Initial thoughts on why OH '06 doesn't appear to have been stolen...

[roseBudd]

Using some of my OH resident knowledge. And I just want to state I don't think there wasn't suppression and possibly ballot box stuffing, especially in counties with '04 suspicious behavior like Clermont and Warren.

First off '04 saw lots of counties using punch cards from either Triad or ES&S. Diebold was not a significant factor in OH quite yet in '04. Though the punch cards were a strong deterrent to fraud because of their paper trail they were exceedingly vulnerable to tampering, which is a low tech way to steal an election. They can be invalidated by a simple punch rendering them overvoted. And the OH punch card ballot vote can be misappropriated by moving a ballot from one precinct to another for tabulation because OH used printed precinct codes NOT punched precinct codes. OH punch card ballots used a header card to identify precinct as this was the only way for the card reader In OH to know what precinct it was tabulating.

Then OH counties finally got around to purchasing their new HAVA voting systems. By this time the disadvantages of DRE were becoming more apparent. I believe that cost was huge determining factor because you had to have enough DREs per precinct to accommodate voters. Also the paper trail DREs solution required additional expenditures.

I believe the majority of counties went optiscan because of this. Optiscan like punch card has a paper trial deterrent against fraud. The majority of races in OH were so close (outside of Blackwell and Dewine) that it would be extremely risky to cheat and Blackwell and Dewine were too far behind to risk such an unlikely result. The optiscan ballot I used by Hart Intercivic appeared to have the precinct codes as a bar code. This means you can't use misappropriation of votes as a technique. To overvote an optiscan ballot is unwieldy. You cannot invalidate a stack of ballots with an ice pick. Putting stickers on optiscans as they did on Clermont in '04 is too risky as Clermont discovered when the Greens mounted recount.


I also believe time was a factor as creating the software programs to tabulate the votes for all those counties who had just purchased new systems had voting manufacturers struggling just to deliver in time for the election. Once they get past the first election, subsequent elections will be easier to program for. I know this because a survey company created online voting for kids in a 3 county area in OH. The amount of programming in the first year was far greater than any subsequent year.

To sum up I think this means that we must not think that tabulation fraud due to programming won't happen if conditions are favorable in '08.

[Submariner]

1. What's the scoop on Mean Jean Schmidt?

Did she get booted out?

[roseBudd]

4. I do not think all the provisionals have been counted. I know in Warren,

part of which is in the 2nd let their BoE go home Tuesday night rather than stay to count all the absentees which because they had been folded were having to be fed 1 at a time. Warren also was recreating optiscan ballots that were unreadable due to folding.

[Wilms]

2. Thanks for those comments. n/t

[Febble]

3. Valuable post

Thanks.

[eridani]

5. Cuyahoga County is still screwed up, no?

[roseBudd]

6. I am as far as you can be from Cuyahoga so hopefully we have a NE OH

DUer who can add their observations.

[mod mom]

7. Rosebud-this bud's for you:

Just finished posting it on Pol Xtra:

Anonymous said...
Dear Mr Blackwell,

Guess what, dude? John Conyers has subpoena power and guess who is near the top of his list? Don't worry, I've seen multiple photo shopped images of you in prison orange, and may I be the first to say you look fabulous in that color. What? You don't want to do any hard time? Well I heat the Bush family just made a major real estate purchase in down in Paraquay, perhaps they'll let you squat on their land. Oops, forget that noise-remember Bab's comments after Katrina?

Dude, you're screwed!

:rofl:

Some less funny news:

Two Republicans won state Supreme Court seats, making the court 7-0 Republican for the first time since 1921.

If Ken Blackwell were running for governor of Southwest Ohio, he would have won. He picked up all four counties in this corner of the state. Statewide, though, he lost 74 of 88 counties - the worst drubbing of a gubernatorial candidate since Democrat Rob Burch won only two counties in his 1994 race against incumbent Republican George Voinovich.

-snip
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061111/NEWS01/611110349/1056/COL02

[eomer]

12. Hey, mm, another problem for Blackwell: OH Attorney General-Elect Marc Dann

will have the power to prosecute election violations thanks to recent changes enacted in H.B. 3. And he made a campaign pledge to prosecute 2004 election violations (and of course would prosecute 2006 violations as well).

With the AG digging into evidence and the various lawsuits getting into discovery phase, and the synergy between those various efforts, 2007 could be an interesting year.

[philb]

8. Major glitch/machine problems in Ohio again, esp. Cuyahoga Co.

Ohio
Athens County. ES&S 650 misfed ballots until repaired by a technician. Story http://www.athensmessenger.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=1787&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=273&S=1

Franklin County. ES&S Model 100 couldn't read ballots. Poll worker set them aside to be scanned later. Polls opened late in states biggest Democratic area. Democrats sue Cuyahoga County. Story Archive http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/15950479.htm

Cuyahoga County. Forty-three of the county’s 573 voting places either failed to open on time or couldn’t get some or all of their electronic voting machines to work. Voters were turned away. Story Archive http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6749

Cuyahoga County. Candice Hoke, director of Cleveland State’s Center for Election Integrity, said some of her public monitors reported that poll workers were incorrectly requiring some voters who used paper ballots to fill out a provisional voter form. Voting results for any of those forms won’t be counted until the official count begins 11 days after the election. Story Archive http://www.cleveland.com/weblogs/election/index.ssf?/mtlogs/cleve_vpdebate/archives/2006_11.html#201826
Cuyahoga County. Voter's name wasn't on the rolls, even though he had a card telling him his polling place. County officials determined that he was classified as an inactive voter, even though he voted in the May primary. Story Archive http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/15950479.htm

Stark County. Diebold touch screens weren't working, and voters were told they would have to vote provisional ballots, which aren't counted until 10 days after the election. In some polling locations, voters had to touch the screen as many as 15 times to get it to register a vote. Story Archive http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=9&ID=317947&subCategoryID=0
Trumbull County and elsewhere in the state. Diebold touch screens fail to display one of the pages of text for Issue 2 when they are in "large-text mode". Story Archive
http://community.vindy.com/profile.php?refer=www.vindy.com%2Fcontent%2Flocal_regional%2F308822736017290.php
Cuyahoga County. Diebold scanner fails one of four pre-election tests. Michael Vu said, "It's not unusual in the testing that we find an anomaly. Our testing is going over and beyond the normal testing of the past." The officials will check the calibration. Some machines may be too sensitive and will be set aside and replaced. Story Archive http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/politics/15924909.htm
Cuyahoga County. Severe security lapse. County officials used ordinary laptops, vulnerable to viruses, to retrieve and archive data from memory cards, which Princeton researchers have shown are capable of carrying viruses that would infect voting machines. “I first raised concerns to the Cuyahoga County Board of Election in mid-Summer, after Secretary of State Blackwell released an advisory about transferring electronic election data to CD ROM. After I witnessed the transfer, I raised concerns a potential security breach to Cuyahoga Board of Elections Chairman Bennett and the rest of the board on October 2nd,” said Adele Eisner. “Unfortunately, the board simply defended its dangerous practice." Story http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3715#more-3715
Summit County. A printer certified by ES&S sent 22,000 misprinted ballots to the county. Already late, the delay will make absentee voters wait even longer for their ballots. "When the ballots arrived at the Summit County Board of Elections on Thursday, staff members discovered the second page was fraught with typographical errors." No QA at the printer, it appears. Story Archive
10/21/06 - Ballot are supposed to arrive today. The same typographical errors were found on the poll-site ballots, so they will be reprinted, too. A "computer problem" cause the printing error. Story Archive http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/15814784.htm

[roseBudd]

10. Most complaints in my county were about how big the optiscan boxs were that had to be

filled in. This took longer than our old punch cards. It definitely takes longer than punching, but I personally prefer a ballot that cuts down on overvoting spoilage.

[roseBudd]

9. The Hart Intercivic eScan I voted on didn't inform me I didn't vote for Mallory or Hale

It was on purpose of course and I didn't vote for any uncontesteds. According to Hart the eScan tells you if you over or under vote.

[Wilms]

11. That's a no-no.

With Diebold (GEMS), if IIRC, the warning(s) have to be switched on via the Ballot Definition Programming.

So perhaps too is the case with the Hart machine.

As far as HAVA goes, I assume the machine not only has to be capable to warn of an undervote, it actually has to do it!

Could be argued that as programmed for the election, those machines were non-compliant.

[roseBudd]

13. I am going to call my BoE on Monday and ask why I wasn't informed of an undervote

[mopinko]

14. i wonder about judges-ie fewer fake repubs

i know that a lot of places here in solid blue land have to resort to slapping republican credentials on any dem that would not feel dirty forever more. i know the ohio dems are a struggling bunch, and they have the reverse problem in many precincts. but maybe there were a lot more real dem judges this time. i know both my hubby and i did it for the first time this year, and i have heard and read many similar stories.