Ohio has become a focal point of the 2004 election problems. The evidence of voting irregularities in this key swing state alone, should be just cause to expose and correct our election process. This is why many people, including government representatives, have called for an investigation into what happened in Ohio on Nov 2nd. Thanks to an unprecedented formal challenge to Ohio's electoral votes, we have been able to "Focus the light of truth on these terrible problems with our election system", stated Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a press conference.

Like we saw in Florida during the 2000 election, there were plenty of obstacles in the way of voters. The issues, often racially driven (by a black Sec. of State?), are direct violations of the Voting Rights Act. Long lines, discriminatory distribution of voting machines, backwards laws from the dark ages, and a Republican Secretary of State's questionable policies discouraged an immeasurable number of voters from even showing up. And when determined voters did show up to vote in Ohio, in some largely Democratic precincts, they were met with long waits of up to ten hours in the rain, due to insufficient equipment - yet . It is the shear volume and variety of these type of problems being reported in Ohio and the state's electoral significance (If Kerry got Ohio - he's president) that have prompted us and many others to concentrate our energies and focus on this state. (Keep in mind many other states, like FL, NM, NH and NM are under scrutiny as well.)

While John Kerry and thousands of volunteers were fighting so hard to get Ohio to vote, Republican officials in Ohio were trying to stop the vote. Ohio is one the last states to use paper-punched ballot cards, which account for 73% of their votes. (ughh...more hanging chads). So, the answer was supposed to be the Help America Vote Act and its billions of dollars to move us past those days. Well, in Ohio, much of that funding went to Diebold and adding their electronic voting machines (DREs) into the mix. The company, with strong Republican ties, produces some of the most flawed DREs on the market. This was the company responsible for the machine causing a 16,022 vote deduction from Al Gore in Florida during the 2000 election.

These electronic voting technologies came up with some surprising results in Ohio. Some Democratic precincts had extraordinarily low voter turnouts, with one precinct at 7%. Two other precincts showed a 124% voter turnout. There were a questionably high number of ballots that registered no vote for president, and some precincts had more votes for candidates for minor offices than for president. These kind of numbers are certainly confusing, we deserve explanations.

When it was all said and done, Flor…I mean Ohio went to Bush. Despite the millions of lost jobs in Ohio since 2000. Despite exit polls that indicated a Kerry win. Now, mysterious votes are surfacing in the Buckeye State. Can this really be happening AGAIN?

The key players who are responsible for delivering Ohio's electoral vote. - Should we trust them?

"It's interesting that Mr. Blackwell is the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, yet he is the chief person in charge of the process. Now, it seems to me to be unfair for the man who owns the team to also be the chief umpire at game seven of the world series." - Jesse Jackson

Kenneth Blackwell. Secretary of State, Ohio. Republican. Responsible for several voter suppression efforts including contesting the weight of paper used for registration forms. Interestingly, his office sent out registration forms printed on the wrong weight of paper as well. He made the decision to contract Diebold for Ohio’s DREs.

Wally O’Dell. CEO of Diebold. In a fundraising letter, he said he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.” He also hosted a $1,000/person fundraiser for the Ohio Republican Party, but urged donations of $10,000. The Diebold machines that he represents have been known for bolstering Bush votes in the 2000 election (Florida).

Bob and Todd Urosevich, Brothers. Both founded Data Mark (later became ES&S). They received funding early on by far-Right contributors (the Ahmanson family). Todd is still a VP at ES&S. Bob is now President of Diebold’s election system division. Diebold has contributed $409,170 to Republicans since 2001.

George W. Bush. “President” of the USA. Hosted his Pioneers and Rangers party at his Crawford Texas Ranch. O’Dell was one of many in attendance, who earned the invitation by contributing $100,000 or more to Dubya's campaign. George W. Bush took Ohio in a very close race.

Diebold – Their machines do not provide a receipt or paper trail. In fact, a Johns Hopkins study showed that voters could cast unlimited votes without warning. The problems continue as all machines link to a PC for final vote tabulation. The Johns Hopkins study as well as Bev Harris proved that the votes could be manipulated by the user or hacked into remotely. These security threats caused the same machines to be banned in California.

Thanks to a DRE error, one precinct in Franklin County, Ohio reported 4,258 votes for George Bush. What brought this to attention? There were only 638 voters at the precinct.

There have been over 150 voting machine errors reported to the EIRS in Ohio.

The conditions were awful. Some people waited in line for up to 12 hours. There were not enough polling sites nor enough booths/machines for voting. No state was as ill-prepared for this year’s large turnout as Ohio, and some votes were not cast because of it.
(Read more about the problems in OH)

Conflict of Interest - Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, did not want his fellow Ohioans to vote. He enforced outdated laws, altered current voting procedures and allowed “challengers” at the polling stations to slow down the lines. He changed restrictions as to where voters where supposed to vote, which caused much confusion and caused a large number of provisional ballots to be cast. He's caused a lot of trouble for Ohio voters and he's also the one who gets to deliver Ohio's electoral votes.

Caging - One woman was challenged that she didn’t really live at her address. Why the challenge? Republican propaganda had repeatedly been sent to her residence, and like a good Democrat, she refused delivery. Since the mail came back returned (indicating a possible Democrat), they put her on the list of challenged saying she didn’t live there. This technique is known as “caging”. The Republicans compiled large lists of these people that they did not want to vote - leading to a large number of provisional ballots this year.

Trickery - In Ohio, The Columbus Dispatch and WVKO have both documented phone calls of people pretending to be Elections officials and directing registered voters to different and incorrect polling sites.

136,483 - Bush's margin over Kerry in Ohio

But consider these other numbers from Ohio:

91,00 - Spoiled Ballots
"Spoiled ballots" is a blanket term for ballots that are basically tossed in the garbage and not counted. Why aren't they counted? One reason stems from confusing ballot designs where voters select multiple candidates. More commonly though, it's because the ballots register with no vote for president. This can be attributed to those wily little hanging chads, a product of outdated and faulty punch-ballot machines. And one more thing, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of spoiled votes are from African-Americans, and many of the rest are from other minorities and poor white precincts. Even Sec. State Ken Blackwell realizes the problems with hanging chads, and their tendency to be racially biased - he plans to fix the machinery sometime after Bush's inauguration.

155,000 - Provisional Ballots
Introduced in 2002, the provisional ballot was proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus as an attempt to salvage voters rights from people who were wrongly denied the right to vote. In Ohio, Ken Blackwell gets to decide which one's count, and he has a lot of quirky rules that will result in many of them not being counted.

3,893 - machine error in Bush's favor
Franklin County, home of Ohio State and its 53,000 student population, gave Bush an extra 3,893 votes via an error by an electronic voting machine.

3,500 Ex-felon's voting rights wrongly challenged: letters of cancellation of voter eligibility were sent out to Ohio felons and ex-felons (who vote Democratic about 90% of the time), usually about 300 letters are sent out. The crime rate in Ohio did not go up 1000% this year. Many of these felons were previously allowed to vote in other states.

See our main This Doesn't Add Up link to see more examples of computer errors in Ohio.