BOE Says Some Close Races Could Take Days To Decide (OH)

[OhioChick]

Elections Officials Says Training, Testing To Continue Up To Election

POSTED: 12:33 pm EST November 2, 2006
UPDATED: 12:52 pm EST November 2, 2006

CLEVELAND -- The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections held a news conference Thursday morning to discuss the continuing preparations for Tuesday's election.

Elections officials said that the BOE will be testing and retesting all the electronic voting machines up until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, just hours before the polls open.

Also, the 7,000 poll workers will continue to be trained throughout the weekend and into Monday.

Another new addition for this election is a poll worker hot line that is being set up at the Board of Elections so that workers can call in with questions and concerns on Election Day.

There have already been 103,000 absentee ballots requested by Cuyahoga County voters, and BOE Director Michael Vu said that because of the high volume of absentee and provisional ballots expected to be cast, some of the closest races could take up to several days for a winner to be declared.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/10221075/detail.html

[msongs]

1. delay to declare .... or to fix? nt

[Birthmark]

2. They better play straight.

This "Republican pulls out a close election in overtime" shit is DONE!

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. It takes time to doctor all those mail-in ballots. n/t

[LiberalEsto]

4. to decide... or fix? nt

[Trillo]

5. I'd rather they be counted accurately and honestly,

than quickly by a fraud machine.

[HuffleClaw]

6. ok, so we know how this is gonna turn out then

pretty blatant if ya asks me.

[kestrel91316]

7. Take all the time you need folks. Just be sure you count EVERY

vote legally cast. I'm sure that's not hard to understand.

[partylessinOhio]

8. Thank you for finding this in print. I saw the report at noon on 5 but

it was not posted on their website or the BOE's site when I searched for it.

Michael Vu should have been fired! Again, he was barely understandable when he spoke today. He just appears to be in over his head. Is that an act or is he really as dumb as he seems?

They showed rows and rows of Diebold voting machines and said they were being tested. The testing would continue up to midnight before Tuesday's election. Earlier this week workers were shown moving unopened machines around on the floor. The workers were banging them around and were not careful at all. They were handling them in the same manner they handled the old punch card cases which did not contain the more fragile electronics of these voting machines.

So even if the machines are tested at the BOE, that is no indication they will be working onsite after they are moved, banged around and set up.

The report also said that the BOE will have phones answered by trainers on election day to help poll workers. Elections are important enough that we should have trained poll workers before the day of election.

Another alarming tape shown earlier this week showed a number of workers, male and female, around a six foot table which held many stacks of opened absentee ballots. In fact there were two rows of ballots and stacks filling the length of the table. These workers were walking/standing around all sides of the table. Many of them would pick up some ballots, then put them down. Some would take a handful of the ballots (just part of the stack) and insert them in a large manilla envelope and return the envelope to the same stack.

An absentee ballot is eight pages long, front and back of four sheets. The sheets are loose, not stapled or attached. With all the handling shown above, there did not appear to be any concern of keeping each voters four sheets together. Would that matter when the votes are counted?

I also wondered why the absentee returned ballots were already opened, taken from their mailing envelopes and placed in stacks. Previously, absentee ballots were never opened until election day, I believe when the polls closed.

From what I've seen in these few reports on NewsNet5 I'm really not sure my vote will be counted properly.

We need to nix electronic voting and return to paper ballots for all voters.

If Vu needs "days" to count these ballots - we can give "humans" days to count paper ballots if needed.