OHIO: Odd vote results point to mix-ups at some precincts

[sled]

Odd vote results point to mix-ups at some precincts

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1102674912293811.xml

Friday, December 10, 2004

Diane Solov and Diane Suchetka
Plain Dealer Reporters

The election results tabulated from the two precincts at Benedictine
High School seemed off-kilter from the start.

Had more than a third of the 1,000-plus voters at the East Side school
really embraced the ideals of Michael Peroutka, the candidate of the
Constitution Party, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik?

Could 215 people have voted for Peroutka in a precinct that delivered
299 votes for John Kerry?

Did Badnarik win 164 votes to Kerry's 334 in the precinct that was in
the same room?

At more than a dozen Cuyahoga County precincts - primarily on
Cleveland's East Side - spikes in votes for the little-known third-
party contenders shot up a flare that something went awry on Election
Day.

(SNIP)

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: [e-mail], 216-999-4133

CONTACT INFO: [e-mail]

[JusticeForAll]

1. Would the media be outraged if their candidate lost?

"But the numbers appear small and the incidents relatively few."

The numbers always appear small until you actually start adding them up and really counting them.

[Streetdoc270]

5. The best way to steal a million dollars

is one penny at a time....

[LiberalFighter]

6. Superman Movie with Richard Pryor

He programmed the software to divert fractions of pennies to his account.

[Streetdoc270]

10. exactly...

And that is where my theory of Election '04 comes from. You don't need to manipulate a lot of votes in one place but rather a few votes from a lot of places

[SoCalDem]

15. 110K extra votes x 31 states "won" = 3.41 million mandate

and of course a portion of Kerry votes would just be "given" to third-party candidates.. No easy way to figure it out.

It was not just in a few states.. I suspect that there was some skewing in LOTS of states.. The software probably arrived with the "fix" built in..

Look at the last minute frenzy of "campaigning" .. That was just a ruse to explain why *² got more votes than "expected"..

He HAD to have a decisive "mandate" and the only guarantee was to pad the count in places that would NOT be contested..and pad them A LOT... and in other places, pad them "just enough"...

[Gman]

2. That fits the pattern of keeping Bush with 51% and

redistributing the rest of the votes to other party candidates and Kerry.

[seafan]

3. Fury doesn't describe it any more.

The stage for the mix-ups was set by a state law that requires candidates' names be rotated on ballots so that each candidate gets a turn at the top position. The rotation is done in the name of fair play, a nod to conventional wisdom that undecided voters tend to choose the name at the top.

In Cuyahoga County, where punch-card voting machines are used, the names are rotated on the pages in voting books that guide voters to the proper position on the punch cards. There were five versions of the page for the presidential candidates.

------snip

Voters from multiple precincts typically share a polling place. Candidates' names in voting books are rotated by precinct, so there are different versions at the same polling place.

-----snip

The problem comes when a punch-card ballot for one precinct is inserted in the voting device for another precinct. Because of the name rotation, a voter unknowingly punches a hole for the wrong candidate.

-----snip

But there are clear signs that, in some cases, poll workers erred in setting up the polling stations or misdirected voters. And voters, who often stood in long lines in cramped quarters, may have grabbed any open booth they could find, unaware there was a difference. In some cases, a combination of both factors conspired to produce bad votes.

-----snip

"There was no distinction between precincts," Daley said. "Voters were being told to go to any machine that was open."

------snip

Gant was a Democratic observer who saw poll workers respond to long lines, crowded space and a broken machine by sending voters from one precinct to machines for another.

------snip

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1102674912293811.xml (requires free registration)


There is only one solution to this colossal mess, and that is a REVOTE nationwide, using pen and paper ballots, hand counted at each precinct immediately after the poll closes and under observation by representatives of the public, and the results immediately phoned in to the Supervisor of Elections' Office.

Computers must be banned from every step of this process.

We must accept nothing less at this juncture.

[LiberalFighter]

7. Comparison should be made between last two elections and this election

How many and which precincts shared polling places?

[Starlight]

11. If the poll workers in OH weren't aware of something this basic...

how can we assume they didn't screw up a lot of other things? Did they receive any training at all? Wasn't there anyone on site who had worked as a poll worker before?

[AirAmFan]

14. Why didn't this problem affect Bush votes just as much as Kerry's?

Easy: Pro-Bush precincts were NOT overcrowded on Election Day. People who wanted to vote for Bush generally had no trouble doing so. But there was a DELIBERATE BLACKWELL STRATEGY to overcrowd pro-Kerry precincts by massively shortchanging them on voting machines (compared to the number they got in 2000) and simultaneously supplying extra voting machines to the suburbs. The weather accomodated Dubya also--it rained hard just about all over the state, and tens of thousands of people waited to vote in Kerry precincts for up to ten hours, outside in the soaking rain. Many tens of thousands probably gave up without voting. Tens of thousands more saw the long lines on TV and never ventured out to the polls. And now this story telss us that still other tens of thousands may have voted on the wrong machines for the wrong candidate.

Have you seen the 3-hour CSPAN video of Conyers's "forum" on Ohio Election Crimes? (Wm Rogers Pitt wrote a truthout story on it with a partial transcript. The URL is in http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1423103 )

About the middle of the first hour, Bob Fitrakis, a pudgy guy in a dark suit with long dark hair touching his shirt collar, gave a detailed presentation on how the Blackwell scheme worked in his hometown, Columbus.

Fitrakis testified that, in Columbus, voter registration increased by 25 percent over the last election, and would have required over 5000 voting machines to accomodate everyone. But only 2700 voting machines actually were supplied, and they were not distributed equally. ZERO of the precincts that went 60 percent or more for Bush got fewer voting machines than they did last time. But 74 percent of predominantly minority precincts on the East Side of the city, that went for Kerry by 80 or 90 percent, were shortchanged on voting machines.

Fitrakis even reports (see the second freepress.org URL in http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2663390 )
that DUBYA HIMSELF met in Columbus on Election Day (he doesn't say whether in person or by phone or video) with Ken Blackwell and the county official in charge of supplying precincts with voting machines. What could have been on the agenda?

Do you think Dubya might have wanted to congratulate these criminals in person, for their creativity, initiative, and daring?

This Ohio election makes Watergate look like a tea party, and no mainstream media are investigating DUBYA's REPORTED DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN ELECTION CRIMES.

[woodsprite]

4. That alone sounds like documented grounds for a revote! n/t

[Beetwasher]

8. Gee, More Vote Fuck Ups That Favor Bush

I have yet to see a single one that favors Kerry...It just ain't possible...

[spotbird]

9. It is just one of those things,

no system is perfect, but the imperfections are tolerable if they favor the Republican.

[oldtime dfl_er]

12. I love the media's use of these benign phrases

"mix up" "glitches"

IT'S FRAUD, PEOPLE. It's not snafus or inadvertent errors or inaccuracies or boo boos.

[sandnsea]

13. Glitchgate

That's why I wanted to use that word. People roll their eyes at hyperbolic language like fraud. But when you start compiling these "glitches" and drawing attention to the absurdity of glitch after glitch after glitch, people would begin to get it on their own. *sigh* Oh well.