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Edited on Sun Nov-28-04 08:51 PM by jmknapp
Note: these are not generally direct quotes, but paraphrases from the camcorder tape I took at the event.
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The event was held at a large Baptist Church (Mr. Hermon) in Columbus.
At about 2:45, a 45-minute press conference was held in a church meeting room.
Bob Fitrakis, Susan Truitt and Cliff Arnebeck, the three lawyers who are spearheading the legal challenges were with Jackson, as well as two representatives
from the Green Party who are funding the recount.
Arnebeck started the conference with some brief comments. Plans to file contest of election in the Ohio Supreme Court this week. He then introduced Rev.
Jackson.
Jackson:
This is about the integrity of the vote. This is not about the Kerry campaign per se. This is about Medgar Evers. It's about Nelson Mandela's years in jail.
It's about whether the US has the moral autority to speak about what's happening in Ukraine.
Americans should know that the election in Ohio has not been certified. This is the 28th of November.
There are patterns of irregularities that are impeding the process.
An outstanding case is that of candidate for Ohio Supreme Court, Ellen Connally, an African-American from Cleveland, who received 257,000 more votes than
Kerry. In the counties of Ohio where she is the least known, she got 157,000 more votes than Kerry.
In Warren County, officials in the name of Homeland Security locked out the press from the BOE on election night. Connally got 45,000 more votes than Kerry
there.
Exit poll gaps further compound the suspicions.
Provisional ballots were supposed to make the process more uniform, in the wake of Gore v. Bush, but in Ohio the process was made more difficult.
Electronic machines have no audit trail.
We do not have a federal right to vote. We have 50 separate and unequal states' rights to vote.
Within the states, in terms of voting machinery, rich counties have better machinery, poorer counties have poorer machinery.
This is a throwback in time to States' Rights.
Despite that, in 2000, the US Supreme Court inexplicably intervened in the process, only to say we stopped the count, we stopped the state court's decision,
but only to say that on the basis of the 10th Amendment, the states rights amendment, the slave amendment, we have no domain over the election. They gave it
back to Katherine Harris, who declared that by 12 o'clock by state law they must stop the count. The Florida legislature went further, saying that even if
Gore got the most votes, they would cast their electoral vote for Bush.
This means that the individual does not have the right to vote for president. The electoral college does. That must be abolished by amendment to the
Constitution.
Secretaries of State determine the outcome of elections.
Iraq, Afghanistan and South African constitutions have an individual's right to vote directly for president.
Rainbow/PUSH joins with a team of lawyers in Ohio demanding that there be a full and thorough federal investigation of the election in Ohio.
Computer forensic experts should be involved, because so much of the process is electronically driven, leaving room for hacking.
We can afford to lose the election. We can't afford to lose our votes, systematically and continually.
Q: Election official say there are always irregularities. Do you have evidence that irregularities this time are disproportionate and widespread?
Jackson:
Admitting to irregularities is no bragging piece. We've been doing this long enough to have first class elections. The Ellen Connally case is the most
egregious example.
Q: Given that SOS Blackwell ran afoul of the Helping America Vote Act, what are the penalties available?
Jackson:
We need a detached observer running the process. This isn’t personal against Blackwell, it’s an inherent flaw in the process. We can’t have privately-owned machines where the owner of the machines says he wants candidate X to win. The machines can be hacked. So you could have a situation where the people in charge may be fair, but they don’t know about the machines. The Connally case indicates a shift in votes. We need computer forensic experts to look into that. We need an investigation.
Q: So you are calling for a federal investigation, as opposed to the lawyer’s actions contesting the election in the Ohio courts?
Jackson:
The Congress has to be a factor in this. The situation is that most Americans think we have the right to vote for president. What happened in 1965 was, the Voting Rights Act was a fulfillment of 1865, of the 15th Amendment that made discrimination in voting illegal. What the Supreme Court said in 2000 was, they went to the tenth amendment, the states rights amendment, the slave holding amendment, and said that the right to vote is not in the affirmative, therefore the right to vote is a states right. Therefore the federal court has no jurisdiction. It is in the state. So it went to Katherine Harris, who said that by state law the vote must be over by 12 o’clock.
No democracy in the world is fighting for those kinds of rules—where there is a stop-gap level of power between the people and the candidate. Our elections should be federally protected. Not one set of laws in Mississippi, another in Ohio.
So in fact it is right now a state issue. So the Ohio supreme court should rule. But we should go beyond that, to a federally protected right to vote. The federal government should run federal elections, on a uniform system. That’s not too much to ask.
Q; There’s a complex timing issue in Ohio laws concerning a recount effort. The Secretary of State appears to be running out the clock. What are these timing issues?
Arnebeck:
It’s a difficult issue.
The Green/Libertarian injunction to begin the recount immediately was denied in a Toledo court. But in the course of that decision, the office of the SOS represented to the federal court that it viewed the recount process as a kind of audit, and that even if they passed the date where the electoral process might preempt the count, that the counting process would go forward. So the state has represented that the recount will occur.
Another point was made by Jonathan Turley of American University, who said that even though there is this so-called drop-dead “safe harbor” date of December 13, that even up until January, if you have proven that the count was wrong, that the revised results should have effect. There should be no safe harbor against a fraud in our electoral process.
Jackson:
The conventional parties have surrendered to fraud again. This situation shows the genius of the independent movement. Back in 1965, LBJ could not give us a federal right to vote. The congress could, but it hadn’t. When we went to Selma it was an independent thrust. It was people of conscience who forced a whole nation to come to grips with the injustice.
It may be dark, but a little light will do when it’s real dark. And these election numbers are glowing, and they will not go away.
We must not have another case of silence by senators, in the face of such patterns of fraud.
Green party representative:
Even though we lost our suit last Monday, we intend to see this to the end.
Jackson:
Called Kerry twice this week. He supports the process of the investigation. Based on the information he had, he withdrew. That’s a choice he had to make. But if the investigation indicates a different result, he would have had a different response.
Q: How much staff and money are you putting into this effort?
Staff and volunteers around the state. Many people now want to get involved because they want to fight back. We had a poor campaign in the South, but a rich message. This hasn’t been driven by a lot of money. Martin Luther King had no budget. We raised, the Greens and Libertarians raised, just enough money to have legal standing. We do not need money. We need people to rise up. We need people to fight back. Mandela had no budget in jail in South Africa. The Ukrainians who are marching have no budget either—they have a will to dignity. We have a will to dignity. It’s not too much to ask to have a vote count. It’s not too much to ask to have machines with audit trails. This is not to be discussed in the margins. This is not just the Greens. It is green, red, yellow blue—all of us, the rainbow coalition.
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