Fooled Again? In His New Book, Mark Crispin Miller Argues Bush Stole the White House, Twice
By Anthony Lappé
Editor's note: If you asked everyone in the U.S. whom they thought won Florida in 2000, half the country (or more) would most likely tell you Al Gore, including Al Gore. But pose the question, who won Ohio in November 2004? and it's an entirely different story.
For most Americans, George Bush earned a commanding mandate on November 2, 2004. The race in Ohio, officially decided by 118,000 votes, was close, but was no Florida. There were no hanging chads or Jews for Buchanan. Democracy worked and the guy with the most votes won. But for a small contingent of left-wing activists and progressive Democrats, Ohio was Florida Redux — a ruthless Republican coup orchestrated under the absent gaze of the lapdog media. In GNN's new documentary American Blackout, we detail some of the more egregious examples of voter suppression. As the Conyers Report documents, there is substantial evidence that heavily Democratic (and African-American) precincts in Ohio didn't have enough voting machines, voters were intimidated and valid votes were discarded. Yet for most on the left, it's still an open question whether Republican shenanigans actually prevented a Kerry win. What does Kerry think? In his new book, American Vertigo, Bernard-Henri Lévy writes he met up with a "haggard, ghostly" Kerry a few weeks after his loss. According to Lévy, the defeated candidate faintly whispered in his ear, "If you hear anything about those 50,000 votes in Ohio, let me know."
In his new book, Fooled Again, NYU media critic and outspoken Bush-basher Mark Crispin Miller (The Bush Dyslexicon) says he knows where to look. In Fooled Again, he lays out what he says is a definitive case that Kerry won Ohio, and thus the election. Recently, GNN's Anthony Lappé conducted this interview with Miller about his controversial allegations:
GNN: In your book, you argue that Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. On what basis do you draw that conclusion?
Miller: I'd put that very question to all those who keep asserting that Bush/Cheney won the race legitimately: "On what basis do you draw that conclusion?" Aside from the official numbers, there's no evidence that Bush won the election as advertised. We're told that he got at least 11.5 million more votes than he got against Al Gore four years before. We're also told that Bush prevailed because of vast outpouring of first-time evangelical voters.
Both claims are preposterous. By Election Day Bush had the highest disapproval ratings of any incumbent facing reelection — higher than LBJ's in 1968, higher than Jimmy Carter's in 1980. The Democrats, moreover, were more unified than they had been in decades; Ralph Nader got only 400,000+ votes nationwide. The turnout was very high — over 60% — and all the evidence suggests that the Democrats did far better than the Bush Republicans at registering new voters, especially in the swing states of Ohio and Florida. And, finally, Bush's party was divided, with many eminent party members (Bob Barr, John Eisenhower, Paul Craig Roberts, Francis Fukuyama, Tony McPeak, Lee Iacocca) calling publicly for people not to vote for him. Sixty dailies that had endorsed Bush in 2000 now refused to do it again.
So where did all those new Bush voters come from? By Karl Rove's own estimate, which was reported over and over throughout the campaign, there were only some four million evangelicals who hadn't voted for Bush/Cheney in 2000. Even assuming that the Bush campaign got every one of those voters out there on Election Day — which is itself a stretch — that still leaves over seven million of those mystery voters unaccounted for.
And once we take a good look at the vast range of colossal frauds committed by the Bush Republicans before and on and following Election Day — fraud that variously cut the national anti-Bush vote at every step of the electoral process, from registration on — we can see how the majority was disenfranchised in 2004, and how they will be disenfranchised yet again this year, unless we act as soon as possible.
GNN: In Ohio, for instance, Kerry lost by 118,000 votes, can you detail where those votes were stolen?
Miller: In all Ohio's heavily populated areas — college towns as well as cities — the Bush machine, supervised by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, cut the anti-Bush vote, first, by cutting back the Democratic registration rate, through a broad range of legal/bureaucratic tricks, and then by scaring countless voters off through statewide use of various disinformation and intimidation tactics. African-American voters, or would-be voters, were the major targets of such efforts, which included telling Democrats to cast their votes the day after Election Day (Nov. 3), giving out wrong addresses for many polling places, and warning folks that anyone with an outstanding parking ticket, or anyone owing child-support payments, or anyone who'd ever been in prison, or who had a relative who'd been in prison, would be arrested if they dared show up to vote. There were also people roaming through black neighborhoods, helpfully offering to hand-deliver people's absentee ballots to the proper place.
Such disinformation and intimidation tactics at the grass-roots level were often carried out by party operatives bused into Ohio, and their lodging paid for, by the Republican National Committee. "The Texas Strike Force" was one such drive, comprising goons from Bush/Cheney's home state, who were very active in Franklin County on Election Day.
Far more effective than such old-fashioned Jim Crow stratagems was the systematic use of DRE machines — touch-screen voting machines — to wipe out thousands upon thousands of anti-Bush votes. On the one hand, there was a deliberate under-supply of such machines to Democratic areas throughout the state, so that there were especially long lines in those places, forcing lots of people to leave without voting. In pro-Bush precincts this did not occur. We also know of several thousand such machines being purposely held back in warehouses even though they were very badly needed in Ohio's cities and college towns.
Also, there was systematic flipping of Kerry votes into Bush votes by machines throughout the state — and no reports, at least none that I've seen, of any machines doing the opposite. Also, as I point out in Fooled Again, there's evidence of some 10%-20% of Democratic votes being automatically erased within the system, so that countless would-be voters were told, when they showed up to vote, that they weren't registered.
Election Day saw whopping improprieties throughout the state. Blackwell's office refused to allow two international observers to get within a hundred yards of any polling place. And in Warren County, on Election Night, there was a "terrorist alert" that caused the Republican election personnel to evict reporters from the premises before the counting of the vote. The next day, the FBI revealed that there had been no such alert; and the Cincinnati Enquirer reported soon thereafter that the plan to call that "terrorist alert" had been in the works for some nine days. There are also two witnesses to the fact that ballots were removed from the Warren County headquarters and taken to an unauthorized storage site controlled by a GOP operative. Considering the fact that Warren County was among the last to report its total, it seems quite likely that the tally was held back and tailored to give Bush his "victory margin."
Finally, after Election Day, the court-ordered recount of the statewide vote was deliberately subverted by the Boards of Elections in many counties, in collusion with employees of Triad, the Ohio company that manufactures the vote tabulators used in the election there. (Triad's owner is a big Bush supporter.) To this day there has been no recount of the votes, just as there never was in Florida after Election Day 2000.
GNN: You claim John Kerry told you personally that he believed the election was stolen. Explain the context and his response when you went public. Why do you think Kerry conceded so quickly? What was Edwards's role?
Miller: He told me that he thinks the race was stolen, and deplored the fact that his fellow Democrats in Congress won't even discuss the issue. This was on Oct. 28, at a fundraiser in Chelsea, here in Manhattan. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes. It was not off the record. He was very frank. I urged him to devote his energies to looking into the 2004 election, as a way to raise the crucial issue of electoral reform in the U.S. He said he'd read the book and intimated that we'd talk again.
I was thrilled, as so few national Democrats had faced the growing danger of election fraud, and here was Kerry — whose concession was, in my view, catastrophic — having come around. So over the next week, which saw the start of my book tour, I would tell the story of our conversation at the bookstores and such. A week after I talked to him, I was on "Democracy Now!" and told the story once again. The show's producers sent out a press release about it. A few hours later, Kerry's office came out with a statement categorically denying that we had ever had that conversation.
It was bizarre, to say the least, but, sad to say, entirely typical — and understandable. I think Kerry and most other national Democrats are in denial about the last election. I don't think they can allow themselves to recognize what's happened, as it's too traumatic, and would call on them to hit the mattresses, or man the barricades. Business as usual, politics as usual, just won't cut it anymore. Most Democrats can't handle that. Neither can most members of the press, the left/progressive press included.
Edwards was furious at Kerry for conceding. I tell the story in Fooled Again, based on the account of someone very close to Edwards, someone who was there when Kerry called him on the cell phone to tell him he'd decided to give up.
GNN: Several reporters have traveled to Ohio to investigate allegations of voter fraud and suppression, most notably GNN contributor Russ Baker ("Rebutting the Ohio Vote Conspiracy") and Mother Jones's Mark Hertsgaard ("Recounting Ohio") — both no cowards when it comes to reporting controversial facts. Both came back saying that they could find no definitive evidence that the state was stolen. In fact, Baker and Hertsgaard appear to disprove some of the most outrageous allegations, like an employee from an electronic voting machine company helped manipulate a recount. What's your response to their reports?
Miller: I have great respect for both of them, but what they've written on the last election is embarrassingly poor. It seems to me that both were over-eager to "debunk" the "theory" of Republican election fraud, as if to advertise their own good sense and level-headedness by shooting down the speculative fantasies of "conspiracy theorists" who've ignored the facts out of mere partisan excitement.
In fact, Russ and Mark themselves have played fast and loose with the abundant evidence of fraud. (I've addressed Mark's claims in a letter to Salon, protesting Farhad Manjoo's attack on Fooled Again.) In every case, a more exhaustive study of the evidence destroys their arguments. For example, Mark quotes Sherole Eaton, an important whistle-blower from Hocking County in Ohio, to the effect that she's not really sure that there was any fraud committed by the GOP in her experience. After Mark's article came out, Eaton emailed Mother Jones to set the record straight. He'd quoted her out of context, she said, and demanded to know why the magazine had let someone so biased write about what happened in Ohio.
On the rampant fraud committed in Ohio, I'd read Bob Fitrakis' and Harvey Wasserman's great work at the Columbus Free Press, and their excellent books. They know more about what happened there than anyone. But we also have to recognize that the fraud went not only in Ohio, but from coast to coast. There's relatively little on Ohio in Fooled Again, which deals with GOP malfeasance all throughout the South and elsewhere, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, Iowa, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York, and then some. I have well over 30 pages just of Florida, where the disenfranchisement campaign was staggering in its scale and ingenuity. There was also massive interference with the votes of U.S. citizens who live abroad — a constituency including up to seven million ballots.
GNN: You also claim there was significant voter fraud in other states. Which ones and give some examples.
Miller: In New Mexico, which Bush "won" by some 7,000 ballots, over 17,000 would-be Democratic voters cast no vote for president- "under-votes" — on their touch-screen machines. Now either all those Democrats turned out to vote but didn't care who was elected president, or there was something wrong with those machines. And that's just one example of the monkey business in New Mexico, where Hispanic and Native American voters were undone by a broad range of dirty tricks. (New Mexico was one of those five states where the exit polls foretold a Kerry victory.) Greg Palast has an entire chapter on the shady doings in New Mexico in his forthcoming book.
This sort of thing went on all over. In Wisconsin, for example, there was widespread disinformation and intimidation in Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha and Racine, targeting primarily black and student voters. There were also machine problems plaguing just those areas. Such stealthy activism may explain the weirdness of the numbers in Wisconsin. In 2000, Bush lost by something like 100,000 votes, with 92,000+ going to Nader and the rest to Gore. In 2004, despite the president's high disapproval ratings and the fierce resolve of Democrats, Bush lost by just 12,000+ votes. (Nader wasn't on the ballot, so those votes all went to Kerry.) So Bush did a whole lot better in that very blue state in 2004. Whoever claims that his success bore no relation to the disenfranchisement campaign throughout the state is either working for the RNC or has his eyes wide shut.
GNN: You also write about the problems with electronic voting machines. We spent a lot of time investigating Diebold and other companies for our own book True Lies. We observed the voting machines in action in California and in Georgia, both places where their use has been extremely controversial. But, like Hertsgaard, we had a hard time finding any smoking gun that showed evidence of someone actually manipulating results through electronic voting machines. What's the most compelling evidence that electronic voting machines have led to voter fraud?
Miller: The fact that the machines flipped Kerry votes into Bush votes in at least 11 states, while no machines (that I know of) did the opposite. The argument that that was a coincidence would seem to me to be a whole lot crazier than the argument that it was due to fraud. Moreover, it's quite possible that there's a "smoking gun" out there already, if Clint Curtis's claims are verifiable. The jury is still out on that one. Meanwhile, other whistle-blowers are warming up.
GNN: What's the latest on Diebold's ongoing problems?
Miller: Diebold is in major trouble. The corporation's staunchly pro-Bush CEO, Wally O'Dell, was recently forced to resign because of a shareholders' class-action suit alleging fraud and other crimes or improprieties. This week, in Alaska, Diebold finally caved on an important point: making its programming codes publicly available. Diebold will do it there — a big concession, and a sign of desperation. Just the other day, a Diebold officer floated the idea of shutting down the corporation's whole e-voting operation.
That would be a great thing, but surely not a panacea. There are other companies just as bad as Diebold operating out there, and the pro-DRE forces have made terrifying strides. AP just reported that, in this year's race, four out of five Americans will be voting on new electronic machines.
GNN: I'm also reading Andrew Gumbel's excellent new book, Steal This Election. He details the long history of stolen elections in the U.S., from Rutherford B. Hayes to Lyndon Johnson to Jack Kennedy. Why do you think it's so hard for people to get their heads around the idea that there are people out there who will do anything to get and maintain power?
Miller: Because it's very scary. That's why we tell ourselves that it can't happen here. The notion is preposterous. The Framers based their whole design of the American government on the fact that it can happen anywhere. We've been basking in the glow of our own legendary democratic excellence for so long that we have a hard time facing the clear possibility that we could well find ourselves more grievously repressed than any population on the planet.
Gumbel's book is excellent indeed, especially its historical chapters. Unfortunately, he is himself in deep denial as to what went down in the last race. He keeps asserting that 2004 was no more fraudulent than any prior election. He happens to be wrong. I hope he reads my book, because his book would only be improved by an acknowledgment of what Bush/Cheney have accomplished in the annals of electoral malfeasance.
GNN: At the end of the day, Baker, Hertsgaard, we here at GNN, yourself, all agree that there needs to be further investigations into voter fraud and suppression. Are you hopeful any action will be taken? What's been the reaction to the Conyers Report?
Miller: The Democrats are largely stricken with paralysis, due mainly to denial. (I think there's also some corruption in the ranks, and at the top.) All those who ought to be devoted full-time to this issue are peculiarly inert, because they won't or can't allow themselves to face the awful truth. Bernie Sanders, for example, won't deal with the issue, claiming that to do so might inhibit many Democrats from coming out to vote. The logic is absurd: "Don't say anything about election fraud, or else the people will sit out Election Day!" So let the people go and vote, so that their votes can erased by the Republicans?
Jerry Nadler is another one. I think the world of him (he's my own congressman), and there's no question that he gets it on the issue of election fraud. He helped out with the Conyers Report. Imagine my surprise, then, when I ran into him one evening last November, and we started to discuss the possibilities for real electoral reform — and he shrugged, and said, "Well, it's not going anywhere. I mean, Bush won Ohio by 400,000 votes, didn't he? So he would have won in any case." Well, as you just pointed out, Bush "won" Ohio by 118,000 votes. Now why would Nadler say 400,000? I think that's what he has to tell himself, to justify not doing anything to change the situation for the better.
That's denial, and it's widespread in the party; and there's quite a lot of cowardice, as far too many Democrats are scared to death that someone will accuse them of "conspiracy theory," "sour grapes," "paranoia." Meanwhile, at the grassroots level, people really understand the need for something to be done — and not just Democrats, but sane Republicans. In many states the fight to drive or keep out DR machines is a bipartisan endeavor. It's only the political establishment — both national parties, and the press, including the left/liberal press — that's standing in the way of radical electoral reform. It's time for everybody to snap out of it.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article indicated that Black Box Voting's Bev Harris had not produced a series of "poll tapes" from Volusia County, Florida she claimed to have found in the garbage outside a warehouse. Harris had in fact posted the tapes on her site, but had taken them down because of pending litigation last year. They were reposted in December. Her group's findings can be found here. We regret the error. See Harris' clarifications in the comments section below.
Endnote:
GNN contacted Russ Baker and Mark Hertsgaard for responses to Miller's allegations:
Baker writes, "Miller is a polemicist who relies on disturbing anecdotes collected at arms-length. They generate a strong emotional response, sell articles and books, and create a demand for those disseminating them. But he has apparently done no personal verification of any assertions of fact — a time-consuming process that involves looking at the actual raw evidence available, and asking parties on both sides of an issue to explain themselves. In journalism, the first rule is to verify. Also, his characterization of my — and Mark Hertsgaard's — motives is speculative and inaccurate. Both Mark and I have long reputations as serious journalists who check out allegations and report what we find — and let the chips fall where they may. Readers can judge the quality of my work for themselves at www.russbaker.com."
See Baker's original article, "Election 2004: Stolen Or Lost," here.
Hertsgaard writes, "I let my work speak for itself," adding, "Anyone interested in reading my investigation of the Ohio 2004 vote can find it on my website, www.markhertsgaard.com."
