smoking gun on Blackwell, Bush, and diebold

AnIndependentTexan

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Wed Dec-08-04 05:20 AM
Original message

smoking gun on Blackwell, Bush, and diebold

Edited on Wed Dec-08-04 05:29 AM by AnIndependentTexan

I've been doing a lot of research relating on Blackwell and how they implanted election reform into Ohio. Articles I want to point out. The first one is about Blackwell running for a second term as Ohio SoS. I've taken a few Snipits from it.

http://www.cincypost.com/2002/10/09/edita100902.html

--snipits--
The fact that the peripatetic (and, yes, ambitious) Blackwell is seeking another four-year term might be taken as a sign that he's maturing, that he's learning one of the toughest discipline in politics: patience. The irony is that this is an office he once jokingly dismissed as not worth winning. But he has run it well for the past four years and, we submit, deserves another term.
--snipits--

--snipits--
Though the secretary of state is Oho's chief elections officer, the mechanics of the job are responsibility of county election boards. After the 2000 presidential disaster in Florida, Blackwell tried to convince Gov. Bob Taft and the leaders of the General Assembly to appropriate state funds to give local election officials an incentive to upgrade their voting equipment. When the state's budget crises shut down that notion, he smoothly shifted to a more workable strategy: codifying into law a set of criteria that local boards must meet in their election systems. Now that Congress appears to be poised to come through with federal funds to help pay for any necessary upgrades, Ohio should be well positioned to take advantage of them.

Flannery, for his part, has run an aggressive race. He is serving his second term in the Ohio House, representing a suburban Cleveland district. He faults Blackwell for not moving fast enough on election reforms, for taking too long to process certain corporate filings, and for being too quiet for too long about the allegedly shady campaign finance practices of some of Blackwell's GOP's colleagues. Flannery generates a lot of smoke, but beneath it there isn't much fire.
--snipits--
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This article is important because Bush signed the election reform that GAVE BLACKWELL MORE POWER over the counties.

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/moneypolitics/2003/get_say.htm

--snipits--

Although counties once had ultimate control over their voting systems, the Help America Vote Act, signed into law last year by President Bush, moved the responsibility for elections from counties to a central elections figure in each state. The law is part of an effort to avoid a replay of the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida, where several counties found themselves embroiled in such election controversy that the U.S. Supreme Court was required to sort it out.
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This next article is important because it pointed out the problems that Ohio will be facing before election date. Notice the date of the article October 5, 2004. It was basically a warning.

http://www.fairvote.org/righttovote/calmes.htm

--snipits--
Election experts agree that Ohio holds the greatest potential for trouble. The state is not only the one most hotly contested by President Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. It also faces "just about every issue that's come up in election reform," says Doug Chapin, director of Electionline.org4, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
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The final tie of Bush, Blackwell, and Diebold. Blackwell was a strong pusher of diebold in Ohio. Even though others protested Blackwell felt the need to Push for Diebold to be in Ohio.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm
--snipits--
COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court challenge over the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified bidder, Sequoia Voting Systems.

In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider donating or raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state GOP will use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that legislative Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.

They urged Blackwell to remove Diebold from the field of voting-machine companies eligible to sell to Ohio counties.

This is the second such request in as many months. State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, asked Blackwell in July to disqualify Diebold after security concerns arose over its equipment.