Media Whites Out Vote Fraud
By David Swanson, International Labor Ccommunications Association   03 January 2005
Part of the Media Blackout series on underreported labor stories

A shorter version of this article, for easy reading between commercial interruptions, is available at http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1397.

January 3, 2005 The Cleveland Federation of Labor is sending busloads of demonstrators to a rally in Columbus, Ohio, today to take part in a protest of election fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

As detailed below, there is strong evidence of vote theft in Ohio. But to anyone who gets their news from a television or from most print media, these protesters are kidding themselves or kidding the rest of us, but certainly they are not onto anything worthy of investigation. Last week I received this Email from the Columbus Dispatch:

"Dear Mr. Swanson:
"You say the rally is to protest the fraud that took place in the election. Where did this fraud occur? Who did it? How did they do it?
"Thanx,
"glenn sheller, editorial page editor"

 

Two months after the election, an editor at ground zero was (seriously or sarcastically) asking a stranger and an amateur to tell him from Washington where the fraud had occurred. I immediately sent him a reply.1 And I didn't hear anything further.

I expect the Dispatch and probably the Associated Press (AP) will cover today's rally, albeit in the way they would cover a disliked visiting sports team. They'll dismiss the concerns of disenfranchised voters in a very wise manner, but they won't actually investigate any of the charges of election fraud - not if they adhere to the practices established by the media over the past two months.

When forced to talk about ethics, media big shots often insist that they draw no conclusions. They endlessly reported Dick Cheney's claims that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, but it would not have been their place to label that a "conspiracy theory." When it comes to election fraud in Ohio and other U.S. states, on the other hand, the media has jumped straight to reporting that it's all a "conspiracy theory" before ever reporting any of the facts.2 The Bush Administration has recently presented the media with a nutty theory that our Social Security system is broken, which the media in turn has3 presented to us as established fact.4 But to anyone who reads more than just the news that's fit to print, it's our election system that has broken down.

Some voices in the media, including the New York Times' editorial page, admit that the election system is badly broken. But they insist that it also functioned quite acceptably in November. It's broken in the abstract, as it were, but not in any concrete time or place.

As the ILCA reported on November 8th,5 the U.S. media has reversed its usual position on the value of exit polls. The media has always relied on exit polls to predict election outcomes and to question the accuracy of official vote counts, such as in the Venezuelan recall attempt or the Ukrainian presidential election. Exit polls in November predicted victories for Kerry in a number of swing states that swung, in the official results, dramatically for Bush. The U.S. media immediately declared the exit polls inaccurate. How they could be so far off has not been explained, and the networks' refusal to turn the raw data of the exit polls over to Congress doesn't help.

I did some searching in the Nexis database on New Year's Eve. I searched for <"election fraud"> in articles and transcripts from the past 60 days. It came back saying there were more than 1,000 articles, too many to display. Of course, most of these were bound to be about the Ukraine and other countries where the U.S. media likes to discuss election fraud. So I searched for <"election fraud" AND Ohio>. This time I found only 177 articles, many of them letters to the editor complaining about the lack of coverage. One article from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported on a protest at its offices over the lack of coverage (but no coverage appeared from that paper). Several of the 177 were editorials, all of them dismissive of claims of election fraud, which in most cases the papers hadn't reported on. And Ukraine was here, too, showing up in Ohio newspapers. The Columbus Dispatch ran an editorial demanding a new election in Ukraine. The Plain Dealer reported in oddly respectful tones (considering its usual coverage of activists) on Ohioans involved in the Ukrainian election. And there were quite a few columns and "analyses" dismissing "conspiracy theories."

What about actual coverage of what the "theories" are about and what in them is solidly proven, what's speculative, what's disproved? Any of that? Wouldn't a conspiracy theory go away more quickly if you refuted it than if you avoided it and called it names? Hasn't over half the country stopped believing in the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after only minimal discussion of the evidence and acknowledgement by the media that there weren't any weapons there?

Well, quite a few articles reported on protests and hearings and legal filings, but most of them didn't delve into the actual charges of fraud. Only about 10 articles contained any substance, even on a single minor allegation. One of these was from the Madison (Wis.) Capital Times, two were from Salon.com, one from Morning Star, one from a California chain of papers including the Oakland Tribune, Fremont Argus, and Tri-Valley Herald, one from the Village Voice, and three from the AP. The AP article that went into the most depth as a 492-word piece on an Ohio couple who had voted twice. Most AP articles have been short and dismissive, but the AP has provided more coverage than anybody else, judging by Nexis. The Village Voice article argues that there is no widespread fraud and that those who think there is aren't quite playing with a full deck. The author, Rick Perlstein, argues this case at some length and addresses specific claims, but only a few of them. While he couldn't be expected to fit everything into one article, his arguments do not serve as examples that refute any of the claims discussed below. An LA Weekly article touched on election fraud, as well, and in a less dismissive way, but it didn't attempt to deal with specifics.

The high points in what was turned up in this Nexis search were, sadly, sound bites on Fox News. Although on December 3rd, Fox brought on a guest to attack Jesse Jackson in absentia, on the ninth, Hannity and Colmes allowed Hillary Shelton of the NAACP to make a few points and did not attempt to dispute them. And on the 29th, Sheila Parks of the Coalition Against Election Fraud made several points, refusing to allow the interviewer to cut her off. He did not attempt to discuss the points she'd made. And, although it didn't turn up in this search, on the 23rd, Hannity and Colmes had on David Lytel of ReDefeatBush.com who began to make a case for election fraud before the hosts cut him off and changed the subject.

The other place where this story has squeezed into the corporate media is on MSNBC and the MSNBC website, through the reporting of Keith Olbermann - and the Newsweek website which posted an interview of Jesse Jackson Sr. Olbermann has been to the media the closest thing to what John Conyers has been to the Congress: a clear indication that there's life there without having to feel for a pulse. Olbermann has given credence to some claims and rejected others, and explained why. On December 27, for example, his blog post treated with all the seriousness that it seems to merit the Green Party's contention - backed up by many other observers - that the Ohio recount has been an illegally conducted farce making virtually no attempt to actually recount anything.6 (But, with typically bizarre media smugness, he then questioned the motivations of those protesting, as if concern for democracy could have nothing to do with it.) And in the same post, he continued an argument against giving credence to the claims by a Florida programmer that he had been asked to write a vote-switching program.7

A search in Nexis for "Ohio recount" turned up some more noise, but not much thought or information. CNN's Judy Woodruff has given the matter an average of three sentences per week, not counting sentences promoting the three-sentence stories. For a while the media focused on the financial cost of the recount and the supposed pointlessness of it. Lately (with the recount "completed") reporters have informed us that the recount reached nearly the same results as the original count, and that the Green and Libertarian candidates are asking for "a second recount," thus framing the issue in a manner that blocks out their claim that the recount has not really been done a first time yet. A transcript from NPR on December 30 has the host saying that NPR received more letters requesting coverage of "irregularities" in Ohio than any other topic. This was followed by a guest's brief dismissal of the topic.

The Cincinnati Enquirer and numerous other papers have printed dismissive columns on the Ohio recount. Anna Applebaum of the Washington Post has dismissed demands for paper trails for voting machines on the grounds that ATM users don't always request a receipt. Al Swanson (no kin to me) has published an article for UPI claiming that there is no evidence of vote fraud, followed by a column a week later claiming, without any evidence, that the motive of those claiming fraud is actually just to rally the Democrats for next time, that in fact those who say they are acting out of concern for maintaining faith in our democracy and/or out of a conviction that the wrong man is in line for re-inauguration, are lying. A Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist made essentially the same claim about people's motives on NPR on December 17. The New York Times, to its credit, on December 15, did print a short article on a particular allegation of fraud in the Ohio recount made by Congressman Conyers. But the Times has avoided most of the story.

Sadly, so has most of the labor media and other progressive media. You'd think that labor, after spending more than $200 million on the election, would want to make sure it got its money's worth on the vote count. Unfortunately, like its candidate, John Kerry, most of the labor movement has so far ped the ball on this one. A handful of established outlets and newly minted organizations have carried the ball, including FreePress.org, Democracy Now!, BlackCommentator.com, Truthout.org, BuzzFlash.com, BlackPressUSA.com, DemocraticUnderground.org, CommonDreams.org, the Green Party, TomPaine.com, Salon.com, RawStory.com, the St. Louis Labor Tribune (an ILCA associate member), In These Times, Air America, Thom Hartmann (an ILCA associate member), Democrats.com, Progressive Democrats of America (an ILCA associate member), and the ILCA. Building Bridges, a show produced by WBAI radio in New York and an associate member of the ILCA, is expected to cover the issue this week, as a result of the involvement of the Cleveland AFL-CIO. A collection of much of this coverage can be found at http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=3 . (The ILCA began its post-election coverage with an article on November 3 calling for the kind of public pressure for an Ohio investigation that we expect to see this week: http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=883 . On December 22nd, the ILCA published a longer article together with flyers promoting this week's events, which the ILCA has helped to organize: http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1326 ).

Not a one of the "alternative" media outlets named above has published anything as inexcusably self-certain and wildly false as the "mainstream" media's reports that Iraq had vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and plans to use them on the United States. The corporate media was wrong to cheerlead for the War on Iraq by uncritically parroting Bush Administration lies. The New York Times admitted some of its mistakes in this regard. Most media outlets did not. The same media outlets are behaving as poorly on the election fraud issue, and someday one or more of them may even acknowledge as much, but should the rest of us wait for that before speaking and acting? Or do we have a duty to fill in where the corporate news has become too corporate and not enough news?

It needs to be said that there are theories that the ILCA and others have published that have not panned out. Some of these have not been theories about what went wrong but suspicions about where things went wrong, such as in particular precincts or counties. Other such suspicions have born fruit or remain steady cries for further investigation. Many questions could be answered more quickly were the Ohio Secretary of State not resisting all attempts to examine evidence.

Why should self-respecting political and investigative journalists take up this story? To my knowledge no one is claiming that a single individual stole an election single-handedly - not even the CEO of Diebold, who said "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral vote to the President next year." In other words, everyone suggesting fraud is also suggesting?.don't stare directly at this word: CONSPIRACY! Actually, that's not quite the right way to put it: we're doing much more than suggesting. But it's important to remember that a conspiracy need not involve communication or even a shared goal among the conspirators.8

Co-conspirators in this case, by well-documented evidence, include:
1. The manufacturers of voting machines who have made them easy to hack and impossible to verify by a meaningful recount, as well as making clear their loyalty to Bush.9
2. The U.S. Congress and President, who have failed to make obvious corrections to our election system following the 2000 election, including requiring paper trails and non-partisan officials.10
3. The television networks that have refused to release the exit poll data and refused to cover the story, all companies with a clear - and in several cases, clearly stated - interest in having Bush, rather than Kerry, control the FCC.11
4. Bush-Cheney Ohio Campaign Co-Chair / Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, whose undisputed public actions before, during, and since the election have served to disenfranchise thousands of citizens.12
5. A group of Republicans, claiming to be from Texas, who made illegal calls in Ohio to scare off potential voters. (This, I think, offers a fun, human interest story should an editor be in search of one).13
6. Ohio judges who have refused to require that evidence be preserved and have refused to admit challenges to the election, including a judge whose own election could be affected but who refused to recuse himself.14
7. Election workers in various counties, hired by Blackwell, who failed to open polling places on time, failed to equitably distribute machines and workers, directed voters to the wrong lines, resulting in the elimination of their votes, wrongly required identification, wrongly denied voters provisional ballots, shut observers out on grounds of "homeland security," failed to randomly precincts for the recount, etc.15
8. Activists who sought to intimidate voters outside of polls or distributed flyers sending people to the wrong polling place or telling them the election was on the wrong day.16
9. Triad, a company that has admitted it tried to rig the Ohio recount.17
10. John Kerry, who conceded despite the evidence of the exit polls, despite his opponent's crimes of four years earlier, and prior to any investigation.18

Given the above, and the extensive documentation of vote suppression and machine malfunction, some other matters merit looking into. The Election Protection Coalition has received over 39,000 reports of vote problems, some of them affecting large numbers of voters. Numerous reports from Ohio indicate that machines and punch cards were set to votes for Bush by default and pre-punched for Bush, resulting in double-punched ballots, which are tossed out. In Coshocton, Ohio, write-in votes wrongly defaulted to Bush when run through the voting machine. In Warren County, Democrats were targeted and forced to vote on provisional ballots.19 It is not disputed that over 100,000 spoiled ballots and provisional ballots have not been counted.

An affidavit by Richard Hayes Phillips, a geomorphology Ph.D. from University of Oregon with a special expertise in spotting anomalous data, found dramatic examples of erroneous voting patterns ? with votes taken away from Kerry - that he says can only be explained by computer manipulation.20

A county shut down for "homeland security" counted a 14,000 vote increase for Bush over 2000. Miami County counted an extra 19,000 votes, two thirds of them for Bush, after all the precincts' totals had come in. South Concord achieved a 98.5 percent turnout, heavily for Bush, but a pro-Kerry precinct in Cleveland managed only a 7.1 percent turnout. Various precincts, some of them cited in Congressman Conyers' letter to Kenneth Blackwell, recorded more votes than there were voters.

When Harvey Wasserman requested information from Ohio's 88 counties under the Freedom of Information Act, the first county replied that they had already destroyed key evidence. The next said the request would have to be made of the private company that had programmed the machines.

When the recount of 3 percent of the ballots in Fairfield County didn't match the official total, there should have been a full recount. Instead, county officials suspended the recount, saying they were acting on instruction from Blackwell. The Green recount observers were told to leave, while the Republicans remained for a private discussion.21

And so on. The trails that could be followed by a truly democratic media are numerous. For the past few days the media has been trying to convince people that the ballots in Ohio have been properly counted twice. However, according to Green Party observers, 86 of 88 counties broke the law and did not RANDOMLY which precincts they would recount. Only one county conducted a full hand recount, which resulted in 6 percent more votes than in the original vote. Those extra votes were evenly split between Kerry and Bush, but - even assuming that one county's votes have now been properly counted - how do we know where votes in the other 87 counties would fall? Should an extra several percent of them show up, and should they be weighted toward Kerry, the election would not have yet been what the media keeps telling us it is: over.

END NOTES:

1 Glenn Sheller,
If you're serious, I'm very glad you asked.
To get started, I would recommend reading the Ohio section of this report
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/dfiles/file_477.pdf
and the following letters from Congressman John Conyers of Michigan to
Triad, to Sec. of State Blackwell, and to prosecutors:
Letter to Blackwell, his response, and follow-up letter:
http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1240
Triad letter:
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/triad_letter.pdf
followup letter:
http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/Triad_Followup_Letter.pdf
related video:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404X.shtml
letter to federal prosecutors:
http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1246
and this article by the director of the National Voting Rights Institute:
http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1316
Would you like me to ask PFAW and NVRI and Conyers' office to send you press
releases in the future? Can I get you any additional information or put you
in touch with any of the organizations involved?
If the above does NOT look to you like reasonable cause to follow the GAO's
advice and investigate, please let me know what level of breakdown and
corruption would interest you.
You know, there are a lot of wacky theories out there, but there are always
dead-ends in a trial and error investigation, especially one done by
grassroots activists without assistance from professional journalists. And
there is so much distrust, that the insane can begin to look plausible. But
the serious evidence of wrongdoing here has mounted so high, that a
continued refusal to acknowledge it will only increase public skepticism and
distrust. Next time around will be worse. Protecting democracy requires
eternal vigilance, and part of eternity is this moment right here. Don't
worry about who you think won or who conceded. That's two people. Worry
about the thousands who tried to vote and had their votes not counted.
Think from their point of view and you'll be on track, in my opinion.
Best,
David Swanson
202-974-8037, cell 202-329-7847
2 Already on November 10th, a column from Cox News appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution with the headline "Election Conspiracy Theories Persist." Many readers of this and similar articles have almost certainly first heard about Ohio election fraud as a conspiracy theory that persists.
3 I resist the endless admonitions of grammarians to use 'media' as a plural meaning "media outlets," primarily to make the point that our media has almost always one unified voice.
4 Respected organizations debunking the Social Security Is In Trouble conspiracy theory include, among others, the Century Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Center for American Progress.
5 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
6 "However, the recount has been butchered, badly enough that even an editorial in Sunday?s Toledo Blade noted 'the miserable performance of much of the American electoral system.' The Green Party says that 86 of the 88 counties violated Ohio voting law and pre-ed what were to be randomly chosen precincts for hand recounts. It claims that only one county (Coshocton) ran a full hand recount of all of its votes, and, oopsie, its certified total number of votes rose from 16,000 on election night, to 17,000 after the recount (evenly split, we might add, between Bush and Kerry, but indicating 6% of all votes disappeared). The official recount in Fairfield County found added 1,130 votes to the first count of 66,378. Representative Conyers last week wrote again to Triad Systems asking them to refute charges that they had 'remote access' to their voting equipment in Fulton and Henry Counties (read as: they could change computer stuff over the internet). In the kindest of all possible lights, a Triad employee tried to save the elections officials of Hocking County the ?trouble? of a full hand recount at Christmas time by helping them find a precinct whose second tally would match the first one."
7 "Speaking of discourse, I?ve received a handful of e-mails since I mentioned in passing in last Tuesday?s post, the claims of a Florida computer software worker that he was asked to write a ?vote-switching program? in 2000. There have been several points raised that can, I think, be pretty easily cleared up here:
Several e-mails noted that the programmer, Clint Curtis, testified before the Conyers Voting Forum in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this month. Well, yes and no. He did tell his story there, but it?s instructive to note that he was not asked to do so until after Representative Conyers left the forum, and had turned the chairing of the meeting over to a local politician. This wasn?t a case of Conyers rushing to catch a bus, nor a problem with too many witnesses, nor a coincidence.
"For weeks, say sources at various levels of the formal investigations into the voting irregularities, Mr. Curtis has promised them corroboration of his accusations ? even if it was just the statement of someone to whom he said, in 2000, ?hey, this guy just asked me to write a vote-switching program.? These sources say they?ve received no such corroboration, and certainly none has been presented publicly.
One e-mailer complained that the denial by the politician accused by Mr. Curtis of soliciting the program seemed pretty tepid, and confined itself largely to his comment ?I don?t remember meeting Mr. Curtis.? Well, the ambiguity of the denial is partially my fault. Much of the remarks were boilerplate and repetitive, but I did leave out a fairly salient one, in which he said these were: ?some of the most ridiculous, fictional charges you could ever imagine.? I wouldn?t classify that as a ?non-denial denial.?
"Two readers asked why we didn?t simply put Mr. Curtis on 'Countdown' or otherwise interview him. Unfortunately, there is a question of the size of the platform here. If the details of his charges can be found on an innocuous website with limited readership, it doesn?t matter much in the grand scheme of things if the possibility that they are partially or totally untrue, turns out to be the correct one. But if that?s the case ? if this is actually the story of a guy out to hurt a politician ? and we put him on national television, I will have effectively recreated the Swift Boat Veterans fiasco. Under those circumstances, especially in the absence of corroboration, the truth becomes secondary, and the damage is the only verifiable thing.
Lastly (and, for my money, most entertainingly): I noted that an attorney for Curtis?s former employers, for whom he was working when he claims to have been asked to develop the nefarious program, described him to MSNBC as a ?disgruntled former employee.? However, an e-mailer writes, at the time of his departure from the firm, the company gave him a going-away card. I had to smile at this evidence. When I left ESPN in 1997, the company gave me a tape of my oddest moments on the air, a huge farewell banner, and a going-away party that lasted until sunrise and was so joyous that the authorities were summoned. Still, I have to be the first one to say it: if anybody has the right to call me a ?disgruntled former employee,? it?s ESPN."
8 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1343
9 See http://www.blackboxvoting.org and also http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1068
10 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1197
11 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1355
John Kerry on August 6, 2004: "I'm against the ongoing push for reducing restrictions on media concentration. It's contrary to the greater goals of democracy for the country."
The Ukrainian media provided a timely and sharp contrast with its conscientious performance during that country's election crisis, when 237 journalists went on strike to protest biased editorial control.
12 Blackwell tried to require that only registrations on a particular weight of paper would be accepted. He oversaw operations that failed to mail out absentee ballots, mailed them too late, and mailed them to the wrong house. He oversaw the distribution of voting machines that left many Democratic-heavy precincts short, requiring voters to wait several hours in line. While Franklin County saw waits of up to 7 hours, at least 125 machines were left unused. Blackwell required that provisional ballots be filed in the proper precinct, not just the proper county. This shut out many voters when combined with flyers and phone calls and poll workers directing voters to the wrong precinct, and election judges telling voters they could vote in any precinct. Blackwell has blocked numerous attempts to examine ballots and poll records or to conduct a recount in adherence to the legal requirements, and has refused to testify when subpoenaed or to answer questions addressed to him in letters from the ranking Democrat on the US House Judiciary Committee. See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1240
13 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1343
14 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1382
15 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1363 and http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/5/94939/4521
16 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1363
17 See http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/triadltr122204.pdf
18 The point is not that Kerry wants to lose or doesn't care about democracy, although many have made that contention about the Democratic National Committee and its candidates for quite some time. Rather, the point here is simply that, for whatever reason, Kerry handed the media a powerful excuse to cut off its already less than eternal vigilance.
19 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1228
20 From Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, co-authors of OHIO'S STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE DISENFRANCHISED, 2004, upcoming from www.freepress.org:
"For instance, in 16 precincts in Cleveland, he found votes that were shifted from Kerry to other candidates. In at least 30 precincts, there was ultra-low voter turnout reported ? as low as 7.1 percent or 13.05 percent ? and seven entire wards where total turnout was below 50 percent. He writes, 'Kerry won Cleveland with 83.27 percent of the vote to 15.88 percent for Bush. If voter turnout were really 60 percent of registered voters, as seems likely based on turnout in other major cities of Ohio, rather than 49.89 percent as reported, Kerry's margin of victory in Cleveland has been wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes.'
"Phillips points to other counties where has says "there is compelling evidence of fraud." In Miami County early on election night, when 31,620 votes had been counted, and later, when 50,235 votes were counted, 'Kerry had exactly the same percentage, 33.92 percent, and the percentage for George Bush was almost exactly the same, ping by 0.03 percent from 65.80 to 65.77 percent. The second set of returns gave Bush a margin of exactly 16,000 votes, giving cause to question the integrity of the central counting device for the optical scan machines.'
"He cites many other examples, but summarizes his findings: 'It is my professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of victory were wrongly reduced by 22,000 votes in Cleveland, by 17,000 votes in Columbus, and by as many as 7,000 votes in Toledo. It is my further professional opinion that John Kerry's margins of defeat in Warren, Butler, and Clermont Counties were inflated by as many as 37,000 votes in the aggregate, and in Miami County by as many as 6,000 votes. There are still 92,672 uncounted regular ballots that, based upon the analysis set forth of the election results from Dayton and Cincinnati, may be expected to break for John Kerry by an overwhelming margin. And there are still 14,441 uncounted provisional ballots.'"
21 See http://ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1339