An article by Harvey Wasserman, via The Free Press.

Green Party candidates who submitted more than twice the legally required number of petition signatures to get on this fall’s Ohio ballot are being stonewalled by the state’s infamous Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who has expressed personal contempt for the Greens’ gubernatorial candidate, Bob Fitrakis.

Blackwell served as co-chair of the Ohio 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. As chief administrator of the statewide ballot, he delivered Ohio’s 20 electoral votes---and thus the presidency---to George W. Bush in a bitterly contested election riddled with charges of intimidation, fraud and theft, electronic and otherwise. Nearly two years later, the charges that the election was stolen continue to escalate.

Blackwell is now Ohio’s Republican nominee for governor. His Democratic opponent in the fall, 2006, vote is U.S. Congressman Ted Strickland. A moderate Methodist minister from southern Ohio, Strickland currently holds a slight lead in the polls over the extreme right-wing fundamentalist Blackwell.

But on May 2, the Green Party gubernatorial campaign of Bob Fitrakis and Anita Rios submitted more than 11,000 petition signatures to get themselves on the fall ballot. The Green Party candidate for Secretary of State, Tim Kettler, also submitted more than 10,000 signatures. State law requires about 5,000 valid signatures for third party candidacies (but just 1,000 for Democrats or Republicans).

With a predicated acceptance rate of well over 50%, the Green Party place on the ballot would seem secure. But Blackwell is refusing to acknowledge or count the petitions.

On its face it would seem a Green Party candidacy would drain votes from the Democrat Strickland and aid Blackwell, giving him a vested interest in seeing Fitrakis-Rios on the ballot.

But Fitrakis (as this writer’s frequent co-author) is one of the nation’s best-known critics of how Blackwell handled the Ohio 2004 election. Fitrakis was also co-counsel for a legal filing demanding a recount, against which Blackwell retaliated with a demand for sanctions. Those sanctions were rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court. But in a first-person interview I conducted with Blackwell this winter while walking down a hallway, Blackwell referred to Fitrakis as “a complete idiot.”

As a certified candidate with full legal standing, Fitrakis has pledged to escalate the Green campaign to unearth more of what really happened in Ohio 2004. As an attorney, Fitrakis’s ability to drag the Secretary of State into court could be more than Blackwell wants to tolerate.

The prevailing common wisdom in Ohio is that “J. Kenneth Blackwell will never lose an election in which he is in charge of the vote count.” Blackwell might believe it crucial to deprive Fitrakis of a certified candidate’s legal ability to demand a recount after Blackwell “wins” another stolen election in 2006.

So Blackwell’s office won’t say when (or if) it will count the Green Party petitions. A ruling “may come in June or July.” In the meantime, the Greens have been hamstrung in their attempts to mount a meaningful campaign or to fundraise.

Blackwell’s tactics parallel his stall against a recount of the Ohio 2004 ballot, which he effectively delayed until after the state’s Electoral College delegation had been certified for Bush. In fact, to this day no meaningful recount has ever been conducted of that election, and more than 106,000 ballots remain uncounted.

Fitrakis and the Greens are contemplating court action to force official certification. But for Blackwell, it would seem that once again, democracy denied is a GOP victory.

--
Harvey Wasserman is co-author, with Bob Fitrakis, of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at http://www.freepress.org, and co-editor, with Fitrakis, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, forthcoming from The New Press.

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1. says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  10:59 am | #

   Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has written a scathing article documenting the theft of the 2004 elections in Ohio and Blackwell’s decisive role. Nothing Blackwell does should surprise anyone. Read it and spread the word: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

   Ourstorian

2. Patriot says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  02:47 pm | #

   Congressman John Conyers held a thorough investigation into this and found unprecedented problems, the BBC reported about many of the problems/"anomolies" and Fitrkais is an internationally recognized election observer who wrote the report for El Salvadors 1994 election. There is no doubt that the 2004 election was stolen. Anyone who doubts it should simply look at the evidence.

3. f says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  04:30 pm | #

   ironic to see a kennedy talking about a stolen election when there is a lot of evidence suggesting that JFK stole his way to the white house.

4. Patriot says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  10:30 pm | #

   f, it is ironic, but it doesn’t discount that the fact that Bush steals elections and the “liberal” media doesn’t cover it. How pathetic is the Dimocratic party? It’s hard to win when you let Bush steal it. Their probably going to let Blackwell steal it too. He’s not really going to be an objective observer for his own election and he has freinds at Diebold. He was even scandalous enough to own stock in them.

5. Patriot says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  10:43 pm | #

   Fitrakis is spreading the word about J Krooked Blackwell. Uncle Ken should be behind bars or get the maximum sentence for his treason.

6. Reginald Van Gleason IV says:
   05 Jun 2006  at  10:57 pm | #

   f.uckhead, back that up with one shred of credible evidence you fucking loser.

   RVGIV

7. anon says:
   06 Jun 2006  at  10:55 am | #

   reginald Van Gleason IV has got to be black to be that stupid

8. f says:
   06 Jun 2006  at  11:02 am | #

   well hello reggie.  glad to see you are here to drop f bombs and make no sense

   “Controversies

   Some Republicans alleged that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud especially in Texas and Illinois. There is no certainty that Nixon would have won both Texas and Illinois (which he would have had to do to win the electoral vote). What is certain, however, is that in Illinois, Kennedy won by a bare 9,000 votes, and Mayor Daley, who held back Chicago’s vote until late in the evening, provided an extraordinary Cook County margin of victory of 450,000 votes. The Republican party urged Nixon to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of some of the votes for Kennedy, especially in the pivotal states of Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election. Nixon publicly refused to call for a recount, saying it would cause a constitutional crisis.”

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1960

   If holding back votes is proof that kennedy uses in his argument to “prove” the 2004 election was stolen then the 1960 was worse by far

   and should you care to see where kennedy went wrong with his study of the 2004 election

   http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/

   have a great fucking day reggie

9. Chuck says:
   06 Jun 2006  at  12:07 pm | #

   f, there is no way that the 1960 election was worse than the 2000 and 2004 elections. As Congressman John Conyers reported in his investigation “What went wrong in Ohio”, the level of disenfranchizement was unprecedented. There is much more documented proof of these stolen elections from the BBC and other sources. Even if the 1960 election was stolen, it still doesn’t excuse these stolen elections and RFK jr was certainly too young to be involved over 40 years ago.

   The sad truth is that American democracy has had dirty little secrets like these and others. Now we have modern day Jim Crow that takes on many forms. We have private partisan companies counting our votes without real oversight. We have partisan officials like Harris and Blackwell that will do anything to have Bush elected. If these same elections took place in the third world we would laugh at them. We don’t meet the critirea to be a part of the EU or to have the Carter Institute oversee them.
   Venezuala and Bolivia have elections that are democratic and the US doesn’t. We need international election observers and to bring our troops home to end this crisis.

   The Salon article is very weak and mostly opinion. Kennedy has a much stronger argument with more facts. Instead of just taking Salon.coms word for it, you should read the Conyers report, Fitrakis’ book, go to the BBC or stop pretending you have done any research into this.

10. says:
    06 Jun 2006  at  02:12 pm | #

    I agree with Chuck. Farhad Manjoo’s Salon article attempts to refute RFK, Jr.’s Rolling Stone article mainly with conjecture and hyperbole.

    BTW, at least three White Nationalist Party (RepublicKlan) operatives have been convicted of suppressing the vote. Their orders came straight from Ken Mehlman (chair of Bush’s 2004 campaign)in the White House.

    Mentioning the JFK election only underscores the problems with voting in this country, and the fact that the system is corrupt and needs remediation. It certainly does nothing to undermind Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s effort to document what happened in 2004. The man was six years old when Kennedy ran against Nixon. Are the sins of the Uncle to be visited upon the nephew more than four decades later?