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This is a bit long, but well worth the read, I think.
my Ohio report
Hello, all you democracy lovers! Thank you so much to those of you who donated (or have pledged to donate) so that I could go to Ohio to help in the recount. Here is a short report about what your generosity made possible. Though I thought when we set out that we might overturn the election, I found out that Ohio law made that very unlikely. But our work was helpful in uncovering evidence of wrongdoing. On Tues, Dec. 14, four of us from Madison set out for Shelby County, Ohio, in 2 hybrid Priuses. (Although a Republican observer heckled us when he heard we had taken 2 cars, it was necessary because we knew we might be split up. As it was, we had to borrow our hosts' car, because mine had a major breakdown and had to be towed 25 miles.) We got to lodge in an old restored farmhouse owned by Phil and Maureen Fry, two wonderful people who were working in Champaign County, just east of Shelby County, but just 20 minutes from Sidney, the county seat. It was a pleasure to stay at their home, and of course, it was free. On Wed. we spent 3 hours at the Shelby County Board of Elections office, looking at the poll books and signature books, counting signatures and looking for anything suspicious. The Director of the Elections Board, Kay Baker (Republican) was wary but polite. She tried calling the Secretary of State's office for instructions, but couldn't get any, so made do with someone in a neighboring county. She let us see the books, but only one at a time. Later we found out the Phil and Maureen had not been allowed to see the same books in Champaign County! We obtained a list of all the provisional votes that had not been counted in Shelby County, with the names and addresses of the voters. We called 2 and found one who said that she had arrived at the polling place, which held several precincts. A woman official had asked her where she lived, and then directed her to a certain line. When, after 2 hours, she reached the head of the line, she was told she was in the wrong precinct and given a provisional ballot. Because the Secretary of State Blackwell had decreed that those voting provisionally in the wrong precinct would not be counted, her vote was junked, even though the correct precinct was in the very same building! The officials could have 1) told her the correct information or 2) told her to go to the other line, but instead they insured that her vote did not count. That night we had a training by Jesse Tendler, an energetic and delightful young man who is a member of Billionaires for Bush, where he goes by the name of Noah Accountability. We learned how to observe the punch card ballot counting, such as is used in Shelby county, and then the optical scan ballot counting, used in neighboring Miami County. Jesse was late for the training because he was dealing with a situation in Greene County. You may have read about the women who discovered that the ballots were left in an unlocked office all night. They got volunteers to do a vigil at the office at night, to protect them. Lights were seen in the office in the middle of the night. On the previous night, she had gone to the office and found her 2 volunteers up against police cars, being harassed by the police. The night of our training, when she came out of the Greene County Elections Board Office, she found her tires slashed. A day or two before this she had received a creepy call from a man telling her where she had been all day, and then that night she was run off the road by 2 SUV's! Jesse assured us that she had been working on this issue for a long time, and was well known, but that we probably had nothing to worry about! On Thursday morning we got up at 6:20 and Brian, Andrew and I drove down to Miami County to help observe. We tried to take my car, but it had major warning signals, saying "Take me to a mechanic!" in Toyota language. Of course, we wondered if the same fiends from Greene County had been active, but later I was assured by the mechanic that a fuel pump failure could not have been caused by malicious action. The Miami County recount, held in Troy, began very differently from most. The Chairman of the Board of Elections started by greeting all the participants, and then had us all stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance! Then he explained, in so many words, that this recount would go forward and we weren't to make trouble. I said, "We'll need to get up and stand behind the counters to see" because they had us about 9 feet away, across 3 tables pushed together into a giant square. He said that we would stay seated, and a discussion ensued. Finally the Director of the Elections Board agreed that he didn't mind if we stood behind the volunteer counters. Then Brian Joiner, who is a retired statistician, stood up and declared that they were not obeying Ohio law, which says that a precinct or precincts comprising 3% or more of the county's voters will be randomly chosen and counted by hand. (If a subsequent machine count exactly matches the hand count, then the other 97% of ballots can be machine counted.) But they were not randomly picked, they had been picked already by the Board, which chose one urban, one small town, and one rural precinct. Of course, the election offficials paid Brian no mind, but proceeded with the recount. The reason that random selection is so important is that if election officials were crooked, they could, under present practice, cheat in all the precincts but one, and then pick that one for the recount, leaving all the dirt safely hidden. So the fact that nothing suspicious was found in a 3% sample chosen by the Elections Board does not put doubts to rest. When it was done, there were a total of 1659 votes. When the ballots were run through the optical scanning machines, the workers cheered when they saw the correct numbers come up on the machines. But it wasn't all over yet. Steve Quillen, the Elections Board Director, took the info from the vote tabulating machines on a CD and took it into another room to print out the results. This was yet another step in the process where one cannot feel sure that nothing tricky is being done. So I asked if I could come with him, and he agreed. When he got the printout, and we all got copies, Erica Weiss, a volunteer from Boston, noticed something peculiar. There was a total of 1660, one vote extra, and yet no candidate, or even a category like overvote or undervote, received the extra ballot. Though Brian and I had to leave to go to Shelby County, Andrew and Erica held their ground, insisting that since the results did not match the hand count, a full hand count of the county was in order. The representative of Ken Blackwell told them to forget about it, that it didn't matter and there would be no hand recount. They called the legal team in, but in the end they lost, because the letter of the law said that the hand count must match the tabulators, not the printout! Of course this was ridiculous, because the print out is what people refer to. Though it seems unimportant, the mystery of that one vote that the software added to the total might be very telling. In Shelby County, the recount started in a very small room crowded with all the observers possible: 3 each from the 4 parties! Brian made his speech about the lack of random selection, and was met with hostility from a member of the Elections Board, who insisted that it had all been done according to the Secretary of State's directives. By badgering him enough, we got him to quote the directive, which merely said the precinct should be "randomly selected." Although the Democratic observer next to me, who whispered that she "didn't even want to be here", also told me that the gentleman was "a local lawyer who knows everything!", apparently he didn't know the meaning of random. With punch cards, you have something called "header cards" which tell the machine which rotation of the ballot was used in that precinct. (Which candidate was at the top, which was next, etc.) We were told to check that they had the correct header card before each precinct during the machine count. (A clever cheat could use Precinct 2's header card in Precinct 4, thereby switching Bush and Kerry votes, for example.) But we were also told that there was no way that we could read a header card, so basically, that was a hopeless task. In the end, it turned out that they didn't have header cards, they used a computer simulation. So for each precinct, they punched a few keys to get the new configuration. Was it legit? Probably. Could I be sure? Of course not. The Shelby recount went smoothly, with the machine count getting the same total as the handcount, eventually. (They had to redo the handcount.) We came back the next day and compiled figures on how many people voted according to the poll books and the certified vote. In 11 precincts, only 2 came out the same, and 2 precincts had significant differences, like 22 and 11 votes. I sent it on to the legal team. After the recount was over, we all (8 Green and Libertarian observers) went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, and debriefed. I learned interesting things, like that optical scanning doesn't work so well if the weather is too humid! I think that's a fitting segue into my conclusion from this weekend: we need to get rid of voting machines of any kind and just vote on paper ballots, counted by hand. Here are a few reasons: • Voting machines are expensive. • They can break down during Election Day, causing long lines and delays, resulting in some people not getting to vote. • People are suspicious when a technician works on them just before Election Day, on Election Day, or just before a recount. They think their votes are being stolen, even if they aren't. • Optical scanners don't work well in humid weather. • Optical scanners can eat a lot of ballots, which then have to be remade by election judges. In Miami County they ate (mangled) about 500 ballots. • Punch card machines need someone with a light touch, or they will stop and malfunction. • Every time you run punch card ballots through a machine, the vote may change slightly because of hanging chads falling out. In a close election this can mean the difference between winning and losing, and there is no way of knowing what the original intent was. • Recounting punch cards, especially thousands of them, is very hard on the eyes, and it's easy to make mistakes. I caught 2 by the counters in Shelby County. • Electronic voting machines can be hacked, and people know it. • In a recount, the volunteers must be extensively trained to really be able to detect fraud, and even so they are likely to forget important points, be intimidated, or simply lack the ability to see inside a machine. • Paper ballots are cheap, and so are ballot boxes. • They can't break down on Election Day, and no technicians are necessary to fix them. • People who see someone messing with the ballot box can trust their own senses as to whether fraud is happening. They don't need a degree in computer science to figure out what's happening. • Paper ballots work well in humid weather! • Ballot boxes don't destroy ballots. They don't jam either. • Paper ballots don't change, no matter how many times you recount them. • Paper ballots are much easier to read than punch cards, resulting in fewer mistakes. • Any literate person can confidently participate in a recount, without extensive training. They can feel sure that even if their party lost, they live in a democracy and can have a chance next time. I cannot feel confident that no fraud took place in Ohio, based on this recount. I do know that massive voter suppression happened, because I saw a CD filmed on Election Day. It showed the huge lines of mostly African American voters waiting in the rain for hours. They were forced to wait because election officials had cut the number of voting machines, despite huge increases in voter registration. And over 100 machines were left in storage all day, despite calls from the polling places for extras. Many people were told false information about where to vote, and people who waited in the wrong line were never allowed to go to the front of the correct line. Instead they had to wait again, and some people just couldn't do it. People were given provisional ballots when the officials knew they were in the wrong precinct, which meant that the officials knew that their ballots would be discarded, even though they didn't. I urge everyone to continue working to restore our democracy. You can visit www.proveitonpaper.org, and www.nov3.us for ideas and information. Thank you for all that you do. Phyllis
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