Archive for category: Clean Elections

by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis
July 30, 2007

It is time to think about the “unthinkable.”

The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.

The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don’t know.

But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006) we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention.

The real question is not how or when they might do it. It’s how, realistically, we can stop them.

In Florida 2000, Team Bush had a game plan involving a handful of tactics. With Jeb Bush in the governor’s mansion, the GOP used a combination of disenfranchisement, intimidation, faulty ballots, electronic voting fraud, a rigged vote count and an aborted recount, courtesy of the US Supreme Court.

A compliant Democrat (Al Gore) allowed the coup to be completed.

In Ohio 2004, the arsenal of dirty tricks exploded. Based in Columbus, we have documented more than a hundred different tactics used to steal the 20 electoral votes that gave Bush a second term. More are still surfacing. As a result of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit (in which we are plaintiff and attorney) we have now been informed that 56 of the 88 counties in Ohio violated federal law by destroying election records, thus preventing a definitive historical recount.

As in 2000, a compliant Democrat (John Kerry) allowed the coup to proceed.

For 2008 we expect the list of vote theft maneuvers to escalate yet again. We are already witnessing a coordinated nationwide drive to destroy voter registration organizations and to disenfranchise millions of minority, poor and young voters.

This carefully choreographed campaign is complemented by the widespread use of electronic voting machines. As reported by the Government Accountability Office, Princeton University, the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, US Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and others, these machines can be easily used to flip an election. They were integral to stealing both the 2000 and 2004 elections. Efforts to make their source codes transparent, or to require a usable paper trail on a federal level, have thus far failed. A discriminatory Voter ID requirement may also serve as the gateway to a national identification card.

Overall, the GOP will have at its command even more weapons of election theft in 2008 than it did in Ohio 2004, which jumped exponentially from Florida 2000. The Rovian GOP is nothing if not tightly organized to do this with ruthless efficiency. Expect everything that was used these past two presidential elections to surface again in 2008 in far more states, with far more efficiency, and many new dirty tricks added in.

But in Ohio 2006, the GOP learned a hard lesson. Its candidate for governor was J. Kenneth Blackwell. The Secretary of State was the essential on-the-ground operative in the theft of Ohio 2004.

When he announced for governor, many Ohioans joked that “Ken Blackwell will never lose an election where he counts the votes.”

But lose he did….along with the GOP candidates for Secretary of State, Attorney-General and US Senate.

By our calculations, despite massive grassroots scrutiny, the Republicans stole in excess of 6% of the Ohio vote in 2006. But they still lost.

Why? Because they were so massively unpopular that even a 6% bump couldn’t save them. Outgoing Governor Bob Taft, who pled guilty to four misdemeanors while in office, left town with a 7% approval rating (that’s not a typo). Blackwell entered the last week of the campaign down 30% in some polls.

So while the GOP still had control of the electoral machinery here in 2006, the public tide against them was simply too great to hold back, even through the advanced art and science of modern Rovian election theft.

In traditional electoral terms, that may also be the case in 2008. Should things proceed as they are now, it’s hard to imagine any Republican candidate going into the election within striking distance. The potential variations are many, but the graffiti on the wall is clear.

What’s also clear is that this administration has a deep, profound and uncompromised contempt for democracy, for the rule of law, and for the US Constitution. When George W. Bush went on the record (twice) as saying he has nothing against dictatorship, as long as he can be dictator, it was a clear and present policy statement.

Who really believes this crew will walk quietly away from power? They have the motivation, the money and the method for doing away with the electoral process altogether. So why wouldn’t they?

The groundwork for dismissal of both the legislative and judicial branch has been carefully laid. The litany is well-known, but worth a very partial listing:

The continuation of the drug war, and the Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act and other dictatorial laws prompted by the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, have decimated the Bill of Rights, and shredded the traditional American right to due process of law, freedom from official surveillance, arbitrary violence, and far more.

The current Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, has not backed away from his announcement to Congress that the Constitution does not guarantee habeas corpus. The administration continues to act on the assumption that it can arrest anyone at any time and hold them without notification or trial for as long as it wants.

The establishment of the Homeland Security Agency has given it additional hardware to decimate the basic human rights of our citizenry. Under the guise of dealing with the “immigration problem,” large concentration camps are under construction around the US.

The administration has endorsed and is exercising its “right” to employ torture, contrary to the Eighth Amendment and to a wide range of international treaties, which Gonzales has labeled “quaint.”

With more than 200 “signing statements” the administration acts on its belief that the “unitary executive” trumps the power of the legislative branch in any instance it chooses. This belief has been further enforced with the administration’s use of a wide range of precedent-setting arguments to keep its functionaries from testifying before Congress.

There is much more. In all instances, the 109th Congress—and the public—have rolled over without significant resistance.

Most crucial now are Presidential Directive #51, Executive Orders #13303, #13315, #13350, #13364, #13422, #13438, and more, by which Bush has granted himself an immense arsenal of powers for which the term “dictatorial” is a modest understatement.

The Founders established our government with checks and balances. But executive orders have accumulated important precedent. The Emancipation Proclamation by which Lincoln declared an end to slavery in the South, was issued under the “military necessity” of adding blacks to the Union Army, a step without which the North might not have won the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order #8802 established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Harry Truman’s Executive Order #9981 desegregated the military.

Most to the point, FDR’s Executive Order #9066 ordered the forcible internment of 100,000 people of Japanese descent into the now infamous concentration camps of World War II.

There is also precedent for a president overriding the Supreme Court. In the 1830s Chief Justice John Marshall enshrined the right of the Cherokee Nation to sovereignty over its ancestral land in the Appalachian Mountains. But President Andrew Jackson scorned the decision. Some 14,000 native Americans were moved at gunpoint to Oklahoma. More than 3,000 died along the way.

All this will be relevant should Team Bush envision a defeat in the 2008 election and decide to call it off. It’s well established that Richard Nixon—mentor to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney—commissioned the Huston Plan, which detailed how to cancel the 1972 election.

Today we must ask: who would stop this administration from taking dictatorial power in the instance of a “national emergency” such as a terror attack at a nuclear power plant or something similar?

Nothing in the behavior of this Congress indicates that it is capable of significant resistance. Impeachment seems beyond it. Nor does it seem Congress would actually remove Bush if it did put him on trial.

Short of that, Bush clearly does not view anything Congress might do as a meaningful impediment. After all, how many divisions does the Congress command?

The Supreme Court, as currently constituted, would almost certainly rubber stamp a Bush coup. If not, like Jackson, he could ignore it as easily as he would ignore Congress.

What does that leave? There is much idle speculation now about what the armed forces would do. We also hear loose talk about “90 million gun owners.”

From the public side, the only conceivable counter-force might be a national strike or an effective long-term campaign of general non-cooperation.

But we can certainly assume the mainstream media will give lock-step support to whatever the regime says and does. It’s also a given that those likely to lead the resistance will immediately land in those new prisons being built by Halliburton et. al.

So how do we cope with the harsh realities of such a Bush/Cheney/Rove dictatorial coup?

We may have about a year to prepare. Every possible scenario needs to be discussed in excruciating detail.

For only one thing is certain: denial will do nothing.

—
HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.solartopia.org, along with SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030. The FITRAKIS FILES are at www.freepress.org (where this article was originally published), along with HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, which Bob and Harvey co-wrote.

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
August 2, 2007

The illegal destruction of federally protected 2004 election materials by 56 of 88 Ohio counties has become a fraudulent “dog ate my homework” farce of absurd justifications and criminal coverups.  

The mass elimination of the critical evidence that could definitively prove or disprove the presumption that the 2004 election was stolen has all the markings of a Rovian crime perpetrated to hide another one.  Indeed, under Ohio law, that’s precisely what must be presumed here. 

But what makes the situation downright pathetic is that Ohio’s new Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has publicly stated she sees “no evidence” of intentional destruction in the disappearance in more than 60% of the state’s counties of the ballots from the 2004 presidential election.

So once again, as did Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, the Democrats seem poised to cave to the on-going GOP coup that has redefined America, and that now involves the criminal destruction of contested evidence in one of the most controversial vote counts in US history.

Ironically, in Florida, under Jeb Bush, the ballot records from the 2000 election in all but one of the state’s counties were successfully preserved.  They are now stored in a state repository in Tallahassee.  An unofficial recount conducted by the national media concluded that Al Gore rightfully carried Florida, and thus the presidency, in 2000. 

A parallel preservation was ordained by federal and state law for the election records from Ohio 2004, where a similar examination has been viewed as inevitable. 

But a series of excuses that range from the lame to the pathetic to the obviously criminal have left us shocked—shocked!—to learn that despite the protection of established federal law, a federal court order, long-standing Ohio laws, two directives from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, and legal notification letters from plaintiff’s attorneys to hold the evidence, a precise recount of Ohio’s stolen 2004 election may no longer be possible.

In short, Brunner has informed us that 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties have mostly “inadvertently” destroyed all or some of their records from the 2004 presidential election.

Are we surprised?

Wait ’til you hear how these mostly Republican directors say it happened!

The materials were under legal protection “from birth” on November 4, 2004, shielded by national law, acknowledged by Brunner, by Ohio Revised Coded 3505.31, then by a federal court decision in the now-legendary King-Lincoln-Bronzeville lawsuit (in which we are attorney and plaintiff).  

The Ohio Revised Code specifically states that in presidential elections  “the board shall carefully preserve all ballots prepared and provided by it for use in that election, whether used or unused, for twenty-two months after the day of the election.”  In this case, that would have been through September 2, 2006. 

These records were also essential to reconstructing a credible recount that was most pointedly stifled by then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Brunner blamed the destruction of documents on Blackwell, “…for not giving counties clear instructions and for not notifying them quickly enough about U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley’s September 7, 2006 order,” according to the conservative Columbus Dispatch.  

But many of the ballots were destroyed soon after the election in a series of events whose descriptions grow stranger and more implausible by the day.

In October 25, 2004, just prior to the election, Blackwell issued directive 2004-43, reminding all county election officials of the federal 22-month holding period for presidential ballots. That meant all election-related materials would be under federal protection until September 2, 2006.

On August 23, 2006, plaintiff’s attorneys in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville case hand-delivered a letter to the Secretary of State’s office and faxed notices to all 88 county Board of Elections offices that the ballots were to be evidence in the forthcoming civil rights suit against Blackwell.

On August 31, 2006 that suit was filed in Marbley’s federal court in Columbus. The AP reported that same day that Blackwell “has signaled his willingness to keep ballots from the contentious 2004 election beyond their scheduled September 3 destruction date in response to activists who plan to sue him in federal court today.”

Ohio laws also require that noticed—for election-related materials and other public records—be offered to the Ohio Historical Society and other public repositories before they are destroyed.  Public record forms must be filed and Ohio law requires a Certificate of Destruction. Nonetheless, Blackwell erroneously told the Dispatch the next day that he was “willing to ask the boards not to destroy ballots, but the decision ultimately is a local one.”

But under applicable law, the decision was definitely not “a local one.”  Indeed, Judge Marbley ordered all of Ohio’s 88 counties to “…preserve all ballots from the 2004 presidential election on paper or in any other format, including electronic data, unless and until such time otherwise instructed by this court.”  Thus anyone destroying such records, from Election Day until the time you read this, may have broken various federal or state laws, and be in contempt of a federal court order. 

King-Lincoln alleges a wide range of civil rights violations perpetrated by Blackwell and many of Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections based on race, economic status, political inclination, wrongful denial of absentee ballots (as in Harvey’s case) and more.

Here are some of the stories the counties are telling about the destruction of their ballots: (View the original state documents in a 19.5MB PDF)

Hancock County says it “received verbal directions” from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office that unused and soiled ballots “did not have to be retained and these items were destroyed.”

But any election audit requires a complete set of used and unused ballots to ensure that the unused ballots weren’t stuffed illegally into the ballot box. The law refers specifically to “all” ballots.

Putnam County apparently understood this all too clearly. That’s why they informed Brunner that “all unused ballots were destroyed for security purposes.”

In Warren County, on Election Day, the board of elections declared a Level 10 Homeland Security alert for which neither the Homeland Security Agency nor the FBI has any documentation or explanation.  The alert served as cover for moving the vote count to an isolated warehouse, away from the media.  Bush emerged from Warren County with a huge majority, far in excess of what he received in 2000. 

Some twenty-two thousand officially unused ballots from Warren County are now mysteriously missing.

Warren County Board of Elections Director Michael E. Moore has written Brunner, stating that, in complete defiance of the law, “They were not accidentally destroyed. They were destroyed pursuant to standard practices that had been used by the Board of Elections for many years in Warren County regarding unused punch card ballots.” Moore notes that “The unused ballots were destroyed 60 days after the 2004 election.”

Warren, along with neighboring Clermont and Butler counties, provided Bush with more than his entire 118,775 winning margin in Ohio 2004.  Thus these three counties were singled out for allegations of fraud in the election contest case Moss v. Bush (though only after surviving the first-ever Congressional challenge to a state’s entire Electoral College delegation). The allegations of fraud on a level that could have decided the presidency were thus never tested in court…and now the evidence has been destroyed.    

Clermont County “could not locate” the unused ballots, according to Mike Keeley, Board of Elections Director.

Butler County cannot provide the “2004 General Election Ballot Pages.”   Director Betty McGary says that “at no time was anyone specifically instructed to discard these items.  Our staff unintentionally discarded boxes containing Ballot Pages as requested in Directive 2007-07 due to unclear and misinterpreted instructions.” For complex reasons having to do with Ohio’s precinct ballot rotation law, the ballots from Butler County cannot be recounted with the “Ballot Pages” missing. The pages match the punches to the candidates.

Holmes County BOE Director Lisa Welch wrote Brunner that  “a shelving unit collapsed in the Board of Elections storeroom on the morning of Friday, April 7, 2006. That shelving unit held the voted ballots, stubs, soiled and defaced ballot envelopes, and ballot accounting charts from the 2004 General Election. The shelves and stored items collapsed onto a side table holding a working coffee maker. The carafe on the coffee maker was full at the time of the incident. Many of the stored items had to be destroyed due to the broken glass and hot coffee. The ballot pages and unused ballots were stored on a neighboring shelf and were not damaged.” 

Holmes County was rendered infamous by Karl Rove’s legendary spin claiming there was an unprecedented massive turnout of homophobic old order Amish voted for Bush and against gay marriage.  (It is well-known that the Amish as a community rarely vote). 

Allen County “labeled all voted ballots and placed [them] in our vault for the required 22 months of storage,” according to Keith Cunningham, Director. Cunningham distinguished himself as a pro-Bush and Rove mouthpiece when he testified at then-Congressman (now-felon) Bob Ney’s cursory March 2005 hearing into the 2004 Ohio election.

Cunningham told the Secretary of State that in the “…latter part of 2004 and into 2005… [we] began to experience problems with storm water migrating and subsequently penetrating our primary storage areas including our vault.” He told Free Press reporter Paddy Shaffer that the vault had been flooding for “six years,” and he had to put the 2004 presidential ballots on the floor because he needed the shelf space.

Cunningham added that:  “As a result of these events, much of what was stored in our vault, including the 2004 general election ballots, were compromised by water damage and subsequently destroyed on or about August 20, 2006. Pursuant to the recommendations of the Allen County Health Department the boxes displaying mold or mildew were set aside to be discarded. Unfortunately, the contractor hired to remove the damaged boxes also accidentally removed the undamaged boxes as well,” stated Cunningham, who did manage to save 498 write-in ballots.

The Health Department records recommended destruction or isolation as a solution.

Guernsey County’s ballots suffered a similar twisted fate. According to BOE Director Jacqueline Newhart, “The unused ballots as well as the punch card ballot pages were destroyed in error” because “the county maintenance worker, when collecting trash, picked up the boxes” that contained them.

In allegedly mobbed up Mahoning County, the board of elections has blamed environmentalists for inadvertently destroying the ballots. Apparently the “Mahoning County Green Team picked up all recyclables in the storage room for disposal pursuant to the retention schedule,” according to Director Thomas McCabe. As a result, some 115, 936 ballots “were accidentally disposed of on Friday, March 23 of 2007.”

Down in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), home of the Taft family dynasty, the unvoted and soiled ballots were “inadvertently shredded between January 19th and 26th of ’06.”

Perhaps the most egregious case of ballot destruction, and easiest to criminally prosecute, is Director Steve Harsman’s in Montgomery County.  Researcher Richard Hayes Phillips reported in the Free Press that, “…the Board was eager to destroy them [the ballots]. The employees who handled the ballots for me brought up the subject themselves.”

Harsman conceded that the “Ohio Revised Code” required a 22-month “retention schedule.” Yet, he argues that since the “Certificate of Destruction” had already been “prepared” prior to his receiving the order from Judge Marbley that he had the right to destroy the ballots.

“We literally ran out of space to prepare, stage, and retain material for these elections. It was imperative that we process the 2004 materials for destruction under the guidelines of the 22-month retention. Therefore, all materials were properly destroyed in a timely manner and we were unable to comply due to these circumstances. We did not receive formal notice from the courts prior to preparing the certification of destruction,” Harman wrote.

Thus Harman admits to openly defying a federal court order and destroying evidence because he wasn’t notified “prior to preparing the certification of destruction.”

But Judge Marbley pointed out in his opinion and order of September 11, 2006 in support of his order of September 7, that the Ohio Revised Code 3501.16 makes it a fourth degree felony for, among other things, willfully or negligently violating election laws as a director of a board of elections.

The original story of the ballots being saved for litigation and history made the pages of the New York Times. But the blatant and bizarre destruction of Ohio’s 2004 ballots has been relegated to the back page of the Columbus Dispatch Metro & State section. The brief article by Mark Niquette ran below the fold and the weather map, and above an ad for Window World and the Ohio State Medical Center. 

Matt Damschroder, the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Election Director and former Chair of the Republican Party, assured the Dispatch that the “counties did nothing intentionally wrong.” Damschroder is the President of the Ohio Association of Election Officials and was suspended without pay for a month after he accepted a $10,000 check from a Diebold representative in his office, made out to the GOP on the day the bidding for e-voting machines opened.

His job was in jeopardy until Board of Elections President Bill Anthony, Chair of the Franklin County Democratic Party, intervened to save Damschroder from firing.

King-Lincoln-Bronzeville Attorney Cliff Arnebeck stated that “The nature and scope of the cover-up can tell a lot about the nature and scope of the crime. Destruction of relevant documents can create a presumption that such evidence would have helped the other side in litigation.”

Arnebeck also said White House advisor Karl Rove “has had the keys to the US Justice Department for some time. No wonder FBI investigations requested by US Rep. John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee went nowhere. He also used those keys to scuttle two years of work by the IRS and FBI of financial corruption at the Ohio Statehouse.”

Overall this blatant destruction of evidence only reinforces the widespread belief that the 2004 election was stolen.  The loss of ballot materials in a few isolated counties might be an understandable  random event.  But for more than 60% of the state’s BOEs to have destroyed ballots or ballot materials amidst a series of bizarre, absurd explanations is a joke. 

America has been robbed of its history here.  The public has a right to know the true outcome of the 2004 election, and to have its laws about preservation of critical records honored.  

Under evidence laws, the destruction of material that serves as evidence in a lawsuit is presumed to be fraudulent action by the destroyer. 

But the Bush-Rove-Blackwell regime is about nothing if not contempt for the law.  And its assault on the documents that could show what really happened in Ohio’s contested 2004 election seems yet another obvious confirmation that it was, in fact, stolen. 

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman’s HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at freepress.org  (where this article first appeared) along with the FITRAKIS FILES.  HARVEY WASSERMAN’S HISTORY OF THE US is at www.solartopia.org. 
Original post at:

 

https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2730

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.

July 25, 2007

Those who would dismiss out of hand our allegations of election fraud are fond of claiming that there is not a “shred of evidence” to substantiate our charges. To the contrary, there are millions of shreds of evidence in Ohio. In at least 56 of 88 counties, ballots and other elections records were shredded or otherwise destroyed.

On September 11, 2006, Judge Algenon L. Marbley, United States District Judge, Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, in the case of King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, et al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, et al. (Case No. 06-CV-745), issued an order requiring the Boards of Elections for all 88 counties in Ohio to preserve as evidence all the ballots from the 2004 presidential election, “on paper or in any other format, including electronic data.” The intent of Judge Marbley’s order was to extend the 22-month records retention period required by law for federal elections, which period would have ended on September 2, 2006. Judge Marbley cited Ohio Revised Code Section 3505.31, which states in relevant part:

. . . if the election includes the nomination or election of candidates for . . . president, the board shall carefully preserve all ballots prepared and provided by it for use in that election, whether used or unused for twenty-two months after the day of the election. (emphasis added)

. . . provided that the secretary of state . . . may order the board to preserve the ballots or any part of the ballots for a longer period of time, in which event the board shall preserve those ballots for that longer period of time.

In fact, Directive 2004-43, issued by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, dated October 25, 2004, eight days before the election, had also instructed the Boards of Elections that “All used and unused ballots must be retained for at least 22 months.”

In addition, wrote Judge Marbley, the Boards of Election were required to preserve the ballots because they were the subject matter of a lawsuit (King Lincoln v. Blackwell), and the “duty to preserve the ballots began when each county Board of Elections office received a letter from Plaintiffs” on August 31, 2006, notifying them of the filing of the lawsuit.

In short, all ballots, used and unused, were protected from destruction until September 2, 2006 by Ohio Revised Code Section 3505.31 and Secretary of State Directive 2004-43; from August 31, 2006 onward by the filing in Federal District Court of King Lincoln v. Blackwell (Case No. 06-CV-745); and by Order of Judge Algenon L. Marbley from September 11, 2006 “unless and until such time otherwise instructed by this Court.”

As it happens, Boards of Elections in at least 56 of 88 Ohio counties did not comply with the law.

During the spring of 2007, the parties to the King Lincoln v. Blackwell lawsuit reached a courtapproved Stipulated Agreement under which Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, successor to J. Kenneth Blackwell, agreed to take possession of the ballots from all 88 counties in Ohio. According to records provided by Brunner’s office, 46 counties destroyed their unused ballots (a.k.a. “unvoted” ballots). In addition, I was personally informed by the Trumbull County Board of Elections that their unused ballots had been destroyed as well. The 46 counties are: Allen, Ashland, Ashtabula, Athens, Champaign, Clermont, Columbiana, Coshocton, Darke, Erie, Fairfield, Fayette, Guernsey, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardin, Jackson, Lawrence, Licking, Logan, Lorain, Madison, Mahoning, Marion, Medina, Mercer, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Morrow, Noble, Perry, Preble, Putnam, Richland, Sandusky, Scioto, Seneca, Shelby, Stark, Summit, Tuscarawas, Van Wert, Warren, Wayne, Wood.

Many of these counties (e.g. Ashland, Champaign, Erie, Fayette, Monroe, Perry, Shelby, Warren) claimed that the records retention schedule does not state that they must retain their unused ballots for more than 60 days. Fairfield County could only “assume” that the unvoted ballots “would have been shredded” 60 days after the election. Others (e.g. Hardin, Scioto, Stark) stated that their unused ballots were destroyed prior to the court order. Hancock County claimed that they “received verbal direction” from the office of former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that the unused ballots and soiled ballots “did not have to be retained and these items were destroyed.” Logan County actually claimed that they destroyed their unused ballots “pursuant to the Ohio Revised Code.” Putnam County stated that “Following the 2004 General Election all unused ballots were destroyed for security purposes.” Thirteen counties which failed to produce their unused ballots (Columbiana, Coshocton, Darke, Lawrence, Licking, Lorain, Madison, Morgan, Noble, Summit, Tuscarawas, Wayne, Wood) submitted no explanation at all.

Five counties (Athens, Guernsey, Hamilton, Mercer, Van Wert) expressed surprise at being unable to locate their unused ballots. The Athens County Board of Elections stated that “The Director in 2004 has retired and we feel that these unvoted ballots from the polls were inadvertently discarded.” The Guernsey County Board of Elections stated that “The unused ballots as well as the punch card ballot pages were destroyed in error” because “the county maintenance worker, when collecting trash, picked up the boxes” that contained them. The Mercer County Board of Elections stated that the unused ballots “were not found in our storage area. Please note that the previous office administration was responsible for the handling of these ballots. We will continue to search for the unused ballots from this election.” The Van Wert County Board of Elections stated that “After a thorough search of our basement (where most of our equipment and supplies are kept) and our office, we are unable to find any unvoted ballot cards from the November 2, 2004 General Election. We assume that those ballots were discarded.” John M. Williams, Director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, first discovered that their unused ballots were missing on August 22, 2006 when he failed to find them pursuant to my public records request. He submitted the following explanation to Secretary Brunner regarding the “unvoted” ballots and “soiled” ballots:

The above ballots were secured after the election in a basement storage area. To the best of my knowledge, the above ballots were inadvertently shredded between January 19th and 26th of ’06 in an effort to make room for the new Hart voting system. The unvoted ballots were stored in boxes and wheeled carts. The voted ballots were not destroyed as they were stored in punch card filing cabinets that were also located in the basement area. The unvoted punch cards cannot be replicated.

Failure to preserve the unused ballots makes it impossible for any Board of Elections to verify the authenticity of the voted ballots. The sum total of voted, spoiled, and unused ballots in each precinct must equal the total number of ballots issued to that precinct. Without the unused ballots, there is no way for Hamilton, Montgomery, Richland, Stark, Summit and Trumbull counties to prove that ballots in selected precincts were not punched in advance for independent and third-party presidential candidates. Without the unused ballots (and the stub numbers torn from the voted and spoiled ballots), there is no way for Clermont, Darke, Mercer, Shelby, Van Wert and Warren counties to prove that fake ballots were not substituted for real ones.

Clermont County is a special case, because of their infamous “stickered ballots.” During the “recount” of December 14, 2004, several witnesses saw numerous optical scan ballots with white stickers over the Kerry-Edwards mark, and the Bush-Cheney oval filled in. By the time we were allowed to photograph these hand-counted ballots in July of 2006, only one “stickered” presidential ballot survived. The most likely explanation is that the incriminating “stickered” ballots were replaced with “duplicates,” and then destroyed. The making of “duplicate” ballots would have partially depleted the stash of unused ballots, and because such a shortage would also be incriminating, the unused ballots would also have been destroyed.

My initial records request to the Clermont County Board of Elections was dated April 3, 2006. More than twenty weeks later, on August 24, 2006, Director Mike Keeley stated in writing to me that “As time permits, we are still attempting to locate said un-used ballots. When they are located you, and numerous other requestors, will be so notified.” More than one year later, on May 10, 2007, they were still looking, as stated in Keeley’s letter of explanation to Brunner:

The Clermont County Board of Elections (has) been unable to locate the unused ballots regarding the 2004 Election. In interviewing the staff, no one could remember the disposition of said ballots. No one remembers specifically discarding the ballots. There is a possibility that the ballots will surface as we complete the re-organization of our warehouse section, as well as a re-visit to our records storage facility. If/when we locate the unused ballots we will notify our Liaison, for disposition.

According to records provided by Secretary Brunner, 23 counties destroyed their spoiled ballots (a.k.a. “soiled and defaced” ballots). The 23 counties are:

Allen, Ashtabula, Clark, Darke, Hamilton, Hancock, Holmes, Jackson, Lawrence, Licking, Logan, Marion, Medina, Miami, Montgomery, Morrow, Preble, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca, Shelby, Stark, Wyandot.

Miami was the only one of these counties that destroyed their spoiled ballots and nothing else. They submitted no letter of explanation. Failure to preserve the spoiled ballots makes it impossible for Miami County to verify the authenticity of their 570 “recount remakes.” Without the spoiled ballots, there is no way to prove that the “remakes” match the originals they supposedly duplicate. As stated in a previous chapter, “Rain-Soaked Records in Miami County,” the rate of undervotes among the “remakes” was 13.9% (79 of 570), compared to a rate of 0.50% (248 of 49,744) among all the other ballots in the county. It cannot be proven that these were not “remakes” of tampered ballots on which a presidential choice had been erased or covered over.

Also according to records provided by Secretary Brunner, 19 counties destroyed their “ballot pages.” These are booklets, placed upon the voting machines, which list the candidates and the numbered positions on the punch cards that correspond to their names. The 19 counties are:

Adams, Ashtabula, Butler, Clinton, Fayette, Guernsey, Lorain, Marion, Medina, Montgomery, Morrow, Paulding, Preble, Richland, Sandusky, Scioto, Seneca, Shelby, Summit, Wyandot.

Fayette County stated that “The actual Election Day ballot pages would have been destroyed a month before the next election so we could reuse the frames.” The Director of the Clinton County Board of Elections stated that “I discovered the punch card ballot pages were not included in the boxes from the Records Department and began to search for them immediately. I called previous Board of Elections employees and searched our office.” She stated that they “opened and searched each box stored at the Records Department,” but the “Presidential ballot pages were not found.”

Four of these counties (Adams, Butler, Clinton and Paulding) destroyed their ballot pages and nothing else. The Butler County Board of Elections offered the following explanation:

In early March of 2007, we were in the process of creating an inventory of all storage items being held in our off-site warehouse. At that time, a request to discard unused forms from the 2004 Precinct Kits was approved. When these instructions were related via telephone to our offsite warehouse staff, a miscommunication occurred. The instructions were interpreted as to include boxes containing the 2004 ballot pages – as they were being stored next to the unused forms boxes. At no time was anyone specifically instructed to discard these items. Our warehouse staff then began cleaning the storage area and marking boxes for inventory purposes. During that process, several boxes containing all the wire-bound ballot pages were discarded into a Rumpke dumpster. This dumpster would have been emptied into the local landfill.

Failure to preserve the ballot pages makes it impossible to verify that the ballot rotation was listed correctly on each and every voting machine. Without the ballot pages, there is no way for Butler County, for example, to prove that the “Connally anomaly” in specific precincts was not due to the ballot positions being reversed on one of several voting machines in that precinct. This could have happened in one of two ways. If the presidential positions were reversed on a machine in a “blue precinct,” there would have been a net loss of Kerry votes to Bush; or if the Chief Justice positions were reversed on a machine in a “red precinct,” there would have been a net loss of Moyer votes to Connally. Either way, by fraud or error, Connally would likely have run ahead of Kerry in that precinct. Reversing the ballot rotations on all machines for a single precinct would make the results obviously erroneous. But if only one machine of several was affected, the results would be merely anomalous.

Among the counties that failed to provide all their voted ballots to Secretary Brunner, two counties (Mahoning, Ross) are listed as having destroyed only their absentee ballots. That is because the only paper ballots they ever had were absentee ballots. Both of these counties utilized electronic voting at the polls on Election Day. The Mahoning County Board of Elections blamed the destruction of evidence on poor communications with the “Green Team” (a.k.a. Mahoning County Commissioners’ Reuse and Recycling Division):

The ballots were accidentally disposed of on Friday, March 23rd of 2007. On Wednesday the 21st the warehouse supervisor asked the Director, Thomas P. McCabe, if it was acceptable to have the Mahoning County Green Team pick up all recyclables in the storage room for disposal pursuant to the retention schedule. The Director gave the affirmative that it was acceptable. Lost in the communication was the previous memorandum between said two of the September court order to retain all 2004 materials past the retention date.

Five counties (Allen, Holmes, Jackson, Lawrence, Scioto) provided some but not all of their voted ballots to Secretary Brunner. The Lawrence County Board of Elections, which failed to provide their provisional ballots, offered no explanation at all. The Jackson County Board of Elections found only “a partial portion” of the voted ballots, and offered two alternative explanations for how the ballots went missing: “They may have been destroyed pursuant to the retention schedule,” or they may have been “accidentally destroyed when we moved our Board of Elections office.” The Scioto County Board of Elections offered the following explanation:

Un-voted ballots were released and shredded following the twenty-two (22) month retention period and prior to our receipt of Judge Marbley’s order on September 11, 2006. Our staff has searched diligently and thoroughly for the box of missing voted ballots but they have not been located, to date. The ballots have not been intentionally destroyed. It is unknown whether the ballots were accidentally destroyed or have been otherwise misplaced.

The letter of explanation from the Holmes County Board of Elections is entertaining, although it does fall short of compliance with the spirit of the law (Ohio Revised Code Section 3505.31), which requires the Board to “carefully preserve all ballots.” (emphasis added)

A shelving unit collapsed in the Board of Elections storeroom on the morning of Friday, April 7, 2006. That shelving unit held the voted ballots, stubs, soiled and defaced ballot envelopes, and ballot accounting charts from the 2004 General Election. The shelves and stored items collapsed onto a side table holding a working coffee maker. The carafe on the coffee maker was full at the time of the incident. Many of the stored items had to be destroyed due to the broken glass and hot coffee. The ballot pages and unused ballots were stored on a neighboring shelf and were not damaged.

More serious problems were encountered by the Allen County Board of Elections:

Following the 2004 General Election the Allen County Board of Elections boxed and labeled all voted ballots and placed them in our vault for the required 22 months of storage. Throughout the latter part of 2004 and into 2005 the Allen County Board of Elections began to experience problems with storm water migrating and subsequently penetrating our primary storage areas including our vault. As a result of these events, much of what was stored in our vault, including the 2004 General Election ballots, was compromised by water damage and subsequently destroyed on or about August 20, 2006. Pursuant to the recommendations of the Allen County Health Department, the boxes displaying mold or mildew were set aside to be discarded. Unfortunately, the contractor hired to remove the damaged boxes also accidentally removed the undamaged boxes as well. Those items include: Poll Books, Clerks Books and a box containing 498 write-in ballots.

Finally, seven counties (Ashtabula, Marion, Medina, Montgomery, Preble, Sandusky, Seneca) provided no ballots at all to Secretary Brunner. Marion, Medina, Sandusky and Seneca counties stated that they destroyed their ballots pursuant to the records retention schedule, shortly after September 2, 2006. Marion and Medina counties stated that this was done before they received Judge Marbley’s order. Sandusky and Seneca counties claimed that they have “no record” of receiving Judge Marbley’s order. Ashtabula County gave the following explanation:

The 2004 Presidential ballots were inadvertently disposed of when the old punch card equipment appurtenances were disposed of before the May 2006 primary when the new optical scan voting equipment was implemented. A similar explanation was provided by Preble County:

We are in receipt of Secretary Brunner’s Directive #2007-07 requesting delivery of the 2004 general election ballots to her office. Upon receipt of that Directive our director and deputy director went to our storage area to retrieve the ballots but were unable to find them. They contacted our recently retired director to see if she might know where they were located. She told them that she had been aware that they were not where they were supposed to be and thought it likely that they had been inadvertently discarded by the Courthouse maintenance staff when room had to be made for our new electronic voting equipment.

The Montgomery County Board of Elections, in a letter signed by Steven P. Harsman, Director, provided a lengthy and contentious explanation:

As you are aware, in accordance to Ohio Revised Code the retention schedule for a Federal Election is 22 months. We prepared the certificate of destruction in preparation of destroying the materials from the Presidential Election and we received the signed copy of Certificate of Destruction from the county records to proceed with destruction according to the retention schedule. In addition, we contacted our county prosecutor for further authorization. In addition, we experienced an extra ordinary situation having 4 elections during a 90 day period. We literally ran out of space to prepare, stage, and retain material for those elections. It was imperative that we process the 2004 materials for destruction under the guidelines of the 22 month retention. Therefore, all materials were properly destroyed in a timely manner and we are unable to comply due to those circumstances. We did not receive formal notice from the courts prior to preparing the certificate of destruction.

In short, Harsman is saying that the 2004 election records still existed at the time the Board of Elections received Judge Marbley’s order to preserve them, but because they “ran out of space” to store these records, and because the Board had already received authorization from the County Prosecutor to destroy these records, it was “imperative” and “proper” to destroy them. The opinion of the County Prosecutor trumps an order from a United States District Judge.

It was Steven P. Harsman who, accompanied by Betty Smith, Deputy Director, barged into the room where I was photographing ballots at about 3:30 P.M. on Thursday, August 24, 2006, and ordered me to stop. I refused, stating that Harsman had agreed to allow me one full day to photograph the uncounted ballots from all 23 precincts specified in my public records request. Earlier on this same day, the Montgomery County Board of Elections had received notification by e-mail from Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney at Law, of the impending lawsuit, and was asked to preserve the ballots as evidence in the case. But the Board was eager to destroy them. The employees who handled the ballots for me brought up the subject themselves.

Of the 501 uncounted ballots photographed in these 23 precincts, 322 (64.3%) contained multiple punches for president. Of these, 21 (6.5%) were punched for both Bush and Kerry, 273 (84.8%) were punched for Kerry and one or two independent or third-party presidential candidates, and only 19 (5.9%) were punched for Bush and for one or two independent or third-party presidential candidates. It is my conclusion, stated in a previous chapter, “Pre-Punched Ballots in Deep Blue Precincts,” that these ballots were pre-punched in order to ruin otherwise valid ballots in heavily Democratic precincts, but that the pre-punching was not done by the Board of Elections. However, 70 (14.0%) of the uncounted ballots had “dimpled chads” for president, 57 intended for Kerry, and 13 intended for Bush. There were 1124 holes punched cleanly through the very ballots on which these 70 “dimpled chads” were found, indicating that some of the voting machines were rigged to make it more difficult to vote for president than for any other office or ballot initiative. If the holes in the “masks” or “shields” that cover the punch card ballots are too small, the punching implement, or “stylus,” will leave only a dent, or “dimple,” in the ballot. It is the Boards of Elections, not the voting machine vendors, who punch the holes in the “masks” or “shields.” This would be a powerful incentive for the Board of Elections to destroy the ballots.

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Richard Hayes Phillips has been investigating the 2004 Ohio election ever since it happened. The Free Press was the first to publish any of his writings. The preceding chapter will appear in his forthcoming book, “Witness to a Crime: A Citizens’ Audit of an American Election.”

June 18, 2007

The current scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys cannot be separated from the Bush administration’s scheme to suppress black, poor and working class voters. In order to divert attention from its voter suppression tactics that won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, the Bush administration created the myth of “voter fraud.” Using fake “voting rights” organizations, obscure groups to finance civil suits and pressure on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against voter registration organizations, Karl Rove and his political operatives like Mark F. “Thor” Hearne have succeeded in undermining the United States’ democracy.

“Hearne was one of the most important Bush operatives that almost nobody in America has ever heard of. He applied his vote-suppressing trade from coast to coast, behind the scenes, in a well-funded systematic effort to undermine democracy and keep voters – Democratic voters – from exercising their legal franchise,” Brad Friedman, Editor of Bradblog, told the Free Press. Bradblog was the first to reveal Hearne’s masquerade as a voting rights advocate.

Hearne’s name recently surfaced in the scandal surrounding the White House’s firing of U.S. attorneys causing the mainstream media to begin scrutinizing his past political activity. The National Journal has pointed out that Hearne is a “common denominator” in the firing of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins and western Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves. At the time of the firings, Cummins was investigating Republican Governor Matt Blunt’s administration, and Graves had refused to indict when partisan charges were brought against the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) for a voter registration drive just prior to the 2006 election.

See the rest of the article here;

https://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1555