OUTRAGE IN OHIO -- Angry residents storm State House

[Guest guest]

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/bbs/message.php?message=21758 & mpage=1 & topic=3 & \

showdate=11/6/04 & replies=54

 

OUTRAGE IN OHIO -- Angry residents storm State House

 

News: Elections & Legislation / Protest Activity

 

Outrage in Ohio: Angry residents storm State House in response to

massive voter suppression and corruption

 

Current rating: 1

 

 

by David Solnit

(No verified email address) 05 Nov 2004

Modified: 02:20:40 PM

November 3 - Toledo, Ohio Hundreds of angry Ohio residents marched

through the streets of Columbus—Ohio's Capital—this evening and

stormed the Ohio State House, defying orders and arrest threats from

Ohio State Troopers. " O-H-I-O ! suppressed democracy has got to

go, " they chanted. After troopers pushed and scuffled with people,

nearly a hundred people took over the steps and entrance to the

State's giant white column capital building and refused repeated

orders to disperse or face arrest. People prepared for arrests, ready

to face jail—writing lawyers phone numbers on their arms, signing jail

support lists and discussing non-cooperation and active resistance

(linking arms, but not fighting back).

also: Photos

 

A freshly painted banner held on the steps read " ONE VOTE DENIED =

DEMOCRACY IN TROUBLE! 100'S OF 1000'S OF VOTES SURPRESSED = DEMOCRACY

FAILED " articulated the crisis. An unprecedented massive grassroots

voter registration and get out the vote effort and widespread

opposition to Bush went up against the massive coordinated Republican

effort to suppress, intimidate and possibly steal millions of votes.

In addition to the voter suppression and intimidation is the fact that

Bush campaign co-chair Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is in

charge of the election and vote counting. But much deeper questions

about fundamental flaws in the system hang in the air.

 

STOLEN ELECTION?

CNN´s exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53

percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio´s male

voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Investigative reporter Greg Palast in

an article today titled " Kerry Won " details how the deciding states,

Ohio and New Mexico, if all votes were actually counted, would have

gone to Kerry. Palast explains, " Although the exit polls show that

most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of

these votes were simply not recorded. The election in Ohio was not

decided by the voters but by something called " spoilage. " Typically in

the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown

away, not recorded. " But that is just a piece of it.

 

TESTIMONIES OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT

The Ohio state House takeover was the culmination of an eight-hour

long afternoon of protest at the state capitol by Ohio student and

youth groups (The Columbus and Toledo Leagues of Pissed Off Voters,

and Reach Out-Bowling Green) together with Columbus residents followed

by a 300 strong 6pm march led by the Central Ohio Peace Network. The

earlier speak-out featured a litany of people who experienced or

witnessed voter suppression, intimidation and disenfranchisement

before and during the election. Thousand of Ohio voters had been

disenfranchised by partisan poll challengers, intimidation incidents,

polling places opening late, lines up to four and five hours long --

often in the rain.

 

Here are a few of their stories:

Holly Roach of Toledo, Ohio spoke of her 74-year-old father, Frank

Roach and her 89-year-old grandmother; Hazel Thompson requesting

absentee ballots in early October. Hazel Thompson is homebound and

Frank Roach had been scheduled for heart surgery on November 2.

Absentee ballots never arrived. They were told by the County Voting

Commission that they could not vote with either regular or provisional

ballots, because they had already requested absentee ballots and

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell had issued a directive forbidding

provisional ballots by people who applied for absentee ballots and not

received them (including some US service people recently returned from

Iraq). A lawsuit late in the afternoon of November 2 by a voter in

Lucas County led to a late afternoon order by Judge David Katz of the

Northern District of Ohio instructing the Ohio Secretary of State to

immediately advise all county boards of election to advise polling

precincts in their counties to issue provisional ballots to voters in

this situation.

 

Evan Morrison, a young get out the vote volunteer, told of polls

opening late. One poll at Glenwood Elementary in Toledo, OH opened

more than half and hour late.. During that time, from 6:30 to after

7AM, more than 50 people left without having voted. An hour and a half

after the polling site opened, the Republican election official said

they had run out of pencils, bringing voting to a halt. Evan ran to

the store and bought a bunch of number 2 pencils out of his own pocket

so voting could resume. Voting continued until 11AM, by which time up

to 100 more people had walked away.

 

Suzie Husami, a University of Toledo student said in a press

conference that her voter registration was challenged by Republicans

along with 35,000 other mostly newer registrants. She received a

letter from the Board of Elections reading: " NOTICE OF HEARING

Pursuant to Ohio Revised Code Section 3503.24: your registration is

being challenged. The reason stated as the basis for this challenge is

that you are unqualified to vote because you are not a resident of the

precinct where you can vote. A hearing has been set at the above

stated place and time. You have the right to appear, testify and call

witnesses and to be represented by an attorney. " The letter was

addressed from Paula Hicks-Hudson, Director of the Toledo Board of

Elections. Although the challenges to her were thrown out in court the

day before her hearing—three days before the election, many people who

received such letters were likely discouraged from voting.

 

Alli Starr, also a get out the vote volunteer, described how, 25

minutes before polls closed in Toledo, Ohio, Republican challengers

were harassing voters at the Mott Library, Central City polling

station, a low-income African-American community. Observers said that

they believed these challengers had repeatedly called the police

producing absurd stories in order to intimidate voters. One of the

Republican challengers was recognized as Dennis Lange, a prominent

local business owner who owns Pumpernickels Deli & Cafe. Mr. Lange

aggressively tried to push back African-American community members who

were poll watching and voting at the site. At one point more than four

police and sheriffs officers, including undercover officers, were

witnessed at the site for no apparent reason. [photo]

 

 

PRE-ELECTION VOTER SUPPRESSION

But even before election day, the Baltimore Chronicle reported

November 1 that " Through a combination of sophisticated vote

rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL,

machines that " spoil " votes---John Kerry begins with a nationwide

deficit that could easily exceed one million votes. "

 

Troy, Michigan Republican State Rep. John Pappageorge, a Michigan Bush

campaign Co-Chair, was quoted in July 16 edition of the Detroit Free

Press as saying, " If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we´re going

to have a tough time in this election. " Blacks comprise 83 percent of

Detroit´s population, and the city routinely elects Democratic

candidates by substantial margins. The British Broadcasting Company

has also disclosed a memo to top Republican officials in Florida

identifying voters in predominantly black precincts for possible

challenge.

 

The secretaries of state, usually the chief election official at the

state level, in four battleground states--Michigan, Missouri, Florida,

and Ohio have all taken top campaign posts for Bush and have been

accused of manipulating state election laws to restrict voter access

on behalf of Republicans. Ultra-right Ohio Secretary of State, J.

Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Ohio Bush campaign, together

with the Ohio Republican Party are at the center of this nationwide

effort to steal the election through voter suppression, intimidation

and corruption. In the months leading up to the election, Blackwell

attempted to require that registration applications that were not

posted on the correct weight paper be cancelled. His efforts to

suppress the vote have continued. Blackwell sought to restrict access

to provisional ballots: he challenged of the validity of over 35,000

new voter registrations in the state (recently thrown out by a Federal

Judge): he issued unclear directives regarding the right of ex-felons

to vote.

 

" In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working

to deny American citizens the right to vote, " charges Wade Henderson,

executive director of Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (the

country's largest civil and human-rights coalition). Miles Rapoport,

former Secretary of the State of Connecticut and President of the

nonpartisan public policy organization Demos, said, " As the election

approaches, chilling reports continue to surface of major efforts to

prevent people from voting. Legions of partisan challengers´ are being

readied for the polls on Election Day; Latino registrants in rural

Georgia are being targeted; and tens of thousands of new Ohio

registrants have been challenged. All appear to be organized

campaigns. These anti-democratic activities must be stopped. "

 

TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING

Additionally, the new touch voting machines being used in 29 states

and the District of Columbia, have been widely criticized by elections

officials and computer scientists and as susceptible to hacking and

malfunction. Election Data Services, a consulting firm, predicted 29

percent of voters would use touch-screen machines on voting day.

 

According to the November 3 Globe and Mail, " several dozen voters in

six states — particularly Democrats in Florida —said the wrong

candidates appeared on their touch-screen machine´s checkout screen,

the coalition said. In many cases, voters said they intended to select

John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it

showed them instead opting for President Bush, the group said. Roberta

Harvey, 57, of Clearwater, Fla., said she had tried at least a half

dozen times to select Kerry-Edwards when she voted Tuesday at

Northwood Presbyterian Church. After 10 minutes trying to change her

selection, the Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker

and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a

pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Ms.

Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Mr. Kerry before a

summary screen confirmed her intended selection. "

 

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. "

 

Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Susan 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 normally-reliable exit polls,

virtually the only check we have against tampering with voting

machines that have no 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. " *

 

NATIONWIDE RESPONSE

Across Ohio, demonstrations were held in Toledo, Cleveland, Oxford,

Athens and Cincinnati. Throughout the United States on both election

night and November 3 people erupted in protest -- some involving

1000's of people -- with marches, direct actions, civil disobedience,

and vigils. Marchers in San Francisco smashed bank windows. Rallies

were held in at least 40 cites and likely many, many more. Many of

these actions were planned in advance, advertised with flyers

headlined, " NOV 2: VOTE! NOV 3: MAKE IT COUNT! "

 

Most of the actions planned by groups were to take place regardless of

the election outcome and were focused more on the deeper issues of

democracy, not empire; healthcare, not warfare; and education, not

occupation. The day of action was initially called for by the Beyond

Voting network, whose call for actions read in part, " When your

government has troops stationed around the world, lets big

corporations write the rules of the global economy and pushes racist

policies that promote fear, undermines civil liberties, and rips off

working people, you are living in an EMPIRE! Empire is as system of

global control that combines international aggression with domestic

repression to create a deeply undemocratic world. REAL DEMOCRACY means

we the people have direct control over the decisions and resources

that matter in our lives. Real democracy means that we make the

decisions that impact our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and the

state of the world we hand off to our children. This year the world is

counting on us to expand the election year debate beyond Democrats

versus Republicans to the larger issue of whether the U.S. will be a

Democracy or an Empire. "

 

Two other networks, This Time We´re Watching (a project of the League

of Pissed Off Voters, the Truthforce Training Center and the Ruckus

Society with many other groups) and No Stolen Elections (Global

Exhange, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice,labor organizers and

others) had also begun to prepare a people power response for November

3. No Stolen Elections publicized a pledge of action to stop a stolen

election, but on election night they chose not to call on people to

take to the streets. The Election Protection Coalition an umbrella

group of volunteer poll monitors that set up a hotline and planned to

monitor and make public voting irregularities. They may have missed

one opportunity to make a difference when Ralph G. Neas, president of

the People for the American Way which helped form the coalition, said

to the media, " Overall, the problems of outright voter intimidation and

suppression have not been as great as in the past. "

 

The massive grassroots participation and activism -- the highest

levels of activism since before the Iraq invasion -- are hopeful. But

electoral work and single-issue campaigns without a broader systemic

analysis are a recipe for disappointment or failure. Moveon.org has

reportedly not returned press calls for two days after the election,

perhaps because they had naively thrown all their hopes with Kerry and

lacked a deeper vision or longer term strategy.

 

The League of Pissed Off Voters was one of the most hopeful efforts

within the massive grassroots efforts to unelect Bush. Catalyzing

activism around the election among youth, especialy youth of color,

they had a vision of building power and organization beyond the

elections using creative tactics and rooting themselves in hip hop and

youth culture. Other local grassroots efforts like Ithaca, New York's

Bush Must Go Coalition, used the energy of anti-Bush election to build

their organization and campaigns that had started before and will

continue after the election -- and after Bush is gone.

 

Let's be honest. Kerry would have been an improvement to Bush and sent

a much better signal to the world, but he is more reactionary than

Nixon; a pro-war, pro-corporate capitalism millionaire who wants a

more multilateral approach to wars and US empire building. It's also

an important to remember what makes deeper changes in the world is

movements and communities and people power, not politicians. And if we

step back and look at things globally, Bush and his gang are fringe

extremists whose empire is overextended, and lacks any global

legitimacy while we are part of a global majority, an ever growing

movement of movements that is creating common sense alternatives that

will undermine the empire from below.

 

--

David Solnit volunteered with the Mobilization for Democracy Not

Disenfranchisement and local anti-bush groups in NW Ohio in late

October/early November and is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How

to Uproot the System and Build a Better World

 

* Quote from the Institute for Public Accuracy