Ten Ways The McCain/Palin GOP Is Now Stealing The Ohio Vote

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

September 9, 2008


The McCain/Palin GOP is already in the process of stealing the Ohio vote, as was done in 2004. Among those at the center of the GOP strategy is Bush Family computer operative Michael Connell, who programmed the key vote counting mechanisms that were used to give George W. Bush his second term.

Except for John Kennedy in 1960, no candidate since 1856 (James Buchanan) has won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State. No Republican has ever done it.

On October 27, 2004, we published “Twelve Ways Bush is Now Stealing the Ohio Vote” at www.FreePress.org. Despite four years of denial by the Democratic Party and the corporate media, all methods mentioned in that article (plus many more) were used in the theft that gave George W. Bush his second term.

Much has now changed in Ohio, including the transition from a Republican Governor (Robert Taft) and Secretary of State (J. Kenneth Blackwell) to Democrats Ted Strickland and Jennifer Brunner. Brunner has made strong public commitments to conducting a fair registration process, an orderly election and a reliable vote count this fall. She is being pushed by the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit, filed originally against Blackwell.

To help guarantee an election that truly reflects the will of the voters, Freepress.org will convene a conference on election protection procedures web-cast from Columbus this September 26-8. It will reinforce the positive steps Brunner has taken, and will help train poll workers and judges to safeguard the vote in Ohio and around the nation.

But much of the electoral apparatus remains beyond public control. Serious questions remain about how reliable the final vote count will be, and how much of it the Republican party will cage, confuse and steal in its crusade to put John McCain and Sarah Palin into the White House.

Here are some of the key factors that still endanger the vote in Ohio and around the nation:

1) ILLEGAL DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE SURROUNDING THE VOTE COUNT

In a federal court decision delivered in August, 2006, Judge Algernon Marbley ruled that all materials related to the 2004 presidential vote in Ohio must be preserved. Standing federal law required that these materials be protected for 22 months dating from November 4, 2004. In response to the King-Lincoln lawsuit, Marbley’s decision came in time to make it a federal offense to destroy any poll books, ballots and other records relating to the 2004 election in Ohio at any time.

Around the time of the decision, GOP Secretary of State Blackwell, who also served as Ohio co-chair of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, issued ambivalent orders to the state’s 88 county Boards of Elections about preserving these materials.

Blackwell subsequently lost his 2006 campaign for governor of Ohio, and was replaced by Brunner as secretary of state. Brunner publicly announced that she would establish a repository in Columbus for all 2004 election materials. In accordance with the King-Lincoln lawsuit, a definitive recount would then establish what actually happened during the Bush re-election.

But in August of 2007, Ohio Attorney-General Mark Dann informed the King-Lincoln attorneys that 56 of the 88 county Boards of Elections had illegally destroyed all or some of their records and ballots from 2004. No repository has been established for what remains, and no definitive recount is now possible.

Ironically, Florida Governor Jeb Bush did preserve materials from the 2000 election there from all but one of the counties in that state. The materials are being held in a repository in Tallahassee. But no such resource—and no definitive recount—will be possible in Ohio.

There have been no state or federal prosecutions for the illegal destruction of these materials. Nor does there seem to be any guarantee similar destruction will not follow the 2008 election.

2) MASSIVE RESIDUAL ELIMINATION OF REGISTERED VOTERS:

In the run-up to the 2004 elections, GOP-controlled Boards of Elections in Ohio eliminated some 308,000 registered voters from the rolls used at the polls to determine whether or not citizens are eligible to vote. The purges were conducted in heavily Democratic districts in Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Lucas (Toledo) and Hamilton (Cincinnati) Counties. The numbers of voters eliminated represented more than 5% of the 5.4 million Ohioans who voted in 2004. The GOP also challenged the right of some 35,000 registered voters to cast ballots, based largely on letters the Republicans sent to voters which then came back undelivered, thus allowing them to claim the lack of a valid address. Challenges were also issued to prevent thousands of ex-felons from voting, even though there is no state law disenfranchising them.

Overall, the removals far exceeded Bush’s official victory margin of less than 119,000 votes. After the 2004 election, another 170,000 voters were eliminated in Franklin (Columbus) County, also now heavily Democratic.

Despite massive grassroots voter registration drives, those voters have never been restored to the registration lists. None were notified when they were eliminated, and no public accounting has been made of exactly who was disenfranchised. Parallel purges were used in Florida 2000, and throughout the US in 2004. There is every reason to believe the GOP will repeat them in 2008 wherever possible.

3) RENEWED ATTEMPTS TO ELIMINATE ADDITIONAL REGISTERED VOTERS:

Throughout Ohio’s 88 counties, GOP-controlled Boards of Elections have continued “caging” registered voters by sending them notices requiring that the post office return those that cannot be delivered. A loophole in Ohio law allows partisan challengers to then demand that the names of those whose forms come back be eliminated from the voter rolls. This practice has been used by the GOP throughout the nation to purge voter rolls in inner city precincts. In many cases those removed are soldiers currently serving in Iraq.

The Advancement Project has notified Brunner that it will challenge any mass purges in Ohio 2008. For her part, Brunner has ruled that returned notices cannot be used as a basis for eliminating voters from the registration rolls. She has further attempted to counter-act the purges by requiring that any registered voter fingered for removal be issued notice and given a pubic hearing by the purging BOE. But the process remains intimidating for prospective voters—especially the heavily-targeted list of those voting for the first time. With sixty days left to election day, the on-going impact remains unclear.

4-5) RESISTING UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ABSENTEE BALLOTS WHILE RE-INTRODUCING CHAOS:

Brunner and voting rights advocates want the Boards of Elections in all 88 Ohio counties to mail absentee ballots to all voters. Previous restrictions on casting such ballots have been lifted. Brunner has strongly supported the practice of making these paper ballots available throughout the state. It would, among other things, help eliminate long lines at the polls, increase access for the infirm and disabled, and circumvent electronic voting machines, which her office has deemed to be easily corruptible. “As we prepare for Election Day,” Brunner has said, “we are promoting clear, consistent, statewide standards for absentee voting. Every Ohioan who requests an absentee ballot should have the same rights and responsibilities,” no matter what county they might be in.

Ohio’s GOP leadership has made a loud public show of supporting this universal access to absentee ballots. But the Republican-controlled legislature pointedly failed to authorize enough money to the Secretary of State’s office to pay for the full mailing. In a stunning display of public cynicism, the GOP leadership has since told Brunner, in a non-binding promise, that she should just go ahead and order the local BOE’s to do the mailings. The Legislature, they say, will then vote the additional money at some point in the future.

Brunner has refused to do this, pointing out that the potential shortfall would be in the millions, and that such an order—in essence, an unfunded mandate—might be illegal. As a result, using a calculation based on per capita postage rates, she has informed every BOE how much state money they can expect. She is encouraging those that have the additional money in their budgets to do the mailings on their own.

The GOP-sponsored shortfall has thus introduced chaos into what should have been the orderly, manageable process of providing every Ohioan with a paper ballot prior to election day. As it now stands, some counties will be mailing absentee ballots and others will not. The uneven distribution is expected to favor GOP voters in better-funded rural and suburban districts. Should problems arise as a result of this uneven distribution, the GOP will certainly blame Brunner.

6) RESISTING SAME-DAY REGISTRATION AND VOTING

A loophole in a recently passed Ohio election law allows voters to register to vote and then cast an absentee ballot at the same time by coming in person to their Board of Elections between September 30 and October 6. Ironically, the loophole was accidentally inserted into an otherwise highly repressive bill by Republican State Senator KevinDewine, second cousin of the former US Senator Mike DeWine, who lost his seat in 2006. By allowing voters to cast absentee ballots as they register, they can avoid long election-day lines and the perils of electronic voting machines. Furthermore, the only election ID required is the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.

The Ohio Republican Party has called on Brunner “to revoke a directive to allow residents to register to vote and cast an absentee ballot the same day.” The GOP says her directive is illegal. The party is expected to deploy a full attack on this provision that would otherwise allow thousands of Ohioans to participate in the process for the first time with relative ease and security.

7) THE PERSISTENT SPREAD OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES

In addition to mass elimination of Democratic voters, a principle method of stealing the 2004 election in Ohio was through the manipulation of electronic voting machines. Since then, the Ohio-based Diebold Company has admitted that its machines are vulnerable to manipulation and the dropping of significant numbers of votes. Decertification and lawsuits involving Diebold and other electronic machines in California and elsewhere have proliferated. Some 800,000 Ohio ballots—representing about 15% of the state’s vote—were cast on Diebold machines in 2004. Additional votes were cast in Ohio and nationwide on machines made by ES&S, Hart Inner-Civic,Triad and others, all of whom have come under serious legal and legislative scrutiny.

Studies by the Brennan Center, Princeton University, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee and others, have all concluded that results coming from such machines can be easily manipulated, and election outcomes reversed, with just a few keystrokes. A $1.5 million report to Brunner’s office concluded that electronic machines could easily have been used to steal the 2004 election in Ohio.

But because of the Help America Vote Act, authored by former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (just recently released from Federal prison), electronic voting machines will be in far greater use in Ohio and around the nation during the 2008 election than ever before. The reinstatement of electronic voting machines has also been forced into effect in New York and elsewhere despite widespread attempts to require the use of paper ballots. Without a massive influx of absentee ballots, voters in 54 of Ohio’s counties are likely to be forced to use touchscreen machines, with parallel increases nationwide. This includes Ohio’s largest city, Columbus, and other major urban center such as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.

In 2004, the compiled tabulation of Ohio’s electronic vote was deisgned for Secretary of State Blackwell by Michael Connell, a Bush family loyalist who programmed the Bush-Cheney web site in the 2000 election. Connell directed the Ohio vote count to servers in a basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which also housed e-mail traffic for the White House. Thousands of emails from Karl Rove and other key Bush Administration operatives have mysteriously disappeared from servers in this basement. Many worked side-by-side with the Connell-designed ones to which Ohio’s official election results were outsourced, under supervision by Rove and Blackwell.

Like Rove, Connell now works for the McCain/Palin campaign. An IT associate, Steve Spoonamore, himself a McCain supporter, has stated that Connell’s IT apparatus can be used to steal elections. Attempts to force Connell to testify under oath have thus far been successfully resisted by the GOP.

Brunner has ordered a halt to some better-known e-voting abuses, such as “sleep overs” whereby electronic machines have been stored at the homes of poll workers prior to election day. At the behest of attorneys working through the King-Lincoln lawsuit, other potential abuses in the electronic apparatus are being exposed and eliminated by Brunner. She has issued the 2008-74 County Board of Elections Security and Risk Mitigation Plan which requires Boards of Elections to secure the machines and file plans that safeguard the hardware and software as well as establish chain of custody. Her 2008-73 memorandum, concerning “Minimum Security Requirements of Vote Tabulation Servers,” mandates that “Each board of elections shall develop and/or maintain a policy for account and password management for granting access to the server and access to related workstations, if any, for its election system.” The directive goes on to require that, “Each Board of Elections shall have a policy for maintaining sign-in documentation of server activity and related workstation activity…”

“We want Ohio’s voters and the rest of the nation to see that we have prepared a transparent process of transporting voting equipment, ballots and supplies,” Brunner says. “That begins with security practices at boards of elections and polling places, documented chain of custody, and now procedures to make secure voting machine delivery.”

But electronic touchscreen voting remains a black hole through which a close election could once again be stolen, in Ohio and throughout the nation.

8) RESIDUAL CHAOS FROM PRECINCT ELIMINATION AND MANIPULATION

In the lead-up to Ohio 2004, Blackwell eliminated numerous precincts where voters had cast their ballots for decades. Consolidation was uneven. Some 321 precincts have been shifted in Franklin County alone. Blackwell admitted to a Congressional hearing that false, misleading and out-of-date information was posted on the state’s official web site, misdirecting thousands of voters to the wrong polling stations. In many cases, they were then denied the right to vote altogether, or forced to cast provisional ballots which were never counted.

The chaos resulting from these precinct eliminations has not been entirely overcome. For financial and other reasons, Brunner has not restored all the precincts to pre-Blackwell levels. It is expected that her website will provide accurate information about precinct status and location. But it’s likely some problems will persist.

9) DATA MINING

Early indications are that the Republicans are heavily involved in data mining. Registered voters are already reporting strange letters from undisclosed senders or unidentified nonprofit organizations “welcoming” voters to the system. As in 2004, voters should expect a deluge of phone calls as well, telling them if they vote they’ll be arrested if they have outstanding parking and traffic tickets, back child support payments due, or are on parole, probation or reside in a halfway house. None of these are legal grounds for disenfranchisement. But we expect thousands of such calls will be made to keep first-time and uninformed voters away from the polls.

10) EXPANDED VOTER IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

A US Supreme Court decision has upheld an Indiana law, drafted and passed by the GOP, requiring photographic identification for voter registration. Because millions of young, poor, homeless, minority and elderly voters may not have voter ID, various state laws are expected to eliminate large numbers of mostly Democratic voters from casting ballots throughout the country. In key swing states like Ohio, which now require ID other than signature to vote (except by absentee ballot), the outcome of the election could be significantly affected. Attempts by voter registration organizations to help such voters obtain suitable ID are proceeding. But the law may still deprive crucial numbers of citizens their right to vote, and play a decisive role in the November 4 outcome.

Overall, there is no doubt that four years of intense public scrutiny, legal action and grassroots organizing have made the theft of the 2008 election in many ways a more difficult proposition. Widespread training of poll workers, poll judges and independent observers (including video teams) will add to the safeguards available during the registration process, voting and vote count. Should thousands of trained election protection activists committed to the democratic process come to the polls this year, it may prove impossible for the 2008 election to be stolen, as happened in 2000 and 2004.

But the Supreme Court approval of photo identification requirements and the proliferation of electronic voting machines will prove serious challenges to a fair registration, voting and vote count process. Given the number of ploys used by the GOP in Ohio and elsewhere in 2004, it’s certain additional methods of election theft will surface this year that no one has seen before.

Unless they are effectively countered, there is little doubt that John McCain and Sarah Palin will follow George W. Bush and Dick Cheney into the White House.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of four books on the electoral process, including AS GOES OHIO: ELECTION THEFT SINCE 2004, newly published at www.freepress.org and www.harveywasserman.com. They are attorney and plaintiff in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, and co-convenors of the national election protection conference to be web-cast from Columbus September 26-28 through www.freepress.org. Their other books include HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (Freepress.org, harveywasserman.com) and WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, co-authored with Steve Rosenfeld, from The New Press.

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BobBytes Back Archives:8/27/1996 Polistinks

8/27/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

The train keeps a’rolling . . . the Clinton choo-choo . . . all aboard and park your principles in the excess baggage car. “You see, you got to vote for Clinton, ’cause of Newt Gingrich. If ya don’t, the Republicans will hurt workin’ people and people on welfare,” or so they explain on the train to Centristville.
Clinton’s visit to Columbus is like an episode of Twilight Zone. He’s created a bizarro world of gutless, soulless, and repentant baby boomers. The most vacuous and unprincipled Democratic president elected this century. President NAFTA, President GATT, destroyer of the New Deal.

Now, let me get this right. In 1992 I reluctantly supported Clinton, because if I didn’t, terrible things would happen. The Republicans would pass a free-trade agreement sending hundreds and thousands of U.S. jobs to sweatshops in the Third World and polluting the global environment. I voted for the Democrat so the Republicans wouldn’t create a police state with 100,000 police added to the streets causing the subsequent erosion of civil liberties based on hypocritical crime hysteria and stereotyping of the poor and minorities. I was supposed to vote for Clinton so the Republicans wouldn’t pass a vicious, mean-spirited Welfare Reform Act. So there would be universal health care, less poverty, etc.

Wait a minute. I voted for Clinton and I got Reagan and Bush’s GATT and NAFTA policies. I got Richard Nixon’s law-and-order agenda. I got Gingrich’s welfare reform act. I got 42 million Americans without health care in 1996 instead of 37 million in 1992. I got 15.1% of Americans living in poverty today instead of 14.2% four years ago. With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?

Fear of Newt has neutered the Democratic Party. Today’s so-called Clintonesque “New Democrats” are still to the left of Mussolini, but are definitely to the right of the Eisenhower Republicans and, dare I say, Richard Nixon. The Democratic Party has turned itself into the pre-Ronald Reagan Republican Party and it now celebrates its hollow victory in Chicago.

“Oh my party’s bound and gagged and they’ve tied it to a chair. Won’t you please come to Chicago…”

Umberto’s inner-belt blues
Can Umberto Fedeli pick ’em, or what? Seems S.E. Johnson Company’s having a problem with its paving of Cleveland’s inner belt. According to Saturday’s Plain Dealer, Johnson’s resurfacing of part of Interstate 480 began “to crumble several months after completion.” Hope they’ve got insurance!

As previously noted, S.E. Johnson won $32 million in third-lane construction contracts from the Ohio Turnpike Commission earlier this year. In July, the company switched its liability insurance to the less-than-renowned Fedeli Group. The Fedeli Group is sort of like the Gang of Four, or the Mob of Three, or Horde of Two. The Group’s sole owner is Turnpike Commission Chair Umberto Fedeli.

Hopefully, everyone’s favorite minority front, Banks Carbone, didn’t use S.E. Johnson for the foundation work at the residence of Paul Mifsud, the governor’s former chief of staff. You can count on the fact that Banks didn’t actually do the work. He’s essentially subcontracts. Maybe T.G. can find an actual minority architect or builder to check the pavement and concrete work at Paul’s place.

A whiff of Y-Town
Something’s rotten in Y-town.

The Youngstown City Health Department received an Ohio Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative Grant from the Ohio Health Department. So far, so good, no smell.

But, the mayor of Y-town can’t document or provide proof of service contracts for $40,395 in grant funds. The money was spent and apparently no one was contracted to provide the required Save-the-Babies services. Starting to have a bit of an odd odor.

The Most Honorable Patrick J. Ungaro, mayor of Youngstown, was looking for a little favor from Georgie-boy-perhaps Y-town’s all-time favorite guv. Ungaro wanted the governor to look the other way over Youngstown’s inability to “provide executed personal service contracts for grant personnel,” as referenced in an August 9, 1996 letter to Ungaro from Ohio Department of Health Director Peter Somani. This is the grant equivalent of “no show” or “ghost” employees. Definitely a strong stench, particularly as, in a letter dated June 4, 1996, the guv had agreed that he would “would explore the state’s ability to waive recoupment of $40,395” of the missing funds. One wonders why our pro-life governor wouldn’t be more vigilant over such funds. But hey, Paul Mifsud-since resigned under a suspicious cloud-was running the show in the governor’s office then and I understand he’s got more than a few friends in Y-town.

Due to heightened scrutiny in the wake of Mifsud’s most untimely departure, the feds are looking very closely at the activities of the Voinovich administration. One federal source suggests that evidence points to the pockets of local Y-town politicals as the best possible recoupment site.

Now sources say a deal has been cut where Mayor Ungaro will look contrite and return the mysteriously missing money.

As the saying goes, “Y-town is mob…I mean, my town.”

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Free Movie: Everything’s Cool!, Tonight, Reminder

You are invited to the free movie:
“Everything’s Cool!”
Dubya’s answer to the global warming crisis

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 7:30pm
Drexel East Theater, 2254 East Main Street, Bexley

A REAL-LIFE DISASTER MOVIE
Filmmakers follow the country and our global warming messengers through an extraordinary three years of transformation,
from 2003-to the eve of 2007, with sometimes funny, sometimes tragic experiences.

EVERYTHING’S COOL is a film about America finally “getting” global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding
and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo-scientific deception, a group of self-appointed global warming messengers
went on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels
to the new clean energy economy – AND FAST.
Hold on… this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.

Sponsored by the Free Press, Central Ohio Green Education Fund and the Drexel East Theater.
Truth@freepress.org
253-2571


Film Site:

http://everythingscool.org/index.php

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Free Press Mourns The Tragic Passing Of Courageous U.S. Representative

Free Press mourns the tragic passing of courageous U.S. Representative
Stephanie Tubbs-Jones
August 21, 2008

Bob Fitrakis, with the Ecological Options Network crew, interviewed Rep.
Tubbs-Jones after the 2004 election debacle and subsequent 2005 challenge
to the Ohio electoral votes. Watch it here:

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Free Movie: Everything’s Cool!, Dubya’s Answer To The Global Warming

You are invited to the free movie:
“Everything’s Cool!”
Dubya’s answer to the global warming crisis

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 7:30pm
Drexel East Theater, 2254 East Main Street, Bexley

A REAL-LIFE DISASTER MOVIE
Filmmakers follow the country and our global warming messengers through an extraordinary three years of transformation,
from 2003-to the eve of 2007, with sometimes funny, sometimes tragic experiences.

EVERYTHING’S COOL is a film about America finally “getting” global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding
and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo-scientific deception, a group of self-appointed global warming messengers
went on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels
to the new clean energy economy – AND FAST.
Hold on… this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.

Sponsored by the Free Press, Central Ohio Green Education Fund and the Drexel East Theater.
Truth@freepress.org
253-2571


Film Site:

http://everythingscool.org/index.php

/by

Razorcake – Interview With Greg Palast

By Chris Pepus

Monday, August 11 @ 00:00:00 EDT

The American press corps has finally begun to report on illegal activities of the Bush administration. However, the subject of election theft remains largely ignored. In recent years, the Republican Party has used an array of tactics to subtract votes from opposing candidates. These include sending defective voting machines to strongly Democratic precincts and removing low-income and minority voters from electoral rolls.

Reporter Greg Palast has been covering this issue since 2000, when he revealed that Florida officials ensured the election of George W. Bush by illegally suppressing the African-American and Democratic vote. (Learn more about that subject here.) In this interview, I asked Palast about his reports on the GOP’s dirty electoral tricks since 2000 and the possibility that the ’08 election will be stolen. He explained how the Help America Vote Act actually helps crooked Republicans and he previewed his upcoming broadcasts and publications, which will include a free guide with tips for safeguarding your vote.

–Chris Pepus

Chris: Your reports on vote suppression led to a congressional inquiry and the resignation of Tim Griffin, one of President Bush’s U.S. Attorneys.[i] Could you describe how the Bush administration interfered with voting rights in 2004?

Greg: Item one is something that we discovered called caging. There were e-mails written by the Republican National Committee’s chief researcher, a character named Tim Griffin, who was a protégé of Karl Rove.[ii] He was sending out caging lists, which are hit lists of voters to challenge. The way caging works is they send out registered letters to voters and when the voters aren’t around to receive their letters—the envelopes say, “Do Not Forward”—the voters end up being subject to challenge. The particular hit list that we got was substantially filled with voters from the naval air station in Jacksonville ( Florida). There are reasons why someone at a naval air station wouldn’t be at their voting address. That’s because, unlike Bush during Vietnam, they are off in a foreign war. Republicans also sent letters to students at black colleges in August knowing that they wouldn’t be there. They illegally challenged their votes. The Republicans challenged three million voters in 2004, which is absolutely unbelievable and unreported. That fact was right there in the records of the Election Assistance Commission of the federal government. Those voters received provisional ballots and a million of those ballots were thrown in the garbage. That is just one of the tricks. There are several and they are being sharpened for 2008.

Chris: But Griffin claimed that he didn’t know what caging was until he read your report. “I had to look it up,” he said.

Greg: Well, actually, I determined that he is correct. He sent out an e-mail saying, “Here is a caging list.” As he said, you have to be an expert in direct-mail marketing to understand what caging is. Now, that means that someone told him to send out an e-mail with caging lists, someone whose orders were so important that he wouldn’t question them, even if he didn’t know what (the list) was. Now, who would know direct marketing and who could give orders to Tim Griffin? Well, before he worked for George W. Bush, Karl Rove was head of Rove & Company, a direct-mail marketing firm. Rove is an expert on caging. Law professor Bobby Kennedy Jr., my co-investigator, says that this was an illegal act. So who ordered this illegal act? Hm, Mr. Rove?

Chris: How did you obtain these e-mails?

Greg: Griffin is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and he copied these e-mails not to GeorgeWBush.com, which was the campaign’s internal e-mail system, but rather to GeorgeWBush.org, a parody web site. The head of that site, John Wooden, knows me. He immediately passed (the e-mails) on to my team. He didn’t know what they were and, frankly, we didn’t know what they were at first either. It took a lot of work to decode.

Chris: Have there been any new developments in the case, other than Karl Rove’s refusal to testify before the House Judiciary Committee?

Greg: I have just returned from a meeting with David Iglesias, a fired prosecutor from New Mexico. Caging and gimmicks like it were behind his firing and the firings of other U.S. prosecutors.[iii] The U.S. press corps, as usual, got it completely wrong. The firing of U.S. Attorneys is not simply about the politics of the prosecutors or even the operations of their offices. Rather, it is about an attempt to force prosecutors to be involved in a scheme to arrest voters under voter-fraud laws to create hysteria to justify vote suppression. I was constantly asking Republicans, “If there are so many criminal voters, why haven’t you arrested them? Why aren’t there prosecutions?” The Republicans said, “Oh, there will be. Talk to David Iglesias.” I called him and other prosecutors and got all this hemming and hawing. So, I’m being told that Iglesias is about to bring prosecutions and he is saying, “I don’t think so.” It’s very clear to me that Iglesias was resisting phony prosecutions. He ran around the bases looking for fraudulent voters and he didn’t find one. Some were in the military, so they were not at their voting addresses.

I just came back from checking out some of the so-called fraudulent voters that Iglesias refused to prosecute. Republican leaders gave me their names. There was one lady, a waitress, who was signed up twice and there were two different signatures of her name. So I spoke to her—this “criminal”—and I said, “Did you register twice?” She said, “Yes.” She explained that, under the law, if you don’t receive formal acknowledgment of your registration, you can and should register again. They don’t put your name on the roll twice. I asked why there were two signatures: “Was there some fraudulent game going on?” She said: “No. One time, I signed at a table. The other time, I signed it on my hand.” This woman was supposed to be one of the six most obvious cases of a fraudulent voter in New Mexico. Governor Bill Richardson signed laws making it harder for people to register because of these so-called frauds. The laws are so horrible that Richardson, a Hispanic Democrat, is being sued by the Brennan Center for Justice for illegally impeding Hispanic voters.     

Chris: It’s remarkable how many groups are targeted. I recall reading about defective voting machines in (Palast’s 2006 book) Armed Madhouse. You mentioned that, in ’04, the county in New Mexico where the most votes disappeared was a predominantly white, working-class county.

Greg: Yeah, I call vote theft “class war by other means.” Places like Native American precincts, black precincts, and Mexican barrios are often the hardest hit. But, statistically, we find that it is income more than race that determines whether your vote will count. I can tell you the probability that your vote will count if you tell me your income. By the way, the Republican secretary of state[iv] in Colorado (Mike Coffman) just attacked me. I reported that he purged all these voters. He said, “Palast is just trying to raise money for his operation,” but he didn’t say I was wrong. He said he was just following the law. I’d heard all this from Katherine Harris[v] before. I’d said, “Guess the color of the voters purged.” He said, “We don’t keep track of voters’ race on our voter forms.” Yeah, right. They know. It’s by zip code. That’s the other thing: if they don’t know, they should know. Civil rights law does require election officials to take steps to determine that their actions don’t have a racial bias. When he said, “I don’t know,” that’s not true and, also, that’s not a legal answer. He’s supposed to know, especially when he removes a fifth of the voters in Colorado.

Chris: Another state with a history of vote suppression is Florida. In 2000, you reported that Florida Republicans removed tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the rolls. Have you found evidence pointing to a similar result this year?

Greg: Worse than ever. The whole nation’s been Floridated. George Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (in 2002) and, in 2006, they did a Katherine Harris on the whole nation. They told secretaries of state, who are partisan officials in every state, to purge away and remove “suspect voters.” A lot of the things that were illegal, like caging, that’s now in the law. Basically, we now have federal cover for mischief, instead of federal prohibition. In one New Mexico county, half the Democrats who showed up to vote in the (2008) primary/caucus couldn’t vote. You have address purges, I.D. purges. The Brennan Center said that about 85,000 voters in Florida are losing their right to vote, because they signed up in voter drives and couldn’t verify their identity. Overwhelmingly, those voters are black, because many black voters register in voter drives out of their churches. So, Florida’s back in the game. They’re just changing the rules.

Chris: How does the Help America Vote Act enable those tactics?

Greg: For example, Florida, when imposing special identity requirements on voter drives, they cited the Help America Vote Act. They said that it was required. Now, the fact that forty-six states don’t agree with them on that interpretation didn’t stop them. Also, HAVA basically required every state in America to change its laws. Once you open up the howling Pandora’s Box of election law, every reform becomes grounds for new mischief. HAVA creates this new shadow world of law. Florida officials said, “Well, we did this for HAVA.” Then the lawyers at the Brennan Center said, “Where in HAVA? How can you say this is for HAVA?” They said, “Oh, well, that’s our own interpretation.” Is this federal law? Is it state law? No, it’s Bush law; it’s Rove law. The nice thing about elections for vote thieves: there’s a “Fuck you” clause in vote theft. If you win, you control the review. You own the police.

Chris: Which provisions of the act are most often cited as authority for attacks on voting rights?

Greg: I go back to the 2006 codicils. Certain things kicked in in ’06 regarding verification of voter identity. That is the most mischievous thing. The law demanded that, beginning in ’06, each state must have centralized, computerized rolls of voters. Again, the first state to go full-on with computerized, centralized purging of voter rolls was Florida. That’s how we ended up with the phony felon purge (in 2000). With HAVA, they used the Florida fix as an excuse to create a so-called reform and the “reform” was to take Florida’s method and nationalize it. But people say, “Well, why shouldn’t we have verified rolls?” The answer is that this is a new law to prevent a crime that almost never happens. We have five or fewer convictions for vote fraud a year in America. We figure that, under the new system, five million voters a year lose their right to vote. You literally have a million voters losing their right to vote to catch one ne’er-do-well. You don’t arrest a million people to catch one murderer.

Chris: Now, regarding these centralized lists, you’ve written about a firm called Accenture that runs computerized voting lists for various state governments. Could you talk about that?

Greg: Accenture used to be Arthur Andersen, but after they got caught cooking the books for Enron, they tend not to use that name. Arthur Andersen was split into two parts: one was liquidated, put into bankruptcy, and one was renamed Accenture. They haven’t changed their ways. There’s Accenture; there’s ES&S (Election Systems & Software). These characters are some of the greasiest operators out there. They combine bias with incompetence and high fees. ES&S has been involved in New Mexico. It’s a firm founded by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (of Nebraska). Every time ES&S gets involved in purging voter rolls, they turn astonishingly Republican. Everyone knows that if you use certain methods, it knocks out certain types of voters. That’s why I’m doing this investigation with Bobby Kennedy. We are investigating the theft of the 2008 election before it happens. We’re looking at what’s happening in Colorado, New Mexico, Alabama, Florida. We’re going to be putting out a big national magazine article with our findings. We can’t say where.

Chris: When is that going to come out?

Greg: In September. We will then also have a film out starting with a broadcast on BBC Television and a U.S. national network. For the first time, we’re going to break through the electronic blockade in America.

Chris: I read that you’re raising funds for the broadcast. How are you doing on that?

Greg: Well, that’s the thing. (The network) finally opened the door, but they said, “Of course, we’re not paying for this.” Okay, I’ll tell my cameramen to eat dog food. My staff is pretty good at living on very little. They were here last night ’til 2 a.m. (Research associate) Zach Roberts—I want to give him his due—his last day off was about seven weeks ago. This is a nonstop operation, but I have to raise money to provide the bare minimum. We do want to be able to provide outreach and give stuff out to some activist groups. We’re going to have a voter guide, Steal Back Your Vote, which I’m putting together with Kennedy. A lot of this is going to be in comic-book form, designed by Top Shelf. I had a complaint from one of my fundraisers that we give away too much stuff—my books, DVDs. But that’s our game: to get the word out and build a knowledge base. Now, I’ll give a hint of my age. The protests against the war in Vietnam began with massive teach-ins: “Here’s where Vietnam is.” We need to learn the issues. People are unarmed. That is, people know that they’re getting shafted, but they don’t really know exactly how.

http://www.gregpalast.com/

[i] U.S. Attorneys are senior prosecutors in the Justice Department. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys, each in charge of his/her own district.

[ii] Nicknamed “Bush’s brain,” Rove served as chief strategist for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. From 2001-2007, Rove held various posts in the Bush administration, including senior advisor and deputy chief of staff.

[iii] In 2006, the Justice Department fired nine U.S. Attorneys, nearly all of whom had received high performance ratings from the department. The subject is being investigated by Congress. Alberto Gonzalez, the attorney general at the time, claims to remember very little about the firings.

[iv] The official in charge of a state’s elections.

[v] In 2000, Harris was the secretary of state in Florida and the co-chair of George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in that state. She presided over the various voter purges in 2000 and was the one who officially certified Bush the winner of the election.

Original Copy Link:

http://tinyurl.com/6cmzfd

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Free Press Election Protection Conference, September 26-28, 2008, Mark Crispin Miller

If you are interested in helping make sure Ohio’s 2008 election is free and fair…
please
SAVE THE DATES:
September 26-28, 2008
for the:
Free Press Election Protection Conference
Co-conveners: Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
at the
Center for Workforce Development conference center
315 Cleveland Avenue, 4th floor
Columbus State Community College, Columbus, Ohio

Workshops on:

Board of Election Monitors
Election Day Election Protection
Video the Vote

** Free Registration ** Free Parking **

Please RSVP:
614-253-2571
truth@freepress.org
Donation requested for refreshments
Parking in Columbus State lot at Cleveland by 670 or guest parking meters
Keynote speaker: Mark Crispin Miller – Meet Mark on Friday, September 26 for his talk at 9pm
Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University and author of the books: “Loser Take All,” “Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections” and “The Bush Dyslexicon.” He is known for his writing on American media and for his activism on behalf of democratic media reform.

Featured films:
Free For All
produced by John Ennis
Sept. 26 – 7pm (free)
Columbus State – conference center
John investigates the evidence of the stolen 2004 election with sometimes frustrating and often funny results

Stealing America Vote-by-Vote
produced by Dorothy Fadiman
Sept. 28 – 12:30pm (tentative)
Drexel Gateway Theater, OSU
Experts and witnesses exposing the flaws of electronic voting

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’04 Election Apologists Still Unmoved By Mountain Of Evidence: Columbus Dispatch Ignores Facts

by Bob Fitrakis

Columbus Dispatch articles explaining the 2004 election irregularities
all embrace the same formula: ignore the more than 1000 signed
affidavits and sworn testimonies of disenfranchised voters; rely only
on the word of OSU Law Professor Dan Tokaji who has no background in
statistical analysis and who always tells the Dispatch whatever they
want to hear; and then apologize for former Ohio Secretary of State J.
Kenneth Blackwell and fail to mention what is routinely reported in
every other major newspaper in the state of Ohio.

In the Sunday, August 10 Dispatch front page story, the paper
conveniently avoids reporting on Blackwell’s well-documented
activities. There’s no mention of: Blackwell’s directive that returned
voter registration applications that weren’t on “80-bond paper weight”;
Blackwell’s refusal to count the votes for the first time in modern
Ohio history if voters were at the right polling place but the wrong
precinct table; the fact that Blackwell outsourced Ohio’s official vote
count tabulation to Michael Connell, a Bush family partisan who sent
the vote tally to a Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee
tied to the White House; or of his full-court blitz on TV trying to get
Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry to concede with 250,000
uncounted votes

The Dispatch claims “there’s no direct proof of widespread fraud.” This
may be true. But, in an election where the exit polls showed Kerry
winning by 3 percentage points, all you need is a “little bit of” fraud
to flip the numbers. And that’s exactly what the exit polls showed.
That instead of Kerry winning 52% to 48%, Bush wins 51% to 48.5%.

So biased was the Dispatch reporting that they either engaged in
deliberate propaganda or made errors so simple that they would have
flunked Intro to Politics 101 at any college. Tokaji, who admitted to
having no training in exit polling, told the AP, and hence the world,
that the unexplainable discrepancy between the exit poll numbers and
the actual vote count was not a problem.

For example, they report without embarrassment that the official
response for the highly accurate exit polls being wrong in Ohio – and
so outside the margin of error that it would only happen in one in
959,000 presidential elections – was that “…exit polls are based only
on responses from voters who agree to participate.”

The Dispatch’s own polls, that they brag about as being highly
accurate, are based on only those who agree to participate. Also,
methodology requires only randomization, not that every single voter
exiting the polls agrees to respond. This means that every voter has
equal chance at inclusion. If the pollsters are asking every 10th voter
and one refuses, they go on to the next 10th voter.

In a telephone survey, if a particular person who is randomly called
isn’t home, or refuses to answer the questions, it doesn’t negate the
scientific validity of the survey if it is randomized and
representative. All of this is taken into consideration in the polls’
methodology.

The Dispatch formula invokes the “c” word – conspiracy – whenever
possible. The paper’s fundamental premise is that the statistically
impossible results of the election and the highly improbably nature of
all the irregularities going in Bush’s favor and against John Kerry are
just a coincidence. The Dispatch’s brand of reporting is a monument to
coincidence theory.

From the paper’s perspective: 308,000 voters purged from voting
registration rolls in the urban centers of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and
Toledo, are not deliberate, even though 80% or so would have likely
voted for Kerry; dozens of sworn statements from voters saying that
they touched the computer screen for Kerry and saw their vote flip to
Bush is only an accident; and that Kerry’s votes ran significantly
behind an underfunded retired African American municipal judge from
Cleveland on the ticket – only in 14 Republican counties – is simply
ignored.

On Friday, July 25, the Dispatch ran the headline: “’04 Ohio election
was fair, Blackwell says.” In the course of the story, they quote the
ubiquitous Tokaji who states without facts or political science
qualifications that Bush’s margin “was sufficient to overcome any legal
challenge that might have arisen from provisional ballots that were
uncounted ambiguously marked punch-card ballots and long lines that may
have discouraged many citizens from voting.”

Tokaji’s assessment runs contrary to dozens of social and political
science texts on the subject. He has refused to appear on panels with
political scientists who offer different views. Nor has Tokaji
indicated that he’s actually gone into the boards of elections’
warehouses and looked at hundreds of thousands of actual ballots, as
his critics do in preparing their analyses.

In a previous article, the Dispatch officially reported without
blushing that Franklin County Board of Elections Executive Director
Denny L. White retired last month. Members of the Franklin County
Democratic Party Central Committee are openly telling reporters that
White was forced out for echoing the Dispatch line that there were no
significant problems with the 2004 election. White, the former chair of
the Ohio Democratic Party, announces his retirement in July of a
presidential election year and is replaced by the 28-year-old Michael
Stinziano, and the Dispatch reports as fact the fantasy spun by the
Party’s PR people.

To put things in perspective, they quote Tokaji who states the obvious:
“There are lots of land mines out there, and someone who is not
experienced in running local elections must very quickly educate
themselves as to where those land mines are.” The Dispatch might have
asked some Party insiders why the highly experienced Denny White was
retiring just prior to the election. It’s difficult to avoid this
question when the Dispatch headline read: “New director will face first
ballot in 3 months.”

Four days prior to the Dispatch’s August 10 article that smeared the
election integrity movement, they were forced to report that Ohio
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner had sued the former Diebold
Election Systems, now Premier Election Solutions, for providing the
state “defective” computerized voting machines.

Brunner told the Dispatch that an investigation by her office
documented that the Diebold machines “dropped” votes in “at least 11
counties.”

Conveniently missing from the Dispatch article is the fact that
Blackwell personally negotiated the unbid contract that brought Diebold
machines into prominence in Ohio. At the same time, Blackwell held
Diebold stock. The article also fails to report that Diebold’s CEO
Walden O’Dell, a major contributor to the Bush-Cheney Re-election
Campaign, sent out a letter pledging to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes
to Bush in 2004.

But the key reason the Dispatch is attacking the election integrity
movement and lead litigator Cliff Arnebeck, of the King Lincoln
Bronzeville case that seeks to protect the civil rights of voters in
the 2008 election, is because of the revelations concerning Bush family
loyalist Michael Connell and the allegations that the vote can easily
be stolen with the flip of a switch in the computerized vote tabulation
process.

The Dispatch avoids dealing with the revelations by highly respected
Republican IT man and McCain supporter Steve Spoonamore at a Columbus
press conference on July 17. With Dispatch reporter Mark Niquette in
attendance, Spoonamore stated in no uncertain terms that he felt the
evidence suggested fraud in the 2004 election. The Dispatch is also not
telling its readers that Spoonamore’s analysis as an expert witness was
offered to the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Spoonamore, who has worked for the Secret Service and major
corporations on credit card fraud, stated that the IT system designed
by Mike Connell for Blackwell is vulnerable to election rigging. In the
Dispatch version of reality, little-qualified Party appointees and
untrained volunteer election workers stand as a bipartisan impenetrable
fortress against election tampering. The ultimate thesis is always
based on the tenuous fact that there’s a bipartisan system of Democrats
and Republicans at county boards of elections, therefore election
rigging is “impossible.”

Spoonamore’s point is the exact opposite of the Dispatch’s. As long as
all the Ohio election results are compiled at county central tabulators
and fed officially to sites in Ohio and Tennessee, overseen partisan IT
companies using proprietary secret software, then our elections are
vulnerable to manipulation. All the well-intentioned “bipartisan”
grandmothers, grandfathers and political operatives working the polling
places and boards of elections watching the flashy touchscreens and
shiny county central tabulators have no idea what’s really going on
inside the black box and what happens when the
digital vote count heads off into cyberspace.
__________________________

Bob Fitrakis holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a J.D. from the OSU
Moritz College of Law, is a Political Science Professor at Columbus
State Community College, and is an award-winning investigative
reporter.

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Two opportunities to meet Cynthia McKinney in Columbus


Two opportunities to meet Cynthia McKinney in Columbus! Free!

Saturday, August 9, 2008 – 4-6pm
At Victorian’s Midnight Cafe, 251 W. Fifth Avenue, Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio Green Party 2008 Presidential Campaign Organizing Event with
Cynthia McKinney will discuss her campaign and statewide organizers will be on hand with petitions.
Sponsored by the Ohio Green Party.
Please RSVP Anita Rios, 419-243-8772 rhannon@toast.net.

And

The Second Saturday Salon – Aug. 9, 6:30pm to 8:30 pm
1000 E. Main St. Columbus Ohio
parking in rear or next door at the Salvation Army
Discussion of grassroots activism and election protection.

Sponsored by Green Pro, the Green Institute, The Free Press, The Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism,
the Central Ohio Green Education Fund
Robert Fitrakis 614-253-2571, truth@freepress.org

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, , ,

Remembering A Hero: Bill Moss

August 4, 2008
By Bob Fitrakis

When he died, Entertainment Weekly called him the Berry Gordy of Columbus. It was August 2, 2005 when Columbus lost a hero. Bill Moss made his reputation in radio as the “Boss with the Red Hot Sauce.” But he was much more than that: a loving husband and father, good friend, public servant, and Soldier of the Year. He was a man of the highest integrity whose principles couldn’t be bought for thirty pieces of silver, who heard the voice of the Lord say unto him “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” and Bill answered, “Here am I, send me.”

Moss, the Chief Plaintiff in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit that challenged the results of the 2004 election, spoke these words before agreeing to sue the President of the United States: “The only way an investigation is going to happen is if we the people take the responsibility.” He felt the theft of the 2004 Ohio presidential election was deliberate. He believed that the American people had “rolled over” too easy after 2000 Florida debacle. After Bill and his wife Ruth witnessed the hours-long lines at the Franklin Middle School polling site, and noting that it had never taken them over 20 to minutes in the past, they decided that they would lead the charge to expose the corruption and reveal the crimes behind it.

It’s hard to forget how deeply he cared and how hard he fought, and how lucky we were to have worked by his side. He kept the faith and so shall we. We vow to protect the 2008 election in his name.

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