U.S. election irregularities in 2004

Problems nationwide

 * Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots&mdash;received them too late to vote &mdash;after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.
 * Consulting firm Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.
 * In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.
 * Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment&mdash;roughly one for every 100 cast.
 * Exit polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark&mdash;they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President George W. Bush.

Particular to Ohio
"The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count."
 * In Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004.
 * In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots &mdash;troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush.
 * "People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct&mdash;it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened," said Senator Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. In the battle for Ohio, Republicans had a distinct advantage: The man in charge of the counting was Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of President Bush's re-election committee, and principal electoral system adviser for Bush during the 2000 recount in Florida, where he witnessed firsthand the success of his counterpart Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who co-chaired Bush's campaign there.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Center for Voting and Democracy
 * Exit polls
 * Provisional voting
 * Republican 'culture of corruption'
 * Thomas D. DeLay
 * U.S. election irregularities
 * U.S. presidential election, 2004

Articles
National


 * Jennifer Joan Lee,"Pentagon Blocks Site for Voters Outside U.S.," International Herald Tribune (NeilRogers.com), September 20, 2004.
 * "Caging," Riffle Blogspot, October 26, 2004.
 * Mark Brunswick and Pat Doyle, "Voter Registration; 3 former workers: Firm paid pro-Bush bonuses; One said he was told his job was to bring back cards for GOP voters," Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) (IPS-DC.org), October 27, 2004.
 * Ben Frank, "Too many voting ’irregularities’ to be coincidence," Bella Ciao, November 5, 2004.
 * Michael Keefer, "Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam," Centre for Research on Globalisation, November 5, 2004.
 * Thomm Hartmann, "Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked," Common Dreams, November 6, 2004.
 * Will Pitt, "Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster," TruthOut, November 8, 2004.
 * "Government Accountability Office to Conduct Investigation of 2004 Election Irregularities," November 23, 2004. Posted on New York U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler's official website.
 * "US 2004 Election Irregularities," Passing Lane, November 24, 2004.
 * "Best of 2004: Election Irregularities," Tom Paine, December 24, 2004.
 * Dennis Loo, Ph.D., "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election," Project Censored, Sonoma State University, 2005. Research compiled by Dr. Dennis Loo with the University of Cal Poly Pomona now shows that extensive manipulation of non-paper-trail voting machines occurred in several states during the 2004 election.
 * Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, "A Call to Investigate the 2004 Election," Boston Globe (Common Dreams), June 26, 2006.
 * Mike Wilkinson and Steve Eder, "Noe gets 27 months in prison; ex-coin dealer says he was pressured by Bush campaign," Toledo Blade, September 13, 2006.
 * luaptifer, et al., "Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again," ePluribusMedia Community, November 7, 2006. {first publication of the Netcraft record showing Ohio's election results server IP address was temporarily shifted to Smartech's assigned IP address space on November 3, 2004.
 * intranets "Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server," ePluribusMedia Community, November 9, 2006.
 * luaptifer, "Ohio Election Night Results, Smartech server, and Netcraft links," ePluribusMedia Community, April 25, 2007, collection of related-story links.
 * Greg Palast, "Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal?" GregPalast.com, March 28, 2007: "BBC Television had exposed 2004 voter attack scheme by appointee Griffin, a Rove aide. Black soldiers and the homeless targeted."
 * Amanda Terkel, "Goodling Dismisses Voter Supression Tactic Of ‘Caging’ As Just ‘A Direct-Mail Term’," Think Progress, May 23, 2007.
 * F. Vyan Walton, "Caging; It's Voter Suppression, Stupid!" OpEdNews, May 24, 2007.
 * Amanda Terkel, "Post Reporter: 'So What Is This Caging Thing?'" Think Progress, May 25, 2007.
 * Connecticut Man1, "Tim Griffin, the Caging Lists and GONEzales," ePluribus Media, May 23, 2007.

Particular to Florida
 * "Analysis of 2004 Florida Presidential Election Results by County Compared to Historical Patterns and Other Information," Florida League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.
 * "A Compendium of Vote Fraud Links," Outside the Box, November 3, 2004.
 * "Volusia County Florida lawsuit alleges irregularities in 2004 election," BlackBox Voting (Bella Ciao), November 24, 2004.

Particular to North Carolina
 * Thomas C. Greene, "It's official: Diebold election bugware can't be trusted. The company implies as much," The Register (UK), November 30, 2005: "Diebold would rather lose all of its voting machine business in North Carolina than open its source code to state election officials as required by law, the Associated Press reports."

Particular to Texas Redistricting
 * "Supreme Court refuses to block Texas GOP redistricting plan," Associated Press (CNN), January 19, 2004.
 * "High court orders review of Texas seats," Associated Press (USA Today), October 18, 2004; also archived at truthout).
 * "Texas redistricting case headed back to Supreme Court," Associated Press (WOAI San Antonio), June 10, 2005.
 * "'Hidden' DOJ Memo Details Texas Voting Rights Violations. Bush political appointees overruled experts to approve illegal DeLay redistricting plan. The Lone Star Project has obtained an internal memo written by U.S. Department of Justice voting rights experts on December 12, 2003." December 2005. Full Memo.
 * ReddHedd, "Gerrymandering and the Bug Man," firedoglake, December 1, 2005.
 * Dan Eggen, "Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal. Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled," Washington Post, December 2, 2005.
 * Judd, "Gonzales On Texas Redistricting: It’s The Senate’s Fault For Confirming Ashcroft," Think Progress, December 2, 2005.
 * Susan Gamboa, "Democrats Seek Probe of Redistricting Plan," Associated Press, December 3, 2005.
 * Gina Holland, "Supreme Court to Review Texas Redistricting," Associated Press (FindLaw), December 12, 2005.

External resources
Books


 * Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, How the GOP stole America's 2004 election and is rigging 2008,
 * Steven F. Freeman and Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006)

Reports
 * Report: "Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings," The Free Press on September 2005 GAO report (pdf).

Databases
 * NCSLnet Search: Election Reform Legislation, National Conference of State Legislatures website. Searchable database by State, Status, Year, Subtopic, and Key Word(s).

Websites
 * Database of Reported Voting Irregularities in the News, Voters Unite!
 * Beyong Voting.org
 * BlackBox Voting.org
 * Bush-Eye Blogspot. "Examining U.S. Election Irregularities"
 * Citizen's Alliance for Secure Elections: C.A.S.E. Ohio.org
 * Coalition Against Election Fraud
 * Count Every Vote 2004.org
 * Counting Coup 2004 Blogspot
 * Election Integrity exit poll analysis
 * Election Justice Center
 * "Election Protection 2004," Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
 * National Ballot Integrity Project
 * National Election Data Archive Project at USCountVotes.org
 * No Stolen Elections Nov3.us
 * November 2nd Truth.org
 * Ohio Election Fraud (formerly Fairness)
 * Open Voting Consortium.org
 * RecountFlorida.com
 * Truth in Voting.org
 * U.S. Count Votes exit poll analysis
 * Verified Voting.org
 * Votergate Blogspot
 * VotersUnite!
 * Vote Watch, Election Science Institute