Chair of Franklin County's Board of Elections Critizes Blackwell !

[sabra]

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http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2004/Dec/EEN41c754d14d6d9.html

Like Tim Burke, Chair of Hamilton County's Board of Elections, William A. Anthony, Jr., chair of Franklin County's Board of Elections disagrees with the uniformly positive statements coming out of Ohio's secretary of state's office. Carlo LoParo, the spokesperson for Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's Secretary of State, encouraged us to contact these local county elections boards to refute any allegations of problems with Ohio's Presidential vote. He specifically mentioned that we should contact the chair's for Hamilton and Franklin County. On December 14th, we reported that Tim Burke had a lot of complaints regarding decisions made by the Secretary of State. If anything, Franklin's chairman Anthony went further.

'A lot of the problems and allegations could have been avoided if the Secretary of State hadn't made the rulings he did in the last few days leading up to the election' said Anthony, 'We in the local election boards tried to do the best we could '. Prior to the election, Franklin county joined in a lawsuit against the state regarding Blackwell's restrictive policies on provisional ballots, restrictions that prevented certain ballots from being counted that would have counted in previous years. 'In Franklin County, we tried to set up sites specifically for provisional voting ahead of the election to make sure everyone could vote and all votes were counted...in previous years you could provisionally vote anywhere in your county. We tried to take this step because we knew the state didn't allow us enough voting machines.' Blackwell's rulings prevented them from having specific sites throughout the county for provisional ballots. 'All across this county, we didnt have enough voting machines. People are blaming us at the local level, but the real blame should be placed on Blackwell, HAVA and the Republican state legislature.' Anthony blames the legislature for part of the problems because they did not vote to authorize paper trails for Ohio's electronic voting machines until late in 2003, too late to change the machines that the counties already had purchased.

Burke and Anthony both seemed to stress the problems created by Blackwell's many directives and opinions in the days right before election day. 'Why, since Blackwell has been Secretary of State since 1998 did he wait until 37 days before election day to make this ruling ?' Anthony wondered.

...


My conversations with two of them, the two that the secretary's office directed me to call, suggest a long litany of issues that may very well have changed the outcome of the election.


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edit: sp for title

[merh]

1. Shake the bushes and look what falls out.

Recognize the injustice and sing out against it to all and then sit back and listen the voices that will willingly join in the chorus.

[marc_the_dem]

2. Great post

Thanks for keeping us updated....

[sabra]

5. Thanks!

This just further shows how shady Blackwell truly is!

[ohtransplant]

3. Has this been picked up by the MSM?

I think I know the answer but I had to ask.

Has it been sent to anyone?

Four years from now, I don't want to look back and read about this realizing nothing has changed - again.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. you kidding?

[ohtransplant]

6. One can hope and pray...

[Pacifist Patriot]

8. The only way you'll see it in MSM is if

someone writes an opinion piece mocking the naysayers.

[Vidar]

7. kick. Thanks for posting.

[Igel]

9. These people were "bad guys" a week or two ago.

Don't give me whiplash, please.

William Anthony is chair of the BOE and of the local Dem party organization in Franklin county. Franklin country is where Gahanna and Columbus are. I think he was also an elector for Ohio in 1996.
DUers have already accused him of all sorts of things, probably falsely; although he (or him + 3 others) had final say over the distribution of machines and reserving any for emergency use. I think he's the one that went on record saying that they could have avoided the long lines by buying new machines, but since they'd only be for this election, it wasn't reasonable.

Tim Burke is chair of the BOE and of the local Dem party organization in Hamilton county (home to Cincinnati). Weren't these punch-card counties?

The most interesting, to my mind, comment was this: "Anthony blames the legislature for part of the problems because they did not vote to authorize paper trails for Ohio's electronic voting machines until late in 2003, too late to change the machines that the counties already had purchased."

Assuming funding is sufficient, any non-paper trail counties in 2006 are the fault of the local BOEs (assuming that the specific models they want to buy are approved, and that the local BOE doesn't deadlock, throwing the decision to the state commissioner).