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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 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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