ED NOTE 11:49pm PT: Well, it hadda happen. A story at The BRAD BLOG that needs retraction! It’s an unfortunate first in our going-on-three years here. Hopefully a last. But so it goes. We’re pulling the following story (leaving it below in full, along with a note where we went wrong) so nobody accuses us of trying to hide anything. When we’re wrong, we’re wrong. And unless further info appears, it would seem that we worked too quickly in our research here and were, infact, wrong. We most certainly regret the error and regret slurring Ms. Hoke, albeit accidentally, by reporting that she was an attorney for Bush/Cheney ’04! She appears to have been representing the Green and Libertarian parties in the Ohio 2004 recount instead. Further explanation below, if you’re interested…
The good John Gideon caught an interesting piece of breaking news as it came in via Lou Dobbs this evening.
As it turns out, Cuyahoga County, OH (who had a disasterous meltdown during their recent primary election) has now named The Center for Election Integrity (CEI), at Cleveland State University as “Public Monitor” for their general election on Nov. 7th.
Sounds good as Dobbs reported it!
…Until you dig a little deeper to find that the CEI is headed by one S. Candice Hoke who was an attorney for Bush/Cheney in Ohio in 2004! ED NOTE ON RETRACTION: This is where things began to go wrong! Read on…
As this little blast from the past, detailing the gamed Cuyahoga County recount on December 18, 2004 shows, good old Candice was right there in the trenches as Bush/Cheney’s official “Recount Coordinator” when the County ran their now infamously phony recount:
ED NOTE RETRACTION: A close re-reading, and additional investigation shows that, in fact, we misread the quoted text above! On closer examination, it appears that the “Green/Lib repS.” (plural!) were Taylor and Hoke, and that the “Bush Cheney attorney and coordinator” mentioned in that graf was actually unnamed! Trouble with commas, and reading too fast! The rest of the story, as follows, is accurate, however, though only useful for background info in general at this point.
Of course, eagle-eyed BRAD BLOG readers will recall, three Cuyahoga County Board of Elections officials were later indicted for having faked the selection of “random precincts” to count during the Green/Libertarian requested recount, so as, presumably, to avoid a full county-wide hand count.
According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s April 6th article on the three indictments which we covered at the time:
Days before the Dec. 16 recount, workers opened the ballots and hand-counted enough votes to identify precincts where the machine count matched.
“If it didn’t balance, they excluded those precincts,” Baxter said.
According to the CEI website today, here’s their mission in Cuyahoga this year:
As Public Monitor, the Center will provide frequent public reports on Cuyahoga County’s progress toward election administrative excellence, and on any risks that develop in preparation for its conduct of an election. The Public Monitor will report to the public, as well as to the Boards of both the Cuyahoga County Commission and the Board of Elections, with the goal of ensuring a lawful, equitable, and secure electoral system that produces accurate and verifiable election results.
With “impartial” Public Election Monitors on hand like Hoke and CEI this November, who needs “impartial” Public Election Monitors at all? The Cuyahoga County Election Hoax continues.
TOMMOROW: More on all-new Buckeye State Election Chicanery…Including what would appear to be the first official (known) dirty trick of 2006! Stay tuned…
When is the “joke” going to end….I’m waiting for the punch line
Here is the trend in Generic House of Representative Congressional polls over the past 12 months:
http://www.progressiveindepende...ic_id=3213#top
As you can see from the chart, the Democrats have held a steady 10.3% average lead over the past 12 months. In fact, the Democratic linear trend has been increasing slightly (positive slope), while the Republican trend line is virtually flat (zero slope).
The steady Democratic lead cannot be due to a series of random occurrences. Based on the numbers, the probability of winning the House is overwhelming. But the lead is not realistic. In every election, about 3% of the (mostly Democratic) votes are never counted due to spoiled and lost ballots. Figure a 1.5% net loss for the Democrats. And the new Voter ID requirement will result in the disenfranchisement of millions.
The remaining difference will be overcome by outright GOP fraud (DRE and central tabulator vote switching).
So, the obvious question: What can be done to stop these shenanegans?
can everybody say “Conflict of interest” !
Northwest Patriot, I wish I knew.
There is such a preponderance of crooks in office that there seems little hope of an honest man getting a fair shake.
We can’t expect people engaging in political crime to police themselves or pass legislation that is against their interests. We can want it. And I do. But it is logically hopeless.
I fear for my country. It’s become a first world banana republic.
# 2 TRUTH IS ALL
# 3 NORTHWEST PATRIOT
*****2006 – Instead of 45% of the Demos showing up at the ballot box to vote,.. as usual,.. we need,.. it is crucial this election that 75-80% of the demo voters cast a vote. We need to FAR EXCEED the vote count of the christo-fascists,.. the Dominionists,.. the armageddonists,.. the neo-con fascists,.. and the corporatists.
If we out vote them by such massive amounts – percentage wise,.. we render the election nearly impossible to steal. If we out vote them by 20-30%,.. then if they tamper with the vote counts it would be blatantly obvious to everyone that the numbers were gamed. They can easily manipulate the numbers and juggle them up a bit if the election is too close to call,.. but if it is a blow out election overwhelmingly against the Republicans then the numbers are not so easy for them to fudge.
*****2006 – Demos regain majority status in both the House and the Senate.
*****2007 & 2008 – Demos update the election laws to simplify/standardize the process and restore integrity to the system of voting without outsourcing the vote counting to private sector partisan corporations who’s loyalties belong to the Republican Party. Make it illegal to disenfranchise any voter who is lawfully trying to place their vote,.. with severe periods of incarceration for those who seek to impede anyone from lawfully attempting to voting.
OK, good you admit when you’re wrong. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Contrast Brad’s behavior and his retraction with the typical, purposefully, intentionally false reports that are so often made from the reicht-wingers:
Case in point: Yesterday evening as driving home, I was switching radio stations between Michael Graham, and Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio (now there’s a contrast). Graham was explaining that whereas the recently divulged IM messages from congressman Foley to 16-year-old pages were clearly outrageous, his emails from a year ago that had been brought to the attention of Dennis Hastert were NOTHING like that–were HARDLY worthy of any kind of action by Dennis Hastert, since they were NOT EXPLICIT or EVEN SEXUAL, or anything, just a little too familiar and uncomfortable, like some people are who embarrass you with thank-you notes and handshakes, and tell you to please come and see them, and so on–blah blah, that kind of thing, nothing sexual.
So I gets out of the car and walks into the house, and punch on the radio there, and it’s tuned to Rhodes, and she’s saying, ok, here’s one email from a year ago, in which Foley say, ‘I’d like to slide your shorts off of you’. Not sexual? To an underaged page? It’s clearly sexual. He’s proposing statutory rape. But of course Graham had made sure before serving this up, that the caller he was talking to had NOT read the emails himself.
And of course Graham was doing everything he could to equate pedophilia with homosexuality. Even though he knows they are completely separate, and the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are otherwise hetersexual in their behavior.
Suggested bumper sticker of the day: “Fox News–trustworthy like a fox”
For more on Graham, check out this link, detailing another high-integrity incident that he was fired for:
Having trouble making that link. Let’s try again. I could see it in the little white box. What happened to it? Here goes again:
Clicking on link:
Graham gets fired over this
Brad, not to make light of this (OK, yes, to make light of this a little) but it’s really the A.P.’s fault for not accepting the use of semi-colons more.
If the original had read:
None of this ever would have happened.
I’m telling you, that AP can’t be trusted.
But good on you for owning up and leaving the evidence. Shows the overall integrity of your site and your work.
We shall overcome. This Thursday, October 5, 2006 is the first day to show them. http://www.worldcantwait.org.
Charlie L
Portland, Oregon
Activist; believer in truth and justice; and lover of that “archaic piece of paper” — The Constitution of the United States.
Sorry that you had that kind of problem, Brad. But you did the absolutely right thing, you retracted without deleting. Deleting would not have worked (Google cache) anyway, so this means your cleverer, honester and a better man than “they” are or ever have been…
Martin
Gee, Brad, one “oops!” out of three-thousand-five-hundred-and-sixty-four blog entries, and that thoroughly corrected within 5 hours: still a perfect 100 on your “logic and accuracy” test!
Careful Brad, or you’re going to end up looking like “The New York Times”, except for the fact that you didn’t help start a war, of course.
Brad, Thank you for correcting the record, and so quickly. We are a nonpartisan entity working fervently to try to ensure verifiable election accuracy in Cuyahoga County, and collaborate with other organizations to assist all of Ohio in election improvement.
–Candice Hoke, Cleveland; CSU Center for Election Integrity