Hmmmm.....It just happened to fall to Ohio...

Still compiling leftist blog reaction to last night. In the meantime...

Flashback: Diebold CEO in Ohio 'Committed to Delivering Election to Bush'

Cleveland Plain Dealer | Re-posted November 3 2004

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

More...

Update 11:50am:

The nationwide consensus that election problems were scattered, that glitches were few, far between, and quickly resolved, is total bull.

Everything was in place for fictitious election results, and that seems to be what has happened.

In most states, the returns were pretty much as predicted by the last polls. Florida seems the odd exception -- the last polls were for Kerry, 49-44%, but the returns are running 52-47 Bush.

So in just one day -- and in just one state -- Bush went from five points down to five points ahead.

Hell of a last-minute swing, eh? Smells like another Diebold victory to us.

IndyMedia article

While I fully believe that there have been forces manipulating the vote, I also fully believe now that there are far too many people (read, possibly more than half) in this country who actually are voting in support of America's current politics.

Update 12:00pm:

It isn't often that right-wing journalists astonish me. The devil, in my experience, hasn't given them a new tune in years. As politics goes, they do paint-by-numbers, generally in shades of black. Peter Oborne was hardly of the sunniest disposition last night, but his analysis of American presidential politics was stunning.

This was less because of the argument, powerful as it was, than because the speaker is one of the most intensely conservative hacks there is. To put it another way, if the likes of Oborne are alienated from the American way, the Americans have more than fromage-munching surrender simians to fret about.

"The greatest democracy in the world?" he inquired. "They have to be kidding." In Oborne's account, a campaign based on fear, lies and black propaganda would be decided by a small, decisive, yet "largely ignorant" group of manipulated voters. He even provided numbers.

As Oborne put it, 200 million Americans may be entitled to vote, but only 6.5 million are undecided. Of those, only the unconvinced in the swing states will be instrumental in choosing a president. In other words, one-half of 1% – perhaps one million souls – will elect the next resident of the White House. Just to add to the fun: "These target voters are ignorant beyond belief."

None of those interviewed could find Iraq or Afghanistan on the map. Asked to identify Britain, one man pointed to west Africa. Another, with his finger on North Korea, said: "Afghanistan is over here, where Russia used to be."

Granted, you probably couldn't find many people in Bearsden or Portobello who could tell you where the Black Watch are currently being shelled. Oborne, nevertheless, was making a different point. By his account, American ignorance is being pandered to and deepened by a political system that is – his word – a sham. Both sides peddle lies – whether it be John Kerry appeasing the gun nuts of West Virginia after voting for gun control 55 times, or Bush using front organisations to plant his smears – and both lie about their lies.

The Dirty Race for the White House was, to repeat, a remarkable assault by a British conservative on "a debased and degraded political system". It was also touching. When Oborne went to Cleveland, Ohio, in a state that is at the heart of the election battle, he was moved almost to tears by a makeshift memorial to 900 youths killed by guns. African-Americans could decide the entire race, but with one in four living in poverty, and half with no health insurance whatever, they see no obvious difference between two rich white men.

I've made some of Oborne's arguments myself, and made them many times over, but that, apparently, is what you expect from lefties. He ended by remarking that America intends to spread democracy around the world. "Judging on how it works at home," he said, "we should all be very afraid."

article

Well, some of us have been duly disturbed and concerned for some time now.

It used to be said that satire died when they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. Back then, no-one had imagined the 2004 presidential election.

Or maybe that was where they got the idea they could pull it off.

Update 12:15pm:

It's not even Election Day yet, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign is already down by a almost a million votes. That's because, in important states like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico, voter names have been systematically removed from the rolls and absentee ballots have been overlooked—overwhelming ly in minority areas, like Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, where Hispanic voters have a 500 percent greater chance of their vote being "spoiled." Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on the trashing of the election.

John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted. He's also losing big time in Colorado and Ohio; and he's way down in Florida, though the votes won't be totaled until Tuesday night.

Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling—ethnic cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil" votes—John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily exceed one million votes.

Truthout article