The Truth will prevail, but only if we demand it from Congress!

9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004

SCROLL DOWN

Home ] 9-11 Inside Job ] Federal Reserve ] Hacking Elections ] Iraq War ] Fake War on Terror ] New World Order ] Media ] Peak Oil-Petro Euros ] Fascism in U.S. ] Editorials ] About Us ] Links ] Contact Us ]

 

Home
Up

MEDIA COMPLICITY ARTICLE 6
 
6. News: Election 2004: N.Y. Times,WashingtonPost, and Cincinnati Enquirer Almost 
Break Votergate Wide Open; Stopped Only By Their Own Incompetence 

By ADVOCATE STAFF

The Advocate presents, below, an article in three parts -- representing the three 

opportunities the mainstream media had to break open the Votergate story in 

the last twenty-four hours, all of which chances were squandered due to the 

incompetence of the respective newspapers' writers and editors.



Half The Story Is Worse Than No Story At All: The New York Times 

Negligently Under-reports the Biggest Scandal Since the Election



Imagine, for a moment, that an article by Tom Zeller, Jr. was published today, 

December 15th, 2004, in the New York Times, and that the article -- a news 

article, no less, not an editorial! -- recounted an accusation by Green Party 

presidential candidate David Cobb and Hocking County (OH) Deputy 

Director of Elections Sherole Eaton that representatives of Triad 

Governmental Systems (TGS, an electronic voting machine developer) 

intentionally tampered with  Ohio voting machines after the 2004 election.



Well, imagine no further -- that's exactly what happened this morning.



You might also assume, however, that in the unlikely event such a story was 

reported by The New York Times, it would be reported in its entirety -- that is, 

The Times would report that not only was the machine tampered with in full 

view of several elections officials (only two of whom, interestingly, appear to 

have leaked the information) but the tamperer followed up his tampering 

with an instruction to Hocking County elections officials on how to defraud 

any recount effort.



If you assumed The Times would find this evidence pertinent, you'd be wrong. 

Instead, The Times reported only that the mysterious tamperer "made 

several adjustments to the Hocking County tabulator." This incomplete 

accusation allowed TGS to, in a public statement made today, proffer a 

complete defense: that the employee was merely "preparing the machines 

for a recount," and that doing so "was standard procedure and was done in 

all 41 counties [in Ohio]."



The problem, of course, is that The Times reported only the least interesting -- 

and most patently "legal" -- portion of the story. In fact, Mr. Cobb also told House 

Judiciary Committee Democrats that, after asking Hocking County elections 

representatives which machine would be used in a recount, and then engaging

 in some miscellaneous "repairs" of the machine the Triad Systems representative 
[then] suggested that since the hand count 

had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize

 the several numbers which would be needed to get the count to come out 

exactly right, that they should post [a] series of numbers on the wall where 

they would not be noticed by observers. He suggested making them look like 

employee information or something similar. The people doing the hand count 

could then just report these numbers no matter what the actual count of the 

ballots revealed. This would then 'match' the tabulator report for this precinct 

exactly. The numbers were apparently the final certified counts for the selected 

precinct.



Would TGS have been able to present the same defense to The Times, had the 

newspaper accurately reported its own story? 



No Math Skills Required: The 

Washington Post Finds John Kerry's Missing 

200,000 Votes, Then Divides By Ten and Issues a Report



If any additional evidence was needed for the proposition that elementary 

mathematics and professional-grade journalism simply don't mix, The Washington 

Post has provided it -- by uncovering the single statistic which constitutes the 

secret of George W. Bush's victory in Ohio, and then failing to report accurately 

on same because of a dearth of basic mathematical skills.



Consider the following sentence, written in the English language and published

 in a newspaper with millions of readers:



Electoral problems prevented many thousands of Ohioans from voting on 

Nov. 2. In Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated 

voters turned away without casting ballots [because of long lines at voting 

precincts].



If those millions of readers were to know -- as those with access to the internet 

either already know or could readily uncover -- that A) Columbus is in Franklin

 

County; B) Franklin County had 525,796 voters on election day; C) Ohio had 

5,625,281 voters on election day; D) Franklin County therefore was home to only 

9.35% of Ohio's electorate on election day; E) a "bi-partisan estimate[] say[s] that 

5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away" from Columbus voting precincts 

because of long lines; then, therefore, if most or all other Ohio counties had 

similarly long lines (as Republican operatives in the state have been asserting), 

somewhere between 54,000 (low estimate), 107,000 (average estimate), and 

160,000 voters (high estimate) turned away from Ohio polls on election day 

because of long lines.



Of course, even those numbers are woefully low, according to the logical analysis 

allowed for by The Post's own statistics, if not its own analysis. In fact, The Post 

was only talking about voters in the city of Columbus itself -- a city with a 

population of 711,470. Columbus had a turnout of approximately 53% on 

election day, according to Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips (see link, below). This 

means, of course, that  Columbus

 had approximately 377,000 voters on November 

2nd -- only 71.70% of Franklin County's total votes. The Washington

 Post numbers suggest, therefore, that the actual number of votes "lost" in 

Ohio due to long lines breaks down as follows:



Low Estimate: 75,000

Avg. Estimate: 149,000

High Estimate: 223,000



Given that numerous doctoral studies have already shown that (contrary to 

Republican claims) the longest lines in 

Ohio on election day were in heavily-Democratic urban centers and mid-sized, 
Democratic-leaning college campuses, one presumes the above voters would 
have broken substantially, perhaps even dramatically, for Kerry. 



The Advocate notes that both the "average" estimate and the "high" 

estimate are much, much higher than Bush's current margin of 118,775 votes 

in Ohio.



In light of the above, one might expect The Post to follow up the sentence, 

"in  Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters 

turned away without casting ballots," with the sentence, "'lost' votes of this 

sort may have cost John Kerry the presidential election." 



Instead, The Post concluded that "It is unlikely that such 'lost' votes would 

have changed the election result[s]..."



To compound the injury, The Concord (NH) Monitor quickly picked up The 

Washington Post story, titling it gravely (yet erroneously), "Lost Votes Don't Tip 

Election."



Warren County Lockdown Was a Deliberate Fraud; Cincinnati

 
Enquirer Satisfied Officials Are Really Sorry and Will Try Harder Not to De-Fraud 

Ohioans and the Nation Next Time



The man who engineered the now-infamous election-day terrorism lock-

down in Warren County, Emergency Services Director Frank Young, is 

strangely silent these days on the topic of whether or not the Federal Bureau 

of Investigation told him, or any Warren County

 official, that on a scale of 1-to-10, the international terrorism threat against 

Warren County was a "10" -- the most dire threat imaginable under the now much-vaunted, 
 
though never-used-by-the-FBI "1-to-10 scale."



Young's silence is best termed an "awkward silence." Awkward, because parents of the 752 
 
children at the Donovan Elementary School -- across the 

street from the Warren County Elections Administration
 
Building -- were never notified that the area was considered Al-Qaeda's number-one terror 

target on election day.



Awkward, too, because Lebanon Schools Superintendent Bill Sears, in charge of 

Donovan Elementary School, recently told reporters, "I wish somebody would 

have warned us, too, because we would have certainly taken precautions." 



Then again, maybe Young's silence is so awkward because the FBI's 

consistent position on the scandal seems to be that Young was and is a liar.



If The Cincinnati Enquirer is to be believed, Young is a liar -- and awkwardly 

silent -- no more. The reason Republican elections officials in Warren County

 
were alone in a locked building with thousands of ballots on election day is 

because, according to Young, "I...just [wanted] to control the flow of people into 

that building that night" -- which, of course, is exactly what Democratic observers 

and fair-elections activists were afraid he would say. Young went on to admit that 

there was "no specific, 100% threat" to Warren County on election night, and that 

the lockdown he ordered was based on "months of information" -- information 

The Advocate assumes Mr. Young gathered himself, via as-yet uncertain channels 

of international espionage, as the FBI seems to know nothing of the "months of 

information" about threats to Warren County, either.



Young told the Enquirer that the scandal was "overblown" and 

"misconstrued." The Enquirer apparently was mollified, however, not by Young's dismissal of 

nationwide concerns about his actions, but rather by these poignant words of 

contrition from Warren County Sheriff Tom Ariss: "[The Sheriff's 

Department] had no input on that decision....[but] everyone's learned from it."



See Related Stories:



("Lawmaker Seeks Inquiry Into 

Ohio

 Vote," The New York Times, Tom Zeller, Jr.,
 12/15/04)



Article

("Several Factors Contributed to 'Lost' Votes in 
Ohio," The Washington Post, 

Michael Powell and Peter Slevin, 12/15/04)



Article

("Lost Votes Don't Tip Election," The 

Concord Monitor [Courtesy of The Washington
 Post], Michael Powell and Peter Slevin, 12/16/04)



Article

(Warren CountyRecount
 Goes Public," Cincinnati

 Enquirer, Erica Solvig, 

12/15/04)



Article

specs everywhere

("Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed," International Labor Communications 

Association, William Rivers Pitt [Appearing Courtesy of www.truthout.org], 

12/15/04)



Article

("Stealing Votes in Columbus

," Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, 11/23/04)