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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 5/15/1996 Daily distortions (Columbia/HCA Healthcare Story Not In Dispatch)

5/15/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Thomas Jefferson said “Where the press is free, all is safe.” But what happens when the only daily newspaper in a large metropolitan area is a monopoly owned by a super-rich family that sees its mission as systematically distorting the news to protect other plutocrats? You get The Daily Distortion.
A recent mega-distortion and an omission illustrate the type of reporting our own Wolfe Family Newsletter is renowned for. On Friday, the Dispatch placed a small blurb on the business page concerning Columbia/HCA Health Care Corps’ buying of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer rightfully placed it on page one.

Columbia/HCA is a $20 billion company that in less than a decade had merged with over 347 hospitals and 125 outpatient centers and home care services. Its president and CEO, Richard Scott, has previously vowed in the pages of the Dispatch to invade Ohio and “…be across the state in every nook and cranny.” Think about it. The Daily Monopoly just buried the unprecedented merger of the country’s largest for-profit hospital corporation and Ohio’s largest non-profit medical insurer. Of course, this is the same paper that put the Rodney King verdict that led to the L.A. riots on page two and Magic Johnson’s AIDS confession in the Sports section. Read more

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Behind Every Bush – There’s A Rigged Election

By Bob Fitrakis

As partisan forces in Ohio clash over the reliability of e-voting machines and whether the state can afford to replace them, we should keep in mind that the use of computer software for central tabulation and the computerized voting machines have been long distrusted.

That distrust is directly related to the Bush family dynasty and its convenient ties to the CIA.

Take the following quote from the Manchester Union Leader from the 1980 Iowa caucus: “The Bush operation has all the smell of a CIA covert operation . . . strange aspects of the Iowa operation [include] a long, slow count and then the computers broke down at a very convenient point, with Bush having a six percent bulge over Reagan.”

In 1984, President Reagan signed National Security Directive Decision NSDD245. A year later, the New York Times explained the details of Reagan’s secret directive: “A branch of the National Security Agency is investigating whether a computer program that counted more than one-third of all the votes cast in the United States in 1984 is vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation.”

It goes on to say: “Mike Levin, a public information official for the agency’s National Computer Security Center, said the investigation was initiated under the authority of a recent presidential directive ordering the center to improve the security of major computer systems used by the nonmilitary agencies . . . .”

The article goes on to note that: “In 1984, the company’s program [Computer Election System of Berkeley, Calif.] and related equipment was used in more than 1,000 county and local jurisdictions to collect and count 34.4 million of the 93.7 million votes cast in the United States.”

Central tabulating computers were used in an attempt to steal the 1986 election for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a favorite of the Reagan-Bush administration. This is captured in Hendrick Smith’s book “The Power Game” as well as the video “The Power Game: The Presidency.”

Thus, even prior to the touchscreen computer voting machines, there was a tradition of suspected election rigging with computer software and central tabulators. The actual computer voting machines were introduced on a grand scale in New Hampshire’s 1988 primary. The results are predictable – former CIA director George H. W. Bush wins a huge upset over Dole and the mainstream for-profit corporate media refuses to consider election rigging.

Here’s the Washington Post’s account of the bizarre and unexplainable election results when touchscreens were first used: In 1988, H.W. Bush was trailing Dole by 8 points in the last Gallup poll before the New Hampshire primary. Bush won by 9 points. The Washington Post covered the Bush upset with the following headline: “Voters Were a Step Ahead of Tracking Measurements.”

Think about the key findings of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s report on e-voting machines. The corporate vendor-connected Microsolved, Inc. found that Ohio’s computer voting machine vendors have “failed to adopt, implement and follow industry-standard best practices in the development of the system.” The report cited “critical security failures.” Among them, according to the independent academics who wrote a different section of the report, was the “pervasive misapplication of security technology.”

They specifically cited the lack of “standard and well-known practices for the use of cryptology, key and password management and security hardware.” The academics went on to describe computer voting software practices as “deeply flawed.” The result leads to “fragile software in which exploitable crashes, lockups, and failures are common in normal use.”

Every honest account of the 2004 presidential election documents  the vote flipping in Youngstown and Franklin County and the convenient software freeze up in Clermont County. Since then there’s been massive problems in Montgomery County in 2005 and Cuyahoga County in 2006. The mainstream media prefers the term “recalibration.” Why not use the correct phrase: computer vote flipping? The only reason you would vote on computers is to pre-program the election results. Why do you think they call it computer programming?

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Bob Bytes Back Archives: 5/08/1996 America Needs A Raise (Labor)

5/08/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Last Wednesday at Columbus City Hall, local community and labor organizations sent a graphic and powerful message to our city and nation: America Needs a Raise! The AFL-CIO is sponsoring a series of town meetings across the country where workers can speak out publicly about their increasing insecurity and reduced standard of living. And so they came: the tired working poor, haggard working single mothers, laid-off and anxious middle-level managers, and downtrodden temps.

Those reading the Wolfe Family Newsletter (aka Dispatch), may have missed the event since they tucked the small article on an inside page of an additional Metro section. That’s not surprising, the highly paid and tightly leashed Wolfe family lapdogs regularly sprinkle the editorial pages with shocking tales of wealthy woes. Usually it’s about some poor millionaire denied a tax abatement by greedy inner-city Columbus schoolchildren or CEOs unable to purchase their third mansion because of heartless workers demanding the minimum wage be raised. Read more

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Ohio Secretary Of State Confirms 2004 Election Could Have Been Stolen

Jenny Brunner :)

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 14, 2007

Ohio’s Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that “critical security failures” are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, “could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.” They have rendered Ohio’s vote counts “vulnerable” to manipulation and theft by “fairly simple techniques.”

Indeed, she says, “the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant.”

In other words, Ohio’s top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen.

Brunner’s stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio’s 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.

Brunner is calling for widespread changes to the way Ohio casts and counts its ballots. Her announcement follows moves by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen to disqualify electronic voting machines in the nation’s biggest state.

In tandem, these two reports add a critical state-based dimension to the growing mountain of evidence that the US electoral system is rife with insecurities. Reports from the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee Task Force Report, Princeton University and others have offered differing perspectives that add up to the same conclusion.

Coming in the state that decided the 2004 election for George W. Bush, Brunner’s confirmation of the electoral system’s vulnerabilities adds huge new weight to the charge that the Buckeye State’s vote count was stolen.

In a series of investigative reports dating to well before the 2004 election, the Columbus Free Press and Freepress.org have documented several dozen different means used by the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign to steal the official 2004 vote count.

The final official tally for Bush—less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million cast—varied by 6.7% from exit poll results, which showed a Kerry victory. Exit polls in 2004 were designed to have a margin of error of about 1%.

In various polling stations in Democrat-rich inner city precincts in Youngstown and Columbus, voters who pushed touch screens for Kerry saw Bush’s name light up. A wide range of discrepancies on both electronic and paper balloting systems leaned almost uniformly toward the Bush camp. Voting procedures regularly broke down in inner city and campus areas known to be heavily Democratic.

In direct violation of standing federal election law, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties have since destroyed all or part of their 2004 election data. The materials were additionally protected by a federal court injunction in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit (in which we are attorney and plaintiff). To date, no state or federal prosecutions have resulted from this wholesale destruction of presidential election records, including 1.6 million ballots, cast and uncast, needed for definitive auditing procedures.

However, two Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) election officials have been convicted of felony manipulation of an official recount. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the state’s largest newspaper, recently editorialized that there is “no evidence” the 2004 election was stolen, but omitted mention of the destruction of the electoral records by more than half the counties in the state. The Plain-Dealer and other mainstream media have consistently ignored findings by the Free Press and others indicating widespread manipulation and theft of the kind Brunner has now confirmed was eminently do-able within the Ohio system.

Brunner says “the results underscore the need for a fundamental change in the structure of Ohio’s election system to ensure ballot and voting system security while still making voting convenient and accessible to all Ohio voters.” Among other things, she advocates replacing touch-screen machines with optical-scan units that include a paper balloting system.

The study was managed by the Battelle Corporation, and conducted by Columbus-based MicroSolved Inc., SysTest Labs of Denver along with a consortium of academic subcontractors. It was reviewed by a dozen county officials, and included scrutiny of voting systems produced by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Hart Intercivic and Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold).

Brunner is the Democratic successor to Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell, who administered the 2004 election as Secretary of State while also serving as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. The report comes as part of her pledge to guarantee a fair and reliable vote count in the upcoming 2008 presidential election.

Under Blackwell, Ohio spent some $100 million installing electronic voting machines as part of the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the scandals surrounding the 2000 election. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, HAVA’s principle author, now resides in a federal prison, in part for illegalities surrounding his dealings with voting machine companies.

Blackwell, who was defeated in a 2006 race for the Ohio governorship, outsourced web hosting responsibilities for the 2004 vote count to a programming firm that also programmed the web site for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Blackwell’s chosen host site for the state’s vote count was in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the servers for the Republican National Committee, and the Bush White House, were also located.

Brunner has now recommended that all Ohio’s voting be done on optical scan ballots, with reliance on central tabulation. Voters with disabilities could use AutoMark machines with bar coding devices that allow the marking of ballots with little or no additional assistance.

“It’s a testament to our state’s boards of elections officials that elections on the new (federally) mandated voting systems have gone as smoothly as they have in light of these findings,” Brunner said.

Conversely, it is also a testament to the ease with which the 2004 election was stolen by election officials who had clear conflicts of interest aimed at keeping George W. Bush in the White House.

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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (The New Press) with Steve Rosenfeld. THE FITRAKIS FILES are available at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org.

 

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Bob Bytes Back Archive May, 2002: Smoking Gun (OSU Columbus Campus Partners)

5/01/2002
by Bob Fitrakis

It’s the end of the campus as we know it, and I feel slimed.
If you really want to know what Campus Partners is all about, don’t buy their hype or PR spin. Instead, read Graydon Hambrick’s article, “A New Campus Partnership” in the April 1996 Ohio State Alumni Magazine (OSAM). It reveals the real agenda; it’s the smoking gun.

Campus Partners portrays itself as just another non-profit organization seeking to promote community cooperation. In reality, it’s a “redevelopment corporation”–they prefer the term “revitalization”–similar to the one that wired the City Center mall deal. As Hambrick puts it, “As such, it is allowed special legal privileges.” Indeed.

Recall the City Center development. In 1977 the city of Columbus purchased $26 million in land and leased it to the Capitol South Community Urban Development Corporation, which in turn subleased the land to billionaire mall developer Al Taubman. Before Taubman built the City Center mall, city and state government officials combined to legally declare the downtown area “blighted” and a “slum.” Columbus Monthly reported that approximately $80 million more in non-repayable public tax expenditures flowed into the mall’s development. When subleasee Taubman began to rake in the dough courtesy of the public’s largess, Capitol South owed the city some $67 million. This is an old game. As Robert Goodman illustrates in his book, The Last Entrepreneurs, billionaire developers like Taubman and Max Fisher–yes, they just named the business school after Fisher at OSU–know how to get taxpayers to provide the “risk capital” for major for-profit private development projects.

Both Taubman and Fisher are good friends of fellow billionaire and OSU Trustee Les Wexner. A senior OSU administrator admits that Les Wexner is stirring the pot on the Campus Partners redevelopment. Despite the fact that there was neither a “needs assessment” done nor any need for a performing arts center at 15th and High, Wexner, according to sources, doesn’t like the view from the Wexner Center east across High Street.

Hambrick writes that OSU President Gordon Gee “….has ‘other commitments’ from businesses that he is ‘not ready’ to speak about, and that Ohio State Trustee Leslie Wexner, head of the Limited clothing empire, has shown an interest in the High Street development.” (p. 27, OSAM) No doubt.

In the late ’70s in Detroit, Taubman and Fisher managed to talk the bankrupt city into giving them $100 million in prime riverfront land for the development of the Riverfront West luxury condominiums. Next, they had the state legislature pass the infamous “Max Fisher law” that created a 24-year 50 percent tax abatement for the property–twice as long an abatement as any in Michigan history. Then, they used their political connections with the Reagan administration to use the city’s federal mass transit money to build a people-mover that runs from the Riverfront West complex, where the wealthy live, to the Renaissance Center, where they work, and the Greektown restaurant strip, where they eat. So, it’s now possible to live in luxury and work in Detroit without ever setting foot on a city street. I’m sure that Les’ buddies have relayed this “success” story to him.

I have no doubt they’re planning a similar carnage in the OSU area. As Hambrick notes, “A special improvement district along the High Street strip will be created under Ohio law.” This is the same tactic Wexner used in New Albany. Say goodbye to Stache’s, Monkey’s Retreat, Used Kids and the like, because the alumni are being promised: “spiffy and modern businesses and galleries, a variety of restaurants, decent housing full of enlightened people….” (p. 27, OSAM)

Hambrick goes so far as to call Gee’s and Wexner’s New Campus Order a “Garden of Eden.” And who are we to argue, since they’re planning “. ..art movie houses, a bowling alley, clothing stores run by national merchandisers [read: Leslie Wexner], maybe even sports bars such as they have in the ‘burbs.” (p. 26, OSAM) Be still my heart!

And Gee just keeps on giving and giving–of course, maybe it’s because he recently got that huge raise engineered by Les. Gee admits it’ll even be better than the ‘burbs because OSU’s planning on returning to “a modified in loco parentis.” Thus, Papa Gee and Uncle Les will protect students from the harsh realities of campus life. Gee assured the alumni in finest democratic fashion that: “I have no intention to make [student life] boring…. [But] there will be no plebiscite on the fundamental issue of change.” That means, to the unenlightened, there won’t be a student community vote, we’re jamming it down your throat.

In an area bounded on the north by the Glen Echo ravine and Fifth Avenue on the south, stretching from the Olentangy River on the west and the Conrail tracks on the east, they’re planning to build their Brave New Campus World.

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Second Saturday Salon, December 8

6:30pm-midnight
1000 E. Main Street

Columbus, Ohio 43205

Join the Free Press and Ohio Honest Elections for a casual get-together to enjoy refreshments and progressive company. Let’s talk about this past week’s election and our organizing to assure the presidential election in 2008 is free and fair! Looking forward to seeing you there.

Parking in rear or next door at the Salvation Army.
truth@freepress.org
253-2571

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50 Ways To Reform Ohio Elections

December 4, 2007

EDITORIAL: The Columbus Free Press and freepress.org editorial board endorses the following reforms to ensure safe, secure and democratic elections in Ohio in 2008 and beyond.

1. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform voting procedures in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.

2. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform election reporting procedures in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.

3. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform election terminology in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.

4. The Secretary of State shall allow the party’s county central committees to remove party appointments to the county’s Boards of Elections.

5. The Secretary of State shall establish standards for well-trained and fully informed pollworkers familiar with the voting laws and regulations of the state of Ohio.

6. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for voter registration processing in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.
(a) The process of registering to vote shall be universally fair, accessible and transparent.
(b) The system of voter registration shall automatically register Ohio citizens at the age of 18. An opt-out provision shall be included.
(c) Each Ohio voter shall be assigned a unique identifying number developed specifically for voting purposes and the state shall not rely for voting purposes on Social Security, driver’s license or any other number developed for other purposes.
(d) The voter registration process shall include acceptable registration forms including weight, size and quality of paper.
(e) The voter registration process shall empower county Boards of Elections and their designated registrars to issue uniform voter ID cards with photos.
(f) The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure for correcting a voter registration form in a timely manner.
(g) The Secretary of State shall implement a statewide voter registration database as required by HAVA and shall make that list available to the public in continuous updated electronic format.
(h) The Secretary of State shall direct that no person shall alter the electronic signature of a registered Ohio voter.
(i) The secretary shall establish statewide uniform procedures for the standards used in accepting voter signatures in electronic pollbooks.
(j) The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide standard regarding timely and legitimate voter registration challenges.
7. The Secretary of State shall promote the rights of college students to vote at their chosen legal residence whether it is at their college residence or their permanent home address.
(a) Students shall have the right to register at their college campus address if they intend to reside in that community while enrolled in the college.
(b) Students shall be allowed to use their college ID cards as voter identification.
(c) Colleges may be allowed to issue voting registration status on their college ID cards.
8. The Secretary of State shall ask the Attorney General of Ohio for a formal opinion on the constitutionality of each and every aspect of Ohio’s current voter ID requirements.

 

9. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for voter registration receipts in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws which function as proof on Election Day that the voter may cast a ballot in Ohio.

10. All county Boards of Elections shall notify all newly registered or re-registered voters within 15 business days that their application for registration has been either accepted or rejected.

11. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for matching voter registration applications to any other government databases for acceptance or rejection and shall clearly define such standards in a directive promulgated and publicly available.

12. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure to avoid human error in databases. The standard shall be based on a “Substantial Match” defined as any transposed letters, slight variation in name, the absence of a suffix such as Jr. or Sr., misspelled addresses, or other common database errors. No voter registration application shall be rejected based on common database errors. A failed match shall produce only the single consequence expressly identified in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA): that a citizen registering by mail and for the first time in a given jurisdiction is subject to an identification requirement.

13. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform security procedures or approve each county’s Board of Elections security procedures for all voting machines and technology in Ohio in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.
(a) The Secretary of State’s office and all county Boards of Elections shall make public a list of all private technicians including all independent contractors and subcontractors employed for election purposes.
(b) The Secretary of State’s office and all county Boards of Elections shall require a technical and criminal background check for all private technicians involved in hardware and software technical support for election purposes.
(c) County Boards of Elections shall notify the Secretary of State’s office of any and all contact by private voting machine technicians regarding their access to the hardware and/or software of any voting machines during the election cycle, including remote access.
(d) The Secretary of State shall adopt uniform procedures for the use and storage of all ballots and pollbooks.
(e) The Secretary of State shall adopt uniform procedures for the use and storage of all electronic storage hardware including all memory and access cards.
(f) County Boards of Elections shall make public all contracts relating to election services.
(g) County boards of election officials shall make public all election-related public records in compliance with Ohio law. Any election official failing to comply shall be immediately suspended by the Secretary of State pending a hearing in accordance with Ohio law.
(h) All voting Board of Elections members and employees shall be protected as whistleblowers as established by a directive from the Secretary of State which shall encourage them to report any possible violations of elections law they have witnessed.
(i) The Secretary of State shall adopt uniform procedures for testing all voting machines, computer tabulators and tabulating machines for both reliability and security.
(j) The Secretary of State shall make public all government agencies, individuals and corporations that have unrestricted access to the Secretary of State office’s databases and county Board of Elections databases.
(k) The Secretary of State and county Boards of Elections shall also disclose any real time remote access and communication between any corporation, individual, or government agency during the election cycle and voting process.
14. The Secretary of State shall prohibit any county Board of Elections to contract with private vendors to maintain voter registration lists, to count the vote or to maintain custody of vote totals or public election records for profit.

15. The Secretary of State shall establish that all voting machine software codes shall be held in a confidential trust by the state and county Boards of Elections.

16. The Secretary of State shall establish a public certification and testing process of all voting machines.

17. The Secretary of State shall require that any electronically transferred information from coordinating state agencies to the database administrator shall utilize a secure encryption protocol.

18. The Secretary of State shall require all real-time transmission of election data to be on public servers.

19. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform election auditing procedures in Ohio that are random and transparent in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.
(a) Random audits shall include audits that match the number of signatures in the pollbooks with the number of actual certified ballots cast in the precinct.
(b) All county Boards of Elections shall report the actual number of voters per precinct for audit purposes, including early and absentees votes that may have been previously placed in special or separate precincts.
(c) All county Boards of Elections shall notify the Secretary of State of any pollbooks unsigned by pollworkers at the end of Election Day.
20. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for purging voters from the voting rolls in compliance with applicable federal and state laws that is nondiscriminatory, transparent, and defines under what circumstances a voter’s registration records can be purged from either the statewide voter registration list or county rolls.
(a) Convicted felons shall be placed on an “inactive” list and remain on that list until their voting rights are restored under Ohio law.
(b) Purges shall take place only upon notice of a death certificate, renunciation of citizenship, official notice from the voter, or from the post office or other government entity, that the voter no longer resides in the state.
(c) Inactive voters may be placed on an “inactive” list but not purged from county voter rolls and remain eligible to vote with proof of residency.
(d) No individual or private vendor shall be allowed to remove a voter’s name from any registration list. The removal of any voting registration record shall be authorized by at least two officials from two different political parties.
(e) Any voter registration record purged from a voting roll at the state or county level shall require the persons authorizing the removal to sign their signatures to the action and state the specific grounds upon which the voter was purged.
(f) Records of voters purged from the voter registration list shall be made available for public inspection and copying. If any code is utilized to identify the reason for removal or the officials authorizing the removal, a key defining each code or symbol shall be made accessible to the public along with the voter purge list.
(g) A standard defined as “a high degree of certainty” shall be the criteria for any purge in Ohio. This is defined as a purge based on, at a minimum, a match with a death certificate that includes last name, first name, middle name, prefix, suffix, date of birth, address, and/or a driver’s license number.
(h) The Secretary of State’s office and the county Boards of Elections shall provide public notice of any organized statewide or countywide voter purges two weeks prior to the purge and provide an explanation of the standards for purging, how the purge is to be conducted in a transparent manner, and where and when the list of purged voters will be posted.
(i) Before any voter is removed from the rolls for any reason, other than a death certificate, he or she shall be given reasonable notice and given the opportunity to correct any errors or omissions or to demonstrate eligibility.
21. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform standards for all paper ballots used in Ohio, including provisional, absentee, and overseas ballots. The ballot shall be designed to minimize confusion over candidate and issue choices.

22. The Secretary of State shall establish that all voting machines provide the voters with a viewable paper record of their vote.

23. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for the timely delivery and pick up of all absentee ballots.

24. The Secretary of State may consider a voting by mail system for both issue and candidate elections.

25. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform provisional balloting procedures requiring only the minimal amount of information needed to establish a lawful vote.

26. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform provisional balloting procedures counting all provisional votes cast for issues and candidates from the municipal level to the presidency if the voter is eligible to vote in that specific county.

27. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform pollworker training on provisional balloting procedures.

28. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform provisional balloting procedures in compliance with state and federal laws, requiring that provisional ballots are counted and stored, and the reasons given if any provisional ballots are excluded from the official tally.

29. The Secretary of State will issue a direction that no provisional ballots or parts thereof, including sleeves or envelopes shall be destroyed or discarded.

30. The Secretary of State shall study the expansion or relocation of additional neighborhood precincts and make specific recommendations to county Boards of Elections regarding the need to establish new precincts, or new locations, to make voting more accessible and to end disparate treatment based on race, creed, color, religion or disability status.

31. The Secretary of State shall establish three months prior to the election fixed locations for precinct polling places that shall not be altered unless an official emergency is declared by local, state or federal officials. The Secretary of State’s website shall contain an official list of all polling locations as shall the websites of county Board of Elections.

32. The Secretary of State shall approve or reassign all county Board of Elections precinct locations to ensure that no disparate treatment exists based on race, creed, color, religion, ethnic origin or disability status.

33. The Secretary of State shall establish statewide uniform procedures for the assignment of voting machines to polling locations and require the county as well as the Secretary of State’s office to promulgate the formulas used for placement in compliance with state and federal laws.

34. The Secretary of State shall make public 15 days before the election the assignment of voting machines to polling locations by county Boards of Elections in compliance with state and federal laws.

35. The Secretary of State shall have prior review and editorial approval of the language and candidates names listed on any county paper ballots, such as absentee and provisional ballots, prior to its release to the public.

36. The Secretary of State shall direct county Boards of Elections to include the names of only valid candidates on the ballots. No candidate’s name shall be on the ballot who has been declared ineligible by the Secretary of State’s office or a county’s Board of Elections.

37. The Secretary of State shall require that all Board of Election officials and precinct pollworkers display official ID at all times on Election Day.

38. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure for accommodating disabled voters, including a directive mandating curbside voting accommodation for any inaccessible precinct.

39. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure for accommodating bilingual voters, including directing county Boards of Elections to identify precincts through census data and other means that may be in need of one or more translators.

40. The Secretary of State shall direct the county Boards of Elections to immediately report any harassment of potential voters to local law enforcement authorities and the Ohio Attorney General’s office. The county Boards of Elections shall, also:
(a) Record and report any incidences of materials such as fliers and/or leaflets containing false voting information regarding the voting process.
(b) Record and report any incidences of voters being directed to the wrong polling locations.
(c) Record and report any incidences of voter harassment throughout the voting period.
41. The Secretary of State shall issue a statewide uniform code of conduct to all county Boards of Elections for all pollworkers to avoid any disenfranchisement of Ohio voters, including disparate treatment based on race, creed, color, religion, or disability status.

42. The Secretary of State shall issue an emergency backup plan to all county Boards of Elections in case of voting machine malfunction or long lines caused by machine misallocation on Election Day including the use of paper ballots.

43. The Secretary of State shall issue a directive notifying all county Boards of Elections that all voters in line at the time of the closing of the poll, including those who are at the wrong precinct, but in the right county, shall have the right to cast the appropriate ballot.

44. The Secretary of State shall direct all county Boards of Elections to count all votes cast including those that are machine rejected. This includes any opti-scan ballots marked and discernible toward voter intent with an instrument other than that provided by precinct election officials.

45. The Secretary of State shall establish reasonable uniform costs for copies of county public voting records so as to make them accessible for public use and scrutiny.

46. The Secretary of State shall establish ethics guidelines prohibiting the use of unbid contracts involving election materials vendors.

47. The Secretary of State shall recommend to the Ohio legislature a bill outlining deceptive voting procedures with appropriate remedies and penalties.

48. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure for the posting of all election results at the precinct polling sites immediately upon completion of the vote tally.

49. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure regarding timely and transparent recounts open to candidates, independent observers and the press. All recounts shall be matched with the certified vote total supplied to the county by the Secretary of State’s office or to the Secretary of State by the county Boards of Elections.

50. The Secretary of State shall establish a statewide uniform procedure wherein citizens may request a public hearing following an election, to gather testimony regarding verifiable election irregularities. This may be done under the auspices of the state’s Voting Rights Institute. The Secretary of State shall publicly promulgate a list of counties that fail to comply with established statewide election procedures.

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Missing Voting Machines In Franklin County, Ohio?

What_Happened_in_Ohio.JPG 

Ah, the coverup continues. Michael R. Hackett, Jr., a Democratic
retired deputy director of the Franklin County Board of Elections is
being charged with illegal conflicts of interest regarding steering a
contract for voting machine carts to a company he and his wife
allegedly had an interest in.

Hackett was the supposed guard dog to protect Democratic interests in
the 2004 election in Franklin County when, under his watch, 125 voting
machines disappeared on November 2, 2004 from Democrat-rich Columbus
polling sites.

None were missing from Republican suburban locations.

The myth is that Ohio’s so-called “bipartisan” county
election systems are foolproof, and Democratic interests are protected.
The reality is that both parties have stacked the Board of Elections –
high-paying, public jobs with the worst sorts of political operatives
and hacks. As Patsy Gallina, the Diebold lobbyist who gave a check to
Franklin County Board of Elections Matt Damschroder once said,
“I found when you take care of the Democrats’ personal needs, they’re
not as partisan.”

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King Corn: The Movie, Subsidies = Obesity, Junk Food

Now through December2, 2007 at Studio 35
3055 Indianola Avenue (614) 261-1581
Each night at 6:30pm

The Free Press highly recommends the independent documentary “King Corn,” that makes the connection between government farm subsidy policy, massive obesity, and a junk food culture. Part Farming for Dummies, part animal rights advocacy, and mostly revelation about the overgrowth of corn and our overweight population. Two young college graduates from the east coast follow the trail of corn syrup from the American heartland as it clogs the arteries of major urban centers throughout the country. It’s witty but poignant, and more than ever proves the axiom, we are what we eat.

Bob Fitrakis

See http://www.kingcorn.net/

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm.

kING Corn
          Aaron Woolf (dir.)

          Ian Cheney

          Curt Ellis

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Dr. Fitrakis Vblog Nov. 27, 2007, Stolen Presidency 2004

Speaking Truth to Power. This is a synopsis laid out showing general and specific evidence refuting the the conspiracy theorist label on the 2004 stolen Elections.

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Bob Fitrakis Official Site