Greg Palast
argues that if Ohio's discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would
have won the state. Today, the "Cleveland Plain Dealer" reports there
are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672
discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. (So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted.)
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one
more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist
examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to
tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in
Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry. Most voters in Ohio thought
they were voting for Kerry. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday morning, CNN's exit
poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47
percent. The exit polls were later combined with--and therefore
contaminated by--the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of
the apparent actual vote. [To read about the skewing of exit polls
to conform to official results, click here
.] Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49
percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state. So
what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters
ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial,
question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know. Here's why.
Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for
Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This
was predictable and it was predicted. Once again, at the heart of
the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads
and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new. [more]
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