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Ohio’s Voting Machines Are Now An Official Crime Scene

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
March 17, 2008

At least 15 touch-screen voting machines that produced improbable numbers in Ohio’s 2006 statewide election are now under double-lock in an official crime scene. And the phony “Homeland Security Alert” used by Republicans to build up George W. Bush’s 2004 vote count in a key southwestern Ohio county has come under new scrutiny.

The touch-screen machines were locked up after Ohio’s new Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, tried to vote last fall. On November 6, she spotted a gray bar with the words “candidate withdrawn” in a slot where the name of Democrat Jay Perez should have appeared. Her husband, voting nearby, told her Perez’s name did appear, as it was supposed to, on his machine.

Perez had been a candidate in the race for Franklin County Municipal Judge. He withdrew his name after the county had finalized its ballots. But it now appears the ES&S machines left his name on some machines but not on others. Perez, a Democrat, wanted to avoid playing a spoiler in the race. But the appearance of his name on some machines may have helped Republican David Tyack win.

Brunner now worries that the state will never find out what happened. County election officials ordered the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to seize the machines. Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann is conducting an investigation that may cost the state $48,000. Brunner recently told WVKO 1580AM radio: “When you’re talking about democracy, it’s priceless.” In another interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Brunner noted “This is a huge problem. There is great concern that not every voter has the same ballot.”

Ironically, Brunner requested a paper ballot in the March 4, 2008, primary, but a poorly trained poll worker gave her a provisional ballot instead. Two other staffers from her office were also given the wrong ballots. Brunner has since pledged to upgrade the training for Buckeye State poll workers.

Brunner further announced that she’s banning the practice of so-called “sleepovers” where poll workers take the programmable and easily hackable voting machines home with them overnight prior to an election day.

Brunner succeeded Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell as Ohio’s Secretary of State. She has vowed to make sure the Buckeye State does not repeat the experience of 2004, when Blackwell choreographed the theft of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for George W. Bush, giving him a second term in the White House. Since taking office Brunner has vowed to shift the entire state to voting on paper ballots, a move being fiercely resisted by numerous Republican-controlled Boards of Elections throughout the state. Thus far Brunner has forced the resignations of BOE chairs in two of Ohio’s most populous cities, Cleveland and Columbus.

Matt Damschroder was removed as Franklin County Board of Elections Director on the Sunday prior to Ohio’s 2008 primary election. Damschroder was previously suspended for a month without pay for accepting a $10,000 check from a voting machine salesman at the BOE building. The check, made out to the Republican Party, was delivered on the day the state’s contracts for electronic voting machines were open for bidding. Damschroder was former chair of the Franklin County Republican Party and the state’s leading foe of paper ballots. “Damschroder was very opposed to paper ballots and was stoking the fire against them,” Brunner told WVKO.

Dennis White, the new director of the Franklin County BOE was skeptical of the masking problem, but says if it happened, “it’s huge. We have a federal election coming up this November,” according to the Dispatch. White, who admits to having little knowledge of computers, is the former Ohio Democratic Party Chair.

That election may once again hinge on Ohio’s vote count. In 2006, Franklin County officials failed to conduct mandated tests on each machine, instead testing only one machine per precinct on a random bases. A report by SysTest Labs, a Colorado consulting firm, confirmed that what Brunner saw on her machine was “exactly what you’d see if someone masked a name,” the Dispatch reported.

Investigators also found that the “audit logs” on the voting machines were turned off by a board programmer in April, 2007, which has hindered investigators from reconstructing software changes. White says the vendor told a board employee how to disable the auditing system, allegedly to speed programming. Brunner said other vendors told her that “You’re never supposed to tell a (client) how to do that.”

In the primary this past March, the BOE allegedly did test all Franklin County’s machines. But some counties ran out of Democratic paper ballots as an influx of apparently Republican and Republican-leaning independents flooded the polls, apparently to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Enquirer has reported that a “casual conversation” between a “friendly” FBI agent and the county emergency services director in a parking lot may have contributed to the phony Homeland Security alert that prompted the Warren County BOE to lockdown the vote count in the 2004 election. The BOE declared the emergency and then moved the ballots from the publicly designated vote center to a nearby unauthorized warehouse. They also barred the public and media from witnessing the counting. Warren County, which is outside Cincinnati, then gave Bush 72% of the official vote count, far exceeding expectations. With neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Warren gave Bush a margin of 140,000 votes, which exceeded the 119,000 margin by which he allegedly won the election.

The Enquirer reports that “hundreds” of e-mailed complaints poured into the county BOE after the election, including one from an angry voter in the United Kingdom. “Stop destroying our democracy,” said one voter from South Carolina.

The Free Press has previously reported that Warren County BOE employees were told on the Thursday prior to the 2004 election day, that there would be a Homeland Security threat on election day. An examination of the ballots by a Free Press investigation team uncovered numerous irregularities in the Warren County vote that helped give Bush the presidency again.

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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman co-authored HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and, with Steve Rosenfeld, WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO from New Press.

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Free Admission Drexel Presents WAR MADE EASY

The Free Press and the Drexel Gateway Theater present:Normon Solomon’s
WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Narrated by Sean PennThursday, February 28, 2008 at 7pm
Admission is free!
Drexel Gateway screening room
Discussion will followWar Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

Approx. 72 minutes

Drexel Gateway, 1550 N. High St.,

OSU campus, parking in rear in garage off 11th.
253-2571, truth@freepress.org
www.warmadeeasythemovie.org

 

 

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 6/05/1996 Copwatch

6/05/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Put a hundred of “Columbus’ finest” in riot gear and you can count on a riot–usually a police riot.

The police tactics on Friday, May 17 are simply the last in a long series of police-instigated rioting and misconduct in the campus area. Last Friday, May 31, I spoke with a dozen students and a lizard exercising their First Amendment rights on the northwest corner of 12th and High. Their demonstration posed a simple question: “Is South Campus a student neighborhood or a penal colony!?”

Neither. It’s condemned and occupied territory, thanks, in part, to the hysteria whipped up by Campus Partners. All that “neighborhood in decay” rhetoric has been taken to heart by the Columbus Police Department.

Tom Vigarino, one of the first arrested on May 17, reports that he was “tackled from behind by a couple undercover cops” that he never saw and who have failed to identify themselves as officers. As they beat him, he recalls one of them warning, “Motherfucker, don’t ever come back to 12th again!” Vigarino, who lives two blocks away on 10th, wonders why he can’t walk the streets in his neighborhood. He is charged with “rioting” for allegedly throwing a bottle at the police, a charge he and various witnesses vehemently deny.

Other witnesses report that police officers purposely shoved Shomas Jones, a third-year criminal law major, over a chain-enclosed planter. Jones was attempting to videotape police activity, and as he lay defenseless on the pavement he was repeatedly Maced and his camera smashed. When police returned his tape, the video had been erased. Another triumph for the Columbus police’s interpretation of the First Amendment.

The police then beat, Maced and arrested Chris Wisniewski, a fourth-year journalism student, for complaining about Jones’ treatment. “I was knocked flat on my ass from behind. We were in back of the police by High Street watching what they were doing on 12th, away from the action, and they just turned on us because Shomas had a camera,” recalls Wisniewski.

Wisniewski says he was taken to the Zettler Hardware parking lot near campus and held. When students complained about their treatment, they were met with the flippant comments of officers, including one who encouraged others to “get ’em riled up, so I can Mace ’em again.”

Writing in the Lantern on May 24, Eric Sims, a senior majoring in journalism, recounts how he and a friend were accosted while walking to a convenience store on May 17 by police who offered helpful hints like “…What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Turn around, NOW!”

“They chased the students down, beating the ones they caught, Macing the others. Students were screaming and almost trampling each other to run back to their houses,” wrote Sims.

The students all tell the same story. No problems, no fights, prior to the police invasion. In fact, area residents had complied with earlier police requests to use plastic fencing to contain their guests and even made public announcements over a PA system asking residents to cooperate with police. Only after the police actions were bottles thrown and items set on fire. But, that must be put in the context of the indiscriminate beatings, excessive Macing and random assault with “knee-knockers”–rubber riot bullets–and other anti-riot devices. Throw in the mounted riot police and cop helicopter and you’ve got the makings for police-state mayhem. But, the students are fighting back.

The demonstrators announced the formation a new and long-overdue organization: Copwatch. They plan to monitor police activity and take legal action to prevent what has now become a long stream of abuses.

Let’s recall the most obvious. After Ohio State’s last big win at home over Michigan, unlike other universities that enjoy victory celebrations, Columbus cops Maced the hell out of celebrating fans attempting to tear down the goalpost. Last spring, riot police Maced and brutally beat Antioch students for holding a peaceful demonstration at the federal building opposing cuts in student loans. And last fall, police fired tear gas canisters and “knee-knockers” indiscriminately into south campus streets and residences making the air in a four-square block area virtually unbreatheable, and then beat and arrested students fleeing to fresh air.

The seeds of the problem germinated in bad social policy. First, an asinine decision to raise the drinking age. This only makes sense if raising the drinking age means that the students would comply; they won’t. College students always drink alcohol. If the drinking age is 18, they drink it in local bars; if it’s 21, they drink at house parties. If you close and burn down the bars, they’ll drink in their cars and alcohol-related fatalities will rise. In our society, it’s a rite of adult passage. The college and the city should be promoting responsible drinking, not police rioting.

What message was being sent when the police department decided to crack down on “drunk walkers” in the campus area a year or so ago? Again, why not crack down on drunk walkers at Christopher’s after the Ohio legislature adjourns on any given day? If the police would contact me, I could gladly give them the names of a few senators and representatives I’ve never seen sober.

Stop the police repression and brutality. Have the police read the Constitution. And if this is what the Columbus Public Safety Department means by a new policy of “community policing,” I wonder about their definition.

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 5/28/1996 “Whiny Dems And Jews” (Anti-Semitism)

5/28/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

From Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium to Columbus’ Riffe Center, anti-Semitism is in vogue. But in the state capital, instead of chastising the bigot, we literally fire the messenger. Ask Devon Rice.

On May 8 at approximately 8:30 a.m., Rice, a messenger with the Legislative Service Commission, was delivering forms to House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson’s office on the 14th floor when he heard Ohio House Sergeant-at-Arms Robert Foster loudly proclaim: “The Jews are just like the Democrats, all they do is whine.”

After Foster “repeated himself several times,” Rice confronted the Statehouse official and said, “Could you do me a favor, next time you make anti-Semitic remarks, could you lower your voice so I don’t have to hear you?”

Rice says Foster initially denied that his remarks were anti-Semitic and reluctantly offered a half-hearted apology. Rice then dashed off a letter to Speaker Davidson (R-Reynoldsburg), informing her of the incident and stating: “As a citizen of Ohio, as a human being and as a ‘Jew,’ I felt compelled to inform the gentleman that I heard him, that I was offended, and that his behavior was intolerable.” Foster was sitting at his desk in the reception area at the time the remarks were made.

Rice wrote “I personally do not care what the Sergeant-at-Arms says at home, at a bar, or on the golf course. However, this type of behavior clearly has no place within his official capacity as an employee of the Ohio House of Representatives. His behavior was, aside from being ignorant and offensive, unprofessional.”

Speaker Davidson seemed to concur. She ordered an immediate inquiry into the matter. Foster admitted that he had called two specific groups–the ACLU and the Jewish Defense League–“whiners just like the Democrats.” Foster denied he ever referred to “Jews” specifically. Nevertheless, Davidson concluded in a letter dated May 15 that Foster’s conduct was “entirely inappropriate and should not be condoned in the House of Representatives.” Davidson directed Carol S. Norris, the executive secretary of the Ohio House, “to verbally reprimand Mr. Foster for his ‘inappropriate’ comments.” A copy of her letter to Rice was forwarded to the director of the Legislative Service Commission, Robert Shapiro. Within a week, Rice was given his six-month evaluation and told that his services would no longer be needed after the session ended.

Instead of talking to Rice face-to-face, the evaluation from his immediate supervisor Eric Rodriguez and Office Manager Cathy Kamer was simply left on his desk. Rice claims every time he was five minutes late was suddenly highlighted, although no one had ever spoke to him about tardiness before. And, curiously, a vague reference to having “gone above a supervisor on one occasion . . .” appeared.

Rice resigned after the evaluation, rather than finish the session, and he requested an exit interview with Kamer and Shapiro. When he showed up at the appointed time, he found State Trooper Sergeant Moore waiting to escort him out of the building. “It’s insane. The trooper threatened me with arrest,” Rice offers.

Shapiro acknowledges that he saw Davidson’s letter, but refused to give Kamer’s or Rodriguez’s names when asked who evaluated Rice or whether they had seen Davidson’s letter. “I’m not going to help you, you’ll have to find out yourself,” Shapiro told me. Shapiro has recently been under fire for withholding corporate donation information from the press and the Legislative Service Commission is still recovering from the recent Puerto Rican junket scandal.

Shapiro claims he was unaware of the state trooper incident and suggests “not so convincingly” that Rice’s evaluation had nothing to do with the letter. A true professional.

School Board Coup

The Wolfe Family Newsletter writes: “Party politics didn’t come into play when the Columbus Board of Education unanimously tapped the Reverend Leon Troy Sr., a Republican, this week to fill a Board vacancy.” Oh? The Daily Monopoly had been touting Troy as above the fray. That’s the usual B.S.. What was left out of the reporting was the fact that the late Sharlene Morgan was a progressive Democrat and Troy fought against her and sided with the Chamber of Commerce on most key issues.

Recall Superintendent Larry Mixon’s on-and-off again “resignation.” As Bill Moss stated at the time, “Troy was the Chamber and Dispatch’s front man” to silence the progressive anti-tax abatement block on the Board and to get Mixon to stay.

Sources in the Franklin County Democratic Party claim that school board members Loretta Heard and Mary Jo Kilroy were against Troy’s appointment in executive session and Karen Schwarzwalder was “up front” about her support. But it was school board President Mark Hatch”described by a Democratic Party staffer as a “weasel”,”who never came clean and cut a deal behind closed doors.”

Hatch has a history of double-dealing and stabbing the local Democratic Party in the back. Remember his vote for the Republican Bob Teater that denied Mary Jo Kilroy the school board presidency a few years back?

As for Kilroy, who rallied her progressive supporters this past campaign by denouncing the Republican agenda, she’s got some explaining to do. But, she wasn’t in the mood. When asked to explain her public support and vote for Troy, she commented, “I’m not interested in the story.” Of course. Can charges of “sellout” be far behind?

Bob Fitrakis ran for Columbus School Board in 1995.
 

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Bob Bytes Back Archives: Ohio Taking To The Streets (School Of Americas)

5/22/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

The action was in the streets, and parks, last weekend. In Westerville, 50 or so activists from the Westerville Social Action group and Amnesty International exercised their First Amendment rights by demonstrating in front of Rep. John Kasich’s house and then marching down Main Street. They want Mr. Budget-Cutter to wield his ax and topple the notorious School of the Americas (SOA)–School of the Assassins. In Franklin Park, the African-American community and guests celebrated the heritage of Malcolm X, and up on campus at 16th and Waldeck–the original site of Community Festival–Anti-Racist Action (ARA) staged a very successful second annual Anti-Fest.
A common theme ran through these three events: the streets and the parks belong to the people, all the people.

Kasich’s house looks like it was built for a Hollywood movie about a wholesome and earnest young politician. That’s probably why the Congressman purchased it. So, imagine his surprise–no, he wasn’t there as usual–when he hears about an actual group of earnest and wholesome young neighbors of his calling his ethics and morality into question.

One notes Johnny has made a career out of trying to balance the U.S. budget, yet he conveniently continues to ignore the School of the Americas located in Ft. Bening, Georgia. The School recently underwent a $30 million renovation at taxpayers’ expense to better house the legions of murderers and assassins it trains. The official purpose of the School is to train Latin American soldiers in combat skills such as counter-insurgency operations, sniper fire, commando tactics and psychological warfare. But, wherever the graduates of the School go, atrocities and torture follow.

General Manuel Noriega is a graduate and so were over 60 Salvadoran officers cited by the 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report for butchering civilians; two out of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero were graduates; three out of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen were alumni; 10 out of 12 officers cited in the El Mozote massacre of over 800 civilians held diplomas from SOA; and 19 of the 26 officers responsible for the slaughter of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were educated there.

Alas, U.S. tax dollars at work, training between 700-2000 Latin American assassins a year. Most recently, Julio Roberto Alperez, who ordered the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine in Guatemala and Efrim Bamaca, husband of U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, calls SOA his alma mater. Harbury reported the last time she saw her husband, he was being blown up with various gases, his body four times its normal size, as he raved unintelligibly. In a recent Dispatch editorial, the paper rightly criticized Clinton for his failure to bring Alperez and other Guatemalan “allies” to justice. Now, if only they would hold their boy John equally responsible for funding the criminals, or at least cover the event like a normal paper. Westerville Social Action is asking citizens to write or call Rep. Kasich and tell him to support House Resolution 2652, a bill proposed by Rep. Joe Kennedy to close the School of the Americas and demand that we spend “Not a Dime for Death Squads.”

Many of the activists went from death squad protests to dancing in the streets and parks on Saturday. Talk about a “pro-life” celebration; that’s what you got at the Anti-Fest. It was a racist’s nightmare with interracial mingling, cavorting and boogeying in front of various people’s gods. The event started off with a certain amount of apprehension and fears that the Columbus police riot unit might show up uninvited. OSU President Gordon Gee’s office, in his attempt to re-establish in loco parentis (“I’m your daddy”) policy, demanded a meeting with ARA organizers. Jim McNamara, ARA leader and local attorney, declined the invitation. “I told him I’m 46 years old, I’ve got kids who’ve graduated from OSU. Why do I need to meet with the president’s office? This is my neighborhood in the city of Columbus. I’m not a college student,” said McNamara.

At the street fest, inevitably, talk turned to the topic of Campus Partners. Seems my penpals in the Glen Echo South Civic Association are sitting down in a neighborly fashion with the dissident Common Grounds Forum group and appear to be working out their traffic problems. Also, University Area Commissioners report that finally, after a year and a half, Campus Partners staffers are seeking real input from the neighborhood. Some small businesspeople originally opposed to the plan appear willing to compromise in exchange for Pearl Alley becoming a real street and some assistance in redeveloping their businesses there.

On the other hand, the Stache’s/Monkey’s Retreat complex is reportedly scheduled for demolition next year. Yet, if the streets still belong to all the people and the campus community organizes, who knows, pardner?

Bob Fitrakis ran for Congress against John Kasich in 1992.

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

5/15/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

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

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

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Behind Every Bush – There’s A Rigged Election

By Bob Fitrakis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5/08/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

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

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

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Ohio Secretary Of State Confirms 2004 Election Could Have Been Stolen

Jenny Brunner :)

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 14, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Missing Voting Machines In Franklin County, Ohio?

What_Happened_in_Ohio.JPG 

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

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

None were missing from Republican suburban locations.

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

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