The GOP’s Cyber Election Hit Squad
Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush’s re-election?The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio’s “official” Secretary of State website - which gave the world the presidential election results - was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s firing of eight federal prosecutors.
Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote- from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves - must be added to the growing congressional investigations.
Numerous tech-savvy bloggers, starting with the online investigative consortium epluribusmedia.org and their November 2006 article cross-posted by contributor luaptifer to Dailykos, and Joseph Cannon’s blog at Cannonfire.blogspot.com, outed the RNC tech network. That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.
The software created for the Ohio secretary of state’s Election Night 2004 website was created by GovTech Solutions, a firm co-founded by longtime GOP computing guru Mike Connell. He also redesigned the Bush campaign’s website in 2000 and told “Inside Business” magazine in 1999, “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Bush campaign and the Bush family because the Bushes truly are about family and I’m loyal to my network.”
Ohio’s Cedarville University, a Christian school with 3,100 students, issued a press release on January 13, 2005 describing how faculty member Dr. Alan Dillman’s computing company Government Consulting Resources, Ltd, worked with these Republican-connected companies to tally the vote on Election Night 2004.
“Dillman personally led the effort from the GCR side, teaming with key members of Blackwell’s staff,” the release said. “GCR teamed with several other firms - including key players such as GovTech Solutions, which performed the software development - to deliver the end result. SMARTech provided the backup and additional system capacity, and Mercury Interactive performed the stress testing.”
On Election Night 2004, the Republican Party not only controlled the vote-counting process in Ohio, the final presidential swing state, through a secretary of state who was a co-chair of the Bush campaign, but it also controlled the technology that allowed the tally of the vote in Ohio’s 88 counties to be reported to the media and voters.
Privatizing elections and allowing known partisans to run a key presidential vote count is troubling enough. But the reason Congress must investigate these high-tech ties is there is abundant evidence that Republicans could have used this computing network to delay announcing the winner of Ohio’s 2004 election while tinkering with the results.
Did Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell or other GOP operatives inflate the president’s vote totals to secure George W. Bush’s margin of victory? On Election Night 2004, many of the totals reported by the Secretary of State were based on local precinct results that were impossible. In Clyde, Ohio, a Republican haven, Bush won big after 131 percent voter turnout. In Republican Perry County, two precincts came in at 124 percent and 120 percent respectively. In Gahanna Ward 1, precinct B, Bush received 4,258 votes despite the fact that only 638 people voted for president. In Concord Southwest in Miami County, the certified election results proudly proclaimed at 679 out of 689 registered voters cast ballots, a 98.55 percent turnout. FreePress.org later found that only 547 voters had signed in.
These strange election results were routed by county election officials through Ohio’s Secretary of State’s office, through partisan IT providers and software, and the final results were hosted out of a computer based in Tennessee announcing the winner. The Cedarville University releases boasted the system “was running like a champ.” It said, “The system kept running through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results.”
All the facts are not in, but enough is known to warrant a serious congressional inquiry. Beginning with a timeline on Election Night after a national media consortium exit poll predicted Democrat John Kerry would win Ohio, the first Ohio returns were from the state’s Democratic urban strongholds, showing Kerry in the lead.
This was the case until shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when for roughly 90 minutes the Ohio election results reported on the Secretary of State’s website were frozen. Shortly before 2am EST election returns came in from a handful of the state’s rural Republican enclaves, bumping Bush’s numbers over the top.
It was known Bush would carry rural Ohio. But the vote totals from these last-to-report counties, where Karl Rove said there was an unprecedented late-hour evangelical vote giving the White House a moral mandate, were highly improbable and suggested vote count fraud to pad Bush’s numbers. Just how flimsy the reported GOP totals were was not known on Election Night and has not been examined by the national media. But an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff begun after Election Day 2004 and completed before the Electoral College met on Jan. 6, 2005, was first to publicly point to vote count fraud in rural Ohio.
That report, “Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio,” cited near-impossible vote totals, including 19,000 votes that were mysteriously added at the close of tallying the vote in Miami County. The report cited more than 3,000 apparently fraudulent voter registrations - all dating back to the same day in 1977 in Perry County. The report noted a homeland security emergency was declared in Warren County, prompting its ballots to be taken to a police-guarded unauthorized warehouse and counted away from public scrutiny, despite local media protests.
In our book, “What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election” (The New Press, 2006), we go beyond the House Judiciary Democratic report to analyze precinct-by-precinct returns and we print copies of the documents upon which we base our findings. We found many vote-count irregularities based on examining the certified results, precinct-level records and the actual ballots.
The most eyebrow-raising example to emerge from parsing precinct results was finding 10,500 people in three Ohio’s ‘Bible Belt’ counties who voted to re-elect Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the official results are true. That was in Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties. The most plausible explanation for this anomaly, which defies logic and was not seen anywhere else in the country, was Kerry votes were flipped to Bush while the rest of the ballot was left alone. While we have some theories about how that might have been done by hand in a police-guarded warehouse, could full Republican control of the vote-counting software and servers also have played a role?
The early returns on the Secretary of State’s website suggest Blackwell’s vote-tallying and reporting system could manipulate large blocks of votes. Screenshots taken during the early returns in Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, gave Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb 39,541 votes, which was clearly incorrect. Similarly, early return screenshots in Lucas County, where Toledo is located, gave Cobb 4,685 votes, another clear error. (The screenshots are in our book). Were these innocent computer glitches or was a GOP vote-counting and reporting system moving and dumping Kerry votes?
There’s more evidence the late returns from Ohio’s Republican-majority countryside were not accurate. During the spring and summer of 2006, several teams of investigators associated with Freepress.org, notably one team led by Ron Baiman, a Ph.D. statistician and researcher at Chicago’s Loyola University, examined the actual election records from precincts in Miami and Clermont Counties. These records - from poll books where voters sign in, to examining the actual ballots themselves - were not publicly accessible until last year, under orders from Ohio’s former Republican Secretary of State. Baiman compared the number of voters who signed in with the total number of votes attributed to precincts. He found hundreds of “phantom” votes, where the number of voter signatures was less than the reported vote total. That discrepancy also suggests vote count fraud.
There was other evidence in the observable paper trail of padding the vote, including instances in Delaware County where in one precinct, 359 of the final punch-card ballots cast on Election Day contained no Kerry votes, which means the day’s last voters all were Bush supporters, which also is improbable. In another Delaware County precinct, Bush allegedly received the last 210 votes of the day. Were partisan local election workers trying to mask what was happening electronically to tilt the vote count?
Ohio’s 2004 ballots were to be destroyed last September. However that fate was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled in the early phase of trying a Voting Rights Act lawsuit that accused Ohio officials of suppressing the minority vote in Ohio’s cities. The state’s new Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Democrats, are now holding settlement talks for that suit, suggesting its claims have merit. However, unlike Florida after the 2000 election, there still has yet to be a full accounting of Ohio’s presidential vote.
What’s clear, however, is the highest ranks of the Republican Party’s political wing, including White House counselor Karl Rove, a handful of the party’s most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio Secretary of State, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system that reported George W. Bush’s re-election to the presidency. Moreover, it appears the votes that gave Bush his 118,775-vote margin of victory - the boost from Ohio’s countryside - have yet to be confirmed as accurate. Instead, the reporting to date suggests that what happened on the ground and across Ohio’s rural precincts is at odds with the vote tally released on Election Night.
As numerous congressional committees attempt to retrieve and examine the secret White House e-mails surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of eight federal prosecutors, those panels must also probe the privatization and partisan manipulation of the 2004 presidential vote count in Ohio. The lessons from 2004 have yet to be fully understood or learned.
Similarly, the House Administration Committee, which is expected to soon mark up H.R. 811, a bill by Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, to regulate electronic voting technology, also must take heed. The vote count and outcome of American elections cannot be left in the hands of known partisans, who can control and manipulate how the votes are counted and what is reported to the media and American people.
Public vote counts on private, partisan servers and secret proprietary software have no place in a democracy.
Bob Fitrakis is a political science professor and attorney in the King Lincoln Bronzeville civil rights lawsuit against Ken Blackwell. Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are authors of “What Happened in Ohio? A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election,” (New Press, 2006).
KEY LINKS: To trace the site-hosting history of election.sos.state.oh.us, go to:
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://election.sos.state.oh.us
(You will note on Nov. 3, 2004, the Ohio Secretary of State’s website was moved from a Columbus-based company, OARnet, to SMARTECH CORPORATION.)
Ken Blackwell Outsources Ohio Election Results to GOP Internet Operatives, Again
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/7/115314/922
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/7/144314/082
Who is Michael L. Connell? Part II: Behind the firewall
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/4/2/6328/14926
The White House, vote theft, and the email trail
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/03/ gwb43-white-house-vote-theft-and-email.html
Cedarville University A Major Player in Ohio’s Election Tallying Efforts
http://www.cedarville.edu/departments/ marketing/publicrelations/newsarticle.cfm? ID=2132271177
“What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election,” by Robert Fitrakis, Steven Rosenfeld, Harvey Wasserman.
http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task =view_title&metaproductid=1597
Rove-ing emails: what else could go missing? by Todd Johnston
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/4/22/ 33926/1773
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/9/61233/1283
This shows a screen capture of the TN server 64.203.98.137 which in 2004 was where election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted from, and in 2006 it was still getting live data from Ohio, even though election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on OARnet servers in Ohio.
This is more than enough for indictments.
Is it just a coincidence that the recent Mexican presidential election followed the same pattern?
In both Ohio and Mexico, the vote totals were frozen for a period around midnight. And then when new totals were finally announced, the rightist candidate had magically pulled ahead.
I only regret that Bob and Steven beat me to the scoop this time. Well done guys! That gun is definitely smoking! You guys should get a Pulitzer.
Let’s not forget that convicted Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (Scotland golf trip a la Jack Abramoff) wrote the Help America Vote Act that threw lots of tax dollars into e-voting and forced states to adopt it without proper review. Ney’s Chief of Staff, David DiStefano, then left to become a bigtime lobbyist for Diebold. So much corruption, so few decent US Attorneys remaining to prosecute it.
Alright folks, time to use the momentum from this scandal to abolish the electoral college system. Surely it has proven time after time to be an antiquated and corrupt system, essentially illogical in nature. Rove and his “tech-savy” cronies have shaken the public’s faith in free elections and made a mockery of America to the rest of the world. This when we are ostensibly occupying Iraq to “spread democracy” could not have come at a worse time. Who do these people think they are?
It’s time to step up the pressure on the Democrats we elected this round to investigate, depose, and impeach these criminals–we need to let them know that unless they work toward the collective goals of the majority who elected them, we won’t be voting for them again next round. Perhaps we should use strong language in our communication with our senators and representatives–language like “the public sees your complicity in this fraud as indorsement of the corrupt system,” etc. . .
I do think it is very likely that the Republican party committed fraud in order to swing the election results in 2000, 2002, and 2004. However, what I wonder is, if they were able to do it in those elections, why not in 2006? Any thoughts?
Hey, gimmesometruth, you’re even wondering if they tried to steal 2006. Of course they did, they just underestimated the level of public anger. I knew from their smugness they thought they had it covered, but late breaking events and Republicans who were wobbling up to the end caught them flatfooted. The Dems actually should have won a lot more than they did. Unfortunately they will be better prepared next time and the Dems as usual are asleep at the switch, complacent and cozying up to the corporations. Watch where the corporate money goes in 2008.
The Republican party is a vicious subversive organization. It is not political.
And yet, have the Democrats made it a legislative priority to introduce laws demanding (genuine) open source voting machinery with paper trail, instant recount capability, and (perhaps) international teams of observers?
I heard it was the Green Party and others that really went after the Ohio irregularities. I sort of read the Dems & Republicans like Shakespeare’s houses of Montague and Capulet. Two competing camps, one waiting for the other’s waxing/waning, and neither asking the deep questions. Ultimately it’ll be the American people that demand that someone does his job. Perhaps the Democrats will, begrudgingly, get to work?
Abolish the electoral college is about as silly as it can be. How about let’s abolish our phony separation of powers state and become as we should a parliamentary state while also getting rid of all but paper ballots? Otherwise, we might just petition the UN to make the USA a trusteeship, and have the UN run our political system until we can get better at self government.
Our government officials do an absolutely stunning job of protecting us from democracy.
Paul Bramscher, I wouldn’t put any money on your “perhaps the Dems will get to work”. Ralph Nader said the Democratic Party is hopelessly corrupted by money. I believe he’s right. They refuse to strip the oil PSAs out of our conditions to the Iraqis. They passed a fake lobbying reform law. Thye’re promising to cave in to Bush when he vetoes their bill which will fund his war to the end of his administration. Aside from ripping the top off the Republican anthill, they haven’t done much else. They’re being as political as the Republicans, only clumsier, as usual. One thing they’re good at is looking busy while doing little, although they’re not fooling very many people.
Did anyone happen to notice that, according to the server logs linked to by the authors, election.sos.state.oh.us was changed back to the Columbus company on 5 Nov 2004. This seems to contradict their assertion that “the final results were hosted out of a computer based in Tennessee announcing the winner”.
So how much longer do we who feel election protection is a necessary prerequisite for getting anything to shift in this country, how much longer and how much stronger a case has to be made before anyone but us takes this seriously?!? Dems are just as big a part of the problem because their continuing silence implies complicity and we are counting on them to challenge the thugs in power. Guess that just makes them “powerless” thugs.
epluribusmedia’s pages and website are not available..what gives with that?
There have been times in the past in which slow-to-act government had its back up against the wall and needed to do something radical, lest they lose the Republic. Abolition and Suffrage come to mind. Are we nearing another tipping point — I think so. A general suffrage, in which votes do matter: parliamentary, unicameral, open source, paper trail, Range or IRV system. If they don’t push this through soon, the people will. Only in their mad rush, they probably won’t get it right.
So it’s possible that the Democrats may, indeed, be forced to do something useful for the country. Better for controlled “reform” than the begginnings of civil collapse to occur under your watch.
Hard to say though. They may be so disconnected from things, as well as corrupted (i.e. miniature Bush’s) that they may go down with the ship?
For now I take back that idea of the USA petitioning the UN for trusteeship status, but a parliamentary state with one person one vote such both Canada and the UK have with better access for political parties other than the established parties is a great idea. Then throw in fusion voting which the state of New York already has, and that’s a good start. Oh, and definitely all paper and public voting and collection and counting of votes is essential.
For now I take back that idea of the USA petitioning the UN for trusteeship status, but a parliamentary state with one person one vote such both Canada and the UK have with better access for political parties other than the established parties is a great idea.
Let’s try fusion voting as well while we’re at it to give progressive third parties more leverage on the two party system.
With such clear evidence of election fraud why isn’t this in our court system and the front pages of our newspapers? Not unlike the unprecedented number and scope of questions surrounding the events of 9/11/01, these allegations of treason against the people of the United States of America must come fully into the light of day!
I think that even the most radical amoung us have a difficult time contemplating the possibility that our government could be so corrupt. The general population cannot begin to fathom it. What is frightening is to understand how terrible the situation will become before we can see the truth.
Gimmesometruth, I think the GOP did cheat again in the 2006 election but too many angry voters showed up at the polls and voted Democrat, so they weren’t able to get away with ‘tweaking’ of that magnitude. That, and many people were watching this time. Why do you think they’re now trying to place their own partisan prosecutors so they can go after the Dems that actually won those close elections? For the GOP, the definition of voter fraud is ‘any election we didn’t win.’ If they can’t win at the ballot box, they will now try to overturn elections via the partisan judicial system they are busy installing as I type.
What are you doing personally to champion government by, for, and of the people? If you want to change this broken system, then YOU actually have to DO something to change it. And there is a lot of positive things going on. And with your support and engagement, we might even get an honest election in ’08!
Okay…It seems that we all agree that our electoral system is broken. The only way it is going to get fixed is at the State level. Here are my thoughts…
About the Electoral College - Its days are numbered. The “Compact for Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote” has been signed off on by 47 states. Legislation has already been passed in several states and been signed by their governors. Legislation is before all 47 states in their legislatures. The Electoral College may be a thing of the past BEFORE the ‘08 presidential election!!!
So get going in YOUR state! Go on over to nationalpopularvote.com and find out how you can support legislation in YOUR state. GO!!!! Do it!!! Make it happen THIS year!!!
Then when you get done with that, call, write, or e-mail your Congressional representatives and get them to support/sponsor the U.S. House Bill 3099 “Clean Money, Clean Elections”. In the Senate, get them to support/sponsor the Durbin/Spector bill “Fair Elections Now Act”. GO!!! Do it NOW!!!!
THEN, when your done with that, march on over to fairvote.org or Common Cause and see what other actions you can take to make further election and campaign finance reform a reality!!
So much to do, and so little time!! GO!! Make your voice heard. Make it LOUD! LOUDER!!!! Raise hell and don’t forget to laugh EVERY DAY!
I was in Atlanta GA late in the evening of the elections. I was in a car with two other people & the radio was on. As the other two people were talking I was half listening to the radio news program. The reporter stated during election news that Karl Rove had been caught in a secret room in the White House where he was operating a computer connected to the Ohio computers & was diddling the numbers.
I never heard another word on the subject & wondered if the reporter got fired for that faux pax. I don’t doubt the Bushites would do such a thing. They did it in 2000 as well. No one else I questioned had heard that broadcast.
Regardless of Democrat or Republican in Congress, I can remember when all of this fiasco would have brought full fledged indictments, active ones, and agressive investigatesions, broadcast live, on TV.
Nowadays, we’re chuntering about here on the “Internet,” and truth be known, accomplishing nothing.
As long as all we do is sit here, and talk like this, they don’t care what we say, or think. It’s action they want to avoid us taking, and “interacting” here like this is not action, IMHO.
We need to DO something about it, NOW.
We need to be in front of Washington DC, and STAY there.
Addendem: Stay there until we’re satisfied with the results, until theses crooks are out of office. Etc.
feduphoosier, I don’t think they’re looking to overturn the 06 elections with their new prosecutors, I think they want them in place to wreak havoc on Democratic candidates and ignore Republican corruption for the 08 election coming up. And they’ve done it. So far.
gwmRNpozSC you must be talking about the good old days when broadcast TV actually reported the news. Sure, go ahead and sit in front of the White House, and be ignored by the media and the public won’t know you exist. RebelFarmer’s right. We need to KEEP ON CALLING our representatives - not just once - and connect with the grassroots groups working for change. Running around waving signs is just spinning our wheels.
And this isn’t such a bad place to share ideas and opinions. These essays inform us and we inform each other. At least I learn a lot here.
My problem is my representative is on board, and I’m wondering if we could target someone who isn’t and figure out how to galvanize people in that one’s district to start calling. Sort of like calling voters to mobilize them.
Clockwork Orange’s American version is in full swing in parts of the South as training for 2008. It will in all probability make the Ann Coulter and Sunni versus Shiaas singsongs seem like childs play. An aged midwesterner confided that the only way to save the Republic of the USA is to provide the religious and ethnic fundamentalists a political party along the lines of the Democrats and Republicans. Claims that with making Jerusalem the capital of the USA we all can continue to believe that we are Gods’ best hope for all mankind since we can nuke the entire planet back to the stone age.
The other way that things will change isn’t just by encouraging corrupted and monied officials to clean up their ways and write clean laws (our essential Catch-22), but by people doing their own little part to disobey. If government is not acting on behalf of the people, then why should anyone listen to them? That is, if they don’t listen to us aren’t we really left to wonder whether they are the legitimate government? We may all have certain responsibities here. My guess is that the Founding Fathers, if alive, would be calling for another Independence.
So change can happen at least two ways: by encouraging forward legislative/legal/structural change, and by disregarding rules coming from corrupted officials in the little ways. Of course, that method requires massive and popular coordination, lest it simply create a small pool of quickly-jailed martyrs, tax resisters, draft dodgers, and whatever else has occured in our history among the divided&conquered.
They probably have gotten away with this much because their corruption hasn’t yet involved labor camps, restrictions on leaving the country or moving internally, a reinstatement of the draft, random (physical) searches, etc. When they start going down that route, the jig is probably up.
Someone noted that their representative is One Of THEM… so is mine. Wally Herger is the epitome of the the word ’suck-up’ he’d rubberstamp a bill to canabalize his grandmother if he thought it would ‘impress’ someone he considers “important” and “powerful” (like tom delay) A DISMAL voting record, against everything that is important to the working American: seniors, labor, environment — and yet, oozing crocadile tears, he pats little old ladies on their ‘poor little’ hands and calls himself an “Environmentalist”. (check his voting record and that will gag you!)
My point is I am SICK OF BEING TOLD TO “CALL AND WRITE TO MY REPRESENTATIVE”… I tried talking to him - he told me: “I only represent those who vote FOR me” another time he told me I ’should move to San Fransisco with the other hippies’. (funny how easy it is to acquire that antiquated label - just mention peace/diplomacy, polution or health care) The FEW congressmen that are left with any integrity are accused of attempting to ’steal’ another congressman’s constituents… they are TERRIFIED to talk to anyone that can’t prove they are in their district. They must think they OWN us -!?
The “new democratic congress” is controlled by AIPAC money. Pelosi is 100% AIPAC and zionist. Do NOT blame it on “republicans” - PLEASE! The PNAC’s (BushCo) have taken control of the Republican Party and stolen their ‘voting base’. They are NOT any more “republican” than your cat is!! What they ARE is: out-to-dominate-the-world. …and you will be very very very sadly mistaken if you imagine that ‘democrats’ are any different!! Candidates from BOTH partys are vetted and financed by the SAME Corporation Money.
Do you suppose that anyone who does NOT ‘pass’ through the “party-machine” can ever be nominated? Candidates are nothing but shills. Nothing but “fronts” for the Party Machine. The ones who are nominated are deemed ’safe’ for the party machine. What WE get is a “choice” between those labeled dem and those labeled repub… WE get the ‘busy-work’ of fighting and arguing and dickering over the supposed ‘differences’ between them. The MACHINE doesn’t sweat the small stuff - that’s given to us to keep us distracted and divided while the Sh** Happens and we don’t even know it.
We ALL need to QUIT both partys and elect someone who is NOT OWNED by the Corporate Money.
The “2-party system” is a FARCE! It is a two-headed snake: the body is Corporate Money, and the two heads are Dem and Repub.
That snake is devouring America, our Constitution and our FUTURE.
Expecting either head to stop the other is futile. WE have to stop it BY REPLACING IT ALTOGETHER. It is far too sneaky and deceitful to trust.
…the crowning glory of Rove’s evil genius is the deathgrip PNAC has on their Corporate Owned Media.
IF the article above was spread to John and Susie Q Public, there would be a lynching…
No Bushie needs to worry about that these days. Maybe we need to target the Main Media Corporations instead of vain attempts to “contact our congressmen” —- which is asking a chicken to kill the foxes
I always suspected that Bush cheated in 2000 and 2004, now we have the proof re Ohio in 2004. Bush, Cheney, Rove and the others belong in Gitmo where the keys are tossed and they can talk to a lawyer maybe in 10 years. Let’s apply the Patriot Act against these terrorists that oppose freedom and democracy.
I am incredibly angry and I am incredibly insulted Mr. Ritter.
What happened in November 2000 was a subversion of the Constitution. That it went truly unnoticed is just beyond comprehension.
What happened in November of 2004 was, at best , a “comedy of errors”.
Let me be very,very clear here…If Gay extremists and Abortion nutters had simply kept their mouths closed, John Kerry, very likely would have been elected. Yes, there were goofups and yes there was some chicanery in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) County but we all know some of these things do occur. But to say that Ken Blackwood controlled it or directed it is just purely malicious. According to Congressman Conyers report, he did not.
Now, some of you may ask why I am bothering to say anything. Well, I will tell you. Kenny Blackwell is my friend. We are both alumni of a very fine Jesuit University in Cincinnati called Xavier. I’ve met the man several times and during my senior year in 1980, I served with him in City Council. I was a staff aide to a newly elected fellow councilman (now former mayor)Arn Bortz and he was either at the time a councilman or Mayor.
And although I left Cincinnati in 1981, I still have family and a best friend there who has, for many years, been an elections judge and he happens to know Ken far better than I do.
BTW, one last thing or almost, Ken Blackwell, in 2004 was running for Governor and he really didn’t have much of a chance at all. The gentleman who he might have succeeded was a Taft and he was caught with his fingers in the proverbial cookie jar for doing something illegal.
I very much doubt if Ken will be a candidate anytime soon, especially since the rumor mongers and hate mongers seem to be out in force.
Some dems can be just as filled with hate as Republicans are.
You know, this kind of thing can be taken care of in a court of law it’s called “Defamation of Character” and slander and if I had the money and was a lawyer I would sue for my friend.
P. Edward Murray
One more thing..I’m not mad at Ritter, my mistake. But this is not the first I’ve heard of Mr. Fitrakis, but no one else is talking about it. Where is Cronkite,Mudd or Dan Rather? What about CNN or for that Matter Bill Moyers? Or anyone else?
Same person keeps reporting the same thing..doesn’t that suggest something?
I’m sorry but I’m concerned that this is just rumor and conjecture and hate and paranoia too.
I would say pretty soon plenty of people will be talking about it, and if Mr. Blackwell has been defamed, he can sue for himself.
I would say further that it is about time to forget learn from the past so that we will not make the same mistakes in the future.
Gay “Marriage” works against us and so does Pro Choice. If folks keep ranting and raving about it,good Americans that happen to be mainstream Christians will NOT vote democrat and it will come back to haunt us.
Both John Kerry & Hillary Clinton said that we need to allow those, like myself, that are pro life into the party.
Trust me when I say I’ve personally had quite enough of extremists taking over my party. It hasn’t done anyone any good at all.
This election needs to be about the future and how we are going to solve for Armageddon because if we don’t it will be ours and it doesn’t have to be.
Dear eddie, you’re welcome to join the Democratic party, but not to take it over. You’re welcome to be opposed to gay marriage and freedom of choice regarding abortion. Don’t marry a gay and don’t have an abortion. But don’t try to control what others do in their personal decisions. If it doesn’t affect your life it’s none of your business.
A better way to run elections, combining paper ballots, VotePad for the disabled and appropriate use of optical scanners and the web for transparent counting:
http://www.marcbaber.com/ElectionReform.htm