to provide certain information when casting their provisional ballots, and this information can be checked afterward to determine if they were eligible to vote.  If so, then their votes are to be counted.

Pre-punched ballots; touch-screen vote switching;  more absentee votes than absentee voters; unfair provisional voter deletions;   change of voting sites on Election Day; voter suppression;  voter intimidation; double voting; malfunctioning machines; recalibrated machines; evidently rigged machines; and even 25 million negative votes registered in some races in Mahoning County!

Those were among the problematic incidents shared at a 3-hour public hearing on vote irregularities in the Mahoning Valley held on December 21 at the Warren-Trumbull Public Library.  Panelists taking voter testimony included Rev. Rick Judy of Mahoning County; Rev. Werner Lange of Trumbull County; Ray Nakley, an officer of the Arab-American Community Center in Youngstown; and Russ Buckbee, Green Party coordinator for NE Ohio.

When I was a little boy in occupied France, I saw priests sprinkling holy water on tanks, canons and other instruments of war so that Christians of one nation -- now divinely empowered -- could slaughter Christians of another nation. I never forgot the surreal spectacle. I owe it (and the extermination of nine-tenths of my family in Hitler's gas chambers) a healthy aloofness toward religion.

Sixty years later, as France, a nominally Catholic democratic republic readies to celebrate nearly 200 years of secularism marked by absolute separation of church and state, the U.S. the ostensible symbol of tolerance and egalitarianism, is unmistakably tilting toward theocratic governance.

When conservative Christian groups rocked the vote in last month's presidential election, We the People did not witness the triumph of democracy but the trouncing of popular sovereignty by an unyielding religious juggernaut intent on ramming religious values down America's throat. Implicit in this blackjack victory, is the ominous proposition that religiosity is an articulation of patriotism. For those of us who love