January 6 is fast approaching, and we need to convince one Senator to support Maxine Waters and other House Democrats in their challenge to Ohio's electors. Call your Democratic Senators today! Cite the Moss v. Bush lawsuit as the basis for the challenge.

Activists will be coming to DC from across the nation. ReDefeatBush.com is helping local activists arrange transportation. ReDefeatBush has also compiled a target list of 77 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives who should be core supporters.

To set the stage for the January 6 protest, Rev. Jesse Jackson will lead a "Pro Democracy Count Every Vote Rally" in Columbus Ohio on January 3, which is co-sponsored by Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, MoveOn.org, Progressive Democrats of America, the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice, Ohio State Senator Joyce Beatty, CASE Ohio and others. According to Rev. Jackson, this rally will mark the beginning of a mass movement:

“The vote recount in Ohio is underway. The election challenge lawsuit has been filed. Subpoenas are being prepared. Depositions are being planned. Hearings spearheaded by Cong. John Conyers are bringing forth new evidence of voter machine manipulation. And now Sen. John Kerry has joined in the recount fight. We must have a thorough investigation of voter irregularities and the voter machines before Congress certifies the Electoral College vote on January 6,” Rev. Jackson said. “January 3rd will be the beginning of a new Pro-Democracy Movement in America. Forty years ago, the Voting Rights Act was passed as a result of an independent, mass civil rights movement. We will carry forward that tradition in 2005, and continue the fight to count every vote and make sure every vote counts.”

The power of a popular mass movement was proved in Ukarine, where street protests forced the corrupt government to conduct a nationwide re-vote that appears to have elected Yushchenko. Amazingly, Sunday's network headlines about Ukraine trumpeted the exit polls showing challenger Yushchenko beating Yanukovych. Yet those same networks refuse to release the raw exit poll data showing challenger Kerry beating Bush. If Bush really won, you can bet the exit poll data would have been released immediately.

Of course, Yuschenko led massive protests against the Stolen Election in Ukraine. Here in the U.S., John Kerry has been invisible since he conceded on November 3. But his lawyers have been increasingly active in challenging Ohio's election fraud. Fintan Dunne says Kerry will intervene in the Triad recount fraud case on Monday, and this case could have decisive consequences.

If the recount was fraudulent, does that have implications for the validity of the first count in Ohio? The Kerry campaign knows full well that it does. That's why their latest statement questions the "integrity" of the "entire" electoral process. And the election of Bush/Cheney.

For Kerry, a fraudulent recount in Ohio could be an open door into to the Oval Office.

To get from here to there, Democrats would have to challenge Ohio's fraudulent Electors - and that requires Just One Senator. To help convince your Senators, Ray Beckerman compiled an excellent set of Ohio links on (a) fraud, (b) disenfranchisment, (c) voter suppression, (d) recount obstruction, and (e) vote machine tampering.

Don't believe Beckerman, whose is meticulously documenting every credible news item? Then how about the non-partisan National Research Commission on Elections and Voting (courtesy of the Nashua Advocate), which issued an interim report on Dec 22 and declared itself unable to make a "conclusive statement regarding the accuracy or fairness of specific [2004 election] results at this time." Why not? They offer about 2 dozen important reasons.

Meanwhile, new evidence of fraud keeps accumulating. Last Thursday, David Cobb asked a Federal Court to preserve a wide range of evidence, including voting machines and election records, to ensure the integrity of the Ohio presidential recount.

"It is time for the federal judiciary to step in and ensure the integrity of the recount in Ohio, something which Ohio's blatantly partisan Secretary of State is either unwilling or thoroughly incapable of doing," said Cobb. Papers filed with the court state that "voting machines in multiple counties may have been tampered with during the recount by an employee of Triad Governmental Systems, Inc.-the company whose computer program tallied the punch-card votes cast in 41" of Ohio's 88 counties. The most widely reported of these instances took place on December 10, in Hocking County, Ohio, when a Triad representative reprogrammed a computer used for tabulating votes and instructed the county's Deputy Director of Elections to create a "cheat sheet" so "the count would come out perfect and we wouldn't have to do a full hand recount of the county."

Last Tuesday, voters in the Mahoning Valley (including Youngstown) testified for 3 hours at a hearing organized by Rev. Rick Judy of Mahoning County; Rev. Werner Lange of Trumbull County; Ray Nakley, an officer of the Arab-American Community Center in Youngstown; and Russ Buckbee, Green Party coordinator for NE Ohio. They testified about

Pre-punched ballots; touch-screen vote switching;  more absentee votes than absentee voters; unfair provisional voter deletions;   change of voting sites on Election Day. voter suppression;  voter intimidation; double voting; malfunctioning machines; recalibrated machines; evidently rigged machines; and even 25 million negative votes registered in some races in Mahoning County!...

“One pattern that has been documented based on the experience of voters in Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, and elsewhere (especially in swing states) is the machines appear to have been set with a default to Bush.  Then if the voter successfully punched the ballot for another candidate, Bush was replaced by that candidate.”

The exact number of votes officially given to Bush and stolen from Kerry by such means is unknown.  No explanation has, to date, been given and no serious investigation into this outrage against democracy has been launched.

Nor has there been any defensible explanation provided for the documented absentee vote inflation in Trumbull County.  A careful review by Werner Lange and Maggie Hagan of nearly 200 precincts in Trumbull County revealed a considerable discrepancy between the number of certified absentee votes and the number of registered absentee voters identified in the poll books.  The poll books are to contain not only the name of every registered voter, but also clearly identify who voted (either by regular, absentee or provisional means) and who did not.  The Trumbull County investigation showed some 650 more absentee votes than there were absentee voters identified in the poll books examined.  If the absentee vote inflation rate there were consistent statewide, then over 63,000 votes were up for grabs in Ohio.

After 7 weeks of protests, hearings, investigations, recounts, and lawsuits, the NY Times finally sent 3 reporters (James Dao, Ford Fessenden and Tom Zeller Jr.) to Ohio to cover the second theft of the Presidency. Their first report is a completely superficial review of the most obvious problems - 155,000 provisional ballots, of which 23% were rejected; 93,000 overvotes and undervotes, all of which were rejected; and long lines. But the reporters didn't do any investigations - or even talk to any investigators! - they just accepted denials from Ken Blackwell. E-mail public@nytimes.com and demand a real investigation of Ohio election fraud!