Activists fighting for Kerry in Ohio
Lawyer petitions state high court to nullify election
By Sam Howe Verhovek
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published December 13, 2004
<snip>
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Clifford Arnebeck won't let it go. He can't let it go. Not, he says, while America refuses to recognize that John Kerry was elected president Nov. 2.
Arnebeck, a Democratic lawyer here and co-chairman of a self-styled national populist alliance, is petitioning Ohio's highest court to throw out official results that favor President Bush and instead hand the 20 electoral votes--and therefore the White House--to Kerry. Or, at least, order a revote.
The bid appears quixotic as Bush has been officially declared the winner by 118,000 votes and Arnebeck is arguing before a Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court. Nor is the senator from Massachusetts helping him, said Arnebeck.
"I can't for the life of me understand why Kerry isn't fighting harder for this. Maybe it's some secret Skull and Bones tradition, where you're not supposed to show up the other guy," he said, referring to a secret Yale University group to which both Kerry and Bush belonged.
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Electoral College slates are due to meet in all 50 states Monday to cast formal votes that will give Bush a 286-252 victory and a second term. But for Arnebeck and thousands of others, this contest is far from over.
From a "rally to change the tally" in San Francisco to black-armband demonstrations in Denver and Boston against the "media blackout of election fraud," the protests go on.
Many complain about long voter lines in Democratic-leaning precincts and electronic touch-screen voting with no backup paper audits. They are especially focused on Ohio, where certified results gave Bush 2.86 million votes (about 51 percent) to Kerry's 2.74 million (49 percent).
"I would like to welcome you to Ukraine," said Susan Truitt, a speaker this month at a Columbus rally,, where 400 people demanded an election inquiry. She was referring to the Eastern European nation that soon will hold a new vote after protests that the first one was rigged.
Rights activist Jesse Jackson, who also appeared at the rally, asked why exit polls done for the media seemed to point toward a Kerry victory that day. Rather than analyzing faults in the exit polls, Jackson and others say, why aren't the media and public officials digging more aggressively for chicanery in the official tabulations?
"We can live with winning and losing," Jackson said in Columbus recently. "We cannot live with fraud and stealing."
Officials here are not taking kindly to the charges.
"Jackson owes every election official in Ohio an apology," said Keith Cunningham, first vice president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials.
Because every Ohio county election board has two Democrats and two Republicans, officials argue, manipulation of voting would require a deep conspiracy. But that is just what Jackson and others allege. Among the circumstances cited by protesters:
- In three suburban Cincinnati counties, a Democratic candidate for state chief justice got more votes than Kerry, though she lost statewide by a wider margin than did Kerry.
- A "computer glitch," as local officials called it, recorded 3,893 extra votes for Bush in suburban Columbus, in a precinct with 638 votes cast. Officials say they caught the glitch and fixed it, showing that the system works; but protesters say they wonder where else such "glitches" may have gone undetected.
- Another matter, which surfaced last year, involved the chief executive of Ohio-based Diebold Inc., a major company in the electronic touch-screen voting industry. In an August 2003 invitation to a Bush fundraising event, the executive, Walden O'Dell, wrote that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." O'Dell later amended company policy to prohibit himself and other top officials from engaging in any political activity except voting.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
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