Ohio '04 308,000 VOTERS CUT FROM THE ROLLS PRIOR TO THE VOTE

[Botany]

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1832

"Robert J. Bennett, the Republican chair of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, and the Chair of the Ohio Republican Party, has confirmed that prior to the 2004 election, his BOE eliminated---with no public notice---a staggering 175,414 voters from the Cleveland-area registration rolls. He has not explained why the revelation of this massive registration purge has been kept secret for so long. Virtually no Ohio or national media has bothered to report on this story."


Just like "they" did in Florida in 2000 .... purge the rolls of those "darkies" and electronically manipulate the rest of the
vote so as to assure a republican victory. "The Katrina Video," just might wake up enough of the rest of the country
as to the level of lying and criminal acts of bush and company.

Sorry, to rant but I live in Ohio and saw and heard voter crimes first hand. We are truly dealing with the devil here.



Time for America to remove the cancer that is bush & company from our body.

[AtomicKitten]

1. the voter purge worked nicely for the Repubs in Florida in 2000

[acmejack]

2. This is Disgusting, Blackwell should be in jail

Not on the ballot. OTOH, Fitrakis & Wassermann should win a Pulitzer IMO.

[bleever]

3. There's the election, in a nutshell.

I guess it's a buckeye.

Rec'd!

:thumbsup:

[Botany]

4. Did I ever tell you that you are my Fav?

A winter Bleever pond.





Shine your shoes/light your fuse
Can you use/them ol' U.S. Blues?
I'll drink your health/share your wealth
Run your life/steal your wife

Wave that flag
Wave it wide and high
Summertime done
Come and gone
My oh my

[acmejack]

5. dude!

[mdmc]

19. kick for the pics, tunes

:kick:

[bleever]

22. The song I'd like to sing about Blackwell: "He's Gone".

"...and nothings gonna bring him back."




You have excellent taste. :)

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. K & R - now that the ports deal has pissed so many people off, maybe

some corporate media venues might start daring to reveal ugly truths about how the criminals in power got there by a coup and not by any kind of democracy.

We have to keep pushing. Once people start to catch on, it will spread.

Thanks, Botany! :hi:

[AzDar]

7. Kick (from a born-and-raised Buckeye)...

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. Fitrakis & Wasserman (the article in the opening post) spell it out:

The Board of Elections in Toledo was chaired by Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, northwestern Ohio's "Mr. Republican." A close personal confidante of the Bush family, Noe raised more than $100,000 for the GOP presidential campaign in 2004. He is currently under indictment for three felony violations of federal election law, and 53 counts of fraud, theft and other felonies in the "disappearance" of more than $13 million in state funds. Noe was entrusted with investing those funds by Republican Gov. Robert Taft, who recently pled guilty to four misdemeanor charges, making him the only convicted criminal ever to serve as governor of Ohio.

The rationale given by Noe and by the Republican-controlled BOE in Lucas and Hamilton Counties was that the voters should be eliminated from the rolls because they had allegedly not voted in the previous two federal elections.

There is no law that requires such voters be eliminated. And there is no public verification that has been offered to confirm that these people had not, in fact, voted in those elections.

Nonetheless, tens of thousands of voters turned up in mostly Democratic wards in Cincinnati and Toledo, only to find they had been mysteriously removed from the voter rolls. In many cases, sworn testimony and affidavits given at hearings after the election confirmed that many of these citizens had in fact voted in the previous two federal elections and had not moved from where they were registered. In some cases, their stability at those addresses stretched back for decades.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

34. I haven't read the entire article...

But this smells like crapola. Boards of Election are not "controlled" by one party or the other. The Hamilton County Board of Election has two Republican and two Democrats -- so both parties have to agree on any course of action before it can be taken. I believe that's the same composition of any Board of Election in the state (by law). In the case of Hamilton County, the two Democrats are the Chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, and the President of the local AFL-CIO Labor Council -- hardly Republican moles.

Hamilton County purged thousands of inactive voters from the lists prior to the 2004 election, knowing that there would be a large turnout and hoping to clean out the deadwood from their database. As a Ward Chairman (with access to the voting rolls in my Ward), I know that there were hundreds of people listed who no longer lived in my Ward -- some of whom had been dead for several years.

[TexasLawyer]

37. So there's even a Tom Noe connection

Maybe some of the millions he siphoned off from Ohio were in payment for helping so well with these dirty tricks.

[mod mom]

45. and don't forget that his wife was Chair of the Lucas County BOE, a

position Tom Noe formerly held. Tom Noe also was part of Blackwell suits:

It was Mr. Noe and company who were intervening on Kenneth Blackwells behalf in many of the court cases where questions of provisional ballots arose. He was also an Intervenor in the case to override the protest to the fraudulent recount in Ohio. 

http://news.lp.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/election2004/sandblack102604opn.pdf

GREGORY L. ARNOLD; GLENN A. WOLFE; and THOMAS
W. NOE,
Intervenors-Appellants
Nos. 04-4265/4266
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Ohio at Toledo.
No. 04-07582—James G. Carr, District Judge.
Submitted: October 23, 2004
Decided and Filed: October 26, 2004
Before: BOGGS, Chief Judge; GILMAN, Circuit Judge; and WEBER, District Judge.*

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/docs/ohio/Rios/intervene.pdf

MOTION TO INTERVENE OF THOMAS W. NOE , GLENN A. WOLFE, AND GREGORY L. ARNOLD
Pursuant to Rule 24(a) and (b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Thomas W. Noe, Glenn A. Wolfe, and Gregory L. Arnold (hereinafter, “Intervenors”), hereby move this Court for an order granting leave to intervene as Defendants in this proceeding. Intervenors have a vital interest in the subject matter of this proceeding and are so situated that the disposition of this action may, as a practical matter, impair or impede their ability to protect those interests.


There are many more cases, some dating back to 2003 where Mr. Noe Intervened on Blackwell's behalf. Another little twist in the story is the Judge who presided over many of the cases Judge Carr, is also the Judge who is now responsible for the only remaining lawsuit referencing the 2004 election. 

http://www.nvri.org/about/ohio_sargus_transfer_order050905.pdf



.Bernadette Noe and Tom Noe both have links to the Lucas County BOE. Ms Noe was Chairperson of the Lucas County BOE during the past election. I hope you have taken the time to read the SOS's Investigation of Lucas county following the election:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/lucas.htm


This report includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.


-One-half of the ballots printed and used in the 2004 general election in Lucas county were stored in an open space on the fhird floor of the county warehouse with no security measures in place.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation on Lucas County BOE page 4



-Live ballots were delivered to polling locations a week in advance of the election. Although the ballots were retrieved, one board employee who was assigned to the warehouse informed the SOS staff that he did not believe all the ballots were successfully retrieved.
SOURCE; SOS Investigation, page 5



-Lucas County BOE failed to record or retrieve ballot stub numbers of absentee voters’ ballots as required by statute OH Revised Code 3505.23. It was reported by an elector that her mother had received not one, but three absentee voter ballots. there was no way to determine if similar incidents occurred and if so how many.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, page 7




-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.



-In late September or early October an employee of the Ohio Republican Party contacted Sam Thurber (*involved with politician wife Maggie Thurber in Noe scandal.) wanting to inspect and have copies made of all recently returned voter registrations, Ohio Republican Party offered to furnish volunteers to assist with copying postcards. No one at the Lucas County BOE can confirm that anyone was assigned to supervise Republican volunteers. On their second day of copying, a BOE employee, Jennifer Bernath, Democratic Booth Official) saw republican party volunteers peeling off the yellow return stickers applied by the post office. (Violation of RC 149.43 (B) (I) , and agruably a violation of 149.351.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, pgs 18-19

*Among those whose donations have caught the attention of investigators are:

City Councilman Betty Shultz; former state representative Sally Perz, her husband, Joe, and her daughter, Allison; former county elections director Joe Kidd; county Auditor Larry Kaczala and his wife, Gina; County Commissioner Maggie Thurber and her husband, Sam; and two of Mr. Noe’s co-workers at Vintage Coins and Collectibles, partner Tim Lapointe and executive assistant Susan Metzger. Mr. Lapointe’s wife, Linda, also donated.

All of the above gave the campaign $2,000 except the Thurbers; each of them gave $1,950 to the campaign. The $23,900 in donations were made between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5, 2003.

Path of donations At issue is whether Mr. Noe gave people money in order for them to give to the Bush campaign, allowing Mr. Noe to exceed federal spending limits, law-enforcement sources said.
Source:
Toledo Blade - FBI Raids GOP Donor Noe's Condo
Friday, April 29, 2005




-The Swanton 3 poll book turned up missing and has never been recovered.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 16


-The number of precincts in Lucas County for the November 2003 election was 530 precincts, at the time of the November 2, 2004 election there were 495 precincts.


Tom W. Noe served as the Chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party from 1992-1995 as well as on the board of the Lucas County Board of Election from 1993-2003. He was also appointed to the Ohio Board of regents in 1995.

http://www.regents.state.oh.us/people/noe.html


(Although he did not possess a college degree, in fact he dropped out in his first year of college)



It was during his tenure on the BOE that Diebold machines were brought into Lucas County.

"TOLEDO, Ohio, May 10, 2002 ¯ Just about every county in the nation is rushing to update their voting technology, but no county to date has done it faster than Lucas County."
<snip>
"Lucas County Board of Elections Acting Chairman Tom Noe, who was present to observe the May 7th election, was pleased with the outcome. "I don't think there is another county in the nation that has implemented touch screen voting as quickly as Lucas County did for this trial run in a primary election," Noe said. "The people of Lucas County and of Ohio in general can be proud of this achievement.""
http://www.sequoiavote.com/mediadetail.php?id=57

http://www.diebold.com/news/newsdisp.asp?id=2997

[sojourner]

9. good God........when will it end???????????? - K & R n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. This should also be sent to Sen. Boxer & the Reps who stood in January 05

to oppose the certification of the Ohio vote. Not only are they proven right but it would give them more ammunition in their public discourse.

[bvar22]

11. K&R

The Democratic Party KNEW that the Repubs were going to steal Ohio.
They were warned REPEATEDLY.
Hundreds (Thousands?) of letters, E-Mails, and phone calls were made from DU (check the archives) warning the Democratic Leadership of the Republican Plan to STEAL Ohio. (check the archives)
The Democratic Party FAILED to protect our right to VOTE after these warnings.
The response was pathetic, and remains PATHETIC!

The Party response to the OHIO theft (especially after the documented theft in Fla 2000) fractured my faith in the Party.

Kudos to the handful of Democrats who stood AFTER the election.

WHY is BBV and election integrity not a NATIONAL, top of the LIST, Democratic Party issue?

The Democratic Party has done NOTHING (as a Party) to protect our vote in 2006!

[AtomicKitten]

23. not true

Democrat Rep. Rush Holt would be surprised to hear that the Democratic Party has done NOTHING to protect the vote.

HR-2239 even had Republican co-sponsors http://home.earthlink.net/~acisney4/id9.html
but epic asshole Republican Bob Ney prevented the bill and every other piece of legislation regarding BBV from seeing the light of day http://www.oregonvrc.org/general_forum/election_related_articles_op_eds_discussions/elections_general_articles_opeds_0?from=30.

There are many other efforts by the Democrats on the record, however, their legislative efforts have been stymied by the Republicans in power.

Howard Dean has long spoken about voter fraud and has asked citizens to start petitions to put this issue on state ballots mandating that voting equipment MUST have a verifiable paper trail.

The above is NOT nothing.

[bvar22]

26. Yes TRUE

If you read my post you will see that I was talking about "Not Doing Anything
to Prevent the Coming Theft of the Election in Ohio in 2004 in spite of advanced Warning".

John Kerry said he hired a bunch of lawers to deal with a theft if one occurred. This effort never materialized, and it was the GREEN Party and Independent Party who took the lead in activities AFTER THE THEFT WAS HISTORY and Bush* was ALREADY declared the Winner.

The Democratic Response has been similiar to Bush*s response to 9-11 and Katrina....Gee, who could have imagined...????
The purpose of my post was to inform (especially the newer DU members like yourself) that the Democratic Party was WARNED REPEATEDLY by myself and hundreds of other posters at DU that the Republicans were going to STEAL OHIO.
Many, MANY things could and should have been done by the Democratic Party in Ohio BEFORE THE FACT. We at DU have been screaming to deaf ears in the Party about Ohio since Blackwell pledged to deliver Ohio to the Republicans. Check the archives.

You also misquoted me.
Here is what I said:
"The Democratic Party has done NOTHING (as a Party) to protect our vote in 2006!

Efforts from individuals within the Democratic Party have been heroic AFTER THE FACT, especially from members of the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party like Conyers (The Basement Hearings), Boxer (The Boxer Rebellion), and the CBC (The 2000 protest).

Please be more careful in your posting at DU:
1) Read the Post before you reply
2) THINK about your response
3) Reply to the actual content of the post

Thanks

[AtomicKitten]

30. thanks for the tips

I stand by what I say.


On edit: The Democratic Party ... (as a party) is redundant; not a misquote on my part. Perhaps you should be more precise in your wording. Just a tip.

[loudsue]

31. Thank you bvar22. Everything you said is exactly TRUE.

The Democratic Party has yet to make this one of their primary issues, and until it is addressed, the republicans will still be given ENOUGH of a majority (by the voting machines) to keep themselves from all going to jail.

If every Democrat in the House & Senate would get their asses in gear over this, we could stop the fraud. They need to shout it from the rafters.

:kick::kick::kick:

[AtomicKitten]

32. Well, not EXACTLY true

The absolutism of many of the emotional statements here at DU dilutes the gist of the issue.

To say the Dems have done nothing is simply not true and will be disputed by people like myself that have actually worked on legislative efforts. To be specific and exact, they have not been successful. Big difference.

I certainly understand the frustration and despair, but IMO this absolutism is just another gratuitous attack on the Democratic Party in toto.

[babsbunny]

12. I'm here in Ohio too!

Satan truely has a stronghold on us!

[gasperc]

13. this is fucked

just fucked

[ohtransplant]

14. Aren't there Dems on these county BOEs?

I must be missing something, confused, or stupid because I can't comprehend why, if there are Dems on the BOEs, they weren't screaming from the rooftops and going to the press before the election. Is that kinda the purpose of having both parties represented? I want to hear a response from the ODP why they allowed this if their people were in the room(s) when this crap happened

[Botany]

15. The answer must be:

They are dirty too. The head of the Ohio Repug Party is the head of the BOE in the must democratic
county in the state?

The Ohio Dem Party has to have some paid off people in it.

[blm]

16. I have no idea why TerryMac and Clinton let the GOP have Ohio from 1996-04

They let the entire infrastructure of the Ohio Dem party just collapse without making any significant efforts to strengthen it.

[JudyM]

17. K&R. Important. How do we boot Blackwell and his cronies?

[Kolesar]

20. Support and fund SOS candidate Jennifer Brunner

www.jenniferbrunner.com

[JudyM]

27. Isn't Blackwell running for Governor, also?

[Kolesar]

33. Blackwell is running for Gov and Brunner ought to bust him on his record

of electioneering and abuse of power when Blackwell was Secy of State of Ohio.

[JudyM]

38. Any idea if Brunner has all the data that DUers have compiled re:Blackwell

[Kolesar]

39. I don't know, but

I wrote to her and said she ought to advertise on DU & DailyKos and rassle up some big bucks to fight the fight. Never heard back. I'm sad.

[JudyM]

44. Don't lose hope..She's probably got more than she can handle. Maybe call?

[jen4clark]

40. I've sent information several times

to Brunner's email. Have never received a response.

OTOH, Fitrakis is running for Gov of Ohio and he WILL NOT remain silent on election fraud. There is a Green candidate running for Sec of State. Read the following from Fitrakis' website:

End the Culture of Corruption

Ohio is being governed by a convicted criminal, Governor Bob Taft, with Congressman Robert Ney, key GOP fundraiser Tom Noe, and others under criminal investigation. Meanwhile, George Bush and the far-right GOP juggernaut stole the 2004 election in Ohio, while the Democratic Party proved itself incapable of mounting significant resistance.

The Democrats' "investigation," entitled "Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio," could well have been produced by a high school class in elementary polling. It consists almost entirely of post-election phone interviews. It says nothing about the devastating discrepancies between exit polls and the highly improbable and virtually impossible vote total that gave George W. Bush a second term. It makes no case about precinct-by-precinct illegalities including unguarded ballots, election machine tampering, an unexplained bogus Homeland Security alert, the firing of whistle-blowing election board officials, and much more.

As my colleague Harvey Wasserman and I documented in our book, Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?, any third-world election that was as rife with fraud and theft as was Ohio's this past November would have been declared invalid by international observers.

This year, the Ohio Green Party is running a slate of fraudbusting experts to help return the Ohio government to the people of Ohio. If elected, Gov. Bob Fitrakis, Lt. Gov. Anita Rios and Secretary of State Tim Kettler will stop the conflicts of interest, end the cronyism, and remove the sweetheart deals that have brought shame to our state's electoral and governance processes.

Please join us as we stand up and fight for clean government in Ohio.

[JudyM]

43. The people of Ohio should know the truth. Shame there's no organized

campaign to get this in the media NOW rather than waiting until the election. Would be more likely to get change if the fact of corruption became part of Ohio citizens' collective consciousness.

[mod mom]

46. There will be fireworks in Ohio this year over this issue.

[JudyM]

48. That'd be great... fingers crossed over here...

[Kolesar]

47. If we organized a fund raiser for her, she would pay attention

I was thinking one in Ohio, but maybe we ought to do a virtual-fundraiser. I bet we could net her four figures in donations and let her know she has friends she can count on.

[JudyM]

49. RIght, money talks... sounds like a good idea!

[annabanana]

18. Will Abramoff help you to clean house there?

I know the coin thing is going to hit the fan...There must be a cadre of 'pubs who are vulnerable in the culture of corruption...

[Kolesar]

21. Another thread at DU tracking this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x414992

[Patsy Stone]

24. Amen

K&R! Go, Bot!

[BelgianMadCow]

25. K&R people! word on what the supposed basis for this purge was

from the OP source :

"The rationale given by Noe and by the Republican-controlled BOE in Lucas and Hamilton Counties was that the voters should be eliminated from the rolls because they had allegedly not voted in the previous two federal elections.

There is no law that requires such voters be eliminated. And there is no public verification that has been offered to confirm that these people had not, in fact, voted in those elections. "

The article also explains the BOEs consisting of 2 dems + 2 reps but SOS has deciding vote in case of a tie.

SOS Blackwell, the one who tried to throw out absentee ballots because of paper weight.

:argh:

edited to answer my own question with info from the article :blush:

[blm]

28. Another kick up - expose the GOP control of the vting machines.

.

[Zodiak]

35. There is also no guarantee

That the Dems on the board are real Dems. Ohio is rife with conservative "Democrats" who try to go along to get along with Republicans. Prominent Ohio Dems have been out of power so long that Stockholm syndrome has long ago set in.

[jen4clark]

41. this is sadly true Zodiak

Remember when Sherole Easton - the whistleblower in Hocking County - reported that the vendor tech came in and was "working" on the computer before the bogus recount, as well as posting "cheat sheets" on the wall showing what the numbers should be? The other "Dem" BoE in Hocking refused to back up Sherole and instead sided with the Repubs. Sherole was subsequently fired. I heard her on The Brad Show last June talking about this. (BradBlog keeps archives of The Brad Show and it would probably be easy to find HERE.)


I also remember reading somewhere back then that the other DEM on the BoE was not only married to a big wig in the GOP - which in itself means not much - but had no record of ever voting Dem.
The Boards of Electors are appointed by Sec of State, so no big surprise there... ;(

[radio4progressives]

29. Excellent Post - thanks! Kicking but too late to Rate it up..

:applause:

[Doctor_J]

36. There's gonna be blood in the streets before the GOP gives up power

They have absolutely NO regard for the law.

[magellan]

42. Neither do the people who keep voting for them

Bushbots don't get that law-breaking is a non-partisan issue, that it undermines democracy no matter who does it. That's why blind loyalty to any party is anti-democratic.

The lesson will not be learned until it's too late.