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Two Big Victories Boost Ohio’s Election Protection Movement

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
April 5, 2007

In a victory for election protection activists, Ohio’s powerful GOP Chair Bob Bennett will be forced to face a public hearing on his removal as Chair of the Cuyahoga (Cleveland) Board of Elections. And in a second triumph, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has agreed, as part of a legal settlement, to take possession of the ballots and other key documents from the disputed 2004 election that gave George W. Bush a second term in the White House.

Brunner has requested the resignations of the entire scandal-plagued Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which Bennett has chaired. Two Democratic members and one Republican have complied with her request. The BOE’s executive director, Michael Vu, previously resigned amidst a cloud of scandal resulting from a mishandled primary election and more than $12 million in budgetary overruns. Two BOE workers have been given 18-month prison sentences for felony convictions stemming from what a government prosecutor called the “rigging” of an officially mandated recount for the 2004 presidential election.

Bennett has issued a legal challenge against his removal. But on Wednesday, April 4, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John Connor ruled Bennett has to comply with Brunner’s call for a public hearing on the matter. The hearing is scheduled for Monday, April 9.

A long-time GOP power broker, Bennett is a close personal confidante of White House advisor Karl Rove. He has been Rove’s point man in Ohio’s most populous county, which includes the Democratic voter rich city of Cleveland. A wide array of irregularities there were pivotal in giving Bush his narrow margin of official victory in 2004.

Bennett asked the court to rule that the Ohio statute seeking his removal was unconstitutionally vague. But Judge Connor ruled that the law was “clear and unequivocal.”

This is Bennett’s third major setback in three days. On Monday, April 2, Brunner put the Cuyahoga BOE under state administrative oversight because it lacked a quorum to conduct business. With the resignations of the other three board members, Bennett stood alone as the sole board member.

On Tuesday, April 3, Brunner suspended Bennett, citing the fact that as BOE chair he had allegedly “instructed” former Executive Director Vu to award a contract to a consultant without Board approval.

“Bennett instructed Vu to award a second contract to David Hopcraft in the amount of $14,750 on or about February 26, 2007, for public relations services to be paid for by public dollars by the Board of Elections,” Brunner wrote in her suspension statement.

The statement adds that: “The Dayton Daily News on March 26, 2007 reported Mr. Hopcraft to be a ‘GOP spokesperson.’ According to Board policy, no contract for services may be awarded without Board approval if it exceeds $15,000. The extension of Hopcraft’s contract for just under $15,000, without Board approval, violates Board policy,” Brunner’s statement says.

Brunner’s order suspends all of Bennett’s powers. It orders Bennett not to attend any Cuyahoga County BOE meetings or to be present at the BOE offices. The suspension is indefinite, pending the results of the removal hearing and any subsequent legal appeals.

On March 21, Bennett lashed out following the convictions of two Cuyahoga County BOE workers charged with “rigging” the 2004 presidential recount. Bennett said, in part: “… the public deserves to know that the big shots, the lawyers and the special political interests are not going to grind up the people who are doing the public’s work at this Board.”

Steve Hertzberg of the nonprofit Election Science Institute, which conducted an investigation of major problems that marred the 2006 Cuyahoga County primary election, responded to Bennett’s attack by stating, “It is an insult to the intelligence of the Cuyahoga community that Mr. Bennett attempts to lay blame elsewhere while he attempts to maintain his lucrative position on the CCBOE. Not only should this man resign immediately, he should apologize for the myriad of mistakes and the damage he had done to the reputation of Ohio and its citizens.

“Shame on you, Mr. Bennett,” Hertzberg concluded.

In another decisive action, which may stand as a major landmark, Brunner has agreed to take responsibility for the preservation of the ballots from Ohio’s 2004 presidential election.

The ballots were subject to destruction in early September 2006, as the law protecting them was about to expire. However, a suit involving the King-LincolnBronzeville Neighborhood Association, among others, was filed in federal court. The suit alleges a wide range of civil rights violations against inner city and other Ohio voters in the conduct of the 2004 Ohio election. It also asked that then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell be prevented from ordering the disposal of the ballots and other election materials, which he was poised to do.

The suit gained widespread national attention, including news stories and editorial comment in the New York Times. On September 11, 2006, Federal Judge Algernon Marbley issued an order preserving the ballots pending the outcome of what has become known as the King-Lincoln lawsuit.

Blackwell left the office of Secretary of State earlier this year, in the wake of his unsuccessful run as the GOP’s 2006 nominee for Governor of Ohio. By and large, the materials have been stored by Ohio’s 88 counties.

As the new Secretary of State, Brunner has now agreed to a joint motion as defendant in the King-Lincoln suit. The motion effectively transfers the custody of “…all ballots from the 2004 presidential election, on paper or in any other format, including electronic data,…” from the counties to Ohio Secretary of State’s office.

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann’s office is representing Brunner.

In a Memorandum in Support of the Joint Motion, the parties state: “To lessen the burden on the respective boards of elections and to provide a central repository for records, the parties are jointly requesting that an order be entered in this matter requiring the 88 county boards of elections to transfer to the custody of the Secretary of State all ballots from the 2004 presidential election….”

Voting rights activists have urged the state to preserve all the records and open them to interested parties following the Florida 2000 election model, which created a centralized accessible repository following the controversial 2000 election in the Sunshine State.

Brunner is now widely expected to do the same for the documents that defined the disputed presidential election of 2004. Scrutinized over the coming years, they could finally reveal what really put George W. Bush back in the White House for a second term.

They may also illuminate Bob Bennett’s role in making that happen.

Original post at:

https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2525 

—
Bob Fitrakis is one of the attorneys representing the King Lincoln Bronzeville Association and Harvey Wasserman is one of the plaintiffs. They are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? from the New Press. Photo by Adele Eisner.

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More Potential 2004 Election Illegalities Rock Ohio’s Hocking County As Cleveland Braces For A Legal Firestorm

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
March 30, 2007

constitution_mth.jpgAs the third of four members of the Cuyahoga (Cleveland) County Board of Elections resigns under pressure from Ohio’s new Secretary of State, additional potential illegalities in Hocking County have resurfaced with new weight against a GOP executive director already under serious fire.

The four members of the Cuyahoga BOE have been asked to resign by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat elected in November, 2006. Brunner has issued a stinging five-point complaint, much of which derives from the report done by U.S. Congressman John Conyers in the wake of the 2004 presidential election, and on reporting done at https://freepress.org/ and research by grassroots election protection activists.

The two Democratic members of the board have already resigned. On March 27, Sally D. Florkiewicz, a Republican , became the third to depart the board. Her departure leaves just Robert Bennett, the BOE chair, clinging to his position. Bennett also chairs the Ohio Republican Party, and has long been one of the state’s most powerful politicians, with close ties to the White House. Many believe Bennett was the key point person, along with then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, in the theft of Ohio’s 2004 presidential election. Karl Rove is widely believed to have personally persuaded Bennett to stay on at the Cleveland-area BOE through the election.

Bennett’s position mirrors that of Tom Noe, former chair of the Lucas County (Toledo) BOE, once known as northern Ohio’s “Mr. Republican.” Like Bennett, Noe had close personal ties to George W. Bush and Ohio Governor Robert Taft. Taft, who left office earlier this year after his public approval ratings sank as low as 7%, pleaded no contest to four misdemeanors involving favors taken from Noe. Noe has since been convicted of a wide range of crimes ranging from illegal campaign contributions to the mishandling of state funds. He is now in prison.

Florkiewicz’s resignation letter charges that “the Secretary of State has decided to use the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to advance a partisan agenda.” Bennett is saying much the same as he refuses to resign. But he now, on behalf of the board he has chaired, faces a wide range of charges involving, among other things, the mishandling of public funds that resulted in taxpayer expenditures of at least an additional $12,900,000 above original budget.

For Bennett to resign would widely be viewed as admission of guilt. But a firestorm of controversy is certain to erupt should Bennett attempt to stand up to Brunner’s complaint.

The public hearing she has demanded is currently scheduled to begin April 2. However, Bennett’s taxpayer-funded special counsel, Stan Chesley, has filed a motion in court to stop it. Pending the court’s review, Brunner’s counsel John Ferron agreed to delay the hearing for a week, according to Cliff Arnebeck who is closely monitoring the case and spoke with Ferron Thursday afternoon. “With all of these fireworks it will become more and more difficult for some of the Ohio editorial boards to maintain their position that the 2004 election was not stolen,” said Arnebeck.

Meanwhile, another GOP county election official is also under intensifying fire. Lisa Schwartze, executive director of the Hocking County BOE, has been charged with allowing an unmonitored manipulation of electronic memory drives before the 2004 recount could be completed. A memo purportedly written by Schwartze also directs poll workers to recount a precinct chosen deliberately by Schwartze, rather than at random, as the law demands. Two Cuyahoga County poll workers have been convicted of felonies for similar behavior, and have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Schwartze’s offenses, however, may not stop there. According to sworn affidavits from Sherole Eaton, former Hocking County DOE assistant director, Schwartze publicly bragged of having held Republican Party fundraisers in her executive director’s office, a clear illegality. Schwartze may also have organized the fundraisers while being paid by the county to do her allegedly non-partisan job as executive director.

Schwartze may also have supervised the shredding of voter registration rolls leading up to the 2004 election. Eaton’s under-oath testimony strongly indicates this destruction of vital public records may also have been illegal.

Like Bennett, Schwartze has long been a high-profile associate of Blackwell’s, and apparently played a key role in delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2004. Whether she did so illegally remains to be seen.

But the fire Jennifer Brunner has set in Cleveland now seems very likely to spread to the rest of Ohio’s 88 counties. Hocking’s Schwartze is almost certain to join Bob Bennett among those feeling the heat.

—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of three books on Ohio’s recent elections which are avaliable, along with their reportage, at www.freepress.org.

Original Post at:

https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2521

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Explosive New Vote Fraud Developments Continue To Rock Ohio And Florida

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
March 23, 2007

Breaking news in vote fraud cases in both Ohio and Florida are feeding a firestorm of controversy that is likely to continue escalating, with major implications for the 2008 election and the future of e-voting machines.

In Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, the newly elected Secretary of State, has received two of the four resignations she requested from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (BOE). The two Democrats on the Board, Edward Coaxum, Jr. and Loree Soggs, have complied with her call for their departures from Cleveland’s scandal-ridden election authority.

However, Robert Bennett, who chairs both the Cuyahoga BOE and the Ohio Republican Party, has thus far refused Brunner’s request. So has Sally Florkiewicz, Bennett’s fellow Republican on the BOE. Should they continue with their refusal to resign, Brunner has threatened to hold public hearings, in the wake of which she could force the resignations.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that a criminal investigation is underway which centers on the Cuyahoga BOE’s conduct of the November 2006 election. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has turned again to Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter who recently won felony convictions of two BOE workers for rigging the 2004 presidential recount for another criminal investigation. Baxter will be investigating “possible criminal wrongdoings” related to ballot security and the scanning of absentee ballots.

A Cleveland State University Center for Election Integrity study has exposed various election irregularities in Cuyahoga County in the 2006 election. Among the most egregious were the BOE’s failure to secure the dual keys (one for the Dems and one for the Republicans) required for the vote counting rooms; that they allowed shared computer passwords; and that they allowed an unexplained cable connection to the county’s vote counting computer.

The Free Press also has viewed a video shot by Jeff Kirkby showing Cuyahoga County election workers downloading the county’s election data onto portable laptops that were allegedly allowed to go home with BOE employees. These practices raise serious concerns over election data security.

Massive computer failures during the May 2006 primary led in February 2007 to the resignation of Michael Vu, who was the executive director of the Cuyahoga BOE at the time. Both Bennett and Vu pushed for the $20 million purchase of Diebold voting machines over strenuous objections from election protection activists, whose concerns were cablecast in the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” shown nationwide just prior to the November 2006 election.

On March 21, the Dayton Daily News reported that “After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.”

The Free Press has previously reported that there were nearly 30,000 undervotes in Montgomery County during the 2006 gubernatorial race, meaning an abnormally high 13.67% of all voters reportedly recorded no vote for the state’s highest office. (See chart posted with this article at the Freepress.org web site courtesy of Pete Johnson and CASE-Ohio) Similar undervote problems exist in Adams, Darke, Highland, Mercer and Perry counties.

Meanwhile, Jonathon Simon has informed the Free Press that the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is analyzing data from Adams County as part of a project to compare exit polls to actual votes. In the 2004 election, the exit polls showed John Kerry winning, while the actual machine and computer tabulated results gave the state to Bush by 118,000 votes.

Meanwhile, in Florida, internal memos from the ES&S voting machine company indicate an e-voting machine created an undervote problem, according to Wired News. In Sarasota County, 18,000 ballots recorded no votes in a hotly contested congressional race.

“But the memo, which the company sent to Florida election officials before the state’s September primary, revealed that the iVotronic machines had a flaw that sometimes caused machines to respond slowly to a voter’s touch ‘beyond the normal time a voter would expect to have their selection highlighted.’ The memo stated that a software upgrade was required but couldn’t be certified before the September election. In its absence, ES&S sent election officials a warning sign to post at polls advising voters that they might need to press the screen for several seconds before their votes would register,” wrote Wired News.

Reginald Mitchell, lawyer for People for the American Way, told Wired News that “this memo is the smoking gun….”

The six counties under investigation in Ohio all used Diebold machines suggesting that both major suppliers of e-voting machines have similar flaws that create undervotes.

These waves of breaking news about serious problems in the conduct of the 2004 and 2006 elections, and in the performance of electronic voting machines in the two states that have decided the last two presidential elections, make it a virtual certainty that we have barely begun to see the full extent of what has really been done to the American democratic system.

—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of three books on the presidential election of 2004, and continue to cover breaking election protection issues at www.freepress.org.

Download the Excel spreadsheet.

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Forced Resignations And Stiff Prison Sentences Intensify The Escalating Blowback From Ohio’s 2004 Stolen Election

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
March 20, 2007

In a bold move “to restore trust to elections in Ohio,” Ohio’s newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has requested the resignation of all four members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. The two Democrats and two Republicans were formally asked to resign by the close of business on March 21. Cuyahoga County includes the heavily Democratic city of Cleveland. Brunner is a Democrat who was elected to be Ohio’s Secretary of State in November, 2006.

Felony convictions have also resulted in 18-month prison sentences for two employees of the Cuyahoga BOE as a result of what the county prosecutor in the case calls the “rigging” of the outcome in the recount following the 2004 presidential election. Further problems surfaced in the conduct of Cuyahoga County’s May, 2006 primary, in the wake of which Michel Vu, Executive Director of the county’s Board of Elections recently resigned.

In tandem, the shake-up in Ohio’s biggest county reflects a widening storm surrounding the outcome of the 2004 presidential election and the conduct of elections overall in the nation’s most pivotal state.

Among those Brunner has asked to resign is Cuyahoga County BOE Chair Robert Bennett, who chairs Ohio’s Republican Party. Voting rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck and others have long charged that Bennett worked closely with White House advisor Karl Rove and Ohio’s then-Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to secure Bush’s 2004 victory in Ohio.

Bennett responded to Brunner by saying that he will refuse to resign. He has placed the blame for the May 2006 primary problems on private voting machine vendors, including Diebold. Bennett claims the rigging of the 2004 presidential recount was caused by the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s office, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

If Bennett and other Board members refuse to resign by Wednesday, Brunner says they “will face a complaint and public hearing to be conducted in Cleveland…”

In the 2004 presidential election, Cuyahoga County suffered serious election irregularities that worked to the disadvantage of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Among them: the purging of 24.93% of all the voters in the city of Cleveland, where Kerry won 83% of the vote; mysterious and suspect vote totals for third party candidates in majority African American wards; unexplained “security” problems that caused the last-minute shift of voting locations in the inner city Cleveland Public School polling places; improbably low apparent turnouts in heavily Democratic inner city wards, and more.

Brunner’s request for the resignations comes a week after two Cuyahoga County election workers were each sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging the recount of the 2004 election in Ohio’s biggest county. These are the first prison terms issued in the escalating scandal over the vote count that gave George W. Bush a second stay in the White House. The two women are out on bail pending appeal. But the substantial jail time demanded by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan indicates there may be more trials and convictions yet to come, especially in light of new evidence unearthed by the Free Press in other counties around the state.

Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer were each convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct by an election board employee. Maiden, 60, was the Cuyahoga Board of Elections’ third-highest ranking employee.

Dreamer, 40, was ballot manager. Maiden and Dreamer were also convicted of a separate misdemeanor. A third defendant in the case was acquitted of all charges.

The Free Press has unearthed evidence indicating possible criminal misconduct by a wide range of election officials throughout the state, including Blackwell. Under the law, election boards are required to do recounts by choosing 3% of a county’s voters at random for sampling. But throughout the state, apparently with the explicit knowledge and approval of Blackwell, precincts were hand-counted for recounting, a criminal act. This non-random sampling in essence voided the recount, for which backers of the Green and Libertarian Parties paid more than $100,000.

According to the prosecution in the case against Maiden and Dreamer, this method of action led to the recount being illegally “rigged.” When investigators working with the Free Press attempted to audit the Cuyahoga County ballots from the 2004 election last summer, BOE officials were unable to find the ballots for four full days. The investigation team, led by Richard Hayes Phillips, had to find the ballots on their own. Under Ohio law, the ballots were to be locked in a known location, and secured by two keys, one controlled by each major party.

Brunner says she acted in part because she is concerned that many of the problems from 2004 and 2006 might resurface in the upcoming 2008 election. “With maximum 18-month prison sentences being handed down to two Cuyahoga County election workers last week, for their role in the 2004 presidential recount, the tremendous problems that surfaced in the May 2006 primary that delayed even the unofficial vote count for five days, and the uncertain future of this board as another Presidential election looms on the near horizon, it is incumbent on me as Secretary of State to provide the direction needed to get this troubled board on track,” she says. “The voters of Cuyahoga county deserve it, the citizens of Ohio expect it and the rest of the nation will be watching.”

In the 2006 primary, Cuyahoga County used the controversial Diebold touchscreen voting machines. These machines suffered a well-publicized meltdown, in which many malfunctioned. A report from the Election Science Institute (ESI) documented significant differences between votes actually cast on the machines as opposed to those officially counted.

Immediately following the election, 562,498 votes were reported cast in Cuyahoga County, with 30,791 listed as absentee or provisional ballots. But the official results show just 468,056 counted. This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared in the official tallies, representing a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast in Cuyahoga.

Michael Vu, who was the Cuyahoga BOE executive director, came under intense criticism for the bitter controversies surrounding both the 2004 and 2006 elections. Last month, he resigned “to pursue future career growth,” according to a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections release.

In an interesting and perhaps telling statement coming from a Republican who was commenting on an appointee supported by the Democratic Party, Bennett said “Michael Vu has worked hard and accomplished a great deal on behalf of Cuyahoga County votes and will, I am sure, continue to have success in his career of public service.

“Michael oversaw a difficult transition period at the Board including the implementation of a new electronic voting system county-wide in the May (2006) primary followed by a near flawless general election,” Bennett concluded.

Brunner’s action underscores a growing sentiment that the unraveling of what happened during and after the 2004 election has only just begun.

The Free Press has learned that Brunner’s office is also investigating an unexplained undercount in the 2006 general election in six Ohio counties which all used the Diebold TSX DRE voting machines. In Montgomery County, where the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland beat Blackwell, the Republican nominee, by 107,593 to 76,189, there was an abnormally high 13.76% of the machines registering no vote for the state’s highest office. Problems are also under investigation in Adams, Darke, Highland, Mercer and Perry Counties.

With stiff prison terms, forced resignations and widespread investigations underway, there is a well-founded sense in Ohio that much more is yet to surface about the disputed presidential election of 2004 and what has come after it.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (New Press) and of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via www.freepress.org.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2503

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The Airwaves Belong To The People, Speak Out March 7th

Bob Fitrakis

I’m heading out in a few hours to speak at Victorian’s Midnight Café. It’s a fundraiser for Ohio Majority Radio, the folks who are trying to bring back Air America to Columbus. As you know, there’s been a huge vacuum since 1230 AM took Air America off the air. Couple that with the loss of WVKO 1580AM last May – and we find that talk radio in Columbus spans the political spectrum from ultraconservativism to neofascism.

This is a point that needs to be made at the Town Meeting on the Future of Media in Columbus on Wednesday, March 7 at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church, 760 E. Broad St. The meeting starts at 5:30pm and FCC Commissioners will be in attendance to take testimony from Central Ohioans on how well – or in our case, not well – the broadcast community is serving the people of our community.

The freepress.net, one of the sponsors of the Town Meeting, has done a good job of analyzing who owns the media in Columbus. As they point out, just four companies control 75% of the Columbus area’s local news market. And, the Republican Wolfe family, owner of the Dispatch company, not only has a daily monopoly over the print media, also owns WBNS TV-10, WBNS 1460 AM and WBNS FM 97.1. These media entities comprise nearly half of all the local news market in our area.

Points that need to be made are that the media ownership in Columbus fails to reflect the genuine diversity of our community. For example, racial and ethnic minorities comprise 23% of the population in the Columbus TV market, 19% of the radio market, and 33% of the city’s population. Despite that diversity, only 7.5% of the area’s commercial broadcast stations are minority owned. And the only station that was willing to look at minority disenfranchisement during the 2004 election was the incredibly brave WVKO. With WVKO out of the market, there’s virtually no alternative local coverage of events that matter the most to civil rights and human rights advocates and minorities.

March 7 is YOUR opportunity to speak out against the oligarchs and plutocrats who own Columbus media.

Remember, the airwaves belong to the people. And, with that in mind, the Free Press is desperate to raise money for a 135 watt radio translator that could add a new progressive voice to Columbus radio. We are running out of time and must broadcast a signal by March 26. Tax deductible donations can be made out to to the CICJ Radio Project and can be donated online soon at our online store at https://freepress.org/ or sent to: 1240 Bryden Rd., Columbus, OH 43205.

So – hope to see you on Wednesday March 7 at 5:30pm at the church. Come prepared to testify and we will be videotaping and streaming it live.

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Authors Dr. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman Book Signing Event

What_Happened_in_Ohio.JPG

March 3, 2007
Local Activists and Authors Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman book signing

Featured at Simply Living Bookstore. 12 noon until 2 p.m. Bob and Harvey are well known locally for their work with the Free Press, and their recent books addressing election issues in Ohio have received national attention. Mark your calendars now to meet them in person and purchase a signed copy of What Happened in Ohio? – a piece of living history that you will want to pass on to your children and grandchildren.

Location:Clintonville Community Market, 200 Crestview.

Email: Contact
Website: What Happened in Ohio?

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Molly And Me

MollyIvans                              I haven’t blogged since the election, although there have been a few postings of articles I’ve written for the Free Press. But I break this unofficial vow of silence to mourn Molly Ivins, the longtime Free Press columnist and Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer.

I can remember the first time I met Molly a decade or so ago. She was in Columbus speaking at a private prep school, the Columbus School for Girls. My good friend and Free Press Senior Editor Harvey Wasserman insisted that Molly would want to meet me. So, we went over to the School for Girls to say Hi.

Molly not only wanted to talk to me, she insisted on shooting hoops before the event. While the crowd gathered in the auditorium, Molly, Harvey and I played a little “21.” As a recall, Molly won, and she was a mean rebounder. She was a tall woman with a quick wit and equally quick elbows, who knew her way around a basketball court.

After her speech, we met back at the Wasserman home in Bexley where Molly was eager to share the longneck beers that she was drinking. Since Harvey is a healthy Green, the task fell to me to drink the longnecks with Molly – and exchange stories. While I hate to admit it, her stories were much funnier than mine, and her charm was incomparable, like her writing.

Molly’s Texas populist perspectives always sided with the poor and the oppressed over the wealthy drunken yay-hoos of her native state. She captured Texas politics and national politics in a way that made you proud to be an American. Molly’s last column entitled “Stand up Against the Surge” was also her last campaign to stop the criminally insane war in Iraq. Many now are calling her the conscience of America. But that’s what they wrote of Michael Harrington, Norman Thomas and Eugene Debs. Molly was more than that, she was not only the conscience, she was the comedic voice that defined the follies and the foibles of the Bush dynasty. As much conscience, as a jester speaking truth shrouded in humor.

We have lost one of the great voices in American journalism. I’m just happy she let me shoot hoops with her, and publish her columns at the Free Press.

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First Criminal Convictions From Ohio’s Stolen 2004 Election Confirm Recount Was Rigged

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
January 27, 2007

The first felony convictions of two Cleveland poll workers stemming from Ohio’s stolen 2004 election confirm that the official recount in that contested vote was, in the words of county prosecutors, “rigged.” The question now is whether further prosecutions will reach higher up in the ranks of officials who may have been involved in illegalities throughout the rest of the state.

The convictions have come down in Cuyahoga County, where Democratic candidates traditionally run up huge majorities. Suspicious vote counts and other irregularities cut deeply into John Kerry’s margins in 2004. Official vote counts gave the state—and thus the presidency—to George W. Bush by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million counted.

A statewide recount, paid for by the Green and Libertarian Parties, was marred in 87 of the state’s 88 counties by the types of illegalities that led to this week’s convictions. Only in Coshocton County was a full, manual recount performed.

Throughout the rest of the state, under the direction of Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, mandatory random sampling was not done, as prescribed by law. Instead, poll workers illegally chose sample precincts for recounting where they knew there would be no problems, and then routinely recounted the rest of the ballots by machine, rendering the recount meaningless.

Blackwell simultaneously served as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. This fall he was defeated in his campaign for governor by Democrat Ted Strickland.

County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that “the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless.” Baxter said three election workers “did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months” on the recount. “This was a very hush operation.”

Jacqueline Maiden, the county election board’s third-ranking employee, and Kathleen Dreamer, an assistant manager, have each been convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct and a misdemeanor count of failing to perform their duties. Rosie Grier, the board’s ballot department manager, was acquitted on all seven counts raised against the three. Sentencing is scheduled for late February. Defense attorneys have indicated they will appeal. The felony conviction carries a possible sentence of six to 18 months.

The county prosecutors have not yet alleged vote fraud. No do they say mishandling the recount affected the election’s outcome. Dreamer’s defense attorney, Roger Synenberg, said the defendants “were just doing [the recount] the way they were always doing it.”

But Cuyahoga’s precinct-by-precinct vote counts and turnout numbers varied wildly and improbably. Several predominantly black precincts showed turnouts of less than 30% in a county where overall turnout was around 60%. One ward showed a 7% turnout as compared to surrounding precincts with turnouts nearly ten times as high.

Further prosecutions may now hinge on what Maiden and Dreamer might tell prosecutors about the role played by higher-ups. The assumption is widespread that the decision to consciously designate test precincts, rather than choose them at random, must have been at least tacitly approved by Secretary of State Blackwell.

In Cleveland, Robert Bennett, chair of the state’s Republican Party, also served as chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Cuyahoga BOE Executive Director Michael Vu was chosen by the county Democratic Party. Under Vu’s direction, the county’s elections have been rife with chaos, irregularities and apparent fraud. When the Democrats recently tried to remove him from his post, Vu was supported by Bennett and the Republican Party. He kept his job when Blackwell strategically abstained from a key removal vote.

There is growing evidence that what happened in Cleveland was the rule, rather than the exception, in Ohio’s 2004 presidential recount. Sworn testimony at a public hearing in Toledo indicates Diebold technicians were involved in picking “random” precincts to be recounted there. A memory card was apparently lacking from at least one optiscan machines.

Miami County election officials admit they merely ran the optiscan ballots through the ES 550 counter, rather than doing the prescribed random recounts. Free Press reporters have found recount results varied signficantly from official results, which should have triggered a hand recount of all the ballots in the county. This was never done in Miami or in any other Ohio County except Coshocton.

Handwritten field notes from Paddy Shaffer, the Green/Libertarian Recount Coordinator in Delaware County in 2004, call into question the role played by ES&S technician Sam Hogsett. On December 15, 2004, Shaffer recorded at 2:42pm that Hogsett was “…tapping tabulator machine on left. There are two machines in the room. Kim [Spangler] says he is doing this because the light/the switch keeps going out. He has now handled the machines multiple times.”

At 4:25pm, Shaffer recorded “ES&S tech Sam Hogsett back on the machine and touching the ballots. They are working on Genoa precincts. My intuition is screaming get him away from the ballots and machines. … He continued moving around the machines, stacking in the ballots.”

At 5:05pm Shaffer noted “Sam is back loading and stacking. Throughout much of this time, Sam is the one to call out the precinct total and the name.”

Sam Hogsett is more than an ES&S technician according to Shaffer and others who investigated him, who have found his letters to the editor quite alarming. Voting rights activists troubled by Hogsett’s role in the recount found letters posted under the name Sam Hogsett, Crown City, at the southeatern Ohio newspaper website

http://www.herald-dispatch.com/ .

One of the letters begins as follows: “I recently read in this pitifully left-leaning editorial section that the spineless, thoughtless, moral less useless left-wing liberal America hater Robert Sheer is unsuccessfully attempting to use an apples-to-oranges comparison to wrongfully attack our Second Amendment rights.” Hogsett goes on to write: “… He [Sheer] believes that if I were to take a Smith and Wesson and blast his little pea brain to bits, that his family should be able to sue the manufacturer and the gun dealer who sold it to me.”

Initially, Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost obtained a temporary restraining order stopping the recount in Delaware County on November 23, 2004.

The Delaware Gazette noted a complaint from Shaffer about the role Hogsett played in the recount as a private voting machine company technician, and in a report dated January 1, 2005, Shaffer wrote the Delaware County Board of Elections that John Myers of the Delaware County Democratic Party said that, “He was very pleased that unlike many counties that are at the mercy of computer technicians, Delaware is not. He [Myers] said during both conversations, even repeated over and over, that they do their own programming. So why was Sam Hogsett needed? Why involve the technician in the process of the recount?”

Board of Elections records in Fairfield County document that when the recount was not matching thus mandating a full handcount under Ohio law, the Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell’s office recommended that Sam Hogsett be brought in to deal with the discrepancies between the official count and the recount. After Hogsett arrived and took charge of the recount as a private ES&S technician, the vote matched perfectly for the first time.

In Athens and Auglaize Counties, BOE workers who attempted to blow the whistle on apparent election irregularities were forced out of their jobs.

Overall, the illegalities prompting these initial convictions in Cuyahoga County appear to be the rule rather than the exception in the handling of the Ohio 2004 recount statewide. The question now is whether parallel prosecutions will follow in other counties. And whether such prosecutions might include those who are likely to have ordered or approved the illegalities that marred the recount in Cleveland, and throughout the rest of the state.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (https://freepress.org/), and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, published by the New Press.

Original article @>https://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2379>

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The Unraveling Of 2004 Election

Do new Ohio recount prosecutions indicate unraveling of 2004 election theft cover-up?
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman January 19, 2007

Three criminal prosecutions in Ohio’s biggest county have opened with strong indications that the cover-up of the theft of the 2004 presidential election is starting to unravel. Prosecutors say these cases involve “rigging” the recount in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), where tens of thousands of votes were shifted from John Kerry to George W. Bush, or else never counted. Meanwhile, corroborating evidence continues to surface throughout Ohio illuminating the GOP’s theft of the presidency. According to the AP, County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that “the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless.” Baxter said the three election workers “did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months” on the recount.

Jacqueline Maiden, the county election board’s third-ranking employee, faces six counts of misconduct involving ballot review. Rosie Grier, the board’s ballot department manager, and Kathleen Dreamer, an assistant manager, are also charged. All three are on paid administrative leave, and are being supported by the county board of elections.

The county prosecutors do not allege vote fraud. No do they say mishandling the recount affected the election’s outcome.

But Cleveland, which usually gives Democrats an extremely heavy margin, was crucial to Bush’s alleged victory of roughly 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million counted. Some 600,000 votes were cast or counted in Cuyahoga County. But official turnout and vote counts varied wildly and improbably from precinct to precinct. Overall the county reported about a 60% turnout. But several predominantly black precincts, where voters went more than 80% for Kerry, reported turnouts of 30% or less. In one ward, only a 7% turnout was reported, while surrounding precincts were nearly ten times as high. Independent studies indicate Kerry thousands of votes in Cuyahoga County that rightfully should have been counted in his column.

In the Cuyahoga case, the poll workers are charged with circumventing state recount laws that require a random sampling of at least three percent of the votes cast in a given precinct, to be recounted by hand and by machine. The prosecution charges that the workers instead hand picked sample precincts to recount that they knew did not have questionable results. Once they were able to match those recounts with official results, they could then do the rest of the recount by machine, in effect rendering the entire process meaningless. “This was a very hush operation,” said prosecutor Baxter.

Similar allegations have been made in other counties. Indeed, such illegal non-random recounting procedures appear to have been common throughout the state, carried out by board of election employees with the tacit consent of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Blackwell was officially charged with administering the election that gave Bush a second term while simultaneously serving as the Ohio co-chair of his Bush’s re-election campaign. Blackwell has just been overwhelmingly defeated in his own attempt to become governor of Ohio.

Defense attorney Roger Synenberg, who represents Dreamer, told the jury that the recount was an open process, and that his client and the others “were just doing it the way they were always doing it.”

The Ohio recount was forced by the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, which raised over $100,000 to cover costs. They charge the recount was fraudulent due largely to the kinds of irregularities with which the Cuyahoga poll workers are now charged. Those charges carry sentences of up to 18 months in prison each, and include failure to perform duties imposed by law; misconduct; knowingly disobeying elections law; unlawfully obtaining possession of ballots/ballot boxes or pollbooks; and unlawfully opening or permitting the opening of a sealed package containing ballots.

But the trial in Cleveland represents just a small sampling of what happened during the Ohio recount. At a public hearing sponsored by the Free Press in Toledo in December, 2004, sworn testimony claimed that Diebold technicians were party to picking the “random” precincts to be recounted. At least one of the precincts lacked a memory card for the recount using the optiscan machine.

In Miami County, election officials admit that they did not recount to the official vote total, but merely ran the optiscan ballots through the ES 550 counter, and then counted them to see if they matched the machine count. In essence, what they did was a test of the counting machine, not a recount to the actual reported votes. Miami’s procedures were thus as illegal as those in Cuyahoga.

Indeed, when the Free Press audited all the recount ballots from Miami County, we found the so-called recount results differed noticeably from the official results. If these differences in results were discovered at the recount in 2004, Ohio law should have triggered a hand recount of all ballots in the county. That was never done.

In Fairfield County, when the recount totals wouldn’t match, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell recommended Sam Hogsett, an ES&S employee, to assist with the process. Despite complaints from a Democratic election officer, Hogsettt worked the central tabulator and counter. Hogsett somehow managed to make the recount match, thus avoiding a full manual recount.

Hogsettt is on record in a local newspaper saying that he would like to shoot a “liberal” so the liberal would learn that it wasn’t the gun that killed him, but the shooter, Hogsett. Green Party recount coordinator Paddy Shaffer complained to Delaware County election officials about Hogsett’s presence during the recount and his constant use of the computer. Her complaint has had no apparent impact.

In Hocking County, Board of Elections Deputy Director, Sherole Eaton was fired after she submitted an affidavit to U.S. Rep. John Conyers outlining how Hocking BOE officials pre-selected one precinct because it had the “right” number of voters (3%), thus illegally prescreening like Cuyahoga County. Eaton also complained that a Triad technician showed up unannounced on recount day and offered her a “cheat sheet” for the recount. He just happened to have a hard drive for a 12-year-old Dell computer that served as Hocking County’s central tabulator. The county’s official central tabulator went down mysteriously just prior to the recount. Eaton said the Triad technician installed his hard drive and told the election officials that the recount would match up perfectly if they didn’t turn off the computer. Eaton has not been restored to her BOE position, and there has been no full recount in Hocking County.

In Coshocton County, Green Party recount observer Tim Kettler acquired public records showing that election officials pre-counted in secrecy in clear violation of Ohio law. Coshocton BOE officials desperately begged Secretary of State Blackwell for advice when the recount did not match. Blackwell’s office urged the county to simply send in the results as official. But after being confronted by angry recount observers, Coshocton BOE officials became the only ones in Ohio to hand count every ballot. The recount resulted in a statistically significant vote pickup for John Kerry among previously uncounted ballots.

In part due to widespread public revulsion over his conduct of the 2004 election, Blackwell was soundly beaten in the 2006 gubernatorial race by Democrat Ted Strickland. Ohio also now has a Democratic Secretary of State and Attorney General. Whether they will conduct further investigations into what really happened in 2004 remains to be seen.

But a federal court decision has preserved the ballots from that election. Whether further legal charges come from the new administration in Columbus remains to be seen. But the Cuyahoga prosecutions provide more evidence that we still don’t have a reliable vote count for the election that gave George W. Bush a second term.

Original Article @

http://tinyurl.com/ytmwxs

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org), and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, published by the New Press. 

 

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Consequences of 2006 Election On Audio And Questionable Results In Text

See Audio track at bottom. 

Bob Fitrakis

Missing votes in Ohio call races into question
January 2, 2007

While Democratic Party supporters celebrate their success in Ohio, where their statewide candidates won four out of five executive offices and they now control both the U.S. House and Senate, they are ignoring massive and verifiable irregularities in the 2006 election. Similar irregularities – including missing votes, undervotes and overvotes – may come back to haunt the Democrats in the 2008 general election.

The only statewide partisan loss for the Democrats was also the closest contest. Republican Mary Taylor defeated Democrat Barbara Sykes for State Auditor by an official vote of 50.64% to 49.36%. Taylor prevailed by 48,826 votes. The Columbus Dispatch’s final poll, usually the most accurate in the state for candidate races, predicted Sykes would win by 10%.

An analysis by the Free Press documents massive discrepancies between the unofficial turnout reported by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately following the election and the official general election turnout numbers reported in December 2006. These discrepancies may help explain Sykes’ unexpected loss.

In Cuyahoga County which contains the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland, immediately following the election 562,498 votes were reported cast with 30,791 listed as absentee or provisional ballots. The official results show 468,056 counted in Cuyahoga. This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared in the official tallies. This represents a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast in Cuyahoga.

Sykes won 62% of the vote in Cuyahoga County.

Cuyahoga County uses the controversial Diebold touchscreen voting machines. These machines suffered a notorious meltdown in the 2006 primary where many machines malfunctioned and an Election Science Institute (ESI) report documented significant differences between votes actually cast on the machines as opposed to counted.

Similarly in Lucas County, another Democratic stronghold, 17,351 votes disappeared (10.6% of the total vote) between the unofficial and official turnout numbers. An analysis by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips indicates that Taylor, a first-time statewide office seeker, ran significantly ahead of Republican incumbent candidates Mike Dewine and Betty Montgomery, in the Senate and Attorney General races respectively.

Other counties with significant and unexplained loss of votes include: Auglaize (15.7%), Coshocton (14.1%), Jackson (11.3%), Licking (14.1%), Morrow (17.4%), and Tuscarawas (11.7%). In these less populated counties, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland won in five out of six and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod won in four out of the six.

Normally, the official total vote tally increases as provisional ballots are added to the unfficial total. For example, Franklin County had 342,958 votes unofficially with 46,458 provisionals and a few late overseas absentee ballots. The official Franklin County result was 385,863 votes cast, a pickup of 42,905 ballots once the provisionals were counted. Eleven of Ohio’s 88 counties reported this anomaly of fewer votes in the official total than the unofficial total.

Other election anomalies that bear further investigation are six counties with improbable undervote percentages in the U.S. Senate race. On average in Ohio, 3.9% of the ballots contained an “undervote,” meaning no vote was cast in the Senate race. But, in the Senate race there were significant undervote totals: Adams County had 14.1%; Darke County had 13.5%; Highland had 13.8%; Mercer had 11.2%; Montgomery had 13.8%; and Perry had 16.3%. The city of Dayton is in Montgomery County where more than 30,000 ballots recorded no vote for Senate. Brown won 53% of the vote in Montgomery County.

In comparison with the undervote in the well-known District 13 race in Sarasota, Florida, the undervote was 18,382.

In the Sykes race, the undervote for Auditor in Cuyahoga County was 10.7%. Undervotes were 8.3% of the total vote in Lucas County. Skyes’ undervote total in these Democratic havens should have been examined along with the bizarre unofficial vs. official vote totals in these counties.

The state auditor’s office in Ohio has enormous power to investigate and root out official corruption involving public funds. Many critics of Republican Party scandals in Ohio have pointed to the GOP’s control of the state auditor’s office as the key to delaying and minimizing public scrutiny.

Franklin County and the Squire challenge

Although the election numbers are stranger in Cuyahoga and Lucas counties for the Democrats, an election contest complaint filed in the Franklin County Court of Appeals by Judge Carol Squire documents in great detail the problem with electronic voting machines based on the results of her 2006 race. Incumbent Squire filed the action on December 22 after losing by 13,064 votes to Chris Geer for a seat on the County Court of Common Pleas.

The action seeks to “declare invalid and set aside” Squire’s loss. The complaint requests a full evidentiary hearing.

Squire hired Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, President and Chief Technical Officer of Notable Software, Inc. as an expert witness and investigator. The former Bryn Mawr computer science professor holds a Ph.D. in computer and informational science from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Mercuri’s sworn affidavit contains detailed criticisms of the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) and its conduct of the 2006 election. Her sworn statements include the following:

  • 35 precincts were unable to close “due to problems with printers, machine malfunctions, infrared readers, PEBs [personal electronic ballots] . . . .” Squire paid for a recount of these 35 precincts but the BOE used the real time audit log (RTAL) paper tapes to recount only 2 of the 35 precincts. The RTALs are the only way to accurately assess how people really voted on the Election Day.
  • In the BOE warehouse “hundreds of RTAL paper rolls were sitting out on various tables . . . It had been my understanding that sealed containers holding the rolls would be open only in the presence of observers, but this apparently had already been done, and the rolls extracted, prior to the observers’ arrival.”
  • “Many of the rolls” lacked “tamper-proof” tape, which seals the RTALs at the end of Election Day in case of a recount. Instead, they had stickers which could be easily tampered with.
  • “Some of the [RTAL] rolls did not have a sticker” leaving them open for tampering or accidental destruction.
  • “. . . Others [RTALs] had a sticker with handwritten initials on it” indicating that the roll “was replaced by a service person during the Election Day.” This raises questions concerning chain of custody of the rolls, the functionality of the machines, and identity and background of the technicians who initialed the stickers.
  • “. . . A considerable number of the rolls were incomplete, possibly because the paper roll had run out or been changed, although for some, it was evident that the end of the paper roll had been damaged or ripped.”
  • “. . . between five and ten percent of the machines had either not printed an end tally,” or “it was missing.”
  • In one case, when Mercuri requested the information at the beginning of the RTAL roll be read aloud during the recount, the phrases “password override” and “PEB failure” were read from the audit log. Mercuri concludes that “. . . this might have indicated a pre-election breach of security or protocol for that equipment.”
  • “It was observed that some of the equipment problem report pages had been previously removed from the pollbooks.”
  • “The warehouse facility appeared to be shared by other agencies, as there was a large SWAT team truck behind some of the rows of voting machines . . . .”

Mercuri’s 16-page affidavit concludes that Squire was denied “an appropriate recount” from a voter-verified paper trail using the RTAL rolls and also points out that the “voting system was inappropriately configured and improperly used during the election.” The Franklin County BOE used different versions of hardware that were not certified prior to the election.

“The use of mismatched components violates certification requirements and also runs the risk of exposure to programming errors (bugs) or security vulnerabilities that could compromise the integrity of the election and result in the loss or mistabulation of votes,” Mercuri states.

In late November the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), one of the federal government’s premier research centers, condemned electronic voting machines noting that as presently configured, they “cannot be made secure.”

In an audit of 25% of Franklin County’s precinct pollbooks and signature books, Squire’s elections investigator Rady Ananda found massive problems with over reporting of votes. Only 29 out of 216 precincts matched the number of signatures to the number of votes cast. Eight precincts reported more than 100 more votes cast than signatures in the pollbooks.

A similar problem of fewer votes being recorded than voter signatures also occurred with one precinct having 100 fewer votes on the machine than signatures. In all, 136 precincts fell into this category. Columbus Ward 66 Precinct G was missing 123 votes. An audit of Miami County by a Free Press investigation team following the 2004 presidential election found a similar problem of optiscan precinct totals not matching signature books. In the spring 2006 primary election, the ESI audit of Cuyahoga County found similar problems.

Cuyahoga’s problems reappeared in the 2006 general election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that, “Nearly 12,000 people in Cuyahoga County cast votes illegally on Election Day without signing the election books, or likely, showing identification as required by a new state law.”

“An analysis showed that 533 of the 570 Cuyhoga County voting precincts reported more votes than voters signed in.” The Plain Dealer found that: “With some polling places, the numbers were off by more than 100.”

Beverly Campbell, a 2006 Democratic candidate for the Ohio Statehouse, lost by 368 votes in Franklin County. She told the Columbus Dispatch that “her campaign has questions similar to Squire’s about vote and signature totals.” In a meeting with the Free Press, she supplied a worksheet from her own investigation of 98 precincts where there were problems in 88 of them either with more votes cast than signatures or more signatures than votes cast. In all, she found 483 more votes than signatures and 300 missing votes.

Squire’s complaint also asserts that “over 2500 provisional ballots were discarded with no opportunity for observers to obtain the basis or justification for rejection.”

The voting irregularities in the 2006 election appear to be greater than in 2004, but many Ohio Democrats have chosen to ignore that reality. But one who hasn’t taken that position is newly-elected Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who has pledged a complete review of the electronic voting machines. The facts remain that not every vote is counted or accounted for in the Buckeye State and this could be the key factor in deciding the next president of the United States.

—
Bob Fitrakis is the co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election published by the New Press.
Find the Original Article @ https://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1481

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