Every county I've looked at had fewer precincts in 2004 than in 2000. Further, a number of counties had more precincts vote at one location than they had before (mine had merged 3 precincts to 2, and had those 2 vote at the same location that already housed 6 precincts) This created lines, inadequate parking problems, confusion, dangerous crossing to additional parking (heavy traffic, no crosswalk or cop -- at least not to help cross, they *were* there to tell us to "move along", tho) I kept taking my Kerry button off to escort seniors across the street. They managed to get all the lines inside, but it was chaos. When I went in for lists at 11am, the workers had FINALLY hit upon some way to identify the end of each precinct's line (which depended on the last person holding a hastily-scrawled note) ---- What sense does it make to decrease the numbers of precincts AND polling places while simultaneously predicting record turnout?
These and other "official acts" well in advance of election day need to be fleshed out. There's a section of the ORC that requires the BOE's to notify the SOS when they change precincts, I believe (new legislation), so there should be records available for public rec requests.
The other big item is the purging of *inactive* voters in August. That timing alone is interesting. Strangely enough, Ohio's Constitution was actually amended in the 70s to provide for these purges, and I do remember hearing about it, but I really don't know if it's ever been strictly enforced. The timing of the purge is such that careful people who had heard about registration delays due to volume would already have called the BOE to determine that their registration was valid by August (you know, we suspicious liberals). There was a great story in the Toledo Blade on this part, and I'm certain the stories are legion.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050109/NEWS09/501090334/-1/NEWS Also, you may want to cross-reference the purge timing with when all the reports came out with how "swamped" all the BOE's were (i.e., they were, but floated to prompt people to check before planned purge?)
One small county I looked at counted only EIGHT provisionals out of nearly 140. Many were listed as "not registered" with no other notation, and I imagine they were people purged in August.
Also, I ran across at least one newspaper article giving out incorrect information (provisionals would count even if in wrong precinct). Didn't see anything correcting that -- (searched for single word "election" in many local news archives)
As to the paper weight issue, it apparently is from some rule adopted by the SOS that he never published anywhere that I could find -- not in the ORC or the Ohio Administrative Code. That's what made some think it was a printer's spec. rather than a substantive rule, which would explain him not providing it for context. That's how most BOE's understood it, as being related to days of file drawers, where you want stiff cards if the records are going to be kept for a substantial period of time, and handled frequently, if only to add additional cards.
About Exit Polls, I know nothing.....BUT, I do seem to recall reading long, long ago when I first began reading about the voting machine industry, that there were three major players (at that time), and that one was being investigated/prosecuted? for attempting to subvert the election process in VENEZUELA, iirc. Probably shortly after 2000, when I would have started looking at that sort of thing.
Are you at a college in Ohio? Need an "outside agitator"?
:hippie:
oh, and n/t = "no text" similarly, nm = no message
I think there's a DU lingo lexicon somewhere, I should check it out, since there are still a few references I don't get after years here.
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whether or not this was based on legitimate data...because if so... then there is no way these exit polls were dead on where there was a paper trail and so incredibly off where there was none.
