Back in 2000, 12,000 eligible voter... a number twenty-two times larger than George W. Bush's 537 vote triumph over Al Gore...were wrongly identified as convicted felons and purged from the voting rolls in Florida, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. African Americans, who favored Gore over Bush by 86 points, accounted for 11 percent of the state's electorate but 41 percent of those purged. Jeb Bush attempted a repeat performance in 2004 to help his brother win reelection but was forced to back off in the face of a public outcry.

And don't forget the nine-hour waits in Cleveland in 2004. It doesn't matter whether you're on the rolls or not if you have no way to cast your ballot.

The official thoroughly reasearched non-partisan outcome was this:

<snip>

The exit polling on Election Day 2004 was performed by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research, under contract to six major news media organizations. Warren Mitofsky, who led the project, had been performing exit polls for 35 years and was recognized as the leading expert on exit polling. The fact is that the exit polls predicted a Kerry win nationally and in most states, but when the official results were tallied, the vote count was found to be shifted nationally and in the vast majority of states towards Bush.

On Wednesday morning, November 3, predicted Kerry with 50.8% of the national vote and Bush with 48.2% of the national vote – a difference of 2.6%. In marked contrast, the machines that were responsible for the official vote count registered a national vote of 50.9% for Bush and 48.1% for Kerry, a 2.8% Bush victory. The difference between the exit poll results and the official vote count was thus 5.4%. The statistical odds against such a large discrepancy occurring by chance were astronomical, approximating one in ten million.

<end of snip>

There was a follow-up court case in Ohio concerning the Cleveland recount that concurred that vote tampering was prevalent in key counties and votes were not counted or thrown out, or people were just turned away and not allowed to vote. I don't have a link or a name but the secretary of state was heavily involved with all that.

There was tons of fraud in the 2004 Ohio election (and elsewhere), but the only one in Ohio that resulted in prosecution as far as I know was the above case associated with the Cleveland recount. Three election workers faced criminal charges for that, and at least two of them were convicted.

Secretary Blackwell was heavily involved in all this.( As far as I'm concerned he should be facing the rest of his life in prison for what he did).

The purging of voters from the voter lists, hundreds of thousands, was probably the main reason that Ohio went for Bush.

This is my biggest worry. In a fair election, Obama will win. But the GOP Governors are again trying to prevent millions of Democrats from voting... and will succeed. The only question is how many votes they will manage to eliminate (or flip).

Only a crook or a fool would believe that Bush won either the 2000 or the 2004 election honestly.

As JOG put it. "Its not the people who vote that counts, its who counts the votes that counts".