Reply #8: Nice little Memo from the MSM's AP! Here's the more complete story, link here!

[Up2Late]

This is absolutely OUTRAGEOUS!

Elections board workers take plea deal

Posted by Jim Nichols November 05, 2007 11:26AM

A special prosecutor ended a two-year drive to convict two county elections workers for rigging a ballot recount during the hotly contested 2004 presidential election....

(edit)

... At issue was how the board and its staff conducted a sample recount of ballots after third-party candidates demanded a countywide vote recount. That sampling was meant as a test of the validity of tabulating machines; if a hand count of the sample - 3 percent of the county's votes - proved the machine count accurate, the board could assume the broader automatic tabulation was also accurate and forego a tedious, expensive and potentially embarrassing hand recount of all 600,000-plus votes.

The board staff rigged the sample count because the precincts actually were secretly selected in advance of the closely watched recount, said Baxter, who was brought in to try the case because Mason is the board's lawyer. The pre-count ensured the 3-percent sample included only precincts whose hand and machine counts matched.

Dreamer, Maiden and a third worker, Rosie Grier, were charged for the fudging. They countered that the board had always done things that way - with the knowledge of its attorney, one of Mason's assistants.

"There was no evidence to that effect - none," Baxter said.

He faulted the media for spreading that "convenient misrepresentation," and for falsely portraying the board managers as low-level employees. Such media portrayals, and a string of editorials in The Plain Dealer that blasted the prosecution as an "overreach, weakened the prosecution's moral foundation by persuasively misrepresenting the case's facts," Baxter said.

(more at link)
<http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/11/elections_board_workers_to_tak.html>