Rasmussen April Senate and Gov Numbers

Feb 16                                    Down 9 points
46% Dewine
37% Brown

Mar 28 (Brown closes the lead by 6 points) Down 3 points
45% Dewine
42% Brown

April 20 (Brown closes the lead another point!) Down 2 points
43% Dewine
41% Brown

I think we should all be thanking Schumer we got Hackett out of the race before he slipped up by bringing up rumors of Bush using cocaine or comparing political christians to terrorists

He would have been negative-attack add'ed out of the race, now Brown keeps closing the track, is up on Zogby, is on the way to be the 2nd most likely challenger to beat an incumbent

Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?

But none of the on-the-ground glitches can begin to explain the impossible numbers surrounding the alleged defeat of Issues Two through Five. The Dispatch polling has long been a source of public pride for the powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in 2004.

The Dispatch was somehow dead accurate on Issue One, and then staggeringly wrong on Issues Two through Five. Sadly, this impossible inconsistency between Ohio's most prestigious polling operation and these final official referendum vote counts have drawn virtually no public scrutiny.

Though there were glitches, this year's voting lacked the massive irregularities and open manipulations that poisoned Ohio 2004. The only major difference would appear to be the new installation of touchscreen machines in those additional 41 counties.

And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch polling---dead accurate for Issue One---was wildly wrong beyond all possible statistical margin of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.

If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.

And we can also, for all intents and purposes, forget about the future of American democracy.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559

Blackwell defined by '04 vote, supporters and opponents say

Sunday, April 23, 2006

By JAMES DREW
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU CHIEF

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060423/NEWS09/604230377

As Ohio's secretary of state and head election officer, Kenneth Blackwell was in charge of the state's controversial 2004 election in which President Bush narrowly carried Ohio's crucial electoral votes.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS )

By MATT TAIBBI

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9519825/meet_mr_republican_jack_abramoff?rnd=1144952282375&has-player=true

(Excerpt on Ohio election fraud and Bob Ney is below illustration)

Illustration by Edward Sorel

... “All along, Abramoff was buying journalists, creating tax-exempt organizations to fund campaign activities and using charities to fund foreign conflicts. He spent the past twenty years doing business with everyone from James Dobson to the Gambino family, from Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist to Karl Rove to White House procurements chief David Safavian. He is even lurking in the background of the 2004 Ohio voting-irregularities scandal, having worked with the Diebold voting-machine company to defeat requirements for a paper trail in elections.” ...

... “Everyone sold themselves on the cheap. They apparently got Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and many others in the House, to lie back and open their legs all the way for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions. In the Third World, corrupt politicians at least get something for selling out the people — boats, mansions, villas in the south of France. If you offered the lowest, most drunken ex-mobster in the Russian Duma $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in soft money for his vote, he would laugh in your face; he might even be insulted enough to shoot you. But Jack Abramoff apparently got any number of congressmen to play ball for the same kind of money.”

“They paid journalists to change their opinions; as it turns out, the right to free speech is worth about $2,000 a column to America’s journalists like Doug Bandow of Copley News Service. And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004.”

“They targeted Congress, the courts, the integrity of elections, and the free press, and in every corner they found willing partners who could be had for a few bucks and a package of golf tees. That doesn’t mean Jack Abramoff was so very smart. No, what that says is that America is no longer trying very hard. And when Jack Abramoff hears his sentence, ours will certainly be made plain soon after. Jack Abramoff was the Patient Zero of Washington corruption. He’s the girl at school that everyone got a piece of, including two janitors in their forties. It strains all credulity to think that he’s been talking to the Department of Justice for months and yet prosecutors still have to “encircle” a lone congressman, Bob Ney, as has been reported. If Ney is the big target the government made a deal with Abramoff for, we’ll know we’ve been had again.”

I hesitate to jump in on this testosterone-laden battle -- but I do have opinions and some relevant experiences (probably too much to post here).

I've read John Conyers' report, the article in Harplantic (I sometimes confuse the 2 magazines and can't remember who wrote it), I had kids who were out canvassing for ACT and VoteMob, and I participated in the recount, on the basis of the things the kids told me, as well as my own experience.

My mother is 87, a staunch Democrat who has been a delegate to the state convention in Wisconsin, where my parents lived for more than 30 years, once ran for school board (and lost, to my father's great relief), had fundraisers at our house (I remember Pierre Salinger coming to one), and once called up the head of the local Democratic party to make sure she was standing behind McGovern when Mother heard a rumor about an equivocal comment -- Mother sounded like a mini ward boss on the phone: "We have six voting Democrats in our household and we want to know if you're supporting the national ticket!" I once saw her snatch a mean sign right out of a college Young Republican's hands at a Democratic rally(back in the 60's, when we lived in North Carolina), and tear it up! The young man just stood there with his mouth open. The rest of us gave her a talking to about free speech -- but she just thought he was too rude and should have been ashamed of himself (and maybe he was, considering his reaction to her righteous indignation). This is a person who wanted to vote, still likes to talk politics -- so of course I wanted to change her registration from Wisconsin to Ohio, having persuaded her to come here. She's frail and her eyesight is failing, so my ACT daughter gave me the forms for her to register and to get an absentee ballot. Her handwriting is shaky, and  I wasn't surprised when the first form came from the secretary of state's office, asking for confirmation of her -- and my -- identity. That seemed reasonable, and I mailed it back. But things kept coming in the mail -- vague warnings that she might not be allowed to vote, warnings about voter fraud -- and then she got her registration confirmed, so I assumed the absentee ballot would arrive in a timely manner. But it didn't.

On election day, her absentee ballot still hadn't come, so I took her to her polling place (she is in a big retirement community, so it was right there). They wouldn't let her vote, even provisionally, because they said she was listed as having voted absentee. I called the Board of Elections to complain.

Then the mail came -- and there, finally, on Election Day, was her absentee ballot. She filled it out, and I hand carried it to the Board of Elections. I made my husband drive me down -- it was pouring, and I didn't want to cope with parking. He dropped me off across the street. There was a long line of COTA buses, parked bumper to bumper in front of the Board of Elections building. I walked up the sidewalk beside them and an agitated security guard said "You can't come over here!" (And I assure you, I don't look like most people's idea of a terrorist -- unless you are a Republican with a guilty conscience, or under instructions from one.) I told him what I was there for, and he directed me to the back of the building, where there was a big awning -- the sort of thing you see at a football game over a PTA snack area, or at a funeral -- and a bunch of people making you run a security gauntlet to take anything inside -- plus all the smokers were hanging out there, so it was kind of annoying and stinky for a nonsmoker like me. Some woman (also in uniform) finally took pity on me and asked what I was there for. I explained, rain trickling down my neck from the edge of the awning, and she said she would hand carry it in for me. I hope she did. But I didn't like the Board of Elections looking fortified (why were they doing that unless they were anticipating outrage or trouble -- did they think they deserved it?). It seemed frightening and undemocratic somehow, like something in a Banana republic or fascist state. It just didn't seem American. And I wish I'd insisted on getting some sort of record of having given my mother's ballot to someone -- but I was wet and I had a spouse who was probably tired of circling the block, so I didn't. If my husband and I hadn't both had the day off, we couldn't have done what we did to make my mother's vote count. It might be her last presidential election -- and I don't think she -- or we -- should have had to go through all that, although it was nothing compared to other people's experiences.

That's just one anecdote -- and all this could be coincidental, but it does seem that many people had problems voting. There were reports of "pranks" -- signs telling people they'd be voting on different days in their area and the like. I had to wait an hour to vote in my suburban precinct, which I didn't mind, since I got to hang out with some interesting people -- and there seemed to be enough machines -- but one was doing weird things, agitating the poll workers. Maybe it was no big deal.

Of course, none of this was as bad as what my daughter who worked for ACT was seeing. She was heartbroken -- she had done amazingly hard work, getting people registered, often going into pretty rough areas, talking to people about their rights (including people who had done their time for felony convictions who had been told by parole officers that they couldn't vote). She convinced a lot of citizens that voting was important -- and she believed it. She felt like she had been an inadvertant part of one more betrayal. She's hard at work once again -- but I know she wonders how all those people she registered to vote are going to feel this time.

So I took part in the recount, and I am grateful to the Green Party for what they did for all of us. I was at the Franklin County Board of Elections for it, but gave up my chance to observe to a college student -- I want this experience firmly in the minds of the next generation. David Cobb, the Green presidential candidate, was down there, and I was impressed. He is thoughtful, articulate, amazingly optimistic about the possibility of genuine change and progressive values. If we had a parliamentary system, I'd be a Green. But we don't, so I am a Democrat. People in my family signed petitions for Bob Fitrakis to be on the ballot -- so we've had some "discussions" at our house about whether that will take votes from the Democrats. One person approves of everything Bob Fitrakis says. Another argues the people who are voting for him wouldn't vote for a Democrat anyway. I don't know -- but the argument that we need them in case there has to be another recount, is important to me.

I still remember that Matt Damschroeder was there too on recount day, being grumpy in an interview with some reporter as I left. I wasn't impressed with his attitude. Maybe the recount did not uncover much -- but what was found is important, even if it is not a signal of orchestrated fraud. Any failure of the system is important. 

 Maybe people are getting too caught up in conspiracy theories -- but maybe not. The 2000 and 2004 elections have had quite an effect on me, and I think Karl Rove and those he has inspired are reprehensible and contemptible and will resort to any skullduggery they can dream up. The Bradblog has become too much to read these days, although I am glad they're still at work. I've run across several programmers who tell me that these machines are easy to scam, and I hear people say that Blackwell is convinced he has it all sewed up. I can't accept that. We have to make sure there are trained poll workers and poll watchers everywhere. I think Howard Dean is going a good job. If the election is undermined, it may well be "death by a thousand cuts" rather than anything that can ever be proven. But we all have to be willing to work as hard as my kids did in the '04 campaign to make sure we get a free and fair election.

Blackwell winning? -- that's the stuff of my nightmares! 

Spirit1

Wow,

Man I know I have gotten testy a time or two because I am in a losing corner, but damn I still fight for what I believe in and come in here and talk it out to blow off steam.

This guy really needs to calm down and take that kind of aggression and use it to change Ohio not to freak out on us with.

Really why would you even bother to come in here and tell us we are foolish for thinking we will win when there is not a way in blazes that Blackwell is going to win this election without thousands of Ohioans screaming he's a cheater. He really just needs to give up and go home.

 Why isn't it illegal for him to run when he is the office position he is in?

LOVE THE SHERROD SIGN!!

We all need to cool off every now and again, we are hopefully all Democrats here and we will fight our asses off to get a Democrat elected no matter what!!