Experts' Affidavits Filed on Ohio 2004 Lawsuit Say Republican Cyber Operatives Could Heist 2008 Election in Replay of 2004 Surprise

OhioNewsBureau

UPDATED

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Ohio attorneys pushing to convince a federal judge in Franklin County to lift the stay on a case alleging Republican Party operatives and Bush family loyalists cyber-rigged the vote in certain Ohio counties in 2004, filed two affidavits on Wednesday from data security and academic research experts on voting. The attorneys hoped to convince the court to lift a stay on their case, allowing them to issue a subpoena to Mike Connell, a long-time information technology handyman who worked in both Ohio and Florida, who they want to depose now in an effort to see whether the Matrix-like system he helped build in Ohio, that some say put Ohio in the win column in 2004 for President Bush instead of his Democratic opponent John Kerry, a senator from Massachusettes, is still rigged to go off on Election Day in November.

Al Gore received hundreds of thousands more votes than George W. Bush did in 2000 nationwide, but didn't become president, even though a recount of votes after the election in Florida showed that he also won more votes there, too. Some say John Kerry won more votes in Ohio in 2004, but due to dozens of Election Day irregularities, some maybe orchestrated while others were just vulnerabilities in Ohio's system of voting, lost the state by 118,601 votes. So the question of whether Barack Obama, who currently trails John McCain in Ohio but who leads him in recent polls nationwide by four percentage points (49-45, Gallup) can both win and loose Ohio. If three Ohio attorneys get the signal to re-energize their now moribund lawsuit, we all might learn somethings that we need to know but that also might scare us straight, and show us that the wacky election conspirators the news media has marginalized were not as wacky as first thought.

The stay, which was lifted by the court of Judge Algernon Marbley last Friday after Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who had previously issued motions to keep it in place least it interfer with plans for the upcoming presidential election, agreed to let plaintiff attorney's pursue more discovery by moving forward with the issusing of subpeonas to Connell and, maybe, to others like Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser and master Republican strategist, who the attorneys and those helping them think a path of breadcrumbs will lead to. The attorneys say Connell can blow the whistle on how democracy was compromised in Ohio and other states, like Florida, where he was given the keys to the castle of cyber systems.

2008 Elections Courting Trouble, Experts, Media Say

The filing that has the potential to open up a major can of nasty worms about whether Ohio's (or any state's)  elections are really free, fair, open and honest, came on the same day the Washington Post ran an article titled "High Turnout, New Procedures May Mean an Election Day Mess."  The Post article painted a picture of what problems lie ahead for American voters and the systems they use, as record-high registrations set the stage for "long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.

The crush of voters will strain a system already in the midst of transformation, with jurisdictions introducing new machines and rules to avoid the catastrophe of the deadlocked 2000 election and the lingering controversy over the 2004 outcome. Even within the past few months, cities and counties have revamped their processes: Nine million voters, including many in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida and Colorado, will use equipment that has changed since March.But the widespread changes meant to reassure the public have also increased the potential for trouble. [Washington Post]

The article includes a reference to Ohio, reminding readers that some voters, as happened in Franklin County, home of the state capital, waited in line more than five hours. The county in question, it said, has "added poll workers, increased the number of voting machines by 50 percent and commissioned a study on where the machines should go." Other Ohio jurisdictions are requiring more training of poll workers. In an effort to alleviate voting machines being tampered with while they were taken home by board of elections officials the night before an election as a cost saving measure, an accepted operational practice not given a second thought as to how it compromises the chain of custody, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, elected in 2006, issued a directive to ban the so-called "sleepovers" of the touch-screen machines she, and a $2 million dollar study she commissioned says are not trustworthy.

On Friday CNN reported that a new Government Accountability Office report on voting system testing finds that the Election Assistance Commission has not notified election officials across the country about electronic voting machine failures. CNN's article also said a new study by Common Cause and the Century Foundation finds that 10 very vital swing states have significant voting problems that have not been addressed since the last election. Those 10 states, according to Common Cause, are Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

With a monumental presidential election looming less than 46 days away, and with Ohio again in the the cross hairs of the nation on issues related to voting and voting systems, the legal dust-ups between Brunner, the first woman to hold the office of elections chief in Ohio, and the Ohio GOP, who believes Brunner has made enough unforced errors in her first two years to unseat her in 2010 and continue its control of the state board that draws legislative districts, is troubling at least and potentially calamitous at worst. While everyone talks about voting rights and counting every vote, the reality on the ground is that lawsuits and legal challenges that will come into play in the coming weeks can only contribute to an environment where voters feel frustrated, become angry or confused and wonder if they will be allowed to vote and if their vote will be counted fairly. All good and genuine concerns.

Ohio Voters Confident in Vote Systems, Critics Are Wary

One local view on whether Ohio voters have confidence in their voting system was seen in The Columbus Dispatch, which editorialized that election officials should take heart that "the vast majority of Ohioans believe elections are fair and that presidential ballots will be counted correctly on Nov. 4." The editorial used results of a recent Ohio Poll, conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati, to makes its declaration that "Ohio's bipartisan administration of elections is structured so that the system doesn't favor either Republicans or Democrats" and that "Post-mortems on Ohio's 2004 vote determined that bipartisan errors in planning resulted in too-few voting machines, causing long lines at many polling locations."

Defending its long held position that no hanky panky took place in 2000 or 2004, Ohio's Greatest Home Newspaper said, "Some activists tried to weave the problems into a tapestry of conspiracy, but their accusations didn't fly with most Ohioans." But what do most Ohioans really know about how their election system really works? 

What most Ohioans really know about their election system, how it's constructed, how it works, and how partisan, malicious interlopers of the variety Karl Rove has at his disposal could insert themselves in the system without anyone knowing it, puts their beliefs on the safety and security of voting sytems on ice.

Filings Ask for Lawsuit Stay to be Lifted, Allowing Subpeonas to be Issued, Depositions to be Taken

The attorneys hope to finally find the evidence that will fly with most Ohioans, as well as the state's mainstream newspapers, who choose to put their head in the sand on this topic rather than call for the kind of investigation that would either confirm or debunk the theories of election fraud they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge.  The decision of Federal District Court Judge Algernon Marbley in response to the request to lift the court stay can help shed light, or maybe produce some fire, that will show how bad Ohio got burnt in the past, is key to preventing another 2004 election fiasco this year.

The plaintiff attorneys, Cliff O. Arnebeck, Bob Fitrakis and Dennis Eckart, all of Columbus, Ohio, filed a lawsuit --Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association vs. Jennifer Brunner -- alleging voter suppression in the 2004 election, giving President Bush a narrow win by 188,601 votes, Ohio's 20 Electoral College votes and a second term in the White House. The filing Wednesday from the plaintiff attorneys was a response to a motion filed by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, who with the help of the Ohio Attorney General asked that the stay on further discovery not be lifted because it would interfere with state and local officials preparing for what they have forcasted will be the largest turnout in state history on November 4th, Election Day. Ohio is again center stage, as it was in 2004, as the key battleground state that election-watchers believe will again determine who the next president will be, Barack Obama, a Democrat, or John McCain, a Republican.

Ohio leaders and election officials are still smarting from the black eye the nation and the media bestowed on them for the many irregularities -- some say intentional, others chalk them up to miscues -- that took place in 2004 but have yet to be investigated in any way despite the full-throated protestations from plaintiff attorneys and other activists and advocates on election law and voting matters. These impassioned voting rights advocates say evidence for the cyber-rigging can be found if only this court would agree to have key players, like Mike Connell, Karl Rove and others with responsibility for various Ohio county boards of election, speak under oath about what they did, what they saw and who they believe was behind the long list of events or incidents.  Had these incidents happened in the world of banking, one plaintiff expert testified would have triggered an immediate lock down of the system and detailed investigation of what caused such system blips to occur in the first place.

The filing was labeled a "Tale of Two Witnesses," because the sworn affidavits were from Stephen Spoonamore, a cyber-data expert, and Richard Hayes Phillips, a self-described fact and expert witness based on his gathering and examination of some 30,000 digital images of records from the 2004 election, and his background in academic research.

As someone who knows Mike Connell,  described as "uniquely preeminent in his field of Internet and data processing systems design," Stephen Spoonamore -- an Ohioan and cyber security expert now serving as an expert witness for Arnebeck and crew--  reinforces plaintiff attorneys' argument that Connell -- the man who "handles information technology for the George W. Bush White House; some of the most important congressional committees, including House Judiciary and House Intelligence; sensitive agencies such as the Department of Justice and Energy and currently for the McCain presidential campaign" -- should be brought in to testify to what he knows about past elections, both 2000 and 2004, and whether those systems and the people who run them can pull off another victory for McCain in Ohio even if Obama wins the popular vote.

Spoonamore affidavit asserts that the election computer setup used by Ken Blackwell in 2004 provided the means and opportunity for the manipulation of the election results. " The vote tabulation and reporting system, as modified at the direction of Mr. Blackwell, allowed the introduction of a single computer in the middle of the pathway. This computer located at a company principally managing IT Systems for GOP campaign and political operations (Computer C) received all information from each county computer (Computer A) BEFORE it was sent onward to Computer B. This centralized collection of all incoming statewide tabulations would make it extremely easy for a single operator, or a preprogrammed single "force balancing computer" to change the results in any way desired by the team controlling Computer C. In this case GOP partisan operatives. Again, if this out of state system had ANY digital access to the Secretary of State's system it would be cause for immediate investigation by any of my banking clients. [Velvet Revolution]

The second tale of why the court needs to lift the stay now in place comes from Richard Hayes Phillips, who says that while Brunner's position to oppose the stay until after this year's presidential election is "well taken," he does not find it persuasive, given that four years have elapsed since the 2004 election occurred.  Additionally,  the "crimes" he declares were part of it and that Brunner, who rode in on a high horse of election system reform, is responsible for administering the upcoming election.

In a very compelling document, Phillips argues forcefully that now would be a "good time to hold accountable those who were responsible for rigging a presidential election." He then proceeds to list 22 separate events, from Oct. 13, 2004 to July 27, 2007, that should have triggered an investigation by the Ohio Secretary of State or the Ohio Attorney General, two state agencies with authority and resources to launch hearings or investigations.

The Hayes affidavit asserts that after reviewing hundreds of thousands of documents, ballots and other election records, "it is my conclusion that there is so much evidence of ballot alteration, ballot substitution, ballot box stuffing, ballot destruction, vote switching, tabulator rigging, and old fashioned voter suppression, that the results of the 2004 presidential election, would have been reversed" had there been a real investigation. [Velvet Revolution]

The Three Amigos of Ohio election law (Arnebeck, Fitrakis and Eckart) told Judge Marbley that lifting the stay now would "likely produce information that the public should have before voting in the next election. It would provide a clear signal that the rule of law will apply, and there will be accountability for criminal conduct." A major objection raised before to lifting the stay was about resources being drained from various agencies. Arnebeck, Fitrakis and Eckart countered that they could "accomplish without a significant drain on the resources of either the Ohio Secretary of State or Ohio Attorney General's office."

Local Views, Background Archives

One of the Three Amigos, Bob Fitrakis, a professor of political science at Columbus State University and editor of the Columbus FreePress, wrote a round-up article about the 10 things that can go wrong with the 2008 election. Fitrakis,  has run as a candidate for congress and governor.

Important background articles on this topic can be found at ePluribus Media, a powerful citizen journalism site known for vetting and fact checking and its revelations about big issues like the politiziation of the US Dept. of Justice under John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales.

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About the author

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal. Find ONB archives here.
Photo credits: (c) 2008 AnHarris, istockphoto

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