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Oct
20
Full disclosure: I supported Jennifer Brunner in her run against Republican and then-incumbent Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in 2006. I gave her a modest political contribution which you can find in public records and hosted a house party for her (which was actually incredibly pitifully attended – but that’s another story).
I also happen to like Brunner personally. I first met her at an interview in the winter of 2006 and as soon as it was over, the first question I asked her was, “How did you do it?” She’s the mother of three children, all grown up now (and were then as well) and married for many years to the same man. And she nodded, sighed and smiled before telling me about how she juggled, waited, worked, waited, worked more, juggled more and so on. When I meet impressive women, that’s almost always the first thing I want to know: how do you do it?
So I get pretty upset when I read things like this, on a blog post titled, “Republican Domestic Terrorism Against Ohio Secy of State”:
I knew it was bad when last week someone sent Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner a package in the mail containing an unidentified powder with the words scrawled on the packaging: “Death to Obama Supporters.” Due to state security protocols and observant mailroom staff and the Ohio Highway Patrol, the package never got close to Brunner. In fact, the nutjob who sent it mailed it to the wrong building, albeit a state building.
(That incident is described in this news report.)
Not much more information has been released from any source since I posted the one press release sent by the SOS, which you can read here, but I have e-mailed the communications people for the governor, the Ohio Democratic Party and the Ohio Republican Party for their statements.
The only other details I’ve found in the few articles out so far, besides stateements about death threats, security breaches and barrages of calls and e-mails jamming the offices, includes this:
[Communications Director Patrick] Gallaway also said a barrage of menacing e-mails had been sent to the office, and a receptionist on Friday filed police reports alleging phone harassment.
“It’s getting kind of scary,” he said.
To immediately fingerpoint to the Republicans, especially because of their incredibly heightened rhetoric and constant pursuit of legal action in the absence of actual voter fraud or wrongdoing, is understandable, but wrong.
I only hope that the ORP not only comes out hard against these kinds of tactics but likewise instructs their supporters to do the same and to offer whatever assistance is necessary to make sure that all Ohioans who are legally registered to vote can do so without any hint of intimidation whatsoever.
UPDATE: Ohio Daily Blog notes appropriately:
This has gone far beyond anyone’s definition of acceptable political tactics. As State Sen. Teresa Fedor wrote at Glass City Jungle yesterday, the Republicans are “trying to destroy our election system just to win an election” (although I would add that their other goal of unseating Brunner in 2010 is also in the mix). This despicable assault comes a hell of a lot closer to “destroying the fabric of democracy” than anything ACORN has allegedly committed, even in John McCain’s feverish imagination.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:50 pm October 20th, 2008 in Courts, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Jennifer Brunner, Law, Ohio, Politics, Republicans, Voting, WH2008
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17 Responses to “[updated] Threats of violence, harassment, cyber attacks target OH Secretary of State”
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Ypu wrote: “To immediately fingerpoint to the Republicans, especially because of their incredibly heightened rhetoric and constant pursuit of legal action in the absence of actual voter fraud or wrongdoing, is understandable, but wrong.”
Jill, you know I’m in your corner.
But with all due respects what are the logical odds of Democrats sending these kinds of threats and hate mail to the Ohio SOS office. Seriously. I mean, really.
“Death to Obama supporters?”
Yep, I’m sure some twisted vile Democrats risked felony charges to send that to a state office.
I think if, and hopefully when, the State Patrol get to the bottom of this, I think you’ll see people charged who will only reinforce what I have written here.
As my old history teacher at Lake Catholic used to say “figure the odds.”
[...] her next post this evening, Jill adds some more detail from the Clips and Comments blog which, until this evening, I had not [...]
Dear Jill:
I understand your point regarding blaming the Republicans. I wrote an incendiary headline because they’ve organized the whisper campaigns about Obama’s religious affiliation, citizenship, and “associations.” There’s no traction there, the actual Republican Party files BS lawsuits against a SoS who is following laws their Republican legislature and governor put into place. That’s not enough, so the wingnuts start with the death threats, cyber attacks, and harassment of staff who are not even involved in elections work. The irony is that while they try to paint Obama a terrorist sympathizer, their own supporters (if not some party hacks) are involved in borderline domestic terrorism. They’re screwing with a decent public servant, but more, they’re screwing with our election. The incident with the package happened a week ago and nobody said anything about until incident piled upon incident. They need to own the behavior they’ve created and at the very least tacitly condone by their silence.
Kegbot and Pelikan – believe me – I don’t find it difficult to point the finger either – the stuff they say explicitly is horrid to begin with. But until they say something and until we know more, you know – I’m trying to be responsible here.
And – I should say, when I was a camper in my teens, we had a bunkmate who raided our own bunk – and one night, she didn’t return to our bunk with us – she’d been shipped home. She’d destroyed our favorite stuffed animals, clothing, dumped out our toiletries etc. It was sick.
But you know – I just want to wait to see how it shakes out. Hopefully, we’ll have some more info soon.
The denial of the absentee ballot requests seems petty.
Why the check box? Her position on that annoying, and considering that a certain amount of the population goes from annoying to insane over things like this, you could say she instigated it. She is overtly anal retentive to a fault and not smart enough to see how that is perceived. Then stubborn in that she refused to see her faults and that makes everything she does suspect.
Oengus – let’s be clear about one thing: regardless of anyone’s opinion about the rightness or wrongness of Brunner’s decisions, threats of violence, harassment and cyber attacks are not permissible expressions of dissatisfaction.
Jill you are truly the den mother of Ohio lefty political blogs. And yes, that’s a compliment.
Someones gotta keep us unruly kids in line.
Pelikan: right on brother!
I appreciate that but I definitely make mistakes.
Could this be the Cloward Piven method?
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967
I’m just askin’. I have no proof, but neither do those of the other narrative.
Never heard of such a thing but you could ask these victims too.
Nice denouncement by the way. Thank you.
Mark:
No, unless its the GOP who is precipitating the crisis by filing frivolous motions.
But it COULD be the Rove-Cheney method.
Proof would be nice before accusations are made and if I really hated republicans, the smart thing to do would be to create situations just like this where it would be assumed it was them. While that almost sounds as if it’s a movie plot, the reality is that there are many people out there on both sides harboring a great deal of hatred who do stupid things not stopping to realize how it will be reflected upon their candidate of choice.
I remember vaguely some incident from a few years ago where a political office was vandalized and the assumption was that it was one party…If I remember correctly, that did not turn out to be true. Yet the blogosphere was a buzz with accusations…
It is nothing more than data analysis not people counting 700,000 by hand, all registration should have one unique social security number not all will have a drivers license. However many will have both, then the others those that have only socials security numbers and valid addresses for the district they are registering in that’s about the best you can do…if your suspect of them than they should have copies of proof of address it’s required.
Why is this going to court? This type of review should not take that long, most voters have a social and drivers license or state registered ID. That would take no time for a programmer, why is this not normal practice? That office has to be highly approachable it not being is very suspicious and not encouraging.
Why does it matter if the judges are republican…because they will request an audit? Thats all they can rule, yes check the registrations, then what? A high percentage of registered voters with out social security numbers and or other required ID?
No time to do that, to close to elections? That’s bullshit and somebody actually hacked her site to prove it, or maybe to tamper with the data to corrupt it, the later is really insane.
But entertaining none the less, oh way to go ohio
Of the 700,000 new registration what percentage has a valid social security number and what also has a valid State ID?
If the process is good it has 100% if it great it can be proven with a simple audit. But the problem is bureaucracy, who can audit the data? The state does have IT professional do they not? Do they have data analysts? Do they have data analyst who do quality control? The governor should say we can audit to insure accuracy, why not, it is a legitimate request, yes political as political as the response and not encouraging. You think we would have to hire auditor from another country? Maybe we can get the UN to come over? LOL
Please do not tell me they process registration verification by hand? I am sure they manually enter them in a data base, one would hope.
My point is that the more information and the more details provided then the more confident, calling it political is an escape of that.
Its not that complex one data set that you have to exist in and then the percentage of those registered counted. We could begin conversations that make people question the integrity of the social security data base, that would be more difficult since the fed has higher quality control than the states. They have gate control, call the IRS and every time they open data and look it gets recorded. If Brunner is limited as to her access to that data then she should disclose that and speak to those that understand that. People are talking strong to the overly simple people.
I see what is happening politically, we should not care about a washed up old terrorist, till you get an McCain Robo call then you will feel terrified. I am confused if you live in small town you are a true American but if it in a state like Massachusetts that allows gay marriages are you fake American? I am not sure about what is true and pro and anti and false? The marines that are from Brooklyn that fight in Iraq must be pro-American but they are not from a small town or Southern Virginia so then are they fake Americans? The media should do a sensational penetrating expose on what is true and fake and anti-pro American. Can we all be kissed first though?
“Oengus – let’s be clear about one thing: regardless of anyone’s opinion about the rightness or wrongness of Brunner’s decisions, threats of violence, harassment and cyber attacks are not permissible expressions of dissatisfaction.”
No kidding, I agree, never an excuse to be violent and threatening no matter what is said or done.
She has the supreme court of Ohio and the ACLU offering opinion that are not flattering, that should not be disregarded. The fact that the web page was hacked is not flattering either. Not sure but I believe that if personal information was compromised the law may require a letter to everyone that is in the data base. Perhaps it time for them to allow us to lock down our access to credit. If a data table with social security numbers was compromised that has repercussion.
The comments by Sen. Fedor are truly chilling. And I agree with her. These thugs will stop at nothing.
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