November 12, 2004

The Miracle of Franklin County Voting
By James Preston Allen, Publisher

     Was it Yogi Barra who said, “It’s not over until it’s over”? For those of you who have been grieving about the questionable “Bush Mandate” of the recent 2004 election, there is a faint glimmer of hope that all is not well with the vote counting in Ohio–the state whose motto is “With God All Things Are Possible.” It would be an ironic twist of fate if the final vote count of that God-fearing land of guns and Bibles changed enough to trigger a complete recount in that state, only to find that John Kerry had actually won by even the slimmest of margins after he had conceded the election to Bush.
     What started all of this post-election hand wringing and speculation was a late night news report on KGO radio that quoted a news story from the Columbus Dispatch that in one precinct in the little town of Gahanna, Ohio where only 638 votes were cast at the New Life Christian Church, George W. received 4,258 votes. Well it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if just one precinct in Franklin County couldn’t get the vote count right that it would take only one precinct each in less than half of Ohio’s 88 counties to throw a wrench in Bush’s “political capital” spending program. Kerry still might have a chance.
     Upon further investigation, we discovered that the Election Protection Coalition’s online database had logged 1,652 complaints in Ohio regarding election day procedures, voter suppression activities and polling places where there were so few voting machines that voters had to wait hours to cast their ballots. In one college town alone it took up to ten and a half hours of waiting in line.
     This list did not mention the miscount in little Gahanna polling place at the Christian church where one alternative news editor reported that his nephew voted, inside of which hung banners stating, “marriage is between one man and one woman.” This of course brings up the uncomfortable question of the division between church and state at the polling place, as the anti-gay marriage proposition was the first one on the Ohio ballot after the candidates! Is this just an obvious example of God working in mysterious ways? Or have the born again brethren of Ohio taken God’s work to a new evangelic high?
     Would it be impertinent of me to ask, just how many polling places in Ohio are held at churches and just what were those precinct workers instructed to do on November 2? Perhaps they were listening to God rather than the election board. This along with the headline that ran in the Daily Breeze the day after the election exclaiming that “America Speaks,” begs the question of whether it was America actually saying something or if this is just Karl Rove channeling God.
     If my suspicions hold true, and more of these polling place anomalies surface, there are going to be a lot more people in Ohio and around the nation like the recently formed the League of Pissed Off Voters who were recently protesting in Columbus over the election day abuses of Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell who doubled as Bush’s Republican Campaign chairman for Ohio. Talk about conflicts of interest! It should be illegal for the chairman of any party’s state campaign to also be the person responsible for holding a fair election, Blackwell should have recused himself in this incidence, but he didn’t. This only casts a larger cloud of distrust on the 2004 vote.
     In a special email released on Tuesday Nov. 9 by the Kerry Campaign they are taking these allegations quite seriously saying that:

     Although the Kerry group is timidly predicting that this closer inspection of the voting irregularities and the provisional ballots will not change the outcome, I would like to be the first to speculate that if it doesn’t, it will trigger a statewide recount as it may well reduce W’s lead to under half of one percent of the total vote. And if this happens and either candidate were to win with this slight of a margin it would not prove to be a mandate for anything other than a house divided and more of a virtual split decision than it is now. We would be looking at an America more severely divided than it was between North and South in the pre- Civil War era, which when you look at the 2004 election map results bears a striking resemblance to this time in our history.
     Will this all end on November 12 when Ohio counts its provisional and absentee ballots? Will the mainstream media follow up on these significant allegations? While it gives me some great pause to think what might happen if significant voter fraud and tampering were to be discovered, it gives me even greater fear for this country if it has happened and not discovered.
     If the miracle voting of Franklin County, Ohio is found to be not so miraculous after all, and even widespread then there should certainly be a full-blown federal investigation in Ohio and elsewhere, followed by indictments and (if God willing) impeachments for those elected officials involved.
     For now, the rumors passing through the internet like telegraph signals from the frontier are raising questions that are not being addressed about the fairness of the Ohio election. This may well throw the choice for President into doubt and the entire electoral system along with it.
     As the Good Book says, “And the truth will set ye free.” Let us all pray that the truth simply gives us a winner whose name is not George W. Bush.