Ohio

I know what you’re thinking, because I have the same impulse: I don’t want to read about voting irregularities in Ohio (or anywhere else for that matter). It’s over, and the bad guys won. Reading about GOP dirty tricks just increases my sense of hopelessness about this country. We haven’t suffered an electoral defeat, but an Orwellian revolution: combat losses are victories; economic stagnation is recovery; dismantling social security is reforming it; a muzzled press is free.

Yet, some journalists are still doing their job, holding the administration’s feet to the fire. And not just Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman at the New York Times. Despite the fact that the Justice Department is avidly pursuing journalists who report inconvenient facts, some smaller papers, even in the red states, are daring to comment on the emperor’s fashion choices. Today the Lake County, Minnesota, Timberjay reports Election lawsuit gathering steam in mainstream media:

A lawsuit filed there Monday challenges Bush’s victory in [Ohio], alleging that a long list of irregularities, including intentional vote suppression in Democratic precincts and outright manipulation of vote totals in some locations, combined to steal the Ohio election and the presidency from Democratic candidate John Kerry. While Kerry isn’t behind the lawsuit, his campaign has become more vocal in recent weeks in pushing for answers about what actually happened in Ohio on Nov. 2. and is now funding some legal work there.

Questions about the vote in Ohio and elsewhere have been rampant on the Internet ever since Nov. 2, but the mainstream media has been slow to pick up on this developing story— until this week.

The lawsuit certainly has attracted media interest, as has an ongoing investigation into the situation, led by Democratic congressman John Conyers. Conyers began hearings this week in Ohio and already those hearings have produced very disturbing revelations about potential vote fraud. One of the most electrifying comes from an affidavit filed Dec. 13 by the deputy director of elections in Hocking County, Ohio. The official, Sherole Eaton, claims that a technician from the company that was hired to help tabulate returns from electronic voting machines, entered county offices on Dec. 10 under the guise of answering legal questions in advance of a partial hand recount of certain precincts, as requested by the Libertarian and Green Party presidential candidates in Ohio.

Though the last thing I want to think about is the Republican Party’s relentless consolidation of power through misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance, I think the least I can do is not look away when journalists part the curtains.