Who Really Won?

Friday, January 21, 2005

John Conyers Updates-Updated!

Rep. John Conyers writes a letter to the Ohio Attorney General:

It is also noteworthy that the Ohio Secretary of State intentionally delayed certifying the vote, thereby insuring that the recount could not be completed by the date the electoral college met on December 13. The Ohio Secretary State also refused to respond to numerous questions regarding the irregularities submitted to him by several members of the House Judiciary Committee, has refused to respond to a single concern set forth in the Judiciary Report, and also sought a protective order to avoid any discovery related to the legal challenges. In short, Ohio election officials have compounded public doubt concerning the election by refusing to provide any sort of accountability and acting in almost every respect as if they have "something to hide."


And gives an interview to The Blue Lemur:

Conyers: Here we are two presidential elections in a row, one state determines the winner, and each time that state has the highest number of irregularities, unusual procedures, outright violations of election law. It does not require political science to get the connection

John: You don’t think that was simply because there was more focus on, say, Ohio in this election, and Florida in the last?

Conyers: It all came down to the same thing, John, the one state that would make the difference was the one state that was plagued with the most irregularities and the most complaints. I did not pick Ohio, Ohio leapt to our attention because that is where the majority of the calls came from.

Larisa: Congressman Conyers… I do want to tell you that there were significant problems in Florida.

Conyers: Well, I think that if Ohio had not come into such prominence, Florida would have again been the most contentious state in the union, don’t you?

Larisa: Well, I think Ohio overshadowed Florida. …The office of the inspector general for the state of Florida basically in an audit released shortly after the Nov. 2 election cited serious violations with regard to Federal law as well as the NAACP settlement of 2000. The audit fell largely on deaf ears. Just to give you a brief background summary, as you know in the 2000 election, there was a “fake” felon list that listed non-felon African Americans as felons, falsely…

Conyers: Of course.


UPDATE:

And he writes the pollsters:

To be frank, blaming such factors as distant restrictions on polling places, weather conditions, the age of exit poll workers, and the fact that multiple precincts were contained at the same polling place, as your report does, does not come close to explaining why the exit polls overstated support for the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 26 states and support for the Bush/Cheney ticket in only 4 states. Many of the factors you point to appear to merely be random characteristics of the election and your exit polling, rather than quantifiable and justifiable explanations. Nor can I believe that the massive discrepancies can credibly be written off to eagerness of Kerry voters to participate in the exit polls.