Election Issues

Even in Democratic County, They Rigged To Avoid The Extra Work and Embarrassment that Finding Discrepancies Would Bring

THE BASIC NEWS:

The verdict is in on whether the November 2004 presidential election recount in Ohio was "illegally rigged {by election officials} in what was supposed to be a random sample recount in {order} to avoid a time-consuming hand count of all votes." http://wcpo.com/news/2007/local/01/23/oh_elections.html

Verdict: Two officials found Guilty of felony level negligent misconduct in elections. The lowest level manager of the three officials charged was acquitted on all counts.

The two convicted Election officials face terms of 6 to 18 months in prison. A third assistant manager was acquitted on all counts. http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/165362...

Three criminal prosecutions in Ohio's biggest county have opened with strong indications that the cover-up of the theft of the 2004 presidential election is starting to unravel. Prosecutors say these cases involve "rigging" the recount in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), where tens of thousands of votes were shifted from John Kerry to George W. Bush, or else never counted. Meanwhile, corroborating evidence continues to surface throughout Ohio illuminating the GOP's theft of the presidency. According to the AP, County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter opened the Cuyahoga trial by charging that "the evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless." Baxter said the three election workers "did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months" on the recount.

Jacqueline Maiden, the county election board's third-ranking employee, faces six counts of misconduct involving ballot review. Rosie Grier, the board's ballot department manager, and Kathleen Dreamer, an assistant manager, are also charged. All three are on paid administrative leave, and are being supported by the county board of elections.

I am in the famous Mystic Pizza, in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, where a young, unformed Julia Roberts grins from a fading movie poster. Out the window, the late November sky gathers cold, grey and moist, wanting to snow. Townspeople, bundled up, hurry in and rush out with sizzling pizza in boxes.

Against the wall, serenely oblivious, gold and silver and rainbow colored fish shimmer and wiggle and dart in the warm water of their tank. I recall my first time snorkeling, after running a terrible marathon in Hawaii. There I was, just a gal from Ohio, glimpsing creatures underwater so exquisitely beautiful and diverse and beyond my imagination that my eyes teared.

And now, on my walks through this centuries-old New England village, I pass an old, squat, one story red brick building. It sits apart from the surrounding three-story wood structures. No filigree porch or widow’s walk. Above the door a flaking brown sign states in white: Fourth District Voting Hall.

Recount-Audit Observations
Franklin County, Ohio
December 2006

The evidence adduced during post election review of the results demonstrate(s) unequivocally that by reason of stunning violations of Ohio law and complete disregard of mandatory election procedures established by the Ohio Secretary of State and the Ohio General Assembly… [t]he deviations are so pronounced that the results of the election are uncertain.

READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

While Democratic Party supporters celebrate their success in Ohio, where their statewide candidates won four out of five executive offices and they now control both the U.S. House and Senate, they are ignoring massive and verifiable irregularities in the 2006 election. Similar irregularities – including missing votes, undervotes and overvotes – may come back to haunt the Democrats in the 2008 general election.

The only statewide partisan loss for the Democrats was also the closest contest. Republican Mary Taylor defeated Democrat Barbara Sykes for State Auditor by an official vote of 50.64% to 49.36%. Taylor prevailed by 48,826 votes. The Columbus Dispatch’s final poll, usually the most accurate in the state for candidate races, predicted Sykes would win by 10%.

An analysis by the Free Press documents massive discrepancies between the unofficial turnout reported by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately following the election and the official general election turnout numbers reported in December 2006. These discrepancies may help explain Sykes’ unexpected loss.

An expert computer security programmer who successfully manipulated the results of a mock election held on a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in Florida, as well as finding major security vulnerabilities on a Diebold touch-screen system in Utah, has agreed to meet a public challenge to "manipulate" a Sequoia voting system in Riverside County, California.

Read more at BradBlog.

Media, Pennsylvania, Dec 11, 2006. Something was rotten in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, on Election Day, November 7, 2006. According to the Numbered List of Voters in the precinct known as "Newtown 1" in the Philadelphia suburbs, 984 citizens arrived at the precinct to cast their votes. But the voting machines tallied 1089 ballots -- an overvote of 10%.

We don't know exactly what happened. It's clear that the next thing to check is the pollbook -- but the Delaware County Board of Elections has not responded to Election Integrity's week-old request to see the pollbook. And whatever the pollbook says, it won't explain how the Delaware County Board of Elections missed such a whopping discrepancy in their certification process.

We also don't know how many other precincts in Delaware County have similar problems. We found this discrepancy while examining a mere 10 precincts (out of hundreds), in a routine check on Election Integrity's Election Verification Exit Poll. A request to see materials from other precincts has been referred to the County's Right to Know officer, who has stated that Right to Know office requires 30 calendar days to respond.

The Republican Party is on the brink of seizing another seat in the U.S. Congress. The key race is the central Ohio 15th District Congressional House seat held by Deborah Pryce, the fourth most powerful Republican in Congress. 

On election night the preliminary vote count showed Pryce beating Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy by 3717 votes out of more than 200,000 cast. Nearly 20,000 votes remained uncounted after Election Day. Kilroy refused to concede and demanded a full accounting of provisional, absentee and uncounted machine votes.

On Monday, November 27, the final tally was announced. Kilroy officially picked up 2482 votes, leaving Pryce ahead by 1054. The Franklin County Board of Elections could have certified the results earlier, but chose instead to wait until after the Big Ten championship football game between Ohio State and the University of Michigan.

Because the margin is within 1/2% of the votes cast, Franklin County Board of Elections Director Matt Damschroder says this will trigger an automatic recount within ten days.

Just as local cities have adopted environmental and wage laws that exceed federal standards, maybe it's time for local initiatives protecting the sanctity of the vote. We've been seeing electoral abuses and manipulations since the Bush administration took power. So we need to ensure the Democrats make national electoral protection a priority. But we can also act on a local level.

Though the Democratic surge took back the Senate and House, some ugly actions quite likely shifted several close Congressional races. The poster race for this election's abuses, appropriately, is Catherine Harris's old Congressional district in Sarasota, FL. Whether through manipulation or error, electronic voting machines in that district logged 18,000 fewer votes in this neck-and-neck congressional race than for governor or senator, and fewer than wholly uncontroversial down-ballot races like the Sarasota Public Hospital Board. Whatever the causes, these votes disappeared in a county that Democrat Christine Jennings carried by 53 percent, and would have likely allowed her to defeat Republican Vern Buchanan.

"After the first challenge, this one big guy stood over me and pointed his finger," Anne Schultz e-mailed me. "Shaking a bit with anger, he said that he could throw me out in a minute for disrupting the election. The woman was on her way out of the polling place, and I asked her to stay until this was resolved, which she was glad to do. I reminded him that I wasn't disrupting the election, I was simply doing what was within my rights, but after that the cozy relationship I thought I'd established with the judges, with the help of bringing donuts, went rather to hell."

This is democracy raw, warts exposed. It's not the kind you see on TV - all sanitized numbers and gleeful winners - but the real deal, one vote at a time, a power struggle in every precinct, as fair as it has to be (and no fairer).