DLR'sCock
12-01-2004, 03:29 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23344-2004Nov30.html?sub=AR
Kerry Team Seeks to Join Fight to
Get Ohio County to Recount
The Washington Post
Wednesday 01 December 2004
Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign asked an Ohio judge yesterday to allow it to join a legal fight there over whether election officials in one county may sit out the state's impending recount.
A pair of third-party presidential candidates, who said that reports of problems at the polls on Election Day are not being addressed, are forcing the Buckeye State to recount its entire presidential vote. But David A. Yost, a lawyer for Delaware County, just outside Columbus, won a temporary restraining order last week blocking any recount there. He told the Columbus Dispatch that a second count would be a poor use of county resources. President Bush won the mostly Republican area handily, unofficial results show.
Lawyers for the Kerry campaign asked to join Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute in the fight to force the county to participate in the recount. "If there's going to be a recount in Ohio, we don't want it to exclude Delaware County or any other county that might decide to follow Delaware County's lead," Kerry lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said. "It should be a full, fair and accurate recount."
Bush won the critical battleground state by approximately 136,000 votes, a victory that also won him a second term.
Cobb's lawyers filed papers yesterday asking a federal court to take over the case, which is scheduled for state court.
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http://www.cleveland.com/election/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/110181082962790.xml
Signed, Sealed, Certified: Kerry Wins Cuyahoga
By Diane Solov
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Tuesday 30 November 2004
But questions are raised over provisional ballots.
Cuyahoga County officials certified the results of the Nov. 2 election on Monday, despite vigorous protests from voter advocates who maintain that too many unresolved questions remain.
Armed with new studies and fresh anecdotes of Election Day mishaps, voter advocates put members of the county elections board on the defensive with nearly two hours of testimony. They presented lists of about 500 voters whose provisional ballots were rejected due to their unexplained absence or last-minute disappearance from voter registration rolls.
None of the voter advocates suggests that Cuyahoga County results portend a different outcome in the presidential race. But their growing frustration was evident in their tightened jaws and rising voices as they pressed to delay the certification.
"I do believe it's premature to certify the votes today," said Candice Hoke, a Cleveland State University law professor. "It looks as though there were systemic problems, not that they are by design."
But while conceding that some mistakes were inevitable, the board of elections dismissed suggestions that systemic problems caused errors, which they characterized as minimal. At 10:43 a.m., it voted unanimously to send the county's tallies to the Ohio secretary of state, who is expected to certify statewide results on Dec. 6.
Officially, the count of provisional ballots stands at 16,750 accepted and 8,552, or 34 percent, rejected. Sen. John Kerry widened his margin over President George W. Bush in the county from 217,638 to 226,880 in the official count of the race that made Ohio a nail-biter.
But the discussions surrounding the certification focused primarily on procedures and their safeguards and potential flaws that determined whose vote was counted. A focus of Monday's testimony was three lists containing names and addresses of 495 voters whose provisional ballots were rejected, according to an analysis led by Dr. Norman Robbins, a neurosciences professor at Case Western Reserve University who volunteered for the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.
The first list held names of 32 rejected voters the coalition said it reliably registered and delivered to the elections board. The names never made it onto the rolls or were entered incorrectly, Robbins said.
The second list contained 201 rejected voters who were on county voter registration rolls Aug. 17 but had dropped off by Oct. 26. They may have inadvertently been dropped, perhaps during a September software change, Robbins said. Elections Director Michael Vu said he doubts that happened.
The third list contained 183 voters who were on rolls Oct. 26 but given provisional ballots and rejected as not registered. Another 79 were rejected because they didn't sign the provisional ballot, which Robbins maintains they should never have had to use. Vu said he would review the lists Robbins provided and wished he had had them sooner. He also plans a study of the more than 6,000 voter registration cards dropped on the board of elections after the registration deadline. Many of those voters may have gone to the polls unaware the Get-Out-The-Vote group that registered them failed to turn in their cards on time rightly landing their provisional ballots in the discard pile.
Vu detailed additional steps to safeguard votes that his staff took in the last week, including 99 site visits to try to confirm faulty addresses. More than 200 provisional votes were moved to the accepted pile.
"We know that there are going to be administrative errors," Vu said. "But it's not systemwide as it's being painted to be. The reason why I feel that way is from going through the trenches to find every additional step we could take."
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Kerry Team Seeks to Join Fight to
Get Ohio County to Recount
The Washington Post
Wednesday 01 December 2004
Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign asked an Ohio judge yesterday to allow it to join a legal fight there over whether election officials in one county may sit out the state's impending recount.
A pair of third-party presidential candidates, who said that reports of problems at the polls on Election Day are not being addressed, are forcing the Buckeye State to recount its entire presidential vote. But David A. Yost, a lawyer for Delaware County, just outside Columbus, won a temporary restraining order last week blocking any recount there. He told the Columbus Dispatch that a second count would be a poor use of county resources. President Bush won the mostly Republican area handily, unofficial results show.
Lawyers for the Kerry campaign asked to join Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb, Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute in the fight to force the county to participate in the recount. "If there's going to be a recount in Ohio, we don't want it to exclude Delaware County or any other county that might decide to follow Delaware County's lead," Kerry lawyer Dan Hoffheimer said. "It should be a full, fair and accurate recount."
Bush won the critical battleground state by approximately 136,000 votes, a victory that also won him a second term.
Cobb's lawyers filed papers yesterday asking a federal court to take over the case, which is scheduled for state court.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.cleveland.com/election/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/110181082962790.xml
Signed, Sealed, Certified: Kerry Wins Cuyahoga
By Diane Solov
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Tuesday 30 November 2004
But questions are raised over provisional ballots.
Cuyahoga County officials certified the results of the Nov. 2 election on Monday, despite vigorous protests from voter advocates who maintain that too many unresolved questions remain.
Armed with new studies and fresh anecdotes of Election Day mishaps, voter advocates put members of the county elections board on the defensive with nearly two hours of testimony. They presented lists of about 500 voters whose provisional ballots were rejected due to their unexplained absence or last-minute disappearance from voter registration rolls.
None of the voter advocates suggests that Cuyahoga County results portend a different outcome in the presidential race. But their growing frustration was evident in their tightened jaws and rising voices as they pressed to delay the certification.
"I do believe it's premature to certify the votes today," said Candice Hoke, a Cleveland State University law professor. "It looks as though there were systemic problems, not that they are by design."
But while conceding that some mistakes were inevitable, the board of elections dismissed suggestions that systemic problems caused errors, which they characterized as minimal. At 10:43 a.m., it voted unanimously to send the county's tallies to the Ohio secretary of state, who is expected to certify statewide results on Dec. 6.
Officially, the count of provisional ballots stands at 16,750 accepted and 8,552, or 34 percent, rejected. Sen. John Kerry widened his margin over President George W. Bush in the county from 217,638 to 226,880 in the official count of the race that made Ohio a nail-biter.
But the discussions surrounding the certification focused primarily on procedures and their safeguards and potential flaws that determined whose vote was counted. A focus of Monday's testimony was three lists containing names and addresses of 495 voters whose provisional ballots were rejected, according to an analysis led by Dr. Norman Robbins, a neurosciences professor at Case Western Reserve University who volunteered for the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.
The first list held names of 32 rejected voters the coalition said it reliably registered and delivered to the elections board. The names never made it onto the rolls or were entered incorrectly, Robbins said.
The second list contained 201 rejected voters who were on county voter registration rolls Aug. 17 but had dropped off by Oct. 26. They may have inadvertently been dropped, perhaps during a September software change, Robbins said. Elections Director Michael Vu said he doubts that happened.
The third list contained 183 voters who were on rolls Oct. 26 but given provisional ballots and rejected as not registered. Another 79 were rejected because they didn't sign the provisional ballot, which Robbins maintains they should never have had to use. Vu said he would review the lists Robbins provided and wished he had had them sooner. He also plans a study of the more than 6,000 voter registration cards dropped on the board of elections after the registration deadline. Many of those voters may have gone to the polls unaware the Get-Out-The-Vote group that registered them failed to turn in their cards on time rightly landing their provisional ballots in the discard pile.
Vu detailed additional steps to safeguard votes that his staff took in the last week, including 99 site visits to try to confirm faulty addresses. More than 200 provisional votes were moved to the accepted pile.
"We know that there are going to be administrative errors," Vu said. "But it's not systemwide as it's being painted to be. The reason why I feel that way is from going through the trenches to find every additional step we could take."
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