Ohio Ballot Order Bombshell

[minvis]

I just got the ballot order from Clermont County in Southwestern Ohio. * won this county by nearly 2-1. I wanted to see if the large third-party vote totals would appear in a * county. Although there were not a lot of third-party votes, I came across something amazing to me. Perhaps this was discussed in the Cuyahoga County postings, but I found out looking at Clermont County that although the number position of the candidate does rotate, the actual order of the candidates does not. For instance, the number position of the candidates in one precinct can be as follows:

Bush Kerry Nader Peroutka Badnarik
1 2 3 4 5

In the other precinct shared in the same location, it could be as follows:

Nader Peroutka Badnarik Bush Kerry
1 2 3 4 5

Notice that although Bush is in the first position in the first precinct and fourth in the second precinct, the order of the candidates themselves never changes.

Why does this matter? Well, if you are a programmer trying to come up with a way to change votes, this makes it very easy. If I know that my candidate always appears right before my opponent no matter what, I can write a program to change that by simply telling it for every n number of votes, change opponent's ballot number (x) to x-1.

Maybe I was naive but I assumed that rotating the ballot order also meant rotating the candidate's order as well. This makes computer fraud appear to be much easier to do than I first imagined.