Whistleblower Sherole Eaton Appears at Hearing to Challenge Her Firing.
American Hero Shows up to Fight, Just Days After Undergoing Brain Surgery.
By Brad Friedman on 6/9/2005, 10:28pm PT  

We meant to blog about this earlier, but were waylaid by the power outage today and other matters... In any case, a DU'er announced last night that a meeting of the Hocking Democratic Central Committee was to take place tonight to discuss the recent firing by the Board of Elections of Ohio Recount Whistleblower, Sherole Eaton.

(Eaton was a guest on last weekend's BRAD SHOW to discuss the matter. In case you missed it the interview is archived here [MP3]).

Eaton filed an affidavit during the December recount concerning some chicanery she witnessed by a Voting Machine Company employee from Triad. The employee, Mark Barbarian, she testified, removed a hard drive from the central tabulating machine in Hocking County prior to the recount and instructed her county and others in Ohio, on how to create a "cheat sheet" to ensure that the recount would match the original Election results.

As her thanks for whistleblowing, she was fired this month by the Hocking County Board of Elections.

The legend goes --- as spread frequently and thickly by Ohio Secretary of State and Co-Chair for the Committee to Re-Elect Bush/Cheney, J. Kenneth Blackwell --- that nothing could possibly have been amiss in Ohio's Election, since all of the BoE's are bi-partisan and comprised of two Democrats and two Republicans.

Trouble is, many of those Democrats, we've since come to learn, may indeed be "Democrats" in name only. They serve at the approval and pleasure of Blackwell and the behavior of the Hocking County Democrats on the BoE give every indication that they are anything but Democrats.

As Eaton explained to us on the show last Saturday night, these Boards of Elections are "cooked".

This evening, the Democratic Central Committee met to call those two Hocking County "Democrats", Susie Hughes and Gerald Robinette, on the carpet in a public hearing concerning the Eaton firing.

Once again, DU'er "NoBushSpokenHere" filled us in on the details including a surprise appearance by Eaton herself who was, as of this past Monday, under the knife having brain surgery for an aneurysm.

The good news is she made it through the surgery successfully. The bad news is that the surgery was unsuccessful.

Indefatigable as she is, incredibly, she made it to the meeting tonight to stand her ground and face her accusers. We'll let "NoBushSpokenHere" take it from here:

I was quite surprised to see Sherole in attendance at the Hocking Democrat Meeting tonight. She was released from the hospital earlier today after having brain surgery just 3 days ago. Her face is bruised, her head shaved, large incision on her head, and just as ready to stand up for Democracy as she was the day she stood up to the Hocking Board of Elections during the recount in December.

Standing before the microphone, she explained to the crowd the surgery was not successful. They were unsuccessful in clipping the aneurysm from the path they went in due to the position it is in. The aneurysm lies between her brain and eye requiring surgery through the arteries. Since she also had recently had surgery on her carotid artery, they could not go through them. They plan to go back in and place a coil on the aneurysm.

Since she was fired effective June 30, 2005, she is hoping to have the surgery yet this month while she still has insurance. She can keep her insurance through the COBRA plan, but it will cost approximately $600 a month. A pledge list was passed around the room and donations were made to help pay her insurance premiums. It was decided to place the funds into the fund established by her son, Sherole Eaton 11/02/2004. Sherole received a standing ovation from the crowd of Democrats in attendance.

Hocking County President Regina Prater opened the floor for discussion of Sherole's firing. The two Hocking "democrat" Board of Election members, Susie Hughes and Gerald Robinette were present at the meeting. It was these two individuals that had voted for Diebold and voted along with the Republicans to fire Sherole. Bruce Johnson stated to Gerald Robinette, “We will have a recommendation of who we want to become the next Deputy Director” and asked “Will you follow our recommendation?” Gerald Robinette replied, “No, I cannot say that we will” and added, “We normally just go along with whomever the Republicans want” A few people spoke to the group to explain these two individuals do not have the Democrat parties' interest at heart. The crowd applauded and shouted in support of cleaning up the party.

Regina Prater asked for the resignations of both Susie Hughes and Gerald Robinette from the BOE. They refused despite the resounding applause in support of her request.

(Special thanks to BRAD SHOW engineer, Eddie Ajamian for keeping us apprised on this matter and the coverage over at DU.)

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