Talk:2004 United States election voting controversies, Ohio/example

During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, there were allegations of problems with the election process in Ohio, including missing and uncounted votes; machine malfunctions; machine shortages; machine mis-voting; and anomalous statistical discrepancies in vote tabulations, such as more votes than voters. Statistical analysis of the demographic distribution of these problems and how strongly, in the aggregate, they favored one candidate over another, have led some critics, authors, statisticians, politicians, and concerned citizens to suspect coordinated election fraud throughout the state.

Long Lines
In Cuyahoga County 141 reports of long lines were recorded. This amounts to an average of 0.098 per precinct. Various incidents were reported in Franklin County, Ohio ; the county sparked particular attention due to allegations that lines were disproportionately long in poor and African-American communities.

Although low population precincts were allocated relatively many voting machines and were well within the limits of processing capacity, high-population centers often were not.

Knox County
The chaotic situation in the small town of Gambier, Ohio attracted nationwide attention, thanks to the fact that the town happens to be the home of a university, Kenyon College. Only two voting machines were allocated for this liberal college town with many newly registered voters and those two machines malfunctioned for several hours. Students and townspeople stood in line as long as 11 hours to cast their votes. Reportedly, no such problems occurred five miles away at a neighboring college town, Mount Vernon, Ohio, home of the conservative Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

Provisional ballots
Of 25,309 provisional ballots cast in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 8559 ( 33.2%) were not accepted after inspection. On November 27th, People for the American Way filed a lawsuit seeking to have provisional ballots re-examined. The suit demanded that provisional ballots be accepted regardless of the precinct they were filed in, in accordance with Ohio state law and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and that registration be checked against voter registration cards, rather than just electronic voting lists. That lawsuit was dismissed, and PFAW's appeal was denied in a per curiam opinion dated September 28, 2005.

Official tallies not matching official records
Steven Rosenfeld, a freelance reporter formerly with National Public Radio, said an investigative team analyzed three types of sources of election data from Ohio:
 * poll books used by officials to record the names of voters casting ballots
 * signature books signed by voters and used to verify that signatures match registration records
 * optical scan and punch card ballots (used by 85 percent of the voters in the state)

The team inspected 35,000 ballots from 75 rural and urban precincts. They said that their inspections revealed precincts where the number of ballots and/or signatures in poll books differed significantly from the official election results.

"There is a gap between the numbers provided in the local level records, which until recently no one has been allowed to see, and the official final tallies that were publicly released after this election, and we want to figure out why that gap is there." - Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

According to Mr. Rosenfeld:
 * In 10 southwestern counties the team found thousands of punch card ballots that lacked codes identifying the precinct where the ballot was cast. The codes are typically necessary for the machines processing the ballots to "know" to record which candidate receives the votes.
 * In some precincts in Miami County, the team found discrepancies of 5 percent or more between the people in the signature books and the certified results.
 * In one precinct in Miami County, official tallies recorded about 550 votes, but the team could only find 450 ballots for that precinct and the signature books contained only 450 signatures.

The team also said that they have found many ballots with signs of tampering.

In January, following an agreement by the League of Women Voters (a plaintiff in another election suit against the state) that it was not contesting the 2004 results, the team was given access to all 5.6 million ballots in the election. The ballots in Ohio were scheduled to be destroyed early September 2006, but Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, under pressure from critics, agreed to delay their destruction for several months. The critics, which include a team of statisticians and lawyers, say the secretary of state's proposal is insufficient. They say that the ballots should be saved pending an investigation, and that they intend to sue to preserve them. 

Other problems
In October 2004 the former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. In Franklin County a machine error gave Bush 3,893 extra votes, though error is detected and vote total is corrected. 9,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported for Miami County, Ohio. , while in Warren County, County officials, citing security concerns, prevented public viewing of vote counting.

Data sets

 * Ohio Election Results Spreadsheets
 * Cuyahoga County Results Access Database