[MAJOR CORRECTIONS. SEE NEXT POST]
Do you remember this man?
He is Triad GSI technician Michael Barbian, who has been implicated in tampering with a Hocking County punch card ballot machine and in conspiring to have Hocking County deputy director of elections Sherole Eaton prepare a "cheat sheet" so that during the recount the sample hand count would match the machine count.
Democratic Underground user kitkat65 has found some pictures on the Ohio Democratic Party website of the recount in Geauga Guernsey County, where Michael Barbian appears to have been present.
The man who looks very much like Mr.Barbian seems quite involved in the recount, talking to election officials and hovering around what appears to be a ballot counting machine. To say the very least, this bears some further investigation.
Update:
Geauga County is of some significance in the National Voting Rights Institute motion asking the federal court to preserve all ballots and election machinery. The memorandum (pdf) that includes the motion to preserve all ballots and election machinery makes special mention of Geauga County because it is one of several counties that will hold special elections on February 8, 2005. (The other counties are: Cuyahoga, Butler, Trumbull, and Wood.) In Geauga County, the special election is for a ballot question on a tax issue. I haven't yet checked to see what is on the ballot in the other four counties.
In all of these counties, the 2004 presidential election data is likely to be destroyed in order to use the machines for a new election. Given the allegations of criminal activity by Mr. Barbian in Hocking County, it would seem all the more pressing to preserve the electronic data from the voting machines in counties where he was present prior to or during a recount.
Go here for more information on the National Voting Rights Institute's legal actions in Ohio as counsel to Presidential Candidates David Cobb (Green Party) and Michael Badnarick (Libertarian) to have a full recount of all votes cast in Ohio. For detailed information on the recount effort in Ohio, see the county reports on the Cobb/LaMarche 2004 website.
Update #2:
kitkat65 points out that Geauga County is not a county administered by Triad. According to the data at VerifiedVoting.org, Geauga County uses optical scan machines, administered by ES&S:
Geauga County Detail:
Voting Technology: Optical Scan: Central Count
Vendor: Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S)
Data Source: CASE-ohio.org; electionline.org
Last Verified: 4-Sep
Either Michael Barbian is not in the Ohio Democratic Party photos—or something extremely suspicious was going on during that recount.
Update #3:
MAJOR CORRECTIONS. SEE NEXT POST.
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