As the clock ticks until the electoral college meets in December 13 to finalize the 2004 presidential election, a second day of informal hearings was held in the US Congress today on possible fraud in that election, with Reps. Conyers, Jackson Lee, Nadler and Watt among those in attendance.

Although Ohio and Florida were the states most often mentioned, several speakers noted that other states were also troublingly problematic. Discrepancies between exit polls and voting machine tallies and unequal distribution of voting machines leading to unprecidented long lines to vote were mentioned by several speakers, as was the case of a female Ohio supreme court candidate who received hundreds of thousands more votes than Kerry, especially in precincts where she was less known.

Rev. Jesse Jackson called for voting machines to be impounded and for the body convened to conduct hearings in Ohio. Rep. Conyers responded that they would in fact go to Ohio. Calling Ohio's voting a "classic calamity" and using sports analogies, Jackson asked whether the Superbowl would be called without the benefit of referees viewing instant replays. He called for an end to voter suppression and marginalization and supported Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s bill for a voting rights constitutional amendment.

Ralph Neas of People for the American Way held up a report that group published along with the NAACP and Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, saying it "shattered the myth" that 2004 was a fair election. He called the vote a travesty and said that the 40,000 complaints received were just the tip of the iceberg and perhaps millions of voters were disenfranchised, mentioning Mexican Americans in Arizona and blacks in Georgia. "Whether in the Ukraine or the USA, every vote should be counted. the US should be a model of democracy, not hypocrisy." Neas's group has held hearings in Ohio and plans to do so in seven other states.

Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb made a case for recognizing third party attempts to get a recount, noting that ballot access is easier in the countries of the former USSR than in many US states, and most other democracies have proportional representation and instant run-off voting, empowering citizens to better participate in elections. He noted than many reforms in this country including the abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, the creation of the Social Security administration were first championed by third parties. He called for publicly funded elections and supported Congressman Jackson's right to vote bill.

Attorney Cliff Arnebeck of Alliance for Democracy and Common Cause Ohio said, "The fraud in this election in Ohio must be fixed before this election is finalized. ...We will not move on until we find out what the fraud was and correct it." Saying that the recent elections in the Ukraine were a pertinent analogy to ours, he asked how the US could, "with a straight face," help establish free elections in Iraq in January with the record of a corrupt election in this county. He pointed out that the news media determined Al Gore won Florida in the 2000 election and said, "We should never again certify and inaugurate a candidate until we've established that they've got the most votes."

Stephen Rosenfeld, producer of the Laura Flanders show on Air America radio network, called the tactics in Ohio "old school thuggery combined with new school manipulations." The old school was shorting machines in Democratic districts and the new was possible electronic maniupulation. Noting that Air America's audience had helped raise money for the Ohio recount, he called for a nonpartisan analysis. Professor Robert Fitrakis, editor of the Free Press, said there was a 74% loss of voting machines in heavily Democratic districts and no loss in heavily Republican districts. Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority highlighted the long lines seen at colleges in Ohio and said in the future her group would count the number of voting machines and fight for more machines where needed. Smeal also said voter registration numbers and voter purging should be looked at, She said an analysis of the "treemendous variance between electronic equipment, OCR, and punch cards" was available on her group's website.

Stephen Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania published a paper detailing the statistical impossibility of the discrepancy between exit polls and voting results. He said, however, he was hampered by unreleased data and said that current data has been adjusted by the polling companies assuming the vote was correct. Sawnta Walcott of Zogby International polling called for a blue ribbon, bi-partisan panel to examine the "uncharacteristically inaccurate" exit polling.

Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Voting Rights Project, said, "Across the nation, we saw state and partisan election officials, priveleging their party's success, and sometimes their own personal political ambition, over the rights of their constituency. These cracks in our infrastructure need to be addressed, not just in Ohio, but elsewhere as well." He called upon the "unprecedented" number of activist citizens and policymakers not to let the moment pass without action. After encountering long lines at their voting place, Ohio state Senator Rev. William Moss announced he and his wife are the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit to be filed tomorrow petitioning judgment against Blackwell for conflict of interest and a deliberate failure to supply the necessary number of voting machines to ensure voters' rights.

John Bonifaz of National Voting Rights Institute (Boston), who serves as co-counsel for Cobb and Libertarian party candidate Michael Badnerick in their call for a recount in Ohio, accused Blackwell of obstructing the recount process, stalling for time until the vote is certified by the electoral college. Bonifaz said that there is a chance that a different set of electors will meet and cast their vote for president in Ohio presenting their results to the US Congress on Jan. 6, 2005, when they meet. "We will have a recount, and the fight will go on," he said.