Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Or did he? The evidence clearly indicates this cannot be the basis of any mandate.

Interested? Maybe at least for the idea that as warned here and so many other places, Ohio's election system is broken?

Can you at least stomach this enough for the argument that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell should never hold elected office in Ohio again? Certainly not Governor under the same system rigged for him, by him.

Mind you, an unbelievable number of people rewarded Bush's administration for tax giveaways to companies that outsourced Ohio's manufacturing base, cherry-picked intelligence, mismanaged the war and destroyed our foreign policy. But even if Greg Palast has overstated the case (and I'm undecided about that as of yet) the so-called "mandate" about to be shoved down our throats is more like a whisper thin piece of tissue.

The Evidence:

4,000 votes for Bush in a precinct with 638 voters

And this was only a situation where Blackwell's office screwed up overtly. How many precincts were "nickled and dimed" in Bush's favor?

Just some data points E-mailed to me:

Ohio's ballots still outstanding...

Provisional - 155,337
Military/overseas - 86,512

Total yet to be counted - 241,849

Ohio's ballots cast and counted to date...

Total votes cast - 5,574,476
Bush received - 2,796,147
Kerry received - 2,659,664

Undervote/discarded/spoiled - 118,665

Number of votes separating the two candidates / number of votes needed from total still outstanding in a percentage (based on the 90% which was certified as valid in the last general election in 2000)...

136,483 / 217,664

At the very least this shows that Kerry need not have receive "All" the outstanding votes to cover the spread. By this math moron's caluclations, he would have had to get about 89% of the outstanding ballots that will be counted and only (too high still by far) but only when including the "spoiled" ballots he needed 69% of the votes had all the ballots been counted -- starting to get into the realm of possibility.

Add in folks who walked away from stations where the lines were hours long (there was no excuse for the situation in Kenyon College), didn't open on time, or were shut down for a couple of hours, and this thing was a lot closer than one would think. And if Iwere to speculate well within the 16,000 vote spread which would have triggered an automatic recount.

Kerry deserved the Ohio Medal of Honor for sparing us another FloriDUH, but that's exactly what we have here and it must be fixed and fixed now -- well before Ken Blackwell's run for Governor.

Graphic from the Columbus Dispatch.
Click for larger image.


The Anecdotal:

False Change of Registration. She shows up at her precinct and has to demand a provisional ballot. Hasn't missed an election in 34 years. Has no idea who reregistered her and changed her address.

That's not even the tip of the iceberg. Let's just say that this deserves it's own blog. My in box is full and still filling up. I have a lot of work to do.

One item that was directed to my attention was the story of a man currently in Germany who requested an absentee ballot from the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Elections Board. He registered as a Democrat and the ballot never came. As the deadline approached he requested another, this time as a Republican, and his absentee ballot promptly arrived in time for him to vote.

If this was in any way a trend and not merely a coincidence, it is more than alarming.

The Analysis:

TomPaine.com - Kerry Won is a start.

KOS has quite a bit more and Ohio Voter Supression News. should be looked at too.

More On This, Please
. . . reported election results vs exit polls are different for areas with and without touch-screen machines that do not have a paper trail, and that those differences always favor Republicans. Clean and untraceable, nice.

Maybe there's something to this and the nagging uncertainty and outright distrust of a system we didn't like in the first place.

But I'll repeat, I'm not saying that Bush lost, just that in the 21st century, this kind of thing should not happen. This is 2004 and after the last election the integrity of this election was paramount. After all, we have much better technology than they did in 1984.

UPDATE: Don't Read This either, not on a full stomach anyway.