News Intelligence Analysis
A Vast Political Misfortune
Or Why Robert
F. Kennedy, Jr. is Correct in His Assessment
of the Late 2004 Election (which was sadly murdered by the G.O.P.,
may it rest in peace). And Why Salon.com’s Article Attacking
Kennedy is Wrong.
By Katherine
Yurica
June 11, 2006
Updated
June 15, 2006 to clarify that the Leadership Institute's
Congressional Advisory Board document shows
only Republicans are members.
the following demonstration during a lecture: he put a flea on his desk and
said, "Jump!" Presently the flea jumped. He then removed the flea's hind legs
and said, "Jump!" again. This time the flea did not jump. "Observe,
gentlemen," said Lysenko: "This proves that when you remove the flea's hind
legs, its hearing is impaired.
If one is an old Ent, one does not like to be hasty. However, circumstances have a way of forcing themselves upon us and occasionally we are called upon to analyze something minutely, which nowadays goes against the grain, in as much as thinking, itself, is out of style. This latter fact is lamentable, but let us not tarry on it. Instead, let us go forward, analytically speaking.
On June 3, 2006 Farhad Manjoo, a 27 year old writer for Salon.com, penned a denunciation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” published by Rolling Stone. Mr. Manjoo mentioned that many major studies and analyses of the 2004 election existed, and then lamented that those studies were followed by “legions of activists, academics, bloggers and others who’ve devoted their post-Nov. 2 lives to unearthing every morsel of data that might suggest the vote was rigged.”
You can easily note that Mr. Manjoo and Salon.com are not in a generous mood in their essay. The very best of his ungracious statements is this one: “If you do read Kennedy’s article, be prepared to machete your way through numerous errors of interpretation and his deliberate omission of key bits of data.” Oh dear, Mr. Manjoo’s words are so, so violent—so uncharitable to the innocent sentences as well as to the guilty ones, if there are in fact any guilty ones at all. For starting with Mr. Manjoo’s very first assertion, which I admit was so convincing on the surface that the Yurica Report posted a warning to its readers to drive by with caution when reading and slow down to a crawl when passing Mr. Kennedy’s powerful imagery.
Alas, Mr. Manjoo and Salon.com make the mistake of holding Mr. Kennedy to the literal meaning of words and quotes, much like critics of the Bible do, but just as metaphors are not meant to be taken literally by the poets who penned them, statistics are not meant to be taken literally either. Numbers are metaphors that need interpretation (a fact Mr. Manjoo admits, but transgresses when he asks us to anoint him: “the Grand Interpreter!”)
Here is how Mr. Manjoo opens his attack:
“The first salient omission comes in paragraph 5, when Kennedy writes, ‘In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.’ To back up that assertion, Kennedy cites “Democracy at Risk,” the report the democrats released last June.
“That report does indeed point out that many people—26 percent—who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn’t say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn’t find their names listed. The Democrats’ report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a ‘provisional’ ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same—a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy’s claim of ‘astounding’ partisanship.”
That looks very much to be game, set, and match! In fact, we at the Yurica Report initially thought Mr. Manjoo had presented a credible thump to Mr. Kennedy’s efforts. (We apologize for our hasty leap.)
The problem here is Mr. Manjoo does not understand the functional application of “intentional suppression techniques” taught by specialists and leaders of the Republican Party, and in particular, Morton Blackwell’s Leadership Institute (a non-profit tax exempt organization.) In fact, it was Salon.com’s important article “My Right-wing Degree” by Jeff Horowitz that first alerted Americans to the GOP school that teaches classes on “How to Suppress the Vote” (without getting thrown in prison of course!) Horowitz calls the classes “mock election-rigging.” (See the list of Republican Senators and Representatives who sit on the Congressional Advisory Board to the Institute by clicking here. Although the list of 109, including one dead man, is called Bi-Partisan all the individuals listed are Republicans.)
Now gather ‘round and I will explain why Mr. Manjoo’s point is, alas, without the slightest bit of merit! It’s not his fault or even the Democratic National Committee’s fault, they aren’t focused on nefarious ways to suppress the vote—they are honest sweet, sincere naïve people who love Democracy! So let’s you and I enter the criminal mind for a few minutes just this once:
Suppose we are dealing with the smallest county in America. Actually, let’s make up one for simplicity’s sake. Let’s say it has 1,500 people living in it and only one polling place. Before the election, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by a fairly comfortable margin, so the GOP controlled all the elective offices in the county, including the Election Director’s position. Let’s say that there were 500 registered Republicans and 400 registered Democrats. But prior to the election, the Democrats got the brilliant idea to go out and register more Democrats, which of course forced the Republicans to do the same. The “Voter’s Registration Drive” caught on. The Republicans gained 100 new Republican registrations, but somehow, the Democrats managed to gain 215 newly registered voters. Now that brought the total to 600 Republicans versus 615 Democrats, a fact known to the Republican election board. For the first time in fifteen years, the Democrats had the potential to out vote the Republicans. But the Republicans weren’t worried. And this was especially true because Charlie Brown’s son had attended the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia and obtained a degree in suppressing the vote. So what did the Republicans do?
Charlie Brown’s son advised the election board to do what Ken Blackwell did so successfully in Ohio: force twenty-five percent of the newly registered Republicans and Democrats to vote provisionally (then never count their votes). That twenty-five percent sounds drastically harmful to the Republicans doesn’t it? But in fact, that’s all our little hypothetical county need do. Take a look at the statistics:
Republicans Democrats
500 400
+100 +215
600 voters 615 voters
Taking 25% of 100 is 25.
Taking 25% of 215 is 54 (rounded off)
600 less 25 = 575 for the Republicans
615 less 54 = 561 for the Democrats
Voila! The playing field has been tipped in favor of the Republicans! It was unethical. (Legal only because it’s difficult to prove anything) but the real beauty of it is this: it doesn’t even look like they cheated because as Mr. Manjoo points out, the Republicans were treated exactly like the Democrats, a fact “that lowers the heat on Kennedy’s claim” of partisanship.
Now if our tiny hypothetical county does everything else J. Kenneth Blackwell did in 2004 in Ohio (since as Secretary of State for Ohio he was the official in charge of the election as well as being the co-chair of President Bush’s re-election committee, and as a leading Christian of Ohio, has made every effort to impose a religious ethics and character guide upon the good folks of Ohio), Charlie Brown’s son would advise the election officials in our hypothetical county to: move the voting locations just before election day and redraw the boundaries of precincts, make a rule that all new registrations had to be on 80 lb. paper, defy court orders halting caging, purge the voting lists, bring in a Strike Force from Texas to intimidate potential voters, restrict the number of voting machines used so that citizens in African American communities would have to wait in line to vote for hours, create chaos on election day, and finally misplace most of the new Democratic registrations coming in and by all means, challenge a huge percent of all African Americans’ right to vote! After doing such evil, be sure that Farhad Manjoo of Salon.com, the American media, and even the Democratic National Committee will defend to their deaths that the election wasn’t rigged! With friends like that, rigged elections will become the norm—not the exception.
And with friends like that, American democracy is dying from a cancer spread by the infection-ridden-hands of sick physicians masquerading as defenders of our American ideals.
Katherine Yurica is a news intelligence analyst. She was educated at East Los Angeles College, the University of Southern California and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.
Also Katherine and her mother, Kelly Leosis (who served as an election judge and inspector for twelve years for three precincts in the state of Washington for her county) designed and created voting systems for their community and investigated election fraud.
Katherine has also designed a universal Make-Your-Own-Voter-Receipt for the coming elections that anyone can duplicate and pass around. Click here. See also Katherine's articles on voting fraud: "Ohio Vote Fraud Battle Heats Up," and "Votergate 2004."
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Two Election Fraud Articles
by Katherine Yurica
About Three Research Studies
by Katherine Yurica
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more
than 350,000 voters in
Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted --
enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004
election watching the returns on television and wondering
how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory
for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the
official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush --
and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to
contest the results, Kerry
conceded.
"No" Says Farhad Manjoo:
To date, dozens of experts, both
independently and as
part of several research panels, have spent countless
hours examining 2004's presidential election, especially
the race in Ohio. Many of them have concluded that the
election there strains conventional notions of what a
democracy ought to look like; very little about that
race was fair, clean
or competent.
Illegitimate Election
A key source for Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
responds to criticism of his analysis of the 2004 election
By Steven F. Freeman
Jun. 12, 2006 | Because Robert
F Kennedy Jr.
based much of the discussion in his Rolling Stone
article on interviews with me and on a close
reading of my new book, coauthored with Joel
Bleifuss, "Was the 2004 Presidential Election
Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official
Count," and because Kennedy cites in his thorough
footnotes many of the same key sources we worked
from, I feel compelled to address directly several
statements that Farhad Manjoo makes about the
exit polls, both in his original Salon article and
in his response to Kennedy's response to that
article -- statements that are either incorrect or
based on misunderstandings about exit polls
and
the 2004 results.
Part II. Articles Revealing Election Wrongdoing
Part IV. Articles Analyzing Voting Machine Election Fraud Potential
Related Articles and Essays:
How To Steal an Election
It's easier to rig an
electronic voting machine
than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University
of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman.
That's because Vegas slots are better monitored
and regulated than America's
voting machines
Third Elections Worker Indicted
Over Presidential Recount
3/9/2006, 5:11 a.m. ET
The third highest ranking employee at the
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has been
indicted on charges of mishandling ballots during
the 2004 presidential election
recount.
Did 308,000
Cancelled Ohio
Voter Registrations
Put Bush
Back in the
White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
February 28, 2006
As we reported more than a year
ago, some
133,000 voters were purged from the registration
rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas
County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The
105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo
exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory
---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million
the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth
Blackwell, deemed
worth counting.
None Dare
Call It Stolen
Ohio, the
election, and America's
servile press
by Mark Crispin Miller
Whichever candidate you
voted for (or think
you voted for), or even if you did not vote (or
could not vote), you must admit that last year's
presidential race was—if nothing else—pretty
interesting. True, the press has dropped the
subject, and the Democrats, with very few
exceptions, have “moved on.”
The Silent
Scream of Numbers
The 2004
election was stolen - will someone
please tell the media?
By ROBERT C. KOEHLER
Tribune Media Services
The media are not on our side. The politicians are
not on our side. It's just us, connecting the dots,
fitting the fragments together, crunching the
numbers, wanting to know why there were so
many irregularities in the last election and why
these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers
had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is
not about partisan politics.
It's more like: "Oh no,
this can't be true."
Preserving
Democracy:
What Went
Wrong in Ohio
The Conyers
Report on the 2004
Presidential
election This
is a riveting
and alarming report on the status of our
ailing presidential election process. Free
Download in a PDF file.
Blackwell’s
Un-American Scheme:
Under the Guise of “Character
and Civic
Renewal” Ohio State Foists a Religious
Moral Code upon Its Citizens
by Katherine Yurica
J. Kenneth Blackwell has stepped
to the
forefront of the American culture wars. He has
posted his official endorsement of a 20-point
religious moral code claimed to be “a shared
vocabulary of character-building ethics” on Ohio’s
official Secretary of State web site. Blackwell
wrote, “Character is the cornerstone of American
citizenship. And good citizenship is the foundation
of community. But to a lot of people, civic renewal
means the opportunity to not only religionize our
government, but, as we shall see, to create a new
religion that is decidedly not Christianity. Instead,
it is an opportunity to convert our citizens into docile
followers of a new authoritarian rule.
(Includes a linked glossary of
definitions of terms
plus parallel columns
that compare the text.)
Directory
of Election Fraud
Articles For Elections in 2005-2006
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