I didn't vote.  There was nothing on the "issues only" ballot.  I'll have to wait until November.

Well, since I'm a Republican this was a big primary for me.  They had electronic machines in my precinct in Washington Twp, so this was my first try.

 

It was pretty foolproof...touch screens, vote, hit the green key to keep moving on, then the thing has some sort of printout that it runs, sort of like a cash register roll, which I guess is the paper record of the electronic vote.  When its finished, I just take my card and give to the precinct worker.

 

The only glitch I could see here is if that paper record thing gets jammed somehow.  That could be a real goat rope during an election with a heavy turnout.

 

 

I am out-of-state at school, so I opted to vote absentee.  My home county, Erie, still uses the optical scan (fill-in-the-bubble ballots) method of voting; and I did that a couple of weeks ago.

 

I wonder what's going to happen if my county switches to touch-screen voting?  Will absentee voters still use the optical scan?  I'm guessing yes, but who knows.......this is Ohio after all........  :-D

I used the fill in the bbox thing.

high tech

Isn't this the same way I took tests in high school ?

Pretty silly filling in that big-ass box with a ball point pen. A wide tip marker would have made more sense.

Nothing complicated, just slow and cumbersome.

Oops. Everyone makes mistakes, Mr. Blackwell  :roll:

Im not sure of my vote was counted. Lucas county used the computer machines in the 04' election. Last time I had no problems, this year the machine froze on me and election workers kept getting new cards for me to use, this whole ordeal took around 5-8 mins all while Im holding up the lines. After voting for the last local issue it froze again, the poll worker yanked out the card (Im thinking mistakingly) and puts it back in. She tells me to hit next page, so I do and a blank recept comes out and the final screen comes up. :? I felt sick because I knew my vote didnt count, and I didnt want to waste more time.

 

I know from last year those recipts are supposed to have some wording on it, this one was blank. The poll worker says its normal, but I think she was lying.  I wasted a good 20 mins voting today.   :-(

Ohio uses optical scan and electronic touch-pad machines now. I have used both, prefer optical scan.

 

    I used the optical scan for the first time. We previously had punch cards. I used to think the punch cards were kind of fun, and I only saw them on election day, so it was a unique experience.

 

    My dad has a funny joke about elections: Your vote never counts unless your guy happens to win by one vote. As far as I know, my vote has never counted.

From the AP, 5/4/06:

 

 

Candidate would have won if his sons had voted

Associated Press

 

CASTALIA | You're both grounded!

 

Two voting-age sons of a northern Ohio candidate didn't go to the polls Tuesday, and their father's race ended in a tie.

 

William Crawford, trying to retain his seat on the central committee of the Erie County Democratic Party, laughed Wednesday when asked about the election.

 

"I got two kids who missed the vote," he said...

 

http://www.daytondailynews.com/localnews/content/localnews/daily/0504ohsons.html

 

Jettison TEL? GOP may try

Party doesn’t want Blackwell hurt

Friday, May 05, 2006

Jim Siegel and Mark Niquette

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

Ohio Republicans are exploring ways to remove a government-spending amendment from the fall ballot, saying it’s flawed and could hurt GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell.

 

They might not be able to alter or dump it, however, because it already is certified for the Nov. 7 election.

 

The proposed Tax and Expenditure Limitation amendment would limit the annual growth of both state- and local-government spending and is a key part of Blackwell’s campaign for governor. 

 

http://dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/05/20060505-A1-02.html

44 votes to win an election? I know where I'm moving to.

Yay.

 

Counting the votes continues

By Connie Mabin

Associated Press

 

CLEVELAND - The state's largest county continued counting - and searching for - votes two days after the primary election, Ohio's first without punch-card ballots.

 

Vote-holding memory cards from 20 polling locations were still missing Thursday in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County. Board of election workers continued painstaking hand counts of more than 17,000 paper ballots that could not be read by new optical scan machines. Officials predicted the count could go into the weekend.

 

Full story at:

 

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060505/NEWS01/605050351/1010/RSS01

 

Mr. Blackwell has painted his own party into a corner and the paint isn't drying fast enough.

 

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060506/NEWS09/605060377/-1/NEWS

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

Article published May 6, 2006

 

GOP wants out of tax issue without hurting Blackwell

 

By JIM PROVANCE

BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

 

 

COLUMBUS - Republican leaders have never made much of a secret of their distaste for Kenneth Blackwell's pet constitutional amendment restricting state spending.

 

But now that the secretary of state is the party's only hope for holding on to the governor's mansion, Republicans are looking for a way of attacking the Tax Expenditure Limitation ballot issue without bruising the candidate inextricably linked to it.

 

"It's a good wedge issue for Republicans, but it's misdrafted," said Dale Osterle, an Ohio State University law professor with expertise on initiative and referendums. "The trouble becomes whether the language means what they thought it meant," he said. "Now they're worried that this could be used as a political issue against Blackwell."

44 votes to win an election? I know where I'm moving to.

 

You don't want to move to the Duck Pond

Maybe his sons didnt like him.

the race may have to be settled by coin flip

 

What a great way to decide a political position...so scientific and logical (I would suggest playing rock, paper, scissors..best of 3).

Thunderdome...two candidates enter, one candidate leaves...

maybe they did vote, but they didn't have the heart to tell him that the voted for Jean

Thunderdome...two candidates enter, one candidate leaves...

 

personally i lean towards texas death matches, but anything involving tina turner is pretty cool

...anything involving tina turner is pretty cool

 

Preferably singing

From the 5/12/06 PD:

 

 

GOP tries for plan to cap spending

Friday, May 12, 2006

Sandy Theis

Plain Dealer Bureau Chief

 

Columbus - Amid growing concerns that Ken Blackwell's much-maligned plan to limit state and local spending could undermine his campaign for governor, Republican legislators are working behind the scenes to put a less-controversial spending limit in state law, rather than embrace Blackwell's sweeping plan to amend the Ohio Constitution.

 

Blackwell's campaign continues to maintain that he stands firmly behind his proposed Tax Expenditure Limitation Amendment, or TEL, which has been certified for the November ballot.

 

Yet in the most visible sign that Blackwell recognizes the measure's shortcomings, campaign adviser Norm Cummings has spoken with legislators about concerns and pledged to work with them on an alternative.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1147423074244900.xml&coll=2

 

SPENDING LIMITATION

GOP hopes to ditch TEL to benefit Blackwell

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Jim Siegel and Mark Niquette

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

 

Republican lawmakers are exploring ways to make a measure limiting government spending disappear from the November ballot while allowing J. Kenneth Blackwell to save face on the signature proposal of his gubernatorial campaign.

 

Although Blackwell continues to insist the state needs a constitutional amendment to restrict government spending, he will consider other options that achieve the same objective, spokesman Carlo LoParo said yesterday.

 

http://dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/13/20060513-A1-04.html

From the 5/14/06 Middletown Journal:

 

First 100 days for Boehner in ranking GOP post

By Jessica Wehrman

Staff Writer

 

WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader John Boehner stood before a hotel conference room packed with Dayton-area leaders recently and summarized the past three months in simple and stark terms.

 

“It’s a pretty good job when things are going well,” he said. “But as you know, things haven’t been going very well.”

 

Saturday marked the 100th day since Boehner, R-West Chester, was elected House majority leader, campaigning on a message of reform. Those 100 days have been marked with party in-fighting and tumult that lawmakers say no majority leader could successfully quell.

 

More at:

 

http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/05/14/mj051406boehner.html

 

From the 5/14/06 Dispatch:

 

 

Support for TEL switch growing

Blackwell says he’s willing to accept legislative limits on spending as substitute

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Joe Hallett

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

In a stunning step back from his yearlong campaign to persuade Ohioans to amend the constitution to limit government spending, Republican gubernatorial nominee J. Kenneth Blackwell yesterday said he would accept legislation that accomplishes the same goal.

 

If such a bill materializes in the GOP-controlled legislature, Blackwell also hinted that he would not strenuously object if it excluded a limitation on spending by local governments, a provision of his proposed ballot amendment that has caused a firestorm of protests from local government officials. 

 

http://www.dispatch.com/?story=dispatch/2006/05/14/20060514-A1-01.html

 

GOP leader predicts victory in November

Bennett sees party unity despite state, national scandals

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Joe Hallett and Mark Niquette

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

As his statewide candidates and roughly 300 of the faithful filed out of the ballroom Saturday at the Downtown Renaissance Hotel, Ohio GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett stood alone on the dais, his enthusiasm palpable.

 

"Don’t count us out in November," he told a reporter. "We’re gonna win." ..

 

[email protected]

 

[email protected]

 

http://dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/16/20060516-E1-03.html

Ethics aside, were carts for voting devices even needed?

As conflict questions swirl, commissioner wonders about merits of purchase

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Robert Vitale

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

With ethics questions surrounding a $785,000 contract for voting-machine storage carts still unresolved, a Franklin County commissioner asked for proof yesterday that the purchase was even necessary.

 

Commissioner Paula Brooks said she wants county Board of Elections officials to explain whether carts were required under warranties for the machines that they’re designed to hold. She also wants to know whether other counties that purchased the same brand of machines also purchased carts.

 

More at:

http://dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/16/20060516-A1-04.html

From the AP, 5/17/06:

 

 

Blackwell appears allowed to oversee removal of ballot issue

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

AP Statehouse Correspondent

 

COLUMBUS (AP) - There is a way that GOP governor candidate Kenneth Blackwell, anti-tax champion, could pull his hallmark government spending cap off the November ballot using his powers as the state's chief elections official.

 

The maneuver would require members of the committee behind the proposed constitutional amendment, which Blackwell ostensibly controls, to submit requests to withdraw the issue. Blackwell, as secretary of state, could be the one who decides the question.

 

http://www.marionstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060517/NEWS01/605170317/1002/rss01

 

All but official: TEL plan is D.O.A.

Legislature likely to pass law achieving some Blackwell aims

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Mark Niquette and Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

 

In a move that will affect this fall’s race for governor, a proposed constitutional amendment to limit state- and local-government spending is expected to be stripped from the November ballot and replaced with a less-restrictive law.

 

Republican legislative leaders announced the change yesterday involving the Tax and Expenditure Limitation amendment, which has been Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell’s signature issue in his gubernatorial campaign.

 

http://dispatch.com/?story=dispatch/2006/05/18/20060518-A1-00.html

The no-TEL option

Blackwell painted GOP into corner, now party searches for a way out

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Dispatch Editorial

 

 

Ohio Republicans who backed a statewide initiative to limit state and local spending are scrambling to scuttle that issue before it reaches the Nov. 7 ballot.

 

After state and local officials, universities and business and labor groups independently mounted strong opposition, GOP bosses concluded that the constitutional amendment known as TEL would hurt their candidate, J. Kenneth Blackwell, more than it would help him in the governor’s race. Blackwell is the creator of the amendment, which, if approved by the voters, would restrict annual spending increases by state and local government to 3.5 percent or by a formula combining the rates of inflation and population growth, whichever is higher.

 

http://dispatch.com/editorials-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/18/20060518-A16-02.html

 

 

TEL vs. TEL LITE

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

Republican lawmakers have come up with a milder alternative to GOP gubernatorial nominee Ken Blackwell's proposed Tax Expenditure Limitation, or TEL. Here is how the two plans to limit government spending compare.

 

TEL

 

A proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution.

 

Would limit annual spending increases to 3.5 percent or the combined rates of inflation and population growth, whichever is greater.

 

...

 

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/114794894920200.xml&coll=2

From the 5/18/06 Dispatch:

 

 

REGIONAL COMMISSION FUNDING

U.S. House panel shuns Taft’s appeals for Appalachian aid

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Jonathan Riskind

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

WASHINGTON — Gov. Bob Taft’s plea for more money for the Appalachian Regional Commission went unheeded yesterday on Capitol Hill.

 

Taft and other ARC advocates ultimately may be victorious in securing more from Congress for the commission’s economic-development aid. The money goes for things such as sewer lines and industrial parks in struggling Appalachian counties in Ohio and 12 other states...

 

 

[email protected]

 

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/18/20060518-C5-01.html

 

Okay, so excuse my ignorance here, but since Ken Blackwell is Sec of State won't he be counting the votes for his own election for Governor? Isn't there some law in place that should prohibit this?? I just find it really odd that there would be no checks and balances in place? Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

No sweat.  You can rely on Diebold voting machines!

Wasn't creating an election commission to oversee the elections and removing that authority from the Secretary of State's position part of one of the issues on the ballot last year that failed?

From the 5/19/06 Toledo Blade:

 

 

Supporters decry deal on tax-limitation issue

Petition signers want proposed amendment to stay on ballot

By JIM PROVANCE

BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

 

COLUMBUS - "Not fair," said Nancy Wheeler, one of hundreds of thousands of registered voters in Ohio who signed petitions favoring a constitutional amendment setting spending limits for government.

 

Republican legislative leaders have struck a deal with the honorary chairman of the Tax Expenditure Limitation campaign, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, that is expected to lead to the removal of that amendment from the ballot.

 

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060519/NEWS24/605190417/-1/NEWS

 

yes

I think that was one of the issues that was predicted to win by quite a few votes, but somehow the results were totally different...

TEL plans not that alike

Spending reductions would be billions apart

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Jim Siegel and Mark Niquette

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

 

A legislative plan to restrict future state government spending won’t pack nearly the same punch as the constitutional amendment formerly pushed by J. Kenneth Blackwell, though some groups say it still goes too far.

 

Had it been in force, the GOP gubernatorial nominee’s proposed amendment would have led to $34.1 billion less in state and local government spending from 1994 to 2002, according to the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission. 

 

http://dispatch.com/news/news.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/20/20060520-A1-02.html

 

He was also the man who counted the votes for GWB, whom he was the campaign manager for, and for whom he thought God put him into office to get reelected.  Conflict of interest?  What is that?

From the 5/20/06 PD:

 

 

Would spending cap hurt schools?

Analysis shifts debate over plan

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Sandy Theis

Plain Dealer Bureau

 

Columbus - If Ken Blackwell's scaled-back spending limit becomes law, public schools, colleges and state schools for the blind and deaf would be among the hardest hit, according to a new analysis by Cleveland's Center for Community Solutions.

 

The proposed new limit, headed for a legislative vote next week, would apply only to tax dollars, not fees and other money in the state coffers. Since schools and colleges get a high percentage of tax money, they would get squeezed the most, the center concluded.

 

http://www.marionstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060521/NEWS01/605210320/1002/rss01

 

From the 5/22/06 Dispatch:

 

 

ANALYSIS

Is spending cap designed to fix GOP or public perception?

Monday, May 22, 2006

Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

Nearly every bill that passes the Ohio General Assembly does so for one basic reason: to solve a problem, real or perceived.

 

So what problem is the legislature’s new government-spending restriction trying to solve?

 

The answer depends on your perspective. 

 

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/22/20060522-D1-04.html

 

 

From the 5/23/06 Dispatch:

 

 

Republicans rush through bill replacing TEL issue

House panel OKs state spending cap; critics protest speed

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

Republicans said they are giving the public what it wants: assurances that state spending will not exceed moderate increases.

 

Democrats said the only thing a new legislative Tax and Expenditure Limitation will give people is higher local taxes to make up for state funding reductions.

 

Moving at breakneck speed, the Republican-controlled legislature will take less than 24 hours to introduce and pass proposals that enact a state spending limitation, while removing a stricter constitutional spending restraint from the November ballot. 

 

http://www.dispatch.com/?story=dispatch/2006/05/23/20060523-A1-03.html

 

From the 5/24/06 Dispatch:

 

 

Revised TEL plan rushed through

Debate heats up as lawmakers agree to kill Blackwell initiative

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

 

Republicans jammed a pair of bills through the legislature yesterday, setting up the demise of a constitutional amendment they thought could harm the state and J. Kenneth Blackwell’s run for governor.

 

The debate turned heated in the House and Senate, where Democrats were gaveled out of order and had their microphones shut off after Republican leaders decided their speeches were too political.

 

But to Democrats, the whole plan added up to little more than politics.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/05/24/20060524-A1-00.html

---

From the 5/24/06 PD:

 

 

Spending cap to hurt schools, lawmakers say

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Sandy Theis and T.C. Brown

Plain Dealer Reporters

 

Columbus - With a hefty dose of sarcasm, State Rep. Chris Redfern said he was pleased to see Ohio's new spending-limit bill includes $2.4 million to buy defibrillators for public schools.

 

They'll come in handy, Redfern told his House colleagues Tuesday, "because educators and parents are going to have heart attacks" when they realize the spending cap will hurt education.

 

Fellow Democrats chuckled.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1148459519279560.xml&coll=2

 

The GOP leaders in the General Assembly are practically doing handstands to try to make this "rush" job look good, but I doubt they will avoid the fallouit from their political base.  But, in fairness, these legislators are caught between a rock (their constituents who don't want the TEL) and their own Gubernatorial candidate (Blackwell) who cannot avoid looking like a flip-flopper as a result.  Interesting dilemna.

 

The Dems are already airing radio ads hitting on these points.

Well I have to say, If it weren't for this thread I wouldn't know anything about this issue, given that I haven't seen anything about it in the Cincinnati Enquirer.  And from the looks of where these articles have come from, neither has anyone else.

From the 5/27/06 PD:

 

 

State to use welfare surplus

Money to go to targeted aid

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Barb Galbincea

Plain Dealer Reporter

 

Low-income college students and families who need subsidized child care will be among the beneficiaries as Ohio dips into its long-hoarded welfare surplus.

 

Gov. Bob Taft this month approved using $199 million of unspent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families money, a pot that at one point last year topped $1 billion. Ohio closed the books on the fiscal year that ended June 30 with a $758-million temporary-aid balance carried into this year.

 

State officials have been reluctant to tap the reserve, despite appeals from advocates for the poor.

 

Read More...

 

From the AP, 5/30/06:

 

 

Spending cap's return likely

By Julie Carr Smyth

Associated Press

 

COLUMBUS -- After all that, the pesky proposal for a constitutional amendment restricting government spending is gone.

 

The people who advanced the measure have asked to pull it from the November election ballot. Those who fought it for nearly a year have snapped up their briefcases and begun planning their summer vacations. But Ohioans haven't heard the last word about spending caps, a topic that has carried with it implications in the race for governor.

 

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060530/NEWS01/605300368

 

I dismissed all the talk about stolen elections and election irregularities here in Ohio as just so much sour grapes coming from tinfoil hat territory...water under the bridge.....

 

However, this detailed article from the most recent Rolling Stone (which has pretty good political commentary even if their rock journailsm is a bit tired) is making me wonder what really went on here in 2004.  Was The 2004 Election Stolen...the article footnotes its sources and ties together all the things that where happening in Ohio.

 

Heres an excerpt with graphic, dealing with irregularities in heavily GOP rural and suburban southwest and west Ohio:

 

 

VIII. Rural Counties

Despite the well-documented effort that prevented hundreds of thousands of voters in urban and minority precincts from casting ballots, the worst theft in Ohio may have quietly taken place in rural counties. An examination of election data suggests widespread fraud -- and even good old-fashioned stuffing of ballot boxes -- in twelve sparsely populated counties scattered across southern and western Ohio: Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert and Warren. (See The Twelve Suspect Counties) One key indicator of fraud is to look at counties where the presidential vote departs radically from other races on the ballot. By this measure, John Kerry's numbers were suspiciously low in each of the twelve counties -- and George Bush's were unusually high.

 

Take the case of Ellen Connally, a Democrat who lost her race for chief justice of the state Supreme Court. When the ballots were counted, Kerry should have drawn far more votes than Connally -- a liberal black judge who supports gay rights and campaigned on a shoestring budget. And that's exactly what happened statewide: Kerry tallied 667,000 more votes for president than Connally did for chief justice, outpolling her by a margin of thirty-two percent. Yet in these twelve off-the-radar counties, Connally somehow managed to outperform the best-funded Democrat in history, thumping Kerry by a grand total of 19,621 votes -- a margin of ten percent.(181) The Conyers report -- recognizing that thousands of rural Bush voters were unlikely to have backed a gay-friendly black judge roundly rejected in Democratic precincts -- suggests that ''thousands of votes for Senator Kerry were lost.''(182)

 

Kucinich, a veteran of elections in the state, puts it even more bluntly. ''Down-ticket candidates shouldn't outperform presidential candidates like that,'' he says. ''That just doesn't happen. The question is: Where did the votes for Kerry go?''

 

They certainly weren't invalidated by faulty voting equipment: a trifling one percent of presidential ballots in the twelve suspect counties were spoiled. The more likely explanation is that they were fraudulently shifted to Bush. Statewide, the president outpolled Thomas Moyer, the Republican judge who defeated Connally, by twenty-one percent. Yet in the twelve questionable counties, Bush's margin over Moyer was fifty percent -- a strong indication that the president's certified vote total was inflated. If Kerry had maintained his statewide margin over Connally in the twelve suspect counties, as he almost assuredly would have done in a clean election, he would have bested her by 81,260 ballots. That's a swing of 162,520 votes from Kerry to Bush -- more than enough to alter the outcome. (183)

 

''This is very strong evidence that the count is off in those counties,'' says Freeman, the poll analyst. ''By itself, without anything else, what happened in these twelve counties turns Ohio into a Kerry state. To me, this provides every indication of fraud.''

 

How might this fraud have been carried out? One way to steal votes is to tamper with individual ballots -- and there is evidence that Republicans did just that. In Clermont County, where optical scanners were used to tabulate votes, sworn affidavits by election observers given to the House Judiciary Committee describe ballots on which marks for Kerry were covered up with white stickers, while marks for Bush were filled in to replace them. Rep. Conyers, in a letter to the FBI, described the testimony as ''strong evidence of vote tampering if not outright fraud.'' (184) In Miami County, where Connally outpaced Kerry, one precinct registered a turnout of 98.55 percent (185) -- meaning that all but ten eligible voters went to the polls on Election Day. An investigation by the Columbus Free Press, however, collected affidavits from twenty-five people who swear they didn't vote. (186)

 

In addition to altering individual ballots, evidence suggests that Republicans tampered with the software used to tabulate votes. In Auglaize County, where Kerry lost not only to Connally but to two other defeated Democratic judicial candidates, voters cast their ballots on touch-screen machines. (187) Two weeks before the election, an employee of ES&S, the company that manufactures the machines, was observed by a local election official making an unauthorized log-in to the central computer used to compile election results. (188) In Miami County, after 100 percent of precincts had already reported their official results, an additional 18,615 votes were inexplicably added to the final tally. The last-minute alteration awarded 12,000 of the votes to Bush, boosting his margin of victory in the county by nearly 6,000. (189)

 

The most transparently crooked incident took place in Warren County. In the leadup to the election, Blackwell had illegally sought to keep reporters and election observers at least 100 feet away from the polls. (190) The Sixth Circuit, ruling that the decree represented an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, noted ominously that ''democracies die behind closed doors.'' But the decision didn't stop officials in Warren County from devising a way to count the vote in secret. Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials -- citing the FBI -- declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

 

In fact, there was no terrorist threat. The FBI declared that it had issued no such warning, and an investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer unearthed e-mails showing that the Republican plan to declare a terrorist alert had been in the works for eight days prior to the election. Officials had even refined the plot down to the language they used on signs notifying the public of a lockdown. (When ROLLING STONE requested copies of the same e-mails from the county, officials responded that the documents have been destroyed.) (191)

 

The late-night secrecy in Warren County recalls a classic trick: Results are held back until it's determined how many votes the favored candidate needs to win, and the totals are then adjusted accordingly. When Warren County finally announced its official results -- one of the last counties in the state to do so (192) -- the results departed wildly from statewide patterns. John Kerry received 2,426 fewer votes for president than Ellen Connally, the poorly funded black judge, did for chief justice. (193) As the Conyers report concluded, ''It is impossible to rule out the possibility that some sort of manipulation of the tallies occurred on election night in the locked-down facility.'' (194)

 

Nor does the electoral tampering appear to have been isolated to these dozen counties. Ohio, like several other states, had an initiative on the ballot in 2004 to outlaw gay marriage. Statewide, the measure proved far more popular than Bush, besting the president by 470,000 votes. But in six of the twelve suspect counties -- as well as in six other small counties in central Ohio -- Bush outpolled the ban on same-sex unions by 16,132 votes. To trust the official tally, in other words, you must believe that thousands of rural Ohioans voted for both President Bush and gay marriage. (195)

 

 

The article also has quite a bit of coverage on the urban county voter irregularities as well.  But this "Twelve Suspect County" twist makes alot of sense to me, who is famliar with Democratic vote rigging in heavily Dem places like Chicago of the first Mayor Daley....its these places, where the GOP candidate is going to win big anyway and Democrats are few and far between, where you can get away with ballot box stuffing of various forms, since theres no one around to really challenge it. Big majorities for the Republican candidate in heavily Republican counties?  So what else is new?  So no one pays attention to the vote there.

 

 

 

 

There is are some good accounts of voting machine  as a way of discouraging voters.  This one was particularly good...

 

At liberal Kenyon College, where students had registered in record numbers, local election officials provided only two voting machines to handle the anticipated surge of up to 1,300 voters. Meanwhile, fundamentalist students at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University had one machine for 100 voters and faced no lines at all.(139) Citing the lines at Kenyon, the Conyers report concluded that the ''misallocation of machines went beyond urban/suburban discrepancies to specifically target Democratic areas.''(140)

 

So by the time the Mnt.Vernon Nazarene students had all voted and the machines where sitting mostly idle Kenyon students continued to stand in line...  One just has to wonder about the impartiality of the County Board of Elections in that county...or in many other counties. 

 

 

After reading this article Im even more convinced, one way or another, Blackwell will win this fall.