"2004 Election Fraud" Fraud

This evening I stumbled upon an article (here) alleging that the missing Rove emails probably contain(ed) the smoking gun that prove Dubya stole the 2004 election. The authors of the article are apparently famed Democrat voting vigilantes, Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. And the stuff they write is like the Nth level of some video game where you perish from a barrage you never saw coming.

Typical of this genre are dark insinuations from facts like Bush and Rove (Bush's chief political advisor) traveling to Ohio (an electorally significant swing state) on election day and meeting with Ohio's head election official (the Secretary of State who happened to be the highest-ranking statewide GOP officeholder and who naturally was the co-chair of Bush-Cheney in the state). Something smells fishy, doesn't it?!?!?

Anyway, you ought to read the whole thing, but here's the core of what they're asserting:

There were four key phases to the GOP's election theft strategy:

1. Prior to the election, the GOP focused on massive voter disenfranchisement, with a selective reduction of voter turnout in urban Democratic strongholds.
. . . .
2. On election day, the GOP focussed on voter intimidation, denial of voting rights to legally eligible ex-felons, denial of voting machines to inner city precincts, malfunctioning of those machines, destruction of provisional ballots and more.
. . . .
3. After the final tabulation of the votes, and the announcement that Bush had won, the GOP strategy focused on subverting a statewide recount.
. . . .
4. Ultimately, however, it is the GOP's computerized control of the vote count that may have been decisive.

I'll say up front that I generally overlook these types of charges because I think they're so outrageous. I've worked as a Head Poll Official (in Davidson County, where we each time we had to "designate" Democrats to act as Republicans to arrive at the prescribed party balance at our polls), and I've worked as a poll watcher, and I have seen how easy it is to demagogue a system that is used only once every couple years, under great pressure and with such high stakes. But I thought I'd look into some of their claims, and after sifting through the hundreds of vague, lightly-sourced, and recycled material, I was able to find some facts. Here is what I found.

Discriminatory Distribution of Election Machines:
Distribution of voting machines was fair. Verified Voting Foundation : Justice Finds No Discrimination in Voting Machines Distribution

Voter Suppression/Systematic Disenfranchisement:Here's more about the ludicrous claims of Wasserman and Fitrakis . . . the article includes facts conveniently lacking in articles written by this pair of demagogues.

Over-voting for Bush:Here's an article about the inflated (and corrected-before-certification) vote count in Gahanna, OH. Gee, do you think that W and F missed this report?

Regarding Exit polling: Exit polls say Bush won fair and square - Politics - MSNBC.com. D'ya think NBC is covering up for Dubya and Rove?

Ken Blackwell's Republican Cabal: Here's a great op/ed from Ken Blackwell ("Bipartisan System Protects Integrity of the Vote"); he highlights the bipartisan makeup of local election boards in Ohio.

And lastly, here's ("ABC News: Conspiracy Theories Abound After Bush Victory") a great overview of the issue from ABC News (aka "known" flak for the GOP and Dubya).