Breaking: Conyers to Object to Ohio Electors, Requests Senate Allies

John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will object to the counting of the Ohio Electors from the 2004 Presidential election when Congress convenes to ratify those votes on January 6th. In a letter dispatched to every Senator, which will be officially published by his office shortly, Conyers declares that he will be joined in this by several other members of the House. Rep. Conyers is taking this dramatic step because he believes the allegations and evidence of election tampering and fraud render the current slate of Ohio Electors illegitimate...

The letter goes on to ask the Senators who receive this letter to join Conyers in objecting to the Ohio Electors. "I am hoping that you will consider joining us in this important effort," writes Conyers, "to debate and highlight the problems in Ohio which disenfranchised innumerable voters. I will shortly forward you a draft report itemizing and analyzing the many irregularities we have come across as part of our hearings and investigation into the Ohio presidential election."

You GO, John Conyers!!!!!!!! Activist Nancy Wallace has this follow-up:

I just had a long talk with his aide, and he wants pressure on ALL members of Congress to challenge - Republicans as well as Democrats, to hear what the people are wanting.

The best thing to do is just call the Capitol Hill switchboard first thing Friday morning, 202-224-3121, ask for one of your Senators, and give them the message: Challenge the Ohio Electoral College delegation!!!!              

Then repeat for the other Senator and Rep. If they're not in, email (Google for their official website with email address), and call Monday!!!

Remember, Conyers went to Ohio himself and heard the direct information from the voters - and he says it should be challenged!

If the switchboard is busy, Google on your representative and Senators' names, and CALL DIRECTLY. We must get through! emails should also be sent through their websites this weekend. DO BOTH!!!!

ACT NOW!!!! yahoo, Thank God for some leadership, at last!!!! Let's back Conyers up bigtime!!!! And send this immediately to all your buddies around the country, we need to do e-democracy now!!!

Senator Robert Byrd may be the most likely Senator to challenge Ohio's fraudulent Electors on January 6. Gary Zuckett of WV Mountain Party reports,

A delegation of West Virginia Citizens today met with Anne Smith, State Director of US Senator Robert Byrd's Charleston office. We presented Ms Barth with a letter to Senator Byrd requesting him to challenge the certification of the electoral votes until the legal challenges to the voting in Ohio can be resolved.

Ms Barth commented that they were getting calls and messages in support of the challenge. Please take time to contact Byrd and ask him to uphold our constitutional right to a fair and open election process by challenging the electoral vote on Jan 6th. Call 202-224-3954 - Byrd's Washington Office.

Ms Barth also asked for copies of NYT, Washington Post or other nationally recognized news articles on the Ohio vote situation. She specifically requested faxed copies of actual printed news articles, not web copies. Her fax number is 304-343-7144.

Of course, the NYT and WP have only published the most superficial articles on the problems in Ohio.

• 12/24 NYT Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul
• 12/15 WP Several Factors Contributed to 'Lost' Voters in Ohio

So I encourage you to fax her my Open Letter to John Kerry. In my cover page, I offered these words of encouragement:

Sen. Byrd would go down in History if he stood up for Democracy at this crucial moment in time.

Feel free to share your heart-felt sentiments in the cover letter.

The always-astute Joseph Cannon offered some intelligent thoughts on my Letter.

I agree with Fertik's points; we all must salute his superb work. But one factor troubles me: Obviously, the Republican party should suffer politically from the outrages listed above. But they will suffer nothing, for the mainstream media will not repeat the list of charges given above, even if Kerry proclaims himself an aggrieved party.

If Kerry challenges the electors, Kerry -- not Bush -- will suffer politically.

On the other hand: If Kerry does not challenge the electors, he will suffer politically within his party. The Democratic faithful -- which is to say, the many small contributors -- will view John Kerry as someone who would not stand up for himself.

However he stands, he stands damned.

What can change the situation? A political miracle. We need a striking new piece of evidence. It need not be conclusive, but it must grab attention. And we need this evidence within a week.

A miracle would certainly be helpful! And after all the bad luck we've had with the last two Stolen Elections, we've certainly earned the karmic right to one.

If Kerry stands up for the 59 million patriots who voted for him, he will certainly earn the wrath of the GOP, the rightwing media, and the right-leaning mainstream media (led by the Washington Post and the NY Times). But is that a reason to surrender to the Forces of Evil?

Al Gore surrendered after the 2000 Election was stolen from him. First he gave the most gracious concession speech imaginable (for which he was ridiculed), then he announced he would not criticize Bush for a long period. Just as he was about to speak up, 9-11 happened, so he bit his lip again. Finally, after the Iraq debacle, Gore began speaking out again, with new-found passion, to groups like Moveon. These speeches were so passionate that the rightwing media savaged Gore, and the mainstream media decided he was a joke.

I believe John Kerry should speak up now. When the rightwing media attacks him, he should demand equal time. If they refuse, he should challenge their licenses. Either we fight Evil - our we lose.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is trying to persuade Kerry to speak up. Jackson told Newsweek,

Kerry should take the floor and ask for a debate on the subject. Kerry pulled out too early. The scrutiny pulled out with him.

Ron Walters offered an eloquent call to action:

So it is necessary to ask: what would Martin do? What would Fannie Lou Hamer do? They would answer in the tones of the singing group, Sweet Honey On The Rock that “those who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” This means that there must be a design to fight back - not just at the next election, but in the street, at every corner, on every mountainside. It must be said that the system we call Democracy in America is corrupt, has been corrupted by a vicious desire to win at all cost, a desire that mitigates fairness - the bedrock of democratic process - a desire to further the aims of a conservative ideology by the absolute control of government.

Jesse Jackson told Newsweek his "evidence" for the Stolen Election was:

Based on distrusting the system, lack of paper trails, the anomaly of the exit polls. In Ukraine, there’s an exit poll gap, they say, “Let’s have another election.”

To reinforce this point, Jonathan Simon and Ron Baiman published an in-depth analysis of the still-unexplained exit poll discrepancy. Their key conclusions:

• Evidence does not support hypotheses that the discrepancy was produced by problems with the exit poll.
• Widespread breakdown in the fairness of the voting process and accuracy of the vote count are the most likely explanations for the discrepancy.
• In an accurate count of a free and fair election, the strong likelihood is that Kerry would have been the winner of the popular vote.

The Nashua Advocate analyzed the crucial role of exit poll discrepancies in Bush's response to the first election in Ukraine.

In declaring the Ukrainian election null and void, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the disparity between exit-polling for the election, which showed Yuschenko winning by an average of 52.3% to 44.5% (54%-43% in one poll, 49.5%-45.9% in another, an average lead of 7.8 points) and the final tally of actual votes, which showed the Russian-backed challenger, Yanukovych, winning 49.4% of the vote and Yushchenko garnering 46.7%, a 2.7-point edge for Yanukovych. This 10.5-point swing between exit-polling and tallied votes suggested to Yushchenko a "total falsification of the vote," and to Powell a "perpetration [of] fraud" which could only meet with one response from the Bush Administration: "We do not recognise the election as officially declared."

Ditto for Ohio.