tagged w/ Vote Rigging
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By Rebecca Abrahams on 11/9/2009 11:08AM
Exclusive: Mike Connell's Family Copes With His Mysterious Death, Tipsters, Legal Options
Guest Blogged by Rebecca M. Abrahams
On December 18, 2008, Bush IT expert Mike Connell, a highly skilled pilot, was killed in a sudden crash while flying his small aircraft from Washington DC to his Akron/Canton home airport. The cause of the crash is still unknown and under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
For more than ten months, Connell's family has been coping with feelings of disbelief, anger and confusion and has many unanswered questions about the man they knew and loved.
For Connell's widow Heather, holding her husband's New Media consulting firm together is a daily struggle.
"The more I learn about the crash the more sick it makes me - the destruction of the plane. I found a pack of the I-pod ear buds in a tree. I'm obsessed with the Blackberry. I don't have the Blackberry. I have his backpack. I have his paperwork, his schedule. None of his paperwork is burned up. One of his prayer books burned on the outside. I think there was a lot thrown from the plane."
Although mainly un-reported, there's a great deal of controversy surrounding Connell's death - largely in part because he was the architect of many Republican websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com, the site Karl Rove used for 95% of his email correspondence. Connell was also considered a key witness in the election fraud lawsuit King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell. The suit implicates Former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell, Karl Rove and others of 2004 election night vote rigging.
Attorneys in the case believe that Connell, who had not been accused of any wrongdoing, had firsthand knowledge about the missing White House emails and Rove's alleged wrongdoing with respect to the 2004 Presidential election.
His wife, and those attorneys, are not the only ones still focused on questions about what actually happened to Mike Connell nearly one year ago, and in the years prior...
'Way too convenient'
Connell, 45, was the oldest of six children. His sister Shannon Connell describes her family as very close, despite differing political opinions.
"Even though we had different political beliefs, there's always been a close tie among siblings. In fact, my parents were Kennedy Democrats. But then after Kennedy, they started voting more for Republicans and I would say that in our family we range from progressive to conservative and Mike and one of my other siblings are staunch Republicans."
Although her brother never spoke of his work, Shannon believes that Mike's ties to the Bush Administration and the GOP are somehow related to his death.
"It just seems way too convenient, the timing since he had been deposed. He didn't get to testify. But I don't think he would've perjured himself. When it comes down to it, he was basically an honest person. If push came to shove and he was under oath testifying, I believe that he would've told the truth. I think that there were other people who believed that as well."
Connell's wife Heather acknowledges he received threats in the months leading up to his death. But says she was unaware Connell was told not to fly.
"I have spent days and days and days trying to figure it all out. I don't think he would lie to me. Number one, I don't think he took the threats seriously. I never heard 'Don't fly.' I never knew my husband as Bush's IT guru. He built lots of Republican websites… He built Jeb's site, George's site, George's 2nd site --- his campaign sites. I don't know what involvement he had with SmartTech. That I don't know. I just knew what sites he built. SmartTech was the big hosting center. Everything was hosted at SmartTech. That's where the access would be --- not at New Media. I was signing lots of checks for hosting fees, huge payments to SmartTech forBy Rebecca Abrahams on 11/9/2009 11:08AM
Exclusive: Mike Connell's Family... more
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In the southern Afghan district of Shorabak, the tribesmen gathered shortly before last month’s presidential election to discuss which candidate they would back. After a debate they chose to endorse Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai’s leading opponent.
The tribal leaders prepared to deliver a landslide for Abdullah – but it never happened. They claim Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and leader of the Kandahar provincial council, detained the local governor and closed all the district’s 46 polling sites on election day.
The ballot boxes were taken back to the district headquarters where, tribal leaders allege, they were stuffed with ballots by local policemen. A total of 23,900 ballots were finally sent off to Kabul, the capital – every one of them a vote for Karzai.
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More at link.
Hamid Karzai has learnt well from his Neocon buddies and partners.In the southern Afghan district of Shorabak, the tribesmen gathered shortly before... more
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Allen Raymond is living proof that political dirty tricksters do exist.
The former Republican political operative went to federal prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of phone harassment. He jammed the phone lines of New Hampshire's Democratic Party on Election Day six years ago.
"The concept was to disrupt lines of communication. That's a fancy way of saying, 'make it so the phones didn't work,' " Raymond told CNN recently. "No calls going out. No calls going in."
We're not going to give away exactly how Raymond did it. According to federal prosecutors, two top Republican Party officials tapped Raymond's Virginia-based telemarketing firm for the operation. Raymond then contracted out the job to a private phone bank in Idaho.
Former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan remembers the ensuing flood of hang-up calls that created havoc in her office.
"At first, people had various impressions about what was going on," Sullivan recalled. "For example, at the Manchester field office, the young man who opened the office thought, 'The phones are all ringing off the hook. Nobody's here. I've broken the phone system. What did I do wrong?' And he was on the verge of tears."
The operation also jammed the lines inside a firefighter's union hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, where Jeff Duval and other local firefighters were lining up car rides to help senior citizens get to the polls.
"It almost felt to me like an election might have been stolen," Duval said. "I know for a fact that we received calls a few days later from people saying 'we tried to call you.' And I say 'did you get out and vote?' And they said 'no.' "
Looking back, Raymond said he thinks the scheme was ingenious in an "evil genius sort of way."
In his book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative," Raymond details how he got caught. An hour and a half into the jamming operation he received an e-mail from a Republican official, frantically telling him to shut down the calls. The e-mail read: "Chairman wishes not to proceed with this project ... insists it violates federal law."
Federal agents eventually paid a visit to Raymond's office.
Raymond decided to come clean about his role in the operation and cooperate with investigators.
Allen Raymond is living proof that political dirty tricksters do exist.
The former... more
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"New evidence of vote-rigging in last month's presidential election in Zimbabwe has emerged in the form of a secret film made by a prison guard. The guard, Shepherd Yuda, filmed the vote-rigging at his jail in a production for Guardian Films.
Prison officers, including Mr Yuda, who has now fled Zimbabwe, were forced to vote for President Robert Mugabe by superior officers. The officers organised a postal ballot and stood over them as they cast votes.
Mr Yuda decided to speak out after the murder of his uncle, an opposition activist, two months ago. He knew he and his family would have to leave Zimbabwe as a result.
"This election: I have never seen that type of violence," he says in the film. "The impact has left a lot of orphans; it has left a lot of people displaced. You cannot expect that from your government."
He secretly filmed a war veteran, Superintendent Shambira, watching as prison officers voted. Supt Shambira ensured they marked their ballots for Robert Mugabe, and not the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai. Supt Shambira then logged each vote against an identification number. There was no secrecy.
All those voting knew Supt Shambira had the power to condemn them as MDC supporters. Mr Yuda says he had no choice but to vote for Robert Mugabe. Mr Yuda also spoke to voters on the streets of Harare.
"They're standing right in front of you when you cast your vote," one voter told Mr Yuda. "They watch." The voter went on: "Shambira definitely sees you vote - there's no way of hiding it. I was thinking I could vote when he wasn't looking, but he was watching like a hawk."
Among the prisoners is Tendai Biti, a prominent opposition MP and human-rights lawyer. Mr Yuda filmed him having his leg-irons removed for a court hearing. Mr Biti, who is awaiting trial on treason charges, was released on bail, but could still face execution.
"You know, I was so touched: for a man of his status to be reduced to such levels, to be put in a criminal institution," Mr Yuda says in the film. "It's very, very sad."
Mr Yuda also captured conversations between prison guards in the run-up to the 27 June run-off election, as tension was increasing.
"In my area, there's a lot of tension," one guard tells him. "Zanu-PF (ruling party) thugs came to my house as soon as I left for work today. They abducted my wife. They took her to the base."
These "bases" are springing up in private houses all over Harare. Previously they were a feature of rural Zimbabwe; now they have reached the capital. Ordinary people are abducted and compelled to attend Zanu-PF re-education rallies.
"I am forced to go and guard these bases all through the night, after my shift here," another prison officer says. "They cordon off the whole street: it becomes a no-go area. These people are killers, the thugs that Zanu-PF are using."
And another guard says the rest of the world should do more to help Zimbabwe.
"It's in the hands of the international community now," he says. "[South African President] Thabo Mbeki has betrayed us. He didn't want to come down hard on Mugabe. Instead, he kept going on and on about pan-Africanism."
On election day itself, Mr Yuda films a woman who is so fearful that she has pretended to have voted. She colours her little finger with a pink marker, hoping to simulate the ink used to identify those who have already cast their ballots.
The day after Robert Mugabe's election, Shepherd Yuda and his family began packing, preparing to leave Zimbabwe. Their lives would have been in danger if they had stayed. They can only begin to think about returning once Mr Mugabe has gone.""New evidence of vote-rigging in last month's presidential election in... more
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OOOps, 'Nothing to see here, move along!' Will we? VotersUnite.org's John Gideon calls our attention to this snippet, from this recent story at NH's SeaCoastOnline [emphasis ours]:
So many Democrats turned out in Stratham that Town Clerk Shirley Daley said she had to photocopy 87 ballots. Hartson said she began printing extra Democratic ballots at 6 p.m. when they began running low. Because of a glitch in the machines, clerks there had to hand count all of the extra ballots.
Gideon follows up by asking: "They had to hand-count all of the extra ballots. What about the ballots that had already been run on the machines (note the plural)? How many other machines across the state had the same 'glitch'?"
We tried to contact Town Clerk Daley on Friday, in order to find out, what came of the ballots counted before the problem was discovered, but their offices close at 12noon on Fridays.
As to further such incidents across the state, it seems there were far more than anyone has so far reported. We will have another article shortly, concerning such reports of problems on Diebold voting machine across the state during last week's Primary Election. 80% of New Hampshire votes were counted on such machines. To date, none of those ballots have been counted, verified or audited by any human being to our knowledge.
OOOps, 'Nothing to see here, move along!' Will we? VotersUnite.org's... more
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In what has become standard practice, the GOP is backing laws designed to stop students, the poor, and black voters from getting to the polls.
Oh, and Bill Clinton is helping them too.In what has become standard practice, the GOP is backing laws designed to stop... more
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On the day she died, Benazir Bhutto planned to hand over to visiting U.S. lawmakers a report accusing Pakistan's intelligence services of a plot to rig parliamentary elections.
Violence, ballot-tampering or intimidation could be used, according to a dossier Bhutto requested, the sources said. But of course, Pakistani officials have denied the claims.On the day she died, Benazir Bhutto planned to hand over to visiting U.S. lawmakers a... more
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