September 17, 2007
The notoriously pro-Republican Columbus Dispatch is on another of its bizarre crusades. They're out to make Ohio safe for easily hacked and illegally manipulated computer voting machines. Using the disgusting tactics pioneered by the tobacco, nuclear and Big Oil companies, the Dispatch has endorsed a position where compromised vendors who work for the secretive voting machine manufacturers are unbiased and independent academics who come to informed, factually-based opinions, are biased.
In the Dispatch's editorial fantasy land, the "...busy election [of 2006] went ahead without significant problems, and there was no evidence that the results were tainted." Apparently, Dispatch reporters and editors aren't allowed to read other Ohio newspapers or, for that matter, their own website.
On August 7 of this year, Dispatch reporter Mark Niquette wrote: "Voting machines used in more than half of Ohio's counties were determined to be vulnerable to tampering in studies completed in California and Florida, reports show."
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that 10% of the machines tested malfunctioned in Cuyahoga County as well in the 2006 primary.
In Franklin County, the only African American female on the Domestic Relations Court, an endorsed Democrat, lost her bid for re-election in a race that had 34,000 statistically unexplained undervotes. A Franklin County court found that this was the result of machines that had been improperly tampered with prior to the election by technicians working for the voting machine vendors.
How does the Dispatch see this? "The touchscreens and optical scanners worked as intended, and both systems are far superior to punch card voting. The election process is the best gauge of reliability."
This is a curious comment, considering that statewide Democratic candidates lost across the board between 10-12% of the votes predicted by the Dispatch in its historically reliable pre-election poll. For decades, the Dispatch has prided itself on having the most accurate polls in Ohio, so much so that their editors have co-authored articles in a refereed political science journal about the Dispatch polls' uncanny accuracy.
With the rise of voting machines, the Dispatch has become perhaps the worst polling newspaper in the state.
Or maybe the Wolfe-family owned Dispatch means literally what it says. Voting machine hardware and software controlled by partisan Republican vendors protected by proprietary software is doing exactly was it was designed to do. Program the vote. After all, the last time the Dispatch endorsed a Democrat for President was Woodrow Wilson in 1916. And only then, because the Wolfe family's German ancestry favored the slogan "He kept us out of war."
The Dispatch and its Republican allies in the Statehouse have resurrected their favorite smear phrases for the fight. The Dispatch offered the following absurd comments in its editorial: "Conspiracy theorists and some Democrats warned for months before the election that Blackwell, the GOP's candidate for governor, might use his office to slant the vote to favor him and fellow Republicans." The Dispatch points to the fact that "Ted Strickland trounced Blackwell for the top job."
What they fail to point out is that the normally reliable last Dispatch poll predicted Strickland would win with 36% of the vote. He only won by 24%. Now, if they predicted that Blackwell would be winning by 12% and that vote disappeared and Strickland won in a squeaker, say, a la Bush in 2000, the Dispatch would have seen this as election theft.
The crux of the Dispatch crusade is against university computer science professors proposed as part of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's voting machine testing plan. State Senators Steve Stivers and John Carey are leading the charge against the academics. Stivers demanded to know "How many tests are we going to have to do?" He and his Republican cohorts appear to favor no security measures being tested.
On September 10, Stivers and Carey successfully postponed the testing of voting machines in Ohio, blocking it 4-3 along party lines. The Dispatch immediately leaped to their defense stating "The State Controlling Board is right to seek more information on a proposal to re-test Ohio electronic voting machines." The Dispatch comes right to the point, "The questions pertain to the scope of the study, who will conduct the test and what standards will be applied."
Dispatch news stories and editorials have no problem with Battelle Memorial Institute as project manager for the tests, despite the fact that they botched the 2002 exit polls that saw the improbable defeat of Max Cleland on Diebold electronic voting machines with no paper trail in Georgia. Battelle's long relationship with the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence community is never questioned.
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