WP: What Happened in Ohio

[BeyondGeography]

GOP Won With Accent On Rural and Traditional

By Paul Farhi and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A01

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 3 -- By all the conventional yardsticks of Ohio presidential politics, Sen. John F. Kerry was a smashing success. He turned out droves of supporters, many of them first-time voters, and won more votes on Tuesday than any Democrat in state history -- and more than George W. Bush did in 2000 when he took the state from Al Gore.

Yet if Kerry's campaign operation performed admirably in this complex and critical battleground state, President Bush's volunteer army of 85,000 gave more than equal effort. By early Wednesday, Kerry was forced to confront the stark math from the Buckeye State: Bush had stormed to such an overwhelming advantage in rural and exurban counties that his victory was secure, even if Kerry were to insist on a protracted audit of uncounted provisional ballots.

As a political tale, Ohio '04 can be simplified into a story of city vs. country. Kerry's strategists have been hoping for months that urban voters, including such loyally Democratic blocs as organized labor and blacks, would push Kerry to an unbeatable margin, offsetting Bush's strength far beyond the cities.

It almost worked.

People living in and around Ohio's six biggest cities -- Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Akron and Dayton -- flooded polling stations to vote the Democratic ticket. Kerry won Cuyahoga County, part of the Cleveland area, with nearly 51,000 more votes than Gore won it by four years ago (his campaign says it exceeded its goal for black votes in Cuyahoga by 25 percent). His margin in Columbus's Franklin County was 10 times that of Gore's.

But it was not enough. Bush matched his 2000 performance in Ohio's urban areas, but his campaign more decisively brought out waves of voters in his rural base. Compared with 2000, his vote totals and margins of victory soared all across Ohio's Appalachian southeast and its southern and western farm belt. He even won over Ohio's Amish, capturing Holmes County in the heart of Amish country with 76 percent of the total.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23754-2004Nov3.html

[aquart]

1. Pasture pastries.

[Positronic]

2. Yeah, sure

it was the Amish vote that put * over the top, uh huh!
:eyes:

[bushisanidiot]

7. Yeah, 300% of the Amish voted for AWoL

and they probably don't even know it.

[acmavm]

3. Rural voters. Apparently the 'rural' voters are being short changed

big time on their educational opportunities. Or there's something in the water in 'rural' communities that makes them incapable of critical thought and rationalization. They voted against their own best interests. That, to me, is the big irony of this election.

[BeyondGeography]

6. Think "gay marriage"

<snip>
It all came together perfectly in Ohio where Issue 1, a proposal to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only the union of a man and a woman, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.

"The evangelicals turned out, and clearly that issue seems to have driven it," said Paul Tipps, a former state Democratic Party chairman and an informal adviser to Kerry. "I'm tending to believe that the moral values issues did trump" the war in Iraq and the economy for many Bush supporters. Tipps called that a fundamental shift in Ohio politics. "I am stunned," he said. "I didn't see it. This is a state that has historically voted the pocketbook."

The Bush campaign officially stayed out of the same-sex marriage initiative, but Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) said in a letter to supporters that the Bush campaign had asked that he advocate the initiative. Blackwell did radio spots and taped a message that was played in 3 million phone calls to voters. Supporters also mailed out 2.5 million church bulletin inserts.

Indeed, even close observers of Ohio politics might have missed the Bush campaign's emphasis on social values because much of its outreach efforts occurred away from the mass media. While the two campaigns slugged it out on big-city TV stations with commercials about the war and the economy, Bush's Ohio campaign used targeted mailings, phone calls and doorstep visits to talk about values, said John C. Green, a University of Akron professor who studies religion and politics. Green described one piece of mail from the Bush campaign that featured a beautiful church and a traditional nuclear family. It was headlined, "George W. Bush shares your values. Marriage. Life. Faith."

"It could not have been clearer if it had quoted from the Bible," Green said.

[Wright Patman]

8. Rural voters don't place

a priority on their economic status; otherwise they would have moved to the 'burbs long ago.

They vote on God, guns and gays. And they always will. In the South you have the added factor of racism to go with the homophobia and anti-abortionism.

This is why they are so zealous. Most of them believe it is some sort of divine retribution they are carrying out by voting against the "godless" Dems.

[are_we_united_yet]

4. You know

everybody ignoring the elephant in the livingroom syndrome is starting up again.

[maxsmom]

5. check these stats!

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

[bushisanidiot]

11. Holy Crap! Jeb stole it with the optical scan machines!

Changes in repuke counties were up to 433% more than expected?!

They fucking cheated AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Xipe Totec]

9. So how come there were no long lines to vote in rural OH areas?

One way to suppress the vote is to short the democratic precincts of voting booths so that people have to stand in line for hours to vote. We should be looking into the average number of registered voters per voting booth. If there is an imbalance of access between Republican and Democratic precincts the DNC should sue.
:think:

[bones_7672]

10. Only problem is ...

voting machines are the jurisdiction of each county board of elections, and in urban counties these are usually controlled by the local democratic party, so is the DNC going to sue the local dem party?

[Xipe Totec]

13. Oh, Really? You sure about this? Got any names?

Get your facts straight first:

Blackwell, a conservative Republican who co-chairs President Bush's statewide campaign, of trying to suppress the registration of poor and minority voters, a bloc likely to support Democrat John F. Kerry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A448-2004Oct26.html

As Ohio's chief election officer, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell oversees the elections process and appoints the members of boards of elections in each of Ohio's 88 counties.

He supervises the administration of election laws; approves ballot language; reviews statewide initiative and referendum petitions, chairs the Ohio Ballot Board, which approves ballot language for statewide issues; canvasses votes for all elective state offices and issues; investigates election frauds and irregularities; trains election officials and reimburses counties for poll worker training costs

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/blackwell/index.html

[cubsfan forever]

16. See post #13 n/t

Professor 2

[TexasProgresive]

12. good point

I voted on election day in my rural precinct in Texas. We had 4 BBV machines. Then I hear of urban precincts in the swing states with 2 machines. It sure makes one wonder.

[LisaL]

14. I am sure they had lots of machines for those.

While here in Franklin county I had to stay in a long line under the rain to vote. Long lines were in Cleveland as well. How easy it is to steal the election? You don't even have to cheat by rigging the vote-just not give people enough machines to vote on.
:nuke:
Kerry did great in Franklin, he won it by almost 10 %. He did great in Cuahoga, he won it 2:1. But how many people were not able to vote because of long lines? And how many rural people were able to vote because I am sure they had plenty of machines.
:nuke:

[lizzieforkerry]

15. I was a challenger in a rural precinct in Ohio

I was out in the hallway when the BC people were checking who had already voted from their lists. By 4:00, only 2 people hadn't voted so they were going to drive to their houses...I've never seen people to pleased with themselves

[LisaL]

I bet neither of them had to wait in a long line either.

[edhopper]

17. My theory, again

Sorry to all who have seen this, but I can"t get a thread of my own and I want to get this out there.
Take a state like Ohio. You have a very close race, the Democrats out register the Republicans by 10 to 1 and the early exit polling showed a lead for Kerry. But Bush won. How? In Ohio you have a Republican Secretary of State and Governor who seem willing to do whatever it takes to effect the vote. You also have generous voter residency and registration requirements. And you have Deibold voting machines that don't use paper ballots and can be manipulated.
So if your Karl Rove, you do a few things. First you register a bunch of bogus new voters. But you register them as Democrats. This way no one questions the names. (Why would the Democrats question new Democratic registration?) You do this in very Republican counties where you can find good, God fearing election officials to help. And you use the new Deibold machines that don't need actual people to cast a vote. (ballot box stuffing by software) Come election day you have these "new Democratic voters" cast their vote for Bush. But to pull it off you have to keep it hidden. You use slight-of-hand distraction to keep everyone looking elsewhere. So you hire thousands of poll watchers and lawyers to go into the heavily Democratic urban precincts to suppress the vote. This takes all the resources of the Democrats, and leaves your ballot stuffing activities free from scrutiny. And if you stop some Kerry voters along the way, so much the better.
I have nothing to back this up but my sense that the voting in Ohio just didn't add up. I don't have a good enough knowledge of Ohio or the statistical resources and data to check this out. But it can be done. If some one would to look at some of those "red" counties that had a very heavy voter turnout and went mostly for Bush, and also had larger new voter registration. It would not have taken much to tip the scales. And let's face it, not beyond what Rove is capable of. This is also a scenario that could work equally well in Florida, where you have the same criteria and where the "red" counties overcame the voting in the "blue" counties. Even though the early voting had given Kerry an 8 to 10 % lead.
If I can come up with this plan, the "Boy Genius" would certainly be able to.

[tngledwebb]

21. Herr Rove and his PNAC crew

have had many years practice abroad, and a successful trial run here in 2000. And there was an even bigger 'success' in between then and now.

[lizzieforkerry]

23. I live in Warren Co Ohio

Check it out. In 2000 Gore was gone 6 weeks before the election. I was the only Gore sign in my neightborhood. Our HQ shut down, not that they had done anything anyway. No phone calls, no canvassing, no GOTV NOTHING! WE got 28 percent of the vote in 2000- fast forward 4 years. Kerry had HQ here in July, 1000's of phone calls, 1000 volunteers, canvassing every weekend, us and ACT, more yard signs than you can imagine, bumper stickers t shirts, bonfires, house parties, letter writing parties, we opened a second HQ because we had so many volunteers. We had people helping us from other states and countries, we had a team of lawyers and an incredible GOTV. We had training sessions and I was amazed at how many Kerry signs there were around. It was 2:1 Bush but still much more than I would have dreamed about. This year Kerry got 27.5 % of the vote in Warren county...How is that possible?!?!?!? and with that I am crying again

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

25. Couple of items regarding your theory

In Ohio, you don't register your political party. Other than making an educated guess based on demographics, there's really no way to tell who's registering as a Democrat or a Republican.

By statute inside poll workers in Ohio are evenly split between Republican an Democrats. It would be virtually impossible for one side or the other to get away with widespread ballot-box stuffing -- it would require the partisan poll workers on one side to simply ignore obvious fraud against their own party.

SOS Blackwell halted the rollout of Diebold's voting machines in July. While a few locations may have already had them in place (and I don't know that that's for certain), I don't think it would have been enough to sway the election without being detected. The danger of these machines is that you could goose a candidates performance by 2-3 votes per precinct and, in Ohio, that could come to about 30,000 additional votes.

[LisaL]

28. Well, sorry, that is not true.

I am in OH, and yes, you register your party.
It's on your voter registration card.
:eyes:

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

31. You have an illegal registration form...

Here's the Secretary of State's Voter Guide. The pertinent information is on Page Five:

http://serform2.sos.state.oh.us/sos/pubAffairs/elections/voteGuide.pdf

"Under Ohio law, your party affiliation is determined by the ballot you vote in a primary election.

Believe me, as a Ward Chairman I would love it if people were registered by Party Affiliation. The only way I know if you're a Democrat is if you voted in the last primary -- otherwise you appear as non-affiliated. To make matters worse, in the 2000 primary many Democratic voters crossed over and voted for John McCain (if for no other reason than to screw up the Bush Campaign). I have a boatload of good Democrats who showed up as Republicans -- they're back in the "Dem" column after the 2004 primary, however.

Edit: Here's a .pdf of the Ohio Voter Registration Form

http://24.75.117.7/boe/PDF/VoterReg.pdf

[tngledwebb]

18. WashPost.

Now proven complicit in Election Theft 2004.

[DaveofCali]

19. Fuck, the Media pandering to Bush again....

Im afraid the Media's gonna be even more afraid of Bush now and gonna roll over for him now.

[tngledwebb]

22. Not pandering

to, more part and parcel of why and how this happened.

[tinanator]

27. propping

as always. It aint the medias responsibility anymore, they abdicated long ago. Shoulder the responsibility for responding to this nightmare, or shut up.

[Woody Box]

20. The first "limited hangout" concerning vote fraud (nT)

[JPZenger]

24. Karl Rove's Evil Genius

About 3 months ago, there was a front page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that quoted Karl Rove's comments in a speech to Bush supporters. It turns out Rove was telling the truth.

In that article, Rove said he was not following conventional wisdom that the election would be won by appealing to moderates and independents. He said that there were millions of evangelical Christians who did not show up to vote in 2000. He said that is was simply a matter of motivating this base to vote.

By placing anti-Gay Marriage ballot questions in over 10 states, these people were motivated to show up. And they swung Ohio, Florida and many other states.

[g5jamz]

26. something to thing about...

90% of the black vote goes to democrats...yet are considered very religous. If we continue with the religous-based rancor concerning these results, it may not play out well for the future.

[Bridget Burke]

29. What's the specific Democratic "religous" (sic) based rancor?

There are posters here who love to knock religion, but I didn't hear anything anti-religious from any Democratic candidate.

Please supply some more information.

[g5jamz]

32. On the boards....no candidate persay

post-election. People are assigning blame...and you don't burn bridges to people of faith when it was that group that just trounced us.

[TheKingfish]

30. We lost because of Roe v Wade and those Mass judges n/t