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Departments Election Issues Court victory lets preserved Ohio 2004 ballots tell new tales of theft and fraud as indictments and convictions mount 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. Under intense public pressure, Blackwell claimed he lacked the power to force the BOEs to do that. Marbley responded by both ordering Blackwell to issue a blanket preservation edict, and by issuing a federal order to all Ohio’s BOEs. The ballots are thus to be protected at least until after the conclusion of the lawsuit, which could take years. Ironically, the ballots from the disputed Florida 2000 presidential election have already been preserved in a state facility at Tallahassee. In response to a petition drive spearheaded by historians and other academics, Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood have gathered the ballots from Florida’s counties in a temperature controlled archive, with access guaranteed to future generations of citizens and researchers. (Hood succeeded Katherine Harris as Secretary of State. Like Blackwell, Harris administered her state’s election while also serving as a Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair. She is now the GOP’s Florida nominee for US Senate, and is also trailing badly in her race.) A petition drive to establish a permanent repository for Ohio’s 2004 election materials is being coordinated through the www.savetheballots.org web site. The campaign’s final outcome will probably hinge on who wins the governorship and secretary of state’s office in November. As of now, Ohio’s election records are stored in 88 county warehouses that range widely in quality and security. Some of the materials are vulnerable to rain and mold, and are sprawled haphazardly in cardboard boxes on dusty floors. Federal law requires all such records be kept under double lock and key, but many clearly are not. In at least one case, unmonitored maintenance workers have routine access to areas where ballots are stored. County BOEs have been inconsistent in granting access. But thus far, independent researchers such as Dr. Richard Hayes Philips and Dr. Ron Baiman have looked at about 50,000 ballots under the auspices of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism. Some 5.6 million votes were cast in 2004, but at least 800,000 were cast electronically, with no paper trail. Bush’s official margin was 118,775. So far, even the limited inspection of ballots has yielded astonishing results. Three precincts in two counties have shown consecutive runs of Bush votes that qualify as “virtual statistical impossibilities.”
Dubious outcomes and marginal behavior by Republican election officials has set off a trickle of legal prosecutions that may become a tidal wave if the preserved ballots continue to tell such tales, and if the assertions in the King Lincoln suit are proven out. Three Cleveland-area poll workers have already been indicated for their actions in the 2004 election, all of which were perpetrated in ways that benefited the Bush vote count. Meanwhile, the architect of the national imposition of electronic voting machines is on his way to jail. Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, who authored the federal Help America Vote Act, pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges on September 15. Ney’s HAVA legislation has been central to foisting electronic voting machines on much of the nation. Central to Ney’s conviction has been a flow of “contributions” from the manufacturers of those machines, which have yielded millions in profits for companies with deep Republican roots. Ney will join Tom Noe, northern Ohio’s “Mr. Republican,” a major GOP contributor and close cohort of Blackwell, Bush and Ohio Governor Robert Taft. Noe served as chair of the Lucas County (Toledo) Board of Elections for many years. His wife held the post in 2004, and ultimately resigned in disgrace. The entire Lucas County BOE was later fired by Blackwell. Independent researchers have shown at least 7,000 Toledo citizens were stripped from the voter rolls, and have substantiated widespread allegations of vote theft and fraud. Noe has been convicted of federal election funding violations and of mishandling millions of dollars in funds from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation. As researchers dive deeper into the vast body of ballots, huge legal battles loom over what they may and may not tell us about the true outcome of the 2004 presidential election. But the tip of the iceberg indicates very serious problems, with a wide range of dubious vote counts and illegal recounts all favoring George W. Bush. Diebold opti-scan machines alone are known to have cost Kerry at least 7,000 votes. Thus far only a fraction of Ohio’s 88 counties have received even passing scrutiny. But the early indicators are that Ohio 2004, which decided the presidency, may ultimately prove out to have been the dirtiest and most obviously stolen election in all U.S. history. -- Bob Fitrakis is of counsel, and Harvey Wasserman is a plaintiff, in the King Lincoln lawsuit. They are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of What Happened in Ohio: A documentary record of theft and fraud, just published by The New Press. The Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that publishes the Free Press. |
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