IF IT LOOKS LIKE A DUCK…

There’s an old saying that goes something like, ‘If it looks like a duck; walks like a duck; and quacks, it’s a duck.’

Well, election fraud in the Palmetto State is quacking its head off.

The cast of characters in the South Carolina election scene reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of Democratic politics. The Fowlers, Carol and Don, are as much a touchstone of the SC Democratic Party as are the Kennedys in Massachusetts. Don is the former DNC Chair. Carol is the Chair of the SC Democratic Committee. Although married for only 3½ years, they have worked together in party politics for over 30 years. Both are members of the DNC’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee; both were Super Delegates to the 2008 DNC Convention. In the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary election, Don claimed he supported HRC; his wife supported BO.

Kathy Hensley, Treasurer of the SC Democratic Party, has been active in politics for over 40 (forty) years. In 1968, she was the National Finance Manager, McCarthy for President; she was Assistant to the State Director, Richard Gephardt for President 2004. She has been President and board member of a number of local, regional, and national non-profit organizations and participated as a volunteer and staff member in many local, state, and national campaigns in both Virginia and South Carolina. Currently she is Chair of the Lexington County Democratic Party in Virginia.

Garry Staub is currently the Public Information Officer for the South Carolina Election Commission. He has worked for the Commission at least 8 (eight) years, being mentioned in the minutes of the meeting of the SCEC back on April 19, 2001. (Note: At that time, he was their Training Coordinator.)

As previously posted on this blog, on November 1, 2007 Carol Fowler typed a memorandum to the SC Election Commission, certifying the names of the D candidates that should appear on the January 28, 2008 Presidential Primary ballot. The names of these candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and others, were typed below. Then, she informed the SCEC enclosed was a check for $160,000, $20,000 for each of the “seven” candidates and signed her name. (There were 8 (eight) candidates in all.) But as you saw, beneath the typed portion of the memo and, partially superimposed over her signature, appeared several handwritten lines, below which was the signature of Kathy Hensley, and the date, November 1. (Scroll to the 4th document shown.)

View this document on Scribd

I recognized that the language of her handwritten note mimicked the SC statute. So, I wondered, how did Kathy Hensley come to hand write the statutory language that appears on the bottom of Carol Fowler’s typed candidate certification memo? Enlisting Dawn’s help, I can now answer that question.

Turns out, Kathy Hensley hand-delivered Carol Fowler’s November 1, 2007 memo to the offices of the SCEC. Garry Baum said so. He remembered that someone in the office – he could not recall whether he or another staffer – pointed out, ‘she’ “forgot” to add the statutory language that the D candidates listed to get their names printed on the SC primary ballot were eligible for the job. He said she had not noticed this language was missing, on her own.

So, Ms. Hensley added the required language, then and there, along with her signature. And that explains the unusual appearance of the state D party Certification of names for the Presidential Preference primary election.

This omission begs the question: Was Chairwoman Fowler’s oversight intentional? Who knows. On the one hand, she was only elected to that position in April 2007. On the other hand, along with her husband, she had been involved in party politics for over 30 years. Ms. Hensley, another party veteran, ostensibly had not seen this omission. Had she seen the letter at any time before she handed it over to the Election Commission and failed to notice the missing language of eligibility verification? Maybe, maybe not.

And this: Does the organization of the D party or, the laws of the state of SC authorize the Treasurer of the party to authenticate the eligibility of the names of the D candidates submitted to the Election Commission to be placed on the ballot?

These are only some of the questions appropriately asked in the context of a criminal investigation.

Now, I want to explain how people throughout the blogosphere thoroughly misconstrued the (posting of the) August 14, 2008 letter from Carol Fowler to the SCEC, Certifying the names of the candidates that should be placed on the general election ballot as well as their eligibility for the job, which was posted on the web site, “americamustknow,” and linked to from the blog “yourfellowcitizen.” http://americamustknow.com/Documents/southcarolinabologna.pdf

As you can see, this August 14, 2008 document appears to be 1 of 3 documents faxed to the recipient, shown by page numbers in the upper right hand corner, “1,” “2,” and “3.” Ms. Fowler’s August 14 letter is page 2; the document on page 3 is the Official DNC Certification of Nomination signed by NP on August 27. People who read these documents – Ms. Fowler’s August 14 letter and the Official DNC Certification of BO’s nomination – have expressed their indignation that Ms. Fowler certified the nominees 2 (two) weeks before the DNC Convention. How did she know BO and JB would win the nomination! But this outrage was, understandably, based on their mistaken belief that, the DNC Official Certification of Nomination posted as page 3, necessarily contains the information referenced in Ms. Fowler’s August 14 letter, page 2, which immediately precedes it on the published pages. But in fact, notwithstanding they are numbered sequentially, page 2 of the fax had absolutely nothing to do with page 3.

As we know, the Official DNC Certification of Nomination was submitted to the SCEC by DNC General Counsel Sandler; you can access his letter posted on this blog in “UP TO HERE IN ELECTION FRAUD IN SC. FROM THE CHAIR OF THE 2008 DNC CONVENTION TO THE CHAIR OF THE DNC.” (As you have seen, Mr. Sandler’s letter contained no Certification of eligibility for BO or JB but, as we have just discussed above, their eligibility was sworn to by Ms. Hensley, in November 2007, when their names were submitted for inclusion on that state’s January 2008 Presidential Preference primary ballot.) Rather, the candidates to whose eligibility Ms. Fowler attested in that August 14 letter, did not include BO and JB as the Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees for the party, but all of the ‘down ticket’ Democrats whose names the state D party wanted to appear on SC’s general election ballot, names listed on pages that were attached to her filing with the SCEC but omitted from subsequent postings on the above-sited blogs. Here is that list of D candidates, in its entirety.

View this document on Scribd

In sum, the August 14 letter from SC D state party Chair Carol Fowler Certifying the names and the eligibility of D candidates to appear on that state’s general election ballot appears to be kosher. On the other hand, that November 1, 2007 typed and hand-written memo Certifying the names and eligibility of D candidates to appear on that state’s Presidential Preference primary, signed by both Ms. Fowler and Ms. Hensley, could have ‘election fraud’ written all over it.

Biographical information taken from these sites.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/05/30/its-not-all-in-the-family-for-some-dnc-rules-committee-members.html
http://www.scvotes.org/files/ACCT.%20REPORT%2008-09.pdf
http://www.lexingtonchronicle.com/clients/lexingtonchronicle/20090514PageA6.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/biden/bidenorgsc.html
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:oILs9qPDv7oJ:www.aspaonline.org/swpa/BTGFall_08%255B5%255D.pdf+profiles+of+outstanding+women+kathy+hensley+south+carolina&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
http://www.state.sc.us/scsec/minutes/apr01.htm