From Precinct 18A, an affidavit said: "At 4 p.m. the average wait time is about 4.5 hours and continuing to increase?. Voters are continuing to leave without voting."
An affidavit from a judge at Precinct 40 states: "I am serving as a presiding judge, a position I have held for some 15+ years in precinct 40. In all my years of service, the lines are by far the longest I have seen, with some waiting as long as four to five hours. I expect the situation to only worsen as the early evening heavy turnout approaches. I have requested additional machines since 6:40 a.m. and no assistance has been offered."
In response to the lawsuit, in the early evening, US District Judge, Algernon Marbley, issued a temporary order requiring that paper ballots be offered to voters. However, according to estimates published in December 15, 2004, Washington Post, as many as 15,000 voters in Columbus had already given up and gone home.
When poll closing time came, some Republican poll workers dismissed voters who had waited in line for hours in the rain in violation of Ohio law, which allows people in line at closing time to stay and vote.
The GOP owes Blackwell a lot. They definitely could not have stolen the election without him and he no doubt earned every dime he ever got from Noe.
The only news reporter to publicly questioned the integrity of the 2004 election was Keith Olbermann during his nightly show on MSNBC.
During an interview for an article published in the June 2006 Rolling Stone Magazine, Bobby Kennedy, Jr asked him why he stood against the tide and Olbermann said: "I was a sports reporter, so I was used to dealing with numbers."
"And the numbers made no sense," he continued. "Kerry had an insurmountable lead in the exit polls on Election Night -- and then everything flipped," he told Kennedy.
Olbermann said he believes that other reporters fell down on the job. ''I was stunned by the lack of interest by investigative reporters," he said. "The Republicans shut down Warren County, allegedly for national security purposes -- and no one covered it."
"Shouldn't someone have sent a camera and a few reporters out there?" he noted.
Olbermann attributes the lack of coverage to self-censorship by journalists. "You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble," he told Kennedy, "You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our electoral system."
"The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one," Bobby Kennedy says in the Rolling Stone article. "For the second election in a row," he notes, "the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks."
"Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office," Kennedy pointed out, "which means," he says, "in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself."
"If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded," he warns, "they will abandon the ballot box."
"Nothing less is at stake here," Kennedy says, "than the entire idea of a government by the people."
Based on the last two presidential elections, voters seem to agree with Kennedy, and say there is little reason to think that future elections won't fall victim to this same sort of manipulation.
An affidavit from a judge at Precinct 40 states: "I am serving as a presiding judge, a position I have held for some 15+ years in precinct 40. In all my years of service, the lines are by far the longest I have seen, with some waiting as long as four to five hours. I expect the situation to only worsen as the early evening heavy turnout approaches. I have requested additional machines since 6:40 a.m. and no assistance has been offered."
In response to the lawsuit, in the early evening, US District Judge, Algernon Marbley, issued a temporary order requiring that paper ballots be offered to voters. However, according to estimates published in December 15, 2004, Washington Post, as many as 15,000 voters in Columbus had already given up and gone home.
When poll closing time came, some Republican poll workers dismissed voters who had waited in line for hours in the rain in violation of Ohio law, which allows people in line at closing time to stay and vote.
The only news reporter to publicly questioned the integrity of the 2004 election was Keith Olbermann during his nightly show on MSNBC.
During an interview for an article published in the June 2006 Rolling Stone Magazine, Bobby Kennedy, Jr asked him why he stood against the tide and Olbermann said: "I was a sports reporter, so I was used to dealing with numbers."
"And the numbers made no sense," he continued. "Kerry had an insurmountable lead in the exit polls on Election Night -- and then everything flipped," he told Kennedy.
Olbermann said he believes that other reporters fell down on the job. ''I was stunned by the lack of interest by investigative reporters," he said. "The Republicans shut down Warren County, allegedly for national security purposes -- and no one covered it."
"Shouldn't someone have sent a camera and a few reporters out there?" he noted.
Olbermann attributes the lack of coverage to self-censorship by journalists. "You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble," he told Kennedy, "You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our electoral system."
"The issue of what happened in 2004 is not an academic one," Bobby Kennedy says in the Rolling Stone article. "For the second election in a row," he notes, "the president of the United States was selected not by the uncontested will of the people but under a cloud of dirty tricks."
"Given the scope of the GOP machinations, we simply cannot be certain that the right man now occupies the Oval Office," Kennedy pointed out, "which means," he says, "in effect, that we have been deprived of our faith in democracy itself."
"If people lose faith that their votes are accurately and faithfully recorded," he warns, "they will abandon the ballot box."
"Nothing less is at stake here," Kennedy says, "than the entire idea of a government by the people."
Based on the last two presidential elections, voters seem to agree with Kennedy, and say there is little reason to think that future elections won't fall victim to this same sort of manipulation.
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