Michael Connell, the IT consultant who died in a plane crash last Friday, shortly before he was due to testify in federal court regarding his alleged role in tampering with the 2004 Ohio presidential election results, brings to mind the death of Raymond Lemme.
Because of the similarities between Lemme’s and Connell’s connection to the 2004 Presidential election, I think that people trying to figure out the cause of
Connell’s death would do well to consider the death of Raymond Lemme. Therefore, I’m reposting my 2005 DU post on the death of Raymond Lemme, with some minor revisions to make it more current:
The Significance of the Death of Raymond Lemme to the 2004 Election There is very good reason to believe that Raymond Lemme (who was barely mentioned by our corporate news media, if mentioned at all) had information shortly before his death, in July 2003, in a Valdosta, Georgia motel room, that could have blown open the plans of George W. Bush and his handlers to “win” the 2004 Presidential election. To evaluate this connection we should start with a brief summary of the unsolved mysteries surrounding Bush’s “victory” in Ohio, which everyone knew well before Election Day would almost certainly be necessary for a Bush Electoral College victory.
Brief summary of unsolved mysteries surrounding Bush’s Ohio victoryHere is a brief description of some of the most important unexplained “irregularities” noted in Ohio on Election Day.
The Warren County “lockdown”The infamous Warren County “
lockdown” occurred shortly before the polls closed in Warren County, when Warren County election officials locked reporters out of the building while they “counted” the votes, justifying this action on the basis of a “national security alert” involving a terrorist threat. The FBI later denied issuing such an alert.
Other than the above mentioned facts, there are many other ominous circumstances surrounding this event, as pointed out by fellow DUer Farmbo in his
post: 1) The incident, which apparently involves a federal felony, has never been seriously investigated either by any news organization, by the state of Ohio, or by federal investigators; 2) The lockdown was planned in advance; 3) Just prior to this event, Ohio seemed to be safely in Kerry’s column; 4) According to a U.S. General Accounting Office (
GAO) report, Ohio’s statewide tabulation network was highly vulnerable to hacking.
Huge inconsistencies in voter registration figures There were
huge inconsistencies between
NY Times articles which indicated that the rate of new Democratic voter registration in Ohio was ten times the rate of new Republican voter registration, compared to official Secretary of State figures that showed no advantage in Democratic over Republican voter registration. An explanation for this strange finding is detailed in
this report, which notes that 165,000 voters were electronically purged, apparently illegally, in Cuyahoga County alone, and that this purging may have been targeted at Democratic voters. Further explanation comes from Mark Crispin Miller’s book, “
Fooled again – How the Right Stole the 2004 Election, & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless we Stop them)”, in which Miller describes the targeted purging of Democratic Ohio voters following break-ins at Democratic Party headquarters in Summit and Lucas Counties, Ohio, in which computers were the only things that were stolen. (For a more detailed description of the Democratic voter purging, see
this post.)
Late addition of votes to Miami CountyThe late addition of 19,000 votes from
Miami County, after 100% of precincts had reported, resulted in a net addition to Bush’s vote margin of 6,000 votes.
Electronic vote switchingReports by voters of
electronic switching of their votes from one candidate to another, favored Bush over Kerry by a ratio of 12 to 1, and were nine times more frequent in swing states (especially Florida, Ohio, and New Mexico) than in other states.
Withholding of voting machines in Franklin CountyThe
withholding of voting machines from Democratic precincts in Franklin County, resulting in voting lines which were several hours long, with the subsequent
leaving of those lines without voting by tens of thousands of voters, was calculated to result in a net advantage to Bush of about 7,000 net votes.
Failure to do a full hand recountNumerous Ohio counties did everything they could to avoid doing a full recount, even after a recount was mandated by court order, so that when it all ended, only one county in the whole state had been fully recounted. In order to accomplish this, numerous violations of Ohio’s recount rules were perpetrated, including: At least 17 counties where the recount was chosen by Ohio election officials rather than randomly; at least 6 counties where tampering with the tabulating machines by voting machine company technicians was noted, including a case in
Hocking County where the technician actually gave the election officials a cheat sheet, with instructions on how to make the counts match (The whistle blower of this felony, Sherole Eaton, was subsequently fired from her job); and, at least 6 counties for which, even when it turned out that the vote totals didn’t match, election officials still refused to do the required recount. Two Cuyahoga County election workers were later
convicted of manipulating the 2004 Presidential election recount.
The testimony of Clint CurtisIn October 2000 Clint Curtis was a computer programmer and a life-long Republican who worked for the Florida based Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI). According to Curtis’
sworn testimony to House Judiciary Committee Democrats in December 2004, while working for YEI he wrote a prototype for a computer program that would switch votes from one candidate to another, at the request of Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) in October of 2000. Believing at the time that the purpose of Feeney’s request was to better understand how
Democrats might plan to commit election fraud, Curtis complied with the request and wrote the program and presented it to his employer, Mrs. Li Woan Yang. According to Curtis’ sworn affidavit:
She immediately responded, “You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in south Florida.”
(Curtis continues)
I was shocked that they were trying to steal the election and told her that neither I nor anyone else could produce any such program. She stated that she would hand in what I produced to Feeney and left the room with the software.
Please note that when Curtis said that neither he nor anyone else could produce "any such program" he meant that nobody could produce such a program that was undetectable. But since the public has not been allowed access to the "proprietary" software codes used to count our votes, the question of whether or not a computer program to switch votes from one candidate to another was detectable turns out not to matter so much. And that is the reason why Curtis was able to offer the opinion that he believed that the 2004 election was rigged using a program similar to the one that he wrote.
I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Curtis in January 2004, when we were both invited by “Justice Through Music” to participate in a small group to lobby Senators to object to the Ohio Presidential Election on January 6th. Curtis had gotten the idea to contact Justice Through Music because they were offering a $200,000 reward for anyone who could prove that the 2004 election had been stolen. However, Curtis was not interested in the money, nor did he accept any money in return for his information or testimony. Curtis told me that he believed the murder of his dog represented a threat from those who feared his testimony.
Skeptics have pointed out to me and others that Yang Enterprises did not receive any contracts to run elections in 2004 and that there is no proof that Curtis’ programs were used to rig the election. True enough. But I ask them to consider three things: Firstly, of the unsolved mysteries of Bush’s Ohio victory that I listed above, item numbers 2 and 4 appear to have involved electronic vote rigging, and item numbers 1, 3 and 6 seem very suspicious in that regard. Furthermore, Curtis said in his sworn testimony that he was told by his employer that his program was specifically needed to control the vote in South Florida. In fact, it was from south Florida where 48% of all voter complaints in the country of
electronic vote switching that favored Bush were reported to the national Electronic Incident Reporting System (EIRS). And secondly and thirdly, we need to consider the circumstances and events surrounding Tom Feeney and Raymond Lemme.
Tom FeeneyAt the time that Feeney asked Curtis to write the vote switching program Feeney was simultaneously a Florida legislator (soon to become Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives) and a registered lobbyist for YEI.
Those of you followed the Florida 2000 election with great interest might remember that Feeney played a VERY prominent role in Bush’s “victory” in that election. For it was Feeney, not the U.S. Supreme Court or Bush’s lawyers, who first came up with the idea (or threat) of taking the 2004 Florida Presidential election out of the hands of the voters. It was Feeney who first put forth the argument that Article II of our Constitution gives the right to state legislatures to determine the winner of their state’s electors. And it was Feeney, as Speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives, who threatened to use that power
to nullify a Gore victory if a recount of the votes resulted in Gore being declared the winner. And it was precisely this argument of Feeney’s that the U.S. Supreme Court was to use a few days later to hand Bush the Presidency.
What I am trying to imply here is that it is not plausible to believe that Feeney’s interest in vote switching programs was limited to his association with YEI. And while it is true that we do not know that the specific prototype that Curtis wrote was actually used to rig the 2004 election, Feeney’s asking Curtis to write such a program is evidence of high level Republican interest in stealing the election.
The death of Raymond LemmeRaymond Lemme was the official from the Florida Inspector General’s Office who was charged with investigating Curtis’ allegations. In his affidavit, Curtis describes a June 2003 meeting with Lemme, where Lemme told Curtis that he (Lemme) “had tracked the corruption all the way to the top”, and that the story would break shortly.
But we will probably never know what explosive information Lemme had obtained, for he was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia, Knights Inn motel room two weeks later, July 1, 2003. His arm was slashed twice with a razor blade, near the left elbow. The
Brad Blog has thoroughly investigated this case and put forth several reasons to believe that Lemme’s death was not suicide, as has been ruled by the Valdosta police:
In the first place, nobody knows why Lemme was in Georgia, about 80 miles north of Tallahassee, where he lived and worked. No autopsy was performed, whereas had the death occurred in Florida, an autopsy would have been required.
Secondly, motel receipts are not consistent with the rest of the story. There is an unsigned check-in receipt dated June 29, 2003, and a signed check-out receipt dated June 30, 2003, 6:54 a.m. Yet Lemme was found dead in the hotel on July 1, the day AFTER he apparently checked out. The police claim that the check-out date on the receipt is wrong, and ascribe the “incorrect” date to machine error, but refused to provide additional detail on that.
Thirdly, there are mysteries surrounding and inconsistencies between the photographs of the scene of the crime and the police report. The initial police report stated: "a defect in the camera flash memory cards resulted in no usable photographs. Photographs will not be submitted with this report." Yet good quality photographs of the crime scene, some showing Lemme in the bath tub where he is said to have killed himself, and which were previously said not to have existed, later showed up. The legitimacy of the photographs was confirmed by the Valdosta police.
An official report by Detective Shannon Floyd states that there was no sign of foul play, and that there was no blood on the towel on which a black belt (apparently used as a tourniquet) was found. Yet, the pictures clearly show blood on the towel and severe bruising on the right side of Lemme’s neck.
When Brad Blog attempted to talk with Detective Floyd about her inconsistent findings, he was told that she no longer works for the Department, and the police refused to tell him how he could reach her.
Fourthly, after re-opening the case (late 04 or early 05), the case was quickly closed after the Valdosta police talked with the Florida Department of Transportation. The Valdosta police refused to comment on why the Florida DOT should have a say in when they close a death investigation in Georgia.
And lastly, Lemme’s work colleagues and family all agree that there were no previous indications that Lemme wanted to die.
SummaryIn summary, there are several unsolved (not to mention uninvestigated) mysteries surrounding Bush’s Ohio “victory”, many which suggest the possibility or likelihood of electronic vote rigging (and the
Edison-Mitofsky exit poll showed Kerry with a 4.2% victory over Bush in Ohio.) Clint Curtis has provided sworn testimony to Congress that he wrote a computer program, at the request of a Republican operative (Tom Feeney), which was capable of rigging the 2004 election, and which he believes was in fact used to rig the 2004 election. The man charged with investigating Curtis’ allegations appeared to be on the verge of verifying his allegations and tracking them “all the way to the top”. And then he died under highly suspicious circumstances, and the investigation into his alleged suicide was quickly squelched.
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