Florida - Suit seeks to overturn election - 12/2

[dzika]

Suit seeks to overturn election
02 Dec 2004
By Marvin G. Cortner News-Gazette Staff Writer

-snip-
The Osceola County Canvassing Board and the two newly elected
Republican county commissioners have been named in a lawsuit that
alleges voting irregularities.

Julio Cesar Diaz II, a Kissimmee resident who worked on the campaign
of Democratic County Commission candidate Michael Harford as a
political consultant and who observed canvassing board activities
for both Harford and commission candidate Peter Olivo, alleges
irregularities occurred with the way absentee and early votes were
handled by the canvassing board. Republican County Commissioners Ken
Smith and Atlee Mercer and Osceola County Judge Jon Morgan comprised
the canvassing board for the Nov. 2 election.

-snip-
Diaz alleges that the unexplained delivery of thousands of ballots
to the canvassing board late on election night after the polls
closed provides the grounds on which the election should be set
aside. After the polls closed on Election Day, the elections office
received 1,955 absentee ballots and 2,602 missed early votes. He
claims that a number of these ballots were illegal — that people
essentially voted twice — and in a sufficient number to change or
place in doubt the results of the election.

-snip-
Diaz claims that neither the Supervisor of Elections staff nor the
canvassing board provided an adequate explanation as to how the
absentee ballots and early votes were received and handled on
Election Day.

-snip-
Diaz further states in court documents that the attorney also
reported that on Nov. 2 a number of absentee ballots reviewed by the
canvassing board appeared to be voted in a “hasty manner” as most of
them did not have a vote on the constitutional amendments or for
Appellate Court judges.

http://www.oscnewsgazette.com/index.php?option=news&task=viewarticle&sid=9670

[flordehinojos]

1. God Bless Julio Cesar Diaz II's heart

but in a jeb bush florida turf .... no election which favors the bush goons is going to be overturned.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

3. Don't need your wet blanket

Need people in Florida to stand up for Diaz.

[flordehinojos]

6. I thought I was standing up for Diaz when I said Bless his heart,

but then i thought i also hit some reality spot about what will not happen in jeb bush's turf ... sort of listening to people is not a bush virtue... has his great brother ever listen to the millions of people saying no to war, no to the iraq invasion, no the iraq occupation and no to stolen elections? No. these bush boys and their goons they do whatever they damned well please and that was my point.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

7. So do you Floridians just roll over and play dead?

Where is the imagination? the dedication? the backbone? Come on, set an example. The rest of us have been victimized by Florida long enough.

[flordehinojos]

9. I don't think you have been victimized by Florida. YOU HAVE been

victimized by BUSH along with the rest of us in FLORIDA who, after four years of sending letters to the newspapers and television stations, both on a local and national level, and having them respond that we need to GET OVER IT, not respond at all, respond by saying that someone has gotten hold of our e-mail and is using it to send them irrational e-mails because we have dared to criticize the work that they are doing .... the time has come for us to recognize that we are being silenced and ignored and that there does not seem much left that we can do ... unless the country goes into a full armed revolution...and it may be that that is where bush is driving the country to.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

10. you many be right.......nt

[eowyn_of_rohan]

11. oops, meant MAY be right (nt)

[Stand and Fight]

26. That, my friend, is the only thing that will fix this country.

Revolution is absolutely necessary.

[PATRICK]

17. That is one cold truth

The Gore campaign for all its talent didn't know the judicial turf which was stacked against them in all the right places except for the State Supreme Court which reluctantly had to take the ball to get it into play, then get pre-empted by the Bush SCOTUS in the Decision of Infamy.

All of our challenges are as spirited as in 2000 when several suits were filed by citizens who in hindsight were not coordinated with Gore(contrary to what a rational supporter would assume). Have we learned anything about gaming the system? It doesn't appear so. These separate efforts are washing up now against the same hurdles and time limits that easily shunted Gore aside- with much less public attention. The applications are just, often clever, but do they know the judges? In 2000 those luminaries were researched and googled to lower our expectations.

I think we are massively spinning our wheels, yet the depth of commitment to challenging FRAUD and the legitimacy of the system is much greater than in 2000 when people felt compelled to bow to the attentive media definitions and "play the game", letting the main issue(that GORE WON and BUSH CHEATED) slide for the real possibility that Gore could win a TKO. The big danger this time is that there still is a coming letdown if Kerry just dissolves into the lost "game" and that sucks the life out of our efforts.

THAT cannot happen and why should it? The whole game is a deadly fraud and a crime. It is a system that must be overturned not a game that must be rematched in 2008 or 2006. We need to recover America not slink away to allow worse and worse to happen again and again..

[Truman01]

2. Again, this suit has NOTHING to do with overturning

the Presidential race. This suit is about a board of elections race. The margin of victory in the Presidential race can not be affected by a single county like this.

TC

[ClassWarrior]

4. It's about establishing a pattern.

I can't understand why so many are expecting a lightning bolt. We're going to win this thing little by little.

NGU.

[Truman01]

5. This isn't going to happen little by little......

We are dreaming. If we don't find major fraud, MAJOR, there is not going to be anything done to this election. We can find the fraud, or accept the election, or just wait until Jan 20th and be standing around waiting for a lightning bolt.

TC

[eowyn_of_rohan]

8. Well then, we'll just have to change our focus

and carry the fight to a different issue, of which there are plenty

[The Backlash Cometh]

16. Don't listen to Truman

[eowyn_of_rohan]

18. gotcha. -nt

[Carolab]

12. Why don't you just keep on working on what we can work on

and continue the fight, instead of nay-saying and wringing your hands? Have you donated? Done research? Helped here with the tasks on the FRAUD WORK TEAM? Offered to volunteer? Anything?

[Truman01]

13. I was part of the Gore legal team.....

So I'm not talking through a hole in my head when I tell you that there isn't anything here. We are making most of this crap up. So far, I haven't seen one thing that could even possibly overturn this election. We LOST>

TC

[Stand and Fight]

27. You know what?

Prove it. Prove that you were part of the Gore legal team, because you sure as hell don't seem to be doing much more than trying to dampen spirits. Rather than "nay-saying," why not contribute to the EFFORT or just do us all a favor and keep your nastiness to yourself!

[Truman01]

34. If the truth is nastiness then you are just going to have to live with

it. I certainly don't need to prove to you what I have done in my life. I'm a trial attorney with plenty of experience and you can like what I say or ignore what I say. If you want me to rah rah a bunch of bull shit you are just out of luck. Bull is bull and that is all I have to say about it. If you want to delude yourself into saying that this is progress, go ahead, but don't ask me to bless it.

TC

[electropop]

23. Patience, Grasshopper...

Don't fret so much over so-called 'deadlines' such as certs or the Electoral College convention, or even inauguration. It took nearly 2 years to topple Nixon, and the case here is gradually (but far quicker than Watergate) building into a massive steamroller. It's also far more significant than a single botched burglary.

[Stand and Fight]

28. Thank you.

You hit it on the head, ClassWarrior.
Bit by bit we are making our way.

[floridadem30]

14. kick

[The Backlash Cometh]

15. Do you know what we were told about those absentee ballots?

I was working the polls as one of the laptop people. At the training session I asked the instructor how to handle the absentee ballots if someone came in saying that they didn't send in their ballot in and wanted to vote and I was told that wasn't part of my job description so they didn't want to tell me anything more than I was required to do. They said the clerks were being trained to handle it. On election day, I discovered that wasn't true. There were people in the books who were marked with "Absentee Ballot requested or delivered" and we had a moment when we didn't know what we were suppose to do. Should we give the voter a ballot or not? The clerk asked ME to call the Supervisor of Elections office to find out. The SoE said that if the register didn't say "Voted by Absentee Ballot" or anything that clearly stated the vote had been received, then they should be allowed to vote. No provisional ballot needed.

In other words, any Absentee Ballots that the SoE got on election day could have potentially been double votes if someone didn't check the precinct records.

[FogerRox]

19. hmmm- I was in Miramar FLorida--Broward county

A voter needs to remove themselves from Absentee status before voting at a polling location or niether ballot would count--absentee or machine cast ballot.

I dont buy the --they voted twice-- scenario. Since Absentee ballots were entered into the system just like a regular ballots-I witnessed this 3 times--delivering absentees for elderly people.

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. That wasn't the process we used on election day.

It was a Republican county and they were very liberal about allowing people to vote -- mostly with provisional ballots, except for the circumstances mentioned above. And except in Casselberry, I hear.

[Patsy Stone]

20. See! THIS is what we need to be doing

instead of petty bickering. Nice catch.

[mikelewis]

32. Correction

[Wordie]

21. Kick

[pointsoflight]

22. Very important case.

Some very suspicious things and strong allegations.

[Hobbes199]

25. I think ballots should all be serialized...

Then you can write down your number to make sure it went to the right candidate later, and large groups of numbers going to the same candidate would be noticeable.

[Stand and Fight]

29. That...

That is a top-notch idea!!

[shaggy briard]

37. No it isn't

It invalidates the concept of secret ballot
Better to give a voter a receipt to keep which can be provided as evidence later in a recount -- no one should ever be able to track an individual voter back to an individual ballot without that person's permission

[Fiendish Thingy]

30. Although there's quite a way to go, we've come a long way

Since 11/2- look at all the careful analyses and verified info that's been documented in the past month. (yes, there's lots of crap and speculation, but the meat is still there). In terms of uncovering fraud and debunking the "myth of the mandate", things have only gotten better since that miserable morning of 11/3...

[rodeodance]

31. yes little by little *as some above said--

If nothing else make the creeps sweat!!

[mikelewis]

33. Ohio Absentee Ballots and Over Registration

Post #1 in rsponse to the question, "Does the NH recount hurt our credibility.

The NH recount was an audit of Voting Machine Irregularities. The central focus was to find the ghost in the machine. Frankly, I am glad that they didn't find fraud in the voting machines. Ohio is a predominantly punch card ballot state. I do realize that there were many voting machines but to take the state, relying on this would have been folly. I have repeated and been heckled for claiming that the voting machines were not the problem in Ohio. Yes, all anomalies did go to Bush and yes the machines are a nightmare of epic proportions but I have never believed that the voting machines could have stolen this election. They could have had some part but the irregularities would have been so startling that even a child could have seen the blatant disparity in these weighted votes.

Again, I ask you to consider one thing. Consider for a moment that the ballot count was correct. Also consider for a moment that exit polls were correct. If both of these issues are correct, then what factor that was not included in the exit polls could have had a verifiable effect on the ballots.

Do you honestly think the Repubs are capable of corupting all 88 county Board of Education officials and some of thier staff. There are some jerks in this bunch but all of them? I don't buy it. Do you honestly think the people who conducted the exit polls were complete morons and screwed this up so badly that they have just rendered thier own jobs useless?

No, No, No. The race was neck and neck, right down to election day. The voting machines had a lot of scrutiny in these battle ground states. If they were going to rig them, at least in Ohio, this would have been a very difficult endeavor. They would need to have rigged them prior to delivery to the BOE's or the delivery to the individual precincts. You cannot convince me that the voting officials or poll workers would allow someone to tamper with these machines while they were in thier custody. They would not want to go to jail. They may have infected a few in Ohio but if this was enough to swing the vote it would be so noticable that anyone with a cheap calculator could identify the fraud.

No, the answer has to be something else. I believe it is the absentee ballots. I have stated this many times over. We have 0 information on absentee ballots in Ohio. Well, actually, that's not true. Thanks to that computer "glitch" that freaked everyone out, we have Cuyahoga County. In Cuyahoga County, we have a 7% shift in absentee votes in favor of Bush. I live in Cuyahoga and I have talked to a great many people about this issue. I have reports of people getting two absentee ballots mailed to their home. I have reports of "County Officials from the BOE" stopping by to pick up the ballots. I have voter registration information in Cuyahoga Couty that places many of the wards voter registration percentage over 100% of people of voting age. In Cuyahoga County 12% of the people voted absentee. 12%. That's 12% of the vote where 7% more went for Bush. To date, we have no information on the absentee voters in the remaining 87 counties. We have no idea how these people voted. We need to know.

I have been following the Madsen Articles and the issues with vote tabulation machines but I cannot believe that they would have taken a risk of this nature when the majority of the ballots are physical hand countable ballots. These methods wouldn't have stood the scrutiny of a hand recount. I don't think that this risk is justified in Ohio, at least. Maybe in Florida which I know nothing about but not here. There is something else that has happened here. They needed to suppress the votes here in Ohio, why? If the tabulation machies were rigged, why go through the trouble of suppressing the vote? In fact the more people who voted, the better off they were. It wouldn't matter one little bit who the person voted for as long as had the ability to skew the vote in thier favor upon tabulation. But if they padded the vote, they would have to suppress to ensure that the votes for Kerry didn't blow past the vote padding they had already rigged through some other avenue. I believe that avenue was the absentee ballots.

Again, I will admit it if I am wrong but the more I look into Ohio the more convinced I become. They can recount the votes here till the cows come home and the vote isn't going to change much. They're counting a percentage of illegal votes. A dangling chad or two thousand won't affect the outcome. The vote was too close. What needs to be addressed and addressed right now is the effect the absentee votes had on this election. This is the only factor that could have affected the vote and held up in a hand recount.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis



Post #2 In response to how I believe John Kerry will be inaugurated on Dec 20th

Message Ohio counties w Registration exceeding 100% of the voting age


Truehawk: I am reposting this where it is more visable


mikelewis (1 posts) Fri Nov-19-04 02:46 AM
Response to Reply #65

98. Making the margin in Ohio - the absentee votes


The problem isn't where to find votes for Kerry, the solution is where to challenge votes for Bush.

I have been documenting over the past few days, several counties with Registration levels exceeding 100% of the voting age population. I have also been looking into absentee ballots as a possibility as to how the votes swung to Bush.

In Cuyahoga County, a county that went overwhelmingly for Kerry we find some very alarming irregularities. I chose to research Cuyahoga for a specific reason. Because it was so heavily for Kerry that any manipulation of the system would be very appearant. Such as, excessively high voter registration in 37 of the 67 precincts in this county. In these 37 precincts, voter registration exceeds the voting age population. In the case of Cuyahoga Heights, (where I went to school btw) the registration level was 131% of the persons of voting age.

The way I determined the number of eligible Persons of Voting Age (PAV) was to go to the U.S. census bureau and pull the estimates for the individual cities and then compared them to the number of registered voters on the Cuyahoga County Board of Election's website. In at least 8 cases, these registration levels exceeded 120% of the PAV's.

Now the exit poll data suggests that Kerry won the state 52.1% to Bush 47.9% but the results give the state to Bush by 51%. So what could have tipped the scales in a primarily punch ballot state? What condition that was not guaged in the Ohio exit poll data could have had an impact on this election? The absentee vote could have had such an effect. So I again went to Cuyahoga County and found that there was a 7% gain in Bush votes in absentee voters as compared to the way the people who went to the polls voted. This is an unusually high shift.

The total number of votes cast at the polls was 574,475 votes where:
Kerry Received 66.7% of the vote or 383,446 votes
Bush Received 32.7% of the vote or 187,854 votes

The total number of absentee votes cast was 80,624 where:
Kerry Received 61.8% of the absentee vote or 49,816 votes
Bush Received 34.4% of the absentee vote or 27,770 votes

So I surmise that the possibility exists that the absentee voters swung this election. Now whether or not this is by fraud remains to be seen but it gives us a much smaller pool of voters to challenge and we can do so based upon the impossibly high number of registered voters. This pool of voters broke more for Bush in Cuyahoga County so the odds that the absentee ballots aided Bush across the state are very high.

Furthermore, in several counties I have found that the entire county is has registered voters in excess of 100% PAV. This would again give us opportunity for legal challenge of the registration data. Fortunately, the majority of these counties voted republican. In fact only 2 of them, Mahoning (101.4%) and Franklin(103.7%) voted for Kerry and I believe we will find more votes for Kerry in these counties than less. The number that voted for Bush so far is 7. I have only checked 14 counties so far. As I dig deeper, I assume the number will be about half since the registered total for the state based on PAV is 93.5%. Roughly 44 counties with unusually high registration and high absentee votes and no informtion should alarm many people.

The final piece that has convinced me that I am correct is the testimony from Pickaway County of the poll books. What could explain the unsigned poll books is absentee voters. See, if a person votes absentee, they are recorded in the book as voting so that if the person should show up at the polls, they will not vote twice. They would not have signed the books. The fact that she notes so many in such a short amount of time that she would become alarmed indicates that a large amount of absentee ballots were cast. The State is making a point as to not release the data on the absentee ballots. To date, we have only one county, Cuyahoga, that has released the results of the absentee vote in its canvass report and in that report the 7% shift is noted.

While everyone is concerned with finding fraud in the electronic voting machines, we must remember that we use very few of them and they have been very heavily scrutinized. While the possibility for fraud exists with these machines they could not have swung this election on thier own. Voter suppression could also have had an impact but not have guaranteed the election which I am sure they would want to do. The only explanation that maintains the validity of the exit polls and would provide a "ligitimate" ballot count would be the absentee vote. We have not given sufficient attention to absentee ballots which have not been guaged as to thier effectiveness in securing this election and do not have adequate safeguards to protect against fraud.

I beleive that we must put out a demand to have this data released and it allowed to be studied by people much more qualified than I who can verify anomolies in these 600,000 or so votes. If we can see a 7% shift towards Bush in Cuyahoga then what is the shift in other counties that voted heavily towards Bush at the polls. A recount of the votes would only confirm the election for Bush, a challenge must be made against these absentee votes and we can legally question them based on the high registration levels. In many of the smaller counties, there are only 8 to 10 thousand absentee votes to challenge. Should we find people who voted who are not eligible to vote in these counties or state, we can use this to challenge these votes statewide.

I am quite sure, we will find a number of these ballots cast by voters who were either not eligible to vote in this election or voted without knowing they voted. How many of these absentee ballots were forced to vote provisionally? How many were thrown out as spoiled ballots? This data must be known and publically reviewed by trusted experts. I believe this is how Kerry will be inaugurated on Jan. 20th.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis

[WMoses]

35. Is there something to go on here?

This sounds like it might be plausible. No one is replying. It wouldn't be me, so who can take this angle and publicize this with the credibility with which seems to have?

[trudyco]

36. While we wait for the courts to pry the precinct absentees

can we get the groups that have dem/new registered voter lists and call them up? Ask them if they voted by absentee and if they have any wierd absentee stories to tell?

I'd be willing to pay for some college kids to get on the phone.

trudyco

[mikelewis]

38. I have a telemarketing machine ;) it can call 10,000 people in 2 days

I have sold security sytems with this machinesbut stopped when I closed my business. It's sitting next to me. Get me two phone lines, a list of numbers and let's get the word out. I know how to get a response from this machine. It works great. If any organization would like to try to either contact people to collect a poll, get the word out or just simply annoy republicans, I have the perfect thing. This sytem is awesome and free to a use for this vote battle. I am going to post this as a thread and see who bites. The best proposal wins the use of this machine for the next month.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis