Members of the Progressive Ohio Backbone Campaign traveled to Hocking County on Monday morning, July 11, and filed criminal charges with the Hocking County Sheriff’s Department against the county’s Board of Elections (BOE) Director Lisa Schwartze.

::::::::

Members of the Progressive Ohio Backbone Campaign traveled to Hocking County on Monday morning, July 11, and filed criminal charges with the Hocking County Sheriff’s Department against the county’s Board of Elections (BOE) Director Lisa Schwartze.

Schwartze had previously admitted at the July 5 BOE meeting that she had used the office to promote a Republican Party fund-raiser last fall. The charges filed against Schwartze, however, do not to pertain to Schwartze’s use of the BOE office for partisan political fund-raising. Rather, the charges filed pertain to her alleged illegal shredding of election documents, the Free Press has learned.

Sherole Eaton, the fired Hocking County BOE deputy director and Congressional whistleblower, who swore an affidavit against a Triad company technician for allegedly offering a cheat sheet and replacing the county’s central voting tabulator hard drive during last year’s presidential recount, says that Schwartze may have destroyed up to “ten thousand documents.”

“I told her that she couldn’t shred and delete the changes of addresses that were coming in from registered voters during the election year, but she wouldn’t listen to me,” Eaton explained, “In order for Lisa to destroy those documents, she’s got to go to the Board of Elections, state officials, and then ask the Ohio Historical Society if they want them. And even then, she can only destroy them according to a public records retention schedule that requires they are kept for four years.”

Eaton says that all investigators would have to do is ask Schwartze for hard copies of the change of address forms to verify her allegations.

Eaton also claimed that she told BOE President Gerald Robinette of Schwartze’s action including her use of the office for Republican fund-raising purposes and the Democratic Board Chair said, “Let’s not go public with it. We can use it for blackmail purposes later.”

“I think he thought of it as some form of political leverage, but I really didn’t understand why he didn’t investigate activity that is obviously illegal,” Eaton said.

Eaton told the Free Press that Schwartze, a Republican, and Robinette had hand-picked a Democratic replacement for her job who was the wife of a prominent Republican and had no history of voting in Democratic primaries.

A hastily called Hocking County BOE meeting on Monday, July 11 went into a private executive session to discuss legal issues concerning Eaton’s firing and a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting the BOE from replacing Eaton. Cliff Arnebeck, an Alliance for Democracy attorney, obtained the TRO from Judge Gerkin and served the Board at the July 5 meeting.

The Logan Daily News ran a front page article following the July 5 BOE meeting which included Schwartze’s admissions that she had coordinated a Republican auction out of her office. The Columbus Dispatch, in a front page Metro story on July 9, wrote that Schwartze “used the government office downtown as a collection drop for items being donated to a silent auction featured at a Republican Party fundraiser last fall.”

Eaton told the Free Press that Schwartze used the BOE phones to coordinate the event and plan the catering. Schwartze publicly admitted using the phone for fund-raising purposes.

Arnebeck believes that the Hocking County prosecutor will agree to reinstate Eaton because of the obvious “retaliation” against Eaton for bringing allegations of illegalities to the Board. The Logan Daily News reported that Board members anonymously claim that Eaton is not a team player.

But Eaton told the Free Press, “Why should I be a team player if the director’s doing illegal things? She took an entire rotating file cabinet of registration documents including brand new changes of addresses and shredded the hard copy and deleted items on a computer. Why should I keep my mouth shut? And I really don’t understand the so-called Democrats that fire me after I blow the whistle.” Eaton said the document shredding occurred between the spring primary and the November 2 election last year.

Eaton, who is a 65-year-old widow, recently underwent unsuccessful brain surgery for an aneurysm and is concerned about a lack of health care. She says she appreciates the supporters who are standing up with her and believes that Democratic BOE officials in Hocking County definitely need “a backbone.”

--

Bob Fitrakis is the co-editor of Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election? http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel with Cliff Arnebeck in the Alliance for Democracy suit against the Hocking County Board of Elections.

Submitter: Rob Kall

Submitters Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation