Thanks to an outpouring from grassroots activists, the Green Party raised $113,600 for the Ohio recount in 4 days. Now they are recruiting thousands of volunteers to monitor the recount in Ohio's 88 counties. Get ready for a wild ride!

In Florida, friends of Congressional candidate Jeff Fisher say he has proof of fraud.

WE BELIEVE WE HAVE THE SMOKING GUN OF THIS VOTER FRAUD SCANDAL AND IT ALL POINTS BACK TO FLORIDA 2000 AND NOW 2004 . WE KNOW WHO DID IT, HOW THEY DID IT AND WHERE IT WAS STARTED FROM...

By internally tampering with Diebold Optical Scanners as well as Diebold Electronic E voting machines, the hacking, (done from remote locations under the control of Mel Stembler's facilities (see below), votes were altered, switched, deleted or detroyed in numerous Florida, Ohio and New Mexico counties and then switched from John Kerry to George Bush.

It is very likely that other races have been effected as well such as Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina , etc. WHERE POLL DIVERGENCES WERE NOTED IN RECENT POST ELECTION STUDIES.

All very mysterious, including the author of the letter...

Last week, Indiana Dems discovered electronic voting machines made by Fidlar awarded straight-line Democratic votes to the Libertarian candidate. Rep. Baron Hill's (IN-9) district was not directly affected by that problem, but it used the same Fidlar machines. So at the last possible minute, Dems asked for a recount - and a contest too.

Steven Rosenfeld's The Perfect Election Day Crime focuses on voters in Franklin County (Columbus) Ohio, who were discouraged from voting by long lines caused by insufficient voting machines.

Across Ohio’s minority-rich cities, there were fewer voting machines than during past elections, including March’s presidential primary. As the number of voters grew by as much as 50 percent in some precincts, according to pro-Kerry field organizers, the number of voting machines on Election Day shrank by a third. Precincts that usually had five machines only had three.

The lack of voting machines was a disaster.

“I don’t think this story has been told,” said Miles Gerety, a public defender from Bridgeport, Conn., who went to Ohio as a legal observer and discovered this trend by overhearing elderly voters talk about fewer machines. “The press and election protection people weren’t looking for this. They were looking for poll challenges. But this is the perfect way to suppress the vote.”

The shortage of voting machines didn’t just create long lines. It kept thousands of new and longtime voters from casting ballots in the state’s minority communities—the Democratic strongholds. The accounts of people who had to leave the polls for work or family obligations were everywhere. But on Election Day, very few Democrats realized this was happening. They just saw long lines.

"The lack of adequate voting machines helped the GOP in Ohio," said Brian Clark, site coordinator for SierraClubVotes.org in Franklin County, where the city of Columbus is located. He managed a voter contact and get-out-the-vote effort in 43 precincts that reached a third of the county’s 250,000 voters. "There were fewer machines in some inner city precincts than in 2000, despite Board of Elections and secretary of state’s projections of record turnout."

This is important information, but it would be impossible to accurately quantify the impact on the election results. Here are some numbers, but they are wrong:

Franklin County is a good microcosm for understanding what happened in Ohio. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush there by 4,156 votes. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry there by 41,341 votes, according to the unofficial results on the Ohio secretary of state’s website. Bush’s lead in the county was almost a third of his statewide margin against Kerry, even though, as of last March, according to the state statistics, there were 54,040 new voters in the county. Some of those new voters were Republican. But still, what happened? 

What happened? Dems kicked butt in Franklin, that's what - picking up 73,555 more votes and extending the margin to 37,221.

Statewide, the discouraged voters might have had an impact, as Rosenfeld argues:

"Based on what we were being told by people on the ground, at the door, on the phones as we were doing our get out the vote effort, it was very clear that enough people went out intending to vote to meet the projected turnout by the secretary of state, which was 73 percent," he said. "The final number was about 70 percent of the voting age population actually voted. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least 3 percent of the people who went out to vote didn’t get to vote, because of these problems statewide."

Ohio’s 2004 vote has not yet been certified. But in the unofficial results on the secretary of state’s web site, George W. Bush had 51.0 percent, compared to 48.5 percent for John Kerry. That difference is on par with the gap between the secretary of state’s projected turnout and the percentage of people who got to vote. Had all Ohioans who wanted to vote cast their ballots, both Clark and Gerety said Kerry might have won the state and the presidential election.

Increasing the vote from 70% to 73% would mean 250,000 more votes, but it's hard to imagine that many voters were discouraged.

Thom Hartmann apologizes for his 11/6 article Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked, which focused on suspected problems in Florida.

Was the vote hacked? Nobody knows for sure. Dopp stands by her analysis, and has several credible PhDs backing her up. Others of similar veracity say she has found an anomaly, but not one of significance. Congressional candidate Fisher continues to insist that he has proof, and has now turned it over to the FBI, but has been unable to provide me with what I would consider credible evidence. Similar analysis in other states are uncovering troubling questions, leading to investigations and provoking Ralph Nader to ask for a recount of New Hampshire...

To the extent that some people thought, based on the first in-error version of my story, that a smoking gun of voting fraud had definitely been found and have now become skeptical and thus may abandon efforts at real investigation or reform, is a tragedy, for which I take full responsibility.

To the extent that this issue has been raised, and is being pursued by many, this episode may well turn out to be a good thing. Some very interesting rocks are being overturned, and there is new energy behind Rush Holt's bill to force greater transparency for electronic voting.

Thom, thanks for setting the record straight!