-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 20, 2007 12:39:56 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Karl Rove and Votescam
Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of
some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including
24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry.
In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters
were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for
John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the
Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was
officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.
Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that Karl Rove and the GOP had
real-time computer access to both the actual vote numbers in Ohio
as well as the exit polling data that would have allowed them to
direct how many votes they needed from the suspect Ohio
southwestern Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin
of victory in the 2004 election.
April 17, 2007
Bye Bye to Cleveland GOP Election Chair Bob "Ballots for Bush" Bennett
By Bob Fitrakis
http://www.opednews.com/articles/
genera_bob_fitr_070417_bye_bye_to_cleveland.htm
Ohio's Bob "Ballots for Bush" Bennett, an essential player in
putting George W. Bush back in the White House in 2004, is no long
chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. His milestone
resignation leaves a legacy of scandal, recrimination, massive
voter purges, felony convictions and a pivotal role in a stolen
presidential election.
Bennett has quit in a signature cloud of graceless accusations and
cheap shots at Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's newly elected Secretary of
State, who asked him to resign along with the rest of the Cleveland
election authority. His forced departure marks the biggest landmark
yet in the unraveling theft of the presidential elections in Ohio
2004.
Bennett remains chair of the Ohio Republican Party. In 2004 he was
apparently asked by White House consigliere Karl Rove to stay on at
the Cuyahoga BOE to help guarantee Bush's second term. Cleveland is
Ohio's biggest and most Democratic urban center. A massive sweep
there by John Kerry was widely expected to have given him the White
House. It was Bennett's job to mute that margin, and apparently
that's exactly what he did.
Leading up to the 2004 vote, Bennett oversaw the quiet purge of
some 168,000 registered voters from the Cuyahoga rolls, including
24.93% of the entire city of Cleveland, which voted 83% for Kerry.
In one inner city majority African American ward, 51% of the voters
were purged. Centered on precincts that voted more than 80% for
John Kerry, this purge may well have meant a net loss to the
Democrats of tens of thousands of votes in an election that was
officially decided statewide by less than 119,000.
In a report issued December 7, 2004, the Greater Cleveland Voter
Registration Coalition (GCVRC) reported that in addition to the
purge of registered voters, some 3.5% of those applying for new
registrations were never even entered on the rolls by Bennett's
BOE, or were entered incorrectly, which would result in
disenfranchisement of those who had just tried to become new
voters. Additionally, the GCVRC estimated that "over 10,000 voters
in Cuyahoga County would be compromised because of these clerical
errors."
Bennett refused to respond to the report's initial conclusions.
When the study became public, BOE Executive Director Michael Vu
accused the study coordinator of "inciting panic." Vu did not
respond to GCVRC's request for the reinstatement of 303 voter
registrations where there was direct evidence that they had been
wrongly cancelled.
The GCVRC also documented that the Cuyahoga County BOE incorrectly
classified 463 properly registered voters as not registered. This
included 201 voters who were registered on BOE computers on August
17, but for some unexplained reason, were removed from the rolls by
October 22. They then were forced to vote provisionally and their
votes were rejected as not registered.
In Brunner's formal complaint against Bennett she cited the fact
that Bennett's BOE did nothing when an estimated 10,000 voters were
thrown off the voting roll by a Diebold voter registration computer
glitch.
Also, Bennett's BOE rejected 262 properly registered voters
included on its own list as of October 22. They incorrectly listed
183 as not registered and 79 as no signatures. "The Board did not
contest our data," said the GCVRC, "but said again it was just a
small percentage due to human error, and then proceeded to certify
the entire Cuyahoga County vote even though they thereby knowingly
possibly disenfranchised 463 individuals."
Parallel purges were conducted by Republican-controlled boards of
election in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) where some 105,000 voters
were purged from the rolls, and in Lucas County (Toledo), where
some 28,000 were purged in an unprecedented move in late August
2004. These remain the only three counties in the state known to
have conducted massive registration purges prior to the 2004
election. The three mass urban purges decimated the rolls in
heavily Democratic areas. Since then, another 170,000 voters have
been purged from the rolls in Franklin County, primarily in the
heavily Democratic Columbus precincts. Many rural Republican
counties, like Miami, practice a "no-purge" policy.
From his post at the helm of both the Ohio GOP and the Cuyahoga
BOE, Bennett was at the center of the purges. Many of the 300,000-
plus purged voters reported that they never received notice that
their voting rights had been cancelled. Should the general 80% pro-
Democratic inner city margins have prevailed for all three purged
lists, the net loss to the Kerry camp could have been in the range
of 100,000 votes.
In addition to the purges, Bennett was also at the center of the
election challenges to college students in Democratic enclaves.
Bennett is infamous for far more than massive voter purges. Under
his supervision, a legally mandated recount of the 2004
presidential vote was illegally manipulated. Ohio law says
precincts must be chosen at random for hand counting as part of the
recount process. But two Cuyahoga BOE employees have been convicted
of a felony and a misdemeanor each, and have each been sentenced to
eighteen months in prison for what prosecutors have called
"rigging" the recount.
Bennett was also instrumental in the purchase of some $20 million
in Diebold voting machines for 2006 statewide elections. Election
protection activists vehemently opposed the purchase, as seen in a
nationally televised HBO special, "Hacking Democracy." Under
Bennett and Cuyahoga BOE Executive Director Michael Vu, the
machines malfunctioned in Ohio's 2006 primary, with vote count
reporting delayed for five days.
Long-time election activist Adele Eisner characterizes Bennett's
reign at the Cuyahoga BOE as a "culture with fear." Among other
things, Bennett chose to disregard long-standing laws requiring
that election results be posted at the precinct level, a decision
backed by Ohio's former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
In a recent audit of the general 2006 elections, Dr. Richard Hayes
Phillips found that in the initial vote count, "Cuyahoga County
alone accounted for 148,928 undervotes, or 42.47% of the statewide
total." The undervotes occurred in the race for U.S. Senate, where
voters apparently opted to not vote for either incumbent Sen. Mike
DeWine or Democrat Sherrod Brown, the eventual winner. The
undervotes represented 26.48% of the county's voters.
But, says Philips, "Once the official results were posted,
Cuyahoga's undervote total fell to 3.25%," leaving him to wonder
"how the unofficial results could have been so erroneous in the
first place."
Hayes also found that Cuyahoga County reported 30,791 uncounted
absentee and provisional ballots. After these ballots were counted,
they reported 39,262 votes, an outcome Phillips terms
mathematically "impossible."
Bennett and Vu were also responsible for more than $12,900,000 in
BOE cost overruns, more than doubling the agency's original budget
of $11,000,000.
Vu resigned earlier this year, and has since been hired as an
Assistant Registrar of Voters in San Diego County, the number two
spot, with a $10,000 salary increase to $130,000 a year. The San
Diego Union-Tribune noted that, "Vu's resignation followed a
tumultuous 3 1/2-year tenure as election chief, including a
disastrous May 2006 primary when the county began using new
electronic voting machines."
In response to the chaos and recrimination, Brunner requested the
resignations of the Cuyahoga board's two Democrats and two
Republicans. Only Bennett vowed to fight his removal.
But he has now become the highest election board official to resign
here amidst the deepening scandals surrounding the 2004 election.
He has joined the growing Republican chorus echoing Rove's line
that the Democrats are preparing to steal the 2008 election.
But Brunner has taken custody of the 2004 ballots and other vote
count materials, which are currently protected by a federal court
decision. She is expected to bring them from Ohio's 88 county
boards to a central repository in Columbus.
Meanwhile, new evidence is emerging that Karl Rove and the GOP had
real-time computer access to both the actual vote numbers in Ohio
as well as the exit polling data that would have allowed them to
direct how many votes they needed from the suspect Ohio
southwestern Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin
of victory in the 2004 election. Stay tuned.
--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman's books include HOW THE GOP STOLE
AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION (www.freepress.org) and WHAT HAPPENED IN
OHIO from the New Press (with Steve Rosenfeld).
See what's free at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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