Franklin Co Dems: Blackwell Blames Dem BOE Chair for long lines

FRANKLIN COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 16, 2006

BLACKWELL BREAKS THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

COLUMBUS – The Franklin County Democratic Chair issued a stinging rebuttal to counter Ken Blackwell’s slanderous accusation against him. “Ken Blackwell is not telling the truth. He should be ashamed of himself for misrepresenting facts and impugning my integrity in order to deflect criticism away from his questionable activities as Secretary of State,” said William A. Anthony Jr.

Anthony was responding to a Cleveland Plain Dealer article reporting on Blackwell’s luncheon with members of the United Pastors Mission held at Cleveland’s Antioch Baptist Church. According to the article, Blackwell told the group that Anthony was to blame for “unconscionably long lines” at polling locations during the 2004 presidential election.

“I wish Mr. Blackwell had the honor and decency to tell the truth while appearing before a group of church leaders. Unfortunately, he is unwilling to confess his own sins and would rather cast unwarranted blame onto others.”

Anthony concluded, “I’m outraged that Mr. Blackwell thinks he can get away with this deceitful misdirection. Franklin County and many other counties throughout the state did not have nearly enough voting machines because Ken Blackwell mismanaged the HAVA-implementation process from the start. The only HAVA funds spent in Franklin County during 2004 was Gene Pierce’s no-bid contract. No HAVA money was spent on voting machines.”

A copy of Anthony’s letter to Blackwell is attached.

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Contact: William A. Anthony or Mark Rutkus at (614) 224-1193 or franklin@ohiodems.org


____________________________________________________________________
J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 East Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215

Mr. Blackwell:

According to an article published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on March 14, 2006 you made a slanderous accusation against me while meeting with members of the United Pastors in Mission. In an attempt to deflect criticism away from your own actions as Secretary of State and win over African American voters, you apparently tried to blame me for misallocating voting machines—thus, creating long lines at polling locations—during the 2004 election. You know your allegation against me is false.

In separate independent investigations, the Election Science Institute and the United States Department of Justice analyzed the methods used by the Franklin County Board of Elections employees who assigned voting machines to polling locations. Both of these studies came to the same conclusion: while Franklin County did not have enough voting machines in general, there was no deliberate malfeasance involved in the allocation of machines.

I will be the first to concede that Franklin County had a woefully inadequate amount of voting machines for the type of voter turnout we experienced in 2004. However, I attribute the lack of machines to your machinations after the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed in 2002, as well as other circumstance that were far beyond my control. Boards of Elections throughout Ohio were at your mercy while waiting for your office to create and implement a coherent strategy to approve HAVA-compliant vendors and then allocate funding to counties to purchase new voting machines.

Section 102(a)(3) of HAVA states:

(A) In general...a State receiving a payment under the program under this section shall ensure that all of the punch card voting systems or lever voting systems in the qualifying precincts within that State have been replaced in time for the regularly scheduled general election for Federal office to be held in November 2004.

(B) If a State certifies to the Administrator not later than January 1, 2004, that the State will not meet the deadline described in subparagraph (A) for good cause and includes in the certification the reasons for the failure to meet such deadline, the State shall ensure that all of the punch card voting systems or lever voting systems in the qualifying precincts within that State will be replaced in time for the first election for Federal office held after January 1, 2006.

So, who is to blame for the state’s inability to meet HAVA requirements before the 2004 deadline, you or me? It certainly wasn’t my actions that caused Ohio to miss the deadline specified above in subparagraph (A). In an amazing display of cronyism and mismanagement reminiscent of President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, the Secretary of State’s dubious

selection process for choosing approved voting machine vendors resulted in a lawsuit against the state. This litigation contributed to the delay in the selection process for new machines.

May I also remind you that the Ohio General Assembly enacted legislation on May 7, 2004 requiring that all direct recording electronic voting machines include a voter verified paper audit trail. At that point, none of the approved vendors had the capability to install reliable and cost-effective voter verified paper audit trail components to their machines.

So there we were, almost two years since HAVA had originally passed and faced with the prospect of the highest voter turnout in the history of Franklin County and we had no ability to purchase new voting machines. We considered the possibility of purchasing 1000 voting machines from Danaher at a cost of approximately $5000 per machine. However, this $5 million expenditure would have been unjustifiable since these machines did not meet HAVA or the paper trail requirements and would have been obsolete within a year.

Many counties faced the same dilemma. Your inability to lead us responsibly through the HAVA implementation process forced us to use old machines with no realistic way to add more. The insufficient number of machines caused many counties throughout Ohio—not just Franklin County—to experience long lines. I find it particularly odious and offensive that you insist on singling me out because I am a black man.

You have used my race to publicly attack me before (on a nationally broadcast program), but now I am demanding that you cease and desist. I refuse to allow you to use me as a stalking-horse to deflect criticism away from your actions as Secretary of State, especially as you attempt to court African American voters in your gubernatorial race. I also demand that you issue a formal apology to Reverend Marvin McMickle and the other members of United Pastors in Mission who attended the luncheon with you. You had no right to falsely misrepresent the facts before their venerable organization and impugn my character.

I fully intend to contact Reverend McMickle and defend myself against your defamatory accusations. I hope he’ll be interested in learning more about the lawsuits that the Ohio Democratic Party, Franklin County Board of Elections, League of Women’s Voters, voting machine vendors, and many others filed against you due to your questionable activities throughout 2004.

Sincerely,

William A. Anthony Jr., Chair
Franklin County Democratic Party

CC: Reverend Marvin McMickle

You can safely assume that if Blackwell is speaking he is lying his no good ass off.

You know I've been predisposed to defend Anthony along much these lines (although I think they should have thrown out their initial allocation and started over).