U.S. Election: Ohio Lost?

On January 7 on TomPaine.com and reprinted January 10 on guerilla news network, Russ Baker reported that fraud did not change "the outcome of the most important presidential election in recent times."  Baker's expansive definition of fraud includes even voter suppression.  He wrote:

The [House Judiciary Democrats'] report concludes that the "massive and unprecedented" voting irregularities in Ohio were in many cases caused by "intentional misconduct and illegal behavior."  Sounds like fraud to me.

Baker then runs through a handful of claims, but he does not draw these claims from the report cited above (available in .pdf format).  Instead, he takes the claims from laywers suing to overturn the election, writing that the report takes much from the lawsuits.

Baker finds only one claim to be true, the misallocation of voting machines, and states that this was "probably not" intentional.  He thus concludes in "Election 2004: Lost or Stolen" that it was lost.

As he wrote about those ambitious lawyers he hung out with, Baker has good intentions but he is wrong. Since roughly election night I have an article started and planned about the lack of authentic coverage to turn to and the failure of nearly anyone to step up and be an "old-style investigative reporter," as Russ Baker calls himself.  The great journalist Greg Palast didn't crunch the numbers when he wrote that Ohio went to Kerry.  The reported more than 92,000 uncounted "spoiled" ballots, mostly in minority and working class areas and mostly for Kerry, would not have been enough to put Kerry in office.  A full hand recount that includes these ballots might have an outside chance of putting Kerry in office.  It's the addition of voter suppression, especially through hours-long lines to vote, that makes it virtually certain that a free and fair election would have let Ohio voters choose Kerry.  This is true without any local tabulation fraud, larger scale electronic fraud, or the good old U.S. standby of stuffed or lost ballot boxes.

The Numbers

Counting people prevented from voting is even harder than estimating the breakdown of uncounted votes.  Nevertheless, the report by Congressional Judiciary Committee staff under Representative John Conyers of Michigan makes a reasonable attempt.  Another article by your humle reporter, compiled more than written, presented some of the charges:

• The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters. The conscious failure to provide sufficient voting machinery violates the Ohio Revised Code which requires the Boards of Elections to "provide adequate facilities at each polling place for conducting the election."
• Mr. Blackwell's decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr. Blackwell's decision departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidence that a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption at the polling places, and did not do so in other states.
• The Ohio Republican Party's decision to utilize thousands of partisan challengers concentrated in minority and Democratic areas likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal voters, who were not only intimidated, but could not wait out the long lines. Shockingly, these disruptions were publicly predicted and acknowledged by Republican officials: Mark Weaver, a lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party, admitted the challenges "can't help but create chaos, longer lines and frustration."
• Mr. Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able to receive provisional ballots 6 likely disenfranchised thousands, if not tens of thousands, of voters, particularly seniors. A federal court found Mr. Blackwell's order to be illegal and in violation of HAVA.
• Improper purging and other registration errors by election officials likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide.  The Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition projects that in Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to vote as a result of official registration errors.
• There were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process and the Ohio right to vote. Mr. Blackwell's apparent failure to institute a single investigation into these many serious allegations represents a violation of his statutory duty under Ohio law to investigate election irregularities.

The overwhelmingly Kerry-supporting 70,000 voters disenfranchised here, on the low end of the estimates, plus at least 10,000 net votes for Kerry if the tiny gain certified by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State in the partial recount extended statewide, plus 40,000 or more net votes from the uncounted machine-rejected ballots– that overtakes Bush's official 118,755 vote lead.  In a free and fair election, Kerry probably would have won.

Responsibilities of a Reporter

A rather odd and properly ignored article your reporter wrote on November 7, Democracy in the United States, presented two new practices as important for honest reporting:

• News organizations must follow-up on previously reported stories.
• Journalists have the responsibility to seriously and publicly consider the worst when people in power deny access to information necessary to hold them accountable.

Both apply here.

Russ Baker himself covered candidate Ralph Nader's New Hampshire recount better than anyone, but never gave the final results.  Nader himself says the recount, requested for several counties with unexpected results, checked out with the initial count quite closely and that the smooth process shows how a system with a non-partisan Secretary of State and hand countable ballots works very well to ensure everyone's faith in the system.  If Baker wants to shut down unfounded allegations of vote fraud, he should follow up on this story and present the exact extent of that recount and how many votes Bush or Kerry picked up.  I'll believe alleged Republican operative Ralph Nader, however, that it was a fair recount.

Which brings us to the Ohio recount, and the responsibility to investigate not just the charges local officials will eagerly explain away for you (though this is an invaluable role given the failure of both the corporate media and most activists to go to the source on this), but the accusations against more powerful folks trying to deny the people's right to know.

Baker completely mischaracterizes the recount, as having been completed and showing Kerry gaining only slightly.  In fact, the lack of professionalism, lack of transparency, and basic failure to do any significant recounting should strike a contrast to anyone familiar with Baker's initial reports on New Hampshire's prompt, professional treatment of Nader's request.

The biggest sabatoge of the recount by Kenneth Blackwell, an official Baker apparently did not try to interview while in Ohio, was making even an honest count moot.  Also from the Conyers report:

By setting the vote tally deadline so late and then delaying the declaration of results -- it took a full 34 days after the November 2 election for the results to be certified -- Secretary of State Blackwell insured that the time for completing recounts, therefore, was pushed to after the date of the Electoral College meeting.

Blackwell violated many people's right to have their vote counted  and he's violating the public's right to know just how many cast votes went uncounted.  He has not earned a free pass, he's earned the "close scrutiny" Baker applied to the election lawsuit lawyers.

Reporting Requires Reading the Reports of Others, Too

Baker has done more legwork than I have (to understate it just a little), but a little newsprint or Internet investigation would have helped his story.  He presents as a mystery an issue at least partially explained weeks ago:

In a couple of precincts in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), third party candidates did inexplicably well.  In one precinct located in a predominantly African-American area, Kerry got 290 votes, Bush 21 and Michael Peroutka – candidate of the anti-immigrant Constitutional Party – got 215. In another precinct that voted at the same high school, the tally was Kerry 318, Bush 21, and Libertarian Michael Badnarik 163.  These are, for the moment, mysteries, but they are not indications of widespread fraud.

Baker is right that these aren't indications of widespread fraud, but they aren't mysteries, and weren't when he wrote his article.  I haven't been to Ohio for a year, and I know what happened in this instance.  These impossible counts have been explained in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, among other places.  Where multiple precincts had to vote in one polling place ballots for one precinct were put in the machine for another.  When Kerry and Peroutka split the vote, though, this is not voter error but a problem with the polling station.  It could well be an accident, but it only cost Kerry votes, and it's one of those accidents that occurs because of systemic problems: the failure of our government to take democracy seriously, especially for Blacks.

The importance of this issue here, though, is that Baker pronounced on the fairness of the Ohio election without doing basic research.  He took his partial truth, based on his good investigative reporting tracking down the lawyers' claims, and has presented himself in two important, independent, and honest news outlets as conclusively determining that Bush's backers did not steal Ohio.

Disservice to Democracy

If Baker had written an article only investigating specific claims, and not announcing that Ohio was not stolen but lost, this article would not be necessary.  But if he is going to make broad conclusions, he needs to do a little research beyond his important legwork.

Baker's intentions may be good, but his truth is incomplete.  He does a disservice to the cause of democracy in the United States of America and to the citizens who tried with or without success to surmount the obstacles – regular and irregular – to voting in this country.