OH's 2004 Election Night Lockdown Finally Investigated by Media

[BradBlog]

Warren County, OH's 2004 Election Night Lockdown Finally Investigated by Media
FBI: 'There was no information given to Warren County of an imminent terrorist threat to that county or to Southern Ohio'
Kerry Campaign Stands by Decision to Not Challenge Election...

With more than 3000 counties in the United States of America, only heavily Republican Warren County, Ohio --- one of the last to report election results in the Buckeye State that night --- took action on Election Night 2004 to lock out members of the public and the media from their tabulation room.

The president of the county's Board of Commissioners claimed at the time that during a "face-to-face meeting between the FBI and our director of emergency services we were informed that on a scale from one to 10...Warren County in particular was rated at 10, 10 being the top highest risk."

Nobody, however, in Warren County has ever named the supposed FBI official who gave the warning, and to this day, the director of the county's Department of Emergency Services, Frank R. Young, will not reveal the name of the official with whom he claims he spoke, even as the FBI maintains "there was no information given to Warren County of an imminent terrorist threat to that county or to Southern Ohio," and that "None of our agents...advised of any type of any terrorist threat or anything like that."

Now, going on four years since the Lockdown occurred --- The BRAD BLOG originally reported on the matter on November 8, 2004 --- a mainstream corporate media outlet has finally taken the issue seriously enough to devote some resources to a legitimate investigation.
Among the findings from Jon Craig's Cincinnati Enquirer report today: both the FBI and the Warren County Sheriff confirm that Young's claims, essentially, are complete bullshit...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5810

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Was there actually ANYONE who believed the terror-threat bullshit at the time?

...besides the MSM?

Grear post & great news, Brad! K&R!:thumbsup:

[L. Coyote]

26. Was the lockdown a False Flag to detract from vote-switching?

Why do people always watch the wrong hand during a magic show?
They are directed to look where the magician wants them to look, of course.

If this is a false flag, why is it being waved again now? Watch the other hand!

Other False Flags:
- voter fraud (Ney and the Jive Turkeys)
- e-vote altered Ohio (OH was 3/4 punch card voting)
- recounting Ohio (switched votes recount the same)
- civil rights lawsuit ignores Cuyahoga County (where the case is strongest for vote-switching)

Warren County was a punch card county with a 1.68% of OH votes.
Bush 68,037 vs. Kerry 26,044

The focus in Ohio needs to be first on Counties with
the greatest number of Dem votes to steal, like Cuyahoga,
and on punch cards where theft can be demonstrate and/or proven.

votes           % OH    % K
673,777 	11.97%	66.6%	Punch Card	Cuyahoga
140,742 	2.50%	56.1%	Punch Card	Lorain
276,320 	4.91%	56.7%	Punch Card	Summit
108,145 	1.92%	61.7%	Punch Card	Trumbull
188,459 	3.35%	50.6%	Punch Card	Stark
282,584 	5.02%	50.6%	Punch Card	Montgomery
424,025 	7.53%	47.1%	Punch Card	Hamilton
166,819 	2.96%	33.7%	Punch Card	Butler
94,422  	1.68%	27.6%	Punch Card	Warren

Where Kerry cross-votes count for a specific third-party candidate,
Badnarik (% b) votes increase five-fold and Peroutka (% p) votes jump over nine-fold.



MORE: How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

[roseBudd]

2. discussing on Election Reform also as many researchers from '04 hang there

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=499148&mesg_id=499148

Check out the photos of some Warren County ballots

http://freepress.org/images/columns/Ballots.pdf

Also check out FOIA memos & emails from Warren Cty

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2008/03/16/warrendocs.pdf

Contact Enquirer reporters with any additional info/research

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=CONTACT

[bluesmail]

3. K&R for hoping, to getting closer, for the truth. Exposed to ALL

[farmbo]

4. Warren County, Ohio...the Law West of the Pecos

It's scary down there.

Here you have a clear cut violation of Federal election law, felony impersonating an FBI officer (if anyone actually believes Young's silly cover story) and a violation of Ohio's Sunshine (public meetings) law.

And what do they do...nothing.

We can only hope that Marc Dann (Oh Atty Gen) and Jenn Brunner (Oh SOS) have had an opportunity to read the Enquirer over coffee this morning.

[The Doctor.]

5. Add the blatant violations by Blackwell; restricting log access

and handpicking recount precincts.

[Divine Discontent]

7. exactly... it's not very hard to use one's brain to see they manipulated everything

they could to show shrub won Ohio, when there's no way he did, it was close, but the lines for Kerry/Edwards late, and the lack of voting booths in big areas, whereas rural areas had tons of booths that were mostly vacant throughout the day, the voting counts going through the Republican owned servers, and so many other issues show corruption - and one of the biggest is the lockdown. What the heck were they doing in there, one must wonder...

[mod mom]

21. I'm thinkin' maybe Chairman Conyers needs to add Frank Young to the subpoena list

when they bring in Blackwell.

[Divine Discontent]

6. Prison time is needed for them...

the justice department needs to be ordered by Congress (if that's possible) to do a full investigation as to the possibility of our country's election being stolen. End of discussion!

[Tribetime]

8. didn't 2 republicans get convicted of felonies

of rigging the recount in cuyahoga county...a recount that was still never done?

[BradBlog]

10. Yup...

They were sentenced to the maximum of 18 months, before their verdicts were tossed out for a technicality and another trial was ordered. This time, they pled guilty instead, and got off without jailtime, only probation or some such.

It was in Cuyahoga County OH where it was found that they violated the law by failing to do a random recount, and instead pre-counted the precincts they planned to use so they would not have to count anything above and beyond the 3% ordered by state law.

Their boss, Michael Vu, now serves as Asst. Registrar in San Diego County. He was not forced to serve any time, or even put on trial.,

[lonestarnot]

15. Damn, what is San Diego doing with him? Are they now after CA?

[BradBlog]

17. Yup... (n/t)

[JackRiddler]

11. Ahem, I believe they were Democrats... in a Democratic county.

Most of all, they were lazy or something and didn't want to do a full recount. So instead of choosing three precincts at random for the sample that would determine whether a full recount would go ahead, they checked in advance to make sure the precincts sampled woun't trigger the recount. They weren't in on anything, very low on the totem poll, which is why they actually got caught and convicted.

ON EDIT:

Wait, it's more complicated than that and there are indications it goes up to Blackwell.

Here's an archive of several articles:

http://rangevoting.org/OhioConvictns.html

The reason that the Cuyahoga folks got busted was that there was someone at the official recount with a video camera, and this person videotaped election workers Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer dropping off boxes of ballots for the recount that were pre-sorted into "Bush" and "Kerry" stacks. When they were asked why these supposedly randomly selected ballots were already sorted into neat piles, the workers responded on camera to the effect that the 3% sample was not in fact random, but had been carefully selected so that it would product the correct results.

(...)

Michael Vu (30, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, $119,000/year salary) although unindicted, resigned on 6 Feb. 2007.

(...)

FITRAKIS:

County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that "the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless." Baxter said three election workers "did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount. "This was a very hush operation."...

Dreamer's defense attorney Roger Synenberg, said the defendants "were just doing the way they were always doing it."

But Cuyahoga's precinct-by-precinct vote counts and turnout numbers varied wildly and improbably. Several predominantly black precincts showed turnouts of less than 30% in a county where overall turnout was around 60%. One ward showed a 7% turnout as compared to surrounding precincts with turnouts nearly ten times as high.

Further prosecutions may now hinge on what Maiden and Dreamer might tell prosecutors about the role played by higher-ups. The assumption is widespread that the decision to consciously designate test precincts, rather than choose them at random, must have been at least tacitly approved by Secretary of State Blackwell.

In Cleveland, Robert Bennett, chair of the state's s Republican Party, also served as chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Cuyahoga BOE Executive Director Michael Vu was chosen by the county Democratic Party. Under Vu's direction, the county's elections have been rife with chaos, irregularities and apparent fraud. When the Democrats recently tried to remove him from his post, Vu was supported by Bennett and the Republican Party. He kept his job when Blackwell strategically abstained from a key removal vote.

There is growing evidence that what happened in Cleveland was the rule, rather than the exception, in Ohio's 2004 presidential recount. Sworn testimony at a public hearing in Toledo indicates Diebold technicians were involved in picking "random" precincts to be recounted there. A memory card was apparently lacking from at least one optiscan machines.

(...)

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Tribetime]

12. thanks... I did not know that

there were so many stories out then, so many irregularities. A supposed diebold maintenence man going into a school with locked down machines on a friday night, only to find out the next morning no one knew who he was or had any record of him....I still think it was stolen.

[lonestarnot]

16. Vu sounds like a two faced fucker on an under-the-table payroll.

[BradBlog]

18. Thanks for correcting your story...

Only one was theoretically a Democrat as I recall. As well, both the judge and the prosecutor stated that they believed the matter went up much higher than Maiden and Dreamer (who were not all that low on the totem poll, btw, at least not in Cuyahoga itself).

As well, Vu admitted to opening and counting ballots privately when the public was not around.

The "lazy" thing was largely an MSM-purchased cover story for whatever actually happened.

Again, thank you for correcting your original story. Wish you were able to edit the original headline, however.

[JackRiddler]

23. Well, it's too late now...

But I see, yes, the two convicted seem to be the fall-women at the bottom for whatever Vu and higher did in Cuyahoga.

[Oslo]

9. It's about time!

[orleans]

13. ugh. (on edit: k&r)

But one more item of note, for the moment, is that even today --- even after all of the books and reports on what happened in Ohio, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s '06 report documenting in great detail "How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" --- representatives of John Kerry's '04 campaign still stand by their reprehensibly unforgivable decision to not keep their infamous campaign promise assuring that "every vote will be counted."

A spokesperson reaffirms that decision in Craig's article, even though the reported results were so close that a mere 6 votes registered for Kerry instead of Bush in each Ohio precinct would have changed the outcome of the election. The "official" margin of "victory" for Bush in Ohio was just over 118,000 votes.

"Bush still carried the state by a large enough margin that it seems unlikely...that even with all of these errors that Kerry could have won Ohio," Kerry's Ohio legal counsel, Cincinnati attorney Daniel J. Hoffheimer, tells the Enquirer today, as many of the same DNC attorneys across the country prepare to "protect" your votes again in 2008.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5810

[magellan]

14. If the Corporate media had been doing its job FOUR YEARS AGO.... n/t

[mod mom]

20. Actually the Cincinnati Enquirer's Erica Solvig (no longer w paper) provided excellent

coverage and was used in RFK's and other writings on the event. It time to hand out subpoenas if more is to be learned.

[mod mom]

19. READ THIS FRANK YOUNG EMAIL UNDER DOCUMENTS @ ENQUIRER ARTICLE:

UNDER DOCUMENTS:

Oct 13, 2004 Email from Warren Co emergency Services ([e-mail] ) to CJ Couch RE: Nov 2 update:

CJ,

It is our intention to watch the election from home, but alas, that may not occur. We will not be occupying the EOC, however, the room is ready to go (always is) and the appropriate people notified to be ready if needed.

-snip

As for election preparations, I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you! We have made a geat deal of plans and preps, probably many of the same things other counties are informing you about.

Remember, Vote early, Vote often.

Frank R. Young, Director
Warren County Dept of Emergency Services
500 Justice Drive
Lebanon, Ohio 45039

[Holly_Hobby]

22. "Ohio's voting machines are now an official crime scene"

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3054

[Botany]

24. about time to look @ this crime

:grr:

[madmom]

25. to little to late.. IMO

[McCamy Taylor]

27. Ohio has been waiting for this moment to get its revenge on Rove and Bush.