Thursday, January 06, 2005

"It's nice to have a senator"

That's how Brad DeLong put in in commenting on Barbara Boxer's objection to counting the Ohio presidential electors.
We, a member of the House of Representatives and a United States Senator object to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Ohio on the ground that they are not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given.

Signed,

Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH, email)
State of Ohio

Barbara Boxer (D-CA, email)
State of California
This is apparently part of the text of the complaint.
...we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.... The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters... in Franklin County, 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush... six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry... decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters... departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots... preelection 'caging' tactics.... The Third Circuit found these activities to be illegaland in direct violation of consent decrees barring the Republican Party from targeting minority voters for poll challenges.... Mr. Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able to receive provisional ballots... 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast for president, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected... two precincts in Montgomery County which had an undervote rate of over 25% each accounting for nearly 6,000 voters who stood in line to vote, but purportedly declined to vote for president...

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