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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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