Cols Dispatch Ed:Suspicions of Ohio's voting systems are unwarranted and shouldn't worry voters

[mod mom]

Editorial: November prospect
Suspicions of Ohio's voting systems are unwarranted and shouldn't worry voters
Sunday, August 17, 2008 3:33 AM

Because Ohio again is a battleground state in the presidential election, every aspect of voting is undergoing intense scrutiny. Concerns raised by one political party are answered by complaints from the other. Both parties have been blowing potential problems out of proportion.
But the 2008 election is likely to be far less problematic than the 2004 balloting, when some Ohioans waited hours to vote. Since then, election officials used federal funding to buy new equipment and institute more safeguards. In 2004, nearly 72 percent of Ohioans used unreliable punch cards. Touch screens or scanner-fed paper ballots have replaced them.

Improvements since 2004 include expansion of voting by mail, more voting machines, better data on where to put machines to meet demand, post-election auditing of results and upgraded poll-worker training and voter literature.

Yet the improvements have failed to derail a cottage industry, in the words of one elections expert, of conspiracymongers who believe that the 2004 election in Ohio was stolen for President Bush and that a "fixed" vote could happen again. One of the villains in this leap of illogic is electronic voting, which opponents paint as subject to error or hacking.

-snip
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/08/17/brunr.ART_ART_08-17-08_G4_K2B12ME.html?sid=101

CONSPIRACY MONGERS, YOU SAY?

EXPLAIN THESE HEADLINES:

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail

Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.
By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Dayton Daily News

Vote of no confidence
A long-awaited review of Ohio's election systems finds 'critical security failures.' The secretary of state wants to start over with new systems, a pricey option.
Saturday, December 15, 2007 3:10 AM
BY MARK NIQUETTE
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH


Brunner: Touch-screen machines defective, company should pay
Thursday, August 7, 2008 3:24 AM
By Mark Niquette
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH



Ohio seizes voting machines in criminal investigation
By Ryan Paul | Published: March 18, 2008 - 08:38AM CT
arstechnica


County's voting machines examined
Brunner triggers state probe by reporting that fall ballot apparently masked a name
Sunday, March 16, 2008 3:22 AM
BY BARBARA CARMEN
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

UFB!

[flamingdem]

1. Recommend - Most important issue if we want to see Obama win in November! nt

[Botany]

2. The dispatch is nervous that the truth will get out.

They helped in the cover up of 2004

[Wilms]

3. They treat Brunner shabbily.

And want to act like nothing went wrong in 2004.

What do the average Ohioans think about this?

[farmbo]

6. The Dispatch is a GOP house organ that lives to smear Brunner...

First: Ohio has an apportionment board which will switch to Democratic control if Jennifer Brunner wins re-election in 2010. This Board will draw the lines for state and federal election districts after the 2010 census. The Dispatch has made it their mission to halt this power re-alignment by slurring SOS Brunner at every turn and building up her competition-- another second-rate GOP empty suit.

Second: The Dispatch has always endorsed the Republican Presidential candidate in every election since 1912... and this year will be no different. They do not want serious election reform to occur in this state. The status quo-- a broken election system-- benefits Republicans greatly because in the end hundreds of thousands of votes will not be counted.

Third: The Dispatch has ignored and trivialized all attempts to gather information on the 2004 election since Nov. 3rd 2004. Ironically, the major thrust of these editorials is to accuse election critics of failing to accept "the evidence" of a sound election. Yet not a single person at the state level has ever been required to testify under oath, dozens of computer studies showing hack-ability have been ignored, and many of the 2004 ballots were systematically destroyed-- in violation of a federal court order. In other words, the only "evidence" of a proper election in 2004 seems to be anecdotal statements by the likes of Ken Blackwell and Karl Rove.

What did Gandhi say? First the ignore you...next they mock you...then they fight you...then you win.

[Botany]

7. Be Afraid ......

.... "the conspiracymongers" are out to get you.

The Dispatch damn well knows that 2004 was stolen and is
scrambling to keep the truth from getting out.

Just last Sunday they had a front page story about the 2004 election
being stolen is part of an urban legend or a "cottage industry" that
anybody w/ any brains would know is not true.



blast from the past .... the poor computer just couldn't keep count :rofl:

farmbo (1000+ posts) Sat Feb-12-05 09:54 AM

(Cols. Dispatch) Gahanna (Ohio) Voting Glitch Explained ..4K Bush votes

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2...



Fourteen weeks after the Nov. 2 election and the release of unofficial totals that counted 3,893 extra votes for President Bush in Gahanna’s Precinct 1-B, officials said a computer trying to do two things at once is to blame
<snip>
After isolating the glitch to the tabulating zone, where removable voting-machine cartridges are plugged into a reader and transmitted to a laptop computer that sends data to the countywide tabulator, the company focused on those steps.

Its conclusion: The laptop computer that collects and sends data was busy completing another task at the exact moment it was receiving numbers from Gahanna 1-B. "As a result, the laptop did not receive the data as fast as it was sent . . . and consequently, data was lost," the report said.
<snip>

The BOE contractor attempts to explain the error but NOT why it translated to 3,893 votes for Bush, rather than a simple "error" message.

[mod mom]

9. Oh come on Botany-what's suspicious about that?

Warren Co. defends lockdown decision

FBI denies warning officials of any special threat
By Erica Solvig and Dan Horn
Enquirer staff writers

LEBANON - Warren County officials, facing scrutiny of their decision to lock down the administration building on election night, say they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10.

The information, which Commissioner Pat South said was previously deemed confidential, is coming out a week after the public was barred from viewing the Warren County vote count. The Ohio Secretary of State's office doesn't know of any other county in the state to impose such a restriction.

County officials initially said they feared that having reporters and photographers present could interfere with the ballot counting. They subsequently cited homeland security concerns.

Now, they say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a "10" on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.

-snip

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/10/loc_warrenvote10.html


DON'T TELL ME YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE CONSPIRACY MONGERS :eyes:

[Botany]

10. Or that Bernadatte Noe tampered w/ the vote in Lucas County

http://www.justsaynoemore.com/bernadette-noe-republican-ohio-convention.htm


<Muddying the waters even more, Mrs. Noe came under fire again after the controversial 2004 election win for President Bush. Noe, who served as Chairman of the Lucas County Board of Elections, only added to the theory that Ohio’s votes were tainted, at best.

First, authorities discovered that 12 partisan volunteers who arrived unexpectedly during voting tabulation on election night (and were later escorted away by police after refusing to leave the premises) came at the behest of Mrs. Noe herself.

Mrs. Noe also failed to ensure the security of ballot boxes and voting machines, causing concern over potential vote tampering. In addition, Ralph Nader was not removed from voting ballots. Most interesting, however, is the accusation that she also tampered with the three percent hand recount.

Bernadette Noe, Republican Ohio Convention delegate, faces scrutiny from an ever-growing number of people who believe that Bush’s 2004 victory was earned by corrupt means. No matter what history decides, a long shadow has forever been cast on the infallibility of election results, and Bernadette Noe stands in the foreground.>



DON'T TELL ME YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE CONSPIRACYMONGERS :rofl:


I loved last sunday's dispatch that their was no evidence of election fraud.

[mod mom]

11. I lost my file with that you you have the Montgomery Co screensaver as well?

I recall it was DUer JSamuel who first sent them to me.

As for ole Bernadette, (wife of convicted Bush/Cheney Pioneer/convicted money launderer/Beanie Baby collector extraordinaire) that sweet woman couldn't possibly be responsible for any of this:

OH SOS Investigation of the Lucas County BOE

includes the fact that REPUBLICAN VOLUNTEERS were allowed UNSUPERVISED ACCESS to UNSECURED BALLOTS prior to the election, as well as this list:

*failure to maintain ballot security
*Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation .
*failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
*issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
*manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount.
*disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and Camejo from the ballot .
*failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory requirements.
*failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass
*failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner.
*failure to guard and protect public documents ....etc.


-One-half of the ballots printed and used in the 2004 general election in Lucas county were stored in an open space on the fhird floor of the county warehouse with no security measures in place.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation on Lucas County BOE page 4



-Live ballots were delivered to polling locations a week in advance of the election. Although the ballots were retrieved, one board employee who was assigned to the warehouse informed the SOS staff that he did not believe all the ballots were successfully retrieved.
SOURCE; SOS Investigation, page 5



-Lucas County BOE failed to record or retrieve ballot stub numbers of absentee voters’ ballots as required by statute OH Revised Code 3505.23. It was reported by an elector that her mother had received not one, but three absentee voter ballots. there was no way to determine if similar incidents occurred and if so how many.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, page 7




-October 4, 2004 was filing deadline for new voter registrations. At that point there were approximately 20,000 unprocessed voter registration applications with less than a month before the election. One mail tray containing 4,500-7,000 (estimates vary) unprocessed “Project Voter” registrations were discovered on or about October 18,2004.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 10

***Of interest here is information obtained from the SOS website entitled ElectionsVoter/results 2003 and 2004 which show the # of registered voters number change from ‘03-’04 was 11,947 in Lucas County: reg voters 2003 in Lucas=288,190 ; registered voter in 2004=300,137.



-In late September or early October an employee of the Ohio Republican Party contacted Sam Thurber (*involved with politician wife Maggie Thurber in Noe scandal.) wanting to inspect and have copies made of all recently returned voter registrations, Ohio Republican Party offered to furnish volunteers to assist with copying postcards. No one at the Lucas County BOE can confirm that anyone was assigned to supervise Republican volunteers. On their second day of copying, a BOE employee, Jennifer Bernath, Democratic Booth Official) saw republican party volunteers peeling off the yellow return stickers applied by the post office. (Violation of RC 149.43 (B) (I) , and agruably a violation of 149.351.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation, pgs 18-19



-The Swanton 3 poll book turned up missing and has never been recovered.
SOURCE: SOS Investigation pg 16

Investigation posted at (Big thanks to Garybeckwith!):

http://www.solarbus.org/election/docs/lucas.pdf




http://www.sos.state.oh.us:80/sos/ElectionsVoter/OhioElections.aspx?Section=1008

[mod mom]

8. Hey Farmbo, I'm working election protection w ODP and just attended a hearing

on machine allocation for Franklin Co. Looks like their expecting really long lines as with issues an independent study said voting times per voter will range between 4-20 minutes per voter with an average between 8-9minutes. Early voting/absentee appears to be their hope. I'm going to write up a summary of the meeting and will post it here along with recommendations to send to Brunner regarding having pollworkers suggest paper ballots should lines be long and having tables available with ballot issues so that voters can inform themselves on ballot issues prior to entering the booth, as well as possible mailers with ballot issues sent to registered voters (currently available online to those voters who have access). I heard an NPR story saying several issues are written w double negatives (ie confusing) and they are currently looking at shortening the text. You might check back in a few days to read full summary-I'm playing mom today ;)

:hi:

[bertman]

4. Fair Elections ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF THIS CAMPAIGN. If we can't elect progressives

we will never change this corporate oligarchy.

Why don't the Democratic Party leaders get this??

[bleever]

5. "Leap of illogic"? Machines "painted" as "subject to error or hacking"?

What kind of crap is this? It sounds like something out of a Soviet-era state-run newspaper.

:mad: