Karl Rove

From Jenny Cohn Thread “75. Blackwell also hired Karl Rove’s IT guru, Mike Connell, to design a “backup server” that re-routed Ohio’s election results through a hosting company in Tennessee called “Smartech,” which also hosted a range of sites for the RNC. Computer expert denies knowledge of ’04 vote rigging in Ohio GREG GORDON – MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS NOVEMBER 03, 2008 NOVEMBER 04, 2008. “Records show that Blackwell hired Connell’s Govtech Solutions, LLC, of Richfield, Ohio, as an Internet consultant. SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, Tenn., was retained to provide a backup server, which was needed because the secretary of state’s Web site got more than 40 million election-night visits, said a spokesman for Ohio’s current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat.

During the same year, Bush’s campaign paid New Media Communications, which was owned by Connell, more than $806,000 to for Web services, according to Federal Election Commission records. Connell’s firm also has served as a consultant to John McCain’s 2008 Republican presidential campaign.”

76. “Smartech was paid more than $72,000 by Bush’s 2004 campaign and has hosted hundreds of Republican Web and e-mail sites…” MCCLATCHY

77. “Connell was the Bush campaign’s chief IT strategist.” How to Rig an Election Harper’s Magazine The G.O.P. aims to paint the country red By Victoria Collier  November 2012.

78. Connell was also a zealous anti-abortion activist. Harper’s

79. The backup server was supposed to “kick in … if the official Ohio servers were overwhelmed by Election Day traffic.” Harper’s he G.O.P. aims to paint the country red By Victoria Collier  November 2012.

“In 2004, Connell was hired by Blackwell to design a website that would post Ohio election results to the public. Connell’s contract also required that he create a “mirror site” that would kick in to display the vote totals if the official Ohio servers were overwhelmed by Election Day traffic. For the latter portion of the job, he turned to SmarTech, a little-known company headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. SmarTech was as partisan as Connell himself, and the company’s servers hosted hundreds of high-profile Republican websites (and, later on, an assortment of anti-Obama websites).”

80. “The SmarTech site [in Tennessee] went into action at 11:14 p.m. on Election Day.” Harper’s 

81. The transfer of Ohio’s vote count to the backup server remains a mystery because there’s no evidence Ohio’s system failed.

Court Filing Reveals How 2004 Ohio Presidential Election was Hacked: “Unexpected Shift in Votes For George W.”  GlobalResearch.  By Bob Fitrakis. July 26, 2011

“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.”

82. In 2008, attorney Cliff Arnebeck (formerly a Republican) filed a civil racketeering case against Karl Rove, which included allegations that the 2004 election was rigged. Harper’s “Four years later, Ohio attorney (and former Republican) Cliff Arnebeck began gathering evidence to file a racketeering claim against Karl Rove, which included the charge that Rove had masterminded the theft of the 2004 election. “We detected a pattern of criminal activity,” Arnebeck told the British journalist Simon Worrall. “We identified Connell as a key witness, as the implementer for Rove.” On November 3, 2008, he took a sworn deposition from Connell, who had repeatedly tried to quash Arnebeck’s subpoena.”

83. On November 3, 2008, “Connell swore under oath [in deposition] that, ‘To the best of my knowledge, it was not a fail-over case scenario…”GlobalResearch

84. “Bob Magnan, a state IT specialist for the Ohio 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.” GlobalResearch

85. “Late on Election Day, John Kerry showed an insurmountable lead in exit polling, and many considered his victory all but certified. Yet the final vote tallies in thirty states deviated widely from exit polls, with discrepancies favoring George W. Bush in all but nine.” Harper’s

86. “The greatest disparities [in 04] were concentrated in battleground states — particularly Ohio.” Harper’s

87. “In one Ohio precinct,” exit polls gave Kerry “67 % of the vote, but the certified tally gave him only 38%.” Harper’s

88. Although Connell testified in a deposition on November 3, 2008, he died in a plane crash on December 9, 2008, before he could testify at trial. Harper’s “Arnebeck hoped to have Connell testify in open court against Rove. But the prospective witness died on December 19, 2008, at age forty-seven, when his single-engine Piper Saratoga, which he was piloting alone, crashed en route from Washington, D.C., to Ohio. The circumstances of his death were viewed with suspicion by his family and close friends and sparked a firestorm of conspiracy chatter on the Internet, but no criminal investigation was launched. Whether Rove and his collaborators orchestrated the electronic theft of the 2004 election will likely never be known. Still, Election Day exit polls make a compelling case that somebody may have been tampering with the presidential vote count, in Ohio and elsewhere.”

Republican IT Guru Dies In Plane Crash CBS News

89. “Arnebeck believes the data being routed to Tennessee was used by G.O.P. partisans to target Ohio counties that were ripe for vote tampering. ‘The SmarTech people may have been guiding the manipulation of paper ballots in places like Warren County,’ Arnebeck told me.” Harper’s 

90. According to “Stephen Spoonamore, an IT specialist (and Republican) who has consulted on cybersecurity for Boeing, MasterCard, the Navy, and the State Department,” SmartTech “might have been able to use Connell’s interface to gain access to and modify vote totals.”Harper’s 

91. Here is a link to Jon Conyers’ House Judiciary Committee Report re: 2004 voting irregularities. http://www.votescam.org/preserving_democracy_what_went_wrong_in_ohio_2004?recruiter_id=2 …

92. Here is a link to the transcript of a Congressional hearing about the 2004 recount in Ohio. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2005-01-06/html/CREC-2005-01-06-pt1-PgH84-6.htm …

93. Directors of the Election Boards in two Counties stated that Triad (an affiliate of the butterfly ballot company in 2000) had remote access to computers used in the 2004 recount; Triad reportedly also handed out recount “cheat sheets.”

The 2004 Ohio Election in the US House:   COUNTING ELECTORAL VOTES--JOINT SESSION OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE HELD PURSUANT TO THE PROVISIONS OF SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 1 (HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES--JANUARY 6, 2005)" / Jenny Cohn Thread