Fairfield Co. Ohio recount -- lost opportunity [View All]

[jmknapp]

mtnester, a recount observer in Fairfield County Ohio yesterday, has reported in this forum that the Democratic observer and the Republican observer each picked a precinct for the 3% hand-count, Lancaster 2C and Pickerington C.

According to the official tally, there were 68,742 ballots cast in the county, 1,154 of which were in Lancaster 2C and 885 in Pickerington C.

(1154+885)/68742 = 2.97%

Close enough for government work?

Anyway, it's evident that the Democratic and Republican observers each picked one of the largest precincts in the county, so they could reach 3% with only two precincts. This limited their choices severely.

But what in the world is the Democratic Party and/or Kerry telling its observers? They seem to be without a clue. There are a several precincts in the county, in Violet Township, that show the unmistakeable signs of ballots being swapped between them. With all the attention on such ballot swaps, it's incomprehensible to me that the Democratic observer didn't pick one of these precincts.

pct votesCast Kerry Bush Badnarik Peroutka Disqualified
Violet-O 540 326 174 0 10 29
Violet-Q 807 505 270 2 0 23
Violet-R 473 241 156 29 43 0

It's interesting that the Fairfield Co. software, unlike Cuyahoga Co., does not automatically zero out the disqualified column, which is an excellent indicator of ballot shuffles between precincts. Since the ballot orders in general differ between precincts, candidates get mapped into each other, including sometimes into the normally impossible "Disqualified" column. This happened above in O and Q, with 52 disqualified votes between them. The particular mapping in Violet R evidently moved Bush and Kerry votes to Badnarik and Peroutka. Looks like general chaos at the Violet Twp polling location.

Recounting any of these precincts would have revealed the discrepancies and brought this ballot shuffle issue to the fore!