- Interviews and Background
-
- TERESA FEDOR
- (via Greg Lestini glestini@maild.sen.state.oh.us)
-
- Ohio State Senator Teresa Fedor said today: "There
was trouble with our elections in Ohio at every stage. It's been a battle
getting people registered to vote, getting to the ballot on voting day
and getting that vote to count. There is a pattern of voter suppression;
that's why I called for [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell's resignation
more than a month ago. Blackwell, while claiming to run an unbiased
elections
process, was also the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.
Additionally,
he was the spokesperson for the anti-business, anti-family constitutional
amendment 'Issue 1,' and a failed initiative to repeal a crucial sales-tax
revenue source for the state. Blackwell learned his moves from the
Katherine
Harris playbook of Florida 2000, and we won't stand for it."
-
- BILL MOSS
- bmoss@hbcuconnect.com
-
- Executive vice president of HBCU Connect, which works
to connect historically black colleges and universities, Moss said today:
"I stayed in line two and a half hours. I've never seen anything like
this in my life. There were fewer voting machines in the highly
concentrated
black areas, creating the long lines so as to frustrate the voters. But
we knew the Republicans -- many of whom became Republicans because they
opposed equal rights for blacks -- would try to drive down black turnout.
... [Ohio Secretary of State] Blackwell was confusing things by raising
issues like the paper weight of cards."
-
- SUSAN TRUITT
- susan.truitt@lexisnexis.com
- http://www.caseohio.org
-
- Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections,
Truitt said today: "Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting
machines and none of them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of
accuracy and integrity as to how we can verify the count. A recount without
a paper trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data.
Last year, Blackwell tried to get the entire state to buy new machines
without a paper trail. The exit polls, virtually the only check we have
against tampering with a vote without a paper trail, had shown Kerry with
a lead. ... A poll worker told me this morning that there were no tapes
of the results posted on some machines; on other machines the posted count
was zero, which obviously shouldn't be the case."
-
- DAN WALLACH
- dwallach@cs.rice.edu
- http://www.cs.rice.edu/~dwallach,
- http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR062104.htm
-
- Wallach is an assistant professor of Computer Science
at Rice University in Houston specializing in building secure and robust
software systems for the Internet. Along with colleagues at Johns Hopkins,
Wallach co-authored a groundbreaking study that revealed significant flaws
in electronic voting systems. He appeared on an Institute for Public
Accuracy
news release in June entitled "Electronic Voting -- Danger for
Democracy."
-
- BOB FITRAKIS
- rfitrakis@cscc.edu
-
- An attorney who monitored the election with the Election
Protection Coalition, Fitrakis said today: "There were far fewer
machines
in the inner-city districts than in the suburbs. I documented at least
a dozen people leaving because the lines were so long in African-American
areas. Blackwell did a great deal of suppressing before the election --
like attempting to refuse to process voter registration forms. The absentee
ballots were misleading in Franklin County. Kerry was the third line down,
but you had to punch number four to vote for him. Bush was getting both
his votes as well as Kerry's."
-
- HARVEY WASSERMAN
- windhw@aol.com
- http://www.freepress.org/
- departments/display/19/2004/810
-
- Senior editor of FreePress.org, an Ohio-based web site,
and co-author with Fitrakis of the recent article "Twelve Ways Bush
is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote," Wasserman said today: "There
was a huge fight around ensuring that the electronic voting machines had
paper trails and there was resistance by the secretary of state, so there
is no paper trail. There were some victories to ensure a paper trial --
by 2006. There were limited numbers of voting machines in African-American
districts. Some people had to wait up to eight hours, far more than in
predominantly white areas."
-
- BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
-
- On November 9, 2003, the New York Times reported:
"In
mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat
down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and
politically
inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his
home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. 'I am committed to helping Ohio
deliver
its electoral votes to the president next year,' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose
company is based in Canton, Ohio. That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell.
A longtime Republican, he is a member of President Bush's 'Rangers and
Pioneers,' an elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000
each for the 2004 race. But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is
involved
in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary
in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers
of paperless, touch-screen voting machines. Judging from Federal Election
Commission data, at least 8 million people will cast their ballots using
Diebold machines next November. ... Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing
of interests -- as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican
fund-raiser
-- troubling."
- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/
- business/yourmoney/09vote.html
-
- On November 3, 2004, Reuters reported: "Voters
across
the United States reported problems with electronic touch-screen systems
on Tuesday in what critics said could be a sign that the machines used
by one-third of the population were prone to error.... " http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1103-03.htm
- &nb
sp;
- On October 24, 2004, the Palm Beach Post reported:
"A
federal judge
- on Monday rejected U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's claim that
paperless
- electronic voting violates the constitutional rights
of
- Floridians...."
- http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content
- /news/epaper/2004/10/26/c1a_wexler_1026.html
-
- On November 3, 2004, Thomas Crampton wrote in the
International
Herald Tribune: "The global implications of the U.S. election are
undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in southern
Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the extremely
close contest fell short in many ways of the best global
practices...."
- http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/02/news/observe.html
-
- For more information, contact at the
- Institute for Public Accuracy
- Sam Husseini (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858
- or David Zupan (541) 484-9167
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