Reply #15: WaPo - What Happened in Ohio [View All]

[dzika]

Monday, January 10, 2005; Page A17

What Happened in Ohio

By William Raspberry


I don't usually let other people do my thinking for me, but I confess I'd been waiting for Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to tell me what to think about the voting irregularities that marred the November elections in Ohio.

Bloggers have been burning up the Internet with tales of manipulation and fraud. A representative of the company that supplied some of the voting machines (and whose corporate chief had promised to deliver the state for President Bush) supposedly was caught fiddling with some of the machines. Heavily Democratic -- but not heavily Republican -- precincts were plagued by a shortage of voting machines. Votes cast for challenger John Kerry showed up on the screen as votes for Bush. Black and poor voters -- likely Democratic voters -- were harassed and otherwise discouraged. And there were scores of similar allegations.

Stories in the mainstream media weren't much help. They pretty much agreed that, while there were irregularities in Ohio and elsewhere, there always are irregularities. Nothing particularly unusual -- or outcome-changing -- happened in Ohio.

Political reporters, mainstream editors and most of Congress seemed utterly unalarmed. Were they asleep at the switch? Were they afraid of discovering a truth that the country couldn't handle? Or was there simply not much of a story?


continued
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61930-2005Jan9.html