Anybody here vote in Ohio?

[trudyco]

Yesterday it was mentioned that to swap the vote all you had to do was give the person the wrong precinct voter guide. THen they would punch a hole in say number 2 for Kerry when in fact in their precinct 2 is for Bush.

Did anybody keep their voter guide or were they asked to leave them? And can the election worker tell what party you are from?
I don't know if that's how they did it in Warren et. al but if so then there would be no way to prove it via hand count. The cards have been punched wrong.

trudyco

[BlueOhio]

1. I did, Butler County

Punchcard, If I remember correctly John Kerry was chad/punch #6. I voted in the reily township, 5 minutes in and out.

Here is where I voted.

Precinct | Location | Place | Address | City, State, Zip
4IA 4IB | Reily Community Center Trustee Meeting Room | 6101 Reily Millville Rd | Oxford, OH 45056

edit to add precinct info.

[skids]

41. PLEASE ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS if you voted in OHIO.

(EDIT: on a punchcard machine.)

I'm just moving trudyco's questions up to the top of the thread here so people see them first off...

1) did you notice the order of the candidates on the voting machine and, if so, what was it?
2) did you check the hole that your vote made in the punch card and, if so, which column was punched for president?
3) did your ballot have an indication of the precinct on it and, if so, what did it say?
3) what county and precinct did you vote in?

[Lerkfish]

47. some answers...

1) did you notice the order of the candidates on the voting machine and, if so, what was it?
---oddly enough, the secondary presidential candidates were first, and Bush was last, if I recall correctly.
2) did you check the hole that your vote made in the punch card and, if so, which column was punched for president?
---I did check the hole to be damn sure, but I can't say for sure which column it was, whether the first or second, but I did double check, I even lined up the card again to be sure.
3) did your ballot have an indication of the precinct on it and, if so, what did it say?
--- Don't recall a precinct number being on the ballot, but then again, I didn't know to be looking for that, sorry.
3) what county and precinct did you vote in?
---Montgomery county, Wash twp. don't recall the exact precinct..there are two, I just know I went to the one on the left..I think it was "x" but I don't recall.

[roseBudd]

2. The voter guide is attached to the machine. It looks like a book

and you flip the pages as you vote.

[truehawk]

5. Who marked the bottem of the ballot with the precinct number?

That precinct number indicates which canidate order program should be used to count the card.

[Danocrat]

3. Franklin County here

but we had touch screen machines

[goodboy]

4. ditto...not a computer touch-screen, but the one where a red light

would flash next to every candidate's name until you pushed it...then it would stay on.

[unpossibles]

6. I voted on a machine

(and waited an hour at 6:30 am - some who voted an hour later in the same neighborhood waited 2-3 hours).

We used machines except for provisional voters (I saw at least three of them when I was next in line.

[MercutioATC]

7. Cuyahoga County, here.

The voter guides were attatched to the booths and your ballot went into a clearly-marked ballot box that matched the precinct number, so I don't see where any "switching" would have worked.

Poll workers had no way of knowing political affiliation.

[New Earth]

8. switching would be in the tabulation

[Chili]

11. Cuyahoga County here too...

...same here, same procedure. Poll workers were sliding the ballots into the machines, too... Mine fit perfectly, but that's just in my precinct - mine wasn't one of the ones targeted, my precinct was "safe."

I hope.

BTW, since I helped my mother complete her absentee ballot, I knew exactly which hole was supposed to be punched before going in, and I checked it to make sure the ballot was lined up correctly.

[roseBudd]

13. But they could guess dem voters based on race and liberal

neighborhoods, ie. near a university

[MercutioATC]

15. How would it have made a difference?

As long as the voter guides are attatched to the booths and the ballots are put in the correct box, there's nothing a poll worker could do with that information.

[LisaL]

19. Yet, somehow, some precincts got absurd high numbers of

votes for third party candidates. That indicates that something fishy went on.
If several precincts with different order of candidates vote in the same place, one can see that mistake was somehow made, either on purpose, or just by accident.

[skids]

20. They could do one of two things:

Mark your ballot with the correct precinct, and then tell you to use the wrong machine.

Or, mark your ballot with the incorrect precinct, and send you to the correct machine.

[MercutioATC]

24. Not a possibility where I voted.

Each ward had a few booths. I went to to the ward in which I lived, got a ballot from those poll workers (who were ONLY working at the desk for my ward), went into a booth marked with my ward's number and put my ballot in a box marked with my ward's number.

[skids]

30. Could you tell us which precinct?

Assuming you mean you voted in OH, could you tell us which precinct? If the suspicious third party votes still show up even though neither problem could have happened, that means the ballots got mized, and a hand recount should show it.

[MercutioATC]

31. I'm in Westlake (west Cleveland suburbs)

[skids]

32. Which precinct?

Do you know which of the following precincts you were in?

WESTLAKE 1-A
WESTLAKE 1-B
WESTLAKE 1-C
WESTLAKE 1-D
WESTLAKE 1-E
WESTLAKE 1-F
WESTLAKE 2-A
WESTLAKE 2-B
WESTLAKE 2-C
WESTLAKE 2-D
WESTLAKE 2-E
WESTLAKE 2-F
WESTLAKE 3-A
WESTLAKE 3-B
WESTLAKE 3-C
WESTLAKE 3-D
WESTLAKE 3-E
WESTLAKE 3-F
WESTLAKE 3-G
WESTLAKE 4-A
WESTLAKE 4-B
WESTLAKE 4-C
WESTLAKE 4-D
WESTLAKE 4-E
WESTLAKE 5-A
WESTLAKE 5-B
WESTLAKE 5-C
WESTLAKE 5-D
WESTLAKE 5-E
WESTLAKE 5-F
WESTLAKE 6-A
WESTLAKE 6-B
WESTLAKE 6-C
WESTLAKE 6-D
WESTLAKE 6-E

[MercutioATC]

36. Sorry, 1-D.

[eomer]

37. Ballot order in that precinct should have been:

Disqualified, Peroutka, Badnarik, Bush, Kerry

Here's the official ballot from county website:
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/boe/ballots/PDF/WLKV01D.pdf (pdf)

[MercutioATC]

45. That looks right.

I remember the first choice was "Disqualified" and Kerry was the last choice,

[eomer]

38. Looks like your polling place would have been this one:

HILLIARD SCHOOL
24365 HILLIARD ROAD
WESTLAKE OH 44145
PRECINCT(S)
WESTLAKE -01- D
WESTLAKE -01- E
WESTLAKE -01- F
WESTLAKE -02- A
WESTLAKE -02- D

The ballot orders for those precents are:
WESTLAKE -01- D: Disqualified, Peroutka, Badnarik, Bush, Kerry
WESTLAKE -01- E: Peroutka, Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, Disqualified
WESTLAKE -01- F: Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, Disqualified, Peroutka
WESTLAKE -02- A: Bush, Kerry, Disqualified, Peroutka, Badnarik
WESTLAKE -02- D: Peroutka, Badnarik, Bush, Kerry, Disqualified

So if you voted for Kerry and your 1-D ballot got put into the stack for one of the other precincts then your vote went to:
WESTLAKE -01- E: Disqualified (black hole)
WESTLAKE -01- F: Peroutka
WESTLAKE -02- A: Badnarik
WESTLAKE -02- D: Disqualified (black hole)
respectively.

If, on the other hand, the voter guide that is part of the machine was intentionally modified as suggested in the original post then nobody knows whom your vote went to unless you doublechecked the hole in the punch card.

[skids]

39. What a clusterf**k

Five? Ugh. OK, well, anyone have the link to the precinct vote totals? It's buried out there someplace...

If there were swaps in that precinct, then we may be able to tell something. Maybe not much.

Since he said all precinct lines were well separated:

1) They would have really had to screw up hard, or intentionally, to give him a ballot with the wrong precinct marked
2) They would have really had to screw up hard, or intentionally, to put his ballot in the wrong collection box.
3) And of course we have the altered guide suggestion.

All three are signs of gross negligence if not fraud, rather than a few innocent mistakes by a confused poll worker.

MercutioATC: You didn't happen to check to make sure your ballot had the right precinct marked on it, did you?


(EDIT: I just noticed that places with 5 precincts had virtually no large 3rd-party abberations. So this may be a dead end.)

[eomer]

42. There are 93,000 undervotes and overvotes

If this ballot got changed from a Kerry vote to a Disqualifed vote then it's one of those 93,000.

The question of the precinct marking on the ballot seems to be a very important one.

[MercutioATC]

48. Why are precinct markings on the ballot important?

(at least in this case)?

A ballot without any precinct mark on it still goes into a locked ballot box for the correct ward (or precinct). They're not mixed with other ballots before they're counted.

[skids]

55. For a recount, see #53 (and kick n/t)

[MercutioATC]

46. No, I didn't check the precinct marking, but

I had assumed that all of the ballots were the same. The BOOKS were different, but all of the ballots themselves were identical. If the ballot from a 1-D voter went into the 1-D box, I don't see why it wouldn't have been read correctly or how it could be mixed in with other ballots.

[eomer]

50. If you put it in the box for 1-D

then the only way it could get into a stack for another precinct would be by way of fraud - someone later taking cards from one precinct and putting them into the stack for another precinct.

The question of chain of custody for the ballots after the polls closed is another issue to be looked at.

Not saying any of this for a fact happened - just exploring possibilities that should be watched for.

BTW, thanks very much for the info!

[MercutioATC]

44. That's correct.

My ballot wasn't put in any "stack"...it was put directly into a locked ballot box at the Ward 1-D desk.

[eomer]

25. The poll worker could "accidentally" direct the voter to

put the ballot in the wrong box after finished voting.

That's why it's important to know if the ballots were marked with the precinct number. I've been watching several threads on this topic and still have not seen a definitive answer. Does anyone know for certain that the punch cards were marked somehow with the precinct number?

[truehawk]

9. Trudy, look at this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=119653&mesg_id=119653

There is an image of a punch card down thread.

If the card has been run through on the wrong program, there are often tell tail signs.

It depends if the ballots with different candidate order used different offsets or a machine readable punch to indicate the particular candidate order on that ballot, or weather we are depending entirely on the precinct written on the bottom to sort them out.

[ohio_liberal]

10. Here in Belmont County

The voter guides are attached to the voting booths by some kind of metal binder. There's no way to switch the guides.

[fliesincircles]

12. Election workers know how you voted in the primaries.

You have to ask for the ballot you want in the primaries (D or R or I). The booths are designated as such. Dems use Dem booths. In the General Election the booths aren't designated. You can use whichever one you want. The poll book has a check for your primary ballot choice. If the ballot order was changed at the booth, to pad * votes, it could only be done in HEAVY Dem precincts. Say * was gonna get clocked in precinct 2C by 80%. If one booth was changed, and 100 people voted in that booth, instead of getting 20 votes on that machine, he would get 80 votes. Or a net of 60 votes. No one would be the wiser. This switcheroo would have to take place when the booth was set up.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[trudyco]

16. Voter guide attached to machine

Ok. Sorry I posted and ran on an errand. Just got back. LOL.

So the only way votes could have been switched was either the machine you put the vote in (this is a precinct level tabulator?) was for a different precinct and somebody purposely put a wrong precinct voter guide on it or there were hacked tabulations.

If it was possible to switch the machine then it might end up that all the votes for Kerry went to B*sh and vice versa. Somebody could put up a voter guide with the correct precinct number on it but incorrect alignment of votes. There might be a problem with jamming and there might not. If not, then they successfully switched the votes and you can't detect the fraud even on a hand recount. The precinct number is on the card, but the voter was given the wrong set of instructions for that precinct so they punched the card wrong. The voter guide has since been changed so there is no trail.

In Cayahoga county precinct (4something) at least the alignment was consistently #6 for Kerry in absentee and voting day. But is the machine really reading #6 for Kerry or is it reading #5? I think the recounters need to make sure the slot number for Kerry for that precinct is what the voters thought it was.


Is that why Wood county or whichever it was that had employees suspended with pay had 10:30 PM tally of over a 1000 (or something significant) for the third party candidate? It looked so blatant they had to change it later? They were supposed to have swapped the machine with one that would give Kerry votes to B*sh and vice versa but somehow they got the wrong machine and it went to the 3rd party instead? If so, those cards on hand recount should show the 3rd party getting a lot of votes again.

On the other hand, it doesn't explain the large (but not huge) number of 3rd party votes in the multiprecinct locations. If voters had simply been directed to the wrong machine the voter should have known it didn't match the precinct # on their card. If they had changed machine/voter guides and messed up a Kerry/B*sh swap into accidently a Kerry/3rd party swap then a whole lot more would have voted for the third party. Were there several machines per precinct and they only tampered with one?

Sorry to be thinking out loud but it seems like if you could swap the guide and make the voter accidently vote for b*sh or a 3rd party without them realizing it you would NOT be caught in a hand recount. Hmmm. Unless somebody was clever enough to verify that the candidate assignment for that machine for that precinct (#1 Kerry, #2 Bush etc) was exactly what voters saw in their guide on election day.

I actually think they did multiple things. A lot of it would be small enough a change that you could blame it on normal FUBAR election procedures like "known minor computer errors" or "gosh, gee, buearocratic bumbling - oops we put up the wrong voter guide" or "the person 3 levels down from the SOS is fired for causing the misallocaion of machines - it was not intentional, just imcompentence at the lower level". Or "gee, we messed up on registration, don't know how that happened".

Makes me wonder how New Hampshire worked. Or were they optical scanner?

trudyco

[skids]

40. NH was opscan, yes.

And they were older opscan units that were basically unmodified from the way they were under the company that Deibold bought out, IIUTC. So it's quite possible, though by no means verified, that NH was clean.

Though I haven't seen a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of the vote gains yet. I would've thought Ida would have mentioned it if there were an unusual number of Kerry+'s

[jhgatiss]

17. jpknapp has a thread somewhere else about this...

I remember he mentioned the possibility that people voting in different precincts at the same location could have been directed to put their ballots in the wrong boxes. So, if they had different ballot orders this would affect the total. There was also a post on here earlier today that had the key to the Cleveland area ballot orders. Can someone find those posts so we can cross reference them?

[trudyco]

18. Just replied to that thread

THe thought there was that the ballots were put in the wrong box. That would be caught on hand recount or even automatic recount because the precinct numbers could be matched.

My theory is that the voters guide was faked so that voters unwittingly voted for Bush. Even the election officials at the precinct may have been duped. The beauty of this is that the hand or automated recount would not show anything wrong! The fake voter guide would be long gotten rid of. Somebody needs to check voters at those precincts to find out what the order was supposedly on their voter guide and make sure it maps to the order the machine tallies in a recount.

trudyco

[KaliTracy]

56. I read a post earlier that people were told to go to the wrong machines

so you were supposed to vote in Precinct A, a Machine in Precint B opened up, and the poll worker says -- go ahead and vote...

[eomer]

35. Here are the ballot orders in the Cleveland area

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=122913&mesg_id=122913

[eomer]

43. or, if you want to know the ballot order in just one precinct

You can look at the official ballot pdf from this page:
http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/boe/ballots/ballots.htm

[ClevelandSportsCurse]

21. In Summit County

I have never heard of or seen the kind of voting guide you're referring to in which votes could be switched. Here in Summit, nothing was too far out of the ordinary as far as I could tell. There were a few incidents such as an hour long power outage (I think the polling location was allowed to stay open an hour longer) and people going to the wrong precinct or not being on the list, thus voting provisionally, but it was not even close to the level of Cuyahoga or any other counties we often hear of.

The Dems on the Summit County Board of Elections are very good. One of whom is Russ Pry, the chair of the county Dem party, and another is Wayne Jones, a former State Rep and lawyer who was on the forefront statewide in trying throw out the challengers on election day. These guys made sure that Summit would not use paperless electronic voting machines.

[eomer]

23. sph812

Did you vote by way of a punch card?

[ClevelandSportsCurse]

27. Yes, I voted punchcard and absentee

Since I was a poll challenger for the Dems on election day, I was allowed to vote absentee at the Board of Elections a few days early. I had a booklet (unique to my precinct) that used numbers to correspond to the hole to be punched. I just took my time to make sure that I did not punch the wrong holes, especially on the judicial candidates, where party affiliation is not labeled. After I was done, I checked it twice to make sure I punched the correct holes and that there were no chads of any sort.

For those who vote on election day, there are no corresponding numbers. Therefore, I would find it very difficult to switch votes at the actual polling place.

However, after the votes are counted, it is possible that someone could hack into the tabulator and switch some numbers around. I don't think that happened here Summit because the results are very consistent to what I expected. Besides, like I said before, Pry and Jones on the board of elections are very good, and I have full faith that they made sure the election was clean. Kerry won Summit with about 56.5% of the vote. In 2000, Gore won Summit with 53%. So, locally, our grassroots efforts paid off.

[fliesincircles]

29. Election day ballots DO have corresponding numbers

It's the first thing I check. Put the ballot in, punch the ballot, pull the ballot out and make sure the number on the ballot macthes the one in the booklet. I check the number for the last issue/candidate when I'm done.

I voted in Stark county.

[eomer]

22. trudyco

Your theory makes sense to me.

I guess the questions to ask Ohio voters are:

1) did you notice the order of the candidates on the voting machine and, if so, what was it?
2) did you check the hole that your vote made in the punch card and, if so, which column was punched for president?
3) did your ballot have an indication of the precinct on it and, if so, what did it say?
3) what county and precinct did you vote in?

[bones_7672]

26. Each precinct had Dem & Repub poll workers. n/t

[RawMaterials]

28. Hamilton county here

attached to machine Kerry Edwards was second from bottom
bush was second from top.
my precinct went for gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 but it was closer

[skids]

33. kick n/t

[Pulse]

34. Dayton here - Montgomery County

I voted in Dayton. I went during lunch break. Line - 15 minutes, nothing unusual.

[newyawker99]

54. Hi Pulse!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[skids]

49. Posting a few EIRS reports.

Gonna give each one it's own topic so things don't get hairy.

This one would be more interesting if it was in Cuyahoga -- do we have data for Hamilton?

058785 Ohio Hamilton Old St. George Church 11/02/04 11:30 am 2004-11-19 12:44:33 PST
Machine problem; Other ballot-related problem; Other

Kerry was 3 (sic) (1st for Presidential Candidate)
- Kerry, Blank, Libertarian, (Name), Bush
- voter's girl friend also reported that Bush and Kerry
were swapped on ballot 39 061

[skids]

51. EIRS: Brooklyn, Cuyahoga -- holes didn't match up.

048874 11/02/04, 5:34 PM PST Machine problem Brooklyn, OH, Brooklyn, Cuyahoga County, Ohio Long time voter called to say that one of 10 machines at his precinct was recording faulty votes all day. He voted at 7:30pm, so the problem affected voters all day. Holes were not properly lined up with names and pages were out of order. (Half the names had no corresponding holes.) When caller brought this to the attention of the presiding judge, the caller was "shushed" by the presiding judge and not allowed to discuss the problem with any of the other voters. Caller said that he has never seen the volume he saw today at his polling place. Normally he waits 10-15 min; today he had to come back because he couldn't wait the necessary 25 minutes.

[skids]

52. EIRS: Cleveland: machines delivered with wrong ballot

050558 11/02/04, 7:18 PM PST Machine problem Correy United Methodist Church, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio Mixed up machines configured for different precincts despite workers' complaints; site director disregarded warnings.

[roseBudd]

53. Hypothetical: Warren County,

Ballot order of candidates anyone?

Could the cheating in Warren have been that during the lockdown, x percentage of Kerry votes were culled and mixed into an incorrect precinct where a Kerry vote would register as a Bush vote?

[KaliTracy]

57. I voted in Butler County

I had NO wait at 7:30 am, nor was there a wait at 6:15 when I came home from work.

There were over 23 punch card machines (at least) in a 1 to 1.5 mile strip.

I want all the polling places to disclose How Many people voted in each precinct, and how many people voted on Each Machine.