Much has been written on the U.S. Attorneys Scandal as it relates to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Karl Rove. Devilstower posted a summary of the salient points in The Justice Department Swallows Its Tale. A more detailed account can be found in Glynn Wilson's web postings on the Siegelman-Scrushy Travails and Scott Horton's posts on Don Siegelman and the U.S. Attorneys Scandal.
This diary is about another scandal: the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial election.
Some may say that the story is old news and we need to move on. Recent revelations by a local newspaper in Baldwin County Alabama, where the election was decided, are worth reviewing. The gist of the story is Don Sielgelman was en route to winning the governorship of Alabama handily in 2002 when the polls closed, but
... by the next morning, 6,300 of his votes had disappeared from an important county's electronic count.
A recount was denied on the grounds that, without paper ballots, there was nothing to recount. The election was handed to the Republican.
This "recount" begins with a June 20, 2007 post on LocustFork.net by Glynn Wilson. In the post How the 2002 Election Was Stolen in Bay Minette, Wilson reports that:
... When the poll workers and the press left the courthouses of Alabama that Tuesday night, Siegelman was declared the winner statewide. But the race was not to be over and would come down to a few thousand questionable votes in Baldwin County in South Alabama.
Siegelman received 19,070 votes in Baldwin County and beat Riley by 3,139 votes there. And he won statewide by an initial count showing him with 674,052 to Rileys 670,913 - a margin of 3,139 votes, the closest ever reported in an Alabama election.
But sometime during the night after everyone else went home, a Riley campaign worker by the name of Dan Gans - who had served as Riley’s chief of staff both in Montgomery and Washington and went on to work with the Alexander Strategy Group, which has been repeatedly implicated in the Abramoff corrupt lobbying scandal - set up a laptop computer in the Baldwin County courthouse and changed the results, sources say. (Other sources say it was not Dan Gans, but another Riley aide. A Congressional investigation could get to the bottom of this)
Wilson cites Auburn University Professor James H. Gundlach, who published a peer reviewed paper on the election that was presented to the Alabama Political Science Association. Professor Gundlach said that there is little doubt that election fraud took place that night in Bay Minette - "There is simply no way that electronic vote counting can produce two sets of results without someone using computer programs in ways that were not intended."
Wilson was working for the New York Times out of Bay Minette during the election. He said that he suspected fraud and was prepared to work his sources to investigate, but the Times sent him back to New Orleans when Siegelman conceded.
Scott Horton reported in a post on Abramoff and "Justice" in the Heart of Dixie that Dan Gans:
... served as Riley’s chief of staff both in Washington and Montgomery. He left Riley to work with Ed Buckham and Christine DeLay at the Alexander Strategy Group, which has been repeatedly implicated in the Abramoff Scandal. Gans is a Republican "voting technology expert" who played a mysterious role in the 2002 gubernatorial election – he was in Republican controlled Bay Minette, Alabama, when 6,000 votes inexplicably shifted from Siegelman’s column to Riley’s due to a "computer glitch."
Here we have two reputable reporters saying that Dan Gans, Riley’s chief of staff and a "voting technology expert," apparently had a role in the vote shifting from Siegelman to Riley.
Steve McConnell, a staff reporter with BaldwinCountyNow picks up the story here. He said that when Siegelman defeated incumbent Republican Governor Forrest Hood "Fob" James in 1998, he nearly won in Baldwin County: 17, 389 for Siegelman versus 21,004 for James. The Chairman of the Baldwin County Democratic Party, William Pfeifer, said, "We didn’t expect Siegelman to win Baldwin County, but we certainly expected him to do better than the typical results for a Baldwin County Democratic candidate."
On the night of the election, the first report of election results were delivered to Pfeifer and other election officials at 10:45 p.m. There was an obvious error in the results because Libertarian candidate John Sophocleus had 13,190 votes, Siegelman had 11,820, and Riley had 30,142. Pfeifer said, "When we were calling in the results ... as soon as we got to the John Sophocleus number, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong." According to Pfeifer, "someone" with the Sheriff’s department later reported that "they figured out the problem (...) They didn’t say what the problem was but they said that they fixed it."
At 11:04 p.m., new results indicated that Sophocleus had 937 votes, Siegelman had 19,070, and Riley had 31,052. 19,070 votes in Baldwin County would have been enough for Siegelman to win the governor's race.
Pfeifer said, "These were the numbers that we were told were correct (...) Everything was being locked up for the night ... we all thought it was over (and) looking at these numbers this was about what we could have expected it to be, no one expected Siegelman to carry Baldwin County." The 11:04 p.m. results were given to the Associated Press and local media reporters and officials with both parties.
By the time Pfeifer got home from Bay Minette a different set of numbers were being reported on televised election results, based on a report posted on the county's election website at 11:06 p.m. That report showed Siegelman with 12,736 - a difference of 6,334 from the 11:04 p.m. results that Pfeifer was told to be the correct numbers. The difference of 6,334 votes was enough to put Riley in the lead.
The next morning Pfeifer and other Siegelman supporters went to Bay Minette to find out what had happened. The office doors of the probate court were closed. Pfeifer said his attempts to talk to the canvassing board were delayed until "just a few minutes before they went out and did the certification."
Despite Pfeifer's protests and requests to delay the final certification as allowed by law to get the results "sorted out," the county canvassing board was "very insistent that the results were correct and that they were going to certify them that morning." Pfeifer does not contend that anyone altered Siegelman’s votes. His position is that when three different counts of the votes produces three different results, another count should be made, "That’s not accusing anyone of fraud, all that is saying is the obvious it’s just common sense."
I don't agree with Pfeifer's stated position. According to McConnell's article, the election results for the state senate district 22, the state representative district 64 and state representative district 66 had identical results on the first and second summary reports. Five other election results changed between the first and second result summaries, but none affected the outcome.
The only anomoly between the second tally and the results posted on the county website, that was ultimately certified, was the result for Siegelman.
As a qualified elector, Pfeifer petitioned for a recount on Nov. 8, and the Democratic Party petitioned for a recount in all 67 counties. Pfeifer wanted a munual recount in Baldwin County "because of what appeared to be a number of problems with the equipment." Before a determination for a recount could be made, Attorney General Bill Pryor issued an opinion that sealed paper ballots could not be counted without a court order to break the seals. The result of this opinion was that unless Siegelman contested the election in court, or a grand jury was empaneled for an investigation, county election boards did not have the authority to break the seals on ballots and voting machines. The Baldwin ballots remained sealed.
As an aside, Bill Pryor was the beneficiary of a recess appointment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit by George Bush, April 9, 2003. On June 9, 2005, he was confirmed by a Senate vote of 53-45. He now has a lifetime position on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
In an interview with McConnell, Dan Gans denied ever having been in Bay Minette, Alabama. Gans' bio on the Alexander Strategy Group’s website stated that he "implemented a state of the art ballot security program that was critical to securing Governor-elect Riley’s narrow margin of victory (3,120 votes)."
Siegelman conceded to Riley on November 18, and Riley was sworn in as governor January 21, 2003.
Riley signed legislation on June 20, 2003, that requires an automatic recount of votes in a general election if a candidate is defeated by less than one-half of a percent.
Professor James Gundlach was also interviewed by McConnell on July 11. In the interview, he said:
I make the case that this is an extremely suspicious vote (...) The circumstances surrounding it are really hard to believe ... The notion that the software is designed to count votes, (but that it) comes up with different results means somebody is messing with the software.
Gundlach said that statisticians at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told him that his report on the election was the "strongest statistical evidence of election theft they’ve seen."