Investigating Reports,

The Noe Factor 

By late afternoon on November 2, 2004, nationally, all the exit polls showed John Kerry winning with 50.8% of the votes and showed George W Bush with 48.2%, meaning Kerry had a 2.6% lead over Bush. 

But when the vote counts came in at the end of election day, Bush had 50.9% of the votes, and Kerry had 48.1%, meaning Bush received 2.8% more votes than Kerry. 

According to Dr Ron Baiman, PhD, from the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois in Chicago, who has 16 years of experience teaching statistics to both graduate and undergraduate college students, there would be about 1 chance in 900,000 of that kind of statistical error occurring. 

Ohio was the most important state to Bush.  He could not win without it.  He spent so much time in the state that people began to wonder whether he had left a forwarding address to Ohio. 

At his last campaign rally in the state, a mere 4 days before the election, Bush bestowed special praise on a husband and wife team who in hindsight, were more helpful to Bush than any other politicians in Ohio, as far as rigging the election. 

““I want to thank my friends Bernadette Noe and Tom Noe," Bush told the audience at the Toledo rally, "for their leadership in Lucas County.” 

After the speech, Bush and his wife met with Tom Noe and his wife backstage, to thank them for their "work on the campaign," according to the October 30, 2004 Toledo Blade. 

As it turns out, Bush had a lot to be thankful for. During the campaign, Noe earned the title of  “Pioneer,” which means he raised at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign.  

However, Tom Noe was rewarded by Bush with an appointment as chairman of a committee of the US Mint, that advises the US Treasury secretary on designs and themes for coins and congressional medals.  

According to a Treasury Department press release Noe was recommended for the appointment by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and nominated by Treasury Secretary John Snowe.  

Noe was the guy to know in Toledo-area politics for many years. He chaired not only the Lucas County Republican Party, but also the Lucas County Board of Elections and in 2004, the regional Bush-Cheney campaign. 

As a regional chairman of the campaign, according to the April 8, 2005 Toledo Blade, Noe had frequent contact with Karl Rove, met with the President, and received White House invitations. 

According to e-mails obtained by the Blade, from Ohio Governor Bob Taft's office, Noe used his influence to obtain an invitation to a White House ceremony honoring the Ohio State football team and once in the White House, Noe was invited to attend an "Ohio political strategy session." 

In 2002, Bernadette Noe, took over the post of chairman of the Lucas County Board of Elections, and is largely credited with playing a key role in rigging of the 2004 election in Ohio. 

While Tom Noe was still BOE Chairman, he made the acquisition of electronic voting machines, bragging about how fast they were installed. But in 2004, even before election day, Lucas County was up to its neck in problems with the now infamous Diebold opti-scan vote counters. 

The dirty tricks in Lucas Country started long before election day. For instance, the Democratic headquarters was broken into and key voter data was stolen.  

In the months before the election, when voting rights activists tried to challenge the Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell's partisan handling of provisional ballots in court, Tom Noe intervened on Blackwell's behalf. Blackwell also served as co-chair for the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign,  

While Tom handled the court business, Bernadette worked to reverse the Ohio tradition of allowing provisional ballots to be cast in precincts other than the one in which voters were registered and helped disenfranchise many inner-city Toledo Democratic voters. 

On November 2, 2004, during the election, inner city voting machines broke down and polls opened late. The Toledo Blade reported that the sole machine at the Birmingham polling site in east Toledo broke down at about 7 am, and that per order of Secretary Blackwell, there were no paper ballots available for backup.  

At one school the voting machines were locked in the principal‘s office, and the principal just happened to call in sick election day. Another school in west Toledo temporarily ran out of ballots.  

In precinct after precinct, African-American voters were disenfranchised as the waiting lines grew to three, four and 5 hours and thousands were forced to leave without voting.  

The Blade discovered that in the summer of 2004, 28,000 voters were "erased" from the Lucas County registration rolls and found the purge included voters like Barbara and Ralph George "who first registered to vote for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and had lived in the same East Toledo house for 44 years." 

After a job well-done in Lucas County, in January 2005, the happy Noe couple co-sponsored Ohio’s inaugural ball in Washington, and according to the Blade, "Mr. Bush and Mr. Noe embraced. The President then hugged Mrs. Noe."  

However, on April 8, 2005, it started raining on the Noe’s parade when the results of an investigation into the Lucas County election turned up so much dirt that it forced Secretary Blackwell to fire the entire Lucas County Board of Elections. 

The investigation cited over a dozen areas of "grave concern" including failure to maintain ballot security; inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation; failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received; issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms; and failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvas. 

Over the years, Tom Noe and his wife, were equally generous to all Republican candidates for state office, federal office, and even judicial seats on the Ohio Supreme Court.  

In fact, five of the seven Supreme Court justices were Noe beneficiaries receiving over $23,000 in contributions from the husband and wife team. In 2004, Tom was even the campaign chairman for Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger. 

Noe was known to be a close associate of Ohio Senator George Voinovich and Ohio Governor Robert Taft, and had long been called northwest Ohio's "Mr. Republican."  

And Noe's generosity to Ohio politicians did not go unrewarded. In addition to his leadership positions in the GOP, he was appointed to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, the Bowling Green State University board, and the Ohio Board of Regents, which has authority over state's educational system, including the management of funds.  

In 1997, Noe even gained access to state funds when the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation started a program, allowing for investments other then stocks and bonds, and Noe cut a deal to buy and sell rare coins as an investment for the BWC.  

It seems that Noe was given authority to invest $50 million in coins and other collectibles such as baseball cards, and under the contract, 80% of the profits were to go to the worker's compensation fund, and the remainder to Noe's business.  

The Toledo Blade was the first to run a story on Noe’s gig with the state on April 3, 2005. 

Within 20 after Blackwell fired the BOE, it started pouring on the happy couple. On April 28, 2005, the Blade reported that Gregory White, US attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, had confirmed that his office, in conjunction with the FBI, was looking into Tom Noe's fundraising activities, as chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in northwest Ohio.