4um: Ohio Election Workers Sentenced to 18 Months for Rigging 2004 Presidential Recount

Title: Ohio Election Workers Sentenced to 18 Months for Rigging 2004 Presidential Recount
Source: Brad Blog via Raw Story
URL Source: http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php ... www.bradblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D4266
Published: Mar 15, 2007
Author: Brad Blog
Post Date: 2007-03-15 06:02:13 by Zipporah
Keywords: None
Views: 106
Comments: 9

From AP...

CLEVELAND (AP) - Two county election workers were sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in prison for rigging a recount of 2004 presidential election ballots so they could avoid a longer, detailed review.

Jacqueline Maiden, 60, a Cuyahoga County election coordinator who was the board's third-highest ranking employee, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer, 40, each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Peter Corrigan allowed the women to remain free on bail pending appeal, but indicated he thought there was a more widespread conspiracy among election officials.

"I can't help but feel there's more to this story," Corrigan said.

And I can't help but feel the two election officials should have been sentenced to 18 years instead of months (though we understand that to be the max sentence), given the number of folks who have died in Bush's War since the 2004 Election and the fact that there were enough votes in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) alone to give the race to Kerry instead of Bush had the election been administered legitimately.

Just for the record, only 6 votes registered for Kerry instead of Bush in each of Ohio's precincts would have changed the result of that election.

Must run, so we'll refer you to our previous coverage when the two Ohio elections officials were found guilty in January for more details.

NOTE: Hat-Tip to "Ninepatch" over at DailyKos for tipping us off to the news of the sentencing. It's a rather sigh-inducing irony to get the news from dKos given it's proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zúniga had once shamefully banned all diarists, and purged their diaries, for daring to discuss and/or investigate the Ohio 2004 Presidential Election conspiracy. Thank you for continuing to make noise on these matters anyway those of you who have done so at dKos!

Isn't Cuyahoga County (and isn't the Cuyahoga County election staff) heavily Democrat? Weren't the results of Cuyahoga County heavily pro-Kerry?

Answer my own question -- Bush got 221,600 votes in Cuyahoga; Kerry got 448,503. So just what did these election workers do?

That's the way it was done in the 2004 Kenneth Blackwell Republican Secretary of State in Ohio, Chairman of Bush Re-Election committee, implementer of Diebold rigging machines era. Like to see him indicted, convicted and executed for his treason.

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win." --Mahatma K. Gandhi

Good work, Deacon. If the story is true, it didn't help Bush unless it was part of a larger effort to sway the state's numbers.

Prosecutors said the employees broke the law when they worked behind closed doors three days before the Dec. 16, 2004, recount to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand so they could avoid a lengthier, more expensive hand recount of all votes.

Baxter criticized the outspoken support for the women from Robert Bennett, the election board chairman and head of the Republican Party in Ohio. Endorsing such criminal behavior is “amazing, it’s astounding,” according to Baxter, who didn’t indicate if the investigation might lead to more charges.

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win." --Mahatma K. Gandhi

It sounds to me like the election officials' actions are driven by laziness more than by partisan ideology. Recounting 700,000 votes by hand doesn't sound like much fun. Additionally, while there are alot of places I can easily believe that Republican electoral officials would pull a stunt to manipulate results, Cuyahoga County isn't one of them. In fact, I can't imagine Republican-tending electoral officials having any electoral decision-making authority in Cuyahoga County.

You don't win or lose states by county. It doesn't matter where the votes disappear. Just having Blackwell in charge of voting AND running for governor AND heading up the Bush committee is pretty suspicious on its face.