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It's been over a year now since Jack Axaopoulos conducted that crooked election, and there are now people interested in this topic who were not the original witnesses to the fraudulent HGAA election. So for their benefit I'd like to offer a more complete description of what happened.
I had founded the HGAA around June of 2010, but I had allowed Jack Axaopoulos to create a forum where we would conduct our business discussions on line. Those discussions ended up leading to an election for a new Chairman after our original consensus Chairman (Scott Wise) was challenged by Jack Axaopoulos. All of the HGAA discussions and voting in that election were done on the web forum which was completely controlled by Jack Axaopoulos. There were 2 factions in that election:
The first faction was generally led by John Wright and John Borton.
The second faction was generally led by Scott Wise and Bob Kuczewski.
Jack Axaopoulos (who controlled the forum) clearly supported the first faction.
When the candidates were being nominated, we had a deadline of midnight to accept our nominations. I accepted my nomination, but stated very clearly in my acceptance post that I would withdraw my nomination and support Scott if he decided to run before the deadline. And just prior to midnight, Scott posted that he would accept his nomination.
The next morning, Jack Axaopoulos took 2 actions which were improper with regard to the election:
1. He removed my post where I endorsed Scott and where I said that I would withdraw if Scott accepted.
2. He created a ballot that included both myself and Scott along with John Wright and John Borton.
It was clear to me (and many others) that Jack did that with the explicit hope of splitting the vote for Scott and having some of those votes cast for me. Imagine, for example, that the Republican party submitted one candidate for inclusion on the ballot, but the voting "authority" ended up including a second Republican candidate. That would invalidate the election right there. That's exactly what Jack had done.
But since the voting had already begun when I discovered the error the next day, I wrote to Jack and John Borton and several others asking to have my votes transferred to Scott since I was NOT a candidate. This was reasonable because Scott and I were of the same faction ("party") and it was also reasonable because I had withdrawn from the election and asked my supporters to vote for Scott.
Now you can debate whether that's the best solution to this problem or not. But since I made a public request for that action and I included the opponent candidates in that request, there is no way that it can be considered fraud. It was much more similar to asking for any ballots with "hanging chads" to be counted for that candidate. The election authority could decide whether that was a reasonable request or not. But it would never be considered fraudulent to simply make that request.
But Jack didn't want to honor that request, and instead he claimed that I was committing "voter fraud". I immediately replied that if he didn't want to credit Scott with votes cast for me (when I wasn't a candidate) then he should simply restart the election. After all, the vote had only been underway for a few hours, and our total voting team was less than a few dozen people who could be easily notified.
But Jack Axaopoulos refused to do that either because he wanted to be sure that the vote remained split. So he not only continued to claim voter fraud, but he also continued to conduct an election with me on the ballot to draw votes from Scott. In the end, John Wright won the election, but his leadership was not widely respected and the HGAA ended up dying soon after that fiasco.
The most important point here is that there was NEVER any attempt to conduct "voter fraud" because my request had been circulated as widely as possible (within the locked down forum), and I had even included the opposition members and at least one of the opposition candidates in my request. Fraud requires an attempt to deceive, and that element was never present in my actions. I was making a legitimate request to correct a flawed election ballot that was created by a crooked election authority.
I would also like to note that shortly after this crooked election, Jack Axaopoulos - who had volunteered and been trusted to register and run the torreyhawksforum.org web site - locked down that site without any authority from the President (myself) or our Board of Directors. Jack not only locked down the forum (preventing any replies), but he also defaced every page with claims of misconduct (including "voter fraud") against myself and Scott Wise. Jack Axaopoulos also abused his administrator authority and actually changed other people's posts on that forum as he has done on other forums which he has moderated.
