Election rigging convictions in Ohio

Just a quick note about this. I'll let Mark Crispin Miller and Bradblog elaborate, but two election officials in Ohio have been convicted of election rigging during the 2004 elections.

Two election workers in the state's most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.

Jacqueline Maiden, the elections' coordinator who was the board's third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Maiden and Dreamer also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty.

These charges stem from the recount -- a recount requested not by Democrats, who thought everything was just peachy -- but by the Green and Libertarian Party.

Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. They worked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

This is an obvious case of forcing the "recount" to match the orginal vote tally, which ostensibly proved that the vote count was just fine. I guess we'll be told by the mainstream pundits and those closeted louts at DailyKos that this still doesn't mean anything; a couple of "bad apples." If they pay attention to it all, that will be the refrain.