Conyers on the Ohio Elections

Democratic Underground Forums – Final version of my speech today

“The Recount effort is simply a search for the truth of what happened during the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. We have now repeatedly seen election officials obstruct and stonewall this search for the truth. I am beginning to wonder what it is they are trying to hide.”

There are people out there who think we are crazy, who think we are bitter-enders, sore losermen, conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hatters. We just cannot accept the outcome of a truly legitimate American election, and we are flailing about like pathetic boated fish trying to change what cannot be changed. But the Ohio Secretary of State is brazenly breaking the law by denying public access to public records. The terrorism bugaboo was thrown in the way of those who wished to observe the counting process in Warren County, though nobody seems to know who tossed out the warning nor why terrorists would want to blow something up in southwestern Ohio. And now, legitimate hearings on these issues are being thwarted.

If demanding answers to these questions, along with all the other questions that have arisen – more than 30,000 reports of voting irregularities and fraud all across the country, including thousands of reports of malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines, plus the disenfranchisement of as many as a million minority voters, and the startling reality that virtually every single ‘malfunction’ or error favored George W. Bush – if demanding answers to these questions makes me crazy, then damn it, bring on the boys with the butterfly nets, because I am completely out of my mind.