Ohio Democratic Party: "Every Vote Will Be Counted!"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111004V.shtml

Every Vote Will Be Counted!
Dan Trevas, Ohio Democratic Party Communications Director
t r u t h o u t | Statement

Tuesday 09 November 2004

The Ohio Democratic Party shares Sen. John Kerry's insistence that every vote be counted.

Here is where we stand in Ohio:

After the Unofficial Results reported Nov. 2 - George Bush leads John Kerry by 136,483 votes.

Provisional ballots will be counted.

155,000 provisional ballots have been cast and not yet been counted.

County Boards of Elections have until Friday to verify the eligibility of those who cast a provisional vote. Counting will begin, Saturday, November 13. County Boards have until Dec. 1, 2004 to certify their vote totals and report them to the Secretary of State.

Two Democrats and two Republicans sit on each County Board of Elections.

Tabulations of the votes will be done in a bi-partisan manner. Only if there is a tie vote on the board does the decision go to the Secretary of State.

Overseas absentee ballots have not been counted.

Overseas Absentee ballots by civilians may have been received by County Boards of Elections by Nov. 2 that have not yet been counted. The Boards of Elections will count those votes.

Overseas absentee ballots by military have until, Friday, Nov. 12 to arrive and be counted by the Boards of Elections in the final total.

93,000 punch cards were cast, but a vote for president was not counted.

The votes were not counted either because the voter voted for more than one candidate or did not vote for a presidential candidate. These ballots will be reexamined if there is a recount.

Ohio has a uniform, statewide system for recounting punch card ballots. Hanging chads and dimpled chads are treated uniformly throughout the state.

Examination for errors going on in all 88 Ohio counties.

A Vote Error on Election night gave George Bush 3,893 more votes in a Franklin County precinct than actually cast for him. That error was found by comparing the unofficial abstract of votes casts by precinct to votes for each candidate. Officials in all 88 counties have been contacted and requested to review for a similar error.

No Ohio County used Diebold Electronic Voting Machines.

Ohio did not use modern electronic voting machines in this election. Six counties use an older form of electronic voting, which has a means of verifying the accuracy of the vote. In 69 Ohio Counties, punch card ballots were used.

Recount

In Ohio a recount is automatic for statewide election if difference in the vote is within 0.25% of the total votes cast.

For a recount is the presidential race, this is probably about a 19,000-vote margin between Kerry and Bush.

Only a losing candidate can request a recount. A recount may always be requested regardless of the closeness of the race. The recount is requested by the losing candidate. The request for a recount must be made within 5 days of the official announcement of the results by the Secretary of State.

The fee for a recount is set by each Board of Elections and may be between $5 and $10 per precinct. You can limit the recount to specific precincts. The cost is deposited by the person making the recount request at the time of the application based on the number of precincts requested to be recounted. The entire recount and contest procedures are outlined at ORC 3515.

Vote Fraud or Mistakes

Information about fraud or mistake can be reported the Ohio Democratic Party.

You can leave a message at (614) 221-6563 ext. 134 or email dan@ohiodems.org. This information will be share with our legal counsel as the official election tabulations are being made.

You may also share any concerns about voter fraud or mistakes the Secretary of State by emailing: election@sos.state.oh.us.

Is that so hard in a effing DEMOCRACY?

and we know from history they are mostly Democrats.

"The votes were not counted either because the voter voted for more than one candidate or did not vote for a presidential candidate. These ballots will be reexamined if there is a recount."

Those are overvotes, undervotes and intentional non-votes, which happens more often than people realize, even for president.

The overvotes are gone. I doubt Ohio has a provision for attributing overvotes, punch cards in which two or more candidates were chosen. Non-votes will not have a mark or chad, and ignored. Kerry may be able to gain several thousand net votes among undervotes that do have evidence of an attempted vote (dimples, chads), but with only 93,000 total in the three categories, I wouldn't expect more than + 5000.

re-examined "only if there is a recount." Those 93,000 ballots should be reason enough for a recount.

Kerry is a losing candidate-why doesn't he request a recount?
The laws in OH seem to be much clearer than those in Florida!

The request for a recount must be made within 5 days of the official announcement of the results by the Secretary of State.

Maybe I missed something, but the official announcement by the SoS can't be made until all of the provisional and absentee ballots have been tallied, right? So it's premature for Kerry (or anyone else) to request a recount. Maybe by the time that announcement is made enough discrepancies will be out there that Kerry might change his mind and ask for a recount. Who knows?

phase. Gore screwed himself up by prolonging the challenge phase and it helped to run the clock out on him during the recount phase.
Bush/Cheney/Baker helped do that too.

1) Opponent's brother, working with brother's campaign co-chairperson, disqualified tens of thousands of voters without any evidence whatsoever

2) Republican operatives forcibly shut down the recount in Miami-Dade County

3) bu$h's campaign co-chairperson refused to accept recount results favoring Gore because they were handed in 2 hours after her arbitrary deadline

4) Judge N. Sanders Sauls (who was later forced to decline an invitation by FreakRepublicans that he had previously accepted to attend a cozy get-together in South Carolina) wasted valuable time by demanding that the Democrats ship him thousands of controversial ballots by truck, only to refuse to look at them after they arrived.

5) Florida Supreme Court issued ruling mandating that all ballots be recounted, but

6) Cheney's hunting buddy on the US Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, (who owed his job to the plaintiff's father) then suddenly decided that the court should, indeed, get involved in the process, and, lo and behold, the USSC overturned the Florida court's decision without any factual basis in the Constitution.

So, no matter what Gore had done, he would have been screwed over five ways to Sunday

official announcement?

I hope that doesn't happen in OH.

Deliberate, targeted vote spoilage was used on a massive scale in this state IMHO.

19K is reasonable if the vote counting is non-partisan.

A :toast: to a great unsername!

as my fave AAR show. I can't get enough of Lizz and Rachel.

Thanks, when I saw Skinner's name change amnesty thread I thought it was a no brainer! :hi:

That's the real answer.

due to provisional and other ballots, I think Kerry should say, "George, not so fast on that inaugural speech."

No Ohio County used Diebold Electronic Voting Machines.

Ohio did not use modern electronic voting machines in this election. Six counties use an older form of electronic voting, which has a means of verifying the accuracy of the vote. In 69 Ohio Counties, punch card ballots were used.

It's not only the voting machines at the polling places, the danger is even more present if they're using the GEMS central tabulators. That's what Ms. Harris has been fighting against.

http://www.why-war.com/features/diebold-campaign.pdf

...Franklin County OH used the machines.

As Ms. Harris told Governor Dean, it's much easier changing the results of 400 voting machines after their result has been fed into the central tabulator, rather than changing 400 results on 400 machines.

it isn't just Diebold machines we must be on the lookout for - isn't the CEO of one of the other voting machine companies the brother of the vice president of Diebold?

What are your thoughts on this whole fraud issue?

As of July 2004, only three counties - Lorain, Trumbull and Hardin - were planning to use Diebold machines (all other counties had decided to stick with punch card and optical scan in light of new state legislation requiring voter-verified paper receipts by 2006). However, in mid-July Ken Blackwell barred the use of the Diebold machines in these three counties because of security flaws.

Diebold machines were not used anywhere in Ohio.

And so did Summit county, they bought diebold before they bought someone else.

the provisionals and overseas and military absentee votes. Think about it.

I think there were 90,000 more votes than voters in 30 precincts in Cuyahoga county as opposed to more votes than voters in 30 counties.

I could be wrong, but this item has been confused a lot lately.

That's what the letter doesn't say. And we have a limited amount of time?

Thanks for posting this.

Like the precinct with 4,000 more votes than registered voters? Does the whole precinct get thrown out? Do they count it anyway, knowing it is wrong? Aren't there a ton of places in Ohio with overvotes?

(I'm not sure of the term, in Florida in 2000 we called an "overvote" a ballot voting for 2 people in the same race. Remember they threw out the ballots of people voting for Gore and writing his name in on the same ballot.)

An overvote occurs where it appears that the voter picked more than one candidate in the same race, such as in the example you gave. Such ballots are considered "spoiled" and are not counted in the regular count. However, should a recount occur, they are included in the hand recount and, if the intent of the voter is clear, they are counted.

The example you gave of too many people voting is not an overvote situation. In such instances where the result seems to be a clear anomaly, the local board of elections will try to correct the problem before certifying its count.

there is truckloads of attorneys watching every move from our side.

Kerry is "fired-up" because he knows that the check is in the mail with this fraud business. He mentions running again in four years perhaps because he suspect that the provisionals and recount ballots (undervotes) will put him barely over the top, and that he'd be running for re-election then..

Wild theory. I don't believe it, but still, pause for thought..

all our info on fraud and mistakes?

;)

You better believe he wants to show some spine.

Having said that, I have not read the whole article. So I might eat my words ten minutes from now.

not to count all the votes in a supposed Democracy. That's the least that can be done, regardless of whether Kerry has conceded or not.

It's a matter of public record. We as a nation must have an accurate vote count.

He sounds like some evil dictator taking over countries. Oh, wait.
Helping America Vote Act:
January 1, 2006-Deadline for States to implement computerized Statewide voter registration database if qualified for waiver.

January 1, 2006-All punchcard and lever machines replaced in States accepting Section 102 payments who qualified for a waiver of the original deadline.

http://www.fec.gov/hava/hava.htm
http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/HAVA.html

Newt:
The 2004 election made American conservatism the majority viewpoint in the United States, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday.

He goes on to say the re-election of George W. Bush the fourth stage in the political life of majority U.S. conservatism. The first, he said, was 1980's election of Ronald Reagan, followed by 1994's “Contract with America” and the election of George W. Bush in 2000.

“Bush's 2004 re-election, which also increased the GOP's majority in the U.S. House and Senate, marks the beginning of a sustained Republican majority in that it resembles the 1936 election that saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning a second term while bringing new Democrats into the U.S. House and Senate.”

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041108-124616-9353r.htm