News Intelligence Analysis
Monday, December 13, 2004
Electoral College today more
than ritual
By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau
• Electors take turn
WASHINGTON - Ohio's 20 presidential electors will gather at noon
today in Columbus to cast their votes for President Bush, officially
awarding him the most coveted electoral votes of the 2004 presidential
race.
For many Americans, including Sen. John Kerry and leaders of the Democratic Party, it's just a ceremony cementing the fact that Bush beat Kerry.
But for a small sliver of conspiracy theorists, liberal activists and alternative news junkies, it's the latest step in stealing the election. Through conspiracy or errors, Kerry's votes were not counted, they insist, though repeated media investigations have shown no evidence supporting their claims.
"I will not accept the results as valid without a recount and further investigation," said Denise Eileen McCoskey, 36, a teacher from Clifton.
"There's enough evidence of orchestrated disenfranchisement to toss out the results," said John Burik, a 53-year-old liberal activist and counselor in Mariemont.
"If they are permitted to select the next president of the United States, our democracy is at an end," thundered Ray Beckerman, a New York City lawyer who runs a Web log devoted entirely to Ohio's presidential election.
The Kerry campaign says Bush won Ohio. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe says Bush won Ohio. The Democrats who serve on the county boards of elections say Bush won Ohio.
What are the chances of Bush's 119,000-vote victory, which puts him over the top in the Electoral College vote, being overturned?
"None," said Carlo LaParo, spokesman for Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.
"These accusations are absurd," he said. "Come on. You answer the questions and you provide explanations. And yet these folks still don't believe you. You get to the point where you essentially have to say, 'You know what? I prefer my nuts dry roasted. Thank you.' "
Elizabeth Wagner of Westwood, one of Bush's 20 Ohio electors, blames the lingering controversy on the intensity of this presidential election, one of the hardest fought in the state's history.
"I've worked on maybe 16 campaigns and never before have people been so impassioned," said Wagner, 80, a longtime GOP activist. "People are still that way."
People fighting the election results are moving forward on three fronts:
• Public pressure: A group of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee held a forum, not a hearing, last week on the Ohio election, and pledged to hold a similar event in Ohio. Protests, including a "hands around the Statehouse," are planned outside the state Capitol today. E-mails ping across the country and Web sites breathlessly feature information - some of it erroneous - about Ohio's election.
• Lawsuits: A liberal nonprofit group is threatening to sue to have the election results thrown out. The Alliance for Democracy wants board of elections computers impounded and the electors barred from casting their votes. "The fraud in this election must be fixed before this election is finalized," said Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer for the group.
• A recount. Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik asked all 88 county boards of elections for a recount, which could cost taxpayers $1.5 million. Cobb said it's a "crime against democracy" for the electors to meet while the recount is ongoing.
But Republicans and most independent observers say: Get over it.
"No one believes the outcome is going to change," said Rep. Rob Portman, the Terrace Park Republican who served as Bush's communications director in Ohio.
Once electors across the country vote today, the next step is for Congress to count the votes on Jan. 6. During the 2000 counting ceremony, the Congressional Black Caucus and liberal members repeatedly protested, but the count went ahead.
Some have suggested doing the same thing this time, said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who convened Wednesday's forum on the Ohio election. But he said he wasn't sure what might happen.
If a recount in Ohio shows Kerry won or a court challenge is successful, there could be action taken at the Jan. 6 session.
"However, these developments are so unlikely as to be fanciful," said Daniel Hoffheimer, the Cincinnati lawyer representing the Kerry campaign in Ohio.
For people like Clifton's McCoskey, the least Congress or Ohio could do is thoroughly investigate the problems in Ohio voting and fix many of the nationwide problems: the lack of a paper trail for electronic voting machines, the long lines at the polls, the possible conflict in Ohio's secretary of state serving as a co-chairman of the Bush campaign.
Others have broader fixes in mind: the abolition of the Electoral College and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.
Rep. Bob Ney, the St. Clairsville Republican who chairs the House Administration Committee, said he will hold hearings on election reform next year.
Ney said his hearings would be "serious" and bipartisan, unlike Conyers' Wednesday event that Ney derided as "partisan attacks and unsubstantiated claims disguised as fact in a faux hearing."
Among the charges aired at that meeting:
• Poor, black and urban voters had to stand in line longer than white, wealthier suburban voters. But lines were long throughout Ohio, even in Warren County and rural counties.
• The computer software for counting votes could have been hacked or rigged by the private companies to ratchet up Bush's margins. But the only evidence cited was that a Democratic Ohio Supreme Court justice from Cleveland seemed to have gotten more votes than seemed likely in the rest of the state.
• Too many people were given provisional ballots and too many provisional ballots were tossed aside. But even if every remaining uncounted provisional ballot were for Kerry, it wouldn't change the results. And decisions about which ballots to count are made by Democrats and Republicans. Three quarters of the provisional ballots were counted in the end.
• Warren County election officials' counted their votes in secret, citing a terrorist threat that no one else seemed to know anything about, including federal Homeland Security officials. But the vote counting, as in every county, was overseen by Democrats as well as Republicans.
E-mail cweiser@enquirer.com
Copyright 2004, The Enquirer
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