Reply #29: Yes, I think Ashland is a county that chose to fudge rather than finagle,

[eomer]

at least in the public part of the process. But like Cuyahoga, this process apparently had both a secret part of the process and then a public part.

It looks like you are right that in the public part they ended up with a difference between the 3% machine and hand counts but didn't do a full recount anyway (which is what I am calling a fudge).

Notice in the observer report that there were serious concerns about ballot security. The ballots were stored in a room that appeared to be used also as a lunch room and/or a meeting room.

So, once again, how would we know they didn't finagle first in secret but were then forced to fudge later? BTW, the fudging was necessary only because the observers challenged the standard being used to count overvotes. It would be a reasonable explanation to believe that they finagled the votes in private but then had to execute Plan B (the fudge) due to challenges by the observers.

Aside from the total lack of ballot security, the other evidence that would point to secret finagling is that the precincts were pre-selected.

I don't want to be on a witch hunt here but, golly, the number of irregularities in each of the examples we've talked about so far would, I think, have any reasonable person asking "what is going on here?"