LdC: Mike Connell and Proposition 8

It's Tinfoil Hat Time.

As we all know by now, Mike Connell has been killed in a solo plane crash in Ohio.

But what we may not all know is that on September 22, 2008, Connell's firm, Connell Donatelli Inc., was paid $200,000 for their work for the Yes on 8 campaign.

Before his untimely death, Connell had been a key witness in the King-Lincoln v. Blackwell lawsuit regarding fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.

As Yogi Berra once described it ... it's like déjà vu, all over again: on April 26, 2003, Wesley Vance, devout Mormon and senior exec at Diebold (the vote-counting company), was killed in a single-engine plane crash in Ohio.

More about Mike Connell from Larisa Alexandrovna: One of my sources died in a plane crash last night ...

H/T: TrueVote.US

Curiouser and curiouser:

1) Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio attorney litigating the lawsuit regarding alleged manipulation of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio has offered to cooperate in an investigation into California's Proposition 8.

2) In its post-election poll, the PPIC replaced the response from the folks they polled regarding Prop 8 with the previously reported vote breakdown (52% Yes, 48% No), rather than reporting the actual breakdown from their own sample.

3) In 2004, Bart Marcois, chair of the RNC Advisory Council on LDS Outreach, helped make sure that 50% of observers at Ohio's election places were made up of his Mormon volunteers.

4) Compare these two URLs (losing and winning):

A) On the basis of answers from 2,168 exit poll respondents, CNN reports Prop 8 losing 48% - 52%

B) Later in the evening, on the basis of 2,240 exit poll respondents, CNN reports Prop 8 winning 52% - 48%

C) Between the exit poll that showed Prop 8 losing and the exit poll that showed Prop 8 winning, CNN polled 72 voters ... not enough to account for the flip, even if every single voter they polled answered that they'd voted yes.

I've long wondered why so many players from the Ohio 2004 contest were involved in the Prop 8 campaign. With Mike Connell's passing, it's time to stop wondering and start sorting out this mess.

My sincere condolences to Michael Connell's family.

And to the Felt family.

Mark Felt - better-known as "Deep Throat" (and less well-known as patriarch of a devout Mormon family) - has passed on at 95.

We could all benefit from a few more Mormons like Mark right about now.

Absent that, how about a few more no-holds-barred reports like this one?

OK, so it wasn't so much "no-holds-barred" as it was "more-questions-than-answers."

Frankly, that's also where I happen to be right about now.

And here's why: