Investigating Ohio

Investigating Ohio
Rep. John Conyers isn't ready to declare the election stolen, but he'll continue to dig into the droves of complaints -- and fight to fix the broken U.S. election system
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By Tim Grieve
Dec. 21, 2004 | For those who believe that the 2004 election was stolen by George W. Bush, Karl Rove and an unholy alliance of party operatives and voting-machine impresarios, a 75-year-old Democratic congressman from Detroit has emerged as the last best hope for American democracy. Almost alone in official Washington, Rep. John Conyers has insisted that the nation understand -- and then correct -- the problems that plagued the 2004 vote.

With little attention from the media and little support even from members of his own party, Conyers has launched his own probe of the 2004 election. His early conclusion: There may not have been an active conspiracy to suppress the vote and steal the election, but all those problems in Ohio -- the long lines in Democratic precincts, the voting machines that may have switched votes, the suspicious actions of a voting-machine company representative, the trumped-up concerns about terrorism in Warren County, the Republican-friendly rulings by the state election official who also happened to chair the Bush-Cheney campaign -- well, those things didn't all happen by accident, either.

"You know, orchestrated attempts don't always require a conspiracy," Conyers told Salon on Monday. Conyers said that Bush's supporters in Ohio may have worked to suppress the vote based on cues rather than orders from party officials. "People get the drift from other elections and the way [campaign leaders] talk about how they're going to win the election."

Conyers isn't looking to overturn the election, and he won't say that the Republicans stole it; coming from a member of Congress, such an allegation would be "reckless," he said. But neither is he willing to put the election of 2004 behind him yet. This is the second presidential election in a row in which Republicans have succeeded in suppressing the vote, Conyers said, and he wants to ensure that the system is changed so that it won't happen again. He'll continue his investigation, he'll join the Rev. Jesse Jackson in a protest rally in Ohio on Jan. 3, and when the new Congress meets in January he'll push for further investigation and reform.

Conyers spoke with Salon by phone from Detroit.

Your first public forum on the 2004 election was called "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?" Do you know the answer to that question yet?

Well, dozens and dozens of things went wrong. It depends on what part of the state we're going to examine. In Hocking County, a private company accessed an election machine and altered and tampered with it in the absence of election observers. It disturbed a deputy chair of the election in the county so much that she has given a sworn affidavit that has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we're in the process of running that down. But what about in Cleveland, Ohio? There, thousands of people claimed that their vote for Kerry was turned into a vote for Bush. Poll workers made mistakes that might have cost thousands of votes in Cleveland. And in Youngstown, machines turned an undetermined number of Kerry votes into Bush votes as well. Provisional ballots were thrown out. There were several conflicting rules. There was mass confusion. In Warren County, they talked about [the possibility that] terrorism might close down the election. I mean, please.

What we're doing, understand, is we're collecting the complaints, the grievances, the outrages, the indignities that people suffered, and then we've got to process them to find out what is valid and what needs to be further examined and what needs to be tossed out. It's not like every complaint is one that has to be counted. What we're trying to do is make the system better.

Do you believe that there was an orchestrated attempt to steal the election?

Well, you know, orchestrated attempts don't always require a conspiracy. People get the drift from other elections and the way [campaign leaders] talk about how they're going to win the election. When you have the exit-polling information discrepancies that occurred in 2004, where the odds of all the swing states coming in so much stronger for Bush than the exit polls indicated -- they say that that is, statistically, almost an improbability.

[People] are saying, "No, no, no, that doesn't mean much." But it means a lot. It feeds this growing, [but] not provable feeling among millions of Americans that this was another unfair election.

Do you have that feeling?

Sure, I have a feeling that whenever we can come across ways to make elections fairer or work better or improve the process or simplify the regulations or make voting more available to people who have language problems or disabilities, we have a responsibility to do it. We're trying to improve the system. I'm not trying to attack the outcome. What we need is a system where there are only a few of the kinds of the tens of thousands of complaints that we already have.

Do you believe the outcome of the election would have been different if it had been conducted more fairly?

I have no way of saying that because this gets into conjecture. I make one conjecture and somebody else makes a counter conjecture, and where are we? We're all, "This is what I think." I'm not as concerned about what I think as I am about what people told me went wrong on Election Day that we in Congress, especially the Judiciary Committee, have the responsibility to correct.

But is there any real chance that anything will be corrected? The entire nation was focused on the problems with the electoral system in 2000, yet very little seems to have changed. If meaningful reform didn't come then, how can anyone expect it to come now?

I thought that the Help America Vote Act would improve things dramatically. And although it helped in places, the provisional ballot [process] was misinterpreted. We couldn't get all these private companies to come up with a paper trail on their machines. And with the precinct machines, there was quite a disparity in the conservative counties in Ohio as opposed to the Democratic areas where there were only a few machines.

Republican precincts had plenty of machines, and people could vote quickly.

Instantly, yeah. And we had people waiting for hours only miles away.

So what comes of all of this?

First, we've got to collect the complaints. Second, we've got to investigate them and bring forward the ones we're willing to stand by. And then we have to examine how we correct them. There needs to be, generally stated, more federal regulation over presidential elections. There are just way too many differences, from not only state to state but also county to county.


So far, which complaints are you willing to "stand by"?

It's not a matter of my claiming ownership over the complaints. I'm just doing my job. If all of them are valid, that's what I'm going to present. If half of them are valid, that's what I'm going to present. I'm not going forward with complaints that don't reach the level of believability or credibility.

The complaints you've described in this interview -- do they meet that level of believability and credibility?

Oh yes, and plenty more reach that level. So we've got a problem. Many people in the media are saying, "Look, the election's over, and yes, we had problems." It's like many people are just taking this. Then we have the hundreds of thousands of people who are outraged and supportive of me for carrying on and trying to make sure we get to the bottom of all these grievances that have been brought forward.

We've received e-mails from hundreds of those people, and many of them seem certain that the election was stolen, or at least that the outcome would have been different if the election had been more fair.

Sure.

But you're not there yet.

Well, no, that's not why I'm doing this. I'm not trying to get there. I'm trying to do the kind of job that people will say, "I think the congressman and those working with him are going about this in a fairly impartial, effective manner" -- and not that they're coming in as thieves trying to upset the election result. To me, that would not be what I'm in Congress to do. I mean, I would be doing this if it were just the reverse. A fair election process applies to everybody -- Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals alike.

Four years ago, when it came time for Congress to certify the election results, a number of House members rose to protest the certification of the Bush electors from Florida. Not a single member of the Senate joined them. Do you expect the same thing to happen this time around?

No, I think the Senate is going to go along with an inquiry this time. I don't think they would embarrass themselves to let this happen two times in a row.

Has any senator said to you that he or she will call for an inquiry?

No, I haven't talked with a single one. I'm not citing somebody who I know is going to do it. I'm not aware of anyone. I just don't think the Senate would get caught in that position.

You haven't exactly enjoyed a groundswell of support from other members of Congress. Are there Democrats in Congress who support what you're doing but won't come forward and say so publicly?

Well, there are Republicans who support what I'm doing who haven't been willing to come forward. Look, calling for fair elections is not the most radical thing in the world. We're not positing some revolutionary theory here. We're asking that the people who complained be given a fair hearing.

Have any Republicans actually told you that they support your efforts?

I'd rather not comment on that.

Are you surprised that none of them have said so publicly?

No, not really. If you had a majority leader like theirs, you'd probably think twice about it yourself.

What about the Democratic leadership? Harry Reid, the new Senate minority leader, says he'd rather dance with Bush than fight him. Should the problems in Ohio change the way Democrats in Congress think about accommodating Bush in his second term?

Well, I'm not sure how much accommodation is going to happen. I listen to Bush talking about "reaching out," which he talked about the first time, and we had the most divided federal system in memory. And now those kinds of phrases are being tossed about during the Christmas holiday again. Please. I don't put much stock in it.

Bush billed himself as a "uniter, not a divider."

I keep reminding myself of what he said. He sure didn't unite anybody I knew of.

And what about John Kerry? Have you spoken with him about your investigation?

His lawyer was in Columbus for our hearing there last week. And he has also, at the same time, asked for a full recount in Delaware County [Ohio].

Has the Kerry campaign done enough? A lot of Democrats think Kerry conceded too soon.

It's easy to be in an armchair somewhere saying, "You've got to do this; you've got to do that." He had more in his control. And besides, he's the candidate. I wish he'd listened to me more, and everybody wishes that the guy they voted for would listen to them more. But he's the master of his ship.

When you say that you wish Kerry had listened to you more, do you mean during the campaign or in the days after the election?

During the campaign and after.

What do you wish he were doing now?

I don't want to go into all of this "shoulda, coulda, woulda." I think it takes our focus off the fact that we had far too many grievances and misfires in this election that have to be corrected.

But you don't believe that those problems were the result of a concerted effort by the Republican Party or the Bush-Cheney campaign? You think people who wanted to see the president reelected just got the message somehow that they were supposed to do the things they did?

People didn't have to get a message. If you use questionable tactics and generally attempt to suppress the vote -- that's what the Republicans' strategies were all about: "How do we limit the vote?" Because the more people who voted, the more imperiled they felt they would be. And from that kind of an assumption, you can get a whole lot of activities that might not meet the smell test.

Because people on the ground understand the overall strategy and then take it upon themselves to engage in whatever conduct they think will help?

That's what frequently happens, and usually does.

Do you believe that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell did that? Do you think he acted with the intent to suppress the vote?

I know that Kenneth Blackwell made some decisions that were blatant and outrageous for a secretary of state. How he felt that his head was big enough to be chairman of the "Re-elect Bush" committee and also head of the administration of the electoral vote for the president in that same state was beyond me.

Is that the sort of issue that you hope to address through legislative reform?

Oh, good night, yeah. There are very few people who did what he did.

Do you think you'll ever be able to prove that there was a coordinated effort to steal the election?

We're not trying to prove that. This is what we're discussing: We're trying to improve the situation wherever we can to make a better voting system in the states.

But a lot of the people who support your efforts desperately want you to prove that there was a conspiracy. If the e-mails we get are any indication, a lot of them believe that the existence of a conspiracy has already been proven.

Well, you know, a citizen's point of view may be different from a federal lawmaker's point of view. The citizens are entitled to form their own opinions. They can assert that easily. A member of Congress, the ranking member of Judiciary ... I can't make those assertions without proof. That would be reckless.

So you don't make them.

No, I don't.

What do you do?

We pass laws. We make laws and we try to correct the system through the legislative process.

And what conclusions have you reached about how the system can be fixed?

Everyone is beginning to reexamine the appropriateness of the Electoral College. We realize that provisional balloting needs to be streamlined and simplified. We know that there should be paper trails in computers. We're beginning to wonder if we haven't privatized the electoral system so that the computer tabulators can do more and know more than the electoral commissions of the counties themselves.

In the meantime, what do you say to all of the people who believe in their hearts that our democracy is broken and that the election was stolen?

I ask and invite everybody to turn in any evidence that they want that helps proves whatever position they believe, or even a position they don't believe. But this isn't a hunch and suspicion game. This is very serious business. Either there were defects so numerous and so plentiful that we had a faulty election, or we had an election that had these defects [but they didn't alter the outcome of the election]. And as we go forward with trying to improve the process, my whole objective is not to change the election result but to try to improve the process itself.

Salon.com

In Search of Armor an Exit Plan

In search of armored Humvees and an exit plan
By Arianna Huffington

Dec. 16, 2004 | If there is one thing Democrats should have learned from Karl Rove during this year's election, it is the value of relentlessly attacking -- day in and day out -- your opponent's perceived strength.

Well, from now until Congress is asked in January to vote on the next $80 billion the president wants for the war in Iraq, not a day should go by without Democrats shouting from the rooftops that the White House is shamefully betraying the very troops it so vociferously claims to be supporting.

Last week, one brave soldier's question opened the door on this scandalous subject. Now it's up to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi -- and all citizen-activists who have learned what a difference they can make -- to kick the door in, and force the media to spend some of the precious oxygen consumed by Scott Peterson's sentencing and Bernie Kerik's nanny on the dangerous mess in Iraq, with first on the list the deplorable treatment of the young men and women we've sent there.

Some, like Sen. Joe Biden, have begun making the case. "This was a war of choice, not necessity," said Biden last week. "Why is it that, 20 months after Saddam's statue fell, our troops still don't have the protection they need?" He's right, but these kinds of pointed attacks have been scattershot. To really make a difference, the loyal opposition desperately needs to mount a concerted and impassioned assault on Bush's bankrupt Iraq policy.

And the ammunition at its disposal is devastating.

For starters, as Army Spc. Thomas Wilson pointed out to the shockingly-still-in-office secretary of defense, our troops continue to have their lives put in jeopardy due to a lack of properly armored vehicles. Indeed, half of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq might still be alive if these basic tools of a modern army were available.

Let me repeat that: Half of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq might still be alive if only our troops had been properly equipped. What's more, one of the companies that makes the protective plates for the Humvees used in Iraq said last week that it could easily have increased its output -- if only the Pentagon had asked. Remember how often on the campaign trail the president trotted out his surefire applause line, promising, "I'll make sure our troops have the best. They deserve the best"? Maybe he was referring to the quality of their funerals.

Then there is the deceitful way his administration continues to underreport the number of injured and ill soldiers, leaving as many as 15,000 off the Pentagon's official casualty count because their wounds -- including spinal injuries, bone fractures, heart problems and mental disorders -- were not the result of enemy fire. Eighty percent of these soldiers were injured so severely that they never returned to their units -- but, to the Pentagon, they are not even worth counting.

As for the injuries they are willing to tally, the numbers tell a chilling tale of suffering. For instance, American soldiers in Iraq are having their limbs amputated at double the rate of previous wars, while Army suicide rates are soaring, up 40 percent in the past year.

Some of the latter can, no doubt, be traced to the lack of a clear purpose guiding our troops. "That," says Iraq war vet and Operation Truth founder Paul Rieckhoff, "is the most basic tool a soldier needs on the battlefield -- a reason to be there." And it can't help morale to have the administration repeatedly invoking stop-loss orders (many just in time for the holidays) and turning decades of Pentagon policy on its ear by calling on troops to serve multiple tours of duty overseas.

The situation doesn't get much brighter once the troops finally make it home. Twenty percent of the nearly 28,000 Iraq war vets who have sought help from the Veterans Administration were diagnosed with a mental disorder, including major depression, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, emotional numbness and violent outbursts. And, stunningly, Iraq war vets are already starting to turn up at our nation's homeless shelters, the first drops of what homeless-vet advocates fear could become a deluge.

The rotten cherry on top of this disgusting sundae? Reports that wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital are asking for donations because the government refuses to pay for their long-distance phone calls. Feel like talking to your loved ones while you recover from a wound you received fighting for your country? Not unless you can get someone to give you a handout. That is, if you still have a hand to put out. Yet here was Rummy claiming: "We're focused on the power of saying 'thank you' to people. And not just 'thank you' to the troops, but also their families." As long as it's a local call.

The time has come to stop being cowed by accusations that criticizing the war is the same as criticizing the troops and to start speaking the truth: Tens of thousands of young American men and women are having their lives destroyed because of the Bush administration's willful negligence.

As Sen. Biden said, this was a war of choice -- and the president chose to wage it before our forces were properly equipped for battle. Convinced that the people of Iraq would, in the words of Paul Wolfowitz, "greet us as liberators," the administration wildly miscalculated. The original war plan estimated that we'd have as few as 50,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2003. Instead, as we head into 2005, the White House is pushing troop levels to 150,000 -- the highest since the invasion.

All because the president refuses to course-correct. Which is, after all, the only reason Rumsfeld still has a job. Iraq is Bush's signature offering to the world -- and firing Rummy would be like McDonald's deciding to pull the Big Mac off its menu.

Instead, the president continues to operate in a fog of denial, serving up rosy assessments of the mayhem he has unleashed. Just last week he held fast to the notion that the Iraqi insurgency is the result of "the few people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march toward democracy." Even the Pentagon puts the number of insurgents at 20,000, while the British military estimates that it's closer to 40,000 or 50,000 (and that's on top of the 24,000 Iraqi rebels who have already been captured or killed). I guess it depends on what your definition of "few" is.

For a more clear-eyed judgment on Iraq, I suggest the president turn away from the mirror and the small circle of yes men and women he surrounds himself with and listen to Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel. "We were unprepared for what we are facing in a post-Saddam Iraq," said Hagel. "But too many of our leaders in this administration were going around the country reassuring Americans our troops had everything they wanted. Certainly the Congress was passing a lot of money to make sure they had everything they wanted."

So where exactly has the $150 billion we've already spent in Iraq gone -- if not to "make sure our troops have the best"? It's a question that Democrats in Congress should demand an answer to before they rubber-stamp an additional $80 billion for Iraq right after the president is sworn in for his second term.

The loyal opposition needs to finally start opposing this administration's most catastrophic failure -- and make it clear that standing up to its delusions and incompetence is standing up for the truth.

Tired of All the Bogus Comeback Tours?

One more time
Some bands just don't know when to quit. Tired of all the bogus comeback tours, Michael Hann sets down some ground rules for those contemplating a reunion

Michael Hann
Friday December 3, 2004

The Guardian

It used to be called the oldies circuit: troupers your parents, or grandparents, might have known, playing the pubs, clubs and Mecca ballrooms. Walking around provincial towns, one would see posters for groups whose names were half-remembered from brief clips on Pop Quiz, or from the radio stations favoured by bus drivers. Those were the good times, when bands whose time had passed knew that they should aspire to nothing more than comfortable, rent-paying mediocrity.
But old bands are now big business. The growth of heritage rock in the past few years - spurred on by the CD-reissue business, nurtured by magazines such as Mojo, which devote 20 pages to the making of the third Yes album - has created a market for any Tom, Dick and Harry that someone, somewhere has acclaimed as hugely influential. All it needs is some hack to assert that Tom, Dick and Harry's fourth album remains one of the classics of the neo-urban folk-funk genre, the influence of which may be heard in everyone from Dizzee Rascal to the Darkness and - lo! - T, D and H will be embarking on a 10-date tour, with original lineup, of some of our more prestigious venues, finishing with a night at the Royal Festival Hall in London, tickets £30 a pop.

Which is why we need some hard and fast rules to govern this reunion madness:

1. Make sure enough members are still alive

The strength of the brand (and make no mistake, reformed bands are trading as much on their brand as their music) is slashed if the ones who wrote the songs have long since succumbed to drink, drugs or old age. The experience of seeing the elderly New York Dolls tottering around the stage of the Royal Festival Hall in the summer was diminished rather by the absence of the late Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan - himself a replacement for a drummer who had died first time round. If, on the other hand, you can manage to get all the original band members in the same place at the same time without the need for emergency medical assistance, it could work out.

Getting it right: Television's classic lineup reconvened last summer for a handful of small-scale shows running through their late-1970s repertoire. All members were alive, and fully functioning.

Getting it wrong: Thin Lizzy - Touring next spring. Even though Phil Lynott is dead. Imagine Laurel and Hardy, without Laurel. Or Hardy. You get the picture.

2. Don't compromise your politics

If all your band ever stood for was generating enough cash to support the combined rural economies of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, by all means reunite and renew your audience's acquaintance with £150 tour jackets. But what if you were known for your strident Marxist politics, your bitterness about all-pervasive commerce and your refusal to pander to audience expectations? Best not to sully the purity of the original statement, surely? If you paint yourself into the corner of asceticism at 20, you should expect some dismay if you stride out of it at 40.

Getting it right: Duran Duran never had any principles to compromise. So making a fortune from a reformation world tour offended nobody. And they were surprisingly terrific.

Getting it wrong: Punk-funk pioneers Gang of Four were the most earnest rock band in history. They sang that everything you might enjoy, from falling in love (like anthrax infection, apparently) to going on holiday, was tainted by capitalism. Now punk-funk is back in fashion and you can see their original lineup for the first time in two decades in January - tickets start at £18.50!

3. If it's about the money, admit it

We understand that a lot of great, great bands never get their due at the time. And we understand that after splitting, the members - who may very well have changed the fabric of pop music - will often spend 20 years releasing solo albums no one buys and playing gigs no one bar two fanzine writers attends. So if the drug-addled members step forward and say, "Enough of noble poverty. We want some of the cash that talentless wasters have made by ripping off our sound," it's hard to argue. It's hard to feel quite so sympathetic when the musicians insist that they feel more relevant than ever now and have really got something to communicate to the kids - kids young enough to be their grandchildren.

Getting it right: The Pixies named their reunion the Sell-Out Tour. They've made a bundle, and they've played some blinding rock music. Now they and we can go home happy the job is done.

Getting it wrong: Jane's Addiction's reformation "came just when they're needed most", according to their website. No, no, no. It came when they were at a loose end. They've split again now, thankfully.

4. Don't trample on your legacy

Rock audiences will tolerate an awful lot: sullen, uncommunicative singers; a sound mix that makes the most delicate Bachrach and David number sound like Iron Maiden's Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter; a venue floor so coated in unnamed fluids you need half a gallon of white spirit to free your shoes at the end of the evening. What they won't tolerate is their heroes treating their back catalogue with contempt. Mess with the songs that, as some drunken slob in a curry-stained T-shirt tells you at the show, "were my life when I was 16", and you destroy the pillars on which they have built their subsequent cultural lives. They will never forgive you.

Getting it right: Mission of Burma were pretty well unheard of until they reformed in 2002. Which made it that much easier for fans at their reunion gigs - who had never actually heard the songs before - to hail them as the pioneers of the American alternative scene.

Getting it wrong: The Velvet Underground turned up in the early 1990s to play White Light, White Heat as such a pedestrian pub-rock boogie that one half-expected Lou Reed to announce the results of the raffle at the end of the song.

5. Wait for the cultural tide to flow in your favour

Rock music moves in cycles: what was risible a fortnight ago can be inspirational today, given the right endorsement from a new generation of musicians. But the secret is in the timing. Like playing chicken while driving a car, you need to wait as long as possible before making your move. So reform too early and you risk the world shunning you; choose your moment, after the appropriate number of namechecks from fanboys who have gone on to sell millions of records, and the world, if not Popworld with Simon and Miquita, is your oyster.

Getting it right: Slint, from Kentucky, sold about three records and played a handful of gigs during the first phase of their career. After they split, dozens of other bands forged careers from note-for-note rip- offs of their template. Now they have reformed - with enough cultural cachet to curate a rock festival of their own in February.

Getting it wrong: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich got back together in the 1990s, yet they have still not secured that season at the Royal Albert Hall or the loving retrospective in Uncut. Why should that be?

Ohio Offers Lessons for 2008

Ohio offers lessons for 2008
Several factors contributed to 'lost' voters

By Michael Powell and Peter Slevin
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:31 p.m. ET Dec. 14, 2004

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Tanya Thivener's is a tale of two voting precincts in Franklin County. In her city neighborhood, which is vastly Democratic and majority black, the 38-year-old mortgage broker found a line snaking out of the precinct door.

She stood in line for four hours -- one hour in the rain -- and watched dozens of potential voters mutter in disgust and walk away without casting a ballot. Afterward, Thivener hopped in her car and drove to her mother's house, in the vastly Republican and majority white suburb of Harrisburg. How long, she asked, did it take her to vote?

Fifteen minutes, her mother replied.

"It was . . . poor planning," Thivener said. "County officials knew they had this huge increase in registrations, and yet there weren't enough machines in the city. You really hope this wasn't intentional."

Electoral problems prevented many thousands of Ohioans from voting on Nov. 2. In Columbus, bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots. It is unlikely that such "lost" voters would have changed the election result -- Ohio tipped to President Bush by a 118,000-vote margin and cemented his electoral college majority.

But similar problems occurred across the state and fueled protest marches and demands for a recount. The foul-ups appeared particularly acute in Democratic-leaning districts, according to interviews with voters, poll workers, election observers and election board and party officials, as well as an examination of precinct voting patterns in several cities.

In Cleveland, poorly trained poll workers apparently gave faulty instructions to voters that led to the disqualification of thousands of provisional ballots and misdirected several hundred votes to third-party candidates. In Youngstown, 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of votes for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to the Bush column.

In Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo, and on college campuses, election officials allocated far too few voting machines to busy precincts, with the result that voters stood on line as long as 10 hours -- many leaving without voting. Some longtime voters discovered their registrations had been purged.

'Disenfranchsing people'
"There isn't enough to prove fraud, but there have been very significant problems in running elections in Ohio this year that demand reform," said Edward B. Foley, who is director of the election law program at the Ohio State University law school and a former Ohio state solicitor. "We clearly ended up disenfranchising people, and I don't want to minimize that."

Franklin County election officials -- evenly split between Republicans and Democrats -- say they allocated machines based on past voting patterns and their best estimate of where more were needed. But they acknowledge having too few machines to cope with an additional 102,000 registered voters.

Ohio is not particularly unusual. After the 2000 election debacle, which ended with a 36-day partisan standoff in Florida and an election decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002. The intent was to help states upgrade aging voting machines and ensure that eligible voters are not turned away. To a point, it has had the desired effect.

"Viewed dispassionately, the national elections ran much more smoothly than in 2000," said Charles Stewart III, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a specialist in voting behavior and methodology. Because of improved technology "nationwide, we counted perhaps 1 million votes that we would have lost four years ago."

But much work remains. Congress imposed only the minimal national standards and included too few dollars. Thousands of precincts -- including 70 percent of Ohio's machines -- still use punch-card ballots, which have a high error rate. A patchwork quilt of state rules governs voter registration and provisional ballots. (Provisional ballots are given to voters whose names do not appear on registration rolls -- studies show that minorities and poor voters cast a disproportionate number of such ballots.) Ohio recorded 153,000 provisional ballots. But in Georgia, one-third of the election districts did not record a single provisional ballot in 2004.

In Florida, ground zero for 2000's election meltdown, professors and graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley studied this year's voting results, contrasting counties that had electronic voting machines with those that used traditional voting methods. They concluded, based on voting and population trends and other indicators, that irregularities associated with machines in three traditionally Democratic counties in southern Florida may have delivered at least 130,000 excess votes for Bush in a state the president won by about 381,000 votes. The study prompted heated critiques from some polling experts.

Stewart of MIT was skeptical, too. But he ran the numbers and came up with the same result. "You can't break it; I've tried," Stewart said. "There's something funky in the results from the electronic machine Democratic counties."

Berkeley sociologist Michael Hout, who directed the study, said the problem in Florida probably lies with the technology. (Florida's touch-screen machines lack paper records.) "I've always viewed this as a software problem, not a corruption problem," he said. "We'd never tolerate this level of errors with an ATM. The problem is that we continue to do democracy on the cheap."

Heated run-up
By October, the Bush and Kerry campaigns knew that this midwestern state was a crucial battleground. Each side assembled armies of 3,000 lawyers and paralegals, and unaffiliated organizations poured in thousands more volunteers. Both parties filed lawsuits challenging rules and registrations.

Two decisions proved pivotal.

Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Ohio, decided to strictly interpret a state law governing provisional ballots. He ruled that voters must cast provisional ballots not merely in the county but in the precise precinct where they reside. For cities such as Cleveland and Cincinnati, where officials long accepted provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, the ruling promised to disqualify many voters. "It is a headache to take those ballots, but the alternative is disenfranchisement," said Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, which includes Cleveland.

Earlier this year, state officials also decided to delay the purchase of touch-screen machines, citing worries about the security of the vote. That left many Ohio counties with too few machines. County boards are split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and control the type of machines and their distribution. In Cuyahoga County, officials decided to quickly rent hundreds of additional voting machines.

Other counties decided to muddle through. At Kenyon College, a surge of late registrations promised a record vote -- but Knox County officials allocated two machines, just as in past elections. In voter-rich Franklin County, which encompasses the state capital of Columbus, election officials decided to make do with 2,866 machines, even though their analysis showed that the county needed 5,000 machines.

"Does it make any sense to purchase more machines just for one election?" asked Michael R. Hackett, deputy director of the Board of Elections. "I'll give you the answer: no."

On Election Day, more than 5.7 million Ohioans voted, 900,000 more voters than in 2000.

In Toledo, Dayton, Columbus and Akron, and on the campuses at Ohio State and Kenyon, long lines formed on Election Day, and hundreds of voters stood in the rain for hours. In Columbus, Sarah Locke, 54, drove to vote with her daughter and her parents at a church in the predominantly black southeast. It was jammed. Old women leaned heavily on walkers, and some people walked out, complaining that bosses would not excuse their lateness.

"It was really demeaning," Locke said. "I never remembered it being this bad."

Some regular voters filed affidavits stating that their registrations had been expunged. "I'm 52, and I've voted in every single election," Kathy Janoski of Columbus said. "They kept telling me, 'You must be mistaken about your precinct.' I told them this is where I've always voted. I felt like I'd been scrubbed off the rolls."

Aftermath of Nov. 2
After the election, local political activists seeking a recount analyzed how Franklin County officials distributed voting machines. They found that 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry.

Voters in most Democratic wards experienced five-hour waits, and turnout was lower than expected. "I don't know if it's by accident or design, but I counted a dozen people walking away from the line in my precinct in Columbus," said Robert Fitrakis, a professor at Columbus State Community College and a lawyer involved in a legal challenge to certifying the vote.

Franklin County officials say they allocated machines according to instinct and science. But Hackett, the deputy director, acknowledged the need to examine the issue more carefully. "When the dust settles, we'll have to look more closely at this," he said.

In Knox County, some Kenyon College students waited 10 hours to vote. "They had to skip classes and skip work," said Matthew Segal, a 19-year-old student.

In northeastern Ohio, in the fading industrial city of Youngstown, Jeanne White, a veteran voter and manager at the Buckeye Review, an African-American newspaper, stepped into the booth, pushed the button for Kerry -- and watched her vote jump to the Bush column. "I saw what happened; I started screaming: 'They're cheating again and they're starting early!' "

It was not her imagination. Twenty-five machines in Youngstown experienced what election officials called "calibration problems." "It happens every election," said Thomas McCabe, deputy director of elections for Mahoning County, which covers Youngstown. "It's something we have to live with, and we can fix it."

As expected, there were more provisional ballots, and officials disqualified about 23 percent. In Hamilton County, which encompasses Cincinnati and its suburbs, 1,110 provisional ballots got tossed out because people voted in the wrong precinct. In about 40 percent of those cases, voters found the right polling place -- which contained multiple precincts -- but workers directed them to the wrong table.

In Cleveland, officials disqualified about one-third of the provisional ballots. Vu, the election board chief, said that some poll workers may have also mixed up their punch-card styluses -- that would account for why a few overwhelmingly Democratic precincts recorded large numbers of votes for conservative third-party candidates.

Still, state officials saw little to apologize for, particularly in the case of provisional ballots. A recent count of provisional ballots sliced 18,000 votes off Bush's margin in Ohio. "In Washington, D.C., a voter who casts a ballot in the wrong precinct cannot have that ballot counted," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell. "Yet in Ohio, it was 'voter suppression' and 'voter disenfranchisement.' "

In the days after the election, as voters swapped stories, anger and talk of Republican conspiracies mounted. "A lot of folks who, having put an enormous amount of energy into this campaign and having believed in the righteousness of their cause, can't believe that we lost," said Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County election board.

Most senior state officials, Republican and Democratic alike, tend to play down the anger. National Democrats -- including the chief counsel for Kerry's campaign in Ohio -- say they expect the recount to confirm Bush's victory.

But that official view contrasts sharply with the bubbling anger heard among rank-and-file Democrats. While some promote conspiratorial theories, most have a straightforward bottom line. "A lot of people left in the four hours I waited," recalled Thivener, the mortgage broker from Columbus. "A lot of them were young black men who were saying over and over: 'We knew this would happen.'

"How," she asked, "is that good for democracy?"

Slevin reported from Cincinnati. Special correspondents Michelle Garcia in New York and Kari Lydersen in Chicago contributed to this report.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

McCain: 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld

Well, that makes two of us! Now, I'll ask again, When is Rumsfeld getting fired?

McCain: 'No Confidence' in Rumsfeld
By BETH DeFALCO, Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX - U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and the failure to send more troops.

McCain, speaking to The Associated Press in an hourlong interview, said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation, explaining that President Bush "can have the team that he wants around him."

"I have strenuously argued for larger troop numbers in Iraq, including the right kind of troops — linguists, special forces, civil affairs, etc.," said McCain, R-Ariz. "There are very strong differences of opinion between myself and Secretary Rumsfeld on that issue."

When asked if Rumsfeld was a liability to the Bush administration, McCain responded: "The president can decide that, not me."

The 12 Days of Rummying

December 12, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The 12 Days of Rummying
By MAUREEN DOWD

On the first day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
a Saddam pigeon in a palm tree.
Not knowing Osama's address,
Rummy hastened to 'Potamia - and a mess,
exhorting his pal Cheney,
"Let's bomb Baghdad again, golly gee!"

On the second day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
two dead-ender turtle doves
(Colin and Kofi),
flowers and chocolates from the ninny Chalabi,
and a billion Arabs mad at me.

On the third day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
three French henpeckers and imaginary W.M.D.
And 300 tons of lost explosives
going BOOM! everywhere.
Rummy tried for a Vin Diesel movie,
when he should have heeded General Shinseki.

On the fourth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
four cuckoo birds -
Wolfie, Perle, Feith and Condi.
The cost of empire on the cheap will be steep.
How did Rummy get a job guarantee?

On the fifth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
five Pentagon rings.
Rummy wanted to go down in history
by transforming the military.
But many G.I.'s feel cheated,
that their forces and matériel are depleted.
Stop Loss and Stuff Happens, by Jiminy!

On the sixth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
six German shepherds teeth a-baring.
A hooded man attached to wires,
Abu Ghraib and Army liars,
Red Cross in the dark
about dogs that liked to bark.

On the seventh day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
regime change that wasn't free,
our troops sitting ducks for I.E.D.
(Improvised Explosive Devices,
dear me)
Rummy is another sort of I.E.D.
(Instant Excuses for Disaster,
"I'm an old man, don't you see?")

On the eighth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
eight Osama videotapes.
The Bushie fever with Saddam
left Osama free to scram.
Invading Iraq was an Xmas gift
for bin Laden - a recruiting lift.

On the ninth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
Iran and North Korea
on a nuclear buildup spree.
Nine mullahs a-proliferating,
as our military's straining.
The Bushies were fixated on Iraq,
but Saddam's weapons were merely the mock.

On the tenth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
ten Gitmo lawyers a-leaping.
What cares he
about civil liberty?

On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
eleven generals a-hyping that the war is just dandy,
while our spooks are warning
that civil war and theocracy are a-borning
as the Kid in the Oval feels free
to consult a Higher Authority.
Burkas, turbans and beards you'll see
after the puppet Allawi.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my Rummy sent to me
a brave grunt from Tennessee
griping about his unarmored Humvee.
No twelve drummers drumming,
but twelve soldiers thrumming,
complaints to Rummy keep coming,
but the septuagenarian's not admitting
that the Iraq resistance isn't quitting.
The Ghost of Christmas Past, Mekong Delta,
is clanking after Rummy in Samarra.
Eleven generals spinning,
Ten Gitmo lawyers not grinning,
Nine Iranian mullahs Iraq annexing,
Eight Osama tapes perplexing,
Seven bombs a-scaring,
Six German geese bewaring,
Five Pentagon rings,
Four cuckoos a-raving,
Three French hens appeasing,
Two dead doves,
And a Saddam pigeon sparking an insurgency

Troops Confront Rumsfeld

60 Minutes did a segment on this subject days before the election - were you paying attention? For the flag waving country we are - is this really an acceptible way to treat our troops? I think not.

WHEN is Rumsfeld getting fired?

December 8, 2004
Iraq-Bound Troops Confront Rumsfeld Over Lack of Armor
By ERIC SCHMITT

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait, Dec. 8 - In an extraordinary exchange at this remote desert camp, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld found himself on the defensive today, fielding pointed questions from Iraq-bound troops who complained that they were being sent into combat with insufficient protection and aging equipment.

Specialist Thomas Wilson, a scout with a Tennessee National Guard unit scheduled to roll into Iraq this week, said soldiers had to scrounge through local landfills here for pieces of rusty scrap metal and bulletproof glass - what they called "hillbilly armor" - to bolt on to their trucks for protection against roadside bombs in Iraq.

"Why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" Specialist Wilson asked Mr. Rumsfeld, drawing cheers and applause from many of the 2,300 troops assembled in a cavernous hangar here to meet the secretary. Mr. Rumsfeld responded that the military was producing extra armor for Humvees and trucks as fast as possible.

A few minutes later, a soldier from the Idaho National Guard's 116th Armor Cavalry Brigade asked Mr. Rumsfeld what he and the Army were doing "to address shortages and antiquated equipment" National Guard soldiers heading to Iraq were struggling with.

Mr. Rumsfeld seemed taken aback by the question and a murmur began spreading through the ranks before he silenced them. "Now settle down, settle down," he said. "Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here."

He said all organizations had equipment, materials and spare parts of different vintages, but he expressed confidence that Army leaders were assigning the newest and best equipment to the troops headed for combat who needed it most.

Nonetheless, he warned that equipment shortages would probably continue to bedevil some American forces entering combat zones like Iraq. "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Moreover, he said, adding more armor to trucks and battle equipment did not make them impervious to enemy attack. "If you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up," he said. "And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."

It was difficult to gauge the scope and seriousness of the equipment problems cited by the two soldiers and by several others in interviews after Mr. Rumfeld's remarks and the question period. A senior officer in Specialist Wilson's unit, Col. John Zimmerman, said later that 95 percent of the unit's more than 300 trucks had insufficient armor.

Senior Army generals here said they were not aware of widespread shortages and insisted that all vehicles heading north from this staging area 12 miles south of the Iraqi border would have adequate armor. "It's not a matter of money or desire," Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb, the commander of Army forces in the Persian Gulf, told the troops after Mr. Rumsfeld asked him to address Specialist Wilson's question. "It's a matter of the logistics of being able to produce it."

But the complaints voiced by the soldiers here are likely to reinvigorate the debate that the Bush administration failed to anticipate the kind of tenacious insurgency now facing troops in Iraq, and that the Pentagon is still struggling to provide enough such basic supplies as body armor and fortified Humvees and other vehicles.

In October, members of an Army Reserve unit disobeyed orders to deliver fuel to a base in Iraq, complaining that their vehicles had not been properly outfitted. Earlier this month, the Army raised its goal for replacing regular Humvee utility vehicles in Iraq with armored versions, to 8,000 vehicles from 4,000.

The soldiers' concerns here may also rekindle deep-held suspicions among many National Guard and Reserve troops that they are receiving equipment inferior to what their active-duty counterparts get, despite assurances from senior Army officials that all Army troops are treated equitably.

Some 10,000 soldiers, many of whom are reservists from Oregon, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina, are here on their way to one-year tours in Iraq or passing through this camp on their way home after serving their stints.

That some soldiers would dare confront Mr. Rumsfeld directly on the readiness and equipment issue in such a public setting was highly unusual. In his town-hall style meetings with troops, Mr. Rumsfeld usually gets general policy questions or very specific complaints about pay or benefits.

But in interviews afterward, the equipment issue resonated with many soldiers and commanders here. Specialist Blaze Crook, 24, from Cleveland, Tenn., said he and other members of his Tennessee National Guard felt shorthanded going into their mission in Iraq. "I don't think we have enough troops going in to do the job," said Specialist Crook, who is a truck driver.

In an interview, Specialist Wilson said the question he asked Mr. Rumsfeld was one that had been on the minds of many men in his unit, the 1st Squadron, 278th Regimental Combat Team. "I'm a soldier and I'll do this on a bicycle if I have to, but we need help," said Specialist Wilson, 31, who served on active duty in the Air Force for six years, including in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, before leaving the military, and then re-enlisting in the National Guard after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Col. John Zimmerman, the staff judge advocate for the 278th combat team, said in an interview that the unit's Humvees were sufficiently armored, but that most of its heavy trucks were not. He said that Army supply officials had given the unit 70 tons of steel plates to attach to their vehicles, but that it was not enough.

Colonel Zimmerman suggested that the Army would not have let this happen to an active-duty unit about to deploy into Iraq. "We've got two Armies," he said. "We've got the active-duty and we've got the National Guard. We're proud to serve. We just want what everyone else has. We're not asking for anything more."

When asked about the soldiers' complaints, General Whitcomb's deputy, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, acknowledged in an interview that many vehicles would head north from here into Iraq without the bulletproof windshields or the Kevlar flooring that protect against bombs exploding underneath Humvees or trucks. General Speer said many vehicles were not armored because they would be assigned duties inside headquarters compounds where there was virtually no threat of roadside bombs.

General Speer said a special unit here at Camp Buehring removes the extra armor on vehicles that have left Iraq and re-attaches it to vehicles going into the country. "We've got a lot of work to do," he said. "There's a lot of people working around the clock to meet the concerns those soldiers raised."

Colonel Zimmerman said he appreciated the efforts by Army supply officials here, but he and his troops said they could not help but fume at the sight of the fully "up-armored" Humvees and heavy trucks set out on display here for Mr. Rumsfeld's visit.

"What you see out here isn't what we've got going north with us," he said.

New York Times

Report: CIA Paints Bleak Iraq Picture

Well, here's a surprise. Another leaked memo getting at the truth of what is really going on in Iraq. John Kerry is redeemed, yet again with his assessments from the campaign.

Remind you, this news is on top of the revelation from Rummy that we are stuck for at least four more years.

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- The situation in Iraq is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to a classified cable and briefings from the Central Intelligence Agency, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The assessments are more pessimistic than the Bush administration's portrayal of the situation to the public, government officials told the newspaper.

The classified cable -- sent last month by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad after the completion of a one-year tour of duty there -- painted a bleak picture of Iraq's politics, economics and security and reiterated briefings by Michael Kostiw, a senior CIA official, according to the Times.

The station chief cannot be identified because he is still working undercover, the Times added.

The cable, described as "unusually candid," cautioned that security in the country is likely to deteriorate unless the Iraqi government makes significant progress in asserting its authority and building up the economy, the paper said.

Spokesmen for the White House and the CIA told the Times that they could not discuss intelligence matters and classified documents.

http://www.cnn.com/
2004/US/12/07/iraq.cia.reut/index.html

New Round of Challenges in Ohio Vote

Even without a recount - notice the certified totals for Shrub went down about 30,000 votes. Thank you Ohio - I knew we weren't that "red".

New round of challenges in Ohio vote
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Dec. 5, 2004 | COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Two major challenges are expected to unfold Monday when Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certifies the state's final presidential election results, declaring President Bush the winner by about 119,000 votes.

Lawyers representing voters upset about problems at the polls plan to contest the results with the Ohio Supreme Court, citing documented cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a pattern of problems in predominantly black neighborhoods.

In addition, third party candidates, bolstered by a favorable federal court ruling, plan to file requests for a recount in each of Ohio's 88 counties. About 400 people rallied at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on Saturday to demand a recount begin immediately.

The efforts represent "an incredible long shot," said Steven Huefner, an Ohio State University law professor. "Courts are just incredibly reluctant to overturn the results of an election absent a really strong showing that something happened that affected the outcome."

Bush came out with a 2 percentage point victory over John Kerry in the state when the provisional and absentee ballots were counted.

That was much closer than the totals election night showed but not close enough to trigger an automatic recount.

However, the Green and Libertarian party candidates have raised the $113,600 required to pay for a recount themselves. A ruling by U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus on Friday, rejecting Delaware County's attempt to stop a recount, paved the way for it to begin after Ohio's electors meet Dec. 13.

Republicans say it won't change the final result.

"There's simply nothing in the election process that could possibly meet that standard, so the contest will fail like all the other legal maneuverings that failed," said Mark Weaver, an attorney representing the Ohio Republican Party.

Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus lawyer working for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, said overturning the result is not the objective.

"We should verify the accuracy of the vote and the process by which the vote was achieved," he said.

Arnebeck wants Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer to review evidence of election irregularities, an option allowed under state law.

The last time the law was used statewide was during Paul Pfeifer's 1990 challenge of Lee Fisher's 1,234-vote victory in the attorney general's race.

Pfeifer, a Republican now on the Supreme Court, argued that irregularities such as discrepancies between the number of ballots and the number of signatures in poll books could have cost him the election. The court disagreed and Fisher won.

Former Bush Campaign Official Indicted

The Republican way of playing fairly?

Dec. 2, 2004 | Concord, N.H. -- President Bush's former New England campaign chairman was indicted Wednesday on charges he took part in the jamming of the Democrats' get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.

James Tobin, 44, stepped down Oct. 15 - two weeks before Election Day - after the Democrats accused him of involvement.

"I am saddened to learn that this action has been taken against me," he said in a statement. "I have great respect for the justice system and plan to fight back to clear my name."

In 2002, six phone lines run by the Democrats and the Manchester firefighters union were tied up for 1 1/2 hours by 800 computer-generated hang-up calls. Federal prosecutors said Tobin and other Republicans had hired a company to make the calls to disrupt the organizations' get-out-the-vote efforts.

Tobin was charged with conspiracy to commit telephone harassment and aiding and abetting. He could get up to five years in prison.

At the time of the jamming, Tobin was Northeast political director for the Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate.

Among the races affected by the jamming was the Senate contest between Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Rep. John E. Sununu. Sununu won by about 20,000 votes.

The Democrats praised the indictment but questioned its timing.

"I think it's unfortunate the Justice Department delayed, for whatever reasons that it did, until after the election," state Democratic chairwoman Kathy Sullivan said. "I hope this was not delayed for political reasons."

Over the summer, Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and admitted paying $15,600 to a Virginia telemarketing company that hired another business to make the calls. A GOP consultant with the telemarketing company also pleaded guilty. The two men are awaiting sentencing.

It's Still a Man's World on the Idiot Box

I just adore Maureen!

OP-ED COLUMNIST
It's Still a Man's World on the Idiot Box
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 2, 2004

It's the End of an Era. A momentous change.

Tonight on NBC, one tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes will replace another tall and handsome white male anchor with bespoke clothes.

Even Tom Brokaw is a little surprised that he has been succeeded by someone who looks like the love child he and Peter Jennings never had.

"I honestly thought, eight or nine years ago, that when we left," Mr. Brokaw said, referring to himself, Peter and Dan Rather, "that it would be the end of white male anchor time."

Nah. Those guys are hard to kill off. Indeed, white men are ascendant in Red State America.

As my mom said, discussing her belief that Martha Stewart had been railroaded by jealous men, "If men could figure out how to have babies, they'd get rid of us altogether."

The networks don't even give lip service to looking for women and blacks for anchor jobs - they just put pretty-boy clones in the pipeline.

"I think we're still stuck in a society that looks at white males as authority figures," Mr. Brokaw conceded.

Bill Carter, a TV reporter at The Times, agreed: "Katie Couric may be a much bigger star and even more experienced than Brian Williams. But when the next 9/11 happens, it'll be Brian, not Katie, in the central role. The attitude still seems to be, 'We want a daddy in that chair.' "

And then there's biology. Asked why there couldn't be an anchorette as we enter 2005, Mr. Brokaw, the father of three accomplished daughters and the husband of one strong, cool wife, Meredith, replied: "You know, honestly, what happens is career interruptus by childbirth and a couple of other things. It's unfair to women that they have to juggle all this stuff, but it plays some role, I think."

At CBS, the Dan Rather look-alike John Roberts is locked in a battle with the Dan Rather sound-alike Scott Pelley to succeed Dan, and executives are considering four guys - three of them white - to replace Craig Kilborn on "The Late Late Show."

At NBC, Conan O'Brien is locked in to succeed Jay Leno in 2009, and executives have groomed Brian Williams for a decade to replace Tom Brokaw. I asked Brian in December 1995 if he was a Tom pod person. "I can deny the existence of a factory in the American Midwest that puts out people like me," he said, deadpan, looking at me with those green anchor eyes.

Roger Ailes says he has joked about Mr. Williams having too many shirts, but says he'll "do better than people think. ... He has that Tom Brokaw look of somebody every mother wants her daughter to marry."

Even if I felt like raising a ruckus about Boys Nation, who would care? Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted 30 years.

We are in the era of vamping, self-doubting "Desperate Housewives," not strong, cutting "Murphy Brown." It's the season of prim "stay in the background" Laura Bush, not assertive "two for the price of one" Hillary. Where would you even lodge a feminist protest these days?

"You ought to call the Lifetime network or, as we say, the 'Men Are No Damn Good Network,' and protest it," Mr. Ailes slyly suggested.

I know that women have surpassed men, in many respects, by embracing their femininity and frivolity. Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer, who mix news with dish, cooking and fashion in the morning, are the real breadwinners of their news divisions, generating more ratings and revenue than the cookie-cutter men of the night.

Yet, as Mr. Ailes says, "network anchoring is still Mount Olympus." I checked around for feminist outrage, but couldn't find any. Women told me the nightly news was an anachronism, so why shouldn't the anchor be? "Caring about having a woman in the showcase or figurehead role seems so 80's," one said.

Another friend said she devotes the "one little ounce of feminist annoyance" she has left for the excess of "young fluffs" on cable news - as opposed to substantial newswomen, like CNN's bespectacled Pentagon reporter, Barbara Starr, "who looks like she could hit those generals with a handbag if they didn't give her answers."

But my pal admits that she watched Mr. Brokaw partly because he was "eye candy," and declares women at fault in this matter: "Women like to read books about men and go to movies about men. But men don't like to read books about women or go to movies about women. The only way this is going to change is if women refuse to watch men. And the problem is, women like watching men."

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Kerry Team Weighs in on Recount

Thursday, December 02, 2004
Mark Niquette and Robert Vitale
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Sen. John Kerry’s campaign is seeking to intervene in a case involving whether a recount must be held in Delaware County, Kerry’s first involvement in a post-election legal proceeding.

Kerry isn’t trying to overturn the Ohio outcome and hasn’t found evidence proving fraud, but his campaign wants a recount in all counties to ensure that all votes were counted, said Daniel J. Hoffheimer, state counsel for the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

"We know there were a lot of problems in this election," Hoffheimer said. "We want people to feel the election was fair."

Presidential candidates David Cobb of the Green Party and Liber- tarian Michael Badnarik say they have raised enough money to pay for a statewide recount after the official results are certified Monday.

After a Delaware County judge granted a temporary order last week blocking the recount in that county, the parties had the case moved to federal court yesterday.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign wants to be part of the case, especially if other counties try to join it — and because there are concerns that a ruling blocking a recount in Delaware County could be applied statewide, Hoffheimer said.

A hearing on the matter has been scheduled Friday before U.S. District Court Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. in Columbus.

Delaware County officials argue that the outcome won’t change and that a recount is a waste of time and money. An old state law requires a $113,600 payment for a statewide recount, but state officials have estimated the actual cost will be $1.5 million.

The candidates say Ohio law specifically allows a recount and that cost is a small price to pay for confidence in the result.

Meanwhile, elections boards in Franklin and other counties finished certifying their county results yesterday and will forward them to Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell for statewide certification Monday.

A check of the state’s largest counties and other counties that have reported results so far showed that provisional ballots and other votes not counted on election night weren’t significantly changing President Bush’s margin of victory.

Bush defeated Kerry by about 136,000 votes based on unofficial returns, and with results from counties accounting for 83 percent of the vote statewide, Kerry had picked up a net 19,823 votes.

In Franklin County, Kerry gained 7,171 net votes from provisional ballots, uncounted absentee ballots and the correction of a computer glitch in one Gahanna precinct.

In all, the official count added 13,296 votes to totals for Bush, Kerry, minor-party presidential candidates and write-ins.

The majority — 12,125 — came from provisional ballots cast on Election Day. The rest, according to board of elections Director Matthew Damschroder, were absentee ballots received on Nov. 2 and overseas ballots received by Nov. 12.

In Franklin County, 2,337 provisional ballots were rejected, most because they were cast by unregistered voters.

A total of 623 were ruled invalid because they weren’t cast in the voter’s home precinct. Local elections officials also found some were cast by people who weren’t Ohio residents.

Eight provisional ballots were rejected because people also voted absentee. Federal law allows voters to do so if they think their absentee ballots won’t reach the elections board on time.

About 77 percent of the 155,428 provisional ballots statewide have been ruled valid so far.

Yesterday’s official totals also subtracted 3,893 votes for Bush in Gahanna Precinct 1B, where an election-night computer error counted 4,258 votes for the Republican in a precinct with 638 voters.

The new total from Gahanna was Bush 365, Kerry 260.

Besides the recount being sought, a coalition of citizen-action groups plans to file a new lawsuit today with the Ohio Supreme Court contesting the presidential election results.

The filing was to be made yesterday but was delayed so civil-rights activist the Rev. Jesse Jackson could attend. Jackson also is expected to appear at a rally Saturday at the Ohio Statehouse.

Ohio Republicans have urged all parties to accept the outcome.

"The absurd attempts by a few groups who are desperately trying to cast doubt on the outcome and the legitimacy of Ohio’s election results damage the very foundation of our democracy," Sen. Mike DeWine said.