The E-Vote Factor: Kerry Conceded But Did He Really Lose?

President Bush arrives back in Washington today after spending a 3-day weekend at Camp David. Since John Kerry conceded to Bush last Wednesday, the president and his advisers have talked extensively about what they call Bush's strong mandate to govern following the November 2 election. But as the rumor mill swirls about a reshuffling of Bush's cabinet and John Kerry returns to the Senate, there are many people who are not willing to simply move on from last Tuesday's election.

Many of John Kerry's supporters were stunned last Wednesday when their candidate conceded the presidency to Bush. Just hours earlier, his running mate John Edwards told a rally of their supporters in Boston that they would not stop until every vote was counted, a reference to the hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots in the key state of Ohio that some Democrats believed could have tipped the balance. But it's not just the provisional ballots.

Even though Kerry has stopped fighting for the presidency, serious questions abound about the use of electronic voting machines. Take this story: In a voting precinct in Ohio's Franklin County, records show that 638 people cast ballots. Yet, George W Bush got 4,258 votes to John Kerry's 260. In reality, Bush only received 365 votes. That means Bush got nearly 3,900 extra votes. And that's just in one small precinct. This in a state that Bush officially won by only 136,000 votes. Elections officials blamed electronic voting for the extra Bush votes.

Meanwhile, a number of Congresspeople are asking the General Accounting Office to investigate electronic voting and the 2004 election and the nonprofit group Blackbox Voting has begun the process of filing the largest Freedom of Information Act request in history.

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/08/1513252