Freepress: New Tales of Theft as Indictments + Convictions Mount (OH-04)

[mod mom]

Court victory lets preserved Ohio 2004 ballots tell new tales of theft and fraud as indictments and convictions mount
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
September 25, 2006

Ohio election protection activists have won a landmark court battle to preserve the ballots from 2004’s disputed presidential election, and researchers studying those ballots continue to find new evidence that the election was, indeed, stolen. Among other things, large numbers of consecutive votes in different precincts for George W. Bush make it appear ever more likely that the real winner in 2004 should have been John Kerry. Meanwhile, indictments and prison terms are mounting among key players in that tainted contest.

In King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association et. al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, three community groups and five individuals have won a precedent-setting federal decision preserving the ballots from the 2004 election. By federal law those ballots could have been destroyed en masse September 3, twenty-two months after the November 2, 2004 balloting. Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell gave every indication that he would order the records to be destroyed as soon as he could. Admissions have already come from a few counties that illegally disposed of election-related materials well before the federal deadline. By law, all such documents were to be preserved, under lock and key, right up to the federal deadline.

While running the 2004 election, Blackwell served as the very active co-chair of Ohio’s Bush-Cheney campaign. He is now the GOP nominee for governor, but is trailing substantially in all major polls behind Democratic Congressman Ted Strickland.

Blackwell was put on notice by Columbus Attorney Cliff Arnebeck and others who filed the King Lincoln suit contending illegal discrimination against black and young voters in 2004. The suit is based on widespread allegations involving mal-distribution of voting machines, dubious vote counts, race-based voter suppression and many other questionable occurrences before, during and after the 2004 balloting. The suit asked Judge Algernon Marbley of the federal district court in Columbus to order Blackwell to force Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections (BOEs) to preserve ballots and other election-related materials so the full extent of the allegations could be proven.

-SNIP

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2162

[mod mom]

1. Delaware Co:

In Delaware County, Precinct Genoa I, researcher Stuart Wright viewed and recounted 3 separate bundles of ballots. In the second bundle, there were 274 consecutive ballots for Bush. In the third bundle there were 359 consecutive ballots for Bush. Genoa I was not one of the four precincts recounted as part of a required official recount, conducted on December 15, 2004.

In Delaware County, BOE officials told Phillips that after the votes were cast on Election Day, ballots were unloaded by a team of teenage volunteers including the Boy Scouts who carried them into the BOE building where they were then given to a "mentally retarded man" who scraped the chads off the punch card ballots. Dr. Phillips estimates that the "mentally retarded man" would have had to scrape four or five ballots per second on election night in order to comply with the posting of the results at 12:40am for the nearly 80,000 ballots cast there.

In Delaware County, Ross Township precinct, Philips has discovered that the BOE certified that 70% of the ballots cast for C. Ellen Connally, an African-American woman from Cleveland running for the Ohio Supreme Court, were also counted for Bush. The implausibility of this outcome in a white, Republican suburb is underscored by the fact that Connally trailed both Bush and Kerry very substantially throughout the rest of the state. Some 60% of the Township’s ballots opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (which passed substantially) also were punched for Bush, an extremely implausible outcome widely branded as the “Gays for Bush” anomaly.

[mod mom]

2. Miami Co:

n Miami County on Monday, June 19, 2006, Director Steve Quillan handed co-author Bob Fitrakis a print-out of what he called "freely amended results." Director Quillan said "You guys were right" regarding the voter turnout in Concord South West Precinct, which had been listed as 98.55% in the certified election results in 2004. Quillan also disavowed the alleged 94.3% voter turnout certified election results in Concord South. The Free Press has questioned those results, which would have meant that 679 out of 689 people successfully voted in Concord South West. Using a computer databank of voter history, Quillan now admits that the voter turnout was just 82.1% in Concord South West and 79.5% in Concord, discrepancies of more than 15%.

In Miami County, BOE Director Quillan also says Boy Scouts who volunteered to help on Election Day mistakenly took Concord South West ballots to the Concord East precinct. Baiman found that the pollbooks and absentee ballots in Miami County “have little to no relationship to the voters who voted in the county.” He also discovered that “At least 8% of precincts in Miami County have at least a 5% discrepancy between the number of voters who voted and the official certified number of votes.” He also noted that there were two precincts that were off by more than 100 votes.

In Miami County, both the chair and the director of the BOE admitted that the recount matched the official vote count only because they didn't use the certified results, but simply counted the ballots in the precinct and ran them through the tabulator. This is a valid tabulator test, but not a legally valid recount, since there's no benchmark.

Also in Miami County, Diane L. Miley, the BOE’s former Deputy Director said the Director allowed “Republican friends” and “high school students to take ballots out to the polls on Election Day.” Miley also says ten or more Republicans were allowed into the BOE on the evening of Election Day, when votes were being counted, which she says made her “incredibly uncomfortable.” But in going public with her assertions, Miley says she was "abandoned by the Dems . . . when I stood up at the Board of Elections."

[mod mom]

3. Clermont Co.:

In Clermont County, which contributed significantly to Bush’s margin of victory, researcher Dr. Ronald Baiman discovered a suspicious use of replacement ballots, that are meant to be issued only if a regular ballot is somehow spoiled by a voter. In a random draw of one ballot from each of the 192 precincts, against huge odds, Baiman found a replacement ballot. Baiman asked that the next ballot from the precinct be drawn and it, too, was a replacement ballot. Continuing pulling ballots from that same precinct, Baiman witnessed 36 straight replacement ballots in a row, a virtual statistical impossibility. Dr. Philips recorded only five spoiled ballots in this same precinct, raising the question of where the other 31 replacement ballots came from.


Also in Clermont County, Phillips found an opti-scan ballot with a white sticker over the Kerry-Edwards spot which would prevent the counter from recording a Kerry vote. During the December 2004 recount in Clermont County, witnesses swore out official affidavits that they saw several ballots with stickers over the Kerry-Edwards spot. The county prosecutor claimed there were “less than one hundred” of these, but was unable to explain why any stickers were there at all.

[texpatriot2004]

4. K & R for Transparent Democracy nm

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. K & R

eom

[Land Shark]

6. does anybody know what the numbers of "consecutive votes" are?

in a row for Bush? And how many times that appears? K&R

[acmavm]

7. Hey mod mom, do you remember all the jerks (even here)

who said the election wasn't stolen and that we were embarrassing ourselves and DU for saying so?

I do.

[Downtown Hound]

8. I do as well

Bumped into a few of them yesterday also. Kept saying there's no evidence whatsoever that the election was stolen. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

[mod mom]

9. Yep, I remember the skepticism even among Dems, but after what I

witnessed on Nov 2, there was no way I could turn my back-it was that blatant.

As for the Dems who said we were hurting their chances speaking out, I said and still say we didn't speak out loud enough after 2000 and look what happened. The truth is always the best option.

[bleever]

10. K&R, and thanks.

[eomer]

11. K & R (eom)

[DemReadingDU]

12. Election 2004 was blatantly stolen

I'm in Ohio, and no one can tell me that Bush won this state in 2004

[freedomfries]

13. k & r

[bobbieinok]

14. is there ANY plan in ANY state/precinct to strictly monitor election

so it cannot be stolen AGAIN????????