As the Reverend Jesse Jackson rocked a cheering crowd here in Columbus Sunday, a national movement was born. Shouts of "you got that right!" rang through the hall as Jackson preached that what Karl Rove and George Bush and Kenneth Blackwell are doing to the 2004 vote in Ohio would not fly in Iraq or Ukraine or Afghanistan.

Jackson plans to return to Columbus on Thursday as his organization Rainbow/PUSH files a legal challenge to overturn Ohio's election results. On Saturday, December 4, Jackson will join voter rights advocates for a symposium at Columbus' Africentric School on the near east side. Earlier in the day, demonstrators will gather at the Ohio Statehouse to protest voter suppression and irregularities that occurred on November 2.

Also see the other new article, "Warren County, Ohio: most successful voter registration drive in American political history, or stuffing the ballot box"

Not the usual topic, but I thought I should help get this information out, and it is about Ohio (that cute squarish state you see pictured above). I just received the following e-mail from Katherine Thomsen:

Dear fellow Ohioan,  

You probably wouldn't know it, but today could be a very important day in Ohio's history. After many months of Speaker of the House Larry Householder stalling; tort reform may go before the Ohio House this afternoon.
   
For those that aren't very familiar with tort reform, let me give you the overview. Tort reform is broken down in to two areas for this bill. The first is cases that are an individual vs. a business and then medical malpractice cases.

They argue that the cases that are an individual vs. a business are frivolous and are clogging up our courts. But, the truth is that we already have laws in the state of Ohio that block frivolous lawsuits from going to trial. A judge has to hear a case before it goes to trial. If he finds it frivolous the plaintiff's lawyer faces a fine and the case is thrown out. As for clogging our court system, these type of cases have actually been dropping in numbers over the past ten years. The cases that are clogging the courts are criminal cases and business vs business cases. 

For medical malpractice cases the claim is that malpractice cases have driven up the malpractice insurance rates over the past few years. But, that too is untrue. The General Accounting Office in a report before Congress in October of last year stated that there is not sufficient evidence to show that it is malpractice cases driving up insurance rates. But, they found that there were a few other factors. All of them were due to profit margins for the insurance companies; less competition in the market, slumping stock prices, etc.

Not only is this law based on a lot of falsehoods, but it will limit the everyday citizens rights in a courtroom. It will limit the jury's right to decide what the reward should be. It will limit the plaintiff's choice on lawyers, but not the defendants. It will make many fair cases very hard to get to court.
 
So while many people are going about their day, they do not know that many of their rights could be disappearing. The House session begins at 1:30pm today. Please send an email or call your State Representative and tell them to vote for your rights.

If you don't know your Representative please click here:
http://www.house.state.oh.us/jsps/Representatives.jsp

If you would like more information on this Tort Reform bill please click here:
http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=125_SB_80

If you are interested in watching the House session today please click here:
www.ogtv.org

Just remember that the definition of tort is wrongful act. How can one reform that?

Sincerely,
Katherine Thomsen

Please pass this along to other Ohioans.

President Bush clinched re-election by winning the state of Ohio on November 2 by a margin of 136,000 votes over the Democratic candidate, John Kerry. Despite claims of fraud and technical glitches, Senator Kerry decided that they were not big enough to affect the result and conceded the election on November 3.

However, Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer representing a group of voters challenging the Ohio result, claimed new analysis of various anomalies suggested it was rigged.

"We'll be calling for a reversal of the result based on evidence developed in the course of litigation," Mr Arnebeck told The Guardian yesterday. "Exit polling and substantial irregularities excluded votes that should have been counted. There is evidence that votes cast for one candidate were moved to the column of the other candidate."

Mr Arnebeck, a legal adviser to a liberal group, Alliance for Democracy, said the "contest of election" lawsuit will be presented to a judge from the Ohio supreme court today on behalf of at least 25 disgruntled voters. He said he expected other voters and organisations to join the case.

Ohio's secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, has until Monday to certify the result. His office did not return calls seeking comment yesterday but his spokesman, Carlo LoParo, told the Associated Press news agency: "There are no signs of widespread irregularities."

So we decided to do what everyone else had been doing for months: We ignored him. Scene sent four reporters to cover the weirdness in Cleveland and Akron. One wore spandex. They were under strict orders: Don't even think about expensing anything, and for Chrissakes, stay out of the bar till 7:30. Here's what they found, the story Blackwell never wanted you to see.

Click here to read the rest

Ohio determines the election, but the state has not yet counted the vote. That outrage is made intolerable by the fact that the secretary of state in charge of this operation, Ken Blackwell, holds -- like Katherine Harris of Florida's fiasco in 2000 -- a dual role: secretary of state with control over voting procedures and co-chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign. Blackwell should recuse himself so that a thorough investigation, count and recount of Ohio's vote can be made.

Blackwell reversed rules on provisional ballots in place in the spring primaries. These allowed voters to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their county, even if they were in the wrong precinct, reflecting the chief rationale for provisional ballots: to ensure that those who went to the wrong place by mistake could have their votes counted. The result of this decision -- why does this not surprise? -- was to disqualify disproportionately ballots cast in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County.