Was Ohio an election nightmare in 2000?

[Annette]

I know Ohio wasn't in the spotlight in 2000, but have they always had these voting "problems" or is 2004 the exception?

[sandnsea]

1. These problems are normal

You could put a microscope on almost any highly populated state and come up with as many problems as Ohio had. The registrations, machine distribution, provisional ballots, vote count variations, all of that. That's why the MSM isn't calling it fraud, it happens everywhere and always has. It's the kind of stuff that used to accompany ballot box stuffing and dead voters and that sort of thing, so I suppose it's always been connected to fraud. Both parties have been equally guilty, why it always gets dumped on Democrats is a puzzle. The voting machine "glitches" though, that's totally new and there's no way to track it, that's what makes it particularly unnerving to me.

[catnhatnh]

5. Both parties have been equally guilty...

NO,NO,NO....get the equivelence thing out of your system....Yes there are crooked thieving democrats,but the disenfranchisement of blacks is a strictly republican franchise today...even a crook don't steal what he already has (Blackwell and cronies excepted...)

[kerry2win]

2. this election stands out

nothing in 2000 was close to the problems this time. Trouble in registration, standing in lines, voter suppression, monitors, caging lists etc.

[thanatonautos]

3. Election nightmares are a well-established American tradition.

There is nothing particularly exceptional
about 2000, except that it was a very close
election. The Presidential election in 1960, for
example, was much closer, percentagewise
and there were serious allegations of fraud
on both sides.

Both major parties have used fraudulent
methods in the past.

In the past 50-60 years we have seen Jim Crow
voter suppression efforts migrate from the Democratic
to the Republican party.

In the election of 1876, the Republican candidate
Rutherford B. Hayes won election by means of
fraud in the state of Florida, over the Democratic
candidate Samuel Tilden. The margin on election
night was something like 80-90 votes out of a total
of 40,000 for Tilden. The Republicans first conceded,
then later unconceded the election, and by means of
fraudulent ballot tampering in the State of Florida
eventually certified a vote for Hayes. A constitutional
crisis resulted, which was resolved in favour of Hayes,
when a deal was made by the Republicans to withdraw
federal troops from the South, where they were attempting
to enforce the rights of newly freed slaves. This was
enough to get the Democrats to agree to a committee
of 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats to decide on the
disputed electoral votes.

It was one of the most shameful compromises in
the history of the nation. It ended Reconstruction
effort in the South, and likely set back the
progress of Civil Rights for African-Americans
by almost a century.

President Hayes has henceforward been called
Rutherfraud B. Hayes by Democrats.

In the later 19th century and before 1930-1940
many large Northern cities were effectively controlled
by Democratic political machines (a couple of exceptions
being Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the late 1800's
where the local bosses I believe were Republican). Votes
were essentially directly paid for under the de facto
system of corrupt local bosses who controlled essentially
everything in the cities.

The US has always had these problems, it's nothing
new.

I think the situation could be to some extent
ameliorated by creating a non-partisan civil
service to manage the elections, and by returning
to a system of hand counted paper mark-sense ballots
on a precinct level, with the counting monitored by
represenatives of both parties.

But no one cares, particularly, what I think.

[genieroze]

6. Paper ballots sound good to me.

[thanatonautos]

9. Well maybe at least one person cares what I think, then :)

[genieroze]

11. Don't despair.

When one has a low post count we tend to be cautious, nothing personal. You don't seem like a freeper to me. Freepers come here and say Oh let's move on to 2006, 2008, we lost fair and square, get over it. You seem concerned to me that this election wasn't fair that something wasn't right with those machines. With no paper trail, and criminals owning those machines, that's the point. I really know in my heart * wasn't elected by the majority of people, he was selected by criminals and con artists.

[KaliTracy]

4. The press "prepared" us for "problems" in Ohio

They warned of Long Lines. They warned that we were the most crucial "swing state" -- this started weeks before the election. And of course, Kenneth Blackwell, changed rules 2 months before the election, and tried to defend his positions. He also MERGED precincts in "anticipation" of using e-machines and the idea that voting would go fact - then decided not to use them -- AND kept the preincts merged!

So, I would say NO -- this was NOT a typical year in Ohio -- I've been here all of my life, and I've never been so outraged as I was the day after, knowing I voted in less than 10 minutes (NO wait), but that other people in Ohio waited, not 30 minutes, or an hour, no, but over 3 or 4 hours to vote! That is simply INSANE and is not typical.

Of course, then all of the allegations of actual vote fraud don't make it such a great state this year....

[read the law first]

7. If you told 100 million people to go outdoors and raise their left hand...

..how many couldn't wouldn't be able to do it? You'd have people that showed up on the wrong day, people that raised their right hand instead, people that couldn't go outdoors at the proper time, people that wouldn't go outdoors at all, etc.

In other words, anytime 100 million people do anything, there's going to be foul ups. The provisional ballots actually were an improvement over sending the people who thought that they were registered home without voting and the registration efforts led to an unprecedented number of voters and an unprecedented turnout.

Ohio was no better and no worse than any other state on average and probably much better than in the past because so many people were watching. In my years of poll watching, I've found that merely the presence of poll watchers stops most of funny business. One particular precinct I know, we win the close races when we have poll watchers and we lose when we don't.

That being said, even the normal glitches with no bad faith and no fraud can result in an election being tossed out. For example, a court of appeals race got thrown out in Georgia because 495 absentee ballots spelled one of the candidate's names wrong. In North Carolina, a race was thrown out because votes were eliminated by the machine. If the race in Ohio was closer, there's probably enough things that went wrong that have been exposed through DU to set the election aside, but the margin is 119,000 and I haven't seen any hard proof that we're approaching that margin. And no, the "I made twenty dollars in the last ten minutes and therefore if I extrapolate that out for a full year, I should make several million dollars theory of evidence," doesn't count as hard proof.

Take the long lines as an example. One of my earliest memories decades ago was taking drinks and chips to people waiting in line at midnight so that they wouldn't get out of line and go home. There's always been long lines on election day. It would be better if there weren't but that's nothing new to Ohio in 2004.

I'm strongly for the recount and I'm adamant for paper trails and I'm for checking the programs and I'm for examining the undervotes and the overvotes and I'm definitely for stamping out election fraud and voter fraud but the statement that Ohio is the singular worst disaster that ever existed in the history of voting in this country is hyperbole.

[Straight Shooter]

8. Ohio itself may not be the singular worst disaster that ever existed

But it damn sure has resulted in the singular worst disaster.

No, wait. That was 2000. Nevermind. Secondmost worst disaster.

And yet, if Little Boots runs rampant in a second term ...

[read the law first]

10. You got that right. n/t