An absolutely crucial piece. MCM How afraid is Karl Rove about Ohio 2004 election fraud evidence coming out?
by Larisa Alexandrovna <http://www.atlargely.com/2008/10/how-afraid-is-k.html>http://www.atlargely.com/2008/10/how-afraid-is-k.html John McCain's tech guru is the same technician who helped fix the facts around the Ohio 2004 election results. Mike Connell has been a Rove tool for ages, and has even recently been subpoenaed to testify about his involvement in Ohio's vote rigging during the 2004 election cycle. Following in the steps of Rove, Connell has refused to honor the subpoena. Before we get to the latest Rove dirty trick, let's do a quick run-through of the allegations against Connell: COLUMBUS -- A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election. Michael L. Connell was served with a subpoena in Ohio on Sept. 22 in a case alleging that vote-tampering during the 2004 presidential election resulted in civil rights violations. Connell, president of GovTech Solutions and New Media Communications, is a website designer and IT professional who created a website for Ohio's secretary of state that presented the results of the 2004 election in real time as they were tabulated. At the time, Ohio's Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, was also chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection effort in Ohio. <snip> The case took on fresh momentum earlier this year when Arnebeck announced in July that he was filing to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the integrity of the 2008 election." The new filing was inspired in part by the coming forward as a whistleblower of GOP IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore, who said he was prepared to testify to the plausibility of electronic vote-rigging having been carried out in 2004. <snip> The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell's name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in. Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio's official state election website. <snip> However, the alternative media group ePlubibus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains. "Since early this decade, top Internet 'gurus' in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results," researchers at ePluribus Media wrote. A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers. So, now that we know what the issues are here (Rove, Chamber of Congress, and Watergate-like dirty tricks), let's examine the latest developments. Brad Friedman tells us all about it: The latest Republican assault on democracy began earlier this week with a 'stunt' raid in (swing state) Nevada, then unsubstantiated allegations in (swing state) Missouri last night (raid coming soon, no doubt), and just hours ago as AP reports, it's (swing state) Ohio. <snip> Of course, the GOP's ACORN "Voter Fraud" Scam was picked up today by John McCain on the stump (and, mercilessly, on Fox "News" all morning, naturally). Here's McCain putting the scare tactics first, and democracy and country second, if even that high on his list. In addition, the GOP has "located" a man who claims to have been bribed by ACORN: CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws. "Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Here is my question: how much was this man paid to fabricate this story? I have an idea, let's get him under oath and ask him just who it was that paid him and for what? One of the reasons I find this story so suspect is because the Rove thugs have long been attempting to fix elections (in some cases, succeeding like in Alabama's 2002 race), and planting evidence or bribing "witnesses" to cry vote fraud as a way to distract from their own activities. Why is it, for example, only right before an election that GOP operatives suddenly scream vote fraud? If you recall, the US Attorney scandal was about Rove's push to force indictments of left-leaning various groups, people, and candidates for voter fraud back-fired when 8 of the US Attorneys would not do it. Come on, really, this is Rove bullshit 101: plant evidence to implicate your opponent in a crime that you are actually committing: Rove has testified under oath before investigative bodies twice, and in neither case was the truth well served. In 1991, he was sworn in before the Texas state Senate as a nominee to East Texas State University's board of regents. The state Senate's nominations committee, chaired by Democrat Bob Glasgow, was eager to have Rove explain his relationship with FBI agent Greg Rampton. Rampton was a controversial figure in Texas, and Democrats suspected that he'd been consorting with Rove for years. During the 1986 gubernatorial race, when a listening device was discovered in Rove's office, it was Rampton who investigated. No one was ever charged - and Democrats suspected that Rove planted the bug himself to distract reporters from the faltering campaign of his client, Bill Clements (who won the election). Then, in 1989, Rampton launched a series of devastating investigations into every statewide Democratic officeholder in Texas, including Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Rove (at the time running Republican Rick Perry's campaign for that job) often leaked things to reporters, such as whose names were on subpoenas before they were issued. The second reason the whole ACORN bribe story smells to me should be obvious to anyone who knows Cleveland. The majority of the population in the city is African American according to the 2000 census. Here is a wiki entry with all of the sourcing: "The racial makeup of the city was 50.99% Black or African American, 41.49% White." The majority of Cleveland's registered voters are democrats. So the real question is why would anyone need to bribe black democratic voters to vote for Obama, a black democratic candidate? If it were Columbus, for example, where this alleged bribery took place, then I might consider looking into these allegations myself. But Cleveland? Finally, on the point that ACORN is under investigation already - the question you need to ask is by whom... the US Department of Political Justice? Yet Rove is worried enough to ignite the ACORN bullshit now, with the full weight of the Republican propaganda machine helping to spread the message far and wide. I have yet to see actual evidence against ACORN, but there is plenty of evidence against Rove, Connell and others. So why is the DOJ not going after them? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
