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Questioning Ohio No controversy this time? Think again. BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN Nov. 17, 2004 The Boston Phoenix FOR AMERICANS, it's bad enough that the 2000 election was such a fiasco that our government felt compelled to bring in international election monitors from Vienna, as though we were some Third World banana republic rather than the world's oldest democracy. Worse, the monitoring group -- the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) -- left unimpressed. The OSCE won't issue a final report for another six weeks, but its preliminary findings (available at http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/11/3779_en.pdf) are a litany of "questions of possible conflict of interest," "widespread ... allegations of electoral fraud and voter suppression," "significant delays ... may restrict the right to vote," "considerable
confusion ... regarding the use of provisional
ballots," "occasional faults and breakdowns of DRE
machines," "concerns ...
regarding the secrecy of the vote." Not only that, but
"it was not clear that poll workers had generally
received sufficient training to perform their
functions."
On the plus side, the election "proceeded in an
orderly and peaceful manner," the OSCE says. And
according to many news reports, America was awfully
glad, above all else, that there was no untidiness
with this election. Once John Kerry conceded, it
seemed, concerns about voter suppression,
intimidation, and fraud could be safely ignored. The
mainstream media refocused their attention on the
Scott Peterson trial, while Internet bloggers chased
phantom conspiracy theories into the void.
But there are at least two valid reasons why we should
keep our eyes trained on November 2. First, a Phoenix
analysis suggests that more Ohioans may have tried to
vote for Kerry than for Bush, and couldn't -- in which
case by rights W. should be packing his bags and
shredding his files, rather than plotting his
second-term agenda.
And besides -- isn't this kind of thing horrible even
if it didn't happen to tip the election this time?
BUSH HAS, at the moment, won Ohio by 136,483 votes,
but a number of considerations throw that lead into
serious doubt. For one thing, that number will likely
diminish when the state's approximately 155,000
provisional ballots are processed. Most of those who
had to use provisional ballots probably were
first-time voters whose names had not made it onto
their precinct lists, observers say, and first-timers
went 54-46 for Kerry in Ohio, according to exit polls.
Another 92,672 votes were discarded, according to the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, mostly due to now-familiar
problems with punch-card ballots. Those punch-card
machines are -- surprise, surprise -- predominantly
used in urban areas that tend to vote Democratic. In
Cuyahoga County -- two-to-one Kerry country -- a voter
reported misaligned holes and out-of-order pages on
the punch ballots to Election Protection, a
nonpartisan coalition of organizations led by People
for the American Way Foundation, which was monitoring
elections in select states, including Ohio.
Punch cards also probably slowed down the voting
process, suggests Carlo LoParo, spokesperson for the
Ohio secretary of state, as voters with memories of
Florida made super-extra-sure to remove the chads they
produce completely. "People were a little more
methodical, making sure they didn't leave any hanging
chads," agrees Dan Trevas, communications director for
the Ohio Democratic Party.
But wait -- wasn't the Help America Vote Act of 2002
supposed to help rid states of these machines? Why,
yes -- in fact, Ohio received $133 million from the
federal government specifically to replace those old
clunkers with new DRE and optical-scan machines. The
state even contracted with venders. But then Secretary
of State Kenneth Blackwell -- a Republican -- had a
change of heart. The technology was not sufficiently
proven secure, he said. Nothing has been purchased.
The $133 million stayed in the bank. "We weren't going
to spend it on more punch-card machines," says LoParo.
Or on more poll workers, or training, or any of that
nonsense.
"There should have been a lot of effort ,
instead of talking about challengers, talking about
getting enough machines and getting ready to handle
the large turnout," Trevas says.
THE CHALLENGERS Trevas has in mind were, of course,
the Republicans deployed to polling places to make
voters prove they weren't committing fraud. At the
last minute, the state Republican Party finally won
the right to carry out the plan from the US Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, after a lower-court
judge had ruled that it would be too intimidating.
As it turns out, the Republican challengers were not
especially disruptive, observers report. But they were
one element in a broad pattern of alleged intimidation
and deception. In Cuyahoga County, according to one
Election Protection caller, black voters were asked to
show ID, but white voters were not. In another area
some African-Americans reportedly were redirected to
incorrect polling places across town, says Scott
Britton, executive director of the League of Women
Voters of Ohio. According to multiple reports, in the
days leading up to the election, phone calls and
leaflets directed low-income and minority voters to
incorrect polling locations. (Although some might not
have been dirty tricks -- a Democratic
get-out-the-vote group in Marion County was giving out
a wrong address by mistake, Trevas says.)
There were cruder attempts at dissuasion as well,
including leaflets seen in several parts of the state,
including Columbus, informing voters that, due to high
expected turnout, Republicans would vote Tuesday and
Democrats would vote Wednesday. "I saw one of those
leaflets," Trevas says. "There were a lot of dirty
tricks."
Serious questions have also been raised about absentee
ballots, which may have been withheld from those who
requested them -- a problem in the Bay State as well.
The single biggest election complaint in Massachusetts
came from college students who sent for, but never
received, absentee ballots from their home states,
says David Harris, executive director of the Lawyers
Committee for Civil Rights, in Boston. He received at
least 50 such complaints from Harvard alone. The same
problem reared its head at Boston University, says BU
psychology professor Deborah Belle: more than a
half-dozen of her students told her similar stories.
We don't know yet how many of those students were
trying to vote in Ohio, but we do know that the
Republican-led Ohio legislature prevented the
elections department from implementing expedited
absentee balloting and early voting, says Trevas.
Then, Blackwell barred those who never received their
absentee ballots from casting provisional ballots in
person -- that is, until Election Day, when a Toledo
woman filed and won a lawsuit against him in US
District Court.
MANY OF THOSE who did get to the polls had to wait
ages to get to a booth. There were reports of waiting
times of two-and-a-half-hours in Cleveland, five in
Columbus, and six in the college town of Gambier.
This was all officially blamed on extraordinarily high
turnout, but many disagree. After all, turnout was
actually lower than predicted by the Secretary of
State's office, and the increase from 2000 worked out
to just 64 additional voters per Ohio precinct.
"Everybody saw it coming -- the huge lines, the huge
voter turnout," says Britton. "We're very concerned
that county officials did not adequately prepare."
"It was poor planning, and I think you lay that on the
head of the governor and secretary of state," Trevas
says.
But Republican governor Bob Taft and Blackwell did
prepare: they reduced the number of polling places,
ensuring long lines.
As noted above, the state had been anticipating the
purchase of DRE machines, which are both more
expensive and -- at least in theory -- quicker. That
meant, according to Blackwell, that counties could
make do with fewer machines without affecting the
lines, and fewer faster machines meant that counties
could merge small precincts together to share them.
The Republican-led legislature helped encourage
precinct consolidation by raising the maximum
allowable number of registered voters per precinct.
So, some counties merged their polling places, cutting
as many as 48 percent in some cases.
When the state suddenly nixed the new machines, those
counties were left with fewer polling places for more
voters, with the old slow machines, and about the same
number of poll workers. Erie County consolidated 101
precincts in 2000 into just 62 this year. As a result,
the average number of voters per precinct in Erie
nearly doubled, from 355 to 640.
"Our county was in a budget crunch," says Ruth
Leuthold -- Republican -- director of the Crawford
County Board of Elections, which went from 67
precincts to 46. "We did it due to budgetary reasons,
and to go to electronic voting."
The long lines were greatly exacerbated by the poll
workers, whose average age was 78 statewide, according
to Bryan Williams, director of the Summit County Board
of Education.
And in case the octogenarians were too nimble,
Williams -- Republican -- encouraged them to take
their time. "At their training, I emphasized accuracy
over speed," Williams says.
At one Columbus site, the head poll worker was a
half-hour late to open up, "and things went downhill
from there," reported the Columbus Dispatch. Several
other poll workers in the county overslept, according
to the paper. And oddly enough, the same thing
happened in Cuyahoga County, where four polling places
opened late, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Another poll worker was fired for showing up drunk.
Nobody in Columbus's Franklin County, including poll
workers, could reach the elections-board office by
phone -- even when machines broke, which was frequent.
For a 45-minute stretch at one site, all three voting
machines were inoperative, according to the Dispatch,
which added that half of the 100 people in line left
without voting.
Almost certainly, long lines disproportionately
disenfranchise poorer, working-class voters, who tend
to live in high-density city precincts, and have less
flexibility in their schedules. "We heard of folks who
were told by their bosses they have to get back to
work instead of stay and vote," says Britton.
LoParo of the Secretary of State's office dismisses
the concern, saying that "we have heard anecdotally"
that only a few people showed up but didn't vote. But
Ohio newspapers were filled with anecdotes to the
contrary. And many people probably didn't bother to
show up, as word about the long waits spread. "People
were in line on their cell phones telling their
friends not to try to take one hour to vote --
everybody was in line doing that when I went," Trevas
says.
HERE'S THE rub: a Phoenix analysis shows that the
precinct reductions disproportionately hurt Ohio's
Democratic turnout.
Of Ohio's 88 counties, 20 suffered a significant
reduction -- shutting at least 20 percent (or at least
30) of their precincts. Most of those counties have
Republicans serving as Board of Elections director,
including the four biggest: Cuyahoga, Montgomery,
Summit, and Lucas.
Those 20 counties went heavily to Gore in 2000, 53 to
42 percent. The other 68 counties, which underwent
little-to-no precinct consolidation, went exactly the
opposite way in 2000: 53 to 42 percent to Bush.
In the 68 counties that kept their precinct count at
or near 2000 levels, Kerry benefited more than Bush
from the high turnout, getting 24 percent more votes
than Gore did in 2000, while Bush increased his vote
total by only 17 percent.
But in the 20 squeezed counties, the opposite
happened. Bush increased his vote total by 22 percent,
and Kerry won just 19 percent more than Gore in 2000.
If the reduced number of precincts in those counties
accounts for the difference, it cost Kerry about
45,000 votes. And who knows what might have happened
had the state increased polling places in anticipation
of the high turnout it knew was coming? And if the
state had encouraged voting rather than threatened to
challenge credentials? And if there had been no dirty
tricks and intimidation? And if all had received their
absentee ballots?
Would we be preparing for a Kerry presidency? We'll
probably never know.
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