New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked by Bob Fitrakis July 20, 2011
A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.
The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.
Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell's company, GovTech Solutions. Also included that contract a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State's election night server layout system.
Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: "Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not."
Spoonamore explained that "they [SmarTech] have full access and could change things when and if they want."
Arnebeck specifically asked "Could this be done using whatever bypass techniques Connell developed for the web hosting function." Spoonamore replied "Yes."
Spoonamore concluded from the architectural maps of the Ohio 2004 election reporting system that, "SmarTech was a man in the middle. In my opinion they were not designed as a mirror, they were designed specifically to be a man in the middle."
A "man in the middle" is a deliberate computer hacking setup, which allows a third party to sit in between computer transmissions and illegally alter the data. A mirror site, by contrast, is designed as a backup site in case the main computer configuration fails.
Spoonamore claims that he confronted then-Secretary of State Blackwell at a secretary of state IT conference in Boston where he was giving a seminar in data security. "Blackwell freaked and refused to speak to me when I confronted him about it long before I met you," he wrote to Arnebeck.
On December 14, 2007, then-Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who replaced Blackwell, released her evaluation and validation of election-related equipment, standards and testing (Everest study) which found that touchscreen voting machines were vulnerable to hacking with relative ease.
Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud. In a previous sworn affidavit to the court, Spoonamore declared: "The SmarTech system was set up precisely as a King Pin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of State computers to allow whoever was running SmarTech computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control."
Spoonamore also swore that "...the architecture further confirms how this election was stolen. The computer system and SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers."
Project Censored named the outsourcing of Ohio's 2004 election votes to SmarTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee to a company owned by Republican partisans as one of the most censored stories in the world.
In the Connell deposition, plaintiffs' attorneys questioned Connell regarding gwb43, a website that was live on election night operating out of the White House and tied directly into SmarTech's server stacks in Chattanooga, Tennessee which contained Ohio's 2004 presidential election results.
The transfer of the vote count to SmarTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee remains a mystery. This would have only happened if there was a complete failure of the Ohio computer election system. Connell swore under oath that, "To the best of my knowledge, it was not a fail-over case scenario or it was not a failover situation."
Bob Magnan, a state IT specialist for the secretary of state during the 2004 election, agreed that there was no failover scenario. Magnan said he was unexpectedly sent home at 9 p.m. on election night and private contractors ran the system for Blackwell.
The architectural maps, contracts, and Spoonamore emails, along with the history of Connell's partisan activities, shed new light on how easy it was to hack the 2004 Ohio presidential election.
Now this ought to be interesting. Once I shake off this birthday buzz Imma gonna tear that article up one side and down the other.
Really this thread and the PowerStroker thread should be in the MBTP section, but since the merging of the off topic areas we have this forum as sort of a landing. I guess PowerStroker is sticking his Jack-Ass flag down in this turf and claiming it.
-- Edited by SELLC on Thursday 28th of July 2011 04:19:53 PM
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
How Ironic you post a video of Justice Alito saying "That's not true" at the State of the Union, when what President Obama was talking about with regards to the Citizens United case actually was very true.
Yeah I thought you might like ole' Alito. Judging from that nice new little avatar photo you have I am thinking it worked.
As for the elections being rigged in Ohio, well that would explain how Obama managed to get elected. How many dead people voted for Obama again PowerStroker? How many people voted 2-3 times?
If Bush stole the election he must have been DAMN GOOD to pull it off TWO TIMES in a row. That simple fact alone somewhat blows a hole in your story.
I pick my favorite party much like a person would pick their favoite sports team, rooting for the home team, and players that seem to shine. Anymore politics has become a white colar sport. The Red team and the Blue team. While the colors may have switched up over the years one thing remains the same... The Democrats are still the "Jack Ass" of the two parties.
We are about to have a lock-out anyway. How much you want to bet the most recent Debt bill does not get passed?
-- Edited by SELLC on Monday 1st of August 2011 03:34:49 PM
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
I totally dismiss the report. Looking at the diagrams it's clear to see that the complexity of the network means just about anyone could make up some wild eyed story with multiple conclusions. The fact there is not ONE SINGLE shred of proof, nor any explanation of exactly "How" the authors claims could be substantiated I would have to say this article was taken from a tabloid like the national enquirer, oh I almost forgot, you find them to be a credible news desk. Never mind......
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
"Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash"
So all of that ^^^ is just a coincidence??? Hey, now that I think about it, wasn't George Bush senior's favorite means of making people disappear back in the 70's when he was running the CIA, to arrange for a mysterious plane crash???
So what? I don't see the smoking gun anywhere in that jargon you just posted. The part about his plane going down only proves the guy was a shitty piolt. Or do you expect me to believe a guy named Devlin messed with his instruments and caused him to fly into a mountain? Because if so that sounds a lot like a movie I seen called "The Net".
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
There's never a smoking gun when they make a plane go down. Senior's people have had enough practice to get it done right. Paul Wellstone comes to mind.
Are you trying to say there wasn't a body count over the white-water/Clinton scandal? Or are you trying to imply that politics is only dirty business when it comes to Republicans?
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
Gee... I thought the Clinton's were involved in politics, now you claim they were involved in sleazy real estate dealings?
Sure sounds to me like the two separate issues became singular when ole' Clinton became President. Yet you will sit here and tell us that a suicide is less suspicious than some guys small prop plane crashing?
Yeah sure...
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What is to give light must endure burning -- Viktor Frankl
Minnesota GOP pays fine for campaign finance violations By Joe Kimball | Published Fri, Aug 19 2011 10:21 am
Minnesota Republicans will pay a $170,000 fine for campaign finance violations for failing to properly report campaign debt in 2006 through 2008, under an agreement with the Federal Elections Election, the Star Tribune reports this morning.
In a statement, state Republican Party Chair Tony Sutton said: We learned a very hard lesson. I could say something here about excessive government regulation but were taking our lumps and moving forward."
Sutton was the party's treasurer during some of the time that the violations occurred.
The FEC agreement report says:
RPM [Republican Party of Minnesota] contends that the errors and omissions in its 2006-2008 reports were not intentional and in 2007-2008 RPM acted proactively to address the issues involved by retaining an accounting firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of its financial records.
In 2008, RPM further acted proactively to address the issues involved by filing more than 50 amendments to its reports. However, these amendments did not disclose all previously undisclosed debt. RPM has taken affirmative steps to ensure that such errors and omissions do not occur again by retaining a compliance company to prepare its reports, as well as federal campaign finance counsel that serves as counsel to a number of Republican state party committees.
And the agreement says:
Respondents will pay a civil penalty to the Federal Election Commission in the amount of One Hundred and Seventy Thousand Dollars ($170,000) pursuant to 2 U.S.C.§ 437g(a)(5)(A).
The civil penalty will be paid as follows:
1. A payment of Twenty Thousand Dollars ($20,000) is due no more than thirty days from the date this Agreement becomes effective;
2. Thereafter, ten consecutive monthly installment payments of Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000) each.