Support The Challenge In Ohio

[Guest human_*]

Its okay, you can hate republicans to your hearts content. If Ohio Democrats wish to waste more money on an election that has been over for some time, then All I ask is that ohio democrats NOT ask the federal government for an increase in funds to feed this type of paranoid delusion.

 

The Tax payers’ money can be better spent.

 

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A public outcry in Ohio has forced the state to delay its plans to destroy the ballots from the contested 2004 Presidential elections. Allegations of fraud and disenfranchisement in the state continue to cause people to question the results which declared Bush the winner by a 130,000 vote margin.

 

Ohio State Senator Jeff Jacobson asked Blackwell in July 2003 to disqualify Diebold Election Systems' bid to supply voting machines for the state, after security problems were discovered in its software, but was refused. Blackwell had ordered Diebold touch screen voting machines, reversing an earlier decision by the state to purchase only optical scan voting machines which, unlike the touch screen devices, would leave a "paper trail" for recount purposes. The controversy was inflamed the next month when Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold, sent a fund-raising letter to Ohio Republicans, stating that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Although he clarified his statement as merely a poor choice of words, critics of Diebold and/or the Republican party interpreted this as at minimum an indication of a conflict of interest, at worst implying that those newly purchased electronic voting machines which did not leave any verifiable paper trail represented a risk to the fair counting of ballots.

 

On April 4, 2006, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Blackwell "owned stock [83 shares, down from 178 shares purchased in January 2005] in Diebold, a voting-machine [and ATM] manufacturer, at the same time his office negotiated a deal" with the company. After discovering the stock ownership, Blackwell promptly sold the shares at a loss. He attributed the purchase to an unidentified financial manager at Credit Suisse First Boston who he said had, without his knowledge, violated his instructions to avoid potential conflict of interest.

 

When Cuyahoga county's primary was held on May 2, 2006, officials ordered the hand-counting of more than 18,000 paper ballots after Diebold's new optical scan machines produced inconsistent tabulations, leaving several local races in limbo for days and eventually resulting in a reversal of the outcome of one race for state representative. Blackwell ordered an investigation by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections; Ohio Democrats demanded that Blackwell, due to his prior role in acquiring the Diebold equipment as well as his status as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in this election, recuse himself from the investigation due to conflicts of interest, but Blackwell has not done so.

 

On January 6, 2005, representatives from the 50 American states met to certify the electoral votes for president and vice president. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones raised an objection to Ohio's votes, on the grounds that they were not "regularly given". This was the first objection to an entire state's votes since 1877, and resulted in separate debates and votes on the objection in both Houses. (A similar objection occurred in 2001, with Rep. Maxine Waters challenging Florida's votes, but in that instance no Senator joined the objection, so it could not be legally recognised.)

 

See CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H121

 

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/ge...21&position=all

 

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/News/NewsList.aspx