Election Issues

In this election year, the most important companies to watch are two you've probably never heard of -- Smartech and Triad.

In the 2004 presidential election, Averbeck worked closely with the late Michael Connell, the CEO of New Media Communications. Connell was Karl Rove's IT guru before his untimely death in a suspicious plane crash. As the FreePress.org has previously reported, then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell contracted with Averbeck to provide back-up computer services to report Ohio's official election results.

Ohio Secretary of State's office claimed they were unable to tabulate Ohio's votes within the state in real time because their computers had a supposed "denial of service" attack in the wee hours of the morning after the 2004 Election Day. Vote tabulations were then shifted to the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee where Averbeck ran his internet service company Smartech. (See New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked)

Traditional conservative and Midwest moderate Republicans are finally standing up to the reactionary Buckeye State GOP’ers whose anthem is “Gimme that ol’ time repression.” On January 25, 2012, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted addressed the Ohio Association of Election Officials and recommended that the state’s legislators should repeal the draconian House Bill 194. In this November’s presidential election, voters in Ohio will literally get to vote on who should vote in the state.

Husted urged lawmakers and election officials to start over after the 2012 election with a new bill on voting reform. HB 194 has been denounced by voting rights and civil rights organizations as it, among other things, eliminates some opportunities for early voting and doesn’t allow pollworkers to guide voters to the correct precinct.

The Free Press received an email from Bev Harris of Black Box Voting that stated: "100% of South Carolina election results will be routed through Barcelona-owned Scytl/SOE before being released to the public." This should not surprise anyone who follows the freepress.org or blackboxvoting.org. The 2004 highly-suspect Ohio election results were routed through Smartech in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the company under the control of Jeff Avebeck, a far-right Pentecostal Christian. This has not been properly investigated by authorities.

Black Box Voting also sent a video entitled "Video the Count: What to do on Election night." We're posting this to urge activists, especially in South Carolina, to watch the polls. Last November's elections in Franklin County, Ohio, home of Columbus -- the state's largest city -- the final poll tapes from the voting machines at all precinct sites failed to print, leaving no check or balance against the central tabulating and processing of votes in other locations.

Watch Black Box Voting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3_xFb1sWKU

SIX PROBLEMS UNIQUE TO 2012 NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTIONS:
1. Removed safeguards for its same-day registration system.
2. Ignores the law on ballot-stuffing safeguards
3. Breaks the chain of custody
4. Conceals vote-counting from the public, in violation of Article 32 of its own Constitution
5. Removed candidate recount rights (2009)
6. Made it illegal for public citizens or members of the press to examine the ballots after the election is over (2003)

TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO
1. Get involved with Protect the Count NH or Watch the Vote 2012 (links below)
2. Monitor the trap doors

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT NEW HAMPSHIRE'S FIRST-IN-NATION PRIMARY?

Like the Iowa caucus system, it forces candidates to answer real questions from actual people. Political strategists like their candidates to plan their media (setting up media ops that are nothing short of laughable; placing their candidates in cornfields, in tanks, on factory assembly lines, donning catcher's mitts and plaid shirts and baseball caps.) Unscripted moments are forced on candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, where locals won't vote-ya if you hide behind photo ops.

Maybe they’re trying to remind us that democracy isn’t merely a matter of casting that little vote once every Leap Year — but, far, far more significantly, it’s about getting that right to vote in the first place, keeping that right, and having it matter.

Every one of these rights is in jeopardy as 2012 opens and another presidential election season gets serious. But this is nothing new.

After all, democracy is nothing if not a perpetual nuisance to the powerful. It asserts that public policy is everyone’s business, and that the concerns of even the most financially and socially marginal citizens are equal to those of the most elite. Indeed, no one is marginal in a democracy — a concept we embrace as a nation but don’t believe. And thus citizens are marginalized all the time.

It took two stolen US Presidential elections and the prospect of another one coming up in 2012.
For years the Democratic Party and even much of the left press has reacted with scorn for those who've reported on it.
But the imperial fraud that has utterly corrupted our electoral process seems finally to be dawning on a broadening core of the American electorate---if it can still be called that.

The shift is highlighted by three major developments:
1. The NAACP goes to the United Nations

In early December, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in America, announced that it was petitioning the United Nations over the orchestrated GOP attack on black and Latino voters.

In its landmark report entitled Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, the NAACP directly takes on the new Jim Crow tactics passed in fourteen states that are designed to keep minorities from voting in 2012.

The crushing defeat Ohio's working people dealt 1% politicians this week has critical implications for a whole other issue---election protection.

In a voting process that might otherwise have been stolen, a concerted effort by citizens committed to democracy---NOT the Democratic Party---guaranteed an official Ohio tally that finally squares with reality. The defeat of millionaire Republican Governor John Kasich's union-busting Issue 2 by more than 20% actually squared with exit polling and other reliable political indicators.

In the 2008 election, Richard Charnin has demonstrated how there was a more than 5% shift towards the Republican presidential candidates John McCain than predicted by the highly accurate exit polls, the gold standard for detecting election fraud. In Ohio’s 2010 election, exit polls revealed a 5.4% unexplained “red shift” towards the Republican Party. The shift led to the defeat of Democratic Governor Ted Strickland as well as Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

To Whom It May Concern:

Repealing bad laws and preventing bad Constitutional Amendments:

Thank goodness that Ohioans have the right to vote down harmful proposed amendments to the Ohio Constitution, currently Issue 3. The U. S. Supreme will trump Issue 3, but it would immediately invalidate necessary Federal and Ohio laws and regulations passed since March 19, 2010 and prevent future ones.

Equally important are referenda which repeal harmful laws. Issue 2 would allow SB 5 to remain law. It unfairly harms public employees. All Ohioans would suffer because the economy would be damaged by loss of jobs. The shift of $ 4 billion in State taxes to schools and municipalities etc. would also increase the local tax burden.

The Issue to repeal HB 194, the voter suppression law, will be on the 2012 Ballot, so that law will not be in effect for the important 2012 election. Secretary of State Jon Husted has not certified that referendum. It would have some effect on the current election.

As the mobilization to defend Ohio’s attack on public worker’s rights, SB 5/Issue 2, a Quinnipiac poll was made public, with the widest gap yet on the issue. 57% stated their opposition to Issue 2 in the poll, with only 32% backing it.

There is no sign of overconfidence on the part of Issue 2 opponents, however. In Ohio’s Capital City & across the state organized labor & their coalition partners were mobilizing, preparing to bring the predicted victory home.

Jeanette Mauk, of We Are Ohio, the coalition leading the fight against Issue 2, stated; “We cannot sit on our laurels. We’ve done a great job so far bringing the message to Ohio families on how Issue 2 will hurt our communities if it passes. We aren’t going to let up now!”

This past week in Ohio’s major cities, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Dayton, thousands of opponents of Issue 2 participated in public marches to local Boards of Election, voting in mass against the Issue.

The Franklin County Republican Party hosted the first-ever Swing State Straw Poll at the Ohio Union on the campus of The Ohio State University. The straw poll provided Ohio Republicans with an opportunity to have their voice heard in the early stage of an increasingly competitive GOP presidential nominating process. Voters in the straw poll contributed $25 to participate, listened to messages from all campaigns, and then voted for a single preference.

"Again, it looks as though the presidential race will be all about Ohio, probably Central Ohio in particular," said Franklin County Republican Executive Committee Chairman Doug Preisse.

"Our national party needs to know what Republican activists in this area are thinking about the GOP nominee," observed Franklin County Republican Central Committee Chairman Brad Sinnott.

The results of the straw poll, with 428 ballots cast, are:

Ron Paul 53.50%
Herman Cain 25.47%
Mitt Romney 8.88%
Newt Gingrich 5.37%
Rick Perry 2.80%
Jon Huntsman 2.10%
Rick Santorum .93%
Michele Bachmann .47%
Write-In .47%