UPDATED: Ohio Election Workers convicted of felony [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 7:24 AM on January 25, 2007.

Two low-level elections workers from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were each convicted of a felony for "negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty."

According to the prosecutors, they were "secretly reviewing preselected ballots before a public recount."

UPDATE: Video right, is from HBO's Hacking Democracy.

And of course, Ohio tipped the election to Bush. But this is no smoking gun -- though it is another exposed gear in the dirty election fraud machinery, to be sure.

Though the AP article is a bit short on meat, we are fortunate enough to have the Black Box Voting folks all over this one.

Not only are these two employees taking the heat while the higher ups aren't even being questioned (Elections Board Director Michael Vu and County Board of Elections chair Bob Bennett), but it looks like the convicted workers' defense attorney happens to be a former Chairman of the Board of Elections back in '95.

This is no huge coincidence, of course, nor is it likely to signal anything particularly nefarious, as he is the person most familiar with the numerous and arcane laws governing elections in Ohio.

The one thing that does give one pause is the fact that, as Black Box points out, the defense lawyer didn't appear to push his clients toward a plea bargain, despite the fact that they were videotaped doing something that violated the law.

That sounds like some crappy lawyering.

Black Box notes that if these workers were just, as they claimed, following procedure, is it plausible to wonder whether illegal "procedures" had been in place since his years as chairman?

Tagged as: ohio, voter fraud

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.