Ballots run through wrong vote tabulator in Ohio (led to miscounts)-link

[Vote4Kerry]

This was posted on DU earlier. Hopefully the people doing the recount in Ohio will get this information so that the same mistakes will not happen during the recount:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x124029

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DUer Verve wrote:

"Truehawk and k8conant have brilliantly discovered in some Ohio precincts that certain ballots were possibly run through the wrong vote tabulator. Thus, miscounting votes. If multiple precincts with different ballots voted at the same location, ballots could have easily been tallied in the wrong machine. Please see their posts below.

This definitely looks like an area to research further. Questions that come up are:
Where are the multiple precincts that voted in one location?
What did their ballots look like? How were they different?
What candidates would have benefited from a mistake in these locations? And thus, did these candidates have significantly elevated votes in these precincts?

The problem is that if ballots are shuffled into the wrong stacks, a machine recount will not discover this. It will only ensure the same votes they got in the first count. What needs to be insisted upon is that all ballots are checked first to ensure they are in the correct precinct stack before they are run through the machines.

I know, I know. Ohio election officials will Fuss Big Time about this. However, if all ballots would have been color coded for each precinct, like in most states, this would not be an issue. A good question to ask Mr. Blackwell is why he did not color code ballots?"

[Zan_of_Texas]

1. Color code ballots and boxes they go in. ALSO, why not create the

same ballot rotation on all precincts that vote within the same building? That way, if they DO get mixed, there would be little change if any.

I think I know the answer. OFT

(Old-Fashioned Thuggery)

[ClarkinMich]

2. I know this can happen

but it might be purely due to incompentance and poorly designed machinery.

This exact thing happened to my wife here in Michigan.

Same situation -- 2 precincts, 1 polling place, different ballots. We have optical scan balloting, but similar to Ohio, the ballot is scanned by machine as the last step.

ONE DIFFERENCE -- THE MACHINE IN MICHIGAN WOULD NOT SCAN HER BALLOT IN THE WRONG PRECINCT.

So the machine told her a spoiled ballot. The inattentive election worker gave here a new ballot... now from the wrong precinct. She filled it out... and when she went to scan it, they then figured out she was scanning at the wrong machine (which had no sign on it for which precinct it was for). The election workers then got in her face, told here she made the mistake and she couldn't vote. She was trying to call the election protection hotline when the Democratic challenger stepped in and argued with the elections officials to give her a 3rd ballot, which they eventually did and she filled out and scanned it in the correct machine.

The democratic challenger took her complaint, and I think it is one of the 37,000+. When I got there to vote 1 hour later, there were big signs on the machines as to which precinct they were and the workers at the scanners were asking every voter which precinct they were in.

Now the kicker of it all -- her franchise was saved and, because of the Democratic challenger, her vote for W was counted.

AND THEY SAY THIS IS A PARTISIAN ISSUE!!!!!!

THIS IS ABOUT THE KEY RIGHT OF A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY -- THE RIGHT TO VOTE!!!

[Vote4Kerry]

3. Thanks for posting your story

I will try to forward it to others

[KaliTracy]

4. when secretary of state/co-chair of bush/cheny committee

decided to merge precincts -- of course they should have figured out a way to differentiate the different machines/ballots....

[demodonkey]

5. Votamatic Changes Its Own Settings for Each Precinct's ballots...

based on a preset code for the ballot rotation being used in that precinct. When a ballot goes through the Votamatic machine, it reads the precinct code and tallies the candidates in the order assigned to that particular code. No need to color code or change any settings for different rotations of candidates on the ballots in different precincts.

Confirmed with a BOE Director in one OH county (she showed me her code sheets, and explained how it works). I am working on the Ohio recount.