Warren's Vote Tally Walled Off (Ohio red county)

[chimpy the poopthrower]

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/11/05/loc_warrenvote05.html

Friday, November 5, 2004
Warren's vote tally walled off

Alone in Ohio, officials cited homeland security

By Erica Solvig
Enquirer staff writer


LEBANON - Citing concerns about potential terrorism, Warren County officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns.

County officials say they took the action Tuesday night for homeland security, although state elections officials said they didn't know of any other Ohio county that closed off its elections board. Media organizations protested, saying it violated the law and the public's rights. The Warren results, delayed for hours because of long lines that extended voting past the scheduled close of polls, were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election.

...

Commissioners made the security decisions in a closed-door meeting last week, but didn't publicize the restrictions that were made until after polls closed.

...

"Frankly, we consider that a red herring," (WCPO-TV News Director) Morford said of the county's "homeland security" reason. "That's something that's put up when you don't know what else to put up to keep us out."

...

Having reporters and photographers around could have interfered with the count, (County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel) said.

[UpInArms]

1. good grief, that was just Wally keeping his "promise"

what's the big deal? /sarcasm

[Rose Siding]

2. Golly, that seems innocent enough

:grr:

[chimpy the poopthrower]

3. Could that be legal cause to challenge those votes? (nt)

[George_S]

21. Sure sounds like an "issue or question".

C'mon Ohio DUers. Go for it.

[maddezmom]

4. just another "irregularity", no big deal

:eyes: They keep piling up, and yet we are to assucme the election went of without any problems.

[symphony]

44. yeah, check this out - also from OH

And why isn't this all over the news? Must be that "librul" media again, I guess.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch.
State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome.
Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result
The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error.
The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections.
In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor.
In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred.
Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said.
The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine.
Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round.
When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said.
"All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to."
A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem

:wtf:

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Oh, my dear God! What was the vote tally -- anybody know?

They truly DID steal Ohio, didn't they --

[jobycom]

14. I sure hope so

I'd like nothing more in my life right now than to have Bush finally exposed as the crook he is. Man I hope he stole Ohio, and Florida. We will prove it this time!

Watch out Bush and Cheney, we still be Moshin'!

[roseBudd]

26. Warren County gave 66,000 votes to Bush

[intheflow]

6. Obviously Wally is a Wally

England slang: wally = dumbf*ck, idiot, wanker

This is a huge story. Where was Michael Moore with cameras when we needed him? No wonder they didn't let anyone know until after the election.

I think I'm going to be sick for real. :puke:

[Cassandra]

91. That is why the repukes have so demonized Moore...

so that even if he appeared with film that showed repuke operatives stuffing Dem votes in their shorts, the sheep would still not believe it.

[Meritaten1]

7. National news

if that is an accurate account.

[MidwestTransplant]

8. Relax people. The constitution only guarantees a right to vote

not a right for it to be counted. That's what the strict constructionists would say anyway.

[Eloriel]

61. I don't think it even gaurantees a right to vote --

otherwise we wouldn't have some activists (and I'm among them, along with Sharpton I think) calling for a Right to Vote Amendment to the Constitution.

[ecoalex]

92. Not so acording to the U.S. Supreme Court

The Gore vrs Bush Supreme Court decision had a statement that "the electors from the states elects the president, not the voters"."A president would be elected regardless of any popular votes".

[Onlooker]

9. How did Kerry do in Warrne county?

Did he do better or worse than expected?

[henslee]

16. Kerry lost 25,399 to Bush's 66,523. In 2000, Gore got creamed similarly.

source: SOS website

[roseBudd]

27. In 2000 there was no Dem GOTV, not so in 2004

It's hard to believe their efforts had 0 effect

AND Warren kept the polls open late AND were late tallying

Waiting for Cuyahuga?

[Longhorn79]

54. I lived in Warren county in '00

Right on the border of Warren/Montgomery actually. There was a moderate effort by both parties. Probably depended on the circle you ran with, neighborhood you lived in, and job you had, that determined your exposure to the effort.

[roseBudd]

45. I have been in contact with a Warren County Kerry supporter, Gore

had nothing in that county in 2000. Kerry campaign, MoveOn and ACT were all over that county in 04 and every other yard sign was a Kerry sign, yet the chimp got over 70%

Better than other similar Ohio repug counties

[Longhorn79]

55. As mentioned above

I lived there in '00. I have since moved to Texas, but people I know have said there was a much larger effort this year, on both sides, however. In general, it's an expansion suburb due to Proctor & Gamble, GE aircraft engines, and even some Dayton businesses. For the most part it is fiscal conservatives. I'm not so sure Moveon had much of an effect on those types.

[lizzieforkerry]

56. I agree except that the P&G site that they built here is

the Health care research and Developmnet. These are mainly scientists that have PhD's and younger lab assistants. I have met a lot of them and I think because they came from academia and usually from Northeast schools a lot of them are liberal. I think this is why we had such a huge Kerry volunteer turnout in Mason. The young generation at P&G is pretty liberal, they have a large community of Gays and Lesbians and P&G offers civil union benefits. I do agree that P&G has a lot of Conservatives but they ae mainly downtown and in Sharon Woods.

[roseBudd]

68. The point IS that the press watches the vote tallying, to bar the press

with some BS Homeland security excuse that was decided during a closed door session a week earlier and not even publicized until the polls closed is beyond the pale. At Hamilton County BoE the press was there until 5 am.

Guessing that 71% for Bush is right does not change suspicious behavior on the part of elected officials. Secrecy is not what democracy is about.

[The Magistrate]

10. Homeland Security, Sir!?!

These people are lying thieves; open enemies of our country and our electoral system. In this county, you may depend upon it, real, old-style vote fraud was done....

"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first."

[Gregorian]

11. Everybody know the next terrorist attack would be in Lebanon.

Oh, Ohio. Well, maybe the terrorists had a bad roadmap. Maybe they didn't want blood. They wanted voting machines. It's a long shot, but just maybe. So, goood for you. Shut the doors to Democracy. Lock out the truth.
My guess is that there was no terrorist attack. Just a few votes that needed "counting".

Maybe we should just not vote at all. Or perhaps we should just declare marshall law, in perpetuity. I mean, one never knows when those terrorists might attack. It could be NOW. Or now! No time for voting. No time for freedom. No time for the truth.

[Philostopher]

12. Okay, I have to be honest about this one.

I hate to say this, but it definitely wouldn't have mattered. Warren County is very, very whitebread Republican. There is no doubt in my mind that it went at least 60% for Bush. No doubt whatever -- I live just north of there.

Also, they voted punch cards, most likely. Ohio's rural counties largely did -- there would have been no reason to manipulate votes in rural counties in Ohio, most of them go pretty heavily Republican.

Now, I can't explain why they did this, and I have my doubts about the integrity of the overall voting in Ohio and the counts -- but I can tell you Warren County is full of the very people we always say should vote for Democrats, but don't. They're dangling over the pit of poverty, but more scared of 'terra' than they are of starvation.

[trotsky]

15. Where better to pad your vote total?

An area that already goes pretty heavily for Bush won't look suspicious at all if you steal a few more, maybe even a LOT more. Remember, it's a statewide total that determines the E.V. win - you grab votes wherever you can manufacture them.

[Philostopher]

17. Yeah, that's a point.

Let me juggle some figures, here -- maybe it's a bigger point than I thought, at first.

The total population of Warren County is about 180,000 people. Of that total, 70% of them are voting age. When you figure only half the population votes, on average, that means about 35% of the total population in the county voted. That gives you 63,000. If I give the generous result of 75% of them being Bush* votes, that's about 47,000 votes for Bush* that got thrown into the pot late.

On edit -- it may have been higher turnout due to homophobes, but I think the 75% I threw to Bush* probably accounts for any error there.

Huh. I'm guessing the Warren County results were what was used to convince the Kerry campaign that no matter how many provisional ballots they counted, they still had somewhere around 50K votes for Bush* in their pockets.

For anybody else who wants to play around with the numbers, here's a page from the Census Bureau with the Warren County demographics:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39/39165.html

[kittenpants]

18. warren county results

Warren
Bush, George W. Republican 66,523 72.11%
Kerry, John F. Democratic 25,399 27.53%

bush got a few more than 47,000!

[Philostopher]

20. Turnout was higher than I estimated, then.

I was playing safe at 30% of the total population -- this really isn't out of line with what I said overall, though. Bush* got almost 75% of the votes. Just more people voted than I estimated. I think the number from the Census site was just a projection of Warren County population for 2003 based on the 2000 census -- many things could have conspired to make that number wrong, including more people moving there than they'd anticipated and higher voter turnout than I attributed.

[lizzieforkerry]

53. We have the second highest population growth in the state

and we are ranked pretty high in the US. I can't believe that with such a huge influx of people we were able to maintain the exact same voting percentages as 2000. What is the likelihood of that happening?

[The Voice]

62. Thanx for the Census Bureau link.

I had wondered how Warren County could have 125,000 registered voters - the number seems inflated. Link to Warren County BOE from post below:

http://www.co.warren.oh.us/bdelec/voting_results_publish_dynamic.htm

Warren is the fastest growing county in Ohio and one of the fastest growing counties in the nation. Let's bump the census guesstimate to 200K total population in 2004 and round down the under 18 proportion to 25% and we arrive at 150,000 voter eligible residents over 18.

83% of eligible residents are registered to vote?

Seems a tad steep to me.

Perhaps one explanation might be that there are a few non-eligible former residents still on the rolls in Warren County.

I moved from Warren County, Ohio to a NE blue state last year. Recall that Ohio has crossover primary voting. Since Gore already had a lock on the 2000 Democratic nomination, I voted for McCain in the 2000 Ohio Republican primary in order to stick it to Smirk. This was the last time I indicated a party preference in Warren County.

Guess the Ohio Republican party thought I was a lock for Furious George.

During the final months of the 2004 campaign, I received three mailings, one absentee ballot, three recorded phone messages and, in the last week of the campaign, two live phone calls from the Ohio Republican party.

It's not hard to imagine what they hoped to accomplish with mailings to a northeast address and calls to a non-Ohio area code.

Wonder how many former residents double dipped for the pResident?

In fact, given the evidence of massive Republican voter fraud, I wonder if I voted absentee in Ohio?

The Voice

[lizzieforkerry]

63. One more thing I forgot to all of you

Every Republican in our county was mailed an absentee ballot. My Rep friend received one and called the BoE because she didn't request it and wanted to go vote. In Ohio if you have a absentee you con't vote at the polls- Well they told her she could still go to the polls if she wanted. I think there was a lot of double dipping going on around here.....

On edit: Sorry Voice, I replied to you before I read all of your response, I got excited when I first started reading your Census results and remembered why this could be so. :)

[The Voice]

75. I think we have established.......

.....that at least one fraudulent illegal Bush/Cheney absentee ballot would have been counted in Warren County.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has established that illegal ballots could have been counted though out Ohio; linkage below:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1096882397251320.xml

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has reported that the Ohio Republican Party mailed "more than 3.5 million absentee request forms to likely Republican and independent voters"; linkage below:

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1096882397251320.xml

If just 5% of those Republican ballot requests resulted in fraudulent, illegal Bush/Cheney ballots, then Kerry won Ohio.

The Voice

[LiberalFighter]

83. Wouldn't that be a legal challenge?

And investigate to see if and how much double dipping there was?

[roseBudd]

76. Exactly, I read an AP story about a month ago that indicated FORMER Ohio

GOP supporting residents received absentee ballots from the Ohio GOP at their new addreses in nonbattleground states urging them to vote in Ohio.

[LiberalFighter]

82. Maybe you should investigate to see if they have you as voted

[AngryOldDem]

30. What's more disturbing are votes being counted in secret

Even if our form of democracy is an even bigger joke than before, this kind of tactic should not be tolerated and should be protested whenever it happens.

It may not have made any difference if the votes had been counted in a closet or out on Main Street -- but the fact remains counting votes is a process that must be open to observation.

And Warren County is becoming the upscale bedroom community between Dayton and Cincy -- Springboro, especially. So in addition to the shrinking rural (and poorer) population, we have the nouveau riche who will guarantee a GOP chokehold there for years to come.

[Philostopher]

60. Bad enough they kept a lot of people from voting...

where they knew Dems would draw the most votes, but they counted them in secret in a place they knew Kerry wouldn't. Okay -- it stinks.

[wicket]

13. Oh my effing god!!!!!

[Eurobabe]

19. oh good god and I am going into the thick of that county

maybe not, hubby and I have decided we might "patronize" a more blue county in light of tuesday.

[roseBudd]

Come to Hamilton County near UC we are way liberal

[lizzieforkerry]

49. We have a great network or Democrats here in Warren

and we are getting stronger. Warren County Democrats in Action- check us out if you do come here. You would have been amazed if you could have seen us all 4 days ago...We did make a difference whether they stole it or not. I think it is because they knew we were making a dent that they decided they had to raise Bush's numbers. PLEASE come we need you here...please! please?

[Eurobabe]

70. Lizzie, I just emailed you at DU -C4C

[0rganism]

22. So, where's our flash mob of paid congressional staffers?

The Democratic party is going to have to step the game up a few notches to compete in the New World Order.

[Reciprocity]

23. This is so true.

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
- Josef V. Stalin

[RememberTheCoup]

24. Warren County is Ohio's 3rd largest county that went for Bush -- out of 88

Of the counties that went for Bush, only Butler and Hamilton gave Bush more votes. This is big.

[Straight Shooter]

25. In the interest of National Security, the Democratic party is now illegal

That will be all. Thank you for your cooperation.

Signed,
Dept. of Homeland Security

Co-signed
Secret Service

[KTM]

28. Please say someone in power gives a damn !

:kick:

[roseBudd]

29. Contact Ron Leibau, he is the local news editor who covers elections

Ron Liebau
(M-F, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.) Local News [e-mail] 513-768-8396

The Enquirer needs a pulitzer for investigative reporting after their Chiquita debacle.

After that contact Dayton Daily News, Toledo Blade, Plain Dealer.

I can't I am a newspaper insider. I can only point the way.

[roseBudd]

73. Contact Dayton Daily News also

NEWS EDITORS
John Erickson, Asst. Managing Editor/projects and government
[phone]
[e-mail]
Vince McKelvey, Public affairs editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Chris Celek, Regional Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Doug Page, Miami Co. Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Jim Dillon, Business Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
James Lloyd, Multimedia Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Ellen Belcher, Editorial Page Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Laurie Denger, Community News Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Frazier Smith, Night Local Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Hal Davis, Asst. Local Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Steve Bennish, Asst. Regional News editor
[phone]
[e-mail]
Jana Collier, Assistant Managing Editor/Production
[phone]
[e-mail]
Steve Roberts, News Editor
[phone]
[e-mail]

Important Editorial Numbers
Metro desk [phone]

[foo_bar]

31. this is the worst news I've seen this century

[kittenpants]

32. another weird OH result in Cuyahoga county

parma, OH precinct 5-E
in Cuyahoga county (the county w/ the highest % of voters for Kerry)

Kerry 310
Bush 340
Badnarik 3
Peroutka 1

Voinovich 609
Fingerhut 241

total voted for president = 654
total registered voters in 5-E = 972
total ballots cast = 917

Kerry % = 47.4%
turnout = 917/972 = 94%
ballots with no vote for president = 917 - 654 = 263 (40% of total)

so 40% voted for senate, but not president??

reported results for Cuyahoga county-

Kerry, John F. Democratic 433,262 66.41%
Bush, George W. Republican 215,624 33.05%

so by taking the average % for Kerry in that county (not knowing if that precinct is avg or not) we could guess there should be about 605 votes for Kerry. Instead we have about half that!

[AngryOldDem]

33. (UN)OFFICIAL Warren Co. Board of Elections results

http://www.co.warren.oh.us/bdelec/voting_results_publish_dynamic.htm

[pleiku52cab]

34. Youse Ohoians aint got nuttin on usn Floridee crackers

Watcha ya hidin fur - Jus do ur sheet right out in publik like wese do don here in the greet state of Jebbie Boy (see article proceeding this on the DU home page)

[lizzieforkerry]

35. I worked for KE campaign in Warren County

OK I have been screaming this in every thread I have replied to so if you have heard it already sorry.

I lived in Warren County during the Gore campaign. I was the only person in my neighborhood that had a sign. We had a Dem HQ but it had no supplies, no volunteers and shut down when Gore pulled out of Ohio 6 weeks before the election. We did not have a GOTV campaign. We made no calls, we did not canvass- NOTHING! Gore got 28% of the vote here. Fast Forward 4 years. We had two headquarters set up by July Dems and KE. We started phone banking and canvassing in July. ACT was here working every weekend. Moveon was here. We had yard signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts and volunteers. When we reached 1000 volunteers we opened a third headquarters and we still had to turn people away because we didn't have enough room for them. They moved the Dem HQ to a bigger building. Our KE field organizers were AMAZING. We were well organized, we had bonfires and cookouts and house parties. Our GOTV was amazing, we had all of the Challengers that we needed. We had training sessions and lawyers. We had money out of the wazoo, both from KE and from people that just kept coming in to HQ and dropping money. Kerry got 27.5% of the vote. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. I wish you guys could have seen us- we were a Kerry machine. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE. This is why I will never believe that this election wasn't stolen from us. Because of what I saw here in Warren county. I can accept that Kerry lost this election but I can't accept that he didn't get a higher percentage of votes than Gore.

[AngryOldDem]

36. Have you looked at the returns in my post above yours?

Seems ALL the figures for ALL the races are REMARKABLY similar.

Coinkydink? Me thinks not.

This stinks.

[lizzieforkerry]

38. And again, more people

voted for Dem representatives than voted for Kerry. No these repubs around here vote for anyone with an R next to their name. They would not swtich, especially since all of the Dems were challengers. I could see it the other way around but...

[Philostopher]

59. Okay -- that raises a red flag.

The only place that makes sense in Montgomery County, where Mike Turner draws a lot of Dem votes because he was the mayor in Dayton for a while. For some reason, even though he's a bootlicking neocon, you could barely get a Dem outside of Kettering to look at Jane Mitakides because they'd never heard of her before. Here, I'd understand it; there, it doesn't make sense -- you're absolutely right. Warren County Republicans, if they're anything like the 'white flight' Repubs in Clermont County (where I grew up, so I know summat about the breed) would never vote off-party, even if the Republican on the ticket was a convicted child molester. That doesn't pass the smell test.

[lizzieforkerry]

65. Do these numbers include absentee

ballots? They can't include provisional yet, can they?

[LiberalFighter]

84. Could they had inputted the numbers and percentage from 2000

into the voting machines to create an outcome similar?

[kittenpants]

37. sounds like they thought fraud would go unnoticed in that county

[CAcyclist]

47. Do you have a list?

Can you start calling people and asking them how they voted - is it possible to canvass all of the contacts? I'll donate money if need be. I'll help if I can.

[lizzieforkerry]

51. I'm working on getting it. THANKS n/t

[LiberalFighter]

85. I would hope that the Kerry campaign still have county voter files

[AndyTiedye]

48. Does Bush Pull 72% of the Vote In Texas?

That seems an absurdly high number.

[sergei kirov]

78. also worked on campaign in warren county

I think something seems a bit fishy. While I expected Bush to win easily in the county approximately 60-40 I think over 70% is out of line. Also loads of people in Warren county do not vote. I canvassed many houses where no one was registered and no one wanted to register. This county is growing but not that fast.

[alfredo]

39. Did they allow Democrats to take part

in the counting? If not, raise holy hell.

[A Brand New World]

40. Why do you all think *'s last campaign stop on Tuesday was in Columbus?

It was to make sure that everything was in order. He had Jeb in Florida to take care of that state but he made sure he checked in himself with Columbus. I'll never believe anything else.

[lizzieforkerry]

52. Yeah and he was in Wilmington on Mon

which is only about 20 minutes from here. We were all saying that it was really dumb of him to waste time coming to Wilm the day before the election- I guess not now.

[mountainvue]

41. Well,

this stinks to high heaven.

[struggle4progress]

42. Dide Fawn Hall drop in to help em shred?

[jagasian]

43. Why didn't they video tape it?

If they were only concerned about security, then they could have video taped the counting instead of letting people watch it live. This just screams fraud!

[VPStoltz]

46. Security?

This is just one more example of the * bunch using "security" to its advantage. It is becoming more and more evident that this election was rigged. I hope to God that Kerry is taking a low profile because behind the scenes he has hired a mass of folks to investigate to prosecute these pukes.

[lizzieforkerry]

50. Warren county doesn't have a single elected Democrat

in office. There is no one to go to to help us look at numbers, to talk about what happened. NO ONE

[CAcyclist]

58. You know what I would do?

If I lived in this county, I'd get out the phone book and just start calling people.

[ed_vadem]

87. lzzie I just

sent you a PM

and I hope ths kicks the thread one more time

[csw77]

57. I live in Warren County

There were TONS of Kerry/Edwards signs and people were standing in line for hours to vote on election day. I have never seen anything like it. I refuse to believe Kerry didn't do better than Gore did in 2000 in Warren County.

Also the presiding judge takes the ballot boxes to the BOE alone. And when I was at a pollworker training session last year they mentioned the judge is always a Republican. Fair, huh? So once those ballot boxes left the polling places Tuesday they were all in the hands of the Republicans. And EVERY single person mentioned in that article is a Republican.

Something stinks. Too bad it will never be mentioned.

[RememberTheCoup]

64. Can you take this to your local ACLU?

5 people in a county are all that is needed for a recount. Of course, if they destroyed ballots, it may not do any good.

[CJCRANE]

66. Sorry folks

but this sounds exactly like what happens in some third world countries. I lived in a small African country for several years. After the elections there was a strange delay counting the votes in some precincts and no oversight.

Eventually the results were declared and the ruling party had scraped through with 51% to 49%. Afterwards I heard (from an inside source) that a large percentage of ballot papers for the opposition had been "spoiled" (and they all had the same drawing on them which caused them to be considered "spoiled").

On edit: there was also a rumour that the head of the electoral commission had gone to the president and told him he'd lost the election. Apparently the president told the commissioner to go back and re-count the votes until he got the "right" result.

[roseBudd]

80. Every person on this thread who has personal knowledge specific to

Warren County should write what they know down and then contact newspapers that do investigative reporting. The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Toledo Blade, Knight Ridder, etc. The more papers the better.

[City Lights]

86. I agree with this idea. But make sure to include international

papers. I can see US papers bending over backward to try and sweep this stuff under the rug since _{king george} has already been declared the winner. Our compliant media is more concerned with keeping the _chimp happy than they are with getting to the truth.

[bushisanidiot]

67. Notice the dems didn't send in the "rent a mob" like the repukes did in FL

in 2000? the repukes fight dirtier.. that's how they "win".

we're too fucking nice.

[holiday]

69. I live in Warren County! I didn't hear a thing about this.

[holiday]

71. csw77, I lived in Franklin and went by there last week

and there were TONS of Kerry/Edwards signs. They outnumbered bush signs probably 4:1

Springboro is probably all Bush

[roseBudd]

81. Only the press would have known when they showed up like normal

at the BoE and weren't let in. I did see a City Beat story saying Hamilton County was going to require press credentials. Normally BoE is a madhose on election night and anyone can walk in.

[intheflow]

93. kick

[SmokingJacket]

72. Why isn't every vote tally witnessed by two reps from each party

and videotaped?

Wouldn't that shore up your faith in the system?

[goclark]

74. Absolutely with one republivan video tphotographer and one Rethug

The Democrat needs to be closely followed in the car by asurrounded by armed guards of Democrats.

Oh, I am so angry!

[BlueNomad]

77. kick

kick

[republicansareevil]

79. kick

[Divine Discontent]

88. UGH....

DOESN'T THIS MAKE EVERYONE THINK WE'RE SCREWED IN THIS COUNTRY? WHY NO FIGHT (IT SEEMS) FROM OUR PARTY?

We are the leaders of the free world, and can't even have a remotely fair process for elections, let alone keeping the doors locked to throw out kerry votes...

BLECHHHHHHHHHHHH

[ohtransplant]

89. How many thing have to be exposed for people to notice?

Isn't it obvious that this stinks?

Do voting machines spontaneously mis-count votes by themselves? All in favor of one candidate?

Do voters lie to exit-pollers in greater numbers when there's no paper trail?

Doesn't anyone in the DNC, Kerry campaign, or national media smell a rat?

Has the DNC or K/E named anyone to monitor the counting of the provisional ballots?

What ever happened to counting the absentee ballots?

Feel free to respond to any or all questions. Educate me.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories but this is too much to ignore.

Signed,

UNBELIEVABLY PISSED!

[roseBudd]

90. Don't forget it is the newspapers who finally counted the votes in FL

We must bring all these stories to the press.

Even if we cannot change the outcome, the stench of the cheater label sticks

Bush used a corked bat

[Osiricity]

94. homeland security

Does anyone know what the actual color-coded threat level was for Ohio and/or Warren County on election day? And are there any stories of an increased security presence due to this claimed/perceived threat? They let the media in on the first floor, and counted on the third floor. It's not like two flights of stairs would actually stop terrorists....

[halobeam]

95. I believe they were rated a 10/10 on the scale

They seem to have a number scale there instead of a color scale. I believe Olberman was reporting last night on this, the other counties were rated 8 in Ohio. But of course they didn't have any specifics.

It's all a bunch of bull. This entire country goes on a one color code threat level, and they never have specifics...but that night they didn't have specifics either, but knew which counties would be more likely to be hit? No sense, all lies. They just pile on so much crap that the 55 million of us would be more dispursed, looking into a multitude of incidents they created. The more things they distract us with, the more time it takes to get it straightened out.

[leftofthedial]

96. well john kerry is a terrorist

so I'm sure they were concerned that he might win