> The Silence of the Scams: Psychological Resistance to Facing Election Fraud
11 May 2005, 20:31
If you look at the facts, particularly in Ohio, there are certainly enough questions and anomalies — regarding both the conduct of the election and the vote count — to justify a thorough unofficial investigation by the news media as well as official investigations by the proper authorities. Certain specific incidents — e.g., the lockdown of the vote count in one Southern Ohio county which officials claimed was based on a (non-existent) warning from the FBI of a terrorist threat — so obviously give the appearance of impropriety that it’s hard to imagine anyone making a reasonable argument that they DON’T deserve investigation.
If there was nothing fishy about the election, why has there been so much resistance to the few inquiries — by Rep John Conyers and others — which have been launched? Why has Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell been so uncooperative and indeed obstructionist? One would think he’d be eager to have any lingering doubts erased and his name unambiguously cleared by investigators. Instead, his hostile reaction (some might say over-reaction) has exactly resembled what one might expect from someone with something to hide.
Leaving aside the traditional, almost institutionalized disenfranchisement of black (and in the Southwest, Latino) voters which occurs in every election (I believe that, nationwide, almost 50% of the eight million or so ballots declared "spoiled" and thus never counted were cast by African-Americans), I think there’s very little doubt that Bush legitimately (as far as the mechanics of the actual election are concerned) won the popular vote in 2004. Therefore his election, however flawed, can’t be considered a denial of the will of the American people, as it arguably was in 2000, but it will now probably never be known whether the majority of Ohioans who set out to vote on election day (and were legally entitled to do so) — in other words, those who actually voted plus those who were prevented from voting through no fault of their own by impossibly long lines, deliberately planned confusion, planted misinformation, etc. — favored Bush or Kerry, or even whether the ballots actually, legally cast favored Bush or Kerry, or whether (and if so on how great a scale, and by whom) vote totals were deliberately manipulated.
However, I just don’t see how you could look at ALL the anomalies and allegations and unexplained goings on which have surfaced in connection with the election in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere and claim with a straight face that there are no grounds for an investigation. In fact, to even be able to hold an intelligent opinion concerning the argument over the signficance of the discrepancy between exit poll data and the reported vote count, you would need to be a trained statistician.
It’s interesting that the current administration — by any objective standard the most secretive in recent history — and their Republican allies in Congress — who like to pass mystery bills in the middle of the night with a minimum of debate — always oppose ANY independent investigation into ANYTHING they’re involved in. They resisted the 9/11 Commission at every turn; they’ve tried to keep the Red Cross from investigating conditions at Guantanamo; just a week or so ago they threw UN human rights monitors out of Afghanistan; Congress tried to dismantle the House Ethics Committee to prevent any further examination of Tom DeLay’s allegedly shady dealings; the military has deliberately made life difficult for independent jouralists in Iraq and has raised no objection to the new Iraqi government’s arrest of a number of journalists; the Vice-President just won a case allowing him to keep secret the names of those who advised on his energy plan; and so on... Why, you’d almost think they had something to hide!
If you look at the facts, particularly in Ohio, there are certainly enough questions and anomalies — regarding both the conduct of the election and the vote count — to justify a thorough unofficial investigation by the news media as well as official investigations by the proper authorities. Certain specific incidents — e.g., the lockdown of the vote count in one Southern Ohio county which officials claimed was based on a (non-existent) warning from the FBI of a terrorist threat — so obviously give the appearance of impropriety that it’s hard to imagine anyone making a reasonable argument that they DON’T deserve investigation.
If there was nothing fishy about the election, why has there been so much resistance to the few inquiries — by Rep John Conyers and others — which have been launched? Why has Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell been so uncooperative and indeed obstructionist? One would think he’d be eager to have any lingering doubts erased and his name unambiguously cleared by investigators. Instead, his hostile reaction (some might say over-reaction) has exactly resembled what one might expect from someone with something to hide.
Leaving aside the traditional, almost institutionalized disenfranchisement of black (and in the Southwest, Latino) voters which occurs in every election (I believe that, nationwide, almost 50% of the eight million or so ballots declared "spoiled" and thus never counted were cast by African-Americans), I think there’s very little doubt that Bush legitimately (as far as the mechanics of the actual election are concerned) won the popular vote in 2004. Therefore his election, however flawed, can’t be considered a denial of the will of the American people, as it arguably was in 2000, but it will now probably never be known whether the majority of Ohioans who set out to vote on election day (and were legally entitled to do so) — in other words, those who actually voted plus those who were prevented from voting through no fault of their own by impossibly long lines, deliberately planned confusion, planted misinformation, etc. — favored Bush or Kerry, or even whether the ballots actually, legally cast favored Bush or Kerry, or whether (and if so on how great a scale, and by whom) vote totals were deliberately manipulated.
However, I just don’t see how you could look at ALL the anomalies and allegations and unexplained goings on which have surfaced in connection with the election in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere and claim with a straight face that there are no grounds for an investigation. In fact, to even be able to hold an intelligent opinion concerning the argument over the signficance of the discrepancy between exit poll data and the reported vote count, you would need to be a trained statistician.
It’s interesting that the current administration — by any objective standard the most secretive in recent history — and their Republican allies in Congress — who like to pass mystery bills in the middle of the night with a minimum of debate — always oppose ANY independent investigation into ANYTHING they’re involved in. They resisted the 9/11 Commission at every turn; they’ve tried to keep the Red Cross from investigating conditions at Guantanamo; just a week or so ago they threw UN human rights monitors out of Afghanistan; Congress tried to dismantle the House Ethics Committee to prevent any further examination of Tom DeLay’s allegedly shady dealings; the military has deliberately made life difficult for independent jouralists in Iraq and has raised no objection to the new Iraqi government’s arrest of a number of journalists; the Vice-President just won a case allowing him to keep secret the names of those who advised on his energy plan; and so on... Why, you’d almost think they had something to hide!