From Morning Star Online

'WE hope that the upcoming election will be free, fair, open, well-supervised,' US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington at the weekend.

Needless to say, he was referring to the situation in Ukraine rather than the homeland of his 'honorary democrat' guest President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. General Musharraf is the man who led a coup against his country's elected government and refuses to countenance free elections but whose 'democratic' credentials were redeemed by turning his back on the Pakistani military's Taliban proteges and backing the US invasion of Afghanistan.

And the outgoing apologist for the Bush administration's many crimes was certainly not talking about Ohio, where his Republican Party presided over similar electoral fraud to that masterminded by the president's brother in Florida in 2000.

No, General Powell was as oblivious to electoral malpractice in Ohio as he had been to the fact that the evidence that he presented to the UN of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify last year's invasion was entirely fabricated.

If the duplicitous general had been able to avert his eyes from Ukraine to Ohio, he might have spotted hundreds of protesters outside the State House in Columbus urging an investigation into polling day irregularities.

George W Bush declared himself the winner of Ohio's 20 electoral college votes, but attempts to challenge this poll result have been denied on the grounds that there will not be an official declaration of the result until December 13.

As with Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000, the secretary of state responsible for ensuring a free and fair election in Ohio and the co-chairman of Mr Bush's campaign were one and the same person - Ken Blackwell.

Mr Blackwell personally took the decision to reverse the existing procedure of allowing provisional ballots to be cast anywhere in a county, resulting in a disproportionately high number of Democratic ballots being rejected.

He authorised the removal of voting machines in inner-city, pro-Democrat areas, causing four-hour queues to vote, while Republican areas were given adequate voting machines so that Bush supporters waited only minutes.

Mr Blackwell also allowed the use of Diebold electronic voting machines, which provide no paper back-up record.

The head of the Diebold company had pledged before the election to deliver Ohio for Mr Bush and who can doubt him?

In one precinct, an electric voting system gave the president 3,983 votes out of 638 votes cast.

Senator Jesse Jackson has pointed out that exit polls favouring Democratic candidate John Kerry in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania were all contradicted by official results, quoting professional opinion that the odds against this are 250 million to one.

In addition, Mr Kerry's vote in dozens of counties was far lower than numbers cast for little-known Democratic candidates running for minor offices.

Before Washington lectures other countries about democratic norms, it should clear out its own Augean stables first.



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