But the last sentence takes the prize. The county didn't get "formal notice" before "preparing the certificate of destruction." The county was sent a fax from plaintiff's attorney Arnebeck's office eight days before the destruction certificate. It contained the federal court order and a clear explanation. Wasn't this formal enough?
Montgomery County did a lot of shredding and it was deliberate.
Along with the rest of Ohio, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was under court order to retain all 1.1 million records from the 2004 presidential election. Newly appointed acting elections director Jane Platten walked into a mess left by her predecessors.
Platten complied within just days of the April 9, 2007 request for ballots and other records. It was hard to tell if the April 17 shipment contained only the 700,000 voted ballots or if it included Cuyahoga's 1.1 million ballots of all types (voted, unvoted, provisional, and soiled).
Then the county sent a second shipment after a revealing discovery.
This is a detail from the May 1, 2007 form that accompanied the second shipment of ballots from Cuyahoga County. It reported that the vital unvoted ballot evidence was "found hidden" in a warehouse (line 4). (Page 58)
On May 1st, Platten sent 400,000 additional unvoted ballots to the state capitol following the instructions in the federal court order. These ballots are critical evidence to determine if unvoted ballots were marked and substituted for voted ballots. These "ballots had been found hidden in Cuyahoga's Canal Street warehouse," she wrote. She goes on, "It was thought that they were delivered on April 17th." Why was hidden crossed out? Why was it there in the first place?
Were the ballots "hidden" evidence that Ms. Platten "found" because she had to look? If so, why hadn't her predecessor's secured this notable amount of evidence?
In the past, the county stalled those requesting the legal right to review unvoted ballots. Patten's predecessor, Michael Vu, "resigned" in controversy during February, 2007. Bob Bennett chairman of the county board of elections was asked to resign by the new Secretary of State a few weeks later. In 2004, he was both chairman of the elections board and head of state Republican Party. Bennett is a named defendant in the suit charging election fraud. Maybe one or both of them can explain why these ballots were hidden.
They'll Get Away with It Right?
Wrong, at least not if the law is enforced. The destruction of evidence, while not currently pursued at the state level, has a remedy in the federal court system. It's called contempt of court. In addition, the federal district judge, Algenon Marbley, can refer the case to a federal prosecutor.
But there's no reason to give up on the most significant election fraud trial in modern history: King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association (KLBNA) v. Blackwell et al. Among others, the suit charges the following individuals with election fraud and voter suppression in the following capacities during the 2004 election: Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State and Ohio Bush campaign chairman; Bob Bennett, both a senior state Republican party official and also chairman of the Cuyahoga County board of elections; and a technician from Election Systems and Software (ES&S).
The case was filed on behalf of Ohio citizens by trial attorney for plaintiffs Clifford O. Arnebeck and Henry W. Eckhart, with Robert J. Fitrakis of counsel. The original and amended complaints were filed in federal district court, on August 31 and October 9, 2006 respectively. It continues in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (Case 2:06-cv-00745-ALM-TPK).
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