Just out from AP…
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she called the four board members of Ohio’s most populous county late Sunday, asking them to leave by close of business Wednesday.
…
Brunner, a Democrat, said new leadership is needed in the county before the 2008 presidential election. She said that if the board members don’t resign by her deadline, they would face public hearings and removal.
The board’s chairman, Robert Bennett, is also chairman of the state GOP in Ohio. His term on the board ends in 2010. The other board members are two Democrats and one Republican.
…
Bennett said Monday he plans to finish his term.
“We are making progress on our major goal, which is to restore voter confidence in Cuyahoga County elections,” he said at a news conference
The issue comes in the wake of two Cuyahoga County Election Officials recently found guilty of rigging the 2004 Presidential Election recount and subsequently sentenced to the maximum 18 months in prison after they refused to cooperate with the state’s special prosecutor, Kevin Baxter.
Both Baxter and the district court judge, Peter J. Corrigan, indicated they believed the conspiracy to game the recount was part of a larger, higher-reaching conspiracy. “It seems unlikely that your superiors wouldn’t know what you were doing,” Corrigan declared during the sentencing.
Brunner told the Plain-Dealer this morning that the convictions were “so serious that I don’t think I had any alternative” but to request the resignations of the entire board. “It has to do with public confidence and perception,” she said.
In a news conference this morning, Bennett vowed to fight Brunner in court rather than leave on his own accord.
Cuyahoga County’s then-Election Director, Michael Vu, who was not charged in the incident but has since resigned, had previously admitted that sealed ballot boxes were opened and secretly counted prior to the state-mandated recount in order to assure the recount would not reveal any inconsistencies with the officially reported results. He has since recanted his original story.
After the recent sentencing, Bennett, who was ultimately responsible for overseeing the convicted elections officials — supposedly one Republican and one Democrat — who rigged a presidential election recount in his county said, incredibly enough, “the convictions are a travesty of justice.”
The issue also underscores an important point we’ve been trying to make for years: Despite the claims by disgraced former Buckeye State SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell and his operatives (including Bennett) for the travesty that occurred in 2004, which suggest that Ohio’s supposedly “bi-partisan” structure of county elections boards — theoretically all comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats each — prevents any partisan malfeasance, those boards and the officials who work under them have always served ultimately at the pleasure of the state SoS. That power and pressure were wielded frequently by Blackwell during his tenure, resulting in a host of not-so-bipartisan decisions and oversight from Ohio elections officials in 2004 and beyond.
UPDATE: We heartily recommend “OhioRebel’s” superb citizen journalist coverage at ePluribus Media, with many useful additional details. Would that the non-citizen journalists were as thorough!
Uh oh … is this one domino in a long, snakelike, undulating system of corruption?
Blackwater, Blackwell … Diebold … hey you guys … the UAE looks favorably on your kind of “doin a heckuva job”.
Good for Bennett. Take it to court and follow the subpoena. Make those records public and show America what it means to be fair and balanced.
Don’t look for details of this trial in Faux news.
Go get em Brunner!
This would not have happened — period — without the excellent work of Kathleen Wynne, who got the video that nailed the employees that made the HBO film that caused everyone to look at where the orders came from.
And Adele Eisner has been instrumental as well. And the citizens who fought to get a responsive secretary of state into office were equally crucial.
The good news is that, once again, citizens are the ones that made this happen.
The bad news: Cuyahoga is just where Kathleen happened to set up her video camera that day. Cuyahoga just happens to be a place where this was caught and the right kind of evidence was collected by a citizen. How many more places are there?
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
All right! Now they’ve gotten to the REAl problem. Jackie Maiden and Kathy Dreamer were sscapegoated small fish. Even Michael Vu was just a scapegoat. Bob Bennett is the source of the rot, and I hope he DOES go to court and fight it because he will then expose to one and all, including many well-meaning people on the left who were not aware and hence tore into Vu, that Cuyahoga County’s board of elections “” in the state’s biggest Democratic county “” is controlled by the chairman of the state Republican Party. Get that out there in all the headlines, Bob. It’ll sure make you look good!
In fact, Jennifer Brunner is the one who deserves the credit “” if you start naming activists I can add another 40 or 50 to your list who were just as instrumental as the two you name, Bev. But it was Jennifer who recognized the problem years ago, decided to run for Secretary of State to solve it and made campaign promises she is now keeping. Someone close to her told me back in December that Bennett’s days were numbered and it was just a question of when he would go. If you’ve ever been to a BoE meeting here, you’d see the dynamic “” Bob Bennett and his three little stooges who quivered when he spoke, just like Vu did. Jennifer’s right; they should all be gone.
For me personally, the departure of Sally Florkiewicz is especially sweet since she harassed me at the polling place where I was an elections observer, telling me things that were not true (and I had both my observers handbook and the poll judges handbook to prove it) and threatening to have me ejected if I violated her made-up rules. She also treated the poll judges condescendingly, not a very effective dynamic given that she is a West Side white woman and all the poll judges were African-American.
I should add that your final conclusion “” that Blackwell was able to compromise the “bipartisanship” of certain election boards to the point where they were basically just his puppets and would gladly do “things” he indicated needed to be done “” is dead on.
The second scariest thing I heard Jennifer’s opponent, Greg “son of Dick Cheney’s lawyer” Hartmann, say at a a debate here in Cleveland was that it was impossible for the 2004 elections have been fixed because every county board of elections has two Democrats and two Republicans on its board of directors. My only question was whether he was being naive or deliberately cynical and disingenuous. It was clear back in 2004 that certain boards in certain rural counties had DINOs on them, and that any “Democrat” who was not docile and cooperative in those counties could easily be replaced by Blackwell without repercussions.
(The first scariest thing Hartmann said was that the electronic voting machines are totally safe, case closed. That was especially scary coming from someone without a single minute of elections experience who’d had no opportunity “” and seemingly no interest “” to investigate the matter.)
Wonderful news! When can we demand the resignation of this illegal administration begotten by the baaaad board members and DREs across this state and nation? I think Ohio was/is particularly corrupt, but it has to be all over.
Dredd said, “Uh oh … is this one domino in a long, snakelike, undulating system of corruption?” – I sure as hell hope so. I mean the dominos have to start soon. We’ve had a lot of “leaners” for the past year or more, but… they need to start falling – and falling hard.
If it’s just to replace them with more puppets, like with the Rumsfeld switcheroo joke, it won’t matter. But if she’s truly coming in to clean house and replace with honest, non-Washington-whore type people …. Woo hoo!! I hope Jennifer Brunner is for real and it’s not just more smoke and false hopes. Go Jennifer, we’re behind you 100%. Thank you!!!
According to an August 2005 report from WKYC-TV in Cleveland, the recount process was reviewed and approved by the attorney for the Cuyahoga County Election Board. This attorney was a Democrat by the name of Bill Mason.
With Kerry gaining 90,000 votes over Gore’s 2000 total, and allegations of more votes cast than registered voters, why did this Democrat approve or allow for a process that would thwar a manual recount? Why hasn’t SoS Brunner gone after Mason?
“The Board operates under the advice and counsel of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. The Prosecutor’s Office was specifically asked to review the recount procedures consistently utilized by the Board since 1982. The Board was advised to continue operating under the precedent used for more than two decades. Unfortunately, this same process has now resulted in indictments based on alleged procedural defects.”
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_a...?storyid=40043
For the record, I’ll mention that M.L. Cook’s comment above quotes a two year old story, which references “alleged procedural defects”.
Those “alleged procedural defects” have been proven in a court of law to have been using to rig a Presidenital recount, have resulted in the convictions of two elections officials, the resignation of another and a request by the OH SoS for the resignation of the entire county Board of Elections.
One of the two convicted workers was supposedly a Dem, as was Vu, as are two of the BoE members. How “Dem” any of them really are, is an unanswered question, since many BoE officials around Ohio never voted in a Democratic primary in their life until just prior to be appointed to their respective board. Just FYI.
“Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, long presumed to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, surprised many with his announcement late last month that he would not be a candidate for Attorney General in 2006. He cited family concerns as the reason for his decision.”
http://www.ohiochamber.com/gove...dge_051005.asp
There is no question about the politics of Bill Mason. It looked as if he was going to run for Attorney General on the Democrat ticket, but for some reason he decided not to run. Could it be that the didn’t want to answer questions about his role in this scandal?
This is the man who approved of those “procedural defects”, yet no mention of an investigation of his role in this scandal.
What was his role in “rigging” the election? I would love to know were the 90,000 Kerry votes (over Gore’s 2000 totals) came from, and how that fits into the allegations of more votes cast that registered voters.
And why didn’t Kerry want a recount of the state? He have every opportunity to file for a recount, but failed to exercise his option.
Even with all the massive surveilance and investigations into the democrats by the federal prosecutors (that didn’t get fired) they have still predominantly (if not exclusively) produced convicted republicans.
Does anyone honestly believe that democrats are to blame for all of this vote-count rigging? What a bunch of horseshit. Let’s see those dominoes start tumbling. It’s going to be all republicans.
And *fake* democrats…
M. L. Cook, perhaps some of those extra Kerry votes came from former right-wing-‘leaning’ people who managed to pull their heads out of their asses after watching Shrubby fuck up the country for 4 years… hmmmm?
Your accusations of “allegations of more votes than voters” are red herrings to me, since you clearly seem to have the articles making the accusations you’d also have access to articles showing the resolution to those accusations (unless it’s just some right-wing hack making the accusations, and nothing official on the record.. hmm?). Crying about a huge increase in votes for a DemocratIC candidate doesn’t show any malice by anyone, so unless you can come up with more than “how did 2000 become 90,000 [after 4 years of one of history’s most retarded pResidents screwing the pooch]?”, you might as well stop trying to distract from the CONVICTIONS in THE PRESENT (well, most recent that I’ve seen, anyway) with unfounded allegations.
If Mason did something nefarious, then by ALL MEANS, prosecute him, convict him, lock him up. See, MOST of us here aren’t partisan hacks [like you seem to be].. we want honesty from every one involved, including the Dems. If a Dem breaks the law, LOCK THEM UP.. duh? But, 90% of the accusations from the right-side of the isle end up being crap, while 90% of the accusations from the left side of the isle end up with convictions.. go figure.
Savantster, it is not me who is trying to distract from the convictions, but it is you. Ranting about “partisan hacks”, misquoting the numbers, and making up percentages on who is the “bad guy”, does not make your argument.
As Mr. Friedman points out, those “alleged procedural defects” have been proven in a court of law. The fact also remains that it was a Democrat, Attorney Bill Mason, who reviewed and approved those procedures.
You call the “allegations of more votes than voters” a red herring, and that this must be some right-wing hack making the accusations. There are several sources for these allegations, none that I know of from “right-wing” hacks. Truthout.org and Bradblog are just a couple of sources. Bradblog didn’t call the explanation of why the there were these reports as “definitive”, it was called “plausible”. It is the difference between “irrefutable” and “likely”.
“…..about the 97,489 more votes than voters cast in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. A plausible explanation……”
https://bradblog.com/?p=932&print=1
If calling for an investigation of this Democrat makes me a partisan hack, than so be it. Calling for this action would EXPANDING AN INVESTIGATION, not an attempt to “distract from the CONVICTIONS in THE PRESENT”.
Btw, since I am not registered with any party, I could careless who is found guilty. I don’t have a “partisan” dog in this fight.
If they all resign, will the envistigations end? I hope not, this should be on the front burner right up to 2008.
I really hope Bennett tries to fight this, so Ms. Brunner is FORCED to drop the hammer down. And I hope those resignations don’t obfuscate from the multitude of sins.
Their recent losses and growing desperation might move them to even more depraved acts of electoral subterfuge, and being attacked from all sides like they have been, they become even more dangerous.
Beware the cornered beast…
I sincerely appreciate Bev’s kind words on my behalf regarding my role during the 2004 recount and trial in Cuyahoga County. I see that there were some who felt that proper “credit” wasn’t given to many others, whom they felt contributed to the convictions of Maiden and Dreamer, as well as the subsequent firing of the entire Cuyahoga County BOE. Obviously, there is no doubt that it was a combination of citizens diligently overseeing and documenting any anomolies they found had occurred during the recount that helped make the convictions possible.
However, the fact of the matter is that the prosecuting attorney, Kevin Baxter, stated to me personally that without the videotaped evidence, particularly the 50 minute videotaped interview of Maiden and Dreamer where I, along with Dr. Victoria Lovegren and Dr. Cyrus Baxter questioned them about the procedures they would be using during the recount, there wouldn’t have even been an investigation, much less a trial. Baxter indicated he had neither case law nor legal precedents available for use in supporting his case against these election employees and considered the videotape as the “best evidence” in the case. Also, keep in mind that it took 3 years for this investigation to finally make it to trial. Witness accounts, after a 3-year period, can easily be refuted and undermined by a clever defense counsel in a “he said-she said” scenario and would be cause for reasonable doubt during the jury deliberation.
In fact, Baxter played the entire 50 minute interview for the jury, because he said it clearly showed that Maiden and Dreamer had indeed violated election law when they admitted that they did not choose precincts randomly, nor told us at that time that they had precounted the ballots prior to the recount. The same procecures they claimed had always been used in past recounts. (This is significant because during the trial, defendants’ attorneys stated that the defendants didn’t think they had done anything wrong when they counted the ballots prior to the recount. If that was true, Baxter summised, then why didn’t they openly admit it to us when they had the opportunity during the interview when we asked them about the ballot counting procedures?) Baxter said the videotape was important because of what “wasn’t” said as much as what was said by the defendants. In the end, it was the defendants’ own words that caused their downfall.
The real significance of this trial is not competing on who gets credit. What is important here is for citizens throughout the country to be informed of the extreme importance of videoptaping potential evidence during the election process in helping them make a case that would stand up in a court of law, should it later be discovered that there were anomolies uncovered during the election process. Otherwise, you will come up short in making a case that could make it to trial. Videotaping is the best way of preserving what actually took place during the elections process because videotape cannot forget (no matter how long it takes to get to trial); and cannot be accused of being biased nor disputed as mistaken.
In the end, it was citizen oversight, not experts, not audits, not exit polls, not lawyers who collected the necessary evidence which brought justice to the citizens of Cuyahoga County, albeit too late to change the outcome of the election. It proved, once and for all, what’s the most important ingredient in the elections process — citizen oversight on election night. The kind of oversight that can never be achieved as long as we allow machines to count our votes.
We all helped make the case for HCPB as the best and only way to ensure meaningful oversight in our elections that can prevent a fraudulent election in the first place. That’s what this case proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Kathleen Wynne
Wasn’t it you, Kathleen, that was run off the road by mysterious black SUV’s with tinted windows?
Kathleen Wynne:
Good for you!
I’ve made some videos of my own which I have sent to various publications and radio stations around here which could definitely cause some, much needed, controversy. So far, no takers.
Congratulations on getting yours into the courtroom. It’s awkward and uncomfortable to film people, because they don’t like it, but it’s simply the only method we have to make a difference. Like they say, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Chris,
Have I don’t something to offend you? I don’t understand your response, other than it’s meant to be insulting and I’ve never even met you.
What does such a response accomplish in the way of advancing election reform by insulting someone who is merely trying to share information with the public about certain facts that could be helpful to them?
Kathleen
Larry,
Thank you for your kind words. I’m so glad to hear you are also using your videocamera in trying to capture potential evidence.
Keep up the great work! Videotaping election-related events is just like a box of choclates…you never know what you’re going to get…and that videotape can make all the difference.
Kathleen
No, someone at BBV was actually run off the road by weird SUV’s. I’m not kidding. It disturbed me greatly at the time. I appreciate all you have done, Kathleen. Sorry about the confusion.
Jennifer Brunner will be a TRUE Secretary of State, unlike her predecessor Ken Blackwell. Having lived in the state capital Columbus for 21 years, I’ve found that we’re inundated with not only (obviously) the Ohio State Buckeyes, but also politics. I couldn’t give two hoots about football, but I am a political junkie. Strickland’s election has been a breath of fresh air in our State. Taft was a doofus, a tool and totally incompetent in the governorship and we couldn’t have sent him back to Cinci fast enough. BTW, I thought it was not surprising in the least that Blackwell is now a contributor to Townhall.com edited by none other than…Hugh Hewitt! LOL