House Judiciary Dems taking action on election irregularities

The dems on the House Judiciary Committee have entered the fray in a major way. The first item of note is that they sent a letter to Blackwell, challenging him on a number of issues in Ohio. The second one is not official yet, but there are reports that the Committee will hold public hearings in Washington beginning next Wednesday. I give links and summarize both items below the fold.

Letter to Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State:

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellltr12204.pdf

Unfortunately I can't cut and paste any excerpts, because it's in image rather than text form. It's well worth the read...they're really calling Blackwell to task, and in some cases are directly targeting him for his decisions. Here's a summary of some of the issues they want him to respond to:

Warren County lockdown
Perry County counting discrepencies
Perry County registration peculiarities
Unusual results in Butler County
Unusual results in Cuyahoga County
Spoiled Ballots
Franklin County overvote
Miami County vote discrepency
Mahoning County machine problems
Machine shortages
Invalidated provisional ballots
Directive to reject voter registration forms

Public hearings on election irregularities:

Note that this hasn't been officially announced, so take it for what it's worth.

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001016.htm

U.S. House Judiciary Dems to Announce Hearings on Voter Irregularities!

A source inside the House Judiciary Committee has informed The BRAD BLOG that Democratic members of the committee will be announcing public hearings in Washington to begin next Wednesday on Voting Irregularities in Election 2004.

Scheduling is currently under way and the hearings are "99% certain" according to the source, who hopes the official announcement will be made tomorrow.

The hearings will be held by the Democratic members only at this time since all Republican members of the committee have refused to take part in the investigation so far.

The House Democrats hope to hear testimony from a number of witnesses concerning the thousands of reported cases of mistabulated votes, voter suppression and other concerns about electronic voting on Nov. 2nd.

Witnesses being scheduled to testify include Attny. Cliff Arnebeck, who is leading a group of attorneys filing litigation in Ohio to have the election results set aside, Bill Fitrakis, reporter and editor of the Columbus Free Press whose continuing detailed reports cataloging voter suppression and other related matters on the ground in Ohio have set the standard for what real investigative journalism looks like, and possibly Jesse Jackson who has been outspoken of late on all of these matters.