Ohio's 'CATERPILLAR BALLOT': Worse than Florida's Butterfly?

[AirAmFan]

Here on the eve of the scheduled meeting of Ohio's Presidential Electors, I'm amazed that a very curious feature of voting in Ohio has gotten so little publicity.

Maybe that's because it has no catchy name. You'e heard the expression, "Give it a name!" In this post, I call it "the Caterpillar Ballot", because, at the same polling place, a valid vote for John Kerry (or any other candidate) might have to go in ANY OF FIVE DIFFERENT LINES ON THE BALLOT. Kerry's name climbs from ballot line to ballot line, just like a caterpillar moving from twig to twig on a tree. The Cleveland Plain Dealer explained it all in an article (EXCERPTED BELOW) that remains obscure. Here's my explanation, which may or may not be clearer to you:

Let's say Precinct 33 has Kerry on line 3, Precinct 34 has Kerry on line 4, Precinct 35 has Kerry on line 5, Precinct 36 has Kerry on line 6, and Precinct 37 has kerry on line 37. Friday's Cleveland Plain Dealer says, "Voters from multiple precincts typically share a polling place."

Let's say that Precincts 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37 are assigned to vote together in one huge school gymnasium. Everything will be fine as long as voters from each precinct use only the punch machines set up for that precinct's candidate order.

But if the pollling place is crowded and chaotic (as hundreds of polling places were on Election Day, when it rained hard all day all over Ohio), a Precinct 33 voter might take her ballot to a Precinct 34 machine. She'd punch a hole where it says "Kerry", on Line 4. But a stamp on the back of her ballot would route it to a counting machine where a Kerry vote must be on Line 3. If she took it to another precinct's machine, she'd cast a Kerry vote on another line, but still not on line 3, where it would have to be, to be counted for Kerry.

Do you see the problem? Kerry's name moves like a caterpillar from one ballot line to another, depending on which machine is used in a room full of machines set up for different precincts.

Just like the "Butterfly Ballot" that made Palm Beach County famous in the 2000 Florida fiasco, the Ohio Caterpillar Ballot has great potential for mischief. And it is the most straghtforward explanation I've heard for the incredibly large vote totals minor candidates got in Ohio. People

--------------------------------------------------------------------

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

"Friday, December 10, 2004

"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.

The first version lists the candidates' names alphabetically... In each subsequent version, the candidate at the top of the list moves to the bottom, bumping the rest up one notch. 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.

Voters are supposed to use polling booths, and the voting books in them, that are specific to their precinct, not just any booth in the polling place. 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.

THE PUNCH CARDS THAT VOTERS SLIDE INTO THE DEVICE ARE THE SAME, BUT THEIR BACKS ARE STAMPED WITH THE PRECINCT SO THEY WILL BE COUNTED PROPERLY."

[SharonAnn]

1. Don't the other candidates, such as *, also move around?

I see what you're saying, but with the ones I'm familiar with, all the candidates move around.

BTW, the reason for doing this is so that one candidate doesn't have a preference just because of their position on the ballot. People tend to vote for the first one, it's worth at least 1-2%, even in a closely contested election.

[shraby]

2. That could also switch a Kerry vote to Bush

and vice versa

[AirAmFan]

4. Yes, in crowded pro-Kerry polling places, votes could be shifted to Bush,

though that would be at most one of up to five possibiities.

A thorough analysis of the "caterpillar ballot" problem would start with a list of all polling places in Ohio shared by two, three, four, five, or more precincts.

A square table could be constructed for each polling place, with precinct numbers listed across the columns 'C' and down the rows 'R'. The interior of the table would show the name of the candidate who would be awarded a vote if a voter whose ballot was stamped for precinct 'R' punched Kerry's name using a machine for precinct 'C'. The outcome of trying to vote for Kerry could be Kerry (if the row precinct and column precinct match), Bush, the Green candidate, the Libertarian, or anybody else on the ballot.

But the pattern would not be random; it would depend on which precincts voted together, and which of the 5 ballot orders each precinct had been given.

If Ken Blackwell had wanted to avoid this source of vote miscounting, he could have done so very easily: Assign ballot orders BY POLLING PLACE, not BY PRECINCT. Then all the precincts at a given polling place would have had their machines set up the same way, and it would not have mattered which machine a voter used. A voter would have had to wait in line, get a ballot, then go to another polling place, jump the line, and punch her ballot from one polling place using the other polling place's machine. Even then, her chance of casting a vote for the wrong candidate only would have been 80 percent, if she chose the other polling place at random.

[w4rma]

6. Wouldn't matter.

Lets say that 75% of voters in one of these polling places covering multiple districts voted for Kerry. Lets say that 25% went to Bush. Lets say that 10,000 ballots were switched where Kerry voters voted for Bush and Bush voters voted for Kerry. That would mean that Kerry would get 2,500 of those 10,000 ballots and Bush would get 7,500 of those 10,000 ballots even tho the voters' intent is the precise opposite. That's a net gain for Bush of 10,000 votes over Kerry (Kerry loses 5,000, Bush gains 5,000).

[AirAmFan]

3. Excellent point. If there were crowded and chaotic polling places where

multiple precincts had thousands of people who wanted to vote for George Bush, Bush would have lost votes to minor candidates and to Kerry. But the relative wealth of pro-Bush counties compared to pro-Kerry counties, allowing them to have plenty of equipment and short waits to vote, and the biased distribution of equipment within pro-Kerry counties, would have resulted in very few polling places crowded and chaotic enough for many Bush votes to be lost.

Did you see John Conyers's Wednesday forum on Ohio voting on C-SPAN? A very articulate Kenyon College undergrad told how his campus had only two machines for 1300 registered voters. But in surrounding, pro-Bush counties, there was enough equipment to see to it that no more than 100 registered voters had to share a machine. As a result, some Kenyon students and faculty waited up to 10 hours to vote, out in the pouring rain! At the same hearing, Bob Fitrakis quoted from a statistical analysis of voting machine availability by precinct in Columbus, compared to the same precinct's allocation of voting machines in the last election.

Cliff Arnebeck's lawsuit filing doubtless spends plenty of time explaining how most pro-Kerry voters were forced to wait in much longer lines than most pro-Bush voters. But I'm not sure what it says about what I'm calling 'the caterpillar ballot' problem.

[cattleman22]

5. Sunday's Columbus Dispatch

There was an article talking about the number of voters per voting machine. Urban areas had fewer voters per machine than did suburban areas. However, the meat of the article stated that as the population shifted from urban to suburban areas, there were fewer machine sin urban areas in 2004 than in 2000.

[Lone Pawn]

7. Unless you have even antecdotal evidence this actually caused problems

this is really just only going to clutter the debate even further. Already it's too out there for the mainstream media to fixate on, I'm afraid.

[w4rma]

8. The evidence is there that it happened.

But I don't know if it's possible, with all the ballots mixed up as they are between different precincts, to show how many, or which, votes were switched.

[radfringe]

9. ROFL

It's the HUNGRY HUNGRY CATERPILLER ballot --- eats Kerry votes and shits out bush* votes