Edited on Sun Jul-20-08 12:45 PM by L. Coyote
During part of the press conference, Stephen Spoonamore states (35:00) that the Ohio counties reported their vote totals to the SMARTech server in TN. There are other sources stating the contrary. This is an important distinction. Counties report to the Ohio SoS office. But, where in cyberspace was that at the time of the vote reporting, to the SoS offices in Ohio or to the SMARTech server in Tennessee?
My impression has always been that the SoS office in Ohio refreshed the data on the server in TN after receiving reports from the counties, and that the process was on hold after midnight as a narrow election was being determined. We do know SMARTech in TN served the data online because the Ohio state system (also contracted to a hosting provider) could not handle the volume of traffic. Did the TN server do anything more than display the results?
Here follows a review of the early reporting. This (the breaking story?) from ePluribus Media and dKos on Election Day, Nov. 7, 2006:
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/11/7/115314/922http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/7/144314/082The State of Ohio's real-time, streaming election results are first diverted through Chattanooga, TN, to a GOP-only web firm and the servers currently hosting georgewbush.com, as well as other key Republican web sites.
Since early this decade, top Internet "gurus" in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results. .....
The SOS retained service providers who could develop, host, test, and manage the systems able to handle at least 29 million visitors to election.sos.state.oh.us on Election Night 2004. ....
SOS Blackwell also neglected to inform that he outsourced Election Night hosting services to the provider of Internet operations for the Republican National Committee, SMARTech Corp. It's clear that most of the IP address space allocated to Smartechcorp, if it has a domain name, is operated by the RNC or its functionaries and allies. ....
Ken Blackwell outsourced the design of the Election Night Project to Mike Connell who is a GOP operative and the principal of New Media Communications and GovTech Solutions. ...
The Free Press takes up this story on April 22 and 25, 2007.
The GOP's cyber election hit squad
Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis - April 22, 2007
Ohio's Cedarville University, a Christian school with 3,100 students, issued a press release on January 13, 2005 describing how faculty member Dr. Alan Dillman’s computing company Government Consulting Resources, Ltd, worked with these Republican-connected companies to tally the vote on Election Night 2004. ...
... election results were routed by county election officials through Ohio's Secretary of State's office, through partisan IT providers and software, and the final results were hosted out of a computer based in Tennessee announcing the winner. The Cedarville University releases boasted the system "was running like a champ." It said, "The system kept running through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results." ...
... shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 3, when for roughly 90 minutes the Ohio election results reported on the Secretary of State's website were frozen. Shortly before 2am EST election returns came in from a handful of the state's rural Republican enclaves, bumping Bush's numbers over the top. ...
Are Rove's missing e-mails the smoking guns of the stolen 2004 election?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman - April 25, 2007
... Rove and Bush flew into Columbus. Local election officials say they met with Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in Columbus. Also apparently in attendance was Matt Damschroder, executive director of the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections.
These four men, along with Ohio GOP chair Bob Bennett, were at the core of a multi-pronged strategy that gave Bush Ohio's twenty Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency. Bennett and Damschroder held key positions on election boards in the state's two most populous counties, with the biggest inner city concentrations of Democratic voters.
... election officials, including Bennett, stripped nearly 300,000 voters from registration rolls in heavily Democratic areas in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo ...
... the electronic record of every vote in Ohio was transmitted to the Secretary of State's office, and hosted in real time in Chattanooga...
I responded to the Free Press report when it came out here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x743746#743869Here is the referenced press release. A lot of individuals were involved in the election night hosting. Who has actually interviewed anyone of them?
CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY A MAJOR PLAYER IN OHIO'S ELECTION TALLYING EFFORTS
by Public Relations Office - January 13, 2005 -
http://www.cedarville.edu/newsrelease/2005/Cedarville_University_A_Major_Player_in_Ohio_s_Election_Tallying_Efforts/2132271177.... Dillman, along with a cast of faculty, staff, and students, played key roles in making Ohio`s election a success. Dillman is an associate professor of management information systems (MIS) and one of the principles in Government Consulting Resources, Ltd. (GCR), a professional services firm which had the contract to build, test, and manage Ohio`s election night Web site. Dillman personally led the effort from the GCR side, teaming with key members of Blackwell`s staff. Additionally, GCR teamed with several other firms — including key players such as GovTech Solutions, which performed the software development — to deliver the end result. SmartTech provided the backup and additional system capacity, and Mercury Interactive performed the stress testing.
Cannonfire took up the issue too:
GwB43: The White House, vote theft, and the email trail
March 22, 2007 -
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/03/gwb43-white-house-vote-theft-and-email.html.... So, what does it mean that Ken Blackwell used Smartech for Ohio's election night hosting services? One might, after all, expect a Republican to give state business to a Republican-friendly company. As one observer remarked, this decision seems, at first glance, akin to an Irish drinker going to an Irish pub.
However, one does not need to exercise much imagination to see how anyone using the net for nefarious purposes would want a "friendly" hosting company handling ultra-sensitive duties. Hosting companies keep records of who does what. If you are using computers to do something you don't want the world to know about, you don't want those records available to just anyone. ....
Now, I must stress the speculative nature of all this. I have no evidence that Smartech is anything other than an honest, responsibly-run firm. ....
For background on Michael L. Connell and his Ohio connections, begin here:
Who is Michael L. Connell? Part I: The Atwater School of Politics
by Todd Johnston - Mar 28, 2007 -
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2007/3/28/143050/889As reported yesterday, in 2001 a GOP operative and close confidant of the Bush family was tapped to re-program the Capitol Hill IT network for the 21st century, after George W. Bush's controversial victory over Vice President Al Gore completed the Republican revolution of 1994.
The "Mayor of Capitol Hill" and fellow Ohioan Bob Ney opened the door for Michael "Mike" L. Connell after the GOP put House IT under the control of the Committee on House Administration. Ney, who chaired the committee from 2001 to 2006 is now serving 30 months in federal prison for conspiracy to defraud the United States and falsifying financial disclosure forms.
So who is Mike Connell? Who is the man behind New Media Communications, called "the Bell Labs of the Republican Party," and GovTech Solutions, the company whose custom-made proprietary databases and content management systems run silently and deep beneath the powerful Intelligence, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees at the U.S. House of Representatives?
In this Part I: The Atwater School of Politics, ePluribus Media presents Connell's time line leading up to the formation of New Media Communications: his fast-tracked and early indoctrination into the no-holds-barred style of Bush family politics......
In summary (so far), a lot of people have run with this story as indicative of election rigging accomplished in TN for Ohio 2004. Now, Stephen Spoonamore has also chimed in indicating such could be the case. This idea hinges on how counties reported totals to the SoS offices. Personally, I still find no evidence that counties reported anywhere other than the SoS offices in Ohio, or that anyone except the Ohio SoS office refreshed the data in TN. Is Republican Stephen Spoonamore adding to the confusion?
What is most suspicious, in my view, is the delay from the Ohio SoS in refreshing the data in TN. There was a long freeze on the reporting server, without updates, as counties continued reporting to the SoS office. Why was there such a long delay in updating the online server, before the new data came up showing the turnaround and the Bush victory? The long delay on the TN online server (SMARTech) is a good indication that the TN server was not where counties reported.
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