Brunner Warren County lockdown "troubling"
As Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner grapples with new concerns about the integrity of Ohio's voting equipment, she continues to be asked about unresolved issues from past elections.
This week, Brunner was asked about the infamous Homeland Security "lockdown" in Warren County on Election Night 2004.
In an interview with Brad Friedman, author of the Brad Blog, here's what Brunner had to say about the incident:
Friedman: "Well, not to pick on Warren County again, but they locked people out of the counting room. They claimed that there was a Homeland Security warning from the FBI. Nobody at the FBI has ever said such a thing. They were clearly lying and as I understand those people are still running elections in Warren County. Doesn't that trouble you? And particularly as you're doing, recommending central counting, these guys are going to be in charge of the counting yet again in '08, and they've been told, you know, hey, you got away with it in '04."
Brunner: "We will look at the situation, because when I came into office people were where they were. And we'll look again at that situation and see what the best course of action is to prevent it from happening in the future."
Friedman: "I hope you will, because that one is just. . ."
Brunner: "It's troubling me, too."
Friedman: ". . .just mind-blowing."
Brunner: "It troubles me, Brad."
Friedman: "It troubles you, too?"
Brunner: "It troubled me at the time and it, it, I can't…I can't find any justification for it."
The complete interview can be found here:
Two of the Enquirer's original articles on the incident can be found here
and here:
If anyone has an "inside" information, here's another chance to tell us!
Labels: Columbus
17 Comments:
at 5:18 PM, December 21, 2007 
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at 5:32 PM, December 21, 2007 
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at 6:40 PM, December 21, 2007 
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at 8:38 AM, December 22, 2007 
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at 9:06 AM, December 22, 2007 
jenbethalex1 said...
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at 9:29 AM, December 22, 2007 
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at 11:34 AM, December 22, 2007 
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at 3:05 PM, December 22, 2007 
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at 4:45 PM, December 22, 2007 
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at 10:08 AM, December 23, 2007 
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at 2:59 PM, December 23, 2007 
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at 10:43 PM, December 23, 2007 
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at 6:49 PM, December 24, 2007 
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at 10:24 PM, December 24, 2007 
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at 8:06 PM, December 25, 2007 
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at 9:16 AM, December 27, 2007 
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at 11:30 PM, December 27, 2007 
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Post a Comment*PERHAPS YOU CAN ASK FRANK YOUNG & PAT SOUTH UNDER OATH:
County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a “terrorist threat.” County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. “These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.
“In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,” Ms. South continued, “we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.”
But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.
“The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,” FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn.
Through a spokeswoman, Ohio Public Safety Director Ken Morckel told the newspaper that his office knew of no heightened terror warning for election night for Warren County or any other community in Greater Cincinnati.
-snip
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6368819/
E-mails released Monday show lockdown pre-planned - Nov 24, 2004
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041116/NEWS01/411160355/1056
County Commissioner Pat South has said the decision to lock the doors election night was made during an Oct. 28 closed-door meeting (the Thursday before Election Day). But in e-mailed memos dated Oct. 25 and Oct. 26 - released Monday after an Enquirer public records request - other county officials were already detailing the security measures, down to the wording of signs that would be posted on the locked doors.
From Enq. article:
County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said commissioners "were within their rights" to restrict building access.
Having reporters and photographers around could have interfered with the count, she said.
Yes, having observers could interfere with their counting. Can we please import some election observers from Iraq before Ohio 2008 becomes loaded with stories of ballot boxes floating down the river(s).
We now have two choices:
(1) let the touchscreens count the electronic votes in secret
(2) let the BOEs count the paper ballots in secret
How hard is it to count the votes at a precinct and post the results there as required by law.
I, for one, have a lot more confidence that they will be counted fairly this time. Ken Blackwell and his ilk are gone. For Christ's sake, Bob Taft conducted honest and fair elections when he was SOS.
Some people in Warren, Cuyahoga, Franklin and Knox Counties, plus people in the SOS office from 2004 should be in jail.
Thank you, Jon, for reporting on this story, and thank you to the Enquirer for having the courage to support this investigation.
"Troubling" is clearly an understatement -- I believe it is treasonous -- a fundamental betrayal of our democracy -- to hide the elections under cover of a fake national security alert.
The only guarantee we have that this won't happen again in any county in Ohio is for the SOS and AG to take swift and immediate action. Not to do so, in my mind, is to be complicit.
The only emergency in SW Ohio -- including Butler and Clermont Counties -- was that the long-standing political apparatus might lose power. There is nothing to prevent this from happening again, given the secrecy that cloaks such actions, if people are not held accountable.
Why do county prosecutor's continue to allow the crimes of their county BOE's, such as the Warren County "homeland security lock down", to go un-investigated and un-punished? I would like to hear from Secretary Chertoff of Homeland Security on this issue, and find out who or what agencies are allowed to issue public
warnings of homeland threat under their agency's title, and what criteria needs to be met to do so. And has their agency investigated this "homeland security threat" in Warren County, and if not, will they?
http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm If the Warren County Prosecutor's Office doesn't respond to questions from citizen groups about these crimes, The Ohio AG must step in!!!
This story makes me sick. I've never been one to vote on a regular basis, usually only in presidential elections. Perhaps I've wised up a bit and realized that the locally elected fools can be just a dangerous as a loser president. Hence my new years resolution will be to vote in EVERY ellection and ballot initiative I can. Now ofcourse the problem is how will my vote be counted, as I intended, or as the republican criminals now running the system think it should be counted. With criminals like this involved in any form of government it makes me wonder, would we be better of under a monarchy or communist rule than the freedom of a few greedy neocon republicans that will do anything they can to secure power. I hope this story doesn't just disappear like so many important issues. As well, I hope this issue combined with the many other criminal activities employed by the republicans will be the downfall of the corupt republican machine.
PLEASE KEEP US WARREN COUNTY VOTERS INFORMED!
County Board of Elections should not be allowed to operate as renegade fiefdoms. Warren County election results obtained in a manner inconsistent with basic safeguards for the security of the ballots should never have been certified. Blackwell or Petro should have launched an immediate investigation. Controlling access to the building for security reasons does not include excluding members of the press who must be permitted to observe the counting of our votes in order to maintain a nominal amount of transparency. Votes counted in secret are not legitimate. I hope that Brunner and Dann will commit to investigate this outrageous violation of ballot security. I cannot believe that the Warren County BOE members who participated in this egregious violation of ballot security are permitted to remain in their posts. Failing to investigate sends the message that anything goes at the BOE's. Not the message I want in place for 2008.
Teresa Blakely
Hello!!!! People!!! County Boards of Elections are made up of 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans!
These conspiracy theories are CRAZY! NOTHING untoward or unethical happened in Warren County in 2004.
This entire story is a bogus attempt by the SOS to get in the paper and innoculate herself to the disasterous election night we face in 2008.
Why do we face a disasterous election night in 2008? Because NOTHING will ever be AS GOOD as the punch-card ballots! These new systems are all problematic and the freakish liberal whackos (of which Brunner is a member) made the world believe that one very close election in Florida in 2000 was a reason to overhaul all election systems.
Ohio did so and now the machines that have been certified DON'T WORK WORTH A DAMN!
There are NO shenanigans in Warren County and statements to the contrary by Jennifer Brunner are unproductive and undermine our democratic process.
SHAME ON THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS HERE WHO WILL HURT VOTER TURNOUT!
In the May 2006 primary, Clermont County elections officials also barred the public and press from the building. They didn't make up any "Homeland Security" nonsense, but I guess the Enquirer and the rest of the media complex don't care because their preferred candidate, Jean Schmidt, won.
Anon 4:45 is only one-third right. Clermont did the same thing in the 2005 special primary and special general. Remember the "humidity" which caused them to delay reporting more than an hour in August 2005? Miraculously, after getting blown out everywhere else, they found enough Schmidt votes to propel her to a narrow victory.
The stench was so bad in May 2006 that even Howard Wilkinson had to pay attention to it. I suppose the calculated risk was made to focus on general problems in Clermont County rather than Jean Schmidt's own serious problems (lying, plagarism, etc). A Democratic board member stepped down, giving he Republians at 2-1 advantage. This was important because there would be no ties. Ties are broken by the SOS, at the time Ken Blackwell, a known supporter of Schmidt's opponent (and someone known to game the election system for his favored candidates. See above.)
But, hey, Jean Schmidt won, and that's all that matters to corporate media like Gannett, Clear Channel, Scripps, Hearst, and Raycom.
The crime that was Ohio 2004 is
the biggest story never told and
or killed by a sacred or lazy media.
While Jennifer is looking she can
check out Miami County with 99.7%
turns in some precincts and 20,000
votes loaded after voting was done
and all votes were in .... and funny
if those 20,000 votes (rough #)
did not come in exactly the same
% as all the previous votes recorded
.... down to .01% .... odds are 1
in a billion.
Claremont County with stickers
over Kerry's mark on the ballot
and freaking Ralph Nader was still
on the ballot
Butler County had 14,000 people
vote for a liberal black women as
judge but vote for bush for president.
Cuyahoga County had runs of 5,000
votes with out 1 Kerry vote.
And for those who care google
"Smartech" that was the server
that Ken Blackwell used for the
data in 2004 .... Chattanooga, TN
was were it was located .... and
it had 3 other Clients; bush/Cheney
'04, the RNC, and gwb43.com
But we all know that al Qaeda was
after King's Island in Warren County
in 2004.
As long as you're checking into suspicious results, look at Heather Harlow's suspicious win in Colerain in 2003. That one smells worse than the landfill her family owns.
"Happy Holidays" to my Democratic friends at Bold Endeavors---Barney Frank.
Does anon 10:43 pm have any facts, or even some allegations, rumors, or innuendo to back up his/her claims? Rigging an election for President is one thing. The thought they'd do it for some obscure township race is laughable. But someone around here sure enjoys dragging the Harlows through the mud. Still waiting for evidence or proof. So far, it's been allegations he managed a bunch of losing campaigns, a few "oink, oink" comments, and not much else.
Oh, and the Rumpkes own the landfill, not the Harlows.
Nice try, DFSSG.
I agree with the author of the first12/22/07 anonymous post that punch cards are preferable to DRE electronic vote tabulation. Please consider watching Dan Rather's expose "The Trouble with Touchscreens" which is available on the internet. Sequoia employees suspected that it was a maneuver to stimulate lagging sales of their electronic voting machines that led Sequoia to undermine the quality of their punch card ballots. Numerous long time employees of Sequoia, the company that had a stellar record for printing trouble free punch cards for thirty years, complained that their management deviated from their usual standard of paper quality and purchased paper they considered to be of substandard quality for the 2000 Florida election. The Sequoia employees interviewed said they made it abundantly clear to their management that the new paper was of inferior quality. Their warnings went unheeded. After the 2000 Florida election fiasco these Sequoia employees said their plant manager made sure that everything having to do with the Florida election was hidden or gotten rid of before the press arrived to tour the plant. Sequoia stood to make a lot more money making electronic voting machines than they did printing ballots. Their faulty ballots produced the hanging chads that were used to justify the frantic rush to electronic voting machines.
Another point of clarification. Brunner did not preside over the move to the DRE's and Optiscan machines currently in use in Ohio, Ken Blackwell did.
Teresa Blakely
warren county, two words that sum up neocon malfeasance.
.
We should all be concerned about the elections !
Just take a look at what the wRong wingnut whacko election machine manufactures can do:
'Hacking Democracy' !
PATHETIC !
HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2008 !
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