Let’s Not Let Ohio Slip Away this Time, as it Did in 2004
Last edited Wed Oct 31, 2012, 12:43 PM - Edit history (4)
As in 2004, it appears that whoever wins Ohio will win the presidential election in 2012. Without Ohio, if Obama doesn’t win Florida he will probably need only 2 of the remaining largest 5 swing states (VA, WI, CO, NV, IA) to win the Electoral College (as long as one of them is VA, WI, or CO). But without Ohio, if he doesn’t win Florida he will need to win 4 of the remaining 6 swing states (VA, WI, CO, NV, IA, NH), and maybe 5 (if the 4 doesn’t include Virginia and Wisconsin).
It is therefore important to keep in mind what happened in Ohio in 2004, because what happened then could happen again, especially given that Ohio has a Republican governor – as it did in 2004.
Many have criticized John Kerry for conceding the 2004 election too early, as subsequent events cast a very dark cloud over the 2004 election in Ohio (not to mention elsewhere as well). My purpose is not to criticize John Kerry, whom I respect very much. But at the same time we should learn from what happened in 2004, so as not to repeat it. Subsequent investigations showed myriad “irregularities” with the 2004 election in Ohio. Those investigations did not actually overturn the election. But there is much reason to believe that if the election had not been conceded, and if the investigations had been accompanied by substantial oversight, it would have been overturned. So let’s consider what happened in 2004:
“IRREGULARITIES” IN THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN OHIO
In the official vote count, George W. Bush beat John Kerry by about 118 thousand votes in 2004, a margin of about 2.5%. But according to the final Ohio exit polls, John Kerry should have won Ohio by about 4.2%. The difference between a 2.5% Bush margin and a 4.2% Kerry margin was 6.7%. This is commonly referred to as a “red shift” of 6.7%. This didn’t just happen in Ohio. Nationally, a 2.6% Kerry lead in the final exit polls turned into a 2.8% Bush lead in the national popular vote – a red shift of 5.4%.
Many explanations have been put forth to explain the large differences between the exit polls and the official vote counts. Clearly, either the exit polls were wrong or the official vote count was wrong. The claim by those who wish to disregard election fraud as the primary reason for the discrepancies claim that the exit polls were “biased”. But they put forth very little evidence to substantiate that claim, and there has never been a U.S. Presidential election in which the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count was that large (data is available on this since 1988). On the other hand, much evidence of election “irregularities” was subsequently uncovered.
By early January, 2005, a small portion of those irregularities had come to light – enough to elicit a formal objection by several U.S. Congresspersons. Senator Barbara Boxer, whose official objection forced a public debate in the U.S. Senate, wrote:
This was accompanied by a report by Representative John Conyers, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers said “We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election” as he released his report, titled "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio ".
Let’s take a look at the evidence of irregularities surrounding the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio:
Evidence of vote switching on electronic machines
An analysis of reports by U.S. voters to the Election Incidence Reporting System (EIRS) showed that reported vote switches that favored George Bush outnumbered those that favored John Kerry by a ratio of 12 to 1. The rate of reported vote switches per voting population was 9 times greater in swing states than in non-swing states. Many of the voters who experienced vote switches from Kerry to Bush tried to vote for Kerry several times before the correct vote finally registered. Some voters said they ended up voting for Bush because they lost patience trying to change their vote. Many of the reports noted that there were additional similar incidents in the same polling place, using such phrases as “happening all day”.
Other investigations were conducted that strongly supported the idea that the EIRS reports represented only the tip of an iceberg with regard to vote switching. For example, a report by Paul Lehto and Jeffrey Hoffman identified 19 reports of electronic vote switching in Snohomish County, Washington – all which favored Bush – from the Washington State auditor’s office and other sources. Only 3 of those cases had been reported to EIRS.
Even more compelling was an investigation undertaken by the Washington Post regarding electronic vote switching in Mahoning County, Ohio. That investigation identified 25 electronic voting machines in Youngstown, Mahoning County, each which transferred an unknown number of votes from Kerry to Bush. The Post report went on to state “Due to lack of cooperation from Secretary of State Blackwell, we have not been able to ascertain the number of votes that were impacted or whether the machines malfunctioned due to intentional manipulation or error.”
Supporting the supposition of election fraud as an explanation for the vote switches described in the EIRS analysis, as well as the exit poll discrepancy nationally and in Ohio, sworn testimony by computer programmer Clint Curtis before the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff suggested an intention on the part of Republican functionaries to utilize electronic vote switching software in the 2004 election. Curtis testified that he had been asked by his supervisor, on behalf of Republican Congressman Tom Feeney, to write a computer program that switched votes from one candidate to another. The strange "suicide" death of the Florida investigator who was in the midst of investigating Curtis’ allegations (after telling Curtis that his investigation revealed corruption “all the way to the top”) provides additional reason for suspicion.
Disappearing Kerry votes in Clermont County, Ohio
Several volunteer workers participating in the vote recount in Clermont County shortly after the 2004 presidential election signed affidavits stating that they observed several white oval stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards choice on the optical scan ballots used in that election. Some of these workers noted that beneath the white oval stickers the Kerry/Edwards ovals were filled in. The white sticker would have prevented the optical scan machine from counting those ballots as votes for Kerry. None of these witnesses noted a problem with the Bush/Cheney ovals. Clermont County was one of the three Ohio counties with the largest vote increase for Bush from 2000 to 2004.
Evidence of central tabulator mediated fraud
Cleveland
Heavily Democratic Cleveland was (and is) central to any Democrat’s chance of carrying Ohio. Many anecdotal reports of very long voting lines in Cleveland suggested that voter turnout there was especially heavy in 2004. An excessive number of voter complaints to the national Electronic Incident Reporting System, of long voting lines in Cleveland, confirmed those anecdotal reports of heavy voter turnout in Cleveland. Yet despite the very long voting lines reported all over Cleveland, official voter turnout was recorded as quite low compared to elsewhere in Ohio.
Investigation showed that problems with voting machines were not the cause of this problem (as was the case elsewhere in Ohio). What else would explain a very high real turnout of voters in Cleveland, in the presence of a very low official turnout? That finding alone suggests foul play – specifically the electronic deletion of votes by the Cuyahoga County central tabulator.
Warren County
Warren County, Ohio, was the site of the infamous lockdown, which allowed Republican officials to tally the Warren County vote in private. Their initial excuse for disallowing any observers to watch the vote count was that they didn’t want interference with the counting process. Later, they changed that excuse to say that the FBI warned them of a terrorism alert of grade 10 on a 1 to 10 scale. That claim was later denied by the FBI, and county officials refused to name the FBI agent whom they claimed gave them the warning. Several months later I called Erica Solvig, the reporter who broke the story, in an attempt to find out more about what happened. She told me that she wasn’t at liberty to discuss it.
Yet the Warren County results continued to stand, and without any serious investigation. It also may be significant that this event occurred when it still looked very much as if Kerry would win Ohio. Bush picked up thousands of additional votes in Warren County, compared with his performance in the 2000 election against Al Gore, and the number of voters officially increased by 30% compared to the 2000 election. By the time the Warren County votes had been “counted”, victory had all but slipped away from the Kerry/Edwards ticket.
Miami County
In Miami County, Ohio, after 100% of precincts had reported, an additional 19,000 ballots were reported, giving Bush an additional vote margin of about 6,000 (in exactly the same percentage of the previous votes). What makes this additionally suspicious is that Miami County reported a 20.9% increase in turnout for 2004, compared to 2000, despite a gain in population of only 1.4%. Miami County reported the second largest vote gain for Bush of Ohio’s 88 counties, compared to his performance in 2000. Furthermore, the final official voter turnout figure for Miami County, after the additional 19,000 ballots were added, was a highly suspect 98.55%.
Michael Connell
Michael Connell was a high level Republican operative and IT consultant. He was the founder of New Media Communications, which provided web site services for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee, and many other Republican candidates.
Given the exit poll discrepancies, the numerous other “irregularities” in the Ohio 2004 presidential election, Connell’s close connections with Karl Rove and the Bush campaign, and his official computer duties with respect to the presidential election in Ohio, he was sought to provide testimony in connection with a lawsuit that alleged tampering with the 2004 election. On September 22, 2008, Connell was subpoenaed to testify in the case. Connell initially sought to avoid testifying, and even put forth a motion to quash his subpoena.
The testimony of Stephen Spoonamore
About a month later, October 26, Stephen Spoonamore, a computer expert and close associate of Michael Connor, provided an affidavit on how he saw the 2004 Presidential election being stolen:
Other experts found additional data indicating Bush's increase in votes from these counties, and Kerry's decrease in votes… When information about the SmartTech IT routing switch became public, and recalling that staff of Triad were reported to have removed hard drives from County Tabulators in advance of the recount, I again stated that we now have confirmation of a KingPin, or Intelligent Man in the Middle position had been created… The SmartTech system was set up precisely as a KingPin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of States computers to allow whoever was running SmartTech's computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under it's
control…The SmartTech computer would as the results of the evening proceeded be able to know how many votes Bush needed to steal from Kerry, and flip enough votes on the desired county tabulators to reverse the outcome of the election…
The only way this could have been detected on election night would be complete monitoring… or by conducting a forensic analysis of the complete county tabulator computer, especially the hard drives of these computers. These hard drives were apparently removed by Triad employees before the Green Party Recount, in what appears to be a concerted effort to destroy evidence…
A couple words of explanation are in order at this point: The SmartTech system that Spoonamore referred to was operated by Michael Connell; the references to the hard drives removed by Triad employees before the recount relate back to the corrupted Ohio recount, which I will describe shortly. The removal of those hard drives constituted destruction of evidence of the true vote count, thus making it impossible to conduct an accurate recount.
The death of Michael Connell
On October 28, attorneys filed a motion to compel testimony of Connell regarding his knowledge of the workings of the GOP computer systems. On October 31 a federal judge ordered Connell to submit to a deposition on possible election manipulation. Connell gave the deposition on November 4, providing as little information as possible, but eventually he was forced to admit that “he brought Triad and SmartTech into the Ohio election game”.
When it became apparent that Connell would testify in the case, according to news reporter Blake Renault, Connell was warned not to fly his plane:
Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio lawyer who brought the suit and subpoenaed Connell, warned the U.S. Justice Department that Connell’s life might be in danger, and requested witness protection. Arnebeck wrote:
Unfortunately, Connell never did get to testify. On December 19, he died in a plane crash, presumably caused by his plane running out of gas.
Purging of legitimate Ohio voters
A great deal of evidence prior to the election indicated that massive voter registration drives by Democratic organizations paid of handsomely with large increases in registered voters in Ohio. An article in The New York Times by Kate Zernike and Ford Fessendon, titled " As Deadline Hits, Roles of Voters Show Big Surge", showed massive voter registration gains in Democratic areas of Ohio, far greater than in Republican areas, identifying 230,000 new voters registered in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County in 2004. Norman Robbins, leader of the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition, identified 160,894 new voter registrations received by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in 2004, compared to 31,903 new voter registrations in 2000. These figures were both far higher than the mere 119,000 thousand increase in registered voters between March and November of 2004 indicated by the official figures posted by the Ohio Secretary of State – suggesting that tens of thousands of Ohio voters were purged in Cuyahoga County.
Confirmation of the probable reasons for these discrepancies came from research by Victoria Lovegren, who posted a report at Ohio Vigilance which indicated the purging, apparently illegal, of 165,224 voters from Cuyahoga County alone, for no other rationale than that they hadn't voted recently. Dr. Lovegren also noted hundreds of long-time voters missing from the voter roles and numerous other issues of great concern, including tricks aimed specifically at disenfranchising Democrats.
Additional confirmation of the purging process comes from Mark Crispin Miller’s book, “Fooled Again – How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why they’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless we Stop them)”. In that book, Miller recounts his conversations with Denise Shull, a poll checker in Summit County. During the course of her work on Election Day, Shull noted that approximately 10% to 20% of registered Democratic voters on her list were not on the official list of registered voters. Furthermore – and this is very important – these voters were described as ardent Democrats, as long time voters in the area, AND most of them were not allowed to vote. A possible reason for their not voting is suggested by an encounter that Shull had with one of these voters as the voter (or more precisely, non-voter) was leaving the polls. This voter was simply told that she couldn’t vote and was given a phone number to call. And even more disturbing, Shull noted three of her fellow Democratic volunteers who described to her very much the same phenomenon occurring at the polling places where they worked that day.
What Shull describes not only provides confirmation that legally registered voters were purged from the voter rolls prior to the 2004 election, but indicates that most of these voters ended up not voting.
Targeting of Democratic voters in Cleveland could have been done relatively easily, since Cleveland is heavily Democratic (voted 83% for Kerry, 16% for Bush in 2004), and many precincts in Cleveland voted more than 90% for Kerry. In order to target Democratic voters in Cleveland, one would merely have had to pick out those precincts with a history of voting 90% or more for Gore in the last election.
But what about Summit County, the county where Denise Shull and other Democratic volunteers described on-the-ground evidence of voter registration purging, and where only 57% of voters voted for Kerry. Voter purging in Summit County would have been much less efficient than voter purging in Cuyahoga County, because any voter purging that occurred there would have included a large proportion of Republicans as well as Democrats. Unless ….
Miller’s book also describes a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in Akron (143), Summit County, in the summer of 2004. The only things stolen were two computers with Democratic campaign-related information on them. A similar break-in occurred three months later in Lucas County, and was described by the Toledo Blade. This could easily explain Richard Hayes Phillips’ finding of especially low official voter turnout in the most heavily Democratic areas of Lucas County.
Other dirty tricks
Abundant evidence of dirty tricks is noted in Rep. Conyers’ report: Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio – Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff. Other evidence was provided from numerous public hearings.
The types of voter suppression that were documented in Conyers’ report included: failing to provide provisional ballots to tens or hundreds of thousands of eligible voters according to law; targeting minority voters for thousands of legal challenges, demanding that voters provide ID at the polls (contrary to Ohio law), thereby causing many voters to leave without voting; going door-to-door prior to the election, telling voters that they were not registered to vote; failing to provide absentee ballots upon request, and then refusing to let those voters vote on Election Day; and myriad dirty tricks involving misinformation on such essential topics as where or when voters were supposed to vote. There was even an organized effort to call Democratic voters to tell them that they would go to jail if they showed up at the polls to vote.
In Franklin County, Ohio, which has disproportionate numbers of poor and minority voters, 74% of voters waited to vote for more than twenty minutes. The problem was far worse in Kerry voting precincts that in Bush voting precincts. A study that looked at voting machine allocation per voter by precinct partisanship showed that machine allocation was far less adequate in precincts that voted for Kerry. An extensive statistical analysis of the situation by Elizabeth Liddle found that approximately 18,500 voters were disenfranchised in Franklin County because of overcrowding and consequent long waits at the polls. Furthermore, as Bob Fitrakis revealed, all this happened while 68 voting machines were available in Franklin County but held back by county election officials.
A corrupted Ohio recount
A valid recount of the Ohio vote would have identified many (but not all) of the problems discussed above. If county central tabulator computers had indeed manipulated the vote count, as discussed above, a recount would have revealed the discrepancies.
Money was raised for such a recount. The law required that 3% of randomly selected precincts from each county be selected for an initial recount, and then if the recounted vote totals from those randomly selected precincts did not match the initial count of the respective precincts, the whole county would be recounted by hand.
Yet from start to finish, every effort was made to prevent full county recounts, as described in a review by Georgia10, so that when it all ended, only one county in the whole state had been recounted. In order to accomplish this, numerous violations of Ohio law were perpetrated, including: At least 17 counties where the recount was chosen by Ohio election officials rather than randomly; at least 6 counties where tampering with the tabulating machines by voting machine company technicians was confirmed, including a case in Hocking County where the technician actually gave the election officials a "cheat sheet" with instructions on how to make the counts match (The whistle blower of this felony, Sherole Eaton, was subsequently fired from her job), and; at least 6 counties for which, even when it turned out that the vote totals from the preliminary recount didn’t match the official count, election officials still refused to do the required full recount.
And to top it all off, when workers attempted to examine records during the recount in order to identify discrepancies, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell issued a surprise order stating that the public voting records were now private rather than public, and disallowed access to them – contrary to Ohio law. Then, when Congressman John Conyers’ U.S. House Judiciary Democratic Staff attempted to question Blackwell about this and numerous other violations of Ohio law, Blackwell repeatedly refused to answer any questions of the Committee.
In Cuyahoga County, three elections workers faced criminal charges for their failure to follow Ohio election law, and at least two of them were convicted. As reported by The Free Press:
Similar allegations have been made in other counties. Indeed, such illegal non-random recounting procedures appear to have been common throughout the state, carried out by board of election employees with the tacit consent of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell was officially charged with administering the election that gave Bush a second term while simultaneously serving as the Ohio co-chair of his Bush's re-election campaign.
Additional evidence of a corrupted recount comes from the observations of an election observer representing the Green Party of Ohio at the recount, who noted:
WHAT TO DO?
Time is running short, and most of what needs to be done to prevent a recurrence of what happened in 2004 should have already been done. I’m very glad to see that most of the Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout through such things as draconian Photo ID laws have been successfully challenged in courts and ruled illegal. That includes the foiled efforts of Republican controlled Ohio to limit early voting hours for Democrats while expanding them for Republicans.
Electronic direct recording voting machines produce results that cannot be verified in any way unless they are accompanied by a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). Otherwise the results produced by those machines cannot even be recounted because they don’t produce anything to recount. Unfortunately, 25% of U.S. voters who vote this Election Day will vote on those electronic machines without a VVPAT. Another 13% will vote on electronic voting machines with a VVPAT. That is what most of the counties in Ohio will use in 2012. But even with the VVPAT there are many problems. There are many different VVPAT systems, and it is difficult to know whether the paper trail will accurately reflect the voter intent. Some electronic voting machines with VVPAT systems do not actually give the voter a chance to correct paper trails that may be inaccurate. And even when the voter does have a chance to correct it, some voters have been shown to cast their vote without making the necessary effort to verify that the paper ballot accurately reflects who they voted for.
Statistical analyses can be performed following the election, in order to identify highly unusual patterns. For example, if we again see large discrepancies between the exit polls and the official vote count, analyses could be performed to see if a disproportionate amount of the discrepancy occurred in counties using electronic direct recording voting machines. If so, that would be highly suggestive of electronic vote switching. If the election was not conceded by then, and if a paper trail is available, a hand recount should be demanded, and it should be vigorously monitored for accuracy. If a paper trail is not available, maybe our courts would allow state examination of the machines in an effort to look for fraud. This was widely requested and denied in 2004. Would the result be different if the “losing” candidate hadn’t yet conceded the election? Time will tell. Why we tolerate such machines in a democracy is beyond my comprehension.
If county central tabulators are used to commit fraud in counties that use voting machines that produce paper trails, then the existence of the paper evidence could potentially be used to overturn the election – if the “losing” candidate hasn’t conceded (Theoretically it could be overturned even if the candidate has conceded, but as we saw in 2004, once a candidate concedes, public attention is withdrawn from the issue, and it seems that no amount of evidence is capable of overturning the election). If a paper trail exists then the vote can be recounted by hand, and/or evidence of vote counts from individual precincts can be used to show discrepancies between actual results and those spit out by the central tabulators. That would require an intensive effort on the part of the “losing” candidate – more intensive even than that seen in Florida in 2000 – to ensure that every effort is made to reconcile the vote counts.
If we again see evidence of massive voter purging that appears to be illegal, we’re in for a big fight if we don’t want to concede the election, but I think it would be a fight worth fighting.
We do have a precedent. The Presidential election of 1876 was rightly thought to involve severe suppression of the Black vote in three Southern states (Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina). Based on the official vote counts in those states, the Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden, was initially awarded their electoral votes. A bitter fight ensued, which some thought might lead to another Civil War. The stalemate lasted nearly a hundred days, as the matter was deferred to a commission to make the final decision. The initial results were finally overturned on the last day of January, 1877, with the electoral votes of the disputed states given to the Republican candidate (the Republican Party in those days actually was the Party of Lincoln, the anti-racist Party), Rutheford B. Hayes. It was actually more complicated than that, with much politics and deal making, but my point is that if fraud is involved it doesn’t have to be accepted without a vigorous fight.
At this point I think the bottom line is this: Be very suspicious, investigate early, and don’t concede if there is evidence of fraud until it’s been thoroughly investigated.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Listen to this guy... he's been there, done that. Good to see you Time for change, where you been? Good timing, etc... Please link your Journal in here thanks. Peace. 
if it's not too much to ask. Really, I could say I'm a big fan ... which I am ... but anyway ... link it please, for our sake. Thanks.
Act like it doesn't exist for some other unknown reason. Hell it's almost being treated as a 
theory despite the proof (even some on DU are doing it).
I'm with you msongs, I don't get it. Does someone know something we don't?
I believe that our "mainstraim" media has let it be known that anyone who questions the integrity of our election system will be dubbed by them....... a "conspiracy theorist". 
The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched To Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html
Conclusions
The 2004 Ohio Presidential voting results do not accurately reflect voter intentions. In Cuyahoga County, the election was flawed and the design appears to have been manipulated. At locations with several ballot orders in use, many votes were cast by voters crossing precincts, hence counted other than as intended. At precincts with the highest Kerry support, the percentage of uncounted votes is inexplicably high. The obvious inference—intentional manipulation produced concentrated undercounting, cross-voting, and vote-switching in areas of highest Kerry support—cannot be ignored in the face of the evidence and statistics. The possibility that ballots were switched to different precincts, post-voting to effect vote-switching, must be considered in a complete chain of custody context.
Many individual ballots resulted in a vote-switch, a two-vote margin difference from the intended result. Switched-votes cast for Kerry and counted for Bush had twice the impact as their actual occurrence, by each subtracting one from Kerry and adding one to Bush. Bush and Kerry votes also went uncounted as non-votes or were miscounted as minor candidate votes. A high percentage of all Cuyahoga County votes were cast at locations with multiple ballot orders. The manner in which precincts and ballot orders were combined increased the probability of a Kerry cross-vote being recorded as a Bush vote. Quantitative analyses of candidate votes and of non-vote percentages evidence the cross-voting and the patterns of cross-voting and vote-switching.
Sorting locations and precincts to their specific cross-voting probability subsets reveals intended voting patterns and the degree of cross-voting. The combinations of ballot orders and precincts at polling locations enables quantitative analysis of cross-voting and vote-switching. The complexity of the election's organization—the great number of combinations of ballot orders and locations—also makes the task of determining the number of cross-votes laborious and complex. While that process is not concluded herein, the procedures so far taken in this study define the process. This process may be more easily applied to other Ohio counties given less-complex ballot order combinations.
Any official inquiry into the 2004 irregularities needs to be independent of political interests, and monitored by political interests. The fact that the irregularities discussed herein are known and have been reported to multiple jurisdictions and law enforcement entities, and yet no official inquiry into the election has occurred, illustrates the broader failure of the current election process and judicial system to respond to election fraud and irregularities or to hold officials accountable for their actions. Polling places should never have been arranged such as in Ohio, with multiple ballot orders and separate casting and counting devices. Measures are required to prevent the possibility of similar future flawed election designs. To this end, control of elections should be removed from competing political interests and actors to politically-independent processes, with at the least, independent and political oversight of elections.
Many more conclusions remain to be made as study and analysis continues. The 2004 Ohio election ballots must be preserved to allow further investigations. If this study illustrates anything, hopefully it is the degree to which this problem has not yet been fully considered, and the complete failure of officials to respond. During an era of new voting system technologies and reforms, careful consideration of past errors may prove useful in avoiding their repetition and in preventing future abuses of process and power.
The 2004 Ohio Presidential election remains to be fully investigated. The blatant evidence of irregularities and unfairness of organization continues to be ignored by most jurisdictional authorities informed of the evidence. I thank those few authorities pursuing this matter further.
