Questioning Ohio

[sled]

Questioning Ohio

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid:62991

No controversy this time? Think again

By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 18, 2004

For Americans, it's bad enough that the 2000 election was such a
fiasco that our government felt compelled to bring in international
election monitors from Vienna, as though we were some Third World
banana republic rather than the world's oldest democracy. Worse, the
monitoring group--the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE)--left unimpressed.

The OSCE won't issue a final report for another six weeks, but its
preliminary findings (available at
www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/11/3779_en.pdf) are a litany of
"questions of possible conflict of interest," "widespread ...
allegations of electoral fraud and voter suppression," "significant
delays ... (that) may restrict the right to vote" and "concerns ...
regarding the secrecy of the vote." Not only that, but "it was not
clear that poll workers had generally received sufficient training to
perform their functions."

On the plus side, the election "proceeded in an orderly and peaceful
manner," the OSCE says. And according to many news reports, America
was awfully glad, above all else, that there was no untidiness with
this election. Once John Kerry conceded, it seemed, concerns about
voter suppression, intimidation and fraud could be safely ignored.

But there are at least two valid reasons why we should keep our eyes
trained on Nov. 2. First, an analysis suggests that more Ohioans may
have tried to vote for Kerry than for Bush, and couldn't--in which
case, by rights, W. should be packing his bags and shredding his
files, rather than plotting his second-term agenda. And besides--isn't
this kind of thing horrible even if it didn't happen to tip the
election this time?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. You just cannot keep...

A real story down.

[Pirate Smile]

2. Where is this analysis? I hadn't heard of this yet.

"First, an analysis suggests that more Ohioans may
have tried to vote for Kerry than for Bush, and couldn't--in which
case, by rights, W. should be packing his bags and shredding his
files, rather than plotting his second-term agenda." tip the
election this time?

[LiveInHope]

3. We will never have fair elections until

the voting officials are non-partisan.

"Here's the rub: An analysis shows that the precinct reductions disproportionately hurt Ohio's Democratic turnout.

Of Ohio's 88 counties, 20 suffered a significant reduction--shutting at least 20 percent (or at least 30) of their precincts. Most of those counties have Republicans serving as Board of Elections director, including the four biggest: Cuyahoga, Montgomery, Summit and Lucas."

This is so crazy. How can we allow the Board of Elections director to be a partisan office?!