Mississippi governor helped implicated firm

GOP Marketplace allegedly involved in political dirty tricks

MSNBC - April 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican Party chairman, arranged the startup financing for a GOP telemarketing company implicated in two criminal cases involving election dirty tricks.

Virginia corporation records show Barbour's investment company arranged a quarter-million dollar loan to GOP Marketplace in 2000 and also gave a promotional plug to the telemarketer several months later.

A spokesman for the governor said Barbour had no idea the company would engage in criminal activity two years later. The lawyer for the now-defunct company's convicted president said Barbour was not consulted about its operations.

[...] Barbour, who became Mississippi governor in 2003, gushed over the prospects of GOP Marketplace in a company press release in 2000. He predicted it would be profitable and "give Republicans an edge" by using the Internet to buy and sell telemarketing services.

[...] By 2002, according to federal court records, GOP Marketplace president Allen Raymond and the Alexandria, Va.-based company were carrying out political dirty tricks in New Hampshire and New Jersey.

Raymond, who once worked for Barbour at the Republican National Committee, is serving a three-month prison term after pleading guilty to arranging for hundreds of hang-up calls in New Hampshire in 2002. The calls jammed Democratic phone lines that were offering assistance in getting to polling stations in a close U.S. Senate race.

In a New Jersey indictment, prosecutors implicated Raymond and his company in a separate scheme to make harassing calls to voters but did not charge either with crimes. Rather, the indictment charged the losing candidate who hired Raymond. Ex-candidate James Treffinger pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and mail fraud.

GOP Marketplace's New Jersey operation preceded the New Hampshire phone jamming and used a different tactic, prosecutors said. Raymond arranged for annoying "attack ad" calls during the 2002 Super Bowl. The ads attacked a Treffinger opponent, but appeared to come from a third candidate. Treffinger served spent 13 months in prison.
[...] Barbour is the latest prominent Republican to be connected to Raymond and GOP Marketplace.

President Bush's former campaign chairman for New England has been convicted in the New Hampshire case and The Associated Press reported April 10 that key figures in the phone jamming had regular contact with the White House _ and Republican officials _ as the scheme unfolded.

[...] The White House political office, recipient of most of calls, was run in 2002 by the current Republican national chairman, Ken Mehlman. He denies any calls were related to the jamming, contending the discussions focused only on the close election won by John Sununu, R-N.H.

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Bexar's early voters to put pen to paper

MySA - 04/27/2006

Bexar County's electronic voting machines — for which it paid $8 million — will be unplugged when early voting starts Monday in local elections because the equipment supplier failed to deliver the necessary software, according to county officials.

The county Elections Department instead will use emergency paper ballots and may have to do so again on election day, May 13.

County officials say they have no guarantee from Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software that it'll have the touch-screen voting machines ready by then.

And the hassles don't stop there: The company also hasn't delivered programming for the county's hand-held optical scanners, which could mean counting votes by hand.

"It sure is exasperating," County Judge Nelson Wolff said. "We are looking at avenues to hold them responsible for this."

Bexar County isn't alone; the company left many other Texas counties in a similar predicament.

Scott Haywood, spokesman for the Texas secretary of state's office, said ES&S has contracts with more than 140 counties, and most will be affected by the company's apparent breakdown.

[...] ES&S isn't under fire in Texas alone.

On Monday, Oregon's secretary of state sued the company, saying it failed to deliver $1 million worth of electronic voting machines for disabled voters.

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Senate Vote Inquiry Widens
as Democrats Probe White House Link

Bloomberg - April 24, 2006

To Republicans, the New Hampshire phone-jamming incident is an isolated case of political dirty tricks that took place more than three years ago.

To Democrats, it's a scandal with echoes of Watergate that may reach all the way to the White House.

Republican leaders are facing questions stemming from a criminal case involving efforts to suppress voter turnout in a U.S. Senate election in the state in 2002. Republican John Sununu won that race over Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, helping Republicans retake control of the Senate.

The facts, on the surface at least, are suspicious: dozens of phone calls to the White House by a man later convicted in the case; the national Republican Party agreeing to pay more than $2.5 million in legal bills; phones jammed on Election Day, not only of Democrats but of a firefighters' group, in the first U.S. congressional elections since the Sept. 11 attacks. Democrats say that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff may even be involved.

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How to Rig a Voting Machine

Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House

Yahoo News - Apr 10, 2006

WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

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Ohio Official Invested in Vote Machine Co

Houston Chronicle - April 3, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state's top elections official said Monday he accidentally invested in a company that makes voting machines.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, said he discovered the shares for Diebold Inc. while preparing a required filing for the Ohio Ethics Commission.

"While I was unaware of this stock in my portfolio, its mere presence may be viewed as a conflict and is therefore not acceptable," he said in a letter included in his filing.

[...] The state negotiated a deal with Diebold last year for $2,700 per touch-screen machine. In a statement given in May as part of a lawsuit, Judith Grady, who oversees the secretary of state's compliance with the 2002 federal voting act, said Blackwell was not involved with price negotiations.

[...] Bob Paduchik, a spokesman for Attorney General Jim Petro, Blackwell's rival in the GOP primary, called for further investigation.

Democrats weren't buying Blackwell's explanation.

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