Synopsis of the "Recount Day" section of the Miami County (Ohio) report

[eomer]

Regarding the Miami County (Ohio) report by Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman, and Bob Fitrakis that was recently posted by RonB, there is information in the middle of the report (pages 10-11 of 17) that especially caught my interest: the various counts of the three manual recount precincts.

On my first reading of that Recount Day section, I had the impression that it was definite proof of fraud. After re-reading it a couple of times, I realized that the investigation team is saying they need to go back and look deeper into the physical evidence to determine which explanation is true.

Here are the various counts for the three recount precincts distilled into a handy table:

    Precinct      Machine Count 1    Hand Count     Machine Count 2  Machine Count 3 
       004              566              558              558              566       
       030              675              661              662              675       
       063              443              440              440              443       

Here's the chronology of those counts:

1. All ballots for the county were originally counted by optical scanner on election day ("Machine Count 1")
   
2. The ballots for the 3 recount precincts were counted by hand during the recount ("Hand Count")
   
3. The ballots for the 3 recount precincts were counted by optical scanner during the recount ("Machine Count 2")
   
4. All ballots for the county were counted by optical scanner during the recount ("Machine Count 3")

As you can see from the table, when they would have wanted the optical scanner recount to match the hand recount, it did, and when whey would have wanted the optical scanner recount to match the original count, it did.

There seem to be three possible explanations:

1. The counting software (scanner and/or tabulator) had a switch that let them turn fraudulent vote padding on and off, or
   
2. there were additional paper ballots for the three recount precincts that were located in the overall pile somewhere other than properly included in the three collated groups, and those additional ballots were due to ballot stuffing, or
   
3. there were additional paper ballots for the three recount precincts that were located in the overall pile somewhere other than properly included in the three collated groups, and those additional ballots were just innocently collated incorrectly.

Or, in other words, there was either:

1. Fraudulent software, or
   
2. old-fashioned ballot stuffing, or
   
3. innocent error.

The Director of Elections had an interesting response:

After verifying for himself in 2006 the difference between
the hand recount vote totals (and first machine count totals)
for the 3 recounted precincts and the certified vote totals for
the same 3 recounted precincts, Director Quillen remarked that
the vote counting machines must have added votes to reach the
certified totals.

_{Emphasis added.}

It seems we will have to wait until the BOE is finished working the current election and can provide the support needed for the investigation to continue. In the meantime, if anyone has a different take on this issue, such as another explanation that I missed, or a way to rule out one of the three I listed, I'd appreciate your input.