Alex N. Vogel, American Center for Voting Rights De Facto Executive Director
With so much media attention focused on Mark "Thor" Hearne, Alex Vogel's role in the operations of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) is being overlooked. As ACVR Executive Director and Free Enterprise Coalition representative, Alex Vogel was in a position to coordinate a campaign to disenfranchise Democratic voters and generate support for restrictive voting laws by discrediting ACORN and other organizations conducting voter registration drives.
I called Alex Vogel the de facto ACVR executive director because it was Vogel's lobbying firm, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti (MVC), rather than Vogel himself, that was paid $75,000 in 2005 to be the ACVR executive director, according to the 2005 ACVR 990.
The ACVR also paid $72,687 to Alex Vogel's law firm, Holtzman Vogel PLLC, in 2005.
The only evidence of Alex Vogel's association with the Free Enterprise Coalition is a reference to it in a 12/30/05 Free Press article by Bob Fitrakis, "Fake voting rights activists and groups linked to White House":
"...The Wood County case was withdrawn in June 2005, but not before it was revealed that the plaintiff, Mark Rubick, had been "indemnified" and held "harmless" by an obscure group, the Free Enterprise Coalition, with ties to the Republican Party. Signing as the "Authorized representative" for the Coalition was one Alex Vogel..."
The Wood County case that Fitrakis is referring to is a civil RICO lawsuit filed on 12/17/04 by Mark A. Rubick and Jamey C. Koralweski that charged ACORN, ACT, the NAACP National Voter Fund and the AFL-CIO with racketeering. The lawsuit was financed by the Free Enterprise Coalition.
Among other things, Rubick and Koralewski accused the defendants of intentionally filing fraudulent voter registrations to enhance the success of their registration drives which would attract more donations.
The lawsuit was withdrawn in June 2005 but by then, the lawsuit had been cited extensively in the ACVR's Ohio Report. The Ohio Report was submitted to Bob Ney's Government Administration Committee and the Department of Justice in March 2005 as evidence of extensive Democratic voter fraud and voter intimidation. The original 15-page complaint filed by Rubick and Koralewski was attached as an exhibit to the report.
The Ohio Report is online here. The Ohio Report exhibits can be downloaded here.
The Ohio Report is representative of how the Free Enterprise Coalition and the American Center for Voting Rights collaborated to make it appear the Democratic Party and left-leaning organizations knowingly and intentionally engaged in voter fraud and voter intimidation.
One question that I have not seen asked, let alone answered, is what action the DOJ took after it received the Ohio Report. On the the ACVR website, the heading is "ACVR Refers Ohio Voter Fraud Report To Department of Justice."
Given the politicization of the DOJ, I don't think it is a stretch of the imagination to consider that one of the objectives of the ACVR Ohio Report was to provide the DOJ with cause to open an investigation of ACORN and the other organizatons conducting voter registration drives.
When USA-WDMO Bradley Schlozman announced the indictment of the ACORN Four on 11/1/06, he said "This national investigation is very much ongoing." Is there an ongoing investigation of ACORN and was it instigated by the American Center for Voting Rights?
Read the 11/3/06 Wall Street Journal editorial about the indictment of the ACORN Four. Those big GOP corporate donors would like nothing more than to have ACORN on the hot seat.
Even if the Ohio Report did not prompt any investigations, the question arises as to whether the DOJ's Civil Rights Section relied on "evidence" in the report to justify a shift in focus from promoting voter rights to promoting voter disenfranchisement.
The problem is that much of the so-called evidence in the Ohio Report was manufactured. Was it manufactured at the direction of Alex Vogel?
More to come.
Was Mark Rubick paid to file a RICO complaint against ACORN et al? If he wasn't, he was a fool because everyone else involved with it was making money.
Less than three months after he filed the complaint against ACORN et al, Rubick bought a house in Wood County with little or no money down. Based on the interest rate, it appears that Rubick may not have had an excellent credit rating.
PROPERTY TRANSFER RECORD FOR WOOD COUNTY, OH
Buyer: RUBICK, MARK A; RUBICK, REBECCA A (Husband and Wife), Joint Tenancy
Buyer Mailing Address: 1109 SANDPIPER LN, BOWLING GREEN, OH 43525
Seller: DOLD INVESTMENT CO (Company/Corporation)
Property Address: 1109 SANDPIPER LN, BOWLING GREEN, OH 43525
Sale Date: 2/28/2005
Recorded Date: 3/3/2005
Sale Price: $ 195,800 (Sales Price or Transfer Tax rounded by county prior to computation. Varies by county)
County Transfer Tax: $ 587.40
Lender: MORTGAGE LENDERS NETWORK USA INC
Type of Mortgage: FANNIE MAE/FREDDIE MAC; ADJUSTABLE RATE
Loan Amount: $ 195,750
Rate: 8.50 %
Term: 3/1/2035
June 16, 2007 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
An 8.5% intrest rate in 2005 - wow, his credit must have sucked! And it appears to have been for 100% financing.
June 16, 2007 10:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly my point, C 92. Based on the financing, Rubick was a guy who could use a few bucks. Getting involved in a racketeering lawsuit is risky and I don't think most people would do it without have a stake in the outcome.
Alex Vogel and the Free Enterprise Coalition may have indemnified Rubick and held him harmless but I don't know what that would mean if it was ever proven that the lawsuit was orchestrated by GOP operatives to intentionally discredit and damage ACORN et al for political gain.
If Mark Rubick and Jamey Koralewski were compensated by the Free Coalition Enterprise for filing the RICO complaint, is that illegal?
And why Wood County? Are judges there known to be sympathetic to the Republican causes?
June 17, 2007 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, let's have a look at Rubick.
He appears to have had a bullet accidentally shot into his house by an elderly neighbor wielding a WW2 weapon: http://media.www.bgnews.com/media/storage/paper883/news/2007/04/30/Campus/Misfired.Bullet.Hits.Local.Home-2887678.shtml
He appears to be in the burglar alarm industry: http://www.secureohio.org/pdf/OELSSA_2006_Member_List.pdf
He appears to serve on an advisory committee of the Bowling Green State University atletics organizationL: http://bgsufalcons.cstv.com/boosters/bgu-falcon-club-board.html
He appears to have recently been the President of the Ohio Valley chapter of the Society of Cable Engineers: http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:in8D8kRQ-1IJ:chapters.scte.org/ohio/ovchapter_officers.htm+%22mark+rubick%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=16&gl=us
He is involved with a company called Thomas & Betts:
Mark Rubick
Thomas & Betts
1064 N. Main St.
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
Office (419) 353-0196
Fax (419) 353-05546
mark_rubick@tnb.com
www.tnb.com
A few more ties back to the Ohio movers and shakers in the fraudulent "voter fraud" movement are listed in this article: http://www.mirrorgeek.com/fake-voting-rights-activists-linked-to-white-house.html, which lists:
William E. Frakne of Gannon Technologies Group
Steve Hertzberg of the Election Science Institute
Franke apparently is a close friend of former AG Ashcroft's. Gannon Technologies apparently installed some sort of advanced imaging software at former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's request (you may recall that Blackwell also opted to run 2004 election results through notorious Smartech). And Franke is identified as the operations director for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Hertzberg ran the ESI as "Vote Watch" before re-naming the organization in 2005.
June 17, 2007 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
In his 6/18/07 Free Press column, "Ohio, the DOJ scandal and "Thor" - the god of voter suppression", Bob Fitrakis gives us a couple of clues about Mark Rubick (and indirectly mentions my TPM Cafe post about the Free Enterprise Coalition):
"...As the Free Press reported in 2005, Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel, concocted a story that the main problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was that the NAACP was paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Based on scant evidence and an incident of a volunteer being linked to crack use, Hearne pushed a version of voter fraud in Ohio that directly attacked not only the NAACP, but ACORN, the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio. By attacking this combination of groups, Rove and Hearne were targeting the leading forces for registering blacks, poor, union workers and young people in Ohio – those most likely to vote Democratic.
Aided by Vogel, then-attorney for Republican Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, and a front group connected to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Free Enterprise Coalition, local Republican operative Mark Rubrick filed an Ohio corrupt practices lawsuit (RICO) against all the voter registration organizations listed above in Wood County.
The civil RICO case, backed by financing from the Free Enterprise Coalition, alleged that the voter registration groups provided ". . . payments made in connections with the violations (in the form of, among other things, 'bounties,' payments or other rewards for collecting and/or processing the registrations including but not limited to illegal drugs, paid to individuals actually engaged in the violations), . . ." At the bottom of the document filed by attorneys Jeffrey Creemer and Douglas Haynam of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick of Toledo, the following words appear: "jsc\Free Enterprise Coalition\Amended Complaint.doc" calling into question who was behind the lawsuit.
The suit was later quietly withdrawn after election rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck discovered that the Free Enterprise Coalition had indemnified Rubrick and had promised to pay any and all expenses related to his RICO suit. "I told Rubrick in no uncertain terms that his accusations that the NAACP was a criminal organization were false and that the indemnification from the Free Enterprise Coalition wasn't worth the paper it was written on," Arnebeck said.
In writing about the Free Enterprise Coalition (FEC) on May 28, 2007, the website SourceWatch contains the following quote: "No website, no employees, a disconnected phone and a lapsed corporate registration. Without the 990s, you'd be hard pressed to know the GOP funneled $2.8 million through the Free Enterprise Coalition to fund election-related legal expenses between 2004 and 2005."...
July 9, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The bottom of each page of Mark Rubick and Jamey Koralewski's complaint charging ACORN et al with racketeering is marked "jsc/Free Enterprise Coalition/Amended Complaint.doc." See p.38 of the exhibits to the Ohio Report.
"jsc" is Jeffrey S. Creamer, a partner with Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP. Creamer and another SLK partner, Douglas G.Haynam are listed as the attorneys for the plaintiffs on the complaint.
Haynam is Chair of the Sylvania Area Republicans, according to his online bio. Sylvania is a suburb of Toledo.
The American Center for Voting Rights was on the drawing board when Rubick and Koralewski filed the RICO complaint in Wood County OH on 12/1/7/04. Contrary to popular belief, the first American Center for Voting Rights was registered as a non-profit corporation in the District of Columbia on 1/24/05.
June 16, 2007 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of the cases cited in the Ohio Report as an example of voter intimidation involved charges against MoveOn.org. See p.134 of the Ohio Report Exhibits.
David S. Timms and Robin L. McAfee filed a request for a temporary restraining order against MoveOn.org in a Franklin County Court at 5:30 pm on 11/2/04 which was Election Day.
The TRO was issued but I can't tell when. The TRO is marked as having been filed on 11/3/04 at 8:54 am. Does that mean the TRO wasn't issued until then?
In his affadavit, David S. Timms claimed that he had been harrassed by MoveOn.org staff when he voted at his polling place in Columbus. What ACVR failed to mention in the Ohio Report was that Timms is active in the Republican Party.
Curiously, the ACVR submitted the Timms affadavit as part of the exhibits but not McAfee's. We don't know what happened to McAfee to cause her to join Timms in seeking the TRO against MoveOn.org.
In the case of Summit County Democratic Central and Executive Committee et al v. Blackwell et al filed in Ohio on 10/28/2004, David Timms was named as an intervenor on behalf of the state of Ohio. Timms is described as a "Challenger From Franklin County, Ohio, Individually and as A Representative of All Other Similarly Situated Challengers From All of Ohio's Counties, Except Hamilton County, for Election Day, November 2, 2004."
Timms and McAfee, were represented in the MoveOn.org case by William M. Todd of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. According to his SSD bio, Todd served as "litigation counsel in election matters for groups such as the Free Enterprise Coalition, the American Center for Voting Rights and the Ohio Republican Party."
To summarize, a GOP operative filed a complaint on Election Day against MoveOn.org which was handled by a GOP lawyer who was paid by the GOP or a GOP front and the case was submitted to a GOP-controlled Congress and DOJ as evidence of Democratic voter intimidation. No word on whether the judge is a Republican.
The Ohio Report did not report on the disposition of the case against MoveOn.org.
June 16, 2007 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the afternoon of 11/2/04, Election Day, the Ohio Republican Party got a temporary restraining order against the Marion County Democratic Party and possibly the Greene County Democratic Party, the Ohio Democratic Pary and ACT Ohio.
The TRO ordered, among other things, the organizatons to refrain from phoning voters and giving them misinformation.
The Chair of the Marion County Democratic Party submitted an affadavit on 11/23/04 to the court in which she said the Kerry Edwards campaign had indeed made misleading calls while operating out of Marion County Democratic Party offices.
What I noticed is that the TRO itself was faxed from the Marion County courthouse at 3 pm on 11/2/04 to a New York City phone number.
The phone number on the TRO is 917-403-8713 followed by 21PP2091.
I am curious as to who got the faxed TRO on Election Day and why the faxed copy of the TRO was submitted as an exhibit to the Ohio Report instead of the original.
June 16, 2007 11:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
#4 - Google "Alex Vogel"
June 17, 2007 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gone - Google "Alex Vogel"
#4 at 1:30 pm and deleted by 3:30 pm
June 17, 2007 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
#4 - Google "Alex Vogel"
June 17, 2007 3:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I noted in a post about Mark "Thor" Hearne, Alex Vogel and his wife, Jill Holtzman Vogel, almost certainly brought American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund Executive Director Robin DeJarnette on board as well as directors, Whitson Robinson and Thomas M. Lawson.
The ACVR-LF is registered to DeJarnette's home address in Midlothian, Virginia.
Jill Holtzman Vogel is running for the state senate in Virginia and has been endorsed by DeJarnette and Robinson.
The relationship between Holtzman Vogel and DeJarnette dates back to at least 2003 when they teamed up to to create the VOLPAC-VCAP Victory Fund in 8/03. According to FEC records, the Fund was a joint fundraising effort between the Volunteer PAC and VCAP-Federal. Holtzman was treasurer and DeJarnette, assistant treasurer. Volunteer PAC, of course, is Bill Frist's. VCAP is the Virginia Conservative Action PAC of which DeJarnette is the executive director.
On 2/16/06, DeJarnette testified as an expert witness to the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) about voter fraud. DeJarnette was identified as a political consultant for for C4 and C5 organizations and executive director of the "ACVR". Why DeJarnette was qualified to testify as an expert in election law is not clear.
On the same day, Jason Torchinsky testified as former attorney with the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice and assist general counsel for the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR).
Torchinsky is also an attorney with Holtzman Vogel PLLC. His online bio omits any reference to what he did before joining the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004 which is odd.
Torchinsky, DeJarnett, Robinson, Lawson - Alex Vogel appears to have taken quite an active role in the day-to-day operations of the ACVR and ACVR-FL.
June 18, 2007 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink