The exchanges Monday became heated at times, especially between Blackwell and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Cleveland Democrat who is not a committee member but sat in with the panel.
Tubbs Jones questioned Blackwell about a telephone message delivered to thousands of voters just before the election to make sure they voted in the correct precinct, especially if they had not changed their registration and needed a provisional ballot. Tubbs Jones wondered why he didn't say in the message that voters had the option to use provisional ballots at their local boards of elections.
Blackwell said, "It worked," several times, his voice rising as Tubbs Jones continued the question. Ohio ranked fourth nationwide in the number of provisional ballots that were validated. Ten days before the election, a judge upheld Blackwell's directive that voters must cast provisional ballots in the correct precinct.
Blackwell also said directives he issued on provisional ballots and voter registration cards that led to complaints about their timeliness were forced by court rulings made just weeks or days before the election.
Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald of California, the committee's ranking Democrat, asked Blackwell several questions about alleged irregularities, including voters getting calls telling them the election was the day after Nov. 2 and voting machine misallocation by elections officials.
The above is from John McCarthy's Associated Press article entitle "Ohio official says election went smoothly" which you can find in South Mississippi's Sun Herald which Lynda e-mailed a short while ago. [E-mail address is common_ills@yahoo.com.]
Jimmy e-mails in an entry from The Alpha Liberal who at 11:24 am today made Ohio the first item in Monday's entry:
Testimony To Begin At Noon
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was scheduled to testify at a field hearing of the U.S. House Administration Committee on Monday, more than a month after failing to appear at the panel's first post-election hearing in Washington.
So note The Alpha Liberal as another person attempting to get the Ohio story out.
Trisha e-mails today's entry from Folding Star of A Winding Road:
To many, Ohio and the electoral fraud that took place there was obviously yesterday's news. So much so that few bothered to discuss this hearing in advance and few seem to have given it attention today.
Why Are We Back in Iraq does have a very good piece up that you should read and the Third Estate Sunday Review has an excellent editorial up on the issue.
[. . .]
Today in the hearings, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell maintained that the election 'went smoothly'. Well, you can tell he's a Republican. That election went smoothly in the same way that Bush's love letter to the logging industry is called the "Healthy Forests' act.
I understand that Blackwell and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones had a few 'heated exchanges' during the questioning. I only wish I could have seen it for myself!
The dismissal by Blackwell of the very serious, very well documented problems in Ohio as an election that 'went smoothly' demonstrates all over again the importance of electoral reform.And one key element of that reform has got to be a law that prohibits state officials, like Blackwell, from being involved with any campaign.
We saw this happen in Florida in 2000, where the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, was also in charge of Bush's Florida Campaign. And we saw it again in Ohio were Blackwell oversaw the election while heading up Bush's Ohio campaign.This is such a clear and blatant conflict of interest, yet one which under our current laws is completely acceptable!We've got to change that and we've got to do it before the 2008 elections.
In the meantime, we should all take serious note of the lack of coverage for this latest hearing. We've clearly still got a long fight ahead of us to bring these issues to the forefront.
A number of you e-mail regarding tonight's The Majority Report. We'll go with Alex because that was the first e-mail to arrive and Alex gave permission to be quoted. (If the others wanted to be quoted, it wasn't noted in the e-mails.)
Alex: In hour three, Sam Seder & Janeane Garofalo dealt with the committee hearing in Ohio. They noted that very little was known about it and what information had come out alerting people to it was coming from blogs. I listened to Air America all day since I was off and someone may have mentioned it when I was running to the laundry room. But as far as I know, Sam & Janeane were the only ones who mentioned it. So I want to give a shout out to them and make sure they get noted with the very few others that have been dealing with this. You also need to write something about the ethicist from the New York Times who was on in the third hour.
[Note: Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder host The Majority Report on Air America.]
Consider Janeane & Sam added to the list of people who covered the issue. And I will attempt to listen to the show tomorrow. I did have it on tonight but paid no attention to it as I was following the UK computer gurus advice on what to install and how. (We had pranksters playing at the site today for anyone who missed the note posted earlier this evening.) Then I was helping Rebecca install the same safeguards. Janeane & Sam could have said "Thank God, the Bully Boy has announced he's stepping down!" tonight and I wouldn't have caught it. But I will visit Air America Place tomorrow to see if they have the episode up. (And of course, Alex, you could always write something about the ethicist -- Randy Cohen? -- yourself and we could post it. That goes for anyone.)
And remember that this weekend, Laura Flanders will have a report on The Laura Flanders Show (her producer Steven Rosenfeld was already in Ohio Sunday to cover the committee meeting).
Maria: Since Lizz Winstead has left Unfiltered, I've listened to The Stephanie Miller Show and really enjoy it. I e-mailed the show this morning asking if they were going to talk about Ohio and I got an e-mail back from the producer, Chris, that made me feel like an idiot because the show I was listening to was a repeat. I'd been listening and laughing without even realizing it was a repeat (and kept listening and laughing after I found it was a repeat). Stephanie was sick today and they had to do a repeat but Chris says they will be addressing that tomorrow so mark Stephanie Miller and her gang down as people who care about this issue and are going to discuss it. If you're in an area that gets The Stephanie Miller Show on the radio, please make a point to listen. And if you are at a computer tomorrow morning when The Stephanie Miller Show airs [note: 9:00 am eastern time zone to noon] please listen in. Stephanie's really funny and makes me laugh. I hope she's feeling better tomorrow.
I agree Stephanie's funny. I was able to listen twice last week. She's been doing a very funny riff on Sean Hannity.
If you see something on the Congressional committee meeting in Ohio tonight (or early tomorrow morning), please e-mail the site [common_ills@yahoo.com] and we'll note it.
Probably.
Why probably?
Elaine: So I'm screaming mad. I e-mailed ____ about the Ohio thing Sunday and read the e-mail I'm forwarding to the site, let me know if you don't get it, this morning. I'm furious. ____ knows about it. And could cover it and let readers know about it. But ____ chooses to say that it doesn't matter because it's a "GOP led" committee. Newsflash, all House committees are GOP-led!!!!!!!!!!! They have the majority in the House. And if you're so damn sure that it's going to be a whitewash, all the more reason to alert people so they can pay attention to it and really focus on what lies get spread! This is about democracy, this is about Ohio and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones will be speaking. In case ____ isn't aware, Tubbs-Jones is a Democrat, a brave one, who led on the issue of the Ohio vote. Apparently, if it's not what's going on with the Florida woman, it's not worth covering. And I'm really sick to death of that constant coverage! Every now and then someone online or on the radio will note that it's being used to drown out other stories but they go right back to covering it. That makes about as much sense as saying, "Look, Laura and Bully Boy left poison laying out hoping to kill the liberals!" and then eating it.
Elaine's e-mail forward did come through. It's a private e-mail and we don't publish those. I also have no desire to embarrass anyone. Everyone can write (or talk) about what they feel is important. But I have to say that I understand Elaine's anger.
Others of you forwarded other similar responses. (And Maria forwarded the e-mail from Chris Lavoie, producer of The Stephanie Miller Show. We've respected the privacy of that e-mail, I hope, but at the same time we have plugged it based on that e-mail. I consider positive plugs
to be different from embarrassing someone. I could be wrong. Let me know if you think I am.
But even there, we respected Chris Lavoie's privacy by not publishing his private e-mail -- which had nothing embarrassing to him, Miller, or the show.)
If you send in a link and you get a confirmation e-mail (the automated response) but don't see anything about the person you were recognizing at this site take it as a sign because we're noting the people who led on the Ohio issue, not the ones who responded after the fact if they knew about it ahead of time and elected to treat it as a non-topic.
We're not trying to embarrass anyone. But by the same token, those who were aware of the committee meeting and responded in e-mails to members that the issue didn't matter will not be recognized at this site just because they suddenly found interest or courage after others stuck their necks out to get this story out.
Our shout outs right now go to:
The Third Estate Sunday Review
Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude
Laura Flanders & her producer Steve Rosenfeld of The Laura Flander Show
BuzzFlash
Iddybud
Why Are We Back In Iraq?
Chris Lavoie & Stephanie Miller of The Stephanie Miller Show (we're going by the time of Chris' e-mail)
The Alpha Liberal
A Winding Road
Janeane Garofalo & Sam Seder of The Majority Report
I won't pretend that list is complete (and I sure hope I didn't leave off anyone we'd made a point to recognize today already -- but I'm an idiot so if I did, please e-mail me so we can correct the record). I've not been surfing the net, I've been deal with "pranksters." That took three hours at least. And I wasted more time by going on chocolate run right before posting Cedric's e-mails because I'm was (and still am) about to fall over. (I got one hour of sleep last night because I stayed up reading the e-mails to catch up on them.) The intent was to note the people who stood up and then go on to do some coverage of the rallies this weekend. With only one hour of sleep and my chocolate buzz waning, I'm about to crash.
I'm sure others have mentioned it. And guessing, I'd assume that Mike Malloy spoke of it tonight unless his show was a repeat. (So if you heard Malloy and he did speak about it, please e-mail the site so we can note his contribution.)
I pointed out Sunday that many people probably weren't aware of it. Of those who were made aware, they might not have felt they had anything to contribute and that's certainly valid. I know that I can't write about something if I don't feel I can say something that hasn't already been said. But there's a world of difference between not being able to find an "in" into the topic and announcing that the topic doesn't matter.
I'll also throw out a heads up to Kara that Rebecca (Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude)has blogged on The New Republic as you hoped she would this morning.
She ends that entry with this:
i'm wiped out from the 'pranking' earlier and what it took to fix it time wise. so i'll call it a night and promise to try for a longer entry tomorrow. buzzflash and iddybud and why are we back in iraq have been noted at the common ills for getting the word out so i will note them here. (and isn't jude a groovy blogger? she's a woman and we're supposedly wondering where the female bloggers are so why doesn't she get more attention for all her hard work? or is that all 'so last week' already?) ron is a great guy as well and i like his don't take any sh*t attitude.
(Acutally, she winds down her entry with that.)
Remember to listen to The Stephanie Miller Show tomorrow morning if you're able to. (Again, it airs, eastern time zone, from nine am to noon.) And don't expect much from tomorrow's first of the morning posts.
[Note: The title is a list of the latest shout outs. It's badly done but only so many letters & characters will fit in the title.]
