What Happened on Election Night, November 2-3, 2004? [View all]
It was well known in the days prior to the 2004 Presidential election that a Bush victory was highly unlikely without Bush carrying both Ohio and Florida. As Election Day unfolded, spirits in the Kerry camp were running high, as it became evident that Ohio’s 20 electoral votes would determine the victor, and there was widespread belief that Kerry was on track to win Ohio.
Much anecdotal evidence suggests that the Kerry/Edwards ticket was on track to win Ohio, when rather suddenly its fortunes went south. Kerry had a very comfortable lead in the Ohio exit poll. Even CNN’s right wing hack, Robert Novak, seemed to acknowledge on live TV that things looked very bad for Bush. Reports of exceptionally high turnout in highly Democratic Cleveland provided much cause for optimism. A Kerry campaign worker later told me that he and his fellow campaign workers went to bed Election Night certain that Kerry had won. Yet by noon the next day John Kerry conceded the election, which he officially lost by about 119 thousand votes.
There is a great deal of evidence of foul play in the 2004 election in Ohio. In addition to exit polls showing a 4.2% Kerry win, there was: massive purging of voter rolls targeted at Democratic voters; absurdly low official voter turnout in Cleveland, despite the widespread long voting lines that suggested otherwise; insufficient allocation of voting machines in Democratic areas, especially in Franklin County; numerous reports of touch screen voting machines in Mahoning County switching votes from Kerry to Bush right before the voters’ eyes; widespread evidence of voter intimidation and dirty tricks, as detailed in John Conyers’ excellent report, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio; the finding in Clermont County of oval stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards place on the ballot so that votes for Kerry couldn’t be read by the optical scan machine; the fake terrorist threat in Warren County that provided the excuse for county election officials to count their votes in secret, and; the corrupted Ohio recount, which removed the last chance to ascertain evidence of election fraud.
But why did Kerry’s chances of winning the 2004 Presidential election appear to disappear so suddenly, late on Election Night? Some of the above incidents could have provided at least a partial explanation for that. But perhaps the best explanation was provided by Stephen Spoonamore, a Republican and a computer expert who provided an affidavit on the subject shortly before the 2008 Presidential election. But before addressing Spoonamore’s affidavit we need to consider the man who probably knew a lot more than Spoonamore about what happened on Election Night 2008, though he died prior to his scheduled testimony on the subject.
Michael Connell
Michael Connell was a high level Republican operative and IT consultant. He was the founder of New Media Communications, which provided web site services for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, The Republican National Committee, and many other Republican candidates. At the time of the 2004 national election he was president of GovTech solutions, which was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an election website for the Ohio presidential 2004 elections. This clearly presented a conflict of interests, in the same way that Secretary Blackwell’s dual role as Ohio Secretary of State (in charge of Ohio elections) and campaign chairman for the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio created a serious conflict of interests.
Given the exit poll discrepancy in the Ohio 2004 presidential election of 6.7%, the numerous irregularities surrounding that election, and the fact that the awarding of Ohio to Bush was responsible for his reelection, numerous lawsuits were brought in Ohio to challenge the election results. Given Connell’s close connections with Karl Rove and the Bush campaign, in combination with his official duties with respect to the presidential election in Ohio, he was sought to provide testimony in connection with a case that alleged tampering with the 2004 election. It was alleged in the case that Connell participated in vote tampering. On September 22, 2008, Connell was subpoenaed to testify in the case. Connell initially sought to avoid testifying, and even put forth a motion to quash his subpoena. But that motion was denied.
The Testimony of Stephen Spoonamore
On September 17, 2008, Stephen Spoonamore provided an affidavit in connection with ongoing investigations into election fraud involving the 2004 Presidential election. The first parts of his affidavit related to his qualifications for the opinions he provided, and included the following:
He then went on to describe the vote counting system in play on Election Day 2004 in Ohio:
Lastly he described his view of the how Michael Connell fit into the picture:
An article posted in Velvet Revolutions relates what happened next. Later on the same day that Spoonamore provided his affidavit:
On September 22, Connell was subpoenaed to testify about the matters that Spoonamore raised. Connell did everything he could to avoid testifying. Spoonamore provided another affidavit on October 26, going into more detail than his September 17 affidavit on how he saw the 2004 Presidential election being stolen:
Other experts found additional data indicating Bush's increase in votes from these counties, and Kerry's decrease in votes… When information about the SmartTech IT routing switch became public, and recalling that staff of Triad were reported to have removed hard drives from County Tabulators in advance of the recount, I again stated that we now have confirmation a KingPin, or Intelligent Man in the Middle position had been created… The SmartTech system was set up precisely as a KingPin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of States computers to allow whoever was running SmartTech's computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under it's
control…The SmartTech computer would as the results of the evening proceeded be able to know how many votes Bush needed to steal from Kerry, and flip enough votes on the desired county tabulators to reverse the outcome of the election…
The only way this could have been detected on election night would be complete monitoring… or by conducting a forensic analysis of the complete county tabulator computer, especially the hard drives of these computers. These hard drives were apparently removed by Triad employees before the Green Party Recount, in what appears to be a concerted effort to destroy evidence…
A couple words of explanation are in order at this point: The SmartTech system that Spoonamore referred to was operated by Michael Connell; the references to the hard drives removed by Triad employees before the recount relate back to the corrupted Ohio recount, which I described here. The removal of those hard drives constituted destruction of evidence of the true vote count, thus making it impossible to conduct an accurate recount.
Note that by this time Spoonamore seems to have lost confidence in the innocence of Michael Connell that he exhibited in his September 17 affidavit. This is suggested by Spoonamore’s comment on Connell’s continued efforts to avoid providing relevant information, with the excuse that he was trying to protect trade secrets. Spoonamore said that that excuse was absurd, and he went into much detail to explain why it was absurd.
On October 28, attorneys filed a motion to compel testimony of Connell regarding his knowledge of the workings of the GOP computer systems. On October 31 a federal judge ordered Connell to submit to a deposition on possible election manipulation. Connell gave the deposition on November 4, providing as little information as possible, but eventually he was forced to admit that “he brought Triad and SmartTech into the Ohio election game”. Velvet Revolution noted:
The Death of Michael Connell
When it became apparent that Connell would testify in the case, according to news reporter Blake Renault, Connell was warned not to fly his plane:
Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio lawyer who brought the suit and subpoenaed Connell, warned the U.S. Justice Department that Connell’s life might be in danger, and requested witness protection. Arnebeck wrote:
Unfortunately, in an event reminiscent of the death of Raymond Lemme, who had apparently collected incriminating evidence bearing on the same subject that was at the core of the Connell subpoena, Connell never did get to testify. On December 19, he died in a plane crash, presumably caused by his plane running out of gas.
Unsolved mysteries
I don’t know what ever became of Spoonamore’s testimony. Perhaps any chance the American people had to get to the bottom of this matter was buried along with Michael Conner. In a just world, Spoonamore’s allegations would have been thoroughly investigated in an attempt to find out what really happened. So would the great amount of other evidence of election fraud in Ohio and elsewhere on Election Day 2004.
It is also difficult for me to understand how Spoonamore obtained the information he discussed in his affidavit. Being an expert on the subject was not enough. Clearly he seemed to have inside information. How did he obtain that information? It seems that he obtained much of it from Connor himself – but why did Connor trust him with that information?
In any case, if nothing else we should take very seriously Stephen Spoonamore's central message: Electronic voting machines are a national security threat. They have no legitimate place whatsoever in a democracy.
= new reply since forum marked as read
