Some Voters and Voting Advocacy Groups Continue to question the election results!!

The following is a letter to most major media outlets from Isaac Lieberman of the Kerrytravelers@aol.com. This group went to Nevada from California to assist the Kerry campaign"

November 8, 2004 - Nightline

ABC News

Dear Nightline:

President Bush and Senator Kerry are acting as though they have the authority to decide who won the election by mutual agreement. They are, of course, wrong: there is no official count yet. Accordingly, I hope you will help the citizens of Ohio and the nation ensure that the Ohio Secretary of State fully cooperates with the non-partisan efforts to get a full and fair accounting of the results of last Tuesday's election in Ohio.

AP, CNN, and ABC News all covered the "glitch" where records show only 638 voters cast ballots, but that 4,258 votes were given to President Bush. This was in just one Ohio precinct in Gahanna. Clearly we need to have a full accounting of all Ohio precincts to ensure all such errors are corrected.

Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director of Ohio Citizen Action, and Victoria Lovegren, working with www.BlackBoxVoting.org, are working hard to get the actual results of the election.

While much of the mainstream media seems to have gone on to trumpet the Bush administration's claim to a nationwide mandate, the margin of victory is razor-thin, and in fact, the votes in Ohio are statistically even. We need to have a full and fair examination of Ohio's vote to even make a convincing claim that Bush has indeed been elected to another term.

Thursday's Columbus Dispatch attributed to Blackwell's office the figure of 92,672 ballots uncounted, not including provisional and late-arriving absentee, military and overseas votes.

The estimated vote difference between the two candidates is not statistically insurmountable, and Ohio citizens, as well as citizens of the rest of the nation, are anxiously and carefully watching to see the answers to Ms. Buchanan's questions and the precinct by precinct voting results. Full cooperation with Ohio Citizen Action and Black Box Voting efforts to satisfy the necessity of a full and fair accounting of Ohio's votes will be much appreciated.

Here, for the record, are the questions submitted by Sandy Buchanan on Friday:

1)How many ballots have undervotes or overvotes or are otherwise uncounted in each county?
When will a database of such uncounted ballots by precinct be available?

2) Have you issued instructions to the county boards of elections on the disposition of these ballots?

3) What is your plan to check the 92,672 uncounted ballots to confirm that the precinct-level or county-level decisions to ignore them were proper and to remedy it if not? Improper discarding of ballots can come from simple mistakes, confusion or incompetence; it does not necessarily involve a pattern of bias or a conspiracy. The consequence for the voter is the same whatever the origin of the error.

4) Does your plan for checking both the 155,428 provisional ballots and the 92,672 other uncounted ballots include direct oversight by the media and citizens so that all Ohioans can be certain that Tuesday's balloting was fair?

5) On Wednesday, you reported to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that President Bush's lead was "statistically insurmountable" considering the number of provisional ballots outstanding. Did your calculations include the 92,672 ballots mentioned above, and late-arriving absentee, military, and other overseas votes?

6) If not, why not?

7) And would the lead have been insurmountable had you included them?

Reportedly, the military and other overseas ballots are not expected to exceed 10,000. If 14% of provisional ballots were disallowed, as happened in Ohio in 2000, then the number of countable provisionals would be about 133,668. Some of the other uncounted ballots would be disallowed as well, of course, but there is no reliable rule of thumb for estimating how many.133,668 provisionals + 10,000 (military and overseas) + unknown number of late absentees + 92,672 (other) = at least 236,340 ballots. If Senator Kerry received 78% of these votes, with President Bush receiving the balance, Kerry's vote total would be 2,846,372 and Bush's would be 2,845,778. Thus, the outcome would be changed. It is not possible to assess the likelihood of Kerry receiving this proportion of the outstanding votes, since -- as Florida demonstrated -- vote errors can be geographically concentrated, creating a considerable shift in results. That is why a precinct-level database will be helpful.And I'm sure there are ways to improve on these estimates. It is clear, however, that the vote difference between the top two candidates is "statistically insurmountable" only if you fail to examine carefully these 92,672 uncounted votes to make sure no one was unfairly discounted.

Sincerely,

Isaac Lieberman
Kerrytravelers@aol.com