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Title
WARREN COUNTY LOCKDOWN A FRAUD
Release Date
2004-11-11
Time
07:10:00
Comment
Article Text
NOVEMBER 11, 2004. Five days ago, I wrote about the crime in Warren County, Ohio, where the vote count swung the state and therefore the national election to Bush.
The Warren County building had been illegally closed to all public and reporters while the vote was being tallied. The excuse? Federal warnings about terrorism in that area.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has now laid that one to rest. Writing today in his MSNBC Bloggermann column, he states:
...questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre “lockdown” of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio’s primary homeland security official.
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.
Despite the contradiction from both security services, Ms. South again amplified, telling the Enquirer “It wasn’t international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism.”
So the media was kept two floors away from the vote counting at the Warren County Administration on election night on the basis of a “10” FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued...
end of Olbermann excerpt
This has the flavor of an op. Get someone to issue warnings to Warren County, as a pretext for shutting observers out of the vote-count facility, rig the vote, and then, later, claim no warning was sent.
Here is my original article on Warren County:
NOVEMBER 6, 2004. As I wrote yesterday, it's a very sobering experience to go down to a vote-counting headquarters on election and "watch" the process. Because you don't really see much of anything. The real work---and the real cheating---is done inside computers.
Nevertheless, it is a time honored tradition that anyone can watch the vote count. Anyone.
A citizen has the right. Doesn't have to be a member of the press.
No one is asked for press credentials.
Therefore, to refuse entry to the public and the press is a dire matter. One would expect a judge to levy fines against officials and require a re-count of the vote. And as far as I'm concerned, NO VOTE COUNT IN A RESTRICTED CENTER SHOULD BE HONORED BY THE PEOPLE IF THEY ARE KEPT OUT. On that basis alone, the Ohio vote is thrown into chaos. Ohio will never be a red or blue state. Ohio is dirt. The citizens of that state should stand up together and disqualify Ohio's election.
As you'll see from the article below, a prosecutor passed the whole thing off as a minor and legitimate glitch. The presence of citizens and press in the Warren County center would have gotten in the way of workers handling the vote count. Pure bullshit.
Warren County happened to be a place where the eventual tally played a major role in swinging the state-wide victory to Bush.
In 1994, when I ran for a seat in Congress (Los Angeles), officials in the county building in Norwalk were very careful to point out to me that I and my staff were welcomed inside---every citizen had the right.
Warren County was, last Tuesday, a no-man's land. A government island of shame and lawlessness. A foul place. A disgusting and repellent example of government against the people.
The excuse given on Tuesday for closing down the Warren County building, located on JUSTICE DRIVE, was, you guessed it, Homeland Security. The potential threat of terrorism. Of course, no other county building in Ohio was shut down. Only that one.
The state official who should be coming down on Warren County with a ton of force is Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state, who is in charge of every aspect of voting in Ohio. Ken Blackwell was also, however, the co-chair of the Ohio committee to re-elect George Bush.
Ken Blackwell is in fine fettle these days. He is the most popular person in the US, as far as the Republican party is concerned. When he runs for governor of Ohio, he'll get every perk imaginable from his national party. They'll raise him up on a platform and carry him through the streets of his state and put a gold crown on his head.
Welcome to lock-down voting. Not only are the machines impenetrable, the counting house is under the control of law enforcement. But what law is being enforced? The right to bar citizens from access.
Exit polls, no exit polls, electronic fraud, voter intimidation, provisional ballot crimes---THIS one case, the walling off of the Warren County building, is sufficient to cancel the legitimacy of the national election, in which Ohio provided Bush the necessary margin to move into a second term as president.
Warren County is a smoking gun in full sight.
But the dandy pundits with their all-important hair arrangements have moved on. They've already discussed why and how Bush won, and they're now into what he will do in his upcoming term.
Sold out, sulfurous and brain dead, they're staggering sheep leading other sheep to nowhere land. Business as usual.
There are times when the press would have to do very little to ignite a national story of such proportions that THINGS WOULD CHANGE.
Say no and nothing happens. Say yes and the people rise up.
Putting Warren County front and center for a week could place a large X across the results of Tuesday's election.
FREE WARREN COUNTY.
Rename Justice Drive Never Again Drive, Vote Recount Drive, No More Ken Blackwell Drive.
Friday, November 5, 2004
Warren's vote tally walled off
Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security
By Erica Solvig
[Cincinnati]Enquirer staff writer
LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.
County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board.
Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.
"The media should have been permitted into the area where there was counting," Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner said. "This is a process that should be done in complete transparency and it wasn't."
Warren County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said he had recommended increased security based on information received from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent weeks.
Commissioners made the security decisions in a closed-door meeting last week, but didn't publicize the restrictions that were made until after polls closed.
"If we were going to make a judgment, we wanted to err on the side of caution," Commissioner Pat South said Thursday. "... Hindsight is 20-20. There was never any intent to exclude the press.
"We were trying to protect security."
WCPO-TV (Channel 9) News Director Bob Morford said he's "never seen anything like it." When he first heard about Warren County's building restrictions, he said he understood concerns that too many people could make the counting process "a circus." But he said it's never been a problem in the past, and that the county could have set up a security checkpoint and had people show identification.
"Frankly, we consider that a red herring," Morford said of the county's "homeland security" reason. "That's something that's put up when you don't know what else to put up to keep us out."
James Lee, spokesman with the Ohio Secretary of State's Office in Columbus, said Thursday he hasn't heard of any situations similar to Warren County's building restrictions. He said general security concerns are decided at the local levels.
Other counties, such as Butler County, let people watch ballot checkers through a window.
Typically, the Warren County commissioners' room is set up as a gathering place for people to watch the votes come in. But that wasn't done this year.
And despite being told that there would be an area with telephones set up for the media, those who tried to get into the building on Justice Drive were stopped by a county employee who stood guard outside. After journalists challenged the restriction, reporters were allowed into the building's lobby - two floors below the elections office.
A representative of The Associated Press, which had stringers at every Ohio board of elections site, said no such election-night access problems were reported outside of Warren County.
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.
end of Enquirer article
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com