Reply #23: Most of the Cuyahoga county instances [View All]

[Ms. Toad]

correlated with reports of pollworker incompetence - pollworkers who directed them to the voting booths.

I have also come across another explanation for an automated switch from one precinct to another - which makes sense based on the technology used - the use of a header card to separate precincts.

Assuming that scenario - ballots counted by physical location, rather than electronically readable mark - A manual audit might not help for a couple of reasons:

Voters whose cards were stamped for 8G, who voted in an 8I booth and deposited in an 8I box would have already been counted correctly. On a manual audit these would be reshuffled to 8G, and would now be incorrectly tallied since they were voted in an 8I booth.

Voters whose cards were stamped for 8G, who voted in an 8I booth, and inserted in an 8G box would be unchanged since they got back in the correct box

Voters whose cards were stamped for 8G who voted in an 8G booth, and inserted their cards in an 8I box (resulting in an incorrect count) would be reshuffled to be counted as an 8G .

The last (the only scenario resulting in increased accuracy) is the least likely of the scenarios to have occurred, since it requires the voter to have made two correct choices (correct sign in, correct booth) and then to mistakenly leave his/her voting area and insert the ballot in the box on another table.

The other factor involved in wandering voters was incompetent pollworkers - who would not likely have made that particular mistake, since the motivation reported for the pollworker misdirection was long lines (I suspect the scenario you quoted above actually involved misdirection to a booth - based on the reference to lines, and the voter reporting it was focusing on the precinct deposit box since Blackwell repeatedly insisted that voters must vote in the correct precinct. Given that state-wide emphasis I could imagine a voter unaware of ballot rotation (of which most voters are unaware) might report what seemed most critical to having the vote count - the ballot ending up in the wrong precinct box. I am not aware of any lines for turning in ballots - but the lines for voting booths were at times substantial.

There are also numerous reports of pollworkers directing voters to the wrong booths - in one instance from the time the polls opened until 4 pm. Those ballots may have landed in the stamped precinct box (resulting in an uncorrectable problem) or may have landed in the voted precinct box (resulting in a correct tabulation). Nothing will fix the former, and the latter would be now be counted incorrectly under your suggested manual audit.

So...reassigning the ballots to the box stamped on the box would likely result in increased miscounts of voter intent, rather than decreased.

In addition, I am not sure there is a way of manually auditing the ballots. One DU poster indicated that in the precinct s/he was observing the precinct was stamped on the back of the card. I do not recall than on my ballot (although I wasn't specifically looking for it). It may not be a universal practice - so it may not even be possible.

All in all a horrible mess.